Vox Inaudica

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Rind Literary Magazine
Issue 13
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Rind Literary Magazine
Issue 13
march 2020
rindliterarymagazine.com
All Works © Respective Authors, 2020
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Editor in Chief:
Dylan gascon
Fiction Editors:
Johnathan Etchart
Jenny Lin
Melinda Smith
Stephen williams
Shaymaa Mahmoud
Nonfiction Editors:
Collette Curran
Owen Torres
William Ellars
Anastasia Zamora
Poetry Editors:
Shaymaa Mahmoud
Sean hisaka
Lisa Tate
Webmaster:
Omar Masri
Blog Manager:
Dylan Gascon
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Contents
Acknowledgements 5
Contributors 43
Fiction:
Murder of crows/ ramona black 7
The kitchen table/ Samantha j. atkins 37
non-Fiction:
The whole catastrophe/ Roberto loiderman 17
Poetry:
Another another/ Daniel Raphael 14
To the ground/ john tustin 35
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Acknowledgements
Thank you to all of our contributors, past and present, for
helping us get this thing moving. Thank you to the creative writing
faculty of the University of California-Riverside, Mount San Antonio
College, Rio Hondo College and Riverside Community College for your
continued support of this magazine.
Rind is on the look out for original artwork and photography for
our upcoming issues. If you or someone you know might be interested in
contributing, send us an inquiry for more details.
Please support the San Gabriel Valley Literary Festival; find
them at http://www.sgvlitfest.com. We’ll be there, and so should you.
Check out our listing on Duotrope. We’re also on Facebook and
Twitter. Regular updates on RLM and other fun and interesting things
can be found at our affiliated blog site:
http://www.thegrovebyrind.wordpress.com. If you would like to contribute to
Rind, send your manuscript to rindliterarymagazine@gmail.com.
Cheers!
–The Rind Staff
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Murder of Crows
By Ramona Black
I tried my best to rise above it all. After all, a grown man should not be bothered by the opinions of
others. Especially if the opinion was that of a group of lowly birds. Common crows at that. Every
man has a limit and those feathered beasts brought the war on. I was merely a victim. As much of a
victim as Mr. Jingles, the poor, long haired cat that lives down the street. The crows tormented him as
soon as he dared show one whisker outside of his home.
But, I am getting ahead of myself.
It started innocently enough. A group of crows took up residence in the large fir in the front yard.
They would rise up, cawing and swooping about when I entered or exited my home. I assumed they
had young ones and were merely being protective. I couldn’t help notice it was only my movements
that caught the crows’ attention. Mr. Jenkins from across the hall moved about freely and they did not
move a feather. Even the shrieking offspring of Sally downstairs only caused an occasional head to
turn. Yet when I appeared they would immediately take flight and soar about, shrieking and cackling
in their insane, vulgar tone.
The harsh cries became aerial attacks. The crows plunged through the sky, whirling above my head,
calling out in triumph when I ducked or flinched. Who would not, if some dark, beady eyed beast
dived down and swooped mere inches above their head? They were crueler to poor Mr. Jingles, often
chasing him and on several occasions, removing small tufts of his long, orange fur. They never took
such liberties with me, perhaps because I have very little hair left. They had a far more humiliating.
and filthy attack planned for me.
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On a Spring day I emerged from my home. The crows rose up as a group and stormed the skies above
me. They circled and cried out, drawing the attention of a few neighbors close by. The crows dived
down and released a barrage of gooey, disgusting excrement on the back of my freshly dry-cleaned
jacket. The neighbors thought this was the funniest thing they had ever seen. I retreated to my door,
but not without hearing for the first time that the crows were actually heckling me! Their cries were
not the common “caw caw” they are credited for. They were calling out clearly and most
triumphantly, “Ha! Ha! Ha!” The vicious birds were laughing at me, enjoying what they saw as their
first major victory.
It would be a long and drawn out war.
The sides were decidedly uneven in our battles. They greatly outnumbered me. The key group, or
‘murder’ as I soon found out a number of crows are called, was around four crows. Sometimes the
number grew to ten or more. After the coat incident, I kept a detailed log of their insults and attacks
on me. I noted the culprits involved as well. I could not always tell them apart, but there were a few
differences. The ringleader was the largest and his second in command had a peculiar tilt to his head.
I did not dignify the crows with names, but gave them numbers. C1 for the leader and C2 on up for
the rest.
I had no allies, except for Mr. Jingles. He could not be counted on at all times. He lost much of his
bluster when his owner had him castrated. She also forced the poor cat to wear a light blue collar with
large bells attached. She wished to thwart his success at hunting and killing birds. The loud jingling
which announced his every move made his hunt more difficult. I empathized with Mr. Jingles being
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so hampered. On a few occasions I managed to cut off the bells. Mr. Jingles became a more decided
comrade after the crows announced his humiliating operation to one and all. They followed him
down the street with ribald cries of “BALLS! BALLS!” It was a cruel thing to mock the poor cat for
what had been taken from him. Indeed Mr. Jingles felt the cut deeply and often took refuge on my
small porch.
One overweight, jingling feline did not help much when dealing with the crows. They cried out
derogatory jeers whenever I walked down my street. They heckled me mercilessly. If I failed to wear
a cap, they delighted in screaming out “BALD! BALD! BALD!” at the top of their lungs. They dive
bombed me when my arms were full. They loved it best when they startled me into dropping my
packages. I cannot begin to think of how many dozens of eggs were destroyed by their behavior.
They pestered me continually with crude calls and comments. I had no ammunition to fight back.
Occasionally, pushed to the brink, I would hurl back insults and threats. This had no effect on them.
They merely flew from tree to house to tree, delighted they had gotten a response.
They escalated to more physical assaults. They swooped down and allowed their vile talons to graze
my cap. They bombarded me with the foulest of their arsenal. What could a man do against such
behavior? I attempted to fight back. On several occasions I threw rocks, and once a can at them. But,
my aim is poor and the crows were agile. They easily dodged my humble missiles.
Then came the ugly assault that caused me to trip and spoil a new pair of trousers. I reached the point
of no return. I was nursing my swollen and scraped knee, injured in the fall and watching the crows
from my small porch. I had purchased a pair of binoculars to track their activities. A flurry of flight
and the familiar cries of “BALLS! BALLS!” announced the arrival of Mr. Jingles. He hastily
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trotted across the yard and joined me. I had a small can of tuna ready for him. It was our ritual that
we meet for an evening meal and discussion of the continued war. I put down the binoculars,
hurriedly recorded the crows’ movements in my log and turned my attention to Mr. Jingles.
“This has gone on long enough, my friend,” I announced solemnly. He gazed up from his tuna,
licking his lips for a moment before returning his attention to the can. I knew this was an invitation to
continue. Mr. Jingles was not much of a tactician, but was a solid ally and would follow my lead.
“I have a plan, Mr. Jingles.” I leaned down and whispered to him. “Do you know Bobby Gallagher
from down the street?” Mr. Jingles looked up quickly, green eyes wide with alarm. I knew the
Gallagher boy had a reputation for causing mischief and had once ignited a poor stray with lighter
fluid. I despised the boy, but he was a means to an end.
“Do not worry, he is not part of the alliance.” I gave Mr. Jingles a pat and he relaxed with my words.
“The Gallagher boy owns, or I should say owned, a BB gun. It was taken from him by his mother
after he shot a boy in the park. Now, I heard of this act and approached her and purchased the BB gun
for thirty dollars.” I smiled proudly and lowered my voice confidentially. “I told her it was for my
nephew, though I have none. I do not even have siblings. She does not need to know this.”
“So now we have a weapon, Mr. Jingles. I plan on ending these attacks once and for all! I will lure
our enemy in and destroy them!” Mr. Jingles watched me and uttered the smallest of mews. I knew
what this meant and did not take offense at being questioned. Of course Mr. Jingles would want to
know the details.
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“I do not think it will be easy and I do not expect the crows to trust me. However, that fool Mr.
Breems across the street insists on feeding the birds, including the vile crows, despite my entreaties to
him. He refuses to acknowledge that he this encourages their behavior and allows their numbers to
increase!” I paused to catch my breath and regain my composure. The conversations with Mr. Breems
had grown increasingly heated and escalated quickly. I am ashamed to say, I lost my temper and
pushed the old man backwards. The police were called by watching neighbors. They forced an
apology from me and I was no longer allowed on that side of the street. The fiendish birds had
observed it all and for days after their cries had been “JAIL! JAIL! JAIL!” whenever they saw me.
“Mr. Breems left for Florida last week and now there is no supply of food,” I whispered to Mr.
Jingles. His ears twitched and he watched me intently, perhaps seeing in what direction this is going.
“I will lay out food and wait, hiding in the tree in the backyard. The crows will not suspect a trap.
They are far too arrogant.” I leaned back in my seat, my eyes gazing at the tree which would be my
post. “They will never see what is coming.”
The first two days had no success except to annoy my landlady. She repeatedly stormed out to
demand I remove myself from her tree. I informed her that the lease allowed me access to the
backyard and she retreated, muttering to herself. Mr. Jingles visited each day to show his support,
sniffing the bread I laid out as bait and grooming himself in a patch of sunlight at the base of the tree.
The third day would be it, I felt it in my bones. I spread out bread and broken bits of a danish. I hoped
the added treat would lure my enemy in. A small flock of sparrows descended and began to gobble
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up the supply. I thought of shooing them off, but decided that they would serve as reassurance to the
crows. I settled in my precarious perch, the BB gun resting across my leg and waited.
Sure enough, first one crow landed, chasing off the other birds and stalking impudently across the
dead grass. Another arrived, then a third. They cawed raucously, sneering at the quality of the meal
before settling in to eat. I raised up the gun and took aim, squinting down the somewhat rusted barrel
of the BB gun. I drew a breath as C1 was in my sight. I smiled to myself, waited a moment to enjoy
the sense of victory and squeezed the trigger.
There was a small pop, a flutter of wings and the birds all took flight. Furiously I shot again and
again, aiming wildly as they swerved and dove about the yard. They cried out in derision at my poor
marksmanship. I heard angry and confused voices from the yard next door. My landlady emerged
again and ran across the yard, wielding a broom that she proceeded to swing up at me. She slapped at
my legs and ordered me down. My perch was shaky and after one particularly well aimed blow, I
slipped, clutching wildly at the branches around me to keep from falling.
The gun swung sideways and there was another pop. She screamed loudly and began hopping about,
clutching at her calf. She hobbled back to the house, cursing me and threatening all manners of
punishment. Mr. Jingles had deserted me, racing across the yard and through a gap in the fence at the
first shot. I heard sirens wailing down the street and clung to my place. It was all over. The crows
lined up on the rooftop to watch. They were strangely silent as the officers first tried to coax, then
threaten to get me down. I refused to give up easily. It was only after they drenched me with a garden
hose that I surrendered.
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Now I am in a courthouse. The lawyer assigned to me keeps pinching my arm to remind me of my
promise not to speak. I showed him my log book and recounted all the insults and attacks that I had
suffered. I even told him about Mr. Jingles, but he refused to allow me to plead self-defense. Instead I
am being sent to a hospital for observation.
It seems all my neighbors had been in collusion with the crows. They provided statements of
alarming behavior on my part. They claimed I walked the streets screaming and cursing at nothing. I
had repeatedly broken out windows to homes. There was the alleged attack on Mr. Breems. The
windows were broken, but not on purpose. It was poor aim on my part when I had attempted to
retaliate against the crows. Unfortunately the consequences of my poor aim were even worse on that
final day. The pellets I shot not only wounded my landlady, but broke four windows next door. And
as my mother had always predicted if I were to ever possess a BB gun, someone indeed had lost an
eye. My neighbor ran to look out the window after the first shot and was hit in the face with the next
pellet.
I could not focus on the droning of the lawyers and the judge. My gaze wandered to a window
nearby. I gasped and shook and my hands gripped the table with all my might. My lawyer gave me a
sharp pinch, but I barely could feel it. For outside the window, staring straight in at me, one with its
head cocked in an unusual fashion, were three crows.
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Another Another
By Daniel Raphael
The sun’s as visible at 8am as it was at 11p;
after a couple hours of dawn rumpus
the birds are shaded & inaudible
Why not feather for breakfast instead of eggs
milk straight from the faucet, I’m chair bound
by the interaction of the fog inside me
with the sky’s reluctance to commit,
as if it should get a day off since it’s only a backdrop
for the clouds which don’t have to memorize lines
or put on makeup, just appear, clueless & enigmatic
Not a language we can’t hear but silence
as the neighborhood metronome barks once,
the silver pickup keeps passing my window
not lost but someway telling me what to expect
before my house evicts me
With only the clothes on my back
the random playlist in my brain,
shoes with their own GPS and advertising contracts
from places where I would eat if their doors weren’t so small
their menus mostly alive or requiring a dexterity
only chopstick users and knitters have
So I’m hungry as a drummer in the rain
thinking if I can get this pavement to depress me into a bowl
something tasty will land there, or a sentence
taking ten minutes to unfurl, buzzing with seeds
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and loose threads to tempt the wind and micro-birds
subsisting on dust and free-range intentions
When two clouds can fill the sky
when seismic hunger is quelled by a glass of rain
spoonfuls without spoons, immobile rivers
we have no idea how to motivate or use
knowing if we slow the ground could harden on our hooves
some bipedal predator could use my skin
to redevelop my body’s urban core, removing steaks
to gentrify the rib cage, so much anticipate traffic
my blood can’t get from one kidney to the other
bridges are crutches, shoes are the opposite of wings
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Khao Thong, Thailand
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The Whole Catastrophe
Roberto Loiederman
November, 1967 — Da Nang, Vietnam
I looked over the railing. I’d just smoked half a joint after having swallowed small, measured
amounts of Dexedrine and Valium, so I was hypnotized by the scene: oil slicks, left behind by
ships like ours, created a constantly-shifting color palette just beyond the shoreline.
Small, wiry Vietnamese children used casket-sized Styrofoam casings in order to float on the
gentle surf. It took me a few seconds to realize what these casings were: they’d been used to
cushion the stowed bombs, big ones, during the SS Del Alba’s trip across the Pacific.
Bob yelled from the bridge: “Hey, Maynard, someone looking for you. Top of the gangway.”
My visitor was Dana Stone, a photojournalist. Before the Del Alba had left San Francisco,
Theresa told me to look up her friend Dana in the war zone. I’d left a message for him at the Da Nang
Press Club, where a wire service reporter told me, “Dana? Probably in the boonies.”
The next day Dana, in his mid-20s like me, showed up at the Del Alba. He wore U.S. Army
camouflage fatigues, but he used an Australian bush hat, cocked at a jaunty angle, signaling he was a
civilian. He was short, compact, energetic, wore glasses, with a thin nose that came
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straight down from his forehead, eyes close together, giving him a rat-like look.
“I’m Dana.”
“Maynard.”
We shook hands.
“So you’re a friend of Theresa’s,” Dana said. “I call her Big Red.”
“Tall, maroon hair. Yup. Big Red. She was my old lady for a couple of weeks.”
“She was my old lady for a few weeks too.”
“Homosexuality once removed,” I said.
“What?”
“That’s what Leslie Fiedler calls it. Us, having had the same old lady.”
Dana laughed uncomfortably.
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He had a nervous, intense manner, and he asked to see the bridge, the engine room, even
thefo’c’sle I shared with my two watch-partners. He said he had worked on merchant ships
before becoming a photojournalist.
Dana peppered me with questions. Did I like working on ships? How did I feel about being
on a ship full of napalm and other bombs?
I shrugged it off. “You must know,” I said. “You know the joke about ammo ships: If
anything happens on this ship, she ain’t going down. Uh-uh. She’s going straight up.”
“Yeah, right,” Dana said. “Shit happens. But it’s not like going into battle, right?”
I said the tough part, for me, about working on ships was the solitude: on lookout on the bow
at night, scanning the sea for lights, standing by at 3:00 am in the messroom, or working
alone all day on deck, removing rust or painting. I said that life at sea had taught me how to
be alone.
“Yeah,” Dana said, looking at the rigging. “Is that useful?”
“Well, it’s what we really are, all the time, isn’t it? Even when we’re with others?”
I said I’d memorized lots of poems, mostly by W. B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens. That way, I
said, when I was alone, I had “good company.”
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“Far out.”
We left the ship, went down the gangway to the pier, and walked through a U.S. Army depot
where there were hundreds of broken tanks, LSTs, amphibious craft and other large military
machines, kept there so they could be cannibalized for parts. At the end of this area, I pointed
out a small, empty wire-mesh trashcan that had a sign on it: Please help keep Vietnam clean.
“Americans… we’re good at unconscious irony,” I said. Dana didn’t react. It was hard to tell
if he had even heard the remark.
Once outside the depot, Dana led me toward a jeep. “A Newsweek reporter lent it to me. I get
to use it when he’s in the boonies.”
As he drove, Dana rattled on about the war.
“You get a rush when you’re in battle. I mean really in it. Man, I’m telling you. Not just for
the grunts, for me too. Something inside you takes over, and you know, you take chances.
You have to, if you’re going to get a good shot. You get hooked on risk, you know? After a
while, it’s like there’s no limits. You want to go all the way. Get closer to the action. Artillery
goes off, grunts get killed, gooks get blown up. And after every firefight, you think, shit, I
made it past another one.”
I felt that Dana was telling me how much further he’d gone than me he’d gone on the road to
personal freedom, and I nodded.
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Water buffaloes sloshed in the paddies next to the road, a C-130 zoomed low. Dana swerved
past checkpoints manned by U.S. soldiers who waved us through.
“There’s a guy I normally go to the boonies with, my close pal: Sean Flynn. Son of Errol
Flynn. Sean was in a couple of movies, like Son of Captain Blood, then he gave up
Hollywood to come here. He’s fearless when we get into a fire zone…”
At the Da Nang Press Club, we drank beer with a dozen reporters and photographers. Like
Dana, they’d come to the war-zone to seek adventure and make a name for themselves.
“Did you hear about old Adams?” said a Time reporter. “He caught the green weenie in the
air.” George Adams, a Marine colonel had been shot down in a helicopter. “Yeah,” the
reporter went on, “he’s the highest-ranking officer to take the Big Plunge.”
“Just another day at the job,” Dana said.
“You guys are pretty cynical,” I said.
“You let yourself get emotionally involved, and you stop taking risks,” Dana said. “You stop
taking risks, then you can’t go all the way.”
We left the jeep parked outside the Press Club and walked through Da Nang, a city
pockmarked with bombed and crumbling buildings ringed with sandbags. People on the street
were selling back-scratchers, stone pendants, filigreed fans, sexual potency powders,
marijuana, carved tusks.
A woman with a scrawny, deformed child in her arms begged for money. Her mouth was
rouged-out from betel-nut chewing. A blind man, playing what looked like a home-made
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guitar, was led around by a little girl who held out a tin can for coins.
“The way I see it,” said Dana, “Vietnam is like some grotesque amusement park. Disneyland for
the weird. A ticket in an alternate universe. Surreal. Sir-Real.”
Dana chattered about himself in a rat-a-tat-tat hipster manner. He had studied photography in
Maine, he said, then moved to “the coast”, where he got a seaman’s document and worked on a
couple of ships to Vietnam. Back in San Fran, he met Theresa, who convinced him to try his luck
as a war photographer. So he flew to Saigon on his own and started taking pictures.
“Theresa got rid of me the same way,” I said.
“What?”
“Yeah. She suggested it was time for me to catch a ship back to Vietnam. What’s she do, send all
her old men here?”
“Yeah, well…” said Dana. “So you’ve been here before?”
“This is my third trip to the Zone.”
“Ah, right, the Zone. Double base pay when you’re within fifty miles of the Zone. Bonus
cargo.”
I nodded. “You. Know…it’s all about the paycheck. Ten percent more of our base pay while
there are 50 tons or more of ammo on board, any kind of ammo.” I changed the subject.
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“So you came out here as a freelance photographer. Then what?”
“Yeah, see, some of my pix got picked up by the wire services, you know. As soon as that
happened, man, I was on my way. That’s when I kind of hooked up with Sean. He looks like
his father, you know, tall and handsome, so when I’m with him there’s always a lot of
attention from the ladies. From guys too. He’s got this movie-star charisma and everybody’s
drawn to him.”
As if on cue, whores came up to both of us at that moment, pinched our arms and offered a
variety of services. I was always ready to go to a massage parlor, but I hated group pinching
and waved the whores away.
“I wonder if all wars have been like this,” I said. “People whoring themselves to the invading
army.”
“We’re all whores, man,” Dana said. “You, working on ammo ships. Me, taking pictures. I
mean, we chose to come here, and we choose to stay. We’re all whores. That’s what Graham
Greene would have said.”
Dana had two touchstones. One was the outrageously handsome Sean Flynn, who sent young
girls’ hearts aflutter. The other was Graham Greene, who had spent years in Vietnam during
the 1950s. Dana pointed out places where Greene had slept or eaten or been entertained when
he was a journalist here.
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We walked past the American NCO Club, where dozens of cyclos waited for business. Dana
gathered some of the drivers and gestured as if he were smoking a long pipe. He said, “O-
peen, o-peen.” One of the drivers, ancient-looking, nodded and gestured for us to sit in the
cyclo.
A few minutes later we were being pedaled deep into a warren of very narrow streets where
most of the residents wore black pajamas.
“Does the clothing mean anything?”
Dana laughed. “Hey, it could mean they’re VC. But, you know, I respect the little yellow
bastards. Far as I’m concerned, they’re not Charlie. They’re Charles. Look, nothing’s safe.
Nothing here is safe. You can’t protect your ass all the time, you know. We’re the invaders.
They can move around like shadows. We can’t.”
In a narrow alleyway — no way in the world we could have found our own way out of there –
the driver stopped and pointed to a doorway. Dana jumped out, knocked, and a toothless
papa-san came to the door.
“O-peen?” Dana said. Papa-san nodded and waved us into the house.
I signaled the cyclo driver to wait for us and we went inside.
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One by one, Dana and I lay down on our hips on top of the wide, bed-like platform, covered
only with tatami mats, that took up most of the small room. Then a pipe-preparer joined us,
also lying on his hip, facing us, a kerosene lantern in front of him.
“This is the origin of the word ‘hip’, you know, meaning ‘cool’,” Dana said. “You lie on your
hip to smoke opium.” I doubted the etymology but just nodded.
The preparer slowly stabbed pellet after pellet with something that looked like a pick-up
stick, held each pellet over the lantern while it hissed and became distended, then — while still
very hot and gummy — jabbed the pellet into the small aperture of a large, elaborately-carved
pipe. The pipe was then inverted over the lantern so that the opium could be inhaled. It was
an unhurried ritual. I stopped after we’d smoked four pellets.
“You hedge your bets,” said Dana. “You go only so far and no further.”
“I’m as stoned as I want to be,” I said.
“Yeah, well,” Dana said, “the idea is to fill up the last corner of your brain with smoke. Keep
sending out your mind till it stops coming back.” He laughed as if he were exhaling smoke.
Dana smoked and smoked: ten pellets in all.
An hour passed, maybe more. I drifted in and out of the present, dreams mixing with the
reality of the room. I felt peaceful, surrounded by a loving lava flow of warmth. Lots of nods,
smiles, touches. Mama-san brought in some tea and cookies.
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When we finally left, it was dark. The cyclo driver was outside, still waiting. We got in, and
he cycled us toward town, ringing a bicycle bell when pedestrians scooted in front of him. I
felt a quietness of spirit, as if I were on the other side of things, a feeling that nothing needed
to be done. Not by me, at least. The dim lights of this neighborhood — its narrow streets
throbbing with life — took on a tranquil aura. We rode in silence during most of the trip.
I finally said, “We headed to some restaurant along the water?”
“Nah,” Dana said. “I never eat next to the water. This coast has funny tides.” He meant:
bombs, explosions. “We’ll go to Graham Greene’s favorite place.”
Once inside, he ordered entrecote and I had fish wrapped in banana leaf. Both of us washed
down our food with bottles of 33 Beer.
“Tell me something, man. You gonna go on working as a deckhand?”
“It’s a living,” I said.
“You know what I mean,” Dana said. “I got out of it. You can too. You went to college,
right? All that shit about memorizing poems… what did you major in, English?”
“I don’t remember,” I said.
“No, seriously, man, you’re like some wacky character in a novel, exiling yourself into
downward mobility. I mean, we all do some shit like that for a while… but, you know…”
In a strange way, he sounded a bit like my parents, which was unsettling.
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“Hey, I’m like you,” I said. “A voyeur. This is the outer edge of the known world, isn’t it?
Where humanity’s doing itself in? How could I live through this era and not see it for
myself?”
“Ah, that’s pre-packaged shit. What about the name ‘Maynard’? Where’d you get that?”
“Guys on my first ship, a couple of years ago, they thought I looked like Maynard Krebs from
The Dobie Gillis show.”
“But I got the note you left me in the Press Club. It didn’t say Maynard. Your real name is
what, Leaderman, right?”
“Loiederman.”
“Ah. Loiederman as in ‘oy’. As in oy gevalt. Bizarre. A nice Jewish boy like you,” Dana said
in a mock Jewish accent. “Bringing shame on your family! A shonda! Feh!”
I laughed. My Jewish origins seemed very distant from the person I was now: a muscular
deck-hand, high on opium, on the shores of the South China Sea, in a war-zone where
artillery illuminated the night sky.
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But he was dead-on: my family was embarrassed by me. My parents were ashamed by what
I’d chosen to do with my life so far. I changed the subject.
“I tell you what I’m ashamed of. Every time I join one of these ships I have to go past antiwar
groups outside the docks. Protesters holding up signs and yelling ‘Stop delivering napalm!
You’re baby-killers!’ And they’re looking at me in a van going into the docks with other
seamen, and my shipmates are saying, ‘Commie scum’ and ‘We should stick napalm up their
asses’. But the demonstrators, they’re my people, not the fascist seamen I work with.”
“So… you feel guilty about working on ammo ships… ever think about taking direct action?”
“What? What’re you talking about?”
“Mutiny… Or sabotage. Why don’t you organize other seamen and hijack an ammo ship?”
The idea took my breath away. “Whoa!”
“I know, I know: you’d never go all the way…”
“Hey, I’m willing to do a lot of crazy shit, but I’m not going to throw my passport into the
drink…”
29
“Okay, then: What would you throw into the drink?”
I thought for a moment. “My past,” I said finally. “Parts of it.”
“The nice Jewish boy part?”
I was getting tired of his needling.
“All those times I hurt others, whether I meant to or not. Those times I betrayed people. Those
times when people counted on me and I didn’t come through.”
“Okay…”
“What I wouldn’t throw into the drink is my future. I like to keep options open.”
“Fuck options. Fuck the future. Trouble with you is, you’re still carrying your parents inside of
you. All that guilt shit. That’s what keeps you from going all the way. Unless you go all the
way…”
Dana held his palms up, head cocked at an angle. The rest of his thought was clear: Unless you go
30
all the way, there’s no personal redemption, no hitting bottom, no breaking through to the
other side — which is what we optimistic Americans believe happens when you hit bottom.
“There’s a poem,” I said, “a poem by Yeats. During World War I in Ireland. Yeats is middle-
aged and he’s got a friend, Lady Gregory, she has a son who volunteers for the British forces
and learns how to fly a plane. Ireland was still a Brit colony then, so he didn’t have to fight in
that war. It was his choice, right? He’s in his mid-20s — our age — and he goes off and flies a
combat plane in World War I… and gets killed. And of course, Lady Gregory is devastated
and Yeats is heartbroken. So he writes a poem called ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death’.”
“You aren’t going to recite the whole thing, are you?”
“Just the last couple of lines. Yeats is trying to figure out why Robert Gregory, a young man
with his whole life ahead of him, would risk death doing something he didn’t have to do.
Yeats says it wasn’t because of a sense of duty or because political leaders told him to. No…”
I closed my eyes and recited slowly: “…‘A lonely impulse of delight drove to this tumult in
the clouds. I balanced all, brought all to mind: the years to come seemed waste of breath, a
waste of breath the years behind… in balance with this life, this death.’”
31
I opened my eyes and Dana was looking at me in a quiet, inscrutable way. He nodded, not
saying a word. Like a ship knifing through calm waters, the poem left silence in its wake.
After dinner, Dana and I walked back to his jeep, then he drove me to my ship. Since ammo
ships weren’t permitted to berth on the inland side of the protected harbor, we had to drive
miles all the way around, to the other side of the port. We passed a couple of checkpoints on
the way, manned by U.S. troops. I could feel Dana getting more belligerent with each stop:
not with me, but with the jumpy American soldiers, rifles ready, who shone lights on us. One
checkpoint soldier fired a rifle up in the air after we left, and Dana laughed with delight.
But as we got close to my ship, Dana’s delight quickly turned on a dime to something else.
Loosened by — by what? The bit of poetry I’d recited? More likely, by the beer and opium —
Dana tempered his cynical stance and talked about the war he’d witnessed.
“This thing, this war isn’t what you think. It isn’t what they say. Our soldiers… they aren’t
winning hearts and minds. You know what I’ve seen? Massacres. Massacres, for Chrissake!”
This was before My Lai and other horrors became public knowledge.
“I’ve seen two massacres. Twice Sean and I were there when the grunts got orders to shoot
anything that breathes. I mean, they didn’t know if there was any Charlie there. They just
32
From Under
33
wasted a couple of villages. Wiped them off the fucking map. No questions asked. Okay, in a
firefight it’s grunt versus gook and may the best side win. But those villages… that wasn’t
war. There was no fighting back. They were massacred… men, women, kids…”
“So this war’s getting to you…”
“Yeah, I guess, man, I guess. I take pictures and some of them are so gruesome and bloody
that I never get to publish them. But I got ‘em. And I got ‘em here.” He tapped his temple
with his index finger. “I’ll always have them here.” He seemed on the verge of tears.
We arrived at the base of the gangway. Dana inhaled/exhaled loudly, pulling himself
together.
“What was the line from that poem? A waste of what?”
“‘A waste of breath.’ Weighed against that moment when life and death hang in the balance,
it’s all a waste of breath. All of it: past, future…”
“Yeah,” Dana said. “Yeah. I guess that sums it up. Everything else… just… a waste of
breath.”
34
We hugged each other warmly and wished each other the best possible future.
As it turned out, Dana Stone’s future did not last very long. A little more than two years later,
in early 1970, he and Sean Flynn were taking photos in Cambodia, on the trail of a big story,
and both disappeared, presumably captured and killed by the Khmer Rouge.
There is no definitive evidence of what happened to them.
But there is evidence of what happened to me.
It took a few more years, but in time I became the nice Jewish boy Dana foresaw I’d become.
Wife, children, house… like Zorba says, “the whole catastrophe.” A respectable middle-class
father and husband, a quiet unexciting life with family, friends and a mortgage.
I’ve lived forty-some more years than Dana… but has it been a waste of breath?
I don’t know. I really don’t know.
#
35
To the Ground
By John Tustin
Homeless.
It’s all burning to the ground.
Owing more than I am worth,
Owing only disappointment,
Ashes,
The boot heel of debt;
The pit of despondent squalor
Of the soul.
You.
You give me love
But not confession.
You give me shelter
But not absolution.
Sympathy without hope.
Water but no rope.
Teasing me with your
Rays of light.
My cracked heart,
My dimming soul.
The sadness not redemptive.
My slipping mind.
My damned soul.
It’s all fading away.
You kiss me hello as you contemplate
Goodbye.
I held my daughter to me,
36
Felt the surge of non-negotiable love
As I shook knowing
Every day she grows further from me.
And you.
Your secrets eat my bones
Like cancer.
If you could unshackle your chains.
You hold the key, not me.
I don’t hold anything.
Unlatch yourself. Escape.
I’ll wait beneath the window.
I keep paying the bail
Only to go back to jail.
The holding cell of 8 million
Faceless nameless shadows
Of uncomprehending meat.
Staring at the wall
And all that insulting intimidating graffiti
Slurring my name.
I feel you behind that wall
In your own cell,
Reading the same words on your wall.
Voiceless.
It’s all burned to the ground.
It’s all burned to the ground.
Burned to the ground.
To the ground.
This my only option.
37
The Kitchen Table
By Samantha Atkins
Everybody in town still drives slowly by on Hospital Road to stare guiltily at the house
where it happened. Where, in October of last year, Jeremy Wilkinson shot his son and
daughter and stabbed his ex-wife nearly to death before ending his own life. The house sits
there empty, its blue slat shutters closed, its roof grey with rot. Jeremy Wilkinson’s children
were airlifted to the nearest trauma center, but the little girl died before the helicopter landed
and the family had to take the boy off life support a few days later. Their mother, who just
barely survived along with her new baby, won’t talk about it anymore. But when she used to
she’d shake her head, confused. I know he does, she’d say, he just kept telling me “I know he
does. I know he does.”
The night Jeremy did it was a Monday night and he had been up all weekend sucking
in the smoke from hot little shards of methamphetamine through a glass tube he called his
“hooter.” He’d gone up and then stayed up thinking about his ex Kaley and her new husband
Officer Taylor Benson, a town cop, and their new baby who was a boy and how if Kaley had
never gotten busted that night when she insisted they try to buy liquor from the Bottle Stop,
even though they were banned from there, she would have been there that weekend with
Jeremy. The two of them would’ve given the kids a bath and put them to bed the way they
used to, making sure their daughter had her stuffed ladybug or else she wouldn’t have been
able to sleep. Then they would’ve smoked a cigarette on the front porch to give the kiddos
enough time to pass out in their beds before going back into the kitchen and fishing out the
hooter from the back of the hand towel drawer.
38
They would’ve smoked together like they used to and stayed up talking, whispering so
that they wouldn’t wake the kids up. He would’ve taken apart his guns and cleaned them at
the kitchen table and she would’ve colored in the pages of their daughter’s coloring book.
When the kids got up in the morning, Kaley would’ve already made them breakfast – those
pancakes from scratch she always remembered the recipe for – and sausage or bacon. He
would ask them how they slept and how their dreams were and he would try to interpret their
dreams for them – try to tell them what it seemed like they were afraid of and what it seemed
like they wanted and how they would get all the things they wanted and didn’t have to be
afraid.
His daughter would tell him about that same dream she always had – “the bad one,”
she called it. They had a dog in the dream and when he’d ask her if this time the dog had a
name she’d say, like she always said, that she couldn’t remember and anyway the dog’s name
didn’t matter. In the dream – she’d tell him – the dog died in the backyard and mommy went
to go pick him up and take him to the vet but when she reached down, his bones grew and
grew and pushed through his skin until they went through mommy and then she was dead too.
Jeremy would’ve listened, even though he’d want to ask her all sorts of things, like how did
the dog die and what color was his fur and whether Jeremy was there too and what mommy
sounded like when she screamed. But he wouldn’t interrupt. He would put his hand on her
shoulder and say, It was just a dream. Don’t worry. And he’d tell her to eat the rest of her
bacon because she was too skinny.
39
That’s what would’ve happened if his ex-wife hadn’t gone into the Bottle Stop and
come out in cuffs and then met Taylor, her new cop husband, in jail and then stopped
smoking and drinking. That’s what would’ve happened if she’d just done as she was fucking
told for once. But instead, Jeremy was alone the weekend before he took his skinning knife
and his .357 Magnum over to Taylor’s house and did what he did. He was alone in his
grandparents’ old farm house five minutes outside of town that they’d left his father when
they went into the nursing home. He was alone and he was sitting in the living room on the
sofa cause he’d given her the kitchen table when they split and cause he didn’t like being in
the kitchen anymore than he had to without her.
Friday night was fine. He kept the TV on playing a Rocky marathon and he bit down
all his fingernails and texted every ex he’d ever had except for Kaley and the beer took some
of the edge off of the dope and he went for a walk when the sun came up.
But then Saturday there was nothing good on and none of the girls he’d texted had
gotten back to him and his father came by in the afternoon and bitched at him because he still
hadn’t baled the hay even though his keeping up the property and the crop was part of the
deal for him getting to stay there without paying rent. His father told him he looked sick and
then after shooting the shit about it starting to get cold and the leaves starting to turn and all,
his father finally said what he’d been waiting to say – You been into that shit again?
Jeremy denied it. He said, I’m not sleeping. Divorce is hard, Dad. His father nodded
and put his hands in the pockets of his jean jacket and said, It’s been a year-and-a-half, Son.
40
Gotta move forward. His father clapped him on the back of his shoulder then squeezed in a
way that would’ve made Jeremy feel like liquid if it weren’t for the hooter.
After that, Jeremy went to get liquor for the night at Wal-Mart, not the Bottle Stop. He
was just passing the bread section, trying to keep his teeth from grinding, when he looked
over and saw Kaley picking out a box of strawberry Poptarts from the shelf and tossing them
into a half-filled cart. She was wearing a pink hooded sweatshirt and her cheeks were filled
out and her hair was longer and dyed dark brown instead of burgundy the way it had been
when they’d been together. Jeremy stopped mid-aisle – he was stuck behind an obese woman
in an automatic wheelchair– and he counted the items in his ex’s cart – 17. She’d go to the
express lane when she was finished and check out fast and then be home to his kids and her
husband before he even got his liquor home and poured.
He thought of both the tumbler he had at his house and of the way his ex-wife’s arms
would quake holding her Wal-Mart bags as she walked up the steps to Taylor’s house. Jeremy
was able to do that – he realized – think two thoughts at the same time. In fact, he had been
thinking about the fact that he could think two thoughts at once when Kaley turned and faced
him. Her eyes opened so wide they reminded Jeremy of the eyeballs of a cartoon character.
He hadn’t seen her in months and she hadn’t seen him in even longer. After she’d filed that
fucking restraining order he’d had to look for her car before parking everywhere he went in
town. He’d had to avoid her favorite places at her favorite times, like the Mexican restaurant
on Thursday nights and the bowling alley on Saturdays.
41
Jeremy! she said, her arm searching behind her for the handle of her shopping cart.
How are you?
I’m good. Real good. Just grabbing some beer. You? How’s it going?
I’m fine, she said, Just picking up some stuff – breakfast and, you know, whatever.
It wasn’t just her cheeks and her hair that were different – it was her hips and her
clothes too. She was wider and her jeans were tight and clean. She looked good. Jeremy
nodded. He had been nodding.
So, she said, it was good to see you but I’ve got to –
He cut her off. Gotta get home, he said.
He was still nodding. He was gritting his teeth – he couldn’t help it.
I haven’t seen you in a while. Be good to see the kids some time. I mean I know it’s not
allowed yet but just, it’d be good. Get some lunch maybe. The Chinese maybe?
Jeremy’s ex-wife cocked her head. She bit her bottom lip. She was going to tell him he
couldn’t see the kids, that she was sorry, that someday she hoped it’d be different. But before
she could say any of that, Jeremy felt the top of his mouth rise up on both sides like a snarl.
His tongue flipped up and down on the back of his teeth like a frantic fish’s gills out of water.
You’re gonna say I can’t, he blurted. You’re gonna say I’m not supposed to see them
and I know, you know, I’m not supposed to see them. Not supposed to come over or have
them over or ever talk to you, really.
42
Jeremy’s voice was growing louder and louder. An elderly lady who had been eyeing
the English muffins looked up at him, raising her chin to see him clearly through her glasses.
Jeremy, said his ex-wife, I’m sorry. It’s just the law and my probation officer always
asks me –
He cut her off again. Yeah, he said, shifting his weight from his left to his right foot.
Yeah, yeah, he said again. I know. I’m a bad guy. I get it. Hey – just… you take care
anyway, he said. You take a break from tellin em how bad I am, huh? Tell em I love em
instead and that I’ll see em soon. I gotta go now, so – bye.
He moved so quickly he caught a center stand with his shoulder and knocked a whole
row of canned pumpkin onto the floor. He turned around in time to watch the last can fall and
roll away and then stumbled into the obese woman in her automatic wheelchair who was still,
for some reason, dawdling in the center aisle.
Hey! yelled the woman, craning her enormous neck around so that Jeremy could see
that she had likely once been beautiful – her skin a creamy cappuccino brown, her eyes a
hazel mix of green and grey. Watch where the fuck you going, she said, rubbing her shoulder.
Sorry, Jeremy said, sorry. I’m sorry.
He zigzagged around her and through a handful of other shoppers, mostly women,
their carts full of shiny plastic packages of meat and cheese. He just needed a drink and to get
home and smoke. He just needed a cigarette or to fuck someone or to run a mile around his
property. He just needed to get out of there before they asked him to leave. He couldn’t afford
the booze at the CVS. But Kaley had been a bitch. And he knew what she was telling his kids,
43
that he was to blame for all of it. He shouldn’t have gone there in the first place – should’ve
looked for her car in the parking lot like he knew he was supposed to. But Kaley had been a
bitch regardless.
Jeremy got home with his vodka and beer and a fresh pack of Kools but even as he
pulled an unwashed tumbler from the sink and even as the stinging, sticky aroma of the vodka
rose up to greet him, he thought of his ex-wife and of that pink hooded sweatshirt and of her
asshole husband Taylor, the cop, in his fucking cop uniform. His fucking cop badge, driving
that black cop Dodge Charger around town, pulling old people over for swerving over the line
and giving parking fucking tickets to people who were just using the handicapped spots for a
minute to grab one thing from the store. Jeremy drank heavily on Saturday, thinking of his
kids and of Taylor and of his ex-wife all at the same time so that he surprised himself. It
turned out he could think three thoughts at once.
He drank a lot but he sucked on his hooter even more. So much so that by the time the
sun came up on Sunday morning he felt his muscles pulling against his bones in all
directions, telling him to move – to shake – to jump up and down until the arches of his feet
burned. So he put on his coveralls and he oiled up his father’s tractor and he baled the whole
damn field of hay. He waved at the cars driving past on the country road, heading to church.
He smoked all his cigarettes and he sweated until his T-shirt was soaking and then
shook with the cold, fresh air of the morning. His heart beat faster and faster and the skin
around his eyes grew tight and sore from smiling too much. He sucked on his hooter and he
tried to scratch at his head with his fingernails but then remembered that he’d bitten them all
down. He stretched his neck and tried to crack it. He rolled it to the front of his chest the way
They’d learned to do it in gym class and he thought of nothing but the morning and it’s
fogginess and the hay and it’s dust.
44
That afternoon he took a shower and tried to eat some barbeque chips but they tasted
like sand. He tried to watch TV but the only thing that didn’t hurt his eyes to look at was Pat
Robertson’s puffy face on the 700 Club and Jeremy was too broke to give any money to
anybody, and he didn’t think God would’ve wanted him to give his money to Pat Robertson
anyway so he shut that off. He wished he had hobbies, and he studied the remaining crystals
in the little baggie to estimate how much longer he could stay up. He counted the Seroquels
he’d bought for the come down and then pulled out the junk drawer from the kitchen and
poured out its contents onto the floor. He was looking for something but he couldn’t focus on
what it was. He knew it was in the junk drawer.
On the floor he sifted through rubber bands, loose nails, and dried out pens. He
scratched his face with his nubby fingertips. He picked through a few torn-out pages from a
phonebook, a handful of napkins from a fast food joint, and then found it: his skinning knife.
His ex-wife had given it to him as an anniversary gift before they’d started smoking together.
Their son had been one year old then – he was six now – and he was the second baby they’d
conceived together but only the first one to make it out. They’d decided not to go out to eat
that night because they couldn’t afford it. He’d been working as a mechanic in town but he
was terrible at it, so said his boss, so he was afraid he was going to get fired soon. And Kaley
wasn’t making much working at her aunt’s daycare.
Still, she managed to buy him the skinning knife and she managed to wrap it and she
managed to cook them a homemade lasagna – one of her mother’s recipes – even while the
45
baby cried for milk and Jeremy sat in the living room on the tiny loveseat they had in the
apartment by the hospital. He was watching the news – he still remembered – and on it was a
story about a woman who didn’t know she was pregnant until the day she gave birth. He was
wondering how that could be possible and thinking about the baby they’d lost the year before
when his wife came into the living room, in one hand holding a tiny box wrapped with
Christmas wrapping paper even though it was June, and in the other arm holding their son.
It’s not much, she said, handing him the gift.
He opened it greedily, quickly, and was stunned by the object. He hadn’t hunted since
he was a kid but had always wanted to get back to it. He had often soothed himself to sleep
with the thoughts of the crisp air on his neck and him in a tree stand, holding perfectly still,
scanning and scanning the woods until his eyes adjusted to its textures and colors so much
that any tiny movement perked him up. He remembered that coolness, that sense of
awakeness, when he looked at the skinning knife. Its blade was about five inches long and its
handle carved wood so that it looked like an eagle with its wings spread wide. He gripped the
grooved wood, still faintly hearing the testimony from the woman on television and her
words, God has a plan, she said. I know he does.
That Sunday night, he remembered that moment, sitting on the floor of his
grandparents’ old kitchen, his ex-wife’s old kitchen. God has a plan. He turned the skinning
knife over and over in his hand. What would he do now? What would he do with the years he
had left? He was only thirty-five and already he felt old. Already he could feel it in his knees
46
when a day was a little rainier than the day before. Already he had been in and out of jail. He
had married and lost his wife and he had watched his face growing more and more gaunt in
the bathroom mirror, his lips more and more cracked, his eyes older and older. He stared at
the face of the eagle carved into the handle of the knife, and it whispered to him. He looked
closer, and then he lifted the knife to his ear and he closed his eyes and listened. God has a
plan, it said. I know he does.
By Monday afternoon, Jeremy had laid out all the knives he had in the house. He had
found them in his underwear drawer, stuck behind a dusty can of Comet under the bathroom
sink, under the particleboard entertainment system, and in the kitchen drawers. He pulled out
all his guns as well, and the bullets for them. He cleaned them all, the guns, the knives, even
the bullets, and arranged them in a line on the living room floor from largest to smallest. He
had a dull machete of his father’s somewhere but he couldn’t find it no matter how hard he
looked.
He had his grandfather’s old .22 and it reminded Jeremy of how the old man’s scar had
scared him as a child. His grandfather had been cut that way in a fight and he brought it up
just about every time he was around, telling Jeremy, Never underestimate a knife, boy.
Jeremy also had Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum that he’d stolen from a buddy a few
years before and hadn’t been able to show to anyone since then for fear of being found out. If
he was going to kill Taylor, if he was really going to kill him, like he’d thought about doing
so many times before, like he was thinking about doing now, he’d use the Magnum. It’d be
hard to fuck that up, he knew. It’d be impossible to come back from, the bullets fat and
unyielding.
Jeremy held the hooter in his left hand, the lighter in his right, and he let the flame lick
the glass where the crystal sat inside. He wasn’t angry or sad anymore. And his muscles had
47
Jeremey held the hooter in his left hand, the lighter in his right, and he let the flame
lick the glass where the crystal sat inside. He wasn’t angry or sad anymore. And his muscles
had decided to leave him be. He felt good, the weapons aligned, the television off, the hay
baled. He felt good and he took a shower and decided he was going to kill Taylor after all.
People like that, men like that, who took the women out from under you, who raised your
children without your permission – men like that…
I don’t feel sorry for him, he said to himself, driving his rusted Toyota truck into
town. He did this to himself. Jeremy tried to light a cigarette but he dropped the lighter in the
floorboard and cursed. He was driving over the speed limit. It was almost midnight.
In the passenger’s seat lay the skinning knife and the Magnum. He thought about how
it would hurt if he got shot in the scuffle, but he wasn’t afraid. He would die and take that
son of a bitch with him. He would die because he was already dying and he didn’t have
anything to hang on to. It sounded sad in his head but it didn’t feel sad because of the hooter
and because he had already decided to do it. There was no point in being sad about it. There
was no point in any of it and his ex-wife would remarry and have another baby, he was sure,
but he wouldn’t have to be there that time to see her pictures in the newspaper.
All the lights were off at Taylor’s house. Its blue shutters were open but the curtains
on the inside were pulled shut. Parked out front was Kaley’s car, the one she had gotten right
after getting out of jail and moving in with Taylor. Jeremy had never been in it. He didn’t
know whether Kaley was still using that cherry blossom body spray she used to wear or not
and if she still was, he didn’t know whether the driver’s seat would smell like it or not. He
48
parked behind her car, put the skinning knife in his jacket pocket, and the Magnum in his
belt at the small of his back. He wanted to open the car door and smell her there, but he
decided not to waste time. It was never good for a cop to get the jump on you. He figured
Taylor’s car was in the garage. A big white house with a garage and a backyard with a swing
set. She had traded him in. She had fucking traded him up.
Jeremy walked around to the side of the house looking for a way in. The house would
have an alarm system. Maybe a dog, he wasn’t sure. He would go in and run up the stairs to
Kaley and Taylor’s bedroom. He would shoot that bastard in his chest the way he’d been
taught to shoot deer, and then he’d find his kids in their beds and he’d give them a hug, and
he’d tell them that they didn’t have to worry anymore – that they only needed their real
daddy. Then if he were still alive and not bleeding to death he’d take them. He’d have his
son grab blankets and his daughter grab her ladybug and he’d pick them up – one in each
arm – and he’d put them in the truck and drive until somebody caught him. He’d have a
good morning with them, get them some breakfast, talk about their dreams. If he could make
it thirty miles north he knew where there was a truck stop with good eggs where nobody
would ask him why his kids were in pajamas.
If Taylor shot first, though, Jeremy would die right there. He’d die but it’d be okay
because he’d never have to watch out for Kaley’s car in parking lots again. He’d never have
to sit in a different section from the rest of the family during his son’s high school
graduation, waving alone. He’d never have visitation, not that he’d ever have gotten it
anyway, with his daughter. He’d never have to watch their little brother, who wasn’t his,
49
grow up alongside them and show up with their smile but not their eyes in Christmas photos.
He’d never have to bale his father’s hay or visit his terrifying old grandfather. He’d never
have to worry about how he was going to buy groceries or how he was going to fill up his
hooter or how he was going to stand growing older looking the way he looked now while
everyone else he knew got fatter and happier all the time.
The back door was locked of course, so he pulled out the Magnum and used its butt to
break the glass. Sure enough, the alarm went off in his face and sure enough he heard
footsteps right away coming from upstairs. He reached in, unlocked the door, opened it, and
went inside. No dog, just the wailing cry of a baby, of that baby that wasn’t his. Jeremy
flipped off the safety on the gun, took out the skinning knife, and walked slowly in the dark,
feeling for furniture with his feet.
Then, despite the alarm screaming and the shattered bits of glass crunching beneath
his boots, Jeremy realized he was doing it again – thinking two thoughts at once. He had
been doing it all along. He would kill Taylor and Kaley. He would leave the baby that
should’ve been his on their bed, the bed that should’ve been his too. He would calm his kids
down and then they would leave, all piled into the cab of his truck. They could run. He’d
read about it – divorced dads making it fifteen, twenty years before anybody found them.
But then again, those dads always had money from somewhere – money to buy fake
passports or whatever it was they bought. And Jeremy didn’t have jack. He didn’t even have
enough to fill the hooter for another night.
Jeremy paused in the kitchen to think it over. The green glow of the clock on a coffee
50
machine stared at him from the counter. It said 4:00. Should he wait and do it there in the
kitchen? He couldn’t do that or else his kids would see it all that way – no way to avoid it –
and then everything Kaley had been telling them about him would be true. Besides, it would
stain the old kitchen table if he did it there and the table was too precious for that. All those
mornings and afternoons – the four of them together at it. First bites and first drawings and
first Jack-O-Lanterns. Jeremy reached down to stroke the table’s soft wood, to feel the
carvings around its edges. But what he felt was too cold – metallic. And the table was taller
and there were no carvings, only a smooth lip to each edge. The table he knew was gone.
He set the Magnum on the new table with a clunk. Then he sat down on one of the
kitchen chairs and put his head down next to the gun, his cheek flat against the metal. The
table was cold and it soothed him. He felt tired suddenly; as though he could fall asleep right
there, even with the alarm going off. He should’ve been rushing up the stairs, doing what he
went there to do, but he was coming down and his face felt swollen, his eyes heavy. He
wanted to cry but he couldn’t. He was too tired for that and his legs were too weak to drag
him up the stairs. He rested his hand on the gun and didn’t think a single thought at all.
Footsteps creaked above him. Someone was coming down. He jumped up, knocking
the chair over. He grabbed the gun from the table and leveled it.
Daddy? Said a shadow at the base of the stairs.
Jeremy couldn’t see his son’s face in the dark but he didn’t need to. He knew what
that face was seeing – what he looked like standing there, pointing the gun, shaking. He
knew it was over, that his son would never think of him the way he really was, that he’d
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never remember the way they’d been together. And then Jeremy had a third thought about what to
do. It came all at once, as though it had been there all along and he was only just remembering it. He
wasn’t going to have them remember him like that. How could he let that happen? And he wasn’t
going to have them sitting at that god damn cold metal table ever again.
52
Homeless Jesus
Glasgow, Scotland
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contributors
ramona black is a writer who currently lives in New England. She’s had
flash fiction and poetry published in I between Altered States and The
Haight Ashbury Literary Journal. She’s heavily influenced by writers such as
Flannery O’ Conner and Eudora Welty as well as random conversations with
strangers at bus stops.
Daniel Raphael has a new poetry collection that will be out in the fall from
Unlikely books. He currently has poems that have appeared in Caliban,
Indefinite Space, The Opiate, Pangolin and Oddville. Most Wednesdays he
writes and records a current events poem for the KBOO evening news.
Roberto Loiederman has been a journalist, merchant seaman, and TV
scriptwriter, has published in the L.A. Times, Washington Post, Baltimore
Sun, Penthouse, Serving House Journal, Santa Fe Writers Project, Rum
Punch Press, Thread, etc., has been nominated for Pushcart Prize in 2014 &
amp; 2015, and is co-author of The Eagle Mutiny, a nonfiction account of the
only mutiny on an American ship in modern times. His essay, Roadblock,
published in Fifth Wednesday Journal, was named a Notable Essay in The Best
American Essays 2016.
John tustin is currently suffering in exile on the island of elba but hopes to
come back to you soon. Fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his
published poetry online.
Samantha atkins is a writer from southern Indiana who seems to be migrating
further and further north. A butler university alumna, she received her mfa
from purdue university and is a current PhD candidate at western Michigan
university where she studies and teaches creative writing. Her creative
nonfiction was nominated for a pushcart prize in 2017 and her fiction was
nominated in 2018. Samantha’s fiction, nonfiction, and poetry can be found in
Peatsmoke, Beecher’s Booth, Tahoma Review, Bayou Magazine, Appalachian
Heritage, and Humanize Magazine.
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rindliterarymagazine.com