Category — Flash Fiction

The heron on my roof seemed preoccupied
with the quick shimmy of squirrels up to the roof
to tan and discuss new age philosophies in all their nakedness

The heron casts a little squint, possibly it was sympathetic,
maybe he wanted to pull up a chair and tell the squirrels
about his time in Baton Rouge. “I’m as American as the next heron,” he’d say, “but that doesn’t mean I have to agree
with every stupid thing we do.”

He squints again as he starts to show off
the frames of his great uncle Merv, his Grand-Pepe
and the overly Catholic display of his great great grandmother Anna Banana Von Blue.

Then he’d slip on his snakeskin moccasins, jump
to the middle of the room, and bounce around as he told
the story of the first time one his kin encountered a bulldozer
in the pre-purple loose strife swamps.

My childhood was the art of of a soul annealed in the heat of a father’s cold disdain inside a house surrounded by forsythia and a rotting picket fence. I only tell you this so that you can understand why crabcake make me queasy.

My little brother stood up in his highchair, his mouth frothing with the insanity of his toddlerage.

“Pa, why can’t ya get the little louse to stop, I’m tryin’ to eat my crab cakes. Gawd!” I said.

He glanced at me, and then at the mercury that read something over 90 degrees. He sighed, then I felt the walllop of his rough hand slam against the side of my head.

Hours, days, months working with chisels and sander sand others implements of construction had left him strong. He had smoothed and bevelled and built a multitude of beautiful things for anyone but us. Here, he only put together pain and set up hurt.

At work he was cool and sturdy – a hammer, a screw driver, a tool to make something from lots of bits of almost nothing. At home, he was icepick.

After dinner, almost every night, I dreamt of slamming his head into stone walls. Of dressing as a night and wielding a morningstar. It’s impossible to love a cold bastard breeze, particularly when you know somewhere out there is a zephyr, warming lush. Singing summer into some maybe less deserving family.

“Get to bed, you little prick,” he said into my still-ringing ears.

I don’t remember much of anything else really. Just a doodle of a cat on a napkin. I think he did it. I’m not sure. It was beautiful. Everything else drifted away into the night. It was me in a quixotic search for the connection between his cruelty and this cat.

“G’night Pa,” I said over my screaming brother.

Ma nudged him, “G’night kiddo,” he let out a long sad breath.

I went and brushed my teeth with the thin excuse for paste – store brand Colgate or something like that.

I could hear my mother and father arguing about money, she called him god damned niggardly and a fucking miser. and then I heard his hand across her face.

I started down the stairs, I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I wasn’t thinking. My head was still fuzzy from the impact. I don’t know. I just started down the first step and paused, when the riposte of her words stopped.

He was crying.

It was a sound like drill in a dentist’s office going through me, I wanted to scream. I wanted to run.

Pa got up from the table, walked to the sink and started to wash his face.

My little brother was slathering food all over himself, and no one seemed to notice.

“Jesus, Irene,” and spat out, at my mother like she was a spitoon, “I love that kid, but he don’t know respect. He dont’ appreciate a damned thing.”

“Jesus, Irene,” like a record he skipped, “I love that kid.”

I slipped back up the stair toward my room to fortify myself against another bleak tomorrow.

Then I laid on my bed as the last rays of sun came rosy through my window. I listened to a mosquito buzz around my head until my mother screamed one last time before the lights went out.

Did you ever have that dream about publishers? You know the one where you’ve called them together in your posh New York City office to discuss the millions of dollars they want to give you to aggregate your insanity into a multi-book deal.

“No, nonono. Look, I realize Penguin has been dying to give me donkey-loads of cash in the form of gold coins just back from their secret storage facility somewhere under the alps, but you have to understand, I hate penguins. They smell bad and they have those nasty pointy beaks that scream out to the fact they’re going to try to peck my eyes out. It just won’t work, I’m sorry”

“Look, I realize Harper Collins is somewhat reputable as publishers go, but, I’m sorry, if you can’t pay me in some combination of Rolex watches and platinum doohickeys, I feel like you’re not really serious. Also, I think I need references.”

“Real Estate? Well, Ok, how much? The state of Montana? Hmmm.. can you throw in the odd little strip of Idaho that makes no actual sense squishing there between Washington and Montana? No? Why are we bothering? You people make me sick.”

This is the story of the only real pleasure that exists. It is the truest lie I can share about Meg. Don’t get all upset. I know, You think you hate lies, but you’re lying to yourself.

The best lies are the ones that trickle out slowly, all covered in truey litte bits. They look delicious, they’re a bit salty, a bit sweet, a bit scary to look at if you know, but they’re perfect in their own way.

So, I’ll tell my story like that. Slowly, and let the all that nasty truth back up behind a dam full of words, until a gooey delicious believable lie can form.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve already told you, I’m lying. You won’t believe me. So, I’ll let you figure out what’s true and what’s not. The truth is usually so crazy no one would believe it anyways.

She was out in the woods, I think Muir, maybe, it’s hard to tell, I can’t see so well anymore. And the trees there we so fucking big. So big.

She was swinging a whisky bottle around her left hand, like some trampy bartender in a 90s movie. I guess she’s better than them, she at least used an empty one. No point in wasting some drunken point she might find inside.

“Meg, I didn’t drive all the way here from hell-cross country to watch you whittle away some brain cells, so tell me what’s going on?”

She laughed. She laughed and put down the empty bottle on a picnic table. Sat there, started to sculpt her nails.

“Stephan, you know, I’ve been married a long time. He’s a good guy. I think it might last a bit longer,” she got out some solvent and knocked the cap on the table to loosen it.

“Ok? Um… great?”

“Aww, dammit,” she shook her hand when the remover got into a hangnail and stung her a bit. “I’m not a vain woman you know. I’m not. But sometimes, I just like to feel beautiful. To feel.. sexy. Wanted. Do you understand?”

I nodded, clipped a cigar and started to chew it. No point in smoking it really.

“You know Meg, a few years back, I was in Arizona, driving along some godforsaken noplace road full of dust and that idea of imminent death. I saw this cactus springing out of the desolation. It was huge and alive, and just there in front of me. It was beautiful.”

Meg raised her eyebrow, “So…. how is this related?”

I watched her sharpen her little pink claws.

“It’s all bound up in the truth of things, you know? Beauty. It’s about where you are and what your’e doing and who you’re with.. and who you are. I think maybe who you are .. that’s the hardest part of the whole fucking thing.”

“Darling, I do love you,” she mouthed the words, but didn’t say them.

I forgave her instantly, “It’s ok. I love you too.”

“There’s no shame in doubt you know, just in a bad passport phone really. That’s what shame is.”

We didn’t say much more. We just walked back to the parking lot. She stashed her lovely little ass back into her tiny little put-put car and drove off. She never looked back. She just looked forward to her old man, and the things that love gives you when your body starts to break beneath the weight of years.

I stood there basking in my own ugliness. Understanding that I’m just a man. I’m just flesh.

I folded myself back behind the wheel, let out a long slow yawn and tried not to think of the 3,219 miles I had to drive to get home.

I tried not to think of the 3,219 reasons I’ll never be loved like that again.

I was crying before I could even hit the gas.

If by harlot you mean a bourbon swigging Thai ladyboy just in to the big city after years tending his father’s soybean crop, then yes, yes, she is a harlot.

But you don’t mean that, do you? You don’t mean much at all. You’re just watching. You are just sitting there eating your squid, watching a bus drive past with a giant ad for some sumo wrestler.

Our ladyboy friend is standing nearly-dressed in something akin to spandex. She looks at the sky and knows It’s about to rain. It’s about to rain, and you watch her for another second, hoping something will slip and prove your pointless point. She’s gone after a garbage truck drives by. You don’t see where she went.

Now you see a fat girl say, “toodles” to her mule-faced anyone as you push a sprig of parsley around your plate. He is dressed in filthy clothes and has just enough teeth to give the effect of silent braying.

She’s so fucking fat. He’s going to go on a bender, you can almost smell the alcohol and crack on his breath. You can see the glint in his eye. He will, steal cash from the tin over his mother’s fridge. He’ll be so high that maple syrup will be good enough for a meal.

The fat girl has gotten on a bus. He smiles as it pulls away.

You finish the last of your food and wonder if it is time for you to step out from the audience, and up to the platform. Instead you order another bourbon, perhaps it can lance, the soul-wound, and save you?

You slam it down, and feel the joy as it subtracts enough braincells to make the world a considerable deal less sticky. Now you are ready for the valley of the shadow of dish. The after-dinner nonsense of a man walking home. Becoming part of a world he only watches.

It is a thousand steps from the hole in the wall to the 8th floor of the building where he feigns a life. He can not think through the bourbon, so he feels pretty good. Pretty good.

She lives across the street.

Yes, she is a harlot. Yes, she hates you. Yes, you will find your binoculars and agonize as she yelps in the nearness of orgasmic bliss, while you masturbate in dark room full of molk and nothing more.

The fat girl walks by, looks up, and sees you with your binoculars. For a moment, she hates you too.

She shakes her head, and walks away, sad for you. Wiggling and jiggling and knowing you watch because that is your world.

The harlot lets out her secret, and another customer is happier than he ever imagined.

The ground approaches.

The bourbon is wearing off.

Adrenaline is like that.

A few minutes later a thin young cop with a crooked badge asks everyone he can find. Why?

Dear Papa,

Remember when I was stick-thin? All bones and bruises with a bowl cut? I went to the big old school house, with four rooms and a quarter inch of shellack on the floor. I learned about phonics and Dick and Jane. I watched Ms. Keene every Friday as she drove in her little orange M.G. up to New Hampshire. The rest of the week, I just went home with a head full of nothing and dirty plaid pants.

Do you remember when I was the kid, and we stalked around your filthy ramshackled workshop making little wooden puzzles with your jigsaw. I’d play with them until they broke, or I lost my interest. For some reason, I never painted pictures on them. The color of the walnut stain and shapes of the wood and the grain were enough. More than enough.

After, we’d go to the refrigerator pull out the brown mustard, the cheap liverwurst and the american cheese, and make sandwiches on buttered Wonder Bread. I remember the sound of our chewing in the dusty smokey sunlight. More than thirty years later, and I still smell your Vantage 100 burning to ash in the ashtray and in your lungs. I hear the serenity of a spoon against a department store glass – stirring the generic brand iced tea & sugar before the ice cube could be added.

I was young, and you were too – in a way. Your back hadn’t hunched yet and your eyes were still steely strong. I talked about baseball, and you talked about The Kid. We played with a tennis ball and a stick in your backyard – I was Jim Rice and you were Warren Spawn.

“Always a Braves fan, kiddo, always a Braves fan,” you’d smile.

The ball would slip in a friendly arc through the gentlest evening air – too soft for stars as yet – and land upon the merry swing of that stick.

We both laughed as I ran around the places where bases might have been, then after you’d say, “Spawn.. then Saine … now pray for rain.”

“What does that mean, Papa?”

“Hahahahaha,” a laugh would roll out of your lean strong frame, “Oh Stephan, my back is tired, I think it’s time we go inside and watch the game.”

I did not know, not really, how bad it was for you. How your disks were gone and your back was crunching as you ran. You were tougher than anyone, and I was soft and young and weaker than I imagined.

Inside, I’d sit with the old tarnished door-stop lions and look at your feet. I’d think about the dry dead toe-knuckles and the cracks and the monster-thick nails on every toe but the last – where instead, the nail was just a pebble.

“Papa, Papa, I’ll put some lotion on your feet and they’ll get better.”

You smiled at me, because you knew sometimes things are beyond saving, but you knew that a good heart must true. And I tried. And I tried. And I tried.

Later, when it became obvious how the game against Jim Palmer and the God damned Oriole’s would turn out, we’d go out to get the lottery ticket at the little greek place – I think it was called Massota’s Market. It was on the corner of Main Street and High Street. You’d smile at the old man’s little girl and say, “50 cents on 447 any order.”

“Ok Mr. Fitzgerald!”

Every week, I thought we’d win and so did you. When we did, I’d get a comic book. A super hero comic book with impossible characters wearing bright colors and saving the world from the likes of me. When we didn’t it was just the sweet sadness of a pack of wild-cherry Lifesavers.

Papa, do you remember when you said someday you’d be gone, and I’d be ok. You said it’d be ok. I told you, “No, I can’t live without you and Nana. I can’t.”

You gave me a hug, do you remember? Do you remember how you told me I’d be older and more able to handle it?

When Nana died, you said, “I can’t live without her” and your body shook as you wept and I held you in my arms for an hour or more. I told you, “Somehow, you’ll find a way.”

How we stood there and watched her slip away without slipping away with her, I’ll never know. I thought, perhaps, I was a man. I did not cry. I never cried then. I just held you up and carried you until you could stop your tears and breathe.

Dear Papa, do you remember how cold it was that day when we buried her? Do you remember the hard bright sun and the endless parade of cars and sirens and despair that followed us to Reading where we laid her there to sleep away the world?

I told you, “Papa, I can not live without you, please don’t ever leave me.”

“Stephan, I’m old. I”ll be gone and you’ll go on without me.”

You were wrong you know, there is no going on without you.

Years later, a lifetime or more really, when you died the first time, the doctor in the emergency room said, “there’s a DNR, I can’t do anything without your permission.”

I told the doctor, “yes, yes, please, save him.”

Your heart was stopped, and so was mine. I didn’t cry then either. Not for days. Even then it was only enough tears to remind me that my heart was still there.

You came back and told me, “It’s ok. It’s ok.”

A week later when you got the dying right, I remembered how you told me, I’d go on without you. But I didn’t.

Geez, Papa, it’s been a decade, and your’e still here with me. Your body is rotting in Reading with Nana, but I hear you. I hear both of you. I see you in the dances of the dust in the last long rays of afternoon sunlight. I hear you in every cheap glass as I stir in something sweet. I taste you in every sandwich and I smell you in every cancerous breath of smoke in every seedy bar.

You were wrong. Do you remember when we put the deck on the cottage and it was supposed to last for 40 years. You said, “I intend to be here to make sure it does.”

I want to go check, to see how the pressure treated lumber held up. I want you there with me to laugh at the warping and the cracking and the occassional new planks that had to be nailed in to save it from the world that breaks us all in time.

But even the cottage is gone now. The lake still laps on the blueberry dappled shores, but the concrete walls have broken every year when the ice goes out. The tops of the mountains slide lower every year from wind and rain – and I remember how you told me as we let our worms bob for perch, “These mountains were the top of the world eons ago. Higher, by far, than Everest.”

You’d catch a kibby and toss him back, “Don’t come back. Send a bass instead.”

Do you remember the nights on the dock watching the bats, listening to Ben Oglivie smack the crap out of the ball and us down the standings to irrelevance?

Nana would call down to us over her Seabreeze from the porch, “time to come in boys, the bread pudding’s ready.”

And we’d head up for another sweet moment.

Papa, do you remember me? Who I was? Papa, tell me, who am I?

Love,
stephan

Mrs. Margaret Vaughn adjusted the thick black frames of her spectacles with her thumb and forefinger as she explained, “Happiness is weedlike, once it gets into your life it grows wild and out of control.”

I would be lying if I told you that I listened carefully to her warbling voice. I heard her, mostly, and I thought about what she was trying to say, but rather than respond, I shook my head and walked away.

I didn’t hear or think of Mrs Vaughn again until the day I read her obituary in the Journal. It was oddly juxtaposed next to an article about the Hamilton County Fair and Mr. Thomas Johnson’s prize winning donkey.

I read about her career, her family, her community involvement and her volunteer work helping those with mental handicaps. I didn’t have anyone to tell, to explain, “this woman changed who I am.”

So I let the universe gently shift away from joy and started to shave. The razor blade scraped away little bits of me from me, and I remembered looking at her. My mind wound around those endless hours carefully examining her every curve, the pale of her skin and the revelation of the myriad ways a woman can be beautiful. Yes, Mrs. Vaughn was the reason for a young man’s first knowing  blush.

It just seemed right to head back to where it all started, so I drove downtown and parked my old Buick by a stenchy little fens and a fat man selling cheap balloons. The circus was in town and no matter how vexing a clown might be when a soul is searching for meaning in a unexpected loss, I still smiled at him, and even considered buying a red one from his pudgy fingers.

I wondered if the bones of hope are like Mrs. Margaret Vaughn’s bones, or the picture of a prize winning ass. If hope can hold up a body, or if it means less than nothing at all.

Answers come, sometimes suddenly. I walked up to the wrought iron fence and realized the old library and 4-room school house were gone. The dirt lot on the other side of the wetlands was mottled with weeds and rocks and black rotted remnant of some old shrub-like plant. I stopped, my hand on the  spiky top of the fence , listened as a garbage truck rumbled past.

“Hey boyo, wha’ choo lookin’ at?” some bum in stained blue rags and dress shoes covered in buckles asked from behind me.

“Nothing, nothing at all. Just thinking,” I muttered at him so he couldn’t really hear, then I turned back to my car.

I could hear the bum all scotched-up braying about how good a ciggie would be. There seemed no point to add my words to this pathetic flourish.

I got into my car and drove past the vacant lot one more time. The weeds of happiness weren’t really copulating, and Mrs. Vaughn was still dead. Even all these decades later, the echoes of her body, her bones, her heart and  words were educational.

I never looked back again at that old lot, but sometimes, I think of it – of her.

“Wha’ choo lookin’ at boyo?”

Nothing. Nothing at all. Just thinking.