Witchcraft 1h504z

Witchcraft

Jayme Alan Toomey

Copyright © 2012 by Jayme Alan Toomey.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012913680 ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4771-5156-3 Softcover 978-1-4771-5155-6 Ebook 978-1-4771-5157-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To order additional copies of this book, : Xlibris Corporation 1-888-795-4274 www.Xlibris.com [email protected]

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Contents

Chapter One A Thousand Goats

Chapter Two Roughing It

Chapter Three The Mile High Club

Chapter Four The God Machine

Chapter Five Behind the Computer

Chapter Six The High-Powered Flashlight

Chapter One

A Thousand Goats

D id you ever think about life as a prison? It was like the movie “Alien.” Ash working with mother to take innocent American civilians hostage and turn them into the “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Fuckin’ blood money if you ask me! You’re either a cop or a prison guard. And that isn’t for you; to survive, you have to a gang. That sucks. I wasn’t doin’ shit. I just wanted to smoke some weed and forget about it. Either that or I was gonna write a book about it and tell everyone else to go to fuckin’ Hell.

The Frog

It was a flurry’s Christmas coming this mid-after the last go-round and I had yet another gift—a present for the masses of sheep bah… bah… babbling to those unwilling to embrace unified conformity. I was the “Little Drummer Boy” yet again. Then I raised my wings… parrumph a pum, pum. Christmas “n” carols… everyone loves Christmas time, but I’d rather celebrate on my birthday. I was wordy on that day, and that meant you better get the fuck out of the way.

On serpent’s wings, the son of your most humble narrator’s certain death and unmatched hatred did emerge from the murky depths, awakened from the eternal slumber that new his forever prison. On a gust of cold lurching chill, incumbent death sailed over waves of bluish-green hell that knew not of the subconscious mind, mountains and hills surrounding the snowy mount and zest for new life. The dark messenger approached the cold water’s edge, for my master did hear

my prayers.

At the water’s edge, Jamie found himself sitting in the driver’s seat of his rustedout Chevy, consumed by the dreary confines of another. He was depressed. Not enough to blow his head off, but just enough. Flirting with the idea, he liked being depressed. It was this longing feeling that let him know he was still human. Then something happened. It was like… well, it was like someone dropped the crystal ball and everything was disco. Flashes, beams of light… the world outside had changed inside his eyes.

Trees off to the sides waved their evergreen shingles in a motion of constant vibration. Their rigid surfaces became symmetrical before his very eyes. Their colors blended together, producing a shimmering hue that knew mathematical peace of mind. Structured white crystals fell from the clouded sky. The wind revolved around his thoughts. The lake before him rippled in varying strings of mathematical precision, wind guiding waves pushing sails upon the undulation of meticulous formality. Fake… the world was a fake, and he was the dark overlord that knew the realm below.

Then his body did lean sideways and to the left as his glare focused out the driver’s side window, gazing skyward. God… he was searching for God. As his stare rose aloft in between the clouds… there it was. It was close enough. He had to blink just to make sure. A highlighted byway far beyond the spectrum of mortal men. It was a shiny disk visible for only a moment between the partings of dark clouds. It resembled a saucer, like a craft—perfectly round… silver with the center coming to an orange point of light. Parrumph a pum, pum.

“They got you up there,” he softly spoke to fallen angels, “and me down here.” Hissing repulsive exhale and smoke. “And that’s the way it ends.”

It was time to make a wish on a shooting star. Suspenseful undertakings… Mr. Dooms upped the ante, hardly waiting for the coming of nightfall to summon the moon. One wish… he decided to cast a love spell.

And before he could dissect and deduct his lofty vision, pairing words with balls of thought, a jet appeared, breaking the sound barrier as it soared past, engaging the silver shine. Soaring noise followed a deaf ear. As soon as it was there, it was gone, the jet retreating into the extinction of dark cloud. But, I wasn’t gonna let them spoil my fun. Me and my drum.

Then came… well, it was Revelation for lack of a better term. Outside the open window and only a few feet away was a frog. A frog… it came in the form of a frog. Maybe it was a toad, but who can determine these things? It was just hop, hop, hopping along. Out of season, I didn’t care. What actually happens to the frogs when the lake starts to freeze over? Who knows? No matter… it was a frog that changed his mind and was just hop, hop, hopping along on merry snow just outside his window. The sound of fairy feet creeping from the left side of his fancy did purr, distracting my mind’s eye from reality’s boring limitations.

A striated vision of cut and trim muscle did make her presence known. Jamie envisioned himself inside her thoughts, her wavy blonde hair bouncing to the beat of his pied piper Her eyes were green but could sear the soul. He imagined her naked, straddling his lap and filling his thoughts with a forever orgy.

Breathing it in, only to let it all out in a gush… the gushing of bellows. The lake revolved around waves of anomalous patterns pushed by a wind that sprung from nowhere. Snowflakes fell from the dark clouds above at random. Their vibrations carried damned souls into the beyond and then back again. Parrumph a pum, pum. On my drum. The boundaries of my talent far exceeded my body’s limitations.

Dead Man

Jamie had everything going for him. I mean he was a best-selling author and he had his face out there. He wore new clothes and had a VIP hip to muscle beach, a penthouse apartment, a yearly subscription to Hustler magazine that I so graciously gave him on his birthday, and a brand-new corvette. And he had me, and that wasn’t too shabby. I mean, I was like the supermodel he always fuckin’ wanted, and he was lucky that I would even consider letting him taste my high-priced frosting.

He was a good-looking guy, I guess. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even know who the fuck he was when I met him the first time. I didn’t even notice him really. He was just standing there in line on the beach boulevard like he was in some kinda fog. I mean smog. It was California, you know? I mean he had a cute butt. That’s all I really as I pushed myself by him in line. “Excuse me,” I said as I gave him a stiff hippie push outta my way. “Hungry people want to eat here.” I think I ordered a cheese steak hold the cheese heavy on the red peppers and onions. I wanted some fries too, but I wasn’t totally sold on the grease.

“Hey!” I heard him whisper over my shoulder as if I really cared. “Don’t you know who I am?”

“Pisshhh,” I flipped him off, hardly paying him any mind. “As if. Like I give a shit.”

“Funny.” I heard him chuckle, but I was curious, because I was queen shit of my little world… like how dare he? Anyways, I was totally ready to forget him and like move on with my life, but he was determined. “Aah… could you add a steak tip sub to that order and a large fry? And could ya cook the steak strips rare,

please?”

“You read my mind.” I swear to God once a thought popped into my head, there it was, and there it went.

The man behind the counter did not pay any attention to me at all as he thought to open his mouth. “You guys want something to drink?”

“I’ll take a Coke.” I had my favorites.

“All we have is Pepsi, lady.”

“Water.” I pronounced so totally having had it with Pepsi products.

“Make it two,” this guy said as I finally turned to see what he looked like. I watched him shuffling through his pockets as he pulled out his wallet and slipped the man in the window a bill just waiting to make change.

When I first saw Jamie, I wasn’t totally Taken by him. Ya, just like the TV series that Steven Spielberg wrote. I was the nurse. Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t David Ike or anything, but it was like obvious. Anyways, I knew Jamie wasn’t ugly. He was kind of attractive, but as I gave a critical once-over, I couldn’t help but think he was pretty hot. He had long hair, short on the sides and long on the top, and he was blonde. That was definite plus. I think he used a number two, but I thought he should switch to my one. Blue eyes—I loved his blue eyes turning the slightest shade of green as the sun shone in his face when he tilted his head,

trying not to seem too embarrassed while I checked him out. He was muscular around his shoulders and arms, and kind of intimidating. I mean, he had that kind of presence. I wasn’t intimidated, but I could see how someone else would be. Jumpsuits… that’s what I ed. He was a total “jumpsuit junkie.” I liked him right away. “Total project guy.” It was a loud observation to no one in particular just so he could hear me think. Stephen King made him out to be such an asshole in the Langoliers, but who cares about him. And he wasn’t no X-files Mr. Tooms, so don’t be pissin’ on my baby. He writes fiction. He’s innocent! Oh my god, it’s like two teams of evil children trying to capture a flag made of silicone. Leave him alone! I mean… he is soooo nice to me. And I swear to god, the next time the doctor writes a book, we’re gonna form a lynch party. What an asshole!

Standing there side by side, I kept looking over just to see what he was doing, and, oh my god, he was sooo cute—like a little kid who had a crush—casually turning his head away every time I checked him out as if he was trying to play it cool. And before long, the man in the window willed me to my craving. I was sooo fuckin’ hungry. Let me tell ya. Oh my god!

“Aah.” So this guy that I had my eye on slid the tray off the counter—two hands on to tray with one pinning the napkins against his plastic. “So do you want to sit down?”

“Aah.” I made fun of his subtle stutter just to show off my flirty. “Do you have an ass?” So we went like around the corner and sat down where they had these picnic tables set up. My seat was like a mess so I gave it a one-handed swipe and sat the fuck down. My little Jumpsuit Junkie followed suit around and across love lost and parked himself right where I lifted my eyes to find him there before I could snap my fingers. He ed me my sub and spread the fries on the tray just so I could pick as we unrolled the paper wrappers to fulfill nourishment’s wanting need. I took a bite and it was good—let me tell—as I glanced and saw him do the same. So I like looked at him glancing at me and thought to ask him just to put him on the spot. “So why should I know you?

I watched him as he just sat there taking a bite of his steak tip sub, thinking about how he might respond. I could tell he had thought about it a thousand times before he met me. I could tell he was rehearsing it as we sat there, him going over what he had planned to say to me if and when we met. But when he actually got the chance to meet me, he was dumbstruck and totally head over heels. I guess I had that effect on him. I was like his nurse. You know?

He huffed and puffed, just chewing and stewing… a chewing upon a stew. And then it was like a total light bulb. A swallow and a gulp and before long, he came up with it. “Because, I’m writing you a love spell.”

I fell in love with him right there. It was almost like I could hear him talk inside my head. I didn’t want to tell him that it wasn’t the spell because I thought it might go to his head.

A Space Odyssey

I was an author. I was an author of fictional horror novels. I wrote ’em at home. I had it all going for me. I had my face out there, a penthouse apartment, a new corvette, and a year’s subscription to Hustler magazine. And that was the best part. I the first time we met… touchdown upon a misdirected play that confused the defense. I let the defense past my line as my running back slipped out into the flat with nothing but clear sailing ahead and behind. And before you knew it, I was spiking that shit with a big fuckin’ grin on my face.

I was just daydreaming standing in line on the beach boulevard with an empty stomach and bottomless pit in my chest. And then I felt a hippie shove upon my California sunshine—just seeing her there beside me like I had envisioned it in

most wild and exciting dreams. Oh, she was… she was everything I was waiting for. She was everything I wanted and had strived for. Same girl, different name. Just seeing her there with her blonde hair highlighting my sun upon that beach that saw us together, made me take deep breaths trying to hide an anxious heart just waiting for my angel’s chance to make it all better for me. And as she stepped ahead of me, I gave her a onceover and I knew right then and there that my reality was far better than my brightest daydream. Her tight waist and her back, her blonde locks flowing like the stimulation of waves settling upon my western shore—she was perfect. And at that moment, I was perfect just because she was beside me. And nothing else mattered. I dreamed about what I might say to her the first time I met her. What was I gonna say? Was I gonna try and make her laugh? Was I going to act silent and keep my mouth shut just so I wouldn’t fuck up? A thousand times I had thought about what I was going to say. A thousand times I had come up with the answer. And a thousand times, I thought I had it down. But each word I focused on, each dream that I saw her in seemed so rehearsed and false. I just wanted to take her in my arms, forgoing on formality, just staring into those green eyes that took me away, wondering if she knew me —just wondering if she felt the same way about me that I felt about her. I had kissed her those thousand times before I even had a chance to meet her. And then she was there like a wind blowing in my ear pushing my sail to where I felt myself whole again. I fell in love right there.

“Jamie!” I heard her voice echo inside my head. “Jamie, wake up.”

“I’ll take two Cokes and a large fry.” My lips felt my mouth pursue famished flirty personifications. “Don’t you know who I am?”

“Jamie, why won’t you wake up?”

“Because I’m writing you a love spell.” I felt my lips move as she snapped me out of it. And there she was right beside me, just like the first time I had ever envisioned seeing her. I opened my eyes to her, and all of a sudden she was right

beside me. “Cupid.” My lips did foresee my tongue.

“Hello.” I saw her nearly and completely. “That’s my stage name. We’re in like reality now.”

“Jess.” My words formed on a name as I regained senses and refocused my whereabouts. A plane of consciousness… a hill seen through naked trees with bloodstains upon my footsteps lurking just under my nose. I woke up again. And I was there, and so was she. I was there taking in my surroundings as if for the first time, and for a second I didn’t know who I was.

“It’s okay.” I heard her say. “We just landed.”

Touchdown; I felt the plane roll under my feet as I shook my head free of cobwebs, ing the day before and the day before that. Confined and belted into the enger seat of an airplane, I saw the back of the seat in front of me and the low-hanging ceiling above. Jessica’s hands were wrapped around my right arm as I glanced to my left. A window and a shade above staring out upon the asphalt that moved with blurred yellow lines that brought me back to a place that I swore that I would never return.

“We should have gone to Hawaii.” I wasn’t happy about it. Hunting and fishing, camping out, roughing it—I was about ready to crawl back into the baggage compartment and hold on for dear life. Anything but… please anything but Maine… again. “The price of freedom upon balls and chains.” I sighed, hardly believing I found myself back in cracker and I wanted out. No shit. “Anybody got a safety pin so I can pick my chastity belt?”

“It’s not that bad.” She thought to add her two cents.

“Jess, have you ever even been to Maine? It’s no picnic, let me tell ya. Vacation Land… now that sits in your throat like a frog that just doesn’t want to swim to the bottom of the lake.”

“Come on… camping, fishing… it’ll be fun.”

“Fun… huh? Do you know what they do to city folk out here? The locals make the movie Deliverance seem like a sunny day at the beach.”

“I think you’re overreacting. You’re just trying to make me scared.”

“There’s a lot of woods out there. You don’t want to come across a local in the woods while you’re hanging over an abandoned well. It doesn’t paint a pretty picture. Let me tell ya. How did you ever get it in your head to take a trip to Maine?”

“My dad got brochures on it in the mail.”

“The mail? He got brochures on it in the mail?”

“Come on, you . I showed you the brochures and you said, ‘I don’t think this is such a good idea.’ That’s when you lied and said that you bought us all-expense-paid tickets to Hawaii.”

“Honey, I swear to God, I was on my way to the travel agent. I got his number on speed dial. Wanna see? Listen… no Maine. Okay? So where would you rather go… Maine or Hawaii? I think we should take the first possible flight back to Los Angeles. No Maine.” I shook my head in total defiance. “No Maine! I don’t even think I want to get off the fuckin’ plane. You don’t know how they live up here.”

“How do they live?”

“It’s different,” I replied, pulling my “LA” hat down deep so no one could see my eyes. “That’s all I’m gonna tell ya. It’s just different. That’s all I’m gonna say.”

“So why did you come along if you were gonna be such a Masshole?”

“Because you were going,” I said as I ground my teeth. “And I couldn’t let you go by yourself. So if anything happens, you can always blame me. Everybody else does.”

“It’s your fault. I get it.”

Tag-alongs… luggage… how I hated carrying my tag along luggage out of the plane. All I wanted to do was get up and get off the plane while the attendant pointed me to the nearest beach. But no, I had to drag myself to my feet not wanting to make eye with anyone on the plane except for Jess, her parents, and her little brother just to keep an eye on them so some crazed

motherfuckin’ maniac wouldn’t abduct them and sell them into sexual prognostication. Related… everyone on the plane besides us had relationships in Maine. Most of them had been there before. They knew the locals, and they knew how things worked. I knew all about it. I used to be a local before I got my head out of my ass and started a career. I didn’t even want to the day I moved away, but I’ll tell ya, it was the best fuckin’ day in my entire motherfuckin’ life. I had nightmares about Maine. I had nightmares about my childhood, and even though I never spoke about it, I hated it. I hated Maine and everything in it. To me, it was like the cesspool of the earth, and I did everything humanly possible to escape. But here I was carrying my girlfriend’s tag-along luggage back to the beginning. I waited in line just like everybody else and I tried to be nice, but I hated the air in Maine. From Orr’s Island, all the way to Portland and Bangor, way up into the boondocks, where few return without a toe tag and a mental illness… I hated Maine. I didn’t even like Massachusetts. Let’s just say that New England wasn’t my favorite spot for a vacation.

I kept my eyes focused on the floor, hoping that no one would notice me. Watching feet, I just kept watching their feet traveling round a nearly empty airport. I felt the vibrations rippling the commercial rug as they approached. It was like post-traumatic stress, reliving the terror that I had endured as a small child. And every time I felt their feet come near, I jerked my head aloft halfstepping in front of my girl, immediately checking for bulges around ankles, waists, and pockets. I didn’t trust one of them motherfuckers. They all wanted something from ya… your girl, your money, your cock, and a buttered up asshole. And my virgin ass wasn’t ready to give it up to their deliverance, no matter how many times they buttered up the dildo.

Heels to the back and coming up upon my place in line, keeping my girl as close as possible without letting her in on how angry and cautious I was just by being there. I didn’t want to be there checking over my shoulder every time I heard a faint noise or an abstract vocalization. Up ahead and in front, I raised my line of vision to take it all in. I was standing in line. Standing in front of me were Jess’s mother and father, Denny and Garma Dooms. Denny was a normal-sized individual, still athletic for his age and well dressed with enough collared shirts and dress slacks to go round. He had a chiseled, clean-shaven face and closely

cut brown hair with streaking grays sitting atop his dome. Garma was a little stuffy in her dress and demeanor—a short brunette wearing dress slacks and newly pressed blouses for every day of her life. They embodied the presence of money—easy pickets, and I was really worried.

Beyond their physical appearance, they were a normal middle-aged couple, bickering like all middle-aged couples bickered. I watched as they playfully picked and prodded at each other, Denny poking at his wife’s newfound semiconservative attitude and Garma scolding her husband a child still living his life inside his college dorm. I had the same problem, although I never went to college. Self-taught, I was all about my medical marijuana, the nightlife, and good times. And I wasn’t any ghostwriter. I was put in a situation. That’s just how I liked to live it, and I was as far away as I could imagine.

Beside Jess’s parent’s stood her little brother, Izzy. He was a pissy little squirt that I generously took on like the little brother I never had. Did I want a little brother? Not really. I guess I had to do it just to make my chick happy. But he wasn’t a bad kid. He was brought up in money. That’s the best way I could describe him—new clothes and different hat for every day in the month. He was of fair hair like my girlfriend with an attitude to go with the slant of his hat pulled back and slightly to the side. I made fun of him every now and again calling him a “wigger.” But was he a “wigger?” Well, if he was a “wigger,” I was a jumpsuit junkie and proud of it.

Heels shuffling forward; I watched the ones in front go while the heels to my flirty princess’s giver of good looks slid forward to the front of the line. After a quick glance over my shoulder, I faced forward, staring straight at the maniac working the behind the counter. He had a beard and a nest growing under his long nose. His brown hair seemed fairly kept parted to the left. He was like a dark, fat, out-of-shape Ricky Schroeder. He wore a shirt and a tie, but I knew what he looked like when he walked into the woods with a hunting rifle and an attitude. I could only whisper, “Hey.” I gave my girl a light elbow, motioning to the attendant to the counter. “Watch this.”

“Hello.” Denny rested his forearms on the counter asking oh’ so politely noticing the sign above his head that read. “You rent it, we fence it,” he said, oh so politely, “Catchy slogan.”

“Yep.” This guy was two cents short of a personality.

“Anyways… is this where we rent a car?”

“Yup.” The bearded attendant nodded his head me. “Me and the kids got a station wagon out back.”

“I think we were looking for something a little more—”

“Expensive? Now not all of us out here find the bottomless pit when we reach into our pockets, so you’re gonna have to wait until I can find you something better.”

“See, I told ya.” I laughed, shifting my girl another nudge.

“Shut up,” she said to me.

“How long?” Denny stuck to business.

“Excuse me?” Irritation seemed to come with a greasy stain in his shorts.

“How long is it gonna take you to find us a vehicle?” Denny repeated.

“You’ll get what’s comin’ to ya when I get around to gettin’ done.”

“I told ya.” I couldn’t help but blurt out with a pissy look on my face. “Vacationland?”

“Shhh.” Jess appeared fearful for our lives, whispering under her breath, “He might have a gun.”

“That’s what I’m sayin’! You know he got a riffle hanging on the back windshield of his beater. Beat-er… get it? And they beat the shit out of people up here. And I ain’t whistlin’ no Dixie.”

“Shut up!” She just kept looking at me and looking back at him. “Don’t make a scene.”

“Hey, I’m just observing. You’re the one who wanted to go fishin’.”

“It looks like we might have to wait a while.” Denny motioned to his wife standing right beside him for some .

“Do you think they’re gonna have the high definition NFL football package at the cabin?” Izzy brought up a valid question.

“I don’t think so,” I interjected, doing my best impersonation of a local. “Football is the devil’s game. Don’t chu know anything up in here, boy? Boy, all they do up here is gut fish and skin humps. And you better watch out before the local Baptist minister stages a holy war for talking out a turn, son.” I shook my head at him, ing my best huckleberry accent. “All you need to know is ‘please,’ ‘excuse me,’ and ‘thank you.’” Waving him off, I stressed my point. “That’s all you need to know,” I said with a stiff look to the counter’s attendant. “Right? Ain’t no slack-mouthed kids allowed to be fussin’ up here.”

“Are you playin’ with me?” The bearded attendant thought to open his mouth, shooting it off my way.

“Oh my god!” Jess grabbed my arm as if to say “Jamie, don’t” without moving her lips.

So I shifted my head, cracking my neck and thought to step up to the plate, pushing my way in between Denny and Garma. I was just stepping up to the plate. That’s all I was doing. “Hey.” I locked eyes staring him down. “I don’t see a playground around here, do you?”

“No, sir, I don’t.” He stared right back at me not looking away.

“We payin’ customers, right? We just as good as the last half a dozen people you

just waited on. Right?”

“If you say so.”

“So why are you giving them special treatment and telling us to go fuck ourselves?”

“Jamie, there’s no problem,” Garma wrapped her hands around my elbow. “We don’t mind waiting.”

“Wait a second.” I slowly pulled away, continuing on the conversation. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think our travel agent reserved us a brand-new Denali. And he assured us that that vehicle would be ready and waiting for us with its engine running and our luggage carefully tucked in the cargo area. No hassles.”

“When we fly to Hawaii,” Denny added, “we don’t get hassled.”

“Well,” said the attendant as he took a step back, checking the order just to make sure he got it right. “We’ll get on it.”

“Thank you very much,” I sternly stated never taking my eyes off him. “You have been so courteous, I just can’t thank you enough.” I watched him shuffle around behind the counter as he made his way to the back room. “Thank you so much.”

“Jamie.” My Jess swung me around while all others remained surprised to say the very least. “Why did you do that?”

“You got to know how to speak the language up here. At this point, he’s either gonna help us or leave us stranded on the side of the road. At least before your ass gets tired from sitting, we’ll know where we stand.”

“But don’t you think that was a little abrasive?” Garma asked, totally embarrassed.

“Personally,” Denny added. “I would have chosen different words to express what I was trying to say.”

“I thought he was cool.” Izzy giggled. “You could totally kick his ass. He knows it too.”

“Shhh,” I told Izzy to keep it down. “You don’t want to rub it in.”

Then I spied a seat across the room with my name all over it just in front of a large window highlighted by the fading sun. I swear to God, I hadn’t smoked weed in years and was ready to drive to California just to find a bag. So I strolled over, sat my ass down, and buried my head in my hands. And before you knew it, the counter clerk appeared from the back room. He produced a small stack of forms and slid them across the counter. He handed Denny a pen, motioning for a signature.

A scribble, a few words, and a twist. “Okay.” Denny turned around, proclaiming like he had control over the situation. “Let’s go.”

Salem’s Lot

The ride to the cabin went off without a hitch. It was Beeowulf versus 10,000 BC with The Village smack dab in the middle. Denny took the driver’s seat as head chief and big family man. Mommy dignified took the enger seat beside him with me sitting behind the big family man with his precious little princess sitting beside me to my right and right in the middle of things. Her little shit rug rat of a brother took up space to my extreme right beside his sister and behind his mother. It was cramped in the back, but we managed, even though we were tired from the Los Angeles-to-Logan long haul and the crossover flight in between. To tell you the truth, I was kinda happy that the old man took the helm because I didn’t want to drive. I just wanted to sit back and take the ride to where it was gonna go.

I don’t even leaving the airport parking lot, and before we knew it, we were on I-95, heading north into wilderness country. We didn’t talk much on the ride. I just kept staring out the window at the road and the trees across the highway lined up just so perfectly, allowing short glimpses of line of sight to travel beyond in variance of distance and darkness of shadow. I felt Jess rest her head on my shoulder as I lifted my right arm with her nestling right on, fitting under my arm just perfect. She looked so cute with her eyes closed and the air blowing in and out her nose, her nostrils getting slightly bigger and smaller as she breathed. And with my playful pretty tucked in my arms, I forgot how aggravated I was just for a second, that is until…

“The Allagash.” I heard the big chief head of household giggle as I felt the SUV slowly pulling off the highway. “Hey, Jamie.” He glanced in the rearview. “Didn’t you used to live somewhere around here?”

“I lived a little farther north up near the border,” I replied as I found myself plummeting back down to reality.

“You haven’t been back up this way since you were in your early twenties. Must be bringing back some old memories.”

“None that I want to .” I tried to clear my mind. “I think I repressed it.”

Just then Jess moved, probably awakened by the vibrations of my words. “He doesn’t like to talk about it,” she yawned.

“Do we actually have a good idea of where we’re going?” I tried to change the subject.

“Got it on GPS right here,” Denny answered, pointing to the screen, turning left and merging with the horizontal main drag. Microprocessors… “This is where we are right now.” His finger moved to left-hand side of the screen ending in a swirling motion. “And this large area right here is the Allagash. We’re supposed to end up between five to ten miles north of this great big beautiful wilderness area, right here.”

“Where have I heard the name ‘Allagash’ before?” Izzy squirt out, speaking at the top of his head.

“Aah!” I knew it right away. With a tired sigh like I had had enough before I could really get going, I said, “Here we go with the UFO Files. It’s Kecksburg all over again.”

“That’s where I heard it.” The little squirt became enthused, wishing to get into a conversation where his maturity could show itself. “UFO Files! I love that show.”

“It’s a shame that such a beautiful area has to be known by some crazy rumor that started God knows where.” Garma was so nostalgic about taking in the beauty of nature.

“You talkin’ about Kecksburg,” I was about that ready. “That ain’t no rumor.”

“No, Jamie,” Jess spouted off. “The Allagash: beautiful wilderness, nature, animals… you get it?”

Izzy’s head started swinging around, gazing through one clear pane to another and then another as he unrolled his window and started checking the skies for falling craterous debris. “This is the place where those guys got molested in the woods because they walked up on somebody’s moonshine.”

“That’s Deliverance, you dickhead,” Jess responded with a stiff backhand and a smirky face. “The movie with Jon Voit and Burt Reynolds.”

“No, it isn’t,” Izzy objected swinging round to face his sister, facing off her

onslaught. “I saw it on UFO Files. Lucky number 47.” Out of nowhere, he broke into a rural impersonation. “How ’bout you drop them pants? Take ’em right off. Cause we got some fuckin’ to do!”

“Now you’re confusing the cracker rapist in the movie Monster with the toothless shiners from Deliverance.”

“You got a pretty mouth.” Izzy kept with his nearly flawless huckleberry impersonation.

I couldn’t help but crack a smile. Denny found his son’s last comment almost as amusing as I did, although he tried to hide his smile briefly checking to see if his wife was up to snuff on the pithiness of her son’s retorts.

“I could sooo slap you in your face right now.” Jess staged an attempt to the flinch. “You are completely disgusting.”

“Actually,” I interrupted, calming my laughter to a dull roar. “The Allagash Abductions are supposed to revolve around a true story. And don’t get me talkin’ about Bill Bulebush and Ted Bundy’s Volkswagon Bug.”

“I know.” Jess didn’t want to hear about it.

“Really.” I waited just to make sure they were all listening to me. “I don’t really believe it, but a lot of people up here swear that this group of fishermen got chased around, stalked by something, some kind of big light in the sky. I guess

that night they never ed falling asleep and woke up like hours later with a big headache. Fuckin’ ten years on or some shit they all recalled the same incident through like post-traumatic hypnosis or somethin’.”

“No.” Izzy proclaimed himself the authority. “I heard that story. You’re talking about what happened to those weirdoes in the forest at Loch Ness.”

“Noo… wah,” I objected with a chortle and immediate clarification. “Listen, you stupid shit, you’re confusing the Allagash abductions with what happened at Rendlesham Forest. Like derr… two totally different stories.”

“Okay, my little Marshal Applewide,” Jess interjected with a smile, finding my quirky interests humorous. She reached up with her left set of five delicates and brushed my hair up and over tucking it behind my ear. “Didn’t I tell ya to leave the bow tie and the coat hanger antennae at home?”

“Do I look like a eunuch to you?” I acted perturbed getting into flow of the conversation.

Running her thumb around the outskirts of my ear, she undressed me with her eyes. “Not since I checked.”

“This conversation is way over my head.” Denny, big chief, head honcho, looked to his wife for as he spied an oncoming dirt road off to the right-hand side of the road.

“You’re telling me.” Garma agreed with him. “What these kids get into now a days.”

“Who’s Marshall Applewide?” Izzy was still searching the clouds for Martian meteors with fossilized spores.

“Never mind.” I exhaled, keeping my eyes on my Jess as I cupped my right hand around her right knee. “Aliens are only illegal aliens when you ask them for their port.”

Denny tilted the wheel to the right, letting the SUV roll onto the dirt road, the sound of the uneven surface rumbling under four tires. Then we felt him hit the gas, and we were off.

“Oh my god!” Jess sounded so enthused wrapping her arms around my neck as I again began to stare out the rear driver’s side window of the SUV. “We’re almost there. Aren’t you excited?”

“Fishing!” I could hardly share her enthusiasm, feeling the bumps in the dirt road hit me in the ass. “Great. Camping… roughing it.”

“Roughing it.” She kissed me on the cheek before returning to her casual sitting position between myself and her brother. “I am sooo exited! We are sooo gonna rough it.”

“I think I’m getting into it too.” Izzy really, really wanted to rough it. “I think I

want to go shoot somethin’.”

“Gaming hens,” I half-hazardly stated. “Wild bucks.”

“We’re from California.” Garma swung her head over her shoulder glaring fumes at her youngest and most immature son. “We don’t go hunting. We go to the grocery store like normal people.”

“Total ex-hippies.” Jess was pretty excited like she never saw a wild oak before. “We get our meat from the store, but grow our own vegetables.”

“That’s enough out of you young lady.” Daddy Denny wasn’t about to give up his closet stash.

“Bull moose.” I was still feeling quite adverse to the situation. “Wild turkeys.”

“Do you really want to go hunting?” Daddy Denny was curious about his son’s newfound manly enthusiasm.

“I’m old enough, right?” Izzy seemed eager. “Is there any place we could go rent a gun?”

“Hand warmers,” I added in jest. “Soaked socks. Numb toes. Frost bite.”

“You’d so totally pussy out.” Ignoring me, Jess poked fun at her brother’s willful nature to take advantage of some poor animal that didn’t know any better. “Mah wouldn’t even let you own a paintball gun.”

“Do when we got him that gun that shot plastic pellets?” Garma caught Jess eyes before swinging around in her seat repositioning herself. “And that poor boy… his mother will never forgive me.”

“How about the time Lucky died?”

“Yah.” Denny laughed, slowly pulling the Denali around a sharp corner.

“Oh my god.” Briefly Garma raised her hand to her forehead, wincing before she glanced at Denny. “I’ll never forgive myself. I loved that dog.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Izzy vigorously proclaimed his innocence. “I just put his chain on and let him out. I don’t know what happened.”

“So how did he fall off the porch?” Jess demanded answers.

“How would I know?”

“You didn’t hear his little paws scratching on the downstairs window? All you had to do was look. There he is.”

“I told you already! I went downstairs to watch TV and fell asleep.”

“Can we just drop it?” Garma closed her eyes, positioning her open palms out in front as if to whoa a horse.

“Since you brought it up,” Denny pursued the present track of the conversation, “I did find your story a little peculiar.”

“Orange camouflage,” I said matter-of-factly, my mind still running through the woods. “Great… great.”

“All right,” Izzy proclaimed, unable withstand the pressure. “I had to go somewhere real quick.”

“Oh no!” Garma rolled her eyes and tilted her head back. She was happy with his story, but now she had to pursue the headline.

“You should have stuck to your guns.” Denny was on edge of his seat witnessing his son’s retreating explanation. “I can’t wait to hear this one.”

Garma swung around in her chair making eye with her youngest, her glare looming over the back of her seat. “I’m waiting.”

“Mah!” Defensive, Izzy was about to… “I stand on the Fifth Amendment.”

“That’s my boy!” Denny pronounced, shifting a right-handed fist in the air. “Don’t let her back you into a corner.”

“Ow aah,” Jess sighed, antagonizing the situation. “Come on, Mah, he’s rope-adoping you. Don’t let him off so easy!”

“This isn’t a courtroom,” Garma calmly stated appearing to be as understanding as possible keeping her headlights fixed on her youngest child. “You’re not on trial. Just tell me what happened. I promise I won’t get mad.”

“Just tell her what happened.” Jess played the role of a prosecuting attorney, just searching for a plea bargain. “And I’m sure she’ll go right out and buy you a paintball gun.”

“Even I’m interested now.” I could hardly control myself.

“You went to go see someone.” Mother’s persistence sought for truthful answers. “Who was it? I’m sure this person had to be someone very important to you. Was it a girl?”

“I really don’t want to say.” Izzy found the lamp too hot to handle without some shades and some sun block.

“If it was a girl, I will totally be as understanding as possible. Just tell me the truth so that I know that my son is not a liar.”

Guilt trips and dead dogs—Izzy felt like he was lost in the jungle about ready to toss up this morning’s crackers. His eyes searched longing for shade of relief, but finding himself all alone in the jungle with nothing but glaring eyes encircling him. Then he let us have it. “Lenny, Mah,” he said, under his breath, lowering his head in shame thinking of his mother’s poor little Lucky just dangling there kicking his rear hindquarters off the glass of the downstairs window. “I went to go see Lenny.”

“My son’s a liar.” Garma swiftly swung round her face finding her hands and shaking her head.

“Down goes Foreman.” I almost burst into tears, laughing. I knew who Lenny was and so did everyone else in the cabin.

“All right,” said Denny. Deep sounding to his vocal cords, Denny gave her another halfhearted jerking fist nearly as fun-fulfilled as I found myself.

“Lenny?” Jess squinted a pervasive eye, asking once more just to make sure. “You went to go see Lenny?”

Garma could hardly contain her disappointment. Draping her fingers down across her face, she said, “I can’t believe my son, the liar, went to get high while my poor little dog was dying.”

“Hey kid!” I reached around the back of my baby girl and poked Izzy in his upper shoulder. “You live and learn.”

“Couldn’t ya have let the dog back in the house before you went to get stoned?” Jess thought her hindsight was 20/20.

“Oh my poor little baby puppy.” Garma floated on a low note. “I didn’t even get a chance to kiss him good-bye.”

“And on that note, kids,” Denny proclaimed applying the brake, “we’re here.”

Staring over and in between the backs of the seats, I could see the cabin up ahead taking up nearly the whole windshield from porch to roof. Denny shifted the transmission into park and killed the ignition, distracting my line of sight for just a second. And as he got out, I focused on the cabin once again—brown stacked logs and peeling paint of slanted porch, railing, and shutter; two windows and a door centering the foremost wall with an overhang, casting shadows upon the front door from the sparse light penetrating the forest canopy somewhere above. I couldn’t help but think of the movie Evil Dead. All that was missing was a porch swing and a dead tree. And I wasn’t talking about movie rat trap. Maybe I was, but I wasn’t. You have to take some of it as true. Some of it’s like a parable like in the Bible, but like the Devil’s Bible. Member that show on the History Channel? That’s how the doctor spelled “fall guy” when I wrote Divine Inspiration. Like I said… fuckin’ blood money! I was in total agreement. This sound kept echoing inside my head as the cabin shifted, jettisoning extra luggage to lighten our load. I lived in a house like that when I was younger. It shook. Thud, thud, thud. Shutting my eyes tight, I heard a car door’s slam followed by that irritating dinging sound signaling that someone left the lights on.

Moments turned into seconds, and seconds procrastinated on my procrastination. Suddenly, I felt a fuzz on my nut sack and a longing to keep my hands warm. I wondered which room was mine. Jess and I needed to get reacquainted before I rolled over and ed out for the next six hours. For some reason, I wondered if that was a perverted thought. I mean, it was just a thought. I had had a plethora and a harem of those to go around my little playboy mansion, let me tell ya. I guess it was just because her parents were there. Every time I looked at them and they looked at her, all I could see was how they saw their precious little girl before she became the woman that I held deep affection for. In all honesty, I think I cared too much about what others thought about me when I should be more focused on the way I wanted to live my life. If I was perverted, I knew that I stood in good company.

Cluckclunk. I heard the cargo door swing open behind me as I opened my eyes.

“What are you doin’ in there little wanderer?” Denny called to me over the pile of luggage tightly stacked behind me.

“I was just reading the funny papers,” I responded flushed to the face.

“Yeah.” Denny huffed upon a chortle. “That’s what they all say.” I guess he wanted me to help him carry in the luggage, but I wasn’t an eager wanderer. Checking over my shoulder to see the top suitcase sliding off the mound revealing two ginning male faces, Denny asked me, “So how’s it up there in the nosebleed sections?”

“I just thought I’d supervise and speak up when I saw you doing something wrong.” Izzy grabbed another suitcase standing vertically and positioned to the far-right-hand side of the cargo area and slid her to the ground below.

Distracted, a pop and a yank refocused my attention to the rear driver’s side door swinging wide open to the most beautiful flirty princess I ever did behold. “Do you do that every time you spank your monkey, you’re just begging for high blood pressure?”

“Huh?” I didn’t know.

“Looks like you’re holding more than your funny pages.”

“What?” I half giggled.

“Eh… hem.” Jess pretended to clear her throat focusing her eyes on my warm left hand with a gentle rubbing.

“Oh,” I quickly realized what she was hinting to. Slowly, I removed my hand from “you know why” and gave her a “you know what.” Yawning, I mumbled with a stretch, “Sorry,” before stepping out onto the dirt and gravel below half asleep and ready for bed.

“Ow aah,” she sighed, briskly throwing her arms around my shoulders as I leaned in just to give her a squeeze, my fingers nestling together and resting on the small of her back. “Is my little baby Jumpsuit Junkie tired?”

“Yah aah.” I snuggled her up tucking my nose between the strands of her hair. “I aah… mmm.”

Slightly pulling back, she stared her heaven into my sight, her lips sweet-playing upon my tired eyes. “Are you ready for your nap?”

“Umm hum.” I nodded my head up and down before pulling her close once again. Overtired, I pouted just like a little baby in dire need of his crib. “Snuggle princesses and crazy kisses.”

“Break it up!” I heard Denny’s heavy feet finding the soft grass and sparseness of dirt as he ed by.

“Come on, Dad,” Jess pleaded, pulling away and turning in the direction of her father. “Will you look at him?” I felt her left hand find mine as Denny offered a glance. “He’s sooo cute when he’s tired.” Talking with her opposite hand following some imaginary bouncing ball, she came up with a light bulb. “Okay, here’s the plan. We’ll help you carry in the rest of the luggage and then while you guys are unpacking, we can go find some Z’s with enough time to wake up just before we eat.”

“And pray tell,” Denny tried to straighten his face, “where would said groceries appear out of nowhere for said chief cook and bottle to serve you thereupon?”

“Aah.” Jess appeared somewhat confused as did I. “You didn’t make sure that the cabin came with a stacked fridge?”

“It wasn’t in the brochure.” He casually shook his head from side to side, no.

“So how are we supposed to—”

“I might imagine,” Denny rolled his eyes, “that we might actually have to go to the store and buy some.”

Just then, I heard Izzy make his way around the opposite side of the SUV. Through the side window, I saw him slide out another piece of luggage lying on its side. It tilted over the top, and he rolled a rectangular tire to its next flat surface before he took the handhold by the hilt, dragging it from where his feet did tread.

“See him.” Denny motioned to his little dog killer. “Your brother pitches in.” A step and a drag of his rear foot, and the last big piece of luggage slid off the cargo area and hit the ground on his left side. Leaning over and grabbing the handhold, he flipped the suitcase right side up and lifted it off the ground. “How about a new plan? We go inside and finish unpacking while you, and I mean that in the plural sense, go get acquainted with the locals.”

His words really threw a wrench in Jess’s woodworkings as she asked in disbelief like she was pleading with her dad to do her homework for her, “You want us to go shopping?”

“You get the golden star.” Amused, Denny reached up and placed his hand on top of the cargo door. He said, “Yes, you do,” and pulled her close with a thud.

“Roughing it.” Jess pouted, all depressed with a huge frown plastered across her

grill.

“You got to buy the steak before you can spark the grill. The next thing you know, you’ll be doing your own laundry,” he said with a quick nodding smirk and a strut on bye. “You kids have fun.”

Hearing her sigh out loud—almost as loud as I was hearing myself wish for a warm bed and a cuddly princess to snuggle—I reached back with my free hand slipping my fingers beyond the edge of the open door, slamming her shut. Turning around and leaning in, I gently ran my open palm from the top of her head to the back of her neck. “I guess you gotta add the soap before you can run with the spin cycle, baby snuggle.”

“Laundry.” She was sooo cute when she pouted.

Making my way over to the driver’s side door, I popped the handle and swung her wide. “We better get going,” I talked looking back on my dire forecast as evening was about to set in. “Up here the temperature drops at least ten degrees when the sun goes down. So we better get going before we find ourselves sleeping toes up in a box. Read between the lines.”

“We better get our toes moving.” She took a deep breath and let it all out as I propelled myself into the driver’s seat.

A left-handed swing found the driver’s side door close. “That’s my girl.” I knew she had heard me through the open window. Denny had left the keys in the ignition, so I gave her a twist and turned her over. Through a clear glass pane, I saw Jess move around the hood of the Denali and to the enger side door. It

popped open and swung wide. Glancing over, I checked to see watching her hoist herself into the cabin of my vehicular conveyance with a thud of iron finding my plastic. Cha’ . . . ching.

Drive… I shifted it in and to the front before I cut the wheel taking her along for the ride while my stick found her rear. Reverse… back some and then coming to the fore and slapping that ass before I let it roll. Forward again and slight to my cranking whirl, we were off and down the dirt path, rumbling and tumbling where I found the tumbleweeds just taking me there. There was a calm in the cooling air. We were finally alone, just breathing in the peace and quiet as we gracefully found each other. With the wind blowing in my face, I needed some mood music to take me there.

Power on… I depressed the large round gadget atop the center console and heard it right away. And I wasn’t likin’ it. Not one bit.

“And so he did see his name etched upon the annals of time seen through the eyes of our Lord in his most darkest hour.” I heard the haughty voice of a man telling me how I should live my life falling on my knees. “And so sayith His name hailed in the presence of the Almighty his holy self.”

I hit the seek button as quick as possible before our ears became polluted with fanaticism. Fuzz calling to another voice…

“And then Jeremiah came across a stone and a raging river upon the stone where he so shall purge his thirst.”

Flinching at the reverend’s tone, I hit the seek button a fidgety finger before I

became lost inside the buckle of the Bible belt.

“Then he screamed out to the Lord, “No! I will not sub come to the powers of darkness. For they are the tempters and those seeking to fulfill their own satchels glistening a gold coin sunk into the earth beneath the toes of Judas’ swinging noose.’”

“My god… total frigin’ Twilight Zone.” Jess flinched a wide eye like a seamstress plucked her with a sharp needle. “Change it. Hurry, before he starts chanting.”

“So sayith’ the Lord.” A touch, a seek, and a fuzz. I hit the button again just to make sure. There was nothing but fuzz and static for as high as my ears went long. Seek once twice more before we found what we were looking for INXS “Disappear.”

“Oh, thank God,” Jess proclaimed, sighing in relief. “I hate Christian power chanting. I didn’t know it was actually a reality out in the sticks like you see on TV.”

“Small nit communities and the Bible belt,” I said. “To be honest with ya I’ll bet at least one of those radio shows is probably run out of the local church in town. No shit.” Jess took it in stride and I didn’t force it down her throat. “I’ll even go further and say that one of those guys might even pump our gas before we go back to LA.”

“So are you gonna tell me about the new book?” Jess’s curiosity inquired.

“I haven’t really started anything per se.” I got serious, having been struggling with a theme for my new writing project. “I got an idea that I wanted to play around with. Actually, it’s only a phrase. But it’s a start.” Coming to the end of the dirt path, I briefly applied the brake, checked both ways for oncoming headlights, and pulled my four tires a rubber upon hard asphalt. “It goes… ‘I loved this girl once, but she turned me down and I wanted to kill her. But I couldn’t. So I thought I might kill someone else instead.’” I gave her some gas. “I really don’t know where a book is gonna go until I write it. A change here and a twist there, and then it just kinda works out.”

“You know, I don’t mind if you kill me in your novel.” Jess got all excited. “Just bring me back for the sequel.”

“I can’t kill you.” Tones of baby play-dough in her arms. “You are like the prettiest thing in the world. You are like my everything star. I couldn’t do that to you.” Then I got serious again glancing in her eyes and finding them deeper than the endless sky above, darkening as the sun tucked behind the trees. “The next Jamie Presley… swear to God.”

“No, it would be sooo cool. Hear me out.” Jess was always so excited when I talked about her staring in my novels and relating my aspirations of how great I thought she could be. “I could come back as a zombie or a ghost or a vampire or something like that and totally haunt your ass for like life and turn you into my sexual slave to my bidding.”

“I’ll think about it. I mean if you really want me to kill ya, I mean who am I to argue?”

“Because I like sooo want to play a vampire. I swear to God, it’s eating me alive.”

“Eating you alive. At least you gave me something to work with.”

“Don’t get any ideas, frisky flippy. I know how your brain works. At least not until we get home.”

“Once you start the wind blowing in my direction, baby, it’s hard to turn the ship around.”

“I just love it when you talk dirty.” Then she thought to change the subject. “So are we like roughage material or what?”

“What, you don’t want to go shopping?”

“I’m too tired.”

“I think I got one foot under the covers already. That was a long flight.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“If you want me to cook dinner, at least let me buy the tuna.”

“All right, Bill Parcels. I almost got it.”

A head nod directed Jess’s attention to a lighted sign on her side of the road as I read the words out loud, “Moose, Burgers, and Convenience.”

“Totally winging it.” Jess read the sign too. “I got it now.”

So I pulled on in there, taking my baby girl along for the ride. There was one car in the parking lot other than ours positioned way off to our left. I barely looked at it as it was almost hidden by the darkening skies as I pulled up to the front of the store and came to a stop. INXS and I need some energy quick. “New Sensations” tagged along to funnyman persona. Yah, I was a jumpsuit junkie and proud to think myself fun to be around. And when my goods was on top of her game… look out. Edgewise, it was like we were the only two people in the room. I grooved and she just moved. She shimmied while I shaked and I like to shake it up before she cracked my shell. And when we decided to involve other people in our conversation, they knew to speak only when spoken to or suffer under the wrath of our degradation.

So I killed it… the ignition I mean as she hopped out there with me come to folla’. I could hear my local springin’ wells like a frog in my tongue. Two doors slammin’ upon my handle’s extension of my would-be pursuer. Pursue her… get it? I got it. And I got it good too. So I followed her that way on up the stairs and onto the prunes that were gonna see my empty belly to a whole field full of Fig Newtons. I my grandmamma like on them Fig Newtons and them prunes. I couldn’t take no tare of it none. So I just let it be, just seeing my shit kickers takin’ it on where I might find a nice cherry tree and some apple round shorts.

At the top of them stairs, Jess pulled up as I nearly felt my bump and grind brushing up and on. So I wrapped her up and pulled her tight just like my momma’s beef stew.

“A field full of Fig Newtons, Jamie?” Jess tilted her head just enough for me to see the look in her eye. “I hate it when you start talking like a hick in public.”

“Yah, but baby, you got more than enough apples to go round my cherry patch.”

“So you want to role play the locals, huh?”

“Could be.”

“Just promise you won’t embarrass me.”

“Baby berry apple bottom, would I do that to you?”

“Fun with the locals,” Jess sighed, preparing herself for the very worst. “Never a dull moment.” Pausing to ready herself, she let it all go. “Okay, deep breathe… now I’m ready. I think.”

“And here we go.” I felt her take one step inside as the clerk way off to our right against the far wall caught me by the eye followin’ up on her rear. Jess led my weakened knees to prospect of gold and fortune. So I strolled on over there. “Howdy!”

“What, are you from Texas?” The attendant to my counter’s meat, an old pruning fig tree with ‘squitas tucked inside her griddle inquired ’bout my birthin’ without askin’ my momma first.

“Hell no!” Restin’ my elbows upon hardwood, I said, “I got myself a place in the shed out back yonder.”

“Oh!” She smiled, holding my hungry belly over my head. “You must be from out of town and trying to make fun us.”

“Lady, got me no.” And she did.

“Not all of us come from the trailer park, sonny.”

“What, you ain’t no turnin’ your nose up at cardboard trail no park? Right behind the Wendy’s for when we go shoppin’ after supper.”

“Forgive him.” Jess played plates to my rollin’. “He used to be a local. Now he needs a local anesthetic.”

Smirked the prunes factly no matter “I guess so.”

“Lady, my rumblin’s takin’ my naughty need to duckling’s upon my pewter.

Have two shaved steaks molded over rump roast.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Don’t get mad.” Jess take herself findin’ vocals to cord of harpin’ beat. “He just wants to order two large steak and cheeses.” Spectacles shined shimmied on my light of day. “He’s just having an identity crisis right now.”

“Heavy on the chili and make sure you don’t get any on ya.”

“Peppers and onions.” Jess clarified.

“Twin kielbasas and don’t forget to butter my scullion and make it rise.”

“Excuse me?”

“Two sausage and onions on toasted rolls.” There was my Jess again just to butter my brickle up in some apple sauce.

“Anything else?”

“Large piece a peppah’ on its way out the door.” I took a step just ready to make my way around. “I think sit.”

“A large pepperoni pizza to go too, please.” Jess added me a mossy on over makin’ way up, round, “n” through.

“What a character, huh?” Prunes spoonin’ with Fig Newtons… let me tell ya.

“You should see him when we’re home alone.” Movements cross on hand warm a warmer. “You don’t even want to know.”

“Um hum.” She imagined what like I looked naked, fiddlin’ on them heads.

“Sheep’s wool to the hair on my ass, two humps a coal squeezed out the drain a golden riva’. Taverns upon parcel a hungry horrors in the middle man with my tongue thirstin’ on wet wata’ to suite my kettle’s rare.”

“Honey!” Jess stringin’ cords to my bare back banjo. “Buy cans because two liters don’t last as long, and I don’t think we have any glassware at the cabin.”

“If I had the time a day, I might hopscotch my ass way to Marshals’ five and dime cow tip a pear a penny-less shoes. I dropped the cold off at the tundra kickin’ frosts to forests waspin’ widdle. Six to twelve found eighteen tins color blind.”

“We have lift off.” Jess procalled a filta’ papa’ bottle black findin’ wee close to my lobe’s hoofs to horseshoes.

Stacking twenty-four a six minus a half divided by a fraction of an exponent, I offered grunts like a wounded animal. “How long we lastin’?”

“You’re telling me you understood every single word he just said?” Squeezing prunes, dew’s mount spring produce.

“He just wants to know how long it’s gonna take.” Jess call me show nobbin’ knees to my knickers. “To tell you the truth, I don’t even think he knows he’s talking out loud.”

“Kill me cap to my tally wiggle woggle.”

“What now?” Fig Newtons and prune juice.

“He just wants to know if you have a total ready? That’s all.”

“Go, wait outside, please!” Hangnail heat on my daddy.

“No problem.” A jib jeb Jess a skin a my knuckle needle a titta ripple rivot.

Day turned into night by the time we got out of there. I was following her heels, just tryin’ not to trip over my waspin’ widdle. And as soon as we hit the fresh night air, Jess let me have it, furiously winging her way round. Tongues to throat,

I didn’t see much after that. I just went with the motherfucker wrappin’ my arms and heated blankets—a warm sparking ionate wet feeling of her hands down my pants. Animal magnetism—that’s how I explained it. Air and lungs, a slip a space, and some more sunshine in my skivvies. Jess knew how we gonna spend the next ten to fifteen minutes.

Rights hands to rounds, rippin’ thread conforming to waist’s buckle. Down the stairs, and I almost lost it until insteps dragged on dirt, a gravel finding flats pinned against sexual stimulation. Back doors and just enough time to kill it a nobby knees to my knickers a tilta ripple rivot. And I left it in there. I ain’t shittin’ no brick where I go clammin’ neither.

Fifteen minutes later . . .

“I can’t believe you just did that,” Jess whispered, breathing on my face as we were confined to backseat.

“Just wait till parents go to bed tonight.”

“Shut up.” She moaned, just finding her way around my hips. Eventually, Jess rolled up off me leaning back against the seat. I heard her still panting almost out of breath as I adjusted my pants giving her a button and a zip. “So are you actually going back in there?” Jess was still out of breath.

“Sure.” I was confident. “Why not?”

“Jamie.” She waved her hand in the air. “I don’t know. She probably spit in our food.”

“It all goes down the same.” My handle in hand, I popped my rear side driver’s door open followed by a shift and a drop, two feet topping the dirt driveway. “I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t forget to get some wine for my mom.”

“Will do.” I slammed the door shut.

On the way back inside, my abstract line of thought began to wander. And all I could think about was how her pussy juice felt on my penis. Itchy, I thought trying to relate it in the best that I could. But Jess looked good, and I loved the way my manly belonging hung in my briefs after I gave it to her. Four to five inches a dangle as I felt it raw and moved it around.

Two steps up the porch and two more to the door, I stopped and looked around before I swung into a hook and a curve. Down the aisle, a big swing and a miss. It was an airball. Two balls, a wooden bat, and a strike. All ten pins minus one seeing two fingers jammed in the ball return. Then, I motioned to the referee for a time out. Forty-five seconds to the play clock, and I had the bat resting on my shoulders. Play ball, I heard the little man in the funny mask. So I gave her a practice swing and kept on going. And there was the coin flip. Kick or receive? I chose to bunt, defending the far end of the field after a foul tip that landed in play.

“Wine.” I ed the halftime stats, winging her around and grabbing her

by the neck, figuratively speaking of course. It was a par four, and I had mechanical caddy that picked my clubs for me. I fired him a thousand times and played a full eighteen holes with my putter just to make him shut the fuck up. If he was any good he woulda’ gone pro, but not everyone has a full swing like Tiger Woods. And I loved my plaything. Let me tell ya, I had my favorites in my private playful playhouse. If only I could kick the babysitter and stand in for my own cock, the world would be a simpler place when I killed it.

“So what do I owe ya?” My elbow found the counter, laying the wine right next to my eighteen-pack Coca Cola.

“Excuse me.” Prunes and a package of Fig Newtons wondered where I left my roll.

“Lady, I’m not speaking some foreign language here.” I gave it to her Stern. “Like I failed fuckin’ Spanish, okay. And I’m not French, so don’t ask me to pucker up.”

“Crazy city folk.” She finally laughed out loud as she stacked my piece a pepper on the counter plus twin Kielbasas on its way out the door. “Forty-five eleven.”

“Oh, I left her in the car.” Four plus five, and one on one, and then it hit me as I gave her a tally. “All that for Jesse Jane and a bag of chips.”

“What chips?”

“Never mind,” I sighed, fishing out my wallet and finding myself drifting somewhere in the backseat on a par five that only took me six strokes to get it in the hole. “It’s this crazy math kinda adding thing that I do. Every time my mind crosses an eleven I always try to think of someone special.”

“God help you! I don’t understand a single word you’re saying.”

Slapping two twenties and a ten of the counter, I was just waiting on my one as a field of fig trees letting Sir Isaac Newton know when the apples were ripe.

“Four, eighty-eight is your change.”

“Eleven,” I whimpered my mind doing the adding for me as the bills found my fingers and the change fell into the cup if my hand. Instantly, I found myself inside that backseat one more time, breathing her all in. “That’s my favorite number in the whole world. Three elevens and three wishes. One so I make it to California. The second one so I can make lots of money. And one more so I can buy my flirty snuggle princess a whole bunch of designer shoes and a mink coat just to make her happy.”

“Take your food and go!” Prunes and Fig Newtons sounded like they were about to toss my cookies. “Please, I have to close. I don’t need the hassle.”

Two dainties and a cutesy shuffle of designer shoes on the tile floor caught my eye upon my wiggle woggle. And as I turned to look at her, I heard the prune juice behind me sprout roots. “Just get him outta here!”

Making her way over, Jess knew that I was a bad, bad boy. “I don’t even want to know what you said to her.”

“Phissh,” I gasped almost like Jess sighed before she talked with her hands just to make me happy. “I was nice.”

“Sure you were.” Disbelief was her middle name as she leaned into the counter on my right side until I turned that way to find her on my left. Then she smiled. “Heavy on the chili and don’t get any on ya.” Ins and outs and the out upon my in, we packed up and went. And I was ready to work my way backward through all three of my elevens, standing on my head if need be.

Planet of the Apes

Alone in bed, old thoughts crowded by new life: thoughts forming on the edge of a pillow, the south side of a dream, changing tides and ships breaking surf, sitting up with the covers covering your toes, dropping cold and faint stares, zeroing on decades of seasickness bowing high and leveling upon bare sand in between the puddles of wet. Indifferent to life and teetering on the downward spiral, Garma sat up in bed with her back resting flat against the headboard. A half empty glass of wine in her hand, she sipped the receding tide away just watching and waiting. Denny moved around the queen-sized bed, fishing through his suitcase and boxes of Ts, searching the bottom of his bag for his only pair of woolen socks. From the bed, feminine middle-aged eyes focused on the long-term from then on and into the now just imagining someone else.

“Do you think that Jamie is going to be a good father?” Garma took another sip of wine.

“Only if you know something I don’t?” Denny found what he was looking for deep down at the end of his case. “I think he may still have some growing up to do. But he has potential.”

“I don’t know. They seem to have such a good relationship. I mean the way he looks at her. I when you used to look at me like that, like you couldn’t wait for my parents to go to bed because you could barely keep your hands off me. And the way she looks at him. It’s like they correspond on another level. Ow, I when I used to feel that way about you.”

“You make it seem like they’re living inside a fairy tale.” A bent knee fitting wool to foot and ankle. “I’m sure they have their problems just like everyone else. It’s just we don’t hear about them.” Another bent knee, wool finding toes warm. “They handle it responsibly and quietly much the same way we do.”

“Do you ever hear them fight?” Garma knew the answer swimming inside the fizz. It was a flat out no. “Does Jess ever say anything bad about him?”

“What about the time he told her she needed to shave her bushy eyebrows?”

“Oh, he was only joking.” Another sip of wine. “They just let things roll of their shoulders like nothing bothers them. Eternally young. God, sometimes I don’t even think they’re human.”

“Jamie has a good career going for him, but he’s immature for his age. He is.” Stretching at the foot of the bed, Denny showed off his shape envisioning his wife the way he first saw her under the right side of his covers. “I mean, he’s only ten years younger than me, but he still acts like he’s in his twenties.” Wool

to cold board, he tip-toed to the side of his nighttime bed story. “Beach parties, all-nighters, and quarter pounders, I’m just worried about his lifestyle—goal orientated expectations and eternal college ‘limboism’ consumed by a brain fog and a puff of smoke.” Knuckles to mattress, a slip, and a shuffle found covers snug to pits with flats resting on heads and backboards. “And this whole rock star mentality? Jess has her career to think about now.”

“Oh, you should talk. College limboism? Immaturity?” A glancing stare found her digging a fresh hole in the wet ground in between the crevices of cold covered toes. “He’s already successful and young. He may be only ten years younger than you, but ow, he doesn’t look it. If I was single, twenty years younger, and still had a heart beat? I guess all that matters is how he treats her.”

“Hey, don’t turn your nose up at the big Kahuna, baby,” Denny chuckled on a pleasant persona. “You Jess’s friend Re`al? She had her eye on the way I tucked in my shirt.”

“Please,” she answered with an open hand waving it off, followed by a drawn out breath. “You wouldn’t know what to do with a naked girl if you had a manual.”

“Honey, don’t make up a problem where there isn’t one.” Denny’s monotones related appeasement and reason upon certain occasions. “You see your daughter coming of age with her whole life in front of her. You’re just approaching that time in your life where change is a hard thing for you to accept.”

“Don’t give me that!” Sourpusses and crushed grapes found Garma wet beneath the covers.

“To tell you the truth, I like Jamie, and I know you do too but don’t get disappointed if things don’t come out the other end exactly the way you planned. Listen, Jess has always been my little baby, but seeing things as a realist, I can’t help but notice that all sorts of doors are about to swing wide open for her. I just think Jess might be better served with a guy a little more like an ant or a lawyer.”

“What?” she said with apparent disdain. “Like you?”

“Why not?”

“Aah!” Garma was about to serve her Denny with her own version of postponed reality. “Jess is Norky’s kid anyways.”

“Norman?” Shocked and consumed with utter disbelief, Denny revealed it in his disbelieving tone. It was like he had heard it before in a dream. “You slept with my brother?”

“When you were in the service during Desert Storm,” Garma offered her explanation like it wasn’t a thing, “Norky used to come over every once in a while to check in on me.”

“You never said anything all these years.” Crumbling falls crashing into the unfamiliar pit of Denny’s “down in the dumps” depression.

“Don’t act so surprised.” Surrounded by the walls of medipause, Garma didn’t

mince any onions before she took another sip of wine, swallowing on her own confession. “You came home on leave and less than a week later… I swear to God, you are so oblivious sometimes.”

“He was barely out of high school.” Suddenly disgusted, Denny felt his life was consumed with crisis in midlevel speed bumps. “How could you?”

“What’s the difference?” Cutting tones into harsh reality “You slept in your mother’s bed until you were fifteen.”

Sliver

“Do you think your parents are asleep yet?” Cold fingertips rubbed on naked warmth, gently searching, running faint to touch over the waves of ribs. I wrapped my arms around her resting on top of me, finding my fingers meshing together just above her ripening apple trees.

“I really don’t think I give a shit.” Jess breathed inside my mouth.

The Notorious BIG . . . nasty girl.

I felt the nasty bulge between my thighs as she rolled her hips catching the elastic of my shorts slipping down the length of my pumping chamber. Back and forth, the tip of my penis rubbed the wet vertical lips of her vagina. A half thrust of my hips and I felt it slip in. Just the head at first before she rocked forward across my body and then back again. A little more, like slipping your arm

through a freshly pressed sleeve still steaming and warm. And as it conforms to your torso, you feel the pleasant heat seeping into your shoulders. All the way in, I pushed her hips down to the hilt of my handle. She moaned and struggled a bit like there was a hot branding iron pressing on her ass. So I let her rock forward once more, before she fiercely jammed her hips to my hilt just hard enough to make me shiver.

Leaning back, I took her all in. Beautiful she was… a naked seductive glow. Her fake breasts felt more real than real and soft to the squeeze. And as I let the water flow on down, cupping her ribcage in my palms just beneath my baby’s milk, my hips felt her pick up the pace. Violently thrashing and thrusting up and down, my entire penis felt the brisk air before the ramming unbelievable sensation of her wild wet made me groan. Over and over again, vaginal secretions did lubricate making way for inner directions and the overwhelming joy involved with fucking great goddamned sex! Your hands aggressively grabbed her around her waist just above her hips helping her in euphoric motion and bounce. All the way out coming to a pause at the very tip before she looked at me for just that brief second pleading with me with her longing eyes to give her some more of what she’s looking for. And just that fast, I answered ramming it back in there as she hunches over letting you do most of the work for however long she wanted to take it. Time went on as her vagina spurred on—thought of juicy fresh roast just out of the oven tasting a piece here and a sliver there. In and out and building to a climax like finding the pedals on an exercise bike burning away calories by the second. Five more minutes, I kept telling myself. I can make it last. Five to ten and three twenties to an hour just to see how long I could go on before I ed out from sheer exhaustion.

Swapping sweat, holding it in there for a second and hearing her moan, and just as I was about to blow your load, you slip it out and give her a right-handed jerk once or twice just so you could make it last. And she wanted you to… make it last. So before long, she leaned down over you, her breasts pressing against my chest, and you find that space again somewhere up in the clouds. It just slips in so easy like water conforming to a glass. That’s when you start the whole process over again, just making it last as long as you can—just to keep her honest and always coming back for more.

And beforeI you knew it… “I’m gonna cum.”

“Not yet.” Jess breathed, leaning back and driving her hips down around my cock.

“Aahh!” I sighed, swelling inside of her. Fuck, I swear the tip of my penis touched the top of her uterus, just letting it wiggle around in there. Then I felt it cumming and instantaneously tried to pull out with a shift and a slight push on her hips. But she wouldn’t let me… not that easily. The unending need to let it stand and blow it out instinctively superseded my thought-out reasoning pattern in the practice safe sex. One more roundabout wiggle of her hips and I couldn’t help it. Two stiffening legs lifted her ass off the mattress pushing it in as far as it would go. I couldn’t help but blow a huge load right inside of her. And as I did just that, Jess let out a slight scream, biting on her lower lip just to keep it under wraps. It was almost like it hurt, but I don’t think she was complaining.

“I think you need to think about going on the pill sometime soon.” I huffed and puffed as I was nearly out of breath, leaving my penis, a ten-inch horn fading a half inch at a time.

“I know, baby.” Jess purred like a kitten, resting her head on my shoulder. “I just don’t wanna gain any weight.”

“Well, you might end up gaining a lot of weight if we keep this up.” I was joking, but I wasn’t.

“So why don’t chu just wear a condom?” she asked as if it wasn’t a thing.

“You really want me to wear a condom?” Disbelief was my middle name.

“Aah.” She was in between thoughts. “Not really.”

“Yah… neither do I.” I blatantly offered a chuckle. “That’s why you need to go on the pill. You’re goin’ to the doctor as soon as we go back to LA.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You’re goin’!” Determined I was.

“Oh yah?” A sigh followed a tilt of her head. “You’re gonna make me go?”

“Give about ten minutes, snuggle princess, and I’ll see what I can do.”

Suddenly, we heard a door open and slam shut outside and in the hall followed by footsteps leading downstairs.

“I wonder if we woke them up.” I knew right away that Jess’s dad had angry feet taking his frustration out on inanimate objects. “That was not a pleasant slamming sound.”

“I think we should have waited an extra ten minutes.” Jess had thought they were asleep.

“I think we would have been fine if you didn’t scream.”

“I wasn’t that loud.” Jess giggled, running her fingers down my ribs. “Besides, my dad likes you.”

“I think he puts up with me. At least I’m better than your last boyfriend. What a beaut he was?”

“Come on, you guys always joke around.”

“Being a realist, I just can’t help but think your dad might see you better served with a guy a little more like an ant or a lawyer. And I got this whole rock star thing goin’.”

“I could never be happy with like suspenders and a bowtie. Oh my god, kill me now. I love my little jumpsuit junkie.”

“Tell it to the judge.”

“Well, my mom likes you. That’s for sure.”

“Uh oh,” I gasped, ready for a drum roll. “I sees the wheels turnin’ as we speak.”

“Don’t be gross.” She puckered. “I don’t think she likes you like that!”

“How long have you been holdin’ onto that dirty mind?”

“As long as you play your cards right, flirty flippy face.”

“Nahh, your mom’s got a nice set of silver for an antique store.”

“I am sooo gonna beat the shit out of you if you don’t shut the fuck up.”

“Promises, promises,” I grunted, trying to wiggle away as she tickled the shit out of me.

Chapter Two

Roughing It

Dr. Lector

K nock, knock, knock . . . someone was knocking on my brain.

Leave me alone, I yelled inside my head.

Do you think this is a free ride? I heard the knocking again. Do you expect us to just leave you alone? Do you want to be a scumbag your whole life?

I’m not a lowlife.

5:00 a.m . . . . a morning’s brisk and it’s time to milk the cows.

But I don’t like fat women.

How ’bout an old one?

No!

We’ll tell you what you want, and I’ll sell your cock to whomever we choose, because you are just a slave . . . a bottom-feeding piece of gutter trash whom I shall do away with if I please.

You are the trash. You are the slave. Never me. Never me.

When I finally woke up, I was standing at the bottom of the stairs with the light from the front windows of the cabin shining in my face. It was morning, and the light from the sun made me squint. I could hardly see or determine my surroundings to any specific clarity at all. That is… until I blinked my eyes and shook the cobwebs free. Off to my left was the old man on the fence, the big Kahuna himself. He was sitting on the couch positioned against the far wall just below the living room window. Denny appeared to be in rough shape like he had spent the whole night on the couch, staring off into space like he was in some kind of trance. I watched him for I don’t know how long, wondering why he was sitting by himself so early in the morning with his back to the sun. He had a glass in his hand and the previous night’s bottle of wine still wet with enough in the chamber to give up a nice little buzz. Denny was never a big drinker, especially this early in the morning, but he did drink on occasion—just never before sunrise. Vacation, I thought, brings out the best in all of us. Then he saw me as he turned his head in stiff motion of the neck.

“Do you want a glass of wine?” he asked while I made my way over there, plopping my ass on the cushion beside him.

“A little early.” I yawned as I picked up the bottle off the floor and gave her a

swig. “Don’t get up.”

“That’s kinda what I wanted to talk to you about.” A sip of wine wet his lips. “This whole rock star persona thing.”

“I joke about it like that.” I tried to assure him. “But I don’t think I’m going to go off the deep end anytime soon.”

“What I think you need to start doing is presenting yourself in a more respectable manner. What’s wrong with wearing a shirt and a tie every day? We all have to do it at some point in our lives.”

“I don’t know if you know, but I do own a suit or two.” It was too early in the morning for this kind of thing as far as I was concerned. “I go to meetings just like everybody else, but my line of work doesn’t require me to dress up every day just so I can go impress the clerk at the sub shop. What do I care what she thinks about me?”

“Your line of work?” Denny repeated my statement in the form of a question. “Now I have read parts of your novels and I must say that you’ve got some talent, but have you ever thought about writing anything besides horror novels and sexually explicit material?”

“What exactly is your definition of being ‘sexually explicit’?”

“It’s not what I would choose for you to write. Maybe you could ease up a bit?”

“Choose for me to write?” I was shocked. Here I was a hardworking man with something going for me, and all this guy wanted to do was complain about absolutely nothing, especially this early in the morning. It was like I was already married or something. I never fuckin’ proposed, and I hadn’t planned on taking on a ball and chain anytime soon. “Aah, I don’t know how to answer that. I know what sells and I know I like what I’m doing, and if I can make some money doing it and it isn’t illegal, what problem do you have? I just don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

“All right, you think you know everything.” Denny didn’t like the sound of my tone. Briefly catching me out of the corner of his eye, he continued, “Why don’t you just hang out at the club for the rest of your life and wake up with a headache?”

“You know that’s the kind of snobby mentality I don’t like.” Defensive I found myself, and I wasn’t about to beat around the bush. “What we’re really talking about is the kind of image you expect me to have. I get up every day the same way you do. I work hard the same way you do. And I don’t appreciate it when someone looks down upon me for trying to enjoy my life the way I want to. I mean you smoke weed too, right?”

“Why don’t you just go rent an apartment in Inglewood?” Denny knew he really wasn’t making much sense so was resorting to stereotypes and degradation.

“Now I got a problem with that too.” My tone was a serious one. I had had just about enough. “This isn’t the Outsiders. Not everyone in this world can be classified as greaser or a soc. There’s a whole group of people that just like to live life to the fullest and make their way the best way they can without being forced into some mold just to fit in.” I gave him a hard look. “God, the next thing you’ll say is that every single parent in the city should give their kid a

basketball or a football and hope they make pro. That’s a close-minded attitude. There are thousands of people from the city that struggle and end up making something of themselves. Do you think you’re better than someone else just because you got money and wear a shirt and tie every day?”

“I think you might be missing the point.”

“Listen, I write the way I want to write because I know what sells and people like reading that kind of shit. Do you think everyone that likes reading my stuff is a lowlife? I don’t think so.”

“I don’t want to argue. I just think it’s time you think about growing up.”

“It seems like you think I’m immature just because I wear jumpsuits and write horror novels? I wear jumpsuits because I like feeling comfortable and I got a big fuckin’ cock, all right? I got a career going for me now, and that’s more than I can say for a lot of people. And I had to struggle real fuckin’ hard, more than you’ll ever know, to make something of myself.”

“I think I’m going back to bed.”

Denny got up and headed for the stairs, but before his knee could bend, I left him with a smart-ass comment and some good advice if he could just learn to read between the lines. “Thanks for giving me a headache and leaving a half-kicked bottle of ‘let’s forget this whole goddamned conversation.’” He didn’t say anything. He just lifted his knees one after another as his feet found the steps beneath them. I was alone on the couch thinking out loud, just me and my bottle. “That’s a talk that will make me walk out the door before I have a chance to kick

the rest of this bottle.” Another swig and I took it down. “Vacationland… all right.”

Sooner or later, I decided to go back up to my room and get started on that idea I had rolling around in my head. I was in the right mood for it, and Jess had basically told me flat out that I could kill her if I wanted to. But not right away. I had to make the moment last. So while she was still asleep, I cracked open the computer and gave it my best shot… locked inside a room.

Taxi Driver

Have you ever been at a time or space in your life when you feel like you’re locked inside of a room? No windows… no light, but you can still see. See… nothing. No forward. No reverse. And every time you take a turn, you hit a wall. There are no walls only obstacles that stand in front of you and no matter how hard you hit, they don’t move. They’re just there and you can’t get around them. There’s only one door. You know it’s in front of you and you focus on the handle, but you don’t want to open it. You just want to lay the wood and smash that mother fucker in! So you give her a boot and the door shimmies at the thunder of the blow. You become consumed… enraged. You feel the energy just surging through your veins like you just wanna’ get the fuck out of there and take your aggressions out where they may. So you hit the fucker and break her down as your momentum carries you beyond your mortal ability. And as you pick yourself off the ground, you realize that you’re in the same fuckin’ room. No windows… no light, but you can still see. See… nothing. No forward. No reverse. And every time you take a turn, you hit a wall. But there’s this door just standing there in front of you. So you focus on the handle a heated eye and a clenched fist expecting it to wilt under your anger. Then it all just goes away for a second. You fall back into the same hole you were in before, and no matter how much you try to dig yourself out, you just keep looking up as it fades and all you can see is that handle. So you take a few deep breathes just makin’ you’re way on over to that door. Then you reach out and grab that handle just expecting to find that same room beyond that threshold. A moment’s pause weighs on your

intent as you twist her back and open her up. And just before you see beyond, you slide you tongue upon the sharpness of your teeth just wanting to bite on some flesh and the smooth as it touches your face.

So he opened the door and walked on through and all he could see was her just sitting there with that blank look on her face as it showed her my handle with that blade shinin’ in her eye. Time seemed to move on, but didn’t just running in place. And just as you lock eyes, you give it to her. But not right away. He would make her work for it first.

“I don’t know what you want,” an older masculine voice echoed in from across the seat stingin’ his soul from my drums down to my loins. An object just beyond the hills of her thighs broke the silence. It broke the silence shared from one eye to another. And that didn’t settle well in his stomach. At least not as well as it should. So he waited. He waited for it to . But it didn’t. It thought to open its mouth again as it irritated him to extremes. “If its money you want. Just take it and go.”

“Shut up,” my handle’s lips slithered upon the words before he could speak them. “Just shut the fuck up,” he whispered like the silence was too great and any ripple in the wave was too much for him to handle. “Don’t,” mumbles upon vibration of my tongue. “Just let me hear the silence.” It was as if any further words would shatter my focus and make me want to cry. “Shhh,” I told him to leaning over her while focusing on the thing in the enger seat. “I don’t… don’t—”

“Don’t what?” It said.

Objects all of ’em. I couldn’t stand a single one. I wanted to hate ’em all.

Tiltin’ my head to perspective, he lowered my bottom lip just to let the woman sitting in the driver’s seat so close to me that she see snakes through my sunglasses. “I don’t…” I didn’t realize. He just didn’t know until he saw my handle touch her cheek. “I don’t…” The blade dragged going down slowly tracin’ the faintest red. “I don’t… wanna’ cut her face.”

“You can have whatever you want.” He heard it again. “Just don’t hurt her.” It was silent up until then, but he heard it.

Right then, my free hand felt a bulge on his left thigh. “Don’t talk.” I looked down just to see my hand in my pocket. “Please… don’t,” he begged it to stop. My handle slowly dragged down upon her crevice down to her stomach and finding the pit just above and in between the cradle of her thighs. “You don’t know what he does?” He was the voice of a child crying out for his mother. “He hurts.” Then I raised my head to tear rolling down my cheek as I felt my innocent child gazing onto the eyes of another pleading with it to just keep its voice down.

Energy invaded a child’s muscle a surging torrent down my left arm as I wiped my tears away without feeling my hand on my face.

“Who does he hurt?” I heard its voice upon my silence and I just couldn’t take it.

“Shut up,” I grunted as I whipped my hand out of my pocket and gave it to him!

Three shots! The first hit it in his belly just wondering why he did it. The second

tug plunging into left upper chest before I could explain why. The third shattered its brain upon the enger side window as sheer reaction forced him to stick that bitch where it hurt! She wiggled and shimmied just to get away falling out of the vehicle as her hump found the asphalt as cold as the blade sunk in her abdomen.

Stepping on her hair, I fell to one knee pulling my boot beneath me. I gave it to her again and again just sticking it in there and pulling it out with a yank to counter the resistance. Then it tried to scream. Instantly, thrusts of handle aimed straight for the eye, but he missed, the blade sliding down her face. But she just wouldn’t shut up no matter how many times he cut her. I couldn’t take it. Her screams were my nightmares. And then he felt himself above and before he knew where he stood, she stopped screaming. I saw her head jerk and her neck break as the heel of my boot settled underneath me again. Then, he moved her blood to the lips of my handle. “Shhh.” He heard the silence invade my brain for only the faintest of moments and enjoyed it. I enjoyed it.

I wanted to kill that which stopped on my moment as I gazed over the top of the vehicular obstacle and to the house up ahead that had just turned its light on. A rumblin’ to my left and I couldn’t deal with the commotion. Suddenly, it was all around and coming at me from all sides. It impeded my silence and he had to get out of there. So he ran, letting my heels kick him in the ass all the way down the street and across the playground not stopping to swing on the sets. He was almost out of breath, coming to a hedge and hot stepping my way around the dark. He could see the street lights overhead as I ed bye and onto to the sidewalk tucking my pistol back into my left pocket and then pulling off my mask. Right then, I started walking just praying that my silence would return. Across the street and to my four wheels inside a craft, I heard the sirens before I even grabbed the handle. I just need to see the sun rise.

Campfires, Beer, and Bigfoot

Three Little Birds—Bob Marley

The daylight faded through the trees, giving way to night. We were all outside, sitting around the grill. It had a smell that made my mouth water. And I could smell it. I could smell the water. I knew there was a light on somewhere because it was nighttime and I could still see. But I didn’t check to see where it was coming from. Just like a bat, I could see in the night. I saw in sound: vibrations bouncing off solid objects—not fiercesome, but indifferent—crickets rubbing their legs in random sequence of song, wind whispering through the trees, and the shifting of wood leaving a fluttering fingertip. There was a crackle of the fire underneath the cell door as flesh burned. With a long, slender fork in hand, Denny was at the helm, turning over buns and flipping burger patties with sausages popping a burning smolder to signal that the juices were flowing. Garma was resting in a lawn chair some distance away, not really saying much, just sipping on her wine and watching me and Jess do our flirty little thing. I think she was reminiscing, but I could be wrong. Izzy was off somewhere just on the outskirts of the tree line hitting fallen logs on the side of large sturdy trees, probably to summon bigfoot to carve his name in the bark. And as for me, I had my little flirty princess in hand sitting on my lap as we sprawled out in the lounge chair covered by a fuzzy blanket that Jess pulled over her shoulders to keep warm. It was chilly, but I was cuddlin’ so that was okay.

Denny didn’t say much; he was just focusing on the flames and looking beyond. He was keeping to himself mostly, and I knew that Jess noticed that her father’s usually upbeat demeanor was much nonexistent. I saw her wheels turnin’. Curious, she unwrapped herself, got up, and walked over coming up behind him. Trying to lift his spirits, Jess slipped her knee behind his just to see it buckle. “What’s cookin’, chief, stew?” She watched him smile, however briefly in a glance, but it wasn’t enough. Denny casually brushed it off almost ignoring her returning to his big Kahuna burger-flipping detail.

Totally weirded-out, Jess didn’t know how to take it or him having never seen her father in this frame of mind before—indifferent and totally consumed inside.

Faintness of stare brought her back to me, looking over her shoulder just to check to see if her father looked back, but he didn’t. “What’s wrong with Dad?” she whispered lying down beside me, tuckin’ herself into the same position I had saved for her. “He’s been quiet all day.”

“You got me?” I wasn’t sold on the way she used the word “Dad” as if he were my father now too. But she felt warm when I wrapped my arms around her, so I let it go, just adding on to her observation. “Your mother looks like she’s in a trance.”

“They’ve been ignoring each other all day.” Jess was observant. Hardly offering her mother a look, she said, “I think they might have got in a fight or something. But they never fight.”

“Sometimes there’s nothing better than a good fight to get it out of your system.”

“But I can’t imagine what they could have fought about. Every day my dad like caters to my mom, almost like bending over backward. Borderline pathetic.”

“There’s always something to fight about.”

“Do you know something I don’t?” My Jess was as smart as a whip.

“I think he slept on the couch last night.”

“No, he did not!” She abruptly raised her voice loud enough for her parents to turn their heads.

“Yah, he did.” I almost laughed but held it in. “We had this big dramatic discussion this morning.” Then I took a glance over at Denny to see if he was listening. I think he was, but I told her anyways leaning in and lowering my voice so we could keep it just between us. “He was all bent out of shape about me and my lifestyle and how his idea of what I should be doing for my life wasn’t coinciding with where he thought the direction of my life was headed. Don’t be mad, but I kinda let him have it.”

“Oh no,” she sighed. “Whatcha say?”

“Plain and simple, I told him to mind his own business.”

“I hope you were nice about it.”

“Of course, I was.” I assured her, but she didn’t seem as assured as I intended to make her. “Baby, I wouldn’t cause any undue friction while we’re on vacation.”

“Oh no,” Jess whined just imagining what must have happened inside her head. “You should have just ‘yes’ed’ him to death until we got back to California.”

“Hey,” I ran my fingers through her hair flowing down to the center of her back. “He was in a bad mood before I got up.”

“It looks like a big penis,” Izzy observed a long length of kielbasa raising his voice so that all would hear. Jess and I glanced over simultaneously to see the little squirt at the foot of the grill with his mouth watering.

Garma nearly choked. “Don’t say ‘penis’ in my presence.”

Frustrated, but attempting not to show it, Denny snickered at his wife before he said to no one in particular, “That’s why it’s called a sausage, son.” Snickering at his wife again, he continued, “Do you want any peppers and onions on your sausage, dear? Or do you want it straight up?”

“A burger will be fine, please.” Garma took another sip of her wine.

“I know just how she likes it too.” Denny had his mind somewhere else.

“And how is that?” Garma wanted to know.

“Just like she likes her veal.” Denny just flipped it on his big Kahuna. “Welldone. Right, Izzy?”

“I think I need another glass of wine.” Garma needed some hard alcohol.

“You said it.” Denny laughed, not really thinking it was funny. “I think I’ll take three shots of Tequila and a Mexican senorita just so I can boss her around before I get rid of her.”

“Don’t drink the water,” Jess interjected just trying to be funny. There was a brief moment of silence.

“Honey,” I whispered in Jess’s ear, “keep quiet. They’re arguing right in front of us. Right now. Watch how they use your younger brother to talk to each other without actually doing it.”

“I’m not the only one who needs a Spanish lube job.” Denny was relentless.

“What’s a Spanish lube job?” Izzy didn’t know.

“That’s grown-up talk, Son.” Denny advised.

But Garma told it how it was. “It’s a derogatory term to describe a Mexican mutt with no home and sense of direction that can’t find its way to the hut even when it’s cold outside.”

“Have you ever heard of a Canadian honker?” Denny asked.

“I think so,” Izzy stated.

“A Canadian honker,” said Denny as he flipped his kielbasa over, “well, that’s a rare bird that flies south for the winter to make a nest on your front porch so you

can step in its shit every time you go to work in the morning.”

“Well, maybe if you cleaned up after yourself,” Garma said as she took another sip of wine, “you wouldn’t have to have someone deliver your groceries for you.”

“I’m almost old enough to drive,” Izzy interjected not really knowing what was going on.

“Not those kind of groceries, honey.” Garma knew her son had no clue.

“Did you get all that?” I asked Jess as if she was an insider in the know. “Because if you do, I think I you need to explain it to me. Because I got lost right after the Canadian honker drove to the grocery store to shit on the front porch.”

“Shhh!” Jess was attentive. “I’m listening.”

“Here you go, boy. Fill ’er up.” Denny motioned to his son to pick up a plate stacked on the nearside shelf of the grill before glancing back at his wife and said, “Don’t read into that.”

“Don’t you think you’re going a little too far?” Garma asked her husband, taking a sip of wine.

“That’s what she said,” Denny chuckled, filling his own plate as he mumbled under his breath, “Bitch.”

“Name-calling, college limboism, immaturity.” Garma was a sip close to drunk. “Now that’s a great way to teach our son how to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’”

“I need to get out of here,” I whispered in Jess’s ear.

“I really don’t care.” Jess flirtingly gave it back to me.

Then Denny glanced at Jess and myself sitting on the lounge chair just taking it all in. “It’s not gonna serve itself.”

“I don’t think I’m hungry anymore,” Garma interjected.

“Oh my god,” Jess grabbed my shirt sleeve real tight pulling me in so she could whisper as if all others around couldn’t hear us carry on between ourselves. “It’s like the Twilight Zone.”

“The Twilight Zone doesn’t really apply,” I was serious as I replied. “I’d say this is more like, Grizzly Man, the sequal. So anytime you’re ready, you and me are on the first plane back. No joke.”

“I don’t get it,” Jess was so sexy when she didn’t know what I was talking about.

“No, Garma.” Denny turned red. “All they do is hang all over each other.” Me and my Jess, that’s whom he was referring to. “There’s a time and a place. We never hung all over each other like that.”

I didn’t know how to feel or react once I head his voice bounce off the trees. Jess was so still that I thought she was just taking it in for later.

“That’s because you forgot how to be human,” Garma suggested that her husband should just keep it to himself. “God, everyone knows that. So when’s the last time you ever made me feel pretty in front of someone else?”

“What? Do you think you’re losing your looks?” Denny found his bruiser just flipping the kielbasa. “You said it. I didn’t.”

“Do you know what I want to do with that fork right now?” Garma was serious.

“Sir,” I said as I took two steps back on the evolutionary chain, “if I did anything to offend you, I’m sorry.” I felt Jess lean back into a sitting position as I readjusted myself without shifting my balls from one side or another. “I didn’t know it bothered you.”

“It doesn’t bother him.” Garma took it to the point. “He’s just trying to make a problem where there isn’t one.”

“Come on.” Denny flipped the meat. “It’s like they’re playing on a jungle gym.”

“That’s it,” I proclaimed sliding my feet to the grass beneath them. “They grow better weed in the forest anyway.” I unwrapped myself and got up as Jess followed my lead.

“Make sure you pack a lunch.” Denny was a sure asshole in front of the grill. “It’s been a pleasure really.”

“Oh god, Denny!” Garma sighed, taking another sip of her whine. “Do you see what you started?”

“Mah,” Jess looked to her for motherly influence. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Don’t worry about your father. He’s just going through ‘the change’.” Garma’s eyes refocused on her husband. “Having problems relating to your youth?” A whino she was. “The next thing you know he’s going to start wearing sunglasses all day and put a down payment on a new sports car. Did you check your tampons, dear?”

“Bitch. That’s why they call it a sausage, son.” Denny took a big bite of a long penis.

“I think,” I said, trying to hide my irritation as Jess grabbed me by my arm, “I’m gonna go take a walk.”

“Don’t forget to bring a flashlight.” Denny was just playing the asshole.

“Can I come?” Izzy asked wondering how the woods sounded at night.

“I don’t know—” I tried to say before Garma interjected.

“Go.” She sounded imperative so that was how it was gonna be—me, Jess, and Izzy.

So we went. Izzy ran to the porch and up the steps to the front door of the cabin. He pulled it open and let it slam as me and my Jess walked off to the edge of the trees just so we could talk under our breaths. Alone, we were about to have a deep engrossing discussion. I didn’t know if I was into it, but it was out of my control. It was what it was.

“What the fuck you say tah Dad?” Jess was sure it was my fault.

“I didn’t say anything,” I swore up and down. Then she gave me that look. You know… that look that forced me to search for answers. “Well,” I stuttered, “all I can say is he had some major concerns about you and me and our lifestyle. And to tell you the truth, I’m totally cool with the way we are. I don’t know what his fuckin’ problem is?” Then I recalled Denny’s comment, A jungle gym? “I thought I was cool with him. We don’t hang all over each other. Do we?”

For a second, I thought I was in Orthodox Striction Kid’s Kindergarten. Sit up straight! I heard voices. Cross your legs! No . . . that sounded gay. It wasn’t like I had multiple personalities. Knees together! Fold your hands! Elbows off the table! More like paranoid schizophrenia but at least I wasn’t depressed. Please

don’t hit me! And that was a good thing. Why do you keep hitting me?

“I have no idea,” Jess sighed totally confused, not knowing what was going on. “I never thought it bothered him before.”

“I mean,” I was really stressed knowing that I needed one of two things. I was frustrated. “What the fuck?

“Listen,” she said as she slid her hand into mine, and I couldn’t help but stare into those big green eyes down upon Niagara Falls. “Let’s not let him cause a problem between us.” I felt her fingers delicate upon the skin of my chin. “I think we’re perfect.”

“Hey!” I was just livin’ in the Playboy mansion, and here comes Mrs. Perfect. It was a warm “revv.” Brooom . . . Brrooommm. “Come here, you.” I wanted to tell her that I loved her right then and there. I wanted to tell her that I loved her, but I stopped myself. I was the man, but not the man. Question mark. Get it? The ruler with his ruler, and those greens just talked without moving her lips. “And I guess he’ll just have to get used to it.” It was first grade without the balloons. I was Mr. Line. No, the other one. It was just a quickie.

Yah, I kissed her. I had my tongue down her throat and everything. And if I had written it down, it would have lifted off the paper. Then Jess asked me as she gently pulled away, “What were we fighting about again?”

Her breath on my face… that’s all I could think about. “I don’t .” I was holding her up at the light. Fizzle . . . I heard the moth searing their wings. Fizzle a bigizzle. Crazy I was. “Ask me twice before I ask you again?” And then I laid

it on her… another big wet one. I left it in there. Times for air, two times twice before I took it. Don’t forget to add the cigarette wish. I made one. And I wished as a wish could only wish. She turned over a packy and pulled out a cigarette. Sexy… that’s what she was. It was a wish and I had only one left. And I was the getaway driver. A walk through the woods… the moon was following us on my way home, shining through those trees. And what was that wish you were listening for? I manifested my own destiny.

So it was campfires, bigfoot, and beer. Them woods up in Maine. The wind whistling between them branches. The wood creaked at a cold breeze. I didn’t have a beer, but I just had a bottle of Bacardi. Then I woke up.

Jess was close, just talkin’ to me under her breath. “My parents, they sounded such like old fuddy-duddies.”

“Hey!” I didn’t want to poke fun just yet. “That could be us in ten years.”

“As if. I’m never gonna be old and fuddy-duddy.” Jess liked to hit. She’d slap me in the shoulder and hurt her hand, but she wouldn’t let on. So she gave me one. I let her do it. With a face like hers and a body like that, I’d pay money to see her do it again. I liked it when she played rough. “And if you get one more roll above your bathing suit, I’m dumpin’ your ass for good, baby.”

“Stop.” I acted like I was hurt and fragile. “Stop it. You tend to retain water when you drink a fifth of rum every night.” Being very serious and entirely concerned about other people’s surroundings, I said, “I’m fragile about my appearance. I’m tellin’ ya, don’t.”

“I’ll do whatever the fuck I want to do.” Fury… she wound up and hit me again. It was a glancing blow sliding off my forearm, and then an underhanded swing brushed by my balls. Two hands in a flinch stopped her before she could dig her nails in. It was my cock in a jar of formaldehyde. That’s what I was most concerned with in dedication and being 100 percent attentive. That’s how she managed to stick one up there and slap me in the face. Fierceness… I liked it.

“You sneaky, bitch.” I couldn’t help but laugh as Jess backed up and slowly started moving around the ring.

“Don’t get in the way of Mike Tyson, motherfucker.”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself.” I loved it when pretty girls talked tough because it was fun. I loved teasing pretty girls ’cause that’s what little kids do when they like ’em. And once they start getting physical, you’re halfway in the door. So I duked up, just stickin’ to my toes. “I know your personality.” I gave her the two balls and hammer and started moving around the ring. “I had you down the first time I saw you. Five minutes a flirt and a spotlight girl.” Then I gave it to her just to see if she felt it when I made impact.

Externally feeling the pain, Jess rubbed her sore shoulder because it hurt. I think she felt it, because she gave me a pouty. There was some span coating the pan before I put the bacon in, let me tell ya. “You’re not supposed to hit.” She was sooo cute, she was. “I bruise.”

“Well.” I faked like I was gonna give her another one. “You’re the one who wanted to rough it.” It was intended to make her flinch. But, she didn’t flinch because she knew that I wasn’t gonna hit her or at least not very hard. But I saw it in her eyes that she thought she should, but she didn’t. It was a “don’t you dare me” kinda stare. I took it for what it was. “What’s the matter?” If I could only

act like I was concerned. “You don’t want me to open another can of corn?”

“You’re not gonna hit me again.” She stood straight up and firm sounding as convincing as I ever heard her shaking her head as if she had final say in the matter.

“You sound sure of yourself.” I wasn’t puttin’ my hands down. Movin’ from side to side, I was bobbin’ and weavin’. “What! Do you think you’re gonna hit me and I’m not gonna hit back?”

“I’m a girl, and you’re supposed to let me win.” She took a shot. It was an airball fumblin’ two steps and a tumble.

Whoop, whoop . . . I gave it up to good footwork. “Not all the time.” She repositioned herself and took me square. I was like on my tippy toes. “Come on. Put your hands up, dickhead.”

She was just standing there, and I was encircling her like a wild animal zeroing in on her specific. “This isn’t a prize fight, Jamie.”

“Then why you chasing me around?” I floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee. “I can’t stand you continually gushing over me.” I did my best impersonation of her. “I would never continually gush over someone. It would be like so beneath me.”

“Are you trying to piss me off?” Foreman just kept swinging at me.

“I just think you’re sexy.” Then I popped her another one just to let her know I was thinking about her. “I love it when girls follow me around. The blonder, the better.” She just stood there all pouty, rubbin’ her shoulder ’cause it hurt. So I asked her, “If I’m gonna cook dinner, at least let me pick the groceries?” Jess wanted me to make myself an easy target. “Don’t move.” I said moving from side to side finding my way around the ring. “I just want some kind of physical .” That would be cool. “So, why don’t we hit?” I gave her one more nodding right after I did it. “Because it hurts.” It hurt too.

“Aah.” She was rubbin’ her shoulder and it was sooo cute. It didn’t hurt that bad. It was just the way she looked at me with those green eyes. “I told ya I bruise.”

I was just nodding knowin’ that it… “stings.” Just smilin’, thinking about the gold and two front teeth. Hicks and fine-ass chicks… my dick was hard.

“That’s not funny.” And all of a sudden, Jess got all tender. “That really hurt.” That was the way she was supposed feel, but she thought it was funny so she almost started laughing. But she held it together. She held it together.

“Oh, baby!” I was sooo attentive just totally giving myself to her all at once. “I didn’t mean it.” So I went on over there and wrapped my arms around her. She pulled me in with those eyes and I trusted her just ’cause she was hot and I felt safe when I thought about her inside my pillow. Then she laid one on me.

It was a pinch and she got me good too squeezing my balls and tryin’ to scratch my face. I felt it… that’s all I’m sayin’.

“You don’t hit chicks.” She waved her finger at me jumpin’ back out of the way before she took something that I might losing. But I wasn’t judgmental, so it was okay. I wasn’t done. No, I wasn’t.

“My charm. I’m gonna win you over.” So I gave her one more just ’cause she was a smart-ass. “I mean, who wouldn’t like me? I’m a good-looking mothah’fuckah.” I started bobbin’ and weavin’ and weavin’ and bobbin’. I didn’t hit her hard, but I hit her hard enough to let her know I was kickin’ it. “What round is this? Can’t we just rent a ‘Cuddle and Bubble’? We could sneak off and take a private plane to Brazil.”

“I am sooo like gonna knock you out.” But where was she?

“Two weeks in bed and a prescription, just havin’ the greatest sex.” Me, I was still kinda imitating her like her imitating me. “And then I’ll sleep for a few days, and when I wake up I’ll ask you a few important questions.”

“Why do you got tah be so confrontational?”

“Because… I don’t know.” So I slipped her the jab, tappin’ her shoulder just to let her know I was thinking about her. I was just moving my feet just like my momma told me I was gonna. “It’s fourth and one and you’re down one. And I ain’t goin’ for no fake run. My defensive linemen are fat and you don’t wanna take my fat ass out for dinner. So you better step out of my way before I get serious on your ass.”

“Fat,” she laughed hardly able to duke it when I was comin’ on to her all sexually. “What do you mean by ‘fat’? Do you mean ‘fat’ like fat, like total

‘Escalade Phat’ or do you like ‘fat’ . . . ‘fat’? Meaning like… ‘Holy shit’?” She tried to hit me again. It was another airball.

“Watch out!” I almost burst out. “I know karate. I’m so happy. All I want to do is have sex with you.” It was a “King-size” promise. I was still bobbin’ and weavin’. “You see, this is why we’re not gonna be like you’re parents.” I couldn’t help but laugh some.

“I’m seriously planning to kick the shit out right now.” She was dukin’ it up, but all I really wanted to do was see how her lips tasted underneath the covers.

“And if you don’t come correct before I take a bubble bath, I’m gonna take the toaster to bed with me.”

I thought I was in heaven. It was another galaxy, another solar system. There were thousands of stars. And every single girl was blonde—young and blonde. I don’t know why, but I had to clarify. Young, skinny, and blonde. So I did. I clarified.

“I love to be in control,” Jess sighed. I let her have her way every now and again.

“You are sooo short. Why don’t chu go to midget land?” I was still in love with Jess just bobbin’ and weavin’ around my Valentine’s Day card. She might have been pissed at me, but she was still blonde. Blonde and good-lookin’. Young, blonde, skinny, and good-lookin’.

Impatient, I was just biting my lip watching her watching me watching her. It sent shivers down my spine. Karate critique. I was waiting. I was just waiting for her to make that fatal mistake. I watched as I moved around and around the ring. Jess tried to pin me into the ropes, but I was too quick for her. Footwork and a motherfuckin’ killer instinct. Around and around the ring, I wanted her to lunge for me. I wanted her to want me just like I wanted her to want me. Then she gave me what I was looking for. And what was I looking for? That right jab that just stayed out there that extra second too long. And there it was… and there it was. I was up her sleeve sliding it in there like snake winding up a branch.

I wrapped my arms around my constriction, a Portuguese Man O’ War. Coils… she was all wrapped up and I was about to drop her off at the pool. She gave me a tussle, but I wouldn’t let her go.

So I checked her elbows and made sure my private playful area was clear this time. She tried to hit me there, but I didn’t let her so she couldn’t dig in and pull out a potato. “You ain’t getting me with that shit again.” It was the way her hair grazed across my face while I was checking for elbows. I just wanted to be extra careful, certain.

“What the fuck is your problem anyways?” Jess tried to struggle as I repositioned my coils, but I had oodles of time in the refugee. I pictured her inside my porch.

“Yah, I don’t like you either.” And that was a lie. I liked her extra special. It wasn’t all about them shoes. I knew she liked me. And I liked her too. Gold teeth and some sexy rubbin’. “To tell you the truth,”—you could tell by the way I danced around the ring before I made my move—“my cock has been in prison for ten years, and I’m throwing a slumber party.”

And just as soon as I said that, a light shined in my face dilating my pupils with the fun police rainin’ on my parade.

“Stop shining that light in my face.” My Jess was… and that was it. Tones… it was a threatening tone. She just screamed at the light, “You twisted little fuckin’ twerp!”

“I found the flashlight,” Izzy responded quite eagerly as he ed us at the tree line. “Are we ready?”

Jess could tell that it was Izzy right when she heard him speak. My grip went loose as she stopped tusslin’ about, one foot finding the next one two steps away.

“I guess so,” Jess responded giving me another look a looming cloud on her shoulder. A moment in attention, she directed her brother into the woods. “It’s leaves and twigs for you, kid.”

“What? Are you waiting for marriage, son?” I blinked ’em twice. I took it from Izzy’s perspective. “Don’t shine that light in my face!” An open palm blocked the light from up above. The night air… I smelled it. It was the shore: the waves crashing—I took power from it, a peak of flowing dense curved, the waves in my ears just crashing on the shore. I forgot where I was until I opened my eyes, and there Jess was standing right in front of me leaning in and wrapping her arms around my waist as my hands felt the muscles in her back flexing and goin’ smooth as the leaves fluttered in the wind finding the root. “I don’t ,” I whispered just staring deep into those blue-greens.

“ what?” Jess just glared up at me.

I lost myself before I found myself in the woods. We were walking down a narrow path. I was in the back with my Jess ahead of me, not too far away and just to my right. In front of her, Izzy was shining his flashlight on the path ahead, glinting light catching the naked trees as he ed by their homes. Pines transformed into palm trees. Rats and lizards scurried across the forest floor in front of my steps before I could look to see them. I didn’t even bother.

I heard Jess ask me a question, and I answered the best I could. “I don’t know.” The area seemed so different to me like I could get lost in my own backyard. But I wasn’t scared. “I lost my train of thought,” I said in a daze wishing for her arms and the safety. One way or another, I didn’t give a shit.

“Patience,” she whispered in my ear, a ball of energy upon her shoulder before she glanced back. I didn’t know that I was walkin’ until I saw the light looming overhead. I saw the vibrations in sound. It woke me up.

“You’re getting a little chunky.” I walked up on her fast, brushing up against her side. “Little extra there.” I teased her. It was a little just enough to make her notice I was there. “I ain’t gonna make you breakfast.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever to be ready to have a child.” Mrs. Serious just came on in and introduced herself, airing out her laundry. “It’s such a damper on my doorstep.”

Feet stepping upon the dirt beneath her souls, Jess looked like she had thought about what she was going to say for a long time. But it only took a second or two to speak out loud. “But, babies are so much work. I mean who actually knows what’s wrong with a baby when it coughs? How careful do you have to be? I

mean, it totally changes your lifestyle.”

“You sound just like your dad. He was like sayin’ the same shit.” A pausing moment caught in up in this morning. “About how my lifestyle put James Dean in his coffin.”

“Life is supposed to be like a total party.”

“So why is your dad making it like such a total drag?” Serious was just walkin’ a few steps ahead contemplatin’ shit before she managed to tell what she was trying to say. “I mean, I can barely pick up after myself. Kids cannot sustain on pizza and soda alone.” It was only a giggle, not a whole chortle. I merely giggled, lost in the shadows of time. “And I mean, don’t expect me to stay home with the thing.”

“I might not want to have a baby.” More unexpected serious tones accompanied. “But I would never call a child a ‘thing.’”

“So whose kid ya havin’ anyway?” I didn’t give her a chance to answer, just stickin’ with my Fonzy. “Not mine.” I was kiddin’, but I wasn’t. “I told ya, I hate hanging around with your cousin Fitzgerald.”

“Listen.” She didn’t hit me, so knew I knew she was really serious like serious, serious… not joking at all. She was quiet and calculating, and that’s what made me nervous. “I would never raise your baby.” She said it like she wanted to make it hurt. “Because I know you’re not responsible enough to handle it.”

“That’s ’cause I’m TGC.” I leaned and shifted my attitude, not caring whether she was serious or joking. “Total fuckin’ girl candy, all right. You know what I’m talkin’ about.”

I always tried to make Jess laugh when she started to get pissed, but this time she wasn’t havin’ it. With one foot in front of the other, it was like the wheels of a clock just turnin’ one second at a time. I could tell she was thinking harder than I wanted her to. And then there was a moment of silence as we just paused, stalled in our tracks. Jess glanced down at the ground while my words played over and over inside her head. That’s ’cause I’m TGC—words focusing and forming phrases that I never intended. He doesn’t want to raise your baby. He hates your baby. He wants to take your baby to pool and drown it. Total girl fuckin’ candy. You’re a showpiece and a blonde conquest. But, he still wants to fuck you. All right?

“Don’t talk like that!” Pissed, Jess sounded like she wanted to slit my throat. “It’s not right.” I guess someone hit the turbo boost.

And then I felt her serious invade my brain. I just wanted to form a boundary before I kicked that no-payin’ motherfucker out of my house. So I looked at her, pleading with her to turn around and see me for the man that I was. “Baby, I just want to make you laugh.”

“This isn’t funny, Jamie.”

“Two point two kids and a picket fence,” I gasped in a desperate attempt to escape the conversation. “The next thing you know, it will grow up to be like Izzy. Total A student.” Running up behind him, I let Izzy know that I could still run the “40” in four-seven. “Super jock,” I shoved him kinda hard just let him know I could beat him up. “Class valedictorian.” He was definitely not an A

student. Izzy glanced a handful of quasi attitude back at me as if I was the weirdo before the light stole his attention again, guiding our path forward.

“You said it.” Jess wasn’t givin’ up. It flew right over my head. I didn’t know what she was talking about until the end of the book. I slowed up a bit letting Jess come up beside me. I kept up my jovial manner bringing her brother into the conversation maybe just to change the subject. I don’t , but Jess spoke just what she was thinking in the calmest tone, and for that second, I didn’t know how to handle it. “I don’t even know why your parents had you. I was a mistake. What’s your excuse?”

Pausing for a second and letting everything else go, I wondered what she was really trying to say. I was almost insulted and I didn’t like excuses. “That’s what Izzy said.” Brushing Jess off, I was wiping a dirty rag in Izzy’s face. But he didn’t care. Up ahead, his flashlight shined on twigs and leaves. Me, I was just trying to get Jess’s attention. That’s how I played it. So that was how I was gonna do it, directing my wit at her just to be funny. “You look more like your uncle ‘what’s his name’ than your dad.”

“That’s not funny.” Jess flirted me her staunch stance, one step taking her to the next. “I don’t wear sunglasses to bed.” Jess was thinking with her facial expressions. There was a frustrating tense—a constipated puss and a squeeze of the muscles underneath her eyelids just to see if she had any tears left. Jess was just worried about her complexion. So she rang out some words. “Sometimes, I imagine us alone so I can just talk to you. I wonder what I’m gonna say, but every time I want to say it, I can’t.”

I took two extra-long steps just to catch up to her. Jess kept her head down, barely noticing me in a glance, staring ahead and wondering if I was planning on following her there. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

There was no foreseeable answer. We were just walking through the woods following the light until we hit the end of the tunnel. Our feet took us there just traveling down the path into the middle of nowhere. Noises… we heard noises all around. A shift here and a rustle there while the bed of leaves just turned on over as we put one step in front of the other while we wondered about the stars. I slipped out before finding the way back to the moon. I didn’t check the clock to see if I slipped time.

Walking along, we heard a rustling behind and off to the side. I didn’t know what it was. Jess didn’t care. But Izzy swore that it came from the woods. I knew that he thought it was a Sasquatch by the way he stopped and listened. “What the fuck was that?”

“You left Lucky out on the porch,” Jess almost yelled all irate like her brother had just distracted her train of thought that was so important to her that she would just grab him by his face just to watch him die. “I don’t think he’s gonna come when you call him.”

“I—” I couldn’t answer.

“I heard it.” Izzy cut me off and I just wanted to smash his face in.

“What? Do you smell like a Pamoola, son?” I felt his apprehension and just wanted to pull his leg about them crackers runnin’ around in them woods. “You didn’t spray deer piss on you just so you’d blend in? I thought I smelled bullshit. You better hope they don’t want to mate with you.”

“What the fuck is a Pamoola?” Izzy didn’t know.

But I knew. “It’s a fuckin’ bigfoot… idiot. Big guy, hairy ass. The wild man of the woods. Everybody likes to party.”

“That’s what I’m sayin’,” Jess blurted outI just needing a hug. “Out here all by himself.”

“He just needs extra special attention,” I said as she glanced back. “Doesn’t he, baby?” We were just walkin’ on. That’s all we were doin’, cautious… checking out every corner and every shadow.

“I’d love to see a bigfoot.” Izzy just loved to stay up late so he could watch the midnight creep show.

“And that’s what makes a mystery fun.” We were just havin’ fun. That’s all we were doin’. “Skeptics like us walk out in the woods and make a joke about bigfoot.”

We all heard the rustling again.

“You hear that?” Izzy almost saw a rabid coyote jump out on the path. Then what was he gonna do?

“That was a bear or something.” Jess blew it off with a phishhh and a wave of her hand.

“Or a coyote,” Izzy added.

Then it hit her. “Do you really think it could be a bear?” We were out in the woods and there were wild animals around. Jess almost lost her train of thought.

Every shadow started to jump out at us; Izzy was just shining his light wherever the darkness settled between the pines.

“Exactly… that’s what makes it fun.” A total Einstein… I was what I was. Fuck bigfoot! That’s what I was thinkin’. A bear was bad enough. “Because when you come from the city and you hear shit like this, it brings you back down to trees and limbs.” It was the “limbs” part that really stuck in Izzy’s mind. “And that’s the thing,” I emphatically stated just to put a chill down their spines. “It could be a bear. Yah, it could. You’re out alone in the woods, and you shine on this big fuckin’ thing on all fours standin’ in your path. Then it growls at you, and you’re a long way from home.” One foot in front of the other. “Try runnin’. I dare ya. Now that’s scary.” Jess was scared too, but it was okay because we had Izzy to offer up as a sacrifice just to make up for Lucky’s accident. “Do you know how much a full-grown black bear eats?” I waited for the drum roll, but it didn’t come. It didn’t come, so I just let it go. “How much do you weigh?” I was jestin’ on it, but Izzy didn’t find me funny. “There’s only so much food in the forest.”

Not willing to let on that he was the slightest bit apprehensive, Izzy patiently shined his flashlight around the surrounding area. There was a tree and a bush and some leaves. But Izzy was imagining what he couldn’t see. “It’s not a bear.” He was just lying to himself. “It’s a bigfoot.”

“You don’t really believe bigfoot exists, do you?” I asked still pulling his chain.

“The next thing you’ll tell me is you still believe in Santa Claus.”

“I mean, there has to be somethin’, right?” He kept checking over his shoulder just to make sure he wasn’t being followed. “So many people say that they’ve seen him. I mean, nobody knows everything.” You could tell that every single shadow started to jump out at him. “I mean there could be. I mean, way off out way deep in the woods. They even have pictures of him.”

“Originally, the myth sprang from Asia where big old mountain gorillas would raid the local village and relieve them of a virgin or two.” Just puttin’ one foot in front of the other; I knew that as I watched all the shows. Jess was acting like she wasn’t paying attention, but I knew that she caught the gist of the conversation. “Locals would swear up and down on that shit. Them white tourists told them they were crazy. Then some fuckin’ crazy motherfucker with too much money decided to the climb the mountain and come back down with an unknown primate. Everyone was fuckin’ amazed. It was like a total fad.”

“So it could be real? I mean there could be a bigfoot? There might even be a bunch of them. Right?”

“I mean they keep talkin’ about these land bridges and if one species could migrate so could another.” One step led to another. “And then they started talkin’ about this Gigantopithecus.” I was frustrated with how the modern man wondered about the world. “It’s like a gorilla isn’t a big enough discovery. Just ask Esteban Sarmiento.” I was just following Izzy’s flashlight. “He’s fuckin’ pissed off about this shit! Here is this ultra intelligent scientist working with mountain gorillas in a nonintrusive scientific study and all everyone asks him about is fuckin’ bigfoot!” I was fuckin’ emotional about it too. “The poor mountain gorilla, as if that wasn’t a big enough discovery. What… do they want the missing link on a gurney? I mean, come on!”

“I don’t know who Esteban Sarmiento is,” Jess said with a sigh that stated with no words “Don’t get me into this fuckin’ conversation.” Jess decided to hit me in the face with her opinion. “But how could you call the study of mountain gorillas unobtrusive?” It was an intelligent comment. “Isn’t any intrusion totally intrusive? All those cute little gorillas want to do is be left alone.” Jess could picture just what was happening off in the jungle somewhere. “And you got these people that come up and start lookin’, taking samples every time they duck behind a bush. I mean, why don’t they just burn down the rainforest and pave the whole thing over?”

“Well, that’s a big-girl question.” I was totally bewildered by my pretty princess’s intellectual addition. “I’m surprised you asked.” I was just following the path where the light led. “See, it’s not the quest for knowledge that’s the problem. The pet market is a huge industry. I mean, every girl wants a mink coat,” I said, pointing as Jess glanced back at me; she saw my trail of thought leading straight to her feet. “What do you think those shoes are made of?”

Totally having had it with me, Jess started power walking pounding her feet on the dirt path, not really looking back at me but knowing that I was hearing what she was saying. “They raise cows to make shoes.” She had a point, and all she could think about was the poor treatment of poor little baby animals. “Leather, hide… a bull’s you know what.” When we went out, she ordered a steak just like everybody else. “They raise them on farms so the whole animal can be consumed.” She was hand movements personified. “Sausages, sirloin, filet mignon… London fuckin’ Broil! Don’t confuse the issue.”

“Nah, I’m just sayin’ that poachers make huge loot of the animal trade.” I loved to argue with her. “They’re poor. That’s how they make their money. Luxury taxes and sexual slavery. You gotta live in the now. But do I agree with it? Of course not.” It was like everything I said was the end of the world. “That’s exactly what I mean. Why don’t you totally misread me?”

“I just think you should say what the fuck you mean.” She was huffy puffy and stuffy upon a ruffy.

“I’m tryin’, if you’d just—”

Jess cut me off without allowing the common curiosity of a predicate. “All you keep doing is going on and on, and I’m sick of fuckin’ hearin’ it!”

“All I’m sayin’ is that they’re poor and their father’s father taught them how to go harvest an animal. That’s all. I totally get that if you keep goin’ to the well, you’re gonna come up dry every once in a while.”

“That’s a horrible way to talk about extinction.” Jess was emotional. The poor little puffy stuffy cute that she was. She was definitely emotional. That’s before the morning sickness set in. “Those poor little gorillas.” She started to cry, kinda gushing, but not really. “All they do is eat roots and here comes Mr. AK 47. I feel like a horrible person even talkin’ about this.”

“Listen, I mean, Esteban Sarmiento,” I said as I cleared my throat once or twice, “he doesn’t fuckin’ play! That’s how big boys and girls handle adult situations in the real world.”

“Don’t make fun of me.” A sad expression… that’s what I’d call it. And that’s what she gave me. “I just keep picturing a poor little baby monkey crying and screaming for his mother while all these guys are waving guns around, and I just want to cry.”

“Shhh.” I stopped in my tracks just ’cause she did. Jess looked so cute cryin’ and carin’ about them monkeys. So I wanted to sound as soothing as possible. “It’s real simple. It’s like a total process, my little extra-special girl.” She briefly glanced back at me just to show me she wasn’t havin’ it. “You ask permission to form a study, and you expose the horrible treatment that those poor little mountain gorillas go through on a daily basis.” I think it was the “extra special” that did it to her. “We’re fightin’, baby.” I was dead serious. “We are.”

“It’s like they have their own little family.” Jess wanted to cry just slapping her feet on the ground as if it was wet sand. “And they’re sooo happy.”

“My princess Jane Goodall.” I couldn’t help but find her sooo cute as I crept up behind her and slipped my arms around her waist finding her hands and halting her progression. Our fingers just slipped in between the crevices as I tucked her in just swaying from side to side as I cuddled the shit out of her. “My little wonder worker.”

“I know who Jane Goodall is, okay.” She could barely form the words; she was so gushin’.

“My poor little monkey baby.” I gave her a squeeze because she was beautiful. “You seem so concerned.”

“Shut up,” her head just taking her eyes to the ground. “I just think it’s a sad story. All you can do is try.”

“So does bigfoot exist or not?” Izzy just stood there as if he was just comic relief impatiently waiting for an answer.

“Hey, Izzy, you ever hear a dog scream in pain?” I asked, not really caring if he heard me. Jess showed the first signs of indigestion. I could feel it when I wrapped my hands around her stomach. I was givin’ Izzy my fiercest expression just to see how Jess would react.

“That’s sooo gross.” Jess covered her mouth.

“It’s a horrible sound.” That’s right; I had rhythm and a diseased cranium and I was proud of that shit. “It sticks with you.” Serious, I just couldn’t help myself. “An innocent moan—crying in pain as you rip that blade out of his gulley.” All I could think about was beating Izzy’s hairy ass if he didn’t shut up about bigfoot. “You keep hittin’ it. You just keep hittin’ it. Then you sink into one of them floppy ears.”

“That poor little baby monkey.” Jess just broke into tears so I hugged her real tight wrapping my arms around her like I wanted to kiss her extra special like.

“You just totally killed bigfoot.” Izzy sounded partially irritated as he shined his flashlight down the long the empty path.

Then we heard the rustling again.

“Baby, bigfoots,” I whispered in Jess’s ear in a blow as I felt her skin on my lips. I held her as tight as I could.

“Shut up.” She partially hunched over and cried. All Jess could see was AK 47s cuttin’ the green down to a leaf and a twig. There was a scream. “And all he wanted was his mommy.” It was a scene from Natural Born Killers.

Chapter Three

The Mile High Club

The Village

J amie , Jess spoke to me, This isn’t ‘The Departed.’ And you’re not Mick Fowley. He totally fuckin’ set you up.

I hear what you’re sayin’, but that tribe in Uganda . . . I was just worried about the microprocessors. Lucius Hunt was a pussy. Noah ain’t shit without the crutch. It was just a computer virus. All I wanted to do was leave.

The Green Mile . . . that was the name of the bar. It was like this log cabin on some road somewhere out in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere. From the road, it looked like somebody’s summer home that the neighborhood kids got buck wild one night and threw a kegger. So basically, you could drink on the porch and shit kick it while the drunks fired blanks into the woods. It was hardly a fine-dining establishment, and you might guess there was no required dress code.

“The Green Mile?” Jess formed a sarcastic question inside a statement as we pulled into the dirt patch in front of the bar. “What do they do… serve moose burgers and deer meat?”

“They grow their own potatoes, honey,” I responded as if that would answer all her questions.

It was getting late and I knew that Jess was hungry. She had a little figure on her, but she could “mow” with the best of ’em. “Have you ever tried deer meat?” I don’t think she wanted to.

“Do I look like a cracker to you?” I jested, pulling into the parking lot focusing on a space up and front and somewhat off to the side in between a number of various colored vehicles. The parking space was far enough away from the porch so that the locals would have to consult the Guinness World Records if they wanted to huck a “lungy” on my ride. Also, I made sure that my vehicle was positioned in the direct light coming from a fixture hung high above on a telephone pole. I was scared because I thought it was a satellite. But I ducked and it didn’t move so I thought I was okay. And that was a good thing, because I hadn’t planned on thumbing for a ride outta there when the lights turned out. That was for sure.

“Why do you make fun of crackers so much?” Jess honest engine asked me as I applied the brake and eased the SUV to a stop in between a truck and as I looked, I could see that it was… another truck. Wow… big surprise.

“They’re not all crackers,” I tried not to stereotype, “but the bad ones are so bad they force everyone else to be crackheads too. Do you want to know the truth?”

“Not really,” she sighed. “But I think you’re gonna tell me anyways.”

“Shhh,” I shushed her in a nice way. “Shut up. I’m making a point here.” Then

for the life of me, I couldn’t what it was. “If I could only what it was.”

“Crackheads.” Jess reminded me acting kinda sad just sitting there, staring out the windshield and waiting for me to continue.

“Thank you.” I regained my train of thought. “There are different levels of crackers and they all don’t live in rural communities. They live all over the world. It’s not an area to be precise. It’s a mentality. And when you get a lot of the same-minded people together… you gotta make sure you look both ways before you cross the street. They don’t have enough going on in their own lives, so they like to butt their fat asses into everyone else’s. And don’t get me started about the illegal animal trade.” Heated, I almost was like a snowball rolling down a mountain, getting madder and madder as I kept talkin’ and talkin’. “They have an opinion about everything, and it’s usually negative. Not constructive… destructive! The next thing you know you got a target on your back just because they don’t know you or care enough to mind their own fuckin’ business! Any rumor is good enough to capitalize on. If they don’t like the way you tie your shoes, there’s gonna be hell to pay, let me tell ya. And the religious fanatics are the worst ones of the bunch.” I aggressively slammed the ignition into the parked position and killed the engine. “They think that the world was put here by God just so that they can harvest it to an extreme ending without replenishing what they take.”

Shifting in my seat to the center just so I could let her know exactly what we were getting ourselves into, I continued on, “They look at everyone who hugs a tree as a pagan performing unsacred, unholy rituals to undermine the church. And if you’re from the city… forget about it. You’re nothin’ to them. They don’t care about you! Outsiders are like objects to them… plain and simple. They condemn you for having a nice house or a nice car while they got three million in the bank and have more money in land than God. They wear these clothes that make them look like bums, live in a single-wides, grow their own food, and hardly pay for shit while they cry poor and wait for the market to crash so they

can buy our houses and kick us out on the street.”

“You’re shitting me.” Jess blew me off. “Come on. You’re lyin.”

“I shit you not,” I quickly responded quite confidently. “They hate people that wear their money. They think they have some kind of utopian society going. Conservative living and everyone else can fuckin’ die as far as they’re concerned! And don’t get me started on the flip side of that coin.”

“I can’t wait to hear this one.”

“The ones that don’t go to church every Sunday are so oppressed by fanatical bullshit that they either lash out or give in. Convert or die… have you ever had anyone put a knife to your throat and say, ‘Become a Christian or else’? The ones who don’t give in start practicing black magic and tossin’ salt over their shoulders every time they forget to wear their special socks. Talk about oppression. Don’t even get me started. They become just as bad telling you the same fuckin’ thing as the religious fuckin’ weirdos—that you’re possessed by a demon and they need to perform some kind of séance to clear you of the imaginary dark messenger that looms over you. It’s all bullshit! Not one word of it true. The longer you stay in places like this, the more you get pushed one way or another. The next thing you know, you start believing in this shit.”

“But I thought you like to write about stuff like that.”

“Yah, but I’m not a fuckin’ idiot,” I snapped back. “I only write about shit like that because it’s fun and sells books. But do I believe in it?” I hardly paused. “Definitely not! I write fiction. I don’t need to live that shit! In places like this,

the church minister thinks that every single Jew is only half right. I swear to God. It’s almost like Hitler invaded through Maine and started the Third Reich all over again. Do you know that some parts of Maine way up in the boondocks used to be prison camps for Nazi POWs? Look it up on the Internet. They used to make ’em work on the farm. That’s why Mainer’s get off on slave labor. What do you think happened? The Nazis bred with the locals and taught their kids about hate groups. It wasn’t too hard. They hate outsiders anyways. And even if you have a summer home up here, they want you to marry into their families so they can keep you for some diabolical purpose that I am totally unaware of.”

“You’re lucky no one can hear us right now.” Jess kept looking around just to make sure no one was listening. “The way you make them sound, it seems they would have no problem abducting us and taking us as sexual slaves before they strapped it on.”

“Weirder things have happened.” I tried to hold my breath. “And I’m not putting it past ’em.” Then, I let it out. “That’s all I’m gonna say. I kept telling ya we should have gone to Hawaii.” Then I really thought about it. “Fuck Hawaii! We should have gone on tour with a band for like a month, got fucked-up while we live it up and just have sex for like two weeks straight. That’s what I’m talking about. That’s my idea of a fuckin’ vacation, not this fuckin’ shit. I hate Maine. I can’t believe you dragged me back here.”

“It’s not my fuckin’ fault.” Jess was about to give me a backhand and set me straight. “If you didn’t want to come to Maine, you should have fuckin’ said something, okay! What do I look like, a fuckin’ mind reader?”

“I did say something!” I emphatically ed that I did. “How many fuckin’ times do I got to fuckin’ say it?”

“You’re just fuckin’ prejudiced.”

“I’m prejudiced?” I knew she didn’t mean that, but I acted as if I was insulted anyway. “I’m prejudiced? Me? I’m prejudiced? Me? I’m the one?”

“Well, it sounds like your fuckin’ prejudiced! Cracker this! Cracker that! Crack of my fuckin’ ass! Nazi invasions and potato famines while the locals forget to sprinkle salt on their special socks. Now I’ve heard it all. Why can’t you be more like me? When I meet someone, I just don’t automatically think they’re a fuckin’ cracker, okay!”

“Baby!” I took deep breaths to calm the enthusiasm I had, trying to make her understand that we needed to get the fuck out of there ASAP! “I’m not prejudiced either, but you don’t know what goes on around places like this. I’m trying to tell you the best way I can. I don’t know what else to say.”

“Well, can we at least try to enjoy the rest of the night without having you go off on any tangents on how the local minister worships the devil and sacrifices children in the back parking lot of the convent? And don’t turn that into a whorehouse.”

I couldn’t say one word. I just looked at her pleading with her through my puppy-dog eyes.

“Shut up.” She waved her hand at me almost knowing exactly what I was thinking.

“All right,” I gasped not really wanting to go in. I grabbed the driver’s side handle and popped the door open. “The Green Mile it is.” I got out letting my feet touch the dirt below as she reached over and grabbed the enger-side handle. Following a big sigh, Jess popped her door open and got out. I shut my door and then I heard hers finding its way closed just after.

All was silent for the briefest moment. The mood was tense. To the rear of the SUV, my feet took me there. I watched Jess floating around the far corner comin’ on over to my end. Jess didn’t say anything, only partially giving me a glance before lowering her head to the tips of her new shoes, putting one little foot in front of the other as she walked. I hated to see her stressed. It was a rarity, but she looked so cute when she was stressed though… like a cuddly little, teddy bear munchkin that slipped, oh so perfectly, into my arms as I walked up behind her. My whole body draped over her like some cozy winter coat that she slipped on just to get warm, the top of her head only coming to the bottom of my chin, my lips just kissing her hair. And as I slipped my hands around her waist and felt her fingers interlocking between the crevices of my own, I gave her tinsy little hands a cuddly squeeze. I knew that she fit just perfectly.

“Ow aah!” I let it out as if she were my little baby who got overtired. “Don’t be mad.” Me and my patronizing tones. “I didn’t mean it.”

“No.” She slightly shook her head. “I’m mad at you.”

“That’s not nice.” I used baby talk to make my way into her heart. “What if I gave you a snuggle squeeze?” So I did, but there was no response. “What if I said I thought you look pretty?”

“I don’t know.” Soft and sweet—that’s what she was.

“What if I wanted to call you ‘my snuggle precious’ and hold you forever?” I gave her another big squeeze.

“I don’t know,” she sighed. “I might have to hold you to that.”

So I let her go just for the moment, and we walked up the porch steps and on in, just me and my Jess leaving the lot behind us and looking both ways when we crossed. Jess was pretty apprehensive and was holding onto my arm the whole way. I guess it was my fault that she was apprehensive, but it might have been the animal skins hanging from the outer walls comin’ on and up ahead. Either way, I had my eye on her and I wasn’t letting her out of my sight. I walked up to the doorway, pulled open the screen door, and we crossed over the threshold.

Inside, there was a small seating area to our left. It was an average-sized room with only two windows looking out onto the front porch. Up above the windows was this huge pair of moose antlers that must have been five feet wide. I wondered how big it could have been. And around the room all I saw were animal heads and stuffed carcasses. Talk about ambience—deer heads, bear heads, coyotes, cougars, stuffed beavers… no pun intended. There were even fowl in mid-flight hung above and along the rafters.

On a warm summer’s evenin’ on a train ’bout the doorway, I met up with a gambler. We were both too tired to sleep. (Kenny Rogers). And all of a sudden, I started to see in black and white. Cause you got to know when to hold ’em.

Sitting there at one of the tables in the center was this old dude. He was kinda grubby-looking with a flannel, old tattered jeans, and some shit kickers. He had a shot of his beer; him just looking up at us before glancing back and downing his

shot in one quick guzzle. Then he spoke, just staring out the window. “Life is just a movie, Jamie.” I watched him take a swig of his beer and as we walked by and crossed the threshold into the next room, I felt him on me. I couldn’t help but glance over my shoulder just to see him. I just saw him there… nobody else. I saw him alone. He glanced at the antlers above the windows in front of him offering a slight nod. “That was one big fuckin’ moose.”

“How does he know your name?” Jess asked beginning to getting freaked out.

“Don’t worry about it.” I brushed him off. “He’s just a crackhead.” . There was a kitchen off to our right with a half wall and a counter. The counter area was cluttered with glassware and bottles. There was a cooler behind and a back room beyond. Beyond that, there was a big dining room—a twenty-bytwenty-five foot area—two rooms ed by s carrying the ceiling. There were a couple of tables, but nothin’ else really beside a wood-burning stove to keep ’em warm. The floor was dusty and sticky with a shiny smear of dried alcohol that you had to tug your feet from each time you took a step. And the walls were covered with guns. Tons of guns stemming from the time of the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, all the way up to the present. Some looked like all they needed was a cleaning and a fresh round, and two nights later you’d be picking meat out of your teeth. Numerous pictures were hung at sparse locations along the walls covered in dust and nearly indecipherable. I imagined that they had something to do with the old frontier. There were men in uniforms caught in glimpses dating back as far as the 1800s, holding throwback riffles and posing in front of vast fields and pens where a horse or a cow might graze.

Other than that, there was a coed bathroom at the far end down a small hallway. It was a half bathroom with a shower just so the drunks could clean themselves up when they woke up in the afternoon and went back to work. It seemed that when the lights went out, the owners just stepped around the tables, went upstairs, and tucked themselves in. And when they woke up, they’d just cook

breakfast and kick everybody out.

Shivers to my spine and a bad scent infecting my nose—I brushed it off as we walked up to the bar, my Jess holding on my arm tight. I think she might have been a tad bit scared, her new surroundings catching her unfamiliar. There were no stools and no one was hovering around the bar besides us so we just kept quiet and took everything in. I could partially see what I took to be a woman moving around in a small closet just inside the doorway to the backroom, grunting and groaning as she bent over, shuffling through the stock lining the shelves. Off in the dining room, there was a group of locals gathered around the tables and at the far back against the far wall. A group of about five men standing at the back of the bar were younger, about the same age as I was, early thirties, maybe a little younger. They were loud enough so you could hear them over the music playing, which wasn’t very loud. They seemed all right, I guess —regular everyday kids… hats, T-shirts, jeans, and boots. They didn’t look like they were out to cause any problems as they laughed and joked among themselves, spilling the occasional swig on the floor just ’cause they shook it too hard. In the forefront, there were three more locals—older-looking, probably in their fifties—sitting at one table near the center of the room. They all had roughlooking faces and beards and were wearing old camouflage T-shirts, hats, and rubber boots with wet mud caked around the souls. I noticed that they were smoking even though there was a sign hanging over the bar that said “No Smoking.”

So just wanting to fit in, I fished a fresh pack from my pockets. I pulled out a square from the pack and as I placed it to my mouth, I heard the bartender say, “There’s no smoking here.” She was a middle-aged woman, a sourpuss dressed in old clothes and an old stereotype handed down from generation to generation city folk.

“What about them?” I asked with the cigarette dangling in my mouth almost insulted.

“Well, they’s local.” The bartender shook her head with a cold, stern expression on her face. “You can’t smoke. You gotta go outside.” She just kept shaking her head. “You can’t smoke.”

Immediately, I burst into absolute laughter consumed by the prejudice against us as Jess tugged on my arm, advising me without saying it to take it easy. My Jess, she’d never been to anything besides the Hilton. You know what I’m sayin’? We were kinda of like celebrities. But the locals didn’t watch too much TV so I thought I didn’t have to be worried about her too much. Never the motherfucker, I felt like everyone at the bar knew who I was but they didn’t let it on.

“So what do ya want?” The prune was a local bitch, true as true could be.

I swear I heard her talk to me inside my head. I know you in bitter tongue. Who is this fuckin’ guy walkin’ in here like his shit don’t stink? You think you’re gonna come down here and own the place? Well, motherfucker! You know how it is… right?

“I don’t know.” I smiled at Jess just to keep her spirits up. “Honey, what do you want?”

“I don’t know.” Jess was just like an orange that I loved to squeeze every morning. She thought she might ask the bartender. “What do you know how to make?”

“Listen, lady,” the peach of bartender didn’t mince no words arching her head as if she had enough before she even looked us over. “We just got beer on tap and hard liquor. So if you wanna be orderin’, don’t waste my time askin’ me what’s

good. You know what’s good. You know what you like, so just tell me. And don’t give me any no club drinks up in here because I don’t wanna have to look that shit up. Get it? Got it?” Jess emphatically nodded as the peach stared at her deep and long. “Good.”

“Aahh!” Jess, usually flippy with her comments, looked to me with a humorously surprised expression on her face.

“Well, all right.” I didn’t have anything to say, except, “Well, I guess we’ll have two Coronas. Hold the lime. And two shots a flip me over twice before she sticks her fingers down her throat and drops a load a chunks on the floor.” A second take… that’s all I wanted. It didn’t matter what I said as long as she had to think about it.

“Mister,” replied the peach cracking a concave expression hardly finding me funny at all. “I ain’t got time for the hassle.”

“I would surmise,” I shifted Jess a gentle nudge of my elbow as if to say “I told ya so,” “That a few shots are in order.”

“I think I need one.” Jess blushed ready to down a full bottle of Bacardi.

“Just hurry up.” She was a peach, she was.

“Two stiff hard yanks straight up and don’t be cheap,” I broke into my cracker expression. “I’m watchin’ ya now.”

As usual, the peach went about her duties at the bar leaving me and my Jess to ourselves so we could talk without talkin’.

Wow . . . what’s her fuckin’ problem? Jess gave it to me in a look.

Do I even need to answer that question?

Jess knew me naked. I wasn’t givin’ up one inch. So she thought to tell me what else she was thinkin’ about. “Let me just say… this is my last night out.”

“Yah,” I chuckled. “I’ve heard that before.”

I saw the bartender pour us two peaches, but I wasn’t likin’ that shit. “Hey, honey, you got any Absolute up in this bitch. I’m a slave to my hangover and I don’t wake up good in the morning.”

“We don’t like hangovers.” Jess thought to clarify my statement.

“All we got,” the peach said as she finished pourin’ us two stiff ones. “All we got is Orloff light vodka.” She walked over plopping the two shots on the bar with a click-clack. “That’s it.” Moving away, she fished two Coronas with limes out the cooler and came back my way. “If you don’t like that,” she plopped a bottle on the counter, “you can go someplace else, okay?”

“Okay.” Jess agreed.

So I looked around with the cigarette still dangling from my mouth. “No Smoking,” I read the sign as I fished a lighter out of my pants. The bartender was waiting for me to say something as I lit my cigarette and took a few puffs letting my exhale the cloud hovering around the rafters.

“See the sign?” the peach asked, pointing to the sign dangling over the bar.

“Yah,” I said staring right into her eyes with no thought of blinking. I let out a puff and rested my elbows on the bar. “I see it.” I took another puff. “It says, No Smoking.” I blew the smoke out just so she could see the cloud. “So how much do I owe ya?”

I heard the young kids laughing among themselves not really looking over like the older men did sitting just off and to my glance. I nodded at ’em as I took another drag from my cigarette. “No smoking?” I asked her. “So how come they can smoke?”

“But they’s local,” the peach told me about nothin’ I was takin’ it on. “You a foreigner. You can’t smoke. If you don’t like it, you can go someplace else. But there ain’t no Hilton around here, so you better take it where you can get it. You ain’t gonna get no courteously wake-up call from anyone else up in these parts.”

“No Smokin’, huh?” I wasn’t taking no for an answer.

“There ain’t ‘no smokin’’ here.”

“I get it.” I took another puff letting my exhale find the clouds. “So can I smoke out on the porch?”

“Yah, you can.” She was such a peach. “If you make it outtah here.”

There were two beers with a lime and I wasn’t about to stop smokin’. Jess noticed it right away… a nasty smell. “There’s something wrong with this lime.”

“All right,” I laughed taking another drag just to let my lungs fill up before I let it out, whispering into her ears. “Do you want to be the one to tell her?”

“No.” Jess was so dainty cute as she grabbed the lime of the top of her Corona and placed it in the ashtray. Immediately, she found a napkin stacked on the inner edge of the bar and started wiping off the mouth of her beer.

“Roughing it, huh?” I could only laugh as I took another drag letting the smoke the cloud hovering around the rafters.

“Shut up.” Jess shot me a look as she turned away just sipping on her beer.

“Yah, let’s go fishin’.” I told her about roughing it while she tried to ignore me. Then she glanced over her shoulder at me. “Fishin’ huh?” Me, I squeezed the lime on in there. “Roughing it.” It was what it was. “Roughing it,” I repeated.

The bartender just kept lookin’ over at my Jess. She just kept lookin’ over at her. I reeled my Jess in wrappin’ my arms around her waist and whisperin’ in her ears, “I think she likes you.” Jess was totally taken back. So I was… like, “What do you think?”

“This is really roughin’ it.” Jess cutely laid it on the line.

“You wanted to go fishin’.” I could only laugh. “Right?” So we took our shots and it looked like we were gonna need a double. “Could you back us up there, peaches?”

“When I get around to it,” the bartender said.

Then I turned back to the bar, leaned my elbows on the countertop, and started sipping on my Corona. And here comes another fill us up. Then I thought to socialize. “You know, I used to live around here.”

The bartender didn’t say anything. She just looked.

“I haven’t come back here in a long time,” I told her what was on the tip of my mind. And the peach just looked. And then she just walked away. I had expected her to stare and nod. I just let it go, taking another drag. “Usually when you don’t wanna listen to someone talk, you just stare and nod. I guess they didn’t teach her that in edicut school.”

“Shut up!” Jess pleaded with me to… “Shut up. They’ll hear you.” She took a few breaths and took her shot in a gulp. “Please don’t embarrass us.”

“Embarrass us?” I could hardly contain my amusement in the situation.

“Hey, there’s stables on over there if you want to sit down.” The bartender implied following her imperative. Repeating, she told me tah, “Go wanna sit down.”

So I left it on the tab and grabbed my shot downing it in a quick guzzle as we filed on into the next room. But that was okay. Jess wasn’t a heavy drinker. I had my beer in my hand just toking on my cigarette as me and my Jess found our way into the next room. The next room…

I think Jess wanted to go find the porch and make a campfire. She snuggled on up to me slipping on into my side just to try on my coat. I loved to tuck my Jess in and give her crazy kisses. But I couldn’t help but think about what Denny had said. A jungle gym? I didn’t want to smother her. We had been to celebrity parties before. She worked her way around the room as I shook hands just to meet all those who wished to see my ideas into reality. I marketed myself and so did she. I didn’t hang all over her, because I knew at the end of the night that she’d find her way back to me. I had trust in that fact. And if she didn’t, then it wasn’t meant to be. I mean, I couldn’t see myself like a jealous boyfriend hanging over her shoulder. That would defeat the purpose. I wasn’t jealous. I wanted her to be herself. All I could think about was Dennis Rodman and Carmen Electra. Dennis was a rebounder. He marketed himself just like we tried to do. And I was okay with Jess showing off her personality. That was what I wanted. I wanted her to show off her personality. We’d make it together… me with my acting rolls and her with her flirty little personality. I didn’t want to change her and I thought that she felt the same way about me. But if she was a givin’, I was receivin’. And that was how I was gonna leave it. So I tucked her in just wondering where she wanted to sit.

“So where do you want to sit?” I asked just to let her go first. “I’ll follow your lead.”

“Well,” she began, but stoped herself as her eyes scanned the room. You could tell she thought it was dirty. Every surface was covered in smudged ash and dust. Every seat ed the previous night’s spill. The patrons slept with their feet on the tables letting the grime on their soul’s infect the skin that would touch it. “Well, any choice is as good as how many wet napkins it takes to wipe off the chair.” She was just observing it. No big deal.

“You’re out of your element right now?” It was an obvious observation.

“I’m just slightly apprehensive,” Jess stated under her breath trying to keep her voice down. “I think you should walk in first and I’ll follow your lead.”

“How many napkins do you want me to bring?”

“Do you think we’ll look out of place?”

“That’s a stupid question,” I stated under my breath.

“Don’t make fun of ’em.” She giggled before I could try to keep it down. “I don’t wanna rough it anymore.”

“What you gotta do is treat every one of ’em like an individual.” No matter what, I had my own concept of life. I was just repeating what she had said to me earlier that night. And I went with it. “We don’t wanna stereotype now.”

“Shut up.” She tried to keep herself serious. “Don’t make me laugh.”

So we walked on over and sat down. I went first with her holding onto me like I was her special blanky that she pulled up over her nose every night just to keep her warm and cute. It was like they all were a bunch of animals ready to jump out of the bush in an ambush-type scenario. Jess was a supermodel and every eye that scanned the room saw how she walked. The girl was hot and they were all were lookin’ at her. It was if she only had on a bra and panties. At least that was the way I saw it—my little center of attention, whether she wanted to be or not. Them country folk knew how a fine piece of ass translated when you just wanna take her backstage. And Jess wanted me to go first. All I had to do was keep ’em in front of me.

As soon as we sat down, I could tell that the whole mood was fuckin’ depressing if you ask me. Jess hid herself behind the table hoping no one would get a glimpse of her cleavage or imagine running their fingers down the cleft of her leg. Those eyes and that face—I brushed my fingers gently finding her hair and down her back’s slender pathway. So I sat down across the table while my mind traveled to a better place.

All you had to do to make me want to get up and go home was start playing Kenny Rogers. For the moment, I imagined myself at a Kenny Rogers concert. Kenny sung just because my Jess believed in me. The whole audience automatically quieted down pausing in a huge buildup before Kenny let it go. And at that moment, it was me and her and Kenny. I didn’t notice how noisy it was before Kenny Rogers’s voice started to fill the room. I mean, who tries to talk over a Kenny Rogers’s song? I would never try to talk over Kenny Rogers when we had the whole night ahead of us. You just seep down into yourself and

think about somethin’.

Depression and traumatic flashbacks… It was coming from the portable radio behind the bar. I didn’t look to make sure, but I knew the bartender was caught in some romantic interlude somewhere out yonder.The old men sitting off to my right tried to think about their wives when they were skinny. And as I briefly glanced, I could tell that the cubs at the back of the bar didn’t want to catch a glimpse of each other before those dirty jeans caught up with ’em. They thought of their girlfriends or someone that made them feel special just like everyone else. But I was cool. I had the hottest girl in the room, but I didn’t want to gloat. Jess was beautiful. She had a face that would beat the stars and the golden pathway that brought me into the next day. I just gazed at those big green eyes across the table seeing the white light up there shining on my face giving me light when it was dark outside. And if you didn’t feel the same way, you didn’t want to be at a Kenny Rogers concert.

“I think I’m startin’ to get a little depressed,” Jess exhaled. I could see it by the way she looked at me.

“What… you don’t like this song? This is Kenny fuckin’ Rogers, motherfucker. Big fur, dude. He really knows how to talk to the ladies.” I was just trying to make Jess laugh like we didn’t have time to worry about what was petty. “So don’t mind if I take you for a little dip before the snuggle cuddles up and bubbles.”

“Don’t get romantic with me in a place like this.” Appearing really serious, she half-nodded her head one way and then the other.

The ash rubbing the flame out, cigarettes to ashtrays on the top and left corner of the table—I could see the hot red ashes turn. “Why not?” I leaned over the table

just letting my voice find the softness in my tone. “Let’s make the best of it. We’re always jokin’, but we never get a chance to be serious with each other.” Smoke in ashes. “I didn’t really want to come back here, but I went ’cause you smiled.” So I smiled too.

“Please stop.” A whizzing breeze tickled her lips as she tried not to be too obvious checking to see if anyone was paying attention to us. Maybe Jess was embarrassed or something.

I couldn’t help myself, so I just went with it trying to be as serious as possible. “I’ve been through some bad times,” I reached out noticing her hand resting there alongside her beer. My hand was like a blanket tossed in the air as it fell to the covers in wind and feathers. “And I never thought I’d make it out. There’s times that you go to sleep and you don’t know if you want to wake up or not. You just want to think about someplace else, someone else, something better. Sometimes when I opened my eyes, I didn’t know if I woke up at all. It was like the same day just playing over and over again. It was like I was trapped inside a house and all the doors and windows were shut. I was living inside dirty walls, and no matter how many doors I opened or how many windows I peeked through in between the shade, I just couldn’t find the sun. I can thank you if I wanna, can’t I?”

“Drinks,” Jess pleaded with me in a whisper read out in her lips. I could tell by the sparkle in her puppies.

I noticed that her beer was still full. “You haven’t even touched your Corona.” A deep stare—that’s what I gave her. And all I could find was my charm. “Listen,” I said as I cupped her hand inside mine, “I don’t want to bullshit you. I don’t know how. I don’t why, but I’m gonna make it work.”

“Have you ever seen the movie, The Thing?”

It was a weird question. But I listened. And I gave her an honest response. “The black-and-white with the plantman?”

“No, John Carpenter’s remake. The one where Kurt Russle plays with himself before he flies off the handle.” I knew what she was talkin’ about, her just sinking into the seat. “That’s like one of my favorite fuckin’ movies.” It was a gasp and a pause. “All I can do right now is think about my uncle Norman and what he said to me right before he took the next flight back to Honolulu.”

It was an instant press release just popping into my head. “Your uncle Norky was from Hawaii?” I didn’t know. “I always wanted live in Hawaii. Frankly, I thought about buyin’ a house there one time. Surfing, I wanted to go surfin’, but I was afraid of the tiger sharks.”

“No, the other Honolulu,” Jess exhaled breathing deeply, all cautious and apprehensive. Leaning over the table timidly gazing into my eyes, she spoke slowly and softly, “‘If you look twice I’ll see you over my shoulder.’” Leaning back in her chair, she turned back to palm before her hands found her lap. “That’s what he said.” Glancing around the room without really seeing anyone, she almost started to cry but stopped herself. “I don’t know why I keep thinking about that, but I do.” There was another quick glimpse and a glance around the room. “And I swear to God everyone is staring at me right now.”

I gave a quick look around. Everyone seemed to be minding their own business. I didn’t see one person look at us. “No one’s staring at you, baby,” I assured her. “I know we’re in the Allagash, but it ain’t that bad.”

“They can see me through their glasses,” she whimpered like a cold little puppy dog shivering in frigged spasm. “I know I sound stupid, but I don’t know why —”

“Baby,” I interrupted trying to be as sweet as possible. “My beer goggles only come on after the lights go out.”

I could tell by her eyes that this was the most apprehensive I had ever seen her. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

All I could think to say was that “I’m sorry” or something like that. She read it like a big glowing sign on my face. It was an expression and I was about ready to express myself. Jess didn’t know. I was serious, but I didn’t know if I was acting like I was really serious or if I really was serious. I knew that was the way I felt, but it wasn’t the way I felt it. It was a never-ending, constantly changing equation. In the end, I guess it really didn’t matter. Solutions… I was lookin’ at one.

I knew I wanted another shot just watching Jess sip on her beer. Beer… well, my sunglasses came on after a gallon of Orlof Vodka. “Do you want me to get us some more drinks?”

“Please.” My baby special was sooo scared, I mean apprehensive while she whispered, “Just because—”

“They all know each other.” I finished her sentence leisurely returning back to my jesting demeanor with only the smile that I had to offer her. I knew she was out of her element just watching who was watching what she was doin’.

“Don’t talk like that,” Jess sputtered out as if one of them had a gun and heard what I said. “I think they might be listening.”

“Come on, extra special.” I lowered my voice just because she was sooo cute when she hid in a corner. “You know they have to go through me to get to you.”

“Yah.” She kinda agreed quickly scanning the room again, calculating and multiplying variables to exponentially infinite result. There were too many people there for her to dwell on a positive outcome. “But you’re the only one here.”

“I’ll make sure I’m extra-special careful.” There was a pause and then a wink.

That was a little better. I got into it. If you want to play the game, boy, you gotta learn how to play the pipe (Kenny Rogers, “The Gambler”).

Two guys from the center of the room got up showin’ off their camouflage colored overalls and the muds to cover their soles a slippin’ on the wet. So I got up and followed, my feet sticking to the floor as I tried to pull away from the alcohol. I walked over there and leaned into the bar. The two middle-aged men rested their elbows, four flannels to the counter off to my right. They ordered two shots, peach schnapps and cranberry juice, and duel taps for a hard day’s work. They didn’t care which ones they were. Beer was beer and the peach forgot to wash the glasses.

Then it picked up a little bit. I was ’bout ready to get up and start line dancing a

preconceived movement on a honky.

“What ya say, Mister?” This old skin spoke like he still had his heart and his balls standin’ up to my front ways. This middle-aged, sixty-year-old man spoke with his beard. He was just lettin’ his long hair flow back and comin’ up on rebellion. “Say it again so I can stand in front of ya!”

I didn’t say anything. This guy was just trying to make a problem. What was he… a fuckin’ mind reader?

“Oh,” I heard Jess sigh as if she was just thinking about pullin’ the covers up to her nose as she kicked the bad away. Jamie, don’t! All she could picture was a total brawl. This guy stood up and I threw him to the ground. Jamie, don’t!! Then this other guy stood up. Then another guy stood up, and Jess couldn’t see me anymore. Then someone helped out from the back topplin’ the hump over the heap. “Oh, my god,” Jess just sat there all quiet with her hands folded. “Roughin’ it totally sucks.”

I didn’t care what Jess was thinking. I was following my own path. So I thought I’d just treat the middle-aged patron like his beard homed a furry forest creature. I wasn’t going to go out of my way to make things worse for my sexy.

Turning back, I gave him a stare. He gave me a dirty stare too, but I represented the younger generation—and I was proud of it—so I didn’t let him bother me. I wasn’t afraid to protest. So he and his friend went along with their conversation like I wasn’t even there. “And I’m fuckin’ pissed too! Vince Neil… he has his whole life ahead of him. Like he’s tired and Tommy doesn’t wanna play no more. If the Stones can do it… so can Motley Crew! And I want backstage fuckin’ es! I ain’t fuckin’ backin’ down now!”

“Poor Vince,” his friend snorted like a bull.

“Cross-dressing was the cool thing to do back then and now he’s fuckin’ branded.” I added to the conversation that I picked up halfway through just to open my mouth. Then I broke eye and focused on the bartender fiddlin’ back there where my private playful never wanted to go where she wanted me to and come back alive. “And all I wanted to do was order a fuckin’ shot.”

“Well, I know you, boy.” An eighties’ refugee and an old skin felt pride and true one step closer to takin’ me all in. “And I know how you like it too. You bleed rebel… I can tell.”

“You can only take so much order in your life.” I felt like an animal locked inside a room and all I wanted was a raw piece a meat. “You need to fuck it up every once in a while.”

“It was the cool thing to do back then.” The old man had to agree with me reminiscing on how he used to do it. “We all wanted to stand out.” He was preachin’ how it was from where he was seein’ it. “We wanted to make a statement.” Every hand movement skipped a heartbeat. “We were rebels in the modern age.” Bad breath with no toothbrush—it pelted off my face as he slid closer entering my three foot boundary. “We were just fighting for our human goddamned rights!” It was all camouflage, beards, and music. He slapped me on the shoulder. I let it go just because I was ive. I just listened to him go on and on. It was like he was talkin’ to someone else. “I’m not gonna do what you tell me to, because I just don’t wanna!” He got that part right at least. “We protested just to protest back then!” The whole bar listened to him talk. “So we grew our hair long just to give it back to ‘im! We had all the pussy and the lifestyle, so we had a lot of ideas. Life’s what you make it, man.”

“Let’s make it a party.” I had to agree just waiting to order my fuckin’ shot.

“I like pussy too.” The old buzzard gave me a grab and a shake laughing it up just like I told him he could. “That’s what I’m sayin!”

I thought about killing him just ’cause he touched me. But old was old and he was just speakin’ on it. So I listened to what he was saying.

“See, you never want to get hooked on one drug.” I didn’t know if he was talkin’ about pussy or heroin. “You got to sample your options. Girls are just like food. You have your favorites, but man cannot sustain on poultry alone.”

“Oh my god,” I heard Jess whimper from the corner. “Please don’t talk to the locals.”

“My whole crew is a huge fan of sushi and I gut an empty fuckin’ stomach!” The old man added on a tug focusing my attention on him. “I like lobster tails.”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself.” I gave him a half hug fiercely pulling him in just to give him one, but I didn’t let him get too close. “Mister, you’re like the father I never had.” It was a half hug, me slightly bendin’ forward while he pulled me tight and close. It didn’t feel right, so I pulled on out. “I don’t do that gay shit. I like ya, but I don’t like you that much.”

“I don’t like you that much either.” He was crackin’ up givin’ me a brotherly

handshake and a motherly half hug because he didn’t want to get too close. Neither did I. So that was cool. “Vince Neil wasn’t the only one,” he continued on. “Johnny Cougar was cool before he found the Bible belt. But the authority clamped down. They always do.” It was a sigh, but inside that sigh, I knew who he was from another life. “We didn’t care, man. If it was good to listen to, we let it roll. We’re all individuals. Everyone has the right to independent thought. We all fought for that shit way back when that was the cool thing to do.”

“Back in the eighties.” I almost burst right out. It was like I was talking to a sixty-year-old hippie, but he was totally retro-eighties. It was all bandanas, cars that made a lot of noise, and the music revolution.

“That’s what made it cool, man.” He flipped his head back getting’ all fired up like he used to. Aww aah… he was goin’ off. “You got any?” I didn’t know what he was askin’ me when he asked it. “I wanna snort of line right now!”

“I don’t think that’s gonna mix well with your medication.” The other bull standing to the right of my hippie reminiscent just sat there despondent not really caring one way or another. He was listening, but he wasn’t quite into it as much as his friend.

“Hey, you gotta live the life you’re livin’.” The old man speakin’ on my ear was just goin’ on. I thought the hippie was gonna have a heart attack after he slipped on his bandana—reminiscent of another flashback. “Now, I’m pissed at Vince Neil! One more tour… just point me to the nearest road sign. I want to go back to Woodstock.” Calming down a bit, he got up in it. “That’s the thing about it,” the old hippie was sooo excited just reliving his youth. I could see it on his face. One more shot and he was gonna out. “We just showed up and everybody was already there.” Then the fond memory ed as he offered a sigh and turned back to the bar staring into nothing. Counters, right elbows, and temples —his wisdom was wise. “The man turns us all into a blowin’ sheet.”

“Don’t he though?” I was in total agreement pulling him in real tight again. It was another manly half hug just to let him know that I understood what he was saying.

“Oh my god,” huffing and puffing, I heard what Jess said from behind. She was just sittin’ where she was. She knew how enthused I was getting seeing it all happen in a sigh and a flash. Gasping, she let out as if only I could hear. “The next thing he’s gonna do is flip over the Porsche.”

For a taste of your whiskey, I’ll give you some advice.

“Hey,” the peach interrupted my harvest droppin’ and leadin’ the horse to wata’. She set ’em down, and the two horses to my right gave her a wet whistle. Then it was my turn to place an order. “So what kinda cranberry juice you wanna take back to the stables?”

“I’ll take your cheapest kind rippin’ up my stomach come mornin’ before you stick that pig.” The peach laid down the Orloff, and I took it into the back of my throat. “Short and sweet.”

Two shots rang out before I took ’em down. Twice I tapped on the empty glass, expecting her to fill ’er up and give me what I wanted. “Don’t be cheap.” I laid my beer goggles on her. “And don’t water down my bottles before you give it to me. Understand?”

“Oh my god.” Again I heard Jess’s huff and puff comin’ from behind, but I

found myself ignoring her. “Please come back.”

I tapped on the glasses once more just to make sure the peach wasn’t filled a Fig Newtons. “I’m payin’ for this shit.” So she hit me up again tiltin’ my friendly county so I could see it rise.

I took mine and let Jess’s stay. And to my surprise, I heard my hippie interrupt tellin’ the peach to, “Let him stay.”

“Thanks,” I replied graciously not knowing that at that moment that he put his drinks on my tab.

The bartender filled my shot glass one more time.

“Just ,” he said as he rested his elbow on top of the bar just to stare into my eyes. “Vince Neil isn’t the problem.”

Two tastes a wet. I picked ’em up and brought ’em back offering a cordial nod as I made my way. Dragging my soles, I felt the floor sticking to my feet. Jess was still hiding herself behind the table. I caught her eye as I followed her path and sight to the back of the bar where the group of younger patrons waited for the shepherd to turn the light out. And then I saw Jess look at them before she looked at me. And as we met, my eyes saw her sinking in to the bottom of the sea. I knew she was nervous, but I didn’t know if she was scared. Sometimes being nervous was worse than being scared.

Dragging soles on the sticky floor, my feet rested inside the animal that it crept to, sliding across, and finding the place just where I was before. Two shots, I placed our two shots on the table… side by side.

“See, baby.” I heard the echo as they hit the table, my hands leaving the glasses and following the bouncing ball of my verbalizations. “Once you have the attitude, all you need is the Volkswagen.” Taking it upon my seat, I saw how sexy she was just sittin’ there all nervous. “I think I might like ya this much.” Elbows on the table, I gave her a half inch in between my thumb and the forefinger of my right hand trying to squeeze the snuggle sap down as far as she could go. Then my forefinger touched my thumb unable to withstand gravity. “Nawwahh,” I gave her an inch just showing how far my thumb and forefinger would take me. “I like ya more than that much.”

But she wasn’t havin’ it. “More.” Jess acted like she was impatiently expecting the second coming.

“How ’bout this much?” I gave her a full three inches between my thumb and forefinger.

“More.” Right then and there, I thought Jess might come out of her shell.

“So you’re not mad about what I said about Vince Neil?”

“Who cares what you say? All you do is talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.”

“Baby,” I almost came out of my pants leaning forward and resting my elbows on the table top. “If you keep sexin’ like that, I might just have to get up and take ya in the backroom.”

Then the music came into my mind again—Kenny Rogers and “The Gambler.” If you want to learn the game, boy, you got to learn to play the pipe. It was my fiddle. The man was just puttin’ it on layaway.

“I think someone hit the repeat button.” Jess noticed that the kids at the back of the bar had turned up the volume. I totally expected that they were gonna leave us alone. Jess glanced at them, and I watched her do it following her line of sight over my shoulder. Four out of the five blue jeans and boots rambled on out of control taking them somewhere where every word they said relived another moment. The one closest to our table felt Jess’s eyes on him and he caught her peeking. Maybe, he just kept looking at her not wanting her to know where his mind was until she found it in the gutter.

Then the Kmart shopper switched his line of sight to me. He had a hard expression on his face as if he was testing me to see what I was made of. I just smiled at him and gave him a wink. And then one of his buddy’s saw me wink at him. He smiled at me just because I was smiling. I guess he shopped at Walmart. Then another one of his buddies smiled at me.

“Oh my god.” I heard Jess sink into her seat in fear hoping the drunken’ crowd at the back of the bar would keep a respectable boundary between them. “They see us.”

Off to my right, I could hear the older folk getting pissed off. They had an idea. They knew what was going on, me being a hair across your ass away from the director’s seat and the youngins at back at the bar getting bent out of shape at

how beautiful my baby special was.

And at that point, I started to get nervous. I turned round shifting in my seat real quick thinkin’ elbows to wood and my head in my hands. The next thing ya know, the cracker cult was gonna think we were into the group thing. I just wasn’t havin’ it. I knew at least one of them knew who she was and all of them wanted to have sex with her. So I shook my head before I let Jess see my face. “You just had to look, didn’t ya?”

“Why do you have to always act so tough all time?” Jess snapped back.

“Are they coming?” I just didn’t want to fight with her.

Her eyes drifted to the back of the bar focusing on a few things before returning to mine. “I think so.”

“Awe, my motherfucker,” I gasped not knowing what was going to happen next. “All right, you want me to say it?”

“I really don’t care.” Our eyes were locked and she just would not look away.

“I’m sorry,” I said it in any-fuckin’ way all pouty like. “It’s my fault. I get it.”

The back of the bar just kept talkin’ and lookin’ and lookin and talkin’ and just kept gettin’ louder. Without even looking, I could tell they were glancing over

because Jess would faintly snap her focus in that direction before turning her attention back to me telling me everything I needed to know from eye to eye. There was no use for words. I knew they weren’t coming yet because she didn’t give me the signal. But I couldn’t help but glance over my shoulder every once in a while just to let ’em know that I knew they were saying something. And I wasn’t sure quite how I felt about it. I just kept waiting for instance, the end of my handle cutting through the tenseness in the air like the sharpness of a blade. All I had to do was my pivot foot. What I just needed to do was see it coming. Get rid of the first one before you deal with the rest. I just kept waiting, and Jess kept looking. Minutes ed by like hours. And then all of a sudden, I saw Jess glance over my shoulder, find me, and say…

“Here they come,” she whispered “pussing” her face like mommy made her eat plateful a peas. “I fuckin’ hate you so much.”

Son, I made a life about readin’ people’s faces knowin’ what the cards were by the way they held their eyes.

I could feel him in the floorboards, ing my pivot foot. I watched his silhouette shadow Jess’s face as she opened her eyes up all wide just to show me how scared she was.

Over my shoulder, I watched him come creepin’ my right foot was out into the aisle so I could get up and belt him across the face with my bottle saving the jagged remains for his buddy. It was the corner of his eye that I saw first. It glanced at me, but they didn’t stare.

I was thinking on a higher level… Check one. Now if he started, I could make an educated guess on what he was heading for. Check two . . . what was he doing with his hands? There was no obstruction and foreign instruments, so I thought

I’d brace myself for a sneak attack. Now, if he so much as sneezed before I saw the first shade of his back, my objectives were clear… pounce, belt, and insert. I wasn’t gonna wait around to see him hit the floor. Know what I mean?

Three times and he just kept walkin’ past us, heading for the bar. So I checked over my shoulder to see if he was setting me up for a distraction play, but the coastline was clear. And the waves just nestled into the shore. I held onto the saddle just to make sure that the horse wouldn’t buck me off. It was a moral victory.

Attention shoppers . . . I watched him walk up to the bar, lean in, and order. I kept my eye on him just to protect myself while my Jess sent me messages about what was coming up on my backside. It was the Kmart shopper I was describing earlier. And as he glanced back at me to see what I was doing just seeing what he was doing, I added him up inside my head in a more thorough way. He was basically clean-cut minus the fuzz that his momma forgot to use the straight razor on. His eyes were beady brown and his hat was two shades in a green prison. He wasn’t a big man, meaning he didn’t have to shop at the Big and Tall store. He was short and skinny barely big enough to make it into the big-boy sizes at Kmart. I was weary, repeatedly checkin’ to make sure I knew where he was not wanting to get into a bad situation. But, I had to look out for my one, and I could tell that Jess didn’t want to be there.

At the bar in front of me, the bartender fiddled a bit before settin’ up the peach and slappin’ her down. I saw the wet flow filling her up with a heavy dose of Orloff. No words were said in exchange of the gesture. Mr. Kmart just took his drinks, nodded, and turned around. Then I lost track of him as I focused on the bartender seeing her just above and in back of the counter. The peach just looked at me. It was one of them cold stares with no words, no feelings, and no impulses. I had her locked for that one second before she looked away.

One second skipped by without me knowing. Then, I saw the image inside my

brain focus on a man getting lost between the aisles. I nodded in and out and then he appeared right in front of me laying down another shot where I saw my last one. The dragging of chairs and the lurking noise that came afterward. Seconds in a trance rolled by the images. Running nails across chalkboards, I wanted to hold my palms to my ears to stop the noise as I heard the echo of that chair sliding across the floor inside my head. It snapped me out of it.

I was angry at myself. Out of no where, I let this guy walk up to me, pull up a chair, and sit down at my table without me even seeing him do it. I didn’t like it. But he was there and I was close enough to grab him just so I could show him who I was. You got a fuckin’ problem? Dog psychology. If I can touch ya, I can hurt ya. So you better back up, because I don’t like ya lookin’ at my plate like that. He wasn’t gettin’ away this time. At least, I was gonna get him. My mind let him know where my eyes were leadin’ to as I briefly glanced over my shoulder at the five-finger fraternity. They might have been coming, but I was gonna make damn sure that I was gonna get the one in front of me. He was close enough. I could touch him if I wanted to, that is if he didn’t want to play nice.

“Hey!” The hunting dog just sat down right next to me. “I know who you are.”

“What do ya call it?” I shook it out.

“You’re the guy who wrote the book.” He was a men’s small at best. “I know you, Mister, you yousta’ live around here, right? I like to draw pictures too.” It was an announcement. Attention, Kmart shoppers! Some nameless vagabond appeared as if he was window shopping for luxury items. “I have to tell ya, your wife over there… she perddy fine.” He momentarily leaned in as if takin’ on a stare.

“Actually,” I said just thinkin’ about it, “she’s not my wife.”

“Shut up.” Jess tried to hide her eyes. Then she pronounced to the Kmart shopper, “We’re engaged.” My bread and butter laid it on. I think she was just worried. Appearing to be not available was just as good as not being available. I knew, but I don’t think this guy got the picture. Then, Jess glanced at him long enough to tell him that we were engaged today, but not tomorrow. Oh my god! Oh my god, she thought. Is he gonna pull out a gun?

I nodded in and out. Gun racks on the back winda’s. A fresh deer cookin’ on the hood. I relived the daylight in her eyes. She told me when she went far enough and when she wanted to go back.

“Oh my god.Oh my god. Oh my god.” Jess almost hyperventilated. “Oh my god.” Under her breath, she kept saying the same thing over and over again. “Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.”

“What you guys do fer fun while you up here?” he asked. I stopped by Kmart just so I could check out the hats. “Comin’ up here catchin’ a ‘whoop whoop’ or are you here for the harvest?”

“Do you know that path just off Main Street?”

“Don’t tell him that,” Jess blurted out before she could pull it back in. She didn’t want anyone to know where we were staying. It was good advice, but my alcoholic already fucked it up.

“Yah.” I was cool with every motherfucker in the goddamned place whether I

was or not. “We’re campin’ out in the Allagash. You know? Relivin’ old memories.”

“You gotta shed, huh?” They had a deal at Kmart.

“Don’t we all?” Upbeat, I knew what he was talkin’ about before I had a chance to relive that shit. “Who wants to live in the past? If you live in the past, you might end up getting consumed by it.”

“It could kill ya.” A glimpse and a glance at Jess. “It could kill ya both.”

“Don’t get me power walkin’, motherfucker.” I sounded off all happy partially letting my guard down. Awe, this guy’s all right, I surmised in entirely two seconds.

“That’s a fatal mistake, buddy.” A wisp of alcohol on my face.

I wasn’t sure if I appreciated his comment, but I let it go. There were worse things to worry about in this world. So I brushed it off. He bought me a drink and I didn’t want tah piss and moan.

“The up, the down… the once around.” Making the sign of the cross as if it was my holy wata’, I gave her an exclamation point picking up my shot just layin’ there on the table all for me. “And here we go do it again.”

“Right here.” He picked his shot up and gave her a tilt my way. And at that moment, I knew we were thinking about the same goddamned thing. So I sipped it and took it down. He gave it to her too. And then he asked me to pay for it. “You got that, right?”

Then, I glanced at Jess just to throw her a little. “Tomorrow, me and the boys are gonna go net some salmon.”

The hunting dog livened right up givin’ his buddies a wave on up and comin’ on to. “Well, I just found us a new friend.”

“Stop!” Jess shot me a wide-eyed puffy baby-faced expression, sinkin’ back down into her chair.

And then they all started coming over.

“You can’t bring weed on the plane,” Jess plainly stated whimpering a bit demanding my full attention and glaring concern at me from across the table. I could tell she didn’t want to take on any new friends.

“How else do you think we’re gonna get there?” I didn’t know what I was saying at the time, but I knew Jess understood. And that was good enough for me.

“I don’t wanna drink my Corona.” Four delicates and a thumb cradled the neck of the bottle thinking about how her stomach tossed and turned.

“You gotta sip it,” I replied doing the same. “You just gotta sip it.”

“Shut up,” she mumbled. If I wanted to make up a word, I’d say she “bibbled” by the way her lips quivered. Jess liked to “bibble” fiddlin’ with the end. “You never ‘bibble’ on the bottle.”

“You gotta sip it.” The Kmart shopper caught my little nugget wrapped inside wondering how good she would taste if he could take a hit. But Jess was my plaything and I wasn’t giving her up for nobody.

Then I felt someone coming up over my shoulder. I saw him there. And when he put his hand on my shoulder, I didn’t like it. Looming over me like a dark cloud and staring me deep, he asked me, “Mister, how ’bout you buy us some drinks?”

I knew I was gonna have to do it. Leaning over the table, I directed a jovial comment to my little Valentine’s Day card. “Now I got to buy ’em round.”

“Roughing it.” Jess was totally mortified as she tucked her head in between her shoulders and braced herself as if someone was going to hit her. “Fishing… I understand.”

“So what ya got?” I retuned my attention to Mr. Walmart and his boys now crowding around the table. They were standing behind me and filling in around the table to my right. Then came one more just to walk up beside Jess. I watched him and Jess saw him too. Then she looked back at me before returning focus on the bottle in front of her. I don’t think she liked him standing there, but that was just a guess. But when I checked him out, I could tell that he noticed just like I did that my little garden salad was feelin’ a tad bit uncomfortable. So he did the

good thing and tried not stare too much. I did see him look down her shirt once, but he didn’t dive in there so I let it go. “Drinks are on me! I’m buyin’ so you’re gonna sit here and listen to me talk.”

So what happens when you sink down into your turtle? You pull ’em in and hope they just leave you alone. But when they don’t, you come out of your shell and tell ’em where to go. “What do want them to do?” Jess sent me some attitude. “Etch your name into the seat?”

“Only if I’m payin’ for it, baby.” I gave her an answer. I don’t know if it was the one she was looking for. “Only if I’m payin’ for it.” Now Jess felt safe getting short with me, but the newins loomin’ up and around—she had to feel ’em out first. So she just came out of her shell for a second, flipped me her sarcastic, and then pulled it back in. Basically, she was telling me that she was unhappy with the situation.

“Hey, Mister,” the guy behind me slapped me on my back. “You’re all right. I thought you were gonna be one of them stuck-up city boys. ’Cause you ain’t makin’ fun of us.” I felt him blow in my ear. “You makin’ fun of us, ain’t ya?”

“You wouldn’t do that, right?” Another unidentified hunting dog standing behind me spoke his mind just clearing himself of a bad thought. It didn’t take a brain surgeon, to figure out what was going on.

“I would never do anything like that,” I snickered, having some fun with the locals. So I decided to size up my options. Now, I knew Jess was dead. She was gonna pop out somewhere in the pile whether I liked it or not. What I had to do was simple. I had to bash Mr. Kmart up in the head before he knew I bought him a round. Then I had to avoid the guy comin’ up quick and throw him across the table. That’s when I saw Jess under the pile. But I couldn’t do anything about

that, so I retreated and recovered. I knew that there were a whole lotta weapons around the room. So I grabbed a bottle and made it a shank. Then I stabbed a cracker with it because I didn’t want to stereotype. From the peripherals of my corner, I imagined someone picking up a chair and I thought it was the right time to get up out of there. Poor Jess! I saw her dumped in a pile of leaves on the floor. “Let it stand,” I screamed swinging the chair around the room. Right then, time just paused in spaces and glimpses in between legs of wood crossing hairs under the floor. I knew right then that you didn’t want to get in these kinds of situations especially when you’re tryin’ to snuggle a princess flirt.

“Jamie.” Jess snapped me out of my trance peeking at me right before she shelled herself again. “Oh my god. Please, please, please… please, please.”

“No,” Mr. Kmart waved me off, motioning to his friends. “He ain’t causin’ no trouble.”

I had come to a point, a basis, and a stance. If it was gonna be then, I was waiting for him to do it. So I gave him one last chance to “cool up” just like Fonzy. “Don’t worry, man,” I sighed, slowly getting up but keepin’ my retard ready. “If I make fun of you,” I said addressing the guy standing behind me in a friendly way, “you can make fun of me right back.” Then I motioned to my little sun turtle just shellin’ herself. “But see her?” I saw two of ’em briefly look over as I continued, “She’s a little embarrassed. So if you wouldn’t mind, she only needs to take a couple deep breaths and she’ll be fine.” Givin’ her a half “wave me off,” I took him dead-straight center. “All I want to know is who’s buyin’ the next round after this one because I’m ready to tag in.” Sometimes, it was worse on the outside of the ring. “So how ’bout some shooters?”

“Hey, Doma!” the Kmart shopper screamed behind the counter. “What you got cookin’?”

So said forth, Doma so became. “I got it cookin’,” the peach offered an assuring response.

Shooters with enough to go around and top out my special retard. There were beers too. Oh yes, a plenty of servin’ on suppah’. All I kept wondering about was what I was gonna do after the next round. How fucked-up could I get? How many shots would it take me to throw up? What was I gonna do in the meantime?

So I zoned out and then zoned back in. He touched me. I don’t know if I liked it or not, but the fuzz inside my head just told me to listen to what he was saying. So I slipped my handle on, up, over, and through.

“Your hat’s not big enough for your head.” The Walmart shopper was standin’ straight dead ahead and in front of me figuratively slapping me in the face with a dirty rag. “You got big ears. Can’t help but notice that your eyes bulge out of your head.” I think he was making fun of the way I looked. “You’re skinny. Your lips aren’t big enough for your mouth. I don’t think you could run very far.” He was jokin’ with me… I think. “And I don’t think I like your taste in clothing neither.” It was the birthday suit or the spacesuit. “Different kinda air down here.” He couldn’t help but give it a chuckle. “But, you got some nice sunglasses, Mister.”

“That is funny shit.” Jess shined on her shoulder flaunting me her sexy smile. “I should have brought my digital recorder.”

“Get ’em off.” Doma was bitching about the clutter fucking shit up on top of the bar.

“So what, are you gonna give me a lift?” I still didn’t sell myself on the round. If I was gonna buy, he was gonna fly. “I thought you were the designated driver.” The rest of them hunting dogs were having such a good time that they took the lasso to Benson’s Animal Farm with some Raid just to scare away the pests.

With a bulge comin up, Mr. Walmart rubbed on his belly. “Now if I was in the jungle with a handle and a tent…” He could tell that the forest quieted down, his friends and family talking among themselves about nuttin’ really important. So he just kept rubbin’ and playin’ with his belly button. “All the snakes are poisonous and don’t get me started about the handful of marmosets.” There was a capuchin chasin’ its proboscis and scattering macaques. “And the baboons only throw their shit at ya if you make ’em mad.”

“Let’s not turn this into a safari,” Jess sputtered out a wibblin’ her lips. Everyone kinda wibbled at the lips a little bit. And for a second, it was like my bread and butter forgot all about the macaques and the marmosets. And the baboons clicked puttin’ their whistles back in their pockets.

I sat down while I watched her get up, you know, like kinda all indifferent. Jess was always the one that was a healthy handful a pacify. “I was just havin’ some fun with the locals,” I said. “Sometimes you get caught under a pile before you realize what you getting into.”

“That’s a poor excuse for James Dean.” Jess’s statement hit me where it hurt.

“Come on, baby.” I wanted to take her in the backroom. It was just like it was me and her for a second. No stands filled with fans, no Kmart shoppers, and the announcers left their whistles in their pockets just before Walmart had a special. “They teach self-defense classes for computer geeks too.” I was just a player on the field and Jess had the ball, so I just kept my eye on her. “I just forgot to wear

a helmet.”

“Tell me a fuckin’ hero story, you four beer fuckin’ queer. Don’t forget your sea legs and roll the dough while your surfboard trips on psychedelics. You’ve only been a virgin for like the past ten years.” She was swinging herself to death. “I liked your pornos better when you had a co-star.”

“I was always a good a judge a character.” I was being reminiscent just when I could just stick it in there and try to make her happy, before I could even decide if I was gonna pull it out or not. “Ever since that tribe in Uganda shut down the bar.”

“Call Jim Morrison.” Jess was heartless sometimes. “Roll out the goddamned gurney.” Slippin’ the jab, I was taking some heavy blows, but I kept movin’ from side to side. “You just od’ed on peyote.”

“Yah.” I meaned at her mumbling under my breath a bit. “And you fuck sluts.” It was an overhand right that hit her. I slipped it in there behind the jab. It wasn’t what I said, but how I said it.

Down goes Foreman. And for a second it was like my bread and butter forgot all about the macaques and the marmosets. “What the fuck did you just say to me?” She heard what I said, but she didn’t. Jess smiled, but she didn’t hear it twice before I said it. She just stood there letting it sink in for a second.”

“I don’t .” I loved her twice before I told her I didn’t mean it. And the baboons clicked, puttin’ their whistles back in their pockets. I felt so embarrassed. “It just slipped out.” She was the best sunshine on my face. “I

won’t do it again.”

My little milkshake had a snakeskin skirt just because she was poisonous. Jess stopped right when she stood up. And then it was like someone had attached nodes to her brain and turned on her light bulb. And then she had it. “What the fuck you say?” It was established that it was bad. They knew I wasn’t fuckin’. Then it finally sunk in that I had a crush on her. “Go wash your face,” Jess blurted out all irritated after a brief moment. Then she thought to make herself the queen bitch and spread herself around. She meaned me right back and it was good. “So how long you been livin’ in the gutter?”

Jess was the only girl that talked to me like that and I liked it, because she looked sexy when she did it. She flirty special and I wanted to sex her. And that’s what it was all about—us—me and her up in a hotel room.

“That was uncalled for,” I commandingly responded as if I was plainly insulted pointing at her like I was a little mischievous child with a dark cloud constantly looming over my head. Jess gave me that look that said “I gonna take this shit out on you later” with no words. But I was a willing victim. I could tell she was serious just by the way she tried not to smile when she peered at me like she did. I loved the hick shit. I was just havin’ as much fun as a motherfucker could. “Don’t grin on my grim reaper, motherfucker,” I told her readjusting my chair and sitting up straight.

A whoop-whoop . . . it was all how I plucked the strings as I slipped it in the basket. It was a wavy motion… a jerk, a plump, and a dunk. I got to do the whole scene over. I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t want to tell Jess that I was a slut. It just happened that way. It was the way the sand felt between my toes… bonfires and bare naked sunsets. Then I backtracked and picked up on the conversation a bit.

“That is funny shit.” Jess shined on her shoulder flaunting my big old smile. “I should have brought my digital recorder.”

“Get ’em off.” From behind the bar, I heard Doma bitchin’ about the clutter fuckin’ shit up on top.

“So are you gonna give me a lift?” I still didn’t sell myself on the round. The rest of them were havin’ such a good time that they took the lasso to Benson’s Animal Farm with some Raid just to scare away the pests. “I thought you were the designated driver.”

“I don’t mind,” Jess interrupted before she picked it up and took a walk.

I was smilin’. Jess was happy. She showed it to me in the way she walked away. What an ass! I followed it up around her waist and tucked my hands in, rubbin’ her ribcage. Perfect… that was about the size of her breasts. They were just perfect. I breathed in her hair. And as she reached around and put it in, I was happy just to let her take her frustrations out on me. Cool, I sat back down imagining what she was gonna do to me later.

“Don’t take this the wrong way.” Kmart tucked his chair in an extra inch or two and leaned in. He knew where my train of thought zeroed in on a bull’s eye. “But you got a fine-lookin’ woman there.”

“I don’t let it get in her head.” I leaned back and rested my left elbow on the table, showin’ my pinkies and delicates before I momentarily buried my face in my hand. “The next thing you know, I’m gonna be livin’ on the beach with a shopping cart and fishin’ pole just hopin’ I don’t get another allergic reaction.”

“That’s kick-ass.” The young man standing across from me briefly glanced back at Jess’s apple pie.

Now there were four or five country potatoes circling around me, three lumps of cauliflower sitting off to my right, and a stiff ear of corn centerin’ my thighs. That’s seven heads and seven shots. Seven beers for the queers, so don’t bend over. That equaled the variable labeled X plus two round trip tickets and a boarding . Jess paid for it out of her own pocket. She had one of those designer wallets just made for the finest female that refused to carry a purse. We had a mutual bank that came from my direct deposit endowments. She had another , but I didn’t let her know that I knew about it. “Thirty-one, thirteen…” That’s how much the old bitch charged her. New shoes, a hot bitch, and an entourage—I thought it was a great fuckin’ deal.

Then she brought the whole bar back to me ing out drinks to the baboons playing with the whistles at center stage. She set ’em down with no more than a brief glance sharing glasses. Back to the bar, beers to the bottle, she made her way back to the planet of the apes with a swing and a lethal weapon.

Relaxed, I just sat there with my head lowered catching her eye every once in a while as she handed out shooters to the marmosets gathered around the eternal tree of knowledge, and I had a whole lotta apples. With every expression inside every glance, I could tell that Jess was giving me attitude. I didn’t know what I said.

Snuggling up against her breasts, I saw her grab my shooter off the bar. Orlof vodka straight up when she brought it to me with her shot held in her opposite hand. I heard ’em hit the table with a sound that vibrated my eardrums forcing my lips and tongues to vocalize. Then I downed my shot and leaned in, whispering and blowin’ hot air on her face, “Come on, baby, don’t be like that.” I

hit her shot up too before I told her to go back to the bar and get me another one without verbalizing my intentions. It was all in the looks. I was a handsome motherfucker and I knew how to market my baby bottom.

“You’re a total fuckin’ weirdo sometimes.” And at that moment Tourette’s Syndrome knew her name. “I totally fuckin’ hate you.” She was a cute little Pekingese just spoutin’ off. “It’s only a tobacco water pipe if you don’t sprinkle crack in your marijuana.”

“What a hot bitch?” One country fellow nodded like it was all right. Then the next one did too. They loved her sexy fierce.

Friend or foe, Jess tried to talk, but her brain was traveling too fast. She looked so cute there, just puckering on her lips all pouty. She was so mad that she wanted to kill me; she was clenching her teeth and flexing her muscles, and I just watched her body shine. It came up from behind, a big, dark creeping sensation. I didn’t want her to feel that way about me. “I just feel like, honey, sometimes I can’t do anything right with you.” Half serious and sexy flirting my extra special charm. “You get so frustrated all the time.”

I watched my apple bottoms irrigate my ditch as she found her way back to the head of the stream. “Yah,” she commanded the bartender to acknowledge her. “Can I have another shot? My boyfriend’s a fuckin’ lush,” she explained, lookin’ back at me. “Your mother always said you’d be the worst one.”

“Yah.” I repositioned myself in my chair, flaunting a five finger “go fuck yourself.” “But she was just joking.”

“If you only had a bank and a powerful cock.” Jess hung me hangin’ in open air before she gave me a blow job.

It was a fifteen-yard penalty and illegal use of hands, but the referee was an asshole. I watched her march off those yards watching the play-cock just tick on down. I was waiting for her in the huddle. The bartender substituted two shots for a rim rod. They were on the house. Then Doma wiped the counter clean offering her best advice. “You could do a whole lot worse.” I knew right then that they were talking about me. Jess nodded like the cocksucker I was with two hands holdin’ on for dear life.

“Fuckin’,” one country boy nodded on another checkin’ Jess out. “Fuckin’ hot bitch.”

Two more shots weeding through the macaques, Jess was staring at me like I was supposed to say something. Weaving bye the Kmart shopper, she set ’em down. He was smellin’ of fresh rack a ribs.

“Why do you have to be so serious all the time?” I just kept talkin’ to her like I never stopped talkin’ to her in the first place. “And when I look at you, I can see you’re all mad.” She wasn’t really mad. She was acting like she was the slightest bit perturbed just to perk my interests. And I was interested. “I don’t know why you’re so angry at me. I do what I can for ya. I never talked bad about you at all. Why do you have to be so tough with me? Come on, you know I’m your bitch.”

“Cry me a fuckin’ river.” She dropped the cherry in my chocolate shake just above the whipped cream.

“So why you cryin’ for? Sometimes I just want to walk up to you and put my arm around you runnin’ my thumb over your ear.” Words followed by action, I felt my fingernails run up the back side of her left arm with a drifting index softly touching her chin, up and over behind gently tucking her hair behind her ear. “You look so pretty just standin’ there.” Down slightly, ing by flexed muscle of tense triceps, I felt my hand wrap around her elbow. I didn’t show it, but I needed to talk to her about something. A firm yank on her elbow… that’s what I gave her just starin’ her down as if she were a dog who just pissed on the floor. “So I just wanted tell ya.” Time to look her deep in the eye. “Don’t you evah’ . . .” A second brisk just shakin’ my head attemptin’ to pull her down to my level, “evah’ . . . fuck up my Kenny Rogers again.”

“Are you kiddin’?” There was a weird look and a glance around at the boys like she could not fathom what I just said to her. I guess you could say it was serious —the expression, I mean. And then glancing back in my direction, Jess cracked the faintest, tiniest little smile. “Well,” she gasped as she nodded spontaneously ripping her elbow away from my grip. “Your mother spit on curbs in the combat zone.” Then she told me flat out with the straightest face I could imagine, “Pinch the folds of your arms before you table the crack pipe.”

“That was pretty harsh.” I just took it in stride, but it was pretty harsh. “Personal use is a far cry from distribution.”

“Oh, get over it.” With a quasi upset sigh and the daggers, she waved me off with a gust of wind filling in amongst the gathering. She was just joking. It was Jess’s moment. I wanted her to have it.

“I wish I had painted animals on my pajamas,” one of the baboons whistled. Country cow tippin’ on aisle eleven, we had a good time role playing with the locals before they had to head back to the stables.

Then time just seemed to slow as she appeared to me as a light from a flame coming from the sea—a long-lost shore hidden somewhere in night’sblack; a warming smile, a positive gesture, and those hand movements following the bouncing ball as she took control. It was if she was the only girl in the room and everyone thought… no, they knew that she was the finest girl on the planet. She wouldn’t have to pay for anyone’s drinks the rest of the night.

Otherwise, I personally felt like puttin’ on a cowboy hat and goin’ to a “shindig.” Kenny Rogers was playin’. Everyone got up and started line-dancing, singing in chorus. They weren’t really line-dancing as one might think of it in reality. It was all about the mood. There was a good feeling going around the room. I didn’t think the country cow tippers were goin’ to try and milk me. No one dared touch my ear a corn. Everyone was cool. No one was frowning. There was a gentle gist about the place. Then, I caught sight of Jess’s legs poppin’ out the bottom of her skirt just flexin’ her thighs as her hands talked shit. That is kickass, I thought.

“Don’t mess with no butterface.” Kmart shoppers, sheep, and pigs noddin’ on a corral. “You got to shop around. You can’t just fall in love with the first girl you meet in the pen.” They all shook their heads sharing a common thought. “Uh, uh.”

I was already tired of hearin’ how hot Jess was. We understood… she was a looker. But I couldn’t help but feel her song as it played. Kenny Rogers . . . I was all in as the final hand hit the bar in a sea of thousand-dollar bills. I was going to make sure that I left with those tail feathers.

Every gambler knows that the secret to survivin’ is knowin’ what to throw away and knowin’ what to keep.

All I wanted was my supermodel. Just then she moved up behind the special at Kmart sliding like an angel, running her fingertips over the backrest of his chair. We both looked at her as my eyes followed her behind me. Then I heard the legs of a chair drag across the floor as I moved over a bit to give her some room. To my left, I felt her hand press on my left shoulder as she stepped in front of the chair and sat down right beside me.

Imagining her there beside me just as soft as a pillow, I just wanted to lie down and go to sleep right then puttin’ my arms around her and just blowing in her ear whispering so only she and I could hear. “Do you know what happened to Jesus right before he killed it?” For a second, I had to think about it myself. “And for that second it was like my bread and butter forgot all about the macaques and the marmosets.” Her hair fluttered like a sail that my wind done did blow. “And the baboons clicked puttin’ their whistles back in their pockets.”

“That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

“I’m a lover, not a fighter.” I wanted to move right in and put my best moves on her.

“Sometimes, I like it burley.” Jess just wanted me to tuck it in and slide for home. “Do you the Halloween when you dedicated that song to me at the little alien?”

“The dinner in Nevada?”

“No.” She quickly corrected me. “The one just down the street with the private planes.”

“I . Inside the NBA. I thought I imagined it. I dedicate a song to you and Sir Serrano, fat fuckin’ diversiac got your name wrong.”

“Jay Leno,” she exhaled correcting me, realizing that no matter what, no one was ever gonna do anything like that for her again unless I was planning on topping myself. “It was Jay Leno. Pirates . . . I . That is the most romantic thing that anyone has ever done for me.” I knew Jess was consumed with heartthrob mentality… me, being a tough act to follow. “Who cares what Charles Barkley meant? I know who you meant.”

“I don’t know how I got it done, but I did it.” I had the magic touch and I got fuckin’ Charles Barkley to ask Jesse Jane out on a date for me on national television. Paging Dr. Kevorkian was my most favorite book I ever wrote. I knew I was the shit, but I didn’t let it get to my head. “I just didn’t want them to steal your song,” I said in a soft whisper in her ear. I didn’t dedicate a song to the wicked witch of the east or west, and the Wizard of Oz can take his fairy little computer and shove it straight up his ass right where the rat trap went lookin’ for Richard’s Gear’s gerbils. “When it comes to my little fruit juice, I couldn’t be more serious.” Jess was my extra special flirt, and I was a romantic motherfucker. “All right, you wanna know what I was thinkin’? I knew you had a boyfriend because pretty girls always have boyfriends.” It was an educated guess. “But only girls lookin’ for somethin’ better go to the bar when all their friends are single.”

“How could you tell I had a boyfriend?” Teary-eyed, Jess knew that I knew that I was thinkin’ about her… a lot.

“You were the only one who didn’t want to dance.” Then I thought about her again. “Maybe you were the prettiest girl that I ever saw.” Then reality sunk in. “Maybe I really didn’t give a fuck if you had a boyfriend or not. It’s almost like

two days ago I saw you on TV, but I never thought I’d get a chance to ask you to roller skate.”

“Yah,” she gasped all sarcastic, turning her head away and rolling her eyes. “You’re really weird.”

“Charming,” I whispered in her ear somewhat despondent, feeling her hair on my face.

“But you’re funny charming.” She rubbed her skin across my cheek, finding her lips breathing in my mouth touching on the wet of her tongue. “I think I like funny charming better.”

Touchdown . . . I felt the rubber hit ground. Caught in a college cloud, I couldn’t bring weed on the plane, but I could walk into the airport high as hell with Jess sitting right next to me. A whoop-whoop . . . it was all how I plucked the strings as I slipped it in the basket. It was a wavy motion… a jerk, a plump, and a dunk. I got to do the whole scene over.

“Hey, Mister.” There was a special on mulch in garden supplies. “Are you gonna make out with your girlfriend all night or are we gonna do some drinkin?”

“What? Are you plum stupid, boy? We gonna be drinkin’ and drivin’!” I raised my voice before expressing myself to the bartender. “Hey, Noma, why don’t you back those hoodlums up over there before they start wanderin’ off!”

“The up, the down, the once around, and here we go do it again.” One of the crew raised his voice making the sign of the cross before we all downed a wet one. I watched Jess give her a sip while I was just pacing myself slow.

In his final words, I found an ace that I could keep.

Resting my palm on Jess’s thigh under the table, I leaned in breathin’ on her hair and blowin’ in her ear. Pullin’ back less than a full twelve, her head turned as I watched her green eyes fill me with lust watching her wings spread like some exotic serpent. She was so beautiful. I had to buy her lots of shoes or she was gonna snap on me and chase me up a tree. But all I wanted to do was make her happy.

“So when do you want to get outtah here?” Faint wet on her lips, a forked tongue slippin’ down and rubbin’ on my balls.

“I’ll leave right fuckin’ now if you want to.” I could smell the sex on her blouse. “What the fuck do I want to stay here for… Texas fucking tea?”

“I am so totally ready to bolt.” Jess talked to me in code. “I just don’t want my pipes to freeze.”

“So leave the water runnin’.” I offered her the most stubborn simple explanation I could think of. I was just teasing her. That’s all.

“Jamie.” She said with a warming sensation giving me a tug—just hoping she

wouldn’t pull it too hard. “Don’t make me chop down your tree.” She got to the point real quick.

Jess liked me goofy, but I didn’t want to cross her border without her asking me first. It was Page’s playroom. I was just letting her have her way with me. “Do you want me to walk you to the ladies room?” I knew what she wanted.

Green eyes stared direct and precise; I felt her fingernails draping across my lap. As long as she was touchin’ it, I didn’t really care how she did it. And I liked it rough. I watched her get up—her chair sliding across the floor—shifting hips upon a slim waistline just picturing my hands all over my vacation land. Jess had me wrapped. I submitted jerkin’ off while fingers penetrated just checkin’ what the baboons were doin’ fiddling with the whistles in their pockets.

So I had to get up and walk Jess to the ladies room probably to make sure that she wasn’t followed ushering her to where we needed to go before we could get the fuck out of there. I gave the boys a look telling them I’d see ’em later. Then I stood up and followed Jess’s lead down the aisle hanging a corner into a small hallway on the right. It was a small dimly lit hallway with a door a few feet ahead and a door just to the right. She grabbed the handle on the door to the right done up especial’ for the lady folk and twisted it open. I could see it was dark inside like a bottomless pit. Turning back to me, Jess took a step backward and retreated into the ladies room. She appeared as if she was about to say something before she shut the door. But before she could…

It was a spontaneous flirty little wiggle thing! Startled, she exhaled and blurted out, “Oh fuck,” accompanied by an explosion of random forward movement jumping out of the way and settling back in beside me.

And then we saw it. It was the dimpled ass of a walrus that showed its face

stepping out into the light of the hallway. A hippopotamus stickin’ its nose out the water. An elephant seal takin’ a dump. A whole lotta shit, you don’t want to step in. Just looking at it made me wonder about everything I didn’t want to think about. Takin’ a shit, it was like I looked between my legs while the fish were jumpin’ in my toilet bowl. There was a slurpy sound as they slid all in and around real fast and the nauseating sound it made. I felt their scales and the roughness of their gills as the wet slid across my ass. But I couldn’t get up because I was strapped to the throne. It wasn’t a pretty picture.

Pictures and realizations of images—it was an old woman just haggin’ it up. In the time that it took me to blink my eyes, there was a snapshot of a horrifying image. She wore a dirty, one-length dress tattered at the fray of the skirt. Her curly hair was greasy black hanging down past her shoulders. Wrinkled under the eye, there were two pairs of bags just to show how tired she looked… angry. Blank at the stare as if her body was going through the motions she couldn’t where she kept her soul.

“I so totally didn’t mean it.” Jess realized before I did that it was an old dusty antique. Spying the light switch on the wall just behind and inside the bathroom doorway, she stepped around the witch making sure not to touch her lest her spell penetrate Jess’s chest like a sharp, splintered stake. “Why didn’t you turn the light on?” She flipped the switch. The light went on inside the bathroom, its beams partially shadowed by the door reaching into the hall.

Jess stepped back around, floating to the side so she could see the old woman even though her thoughts told her not to. Then the woman’s eyes fell under the floor. At first, the antique hardly offered a single movement collecting dust lost somewhere in space.

“Do you need help?” Jess asked really concerned for her own well-being.

There was a moment with no response, as we waited for the old crone to move or twitch or say something, but she didn’t. Jess moved in slightly behind me. I felt the pressure of her fingers rounding the inner portion of my left elbow ending in a squeeze. I think she wanted me to say something. But before I could, the old woman just turned around walked away. “I think she lives in there.” I felt my lips move without me first thinking about what I was going to say.

A tug on my elbow redirected my attention toward the ladies room. “Well, she coulda’ cleaned?”

Now when one thinks of a woman’s restroom, green peppers and olives caked in bile on the outside rim of the toilet bowl seldom comes to mind. Dried urine covered the toilet seat. There were paper towels drenched in piss a makeshift bedpan wrapping around the base of the toilet.

And as I walked in taking every step sticking to the floor, I couldn’t help but notice the smell. I didn’t want to describe it. There were dried yellow droplets covering the ceiling most likely the result of long steaming showers at the bottom of a dirty tub just ahead and to the left of the toilet. The sink off to our immediate left sat concave to the counter. I targeted a drain clogged with hair and wet filters from discarded cigarettes. Crumpled paper towels and dirty tissue paper cluttered the free area of the counter with what was left of a whittled-down

bar of soap sitting on left-hand side of the faucet.

I felt her feet coming up behind me. Upset, Jess wondered if she could hold it until she got home. “I’m gonna have to use a whole roll of toilet paper.”

“Yah.” Sighing as I turned around, handles found my fingers like a glove inching the door closed as I left her there. “I have to go too, and I’m not using the men’s room here so you better hurry up.”

“Yah,” she said with sarcasm in a sigh. “I’ll watch out for the crabs that crawl out of the seaweed when I pick up the seat.”

Then I pulled the door closed knowing that Jess was going to take a long shower when she got home with a scrub brush and some disinfectant.

Stepping out into the seating area, I settled back against the wall right next to the hallway. The old woman was only a few feet ahead of me standing with her back toward me and her head pointed down staring through the floor. I heard her muffled voice ing information too fast for her to comprehend. There was a “yes”, two “no’s”, an “I don’t know,” and a big “go fuck yourself” at the end. I wasn’t the only one that heard her talking to herself either. No one said anything to her and it looked like she belonged there, so I let it be. It was none of my business.

“Hey, Mister,” $2.99 and a pair a slippers at Walmart. I heard one of the locals talking to me over the intercom. “You waiting for a bus?”

“It about that time,” I jested faintin’ on a yawn, zeroing in on a nice pair of shoes and a designer purse. “I’m about ready to go home, jump in the shed, and shut the night-light out.”

“Nice knowin’ ya.” He tilted his beer my way while his buddies sat down taking up the empty seats around the table that we had just vacated.

It was a mere distraction, making me take my eyes off from where they needed to be just to make sure I didn’t get “HJ highjacked.” And when I looked back, I noticed that the wind had turned; the old woman’s blank stare was piercing my eyes as she hated me in a cubit and a measurement of malicious intent. It was a bad smell.

“I know who you are.” The sound of her voice was low and trembling, surging, dissecting, and vibrating my eardrums as I jerked my body quickly to the left just to get out of the fuckin’ way.

“I don’t think so,” I responded with a half-hazard smile, not really wanting to get into a conversation with her. I was scared shitless. It was like I found myself in a back alley and I was naked, not wanting to give it up while this big huge guy stood over me cracking a whip. Never suffer a witch lest befalls a hex.

“Do you know if someone were to read your books and let’s say… ‘‘kill a child’ . . .”—it was the diabolical glint in her eye that made me want to get a prescription—“that some psychologists would hold you personally responsible?”

“How fucked up are you?” I didn’t know if I should club her over the head or what before I got up and ran. “So how many times a day do you go to

confession?” I was sarcastic in what I was trying to say. “What are you gonna do… slap the cuffs on me?” Irritated, I was tired of taking it, so I decided to dish it out. “Spare me the crusade.”

“Don’t give me any attitude.” It was twitch of her lip that gave me the dribble down my pant leg. “You’re inside a strange bar, and you’re all alone. All of us are tougher than you are. And when we shut the lights out, nobody comes down here to check what we’re doing.” I was borderline scared. Her large black pupils floated upward to the ceiling for an instant, poking me in the eye when she stared me down before I could look away. “I know where you come from. Diane’s son, Paul, lives in the woods. Do you know how lonely it is in those woods?”

It got serious real quick. For the first time all night, I was speechless. Fear, I ed. That’s how we first start to believe. Out of nowhere, my right periphery caught movement—blonde waves and longing for the muscles of masts and legs. I heard the tapping of designer shoes… an echoing knock upon my chamber door. And before I could comprehend what was going on, Jess was standing in front of the hag with the witch breathing fear down her neck.

“David’s baby’s dead.” The old woman spit poison before I could intercede.

“Who’s David?” Jess asked, shivering like a little mouse.

“Don’t trust him.” Blackest days turning into my worst nightmares whistlin’ like a banshee, the old woman glared at me as if I were naked. “He’s not really here.”

A thousand mirrors breaking and seven times seven years of bad luck. A rat

throwing its tail. And do you know what happens when you grab a rat by its tail and hold it up over a cage? Well, it starts to struggle because it knows it’s gonna die. The feisty ones bite and claw at your fingers, but you shrug ’em off just as you hear the crack of its skin. Then there’s a break, and it slips. You feel the rivets in its spine slide between your fingers and then you see it. It’s just like you’d imagine seeing it on television. White bone stained red with its skin pinched between your fingers. The malicious expression the old woman sent me was terrifying. Disgusted and nauseated . . . were the only words I could use to describe the feeling that came over me.

Then the witch that I wished away went, dragging her tail across the ground. I saw the rivets in her spine.

“Are you okay?”

I heard words coming from my left. I didn’t understand it when I heard it. It lingered. Jess was talking to me, but it took a second to in my brain. For the life of me, I couldn’t tell ya what Paul was doing sleeping in the woods and why David just didn’t hire a sitter. I wasn’t supposed to know. I was supposed to wonder. Then I snapped out of it. It was the green devil inside the forest floor. In a blinking jerk, I righted myself—a traumatized vessel bearing dead ahead on trouble’s nighttime waters. I was almost at the door.

“Are you okay?” I asked Jess, shaken at the hands before I pushed myself off the wall.

“No, no, no, no… I’m okay.” She seemed more concerned about me, her fingertips gently brushing against my cheek.

“Is there another way out?” Rhetorically, I watched the old woman’s silhouette staring at me from across the bar and into the next room, standing there like a brick wall in front of our exit… a nearly imable boundary.

“Who was that?”

“Well, pumpkin,” I said as I pulled Jess close, expecting snakes and spiders to come crawling out of the walls before the woodland cries forced the bats to follow me home. “I wouldn’t pick up any sticks from outside and bring them home with us.”

“I’m totally Skeptical Inquirer about the whole thing,” Jess smiled thinking I was just joking with her. She was just kiddin’ herself, reminding me about how rational people rationalized an irrational situation. “That’s why smart doctors invented paranoid schizophrenia.”

“Paganism.” I tried to put the witch out of my mind. “It’s only black magic when you start bending people to your will.” Witchcraft was only as powerful as the . I heard it when I said it. It was the most serious I had been since we landed. “This ain’t the History Channel, baby. This is Faces of Death.”

“That poor fuckin’ monkey,” Jess blurted out visibly shaken and ready to call an exorcist. It was just like a sledgehammer had hit her in the face. That poor monkey inside her head just kept wiggling around and screaming like it did, struggling to set itself free. “I can’t believe you made me watch that.” I could tell that a thousand bad images decided to invade her white sand beach. “You’re just trying to scare me.” Pissed she was, almost. She almost got pissed. “You don’t think that she was really a witch?” Instead, Jess thought better. Concern and worry focused around her immediate physical well-being. “Because I don’t need some maniac stickin’ pins into a doll just to get my attention.”

“As long as we don’t ask her to babysit.” Me, I was thinking about other things, like wanting to get out of there as fast as possible.

I realized there was no other way. There was no other way to leave except the same way we came in. And I knew the witch’s eyes were staring at me through the dark doorway, breathing down my neck as I pinched my nose and tried not to trip. Four feet kept sticking to the floor as we walked to and beside the bar. I peered down at the dark ageway ahead with no light in front.

Looming in and around the dark clouds forming up above, I was almost there just hoping I gave its curse enough time to move up ahead so I could find another way home before it rained. I didn’t want her son, Paul, to follow me there.

“Thirty-three and change.” A voice echoed inside my head coming in from my left. I had my wallet in my hands before I knew that I pulled it out. Two twenties hit the bar. I told Doma to keep it.

And somewhere in the darkness . . .

The light from the moon shined through the window beyond the doorway up ahead and into the dark. And a magic carpet transgressed the threshold. It was an average-sized room with only two windows looking out onto the front porch. Up above the windows was this huge pair of moose antlers that must have been five feet wide. And around the room all we saw were animal heads and stuffed carcasses. Sitting there at one of the tables in the center was the old man we ed on the way in. He was kinda grubby-looking with a flannel, old tattered jeans, and some shit kickers… a hunter. He was the one who turned me into a

killer. A shot and his beer, he glanced at us before refocusing his attention on the moon downing his shot in one, singular, quick guzzle. Then I watched him take a swig of his beer as Jess and I crossed, leaving the same way we came in.

A slip of the handle and a twist of my wrist pulled the door open. Stepping out of the way, I made sure Jess went first. But before I could bring myself to leave, I couldn’t help but glance back over my shoulder just to see that old man still sipping on his beer.

“It’s all fun and games until somebody gets killed,” he mumbled somewhat in a daze, wetting his lips and staring out through the windows into the nighttime. “And now the fun begins.” He took a sip of his beer. “Now the fun begins.”

’Cause you got to know when to hold ’em.

Vengeance

That night, this man spoke to Jess inside of a spell. We were lying side by side in bed. My eyes were closed, but my ears were wide open. I was hoping and praying really hard. I knew someone heard me, but I didn’t think it was God.

“Do you see them?” Jess asked me. I could only place her voice.

“I’m not sure.”

“Can you hear them?”

“I can hear them,” I whispered on the wind, a breeze inside a cave.

“Are you trying to cast a spell?”

“Don’t try to wipe out my anger. It’s not anger. It’s hate. You can wipe out the anger, but I still hate you. I hate your face. I hate the air you breathe, and I hate the place you stand. And I want to make you suffer in any way possible. I want to kill your dogs. I want to breathe diseased air into your kid’s children. And if I was still alive I’d want to see you how you hurt.”

“Can you hear me?”

“I can hear you.”

“Do you hate me?”

“Do you know what a curse is? It’s when you really hate someone or something so much that your hate transcends boundaries. Even death. You want them to suffer just like you wanted me to suffer. And when that day comes and you gasp for that last breath, you every single person, every single face, and everything they did to you. That you did to me. And you how disgusting you felt every time your skin touched mine and how badly I wanted to hurt you. To say that I want you dead would be an understatement. You can’t even put it into words. There are no magical incantations, no witches, no ghosts,

no goblins. It’s a feeling that you cannot describe, and when it leaves you, you give it back. And then they start dragging you around. And before long, you become them and you live forever while you smile and watch them suffer in the most horrible ways… before you finally blow your load. See that’s what I’m doing right now. I’m taking you all with me so I can come back to visit you in your dreams. So I can speak to you. So I can speak for you. So I can make you trip when you were afraid to step. So I can be the pain inside your head and touch you just to let you know that I’m still around. That cold feeling you get when you tuck your kids in at night.”

“Three times.” She blew.

“I hope.” I cast a prayer in chants and whispers. “I pray.” I cast a prayer, I did. God bless them. I would.

I couldn’t move. I was conscious, but my eyes were closed. I could hear Jess breathing and I wondered what would happen if my brain stopped. Would I how to breathe? I asked. Only if they left the machine on repeat, I replied. I heard it hum. So I tried to move, but I couldn’t. There was a pillow pressed against my face and I couldn’t get it off. And all I could think about was my right arm and how I was going to try and make it move. Did it move because I thought it moved? Then I felt the jerk once in a gasp of air, but I couldn’t wake myself up. Please someone get it off. Words inside thoughts, but I couldn’t hear them. I can’t breathe. Fear and death trapped inside a coffin. Jess was asleep.

The God machine… I had it all inside of a dream. I took a trip into the woods, hunting and fishing. It was all about the idea and how you worked it. And I swear to God that Jess was not going to Maine without me issuing her a ticket.

Four walls and one door and the white light only went on when the doctors were

staring at her through the window. Possessed, I knew how things planned on going wrong. I knew it from when I grew up. I could never explain it, but I knew. I moved away. It was just a hunting trip and I just wanted to take her out. She’s not going to Maine! I screamed at the pillow.

Why?

Because I said so. That was it. And that was that. But I’m still not going up in your goddamned airplane.

They wanted to take a trip back there and I was there to protect them, but the baby wouldn’t stop crying. Then all this weird shit started happening. I imagined Jess ripping out her hair in pain. Then she went into the machine. I wanted her to leave her family. I ed it through hypnosis. There was an airport in the woods.

Then I woke up again. I wrote horror novels about what I ed in my childhood. I went back to the house where my parents lived. It was a long drive down I-95, and all I wanted to do was tell them to shut the fuck up. My parents’ house… it was all fucked up. They kept speaking to my brain and I didn’t even check to see if there were any other cars on the road. I stopped at a gas station and asked about my parents. They didn’t know what I was talking about.

“Where are you?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d head up to my parents’ house.”

“Why are you going back to your parents’ house? Didn’t they like to rough it?”

“Now isn’t that the most wrong fuckin’ thing to say I have ever heard in my life.”

“How can I tell you without telling you?” I heard a cat whine. “What… you don’t believe in witchcraft?”

“It’s a curse.” It was like I was in a trance.

Then I was out the door and back in the saddle before I could blink my eyes, careening out of control down a highway made of dirt and burning coals. It was 4:20, and we all had to smoke weed at once.

Jess called me up on my cell phone.

“Where are you?” I had a bulge in my pants and a soft place to put it right when I heard her speak in moments and tones. “I know you’re there.”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d head up to my parents’ house. I couldn’t wait any longer.”

“I know your parents grew up there and you have a hard time talkin’ about it, but you don’t have to do everything by yourself.”

“That’s how I sing you to sleep every night.” I was praying for a miracle. “A Nish Na Nu… it means ‘princess in love.’”

“Don’t put a curse on me.”

“Opposites.” I kissed her through the phone. “It’s a love spell. What… you don’t believe in witchcraft?”

“So why are telling me that you’re putting a spell on me when you’re doing it?”

“Just to see if it would work.” Calm and intent.

“Now isn’t that the most wrong fuckin’ thing to say I have ever heard in my life?”

“How can I tell you without telling you?” I heard a cat whine. “That I really don’t give a fuck.” I had to ask her. “So is it working?”

“What?”

“The spell.” I imagined cuddling her picture inside my arms cheek to cheek, a squishy face. Emotion… I still had some in the tank.

“I don’t know. I’ll tell you when you get here.” Her voice sounded enticing enough, so I hung up right away and didn’t want to think about her until I got off the Ferris wheel. “A Nish Na Nu,” she whispered in sexy vibrations. “I think I like that.”

“This is like a cartoon.” It was the way I felt about life sometimes.

Where are you? I had a bulge in my pants and a soft place to put it right when I heard her speak. I know you’re there. And then I was. I didn’t how I got there, but I did. And then I lost it.

I was abused as a child, but I couldn’t . I couldn’t until I woke up scared. I woke up and all I saw were devils. It was all fucked up. I was gonna write a horror novel about it. She was in the book.

It was a broken down-home. The whole front of the house was caved in from the weight of snow over the years. There were holes in the roof. I could see the windows, but they were closed. Others were broken. The grass was mowed, but I didn’t see anyone do it. Then I hit the pit and stopped. The side door was closed and I couldn’t get in. I wandered around. There was a path on the side so I took it and it took me alongside the house as I stepped into the backroom just to see how deep the well was.

I was at the backdoor and I wanted to get in… a condemned site. But there was no door. Through the window, I could barely see inside, but I heard the voices in my mind. A close line and a noose, the dog was dead. I hated my father. And I saw my mother again before I even opened the door. A creak did snap a burning coal. I saw her burn on a bed of fire and wood, but she wasn’t dead. Perhaps, I

didn’t pray hard enough. And then I pushed her in.

The door was behind me on the ground. I didn’t look back to see it inside the hole in the floor. So I walked in, kicking the leaves and twigs inside. It was a place that the children saw my child. They just wanted to write on the walls. Nursery rhymes, stick figures, and the devil… Satan and hell. Witchcraft… they talked about spirits and ghosts as they danced around upside-down crosses. An arrow pointed to the crevices under the floor. “This is where Betty lost her virginity.” Chant on a gust of wind blowing across the sea—my poetry was witchcraft, and my children wrote it down for me.

Gates and no door—before I found myself walking through. I saw the whole place destroyed. It was written in the holes in the walls. There was some light coming in, but it was getting dark outside; I was staring down a long narrow hallway. The living room—I was the one living inside. I couldn’t see until I saw the stairs. It wasn’t big house, but it wasn’t a small one. There was still some space. Now the stairs were partially collapsed, but my wings took me there. I stumbled, but I made it. Open air and rooms behind and to my right, but I couldn’t help but wonder about what was inside the room behind the locked door.

To the left, I grabbed the handle, but no matter how I crossed, I couldn’t push it open. I had to look inside. I heard the voices like I had heard when I was a child. I started sweating in my bed and talking to my wallpaper as I tucked myself in. Pick up the knife . . . they’re coming. Thoughts came through the stones. Pick up the knife. And then I saw two shadows. Don’t you know the sound when it knocks on the door?

There was a pounding on my bedroom door before it opened. All of a sudden, I snapped out of it. There was a noise downstairs and I wrote a book about it. A creak under` the covers—I didn’t want to open my eyes until I found her swimming inside the well. Inside the fog and pain, I saw myself outside staring

through a window. Then I walked out the door. There were kids outside in the backyard just waiting to write on the walls. I didn’t know what they looked like.

“I used to pick potatoes.” I glared at them not knowing if they were looking at me or the man touching their brains as he talked behind my head. “What do you want from me? Do you know anything about the fields?”

“No.” The one with the biggest mouth spoke up while some of his friends were gathering wood and others were searching for a pile of rocks. “We don’t sleep.”

“Are you sure?” I was dealing with some shit. “I was just looking for my parents. I haven’t seen them in a long time.”

“We don’t know what happened to them.” There was a hill behind him, but between the blades, I could see his footprints. “Three shades of sunshine before we decide to pick the corn.”

“So I’ll see you later.” A left-handed wink saw me seeing their thoughts inside a flinch and a movement. I saw the devil’s eyes on them. I was just wondering who was inside the well as I walked by. Just staring at me, I thought that I shouldn’t have looked back in the distance colored black before I saw the sheep. I heard a cat moan in pain again. There was a path alongside the house. I hit the pit and stopped.

So I got back to the truck and stepped in. Everyone was looking at me, so I pulled out and started driving back to the shed, twenty miles south of the Allagash. I was heading back to the cabin where she was waiting for me inside the woods.

It was a long drive back down I-95, but I saw the road through the window as I dreamed. I stopped at the gas station, and they told me that cigarettes would kill me. So I tried to be careful before I brought weed on the plane. There was an airport in the woods right beside the shed.

Then Jess called me up on the cell phone. I just ed the road as it traveled beneath my wheels.

“What are you doin’?” Jess was the only one who could bother me when I was writing, and I didn’t mind. “You just totally got pissed and took off and left me hangin’.”

“I’m just writing it down.” So I did. 80 percent truth, 20 percent lie. Since I was about to die, I thought I’d write her a love letter, but I didn’t put it in quotes. Jess came in when I was writing one day. I just wanted to tell her how I felt about her.

“You’re crazy.” she laughed dropping me a line.

“I’ve heard worse.” I forgot to hang up. “Don’t be actin’ snobby with me A Nish Na Nu. I will slap you on your ass right in front of everybody.”

“Well, hurry up and get back home.”

“What, do you want to go out for drinks later?”

“Aah,” she sighed. I could hear her breath muffled through the mechanical device echoing for a second before I could process it. “You read my mind. Total psychic link. So get your ass back here before I have to track you down and rape you.”

“Trust me.” I laughed imagining her sitting there at the cabin waiting for me to come. It made me feel good to know that there was someone waiting for me at home. “I’m on my way, baby.”

I pictured it. I imagined it. I was back home. I didn’t know what state I was in, but Jess was there too. Inside, I was back inside just peeking through a window at my kitchen table. I was sitting there, and Jess was hovering around the table. Ghouls roaming around tombstones and graveyards—but Izzy was the one who had to fight Jack the Ripper at recess.

“All you have to is that if they think you can hurt ’em, they’ll leave you alone.” Jess sounded pissed stamping her little feet around the kitchen table, her hips grazing the cabinets with a scuff. It was almost like she was looking for something, but she kept forgetting what she was lookin’ for so she had to turn around. Appearing frustrated, it was safe to say that she wasn’t having a good day. “This ain’t no fuckin’ pillow fight!”

“That little fuckin’ bastard you got.” I had a bottle of Mr. Friend right by my side. So I took another one and gave a gulp. Hello, my dear. ’Twas I, and I was sitting at the head of the table. “That little bastard kid of yours, he needs a good little ass whoppin’. Tough’n him up some.”

Izzy just sat there like I wasn’t even lookin’ at him. That stupid look on his face

and that attitude—I just wanted to smack him one time. Just one good time. And then came Mr. Friendly. Up and down, I turned it round and round. Then the bottle hit the wooden surface with a “klapop.”

“Fuckin’ piece of shit that came out of me. You gonna let that fuckin’ kid kick your ass?”

“But I’m afraid of him.”

Instantaneously in an instance of reaction, the back ridge of her palm cuffed the back of his head as Jess came up behind him. I heard the impact. She had that “I don’t think you mean that” kinda look on her face. “Why, because he beat you up?” Fractions and jerking movements—Izzy looked to be an accident away from whiplash. Jess was so mad that she didn’t even check to see if she hurt her hand as she repeatedly pointed down at her baby carriage as if he was playing dead and scared to move. “Listen, I’m not really mad at you. What I’m mad about is having to go down to that school and hear about how you started, and that bloody nose is your fuckin’ fault! You threw the first punch. And all I can say is that they were teasin’ ’em. Do you know how stupid that sounds? How many times am I gonna say the same fuckin’ thing over and over again!”

“But, Dad,” Izzy glanced at me with that scared “help me” kind of expression trying to appeal to my sympathy. “There’s like ten of ’em.”

“Ones and zeroes, I totally understand.” I readjusted myself in my chair looking at him all terse and serious. “And you can’t hit ’em ’cause all they do is yell at ya. Well, there isn’t much I can tell ya.” Advice, he needed some. “Listen, you just gotta make sure you get the first. And you just don’t stop hittin’ him until he stops movin’. Understand? You mind your surroundings, but you keep hitting ’em—the biggest one or the one with the biggest mouth.” Izzy knew I was dead

serious. “Hey, tomorrow why don’t you just go in there and grab somebody?”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” Jess objected to my Mr. Bad and his extremes blowing me off like I wasn’t nuttin’. She had supreme authority over her son and the household as long as I thought she was sexy. “He hits you, you hit ’em back.” Izzy appeared to be hearing every word, but did not really understand what each word meant, what each syllable was used for, and how they mixed together. But Jess had high blood pressure. It was like she wanted to grab somebody and stick her claws in just to see how it tasted rolling around her tongue. “But them makin’ fun of you? You got to have a thicker skin. You need to give it back to ’em! Make them react. You’re just sittin’ here sayin’ they’re makin’ fun of you so you hit ’em, and then you’re cryin’ because you have a bloody nose. Well, ask your dad. Bloody noses fuckin’ hurt. Ever take one in the nose?”

“I fuckin’ took one,” I said lookin’ up at her standin’ beside me like the sweet taste in my mouth. “It didn’t feel good either.”

“Do you know why pretty boys are pretty? Because they don’t get hit in the face and they don’t lose too often. So when they start with you, you gotta go after them like you want to fuckin’ kill ’em!” A fistful of scruff, a jack, and a rip-off— Jess jerked Izzy around nearly stealing the shirt off his back. “What do I got to do… paint you a poem?” Animated she was. “You aim for the knee.” Viscous too. “They got to come after you to hit you, right? There’s an instance in a man’s step where his weight travels beyond a certain point and he can’t back up.” Taking a step back for a demonstration, Jess showed how to give any would-be attacker a disability. “He picks his foot up and you see his body movin’ forward. You aim for where you think it’s gonna be. That’s when you fuckin’ give it to him.” A jarrin’ boot to the side of Izzy’s chair snapped him out of his trance. “That’s when you give it to him right in the fuckin’ knee! The front, the back, the side… it doesn’t matter.”

“He takes a step at you…” I nodded my head.

“And he leaves himself wide open to break his fuckin’ kneecap.” Jess kicked the side of Izzy’s chair again. “Now make sure no one gets behind you. Keep ’em all in front and give yourself some space. Make ’em lunge at ya.”

“Side to side.” I took another hit at Mr. Friendly wavin’ my hands from side to side.

“You just keep movin’ from side to side.” She waved her hand just like mine.

“You don’t back up.” Mr. Friendly and I were happy. “You just push ’em off ya.” I imagined just that as she showed ’em how. “Momentum… it’s all about momentum.”

My cradle did follow her attention ramming her feet into the floor as she walked around the table. She plopped her ass in the seat directly across from my immediate place at the kitchen table. “Just don’t hit ’em first.”

“What the fuck!” I was totally fucked-up. “The kid lives in detention. I mean, what are they gonna do?” I answered my own question before I had time to talk back. “Kick him out the school?”

“Then he’ll have to stay back.” A reasoning… that was what she was to me. “I don’t want to have to look for another school for your little cocksucker right now.”

“Ow aah, call Harvard. I don’t think they’re gonna miss his application.”

“You don’t think this is takin’ time away from his studies? All the kid does is fight at school. How do you expect him to learn anything?”

“Exactly.” I had heard what I’d been waiting to hear. “How can he learn anything when all he does is fight at school?” I was Mr. Parable wavin’ my hands in the air as if I was the Almighty himself. “Exactly… what the fuck? He’s thinkin’ about this guy thinkin’, There he is.” I heard her, and I was the one envisioning it. “Is he gonna hit ’em or not? How can you learn when he’s thinkin’ that this kid’s gonna stand up and hit ’em? That’s why… just get it out of the way first.”

“Listen to me,” Jess stood up sooo fast. I blinked before her seat slid across the floor. “You stay away from him!” She reached across the table, grabbed Izzy, and squeezed him by the skin of his cheeks. “And when he comes at ya,” around the table, she came, “you fuckin’ grab him and you break his fuckin’ knee!” She jacked Izzy one good time and told him where to go at the end of her index. “They’ll call it assault and you reacted.”

Then something clicked. It was almost like I could see myself thinking. Then Jess let him go and Izzy said, “So I should just sit there and move around him until I can hurt him?”

“Side to side.” I took another hit from Mr. Friendly and said, “You just stick it in there and keep lookin’ for that knee.”

“Grab his outside hand and break it.” A left-handed pelt a centered sternum, and Jess made sure that Izzy was listening to her. “If you get up close to him and he can even move his arm, you pin him to one side and you fuckin’ give it to his face! But as soon as you hit ’em, make sure you hit ’em again. Someone else might be comin’ over your shoulder.” Thumbs pointed backward, checking for the next ride. “So you check it and make sure no one’s gonna jump you before you hit him.” A moment to stand tall. “And what do you do? You hit him again just to make sure he ain’t gonna get up.”

“That’s how you know he ain’t gonna hurt you again.” I was a lush because I loved it when sexy girls talked tough.

“So when you kick ’em, make sure you don’t bring them knees.” A high knee and a heel impacted balls to floor. “Because when you drive their head real hard they call it a ‘shot-put.’”

“Now let’s not get carried away.” I waved her off. “Even knowing what a ‘shotput’ is legally implicates him. He should just say he fell down and hit his head. I don’t need the goddamned principal shinin’ a light in my face.”

“I’m so sick of conforming to authority.” Then she walked down the long hallway, and I was left alone with only my thoughts of my son. “I’m takin’ the first fuckin’ plane back to Hawaii.” I didn’t know what to say. I knew Izzy was there and I knew I had to fight him at recess.

“That little fuckin’ bastard you got.” I had a bottle of Mr. Friend right by my side. So I took another one and gave a gulp. Hello, my dear. ’Twas I, and I was sitting at the head of the table. “That little bastard kid of yours.” I gaze Izzy my tough. “He needs a good little ass whoppin’. Tough’n him up some.” Jess hit the bricks before she went across. I wanted to follow her, but I couldn’t tap on the

window. I blinked my eyes, and she was outside. She was outside again, just caught in a gazing trance. And then it was just me and my boy.

“You little bastard.” I had thoughts in my mind and my roof was caving in. “You like horror movies, right? What do you think Dracula was based on?”

“Vampires,” Izzy responded unsure that his answer was the truth.

“Cocksuckin’ motherfuckin’ leaches.” I had fangs of my own. “You are correct, sir. But there’s a lot that goes into it when someone writes a horror novel. Did you know that Frankenstein is a true story? There’s actually a castle that’s called Castle Frankenstein. Swear to God. It’s somewhere in .”

“I heard something like that.”

“The Discovery channel,” I sighed and nodded. “I think we were watching the same show.” I took the time to take another swig. “Do you know what Frankenstein really is? It’s a code name for a series of experiments that focused on the dissection of the human brain. This group of men got together in private so they could discuss things. They could say whatever they wanted as long as they were around each other so no one could hear and they kept it a secret.” My index to my lips. “Shhhh!” And then I let her fall. “I’m only gonna tell you. So you better keep quiet.”

“I promise,” Izzy swore to God. “I’m not gonna tell anyone.”

“Now.” I talked to him like he knew what I was talkin’ about. He should have been listening. “Some met in private to discuss equal rights. See, back then they was fearin’ the monarchy and religious slander. New ideas… some good, some bad, but everybody likes a good bad guy, now don’t they?”

“All I want to do—”

I knew what he wanted. “I know, son.” I knew it. “I know.” I swear to God, I did. “So you gotta think how long they been doin’ this shit. They start out with dead frogs, right? Then they try a live one. Then they use an animal… maybe a dog or a cat. And do you know what they do? They remove the skin from your skull while you’re still conscious.” Nodding, I did it slow just so my boy could see my eyes. I didn’t blink… serious and dead. “Then they got to get inside.” I gave him a knockin’ just so he could hear what I was sayin’. “Do you know the brain doesn’t sense pain? And that doesn’t sound right considering that the brain senses pain for the whole body. See, when you touch the brain, it’s not like touchin’ your arm.” I poked him one in the arm just for effect. “See, your brain controls all five senses, but it doesn’t actually feel the pain itself. So you can sit there and play with the fuckin’ thing all day. So why would someone do that? Probably, just to find out what makes you tick.”

“What are you talkin’ about?” It was the real story behind bigfoot. “Real zombies?”

“So what do you think Dracula is about? Who the fuck do you think that Charles Manson is?” I let the images flower in his brain. “Well, do you know what a ghoul is or what?” I was the man puttin’ bad thoughts in his mind just ’cause I wanted to. “I mean, everybody thinks they know what a ghoul is, but do they really know? Do you know what a ghoul is? Never thought about it until now.” Pausin’ moments ed until I told ’em the truth. “They’re one of their servants. They were the masters and the masters had servants. And do you know what they were doing? They were bringing their masters fresh dead so they could

experiment. Vampires… you got one vampire at the top and all the ghouls runnin’ around the graveyard to do his bidding. The only difference between vampires and Dr. Frankenstein is that Dr. Frankenstein tried to create life. He didn’t try to own it.” I could tell my words sunk in a bit. “A real-life horror story, better than the way they talked about it on TV or in them old movies. You wander away and then you’re gone.” I snapped my fingers. “Just like that.” Then I leaned in, making Izzy sink back into his seat just because my eyes told ’em to. “Then all of a sudden, you come walkin’ out of the woods and you don’t know. You don’t nothin,’ and all you know is that you should be dead. You think you’re lucky, but you ain’t. When the commotion dies down, one night you wake up with your hand on a handle and blood all around. Then do you know what they do? They cut off your head and pin you to your coffin. And you’re stuck there and you wonder why you can’t shut your eyes. But all you see is black.” So I sipped on the bottle lettin’ it ease on down my throat. “So I only got one question.” Clearing my throat, I asked him. “Who pullin’ your plug, boy?” Leaning in just a bit further, I poked him dead center squarin’ him up from eye to eye. “Who pullin’ you plug?”

“I don’t wanna be Isaac.” Izzy and a ram—just to let his blood spill on the sacrificial altar. “Don’t make the Bible bad.”

“So don’t make me Abraham, boy.” I felt ignorant about how my words sounded out loud. And then Izzy had to go fight Jack the Ripper at recess. “Ever heard of a Portuguese Man O’ War?”

A Wicked Snap and a Wink

I put my hand on the phone just before it rang. So how long? Thirty miles down the highway. Give me about forty-five minutes. A forty-five-minute drive. I picked her up and went back home. I felt the sun on my face. I didn’t care if she liked me or not. She was still thinking about me. Don’t suppress me,

motherfucker!

We were all outside: Denny, Garma, Izzy, Jess, and me. It was late in the afternoon, and Jess was cuddly with me rubbin’ on her belly. I slipped around her like a snuggly blanket wrappin’ around her shoulders. We had a fire going. But what kind of fire? Was it a big fire? Did it burn your face if you stood too close? Was there anything around that was catchy? Could you see the woods burning behind? I could only describe in question. And it was cold in Maine when the sun went down. The night sent chills down your spine. Flannels, sweatshirts, and warm blankets—while we gathered around the fire.

“Come on, nobody’s around.” Izzy and his springboard. “Can I just try it?”

“You can’t get drunk,” Denny told him. “You’re not even eighteen yet. You have to be twenty-one to drink. Twenty-one!”

“Come on, Dad, you drank when you were my age. I promise I won’t get drunk.”

“What are you, a four beer queer?” Denny spouted off at his son. I didn’t understand what he said, but I thought it was funny. But when I followed his eyes back to his wife, I didn’t think it was funny anymore. Garma had turned three shades to the wind.

“What about the pint of gin in your nightstand?” Jess thought her dad was a hypocrite. I think she just wanted to see her little brother shitfaced.

“You let Jess drink when she was my age.” Izzy was determined. “One sip. What’s that gonna do? Come on, please.”

“Do you want to grow up to be a drunk?” A father and his expectations. “Do you want to be a bagman walkin’ around with a bottle and a paper bag?” Hand movements, Jess’s whole family talked in movements of the hands and body. You didn’t have to listen to what they were saying to understand the underlying point. “Is that what you want to do with your life?”

“I think you might be overreacting.” Garma voiced her opinion. “One beer ain’t gonna kill him.”

“That’s what I thought, Mah,” Jess almost shouted. “Just let him have a beer. Maybe it will shut him up.” I had to get my face out of the way of her hips and her hand movements.

“Here.” Denny shoved his beer in Izzy’s face standing close too, but not too far away from his dad. Denny showed it to him before pulling it back. Then Denny took it with a swig and a frog in his throat. “Oh, you guys are a great influence on our son.” Denny stopped flipping burgers as he looked to me to back him up. “Can you help me out a little bit?”

I was like “Well, I didn’t drink ’til I was like eighteen.”

“You lie.” Jess moved under the covers. “Yes, you did.”

“Give him a fuckin’ beer.” I thought it would be good for Izzy. “What is it gonna matter in the long run?”

So Denny went “fine.” Then he gave Izzy his beer. “That’s the last time I ask you to kick the bottle.”

“Well, where we gonna go?” I wanted to go somewhere else. I didn’t know where it was, but I wanted to get the hell out of the Allagash.

“I don’t know where these crackers hang out.” Denny was irritated. He was mad, but he tried to act out his aggression. “I swear to God, I pulled into town thinking this was the cleanest place.”

“This is the cleanest place in this place.” Jess went rumbling into towns like suds rolling on a windy beach. She took a step forward away from me not really trying to tell me why as she floated behind me and on to the stairs where I heard her feet. She took the step and grabbed my handle in a twisting motion. “I swear I don’t even want to sleep in my own bed.” Then I heard the front door to the cabin open and swing shut with a thud that echoed in my head. I guess the filth that hung around the bar in Maine really did a number on her. She took them home with her.

“Well, you’re the one who wanted to go camping.” Denny tended to reduce the obvious. “Roughin’ it,” he sighed ready to buy some gasoline and light a match. “I hate the woods.”

“So what are we doing right now?” I was ready to take a hopscotch lesson. I had a piece of straw in my mouth because I felt like being reminiscent. “I was the

one who wanted to go to Hawaii. I fuckin’ hate Maine.”

“I don’t really give a fuck.” Garma was sitting in her chair just sipping her wine, three sips away from a fight.

“So how long you been fingering you slang?” Denny commented on his wife repressed hippy. “Afghans, cheap wine, and ruffled corners.”

“Oh, why don’t you get drunk and out?” Garma had enough waving him off like he wasn’t a thing. “You might be a better person.”

Jess was the only one still inside. I wondered what she was doing as the day turned into night. I knew she kept the night-light on for me. I waited for Jess by the fire. As soon as Jess left, Denny finally gave in on Izzy’s blood alcohol content. His son kept stealing beers from the cooler wondering if his dad was watching him drinking them. He covered the beer with his hand just to make his dad feel special. Denny knew, but he didn’t want to look. He just stood in front of the fire lost in his own world as the flames cracked a smoldering amber while our thoughts and wishes were carried above.

“So what is she?” Denny was trying to bait his wife into that fight. “She’s a classy lady. Someone ask me about my wife, I could only compliment her. I could never offer a bad word. Never. Never!”

Drifting off, I was caught staring at a picture of my A Nish Na Nu. I held her right beside my page. What could we fight about? I was looking for something while Denny and Garma were antagonizing each other in the background. I imagined us in ten years and only ten years, because that’s how old I saw us in

the future… no older. After that, I was first in line for a Spanish lube job while I rediscovered my midlife crisis. I pictured myself coming home one evening, ten years just following my footsteps breaking levels and sinking into the snow.

“So you don’t love me anymore?” Jess knew I was all about her.

“I mean, I love you right now. But ten years is a long time. Who knows what’s gonna happen? I mean I’m ’ my life away here.”

“Spanish lube jobs and a midlife crisis.” Jess knew how charming I was.

Me, I just wanted to fight somebody. I wanted to be mad, but I couldn’t get mad at my A Nish Na Nu. We had nothing to fight about. Plus, she had a bunch a hot friends and I had my whole life ahead of me.

Jess was like… “Stay away from my friends.”

Now that was something to fight about. I fell in love with my A Nish Na Nu every single night. And when I woke up in the morning, I fell in love with her again. Then a bird whistled.

“What friends?” Denny waved his hands in the air speaking louder than anyone else. “Who are we talkin’ about here? Did you or did you not?”

“It doesn’t really matter what she did,” Garma added to some conversation that I

had to pick up on. “But she did it.”

“If I was jealous and really believed all this bullshit…” The comments were flying hot from heated tongue half of which sailed clear over my head before setting the woods on fire.

“I’m sorry I’m not good enough. I’m sure you can do better than the abstract, because it looms above.”

“So go back to the…” Denny stopped himself before he could order the tail end of his thoughts into words. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to catch that one.

“All you do is want to fight.” Garma just sat there totally looming above her husband’s attempt to draw her into a verbal confrontation. “Sometimes the words you choose depend on your tone, and I’m not gonna climb up a tree to start dissecting clicks and whistles.”

“I know what I said.” Denny seemed quite attentive and insincere. “But honey, I didn’t mean it. I’m sure the kitten’s just fine just where she is.”

“I have better things to do than argue. Sometimes your mouth gets in front of your face before you plug in your brain. Don’t blow this out of proportion!”

It was all happening behind the scenes. Garma and Denny carried on with their own conversation as I zoned out. I ate raw meat because I liked it. Why do I like raw meat? Because it tastes good. It’s like likin’ somethin’ you want because you

like it. I was a badger using my claws to dig out a mouse from a little cubbyhole. And what’s a badger like? He’s tuff. The perfect animal. And when I came across that bear, I felt like a fur seal avoiding that first strike as a gray-and-white plane broke the surface of the water snapping jaws. I just kept swimming for the tail and hoped for the best. It was a fox hunt and I didn’t know if I was on the horse or the fox scurrying up and over a log. My breath was heavy and I could feel their hoof beats through the pads of my paws. Sweating, I didn’t have time to check my pulse. I was poetic and that meant not being specific. Jess went to bed early.

Later on—things went on, but I let the comments fly over my head. I didn’t have time for it, but it made me angry and I wanted to grab someone and beat them up. Simple, I wasn’t gonna’ be poetic about it.

“Keep away and start pacing around like a wild animal.” I was teaching Izzy how to fight and really getting into it. He liked to talk about fighting and drinking and stuff. And for only ten minutes he could be that tough guy. That’s what I was offering him. “Stay on the balls of your feet and to keep bouncing. You gotta shuffle like you playin’ basketball.” So I started to shuffle, bendin’ at the waist, watching him do the same damn thing. “You keep encircling ’em. You never stop moving.”

So I started movin’ around him. “But you keep thinkin’. Your minds starts racing and all you can do is focus on what’s in front of you. You see what he looks like and it s—his height, his weight, how quick he moves on his feet as he mirrors you after you jump stop and head the other way.” Izzy was intent. He was really listening to me and I think the liquor had got to his head. “There’s a difference between quickness and speed. Anyone can be fast. Quickness changes your direction. The heavier he is, the harder it is. If he’s bigger than you, you judge the distance. And when his balance shifts forward, you cut the space. You got that? That’s the only way to make up reach. It’s like a pit bull stiffening his muscles.” Then I stiffened my muscles. “Step inside, be careful of the knee, make as much damage, and then retreat. You got to go for their knee or their

cock. But sometimes a knee’s like a fuckin’ boulder smashin’ your face when you start tumblin’ downhill. With a big guy, you really can’t do anything else. Some guys you can hit in the head as many times as you want and it’s like hittin’ a rock. I got a hard head, but the difference is I’m not gonna wait around for you to hit me again. Get it? I like my nose where it is.”

I gave him a false lunge just to judge his speed, a lightning stutter-step, and a crossover dribble. If he was lookin’, it would have been two points and a fuckin’ walk. “So you just keep movin’ and waitin’.” Izzy relocated four cubits behind me and I was ready to tear up his ticket. “Don’t let him freak you out. , the human body can survive twenty-eight days without eatin’ and people get in car crashes and walk away harder than you can hit. And don’t dwell on your forehead when it hurts.” I slapped his front hand away just to let him know that I meant business. “Other than that, your guess is as good as mine. So what do you got to do? So what do you try do with anyone? You try to get him off balance. And that means you too. Don’t let him get you off balance. Don’t put your weight on your front foot for no longer than a jump stop. Use your front foot like a jab and never try kicking anyone above the waist.” I was Bruce Lee and his Jeet Kune Do. “You don’t hit with your instep. You fuckin’ stick it with the ridge, the ball, or the heel.” I aimed straight for the knee just to feel it bend. But Izzy was okay. “If you do it right, you feel their knee roll off your foot and hit the ground. Fight the hands and grab their clothes or their wrist or something and twist ’em.”

I didn’t give him a fake lunge this time. I closed the distance and grabbed his front hand like an empty pack of cigarettes that I flung in the backseat. “You’re gonna have to beat me with one arm so you yank ’em down to your size.” I twisted Izzy’s wrist. He let out some pain and fell to his knees. “Then you start poundin’ their face in with your free hand.” I wanted to. “And if their knee hits the ground, you aim for the ankle.” I was lookin’ at it. “You can kick it or kneel on it. It don’t matter.” Balls and bouncing balance, I was outta there as quick as a jiffy. “Don’t worry about the kung fu tricks. They don’t work.”

Brushing off the dust, Izzy didn’t say much. I could tell what he was thinkin’ by the way he moved. Slowly, he got up never breaking eye . He ed how I’d got to him and he could reproduce it. Izzy’s brain was like a sponge. He saw how I had moved from side to side. He saw how quickly I had moved on up behind him before I twisted his shit and thought about leavin’ him a cripple.

“Don’t wind up. And don’t lift your elbows. Your best defense is your jab.” I kept tryin’ to find that knee just teaching him some balance. “Keep kickin’ even if they don’t plant their front foot. And if you get in too close, your knees and your elbows. Short-range explosions.” I showed him the elbow just to make sure he was lookin’ out for it. Then I gave him a false lunge, and he backed up just like he should. “Keep your hands out in front of you so if he shoots you, you just shuffle your feet back and help him to the ground. But if you slip and end up on your back just grab, bend, and break. Don’t try to bench-press him. Just try to slip ’em off you.” It was like I was talkin’ to myself before I knew I grew up. “You got to , if someone is coming after you, he’s trying to hurt you. So you got to stop ’em as quick as possible.” In an explosion, Izzy tried to bend my knee. I didn’t expect it, but he was far enough away from me to know that shit don’t play. “If you hit him with the jab and he still keeps coming, you know he’s serious. So you got to take it up a notch.”

“That’s why God created preparatory schools and tennis.” Denny didn’t want any part of it. It was like someone pouring a bucket of water on your fuzzy blanket when you were trying to sleep in on a Sunday. As soon as I heard his voice, I stopped diggin’ while Izzy swam back to shore.

“So why do you fight?” I ignored Denny’s comment realizing that Izzy was into what I was saying. “You get irritated. You get mad. See these two fingers.” Izzy looked at ’em, but he didn’t want to smell them. “I call it the ‘stiletto.’ Cool name, right? It’s a way to cut somebody down to size no matter who they are.” Just stancing my saddle, I held ’em close so he could see them. “Your middle finger’s your guide. It’s like a sheath. It’s your handle. That’s the first thing that

makes .” Two fingers and a thumb—just wondering what my middle finger was doing, I wanted to show Izzy how to point. “Now your index finger… that’s the blade. You keep that stiff. Now when your middle finger makes with a soft area of the body, like the neck, it stretches the skin just enough to slip in the shank. You can use it up close or when you slip the jab. If you can touch his face, you can make him pack his bags. And if you do it right, you can stick your finger almost all the way in.” It was like a club. “It works kinda like a switchblade. No shit. You can take one of their eyes. You can grab their Adam’s apple and eat it.”

“Why don’t chu just tell him to take out a gun and shoot him?” Something was eating Denny.

“We don’t want to go to extremes. Denny, he’s still in high school. I don’t know if I’d condone that. I mean… that’s intent, right?” Denny shut right the fuck up as I kept imagining how I was going to continue. I was just pullin’ his chain. “Even bringing a gun to school is totally unnecessary. Jagged metal… a fuckin’ pencil. High schools are like prisons now.”

“Can’t say that I haven’t heard you say something like that before. Hey, Izzy, the next time you like a girl, all you have to do is grab her by the hair and take her upstairs. The cavemen did it just to get out of the cold.”

“Listen, I’m not tellin’ him to get drunk and start brawls. Usually, if someone wants to fight you out of the blue, they want to make it into a highlight real so they can go tell their friends. I’m telling him how to handle that kind of situation.”

“Well, I don’t even want him to get into those kinds of situations.”

“Well, that’s part of it too. But sometimes things just happen, and you’re stuck there and there’s nothing else you can do.”

“I don’t want him hanging around cheap bars and diggin’ for syringes.”

“Jesus Christ! What crawled up your ass? What bars? The kid’s just a teenager.”

“Exactly.” Denny felt his point. “He’s just a teenager. I don’t think any kids his age plan on foldin’ kneecaps.”

“You’d be surprised.” I was the world the way I wanted it. “With that Brazilian jujitsu shit.”

“This isn’t a cage match.” Denny got as serious as his face would allow him to talk shit to me. “He could seriously hurt somebody doin’ that. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you here?”

“Yah.” I totally wanted to go back to the Playboy Mansion, but mall security wanted to see my ID and hold me before I had a chance to blow them a kiss. “You don’t want me going on tour with a band.”

“Why do you always have to appear to be so wild?” Denny was sick of my “tough guy” image. But I had a reputation to uphold.

“Is this where I have to tell you how tough I am?” I was caught between a rock and a hard place. “What do you mean ‘appear’? I don’t appear to be anything. I’m not trying to act. I’m not tryin’—”

“What you’re trying to do is push me right now.” Interrupted I was. Denny mean to me… I’m mad. He briefly pointed to my one and only baby boy. “That’s my son, and I say when he goes to bed. I decide where he goes and who he associates with. And if I don’t like him, he’s not coming over my house. Don’t test my patience. I’ve about had it.”

“Why are you so upset?” I dulled down my bad.

“This is still my family and I’m the one who’s gonna have the last word.” I was the way and the highway. “That’s my son right there and you are dating my daughter. that!”

“Denny, why are you getting so angry?” Garma thought to interject into the conversation.

“Shut your mouth. I’m sick of listening to you.” When Denny said it, he sounded angry. But right after he said it, the expression on his face told everyone that he was sorry. But he had to carry on his tirade getting more infuriated with each word that he spoke. “This isn’t divide and conquer. When I say something, I don’t need you undermining what I’m trying to express.”

“It’s just like karate.” Garma and her open mind. “Self-defense. He’s not telling him to go out and ask for trouble.” It was self-defense.

“That’s not karate!” Denny felt he had a strong point. “I know what karate is. That’s not karate! That’s deliberately trying to injure someone.”

“It’s not actually like he’s gonna do it.”

“I could do it,” Izzy spoke when he definitely should not have.

“No, you couldn’t,” Garma gave it right back telling Izzy to shut up without specifically telling him.

“Listen to your mother.” Denny did so and agreed. “Do you know what they do to little boys like you in prison?”

“Not if they hit him first.” Legally speaking, I couldn’t help but voice my opinion.

“We don’t need your help.” Garma’s eyes hit me piercing. I knew I had stepped out of line because Garma never spoke to me like that before. “We have two children. You don’t have any yet. I think we know a little bit better than you do.”

“I’m sorry.” I told her. I was just lookin’ for the nearest exit. “I was just—”

“You’ve gone far enough.” Garma felt that she could tell me what to do. “There

is a line.” Maybe it was because she hadn’t done so before, but I was only gonna let her go so far.

“Oh, don’t start defending me.” Denny wanted to verbally tell his wife to go fuck herself. “Don’t turn me into your daily routine.” Commanding Garma’s full attention—a pack animal and a trained dog delving into the abstract. “You were young. You made a mistake. Don’t feed me that played-out line a bullshit!”

“Why don’t you tell everyone?” Garma hated hiding behind the code. “Why do you always have to bring everything up out of nowhere? I’m sick of dancing around your quizzical remarks. Don’t treat me like a child.”

“Aah… all this time. All this time, I thought…”

“Why don’t you bring up the time your mother called me a gutter C, U, N, and a T who wasn’t smart enough to finish high school? I was mortified. Talk about a vicious vulgar thing to say. I can’t believe your mother is still alive. I wish she fell down and broke her hip. I hate that goddamned woman.”

They didn’t what started the fight. That was not the issue. They just got bent out of shape, started rolling down that hill, and couldn’t apply the brake. They couldn’t say what they were really fighting about so they fought about everything else.

“Don’t bring my mother into this,” Denny almost shouted. “She never forced you to do anything.”

“You’re condemning me for something that I can’t change.” Garma tried to play the adult. “What if I hadn’t told you? I’m not feeding into your childish little ploys.”

“Stop fighting me. I refuse to indulge in your ‘what if’ scenarios.”

“I’m not fighting with you. We’re discussing.”

“So what are we discussing?” Denny didn’t know.

“At this point…”

“I’m not gonna be the one to dance around your quizzical remarks. You know what we’re discussing.”

“You know what? I don’t think we’re discussing the same thing. I think when we get back—”

“I know what that means.” Denny cut her off. “And ya, I think we’re discussing the same thing. I’ve had it. I think I’ve had it.” Denny stormed off, talking loud not really caring who was listening until he had a chance to calm down. “That whole time… that bitch. And that isn’t even my kid.”

Garma couldn’t be stoic. She had to show some emotion, and she did. I saw it when she briefly glanced over at Izzy and me. She tried to hide it, but we knew. I

could see it in the tears forming in her eyes. As far as Izzy and I were concerned, we were just standing there. I thought that the right thing to do would have been to take him for a walk. That would have been the responsible thing. But he had already heard enough and I couldn’t change the past.

I knew that in the case of families that don’t deal with problems on a daily basis, all of a sudden a problem like this arises and in the snap of your fingers, they separate and never even think about getting back together. One minute they’re in love and the next thing you know, they treat each other like a casual acquaintance. Fighting—it happens on many levels and in the many stages of life. And as Garma made her way to the porch and up the stairs, I wondered if Izzy knew that after this trip his family would never be together again.

“Don’t worry, Izzy. They don’t mean you.” I knew it was the first fight Izzy had ever seen his parents having, and I knew he had taken most of it in. I could tell because he was silent, all inside of his head.

“So where’s Jess right now?” Izzy’s mind wandered in elliptical patterns.

“Oh, she’s fuckin’ around with stupid.” I was wonderin’ what Jess was doin’ upstairs. Then I thought about Jack the Ripper and that motherfucker that just kept fuckin’ with me at recess. “Hey, what I told you about slippin’ the jab.” The ridge, the ball, or the heel—I just wanted to slip the jab in there. “Well, don’t do it unless you get really, really fuckin’ pissed, all right?” With a snap, a wink, and an index pointing to where I wanted him to go, I said “Go get ’em.” I didn’t want to mention anything else.

The Other Side of the Crib

“What’s up, baby girl?” I just wanted to sit beside my A Nish Na Nu. “How’s it hanging?”

“Where is everybody?” Jess was upstairs in my playroom just thinking about things. I saw her sitting at the foot of the bed as I sat beside her. Jess was quiet. She was like that every once in a while. Jess was sad, but I don’t think she knew why.

“Don’t worry about them.” I wasn’t gonna upset her. “They’re off into their own lives.”

“I don’t know if I feel too good. I don’t think I digested it well.”

“Well, if I could jump inside your tummy,” I said as I opened my palms to rest on her belly, “I’d tell everybody to be quiet just for you.”

“I don’t need you bein’ a bad influence.” Quirky, funny, sweet… that was my Jess. I loved the way she smiled.

“Don’t fuck with me, A Nish Na Nu.” A slight wind, so soft—like her skin—was brushing up against my nose. Jess made me smile. “I just wanted to let you know that I can be charming if I wanna.”

“Jamie,” she sighed a little huffy puff. “I’m scared.”

“Come on, baby,” I whispered so sweet just livin’ in a nice kinda mood. “I just ordered another round. Come on, honey. It isn’t that bad. You gotta mellow out. You got to take people as people. These people, you know, they live in the woods. You know, they go out and they hunt and they fish, and they do that and that’s how they feed themselves. They don’t gut much up here and its first come, first serve. They look at us like we’re outsiders. It’s probably not a good idea, but you gotta make yourself at home with them and say, ‘I’m not afraid of you. I’m cool. Just take me for whose I am.’ Everything else comes. Maybe if you showed some of that beauty and that personality I fell in love with… well, hey, maybe things will work out for ya.”

“Jamie.” Jess looked at me like I wanted to kiss her. “Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid.”

The Manchurian Candidate

“I woke up again,” he opened my wondering eyes as if my lips were moving. This time… on this day I woke up. But he couldn’t be positive if he woke up from a nightmare that I had from the day before. He dreamt of a snowy, white plain stretching from my feet sunk deep in the snow out to the hill up in front, seemingly miles away. A blood trail following my footsteps leading past the naked trees and over that hill into a place that I had never seen before and could never imagine without actually retracing my steps. With the smell of blood coursing through my brain, I touching my face because it felt cold, but my lips and my tongue felt like they were on fire. And as I saw my own steps below my fingers. I knew where the trail of blood started and ended. The answer was right beneath my nose, a drenching warmth upon the red of fingertips.

I loved this girl once and she turned me down… and he wanted to kill her. To tell you the truth, I don’t know if I loved her or he loved the way she looked when

she was dead. I how she was the bright of day overtaking the snowy white that melted the ice. I could feel her skin on my lips as I dreamt about her without actually seeing her… how my hands reached upon her face gently stroking her hair to the aft. I never touched her, but I imagined that I did. I imagined that she liked me, but I was too shy to talk to her. But I had so many things to say. We had so many places to go. I had so many aspirations that my head could hardly handle feeling that consuming warmth tucked inside me, numbing… numbing the tips of my fingers. My hands were cold.

I used to talk to her every now and again as I laid there upon my bed. I’d ask her questions and she’d answer. She’d answer me. I swear I could feel her breath on my face every time she spoke. I didn’t what we talked about, but we talked for hours laughing… joking… crying. I lived through her. I lived in her dreams. She was my heaven, my eternal residual nightmare.

I saw her this one time in some real place far ahead, but so far behind. Me, I was driving… nowhere. I saw her with her steps lit up in front of her like an aura of an angel as my side put one foot in front of the other. Weights upon slight roll of neck, I could feel my pupils dilate as my tongue slipped upon the inner grooves of my lower jaw. I swear I could almost taste her milk.

Wrong directions, waiting and watching. I followed her. I turned around pulling my black hearse down the same road I had just left, creeping behind her like a hungry wolf heavy pants to heel. I followed my footsteps sunk deep in the snow approaching that hill still so far off and waited. I just waited there. I witnessed her turn and stare almost as if she felt me watching her hair. I think she felt me there before she even knew my stare. Locked across a snowy white plain I could see her in my lair. I glanced and stared oh’ so fair the saliva upon the corner of my mouth slowly willing itself over my lip’s edge unable to look away like a wolf approaching the hare. She was the first to look away blood rare taking one step at a time to where she would meet my mare.

So I let her walk watching her legs centering rippling muscles all the way up to her back and to her shoulders. She was perfect muscular and petite. I swear, I talked to her a thousand times before I even took my foot off the brake. The road crept under my feet, my black extension of muscle inching forward coming near to walking speed. Then, I saw her glance over her shoulder feeling me close behind her. I was right where I needed to be, one paw parting the tall grass of green field lurching forward with my head hung low with three paws in toe keeping pace and taking in my focus encoming the silence of the wind brushing my face.

There was a parking lot up just ahead. “Primrose Lane,” I had read the sign before having driven by once or twice. I ed the signs weathered dry paint, slightness of brush faded by the sun. But no matter how many hares I saw there, I never gave a care to see her hair flowing in the winds of breathing air. A brush and a sweet shift of her hips took her upon my magic carpet. One step before she took another, blowing my wind as I huffed and puffed seeing her to the door that forced my drive to a slowing foreboding stall.

In and out, I hoped she be quick. Seconds formed the minutes, hours divided my time as I waited for her, not really focusing on anything I could see or visualize. That is until I saw a vision’s wave a window’s blur. I saw myself walking up to that very same door and going inside as I quietly sat down and waited my turn. I became lost in the flowing wave of her hair settling down to the center of her back and across her shoulders. A stroke and a cuffing hand to the aft pre-empted my arousal. I saw her there.

“So what do you want to do?” Feminine voices forced me a slave to the cuff of my hand.

“The usual,” an object answered crossing my line of sight.

“I want to give you a ride home,” I answered finding myself parked in some space, my black muscle seeing her beautiful to the side of my window.

“You sure you don’t mind?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to, just gazing upon the empty enger seat before I found her again. I saw her cross upon the shade of a dirty windshield as she found her way to my side and opened the door. She opened the door and got in. Finding her beside me, I felt the thud of the slamming hatch jerking my mind forward as if she fell and suddenly whacked her head. He forgot what happened after that.

I woke up again. I was in a car, I think. I think I was in my car. The thunder forced my head to side enger’s Tag Along. “Why won’t you love me?” One listless memory faded into the dream. I had to wipe my nose.

“I think I do,” she was about to cry glancing at me every so once in a while but looking away when I tried to reach her. “But I’m not sure.”

I didn’t know where I was. I guess he was still in my bed staring over that whitened glaze just licking the blood off his fingertips. Footsteps finding me ahead while I still wondered what was beyond the hillside. It was too far in front and I did not want to turn around to see if she was behind me. I wanted to kiss her like the first time I drove her home. But I couldn’t where she lived. I lying in my bed just cradling her as I forgot about everything else. I forgot about when we met. I forgot about when I drove to see her. I forgot about the time I pulled up to her house and listened.

“Who knows what’s gonna’ happen tomorrow?” She cried feeling like she was boxed in. Maybe he had come on too strong, but I couldn’t doing it.

“With you,” I whispered to no one but myself feeling the metal I hid in my pocket. “All I think about is tomorrow.” Right then, I didn’t know. My intentions reached beyond the realm. “And when you leave,” he could hardly speak fearing that she hated me. “I feel… I feel like I’m locked inside a room.” He could barely feel myself whisper just gazing forward into nothing. “And no matter how many doors I open, I can’t find you.”

“I think you should just take me home.” She huddled into a corner shuffling as close to the enger side door as she could… as far away from me as she could. Then he blinked his eyes again and she was gone.

“I loved this girl once,” I said. “And she turned me down. So I wanted to kill her.” The next dream… I focused on the next dream. “But I couldn’t.” I couldn’t see myself do it. No matter how much it hurt, no how many times I dialed *67 before I called her up just to hear her voice before I hung up the phone. I couldn’t bring myself to. I ed this one time when I was happy and she was there. For the life of me, I can’t where we were or what we were doing. She was walking up ahead of me as I caught up to her, gently taking her by the forearm and swinging her around. And all I could see was her eyes staring up at me from that short stalk. I that I was happy just finding myself lost inside her, but as hard as I tried I couldn’t relive it. I could only my footsteps sunk deep in the snow as I followed the blood trail. I her tucked deep into my arms where no harm could come to her, and I felt safe just because she was there.

“Owwah,” I heard her whimper as if I was a newborn cradled to her bosom. Then she asked me, “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” my voice quivered. “Nothing. I’m just glad I’m here.”

He blinked twice and there I was parked on that same road where I first saw her, but she wasn’t there anymore. She didn’t feel me watching her. She didn’t look back. And all l I saw was an empty sidewalk. Two hands gripped a tight wheel as pulled myself forward, not really feeling depressed, but somehow indifferent. Indifferent… I was indifferent to pain. I was indifferent to life… empty as my stomach searched for nourishment. Every movement I made, however slight, had no purpose in the grandest of schemes. Every gesture seen upon a peripheral plane obscured by the dirt of my windshield. Shapes of objects, some caught in step while figures withered in the slight cool autumn wind.

Calmness of breath and intent, I wondered where she lived. I guess it was where she was, and I ed where I thought I might find her… find something that I lost along the empty dirt road. Maybe, I could retrace my steps and figure out where things went wrong. Maybe they didn’t go wrong. Maybe I was right where I was supposed to be. Maybe… just maybe, I’d see her there waiting for me to come home to her, walking up those stairs into her bedroom, kneeling down at the foot of her bed, and blowing my wind in her hair.

Not knowing that I had shifted into first gear, I started the ball rolling down the hill just retracing my steps, down the street and onto the main drag. Silent, I was so outgoing when things were silent, but underneath I was calm just letting my body do the walking while he took my muscles there.

Anxiousness, here and then gone upon the serpent’s tongue as my right foot applied the brake and my shift took my wheel a left handed turn down a hill. I let it roll. And as my roll did find his soul, the lights up above sprung to life. It was getting dark just in time to put the children to bed after supper. Another left and a quick right, I was almost there until I was. There was a sign that read out to me in the sweetest lips of a thirsting child showing me which way to go. “Blueberry Boulevard,” I felt his lips move feeling my stomach all a butterflies. Tenseness

of shoulders as I took the next right turn. Rolls turned my wheels half way up and to The Last House on the Left. Turning, oh’ so turning, I came. I crept. I stopped, gently pulling in slow and to the right handed curb of bloody fingertips.

I knew which house it was because it was there and so was he. I had driven bye once or twice before. The home, a white shaded by night was hidden between the average, but sticking out like a beacon inside my brain. I didn’t look. I didn’t. I dared not for fear of unwritten information sailing across a plane and seeing her eye to eye. I heard… I heard children playing. I heard the front door open and shut with a bang and a shudder. I heard a voice.

“When are we gonna’ put these kids to bed?” A manly voice of the head of household did yell from lofty perch partially hidden by a closed front door. “Now honey, don’t stay out too late.”

“Oh Frank,” I heard an old feminine gasp, breathing air. “She knows what her curfew is.”

“I hope he isn’t like the last guy.” Frank’s voice sung. “What a weirdo he was.”

Misunderstandings, I thought holding back everything that I had inside.

“Oh Frank,” a mother voice did supersede. “Shut up.”

“He wasn’t weird,” she sung to me as I saw her standing once before. “He was just quiet.”

“Two thirty,” Frank chimed in again. “No later.” It was like an ultimatum.

“Frank,” motherly voices did so address. “They’re just kids.”

“Kids… my ass!”

I saw and I heard… a car door slamming shut, children being ushered inside, moaning and groaning… a thudding slam of the front door. I heard my ignition and whining wheels back on. And then I felt the quiet again… silence.

I came upon a drift just sitting there alone with only my thoughts and my mind. I ed conscious and understanding, wanting of emotion that I so wished in experience contradicting my indifference.

“Owwah,” I heard her whimper as if I was a newborn cradled to her bosom. Then she asked me, “What’s wrong?”

“Who is he?” I asked her without her seeing me.

“Frank… what a weirdo he is?”

“Why don’t you love me?”

“Frank… he only lets me stay out ’til two thirty.”

“I hate Frank.”

“I don’t like him either.”

“What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing… I’m just glad I’m here.”

“So what time do the kids go to bed? I don’t think I’m ready to be a father.”

“Two thirty… no later.”

“What time is it now?”

“It’s time for you to get off your ass.” I heard that whisper inside the wind as her car rolled bye me waiting. “Who knows what’s gonna’ happen tomorrow?”

I knew I couldn’t kill her. I knew it. I tried to imagine it, but I couldn’t. So I thought I’d kill somebody else instead. So I closed my eyes and just sat there

squeezing my teeth together so hard that I could feel them slightly shift, sliding past grooves and exposed bone upon hungry breath and pant. The shimmering of tenseness overtook my face. Lips quivered finding… almost seeing her in front of me like he was the pent up coil of a rattlesnake ready to lash out the lunge. I sensed her warmth upon the fire of her pit moving away. I swear, I could smell her. And as I opened my eye, I felt the sensation, the reddest eyes around the black that colored the night glaring back at me upon the road. Two eyes to the red winking at me at the far end of a road, my right foot to the brake. And I wasn’t gonna’ break. But I swear to god above, I was gonna’ break something. It was almost like I was being brainwashed. Colors that once held no meaning seemed to matter. A flash of peaceful blue upon a sea of raging torment as I drove by a green field. Green meant death. Yellow made me laugh at it. White made me want to cry while all I wanted to do was fuck the blues away. The red eyes a surrounding black asphalt told to me stop… “Go back.” Lighted flashes upon bare backs revealed humps colored a powder blue. And that’s all I needed to see. Blue humps flashing red just like the burning reflection that was shaded upon the windshield in the glimmer of the faintest light. I was on a one-way street, too shallow for a three-point turn and run. So I went with it staying far enough behind so no expectant eyes would see my roll unless they really, really looked for it.

And then the red eyes where now mine and the surrounding black encomed me, comforting me. I could see two shapes through the back window just above the red eyes that reflected upon the road up ahead. One leaned into another as I watched and pictured myself in the driver’s seat. I wondered what they were saying to each other, if anything at all. No words… just the warmth of her body rubbing up against me as I put my arm around her. I felt her close to me just like I always did. And for that moment, I wondered what was going to happen next.

RED EYES… flaring anger as I jammed my foot on the break, honking my horn and letting them know just how pissed off I was. I sailed right ed as the car I had been following took a left-handed turn down a narrow and secluded path. The road in front, now baron and empty to my plane of consciousness and the only red eyes I saw were my own as I glanced at my reflection in the rearview mirror. “Turn around,” a whisper so that only my reflection could hear. In the

blankness of space, I found myself upon a narrow path with the only the dirt beneath my roll to hide the sound of revving engines absent of lights upon my heading. Up ahead… I’d find myself somewhere… up ahead.

“Take your goddamned hands out of my spine and my head!” I told them to, but they wouldn’t let it go. Mr. Brooks wanted me to be a killer and Bill Bulebush wouldn’t take no for an answer. Anger was not enraged violence and they would leave me alone before I had to ask them again.

An embankment past the arms of pine dragging across the skin of my vessel, I crept along the path to the top of a perch upon. I was just following my footsteps. And then I saw her through my windshield. Up ahead, fifty feet or so, twin white lights highlighted the armpits of still bark illuminating the dirt and hair upon the forest floor. So I retreated, throwing my stick into neutral and letting her roll back down the hill where I would leave her there.

Silence, I heard the silence that I so enjoyed with only the crickets rubbing coarseness and the wind to chill my bones. Gazing into the enger side seat, I saw my handle and my Tag Along. Red eyes upon green plastic with only a slit for my mouth, big floppy ears, and a space for my brain. Two hands did see my hat to my lap as I told myself how to put it on, pulling it over my face to hide from the edge of sanity. So was I sane? Perspective and persona are always at odds. Some say insanity is closest to genius a god could feel himself wise. Was I wrong? Was it wrong for a god to claim himself superior to the infinite masses of sheep? I just couldn’t comprehend the fact. Chimps were a dime a dozen and I did treasure my silence just listening to the wind blow through her hair. My handle, I felt it as I reached for an opening popping the hatch wide fucking open. And when I got out, all I could see was red.

“Baby, two seconds,” I heard its voice intruding upon my silence as I hid between the lengths of beings. “I got to take a piss before I fuck. I can’t be thinkin’ about pissin’ when I’m about to fuck.”

“You are so perverted,” I heard her squeal, but I could not see her. “You better plan on polishing your own shoes tonight, buddy.”

Foreplay, I was about to turn the lights out before I saw myself in the mirror chanting… Bloody Mary. Only if I had my way with her. Crumbling leaves trampled under footsteps coming closer. I was waiting for it. I was gonna’ cut it off the head and tell the highlighted silhouettes to say goodbye to your shoe polish. Footsteps, I saw my footsteps sunk deep in the snow before I saw him walk. Walk, it thought he might, but I wasn’t as sure as it was. I felt it just to see it go.

“Shit,” I heard it stumble in the dark. “Didn’t see that coming.” A pull and a zip followed a flowing running river. The filthy, putrid scent, a snapping twig, and ruffle, it might have thought to force lungs to squeeze out, “hello.” I was close enough to breathe on him.

Bloody Mary . . . Bloody Mary. A faint glance over shoulder’s sheep, brown eyes saw me standing there fiddling with my handle running my thumb along the blade. Damning the falls, an object did turn round, taking one step gazing all around and back again, and that’s when I saw him inside my mind. Chimps a click, click, clicking inside of my head broke cherished silence.

“Who are you supposed to be anyway?” There was no response. Then, it thought to speak to me again, its eyes focusing on the green. “Hey, if this is your property, man, I’m sorry. We’ll just pack up and go.”

“Shhh,” an alien to the woods raised the blade to slits of mouth so the object of my affection could see it shine. And it saw me shine as bent elbows, stiff to side,

found my palms fining the stars. I left it up in the air.

Trembles of skin and vibrations under galloping hoofs, game hollered before I even had a chance to grab the object by its shoulder ramming my handle in pleasure of upward stroke. I aimed for the spot between the legs just below the belly, aggressively shoving it on in. It screamed out loud and jaws dropped hitting the ground. I knew that he liked it, but it screamed. Knee to spine crackling like the leaves rolling in the wind, my free hand covered game’s mouth muffling sheiks that found my ears in utter pain and torment. A stiff drag and a silent gasp, I heard the silence once again, hushing sheep choking on the red fluid spewing from open mouths seeping into the filth right where it lay a heaping mass, sporadically jerking like a gutted fish. I felt beautiful.

Bloody Mary . . . Bloody Mary. She left a light on for me calling for him to stand above spreading my wings and following the flame. Approaching, ruffling the dirt under my souls however slight the noise might have been. Maybe, she thought I was him and he was me. But I wasn’t him. I was something much, much greater.

To the back and around the side, I found my handle popping ajar and filling in the driver’s seat. A slam and a door to the shut, I was there and she was beside me. And as I tilted my head her way, she saw me again. And I saw her just like the first time I ever laid eyes on her.

She knew right away that I wasn’t me and she wasn’t her. Instantly, she reached for a way out. And as she pulled away, I thought to keep her there, my right fist violently corralling the horse’s hair pulling her back in. So I thought to let her go pushing her across the seat and to an open doorway. “Shut the hatch,” I whispered for her to… “SHUT THE FUCKIN’ HATCH!” And so she did.

“What do you want?” She could barely speak through the spit showering the dashboard.

“Shhhh,” my free left hand found my handle pressed against her eye slightly feeling the dig. “Don’t you me?” I pulled her close with my blade pressed against a powder blue sea finding myself parked in some space, my black hearse seeing her to the side of my window in some moment in time. But she didn’t recognize me.

“NO!” She screamed a stranger to me scolding me a little child. “Where are you taking me?”

“I just want to give you a ride home,” I wanted to cut her eyes out.

I loved this girl once and she turned me down. I wanted to kill her, but I couldn’t. So I thought I might kill someone else instead. So I slipped out the back door. It was left open for me.

Chapter Four

The God Machine

King Tut

A nyways… the next day I woke up with a vicious hangover. I was either gonna go back to the bottle or go get something to eat. So I said, “Hey, I think I should go get something to eat.” And if I was gonna eat, I knew I wouldn’t drink because my stomach would feel all sloshy and it would make it even worse. But bread was in order. It would absorb the alcohol. Because I don’t know how much I drank, but I knew it was a lot. I was out all night. To tell you the truth, I seeing this girl and I could not for the life of me what she looked like. I goin’ up. I seein’ her there. I foolin’ around with her. I mean, I hoped I didn’t fuck her. I mean, Jesus Christ! Imagine, your girlfriend tells you she’s pregnant and she’s all bent out of shape, and you go out one night and get all wasted and have sex with another girl. But anyways, it was kind of a blur. I didn’t know if I really did it or not. The only proof that I had actually left the house and dropped her off was that I still had an ounce of weed in my pocket. Other than that, I mean who knows what happened. But I thought I’d keep that part to myself.

I’m sure Jess didn’t wake up in the best of moods. When I woke up, she wasn’t beside me and I was sittin’ there contemplating. So I got my ass up and got into gear, went down, grabbed some bread, and you know. Everybody was up. I could hear them outside. And as I gazed out the window, I was like… there they are. Izzy was runnin’ around while Jess was playing catch with her younger brother. I think they were throwing around her Nerf football. Jess liked being athletic. Garma was in her lawn chair drinking her wine, and Denny was thinking about

the fire.

A whoop, whoop . . .

“Did you tell your dad or your mom?” I was shocked. I didn’t walking outside. Jess and I were off in our own little world hiding ourselves behind the SUV so we could keep our conversation private. My thoughts were very fuzzy, and I wasn’t exactly sure what Jess and I were talking about. So I tried to get the gist of it by following the conversation from that point on.

“Well, my mom knows.” I just heard the way Jess’s lips formed words. “My dad doesn’t know yet. Neither does my brother.”

“Do you want to tell them?”

“I was gonna tell you about it the other night at the bar when we were alone and then the next day we could tell them together.” A left-handed downward motion extending her fingers as if she was trying to whoa a bucking horse before she brushed the mud off its coat. You could tell she was concerned due to the tone in her whimper. “But that woman… and then she started talking about—”

“David’s bambino.” I ed speaking on it in jest.

“Shhh,” Jess almost erupted her right index finger aiming for my lips to stop me before they chanted the woman’s curse. “Don’t say that. You don’t want to talk about things like that.”

“It’s puttin’ bad thoughts in my mind.” I was far from joking. “I just want to forget about the whole fuckin’ thing. Focus on something else entirely.”

“We need to stay positive.” Jess didn’t want to that night either. “My mother knew this creepy lady once who said you should picture yourself inside a white room. No windows. No doors.”

Four padded walls—my mind traveled back. How did she know what I was writing about? Did she read it already? Did she follow me to my mother’s house? Did she read the writing on the wall? Was it a coincidence? Was I overreacting? I was overreacting. I thought about it once more before I wrote it down. I was overreacting. For a second, I forgot why my mind drifted off. And then it came to me… white magic. I wasn’t sure if that was the best way to shed a hex, praying for a curse that saw how it comes back three times.

“Baby,” I took a soothing tone, slow and breathing. “I don’t know if that’s gonna work. But I agree we need to stay positive.”

“Well, my mother wants us to get married.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” Ten years was a whole other story and I still wanted to be a rock star.

“She’s excited.” Jess ignored me and just kept talking focusing on a more positive train of thought. “She just says she thinks she’s too young to be a grandmother.”

Then I ed why I was shocked. I ed it like my eyes were twin blinds pulled shut and then released before briskly traveling to the top frame of the windows. “Does she want you to keep it?”

“Of course.” Jess gave me a whack. “Don’t say that. I never thought about not keeping it. And my mother is so against that.”

“So she’s happy?” I wanted to make sure.

“I don’t know. It just came to us as a surprise. I think she’s happy.”

“Are you happy about it?” I stressed the “you” in the previous sentence probably wondering the same thing she was wondering.

“I don’t know. Yah, I guess I’m excited about it. Aren’t you excited about it?”

“I don’t know. I guess.” I didn’t know what to think. It didn’t set in yet. “Ya, I’m excited about it.” I was kinda excited. “Well, when do you want to break it to your dad?”

“I guess we could do it now.”

“Right now?” I wanted some time to think about what I was going to say. But

before I could form the words and hang them on my wall, Jess walked right over to her father. I didn’t even get a chance to hug her. At least I thought I should have hugged her. It was a special moment, and I totally forgot. It made me feel like I wasn’t putting in a good enough effort.

Denny was tending to the fire just waiting to flip some sausages on the grill. Jess walked up behind him and gave him a right knee to the back of his left. Denny’s knee buckled as he made an awkward sound and turned around. There was Denny’s little girl. They both stood there for a moment looking at each other, wondering who was going to speak first.

“Dad, its okay to grow old.” Jess had a glow. “You know.”

“Are you pregnant?” He didn’t want to hear what she was going to say. Denny looked as shocked as I was. He was off on an island somewhere all by himself.

“The old man has a sixth sense.” Garma was starting to develop some wrinkles.

It was the tiniest movement of her face that made Jess’s hair bounce. She had to tell him, yes, but she didn’t want to. She dreaded the day that she would have to tell her father that she was pregnant. Time and time again, she imagined doing the same thing as a teenager. She kept it from him mostly. There was close a call here or there, but she basically was responsible about it. It was the tiniest movement of her face that made her hair bounce. The answer was yes, and she was so beautiful about it.

It was like thinking about something a thousand times before you actually do it —the building point to a moment. She knew it and it was a relatively good

situation, so Jess felt confident about her father’s reaction. You should have seen some of her other boyfriends. At least I had a career.

So for the moment, I forgot how shocked I was and focused on Denny. What was he gonna do? Denny just stood there. He didn’t yell at her like Jess had pictured it when she imagined telling him. And then in a slight movement, he told her how he felt. You could see it in the expression on his face. It was like a birthday party and Jess had just opened the best present she could ever imagine. It was the flushed expression on her father’s face when she told him. Jess was so happy that she made her father happy. And he was. And then all of a sudden, he blinked and let it go. Jess jumped into his arms and that was good enough.

“Forget about the Porsche.” Garma was consumed by thoughts of Denny’s postponed midlife crisis. “No girls under thirty are coming over to babysit.” It wasn’t like Garma was jealous. She was just frustrated, even though she made an attempt to stay upbeat.

Jess and her dad were lost in a world of their own. He gave her a squeeze just like he had a thousand times before. He watched her grow up every single time he hugged her.

Izzy was a little shit. He didn’t give a fuck. He was bored. That was about it. Then I said, “Hey, do you know how much you’re gonna be able to get away with now? The next thing you know, you’re gonna be takin’ honeys’ on dates and slippin’ ’em out the door before your parents get up in the morning.”

At least he smiled. You had to catch Izzy with some kind of interest. Girls… that was an easy way to catch his interest. I liked girls. I know Izzy liked lookin’ at ’em. It was just something to bring him into the conversation, almost imagining that he was the bad guy in the movie. Now he could go out and be a pothead.

Granddad was gonna be busy. Garma wasn’t gonna be living at home anymore. They split Izzy up on weekends. Then Jess and me could turn over the changing table. Well, Dad said that you’re not a very good mother. War over the baby. That would make Garma call a defense attorney. Well, tell Denny, if he doesn’t have the time to spend with his grandson . . . well, I would be more than happy to babysit. You just couldn’t play that card too often. I didn’t plan on babysitting at all. That would make it easy on my rock star. And Jess wasn’t that kind of a girl anyways. We liked to party.

“Did you take a test or did you just miss your period?” Denny let his daughter go as her feet hit the ground.

“Dad, I went to the doctor.” Her tone was sweet and cute.

“Soooo.” Unsure and rechecking equations, he asked, “You’re pregnant?”

“Yah, I think so.” Jess was sure she went to the doctor’s office, but Denny’s uncertainty made her feel the slightest bit unsure. She almost shelled it.

“That’s…” Denny stuttered, “that’s great.” Denny thought that was great, but he had to take a moment to himself.

“Oh my god!” I burst out in laughter. It was such a cute little family scene.

I drifted off. The conversation went on, but I only chimed in. Denny commented on the changes we had to make in our lifestyle while Garma agreed. Izzy tried to

be funny. He wasn’t. But the mood was a happy one so everyone just laughed it off. I wasn’t laughing. At least not yet. I was wild and reckless. I liked to laugh. I did. I wanted to live inside a spa while I had celebrities feed me fruits and vegetables. Roughage, sometimes I liked it rough. I didn’t know what I was gonna do and I loved surprises. Jess liked to be athletic, but she wasn’t gonna be able to hardly do anything for nine months. It was probably gonna kill her just sitting there. She was gonna be such a bitch too. One little extra ounce of fat and the girl goes to the gym for like three hours straight. She couldn’t do that anymore, so I guess I was gonna let her have her fun now. My life was a vacation. I didn’t want to coax her into it. Just takin’ it easy when she’s all excited, I was gonna have to find a way to make her smile. I was gonna have to do all that kinda stuff like a good daddy should. I had no plans on getting married ever, and here was this girl and if I asked her to marry me now, I guarantee she’d probably say no, almost because of the circumstances. It was almost induced, like I had to. So that was out of the question. That was real to me. And where I was I don’t think that there was any place that I could buy her a ring. So what was I gonna do? So what was I gonna do? I’d think of something.

Shoes… she loved her shoes. Jess loved her shoes, let me tell ya. She had so many shoes, I swear ta. Back out on the ranch out west, we had a whole room just devoted to her shoes. And don’t even get me started on the fuckin’ designer fuckin’ clothes. Holy shit! I got sick just talkin’ about it, because I was not gonna fuckin’ take a month to go fuckin’ shoppin’ in Europe. She bitched at me about it, and I eventually gave in. She was wonderin’ about it, and I said, “Let’s go.” I just wanted to make her happy, and when she smiled, she meant it. It was a long trip on my way to Europe. She didn’t pack anything, and I told her not to worry about it. So we went there just to go baby shoppin’. I’ll find something. You’ll buy something. I didn’t even tell her where we were goin’. We ended up spending like a month there just for her to go shopping for fuckin’ clothes and shoes. On the way back, we had so much luggage, you could tell that the attendants weren’t really appreciative. But that was beside the point. I always knew what made Jess happy. So I just thought I’d take her out.

“Do you want to go for a ride?” I asked. “We’re goin’ to town.”

And then her brother asked me, “Can I come?”

“There’s no room for squirts on the little bus,” I responded as if I was being serious tellin’ him to stay home. “Me and the chick gotta go lay an egg.”

“Oh no!” Jess sighed, movin’ in the same general direction as I was. She came to the enger-side door and pulled her open. “Here we go.”

“Let’s go for a ride,” I came to the driver’s-side door and opened it wide up. Jess jumped in on the opposite side as I promised her, “I’m gonna make this special.”

Denny was excited. You could see it in his face. His cheeks were flushed. All he could think about was a little pygmy runnin’ around. It was almost like he was the expectant father just wondering how he was going to have the stamina to run one of ’em down. I could see him already organizing and planning on taking over, and then he’d start giving me speeches about what a horrible father I was and how I didn’t spend enough time in Asia searching for pygmies. “Hey, we were plannin’ on goin’ fishin’ later.” His smile was almost big enough to make me smile. “Later, we’re going to have a cookout again, so I don’t know when you’re plannin’ on getting back?”

“I really don’t know either.” I moved around the open door staring back at Denny through the V-shaped space stretching from the frame around the window of the door to the frame of the cabin of the vehicle. Then, I lifted my right leg slipping it inside the cabin as I heard Jess’ door swing shut. “I don’t even know where the closest town is around here, so I’ll keep in touch.” Sliding my ass over the seat, I shifted my torso inside, took a quick look to make sure everything was clear, and swung my door shut. I gave Denny a yell out the window. “I’ll give

you a call on the cell phone or something.”

“Well, we’ll touch base later.” Denny wanted to organize.

“Check out the feather stuffer.” I motioned for Jess to follow my index to the point where she could see her father through the windshield. “I can see him through the windshield calculating costs and measuring doorways for baby gates. Izzy’s gonna have to organize his room and flush his stash before his dad starts pulling out his drawers and dumping them on the rug. Tomorrow, Denny’s gonna clean out a space in the guestroom. Izzy’s screwed. He might actually start having to do his homework.”

“How much do you think he’s going to charge to babysit?”

“It’s not the money I’m worried about.”

“Shut up.” Jess gave me a backhand, and that smile that just made me melt. “Mental abuse is so less unobtrusive.”

“Not necessarily.”

“God only helps those who help themselves, so don’t make me come out of my shirt.”

“What… you don’t want to go shoppin’ for shoes?”

“You know how I live shoes. I’m always ready to go shoppin’ for shoes, but I don’t think Kmart has my size. Rubbers and boots kick up some shit in this town, cowboy.”

“Come on. We have to be able to find a place where we can buy some shoes.”

“Window shopping for hiking boots… let me phone the back of my closet.”

“Party in my playroom.” I gave another nickname just because I was just trying to describe how special she was. “You need to start thinkin’ about calmin’ down and not tryin’ to be so athletic.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Listen, let’s just have our vacation here and let things happen as they go. Expectations and a one-way ticket to Hawaii… I just don’t want to be bothered.”

I was like “All right… sorry.” I think I was stoned. “Whatever… so ya know?”

“I should have listened to you in the first place. It’s hard for me to take the throne in a place that forgets to wash. Maine isn’t the best place to plan a vacation.”

“It’s definitely not the Hilton. I told ya. I did. We can’t go searchin’ for pygmies when the bigfoots forget to shave.”

“I don’t know what that means.” Jess took a deep breath upon each word. “But, I thought it might be good to relive your childhood.”

“The wheels are turnin’,” I told her with a deep breath. “The wheels are turnin’.” I couldn’t help but breathe. “So how long ago did you find out?”

“To be honest with you… a week or two before we left.”

“Well, that’s okay. You know, so right now, it’s your last night out. So I’m gonna take you shoppin’ and stuff. Even throwin’ the football around with your brother, I mean, that’s too much. That’s too much activity. You know, right now it’s all right. Like you said, we’ll take this vacation… we’ll go off. We’ll go… ahh’ take the boat out. We’ll go fishin’. We’ll go back and tell your mother that we liked her food.”

“We are so spoiled. This is so rustic. It’s like I’m writing my own hell and I can’t find my dogs.”

“Brochures make anyplace seem like the next best thing to Hawaii.”

“It’s the summertime and I’m freezing my ass off. It’s always cold and I don’t think I should be cold. As soon as I got off the plane I was cold. Everything was cold. You know, I’d touch it and I get chills all the time. Like even in that cabin, it totally freaks me out.”

“You think this is bad around here? Try going to Oregon. Totally a different kind of people. They still believe in bigfoot up there. It seems like the farther north you get, the weirder it gets. The tourist trade… they just use it as an excuse to snatch up young maidens and take ’em back to the cave.”

“You’re always such a killjoy. You write about ghosts and killers and demons and stuff, but something possesses you to totally kill it for everyone else. How can you write about something you don’t believe?”

“But I believe in you, A Nish Na Nu.” I loved whispering to my Jess all warm and soft. I was charming, I was. “I’m not trying to kill bigfoot, baby. They’re people too. I mean, I’m not goin’ on a safari to Oregon just to come back with furs. How could I make any money off a bigfoot that way?”

“What about Bloody Mary?”

“Don’t you ever fuckin’ mention her name again!” I must have hit a big fuckin’ pothole because I almost crashed and burned. I fuckin’ hate your guts! I’m only here to put on my clown suit and tell you to go fuck yourselves! It was just because I opened my mouth a little before. It was that gingerbread house and that witch at the bar that tried to stuff me in the oven. That really pissed me off. “I ain’t wishin’ for no Bloody Mary on no mirror now!” I wasn’t gonna start chanting. “I ain’t stupid. Just because witchcraft isn’t real doesn’t mean it don’t work the same way.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in witchcraft.” Jess was sarcastic teasing me with her tone. “Call the Skeptical Inquirer and ask them a how well a witness can recollect a traumatic event. You might not get everything right, but you the gist of it.”

“Ever heard of Christian black magic? It’s the same thing as Satanism. Because if you’re not a Christian, how can you believe in Satan? Just ask Adolf Hitler. I think, I’m about to hit the church up with an annulment.”

“Women are snakes. Men are primates. And I’m not a fuckin’ role model. I hope you choke on a Eucharist.”

“Don’t say that too loud, or the minister might have you excommunicated.”

“Only if you’re lucky, buddy.” Jess was the only one I was gonna let play with my handle until further notice.

“I’ll give you a lesson in terrorism.” I got all sexy with her.

“Jamie,” Jess got all smart with me, “the Salem witch trials actually took place in Danvers, not Salem. Halloween is so fun. I don’t know, but the tin man is having such a hard time getting the crows out of that place.”

“I stand on the Fifth Amendment.” I had no opinion.

“Don’t talk to me like a little kid. I do have a brain.”

“Deep breaths, baby.” I showed her how.

“Now you got me g up for lama’s class.” My party girl appeared as if she was going to cry, but she couldn’t because of her medical marijuana license. A puffy sigh. “Oh my god.”

“Baby,” I said, trying to think of the positives, “that’s great. I mean, it’s not the best thing for you right now. You know, but we’ll work around it, I guess. What’s wrong with that? You should be like happy, you know.”

“I wanted to tell you.” Jess was in the middle. She didn’t want to tell me exactly how she felt, but she weighed the options. “I wanted to go out. I wanted to be alone with you and tell you. But for some reason I don’t feel as happy about it as I did before.”

“Why?”

“Jamie,” she whispered my name. “I’m scared.”

“Are you worried about bein’ fat?” I knew what she was thinkin’. “Oh my god, you’d be such a little porker.” I jolly jiggled. “Oh my god, you’re gonna look so cute with a little dumper in there.”

“Don’t make jokes.”

“It’s nine months out of your life.” I was serious just for as long as it took for me to say it. “I know you’re just getting goin’.” Then I couldn’t help but think about

a little chubby. “Oh, are you worried about bein’ fat? Oh my god, you’re gonna look so cute with a little dumper in there.” I couldn’t verbalize in jest. “Ohhahhhowwahh… you’re gonna look so cute.” Jess was almost on the verge of tears. It was better me than her. “Oh my goodness gracious, I mean, what’s the big deal?” I kept my thoughts rational. “So you take nine months out of your life, okay? I’ll aah… I aah hire a fuckin’ babysitter. Everything’s gonna turn out, you know. And don’t be scared. I mean, things like this happen. Whatever… it’s not bad.”

“I’m just scared. I just didn’t expect what was gonna happen.”

“What happened, baby?” I didn’t know what she was talking about. “Nothing happened, baby. Nothing happened.”

“I don’t know if I’m as confident as you are.”

“Don’t choke on me right now.”

“I’m trying to be serious with you. I’m really worried.”

“What are you worried about? You really haven’t told me what you’re worried about yet.”

“I have baskets, okay.” Jess tried to be defiant.

“What the fuck do you mean, baskets?”

“Baskets.” Jess sunk into a shell. “You see, I think about things that I’m not really sure about, and I put them in baskets. Like brain baskets. I have all these different categories. And I take the thought, like I write it on a little piece of paper and I put it in.”

“I got this animal magnetism going for you right now. I want to roll you in some dough and set the oven to ‘I love you.’”

“Don’t try and distract me.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Baskets.” Jess pouted. “It’s like I’m happy, but very, very sad at the same time.”

“Baskets.” I couldn’t help but feel my belly chortle. “What are you talkin’ about?”

“Sometimes I’m really, really sure about something, and then I think about it again and I’m not really sure anymore.”

“Because of your baskets.”

“Oh my god, they are so full right now, and I’m so confused about clutter. So I’m not really making any long-term commitments right now until I hire a secretary.”

Usually, when a girl finds out she’s pregnant, so many things enter her mind. It’s too crazy to sort out. It’s like a physics experiment—seeing no end in variables only equals infinite solutions. Will he help me? Are you going to leave me alone? Men lump it in as a perspective on depression and emptying emotion. It’s like falling inside a well, and then imagining yourself inside a nightmare. Seeing space in time, upbringing versus genetics—my job was to make her laugh.

“No one’s pushin’ you, baby.”

“Oh my god,” big gusts and a total weight off her back. “That makes me feel so much totally better.”

“Listen, when you like someone, you don’t try to change them.” I was a whisperin’ wizard. “So don’t slip me inside your basket and ask me to undress.”

“That’s why I like you.” Jess let out a big sigh of relief. “You’re like yogurt. You are just easy to get along with.”

“Do you know,” I let out a deep breath, “every day I could come up with another nickname for you? All I want to do is go to the same parties as you do. I’m bein’ as cool about this as I can be.”

“Could you be friends with me?”

“A Nish Na Nu,” I was ready to see myself inside a dream. “Dick on tap is a far cry away from friends. I could so totally be your friend.”

“Don’t make me cry,” Jess sobbed. I wanted to laugh, but my A Nish Na Nu took me seriously. “I don’t want to take things to extremes.”

“I just think you’re sexy.” I couldn’t help but tell her the way I felt about her. “And I don’t wanna fuck up your princess.”

“I so totally know.” Jess’s mind briefly became occupied by abstract thought. “But I could ad-lib and make it so much better. It’s been draggin’ me.”

“No pressure.” I didn’t want her to feel smothered, but I couldn’t jump in her basket a fruits. “Do you know what I like about you? You’re unique. There’s only one of you. You’re still gonna be able to do what you wanna do in life. This isn’t a setback. Don’t look at it like that. You know I’d never be here without you.”

Jess didn’t say anything to me. She just looked at me long and slow, kind of drawn out. Our lips stuck together as I felt my tongue in her mouth and I didn’t even kiss her yet. I felt my hand touch her face as it dropped behind her back; I felt the middle of her waist. She looked like she wanted to say something again, but she didn’t. I opened the door for her, and I let her through. I left the hours before I dropped her off.

We were excited. We had an excited conversation about the coming arrival. I mean, I wasn’t goin’ out of my way, but if it happened, it happened. We always had these long drawn-out conversations. We talked about everything but really didn’t talk about anything at all, the conversation usually lasting how long it took to drive to wherever we were going. It was fun. We had a good relationship. We could argue and not really argue. It was just because she was really goodlookin’ and she had one of those personalities. Her personality fit her hips and that flat belly with those abs. Every time I looked at her lips, I wanted her to jump inside one of those baskets she was talkin’ about and just put it in.

That was it. I didn’t parking the car. I didn’t shutting the door or Jess getting out. We were just all of a sudden inside like two regular people walkin’ through Kmart or some store like that. I guess they had some deals. We went to buy some groceries just to get out. As soon as I saw the toys, I had an idea. Ohhawwahh, I was gonna buy her a little baby doll just to get her used to the idea. So I told her I had to hit the head. She said that she’d be okay and I told her I’d hurry up. It was a total psychic link. I didn’t like leaving her alone because Jess was so beautiful, they might come up and mess with her. She was a celebrity. They know she got money. Some cracker might take her hostage or somethin’ and hold her for ransom.

So I was gonna make it quick. I turned around, acting like I was going to the bathroom. So I went down and took a couple a lefts and rights. First, I went to the aisle where I saw the baby doll. There was little baby in diapers and I pressed the button on the back. And it said, “Mamma.” You don’t need a mamma. I heard a voice. You needed an A Nish Na Nu. It was good advice. It was a special day and I was gonna make it extra special. So I had the baby and I was goin’ around like I was trying to hide it. It was like a woman when she slipped something into her purse because she didn’t want to pay for it. I was thinkin’ that Jess was gonna catch me and ask me what I was doin’ and totally ruin the whole thing. So basically, I took a few more lefts and rights and I saw this woman in a Kmart apron. I went up to her and gotta go, “You gotta help me out.” I was rushing, you see. “I’m lookin’ for baby clothes.”

“I don’t think we have your size.” She was fat and jolly.

“Lady, you gotta help me. Listen, I don’t know the first thing about kids and my girlfriend just told me she’s pregnant. She’s a little weird about it. I wanted to buy some baby clothes so I could dress up the baby.” I showed her the doll.

“Oh my god, that is so sweet.” The apron acted like she got it, but I wasn’t sure about it. It was all about the baskets.

“I’m charming.” I hid my eyes staring down at the ground like Jess was going to spring around the corner just to see what I was doin’. We had a psychic link.

So we went down the aisle and found the clothes to cover the suckling. They were clothes like you’d dress a doll in. And that was kinda ironic because that’s what I was doin’. A little baby bundle in his little bambino clothes.

“Oh,” the apron in the Kmart felt like she was a real person. “That’s so cute. You’re gonna be a great dad.”

“Yah.” I agreed. “I know, right.”

We started matching the baby to the little clothes and this and that. There was a hat. It was little. It was a red hat with a black L and a white A. The front visor of the hat fanned out flat and it was so cute when you pulled it over the baby’s head. Because it was plastic. It really didn’t fit right, but it worked. Then it was time to dress the papoose.

So I basically had to address the baby again… I mean, the doll, and hurry to the front because I had to pay for the doll and the babyclothes separately. Everyone that saw me in line knew that I was in a rush because I was all antci-pants expecting that Jess was gonna make it to the or walk by and see me in line with my babyclothes. So I put the doll down on the counter. The cashier looked at me all weird, and I said, “Don’t ask.”

So I paid her and booked it. I thanked the woman in the Kmart apron because she was such a big help. I thanked her. Then I booked it. Outside, down the hall, and into the parking lot, I wrote when I walked. It was a big SUV. I forgot where I parked it at first, but I found it. I just didn’t know where to put my babyclothes. The front seat or the backseat? It was a big, huge dilemma. So I thought about it. I knew Jess was going to have groceries with her, so the backseat was totally out of the question. So I was gonna put the little sputter in the front enger seat. Around, I walked over round to enger-side door and opened her up. I opened up the door and started dressin’ up the baby and all the cute little clothes. And I left it there for her because I wanted to see Jess’s reaction. It was a surprise. Then I took the bag and shoved it in the backseat and slammed the door closed. Describing my steps, I shut the door and ran back inside.

There was a line. I came up behind her. Jess didn’t ask me where I was. I just walked up on her. She didn’t really notice me walk through the door. Then I noticed her carriage and I asked her what she got. She was like… “I don’t know. A few things.”

I looked through it. There were corn cob holders for the husk. They looked like little corns with little prongs on the end husk. There was corn too. There was a six-pack of beer for her father. And there was some beef jerky for her brother.

And I basically opened the bag of beef jerky and just started pulling it out.

“What you get me?”

“Nothing,” Jess sighed the usual.

“Well,” I responded chewing on a piece of beef jerky. “What your brother doesn’t know won’t hurt him. I’ll save him a little bit.”

“You not gonna save him any.” She knew my type. “I’ll just go get him another bag. Eat it. Whatever… you know it’s gonna be gone before we pay for it.”

Jess was a little depressed. Not really depressed, but a little like “you know.” It was a nine-month gift. If you took the sperm of a test tube baby and waved a magic wand, egg over ovum, would you have to raise the pampers as your own pampers? Talk about genetic freak. I couldn’t help but be nervous about how Jess was gonna take my little surprise.

So what happened was we paid for the groceries and we walked out. She was pushin’ the carriage. I was walkin’ beside her. We went through the doors and hit the parking lot. There was our little SUV and I hit the unlock button before I pulled the rear driver’s-side door open. I put the groceries in there as Jess started walkin’ around the front of the SUV. Then, I opened the driver’s-side front door before she came to the enger’s door.

I wanted to see her reaction. I wanted to see her reaction… how she looked standin’ there with that little doll dressed up in the baby clothes? I hoped I’d get the reaction I had envisioned. You know… just to get her used to the idea.

So Jess opened the enger door, but she didn’t see it right away consumed by thousands of regular movements happening all at once. A set goal and the actions it took to get there. As she lifted her leg up to step into the cabin she saw it. Her first reaction… it was like unexpected, calculating, needing more time to access the data. Resting her right hand on the inner doorframe, Nish Nu started takin’ deep breaths holding her left hand up in the air and showing me her palm like hold on a minute. And she looked at me and said, “You are such an asshole.”

I said, “Come on. The baby’s cute!” I hopped in and leaned, picking it up from the enger seat and cradling the baby in my arms. “He’s so cute! I don’t know if he’s a boy or a girl, but he’s sooo cute.”

Jess got in, sliding her ass on the seat. She was just lookin’ straight ahead, kinda downward like not wanting to glance over. She didn’t want to peek with me acting like I was gonna be a super-duper foster child. Jess didn’t want to laugh. I mean, she wasn’t depressed anymore, but she had to keep that persona. She was about to laugh, but she didn’t. She was holding it back.

“But, the baby’s sooo cute!” I observed. “You want a hug?” Jess was not really happy about gaining weight so I asked her in a rhetorical manner and fashion. “Don’t you think the baby’s so cute?”

“Like no.” Jess acted obstinate.

I’m like, “You’re not even going to look at the baby? Come on! The baby’s so cute. Look! It’s got a little LA hat on and everything.”

“I see,” Jess glanced as I hit the button in the back.

“Mamma,” the baby cried a preconceived reaction. “Mamma.”

“Come on.” I was all into it huggin’ the baby just so my party girl could feed off it. “You don’t want to hold the baby?” There was an occasional giggle. “The baby’s so cute. You know how it is.”

“Jamie.” a relief of breath. “Don’t babytalk me.”

“But the baby loves you.” I lived vicariously through the doll just lovin’ her with my eyes. “I wanna be the baby.”

“That hat is cute,” she offered me a smile just because I was so handsome holdin’ onto the baby. “Don’t make me put on your Pampers.” So Jess took the baby out of my arms and she looked at it, holding it on her lap and said, “Okay, maybe I’m getting used to it.” At a glance, I couldn’t help but smile. Just seeing that expression I had hoped to see made it all worth it. Happy… Jess looked like she was really happy. She put it in the basket.

“Oh, come on,” I sighed letting my character go. “Ridin’ around with a little baby seat.”

“I think we need to hire a maid.” Nish Nu pressed the button.

“Momma,” the doll said.

And it was sooo cute…

“Momma,” the doll said again.

“Momma.” I laughed. “You’re a little momma.”

“Let’s just go.” Jess was thinkin’ and was occupied.

It was so cute. Jess curled up next to me on our way back to the crib sitting in the middle and laying her head on my shoulder. And I had my arm around her with the extra little that she put in her basket. And she was just lookin’ at the baby and she pressed the button every once in a while. Then she started playing with the baby’s hands. Jess was a little kid again, imagining the baby walking around my lap. “Do… doot. Do… doot… do, do.” Happy clucking one baby foot in front of another. It was like Jess climbed back into her dollhouse. I could tell she liked the cap on the bundle. I knew that much. She kept tuggin’ on the baby’s clothes trying to make them look all nice because I did a rush job when I dressed him. So she straightened out the pants and this and that. Jess’s like “Aright, the baby might be a little bit cute.”

“Don’t mess with the cap on the big bambino,” I laughed. The joke didn’t make sense, but you got the gist of it. “I told ya.” I kept tellin’ her. I go, “I told ya. The baby is sooo cute!” I was happy. That much was clear. “You love the baby.” I gave Jess a warm squeeze while she put it in her basket. “You’re gonna be such a good mommy.” I knew that girls only thought you’d be a good dad if you were in it for the long haul. “Oh, my little A Nish Na Nu. We’re gonna buy you baby shoes and everything.”

“You got me a baby.” Jess was happy too. “You got me a little baby.” I knew she was happy, because she pressed the button again.

“Momma,” the doll clucked.

My little baby babble brat. The thing about my A Nish Na Nu is that I liked her. I haven’t liked someone since high school. To say you liked somebody… that sounded so immature. Usually, you think this chick is hot, you go on a few dates, and you have sex. You eventually end up likin’ ’em. But this was different. I liked my A Nish Na Nu from the first time I saw her and I wanted to have sex with her too. At the same time. Like I said, I liked her. It was like I was in high school. And then I was gonna go back to kindergarten before I sucked on my thumb. I was the coolest boyfriend. Jess liked me too. A Nish Na Nu, I’m workin’ for shoes here.

Hey, I was gonna be a dad. That was a new experience for me. Dad… that word required a dictionary translation. But it didn’t have one on me, so I thought about it and what being a dad meant to me—somebody to teach football to, somebody to go liftin’ with. Hey, ten years down the road, someone to teach what I knew. And I was excited about it. Jess was so excited to rough it, and then all the air just left leaving me breathing heavy. She was my party girl because wherever we went it was always a party. And Jess was always the center of attention. Pinch hittin’ for nine months seemed like looking up at the sky and wondering when you’re gonna get there. She had my eye and that was it. I gave it up to chemistry in the end—women and their moods when they go to the playground to play on the swings. Tomorrow was another day. We were gonna start over again tomorrow. I was gonna see her wake up just like she did before and everything was gonna be all right. I was all weirded-out.

That was the end of the scene. I got the gist of it. I did it better the first time, but

I got all my ideas down before I wrote them on the wall. Splintered wood and bending fingers fitting together, I hung baskets from that wall. I was poetic and charming.

You better take care of my daughter. I heard the old man sitting across the table on the direct opposite of my line of sight. She’s asleep.

So where’s the kid?

He’s upstairs, ed out. We lowered the drinking age just so you could make yourself at home.

I didn’t know exactly what he was talking about or what he was insinuating on. And I didn’t want to know, but I knew he was trying to spoil my good intentions.

Ghosts… I would see her in my sheets. I would see her tomorrow before she got back from the bar. And she better give me some before I found myself knocked up. I made it my own. I made it my own. My father was my mother. Voices told me to do weird things, but I wouldn’t do ’em unless they offered me money first. I read it in the newspaper before I heard the voices. And that’s what got me. And when I shut my eyes, I was so evil that people would really believe I was a monster.

White Spells

Fishing. Denny wanted to go fishing. An ex-liberal that turned republican after

he made some money, he had it all set: two poles, two bobbers, the bait, and the hook. It was like a pilgrimage, down the path hanging a left before I thought to drown him in the lake. But I didn’t want to go fishin’. I didn’t think I had the right lure. I knew what Denny wanted. He wanted to talk to me about the direction I was going with his daughter. Denny wanted to know my intentions. I knew he liked me, but I didn’t know if he thought I was going to be with Jess for a long time. Basically, we lived the fast lifestyle. We did. We both had successful careers and were just makin’ our way up. I wanted to try film school out for size. In the meantime, I was just havin’ a good time makin’ some money. Denny was still trying to hedge around the questions.

“So how things?” Denny led in with the general.

“It’s goin’,” I replied not giving an inch because I really thought it was too soon to get serious and responsible about something that was so far away. Being a responsible person, I didn’t want to wear out my serious before the third trimester.

“You’re a writer. That’s a respectable profession. You treat my daughter very well. You buy her everything she wants. You open the door for her. She’s always happy around you.”

“We really don’t got nothin’ to fight about.”

“Well, trust me in every relationship there is hardship. Even after twenty-five years, you never know who your lyin’ next to.”

“What… are you talkin’ about marriage now? We don’t fight. You said it

yourself. That’s good enough. What… you want me to go back to the shed, grab her by the hair, and start a fight with her?”

“My daughter is fond of your smart-ass attitude.” No shit. Denny refused to put up with it. “I am not.”

“I don’t know. Things start goin’ wrong… I don’t know. I’d probably leave.”

“Have you ever thought about—”

“Come on, Denny, what is marriage anyways? Don’t people when they get married start acting different? I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”

“I was going to suggest that you and my daughter might think about having an abortion.”

It took a second. I had to shake my head just to make sure that I heard it right. “Are you telling me that I’m not good enough to be my kid’s father?” I had an attitude about it. And yah, maybe I did want to fight somebody.

“I don’t think you’re ready to make that kind of commitment.”

“Denny, don’t beat around the bush. Is that what you think of me? You think I’d just up and leave her for good? Just like that? Like I never cared about her at all? You really don’t have a good opinion of me, do you?”

“Well, you’ve cheated on her before.”

“I have?” Insulted, I was definitely insulted. “Are you sure about that? How exactly did you know this because we’ve never had that conversation before? In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever said something like that or heard something like that mentioned around me before.”

“My wife said something about it.”

“And how exactly would Mrs. Dooms know that? I have no idea. Denny, if you want to say something, just say it.”

“It’s hard what I want to say. You know, I hear rumors about you, and your lifestyle, and where you see yourself.”

“Denny, rumors are like potatoes around the field. There’s so many of ’em. I mean, come on!”

“Maybe, I heard somewhere that you were with another girl. There was a party. There was drugs. You didn’t leave.”

I could only imagine what he heard. “Denny, now did I? I didn’t cheat. I don’t think. I know I went out, but that’s part of the lifestyle. There are always girls all around. Honestly, I don’t know which one you’re talkin’ about.”

“Listen.” A would-be father-in-law and his advice. I don’t know if I liked that shit. “What you did before this point… that’s gone! It happened. But right now, at this moment, you have to start learning to make mature decisions. I don’t want to be stuck as a babysitter raising another child. My wife and I… I know I haven’t discussed it with her yet, but I know I will. We definitely… you have to do what you have to do about your business and we have no problem watching the child, but we don’t want to be full-time babysitters. We have our own lives. We want to go on trips just like you. And we don’t want our grandson or daughter, whatever the case may be, to be raised by a third party.”

“I don’t want that either. You know, I totally hear ya. I’m gonna do whatever it takes to make things happen in the best way. But we all have our own lives and I guess we got to work our way around it. I can’t just give up on my life and let this hold me back. The same thing with your daughter.”

“What I need you to do is… I need you to promise me. I need you to promise me, you’re going to be there for that child and my daughter. I need you to promise me that you’re not going to be a fair-weather father and you’re gonna be there to help that child to help him with its homework. Be a father… go to baseball games, football games, whatever the case may be. And if it’s a girl, the same thing. Just be a part of their life and I wish you the best. But I know if you tell me and we agree on a handshake that you’re going to do your best to fulfill your obligations.” Honor in rugged. Denny saw that in me. “Money can’t buy a child a father. I know I’m asking a lot especially with the kind of lifestyle you and my daughter have chosen. And I can’t ask you to give that all up. It would be irresponsible of me to think that I’m going to snap my fingers and you’re going to start acting like adults. When you first started with my daughter, you guys started going here, there, going on tour with the band, and going to these parties staying out all hours of the night. Continuing on that route would not be setting a good example for the—”

The child… I hated how people referred to kids as its, only obligations before

they grew up as if they were paper-thin. I knew inside that the way I chose to live my life wasn’t gonna change until I got it out of me. I had to tell Denny that I would do my best. That’s what I said. “I’ll do my best.” And then I thought about it and spoke, “Well, you gotta understand, it’s a lifestyle that you have to embrace. Honestly, I need you to help me be a role model for my kid. Jess isn’t the homebody type, so obviously we’re gonna need some help in the babysitting department. But I’m sure we can all make it work. I have the best intentions of being a good role model for my kid.”

“Good enough,” Denny sighed somehow believing in my words but unable to visualize them fulfilled at the end of the rainbow. “You’re honest.” Denny let out a deep breath. “And honesty is a rare quality in this world. But sometimes honesty isn’t good enough.”

It was just me, him, and the water. We found the lake just beyond the path. It was hidden through the trees. I heard small waves, the sand, and the shore. We were going to take the boat out and go fishin’.

Primrose Lane

They were talking about me. It was Jess and her mother. So what were they talking about? Izzy needed something to do. He was outside, searching for an animal.

What were they doing? What do girls do when they talk by themselves all alone with no men around? I wished that I was that fly on the wall up in Jess’s bedroom… Garma resting in a folding chair as Jess sat at the foot of the bed in front of my computer. What did I see out on the beach? On the street? What did I see? I could read your palm without taking your hand. I needed an action.

“From what I’ve seen out here, it’s enough to declare myself an independent atheist.”

“Well, what are you going to do when it’s time to baptize the child?”

“Don’t send me out shoppin’ for diapers.” Jess liked the idea, but she wasn’t certain. “They don’t teach palm-reading at the voc.”

“The voc… ?” Garma didn’t know.

“Vocational school. That’s where they want to send me. And I just don’t wanna go.”

“Maybe I don’t understand.”

“It’s a place where you go to learn manual labor and Jamie’s no altar boy. Come on. You gotta understand. I’m givin’ you my baskets here.”

“Why don’t you want to have the baby baptized?”

“You know, I was confirmed. But it was like this whole process. I just think I was too young to know any better. They really don’t give babies a choice about it.”

“It’s traditional.”

“Yah, I guess so. If you want to do it, it’s okay. I’ll come if I’m invited.”

“I already have two kids. I don’t need another.”

“Jamie told me it was only gonna be nine months out of my life, and I had planned on doing other things. Come on, Mah, you don’t want to have another kid? This time you don’t even have to go through labor.” Then it hit her. “Oh my god! Labor… that just sounds tiring.”

“You only have two trimesters to think about it.”

“I’m not thinking about it.”

“It’s natural. I thought about it.”

“Mr. Brooks?” Jess couldn’t believe it. “You thought about calling the doctor to take me out?”

“It’s perfectly natural to feel the way you’re feeling. That’s why they call it unbalanced hormones. Who knows what your life is going to be ten years down the road?”

“I might have thought about it, but I never made an appointment. I can’t believe you called doctor Klopeck for an ultrasound.” (The Burbs)

“I had other things I wanted to do too. Before I had you, I can’t say that I didn’t think about getting an annulment.”

“But it was consummated.”

“Don’t talk stupid. I’d just lie like everybody else does. The priest knows, and you don’t even have to go to confession because an annulment is a sacrament that absolves you of your sins.”

“You have to feel bad about it. Me and Jamie had this conversation about confession one time, and it totally made sense to me. Your confessional is like a conscience. I don’t need to watch TV to let me know that I feel bad about something.”

“What do you mean ‘watch television’?”

“Call a priest,” Jess said. “I mean, you don’t have to. There was this movie. I forget the name of it. Jamie brought it up this one time. And you know how he likes to go on and on about how crackers suck and how Christianity leads to Satanism, but this time he really made sense. There was a priest who liked this girl, but he took a vocation to God. I mean, he really, really liked her. And he kept fighting his demons, trying to stay loyal. And then god came to him. And god was angry because he was spending every day at the voc and he forgot how

to smell the roses.”

“Stigmata.” Garma followed her daughter’s note before she put it in the basket.

“I think that was it. Anyways, what he thought was the devil turned out to be God, and he ended up really, really happy.”

“Jamie likes you,” Garma realized. “I can tell.”

“I like him too, but—”

“In the heat of the moment.”

“We might have carried on.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I feel that if I don’t, I might miss out on something really, really special. But I’m not positive… like certain.” Jess paused trying to relate to her mother. “If there is a God, I think he’d want me to live my life to the fullest and not worry about things before they happen.” Jess wrote it on another little piece of paper and put it in. “Those are my baskets.”

Chapter Five

Behind the Computer

Tropic Thunder

A few days later everything was kosher. The whole family was happy— cookouts, laughing, joking and everything was just great. Just great. I was sitting there by the fire, and Jess was on my lap. I liked it when Jess sat on my lap. I went over what I was going to say to my Jess a year before I wrote her a novel. After a while, I got tired of thinking about it, and I said, “Fuck it.” I was gonna take shit as it came. But Jess was happy like I said. When we got up in the morning, she started makin’ the bed. We always left it messy. But she started making the bed puttin’ the little doll on top right next to the pillows. Like I said, Jess was happy. Everyone was happy. It was annoying. Denny and Garma put their overshadowing conversations aside. More than twenty years or more of marriage and still Strangers , they focused on other things. Izzy was more into the family thing than he was before. And beer became a substitute drug for marijuana. But I knew I couldn’t escape my bad luck. I just didn’t want to dive into the shallow end of the pool. I was playin’ with my mind.

Other than that, Jess was cute and snuggly. Fire and wood—Denny built the fire while his pupil searched for the wood. Garma was cool. I don’t think I ever had a conversation with her unless I was talking to other people first. I didn’t want to think about it, but as soon as I did, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I thought about starting one, but I didn’t want to go out of my way so I ignored her. It got a little weird, but we got through it. This went on for several days, the whole thing: the conversations, the smiles, the whole nine yards. I got tired of talking. One little plastic doll and all of a sudden everyone forgot about Jess’s silicone

implants. But I kept reminding myself.

So one day in the middle of everything, I thought I’d take my dad for a test drive. The closest thing I could relate to being a father was raising a puppy. It’s kinda like a baby. You gotta feed it. You gotta walk it. You gotta to make it sit. Give me your paw. You get it. And with some cookies and a chewy, most dogs learn relatively quickly. Izzy was almost old enough to drive, so I thought I’d take him out and teach him how.

“It’s time for your brother to learn his way around the road,” I said needing to launch The Craft for a trip.

Izzy was just carving his initials in the trees. Bored, he always needed to do something.

“Hey, alcoholic,” I called to him. “You drinkin’ today?”

“Not yet.”

“You want me to teach you how to drive?”

“He doesn’t have his learner’s permit.” Garma and the absolute negative. “I will not continue the chauffer service if he commits a felony.”

“Sometimes you drive better when you drive drunk,” Jess added.

“That’s a drunken excuse,” Denny said.

“If you’re not an asshole about it.” Jess and her corona. All she wanted was a lime.

“When you’re first learning, it’s definitely not the thing to do,” I started to give an explanation. “But sometimes you have to be responsible and I rather trust me behind the wheel than somebody else.”

“How ’bout a designated driver?” Denny peered. He was lookin’ at me.

“Designated drivers just don’t get as drunk as everyone else. I just want to make sure that I’m in front of the wheel when I drive home.”

“He’s not asking you if he can teach him to drive drunk.” Jess defended me before her parents could rip me apart. “He just wants to teach Izzy how to drive.”

“Thank you.” I let out a deep breath. “At least somebody.” Happy, that’s what I was. “Oh my god!”

“But if you get pulled over…” Garma testified.

“He’s trying to be a father,” Jess seemed a little annoyed too. “He’s not teaching him how to be a criminal. He’s trying to be responsible.”

And that was it. Nobody else said anything. So I tried it out. I tried out my dad. Izzy was a clean-nosed kid, you know? So I said, “Hey, I’d teach him how to drive.”

Jess was lying on top of me, so I had to describe the footsteps it took me to get to the vehicle. She slipped off me before my feet found the verb. I got up seeking a noun… a subject. Adjectives… and all I had to do was describe the emotion it took to get me there. The first time you get behind the wheel, now that was a big deal. Even if you wanted to run away, you could still go.

“All right, squirt,” I found the driver’s-side door motioning for Izzy to, “Get in the enger seat. We’re gonna take you out to a main road before you start getting ahead of yourself.”

Izzy didn’t say anything. He went around to the other side and we both got in. I gave her a light and we took off. I started backin’ up before I the swung the SUV around. Jess waved. I waved back. I didn’t know how to describe the way she was looking at me. It was like she imagined me as the father of her child a few years down the road. I don’t know whether it was good or bad or maybe somewhat devoid of either looming in the fuzz somewhere in the middle. I couldn’t see my face staring down the long dirt road that took me to the asphalt road beyond, but I thought that I might be sharing Jess’s expression and it was one that could not be put into words. A lifetime… now that’s lookin’ ahead.

“Have you ever driven before?”

“What’s the difference between that and driving a fuckin’ lawn mower? It’s just like a four-wheeler. Same thing, right?”

“When you start swearing?” Applying the brake, I pulled to the side of the road. What if I was teaching my own son to drive? How would I act? How would I be as a parent? Would I try to be his friend or act like a parent? Would I play both sides of the fence giving mature advice when I thought it was the proper time? Izzy was going to be my test subject. I’d rather make my mistakes on him than on my own child. And that sounded like a great idea.

Izzy jumped out and made his way around to the driver’s-side door as I shifted the transmission into autopilot, popped the hatch, and got out. Izzy jumped in the pilot’s seat and shut the hatch. I walked around the front of the SUV, but as I did, I couldn’t help but imagine the car bolting forward realizing that my feet were faster than I thought they were. But the machine didn’t move, so I let it go, finding the enger hatch open. I walked around, got in, and slammed the door shut. I could see Izzy staring at the dash ing new information in random patterns. He was confused, and before he could organize the data, he grabbed the stick and tried to force her into it.

“Whoa!” I raised my voice thinking that something bad was going to happen. “Take it easy there, killah’.”

“Stop!” Izzy took a deep breath. “You’re making me nervous.”

“You should never force anyone into anything. And a vehicle is just like a woman. You gotta treat her nice. It’s just like takin’ a little hotty out. You can’t move too fast. You got to apply the brake first just so you don’t embarrass yourself. And when you feel confident, you just shift her into drive and let things roll. But you gotta check your mirrors first. You gotta make sure nothin’s

comin’ . . . you got enough time to pull out so you can take things at your own speed. Not too fast. Not too slow.”

Izzy applied the brake, shifted the transmission into drive, and let her roll.

“Check your mirrors,” I ordered. Izzy looked real quick, but I don’t think he actually took the time to see if anyone was coming. “No, I mean really check!” Then I thought if it were my own kid, I wouldn’t want him to get in an accident. “Make sure you look over your shoulder. You gotta check your blind spot for Nazis, son.”

Izzy hit the brake as the left front quarter inched out onto the road. He checked his mirror and then he looked over his shoulder down the runway behind him. “Can I go?”

“Is anyone comin’?”

And before you knew it, we were on the road. We jetted out there.

“Now what we forget?”

“I don’t know.”

“You got to signal the tower. It a small thing, but it’s a reason for Nazis to pull you over. But once you get on the road, it’s like drivin’ a four-wheeler or driving

a lawn mower. It is. But you gotta understand that you got a lot more power under foot. You don’t want to be a hero now.”

“This is easy,” Izzy said as he gave it some gas takin’ the craft to the posted speed limit.

“What you gotta is that there are a lot of other cub cadets on the road, and you don’t want to end up cutting someone else’s lawn. Now, when you’re on the highway, you check what the speed limit is and you go five-to-ten miles over the speed limit. Cops give you a five-to-ten mile an hour leeway. You don’t want to drive the speed limit, because that looks conspicuous like you’re trying to hide something so they’ll pull you over.” Izzy kept peeking through the steering wheel down at the dash. So I told ’em, “But you don’t want to keep staring at how fast you’re going. You gotta keep your eyes on the road.”

So he focused on a point way out on the distance. “Now don’t slip into a trance,” I warned him. “You always gotta keep checkin’ your rearview mirror. When you see someone pullin’ up real fast behind you, that’s when you check your speed. And at that point, speeding equals anything more than five miles an hour over the speed limit.”

“I thought you said ten.”

“Five,” I nearly screamed. “At this point, it’s only five. And you never put your foot on the brake. If they see your brake’s lights you might as well pull over.”

“So I should just take my foot off the gas?”

“You just take your foot off the gas. That’s what you do. You let the engine slow the car down.”

“Do I change lanes to get out of his way?”

“I’m not really sure. If you do and he changes lanes with you, you know you’re fucked. And if doesn’t flash his lights, he’s just there to harass you. That’s all. So it’s probably best to keep doing what you’re doing and let him go around you, like you’re oblivious or something. And if he hits the sirens and you pull over and he keeps goin’, you just go about your business.”

“What if you got drugs on you?”

“What… you puffin’ when you ain’t been lookin’, boy? You gotta dump your stash. What… I gotta leave you a trail of breadcrumbs?”

“Throw it out the window?”

“Why don’t you just hold onto it and show it to them when you roll down your window?” I jested. “You gotta eat that shit or something. You never take any more out of the house than you’re willing to lose. Personal use only… you gotta keep it under control. You can fuck around. You just gotta learn how to stay outta trouble.”

I could see the synapses rewiring. I was watching his brain organize.

“Now because you don’t even have your learner’s permit, you should keep your window closed because light obscures images through glass and you cannot positively be identified. So let’s say if you’re smokin’ weed, they can’t positively be sure that you weren’t just smokin’ a cigarette.”

The autopilot put the flight on cruise control.

“Now you gotta , cars just like girls, they’re not toys. You gotta piece of machinery and you gotta know how to use it the right way. When you get your license, you go out. You roll down your windows. You pump the stereo a little bit. You see a nice little hotty on the side of the road, and you’re like… damn! Maybe, you honk your horn a little bit. Lean over and look at her. Give her some eye just so she knows you’re there. And then you move on. You’ll see her again. No big deal.”

“I can’t wait ’til I get my license.”

“I totally understand. That’s when you first start breaking into the dating scene. You end up at some girl’s house. You pick her up and you go for a ride. So you take her out and go to the movies. You don’t got no chaperone. You’re there alone with her. You got that nervousness goin’ on a little bit. You just got to make sure she’s got her pilot’s license with her just in case they don’t card at the door.”

We continued down the road, and every time Izzy saw another car coming up on us from the other side of the road, he sporadically hit the brake. Izzy was huggin’ the yellow line a little bit too much.

“They’re not aimin’ for ya, son.” I tried to cure Izzy’s anxiety by blowing smoke in his face. “So don’t get nervous unless you see a large unidentified object make an abrupt U-turn.”

Then Izzy started huggin’ the breakdown lane.

“Listen, you don’t need to go extreme left or immediate right. You just go. You just keep it centered. You drift a little right, you drift a little left… that’s cool. But you don’t want to jerk the wheel. A cop behind ya is gonna pull you over just for the sake of doing it. It’s simple. You don’t drive a convertible down the highway when you’re sippin’ from the bottle.”

“I definitely don’t want to get pulled over.”

“And they can pull you over for basically anything. You don’t want to get a ticket, because then your insurance goes up. And that counts as points against you in the future.”

“My parents pay for the insurance.”

“Yah, but you never want to give money away. Now when you see one, you never get nervous. And when they flash, you gotta look at them like they’re your girlfriend’s parents. You got to talk to them all sweet and mind your manners. You’d want your girlfriend’s parents to have a good opinion of you, right?”

“Yeah.” Izzy and his one-word responses. I guess he hadn’t developed a personality yet.

“Now if one ends up following you, you might want to take a casual turn or pull into a parking lot so you don’t slip on the dead fish lying on the deck. So let’s do that.”

A quick right sailed by.

“Do you want me to take a right or a left?”

“Doesn’t matter. We’re just gonna turn around and go back to the cabin.”

There was a left was coming up. Izzy grabbed the wheel with both hands. It was like his brain had to shut down and reboot. You could tell he got really nervous.

“You gotta keep telling yourself, ‘I’m not doing anything wrong.’ So you gotta take a deep breath and stay casual.”

The left turn sailed by before Izzy applied the brake.

“So next time when you see a turn coming up, you take your foot off the gas and let the car roll.”

The path started to widen up ahead with enough space on the side of the road to swing around the edge of the track. Izzy took his foot off the gas and let her roll.

“ to use your directional,” I reminded. He did. “You gotta see it coming from about thirty yards away, and then you got to ease into it.” Just as I gave him the , he gently applied the brake and eased into the turn. “Take her down to about five, ten miles an hour and you gotta let her roll around.”

The craft eased into the turn. No G-forces, no nothin’. He pulled the SUV to a stop without me even telling him to check for Nazis. He didn’t see any and neither did I, so he took his foot off the brake and gently applied the gas pulling out onto the main strip before signaling to the tower that he was coming in for a landing.

“This is a learning experience. How to stay out of jail. That’s more than half of learning how to drive. Three tickets in one year and they can suspend your pilot’s license. You never want to mess with an old woman wearing a wig. You don’t want that, do ya? How you gonna pick up any honeys if your license is suspended? What does it matter how nice your car is if you can’t drive it?”

“That makes sense.”

“It does. It makes perfect sense.”

“Can I ask you a question? Don’t get mad.”

“I’m not gonna get mad. I would never get mad at you.”

“Do you smoke weed?”

“Shut up, kid,” I told ’em as I got a little mad. “That’s a stupid fuckin’ question. What kid doesn’t smoke weed when they’re your age? So if anyone asks you, besides me, if you do drugs, you say no, okay? But just between you and me, you gotta have your pilot’s license to do drugs with hot girls.”

“I think you’re gonna be a good dad.”

“Don’t put me in a coffin, kid.” If I was a dad, I’d be a funny motherfucker. I would. “And if Denny asks, I never told you to do anything.”

“My teacher says drugs sell themselves.”

“He sounds like a smart man.”

Rumplestilskin

Green frogs, eight legs, and insects.

What time do you put the kids to bed?

Two thirty . . . no later.

Later, I was in a good mood. Then I got a little irritated. I had this indigestion thing going. I was drunk and bloated. You know that sloshy kinda drunk when you can’t get out of the way of your own stomach and you know you’re gonna have to throw up eventually. So like I said, I was irritated. We had eaten supper hours before and were all gathered around the fire as one little foot wandered off before another would follow. Jess went to bed early that night. Garma was the next to go followed by Denny roughly twenty minutes later. I guess he didn’t want to talk to me when I was drunk. Izzy snuck one last beer and then he was out like a light. I took a few more shots. I knew I shouldn’t have, but I didn’t want to go upstairs. I was good by the fire just thinking inside my head. And then the mosquitoes got to me. I hated when they buzzed around your head. The longer I stayed there, the more irritated I got. I guess it was because the fire was burning down and the midnight chill had started to set in. The cool air was blowing cold climbing in your clothes. Then I felt another mosquito touch down and I couldn’t take it anymore.

I hated bad acting. I hated how I always had to describe things as I did them— each step and a word. I was the subject, my feet were the verb, and all I needed to do was apply some adjectives to describe how I was feeling at the present time. But I didn’t want to be poetic about it. My body memorized the action. And I didn’t want to think about how my brain perceived the environment translating thought into that action. If I thought about it too much, I feared I might forget. And in the time it took me to think, I forgot how I ended upstairs standing in front of a closed door as my hand reached for the handle—a twist and a turn.

I was a fly on the wall. Jess was lying in bed holding my baby in her arms. “What are we gonna name it, A Nish Na Nu?” I spoke to her in her sleep. The doll that Jess was holding was the subject, my thoughts were the verb, and all I had to do was supply the adjectives.

Subjects… subjects and experiments. All I could think about was Frankenstein, but I didn’t know if I was the doctor or the monster. My thoughts supplied my feet a verb lumbering in graveyards searching for places of rest.

I could hear Jess’s breathing; she turned over as she made a noise and shifted her position in the bed.

Carelessly, neglectfully, randomly… now “randomly”—that was an adjective that I liked. Randomly, I picked up the child off the side of the bed and held it in my hands just so I could take a good look at it. Neglectfully, I didn’t want to hear the child cry. Lowering arms to my side, I let the doll go. Slight noises as toys found muffled voices under the floor. Then, I kicked the goat underneath the bed. Carelessly, I really didn’t give a fuck.

I was a fly on the wall, seeing the whole room in multiple octagonal shapes. I saw Jess lying on the bed. I saw the bureau out in front and to my left with a curled-up bag of chips and some dip just lying on top. I saw a book, a table, a computer, and a chair from behind and across the room. And to my right, I saw the luggage I brought with me. But I couldn’t see the sunshine through my eyes. I had to put on my sunglasses.

So again my brain supplied my feet with a verb as my eyes focused on the tags dangling from the handles, my carry-ons resting horizontally on the night table with the top hatch flipped open. Shifting through my clothes, I knew I had brought a few things with me for the trip. That’s when I pulled out my mask. Costumes… I saw Frankenstein—red eyes upon green plastic with only a slit for my mouth, big floppy ears, and a space for my brain. Two hands did see my hat to my lap as I told myself how to put it on pulling it over my face to hide from the edge of sanity. Insanity… some say insanity is closest to genius that a god could feel himself wise.

Buffalo Bill Bulebush

I woke up again. I had slept late, and I was all alone. They were all downstairs. I could hear them through the floor. So I went down in a smog, all groggy. I grabbed the back of a chair as I came upon the table and pulled her out. I could feel their eyes on me, but I didn’t look at them. I just sat down and yawned. Her dad was sitting to my left at the head of the table with Jess to my immediate left. Garma was sitting opposite Denny and to my most right with Izzy sitting directly across from me. I knew one of them said something to me, but I didn’t respond. I wondered why Jess wasn’t talking to me. She didn’t touch me or nudge me or kiss me on the cheek or anything. And I didn’t know why, but I didn’t initiate it either. I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. I wanted to feel abrasive toward her. I didn’t know why I should feel like that, but I didn’t really give a fuck. I just wasn’t gonna go out of my way to be nice to her.

So what do they have laid out?

“Eggs?” Denny had some on a plate.

“Nah, don’t bother. I’ll just chew on some bacon and have some toast. Bacon and some toast put some miles on it.” I grabbed a piece of bacon off the plate in front of me and shoved it in my mouth. “I’ll fuckin’ mow on it.” I started chewin’.

There was a discussion. There always was a discussion. The Dooms could talk about almost anything and just keep going on and on about the stupidest shit. It was like one knew it, and they all knew it. And they didn’t mind talkin’ about it. Anything right… they would embarrass him, you, me… everybody.

Themselves… everybody! At first, it’s like a shock, but you just got to have a smile about it.

This time they were talking about how Izzy found his dad’s porn.

Jess was the first to kick off. “The next time you jerk off make sure the seat’s down before you fall in.”

Izzy fielded the kick in his own end zone. He didn’t know where to go with it, so he tried to run and he got wrecked.

“At least run the water.” Garma put the ball down, first and ten on the twentyyard line.

“I don’t get it.” Izzy took the snap and handed it off.

“So no one else will hear it.” I got nailed at the line of scrimmage. “Personally, right when you wake up in the morning.” Second down, I broke through the line and got tackled three yards away. “That’s the best time.”

“I snuck into Dad’s room and stole his Hustler.” It was a screen .

“First and ten.” I almost popped the pigskin. “Don’t blame me for that shit. I didn’t show him that shit.” I grabbed another curl of bacon off the plate. “That’s you, dude.”

“Come on.” Jess slapped me on the shoulder. “You showed him a Hustler, didn’t you?” She joked while I was about ready to hit the ball on first sound. “Tomorrow he’s gonna rob an old lady for her syringes.”

“That is a lie.” I started calling signals as I felt the defense build up on the inside and I was goin’ over the middle. I saw that safety. Yah, I did. But it was an option route. “I swear to God, if you mention that bitch one more time…” It was a reception twenty yards down the field and I kept runnin’. “I gotta wake up for this shit.” One more move and I would have scored. “I’m just here for the bacon.”

First and ten.

“I never owned a magazine.” Denny didn’t lie.

“You know what started those magazines, believe it or not?” I had the info. “World War II. Women in the workforce.”

“You are so wrong.” Jess slapped my shoulder again. It was another run. “Talk about old. Don’t call my name after you climb over the hill.”

“He’s right.” Denny agreed as fast as I heard him. “Men went away to WWII and women left the laundry room to go pitch in. I don’t know how that relates to pornos and Hustler magazines.” My running back got tackled across the line of scrimmage.

“No, hear me out.” Huddle! “The men had to go away to fight in a war and the women had to take up the jobs. Before, women were stuck at home. And the men went out and worked. They were the providers and the women took care of the kids. Some of them didn’t even go to school. They were basically uneducated and considered slaves to their men.”

“Then came women’s lib,” Garma said.

“Like I said… World War II. Women filled in the hole in the job market. So when the men came home… I mean, what are they gonna do? Just push women out. Now they had to go back to the kitchen.”

“Jamie, that’s like carnal.” Jess intercepted the ball.

“Let’s hear it for Mother Theresa.” I played defense.

“That’s a sin.” She puckered, telling me to keep quiet with her lips. “You shouldn’t say that.”

“Here we go.” I just wanted to go back to bed. It was World War II.

“Anyways…” Denny wanted me to proceed along the same thought path without being distracted.

“World War II,” I continued “So when the men came home, women needed to find other ways to make money. So what do you think they did?”

“They started selling their bodies.” Izzy caught on pretty quick. Touchdown!

“You got that right, my friend,” I pronounced pointing at Izzy to signal a correct response. “The streets were a walking bordello.” We put seven up on the board. Losers walk.

“Either that or they became waitresses.” Denny kicked off. “At least that gave them another option.”

“There’s many more options for women besides waitressing and prostitution.” Jess caught my cornerback lookin’ on the flat.

“Try to think of one.” I couldn’t.

“What about a secretary?”

“That’s a waitress.”

“How about a lawyer?”

“Aah, every woman thinks she’s a lawyer.”

“A high-priced lawyer,” Denny added chuckling some. First and ten.

“How about a teacher?”

I couldn’t think of a bad way to spin a teacher, so I let it go. “All right, you got me. But honey, we’re talkin’ like fifty years ago. Rabbit ears and Channel 56… that’s about all you had back then. The job market wasn’t as diverse as it is now.”

“It’s a little bit longer than fifty years ago.” Denny added the years up inside his head. It was before he was born.

“Whatever. The point is, that’s when women started selling their bodies and that led to porn. Because they had to make money.”

“What about a model?”

“That’s a prostitute because she’s selling her body.” Touchdown! “Doesn’t make it a bad thing.”

“That’s a sordid way to put it.” Garma and her wrinkles just kept getting older and older. She was losing.

“Yah,” I jested. “But that’s the way we do things here. I’m just getting used to this shit.”

“I don’t think that modeling and massage parlors are the same thing. I think the way you said that was just vulgar. Just, just… vulgar.”

“Go put on your blue wig,” Denny fired at his wife. “As soon as you hit the green mile, it’s all downhill.”

“I have just come to a point in my life where I don’t need to be childish.” Garma needed to go back in time to discover her midlife crisis. “Porn is a springboard drug to marijuana.”

“Yah.” Jess agreed. “But everybody smokes weed in California.”

“I have no fuck what you’re talkin’ about?” I slurred and fell over my twisted tongue. I was thinking about football.

“I have no fuck what you’re talkin’ about?” Jess repeated. “What… are you speaking in Chinese?”

Denny had an idea for a trick play. “There’s this little place down the corner, and if you walk in wearing a suit and tie—”

“Spoken like a true moronic deposit,” Garma snapped back. “When Izzy is eighteen years old and mature enough to make his own decisions, he can spend as long as he wants smoking weed in the bathroom.”

“Women in the workforce,” Denny said. “I do believe it’s a woman’s right to get off her ass and not wait for a man to provide for her.”

“Come on,” I let out an excited gasp. “That’s what women have to sell to the public. Women are sexy. They’re beautiful. Their naked bodies are just sexy. Men desire them. They want them. Their sexuality… that’s what catches your eye. They feed off men’s desire to have sex with them.”

“Don’t be a pervert.” Jess tried to stop me before I started rolling downhill.

“I’m not. Men are stronger than women, and because of undying tradition, men naturally have greater opportunity for success. I mean, imagine a woman playing football. Can you imagine that? Even those freaky weight lifter women that have those square chins and no breasts… imagine them playing football? They’d get murdered. They couldn’t even be a kicker. I can just see some 200 lbs returner who can run like a deer breaking through the line and having some girl try to run him down. It just wouldn’t work.”

“That’s why they created the WNBA.” Denny’s observations. “There’s an NBA, and there’s a WNBA. The women are pretty good. I mean they’re better than I am, but they can’t compete with the men. Let me tell ya. It’s like watching a division three men’s basketball team.”

“Men are more gifted athletes in general besides a girl beating you in a sprint

down the street.”

“All men think about is sports.” Jess was slightly frustrated. “What about that girl who plays men’s hockey?”

“I think people just tuned in just to see if she was a hot piece of ass.”

“That’s why I watch the WNBA.” Denny joked.

“Was she hot?” Izzy asked referring to the hockey player.

“I don’t think so,” I responded in what I thought was an obvious assumption. “She plays hockey.”

“So is that a prostitute or a waitress?” Izzy was confused.

“I don’t know. She was a goalie. What do you want from me?”

“You started this shit.” Jess smiled at me. “Prostitutes and World War II.”

“Here we go. Again, I’m the one to blame. There’s nothing wrong with using your body to make money.”

“That’s what makes it athletic.” Denny was more of a basketball fan than an armchair quarterback. Then he stepped back behind the line and let it fly. “So what are you doin’ for work nowadays?” Garma was rebounding.

“Mah’s a secretary,” Izzy added with a laugh.

“That’s a waitress.” Denny smiled.

“Izzy,” Garma immediately focused on her son. “Go outside.”

Izzy didn’t say anything. He just agreed by doing it. I heard the screen door swing open and slam shut. I felt the vibrations in my head.

“Have you ever heard of a crime of ion?” Garma leaned in staring her husband dead.

“I think I know what that is.” Denny pictured a vivid and strict definition of the word. “Isn’t that when a prostitute kills her pimp over abuse?”

“That’s called drug addiction,” I said with a straight face. I heard Jess chuckle, but nobody else did.

“What’s a crime of ion?” Jess thought about taking me upstairs.

“The weirdest fuckin’ law I ever heard of.” Law 101, and I got an A. “A crime of ion. If you go in and find your wife or your girlfriend cheating on you… if you shoot them, it’s an acceptable defense.”

“Bullshit.” Denny blew out some hot air.

“Nah, seriously, you get off. You know how there’s first degree murder, second degree murder, third degree murder, manslaughter… right? You don’t even get any jail time! It’s even a more viable defense than insanity. Insanity you can never win!” I nodded trying to make them understand in body movement. “That is if you plead insanity. But a crime of ion?” Deep breaths. “Owwahh,” I sighed getting all into it. “There’s precedents upon precedents about guys getting off for killing their wives.” I briefly looked in Garma’s direction. “Or vice versa.” She glanced over at Denny as I continued just thrilled about speaking on such a fine topic. “For killin’ their spouses, or girlfriends, or boyfriends for that same thing. I studied upon it when I took a couple introductory to law courses in college. Well, anyways, why did I think it was weird? Well, you go in and you catch your wife or your girlfriend cheating on you, and basically you have intent to find a gun, check to see if it’s loaded, point, and aim at them with intent to kill. Why isn’t that intent to kill? What… because you’re emotional about it? So what if a bum on the street sees a guy walk by in a suit and tie with a briefcase? Is he going to get mad at him and run up and start stabbin’ him to death because he doesn’t have a nice wardrobe as he does?”

“That’s a crime of ion,” Denny added.

“That’s what I’m sayin’! It doesn’t make any sense. That’s a crime of ion too. The guy was depressed about his life. So what’s the difference?”

“I lost ya right when you opened your mouth.” Garma threw in a peanut. “I lost you at a different point than what you said.”

“I never understood that, but I guess it works. People get off. In my opinion, it is never an excuse to kill your wife, even if you find her in bed with another man. It never made sense to me. I’d tell them to get the fuck out. But if it’s your wife, she can take you to court and say she doesn’t have the means of ing herself. She can get a restraining order on you, kick you out of your own house, and you still have to pay for her fuckin’ to stay there. That’s the law. That’s the world we live in. You couldah killed her, but you can’t kick her out of the house. Isn’t that weird?”

“I think you’re reading into it.” Garma thought to interject.

“I think he watches too much TV.” Jess mentioned that I might. “No more History Channel.”

“Come on, A Nish Na Nu.” I let out a deep breath. “That’s an extreme-case scenario.”

“Like OJ?” she asked.

“Kinda like OJ, but OJ premeditated that shit.” Then it hit me. “Isn’t OJ innocent? I think he was found innocent.”

“I mean everybody knows he did it.” Jess was sure just because she was a

woman. “That’s why he played for Buffalo.”

“Not necessarily. He was found innocent. Who knows what happens in the director’s seat?”

“So you can kill your wife if she’s cheating on you?” Denny was eager to know.

“Only if you don’t think about it before you do it.” Garma realized the intent involved with premeditated murder.

“Anyways… a crime of ion.” I was into the conversation. “You’re married. Your wife ends up dead. It’s the husband’s fault, plain and simple. Everyone obviously blames the husband. It’s the first person you think of.”

“He gave her the juice.” Denny half smiled.

“Hey, he got off. And you’re supposed to respect him as an innocent man. If you were gonna meet OJ Simpson, would the first thing you asked him about be the trial? No… you wouldn’t ask him about that, would ya?”

“I don’t know.” Jess and her cute. “I don’t really know OJ Simpson.”

“He was a great football player.” I thought I might say. “Wouldn’t ya ask him about something like that instead?”

“Didn’t he run for 2,000 yards in a thirteen-game season?” Denny watched the NFL network.

“It was something ridiculous like that. Yah, let’s talk about that!”

“I hate fantasy football,” Jess whined. “I never know which players are gonna be good or not.”

The conversation continued, but I ducked as it sailed over my head. I was all about the bacon. I was chewin’ on it. And eventually it was time to break it up. Denny and Garma got up to clear the table. I wanted to help, but I wasn’t sure on how long I was plannin’ on being part of the family. Jess didn’t say much. She knew I was aggravated. She didn’t know why, but she knew. Then I heard the faucet turn on. I heard it turn on and then it turned off. I could feel the herd moving outside. The clanging of plates—Denny was the first and then Garma followed him to the door. I got up and Jess followed me. It was a warm sunny day and we found ourselves outside.

It was either an Irish wolfhound or a malamute. Maybe it was a Scottie or a dachshund. Maybe it was an old English sheepdog without the hair. It was a mutt. There really wasn’t anything special about it. I didn’t know what the fuck it was. A dog’s life was a wretched existence. And this motherfucker was ugly. But we were gonna let sleeping dogs lie.

“Maybe, we should go look for his owner,” Denny suggested.

Izzy found a dog. He was playing catch with it. But I didn’t want to follow the trail of breadcrumbs into the woods just to see myself in the oven.

“That’s not a good idea.” I was uneasy about the whole situation. “You just don’t wanna walk on somebody’s property around here. I’m sure the dog will leave on its own time. What I’m worried about is someone coming here to find that dog. You just don’t go to the boondocks of West Virginia for a canoe trip and expect to come back unscathed.”

“Again you’re overreacting.” Denny felt like arguing with me.

“No.” Jess immediately corrected her father. “No, he’s not.”

“He doesn’t have a tag?” Izzy said suggesting.

“You can’t bring a dog on the plane.” Garma was wondering where the dog had been. “That’s it.”

“Roooofff!” The dog barked.

“Come on please.” Izzy wanted another dog. “It gives me an extra thing to do.”

“I’m not even sure if they pressurize the baggage area in planes.” Garma was already thinking about packing her bags.

“Roooofff!” The dog barked again.

“You never take a stray dog home,” Jess added. “It’s probably got rabies. Look at that fuckin’ thing. You know I don’t want to be rude, but I know what ugly is. I think it’s a Basset.”

“No,” Denny jested. “It’s a fox terrier.”

“It’s like a cross between a husky and a pointer,” Jess added.

“Well, it defiantly is not a German shepherd.”

“Roooofff!”

“German shepherds are so vicious. I was over my friend’s house this one time, and this dog came up to me. I started petting it but got this really bad feeling about it. And just as looked at it, it snapped at me. I was so lucky.”

“That poor dog.” Garma was walking a different path than we were.

“Not Lucky.” Jess was bubbly. “I mean like I was lucky.”

“Roooofff!”

“You don’t wanna stereotype,” I told Jess. “The next thing they’re gonna start outlawing German shepherds like they do pit bulls. Any dog can be viscous. It depends how you treat them.”

“I love pit bulls,” Jess said with a squishy face. It was like I was huggin’ her without huggin’ her. “They’re so cute when they’re a baby.”

“You don’t think pit bulls are dangerous?” Denny and his muzzle.

“Yah.” I thought about athletes. “I mean they have that capability, but so doesn’t ever other fuckin’ dog.”

“His name’s Buddy,” Izzy stated.

“Roooofff!”

“That fuckin’ dog got a big fuckin’ mouth, huh?” The bark echoed in my head. It must have been a chupacabra. All I could see was fuzz. Not the fuzz, but the fuzz. We were speaking in Chinese.

El Chupacabra

I saw in blood splashed on the walls and in footprints on the floor. When I was pissed, I didn’t like thinkin’ about my A Nish Na Nu. But there she was. I tried to push her out of the way, but she didn’t move. Now the problem was, when I was mad, I hated everyone. I hated everyone. I hated every single person that I ever saw in my life. I wanted to cause you so much pain that I hated to see you alive. I hated the way I saw you in my sight. I hated the way my brain worked when it collected the data. I hated to see your shape and if you stood in front of me, I couldah’ strangled ya.

It was the first fight Jess and I ever had. The first real fight I mean. It was probably because Jess realized that she was going to have to tune down her partying just a little bit because she was going to be a mother. I had a bottle of Karloff… I mean Orloff vodka. Excuse me. That was the bottle that I swigged on.

Then Jess started to how much we really did party. Let me tell ya, it was a lot. We had a lot of late nights—snorting lines in the bathroom. It was like “whatever, dude.” You asked him what it was after you snorted it. I spoke about it like it was a big deal. But to tell you the truth, kids were doing that shit in high school. We never stuck any needles in our arms, but what was… was. You know what I’m sayin’? It was the celebrity lifestyle. If you were around and it was there, you did it. And if you didn’t like what was goin’ on, you left. At a couple of parties, we saw syringes in the sink, so we got up and left right away. If we didn’t want to be there, we’d get up and leave. It must have been a bad environment.

But if it was a good environment, good people, and someone laid me out a line, no problem. I was worse than Jess to be honest with ya. A thousand times, you know? It depends. I always lived my life on the edge. Was it coke? Because I didn’t want to search for another line. You know what I’m sayin’? If it was OxyContin, I knew that shit was cool. It tasted good. I was all right for the whole day. Another two days ed out. It had happened before. I was gonna do it

again. Jess conformed to my footsteps a little bit. She ed a time when I said, “You don’t have to do it ’cause I do it.”

She was like, Well, maybe what, you shouldn’t do it. I ain’t tellin’ you not to do it.

Well, you are and you’re not.

She was like, We’re here to have a good time. So you know.

I’m not fuckin’ twistin’ your arm. I don’t think you should do it. You should be worried about your career.

Just shut up. That night she didn’t do it, but she had done it before. You know? So we were out. We did what we had to do. I didn’t push her. She didn’t push me. We didn’t expect to see each other tomorrow, but if we did, it was a plus. We kinda grew together. It was like two trees growing side by side, and as we got older our arms intertangled and our roots touched and we just meshed. We were compatible.

So she’s just sittin’ there on my lap just sittin’ me sick. We were inside the cabin, moving around the kitchen. We spoke when we moved. And then I heard her voice.

“Are you ever gonna calm down?”

I was like “What do you mean… calm down?” A phrase. Did you ever realize that one phrase can mean whole bunch of different things? People can say the same things but can mean entirely different things. It all depends on your tone of voice. It’s like Chinese, some complicated coded language based on pitch and tone. But people like me said what they meant. You could read it our faces. I showed my emotions, and that meant that I was an honest person. But I had to make sure about other people. I had to make sure of their intent. I had to make sure of their tone, and when I was in a bad mood, I tended to read into it. I asked her again just so I could read her face move when she said it. “What do you mean calm down?” I offered her an example. “Like calm down… like I can’t go out and have a good time if I want to?”

“Like I’m sittin’ here and you’re so shitfaced and I can’t like even drink anything,” Jess whispered so her parents wouldn’t hear. I think she wanted a nodrawback gift certificate to happy hour. “I’m trying to be good and think about being a mother.”

“Why you plan on pickin’ me now?” I was drunk when I said it, but what I meant to say was Why you picking on me? So I took a second, thought about it, and said it, “Why you pickin’ on me now?” I had an attitude about it.

“I’m not pickin’ on you,” she wined forming her words precisely as they vibrated off my eardrums. “I’m just saying.”

“I’m already sick of conforming to some ideal that you have of a good father.” A second until… “What? Just because you’re on the injured reserve list for nine months, doesn’t mean I can’t drink. If I wanna drink, I’m gonna fuckin’ drink, all right?”

“Jamie, this isn’t just about you. I’m included. You and me because I think I

really need you right now.” She came to the point of crying because I wouldn’t let go of the bottle. There, when she took it all in me swiggin’ from a gallon of Orloff, it came out in a deep breath, relieving pressure. “You don’t even have a chaser.”

Jess sounded so cute when she said that; she almost made me smile. It was a great line. It was a line you’d build a scene upon. You don’t even have a chaser, I thought. Wait ’till I fix myself up. I knew what the fuck I was doin’, but I didn’t fuckin’ care. Ya understand?

But I wasn’t gonna let her sweet-talk me. “I ain’t no stepdad, so don’t force me to be a deadbeat.” I could never say anything like that to my A Nish Na Nu. And as the footsteps ahead broke through the ice and snow, I wondered how I was gonna get up the side of the hill. And then I realized that I didn’t give a fuck. “I just figured if I ed out enough, that nine months would just fly right by. I wouldn’t even fuckin’ notice it.” Like I said, sometimes I really didn’t give a fuck.

Jess just sat taking a moment to let my words set in. And that was the test. I diagnosed the relationship. If she really liked me, she’d stay. And if she didn’t, she’d leave. Fiery fight conversations just snap. They’re not really poetic. Then it was like someone flipped a switch in her head before she went ballistic.

And then all of a sudden when I thought she was going to explode, there was that split second when I saw her expression change. “Don’t talk to me like that.” She burst into tears. “I hate it when you talk to me like that.”

Puke, the stain on your rug, the pubic hair on the fold of your ball sack. The caked cum stain on your shorts. I could smell the shit from here. Why don’t chu to flush the toilet? I when you were really dirty. You were

covered in soot and dead skin. The greasy three-day old urine between your chafed sweat rash was there for two weeks before you took a bath. Vaseline and dirty hands, and I don’t like using the public restroom. I had to stay in the right frame of mind.

“I don’t even care about the little dumper.” I was still cool about it. Kinda calm. Little aggravated. “It was never my intention. Sex is made for fun… not to have kids. So I might ask myself at what point do a few cells equal a fetus? I don’t know. Those crazy Christians think that your body belongs to god and that it’s god’s choice. Now, the Supreme Court disagrees. They ruled that a woman’s body is her own property, and if of age, she has the right to make her own decisions. I think we should think about it. There’s nothin’ wrong with explorin’ all the options.” It was one for my rock star.

“I thought you were happy about it.” Owe, Jess was whining. “This is stupid. So I look at you and I’m like, I have totally nothing to argue with you about. So it’s like, you know. I don’t like the way you’re talkin’ to me and I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t feel good. Before we left, I was watching TV and there was this documentary about James Dean and I got really sick and all I could think about was you.”

“I saw it. How the fast life leads to excessive drug and alcohol abuse. I selfmedicate.”

“There was this story about this kid who got mixed up with the wrong people. He was such a good kid. He had such a good heart, but there were things happening in his life that he couldn’t understand. Then he resorted to drugs and alcohol to solve his problems.”

“Oh, here we go with the tabloid scenarios. You’re really trying to talk to me

about you right now. How things affect you or don’t affect you or what kinda mold you see me in. Here comes the overseeing voice come to save my soul. I am so aware of Eve and how the apple leads to temptation. You’re not takin’ me down with you. Like I said, I’m a drunk… not an alcoholic. I like to do this shit.” Then I ed. “So what happens to this fuckin’ kid anyways?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t get to that part of the story.”

“You don’t even know what happens to the fuckin’ kid. You brought it up. You don’t even know what happened to the fuckin’ kid.”

“Then there was this story about this girl…”

“Who had to sell herself for sex and got mixed up with the wrong crowd. Then she resorted to drugs and alcohol to solve her problems. Yah, I get it. What do you think you are, the picture of abstinence?”

“I know I don’t want to move backward.”

“Tell me you don’t want to snort a line right now, if I laid one out and you weren’t pregnant. Come on. You wouldn’t like to snort a line right now? You’re lyin’.” It was like I had laid one out in front of her. I had the bag in my pocket and pulled it out. Instantly her eyes grew wide, and we were wide awake. There were some rocks… more like pebbles actually that I crushed under my license. Then I split it up and rolled up a dollar bill. I did mine right away, but I gave her the option. “You don’t know you’re naked until you find yourself runnin’ through the woods with your clothes off.” I handed her the dollar bill and she took it from front to back. The nose or the mouth… orally, like on her

prescription. “The next thing you know, you’re gonna tell me a story about this stripper. She fell in love with the wrong guy. She was a good girl who promised that she’d never date some guy from the bar, but he was really charming. It was the way he described her. And every time she went up on stage, she had to resort to drugs and alcohol to solve her problems.”

“What happens to the kid?” For the moment, Jess stopped talking in code.

“That’s what makes James Dean a tragic hero. He falls asleep before the end of the movie.” It was like every time I sat down in front of the typewriter, I became a genius. I did acid every day of my life.

“So do they get married?”

“No,” I snapped back with my attitude. “She makes an appointment.”

“About the baby?” Jess brought the conversation back to the relevant translating stories that I told her in Chinese.

“Yah.” I was still aggravated. “What about this fuckin’ baby that is nine months away and I don’t think I wanna even deal with this shit right now?”

“Jamie,” she said my name all serious. “Well, I’m not sure I want to have it either.” Jess bolts. She outtah here!

Jess didn’t yell. She didn’t try to belittle me. But what she said really hurt. I couldn’t help but picture the little porker inside the oven. “What… you don’t want to raise my fuckin’ kid?” I yelled to her dissipating energy as I followed her flash upstairs. “What do I care? I don’t even want the fuckin’ thing anyways!”

“Shut up,” Denny screamed from upstairs in a commanding tone. I guess I woke him up.

“Shut up bitch,” I screamed back. “I’ll talk as loud as I want.”

Chapter Six

The High-Powered Flashlight

A Nightmare on Elm Street

I zoned out again focusing through the fire. I fell asleep writing. I saw Jess sitting on my bed. “You’re not as charming as you think you are.” She said something to me.

I only apologized to my pillow when she talked me sweet. I wanted to say something degrading, but I loved my A Nish Na Nu. She was my superspecial. “But how do I know what you’re thinking about unless I imagine it? Don’t get me started, A Nish Na Nu.”

“All right, motherfucker.” Jess was ready to fight. “Your toast.”

I went back to the fair. I couldn’t help but get nostalgic. I had to walk there. It was autumn, and the fall weather blew the dried leaves down the pavement. I loved the fall weather. It was something about the chill in the air and the horror movies on TV. Halloween was just around the corner. Halloween, every Friday night I got to stay up late. And I could just imagine myself inside the movie. There were woods back when I was growing up. And in the woods, I found my idea for the greatest horror novel ever. I just had to get there. I had to get to the Topsfield Fair. It was a long walk like almost a mile. But as a partial out-of-

shape teenager, I would wonder if the walk was somewhat longer than that. Maybe five miles… maybe six.

It was all about the journey and the Haunted Hayride. Once I got there, I had to pay to get in. There was this fence that wrapped around the fair grounds. I thought about climbing over the fence, but I liked to imagine myself as a tough guy. I didn’t want to put it to the test. I was watching the older kids standing in line at the Haunted Hayride. The parents around town didn’t like the Haunted Hayride or the loud noise that came from the rides as the kids screamed. And I never understood why. Maybe, it was the rough-lookin’ nature of the kids smoking cigarettes in line just as the sun slipped behind the clouds. It was dark, not pitch-black, but dark enough to shadow their faces. The cloud of smoke above their heads, the way they dressed with long hair, ripped jeans, and leather jackets. The occasional Canadian tuxedo. You know, they didn’t go to church on Sunday. Just looking at them, you knew at least one of them was carrying a knife… maybe in their boot, in one of their pockets, or tucked into their waistline. You heard bad stories about places like that, especially after dark: stabbings, muggings, old people getting beaten to death, conceiving children in the backseats of cars, and drunken brawls. And as soon as you saw the first cop, you hopped a fence and headed into the woods.

Looking back, I wondered if anything ever happened at all besides some swag that one of them kept in the glove compartment of their rusted-out Trans-Am. A Trans-Am… that was the car. It was the way it looked. Ignoring speed limits and high-speed collisions. You knew you had to have a hot girlfriend if you drove a Trans-Am. And you had to get her high before you had sex with her. And when you were through, it was time for a roller-coaster ride and a hayride. They played rock and roll at the fairgrounds and stayed up late at night to watch horror movies. It was Halloween; you had to .

It was the whole mentality—rebellious dogs and no-leash law. And if you looked at one of their girlfriends, they barked at ya. I just wanted to steal their car and jump in the backseat. And I’d make sure I’d turn up the music real loud. I

couldn’t help it. And as I glanced just to see how the female figure appeared in tight clothing and how my mind wondered beyond… tight jeans that gripped skin at every curve, the bottom of a breast, no bras, and tight blouses. Flat stomachs and cut-off shirts. Blow jobs and backstage es, I didn’t want to obey the speed limit.

Then I saw her walk by. I was looking for her. I saw her walk by a thousand times before she walked by. I swear to God, I thought it was Jess each time and I’d follow those sashes anywhere. I felt her behind me as I lost myself inside a crowd. I think I smelled her. Maybe, it was sex. Maybe, I smelled her sex from the backseat of my Trans-Am. Sashes and suede leather turned inside out. I saw her before I saw the side of her face. That short skirt that made her muscles tense in the chill. I followed the fuzz up her spine, her blonde hair dangling just like the sashes on the back of her suede jacket. Jess was the hottest girl that came out after the sun went down. Music and magic carpets took me on a ride as I felt hands across my waist telling me to buckle up and hold on. Describing her face and feeling like I was going to fall out, I melted before I had a chance to throw water on her smile. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t hold on tight enough. Right then and there, I wanted to go back to the Topsfield Fair. I wanted to have sex with her in the backseat of my car. Then I wanted to get her high. I felt my hands holding on as I gripped tighter and tighter. Jess was the hottest girl on the haunted hayride, and I had to prove how bad I was just for her to notice me. I wanted to go on tour with the band. And next time, I was gonna break in.

A wild roll in the hay, a girl belonged to you if she wore your leather jacket. As a young adult, I wanted to grow my hair long too just because I thought it looked tough. And almost every moment of the day was spent imagining having sex in the backseats of cars. I was stuck in the eighties.

Walking around like a stalking predator, I was young, but I still knew how the taste of raw flesh felt on my tongue. Through the crowd, I kept my brain consumed with flowing sash. I followed her hair. I heard each song as I ed by the dogs waiting in line. Like me, they wanted jump out of an airplane just to

see how the air felt before they hit ground. I loved that time in my life. It was nostalgic. I saw her me by a thousand times before I found the Haunted Hayride.

Snapping jaws, I ed that I had a knife in my pocket. Tight skirts and tight, formfitting clothes, I was worried about what was going to happen after the silo turned dark and I had to feel my way out. I don’t know why, but I wanted to stab somebody because I thought it might happen. I had to buy my way in, but I knew I had to jump over the fence. They wanted to see the animal that I kept inside the barn when I stayed up late on Friday nights just to watch Halloween. The clown hiding inside the Haunted Hayride was a tough motherfucker.

Area 51

I was a wandering sheep. I did not love the fold. I did not love my shepherd’s voice. I would not be controlled. —A Clockwork Orange

I was stuck in front of the boob tube. I could hear someone screaming in the next room—a caged animal squealing in agonizing pain as his captors poked him with sticks. They were studying me in my sleep, showing me things and measuring my reaction. Studying my brain and measuring how I reacted. Each emotion paired a scream. Tones of voices, decibel levels. I heard a different scream coming from each cell. Each cell a different animal, but they knew the sound of how a complex organism screams when it is in pain. I couldn’t hear myself scream. I could only hear the animals. We started shining lights in each other’s faces. I just wanted to shut the light out. I called it “a walk in the woods.”

They wanted me to kill myself. I could tell because they were showing me pictures. I could feel them rewiring my brain and asking me to pray.

What’s the worst thing you ever did in your life?

I thought about killing my mother. I almost killed her before I was born. They had to cut me out of her. I saw the scars on television. Later on, I thought about it again. I thought about how I could do it. What the situation was and how I saw her face after I bludgeoned her to death. I felt the wet on my skin, and I had to wash it off. It felt like I picked someone else’s nose and someone was forcing me to eat it. I watched it over and over again. I felt her snot on my tongue. It was contagious, filtering through my taste buds, comprehending how individual cells carried the data to the rest of my body. I wanted to leave, but someone wouldn’t let me get out of the electric chair.

I heard the dogs barking outside my cell. I couldn’t see behind me, but I pictured it like a dark prison where every cell had a chair and every chair had a jacket.

“Jamie,” I heard a soft voice. “Wake up. It’s not that bad. Camping, fishing… it will be fun.”

“We should have gone to Hawaii.” But I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. I ate someone else’s snot, and they turned the water off. I wanted to clean myself but feared the showers. The pictures were inside my head. They stole my thoughts. They stole my body and tried to reproduce how I felt. I watched her lips move on television.

Then I woke up again, wondering how it might feel to kill someone without

touching them. I had their fangs in my mouth and their thoughts under my skin. Jess was lying beside me. She was a monster, and no matter how many times I wished her away, she just wouldn’t leave me alone. She was tucked away inside my arms as I opened my eyes. Then the man took over. I could have killed her, smothering her under the pillow. I pressed against her face. She didn’t move at first, but then she woke. I felt her struggle as I pressed down. I was still asleep.

“What time is it?” Jess yawned as I rolled over on my side slipping my feet to the floor, pushing my body vertical. I set the alarm clock. It was 4:30 in the afternoon, and I ed Jess and I having a long conversation. I ed it in spirits, but if you asked me to tell you what we talked about…

The buzzer kept going off in my head, and each time I thought to shut it off, I fell asleep. I getting up and dressing myself. I must have walked around my bed and found my luggage. I sifted through it, but no matter how many times I checked, I couldn’t find my mask. It was in Haiti. The doctor had killed a pufferfish and I woke up in a well with no fingers inside The Serpent and the Rainbow. Screaming… I was screaming.

“Jamie!” I heard Jess shout though the floor. “Wake up!”

“I’m awake!” I was still sitting on the foot of the bed with my feet feeling the vibrations through the floor.

My muscles were still in shock and I wondered where I put my brain. It took me some time to collect myself, but once the sun started going down, I saw what time it was. The room kept getting darker. I could see the dim light through the shade. And once I felt the light close enough to the earth, I got up and made my way downstairs. I could hear the boards creeping below my steps as I fell to the earth. Jess was waiting for me at the front door.

“My parents are gone.” Jess stared out the window as I crept up behind her, slipping my arms around her waist.

“Where did they go?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied in shortness of breath and term. “My dad took my mom out for a walk in the woods.”

“Where’s the kid?” I felt her hair on my face.

“I think he went with them.”

“Did you want to go with them?” I wanted to kill my mother.

“Jamie,” Jess sunk to the belt wrapped around my waist. “I don’t feel good.”

It had never been done on television before. Maybe it had, but I had been out of civilized living for so long. I pictured the screen going black. There was a hum and a high-powered flashlight. And then the lights went out. Everyone in the theater was into the movie. They were into it. They got the picture. It was a black screen, and all anyone could hear was their voices.

I saw the light in the woods. I heard the screen door swing open and close. I felt

the cool wind on my face. Then I saw the dog. I changed his name. A bright light inside a space suit. He was chewing on plastic just above the dirt. The doll that I got for Jess was pressed a pearly white, a shake, and a pin… its paw pushing the doll’s head into the ground.

Jess got up and made her way down the porch stairs. I heard the boards creak. “Do you think they’re all right?”

“I’m sure they’re fine.” I swear I wanted to kill my mother.

“I’m kinda worried.” She had a dream about a clown. “They left a long time ago.”

As much as I wanted to have sex with her, I wanted to know how her blood tasted. Meat and the raw, just before I stuck her in the freezer. She would always be a part of me as I reached down and tugged on the doll. The dog growled just not wanting to give it up. I didn’t want to be a heroin addict, but I was great fuckin’ singer. The board crept beneath my feet as I came down from the perch. I wanted to eat the dog after he played with the plastic. I tried to get it away from him, but he just wouldn’t let it go.

“Denny’s just out there all pissed off.” I shoved her off. “Don’t worry about it.”

“But he’s my father.”

I wanted to call the doctor. A mauling, I saw the dog shredding the plastic. So we

called him. We called the doctor. “You want to go looking?” I let the dog have the doll focuon the light inside the woods poking through the trees as the sun dipped beyond the edge of the earth.

Cutting off heads. I put the hacksaw to the back of his neck. The first drag ripped its skin, and then I pushed it forward. A dragging resistance, I wanted to leave them where they were. I heard them scream.

“I want my dad.”

“Don’t worry, baby,” I said. “Let’s go find Mom.”

I was gonna write just how I saw it. I just learned how to talk. I had a flashlight, but Jess didn’t bring one. She followed the light as I shined it on the dog leading our way down the path. As soon as we started walking, the dog ran out in front.

“I see a light.” Jess saw a light shining through the trees, instinct forcing her to stop in her tracts. “Is that them?” She sounded concerned.

“I don’t know.” I saw the light too. It showed itself for a moment down the path and to the left, no more than a few hundred yards away. I took a second to the optical data. I saw it again, and then it was gone, almost hiding behind a tree. It appeared as if someone was walking up a hill toward us holding a flashlight, the movement of an unseen biological entity most likely causing the erratic movement. I took another moment to wait and see if I could see a dark outline. “Denny,” I yelled, vibrations over colliding molecules. “DENNY!” I screamed again at the light blowing like the flame from a Bunsen Burner.

We waited, but no one answered.

“Mom,” Jess screamed, her voice bouncing off trees before the echo came back to us.

And then the light disappeared. “I think they got lost. Maybe they’re moving away from us.”

“How come they can’t hear us?”

“They should. They’re not too far away.”

Then I noticed that the dog’s ears had perked up, one resting slightly forward and opposing symmetry. His attention was focused on some far-off point down the path inside or behind a shadow where I could not see. Then Buddy must have bit down on the plastic, because I heard a muffled microphone mumble mamma’s mechanical memorial.

“Mamma,” the doll cried a preconceived reaction.

“Mah!” Jess screamed again.

“Looks like we gotta go get ’em.” I was about ready.

“I don’t want to go out there.” Apprehension does sometimes resemble fear. It was the way she used her words. “Someone’s definitely out there though.”

“You want me to go and you can stay here.”

“I don’t know if I want to be left alone. I’m imagining someone waiting for me inside the cabin right now. It could be anybody. Everyone knows we’re here. They could be hiding in the woods out back just waiting for you to leave.”

I could tell right then that Jess was scared. The hair on her arms and on the back of her neck was standing on end like some static cling that sent electrical impulses like a beacon of light from one pole to another.

“Does Denny have his cell phone on him?”

“That’s the first thing I thought of,” Jess replied. “They’ve been gone for hours.”

“Well, let’s just walk down the path a little bit. See what jumps out at us.” I didn’t realize I had made a joke until I said it, but Jess was acting so serious and concerned that I knew that I shouldn’t laugh.

So I started to walk following the light and leading the way. Jess stayed behind me, and I wondered why she didn’t hold onto me or stay close like most girls would in that type of situation… just in case, no matter how remote the chance was. Maybe, she was giving herself room to run. My Buddy was there coming

up on my right-hand side, still chewin’ on that plastic. I heard him panting. He moved slightly up ahead of me. I guess he was following the light too.

Then I thought I heard Denny’s voice. I saw the beam of what I thought could be a flashlight streak into the dark outlines of the sky. Only briefly… I saw it only for an instance.

So we turned in that direction with Jess walking up behind me, still giving herself room to run. Twenty yards. Just about, weaving through the trees, and all in one direction. That was all.

“Denny!” I screamed as I stopped at some random point. Then I realized in the time that it took me to wait for a response that the only other sound in the woods was our own breathing. It was completely silent. Eerily silent like the woods themselves were trying to keep quiet. You couldn’t even hear the wind blow the tall pines. There was no response.

“I thought I saw a something.” I thought I did.

“I didn’t see anything.” I could hear Jess’s voice vibrate in tones.

“You didn’t?”

“I didn’t see anything.”

I started waving my flashlight around the trees from pole to pole, and my hair standing on end. I didn’t see anything either. So I turned around and started walking back to the path. Jess took a step back and turned, waving her head around like it was on a swivel trying to see what was looking at her from behind the trees. We walked about twenty yards in the same direction that we came from. That’s all. I didn’t know how it happened.

We saw the light. We thought it could be them. We walked off the path. We didn’t walk that far. The path was clear. It was a long dirt road that was about a few hundred yards long and basically straight. It was wide enough to drive a car down. We couldn’t have missed it and I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t know how many times we walked over our steps. We didn’t walk more than fifty feet at a time before we traced over our steps in the opposite direction. And we just couldn’t find it. We just couldn’t find the path. And after a while, the trees all looked the same.

“Oh my god,” I said as I realized the situation. “I think we’re fuckin’ lost!” I wasn’t ready to freak out yet, but I was starting to get worried.

“How could we get lost?” Jess’s voice bounced back on an echo. “We didn’t go anywhere!”

“Where is it?” I asked. It was a rhetorical question.

“So what happened to the dog?”

“Where’s the fuckin’ dog?” I looked around all shocked. He was gone. “He was beside me like a second ago.” I wanted to yell for him. “What the fuck was his

name?”

“I don’t .” Jess was about to cry. “DAD!” she screamed. “Dad!”

“Shut up,” words… instantaneous reaction before I thought of them. “We’re not that fuckin’ lost! It’s not like we’re out in the fuckin’ jungle. Maybe we just didn’t walk far enough.” So I tried to think which way we had walked heading to and back from whence we came. “We got to walk back in this direction.” I pointed in the direction that I was the most sure about. “About ten, twenty yards from the same direction we came from.”

So we walked about a hundred feet in that direction, and we didn’t find it. “Shouldn’t we be able to see the lights from the house?” Jess asked on the verge. I could read her thoughts. I’m never gonna’ get home. No matter which way we walk it’s the wrong fuckin’ direction.

“I think we need to keep going in this direction.” I didn’t stop walking. “It’s probably right in front of us.”

“I don’t think you know where the fuck you’re goin.” Jess talked like a large intruder was knocking on her door.

“It was right there.” Frustrated, I pointed, not focusing on any one direction. “Right there!”

Then Jess thought she saw something. “I think I saw a flashlight!” And as I

looked in that direction, Jess screamed, “Mah!”

The light was close. I saw it through the trees no more than a hundred feet away. Jess was ready to bolt in that direction, but instinct made my eyes grow wide and cautious as I focused on a steady beam of light weaving around the pines. Mechanical, I grabbed her by her arm and ripped her back before she could go.

Extra force, Jess almost tripped over herself. “What the fuck you doin?” Aggressively, she tried to pull away as I heard my flashlight hit the ground somewhere at my feet.

“You don’t know who the fuck that is,” I spoke faster than I understood grabbing her by both shoulders and firmly pulling her in close so she could see my face and understand how serious I was. It was dark, but there was enough light for her to see it in my eyes. “What if that’s not your dad?” I was scared. “He didn’t answer you.” Jess froze.

And as soon as I said it, someone turned the light out. I caught it out of the corner of my eye instantly jerking my head that way. We froze and waited. I didn’t want us to make any sudden movements because I couldn’t help but think that someone was aiming a gun at us. Cautious and horrified… any movement we made, we had to be cautious and horrified about it from that point on.

Moments in ing, I ed that my flashlight was still on the ground, so I slowly felt my knees bend, my right hand releasing the cloth of Jess sweatshirt and my left hand making sure she didn’t go anywhere. Keeping my eyes focused on the area of the woods where I had last see the unidentified beam of light, I reached down and turned the flashlight out before I rolled it to my palm and stood up. Slowly, I took a few steps to the side, pulling Jess out of the way. Just in case.

“Dad?” Jess whispered, her sharp cries cutting the night air. It was real dark with no lights on. The woods ate up the moon.

“Shhhh.” I just kept staring in the same direction trying to be quiet.

“Who do you think it is?” Whispering.

“Shut up,” low, terse vibrations told her to shut up as we both waited and looked.

“Some cracker gonna rape me.” Soft cries and whines, slowly giving it some volume. “You had to say something. You always have to something!”

“Seriously,” I whispered, keeping my eyes forward and locked in that same general area. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Where the fuck is my dad?”

I didn’t answer her. Then, I ed that there was more than one cracker in the woods. I didn’t have to hear them to know they were there. I slowly turned my head, looking all around, in back, in front, left, and right. I didn’t see anything move. I didn’t hear anything at all. In a moment, I heard the faintest snapping noise. Jess dug her nails into my skin and let out a cry followed by an alarming sob, then making a fleeting attempt to be silent.

“It’s just the fuckin’ dog, all right.” Rational, I tried.

“How could it be the fuckin’ dog?”

Alarmed, I felt the blood pumping through my veins, and I knew we had to go. So I went aggressively pulling Jess along in the same direction. After a few steps, we jumped behind a tree. Jess was so close that I could feel her shoulder digging into my ribs. Horrified but still able to think, I waited there for a second before I thought about coming out from behind the tree. All I could hear was Jess sniffling and whimpering. I thought… thought I didn’t want to stick my neck out. My hands… I thought about my heavy hand and the flashlight as I aimed it at the ground in front of us and turned the light on. The beam highlighted an area about ten feet in front of us. I could see each individual pine needle blanketing the forest floor counting them into the infinite while we waited there shivering. We waited, but I didn’t hear anything. And after a second or two, we started walking. We just started walking.

We turned around so many times. I couldn’t fuckin’ tell. I couldn’t tell where the fuck I was. Then Jess tripped. She stumbled a bit, but I pulled her up and we kept going. We kept going until I realized that we were definitely not going in the right direction. We hadn’t seen anything, so I thought we should stop just to catch our breaths and think about which way we should go. So my pace started to slow. I slowed up just enough to hear. I heard someone walking up right behind us!

“Oh my god!” Jess shouted as it echoed through wood.

Spaces and seconds where countdowns happen in less time than it took for a reaction. Not knowing what to do, I looked over my shoulder, but I didn’t see anything. I didn’t wait long enough, and before I knew it, we were running. I

tried my best to keep the flashlight focused out in front of us so we wouldn’t trip. The cloth of Jess’s sweatshirt was still gripped tightly in my left hand, but I didn’t look to see if she was there. We stumbled our way through the woods, darting around trees, our ankles breaking through shrubs. I didn’t know how long we ran for. Then, I felt Jess pull back, forcing me to stop for a second and abruptly turn around.

“Jamie,” Jess was bawling, sniveling. “We’re lost! I want my dad!”

“Somebody’s fuckin’ stalkin’ us,” I was trying to speak, but I was all out of breath. “What the fuck?” My senses were on overload. “I don’t know who the fuck it is?”

“Dad!” Jess screamed.

Instantly, something turned a light on. Fifty feet away, I saw it out of the corner of my eye. A dark silhouette was hiding behind a tree, the beam of his flashlight stretching up and vanishing into the pines far above.

The light illuminated the forest as if it were the moon… a full moon living inside the forest. Jess and I started moving away. We ran away, but it started following us until it was all around us. It was in front, behind, to our sides, and above. The whole forest all around us lit up. The woods had their own luminescence. Even the trees glowed. The leaves, the pines, everything. My eyes adjusted to the light. We couldn’t help but look at it. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stop staring at it. “What the fuck is it?”

“I don’t know. It’s a UFO. What the fuck do you think it is? I don’t know what

the fuck it is!”

“No,” I said. I seemed calm when I said it. “It’s a UFO.” There was no other explanation.

And then the light went out. Immediately, I started waving my flashlight around. I was frantic, and I didn’t look at anything long enough to see what it was. Jess started rambling. Incoherent rambles, I couldn’t understand what she was saying.

And then I heard it. It was a loud, resonating hum that hurt my ears. It was a fizzing sensation in my head. I couldn’t think. And for a second, it was almost like I couldn’t what I looked like. It was like someone flipped a switch, turning my brain off. Catatonic, I was ready to collapse. And as soon as I felt my legs weaken, I felt the pain inside my head and I couldn’t see. I dropped my flashlight, holding onto the sides of my head with both hands trying to rip my hair out. And just as I thought I was dead, the hum dissipated, the flashlight at my feet flickered… flickering and then shutting off. It was pitch-black and I couldn’t see anything. My pupils were physically unable to adjust to the severe change. There was no sound at all. It was like I went into a room with no light and shut the door.

“Jamie!” I heard Jess call for me. Inside the light, I let her go. I didn’t answer. “Jamie,” she cried again, slowly moving, the smallest movement into another. Then she ed the light. She couldn’t see anything, but she ed the light. Finding her hands and feet, Jess groped for my flashlight in total darkness. Every inch in fear, she was sniveling, searching the pines and moving her hands over the dirt and twigs until she felt it. Her fingers… her fingers knew the object before she thought to pick it up. And then something happened.

“Oh my god!” she screamed across a sea of echoing molecules as something

violently kicked the flashlight out of her hand. “Oh my god! Oh my god!” Whipping herself up on her feet, she stumbled backward and fell. Panting, I could hear her breathe before she screamed, “Baby, where are you? There’s someone here!”

I heard Jess scream inside my head. I tried to call to her.

“Jamie, I can hear you, but I don’t know where you are!” I was right there. “I can hear you. I can hear you, but I can’t see you!” You could hear her howling, crying through the trees in moments and spaces before I heard the leaves rustle. “I can’t find you!”

My voice got farther and farther away.

“Jamie,” she cried stumbling to her feet, nearly falling and bumping into trees while the twigs scratched and ripped at her skin. “Where are you?” Fear resurrected inside her tone; Jess was all alone in the woods. “Jamie, I can’t find the flashlight! I can’t! I can’t find it! I can’t find my dad!”

And then the woods stopped being silent. Shadows in eruption, the trees made noise! Jess had to keep moving. She had to run away from the rustling in the trees and wild animals in the brush. She stumbled and fell trying to get away. Scratching branches and one across her eye, she tripped and twisted. Jess felt the weight on her foot before her ankle hit the ground. Shrieking in pain and nearly tumbling in a fall, she managed to stay on her feet. Resting in moments, she broke down at the root of a tree. “What do you want from me?” She screamed before breaking down into sobs and gasps. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to. Don’t make me.” Moaning on mamma’s memorial. “Bloody Mary isn’t real.”

There was only one other choice.

Then it came back. The moon followed her behind her eyelids. Jess couldn’t get away. She was too tired and she couldn’t run anymore. And as she slowly opened her eyes, the glow overtook the forest. The woods lit up, illuminated like it was before. I could hear her crying.

“Help.” Yelps and wails shedding tears, blubbering sorrow. “Oh God, just get me outta this… please.”

She cast a prayer. God bless her, I would. The wings of birds nesting in the canopy, I lifted my head to the light above filling boxes with pines. And that’s when she saw me under the moon. It was a random freak occurrence that had no explanation whatsoever. I found my mask, and I loved playing the clown. “Mamma,” Jess heard a child laugh. I thought I was Frankenstein.

My ending line is, I loved this girl once and I wanted to kill her. But I couldn’t, so I thought I might abduct her family instead. Jess heard the narrative of my voice echoing through the trees, but I never moved my lips to say it. The doctor was tired of being silent, and I was ready to hop on the first flight back to Honolulu. I loved this girl, and she turned me down so I wanted to kill. So I spoke, my words muffled by green language, silicone satellites, and a Portuguese Man O’ War. I was attaching nodes to Jess’s brain.

We’re waiting. We’re all already here. This is the final flight, and you’re the last one to load her luggage.

“But I don’t want the light inside in the woods,” she cried.

That’s a big, huge mistake. Irate in undulation, flowing narration in senseless, horrible vibration. You’re the one committing suicide by writing my movie. Exasperation imprinted on molecules. Next question.

“Where’s my brother?”

Children have accidents. It was a jerk, a plump, and a dunk. And he was a slow swimmer.

“I don’t know why Lucky slid off the porch.”

We never pressurize the baggage compartment. Next question.

“Where’s my baby? What did you do with my baby?”

We forgot to issue him a ticket. Next question.

A long romantic stroll down a dark narrow pathway. “Why did you kill my boyfriend?”

Your father frankly told you that you had to be home by two thirty, but I thought I

was overreacting. Next question.

“You’re not here because of me,” Jess wailed, at wit’s end unable to move inside the white light. “I’m here because of you.”

Tell that to your mother. Next question.

“Why can’t I take my sunglasses off?”

Because I can’t see the sun through my eyes. Next question.

“Norky… are you an alien?”

Lift off! She’s gone. She’s outta here! Energy unable to be destroyed or created. E=mc^2, Jess just disappeared. It was last call on a one-way ticket to my golden sunshine. Inspired, I took off following tail feathers tickling my feet. A whoopwhoop . . . it was all how I plucked the strings as I slipped it in the basket. A wavy motion . . . a jerk, a plump, and a dunk. One hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second. I got to do the whole movie over and bring my special princess back for the sequel.

The End?

“Disappear” . . . INXS and add the PS conversation. I wanted to get serious for a

second. If anything, I’d call it an encore.

“That’s bullshit.” A Nish Na Nu got all huffy puffy about it after I finished telling her the story. “That is so untrue. It’s not just a satellite. So how do you explain UFOs in all the old drawings?”

“I don’t know,” I said rather matter-of-factly. “They made it up. Artists are creative. That’s what makes art great.”

“If you’re such a good writer, why do they want you to get a job?”

“Ah, they’re a bunch of fuckin’ assholes. Operation Misery, Memory Lane, the two twins, and the three heads to gravedigger Wilkes… they wanted to keep me as their movie slave. At least my scripts don’t have blood on them. So they keep ing out my novels before they’re published, because money equals freedom. And they don’t want me to have any.”

“So what really happened up there in Raghead?”

“It was all premeditated in movies. Truthfully, Mr. Brooks radioed to coach Bill Bulebush to start sending in some plays. It was like a war. The next thing I knew, I was starring in Battle: Los Angeles and tying kids shoes while I was getting my brain dissected. And don’t even get me started on the movie, Eagle Eye, from producer Steven Speilberg. That’s how you set an innocent American civilian up to be the Oklahoma City bomber. Call Lee Harvey Oswald, I think they thought they found the perfect scapegoat.”

“I don’t think I want to go up in the airplane.”

And for a second, it was like my bread and butter forgot all about the macaques and the marmosets. And the baboons clicked, puttin’ their whistles back in their pockets.

Other Horrifying Fiction

by Jayme Alan Toomey

D ivine Inspiration. Jesse Kamphman was just trying to get away, but everywhere he went, the full moon followed his pain. In between fangs, claws, and blood, he falls in love and gets burned. An eruption of total rebellious chaos sentencing his mind to four padded walls inside of a dream. (eISBN: 978-14349-5956-0, ISBN: 978-1-4349-1105-6)

The Tag Along. Aaron Shaw woke up on the wrong side of the bed. His father wanted to kill him and his mother kept screaming about how he couldn’t get any studying done. Once they were out of the picture, Aaron could go hang out with his friends and degrade himself consumed by a murderous psychedelic trance. (eISBN: 978-1-4349-3958-6, ISNB: 978-1-4349-1244-2)

Both Divine Inspiration and The Tag Along can be purchased at www.dorrancebookstore.com

A in’ On. Weird things happen in the country. All you have to do is take a walk in the woods and you might not come back. But when Christian Rueben Levi walked out of the woods he dragged along a few ghosts with him forcing him to stalk, torture, and execute the innocent.

Paging Dr. Kevorkian. A collection of three raw, ground breaking novels. Paging Dr. Kevorkian starts with a chilling explosion of violence paralyzing

the reader before taking aim and tickling your funny bone.

Witchcraft. The Dooms wanted to go on a vacation. Fishing, camping, nature walks, living the rugged life somewhere out in the remote boondocks of Maine. It was a crash course in Cryptozoology, but Jamie Dooms didn’t believe in ghosts and goblins. Behind the scenes, dark forces prayed for chants, spells, and witchcraft leading the Dooms down a dark path searching for the light at the end of the tunnel.