Donal Mahoney: Teddy and Oliver Talk It Over on the Bus

Teddy Fister took the bus to work today, something he will never do again, unless the used car he plans to buy tonight also croaks in the middle of an intersection the way his 1960 Rambler did last night. He sold the clunker on the spot to the tow-truck driver who took it to his junkyard. And that's where his beloved Rambler, and its 210,000 miles, sits in a row with other cars, some terminal and others deceased, every one of them waiting for an automotive mortician to part them out. 

That unfortunate incident is why Teddy is on the bus this morning, bouncing up and down with others, including a rotund man, redolent of garlic, who took the seat next to Teddy a moment ago. The rotund man is Oliver Beckin. After he settled in next to Teddy, he began a soliloquy that everyone on the bus could hear if not enjoy. The oratory was very philosophical in nature. Some might even say it was spiritual in that it was an account of how Oliver had reached the age of 50 this day without any idea of where he was going after he died. And on this particular day, after a lifetime of not caring about that subject, Oliver Beckin was looking for an answer, if an answer to a question like that was available. 

Pausing in his speech, Oliver asked his seat mate, Teddy Fister, if Teddy might be able to help him find the answer. After all, Teddy looked like an intelligent man and Oliver figured that he probably knew where he was going after he died. Actually, Teddy was going to his day job as a dishwasher in one of the better restaurants downtown, a job he had held for 30 years. His longevity in the position was due to Teddy being a dependable sort, one who always knew when a dish needed a second scrubbing. 

At first Teddy didn't know what to say. He had never had the problem that Oliver had. He knew for a long time where he was going once his toes turned up. In fact, he had known the answer since grammar school. The nuns had told him every year in religion class what his options were and it was something he never forgot. He'd have choices to make along the way, of course, but the choices were easy ones to make. 

Teddy's problem at the moment, however, was that he had no car. Since he had no newspaper to read, either, and since Oliver didn't seem to be an urban crazy, Teddy thought, what the hell, he'd give it a go, maybe he could help this guy. After all, popes have been telling Catholics like Teddy for years that they must begin to evangelize and spread the faith, even if most Catholics--and Teddy was certainly among their number--were not in the same class as Mormons and Witnesses when it came to evangelization. But if Oliver didn't know where he was going, Teddy could at least explain what his options were before he had to get off the bus. 

Teddy decided to get right to the point. He asked Oliver if he believed in God. Oliver said he didn't know whether he did or not since he had never met God and didn't know anyone who had but he was open to an introduction if that was something Teddy could arrange. 

"I'm single and I'm free most evenings and weekends," Oliver said.

Teddy asked him if he had heard about Jesus Christ who died on the cross for the sins of every man who ever lived or will live.

"That's according to those of us who follow him, of course," Teddy said. "Some people might disagree with that and that's their right. We all have free will." 

Oliver said he had heard about Jesus and thought that anyone with more than 2000 years of shelf life had to have something going for Him. He indicated, however, that he had not been too impressed over the years with many of the followers of Jesus, especially the ones who rang his doorbell at odd hours. Even worse were those who yelled at him from his television set while he was surfing cable channels looking for something interesting to watch. Preachers were not the kind of people Oliver cottoned to.

"The people who ring my doorbell give me leaflets in tiny print," Oliver told Teddy, "and the preachers on television want my money. Not good." 

Teddy told him he wasn't looking for money but he thought people like Oliver who don't know where they were going ought to meet Jesus. This is important, Teddy said, even if many of those who already know Jesus can at times be an aggravating bunch. Teddy himself had been accosted many times by street proselytizers who wanted to save him from damnation. Their rhetoric would grow even stronger, Teddy said, when he would tell them he was Catholic.  

Oliver seemed to relax a bit after hearing that Teddy didn't want his money so Teddy decided to press on. He leaned forward and quietly told Oliver he should call on the Holy Spirit to provide him with the gift of faith because faith cannot be earned by any man. And it takes faith to believe in Jesus. And one has to believe in Jesus as Savior to be a Christian. 

"Faith is a gift from God," Teddy said. "Once you have the gift of faith, you'll know that the Holy Spirit and God the Father and Jesus are three divine persons in one God. The Trinity is a mystery so it might help you to think about it as kind of a trifecta." 

Teddy figured Oliver might understand a term like trifecta better than a term like Trinity in light of the racing form sticking out of his coat pocket.

Teddy admitted that he was partial to the Holy Spirit because he had always thought of Him as the Rodney Dangerfield of the Trinity in that He never seemed to get the degree of respect that believers give to God the Father and God the Son.

"But that's understandable," Teddy said, "because God the Father created the universe and everything in it and God the Son died on the cross to open the Gates of Heaven for every man, even for wretches like you and me. Many believers think of the Holy Spirit as simply a dove or a tongue of fire whose big day is Pentecost. There's a lot more to the Holy Spirt than that." 

Oliver was not particularly happy about being called a wretch. He became even more unsettled when Teddy told him that he needed to ask the Holy Spirit to introduce him to Jesus. Oliver didn't know the Holy Spirit any more than he knew Jesus. 

Teddy also told Oliver he was telling him all this because he didn't want Oliver to end up like his 1960 Rambler, sitting in a junkyard waiting to be parted out.

Then, as quickly as Teddy's first effort at evangelization had started, it was over. Oliver was ready to make a decision. He smiled at Teddy, rose from his seat and thanked him for explaining everything in such detail. Then Oliver headed for the empty couch seat in the back of the bus. There he began talking out loud again about trying to figure out where he had come from and where he was going. 

One stop later, Teddy got up and got off the bus. He had arrived at the restaurant. Moments later he would be in the steamy confines of the dish room where he was master of all he surveyed.

Erik Moshe: Duplicity

The witch woman had medicinal plants, aromatically pungent, and multicolored vines intertwined within her braided hair. She had sunken features, dark plum hued skin matted with mud. She stared through fiercely judgmental eyes, downward in direction, gazing at a man who was standing just below her doorstep in the shade of the jungle.

“Who's there?” she commanded.

The man, shirtless, his tan torso drenched in blood that looked freshly shed was carrying a wounded man on his back, over one shoulder, and a wooden shield was clutched in his other hand. From the looks of it, the witch could tell that he was very tired, shaken, breathing laboriously. Half hidden by wet foliage, one hand on her hip and facing him was where the witch stood. Before speaking, the man knelt respectfully and bowed his head with the body on his back and all as deadweight, then rose to both feet, straightening his posture. He called out to her in a powerful voice.

“Shini-Tari! Woman of the forest! Sacred witch doctor! I come to you on this night to ask you to save this man. He was fatally wounded in battle and needs healing of your kind. Supernatural healing only you can offer him. I do not have money, but I assure you that I can offer you the eternal gratitude of my people.”

After momentary silence, the witch doctor mumbled to herself skeptically. This night intruder was unwelcome here, yet she seemed unable to stifle a certain curiosity. Perhaps she could...well, she would have to see.

“Is he dead?” she asked.

“Yes," said the man.

"What's your name, boy?"

"Zang."

“Well then, Zang, bring him up and I will take a look,” she said.

Bring him up?

Zang thought. Why can’t she come down and look at him on the ground right here? He decided to follow the advice of his fellow warriors back in his native village: "do not question the witch doctor’s requirements, for she has her reasons."

But the woman read his thoughts.

“If have enough strength, you will haul his body up the tree. I will see if I can heal him, but only then! I have not the strength to descend from this tree and I do not wish to leave this tree. There is food and there is water for me to live here. I do not deal with the forest floor. Too many dead things…too much misery," she said.

“I accept this task. I will bring him up now,” he declared.

The tree wasn’t exceptionally inaccessible, nor very tall or broad. It was a simple jungle tree but still of considerable size and breadth. There was also one additional anomaly, being that it was draped in a thick coat of thousands of fully formed spider webs, some quite large, some miniature. The witch doctor was also known as The Spider Catcher, or Arachnid Eater, in some distant villages. Normally, Zang didn‘t have a problem with climbing tree since his upper body was built for it, having been through many battles, and he would normally use a machete to beat away the thick webs in this jungle region. The problem was that he had a human being slung over his back, but alas, navigating through this labyrinth of webs and branches had to be done. Zang had no choice. Collecting himself for some moments, he dropped his shield at his side and began thinking. Should I go up there and break the webs first and then come back down for the man, or will the witch protest? What if I get stuck in the webs? He stopped brainstorming strategies, then began to climb.

His body glowed in the sentient moonlight, slick with sweat and tree sap juice as the man hacked and grunted his way up the treacherous skeleton of the spider tree. The dead warrior over his back was frequently rested upon a branch as Zang ascended to a higher branch and lifted him from there, treating the tree as a platform for lifting and resting in alternating sequences. What felt like dozens of large furry spiders ran up his back and over his neck and face but he paid them no attention, brushing them away. He gritted his teeth, though they were in the process of being flossed by infiltrating gray webs that waned and snuck into his open mouth, intaking deep breaths. He strained and tugged and pulled through grueling movement until finally after over a full hour, the man reached a set of stone steps at the top of the tree, exhausted, and collapsed.

“There is fresh water in a bowl over there. Revive yourself,” the witch said.

Zang obliged, and following a series of incantations and a strange ritual that consisted of the witch smacking the dead warrior in the chest with branches and rotten banana peels, she sat down, fanning herself with a leaf.

“Stand him up,” she instructed. Zang did as he was told.

“Now move away, quickly.”

“But he is dead, he will fall off of the tree,” Zang retorted cautiously.

“Shush! Do as I say or I will banish you from my house and I will eat him.”

As soon as Zang backed away from holding him up, the dead man somehow found balance with gravity, remaining upright, his body swaying, toes and hands twitching erratically. His throat made loud guttural noises before he became full of life again. He vomitted blood over the edge of the tree as consciousness returned with a mystique that Zang would never forget. Suddenly, the man who was alive now ran at Zang with inhuman speed, and without warning he latched his arms around him and body-slammed him down into the jungle periphery below. Zang briefly managed to scream in surprise before his head collided with something in the darkness, most likely a branch, and then fell headfirst onto the hard earth with a snap. Zang's neck was visibly broken, rendering him lifeless.

"What have I done!" cried the witch. She rushed back inside of her house in fright.

The reawakened man hopped down from the tree, landing firmly on two feet. He trotted over towards the man he had recently murdered, and then slowly knelt and weeped at the realization of who he was, a friend and comrade. He mourned in disbelief, clearly unaware of what he had just done nearly moments ago.

“I will heal you. I will go to the Arachnid woman of the forest!” he said, slinging his fallen comrade over his back, retrieving a wooden shield from the ground and headed back up to the treehouse from whence he came, through a path that was recently cut through the spider webs and the labyrinth of branches.

"The witch will be able to help you."

Donal Mahoney: Harry Tompkins and the Art of Forgiveness

Harry Tompkins hadn't been to church for many years. He still believed in God but going to church didn't interest him. Then on a warm Saturday afternoon in August, he met Jayne, a lovely woman, at a company picnic. He liked Jayne a great deal and he thought he might improve his chances with her if he accepted her invitation to go to church on Sunday morning. Jayne had a way about her that Harry liked. Besides she looked like a woman who would bear good children.

"What time should I pick you up?" he asked her. She told him 9:30 would be fine. "That will give us plenty of time to get to the ten o'clock Mass."

The priest's sermon, it turned out, was about the importance of forgiveness and that was a topic Harry knew something about. He had not made a lot of enemies in life but the ones he had made, he cherished even if their infractions had occurred decades ago. Forgiving them would never enter his mind. Enemies are enemies, Harry thought, but he could understand where the priest was coming from.

Harry had spent many years of a considerable education in Catholic schools. And one of the basic mottoes in those schools was to forgive your enemies as you would want Jesus to forgive you. He didn't want to be disrespectful to the Son of God but Jesus had grown up in Nazareth, after all, which was quite a bit different than Harry's neighborhood in Chicago back in the 1950s. In Harry's youth, fights were not a daily occurrence but a week seldom went by without at least one good fight occurring. Fights were always fair back then because to fight dirty was the lowest thing someone could do. You would be branded for life as a dirty fighter. If you couldn't get the job done with your fists, then don't fight is the way Harry looked at it.

Chief among Harry's enemies from the old neighborhood were Elmer and John. They were two boys, older than Harry by a couple of years. Decades ago they beat the Hades out of him in an alley in Chicago. Harry at that time was in the 8th grade and he was going home from school when he got jumped. The nun had been happy with Harry that day, even if that was a rare occurrence, because he had won the all-school 8th grade spelling bee, no small feat in a class where verbal skills outdistanced math skills. Besides, it was usually a girl who won the spelling bees. But Harry could always spell. He'd look at a word once and it was memorized. This time he won because he could spell "ukulele" and Barbara O'Brien, "Miss Goody Two Shoes," couldn't even come close and had to settle for second.

His enemies Elmer and John were high school sophomores the day they pounded Harry, who though big for his age was still only an 8th grader. Elmer and John were small for sophomores but the two of them together were more than Harry at the time could handle. It was a beating Harry never forgot, perhaps because he had won all the other fights he had ever had in grammar school and would have later on in high school. Besides, it sure wasn't easy explaining to his parents that night how he had managed to get a black eye and split lip coming home from school.

"I pay the nuns at St. Nick's good tuition," his father had said, "to make sure you grow up right." He wanted to go down to the school and discuss the matter with the nuns but Harry somehow talked him out of it. He explained that the kids who beat him up didn't go to St. Nick's. In fact, Harry said, they looked like Lutherans. His father said to tell him if Harry ever saw the boys again.

Two years later, when Harry was a sophomore in high school, Elmer and John were seniors at a different high school. Harry was now 6'1" and about 180 lbs. He'd been lifting weights on a regular basis, hoping to gain weight for the football team. Elmer and John, on the other hand, were still relative runts, perhaps 5'6" or 5'7" and maybe 140 lbs at best. Harry hadn't seen either one of the boys since his throttling. But he had always remembered the beating and he assured himself that if he ever had a chance to make things right, he would do so.

It so happened that around that time Harry met a nice girl at a school dance and it turned out that meeting her led to renewing old acquaintances with Elmer. The girl's name was Margaret Mary and she lived in a wealthy neighborhood. She invited him to a graduation party that her parents had arranged. She didn't know that Harry was only a sophomore.

Harry decided to go to the party because he liked the girl despite her living in a fancy neighborhood, one that he had visited only once before when his high school basketball team had defeated the team from Margaret Mary's school. Besides, Harry remembered that Margaret Mary had said her parents had hired a caterer to provide the food. That sure beat hot dogs, the main fare at any party in his neighborhood.

There were a lot of kids at the party that Saturday night and they were all from different neighborhoods. At first, Harry saw no one he knew, certainly no one from his blue-collar neighborhood, which was just as well because with him in a suit and tie he would have had to take a lot of razzing if any of his friends spotted him. Later in the evening, however, Elmer walked in, still short and skinny but decked out in a nice seersucker suit.

Harry recognized Elmer immediately but Elmer did not recognize him. When Elmer decided to go outside to have a cigarette, Harry followed him. He let Elmer take a few drags before he walked up and asked Elmer how life was treating him now that graduation was near.

"You going to college, Elmer?"

Elmer still didn't recognize Harry. It was no wonder, then, that he never saw the uppercut coming. Down went Elmer with Harry on top of him. Many punches later, one of Elmer's teeth lay on the sidewalk and he was gushing blood from his left eye. The other kids heard the ruckus and came poring out of the party but Harry, by that time, had taken off. Elmer had gotten his, Harry figured. There was no need to hang around and complicate matters.

Besides, Harry figured the cops would be scouring the neighborhood looking for a kid that fit his description so he spent the five bucks his mother had given him to take a cab home. He had never told Margaret Mary his real name, just that his nickname was "Skip." She wouldn't have been able to tell the cops where to find him. And he didn't think Elmer would remember who he was.

And so that was one reason why in church that Sunday with the lovely Jayne--at least thirty years after pummeling Elmer--Harry found the priest's sermon on forgiveness resonating. At age 46, he had acquired a couple of college degrees, had held a good job for many years, but had never met a woman he wanted to marry. It wasn't that he hadn't met some lovely women over the years. He had met a number of them and enjoyed them all but found them disposable.

"Most women are like Kleenex," he'd once told a friend who had inquired why he had never married. But Jayne seemed different. He thought right way she'd make a good wife.

So Harry listened to the sermon and even prayed a little. He remembered all the words to the Lord's Prayer. Having been raised Catholic, he knew when to kneel, stand and sit which can be confusing to someone not Catholic attending a Mass. He also thought his prayerfulness might impress Jayne, who was obviously a very spiritual person. But he didn't join her in going up the aisle for Holy Communion because he had been living in mortal sin for years and as a Catholic he knew he should not receive Holy Communion in the state of mortal sin. He might be a sinner, Harry thought, but he wasn't about to commit a sacrilege to impress Jayne. A few rules even Harry wouldn't break.

After Mass, Harry and Jayne went to a nice restaurant for brunch. She took the opportunity to ask him how he liked the Mass and the sermon--or as she called it, "the homily."

Harry said he liked the Mass in that it brought back memories of his younger years in Catholic schools but the sermon, he said, had upset him a little.

"Why," Jayne asked.

Harry then told her in great detail the whole story about Elmer and John beating him up when he was in grammar school. He also told her how he had managed two years later to pay Elmer back with a good thrashing at an otherwise nice party.

That's when Jayne asked him if thumping Elmer wasn't enough. Couldn't he now forgive Elmer and John for beating him up?

Harry said that maybe, just maybe, he could forgive Elmer at some point in his life but not now, even though it was 30 years later. Besides he still hadn't found John. He had even thought about hiring a private detective to get his address. Harry didn't care what city John lived in because that's why they have planes and trains. And as he told Jayne over their last cup of coffee, when he did find John he would beat the hell out of him, worse than he had beaten Elmer at that party.

"I'll bounce his filthy skull off the concrete," Harry told Jayne, wiping the corners of his mouth with his napkin, "if the opportunity presents itself. And I'm pretty sure that some day it will. What goes around comes around. Even Hitler found that out."

He wouldn't kill John, Harry assured Jayne, when she finally came back from the lady's room. "But if possible I'll leave the schmuck laying there in a puddle of blood, wishing he were dead."

Schmuck was a Yiddish word, of course, and he wasn't sure if Jayne knew what it meant. It would be just as well if she didn't. Harry seldom used the word but if he started to get riled up about something, it sometimes fell out of his mouth.

If he got the chance to meet John again and settle matters, Harry told Jayne, then afterward it might be time to talk about forgiving him and Elmer but he'd have to give it some thought. He didn't like to make commitments if he wasn't sure he could keep them. Then Harry drove Jayne home and told her he'd like to see her again. Jayne smiled but didn't really say anything except good-bye when she got out of the car.

As time went on, Harry never saw Jayne again even though he continued to call her for several months. She was never at home, it seemed, or maybe she was a hard sleeper.

Finally Harry quit calling her and started going out again with different women.

"The flavor of the month," as he told another friend.

He never found another woman like Jayne but as Harry liked to say, "any port in a storm."

Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, Donal Mahoney has had poetry and fiction published in The Camel Saloon and other publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his work can be found here: http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html

Steve Prusky: Out of Polonia

Stan and Celina were reared fenced inside the Polonian hamlet of Hamtramck on Andrus Street. Pole Town, as Hamtramck residents call it, is a two square mile Lilliputian burg darkened by the Gulliver sized shadow of Detroit. 

The pair emerged from their immigrant mothers’ wombs to the New World in 1949 and 1950. They were both born at Detroit Osteopathic Hospital in Highland Park. They were inaugural Baby Boomers. From birth, they were groomed and dubbed first generation Polonian Americans. They grew up in as clannish an atmosphere as any other immigrant ethnic groups in Detroit: Albanians, Lithuanians, Catholic Poles and Polish Jews, a few block long pockets of unassuming Czechs. Stan and Celina were as fluent and literate in Gdansk Polish as they were in English. They grew up fed a dual diet of old country culture and the novelty of the Free World. Their émigré parents nourished them on Chopin, Kielbasa, Warszawa dills, Kud nad Wisłą, Three Kings Day, Easter Monday in competition with the iconic Americana of Gun Smoke, Aretha Franklin, “That Was the Week That Was,” and full color news clips of the made for TV Vietnam War performed almost live each dinner hour. Their Palonian heritage exiled them to Hamtramck: a transplanted European enclave surrounded by prosperous, liberal, tempting, but off-limits America.  

Their cliquish second-generation peersPomazaniec‘the anointed’ Stan spitefully called them, ostracized them, denied them social privilege outside Ham Town. The anointed lived in the nicer parts of Detroit. They flourished on the fringe of their ethnic Hamtramck roots as if the town was an Indian reservation and they the vigilant cavalry hemming the hostiles in. They were aloof, nearly immune to old land cultural mores by bloodline longevity. They languished in second-generation hierarchal privilege by luck of birth. Most shucked the old country ways and adopted the liberal freedoms of the US as if Palonian tradition had become a cultural infection no antidote can cure. They considered themselves Americans first, distant Polonians last, a quantum no return leap past their roots. Stan and Celina walked a tight rope equidistant to Polonia and the world outside Hamtramck. 

Socially excluded by the anointed, it was natural Stan and Celina turn to each other. They remained heads together mates, intimate as lovers, mutually protective of each other to a degree well beyond even the basic tenets of marriage. 

Early Saturday morning they stepped out from Kaminski’s corner market on Caniff and Joseph Campau, each of Stan’s arms slaved to two weighty grocery bags for Celina’s mother while Celina kept pace beside him.

“Mamma’s cleaning the house up all nice and neat right now for tonight,” Celina said. “Probably needs my help. Let’s take our time going home.”

Stan suggested, “Let’s stop at Simanski’s used book store up on Conant, and see what he’s got new. There’s nothing in these bags that’ll spoil.”  Celina nodded, grateful for Stan’s ability to productively waste time. She slipped her arm in Sam’s, surprising him with her gesture of affection. They slowly strolled down bustling Conant Street like new lovers oblivious to all that is wrong in the world, but Stan could easily find fault with every corner of Hamtramck.

Since he could recollect, Stan remained focused on a path out of Polonia. If he stayed, a low paying factory job would be the extent of his future. He felt no obligation to tithe the social dues of subservience his generation and their immigrant parents believed they owed. He was anxious to meld with the fast moving current of upwardly mobile 1960’s America. Stan had no wish to be a Polonian in denial, he simply wanted to jump a few rungs on the ladder of upward mobility, surpass the status of ‘the anointed’ on the first round. Stan was determined to be first generation American, not first generation, or second, or third generation American born Palonian. On the other hand, Celina timidly accepted her ethnic fate. She struggled to balance her staid old country upbringing with the startling self-confident aura of impetuous America swimming laps in an Olympic pool of prosperity. 

A little further east on Conant, after the bookstore and two twenty-five cent paperback novels Celina liked, they came upon the smell of fresh butchered animal blood in Kieslowski’s Meat Market. They gazed in awe at the macabre display of Kieslowski’s amply stocked storefront window lined with tripe, lamb chops, ham hocks, blood dripping beef ribs stacked chest high. Stan stepped in Eliezer’s Kosher Deli next door and bought a small round of soft Camembert and two Pierogies to share with Celina. “Sorry for these paltry lookin’ things,” Stan said, “the Jews should to stick with making latkes, let us Poles make a proper Pierogy.” They threaded through the maze of sidewalk kiosks stocked with every trinket imaginable and staffed with aggressive Polish speaking attendants prepared to swindle any one that took the hook. The couple sat on the slat bench in front of Koszniak‘s Bakery to eat. Stan observed the activity on Conant Street like a practiced Baudelerian flâneur. He listened to the din of kobieta bickering with the butcher and sidewalk vendors hawking cheap black plastic bead rosaries and nickel plated St. Christopher medalschains were extra. “We have to get out of here someday, don’t you think?” Stan said. A focused bapʨa scurried past, late for weekday morning Mass. The tail of her Babuška flapped in rhythm with her escalated pace. The long city block possessed every accoutrement an imported version of old Polonia requires. Each soul contently ambling past the duo appeared certain life in Hamtramck is simply . . . life. “Pole town I mean. Look around us; you’d think this street is no different than a Warsaw open air bazaar catering to peasant farmers in town for the day.”

“I’ve never been to Warsaw.” Neither had Stan. “From intimate to belligerent so quick: Where did that come from? Why such a hurry Stan? I can’t leave. My family’s here. I’m happy near my family. Go where?” Celina asked.

“Any place that doesn’t resemble this signed in stone copy of the old Poland.”

*

Saturday’s were cultural re-affirmation day for Celina and Stan’s families. The two clans were members of the Polish Century Club. At dusk each Saturday both families crammed in their rusting second hand station wagons and went to the Century Club Hall in Mardi Gras moods, as if the day before Sabbath was Fat Tuesday and Sunday Mass Ash Wednesday.  It was July 3, 1967; a few weeks until the Detroit race riots and mad dog insanity reigned unchecked for three days, five complacent months prior to the ‘68 Tet Offensive, seven months before the first Super Bowl; a year until the first man stood on the Moon. Celina had matured into a curvy, graceful olive skinned Polish Venus at eighteen. Stan, gangly and uncoordinated during puberty, turned into a vigorous, sinuous hormone afflicted nineteen-year-old alpha male three months earlier.

Celina’s mother had the house in order by the time Celina got home with the groceries and two twenty-five cent worn thin second hand paperback novels.

“What timing.” her mother scowled.

“Sorry matka, books--you know I read.” Her mother snorted disapproval at so frivolous a purchase. “Books! Books! Why buy books? Go to the library, but no late fees. Save for the Mass tithe basket, clothes, college,” her mother scolded. Stan’s family gathered at Celina’s for drinks before their weekly exodus to the Hall.

*

At the Century Club later, the women freely clucked the latest community gossip in Polish. They fretted over the parish priests that drank too heavily from the sacrificial wine casks before they incoherently flubbed through weekday Mass in Latin to the few believers present. Whether the silk robed men were drunk or sober, none of the faithful understood the ancient language anyway.

  

“Billie Jackobilski is in the Hamtramck jail again for fist fighting, drunk on Stoli vodka at Raymond Dregovich’s bar on Joseph Campau,” Stan’s mother railed.

  

“The old Reichold Chemical plant in Ferndale had another explosion, killing Tadeusz Szymanski and five others,” Celina’s solemn mother mourned. “Thad left three kids and a wife behind. Those who can not afford to help long term must contribute to a one-time collection for the family.”

“Yes, of course,” Stan’s mother agreed without thinking which of her husband’s skimpy paychecks the donation might come from.

The women nipped from a purse size bottle of Madeira Celina’s mother sneaked in as if the sweet liqueur were eighteen-carat liquid gold: the Club didn’t stock Madeira at the bar. The tired, labor worn fathers, ojciecs, many partisans during the Nazi occupation of Poland, later outlaws when Soviet tanks thundered in, lazed about drinking beer, joking, poking fun at their wives plumping bottoms and thickened waists.

The club gorged on Smalec Hors d’Oeuvres and a full course snowball dinner served from the festive trough of New World prosperity. Stan pecked at the old fashion polish dishes, silently pining for pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers and fries instead.  Celina, soft spoken, mostly silent, dutifully traditional, spoke only Polish at the table. She slowly relished each mouthful of the old homeland dishes. However, no staunch Polonian influences could stop Celina’s overwhelming chemistry from radiating post pubescent female youth. Nothing man made could prohibit her hormones from multiplying, spilling over, gravitating toward Stan. 

Celina sat on Stan’s side of the long fold out table during the communal feast. She helped clear the table, sat back down, angled her chair to face Stan and confronted him with her fresh new woman-hood. Her long, straight black hair shined. Its tips kissed her waist. Her smooth shaved legs emitted a corona like the howling moon. Stan smelled her pheromones a room away. Her autumn brown eyes narrowed to a visual swoon, oozing rich hormones in his direction. Her mini skirt rode up her muscle-toned legs when she sat facing him. She provocatively crossed her right leg over the left; her skirt crept higher, revealing a quick peak at her fluid inner thighs. She angelically stared at him as if she had just reconfigured the four virtues of the Australian Southern Cross. Both families spotted her inviting body language. The mothers excitedly cackled and cooed. The men shared glances of approval. Stan looked up from Celina’s naked legs to the reflective pools of heat in her eyes. She proffered him a Mona Lisa smile, amused by the hypnotic testosterone swelling his eyes.

The adults sipped drinks after dinner; Armada Cream Sherry for the women, the best Polish vodka found Stateside for the men. 

Sam and Celina stayed at the table and continued facing each other. Sam, distracted by Celina’s less than subtle innuendos, paid no attention to the blathering adult’s gathering at the bar. He was so taken by Celina he would have ignored the second flood, or a gun to his head. “I’ll get beer,” he volunteered. 

“None for me,” Celina said. She crossed her left leg over her right, slower than before, as if her limbs spoke paragraphs of her intent. Sam, her lone audience, watched the choreography of her molten thighs, smiled, placed one hand on her knee, caressed her cheek with the other and kissed hershe kissed back. Stan hurried to the bar to fetch a Pabst for himself and cream soda for Celina. Those left at the table sat silent in Stan’s absence. 

Celina absorbed all the implications of his soft touch, his kiss, the pleasant mingling of their tongues. She leaned back on her chair as comfortably limp as surrender gets.

  

The band started up. Excessive drinking and shameless laughter took place. The crowd danced to traditional Polish Polkas, mazurkas, Chopin etudes with an occasional brew of pop music stirred in for the teens. After guzzling the first beer, Stan wandered to the bar for a second and took a seat while he waited.

Celina got up and slowly flowed across the dance floor like a female Moses in command. She sauntered toward Stan as if her desire had parted the Red Sea for her to reach the other shore. Her black three-inch heels chiseled her taught calf muscles and sculpted her slightly exposed inner thighs, as if she had resurrected Michelangelo to polish them marble smooth. Her skin tone looked recently poured like glistening fluid amber.  Her short tight black skirt revealed every shapely bit of her as if there was no need to undress her ever and expect more.  Her black Chiffon top accented her raven flowing hair like a brook of jet black endlessly spilling from her crown.  Her eyes were two ponds of brown mist, her lips a pout.  She sanctioned he take her hand to dance. “C’mon Stan, playtime is over.  We’re both grown up.  Hold me,” her low throaty voice was as lust laden as a sultry invitation could be. There was no doubt any one in Pole Town would deny this night belonged to them. Her arms surrounded his neck, possessively clutching him. She looked up to him, kissed his cheek. He wrapped both arms around her waist, resting his hands on her hips, kissed her forehead in reply. His testosterone level leapt over tall buildings, the Alps, the Statue of Liberty, yet he knew tonight that there would be nowhere to land. They held each other close, slow dancing through each waltz, love ballad, slow paced étude. They drank together at the bar between dances. They kissed, slid their barstools close as if their mutual lust had permanently welded the chrome steel legs permanently together. Celina whispered Stan an invitation between drinks, “It‘s time they put you and I to bed,” she said. Stan hesitated. He wistfully breathed in her ear, kissed the nape of her neck. They held each other, drank arm in arm.  He smoked his first cigarette with her. Celina asked Stan dance a polka with her.

“It’ll be the last dance for a while, I got drafted. I leave for the Army next week.” Stan said. 

The Red Sea closed. Stan began to drown as if he was Pharaoh’s first charioteer in the chase to corner Moses.  “So that’s what’s wrong with you! It explains this afternoon on the bakery bench. When did you get the news?”

“Yesterday’s mail. You had to know this was coming. I’m nineteen. Everyone my age is going. Celina, I have no antidote for this. Can you take a chance and wait?”

“Oh, of course I’ll wait. Is there another choice?” Stan had no options. The war was an affair practically every American male his age was bound to inherit. “Kocham cię,” Celina said. Stan could not reply. 

Celina left Stan sitting cold at the bar. Her high heals quickly clicked across the polished wood dance floor like raindrops tapping tin. The sea parted again as she crossed to the other shore. The waters imploded head on closing close behind. Stan felt as if she abandoned him in a dingy back alley with no light to guide him to the street. Although Stan’s affection for her glowed bright, the shiny chrome gleam dulled with his admission. Stan sat at the bar the rest of the evening staring at the top shelf liquor. Celina sat on an uncomfortable seat in a row of like seats single girls used while waiting for invitations to dance. No one asked Celina; it was obvious she only danced with Stan. She whimpered, wept, well beyond the last dance, the last drink, her last glance at Stan as he left the Hall with his family.

*  

Stan left for basic training the following Tuesday. In league with five other bay windows on Andrus Street, Stan’s mother immediately hung a two-foot long vertical silk red, white and blue banner decorated with one blue star in her front window.

The Army did not discriminate; all ethnic groups were welcome.  Even first generation U.S. Palonians got invitations to this war. No second generation ‘Hybrids’ ostracized Stan in the Army. The possibility of violent death in combat tends to promote equality among all those facing it. Stan arrived in Hue just in time for Tet. It was the year of the monkey in Vietnam.

Both families kept on living.  They habitually observed the traditional Polish holidays. The Saturday evening family gatherings at the Hall remained a sacred re-assertion of Polonian heritage. The matkas partook of their obligatory nips from hidden bottles of Madeira, gossiped, exchanged old country recipes. The men cajoled their wives for their bulging waistlines and swelling bottoms, swilled Pabst Blue Ribbon and Stolichnaya Vodka, gratefully feasting on their Polish homeland meals. The anointed prospered, moved to the suburbs while Conant Street continued to be Polonian. Celina clung closer to the old country ways. Stan got out of Polonia and never returned. His mother sewed black ribbon diagonally across the blue star banner in her bay window, walked to St. Florian’s church on Poland Street and lit a candle before she prayed.

 

A native Detroiter, Steve Prusky has lived in Las Vegas  since 1987. His fiction, photography and poetic work have appeared in Camel Saloon, Bactrian Room, Foundling Review, Eunoia Review, Orion headless, Assisi Online Journal, The Legendary, Whistling fire and other publications. 

Donal Mahoney: Mike Fitzgibbons and His Morning Paper

For 35 years, Mike Fitzgibbons had never missed a day driving off at 4 a.m. to buy the newspaper at his local convenience store. Snow, sleet, hail or rain couldn't stop him. There was only one paper being published in St. Louis at the time but Mike was addicted to newspapers. He had spent his early years reading four papers a day in Chicago--two in the morning and two in the evening. He worked for one of them and enjoyed every minute of it. However, an opportunity to earn more money as an editor for a defense contractor required his large family's relocation to St. Louis. Mike needed more money to feed a wife and seven children.

"Words are words," Mike said at the time. "Being paid more money to arrange words for someone else seems like the right thing to do." 

Writing and editing were the two things in life Mike could do well enough to draw a salary. It broke his heart to retire many years later at the age of 68 but it seemed like the best thing to do. His doctor had told him he might have early Alzheimer's disease and that he should prepare for the future since the disease would only grow worse. Mike never told his wife or any of the children about the problem. His wife was the excitable type, and all of the children had grown up and moved away, many of them back to Chicago where all of them had been born. Each of them had acquired a college degree or two and had found a good job. Most of them were married. Mike and his wife now had 12 grandchildren and were looking forward to more. 

"You can never have too many heirs," he told his wife one time. "Whatever we leave, it will give them something to argue about after we're gone. They won't forget us." 

After the doctor had mentioned the strong possibility that he had Alzheimer's disease, Mike decided to have the daily paper delivered to the house instead of driving to the store every morning to buy one. And on most days that seemed like a good decision. But not on the infrequent days when the deliveryman soared by Mike's house without tossing a paper on the lawn. 

The first time it happened Mike called the circulation department and received a credit on his bill. He did the same thing the second time, managing to keep his temper under control. But the third time occurred on the morning after the Super Bowl. For Mike this was the last straw. Three times he told the kind old lady in the circulation department to tell the driver Mike was from Chicago originally and in that fine city errors of this magnitude did not go unanswered. A credit on Mike's bill, while necessary, would not suffice. 

When his wife Dolly got up, he asked her, "How the hell can I check the stats on the game without my newspaper?" She was only half awake. Mike was a very early riser and Dolly, according to Mike, was a "sack hound." 

A kind woman, Dolly had always tried to be helpful throughout the many years of their marriage, so Mike understood why she eventually suggested he drive to the QuikTrip and buy a paper. Then he could read about the game and check the stats, she said.

"That's not the point, Dolly," Mike said. "I have a verbal contract with that paper for delivery and they are not keeping their side of the bargain. A credit on my bill is not adequate recompense." Mike loved the sound of that last sentence as it rolled off his tongue. He always loved the sound of words whether they were floating in the air alone or jailed in a sentence or paragraph. 

What made matters worse, Mike told Dolly, is that without his newspaper he would have no way to check on the obituaries of the day. The obituaries were Mike's favorite part of the paper. Back in his old ethnic neighborhood in Chicago, the obituaries were known as the Irishman's Racing Form. 

Back then, many retired Irish immigrants would spend the day reviewing the obituaries in the city's four different newspapers. Finding a good obituary primed them for conversation at the local tap after supper. The tap was run by the legendary Rosie McCarthy, a humongous widow who did not suffer any nonsense in her establishment. But she did offer free hard-boiled eggs to customers who ordered at least three foaming steins of Guinness. Eggs were cheap in those days. It was rumored that Rosie had to buy 10 dozen eggs a week just to keep her customers happy.

"Rosie knows how to hard boil an egg, Dolly," Mike had told his wife many times over the years. And his wife always wondered what secret Rosie could possibly have when it came to boiling eggs. 

One reason the obituaries were of such great interest in Mike's old neighborhood involved the retirees wanting to see if any of their old bosses had finally died. Some of those bosses had been nasty men, so petulant and abrasive they'd have given even a good worker a rash. There was also the possibility that over in Ireland, the Irish Republican Army might finally blow up a bridge with the Queen of England on it. The IRA had been trying to do that for years. Many bridges had been blown to smithereens but not one of them had "Herself" on it. 

"The IRA keeps blowing up bridges, Dolly," Mike would remind his wife. "You would think one of these times they'd get it right. They know what she looks like."

In addition to reading four newspapers a day as a young man, Mike had had other hobbies during his long and tumultuous life. He had bred rare Australian finches for decades and had won prizes with them at bird shows. However, after his last son had graduated from college and moved away, Mike sold more than 200 finches and 40 cages because he no longer had a son available to clean the cages. Five sons had earned allowances over the years cleaning the cages at least once a week. All of them ended up hating anything with wings. One son had even bought a BB gun and would sit out in the yard all day while Mike was at work. That boy was a pretty good shot. No one knows how many woodpeckers and chickadees he managed to pick  off. 

After Mike sold his birds, he took the considerable proceeds and plowed all of the money into rare coins. For the next ten years he collected many rare coins but when he retired he figured he may as well sell them because none of his children had any numismatic interest. Not only that, none of them would have known the value of the coins if Mike died. Some of them were very valuable--the 1943 Irish Florin, for example, in Extra Fine condition would have brought more than $15,000 at the right auction. Mike loved that coin and kept it, along with all the others, in a large safe in the basement. Guarding the safe was a large if somewhat addled and ancient bloodhound. Mike had bought the dog from a fellow bird breeder when it was a pup. The bloodhound wasn't toothless but he may as well have been. He wouldn't bite anyone no matter how menacing a robber might be.

"I love that dog, Dolly," Mike would tell his wife every time she suggested that euthanasia might be the best thing. "That dog, Dolly, is as Catholic as we are and Catholics don't abort or euthanize anything," Mike said.

When Mike finally sold all of his coins, he had a great deal of money that he viewed as disposable income. Dolly, however, viewed it as an insurance policy in case Mike died first. Mike had a couple of pensions but he had never made Dolly a co-beneficiary. In fact he convinced her to sign waivers so the payout to him would be larger. Dolly didn't want to do it but signing was easier than reasoning with Mike. His temper seldom surfaced but when it did, things weren't good for weeks around the house.

"I get mad once in awhile, Dolly, but I always apologize," Mike would remind her. 

Mike finally decided to put the coin money into guns--big guns--although he had never shot a gun in his life. He refused to go hunting because he saw no sense in killing animals when meat was available at the butcher store. The kids used to joke that maybe deer and pheasant were Catholic, too. 

Some of the guns Mike bought were the kind you would see in action movies. Mike always liked action movies. The more the gore, the happier Mike was. But he had to go to action movies alone because his wife hated gore but she liked musicals. No musicals for Mike, although he would always dig into his pocket to give her the money for admission, complaining occasionally that the cost of seeing musicals kept going up. 

"I don't want to spend good money to see a bunch of people in costumes and wigs singing songs together when Frank Sinatra, all by himself, sings better than any of them." Sinatra had a good voice, the kids thought, and it probably didn't hurt that he was Catholic. One of them once suggested to Mike that it might be nice if they played a recording of Sinatra's "Moonlight in Vermont" at church. Mike didn't agree or disagree because he thought some sacrilege might be involved.

Mike remembered his gun collection on the day the deliveryman had failed to throw his newspaper on the lawn. He decided that the next morning he would sit out on his front porch at 3 a.m. with a big mug of coffee and the biggest rifle he owned. When the delivery van drove down his street, he planned to walk out to the curb, rifle in hand, to make sure he got his paper and to advise the driver of the inconvenience his mistake of the previous day had caused.

"There's no way this guy's a Catholic," Mike said to himself. "Three times now he has skipped my house with my paper."  

The next morning things went exactly as planned--at the start. Mike was out on his porch with his rifle and coffee at 3 a.m. when the van came rolling down the street. Mike got up and strolled down the walk toward the van, his rifle resting like a child in his arms. Mike couldn't have known, however, that the van driver had been robbed several times over the years and that he carried a pistol in case someone decide to rob him again. When he saw Mike coming toward him down the middle of the street carrying a rifle, the driver decided to take no chances. He rolled down the window and put a bullet in Mike's forehead. 

One shot, dead center, was all it took, and Mike, still a big strapping man, fell like a tree. 

The next day the story about the death of Mike Fitzgibbons made the front page of his beloved paper and Mike himself was listed in the obituary section. The obit advised that friends of the family could come to the wake at Eagan's Funeral Home on Friday. It also pointed out that a Solemn High Funeral Mass would be said for Mike on Saturday at St. Aloysius Church, where Mike had been a faithful member and stalwart usher for decades. 

Two days after the funeral, a neighbor was shoveling snow for Mike's widow. He happened to look up and saw the missing newspaper stuck in the branch of one of Mike's Weeping Willow trees. Mike had an interest in Weeping Willows and had planted a number of them over the years, too many some of the neighbors thought for the size of his property. This was the first time a newspaper had gotten stuck in one of the trees, his wife said. And it would be the last time because she had canceled the subscription to the paper the day Mike died. Like her husband, Dolly was a woman of principle and she thought canceling the paper was the least she could do in his memory. She had never read the damn thing anyway.

Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. He has had poetry and fiction published in a variety of print and electronic publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html

David Rawson: A Week of Magic

Every morning in the kitchen, before I leave for the puzzle factory,
my father performs a magic trick.
I was told that if I wanted to know my future, I should ask
the lady who lives in the tree.
As we drove back from the Irish pub,
listening to Rage Against the Machine’s cover of “Maggie’s Farm,”
two-pint Guinness George looked up to the stapled lining of my Olds,
and said, “Damn. That girl’s a BITCH.”

Monday, I drank the rest of the orange juice as my father
Put a toy car in his mouth and swallowed.
I asked her, “Lady in the Tree, why do you live in that tree?”
Hearing past your voice, past my question,
the am-I-wasting-my-time kind.

Tuesday, he took my last twenty dollar bill out of my wallet
and rubbed it between his palms until a finch came out.
I won’t leave my wallet on the kitchen table anymore.
She threw an acorn down to me, and I caught it between my
palms. She replied, “I supposed it’s as good as any other tree.”
What we didn’t do: go out to the bridge so you could see blue
night whales and hear lostgods calling through rock.

Wednesday, father took all the removable compartments
Out of the refrigerator and walked inside.
I opened it, and the fridge was empty. When I opened a cabinet,
father’s arm reached out to hand me cornflakes.
I called up to her, “No, I mean why live in any tree at all?”
She sang Lover went away, and he never came back
Wonder what they did to my lover
He sent me letter til a year ago
Wonder what they did to my lover
He wished that he could come back home
Wonder what they did to my lover
He promised me marriage and a big back yard
Wonder what they did to my lover
Mama tells me not to wear his ring
But I am waiting on my lover
Father brought home the banker’s son
But I am waiting on my lover
Brother brought home the quarterback
But I am waiting on my lover
Sister brought home a sailor man
But I am waiting on my lover
My niece petted your black hair and asked if you liked apple juice.

Thursday, father took my coffee mug off the counter and
shook it gently with both hands, chanting the name of my mother.
I began to hear the sound of coins rubbing against each other.
I counted the coins that night. Exactly twenty dollars.
I asked the lady in the tree, “Do you know how I will die?”
She lowered a bucket on a rope, and I put in the red shoelace
from my right shoe. As she pulled the basket up, I said, “And maybe
you know where my mother is.”
Pretending to like AC/DC.
I regret putting Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” on your mix tape.

Friday, my father asked me why I work at the puzzle factory.
I like factory work, watching all those boxes on the belt, studying the covers
and the number listing of pieces, wondering how long it takes
to put a puzzle like that together. Father spilled my box of Trix on the floor
and sat on the linoleum to sort through the colors.
In ten minutes, I could see a cereal portrait of my mother.
This is not magic, but the way her cereal eyes looked on the
floor of our kitchen made me feel more than any number of toy cars
my father can eat.
The basket fell to the ground, and my red lace slithered out
into the grass a fully formed snake. It came for me,
and I ran. Icould hear it whispering my name in the tall grass.
I still cannot listen to Gary Jules or watch Fight Club.
The smell of cigarette smoke and leather makes my mouth dry.

Saturday, as my father levitated a few inches above the floor,
A pack of playing cards fell from his pocket. Every card
was the queen of hearts, and they all had Mother’s face.
I looked back, and the snake had grown to the size of a horse,
and the lady in the tree rode the snakehorse,
but he moved slowly on his new legs.
Above my own breathing, I heard her say, “I see you dead,
young man. That is your future. You die like the rest of us. You
must come to me with good intentions. You come to me with love
on your tongue. I am your mother. My tree is your mother.
The beast I ride is your mother.”
When I hear your name, I am behind a camera. It is November,
we are in a park, and you are holding signs for me.
I’m making a still-frame movie for a class.
The signs read Ugly and Fat and Alone, and we laugh because we will never
be any of those.

Sunday, after my father pulled ten feet of handkerchiefs from the toaster,
I asked him why his mother left.
Sometimes he makes bad jokes like, “I made her disappear,” or,
“I sawed her heart in half and couldn’t remember how un-half her back.”
On Sunday, he said, “Son, that was so long ago.”
And you, wrinkling your nose to the sun,
ducks mid-flight behind you.

Ed Markowski: Virtue

In  the  mining  town  of  Virtue
where  the  Mercy  River  flowed
two  men  met  with  death
in  a  wicked  blinding  snow

The  Gypsy  left  his  home
a  thousand   miles  east
looking  to  partake  in
Virtue’s  golden  feast

Tall  John  was  the  barkeep
at  the  Ruby  Star  Hotel
a  gentle  man  from  Tennessee
and  a  card  sharp  just  as  well

He  killed  kings  with  the  German
Black  Willie  and  Old  Dutch
that  night  he  dealt  a  loser’s  hand
to  the  preacher  and  the  judge

The  Gypsy  took  room  number  ten
at  Miss  Jesse’s  boarding  hall
when  the  silver  moon  had  faded
and  the  snow  began  to  fall

As  the  sweet  scent  of  a  woman
drifted  clear  across  the  floor
the  gypsy  lit  a  hurricane  lamp
A  knock  rattled  his  door

A  woman  clad  in  sorrow’s  shawl
who’s  eyes  were  wet  and  blue
said  listen  to  me  mister  for  all
I  say  is  true

My  name  is  Emma  Simpson  Sir
the  woman  whispered  low
in  the  morning  mount  your  horse
don’t  look  back  just  go

In  our  town  of  Virtue
no  one  will  hold  a  grudge
unless  you  cross  our  marshal
preacher  mayor  and  our  judge

Why  thank  you  ma’am  the  gypsy said
I  can’t  pass  up  this  chance
in  the  glimmer  of  a  glowing  wick
they  danced  the  lovers  dance

He  is  a  man  of  God  and  truth
Emma  muttered  in  the  glow
and  of  this  tender  moment
he  must  never  know

The  gypsy  flashed  a  crescent  smile
room  ten  grew  cold  and  dark
the  silence  of  the  storm  screamed
a  blood  hound’s  bark

Now  up  the  empty  street  a  block
behind  them  Methodist  Doors
the  marshal  preacher  and  the  judge
called  out  I  need  three  more

Tall  John  cut  the  poker  deck
with  a  magician’s  blinding  speed
inviting  his  opponent  to  take
as  many  as  you  need

Across  the  Pinyon  Altar
he  stretched  his  mighty  arms
Tall  John  gazed  upon  the  cross
feeling  warm  and  calm

The  marshal  kissed  the  hand  he  held
he  was  blinded  to  the  ruse
before  his  eyes  three  of  a  kind
each  card  a  pallid  deuce

The  mayor  and  the  judge  exclaimed
I’ll  see  that  and  raise  ten  more
he  laughed  and  showed  his  triple  play
Tall  John  fanned  Aces  four

The  marshal  and  the  preacher
dropped  his  eyes  down  to  his  boots
Tall  John  laughed  and  said  to  him
as  he  rounded  up  the  loot

Don’t  feel  bad  my  righteous  friend
then  he  gave  the  mayor  a  nudge
I’m  just  a  vagrant  barkeep  your
the  marshal  preacher  and  a  judge

Tall  John  winked  then  closed  the  door
and  through  the  fog  of  snow  that  fell
he  ambled  out  to  pour  the  drinks
at  the  Ruby Star   Hotel

When  the gypsy  left  Miss  Jesse’s  hall
to  sip  a  well  earned  drink
Emma  thought  of  their  bare  skin
as  a  web  of  slate  and  pink

If  the  gypsy  would  invite  her
to  ride  the  mustang  winds
she’d  escape  her  judge  and  mayor
life  would  begin  again

The  gypsy  stood  before  the  bar
he  ordered  up  a  glass
Tall  John  tipped  the  bottle
two  dancing  girls  walked past

You  new  in  town  Tall  John  asked
I  guess  you  could  say  so
What  brings  you  here  the  card  sharp  asked
I  come  to  mine  some  gold

You  know  this  town’s  named  Virtue
said  the  barkeep  with  a  smile
though  Virtue’s  just  a  cruel  mirage
that  hide’s  the  boss  man’s  style

They  use  it  to  disguise  themselves
and  justify  their  sins
you  see  it  serves  them  very  well
another  drink  my  friend ?

I  wouldn’t  know  the  gypsy  said
I’m  here  to  stake  my  claim
sir  I  ain’t  really  interested  in  why
a town’s  named  what  its  named

Ok  said  the  barkeep
I  guess  that’s  up  to  you
in  this  town  you’ll  be  amazed
how  lies  become  the  truth

Old  Piano  Jack  struck  up  a  chord
the  camp  town  horses  ran
Miss  Emma  leaned  against  the  bar
her  face  shifted  like  sand

Well  my  friend  I’ll  consider  that
your  intention’s  crystal  clear
the  gypsy  then  took  off  his  cape
as  a  face  rose  in  the  mirror

A  cropped  goatee  of  gray  and  black
green  eyes  that  glowed  blood  red
A  pistol  shot  then  Emma  cried
My  God  Tall  John  is  dead

It  wasn’t  but  a  minute  passed
when  the  mayor  and  the  judge
showed  up  in  the  bar  room
with  the   marshal  and  his  badge

A  silver  star  shone on  his  coat
he   stroked  his  cropped  goatee
there’s  been  a  crime  the  preacher  said
the  guilty  man  I  see

The  mayor  locked  the  iron  cuffs
round  the  killer’s  hands
We’ll  drop  the  rope  at  daybreak
you  are  an  evil  man

In  the  hate  and  silence  raging
to  the  cadence  of  church  bells
the  marshal  judge  and  mayor  said
Boy  we’re  sending  you  to  hell

That  night  there  was  a  trial
before  the  preacher  in  a  gown
after  the  marshal  judge  and  mayor
alerted  the  whole  town

The  people  lit  their  torches
they  gathered  up  t heir  guns
when  the  killer’s  noose  was  set
they  knew  he  was  the  one

Who  had  ridden  into  Virtue
about  twelve  hours  gone
on  a  dead  man’s  devil  horse
the  judge  said  he  was  the  one

Who  then  walked  into
Tall  John’s  Ruby  Star  Hotel
where  he  drank  a   glass  of  whiskey
and  laughed  when  Tall  John  fell

Who  harbored  malice  in  his  mind
blacker  than  a  pit  of  tar
who  then  sent  Tall  John  six  feet  deep
with  a  bullet  through his  heart.

In  the  frozen  morning
the  gallows  stage  was  set
the  gypsy  wore  his  riding  cape
Miss  Emma’s  eyes  he  met

Her  tears  were  pent  up  deep  inside
of  a  vault  no  man  could  breach
her  love  had  vanished  in  the  storm
to  a  world  no  man  could  reach

The  preacher  judge  and  marshal
dressed  in  gambler’s  black
waved  to  Virtue’s  mayor
as  he  rubbed  Miss  Emma’s  back

When  her  fearsome  preacher
stroked  his  cropped  goatee
he  locked  his  lady  in  her  guilt
for  he  held  all  the  keys

The  marshal  shouted  HANG  HIM !
we’ll  let  the  whole   world  know
that  in  the  town  of  Virtue
a  man  reaps  what  he  sows

When  the  hanging  fest  was  over
the  mayor  then  proclaimed
bury  the  snake  without  a  cross
in  all  his  guilt  and  shame

The  judge  well  he  just  up  and  left
to  raise  a  well  earned  glass
and  in  the  Ruby  Star’s  long  mirror
there  was  no  reflection  cast

The  mining  town  of  Virtue
has  since  returned  to  dust
where  the  Mercy  River  flowed
there’s  just  a  barren  gulch

You  see  there  wasn’t  but   a  speck
of  gold  up  in  them  hills
just  the  vision  of  a  gypsy
who  some  say  wanders  still

When  I  was  a  young  man
fresh  within  my  youth
through  that  night  I  wondered
what  composed  the  truth

Did  truth  have  a  color ?
Was  truth  calm  and  kind ?
I  found  truth  was  a  shadow
just  an  element  of  mind

that   faded  with  each  sunset
then  twisted  into  black
Excuse  me  now  the  old  man  said
I’m  tired  of  looking  back

With  a  nod  he  hit  the  trail
riding  cape  and  dusty  boots
just  another  lonely  gypsy
just  a  miner  of  the  truth.

Michael H. Brownstein: The Man with the Booming Voice

He begins:

            I am the ugly man
            Full of gross pimples and grand chaos.
            I take the air from beauty
            And swell its words until they burst.
            Come to me if you seek mistreatment.
            I’ll schedule you into my calendar.
            Sunsets? A time for desperate men.
            Dawn? The waking of the depressed.
            Let me pencil you in.
            I have not eaten happiness today.

She answers:

            All that I held I let go to you.
            I wanted marriage, children,
            To be an adult within this skin.
            I was blindsided, anger
            Not a part of me, nor hatred.
            I am who I am. This is enough.

He continues:

            And you think passion wise?
            Your worn slogans worth it?
            I am bad breath and bad teeth,
            Dandruff and crusted scalp.
            Who made you so special?
            Who made you think you were needed?

She replies:

            There is always a prism in the rain,
            A glint of gold in the palisades,
            Rainbows beneath clear current—

He interrupts:

            I am the man with the big voice.
            I am the one who shoulders responsibility.
            Broken glass also owns prisms.
            Spilled oil holds rainbows, too.
            Pyrite is the best fool’s gold—

She interrupts:

            And the man with the booming voice
            Is the biggest fool of all.

He answers:

            Maybe…Maybe not…
            I like the snow.

She says:

            And I like walking in it.

            Perhaps shredded skin hides things not obvious.
            Perhaps there is something to anger, to boasting.
            Maybe you are like me and perfume cannot cover it,
            Nor a voice like yours, incoherent and insecure.
            I have steady hands. They are both smooth and kind.
            Here. Let me have yours. Let me see how it is.

(He offers her his hand.)

            Yes, there are things gross and full of themselves.
            This is not one of them.
            Come. There is something to softness.
            Today feels like a day of perfect.
            I have heard you whisper my name.

He says:
     
            And I have listened to you whisper mine.
            Softness is peace
            and softness is all I have ever needed.

KJ Hannah Greenberg: Defense

Honorable Milktoe George Wallibun II, Regional Magistrate,

Last week, Ducky Earl, owner of Galactic Leveraging and Landscaping Service of The Milky Way, gave me an estimate for some work. Mr. Earl said it would cost Intergalactic Standard 245.00 to subdue four specimens, and an additional Intergalactic Standard 174.00 to move them, plus any other species (up to 1 rocket’s worth), to Bode’s Galaxy from my home in The Virgo Cluster. Mr. Earl also said it would cost Intergalactic Standard 262.00 to reintegrate those specified beasts. Last, he quoted me an additional cost of Intergalactic Standard 40.00, per man-hour, for subduing and transporting any additional large species and an additional 29.00, per man-hour for subsequent, but less skilled ,work. I agreed to those terms and paid him a deposit of Intergalactic Standard 500.00 on June 1.

On June 6, Galactic Leveraging subdued the four indicated specimen. The work took longer than the Mr. Earl had estimated. As a result, Galactic Leveraging only subdued three of the seven hydras I had wanted transported, citing that the company lacked time to subdue more. As a result, my large red pyrohydra, my colony of cryohydra, and others of my mature specimens, were left behind. In about half of an hour, Galactic Leveraging loaded, onto two of their rockets, all of the available reintegratable materials, both what Galactic Leveraging had subdued and what a neighbor’s teenager had subdued prior to Galactic Leverageing’s arrival.

Once in Bode’s Galaxy, Galactic Leveraging interned the four large items. Galactic Leveraging did terminate two chimeras in order to do so and did move one chthonic water beast away from its destined location. Meanwhile, since Galactic Leveraging had such a long haul, I had the star cluster’s best ethnic restaurant restock their galley and I shipped them classic Coke from my own personal larder.

Galactic Leveraging interned nothing else for me during that span since Mr. Earl said it was imperative for his team to go home. Thus, three of the precious hydras of mine, that had been transported, were left uninterned. All of the other members of my menagerie, which made transport, too, were left uninterned (and remain that way to this day-I have lost thousands of Intergalactic Standard units on dead and dying specimens). Meanwhile, I gave the Mr. Earl another 500.00 and suggested we figure out the balance when he returned to reintegrate the remaining hydras.

His people did not return until June 20, after many pulse messages from me, to reintegrate the hydras (are a large variant of the species, about eight Galactic in circumference). Galactic Leveraging interned them where there was no room for any further hydras to grow. Mr. Earl acknowledged that he was aware that one of the hydras would suffer stunting given the location in which he had had his men locate it. So I asked them to rereintegrate all of the transported hydras, never dreaming they would charge me for correcting their error.

While the men were working on the hydras, the Mr. Earl and I sat down to discuss billing. We agreed on: the Intergalactic Standard 245.00, the Intergalactic Standard174.00 and the Intergalactic Standard 262.00 charges (see above) to a total of Intergalactic Standard 681.00. We did not agree on the Intergalactic Standard100.00 extra Mr. Earl asked me to pay for the second rocket.

As a negotiation strategy, I asked Mr. Earl to estimate the actual time it took his crew to subdue, to transport and to reintegrate the three leftover hydras, to terminate the two chimeras and to make hash out of the small, but lethal, gelatinous blue flying quip that Mr. Earl found when his men interned the three hydras.

Mr. Earl asked for eight and one half extra man hours, en total:
* one extra man hours for loading;
* one extra man hour for unloading
* one and one half extra man hours for terminating the chimeras and the gelatinous flying quip
* three extra man hours for working with the hydras
*two and one half extra man hours for miscellaneous fees, including the time involved in rushing a worker to a galactic hospital
For a total of 8 ½ extra man hours beyond Galactic Leveraging’s initial estimate at a cost of an additional Intergalactic Standard 681.00

In sum,
At Intergalactic Standard 29.00/hr, 8.5 extra hours =Intergalactic Standard 246.50.
At Intergalactic Standard 40.00/hr, 8.5 extra hours=Intergalactic Standard 340.00.  Intergalactic Standard 681.00 + Intergalactic Standard 246.50=Intergalactic Standard 927.50;
Intergalactic Standard 681.00 +Intergalactic Standard 340.00 =Intergalactic Standard1021.00.

I told Mr. Earl we could settle the tens of Intergalactic Standards later, when he finished reintegrateing my smaller specimens. He already had Intergalactic Standard1,000.00 of my money in the form of a deposit.

In answer, Mr. Earl fumed and fussed about the hours that his crew had used to subdue and to reintegrate the above listed specimens. He said that the work had taken two or three times what he had estimated.

I acknowledged that, in hindsight, he had underestimated, but offered to pay him no extra for that error. I would not have hired him had I thought it would cost twice what his written estimate had stated.

I had to leave my new Bode’s Galaxy home to conclude some business in The Virgo Cluster. When I returned, rather than finding others of my specimens reintegrated, I found Mr. Earl, his men, their rockets, and their tools gone.

On June 29th, I received a statement from Mr. Earl claiming that I owed him an additional Intergalactic Standard 1,046.00. He also mailed to me official paperwork, which he wanted mailed back to him, claiming that his work was a capital improvement and therefore not subject to tax (form enclosed).

On the statement, the Mr. Earl charged me for the labors that I had executed myself or that I had hired a neighbor’s kid to complete. What’s more, Mr. Earl charged me for many more man hours than he had orally specified in our conversation of June 20, i.e. for twenty-five man hours of unloading specimens, rather than for the half hour he had originally claimed. He charged, too, for “consultation with customer on reintegration placement.” That latter business was nonsense since I, myself, had made the drawings of where each species was to be placed in my biological gardens, including the destined locations for the specimens Mr. Earl had failed to subdue or to move for me. Finally, Mr. Earl also meant to charge me for relocating the last three hydras even though he, himself, had admitted that he had botched that job.

I was shocked at that letter. First, Mr. Earl hadn’t even tried to contact me via pulsing channels. Second, the nature of the letter amazed me. “Audacious” seems a polite term for Mr. Earl’s behavior.

On the advice of a friend, I waited to sort out my sentiments before responding. Thus, it happened that I received a second copy of Mr. Earl’s June 29’s letter on July 24 and he had heard nothing from me.

Again, I was counseled to wait. On August 19, I received a third copy of his letter with a warning attached that Mr. Earl would be seeking legal remedy.

Today, Sept. 22, I received a certified letter (having received a fourth, uncertified, copy in today’s mail). Those letters summon me to small claims court. Mr. Earl thinks I should pay Galactic Leveraging and Landscaping Service of The Milky Way the additional Intergalactic Standard 1,046.00 that he has “documented” in his series of mailings, plus that I should pay his Intergalactic Standard 16.00 court filing fee.

I think I should pay Galactic Leveraging Intergalactic Standard100.00 for the extra rocket, only. If there are other fees to be adjudicated, it’s the case that Mr. Earl owes me. Many of my specimen collection was neither subdued nor shipped. In addition, my zoo called for the reintegration of all seven of my hydras, not merely for the three that he chose to subdue on his second trip to Bode’s Galaxy. Even those three fared poorly, having grown impossibly wild during the weeks between their arrival and their internment.  I believe that Mr. Earl needs, as well, to reimburse me for the specimens that rotted in his crates when left at the star port.

Please advise, at your first convenience, a suitable remedy. My garden is destroyed. I do not want that bandit to have the pleasure of ruining my pocket money, too.

Sincerely,
Clarence P. Snickleberry

M.N. O'Brien: Mr. Bennett's Holes

Robert Bennett arrived in Jefferson some years ago, wearing a navy blue suit and round red spectacles. He had purchased a sizable plot of land of twelve square acres in the remote part of town, south of the railroad. Since his arrival, Mr. Bennett had caused quite a stir of gossip in the small New England community. It was not his high-end attire that caused the commotion, though it likely accumulated some ill will towards the man at first; the town was quite poor economically, and such a well-dressed man is bound to be observed with tempered speculation. The main concern of the town involved Mr. Bennett’s use of the land he acquired.

The plot of land was fertile and ideal for farming an impressive array of crops. As various planting seasons came and went without produce being grown from Mr. Bennett’s land, the townspeople came to wonder why a lucrative investment opportunity was going to waste. Then one day, Mr. Bennett walked out upon his land in denim overalls and red flannel shirt and started to dig.

The townspeople quieted down for a respectable amount of time, rationalizing that Mr. Bennett was finally going to put his land to good use. After several weeks had passed from any ideal growing season, Mr. Bennett continued to dig holes all over his property. Rumors spread across town as to the reasoning behind Mr. Bennett’s holes.

Theories grew across town from both sides of the tracks. Mrs. Williston hypothesized Mr. Bennett was digging holes for graves for a future apocalyptic war or famine. Harold Bridges son, Jack, thought Mr. Bennett was trying to dig for oil. Dr. Jamieson, the dentist, believed that Mr. Bennett was constructing a minefield. Some people thought Mr. Bennett was digging for fossils, others thought he was some sort of geologist, and conducting a study of the area, for some scientific reason. The townspeople became divided into schools of thought in regards to the purpose of Mr. Bennett’s holes.

Several more bold speculators inquired Mr. Bennett as to what he was doing. Jeff Higgins would stop by every few days, lean on the rickety old post-and-rail wooden fence that bordered Mr. Bennett’s land from the road and shouted inquiries and offers to aid him in his task. Higgins would jokingly ask Mr. Bennett if he was trying to get to China. All the inquiries went unanswered by Mr. Bennett. Though the townspeople were frustrated with the man, it was only when Mrs. Everett came home from the supermarket one day when anyone from the town felt threatened by Mr. Bennett’s peculiar actions.

Mrs. Everett had finished putting her groceries away and was about to call her son Bill to get ready for dinner when she spotted him in the backyard. Bill was digging a hole. When asked by his mother what purpose he had digging a hole in the backyard, Bill replied, “Why not?”

Soon, several of the children of began digging holes in their parents’ lawn. The trend caused such a significant outcry from members of both the church and the PTA, that the town had a meeting at City Hall to discuss a possible solution, and cast blame on the responsible party. Mr. Bennett was not in attendance.

Mrs. Howard, head of the PTA, told members of the council in a firm voice that Mr. Bennett was having a negative impact on Jefferson's youth, as well as Jefferson’s image by ruining the town’s aesthetic quality with a bunch of holes. Several uproarious citizens shouted in agreement. One person shouted the suggestion that the whole community go over to Mr. Bennett’s house and fill all his holes. This created laughter among the children who were in attendance, but the adults found the laughter more reason to dislike Mr. Bennett. Another concerned parent asked what right Mr. Bennett had, keeping his head underground all day.

After several more outbursts, the committee issued a cease and desist order to Mr. Bennett. The order forbid Mr. Bennett to dig holes that were not going to be used for crops. In addition, Mr. Bennett was to fill the existing holes on his property. The order was delivered to Mr. Bennett’s house through mail, as none of the local authorities wished to confront Mr. Bennett, as curious as they were to witness the man’s reaction.

Within two weeks of receiving the order, Mr. Bennett filled the holes on his property and sold it back at a fraction of the price. It was presumed that Mr. Bennett had returned to where he came, though it is unknown if he knew the reason why he was ordered to fill up his holes. The citizens couldn’t care less. The town of Jefferson returned to its life without any holes.