It was on a Tuesday when the sun became different.
I remember it clearly because Tuesdays I visit with the doctor because I have a hard time walking in a straight line.
“You’re difficult to conform,” he says.
He also thinks he is smarter than me, but I know better. The questions he asks don’t seem very bright to me. He lacks, say, electricity. So like I was saying, as far as the sun goes, I had come home and went to the back of the house and drew the long green drapes away from the large window there. I looked out and there was a bright spot on the fence where the sun was shining and it drew me in, the color of it, like golden metal pressed up tight. It was a cold color, flat, indecent yet proper. And so I looked up and even the whole sky itself looked different. There was a deeper blue confusion about it. The clouds seemed edgy. There was turmoil in the air amid the subtle change.
The house is hidden in the hills surrounding a city. It’s an urban estate of modern aesthetics – tall glass, sharp edges, white and clean as snow and just as cold and empty and lonely, especially in the shadows. The furniture sits rigid and straight. Everything is strictly kept in its place. My home looks as if it has never been lived in.
I have seven bedrooms and don’t sleep in any of them. I have four bathrooms and use only one. My kitchen is always clean. It hums in the dead of day, the big metal appliances stewing in their pipes and electrical cords. There is a window over the sink and I can look out into my yard – a trapezoidal patch of bright green grass surrounded by jungle. A small pool sits empty. There’s some lawn furniture but it’s all scattered about now because of the strong breezes we’ve had lately. The yard is as deserted as my home.
I sat a drink down on a glass end table and the subtle sound of it echoed through the room. Then the telephone rang. It was Fred. I knew this because he was the only one whoever called.
“Hello.”
“I’m always amazed that the telephones still work.”
“I’m glad for it. At least I can call my doctor.”
“Not feeling very well? Is it the crooked walking again?” he asked.
“Yes. He doesn’t know what to do about it.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing. Would you like me to come by tonight?”
“No. I’m just going to stand here and not move for a while.”
I hung up. Fred hung up. I knew this because he was the only one whoever hung up on me. Fred used to be an accountant of some sort, maybe a lawyer too. But not anymore. I used to be a geology professor. But not anymore. There are many things that are no longer the same. I used to have a wife and twin daughters. But not anymore. I used to park a car in my garage. But not anymore. Walking is all we can do now. If I need something from the city, I have to walk. I walk to the doctor, the grocery, the bar. I even walk to the post office and occasionally send a letter to someone I don’t even know – but no one gets mail anymore.
Sometimes I walk to the city with Fred. I really don’t want to because I don’t like him that much even though we consider each other to be friends. I would even say he is kind of boring, but not boring in the way of going to sleep, rather, boring in a way that makes me want to avoid him at all costs because I have better things to do. And the things he talks about are so pointless. It almost makes my stomach hurt when he starts in on how poorly the sidewalks were made.
“Just look it all the cracks,” he always points out, his long arm nearly touching the ground.
“There have been a lot of earthquakes,” I tell him.
“Even so, they should make better sidewalks.”
“They did their best,” I remind him. “The world was a mess.”
Fred picked up a small stone and threw it. It hit a light post. The sound echoed down the street.
“It’s still a mess, Frank. C’mon, you’re hip to it. You know it will never get better than this.”
I stopped and looked at him. I blew into my hands to warm them.
“Damn it’s cold. I thought we lived in California.”
There weren’t too many people at the grocery store. There were never too many people anywhere. I liked it like that, even though the place reminded me of a morgue with sparse shelves.
Fred strolled off to the produce department, but there wasn’t much there. The stores are never stocked that well anymore. I followed him over and together we looked at a handful of oranges as if we were visiting a zoo for fruit.
“They don’t look very fresh, do they?” Fred said, cocking his head and studying the oranges with a bent eye.
“They never are,” I listlessly noted. “I’m going over to the pharmacy.”
“More pills?”
“Yes, more pills.”
“All right then, I’m going over to the meat department,” Fred said. “I want to look at a piece of chicken.”
I walked down the main aisle in the front toward the pharmacy. I knocked on the glass.
“Hey. I need to get my pills,” I said to someone, somewhere.
There was some sort of person fidgeting around in the darkened back. I had to wait. We still always have to wait.
“Your name?” he asked when he came to the window – a little man in a white lab coat all alone with the medicine and a broken heart.
“Frank Buck. Why do you always have to ask? You know who I am.”
He blinked his eyes and barely smiled.
“It’s just procedure sir. It’s company policy. It’s a corporate rule and I cannot break it under any circumstances.” He looked around to make sure there wasn’t anyone else nearby. “My life depends upon it.”
The corporations still have all the power.
“All right. I guess you can’t break the rules. I understand. You need this job. Not everyone has a job anymore.”
“Did you know that being a pharmacist is the best job a person can have these days?” he boasted.
“I believe it. You’ve got 14 bottles for me, right?”
“Yes. Any questions?”
“Do I ever have any questions? Does it even matter if I have any questions?”
“Sorry. I have to ask. They’re watching me. They’re listening to me, too.”
“Sounds like you’re trapped.”
“I am,” he tried to whisper through the glass, and I only turned once to look back at the poor old soul as I walked away.
“Do you think we should buy that last piece of chicken?” Fred asked me in the Something Resembling Meat department. “We could have a fry out.”
I peered into the glass case at the lone piece of raw chicken breast sitting dead and gross in a bloody wet tray beneath a bluish-green light. I stepped behind the counter and slid a door open and flipped the piece of chicken over.
“It doesn’t look too pale,” I said.
Fred was hungry and wanted the chicken.
“Go ahead and wrap it up. I’ll pay for it.”
I wrapped up the hunk of chicken like I worked there or something and we made our way toward the front of the store and through the sliding doors. Something scanned us from above as we walked out.
“When they come for the money, we’ll tell them the chicken was mine,” Fred said to me.
“Absolutely.”
The chicken sizzled on the charcoal grill I had out back. Fred and I went to the yard and plucked two toppled chairs out of the lawn. We set them up on the patio. We lit some torches. I poured Fred a strong drink. He watched me suspiciously as I withdrew a cigarette from my pack and stuck it in my mouth.
“I thought you quit those damn things.”
“I did, but why bother now?”
“I suppose you’re right. Not much to live for anymore is there?” Fred agreed.
“I don’t like to talk about it. Why is it we always end up talking about it such horrible things?”
“I don’t know,” Fred wondered. “What else is there to talk about?”
“Tell me about your dreams.”
Fred thought for a moment.
“I don’t dream anymore.”
“I know. I don’t either. Why is that?”
“I suppose it has something to do with that brain evolution stuff they’re all talking about. You know… What they say about us being able to survive when the others didn’t. They say we don’t need dreams anymore.”
“Leaves the night awfully blank though, doesn’t it?” I said with a downcast head, sad about it.
“Yes,” Fred moaned with a slight nod of his head. “I don’t sleep as much as I used to… Wait. I think the chicken is burning. Flip it over.”
I got up and flipped the meat and there were deep dark burn marks on the side already cooked.
“It might be a bit well done by the time I’m finished with it,” I said.
“That’s okay,” Fred said with a quick laugh. “Chicken is chicken and I’ll take it any way I can.”
The doorbell rang. I went through the house and opened the front door. Two officers from the Debt Police were standing there in a cloud of threatening menace. They had come to collect the money for the chicken and the pills.
“Wow,” I said. “It’s been only two hours or so and you’re already here. I swear, it seems you guys get here faster and faster every time.”
“Just give us the money, sir,” one of the officers said. “We don’t have time for idle chit chat.”
I stuck my hands in my pockets and dug around.
“Is there a problem, sir?” the other office asked as he stepped forward a bit. “Do you have the money? Yes or no?”
“I know I have it somewhere,” I said as I began to panic. “It’s in the house somewhere. But look here, that man outside, he has the money. The chicken was his idea. It was all his idea.”
The officers pushed beside me and well into the house. They went out onto the patio and Fred quickly stood up. I went to help him.
“This guy says the chicken was all your idea. Is it your chicken?” one of the officers wanted to know.
Fred shakily adjusted the eyeglasses on his face.
“Yes. I was the one who wanted the chicken. He just walked to the store with me to get his medicine. I told him I’d pay for the chicken.”
“Then give us the money,” the other officer demanded.
Fred nervously dug into his front pants pocket and pulled out some dirty cash. He flipped through the bills with his fingers.
“How much is it again?”
“Fifty-five dollars for the chicken and four-hundred and twelve for the pills,” one of the officers snapped.
Fred glanced over at me. “I’ll take care of it all,” he said, and handed them five 100-dollar bills.
“The rest is your tip,” Fred said.
One of the officers made a disappointed face. “Not much of a tip,” he said.
“But thanks,” said the other. “We’ll be going now. Make sure to lock all your doors and windows and load your guns. There are lots of creeps out there milling about in the night.”
We watched as the officers quickly moved back through the house and out the front door. I sank down in my patio chair, sighed and looked at Fred.
“Where do you get all that money?” I asked him. “You’re not a pharmacist or a cop.”
“I saved my money,” Fred said. “As I worked and lived my life I also saved money… For the times like these that I always knew were coming. I funded my survival.”
“Do you have a lot left?”
“No. The Men of the Wars took most of it.”
I glanced inside at the banner on the wall. It was the banner we all had now – and in big capital letters of red, white and blue, it read: True Freedom Has a Price Tag — and there was a big green Uncle Sam with devil eyes on the banner, and he had his big fists in the air, and he was clutching money in one and a pair of women’s high-heeled shoes in the other. And in smaller capital letters near the bottom, it read: In Greed We Trust and In God We Wonder.
I didn’t really like the banner, but we didn’t have a choice anymore.
After the chicken, some more drinks and a cold handshake, I said goodnight to Fred and closed the door behind him. I locked it just as the officers advised. It was a big cold deadbolt and it made me feel safer even though I knew deep down inside it didn’t really matter anymore.
I walked crooked through the rest of the house turning down lights and making sure the other doors and windows were all locked up tight. I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. I looked in the mirror and my face looked old. I ran some water in a glass and washed down a handful of pills. I flicked off the light and quietly closed the door. I turned on the ceiling fan that runs right over my bed and sat in a chair by the window. I knew I wouldn’t sleep. What good is sleep without dreams? I looked out the window but all I saw was dark punctured by a few painful points of light. It was my personal jungle surrounding me. I liked it like that. I didn’t want to know everything about the world on fire out there.
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A rainbow in Wisconsin from inside a moving car / A.A. Cinder
Some say they only fall, but I say they walk among us. She walks among me even now. She would never admit to being an angel – I don’t think she believes in them. I would call her a guardian of the heart, if nothing else. She’s taught me to cast out the enemy love once was and replace it with the real spirit of it. And like angels usually do, she came out of nowhere one night when I was alone. She fell from the sky like a derailed comet and exploded everything that was already blown to bits – and what I mean by everything is everything in a good way. I’ve often wondered if I died and she was just helping me along down Heaven or Hell Boulevard – she has carved a soulscape of wonder, my wonder, her wonder, our wonder, two wondering wanderers standing still and cracking until they run into each other, from out of the air just like that – there was Gwenhwyfar.
She came down from the sky on a glowing escalator and I waited for her in the parking lot. But sometimes I think she was maybe there all along, maybe my entire life and I just didn’t see her because they can be invisible. She looks human. She has all the right parts in the right places. A great ass. There is a glow about her though, like sun coming up out of her guts at times. I would call her a beautiful angel. What else could I call her? She helps me when I have problems with life. She’s a pretty decent angel.
I asked her about Jesus, and she said he was a pretty nice guy – just a bit upset about what we do in his name. Gwenhwyfar told me she was an angel of words – the one who corrected the language of the universe. She’s beautiful like that. I’m surprised she eats actual food because I didn’t think angels needed it. She makes me a lot of frozen pizzas because she doesn’t like to cook much. She’s afraid she’ll burn the tips of her wings on the stovetop and that’s not something easily fixed. She watches over me like they say they do – a love never wavering. She can make it not so bad of a day when I am in mental Hades, roasting and getting stabbed, mentally and emotionally. She lifts me up and out of the ashes and shows me the true meaning of love. She is love. She is real faith.
And when the duties of our earthly days are done, she sits with me in the lamplit room of red, and I hold her in the stillness, an episode of House Hunters humming in the distance. I hold her face and tilt her head to kiss her lips… And in that last taste of her before she sleeps, I am fed love, and bow to the mending of a broken heart.
Stars lie still in their pitchy silt and listlessly swim
The ground is crusted over in white
And the way the day death light falls
It looks like blue frosting on a Christmas cookie.
There was me sitting on a bench in this Christmas blue park in London and I was wearing red socks. I heard the ice skate blades grind against the glass pond they had there, and I watched small people glide awkwardly, trip, then fall. Their tears added to the slickness, and it was a comical chain of events — the ballerinas in plaid wool coats and the shining knights in silver boots skimmed across the pond on their bellies like a stone skipped over the ocean.
I unwrapped the white paper and rubbed my hands together in anticipation. Chucky’s Super Fresh Fish N Chips was the best damn chippy place I’ve found after coming over here. I was eating painfully delicious deep-fried cold-water haddock and thick cut potatoes with the traditional salt and vinegar. It was kind of cold outside. I took another bite of the fish and shoved in a chip after it. I washed it down with sweet, milky tea from an on-the-run cup.
I looked around at the beautiful, peaceful world, and I thought about life and was wondering what it really was all about, and wondering why we are here on Earth and… Just where the hell is Earth? Seriously. Have you ever really thought about it? Where is the Earth? Maybe that question is just too much for our primitive brains to comprehend, and we probably shouldn’t attempt to.
And so there I was, sitting on a bench in a park and eating fish n chips, oblivious to the ways of the universe. Then the joy of the glowing and ponderous day was suddenly shattered with screaming. A young girl had fallen through the ice.
I got up and ran over to look, leaving my food on the bench for the birds or a wanderer to eat. There was a thin man stretched out on the ice and he was thrusting his arm out in an effort to reach the girl who was bobbing and struggling in the water. I hurried to the edge of the pond and gathered there with the others, looking over at the struggling child.
“Has anyone called for an ambulance!?” I yelled, frantically searching for an answer from anyone.
One man put his phone in the air, pointed and looked over at me.
“Yes! I’m doing it now.”
“Tell them to hurry or she’ll be dead!” one woman cried out.
It seemed like forever before I heard the sirens and saw the flashing red and blues splashing against the bruised cotton candy sky. The emergency vehicles came to a screeching halt and the men jumped down and pushed through the crowd. They pulled the dad in quick to get him off the ice and out of the way; then they sent out the smallest rescuer with a rope tied around his waist and he snatched the girl out of the hole, and he passed her to another, and she was limp in his arms as they rushed her to the waiting ambulance. She was carried to a gurney near the ambulance and she was soon smothered with blankets while the mom and dad wept over her and kissed her on the head. The gurney went up and into the ambulance and the doors shut with a rude thud and the tires spun and they tore off toward the hospital.
I read about the girl being dead in the newspaper. It was that cold and creamy Sunday afternoon when everything was still and quiet except the floors creaking as I gently walked about the old flat in a t-shirt and boxer shorts and a pair of reading glasses slipping on my face. The fireplace crackled with fire. I sighed at the table. I sighed about the dead girl. I glanced out the window. Not much was moving. The mists of winter crawled up out of the streets, over brown rooftops, and floated into the forests like gray syrup. I tapped at my teacup and then got up to throw another log on the fire. Somewhere far off I could hear the ringing of a handbell. Then I heard the caroling. It was nearly Christmas.
I sat in the chair near the hearth and watched the orange tongues of the fire lap at the sooty brick. An ember popped. The old clock on the mantel struck seven and chimed. My wayward mind drifted and I wondered about the ghost of Santa Claus steering his sleigh through another dimension. The carolers drew closer to my building and so I went to the frosty window, rubbed on it, and looked down at the old street. I looked at the faces there — bright eyes lit up by candlelight, steaming mouths moving open and shut as they sang. I could smell the bones of autumn’s leaves through the glass. Then there was the clop clop of the horses as the old-time carriage rolled by all lathered in garland and bells and shiny glass balls of red. The people inside were laughing and waving and crying out — “Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!”
I drew the curtains, but the bells still rang, and the voices still floated upward. But soon they got quieter and quieter until drifting away completely. I sat back down in my chair near the hearth. I opened a book all about Christmas in the past and started reading it. The doorbell rang and then there was a knock. I had nearly forgotten.
The young man at the door wore a coat over his uniform and a wool cap on his head. His shoes were covered in slush. He handed me the white bag from Chucky’s Super Fresh Fish N Chips.
“I’m going to give you 12 quid tonight… Since you’re having to work so close to Christmas.”
He tipped his hat at me and smiled.
“Thank you, sir. Enjoy your fish n chips… oh, and Merry Christmas.”
I closed the door and it clicked. I turned a knob and the deadbolt snapped in place and kept me safe from the outside world. I dropped the white paper bag on the table and reached inside. It wasn’t the fish n chips I had ordered. But what I pulled out was magical and amazing nonetheless — a little stuffed black bear about the size of a half-loaf of bread with a rubber face and a red plastic collar around its neck and a silver chain leash.
“How did they know? … This has always been my favorite.”
I had gotten one as a child in the gift shop at the place where the high bridge gapped the canyon in some western American place under the sun. It was right after when a cable broke and the bridge went smashing down into the canyon and there was so much dust and screaming — and I had stayed behind so I could set my bear on a rock and just look at him in peace. None of my family — father, mother, brother, sister, grandmother, an aunt, an uncle, two cousins — came back through the dust. They all got smashed against rock and then were dropped nearly 1,000 feet, down into the raging Arkansas River at the bottom. I waited and waited and waited through the chaos until a policeman finally took me away in his patrol car, and then I had a long and challenging life.
I sat the bear on the mantel over the fire and stood back and looked at him. I thought about the fact that Chucky’s Super Fresh Fish N Chips really knew how to deliver. The clock struck eight and chimed. I rummaged around in the refrigerator and made myself a different sandwich. I turned on some soft lights in the living room and plopped down on the couch and began to eat. The carolers were drifting by again. Santa’s magical dead sleigh swooped by on stardust, right near my window. I settled back, powered on the television, and watched all about the latest godless war for sale.
There was a beheading in Moore, Oklahoma. That’s all the message said. I questioned if this was becoming a common practice, for just the other night someone down the hall in my shoddy apartment complex was beheaded, and the night before that, right down on my shoddy street, a hot dog vendor was beheaded just as he was slathering someone’s steaming wiener with relish — I don’t like relish. Then there was that incident down at the public library just about a week ago when a circulation clerk was beheaded after telling a patron he owed $1.25 in overdue book fines.
Machetes and firearms line every rubber raincoat now — as does madness in the minds of men.
“Thank God someone had a gun.” Someone said, in the Land of Violence.
And violence stirs violence until the only solution is more violence — more guns, more bombs, more tanks, more jets, more ships, more drones, more senseless destruction.
And the money we spend to kill and maim and rape countless cultures, could cure illness and starvation and homelessness ten million times over and more. We could actually nurture humanity.
On my way back the other day from the ice cream shoppe, I saw a campaign sign for a death cult touting the joys of the Space Force. Why!? Why do we have to militarize space? And to think we would have any chance against them up there. Dimwitted buffoonery.
And the Annunaki looked down from Orion and wondered what they had done.
Lord Femfatuntin turned to his lead galactic centurion and ordered, “Send down the chariots of fire, these idiots are destroying all my hard work… And Tome, if it’s not too much trouble, would you mind bringing me back a box of Count Chocula? On second thought, you better make it two.”
Tome the galactic centurion bowed with respect. “As you wish, my lord.”
I was sitting alone in my shoddy apartment eating a bowl of cereal and watching COPS when there was a knock at the door. I stuck my eye in the peephole but all I saw was a thick neck, some broad shoulders and a name patch that read TOME across the breast portion of a shiny space uniform.
I pressed my face to the door. “Who’s there? What do you want?”
“It’s Tome. I come to you from the planet Placitas.”
“I don’t know any Tomes and there’s no planet named Placitas. Away with you!”
“Please, Phil Paradise. It’s very important that I speak with you.”
“How did you know my name?”
“You are the spawn of my history — a child of Femfatuntin,” the stranger said.
I looked through the peephole again and shook my head.
“Look,” I said. “I think you may be on drugs, and I don’t want to talk to you. Please go away.”
“I can’t do that, Phil. The future of your very own existence and possibly that of the universe depends entirely on me speaking with you.”
“I don’t open the door to strangers.”
“I’m a lot bigger than you and I can break this door down,” Tome from Placitas threatened.
“Go away or I’ll call the police.”
The aliens in the hallway began to laugh among themselves.
“Oh no! Are they going to come arrest me for possessing a medicinal herb that comes from the ground?!” one of them said.
“They’ll arrest you for harassment and trespassing! That’s what they’ll do. You can count on it!” I called out.
“Your laws are pathetic and ludicrous,” Tome from Placitas said.
There was more laughter in the hallway and then the door opened, and they just walked in — Tome and his two alien sidekicks.
“How did you do that?”
“I’m an advanced being, Phil. It’s pretty easy.”
“You guys are very tall and shiny, but you look absolutely human,” I said in utter amazement as I looked them over.
“And you are very short and dull. We made you that way so you could never be a threat while you work, work, work.”
“I must be dreaming. Did I eat acid?” I wondered.
“Let’s sit down and talk,” Tome said.
“I thought you might smell bad, but you don’t,” I quickly pointed out.
Tome sighed an alien sigh. “Why is it that you Earth people always consider yourselves as the most superior creatures in the universe? You just assume that surely every other living thing out there must smell worse — I don’t understand where you get this false ego. I mean, you haven’t even mastered intergalactic space travel yet. The truth of the matter is… You’re just an animal who requires the use of hand sanitizer in a world that has gone horribly wrong.”
“Well, if I’m just a filthy animal why did you come to me?”
Tome quickly looked over his shoulder at his comrades and then back at me.
“You’re one of the few reasonable individuals we’ve been able to locate down here.” He put a large hand on my shoulder and awkwardly smiled. “Phil, we’re destroying the planet, and we want you to come back with us before we do.”
“Why!?” I yelled in defiance. “There’s no need for that! You’re talking about billions of lives!”
“You mean billions of morons, Phil! Absolute dashboard bobbleheads on the road to self annihalation.”
“You can’t do this! I won’t let you!”
“There’s nothing you can do about it Phil Paradise. Nothing,” Tome said to me with authority.
I scratched at my head and looked about my shoddy apartment.
“What about my things?”
“You won’t need any of it.”
“But, I have asthma. What about my asthma medication?”
“You won’t have asthma anymore where we’re going, Phil. Just close the door and come along,” Tome ordered.
There were some nice people on the spaceship, and I was well fed at a mile-long buffet. When the total annihilation of Earth came it was quick and clean, like laser surgery. They let me join them to watch on a huge monitor as Earth was vaporized — one second it was there and then it was not. There was some low-key clapping and some cheers and whistles, and then we all ate some delicious cake and drank the best milk I ever had.
Awhile later, I was sitting on a spaceship bench and was looking out a window as the galaxy rushed by. Tome came over and stood tall beside me and we looked at space together.
“You’re doing pretty well for your first intergalactic flight,” he said.
“How fast are we going?”
“Faster than you can even comprehend.”
I looked up at him. “There are others like me — sensible like you say — what about them? Why did you leave them behind?”
“We didn’t. We already have them, Phil Paradise. We’ve been collecting them for a long time — babies to octogenarians and beyond. I’m sure you have heard of alien abduction?”
“Yes, absolutely. I’ve always enjoyed stuff about aliens and space. I used to be Catholic but once the priests started ass-grabbing kids, I kind of settled on the idea that organized religion was a bunch of bullshit. Now I subscribe to ancient alien theology.”
Tome nodded his head, seemingly satisfied with my personal confession. “That’s good, Phil, and just so you know, you won’t be alone on planet Placitas, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I was wondering what it will be like,” I said.
Then something shifted in him, and Tome suddenly clamped his big hands to his head and groaned with agitation and stomped a foot.
“Oh shit! I forgot my lord’s Count Chocula!”
“He likes Count Chocula? The cereal?”
“Yes! It’s his favorite thing for breakfast, and lunch, and dinner. Damn it! And Earth is already destroyed. That’s just great! Bad shit like this always happens to me.”
“Calm down, Tome. I’m sure he’ll understand.”
“Oh, but you don’t know Lord Femfatuntin. He has anger issues.”
“But, can’t you just make your own Count Chocula here on the spaceship?” I suggested.
“We’ve tried that, but it just came out tasting like generic Count Chocula and he knew right away it wasn’t the real deal. He’ll only eat real Count Chocula made on Earth.”
“I guess you’re screwed then, Tome.”
“Thanks, Phil.”
“When will I get to meet him?”
“Maybe in about 400 years.”
After that, I didn’t see Tome the Galactic Centurion for a very long time.
They gave me a very nice apartment overlooking a tranquil sea of clouds. Maybe I was dead and there really was a Heaven, but I didn’t know for sure.
I felt alive enough when I went to the market on Tuesdays, and they gave me food. For free. Everyone got as much food as they wanted any time they wanted it. No one on the entire planet ever went hungry.
I had no soul-sucking job in the sense of having a job. I was merely allowed to have a satisfying task of my choosing, and that task was to read to wayward dogs and cats at Space Kennel No. 99. They enjoyed it immensely, evidenced by the plethora of wagging tails and gentle purrs every time I cracked open a new book. Dr. Seuss was their absolute favorite. I asked the animal handler, the odd Susan O’Neil, about it one day.
“How did you get Dr. Seuss books?”
She looked at me and smiled a tight-lipped smile and adjusted her spectacles.
“He’s here.”
“He’s here? Dr. Seuss is here?”
“He prefers to be called Theodor.”
“Well, where is he? I’d like to meet him.”
“He’s incredibly reclusive, but I do think he plays squash at the Stellar Sports Open Air Plaza every other Wednesday afternoon at 4 p.m., but only if it’s cloudy outside and there’s a chance for rain.”
“He plays squash in the rain?”
“So the story goes.”
“I wonder if he really eats green eggs and ham.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Hey Susan O’Neil, can I ask you a question?”
“Of course. You can ask me anything, former Earthling.”
“Does anyone ever get beheaded up here?”
“Beheaded? Do you mean like …” And she rolled her eyes and made a hand motion across her throat like it was getting sliced.
“Yes. Exactly.”
“Of course not. We’re not bloody asinine savages like they were!” she wickedly asserted, shakily pointing the tip of her finger toward that spot in the universe where Earth used to be. “This is Shangri-La compared to your own little version of a spinning blue hell. How on — what used to be Earth — could a species allow its own offspring to be cut down by a gutless murder machine, and accept it repeatedly?” She shook her bookish head in disgust. I must admit that Susan O’Neil was quite attractive for a Placitan. That’s what the originals were called — Placitans. And I suddenly was taken over by the desire to ask her out on a date.
But just as I was about to speak, we heard the haunting sound of the great gongs of Placitas reverberate all around us followed by the heavy march of the centurions and their steeds. I rushed out into the path lined by rubber trees and there I saw Tome the galactic centurion leading his troops to whatever trouble there was. I ran beside him as hard and as fast as I could.
“Tome! What on Placitas is happening!?”
He reached his arm down, snatched me up and threw me behind him on the horse.
“I couldn’t hear a word you were saying!”
“I wanted to know what the situation is. What’s with all the menacing war stuff?”
“They’ve come. We didn’t think their ship could make such a long journey. Somehow, they escaped before the annihilation, and now they’ve finally arrived, and we must stop them.”
“Is it something terrible? I don’t want it to be something terrible,” I cried out.
“Of course it’s terrible. Why else would we be going to war?” Tome answered.
“But you hate war. You’ve learned to put it away and live in peace.”
“Some things are worth fighting for when the enemy decides to impose its beliefs. Hold on Phil Paradise.”
“What is it!?”
“They’re trying to open a WalMart here!”
And that’s when the dusts of war raged, and Tome lit a fire beneath his troops, and I could barely hold on.
“But… Tome… Wait!”
“What is it, Phil!? I’m trying to lead the charge.”
Most days of the week, I watch an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants with my 20-year-old stepson. It’s his favorite show, and he’s loved it since he was a child. I think he knows the title of every episode and what season it first aired.
He usually will come knock on my bedroom/office door and ask: “Hey Aaron, are you ready to watch another episode of SpongeBob?” And that could be 8 in the morning or 2 in the afternoon or 7 in the evening. I don’t think it makes any difference for him. In some ways he’s very in-tune to time, in other ways he has no need for time.
“Sure,” I say, and he gets very excited about it and claps and laughs and runs downstairs to his room to set the show up on his television or DVD player or X-Box. I’m not always sure what method of technology he uses, but he has it down to a science regardless. Once everything is set, he’ll come back up and let me know, “It’s ready.”
Once downstairs I take my seat in the wooden desk chair. It’s the one he always slides into place for me in the very front row. It’s the best seat in the house. But even on my way down the stairs, he prefaces every episode with some sort of introductory statement. Today it was: “I bet you won’t believe how crazy THIS episode is going to be.”
And it was pretty crazy. SpongeBob and Patrick decided they wanted to go to the Bikini Bottom prankster store to purchase some new pranking merchandise. The store owner convinces them to buy a can of Invisible Spray and all hell breaks loose after that. Since the Invisible Spray can stain clothes, Patrick and SpongeBob get naked and start spraying different parts of each other into invisibility. They also come up with the idea of spraying a park bench and then sit on it to give off the impression that they are just floating in the air.
With their invisibility powers in full force, the duo goes around pretending to be ghosts and scare nearly everyone in Bikini Bottom – except Mr. Krabs – and there is even a newspaper article about it all. Well, Mr. Krabs isn’t scared of any ghosts, yet goes to great lengths to ward off any potential ghosts coming to scare him. It was all pretty entertaining.
But it’s Mr. Krabs who gets the last laugh in the end when SpongeBob and Patrick’s Invisible Spray washes off in an incident at the Krusty Krab and they find themselves suddenly in the spotlight. Naked. And in front of a laughing crowd. It was a good one.
During the show, I always try to make comments that let him know I am enjoying the show – which I truly do. But if I show him that I am completely invested in the 23 minutes we spend together nearly every day, it brings him great joy. The more I comment or laugh about what is going on in the episode, the more he laughs, the more he jumps and claps, the happier he becomes.
If you haven’t figured it out already, my stepson is autistic. And one of his favorite ways of socializing with people is to watch some sort of video with them. It could be SpongeBob; it could be an animated movie like Cars or Cars 2 or Cars 3… Or it could very likely be a video about construction equipment, or John Deere tractors, or snow moving machines in downtown Toronto. Now, some of these videos are old, and often the writing, acting, and overall production values are a tad cheesy and amateurish, but that doesn’t really matter because those things do not matter to him. The reality of it, at least in my mind, is that it’s a very important way for him to share what he loves with those he loves.
Before I met my wife eight and a half years ago, I had had no interaction with anyone who was autistic. I knew nothing about it. The only experience with autism I had was the 1988 movie Rain Man with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise (Insert my wife making puking noises because she detests Tom Cruise, but that’s another story).
Anyway, I always enjoyed the movie and would even get a little verklempt at the end when Cruise says goodbye to Hoffman at the train station. Now, is the film’s portrayal of autism accurate? From what I have experienced with my stepson, I’d have to say yes and no. There are some characteristics of Hoffman’s Ray that are familiar to me, but some of his other behaviors are not. But then that should be expected, because people who are autistic are just that – people. Everyone is unique, everyone is different. No two autistic people could ever be exactly the same just like no two “normal” people could ever be exactly the same. It just isn’t like that and why on Earth would it be? But then again, I’m just speaking from my own perspective based on my own experiences.
But back to what I was saying about never having experienced autism before meeting my wife and what that was like for me when I first did.
I have to admit, I was a bit uncomfortable at first, but I suppose that would be true for anyone who had never experienced autism before. It took me time to learn about and experience his behaviors. It took me time to understand his anxieties and triggers. It took me time to fully immerse myself in a life that includes, and will forever include, an autistic person.
One of his greatest triggers and fears is storms. I don’t think it’s so much the storm itself, but its potential to knock out our power. That’s a biggie and causes him great discomfort. Another one of his greatest fears is a kitchen fire. God forbid if we ever have a storm that knocks out our power that somehow in turn causes a kitchen fire that then leads to the smoke alarm blaring.
I’ve learned that one must have a sense of humor and a great deal of patience, empathy, and understanding. My wife is very good at all that because she’s been his mother for 20 years. I’m continually learning and adapting and even though I still struggle at times, I feel I am gaining ground.
But anyway, I don’t mind watching SpongeBob with him. I think it gives us both a break from our individual struggles in this life. Sometimes I am concerned about any isolation he may feel, and so if I can alleviate that in even a small way, then that can only be a good thing.
And truthfully, SpongeBob SquarePants is a pretty good show, and at least it’s not Danny Phantom.
Author’s Note: The following is a bit on the personal side, and contains some slightly mature elements, but I decided to share it because love is so important in these times of so much hate.
Tennessee sunset in viridescent.
Overdue Christmas lights still burn in the night next door
Bluish-white tantrum twinkles like stars splattered against the pitch
Another year flows behind us like an endless river
Another month, another week, another day, another hour
another second
trailing off like vapor from an airplane
slowly dissipating like a wound
swallowed like a slug of water or wine or pennyroyal dreams
“Read some Kerouac
and it put me on the track …”
Wishing I could burn a little brighter now
Wishing the broken heart road
wasn’t so bitter and rutted.
Then there’s them shivers.
Those nervous shivers of love and loneliness, and then there we were, eating coleslaw and catfish right next to a big clean window, and then all these people pouring in — regular folk in caps and orange jackets and I heard the talk about motorcars and hunting and other mad things of the world.
I looked at her from across the table. I had known her for two years but there’s still times I get nervous. I demand too much perfection from myself when it comes to matters of love. I have all these thoughts and feelings and sins and regrets all flowing around inside me like cold streams — sometimes hard to uncork my emotions. Other times I just fly without any sense of personal censorship. I’m abridged one day, the next day I’m at full volume. It’s not only my burden, but the burden of everyone orbiting my sun. It’s a scar of guilt that never fades, an unwelcome skin I can never shed.
We went back to my apartment and played around on the couch a little bit. We tried to watch a movie, but they all sucked. I’d turn to look at her after about 20 minutes in and say, “Do you think this is kind of stupid?” She would agree, even if she didn’t.
We did that three different times. Then we gave up on that, discussed the meaning of the word feckless, and then she disappeared to the bedroom.
I found her there naked in my bed and I was totally surprised by that because just the day before she hated my guts, in theory, I guess. I have a tendency to go off on selfish rants — my head gets all hot and chuggin’ — like a muscled-up train — and I do and say things that would break anyone’s heart. I heard Pat Benatar bitching in my head the day before — some siren song from hell, but maybe really more like my own conscience kicking me in the balls.
Anyways, there she was like I said, naked in my bed, waiting for me. I stripped down too and crawled in under the covers. We embraced, held each other. The warmth was amazing. Everything else that followed was amazing. It’s always amazing with this one. Two years straight and it still feels like the very first time I touched her. We drifted off clutching each other tight. Then we turned to sleep, our asses touching, the warmth of her back like a campfire. I listened to her breathe as I looked up at the purple stars of pretend.
She always helps herself to my frozen waffles in the morning. We have hot tea and look out at the wayward cats on the patio. She still looks beautiful. I feel like I look beat up. We work hard on interjecting joy into the worried spaces of our lives. We can laugh and love amidst our troubles. It’s hard, but it helps, I hope. I can see her fall into the worry. She instantly knows when my mind slips. We love through the damage of whatever disorder of the day I am.
We drove to the city, that city being Nashville, and got some sandwiches. There was football on the TV. The joint wasn’t very busy and I’m pretty sure I said something inappropriate about asses. I always do lately. We’ve breached that gap, her and I — her being the one with the beautiful Sonic Ocean Water blue eyes across the table from me. I watch her eat and her mind is grinding, and I love her all the same, all over again, every day, even when it hurts. We always come back to each other.
“There’s no scoreboard,” she says.
We drove over to a big bookstore, and I went the wrong way. I got confused. I’m new here. I don’t know where I’m going — but I don’t drive into cement abutments like I did in Amarillo where some god blowtorched my mind daily. That entire town was like a cement abutment. The bookstore was busy. It was packed with chatting birds and owls. It’s a big store filled with aisles and aisles of books. I could spend all day there. I get lost in the shelves and the spines and the titles. It’s sort of our place of peace and solace — in times of love, in times of fear, in times of worry. In times of me under the volcano.
“Mam,” I called out loudly to her in the literature section, like she was some stranger in my way, to make people wonder — “What the hell is going on? Is he some kind of jerk?”
Wit and comic relief bubbling over like pea soup slowly coming to a boil on the stove. I ebb and flow. I’m like the ocean. I rise and fall and crash and then calmly lie there, yet ever unsettled. She’s like a river. She’s strong when it rains and moves forward with purpose because she has to be, even when she can’t be, or is too tired to be. She flows around the bends and over the stones. We meet in the end at the estuary under heaven. We flow into each other. Our waters mix and make one. Hands locked, we tangle in love.
We drove out of the city after buying five books. I missed the exit to our town on the outer limits because I was all jived up by her beautiful face and a black Camaro steaming by. I had to go 10 more miles and then we were in town, and we went to the grocery store that I don’t really like. I may have kissed her in the car. Her lips were cool and wet. My heart pounds when they stick to me.
“I love you,” she reminded me.
She’s a bandage to my wounds.
We went in for pot pies and pizzas and the other things she had on her list. I wandered off a few times. I saw her in her red coat from a distance. I saw her talking to a woman I didn’t know. I don’t know anyone here. She knows everyone. I’m the stranger. I have no name here. I’m unrecognizable. But she sees me. She sees me like an X-ray. She knows my ins and outs, she knows my heartbreaks and faults. She’s my angel in the frozen-food aisle. She’s my lover at the dairy doors. She’s my princess in the meat department.
How romantic.
We load up the car in the cold and I already miss her because I know she has to leave to go home. But it was a good weekend after all. I cherish those good weekends. We break, we mend, we carry on. That’s us. That’s always been us. It would never be the same with anyone else. I would have been knifed already. I guess in some ways I was. But none of that matters anymore. Love begins and ends with her. We kissed again in the cold.
“I love you.”
“I love you.”
She clutched me at some point during this day, shook me a bit.
Sam stood on a big rock in the viridescent forest and aimed his arrow at the sky. He longed to taste real blood as he lined up the tip of it with an invisible target. He pretended to fire and made sounds like any young man would – shwoosh shwoosh shwap – and he didn’t even know anything about real life and pointless killing. Sam didn’t know much about most things in the world. His headful of thoughts was always dreamy and swimming backward in another colorful dimension. That’s why Sam wasn’t allowed into the king’s army. Even though he had come of age and was required to sign up, the powerful ones told him he was too crazy and therefore unfit for battle.
“Hogwash!” he cried out, suddenly looking down at the ground and seeing the smiling face of a mushroom with an orange cap and a thick ivory stalk.
And the mushroom opened its eyes and seemed concern. “What’s the problem, Sam? Are you having difficulties adjusting to the norms of society again?”
“You got that right, Mr. Mushroom. I just want to fight like all the others. It’s my duty and yet they won’t let me – they call me Stupid Sam.”
The mushroom worked two small, odd hands attached to thin, frail arms and lit a cigarette. He began to smoke it as he tried to give Sam some advice. “Maybe you are destined for greater things than just killing innocent others by order of some bozo who thinks he’s God. Did you ever think about that?”
“If I can’t fight then I am nothing,” Sam explained, frustrated. “Do you expect me to tend sheep in a golden field for the whole of my life? No fair maiden would want someone as wishy-washy as that.”
“Personally, I think that sounds kind of nice,” the mushroom told him. “I would like that a whole lot better than getting axed or shot with an arrow or slit with a sword because of someone else’s frivolous dispute.”
Sam got agitated. “Have you ever heard of bravery or honor!? Have you ever heard of taking a stand and fighting for your kingdom?”
“Have you ever heard of kindness and love? Have you ever heard of living together in peace and harmony? Have you ever heard of being decent to your fellow man?” Mr. Mushroom shot back.
Sam scoffed. “Oh, what the hell do you know? Look at you. You’re just a bleeding-heart sissy-pants mushroom living in the forest. You don’t even have legs! You have a single stalk. What a loser. I bet you’ve never gotten any action in your whole life.”
“Oh yes I have! I’ve spilled my spores countless times. And I’m not a sissy! And I happen to like living in the forest. All my friends are here, I’m popular, it’s generally quiet, and I don’t even mind the rain.”
“Oh, stop talking like a little girl!”
“Maybe you just need to settle down a little bit. I don’t like your attitude, Sam, and you’re scaring me.”
“Well, I’m not surprised you’re frightened… I can be quite fierce if I need to be.” Sam turned around and watched the clouds race by. “I’m sure I can enlist in an army somewhere else. Nobody has to know. I can take on a new identity.”
“You would misrepresent yourself and fight for the enemy?”
Sam whipped his head around toward the mushroom. “Don’t you get it? We are the enemy. We’re no different than any other enemy in the world. We’re all enemies! What difference does it make who I fight for!? Everyone loses in the end.”
“But that’s treason… They’ll cut your head off for sure.”
Sam chuckled. “I don’t care Mr. Mushroom. People are stupid and I’ll get away with it. I was bred to fight and fight I will — no matter what side I’m on. I’m a natural born killer.”
Sam slung the bow around to rest on his back and drew the sword sheathed at his side. He studied the blade against the sky. The mushroom grew ever more nervous. “What are you going to do with that?” he squeaked.
Sam quickly turned, jumped off the rock, and drew closer to the mushroom. “Maybe I’ll undo your cap for you. Would you like that? Or maybe I’ll slice your stalk and leave you crippled.”
The mushroom tried to pull himself from the ground and run — but of course he couldn’t. “Oh… Come on Sam. What an awful thing to even think. I didn’t do anything. I’m just a mushroom. Please don’t hurt me. Why do you have this thirst for destroying life merely because it exists unparallel to your own? What hypocrisies and atrocities have they filled your mind with?”
“What are you talking about?” Sam wanted to know.
The mushroom stammered. “Have you ever considered the thought that maybe it’s not you that is crazy? Have you ever considered the thought that it is they, your heartless, morally blind, asinine, and ignorant leaders, who are the crazy ones? Hmmm?”
“You’re trying to trick me, Mr. Mushroom, aren’t you? Is this some sort of brainwashing technique you’re trying to use on me? Are you utilizing your psychedelic properties to sway me toward wrongdoing?”
“No Sam! I’m trying to save your soul. You’re becoming one of the very sheep you do not desire to tend.”
Sam touched his chin and walked in slow circles. He looked down at the mushroom and pointed with the tip of his sword. “You know… Maybe you can help me out.”
“What is it, Sam? I’ll do anything. Just don’t hurt me. I want to live. I just want to live as I am without judgment or scorn!”
“Suppose I cut you from the ground and returned to the village hoisting my prize high. Yeah. That’s the ticket. Then they would all see what a great warrior I truly am. Then they would have to let me join the king’s army. They would probably make me an officer.”
“Are you off your meds? You’re filling your head with false and grandiose ideas, Sam. And on top of that, you would be hurting me. I was hoping we were becoming friends.”
“Oh shut up, mushroom! I’m trying to think. And I don’t need any friends.”
“Please, Sam. Consider this. I don’t think the village idiots would be all that impressed by a mere mushroom.”
“Of course they would. You’re poisonous aren’t you?”
“Not really. Unless you ingest too much of me, which is highly unlikely since my psychotropic compounds would render the consumer unable to do so because, well, frankly, they would be trippin’ balls.”
“Well, then surely you are an extremely rare mushroom?”
“No. There are entire colonies of mushrooms just like me.”
Frustrated, Sam shook a fist out in front of himself. “Damn it! Do you at least go well with a fine meat and two vegetables stew?”
“Actually, I’ve been told I have very little desirable flavor. The truth is, I’m quite bitter.”
“Wait a minute… This is all another one of your mind games. You’re trying to convince me that you’re not a grand prize, when in fact, you are.” Sam held his sword high and was set to cut the mushroom down when an arrow suddenly pierced his throat. He fell to the ground, gurgling, and soon after died.
After a few moments passed, the mushroom, shocked and now spattered with Sam’s blood, called out in quaking fear. “Who did that!? Are you still there?” A figure wobbled between some distant trees. The mushroom strained his voice to make it louder. “Please! I want to talk to you! Help!” And suddenly there was someone standing over him. He was portly, nearly blocking out the entirety of the sun with his grotesque body.
“A mushroom that talks,” the stranger said in a nasally and somewhat whiny voice. “Now that is a grand prize — but killing you would make your talent useless. And I don’t like things that are useless. Only losers are useless.”
“Who the hell are you?” the mushroom asked.
“How could you not know who I am? I am Gordon the Great. I am the king of this entire realm. I’m a very important king — very popular with the people. Just ask anyone. People love me. And these are very fine people that say this. They say it all the time. You’ll hear it. Wherever you go.”
The mushroom looked him up and down with great suspicion and disbelief. “You don’t look much like a king to me,” he said. “Frankly, you kind of sound and look like an asshole.”
The king sneered and pouted his overly ripe face. “I don’t like mushrooms that don’t like me. That’s just sad. You’re a very sad mushroom. I can have you beheaded for talking to me that way… And many people, all over the whole kingdom, they will like that. They really will. They will be huge fans of it. Huge.”
The king finally turned his attention to Sam’s lifeless body on the ground. “Who is this I killed?”
“He was a great warrior.”
The king knelt down beside the body and turned the face toward him. He studied it. “It seems I have slayed Stupid Sam,” he said. “How unfortunate. I don’t like people who get slayed.”
“He wasn’t stupid,” the mushroom asserted. “He had a bright future and you destroyed it because all you care about is killing and destruction and polluting the forests and the valleys and the seas, and all because of your damn money.”
Gordon the Great rose and rolled his eyes and chuckled. “You only say that because you’re poor.” Then he made a goofy face and twiddled his fingers in the air, mocking the mushroom. He stepped forward and raised his kingly boot above the trembling fungi in an action of impending stomping.
But then the king suddenly stopped and turned his head. “Do you hear that?”
“What is it?” the frightened mushroom wanted to know.
“It sounds like the kingdom is being attacked,” Gordon the Great answered. “I must run and hide!”
But before he ran off, the cowardly king brought the bottom of his boot down upon the helpless mushroom, seething with ugliness and all the hatefulness he had inside him, and smashed it into an unrecognizable mush.
END
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A house on Oakley Street burned to the ground early this morning. They say no one was inside the home at the time of the fire – 1 a.m.
“Well, that’s kind of suspicious,” I thought aloud to myself while crawling by in my car.
The house was bursting with blackness. The garage door was melted and curled. Black and sooty streaks lurched out of broken window openings and sang mad songs to the sun-drenched day. The place was surrounded by yellow caution tape. A big ol’ fire truck idled with a rabid purr in the street and men in uniforms sternly addressed the scene.
They said the blaze began in the garage… How? What was the point of ignition and who pulled the trigger?
1 a.m. and no one was home.
Sounds a bit fishy to me.
Maybe I should watch the news because there was a cameraman and a reporter on scene giving us all the ugly details… With a laugh, a glossy smile, a pocketful of poison for the mind.
Could it have been a case of someone out to get some insurance money? Maybe someone lost a job and the bills started piling up. And there it goes – worry turns to frustration and frustration turns to a desperate act.
It’s even more suspicious to me because the house is fairly new. Probably not more than three years old and so I think to myself, logically, that a new house like that shouldn’t have any bad wiring or an old furnace set to blow its guts. No… Everything should be just right, like peach pie… But yet, a fire.
And so it goes, and I don’t know the whole story yet because obviously not enough time has flown by. But as I sit here kind of thinking about it and worrying about the safety of my home, I wonder about their lives now. Did they go and lodge in a hotel? Do they have any fun family to stay with and hang out with and have a good time with? Are they together? Are they crying? Are they a huddled and shivering mash of ash-covered lumpkins weeping beneath the boughs of some old stone bridge?
God… It must be stressful. Yes, the world has unsheathed its sword of stress once again and wielded it against some fine family of pure innocence. But how pure? How innocent, really?
I guess I can’t really say. I suppose I will have to wait for the dumbheads on the TV news to lie about it.
But then again, I never watch the news. I can’t stomach it anymore. And the presentation is just so horrible. A suit and tie are just a suit and tie. Hair grease must make the man. Her face drips with Crayola makeup. Those anchors look so polished and honest and perfectly flawless, so people believe them like they were heavenly News God and follow along with the flock all the way to the edge and off the White Cliffs of Common Sense Grounded in True Morality.
I’ll stick with what I know — getting my info from the dynamic duo at Neighborhood Watch News, right next door. To protect their identity, I’ll call them Hansel and Gretel. Just imagine Hansel and Gretel as ancient beings: Gray, slightly bent, meddlesome, snoopish, nosy, opinionated, and not so full of youthful vinegar anymore.
I was out in my front yard executing the last cutting of the season when Gretel strolled over holding a steaming cup of Sanka and that’s when she dropped the scoop on the house fire.
“I came outside at 1 a.m. and the whole sky was just full of smoke,” she reported. “You should go by and take a look at it. Yeah, it’s pretty bad.”
“I already was.”
“You were there?” she asked with a hint of suspicion.
“I was. And what were you doing up at 1 a.m.?” I questioned her with the same measure of suspicion.
She looked at me and scoffed. “I’m an old woman. I had to use the bathroom… And then I smelled something funny.”
“I bet you did.”
Just then, Hansel yelled out from the front porch.
“Do we still have any of those fresh strawberries in the refrigerator!?”
Gretel sighed and snapped her head in his direction.
“Well, why don’t you go look for yourself then!? You do know where the refrigerator is? Don’t ya?”
She turned back to me with an exasperated look on her face.
“I swear… That man! Sometimes I could just slit his throat!”
I agreed with her of course because, frankly, Hansel can sometimes be a pain in the ass.
“Maybe you should,” I said to her.
There was a brief silence and then we both suddenly laughed.
“I suppose after 48 years of marriage I can put up with his old ass for a while longer,” Gretel said, feigning joy.
I stared at the grass because I was beginning to get bored. It was a shiny green color on the verge of going dull.
“I never see your wife. Why?” Gretel asked.
My eyes knocked back and forth in my head and then slowed upon the red tips of her wooden shoes. I was really high in Colorado. I looked up at her and sort of smiled.
“Because I don’t have one. I’ve already been married — five times. I guess it’s not for me.”
“Five times!? That’s terrible. How can you treat the sanctity of marriage with such a throw-away attitude?” she steamed.
“A few minutes ago, you were ready to slit your husband’s throat,” I replied.
“Well… I would never really do it. I just like to think about it,” she said, closing her eyes and pretending to pray.
“Neither one of us is a saint, Gretel. I don’t bathe in holy water and neither do you,” I said.
She looked up at the periwinkle sky — the clouds collapsed there like sleepy children, or in America, like children gunned down at school — right before summer break. How cowardly you truly are, man with gun. Burn in everlasting hell and then some.
“It’s supposed to rain some more,” she said, and she walked off without saying goodbye and disappeared beyond her front door.
I went back to clipping the edges of my small lawn. It was warm, but I could feel the breath of impending autumn on the back of my neck. The street was fairly quiet save for a few trailing screams of fun and joy bursting forth from the mouths of neighborhood kids down the way. They were wearing candied bullet-proof vests while riding their bikes. A big airplane moaned as it crawled across the sky above me. I watched it until it disappeared. I looked at the clock strapped to my wrist.
“Must be the 11:30 from Denver,” I said aloud to myself.
And where was I?
I was alone, on my knees in the lawn, and everything felt the same except that everything in the entire world was vastly different. When I finished my work, I cleaned up my tools and put them in the garage. I pushed a white plastic button and watched as the automatic door slowly went down and sealed me off from the madness of the world. I went inside the quiet house, locked all the doors, and boiled some corn to have with my lunch alone.
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