This Is Bear Country

            My friend Caroline is a dentist. She owns all the tools and rents from some people down the street who own this little spot on the side of a bank. She's been a dentist since before I met her, so she was a dentist before she was a friend.

            Her little shop opened up about seven years ago, about the time my niece and her dog died. See, they were both the same age, and it isn't ever okay to let a small child the same age as a dog be in charge of one. My brother and his wife learned that the hard way, but you live and you learn and you move on and make use of what you know.

            So Caroline meets all kind of people. Dentists, believe it or not, live a very social life. After they get done poking at teeth all day they sometimes go to a bar or so to mingle, even when they have a family back at home. This isn't a necessarily dirty mingling, but they mingle and they do it well — just like a cowboy smoking one of those cigarettes. Sometimes dentists even have a dentist-only mingling at one of their houses, which is usually when someone wants to show off something new without seeming conceited.

            At one of these little minglings, the one where Sharon Rawsburg invited everyone over for some croquet and fried pork chops, Caroline broke her ankle. Caroline knows the surname of every molar and the layers of skin involved with gum care, but she is as dumb as a dead bat when it comes to fibulas or whatever ankles are made of.

            Here she was, trying to walk it off. Paige, her friend that helped her start her practice and whose husband drinks until he's supersaturated, ran to her side and tried to calm her. Caroline, however, would have none of it and just laughed and laughed. See, Caroline has always had a pride that swelled up when it shouldn't. She's even her own dentist.

            Paige, in her blue and purple knit sweater, tried putting her arm under Caroline's arm in an attempt to help. But Caroline snapped at her as if she were a mosquito trying to suck her marrow:

            “Get offa me, Paige. I don't need your damned arms around me. Not now.”

            Not now? people would whisper to one another. You think they got some lesbianing going on?

            Turns out they did. But, see, Caroline was unabashed by the turn of events and of her ankle and pretended to make pretty the situation. She laughed, her face red with signals from her brain, and continued on with the night, unafraid of the truth that lay beneath her socks. She busted her ankle quite badly and walked it into a stump that night and now stuffs one of her shoes with the sock she should be wearing.

            Sometimes the dentists go golfing. They don't invite Caroline because she — like a bear on a tree — marks the ground so much that the dentists are unwilling to jeopardize their memberships over one person's pride.

            Since Caroline's been kicked out of golf club, she's been hanging around my living room a lot more lately. See, it's prime golf season — I guess the grass is the right height and the ground isn't too lumpy — so most of her socializing should take place beyond the gates of the Palmetto Country Club. Instead it's executed by her at my house.

            One afternoon I came home and, lo and behold, Caroline was surveying the perennials on my front porch that I invest so much time in pruning to perfection. Not only was she looking at them, she was rearranging them based upon her opinion of superior colors.

            “Caroline!” I said at her, “What're you touching my flowers for?”

            “Hell, I'm not touching your flowers. I'm just moving them.”

            This puzzled me.

            “Still. They're not your flowers so don't touch them. Anybody ever teach you to not touch a man's flowers? What do you want, anyway?” I was unlocking the door at this point.

            “Oh, nothing,” she said.

            “Sounds about right,” and the door opened. Being the gentleman I am, I said “Would you like to come in?”

            “Oh God yes. This weather's been hell on my hair. Can you believe the humidity lately?”

            There really wasn't much humidity. Caroline's hair has always been boisterous and full, like what I imagine a sheep in a flood to look like.
            "Do you mind if I leave my shoes on?" she said.
            "That's fine," I said, setting my jacket down on the back of one of the stools at the counter. "Would you like something to drink?” I set my keys and bloated wallet — full of receipts, mind you — next to the sink, where they always are. She hovered around the kitchen, poking at my mail.

            “Well, are you having anything? I'll have what you're having.”

            I handed her a glass of water and started the stove. Tonight was lasagna night and frozen lasagna doesn't cook itself.

            “Can I tell you something?” she said, wanting to tell me something.

            “Sure. Tell me something.”

            “Do you remember Jodi? Jodi, the girl you dated who had asthma?”

            “Yeah. I remember her.”

            “Well, Jodi was Scottish. You remember that?” I nodded. Why the hell would I remember she was Scottish?

            “So, you see, Jodi and I used to go to the bar a lot. This was before Pat's was around. God, must've been only four years ago? Well, anyway, we used to go to the bar a lot. We'd get trashed, plastered beyond what you'd believe. You wouldn't believe it.”

            I set the timer and put the meal in the oven.

            “So, you see, we'd go out night after night. Jodi could hold her liquor but I would have a hard time keeping up. This was why I had to sell my son's turtle after he moved out. It's not like I got a lot of money for it — it was a turtle! You can catch those near the park — but I didn't like having to be home for it. I don't like having to be home for things. You know?” She took a drink.
            “Yeah?”

            “Yeah. Too much pressure. Hell, way too much pressure just to keep that damned thing alive. All I did was drop lettuce in there and dump a glass of water over those stupid rocks, but I didn't even want that. What if that thing died? It was already older than it should've been but I would have been responsible if it just rolled over and shriveled up. I didn't want that on my shoulders. Not now.”

            I was thinking about was how great the cheese would taste nuzzled between a slice of pasta and ground beef when I noticed her glass was half empty. I filled her another.

            “Thanks. Lord knows I need this, especially with the weather out there.”

            “Don't mention it.”

            “So, Jodi and I would go out. Most nights it would just be us and whoever else was out there. A lot of the time we'd find a couple of nice young men and play pool with them. They'd order us something to sip and we'd sip. Sooner or later we'd be walking to their cars, laughing at someone's stupid joke about tits and whatnot, and then we'd find ourselves somewhere else. Next thing you know we'd wake up in some house with shitty blinds and a T.V. on mute. We'd find some cereal and wander off together, getting picked up somewhere and brought back to our cars. You know, not once we got robbed, would you believe that?”

            “Really? Not once?”

            “Nope, not once. And you know the chances of that? Hell, one in a million, I'd bet.”

            She talked until the timer on the stove interrupted her.

            “—oh! Damn. Thing's already done, huh?”

            I put on my kitchen mittens and delivered the bubbling lasagna from the oven.

            “You're like a doctor, handling and cradling that meal like you do. You know, for school, we had to practice on people who really couldn't afford regular care. We'd get volunteers in who really needed their teeth cleaned a good two to three years earlier. Sometimes I'd be afraid to use the explorer because I could see through the enamel. Surprisingly, only half of them would be due to meth — the other half would just be lazy people with no one to kiss. You could always tell the people who used to use meth because their gums were dried up and the scabs. God, let me tell you about the scabs—”

            “Hey Caroline—” I said.

            “You know, that reminds me of when I was at Sharon's that one night. I know, I know, you weren't there, but I think you'll get a kick out of this. See, someone — I forget who, really — was getting more ice from the freezer. It was one of those big deep freezers that go in your garage, you know? So someone was pulling ice out from the freezer and I could tell they were having a hard time because ice is slippery and all that. So I grabbed my gloves from my coat pocket in the closet near the door and rushed to help them out — you know, give em the gloves and whatnot — and, as I was walking down the stairs into the garage, someone's hellfire boots were sitting on the steps. Could you believe that? Someone just left their damned boots on the steps. Little things, too. I wouldn't expect anyone to have that small of feet, but someone there did.

            “Well, anyway. I tripped over those boots and landed there against the wall. Glad that was there to catch my fall, because I was due for a long tumble at the rate I was going. Paige ran up to me but I was doing just fine standing there so I told her thanks but everything's alright, just a little trip. Everyone looked at me and then I said, 'Boots are made for the snow, not the stairs!' and everyone got a kick out of that. Those gloves didn't end up fitting whoever it was getting that bag of ice out, so I just slipped em on and did it myself.”

            “Yeah. So, Caroline, I don't mean to be rude here, but I was sort of planning on getting around to reading while I ate.”

            “Oh, of course. Don't let me bother you. You know how I get with stories.”

            “Yup,” and then I scooped some of the food onto the plate. I love the way it stays tethered to the tray, holding onto the rest of the meal with a thousand arms of string like it was the last thing that mattered to it on earth.

            “Well, it's been real nice. Thank you for the drinks. I'll see you tomorrow.”

            I led her to the door and we said goodbye. I went back to the kitchen and filled myself a full glass of milk. I had the knife and fork on the plate, so I took it and headed into the living room. I sat down on my green reclining chair and turned the T.V. on. The news was next and then a pleasant night. I took the first bite of the lasagna — God, that crumbling cottage cheese and melting flavors mixing together. Perfect.

            Behind the blinds, Caroline changed the flowers.

we fell the tree

I found my brother folded
in two, his arms holding close his knees. Beside him, self
portraits portraying a man much younger
than he, eyebrows pressed. An orange blanket
fell across his hands and feet, turned to paper—his eyes
closed, covered in slow air
from his nose. There was a time
when he would be the one awake, patient
for me to join him in the sand littered
with drying weeds. Small trucks, enduring
each storm hidden beneath the slide, would be pushed
across and intro each other. Hornets
and their nests, we knew, were full of honey to stir
with milk worthy of a broken knee if slipped. The new
neighbors brought a fileted lawn where once
ideas of mystery hid the pathways leading to caves
we never found. But here, with the door unlatched, the fridge
left gasping, drooling on the scarred wooden floor, the milk
is warm and you lie asleep in humidity.

Movement and Repose

On paper, a joyful mouse with a Christmas stocking for a cap, holding above
its head a star on a string, stood in front of a wobbly
tree dressed in the season. Every year, like the year before,
snow would fall and Mom would help me put on my boots.
“Remember the bunny ears,” and I would. We'd walk
to her car with the rusted shut passenger door and I'd sit
on the back seat. She drove bus and at the station was a quarter
run Ms. Pac-Man and I always wondered where
Mr. Pac-Man was and why he wouldn't wear a tie. After I turned
seven, on the nights before we'd open presents, Mom would hand me a card
marked my name. Inside I would find the picture-- a mouse, a stocking,
a star, a string, a tree-- with a fifty dollar bill signed “Dad.” I've seen
two pictures of him, one him informal and young, standing on a deck surrounded
by trees and people. His hair was the color of my hair and his face was as much
a baby as mine is. The other, sent two years ago inside the same
card, of him standing next to his dog. Her name I forget. The title
“Dad” scrawled across the back. “I hope you are well. Please write me sometime.”

---

Near Everetts Foods, where good Polish sausage
is sold at $3.59 a pound and soggy nests
of bread cross the second t, a man pulled beside me.
At first I thought he'd like to turn, so I pressed less
on the clutch and inched ahead. He stayed
by my side. I waited. And when
the light turned green, he must have kicked
his foot down the full three inches,
because his tires noisily slipped around on the asphalt
and he plowed ahead, placing himself in front of me
as we drove.
Something caused me to be upset and then,
with the same something, sorry
for him. He was alone in there and the paint
was brighter than the Minnesota Fall's leaves where
Marshall meets Lake and the waxy red reflects
up at those willing to look down.

---

The couch was the scene of an abandoned mouth,
each cushion its own cavity, hosting conversation never to stick
with it. Above, the ceiling fan wobbled in circles,
thinly clinging to the ceiling, as a newly arrived
student— I'm guessing here— sat down and mauled
the keys of the decorative piano. A few sound
right. A man then stands and stumbles on
his chair, the boy playing laughed, looked at him, and stopped.
His name was called. There's no reason to force meaning,
but it can be strange to see dimension in habits.

Birds Thinking

Its fingertips are feathers nearly touching the bark that acts as a safety harness
suspending the ground. It glides between branches
like a sober imitation of Daisy flirting with the stem, while each look,
a head catching movement underneath old leaves, could plummet
a spiral and then, of something, nothing.
No, it has done this for years, a hand upon
a handle and the fingerprints of flash oil. And how is this
not the same as a car ride? Only the other cars could be-- but we don't
talk about that because metaphors are
for school and birds thinking, "I matter, despite how pointless it seems."

Cup Foods

I sat to write about a man
when a mouse scuttled underneath
the kitchen table. I, at first, watched
the stretched shadow bob and weave and freeze
as it saw me seeing it. I then thought only
about walking into my room two nights before, surprised
and angry about it on my bed. I followed
the mouse into the wall it hid
in and assembled a cove full of traps.
I stood guard with an idle broom for a lance
and thought: the man had radio headphones,
a gray beard, dark skin, and a miserable broom
arched on the end. He leaned forward
when he walked and chased the garbage
away in front of Cup Foods. There it is.

A Tour

It seemed like they crawled out of the Great Lake, the rocks
tumbling over until fit-- strong, secure. The metal rails, a rusted glue
like the gold trim on my Great-Grandmother's saucers, balanced
lightly, as if prepared to escape at the threat of wind. The train you paid
to take us pushed past the hanging brush scratching the tin roof.
“Look,” you said to me, holding our bagged lunch as it rested
on the empty seat, “that's the ship your Grandpa was on two years
ago, before your mother left. The gray paint’s turned to rust.”

Bluefin Bay

Bluefin Bay was where water pushed itself through
other water and curled over glass. No one wore their heels
against the rocks or placed their naked feet atop the half
broken beer bottles that washed upon the shore. Tossed
by the semi-lonesome sailors listening to each other
for company, remembering other halves. I asked if we could
go there. We never went, but I wonder if you had.

small thoughts.

I realized today that my mother
is the same age as my grandmother
the year I was born.

***

A Fresh Cup

“I think we did it right.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I think we did.”
“I mean, we're fine, aren't we?”
“Yeah,” he said, “we're fine.”
“You know? I see so many others not make it this long. And we have and we're still happy, right?”
“Yeah,” he said, “we're happy. I'm happy.”
“Good. The last thing I would ever want to be is unhappy, and the last thing I would ever want is to make you unhappy.”
He crossed his legs and she opened a book.

The Town Without a Toothache // A Town Called Run

            My name is Hathorne Nathanial Epoch. I have been gifted my name by my uncle, Hue Epoch, through his love of Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter—a book I never much liked. He tried to avoid the obviousness of traditional naming by rearranging my name and reverting the spelling back before, he says, Hawthorne kicked against Salem. I don’t mind much  my name. Beyond of my name, though, I live in a small house near a bridge that people walk across frequently. Not many cars drive across it. Not quite sure why. It’s a strong looking bridge.

            But this story’s not much about me. It’s about my sister. Her name is Jillenhaul Mealier Epoch. I don’t think that’s who she is. It’s just her name. But our parents named her Jillenhaul because they thought it was both feminine and strong—haul being similar to the word ‘maul’, an action which bears enjoy. They didn’t want her to grow up with all those traits that the women in the stories they read had—helpless, reliant, scared—but they didn’t want her to grow any facial hair. So they tried to balance it out in her first name. I think the name describes her pretty well to the extent that a name can. I really don’t care much for names, but a name’s something we talk about people with, so it’s important to know them.

            Now I want to tell you a little about where we begin. We have lived in a town not much bigger than one of those suburbs that those companies keep building, but everyone has bucked against the changing of our town. People here own land and houses that have been here for years and years, and, although we don’t have fancy sidewalks, the older folks still go for walks at dusk and dawn. It’s a tight knit little area and it seems to me that people here support each other. Like my uncle Hue, when he got drunk one night at Risky’s Bar and fell down and broke up the bone beneath his eye. A couple of people there brought him to Allie’s house—she’s a doctor that works from her home and others’ homes—and she woke up at, what was it, two in the morning to give him some drugs and let him sleep on her couch. She has a fancy couch. It’s copper—very shiny and clean—and a lot of sick people lie on it. So he slept there that night and then later got his face better fixed up. He still looks a little lopsided, but that’s what happens if you drink to much and break your face I suppose.

            That’s really only one example of niceness here. I don’t quite know if people do that kind of thing everywhere, but I sort of think that not everywhere they would. I suppose no one will ever know, but that’s just how it is. Lots of people leave and then come back when they’re done leaving. I think there’s a little bit of an aura around the place you grew up in, especially if it is overflowing with good memories. I know of some people who have come here because they didn’t like where they came from, which I can kind of understand but not at the same time, since I have always liked it here. It’s like they say about how it’s hard to love something you never had. My friend, Pen, for example. She never knew her dad, which I think is a big mishap on his behalf because Pen is a great girl. But when I asked her if it was hard not knowing her dad, she then told me that how could it be hard to not know him because he has never been part of her life and she’s always never had a dad, so it’s perfectly normal to not have one. I thought a lot about that, and I decided that I am just glad I know my dad.

            So my sister, Jillenhaul, did a very good job at school. I didn’t do too well, simply because I didn’t buy the history they told and tried to teach us. Despite how wonderful it is here, the teachers still have to teach the things they are told to, which really isn’t their fault. They complain about it quite a bit but still teach us. They say if they don’t, they won’t be able to work as a teacher, and we suspect that it’d be better to have them as teachers teaching us things that they know aren’t complete rather than having someone who thinks it is trying to teach it to us. So I didn’t get good marks in school because I aligned with the teachers a lot. My sister, Jillenhaul, however, lapped up what they taught and just flew like a bat out of a cave through school. She, unlike me, was able to learn things she didn’t believe. I have always admired her for that, because, even though she knows it, she can just ignore the falseness.

            So she graduated top of her class. I was a year below her, so we went to school together most of our lives. I was thankful for that, because she’s never been a bad sister. Like I said, everyone here is tight knit, so school didn’t have much of a suffering to it. The kids were all mostly nice to each other, except for the kids that had special needs. Everyone was extra nice to them because they didn’t quite understand what was going on, and people just wanted to make sure that the lives they lived were surrounded by friendship and positivity, so people went out of their way to be nice to them. We could see the world for what it was and we all wished it were a little more serene and ideal, so why not inflict that kind of fantasy upon people who could handle it? That’s what we thought, so that’s how we treated them. I think they were happy for it. I still see them at the grocery store, always waving and smiling.

            My bed was my grandpa's bed when he was still alive. I got it last year when he died, sleep well his soul, and it's helpful to have a nice bed when you're needing sleep. It was nice of him to suspect I'd want it, since I never said anything but always admired it's strong wooden frame and carved curls. Anyway, I should get back to Jillenhaul.

            Jillenhaul is, like I said, quite a bright girl. The boys like her for that and her dresses. She wears so many different dresses. It amazes me every time I see a new one because I always wonder where she stores them. She makes them all on her own, too, which I think is really resourceful, because one time she made a dress from the interior of Uncle Levi's old car. He, like Hue, likes to drink, but one night he didn't drink at all and crashed his car into the ground and it burned up like the chair we burnt for my birthday three years ago. When the fire went out and all the fire people arrived, all that was left was some crusty metal and the passenger seat. For a reason none of us would come to understand, the seat was left uncharred, so Jillenhaul took it upon herself to immortalize the whole ordeal. She cleaned up the upholstery nice and pure and then cut it up and sewed it back together and now no one would think that she was wearing a fireproof seat all around her body. Uncle Levi was okay, too.

            One day, with a suitcase full of dresses and other things, Jillenhaul sat down for breakfast. She didn't say much. She went to the counter and got a plate, a pancake that Cousin Judy made, some butter and some of the syrup our neighbor Ralph gave us, and sat back down. She then got up again to get a fork and then sat back down, again. She ate her pancake and I said to her, “Hey Jillenhaul. What's in that suitcase?”

            She said, “Oh, some dresses and other things.”

            “Oh, okay,” I said. “Why?”

            She just laughed and said back to me, “Because I'm going to somewhere.”

            Here Cousin Judy chimed in and said, “Where are you going, Jillenhaul?”

            I was thinking the same thing but I was glad that Cousin Judy asked her, because most times I like to keep people's space all to them. Judy, however, oh boy does she like to know everything.

            “Not sure,” she said. I was surprised at this, because it wasn't like Jillenhaul to not be sure of something.

            “Oh,” we said. Then we ate our breakfast and did that day. Before we all left, however, Jillenhaul made it a point to come and say goodbye to me. It was strange.

            “Hathorne,” she said, “I'll probably be back sometime. I'll write you, okay?”

            “Okay,” I said, “I'd like that.”

            “Good,” she said. Then she left with a smile and her walking away.

            That was the first time she left. I still am not the most sure as to where exactly she went. The postcard had three squiggly letters on the front that I couldn't understand, trying to cover up a picture of what looked like a tar pit. It was basically a big black pond, and I think there were two statues. At least I hope they were statues, because it would be quite unkind to just take a picture of two people in the circumstance that these possible statues were in. One of them was of a woman reaching up towards a branch, her body being swallowed by the black ground beneath her. On the branch was the other statue, a little baby or toddler looking at this woman, not reaching back because it must be hard to balance with such a little body. It was strange.

            On the other side of the postcard was some writing. All it said was: “Hathorne. Letter on its way. From, Jillenhaul.” Sure enough, a letter came a day later. I think she must have written the postcard with the intention of writing a letter or maybe she was working on the letter but didn't have it finished and really wanted me to see that picture for some reason.

            A lot of things were said in that letter, but I got a better understanding of what she meant when she returned a month or so later. What she told me helped me see all that she experienced while she was out there. She made some keen observations and I think it's a good thing to share when someone sees something in a new way.

            So, while Jillenhaul was wherever she was, she saw a small advertisement underground on a board plastered with different colored pieces of paper. She said that there were so many that it reminded her of fish scales, each protecting the beginning of the one beyond it. She stopped and looked at these advertisements. Some of them wanted to find a person who got lost somewhere, some of them wanted to sell something, some wanted to buy stuff, and some of them just wanted to tell others about a class or program or a job. Must be a nifty place to have when you are in need of one of those things.

            A purple piece of paper caught her eye. It was buried beneath two other sheet scales, so she plucked it from its placing. What reeled her in was the picture of a hamburger. It was a unique hamburger, sitting on a somber marble floor with a big, flaky croissant serving as the bun. She thought it must have been nearly a whole pound with all the lettuce and tomatoes on it. It was printed in such a fashion that it made her hungry, so she looked up to the top of the page. Surprised at what she saw, the title was “NEED: HUNGRY KIDS.”

            At this point Jillenhaul was neither hungry nor a kid, but the picture made her hungry and the fact that they needed kids served as a slight deterrent for reading on. She thought about it a minute or two—tossing around the implications of understanding why a place with a fancy floor and a fancy hamburger would need hungry kids—and then decided that there was no harm in reading on. So she did. At the bottom of the paper were serrated rectangle strips cut from the sheet, each with a number and address on it. Two or three had already been ripped off, so she took one for herself. She then tacked the paper back up where it was, buried and all, and then walked up the nearest stairs and into the sunlight. 

            She followed the street signs until she found herself at the address on the little piece of paper. Along the way people walked around her, in front of her, past her, with her, and all the ways that people can walk in respect to someone else. The steps and door were clean and black.

            She walked up the steps and knocked on the door.

I've Heard Stories

Her coat was on the floor, crumpled up behind the wooden rocking chair.

I heard of crimes, she said. I heard that there are crimes out there that we cannot even imagine, simply because of how they aren’t part of this world and we can’t feel or see them. I heard of these crimes.

He nodded, feeling the carpet and her locked gaze.

Yeah. I heard of these crimes. One crime is where someone loves so much that they lose themselves. They lose who they are and then they become an apparition in lieu of their lover’s life. They’ve essentially committed suicide. It isn’t that they essentially did, it’s that they did. They gave themselves up to some higher order that might not even exist. This person they love, that person might not even exist in the way that they think they exist.

She licked her lips and readjusted her position on the couch. The couch was her father’s before, and now it is still tattered and used.

See, she said, they might be completely different than the person who loves them believes they are. This person, this person that lured someone, wittingly or unwittingly, to give up their ghost for them, might live an internal life completely contrary to their expressed life. The way they live—the things they do and say—might be a lie. They might be lying to themselves or trying to convince themselves that they are one way, but they might be a lie. And they, a lie, let someone sacrifice themselves to a lie. Who do you think is worse?

What do you mean who do I think is worse?

Who do you think is worse? The person who lied to the world and reeled in a susceptible soul or the fragile capsule of lost thought that found meaning in an idol the sculptured out of a hint and chose to devote themselves to.

You shouldn’t say themselves. It’s ‘his or herself’.

Is it? I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I don’t know that stuff. You know that.

It’s okay.

You know? I think it’s both of their faults. Who’s worse? I can’t ask that question because those people are both so real to me that I can identify with both. So does that make me a contradiction?

Make you a contradiction? No. You’re you. If you were a contradiction, you wouldn’t be you. You’d be you and you.

I suppose so. I don’t know. I don’t really know. But isn’t that interesting that people consider it a crime to devote themselves to much to an image that they lose who they were?

People always do it.

I suppose they do. But so willingly?

What else should they do? Live without purpose?

No. They should find purpose.

They did.

Yes. But they should find purpose elsewhere.

She coughed and stood up. Do you want any water? She said.

No. He said.

I’m going to get some water. If you want water, you should tell me. I’ll get you water.

It’s okay. I don’t want any water.

Okay, she said. She went into the kitchen and saw a bowl in the sink. She opened the cabinet and took out a cup. She set it underneath the faucet and turned it on, filling her cup. She drank from the cup and poured the rest into the sink and set her cup inside of it.

You forgot a bowl in the sink, she said around the corner.

I know. I haven’t done it yet.

It’s okay. I wanted you to know. I’m just going to take care of it quick, while I’m here.

Okay, he said. He picked up the remote and turned the television on.

She picked up the bowl and a rag and poured soap on it. She turned the water on and waited for it to get hot. She then splashed the rag and washed the bowl and rinsed it out. She dried the bowl off and put it in the cabinet and walked back into the room.

So what do you think? She said.

Tell Me How

She lifted the cup to her lips, sipped, closed her eyes, and died. She closed the book.

“Alan? What do you think of the end of this book?” she said. “Alan?”

Alan was sitting at the table in the kitchen, his back facing the living room, studying a crossword puzzle through his reading glasses. Pushed towards the middle of the table was his plate, littered with a near meatless bone from his steak and a crumpled napkin. In his right hand was a pen, near it a glass half full of wine.

“What’s that, dear?” he said, straightening his back.

“The book I’ve been reading, the one I’ve been telling you about, with the young man and the orphan girl who had amnesia that loved each other.”

“Oh yes,” he said, “The book.”

“I just finished it. Imagine that. Three nights!” she looked up from her place on the sofa to the back of Alan’s head. “You need a haircut, Alan. It’s thinning, and when it gets long you look bald. But you aren’t bald.”

“How’d the book end?”

“Oh yes. After she finds the boy asleep in her bed, after they got into a fight and she left his house and he went looking for her and went to her house but she wasn’t there, she picked one of the cups up that he poured that was sitting on the bedside and drank, because it smelt like wine. But she didn’t know that he poisoned one of the cups and mixed them around so that he might or might not kill himself because he was so sad because of her. She thought it was just wine and was tired from driving around crying.”

“So she killed herself?” Alan wrote something on the paper.

“No, no. She didn’t kill herself. I mean, she died because of what she did, but she didn’t kill herself. Saying she killed herself sounds like she tried to kill herself. It was more of, what do they call it when someone accidently kills someone else, like a pedestrian or---“

“Manslaughter?” he said.

“Yes! Manslaughter. It’s as if she manslaughtered herself. She accidently hit herself with her car. Imagine that, Alan, she hit herself with her own car. Could you imagine hitting yourself with your own car and dying, but all on accident?” She said. “Alan?”

“Yes dear?”

“Could you imagine that?”

“Killing myself---“

“Manslaughtering.”

“Manslaughtering myself? With my own car?”

“Yes! That just… could you imagine it?”

“If I tried, dear, yes. Yes, I could. But I don’t see much stock in that.”

“Imagine how she felt! Imagine how she felt when she walked in front of her car. But, well, she didn’t start her car. She wasn’t driving her car. He was driving. He filled the glasses. And left them out. So isn’t it like he was driving down a hill or something and turned the car off and let it keep going?”

“Hmm?” he filled in another line and then erased it.

“Yes. He left the glasses out. He didn’t put the brake on. He manslaughtered her. He didn’t mean to, though. That’s why it’s manslaughter. Right, dear?”

“I would suppose so.”

“Yes. Imagine how he felt when he woke up and saw her lying there! She had no idea what happened, just lying there. I wonder if she thought anything when she closed her eyes. I wonder if, when she lied there, being dead, she relived anything. Do you think that’s what death is like Alan?” She said. “It’s like reliving life, moments?”

“Dear,” he sat up in his chair and slowly turned his body, resting an arm on the back of the chair, “I love you.”

“Alan? I love you too, but do you think that’s what death is like? Reliving things? I wonder if it all stops or repeats or just is. Maybe time freezes, but it doesn’t get old. Like a painting,” She said. “Alan?”

“Dear,” Alan looked at her eyes, then the book in her hand, and then turned back around, pushing his glasses back up to the top of his nose. “I think life is like that.”

“Oh now, Alan. You always have that way about you. Sometimes you just keep on with your ways, thinking things are one way when they are really one way another, or another way. Sometimes I wonder if you yourself think you’ve always been like that, because I remember, just a while ago, you weren’t like that. It seems like a week ago, but I know it wasn’t a week ago because your hair wasn’t gray. I think you’re very handsome with gray hair, Alan.” She smiled, looking at his hair. “Alan?”

“Yes,” Alan said, then coughed. “Yes dear?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” She smiled. “Well, Alan?”

“Yes dear?”

“Will you look at me? I want to see how handsome you are.” She said.

Alan took his glasses off, turned around, smiled, and looked at her.

“Alan? Are you crying?”

“Yes. I am.” Alan carefully stood up and slowly began to walk towards her on the sofa.

“Dear? Come and sit by me. Talk to me. I always talk to you, but I never let you talk. I need to start letting you talk more. I know you have stuff to say, even though you never want to talk about any of it, but I’m sure there have been times when you’ve wanted to say something but haven’t been able to because I’m over here, talking when I should be letting you talk.”

Alan smiled and slowly eased himself onto the sofa, she holding his arm with support.

“So how do you think he felt when he woke up, seeing her there?”

“Oh, I bet he was sad. He didn’t want it to happen. Nope, he didn’t intend for her to drink it. He loved her, and chased her, even though she wasn’t there, he knew she was going to go there after she got done going wherever else she went. He missed her and didn’t want to lose her. I bet he was sad when he lost her. I know he was sad. Who wouldn’t be sad?”

“I would be.” He put his arm around her. She leaned in on him.

“Oh, I know you would be Alan. I would be if I lost you, too. But I bet he felt really bad because he caused it. He, even though he didn’t mean for it to happen, caused it to happen. Do you think he went to jail? I bet they would have sent him to jail.”

“I bet they would have tried, but eventually understood.”

“I don’t know if they would understand. Maybe if he showed them how truly sorry and sad he was that he did that. I bet that would have shown them. He would need to prove that he loved her and wanted to be with her forever. Think he wanted to be with her forever?”

“I think he---“ Alan cleared his throat. “I think he did.”

“Yes. These two belonged together. I don’t think it would be fair to punish him for something he didn’t mean to do. Especially when losing her was punishment enough. Would you agree?”

“Yes.” He said. “Dear?”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

She looked up at him. “I love you too.”

They stayed there, she with her eyes shut, Alan fixed on nothing in the distance.

“Hey. Hey, dear?” He said, lightly nudging her with his shoulder.

“I’m awake, Alan. Yes?”

“You never really did tell me how the story ended. I mean, you told me about it, but I would like if you’d read the last line.”

“You should read it, my eyes are sore.” She said, closing them and leaning on him.

“I would, but I left my glasses at the table.”

“Okay, okay.”

She sat up, brushed her thin silver hair behind her ears, picked up the book, opened it to the last page, and began to read.v “’He was lying there… you could tell he had been upset… he…’ here.” She said, “‘She lifted the cup to her lips, sipped, closed her eyes, and died.’”

She closed the book.

laura is deathly afraid of horses

            Laura is deathly afraid of horses.

            When Laura was a small number of years old, she wandered into her neighbor’s horse pen, where her and her playmate often played. Spotting a beautiful brown imported Russian Trakhene, she walked up behind it, wishing to welcome its existence with a soft caress on its side. The horse, however, found her threatening and kicked her in the chest. She woke up sometime later and walked home, not remembering what had happened.

            When Laura was ten years old, she and her younger brother decided to go on a walk. They often walked to the park, the highway, or to a neighbor’s house, always on an expedition, exploring new paths and discovering new trees. On a walk one day, Laura's younger brother raced ahead and stumbled off of a twenty foot cliff, breaking his neck on a jagged rock below.  As she watched in estranged awe, a horse tromped by, stopped, made eye contact with her, and tromped away.

            So Laura is deathly afraid of horses.

***

            Laura had a dream. She dreamt that her hands were made of baby kittens, each one meowing towards its own respective desires. Every time she went to pick something up, the kittens wished to do something else, so she never got anything done. As the dream winded down and began to expire, Laura became overwhelmingly thirsty. But her kitten hands refused to hold a glass, much less allow a glass to be filled with water and be brought to her lips.

            Whenever she tried to turn a faucet on, the kittens made a terribly realistic screech, announcing that this was the opposite of their hand-kitten want. They stretched their legs out beyond any handle,  becoming an encasing cage. Laura became more and more parched.

            Kicking her way through the windows of her house, she raced across the backyards of the dreamlike homogeny of her transposed rural neighborhood. Although strikingly similar to any suburbia,  Laura thought is farfetched and dreamlike because she hadn’t ever witnessed a suburb. What Laura was looking for as she galloped through these identical backyards was a dog.

            Laura found a dog. It was a small and white type of dog called a Bichon Frise. She ran up to it, expecting innate hostility towards her feline appendages. As she pet the puppy, she fully anticipated her hands to extend their needle like claws, spurring a feud. But, as her dream’s chance would have it, her kittens and the puppy felt an affinity for one another and began to play and wrestle and let out animal sounds indicating their joy.

            Laura lamented over the Bichon’s unwant of kitten slaughter and the fact that the animals were enjoying themselves, so she wept tears of dehydration that made her all the more thirsty.

            As Laura cried over the fact that a small yippy puppy and two small kittens became such good friends, she heard a sound that her physical body registered. Applying this sound to her dream, her mind interpreted it as a car driving through the ground, spurting up like a fountain of metallic transportation, yet never landing, for this sound shocked Laura out of the dream world and into a dark room.

***

            The dark room that Laura was in was her bedroom. Along with her clock’s flashing time, indicating a temporary power outage, there also lay a large black bird on the floor next to her. It had crashed through her window and decided to lay on the floor motionless, for some part of the bird’s brain chose to stop working after it transcended the solid glass plane separating the world from the inside that is her room.

            As Laura’s eyes adjusted to being open and her brain adjusted to the reality of her immediate surroundings, she felt uneasy. Her walls were tainted by a lack of light, save that of the moon’s reflection, which made them seem smaller. Her heartbeat sounded in her ears like that of a clogging and chugging engine, a sound that overrode that of the wind slithering into her room and that of the bird rocking in the glass by the means of kinetic aftershock.

            To the right of Laura's bed was a nightstand. She reached towards the nightstand with her left arm and slapped around for her glasses, but, since she slept on her arm and it hadn't woken up with her, the arm merely limped about without the ability to grasp. Realizing this, she pulled her left arm off of the night stand with her right arm and sat up, quickly retrieving her glasses with her attentive arm.

            Upon fixing her glasses to her face she turned on the lamp. The room lit up in a yellowish glow, radiating shadows beyond everything that caught the light of the lamp. The large black bird on the floor looked as if it were drunk, wallowing in vomited glass, moving only its eyes.

            The bird sensed the inquisitive glare beaming from the girl sitting on the bed and thought that it may be time to leave, but it could only lay there and think that. It kept the eye on the side of its head nearest Laura fixed.

            Laura turned on her bed, bringing her legs and feet out from under the covers to be placed on the floor. My feet are cold, she thought as they landed on the hard wood floor. Laura did not sleep with socks on due to her fear of mold and mildew growing on her feet, causing her to become sick. Since Laura suffered from hyperhidrosis, she wished to not promote such a habitat. In an effort to combat her condition, she had begun drinking sage tea and reduced her milk intake.

            Laura stood up, her night gown falling to cover her knees. She walked over to the bird and crouched near it. The bird's eye dodged from her head to her feet to the tasteful patterns on her night gown. Yet its body remained completely still. Laura looked at the bird and then turned her attention to the shards of clear glass about her floor. She sorted through them, careful not to run her fingers along the delicate edges that could cut her skin. She set a few choice pieces aside.

            Upon picking the crop of glass clean of its finest fruit, Laura stood up with her handful of glass and walked to her bedroom door, turned the handle, and left. A few moments later she returned with a dust pan and a broom. She swept the large black bird into the dustpan. She picked up the dustpan and held the bird close to her face. The bird stared back. The eye contact lasted for a few seconds and then Laura leaned the broom against the wall and left her bedroom.

            At her apartment's front door she slipped on a pair of white and red laceless shoes. She unlatched her door's locks and opened it, closing it behind her without care of locking it. She began descending the four flights of stairs leading to the ground floor, but with each step she couldn't help but notice the bounce and flutter of the unmoving bird's feathers, causing it to appear as if it were riding a horse. A plastic horse made of a dustpan with human legs, she thought. With this thought she chuckled, smiling at the prospect of a bird riding such a horse.

            She opened the door leading from the apartment to the street and set a small broken brick between the door and the frame to prevent it from closing. She breathed in and exhaled, smiling at the quiet night air. The building looks like my walls, she thought as she followed the yellowish glow of the street lights.

            Laura perched herself on the sidewalk, setting the dust pan on the concrete. Right next to the dustpan was a crack with a small green sprout pushing its way up from the earth, conquering the unnatural case placed upon it. That, she thought, or a seed fell into the crack.

            She looked from the plant to the bird, and from the bird to its small lacquered eye. In its eye she saw an inverted reflection of what the bird was, perhaps, witnessing. But it was impossible to know where it's jotted focus was at any particular moment. She saw herself, with her long dirty blond hair reaching out towards the reflection, framing her face and her orange night gown. How odd to be forced to watch such a thing, she thought.

            Picking up the dustpan, she gently dumped the bird onto the sidewalk. It rolled and settled near the curb, its feet charged towards the sky like two conquering flags. She turned and walked towards the apartment, stopping upon grabbing the door's handle. The street lamp flickered off and then on and then off again. She looked at the lamp behind her and it turned on again, resuming its electric hum. She smiled, shrugged her shoulders, and looked away, entering and ascending her apartment stairs.

            Carefully sweeping up the small particles of glass remaining on her floor, Laura noticed a small tuft of feathers that had fallen from the large black bird that now lay like a destitute wildcat on the street. Upon sweeping the feathers into the dustpan, she felt an immediate sense of guilt-- a sense that, despite the crime of breaking and entering that the bird had obviously committed, perhaps it did not deserve the dereliction that she, without thought, imposed upon it.

            Grounded, and forced to look up towards a sky confined by the man-made pillars rising like hyphae from mold, the bird was now unable to enjoy the very act that had delivered it into such a state. With the same dustpan, Laura returned to the bird and, using a broken twig found nearby, rolled it onto the scoop. She carried it to her room and set it inside of an empty shoebox that she placed on the broken window's sill.

            Laura washed her hands and crawled back into bed, shut the lamp off, faced the window, and fell asleep.

***

            The spine was broken. Everything was falling out.

            “Minerva, a quote for you is ready at the counter. Minerva, quote at the counter,” Laura's voice resounded from the intercom.

            She set the draining book atop a pile and walked to the register, grabbing a piece of paper and a pen. She wrote a number on the paper and placed it inside the front cover of the disemboweled book. She walked away from the counter towards a tattered paper bag, but tripped on what seemed to her a small animal. She stumbled and regained her posture before any had noticed.

            Inspecting the ground, Laura found a small book tossed open on the floor. On the present page was an outline of a bird of sorts, unidentified by Laura due to her lack of ornithological matriculation. She knelt down, picked up the book and closed it, her finger acting as a bookmark, unveiling its title: Birds. She then flipped the book open to where it had first been found. Chihuahuan Raven was the title of the section.

            “Excuse me! Ma'am?” a voice called from over the counter, “You have a quote ready for me?”

            Laura bent the corner of the page into what is called a perfect dog ear and stood up, setting it on the counter.

            “Minerva?” she said, turning, smiling.

            “Yes. How much will you give me?” Her skin looked purposefully baked and prepared, for what type of feast, thought Laura, she did not know.

            “Well,” she said, pulling the slip out from the cover, “we can give you five dollars.”

            “Five dollars?” Minerva scoffed, then immediately brought both of her hands to cover her mouth. Her eyes widened and the top half of her body, beginning with her stomach, lead a revolt against all the contents of her food sack. Minerva puked, her hands acting only as minor and temporary barrier between what belongs inside and where it was to be.

            At first flowing through her fingers like water leaking through the cracks of a dam, and then exploding under the same imagery, a burst of water and soggy bread covered the table.

***

            The Chihuahuan Raven (corvus cryptoleucus) is a big black bird inhabiting southwestern deserts. The shape of a Raven yet the size of a Crow, the Chihauhuan Raven shares qualities with both species. The diet of a Chihuahuan Raven is typical of that of most birds, largely consisting of  earthworms, insects and other small animals, seeds, and fruit. It is no uncommon to find Chihuahuan, like the habit of both Crows and Ravens, scrounging--

            “Hey, you!” a voice interrupted Laura's reading. She looked up from the book to the voice to her left. A young man pointing on the ground behind Laura, smiling. “Is that yours?”

            She turned, eying the path she had traveled. A small velvet bag lay plopped upon the sidewalk.

            “Oh, yes!” she said, returning a smile, “Thank you so much.” He was standing behind a stand selling popcorn. Popcorn!, the sign said. She picked up her bag. It emitted the sound that a bag full of glass shards would.

            The drone of the city street—the cars passing, the rocks and water being pressed between the tires and road, the sound of the feet of those around her bustling to wherever they need be, the silent or one-way conversations people were having with their electronic seashells and cellphones—had allowed the pouch to escape her without consideration. It was fortunate that the popcorn seller had interrupted her research to inform her of this happenstance. For that she was grateful.

            “Thank you again,” she said. She liked his face. To her it was warm, but she thought that it wouldn't be warm if the weather was too humid and uncomfortably hot. If it were that way, she thought, it would then be refreshing and cool. She liked this as well.

            “Not a problem! I watched it climb out of your bag and hang on to the edge. I'm glad it made its way back to you.”

            Two cars began an altercation centered upon honking. The honking faded and it was unclear who had won. They both stood listening. Then the moment passed.

            “How's the popcorn?” Laura said.

            “The popcorn? The popcorn is good. Would you like some?”

            Laura thought of the bird.

            “Yes, actually. Just a small bag, please.”

            “Well, I only sell one size.” He looked at the bags stuffed with popcorn hanging from the side of the cart.

            “Oh, well that then, please.”

            He pulled a bag down.

            “I'll charge you for a small.”

            They smiled. She paid. Abashed, she exited their conversation with an unintentionally laconic goodbye. Laura then walked home, unable to return to her reading.

***

            “Eat,” she said, dangling a piece of popcorn in front of the bird.

            The bird looked at her with the same uncomfortable gaze it offered the night before. She had taken the cardboard box down from the window sill, the bird still motionlessly occupying its new cardboard nest. Its body was contorted to seem as if it had failed to rise from an uncomfortable night's sleep.

            The bird lay there, observing the piece of corrugated food propped in front of its beak. It let out an altruistic squawk, hardly audible to Laura, and reopened its beak, craning its neck like a reanimated skeleton to reach for the food. It, however, made no noticeable progress towards the piece of popcorn gripped between Laura's fingers.

            Laura brought her hand closer, placing the piece of popcorn in the bird's mouth. It bit down, emitting the traditional crunch that popcorn makes. It then, excitedly, gulped down the remnants of what remained in its beak. Tonguing what it could of the crumbs, the bird resembled a desiderated and toyless infant, reaching with its meager and tethered appendages towards the thing that would satiate its anonymous desire.

            So Laura tossed the bird a couple of pieces. The bird ate them.

            She went to her spare room and pulled a bag out of the closet. In this bag was a spaghetti of different sizes and strands of material scraps. She fumbled through them until she discovered a handful of choice fabrics that would provide a more comfortable living situation for the bird.

            She tucked the bag back into the closet and walked back into her room, kneeling before the bird. She, with careful consideration to not accidentally flirt with what could remain of the bird's hunger, partially cocooned a nest around the bird. She stepped back, observing the colorfully organic artwork she had produced. This is good, she thought.

            Squawk, the bird said. Squawk.

            Laura reached into the bag and took out a handful of popcorn. Cautiously, like a driver delivering ore to a refinery, she dumped it near the bird's intake. The bird ate the popcorn.

            She stared at the bird with a calm sense of ease. It repeated its marionette-like consumption. Grabbing, cracking, tonguing, swallowing, in a mechanically efficient manner that caused Laura to fear for the loss of identity of the bird. It was unable to move, unable to express its avian qualities, and had turned into a partially paralyzed automaton, reacting out of necessity to its environment. Grabbing, cracking, tonguing, swallowing. This, she thought, could easily be solved.

            “If it's alright with you,” she said, “I would like to give you name. I know I'm the only one who will ever call you this name, but I think you deserve one. I don't think it's fair, otherwise.”

            She shoveled in some of the popcorn that sat beyond the radius of the bird's reach.

            “Maud?  How does Maud sound? I like it. I'll call you Maud.”

            She stood up and walked out of the room, quietly closing the door behind her. She got a glass of water, walked into her spare room, and set her bag on the desk. She rummaged through it, pulling out the small velvet pouch she had dropped earlier. She set it on the table and moved her bag to the floor. She sat down on a wooden chair. It creaked.

            The desk was immaculate save a large metal frame flooding it. Inside of this frame was a webbing of soldered aluminum rods, reaching out from various locations on the outside of the frame, connecting and dispersing in a meticulous pattern that outlined a frame from a scene in Laura's mind. Between sections of outline lay a sundry of colored and uncolored glass, cut and chipped to mold to other pieces, forming the delicate abstraction of a yet unfinished impression.

            She opened the drawer underneath the desk and pulled out a box full of mixed utensils—a pair of tweezers, wheeled glass nippers, a butter knife, a tub of non-sanded tile grout, a tube of clear silicone glue, adhesive shelving paper, a box of disposable rubber gloves, safety glasses, a bowl with small pieces of glass in it, and a bowl with a dry sponge. She set them on the table. She took the glassy bowl and set it in front of her and slid the gloves on.

            Laura took the small velvet bag and untied the rope leash keeping it closed. She opened the bag and dumped its contents into the bowl. A colored puddle of glass formed a new pool. She pawed at the pile with her rubber hands, finally finding the ideal piece for the next part of her puzzle. She set it in front of her.

            Carefully crafting the glass, she slowly united the newly formed body with the appendage she hadn't known it missed. It was as if love had been introduced only for a moment only to be given the option to be retreated from, at once realizing how imminent and inevitable this holistic affinity was. As Laura, with the tweezers, introduced the tesserae to its eternal calling, she confirmed its significance and married them with glue. They looked beautiful together.

            She mixed together the grout and some water in the other empty bowl, stirring it with the butter knife into the consistency of cookie dough. She waited for the glue to dry. The glue dried. She applied the cookie dough to the new continental lines. She squeegeed off and sharpened the lines with the knife, finally cleaning the remaining grout off of the glass with the dampened sponge.

            She was done for the night. She cleaned her tools and her desk. Everything was how it was.

            She fed Maud and she thought that Maud was happy. She got ready for bed and went to bed.

            Laura slept and when she slept her eyes moved.

***

            In front of her was an endless scene that had no light. The only thing that she could see was a pair of old hands gently reaching towards her. The hands were calm and soothing, which reminded her of the boy's face but she knew they weren't the boy's because they were God's. She knew that they were soft because they felt soft to her, even though she couldn't see her body and she had no body to touch them with. They were worn and wrinkled, like that of an old man's, but a lively gray. They were soft hands. When they reached her she wished they would help her.

            The hands knew who she was and they retreated from her, holding onto a heart—her heart—covered with moving soot that looked like ants but wasn't. This left her thirsty. It lifted the heart higher, rising and rising, and Laura's eyes stayed with it. She felt they were rising but she couldn't see the ground or the sky or the distance. Only the soft hands and her heart.

            She thought that she wanted her heart back but she didn't want it back if that's the way it looked, so she decided that she didn't want that heart back. She asked without asking for a new heart but knew that she couldn't have a new heart because that was hers and it wouldn't be hers if it was a different one. This left her feeling empty and heartless.

            The hands kept lifting, rising and rising, the gentle fingers softly curling in, and, as they curled in, her heart began to turn to water or another clear and clean liquid that she could only compare to water. It began to melt, pouring and straining through the creases and folds of the soft hands, dripping droplets that slowly trickled off of the knuckles and wrinkles, falling and falling to where she couldn't see. She heard the sound that water makes when it falls into an empty bucket, and, with each additional drop, she began to hear more and more the sound that water makes when it drips into a pool of water. Each drop reminded her of how thirsty she was. Each drop helped her be less thirsty.

            The hands continued to rise but Laura stopped rising. They ascended above her, continuing to be the slow fountain quenching her dry throat and tongue. She watched as they rose above her, causing her to feel like she was then falling. She watched the hands rise, turning the slow drip of a dried stream into the torrential downpour of a conquered cloud. The water fell on her, even though she couldn't her see her body and she had no body, but it fell on her, soaking into her papery skin, porous and void of any moisture. Falling on her confused and tangled hair, straightening the knotted braids. Falling on her desperate tongue, trickling down her scratched throat. It fell on her and she knew that it was good.

            Then the rain stopped. She looked up at the hands. She was full and no longer thirsty. The hands  were covered in the dead ant soot and she knew that it was okay and she woke up.  

***

            The day was bright and her room was bright because of the day dripping through the blinds. Laura woke up and Maud slept quietly. She didn't know but she thought that the bird was becoming better. It hadn't died, she thought, and that was good.

            Laura got ready to leave. She then placed a handful of popcorn in front of the bird's mouth and walked out the door. On the subway ride to work she thought about the bird, Maud. Then she thought about the boy with the warm face.

            She thought about him and imagined how he looked. He wore a blue peacoat jacket and held a book in his hand, sitting and reading, his head and book bobbing in harmony as the subway experienced imperfections in the tracks. He then coughed—something she had not imagined—and  realized that she was staring at him, seated six people away, opposite. She felt like a small animal looking out from the brush of people around her, watching with a keen eye his undisturbed order. She was unsure if her daydreaming was now.

            He hadn't realized her.

            He looked up from the book. In the glass window across from where he sat he followed the moving walls. He then adjusted his focus to his reflection. She could see that he could see blue, gray, white, and the colors of his face. He sat, pulled into its swirl.

            She watched him watch him. Then she noticed his focus gaze past his reflection, observing with reverence the blur of brick that tried to smear his face. He watched and the subway stopped. He stood up, picked up his bags, and began walking towards the door. Other people were crowded the door, all waiting to come up for air. He stood in the jumbled line.

            She stood and found herself behind him. Two bags of groceries in his left hand and the book in his right. They waited, the door unrepentantly closed, as if it were trying to coerce the pressure inside to keep building. Laura thought this and tried turning away from his coat's collar, embarrassed. As she turned, the small collapsible umbrella in her bag tumbled out, catching the book in the boy's right hand as it fell.

            Both the book and the umbrella floated to the ground, clattering paper and clothe atop the dirty steel floor beneath their feet, settling like heavy feathers.

            “Sorry, sorry,” she said, sorrily.

            “Oh,” he said, both of them bending over to retrieve, “it's okay.”

            “I'm really sorry. Really,” she said, “I shouldn't have done that.”

            “It's really alright,” he said. Then he saw who she was.

            She returned his smile and then stood up with her umbrella. Him with his book.

            “Good to see you.”

            “Yes. It is.”

            And then the subway door opened.

***

            The boy with the bag of groceries waited for the line ahead of him to begin moving. The door had been open for enough time to pass that the lack of progress felt uncomfortable. Behind him, he thought, the girl still stood, possibly sharing with him the same feeling. Just as he thought to turn around and reassure himself that this was how things were, he was able to take a step away from her.

            Occupied by the girl's umbrella, he found himself on the first stair of his apartment. The stairs were made of brick. They were patched in places with aging concrete, naturally decorated by multiple tufts of grass and weeds poking their way through. Each step was littered with increasing amounts of dirt and loose rocks—a mystery that he had yet to understand.

            As he arrived at the door, he set his bag of groceries down. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his ring of keys. Flipping between three separate keys, he unlocked each of their respective locks, opened the door, walked inside, shut the door, locked each lock, and went into the kitchen.

            “Saul?” he voicelessly yelled, careful to not be harsh.

            Nothing responded so he emptied the groceries into the cabinets and fridge. He took out a shallow pan and set it on the oven, setting the heat to simmer. He cooked a meal with fresh vegetables and avocado oil. He ordered it nicely onto a plate and placed five different pills in a corner, covering it with a lid to keep the heat in. He set the plate, a glass of water, and a variety of utensils on a tray, and set it on the counter. He then poured himself a bowl of cereal and sat quietly at the kitchen table, eating and reading the back of the box.

            Finishing both his meal and the box's puzzle at nearly the same time, he cleaned and put away his dishes. While he waited for the heated water to make its way to him as it traveled through the rattling pipes in the wall, he looked at the empty ceramic bowl in his hands. It was uncle's, like everything else in the apartment, and was part of a series of dishes his uncle had sculpted and fired nearly thirty years ago. Neatly etched into the outside of the bowl were caricatures of anonymous ancestors and animals, each vivifying days of plowshares, while the glaze enamored the reflection it hosted.

story

He could feel her ribs through her sweater. Lying on the ground, the dry dirt beneath them, damp only with the sweat that their clothes had collected, Guy’s hand was spread out over Ruth’s ribs. As he felt her breathe, he thought that it’s unfair that it has taken his body more time to eat itself than it did hers—hers being a product of strenuous care and discipline, his of lenience and a casual attention. His body was flush against her back, pulled close out of both affection and practicality.

At night, the temperature drops only just enough to chill ones lungs to the point of distress. Even though the sun has set, the sky remains an orange haze, filtering the brilliant stars behind the atmospheric screen—a lost monument that remains only a vague and familiar reminder of what once was, at once, both intimate and ignored. Now, instead of a black sky diffused with radiant white speckles, it is a mucky and iron stained pond spread thin through the air in every direction, producing no light to guide them at night.

Underneath the grey blanket they shared, he moved his hand from her ribs to her shallow chest, where she, asleep, readjusted to pull his hand as close to her as their bodies would allow. Their daughter, Nina, lay asleep on the other side of his wife, their horse and caravan tied to a tree beyond their feet. He was usually the last one awake, stirring partly out of protective unease and partly out of hunger and distress. His wife and daughter had always been more adaptive to the continually changing environments that they found themselves transitioning between. Tonight they were sleeping in what was once a corn field. It was a welcomed change from the abandoned houses that they usually occupied.

It’s quiet, he thought, listening to the wind against his ear. There’s little threat this far from the city, and they will be walking to the next one for at least two or three more days. Somewhere in these thoughts he falls asleep.

***

The sound of the gravel shifting beneath the caravan’s wheels served as a droning hum, accented by the syncopated tapping that Guy, Ruth, Nina, and their horse created as they walked along the road in silence. The urge to talk—the inspiration for conversation—had run dry months ago, just as the naturally drinkable water had. There was nothing to discuss, no jovial banter, no daily routines that they didn’t share, as they walked in the shroud of damp and warm air, day after day.

The things that came to Guy’s mind were not of light recourse: what was containing his attention for the time being was his daily acknowledgement of the decaying status of their horse—a horse they decided against naming. The horse’s legs were trembling more and more upon each step every day, his skin draping over what was now nothing more than bone laced with strands of muscle and tendons. They couldn’t ease his load much further without sacrificing the possibility of sustenance.

They collected things. What was valuable was not what had been before—paper money carried less value as a currency than it did as fuel for a fire. What bought food and water was not a currency stranded in hypothetical value, but rather in what those who had food and water wanted: practical items, hygienically products, seemingly sentimental objects, antiques, labor, jewelry, cigarettes, alcohol, medicine, sex. Since the people who had a surplus of tradable food and water were usually in a position that allowed them to pick and choose what they were willing to trade, most practical items, sentimental objects, and labor were easily found. Still, salvaging anything that could be worth something—or at least seemed to be somewhat interesting—was their main source of survival, if not traded to the Tycoons, than to other caravans.

No one rode in the caravan, despite having seats more than able to seat all three of them, in an effort to help their horse last. They had been periodically emptying items from the back of the caravan—typically the heavier ones first—to help as well, dropping power tools, working electronics, and books off at the side of the road. The grass, although thinly spread over a lot of land like tan threads of hair, was like cardboard, nutrient wise. Just as grass becomes starved of natural sunlight, like in winter, buried beneath layers of snow, so does it starve those that rely upon it. Whatever it was that was in the air, creating a thick blanket of a cloud across the sky, prevented the nutrients of the sun to be absorbed on earth. People became sick, animals starved, plants died. The world became a humid winter—gloomy and monotonous, yet warm and suffocating.

Guy was walking to left of the horse, his hand loosely holding its reins, while Ruth and Nina walked behind him in no order or fashion. They walked simply, without any sensed reason to be next to one another, nor any inherent reason not to. They were following a gravel road they believe leads to a train station that could take them to Harbor—the town between two high mountains, fertile with fresh water and—somehow—breached sunlight. People talked of Harbor without much recourse, its existence assumed to be somewhere between a place of imagined existence to a rumored trap to an actual communal paradise, yet it seemed no one ever thought actually trying to go there. After months of witnessing the decadence of enforced wanderlust, Guy, Ruth, and Nina all decided that there was little less they could do with actual purpose. They wanted to make it to Harbor, despite the improbability of its existence.

Lying on the side of the ride, Guy led the caravan around a hollowed carcass of what must have been a cow, its rib cage large enough to crawl inside of. The thought of stopping for a moment quickly passed as Guy eyed the skeleton, noticing not a single ounce of meat still attached to the bones. Even had there been some meat, it would have no doubt been rotten through and dangerous to even approach. There was no viable cure for most diseases, and one would be better off trying to trade aspirin for water than choking it down an already dry throat.

Up ahead, stopped in the middle of the road, a black car sat stalled. There was no saying if there was anyone or anything inside of it, but it wasn’t uncommon for people to have driven their vehicles as far as they could before the gas ran out, forced to abandon what was once a luxury vehicle wherever they were stranded. Either that, or they were hijacked by desperate people, looking for something—anything—to help, usually realizing that their captor was in no greater position than they were, especially now, considering they were without a vehicle.

Nearing the car, Guy, remembering their desperation—a desperation that he made his own—reached back towards Ruth, making eye contact. Without much more than a smile, she took his hand and walked up next to him, setting her unheld hand upon his arm. Nina recognized their remembrance and joined them, walking next to Ruth.

Nina coughed. “Let’s stop for a bit,” Guy said, slowing his pace, leading the horse to do the same. He took from the satchel on the side of the horse a canteen, took the cap off, and pressed the metal rim to his lips. He stopped drinking after some warm water coated his tongue, and handed it to Ruth, who handed it to Nina, who took a drink.

“Nice car,” Guy said, standing not more than a hundred feet away from it.

Nina made a noise, acknowledging what he said as she drank a second sip. She then coughed again and handed it to Ruth, who drank and gave it back to Guy, who put the lid on and set it back in the satchel.

Off in the field to the left of the car was what looked like a pile of brush. It had first caught Guy’s eye, being unable to look away, a gaze that both Ruth and Nina followed. All three of them stood by their emaciated horse, looking off into a field, struck by what they saw.

It wasn’t the first time that a site like this had been witnessed, but the irregularity of it never ceased to catch them off guard. Piled five feet high, ten or so feet in diameter, a brush pile of bones, colored charcoal by fire, sat. Distinguishable from where they were standing was what was unmistakably human skulls, no longer attached to the bones that they had once harnessed. Mass graves had become too tough to dig as machinery became unattainable and energy became more reserved, so the burning of those who had passed become the most economically sustainable way of treating the dead.

Above the pile, barely noticeable between grayish-brown trees, was a green speckle. Receded a mile or so into the rural farmland was what was most likely a farm house. Guy noticed first, pointing.

“We know,” Ruth said, responding to the burned pile.

“No, look above it,” he said, pointing again.

“Oh. Hm,” she said, “Do you think we should go check it out?”

“I think so. I don’t know how often people have been through here. We haven’t seen anyone yet, and it looks like it might have been pretty decently hidden, ya know?”

“Yeah. I suppose. Let’s get going then,” she said, wiping hear forehead of the perspiration that her body managed to squeeze out of her.

“Yeah,” Nina followed, turning back to her parents.

With a light tug, Guy encouraged the horse to continue walking forward. As they passed the car, they noticed the windows missing, the interior as worn as the paint. Without so much as a second glance, they kept walking forward. The abandoner probably ravaged anything worth taking when they left it years ago.

As they walked along the road, the driveway leading to the green house became clearly identifiable a few hundred feet up the road. The dry fields that had been framing them for the last ten or so miles was turning into a austere forest of barren trees, lacking any hue of life. The trees, which were once flooded with the lush, brown color of bark and the vivid green leaves that hung from the extending branches, seemed like a purposeless scaffold, extending from the ground to reach out in every direction, leading to nowhere. What separated the trees from the field was that they, unlike the various carcasses, were erect, supported by the earth, where the skeletons were falling into it, resting upon the ground.

As the sound of the gravel beneath their feet and the caravan’s wheels deceased, Guy, Ruth, and Nina stood in front of the driveway that the supposed lead to the green house. Tugging the horse’s reins, Guy led them down the narrow driveway, dead trees lining the edges.

***

Alan, sitting at his wooden desk, inside the study of his house, set the piece of paper down, looking at in silence. The once bleached piece of white paper held its brightness, smeared with dirty hands at the creases, making eight crumpled white rectangles. In the middle of the page, in barely readable cursive, said:

“Alan, If I perish, I perish. Love, Mariam”

He looked at it, his eyebrows holding back whatever emotion it was that the letter continued to summon. Sighing, eyes locked on the note, he leaned back, his chair accompanying his recline. He crossed his feet, holding his hands together near his stomach—eyes persistent.

Alan wore a grey pinstripe suit, minus the jacket. His pants and vest were a gentle gray, striped with a series of blacks and lighter grays, bringing attention to his face and his shoes. Worn, yet painstakingly kept after, his black leather shoes looked to have acted like more of an armor than a classist expression, scuffed on every surface. His face was consciously shaped—his beard and hair trimmed weekly, a light scruff and a length never going beyond his eyebrows. His hair was once black, but now littered with white and gray hairs, a gentle comment on his age.

His house was made of logs, a distinction from the majority of the houses that had been fabricated before. It was cut down and built with the help of his friends—friends that lived no more than a hundred feet from his from door.

The successive knocks rapped on the door behind him. He leaned forward, responding to the knock while quickly folding up the letter, setting on the shelf above his desk, next to the lit oil lamp.

“Yeah?” he said.

“Hey Alan, can I come in?” It was Judah.

“Yeah,” he got up, walking towards the door. Judah opened it and smiled, extending his hand.

“Hey Alan. How you doin’ today?”

“Oh. Pretty well. How are things out there? Everything fine?”

“Oh yeah,” he said, “Everything’s fine. I hadn’t seen you all morning. I wanted to come and check up on ya. You feelin’ okay?”

“Just a little tired is all. Couldn’t sleep much last night.”

“Yeah, them wolves out there never shut up. We can never find em, either. Think we should go out some night, lookin’ for em?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just noise. The fences keep ‘em out,” it wasn’t the wolves that kept him awake, “I think I’ll be fine. Has anyone else complained about the noise?”

“Naw. I don’t think so. If anything, I’d bet that they’d be liking the auxilery noise. You know, like the sound of cricket or so. You know?”

“Yeah. I suppose so. Well, I think I might try and take a nap. You sure you don’t need anything?” Alan said.

“Naw. We’re good. Everything’s good. You let me know if you need somethin’, alright? It’s all fine out there, no problems. Nope. Just let me know, alright?” Judah smiled.

Alan nodded, smiling back. “Thanks, Judah. I’ll see you at lunch.”

Judah walked to the door, opened it, stepped outside, and said goodbye again before shutting it. Alan stood in the middle of the room, looking at the door. His eyes wandered about the room. His shadow danced on the wall in front of him.

***