Breakfast
That was the worst
hangover I'd ever had: a home-set broken nose; a home-set broken arm in a sling
we'd made from an old sheet; the acid hangover crackling at the edges of
everything; the alcohol hangover, with the asphalt-scarred feel it brings to
your ass and innards; the neck still sore from the spinout and the rest; and
the post-narcotic funk. And God, we'd killed people. I was miserable. I was
sure we'd get caught.
But taking the party to
our place meant one thing: Hospitality. Even if we had no money, even if we
were hung over half a dozen different ways, by God even if we'd run from a
fatal collision in which we were most likely the cause, we'd prepare breakfast
for whoever had stayed. Today's menu was typical: an omelet-scramble of a dozen
eggs; however much milk seemed right to Lee Ann's intuitive gaze; onions and
green peppers chopped in the kitchen by Lee Ann or me; and topped with Mexican
Style Velveeta, the cheese-spread with hot peppers and other Mexican stuff in
it. We'd scoop the breakfast scramble onto a bed of hash browns from the
freezer and melt the Velveeta and serve Jimmy Dean breakfast sausages on the
side.
Lee Ann smiled at me over
the food as it cooked through. Her look said one thing to me: All in all,
things were OK. No one had died — none of us had died, anyway, nor even
suffered a life-threatening injury. That was amazing! God, did I hurt, but she
was doing it again: Somehow, even through all this, things seemed to be looking
up. If you just looked at it right.
The
Good Life, Pt. 2
The Rheinlander bottles
in the window, that was a couple of weeks before the time with the rat. That
was a stroke of genius. No shit. We stayed in bed for a few extra hours that
morning, only getting up for aspirin, or to take a leak. I only barfed once,
and it was a small one, no big deal. I did it to myself, sneaking a little hit
of smack in the bathroom, away from Lee Ann, so she wouldn't know I still had
any around. I didn't even mention it, just gargled my mouth out with a swig of
beer. I made sure the phone was off the hook. No need to take calls from Burger
King if I didn't work there.
Man, were we happy. I
played music on the radio and Lee Ann stripped and sang along with Springsteen,
but only a few lines, and with a huge smile: "Well lately when I look into
your eyes, I’m goin down … " but she left out the parts of the song that
were about a burnt out couple tired of each other and doing one another more
harm than good, their love melting down into hatred, both setting each other up
just to knock-a knock-a knock-a each other down, down, down, down. She gave me
a blowjob to that song to celebrate my last day at Burger King, and ignoring
the pain of the bruises she'd left on me, I thought to myself: Y'know, life is
all right.
Miles was in to open the Fox Head at 11:30, usually,
just before the lunch rush. We didn't even need to change course to avoid
Burger King. That was off our beaten path. It was cold — winter mornings in
Iowa are like that. So we bundled up, no big deal.
But the Fox Head was not
open when we arrived, and it was something like 12 degrees out, far too cold to
wait around outdoors. So we decided to wait in Dirty John's Grocery until we
saw the Open sign light up.
After a while — I wasn't wearing a watch — Lee Ann
started getting antsy. As she gnawed impatiently at a fingertip, a little old
woman behind the counter seemed to take a suspicious interest in us. Lee Ann
was not amused. Her hands had begun to shake, just a little. Nothing just
anyone would notice. I was pretty sure it was just the LSD, not DTs; she didn't
do all that much smack, really.
She turned to me.
"Jesus Christ, why can't we just go over to the bar and get a seat?"
she said. Her voice had taken on an angry edge. She turned and glared at the
woman behind the counter. "What?" she demanded. The little old woman
started, surprised. Lee Ann and I had been drinking for a couple of hours and
were now otherwise medicated, and while I hadn't seen a reflection of myself, I
could see it all over her: dark circles under sunken eyes, creases tracing the
weariness around her eyes and mouth.
With an irritated huff
and dismissive, stabbing wave, Lee Ann stalked away from the old woman. When
she thought she was out of the woman's sight, she scooped a fifth of whiskey
into her bag.
The little old woman
said, "Is there anything I can help you find?" Her voice was full of
worry — she probably didn't much fancy entertaining a couple of junkies already
at it at this time of day — but she asked.
Iowans. You just gotta love Iowans.
I think that the woman
might have seen Lee Ann shoplifting. She certainly could have, with all the
security mirrors set up around the store. But she let Lee Ann walk out of the
place with no hassles. I looked at the store's clock on the way out, smiling
apologetically at the woman. It was 12:15. Other people had walked by the Fox
Head, peered in, and moved on. We decided on George's, another bar only a block
away. I'm amazed it didn't occurr to us before then, but we just usually didn't
hang out there.
We trudged through the
snow of unshoveled walks between us and George's.
There were customers at George's, probably a bigger
crowd than otherwise, had the Fox Head ever opened for lunch. As we pulled off
our layers, one by one, Lee Ann drove a fierce glare into me. This wasn't going
to be good. The storm that was Lee Ann Russo was about to come ashore.
"Don't!" I
whispered.
But she was past that point. Her voice climbed to a
shriek that turned every head in the room. "You worthless sonofabitch,
can't keep a job, even a shitty job, won't defend me when there's old ladies
looking me up and down like I'm a thief or something!"
God, I loved that scream. But this was public. This
was embarrassing.
"Where you folks been drinking earlier?"
asked the bartender, a wiry thirtysomething man with stringy, colorless hair
and the smoke-stained look of tavern life about him. He seemed familiar,
somehow, though I couldn't place him.
"Oh, uh," I
said, "just, y'know, at home. And stuff."
He shook his head No at me and walked over. "Sorry,"
he said. He addressed me by name. "Another day, maybe. But I can't have
you two in here like this right now."
Lee Ann gave me a look trembling with rage, willing me
to act, her expression delivering the message: Coward. Loser.
I guess by that time my
reflexes and reaction time must have been down. I did take a swing at the
bartender, but he just sidestepped it and slugged me. I know I went down. It
didn't hurt much, really, but it numbed my cheek and knocked me over. Can't
imagine how much that would've hurt if it'd happened in the days after the
crash.
Lee Ann bitched and
moaned all the way home. About a block from the police station she laid into me
about the burger job again, and again, and again, and I just let one fly,
doubling her over. A second too late I realized how dangerous it was to have
done that right out here, in the open, in the daylight, near a police station.
This was the kind of thing you kept private. But no police came. We were lucky.
The rest of that day is a
blur of misery and intoxication. I remember watching something on TV. I
remember the awful gray light of winter seeping in through the blinds. I
remember laying low. When I heard a truck pull up outside, I knew it was Bobby
Earle's rusted once-white '67 Ford pick-up. I peaked out the side window and
sure enough, there he was, eyes glassy and unfocussed, dirty blonde hair
unkempt and spraying out from under his Lorsban cap, a thermal vest on over a
flannel stained with engine fluids, his moustache struck through with frozen snot.
It was, indeed, my landlord. I recall Lee Ann seeing him once.
"Where'd he ever get
the money to buy a place — even this place?" she said.
"Inherited," I told her. I'd heard about
people getting something for nothing and not giving a shit about it. So it was
with poor inner-city folks who were handed new homes in so many failed
projects. So it was with Bobby Earle and the property left to him by his long
dead daddy. Bobby Earle didn't need a job; but his daddy, seeing what his money
was doing to Bobby, stipulated in his will that the estate was to provide Bobby
with an allowance, the house he lived in, and the house we rented. That way,
Bobby couldn't get at all the money at once to squander, I guess, and would
still be taken care of. And his allowance was evidently enough for him to get
by on, seeing how infrequently he actually seemed to try to get the money out
of us. In exchange, though, we didn't dare call to have him fix anything. When
the downstairs stool backed up, it pretty much rendered that room unusable.
Bobby drank very heavily,
had shots with whatever he bothered to eat for breakfast. By the time of day
when he started wondering about the last time he'd got rent from us, he was
usually blind drunk. Not hard to fool him. He knocked unevenly for a few
minutes; I saw his silhouette pass on the other side of the drawn living room
curtains.
Then muffled cursing, boots crunching on snow and
gravel in the drive, and the engine of the '67 turning over. Bobby Earle
wouldn't try again today.
My internal clock was so
messed up I fell asleep at 4:30 or so. When I woke up, the clock said 6:45, and
it being dark out, I didn't know whether that meant daytime or night.
I cracked open a capsule of speed, cut it into two
lines, and snorted them. Lee Ann was nowhere to be found. Least, not at the
house.
I found her out at the Fox Head with Larry and Shitty,
very, very loaded. Shitty was sitting pretty close to her, and I thought maybe
she'd hit the end of the line with me. But she turned to face me, streamed smoke
from her nose and mouth, through a beaming, mood-swung smile, and I knew
everything was going to be all right.
Shitty turned to see what
she was looking at. With a smile that hesitated for a hiccup, he waved me over,
cigarette dangling from his mouth. "Dawn of the Fucking Dead, man, where'd
you come from?"
He clapped me on the
shoulder and pulled a mug from the fridge behind the bar.
Larry looked nervous, too, like the three of them had
been caught at something. I did not care. Truly I did not. I let Shitty pour me
a beer and used it to wash back some more cheap speed. There was music on the
jukebox, a noisy crowd having drunken fun on a cold winter night, and I didn't
know what day it was. Honestly, no idea. The cigarette smoke was so thick I
didn't even have to light up. I felt like a gypsy. It was like surviving by
picking what you wanted to eat from the apple trees as you walk pass, or from
someone's garden. Things were looking up.
That's the thing about those nights: They weren't all
that bad. We'd hit some rough spot, then Lee Ann would make all the bad just
kind of drift away, even if she'd caused it in the first place. "Lee Ann
says you were out pretty hardcore," said Larry.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. She told us
she shook you and shook you, but you were dead to the world," he said.
Huh. Never had any idea she tried to wake me. But then
I thought maybe she didn't, really; maybe she just had to get away from me for
a while. I don't know.
I don't know how late it
was when everyone fell into their spots around the house, but Lee Ann fucked me
somethin' special. It was still dark out. I told you about those le cheval
voodoo possessions of hers. They were getting longer. I thought maybe she
didn't give a fuck about consequences, or maybe she thought a kid would make everything
right for us. A lot of people make that mistake. I don't know. But I had to
fight her pretty hard to get pulled back in time. She tore up my back with her
nails trying to hold on.
When she was off and I
was holding a clenched fist over her, blood running down my back, she glared at
me, locked eyes with me. She gave me a few seconds like that, then pushed past
me. Through the open door of the bathroom, I could see her digging at the skin
under her nails with the lid of a bottle cap.
Our
Kind
After the crash, damn,
did the cold made my broken arm ache. I didn't have it in a cast, but Shitty'd
set it, and we'd hung it across my chest in a makeshift sling, a loop of old
bedsheet tied around my neck. The pain you get when you move a broken arm the
wrong way teaches you fast.
We putzed around the house, stayed fucked up most of
the time. We all agreed it'd be best not to be out and about in a small town
sporting injuries that made us look like we'd been in a car crash, not while
the fatal wreck was still being looked into and was fresh on everyone's mind.
My black eyes slowly faded from swollen and purple, to less swelled up and a
kind of brown-beige mottle. Shitty and Larry brought us drugs and booze. Twenty
days into it, Lee Ann and me were stir crazy and in need of other company. I
tried out my arm free of its sling, and it didn't seem bad.
"Whaddaya think?" I asked Lee Ann. She was
an amphetamine blur twitching her way along the seams of the house. I tried to
tell her that speed was not the way to go when you needed to kill time, but —
"HellYesLet'sGetTheFUCKouttaThisHellHole,"
she said. Her eyes were glazed over, wet and distant, dilated. She shook. She
glowered mercilessly at me, my black-mood baby. She blew past me, shoving
against my hurt arm, and it didn't feel broken anymore, but the shove left it a
little sore.
When we turned up at the
Fox Head, Shitty looked like the sun just rose at his door.
"Guys!" he
said, smoke gusting around the cigarette in his mouth. Shitty's teeth were
ringed in stains that I presumed to be tobacco; it looked like eyeliner for
teeth. He kept a full, brushy beard during the winter months. Shitty pulled a
Marlboro hard pack from the pocket of his red-and-black flannel and shook some
toward us. We took him up on the offer. Someone put a Joplin tune on the
jukebox.
While we sat, smoked, and
drank, Shitty caught us up on what we'd missed, which was pretty much nothing.
Once or twice I saw Lee Ann making eyes at some young, clean-cut guys in a
booth across the bar. I'd never seen
them in the place before, hadn't seen them come in, but then, my back was to
the door. I decided not to notice her making eyes. She could play flirt if she
wanted. We were in this thing together.
The jukebox said, "Oh
Lord, won'tcha buy me, a Mercedes Benz?"
Sitting across from Shitty with Larry someplace
nearby, it felt so much like old times I forgot Lee Ann's mood. God damn, can
that woman's mood swing. All at once, out the corner of my eye, I saw her
glaring straight at me.
"You don't
care," she said. "You don't care one bit about me."
"Now, Lee Ann —
" I said.
"Three weeks in that
fucking coffin of a house with you … "
"We had to, honey.
We — "
"Almost got me killed in that
wreck — " Her eyes smoldered angrily at me, her lips pulling back from her
teeth in a clenching snarl.
That set off Shitty, who wanted no one talking in his
bar about any fatal wrecks he'd had anything to do with. "Lee Ann, for
fuck's sake, pipe down," he said, his voice a hoarse whisper.
"God-damned
murderer, that's what you are, a god-damned mass — "
I didn't feel it coming. Her words had turned sour on
me so quick I didn't even know she'd pissed me off. But she had. She'd crossed
the line. And before I knew what I was up to, my elbow'd connected with her
nose, knocked her off her barstool onto the floor. Blood streamed from her nose
and mouth and she bawled, angry at the blood, angry at the world, angry at me.
Shitty said, "Look, you gotta get her outta here,
I can't have you two in here like this."
I felt a deep,
subterranean pain in the arm I'd broken and which I'd just nailed her with, the
right. The break had been just below the elbow, and I obviously hadn't seen a
doctor or anything, but I was at that moment pretty sure if I had, he wouldn't
have advised me to hit things with it just yet.
Shitty was around to our
side of the counter now, got us each by an arm and walked us outside.
"Seeya next time," he said, smiling and nodding. He deposited us on
the walk out front, turned, and headed back in, shaking his head.
The clean-cut guys
spilled out, three of them, and the one who she'd been batting her eyelashes at
came straight at me. I put up my dukes, but I usually lead with my right, and
I'm not much of a fighter to begin with; having to stop and rethink how to lead
with the left instead stopped me dead long enough for him to double me over
with one to the gut. A boot or a fist or something caught me on the forehead
and down I went, scraping my hands in the snow and sand and salt.
Then, in the quiet dark
of the night, I heard Lee Ann shrieking. I looked up to find her on top of the
clean-cut, looked like she'd jumped on his back from behind. She was howling
all sorts of crazy shit at him about having to go through her if he wanted to
hurt me, her husband with the broke arm anyway, what the fuck did he expect,
the big tough man, like that.
Imagine that: Her husband.
In amazement, the
clean-cut ducked and let her just kinda slide off him, over his head and onto
the ground.
"Crazy bitch,"
he said, shaking his head. "Crazy bitch."
He turned and waved his cohorts along. "Let's go.
Fuck these people. Lowlifes."
"We didn't want you
down here, anyway!" The shriek again. After a second, she added: "We
don't want your kind around here!"
Lord, did I love that shriek. Who could resist Lee Ann
all fired up like a bag full of bobcats? Not I. I stuck out my left hand, a
peace offering, and helped her to her feet.
Lee Ann looked around in
a daze, turning slowly around, around, around in the snow. Her eyes came to
rest on a nice, well-kept house down the block. A family home. A good place to
live. It was two floors plus attic, an exterior that looked to be made of some
kind of big gray bricks. There was still a Christmas tree lit in the window,
though we'd laid low and stayed high through the holidays, and hadn't put up
anything like that, didn't have anything like that.
Lee Ann wandered toward the big, stately structure,
her mouth gaping.
"Look at that
place," she said. We could see a woman in a house dress sitting at a table
with a man whose shirt was the kind that looked like it had had a tie on it
earlier. They were smiling. We could see two clean, glowing kids in the window,
passing a bucket of rolls we knew were fresh and hot. We knew that because that
was what would be right, the right way to do things. And this was one of those
families that did things right just because that was the right way to do
things. I'd never met a family that did things right just to do them right. A
happy family gathered together at the dining room table for a square meal. The
man of the house didn't even have a martini. I realized that I must have
thought it was later than it was. But the scene was a sight to behold for the
sheer, Norman Rockwell, Saturday Evening Post cover normality of it. A sight
whose picture-book normality stirred a burning shame somewhere deep down inside
us both.
I usually kept such
visions from my mind with a kind of mental game of tag. If such ideas never
tagged me, I wouldn't have to worry about them. But to keep the ideas at bay, I
had to be aware of them, had to live right at the edge of that truth: That I
and Lee Ann were not that kind of people — that we were another kind.
Lee Ann had begun to cry,
softly now.
I put an arm around her —
cautiously, but I did. "What's got you down, baby?" I said.
She couldn't seem to not
look at them. She just stared.
Very softly, she said,
"Those people — why do people like them get to have what they've got? Why
don't we get to have what they have? Why don't we get to have a nice, warm,
fixed-up house, and a nice family, and a nice dinner, and nice, happy children
… "
She suddenly looked like she'd put on 20 years. Her
stare broke from the family, slipped down the walls of the house, down the
yard, to her feet. I couldn't see her face then, but the tears fell to the cold
ground.
Lee Ann snatched up a
rock and flung it at the house with everything she had. It struck the gray
brick of the side wall, didn't hurt anything. I was so caught off-guard I
couldn't even think of what to say. She dropped to her knees, grabbing up more
rocks, then lurched to a teetering upright and started raining gravel down on
the house.
She said, "That's
not true! That's not true! That's a lie — that's a goddamn lie!" like
someone was trying to pull a fast one on her.
A light came on over the
front door. I don't remember what I said, but I had to do a kind of running
tackle, scooping her over my shoulder to get us outta there.
When we got home, we
found a note from Bobby Earle's lawyer, threatening us with eviction if we
didn't contact him and pay up to current. Our time on Dodge was running out.
My
arm took a few more weeks till it stopped hurting so much. But a cold snap
always made it ache. Damn. The morning was dark, overcast even more than usual
for February in Iowa. Lee Ann was crying when she woke up. I was just rubbing
at my arm, absentminded, didn't even hear her at first.
"Plate,"
I thought she said. I reached out to her, finding her in the darkness. My
tongue tasted like a skid mark, and I in no way recalled coming to bed. I coughed
my throat clear, felt around for a smoke.
"What's that, baby?"
"I
said," her voice harsh, "I'm. Late."
A
haze went over my eyes as I thought of all the things we could do to get out of
it. There was always some way to get out of it.
"A
baby could fix everything," she said, and her eyes were dreamy all of a
sudden, and I thought of the dreams that must be flickering behind them. A baby
room in our house. A wicker carriage. The white dress she'd wear on wedding
day. The more I thought about it, the less likely it all seemed. The house
wasn't our house — not really. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, Bobby
Earle would be by to kick us out. I was often surprised that he hadn't done so
yet. I'd let the grass go all summer last summer. Finally mowed it when the
city stuck a complaint notice to the front door. That grass was nearly four
feet tall, and still no sign of Bobby Earle. I think he missed the whole thing.
But Lee Ann was feeling
good this morning, seemed happy enough for the size of the problems we found
ourselves saddled with. I wasn't about to interrupt that. It was my time to
make sure things kept looking up.
The Good Life, more
We needed out. The only
thing keeping us from homelessness was Bobby Earle not showing up, and he was
going to come knocking at the house sometime. That note from Bobby's lawyer and
Lee Ann's and my last fight had sent Larry away with his bags to a one-room
walk-up across town. We were the only ones left, and we didn't have any money
for rent. For anything. It was good luck that we'd never accumulated much in
the way of possessions. Otherwise, my plan of action would've never worked.
All we had in the world
fit into three duffle bags. Lee Ann's road-weary Lincoln, expired plates and
all, was enough to get us to the Days Inn practically next door, in Coralville,
just off I-80.
The clerk gave us a look,
and I guess we did look a bit washed out, but things were starting to look up.
The hotel wouldn't ask us to pay up until it was time to check out. When that
happened seemed to be up to us.
Our new home was
dee-luxe. It had a bedroom with cable, a desk, and a dining table. A
semi-separate kitchenette next to the table held a little fridge and microwave
and a Mr. Coffee. There was an indoor pool. Lee Ann and I dined on room service
burgers some nights, delivery pizza others. We'd get beer at the Hy-Vee down
the road, then pour a couple into plastic coffee travel mugs, snap down the
lids, and take them down to poolside, to the hot tub. One morning we met a guy
who was traveling through on business, wound up at the Coralville Days more or
less by chance. A secretary in his office chose that one because it wasn't as
pricey as the hotels in Iowa City. Said he was there to sell paper to a
printing plant south of town. A traveling paper salesman? I'd never heard of
such a thing.
I told him me and Lee Ann
were students who were between leases, riding out the time. He laughed.
"In college I guess
you can do things like that," he said.
We laughed, too, nodding
and sipping beer from our mugs. These were good times. We were living the good
life, a jet-set hotel lifestyle. Everything was new and clean and worked.
We walked into the lobby, microwave meals and cold
Milwaukee's Best in tow from the Hy-Vee, on our twelfth morning at the Days.
The clerk cleared his throat at us to catch our attention. I walked over to the
counter.
"What's up?" I
said.
He looked around like he
might get caught talking to us or something. "The manager said to have you
two pay up," he said.
"Ah," I said.
"I thought I'd let
you know before he came knocking on your door."
"Ah. Well, now, I
appreciate that," I paused to look at his ID tag; "Jerry. I really do
much appreciate it."
Lee Ann and I rolled
everything into our duffle bags and our grocery bags and loaded up the Lincoln.
We wanted to stay in the area, because a little townie tavern called Billy's
had grown on us and we wanted to be able to walk there. We set down about three
blocks from the Days, at a small motel called The Sunflower Inn. The Sunflower
was an older building made of big cinder blocks, painted white, a strip of
individual rooms sharing walls, side by side. There was an outdoor pool, but it
wasn't late in the year enough to use it. But all that didn't matter much. We'd
found another place to stay. Lee Ann just kept smiling at me, happy to have me
showing her the good life. She talked about quitting smoking. I wasn't
interested, but kept that to myself.
Our fifth night at the
Sunflower, the time seemed to have arrived. We watched cable with our beers
until sunset, then walked down to Billy's. I ran a tab and made like a big
spender. We drank like there was no tomorrow, smoked our way through three
packs. When we'd put back enough beer, I ordered a round of Wild Turkey shots.
Then, with Lee Ann giggling drunk, I ordered another. I cracked open a capsule
of Benzedrine and, while she was visiting the Ladies' Room, stirred it into her
beer. I added the contents of a capsule of blue cohosh. Then another. An herb
expert at the little hippie store told me it was just the thing. I stirred her
beer again. I don't even remember how many I bought. But I remember paying the
tab with a check. We could go to Billy's one more time, maybe, before they were
after us for that.
I woke to Lee Ann gasping
and sobbing. She was throwing up in the bathroom. She must have felt awful with
all the toxins we'd pumped into her together at Billy's. There was a wide, wet
red circle on her side of the bed. And I tell you, despite a pounding hangover
and a sense of impending diarrhea, relief swept over me.
In the bathroom, I
cradled Lee Ann's head, running my fingers through her hair.
"Don't worry," I said. "Nothing's gotta
change. Don't worry. You'll see." Things were looking up. 'Cause see — it
was my turn to do it. My turn to get things to looking up again for her.
The Helvetica Story
"The Helvetica
Story" first appeared in the journal Eleven-Eleven, Issue 15, August
2013.
I
heard about Helvetica. What a story! As a child, all the print-journalism fonts
used to bully him.
"Snub
nose!" they'd sneer.
Often,
he would find "GET SOME SERIFS!" on typewriter paper epoxied to his
school-locker door, in the telltale script of his tormentors: Times and his
cousin, Times New Roman. The Times cousins often brought Courier with them to
heckle Helvetica. And Courier was a good enough guy, actually, but a bit dull.
They only brought him along because he took up so much room.
It
was frustrating, being harassed by fonts that had been around since hot-metal
typesetting; it was no secret that exposure to that much lead early in life
caused learning and behavioral disorders, so what was he supposed to do? He
didn’t want to get a reputation for picking on the slow kids.
The
calligraphic fonts did their worst, looking askance down their lavish swoops at
him, but they’re so tight-kerned you couldn’t pry a needle from their
ass-cracks with a tractor.
Still,
it all took its toll, chipping at Helvetica’s self-confidence day-in, day-out.
Discrimination against the sans-serifed continued to plague him, leading to a
misspent young adulthood of sex, drugs and rock & roll. He went out to
nightclubs on the prowl, and he got around, littering the town with offspring
he’d refuse to acknowledge — Arial,
Futura, Univers — but the lineage was no secret. They were chips off the
sans-serif block. Anyone could see those vertical and horizontal strokes from a
mile off.
When
the computer age began to dawn, the people he was contractually bound with
began demanding exorbitant licensing fees. To spite them, he renounced the name
he was known by commercially. He became “the typeface formerly known as
Helvetica.” He started calling himself \—/, which was irksome, because as far
as anyone could tell, it was unpronounceable. “Artists,” they said, shaking
their heads.
But it bore the clean lines and straightforward angles
that were his calling card, and the fans still recognized him.
He
went around wearing caps with bills as camouflage, and jackets with epaulettes,
to blend in among the serifed. Then he went to work on his skin, tattooing on
whirling tribal patterns, flowing sickles and curlicues to mask the bland,
smooth lines he always found staring back at him from the mirror.
In
those dark days he hung out in the clubs at night with the twin goth typefaces
Morpheus and Mason. The Avant-garde fonts were part of that whole scene, and
got \—/ (nee "Helvetica") hip to new modes of expression through his
art. He discovered that he had a knack for photography. His still images
captured the majesty of the hot- and cold-set presses of yesteryear. These were
well-received in small, bohemian galleries, but eventually he discovered that
he had access to a greater range of expression that the additions of motion,
sound, and lighting afforded.
And
then \—/ had moment of clarity, a brilliant beam of light striking his
imagination from another place: Gone were rules suggesting that a typeface must
be set in stone — or in lead, or on a printed page, for that matter. His first
use of the new medium was to change the rules, conceiving of an ever-shifting,
animate font. His creation would be one wherein parts of each character would
be showcased separately by its own, individual lighting, rotating at its own
rates and angles. In this new medium, he found harmony between the serifed and sans-serifed
that he had always found missing in his own life. A watchful eye would capture
the transformations: At times each section of each character had its serifs,
but those flourishes would fade as people watched, to cycle back again. He
called the concept font Animalgam. (It even made Prototype, from the edgy Virus
Fonts, jealous to have been crafted in such a static format!)
He
unveiled Animalgam as a gallery installation, a high-definition, ever-shifting
animation, when along came a man, a designer who would become a thief, who'd
come to desperation and nearly to suicide with his own inability to inspire a
client. Admittedly, this was a big client, and this job would make or break
one’s reputation in this business. And this client had become impatient.
The
thief, whose name does not merit mention here (why give him further fame, even
if it is infamy?), pilfered Animalgam to satisfy this big-ticket client. The
client was a 24-hour news channel whose executives wanted to add an edgy design
element. They commissioned a logo so distracting that viewers wouldn't be able
to pry their eyes from it. Thus was Animalgam stolen.
Of
course \—/ never saw a penny for it. And he felt robbed. He did.
But
he had had the troubled youth of one bullied for being different; the days and
nights spend off the map, hanging with goth and industrial types, and even
those crusty-punk corroded fonts, Vintage Typewriter and the other worn-down
fonts. He’d even hung out with Gill Sans, though not for long; certainly Gill
Sans had been sleek and perfectly legible, even from a distance, but his
unsavory paraphiliac obsessions, particularly concerning his own children,
found him quickly demoted to persona non grata).
While
\—/ was out of the spotlight, imitators stepped up, trying to claim his spot. A
boy band of look-alikes appeared with corporate sponsorship. Its lineup:
Helv, by Microsoft;
Monotype’s CG Triumvirate;
Paratype’s version, Pragmatica;
Bitstream’s Swiss 721; and
Nimbus Sans, from the type designer URW++.
But, like the group of
look-alike / dress-alike / James-Dean-hairstyle-alike musicians hired to back
Morrissey when the Smiths called it quits, the fans knew that they were not
interchangeable – not quite, anyway – with \—/.
And others – always
others. He saw his reflection as he walked downtown one afternoon and thought
he’s gained some weight, until he realized that he was only see Helvetica
Rounded, just out for a stroll.
When the boy band broke
up, his corporate sponsors renamed Helv MS Sans Serif; rebranded with their
corporate identity and with the rise of the Web, ironically enough, MS Sans got
most of the attention for a while.
That was the arrival of the Internet age, and with
Windows the dominant operating system, MS Sans was everywhere. But the new age
brought another surprise: On-screen, the serifed suddenly looked awkward.
Chunky. Clumsy. Probably not very smart, and certainly not very stylish.
The new media shined a hard light on the serifed, and
found them pixelated and wanting.
Into
this new era, \—/ awoke and, his old name now spreading, knew that it was time
to reclaim his title and emerge into the spotlight once more. His re-emergence
demanded a makeover that would impart sophistication, maturity, perhaps a whiff
of something European. Thus did \—/'s Neue (new, in German) persona arrive.
the reflecting pool
"the reflecting pool" first appeared in
Hotel Amerika Issue 8.1, Fall 2009.
6.8 josh
sommerford gazes into the swimming pool, its surface glassy, reflective, its
floor glittering pool of water and sunlight and glass, and time pooling,
pooling, in the pool. their pool: that of josh sommerford and josh sommerford's
wife, teema; their pool. but it has seen better days. electrically-luminous,
drying leaves scuff along the poured concrete in the early autumnal breeze. a
skin of dead insect chitin roofs one corner.
1.1 when
josh and teema first met, he was certain that the fates must have planned their
unlikely meeting in time and space, specifically during their undergrad years
at iowa, working in hair nets, bulky, starched-white uniforms, and under tube
lighting, at the unfortunately-named burge food service. burge. purge. regurge.
ick.
this is the earliest of their moments; it is the earliest of the reflections.
1.2 he can
see it all as though it's playing out before him; he reflects upon the
reflections in his reflecting pool, his and teema's, reflecting the moments —
their moments, vivid as the original. meeting her, stunned with her beauty and
vivacious energy, teema teeming with life! hair nets and bulky starched things
and all, but his vision cut through all that to find him stunned by her beauty.
in a hair net! imagine.
6.9+ 1.2 he
can see it all as though it's playing out before him; he reflects upon the
reflections in his reflecting pool, his and teema's, reflecting the moments —
their moments, vivid as the original. he's not well, our josh, we can see that.
his hair is unkempt, the scotch from last night fouls his
first-thing-in-the-morning breath, to which he is adding only coffee. the effect
is a taste on his tongue, the taste and texture of a skid mark on pavement. he
hasn't shaved in a few days — not long enough to seem to be in active pursuit
of a beard, merely unwashed and hardscrabble; he looks like shit — because,
who's gonna care, right? besides, there are no more mirrors in the house.
x.1 all
these moments, reflected …
6.4 he
sometimes sees himself reflected, sometimes a few years younger, healthier,
hair cared-for and beard kept in check. happier times, these, with josh, and
josh with teema. he can see it in his eyes in these moments: he felt
preposterously lucky to have her, had hardly believed when, after working with
her for seven months, he finally worked up the courage to ask her out. he can see that gratitude, see it reflected
in his eyes, reflected in the pool, these early, happy moments.
6.5 other
times, he sees himself toward the end of their time — his and teema's time —
together. if he cared about himself, he would not like what he saw. but he no
longer cares. he first noticed the reflections in the pool a few days after
teema left, packed up her prius and their dog, boris the borzoi, and, like a
wrecking ball to his gut, drove away, boris grinning his canine grin, tongue
lolling, as he watched through the rear window and the prius pulled away.
pulled away forever. dumb damn dog. josh does not feel like joshing. he is,
instead, devastated. teema is the love of his life. he cannot come to terms
with the notion that she will be absent from it from here on out.
2.1 the swimming
pool (josh sees as he reflects upon their lives together) has become the
epicenter in their lives. she has become a poet of that rare, publishing kind,
and teaches poetry classes part-time at a local college; and he has a dull but
well-salaried position documenting an internal software project for at&t in
new jersey. the two fling themselves into their new professional lives,
gathering a circle of good friends and their families, and begin hosting
parties 'round the pool. people bring beer, wine, floaties, kids. it quickly
become a community, these people, these drinks, this pool: everything revolves
around the pool that summer. everything —
4.2 — at
first they do not react to teema's withdrawal from the festivities.
the gatherings, in fact, do go on —
x.2 all
these moments, reflected …
y.1 all
this light, pooling …
note 1.1 sometimes,
an object can accumulate an extraordinary weight as a story progresses, can
become the black hole about which the story orbits, accumulating meaning, waiting to one day,
perhaps, suck in the rest of the story, bring it crashing to its demise. Think,
e.g., of hulga's wooden leg, in flannery o'connor's "good country
people."
3.2 josh
sees himself joshing around the pool, sloshing a bit of gin and tonic on the
poured concrete surrounding it, he wearing one of his trademark pairs of
mirrored sunglasses from his oddly large collection of them. "don't fall
in," teema cries, but she's laughing as she does so. and, josh sees,
there's that look again in her eyes: a happiness, a wonderment, a vibe. she
retreats to their kitchen and returns with a fresh pitcher. boris trots about,
the people sneaking him little slurps of beer, tongue lolling through the
middle of that borzoi grin — not the smartest of hounds, but a happy one.
6.1 josh is
wracked with abandonment, betrayal, dumped, left to die, at this end of the
spectrum. teema is gone, and boris the borzoi with her, packed up and left to
her parents' home in iowa. teema has left. has left him. teema has. he gathers
several pairs of discarded mirrorshades from the previous eve, hurls them to
the concrete, and stomps on them. lenses fly. he tosses them into the pool; the
mirrored lenses spark up at him from the pool floor. it strikes josh as having
an odd, shattered beauty to it. and as this notion strikes him, he catches a
moment, a flash — something passing across the lenses. what the — ?! he gathers
more of last night's glassware from around the pool and begins a rain of
shattering glass down upon the pool's floor, a sparkling, electric shower of
light captured, however briefly, in slow-motion descent, repeating luminescence
through the transmarine atmosphere, a shower of sparks and glints and shards of
light.
x.3 all
these moments, reflected …
y.2 all
this light, pooling … a static rain of phosphor and moments, water and glass
and light … a labyrinth of moments …
6.6 and
josh sees them: the moments. his moments — their moments together — playing out
across the shattered mirrorscape of the pool. these moments, these everyday happinesses,
that he thought had disappeared forever, gone down the road toward iowa with
the dog, he sees them … sees
1.3 — their
moments, vivid as the original. a lifeline to these happinesses, these scenes.
6.9 josh
fears that if he leaves the reflecting pool, the reflecting will stop. ah —
there's the first date, his mistaken impression that a guy friend she knew
might instead be a boyfriend, the awkwardness on both sides as he and teema
worked up the courage to try some expression of affection, a hand-holding, a
kiss, even, maybe, maybe … . josh feels a panic: he can only see the scene in
fragments. vivid fragments, but a patchwork of reflections in the pool, in the
shards. he wants it — wants to relive it as fully as he might. into the house
he runs, to the kitchen, to the cupboards. he carries glassware out, the
long-stemmed ones, the no-stemmed wine glasses, and begins shattering them into
the swimming pool, shower after tiny, isolated squall of sparks and memory and
light flickering down through the water. out come juice glasses, the blue-glass
goblets, the red-glass snifters, and shattering, down they go.
x.4 all
these moments, reflected … across the pool's surface and its floor.
y.3 all
this light, pooling … a static rain of phosphor and moments, water and glass
and light … a labyrinthine, luminous pool of reflections …
1.4 there
they are. josh can see them reflected in the hurricane of glass and lenses on
the pool's bottom: their moments, reflected in a dizzying, dazzling labyrinth
of light: a car he can't afford to ferry him to and from her parents' home
across the state, in des moines, that first summer. they spend time together,
skinny-dip at a local country club after hours, scaling a low fence and
shedding clothing, excitement piqued with the risk. he sees the two, naked in
the pool, reflected in his own pool and its reflective glass gazing ground. he
can reach out — he can almost touch it … almost …
7.1 at one
end of this stands josh, no job, no degree, no pool, but he's just met a girl.
her name is teema. at the other end stands josh, older, broken, stopped making
it to work so the degree isn't much use, a gazing pool full of sparks and
moments, glittering, electric moments, vivid as the original, and no girl named
teema. but he has the pool. he is afraid to leave its side now, afraid the
reflections will stop, and he'll be left without her forever.
x.5 hairnets
… first date … first jobs … a beautiful, happy, if not very bright, russian
wolf hound … the pool … the people round the pool, the entourage … life that
summer in orbit about the swimming pool …
3.1 he
glimpses the parties: their friends, their friends' kids, boris the borzoi,
gin-and-tonics all 'round, big band music alternating with underground music
brought along by the male members of this group, this entourage, in an ongoing
competition to out-hip one another, the music swimming out from the house,
their house, his and teema's. their entourage beginning to arrive shortly after
five, just after clocking out, and, hell, they're friends, so josh and teema
show them where the spare key is kept, just in case that godawful central
jersey, north-south traffic ties one or both of them up. the gatherings must go
on!
3.3 drinks
slosh on the poured concrete. tipsy friends occasionally play up their
tipsiness, tumbling into the swimming pool in full dress; that gets a laugh
every time.
1.x: reflective, reflect
6.7 josh
sommerford gazes into the swimming pool, its surface glassy, reflective, its
floor glittering, a coherent pool of sunlight, and time pooling, pooling, in
the pool. their pool. josh sommerford; josh sommerford's wife, teema; their
pool. but it has seen better days. electrically-luminous, drying leaves scuff
along the poured concrete in the early autumnal breeze leaves brown with death
have swirled into one corner, and dead mosquitoes ride the waves nearby.
breeze. leaves brown with death have swirled into one
corner. a skin of dead insect chitin roofs one corner another.
4.1 the
entourage, you see, come to admire josh and teema, this ideal-seeming young
couple, recently married and still shining like a honeymoon, come to idolize
their marriage, see it as an example of how best to go about the business of
lifetime partnership. that radiance, that clear affection, drew the entourage
into an orbit around them, each friend alight like a tiny nova, luminous,
alive. they could never conceive of life after work that summer, around josh
and teema and boris and the glimmering pool, as finite, endable, mortal. these
moments were their moments, too. which is why — at first — they do not react to
teema's withdrawal from the festivities.
— the gatherings must go on!
4.3 they
want to ask what's wrong, what's bothering teema, the first day of her
withdrawal. they want to, but they do not. they want to on the second day, too,
and so on, but because bad news about josh and teema would be a heretical
thought, they do not ask him, and she does not appear.
0.4 everything begins to zero here —
6.2 and
josh begins to see them: the moments. his moments — their moments together —
playing out across the shattered mirrorscape of the pool. these moments, these
everyday happinesses, that he thought had disappeared forever, gone down the
road toward iowa with the dog, he sees them … sees , horribly, himself:
disheveled, unshaven, skin flaking, hair a stalled hurricane of dandruff.
6.2, addendum he
can't stand the sight of himself, his ruinous face a reflection of the lives
he's ruined, a reflection of the ruin he has wrought upon himself, the ruin he
has, himself, become. he roams the house, smashing mirrors and tossing the
shards into the reflecting pool.
0.3 everything begins to zeroes here —
x.6 all
these moments, reflected …
0.2 everything
begins to zeroes here —
everything zeroes here —
0.0 everything
zeroes here — moment zero —
josh sees her, reflected in the shards of light and
reflection, a mirror of shattered glass and transmarine, see the look on her
face when she realized the truth.
x.7 all
these moments, reflected …
4.4 — the
gatherings must go on!
the gatherings, in fact, do go on —
5.1 the
entourage keeps the fire burning, keeps the gatherings going, though a few
raise eyebrows when teema's prius isn't in the driveway one day when they
arrive, and thereafter does not return. they keep bringing the beer, the
drinks, the so-hip mix cds, and themselves. but then josh stops coming out to
the pool, as well.
4.5 — the
gatherings must go on!
the gatherings, in fact, do go on —
4.6 someone
leaves an old fedora on the kitchen counter, near the screen door, so everyone
can pony-up for things like paper plates and plastic glasses. what the hell?
they have the spare key. they clean up after themselves diligently. but after a
few days an unease creeps into the entourage — for who are they entourage to,
if both josh and teema have withdrawn?
4.7 — the
gatherings must go on!
the gatherings, in fact, do don't go on —
they peter out as the members of the entourage begin
to contemplate the heretical: josh and teema have had a falling out. the last
of the die-hards calls it a season when josh, who has been out of sight these
past few days, suddenly reappears, litters the pool bottom with the shards of
the house's glassware and all of the reflective lenses from all of his
sunglasses, and takes to falling asleep in a lawnchair by the pool,. he is not
well, our josh; he hasn’t shaved lately. his hair a blizzard of dandruff,
always about in the same pajamas and robe, all sliding toward ruin. he can’t
stand the sight of himself.
x.8 hairnets
… first date … first jobs … a beautiful, happy, if not very bright, russian
wolf hound … the pool … the people round the pool, the entourage … life that
summer in orbit about the swimming pool …
and teema’s voice, like winter wind across razorwire,
a sound so sharp and crystalline it threatens to shatter in to a blizzard of
tiny, blazing crystals of ice and fire: “why the hell would you ever do this to
me?”
… finished. in the reflection of the reflecting pool,
josh sees the tale-end of his time with teema. her name is ghislane, she works
with josh, and when teema finds the hotel receipts there is no consoling her.
josh, unable to admit the scope of his sin, simply returns to the party. for a
time, anyway. teema does not.
7.2 the
whole of it has become a much, much narrower passage than before; he can only
go back as far as meeting her, and never makes it past the first reflections in
the pool. at the far end stands josh, no job, no degree, no pool, but he's just
met a girl. her name is teema. at the other end stands josh, broken, stopped
making it to work so the degree isn't much use, a gazing pool full of sparks
and moments, glittering, electric moments, vivid as the original, and no girl
named teema. but he has the pool. this is all he has left now; it is the last
of their moments — the last of their reflections. he is afraid to leave its
side now, afraid the reflections will stop, and he'll be left without her
forever.
x.9 all
these moments, reflected …
note 1.2 sometimes,
an object can accumulate an extraordinary weight as a story progresses, can
become the black hole about which the story orbits, accumulating meaning, waiting to one day,
perhaps, suck in the rest of the story, bring it crashing to its demise. think,
e.g., of hulga's wooden leg, in flannery o'connor's "good country
people."
josh and teema's pool; it is a finite pool, a
gathering of shards, moments, and light, shattered glass and mirrors, hairnets
at one end and unkempt psychological ruin at the other: the end of their
moments, all swirling now in the far corner with the leaves, brown with death,
and the chitin bodies of the season's mosquitoes.
32 FT/Sec2
“32 Ft/Sec2” first appeared in the Journal of
Experimental Fiction, Issue 39, January 2011.
1.1b damon's
life flashes before her eyes: playing doctor with janet, the girl who lived
down the block. wondering, now, what has her life been like
1.1a lorraine's
life flashes before his eyes: the drought that year during her childhood when
the spiders went crazy, webbing anything and everything they could, and how
spectacular and terrifying all of that gossamer silver thread was, wafting in
the breezes, draping from every outdoor surface.
3.1 the
inexplicable sense of heartbreak and loss when his first girlfriend who, at age
12, he barely knew really; how could something so small actually knot him up
inside?
9.1 her
husband returning from world war ii, a war hero — her husband!
2.1 falling
—
moments flashing —
cascading
—
but
this is not normal time, it is brain time
and
it is nearly at a standstill …
0.2 he is
falling through the air now. nothing can stop that. he's taken the leap.
falling
falling
falling
7.1 the
american dream: a small cottage on adams street, in a young neighborhood; the
life-giving joy of a family that rapidly grows, two, three, four, five, six,
seven, eight; the horrible death of the soul that a stillbirth bring to the
couple: the injustice, the inversion of time represented by parents burying
their child.
4.1 his job
as a copy editor, his fluency in four style manuals, and webster's dictionary
of english usage, which none of the other, more seasoned editors had even heard
of, his pride at being one of the vanguard who watch over the english language.
late nights working for a morning newspaper, later nights, occasionally, as the
night editor, the one who sticks around after the paper's put to bed, waiting
to proofread the first copies as they roll off the press.
10.1 jim —
her husband! — a sizeable man to begin with — gains weight over the course of
their years together; she feeds him well the rest of the week, and on sunday,
she feeds the extended family pot roast with mashed potatoes, stewed veggies,
and buckets of gravy. jim retires from his car-delivery job at 65, right on
time, and, with a growing sense of uselessness, tumbles into a slow cycle of
despair and, two months to the day after retiring, dies of heart failure, leaving lorraine to settle the
details, the remains, of their lives together. working with her children, she
finds an apartment within a retirement home, and settles in to a schedule: card
games monday night, big band music from the '40s and '50s on tuesdays, wine
socials thursdays and saturdays, etc. she is enjoying a glass of wine in the
peace of a seat on the screened-in porch of her apartment —
5.1 meeting
damiana there, of all places: at the news desk. they worked together well into
the night of august 31, 1997, an evening that began with a bulletin over the
newswire around 4:30:
***news alert***news alert***news alert*** /
princess diana in car accident. broken arm.
more to follow.
and the two of them
looking at each other, knowing that a broken arm would not provoke a news alert
like this, that — they both knew it — something bigger was happening. — and
learning a few hours later that diana was dead, and that a slow news night had
suddenly become something no one working the evening shift would be escaping
anytime soon. and the following morning, the two of them greet sunset at his
place after work for a drink, the newspaper having become an all-night project,
rather than getting off at the usual midnight punch-out time. and that being
the beginning, as the moments passed and neither moved to end their
conversation, and they realized something was happening between them.
6.2 — to
take a flying leap from the retirement home across from their his apartment
2.3 falling
—
moments flashing —
cascading
—
but
this is not normal time, it is brain time
and
it is nearly at a standstill …
a
nearly immortal moment
he
will fall, eventually, but for now, his thoughts and hers swirl in one
another's minds
8.1 and
lorraine's war-hero husband taking over the finances, cashing the checks,
meeting his war-hero buddies at the legion hall saturdays, returning home with
precious little of it remaining at the end of the day. and their fights over
the finances, her screaming at him, demanding that he take better care of his
children and not drink his paycheck every saturday. and their children filling
the small house past capacity, the two adding bunk beds in the second bedroom
and more in the basement. and the children growing up and one-by-one, attending
columbus high school, the city's
catholic high school, and, one-by-one, the children graduating and moving on to
find jobs. the 60s were well afoot by now, and the children, one-by-one, found
jobs or, in the case of the oldest boy, went to fight in vietnam.
2.2 falling
—
moments flashing —
cascading
—
but
this is not normal time, it is brain time
and
it is nearly at a standstill …
a
nearly immortal moment
3.2 the inexplicable
sense of crushing, inescapable heartbreak and loss when his first girlfriend
who, at age 12, he barely knew really; how could something so small actually
knot him up inside? damiana was, pointlessly, torn from him in a wreck with a
pick-up piloted by a man who was swervingly making his way down highway 35 from
austin's sixth street bar circuit. it was weeks ago — months; why can't he
shake the sense of horrifying desolation?
and lorraine's husband, jim, slowly coming around,
slowly spending fewer days at the legion hall, slowly bringing more of his
paycheck home to the family. and the two
of them, empty nesters now, watching the first of their grandchildren arrive,
and the presence of children's laughter in their small cottage again, after so
many years.
0.3 he is
falling through the air now. nothing can stop that.
falling
falling
falling
hurtling
earthward at a speed approaching 32 feet per second, squared
0.1 when
his eyes —
when
her eyes —
meet hers.
meet his
and
they connect, form a circuit,
0.0a fuse.
they are locked in now, he in hers, she in his. he is falling. nothing can stop
that now; he's taken the leap. but this moment, this exists in its own kind of
time: it exists in the mindlocked space of brain time, their neurons firing at
the speed of light, compared to which 32 feet per second squared is a syrupy,
crawling pace.
(from his perspective, she realizes, she'll seem
upside-down, though he's the one who's wrongside-up …)
6.1 their
wedding, the wedding of damon and damiana,
planned and scheduled for three months out, a date mocking his loss from
its marked spot on the calendar that hangs in the kitchen. he is out with the
other editors after finishing up one night, when it happens: a friend of one of
the women he works with comes home with him afterwards, because when you get
off work at midnight, two a.m. seems pretty early, and they sleep together. in
the morning, he feels like a monster, subhuman, because although damiana has
been gone for months now, he still feels, burning at his core, a sense that he
has betrayed her. he cannot stand his own company. he considers the worth of
life without damiana, and he decides —
4.2 his job
as a copy editor, his fluency in four style manuals, and webster's dictionary
of english usage, which none of the other, more seasoned editors had even heard
of, his pride at being one of the vanguard who watch over the english language.
late nights working for a morning newspaper, later nights, occasionally, as the
night editor, the one who sticks around after the paper's put to bed, waiting
to proofread the first copies as they roll off the press.
0.3 he is
falling through the air now. nothing can stop that.
falling
falling
falling
hurtling
earthward at a speed approaching 32 feet per second, squared
2.4 falling
—
moments flashing —
cascading
—
but
this is not normal time, it is brain time
and
it is nearly at a standstill …
a
nearly immortal moment, stretching on and on
he will fall, eventually, but for now, his thoughts
and hers swirl in one another's minds, when she decides that she's staying
right where she is: in his headspace. forgive yourself, she thinks to him, and
in the next instant: fission will occur, a separation; and damon will taste
cabernet on his lips.
0.x he she
will fall through the air now at that moment. nothing can stop that. but that
moment has yet to arrive. and it is the current, nearly immortal moment with
which we are concerned.
not falling
not
falling
not
falling —
not
hurtling earthward at a speed approaching 32 feet per second, squared.
Waterloo Talking
"Waterloo Talking" first appeared in Rivet:
The Journal of Writing that Risks, Issue 1, Summer 2014.
Hughes Avenue in Waterloo, Iowa, was not a new street,
and not in a new neighborhood even back then, but with so many kids arriving on
the scene, so many young mothers and so little traffic, the concrete seemed
more like a playground, a surface suited more for children than for cars.
That's where we lived, we Farbens, that mid-'70s summer: In the house on Hughes
Avenue where my mother had grown up. She'd hang laundry out on the line and
white sheets that had flapped in the wind for a few hours would come back fresh
as the breeze.
It was the first time
that word had ever come between us, and it tore open a fissure between David
and I that we never managed to make right.
We'd steal a flower from
the riot of unchecked growth in old "Auntie" Agnes' yard for our
mother. If we only took a single flower, and only once in a while, and then
only from the blossoms that pushed out over the sidewalk, through the black
iron fence surrounding her raised, terraced yard, she never seemed to mind.
Fritz never did.
Fritz was Auntie Agnes'
dog, a barrel-chested monster mutt who, whatever else was in his pedigree,
showed clear signs of German Shepherd lineage. But there was more. Fritz was
bigger than any Shepherd we'd ever seen, and his hair, though short, was a riot
of shades and tints. Alongside a German Shepherd's browns, blacks, and golds,
Fritz had streaks of blonde and tan and red slashing through his coat. Fritz
loved us neighbor kids. He'd draw his hulking form to the edge of the fence
and, with a cautious, delicate whine, ask for our hands and attention.
My family never really had much money; my mother
dropped out of high school when she became pregnant with me at 17, and my dad
worked construction.
For us, brotherhood
arrived unexpectedly: Black and my age, David's parents became traffic
fatalities on Highway 20 in a fiery head-on collision during a thunderstorm. A
pickup coming the other way misjudged the slickness of the roads and
hydroplaned smack into them. My friends and I wowed each other with the
ghoulish details we conjured of the scene, envisioning the carnage through the
lens of our imaginations: The driver of the pickup hadn't been wearing a
seatbelt. Had he launched, a human torpedo bursting through the windshield and
into the car carrying David's parents as they returned from dinner at a Cedar
Falls restaurant? Did they all burn to death? What did that smell like? We
imagined the whole thing like an action movie, the same collision viewed again
and again from different angles.
That sort of speculation
died off when David came to live with us. No one could bring himself to ask
another child, especially one who looked so lost, so dazed, such questions. I
was 11 years old, just three and a half months older than David. Mom and Dad
were his godparents.
My father, a stern man of sturdy Germanic stock,
seemed mystified as to how he'd suddenly become the father of a black child;
somehow, something seemed out of whack with us. And David, ebony-skinned David,
stood out like a film negative of the rest of us.
I hated him. Not at first
— I mean, we were great friends when we were just friends, but it was different
when he was my brother, got all that doting and attention from my parents; they
were trying to engineer a comfortable readjustment and give him space to mourn.
David didn't seem to recognize that the crash had really happened, that his
parents were really dead. And in the midst of that haze of denial, my parents
suddenly didn't seem to have time to give me any attention.
The Bickner kids were a
grubby, scrappy pair of boys training to follow in their father's white trash
footsteps. Their future was to become two more on the town's long list of
habitual offenders, bump from job to shitty job, land in the county jail
occasionally. They lived only a few blocks away, up Argent Way, which crossed
Hughes near our house. Johnny, held back in 8th grade, and Joey, who like David
and I was about to begin sixth grade, already pedaled, sullen and sunken-eyed,
around the neighborhood, trying to look like bikers, toughs, bullies. Unlit
cigarettes poached from their father's pack dangled from their lips. They used
to find sticks, fallen branches, and clang them along the wrought-iron bars of
Auntie Agnes' fence, taunting Fritz into a hulking, snarling rage. I told you
that Fritz loved us neighbor kids. Really, Fritz loved every kid in the neighborhood
except for the Bickners, and the Bickners worked to earn that dog's wrath.
David was the first black
person in our neighborhood. There was a kid named Cullen, who was not white,
but not black either, and none of us actually knew how to peg his pedigree. And
we didn't dare ask, either, for fear of showing our stupidity. Cullen had black
hair in great, wavy curls atop his bronze head. His quick, confident smile, his
humor and good looks, charmed us all.
Cullen welcomed David
aboard on our missions to Exchange Park to climb the things we weren't supposed
to climb. I felt betrayed. I fumed in silence when Cullen, too, suddenly
divided his attention between us. To me, my unexpected brother was stealing
away my parents and my friends.
We climbed up the outside
of the rocket-shaped platform and slide, scrambled backwards up the slide. From
the outside, we wedged our feet through the bars meant to keep kids in,
following the curving steps all the way to the top, 30 feet up. Simple! I
remember watching from inside, as David edged along the rocket's outer bars,
unaware in that child's way of the danger he was putting himself in. As his
bronze hands clutched the bars before me, and he braced to climb higher, I
thought: How easy it would be to give his fingers a quick punch and watch him
fall; it would be a terrible accident, and my parents would rush in to comfort
me over the loss of my best friend, my new brother.
I didn't do it. I wasn't
quick enough, and the moment passed, and in the aftermath, as my brother scaled
the rocket, my heart clutched and lungs ached like I'd been kicked by a horse.
My eyes burned with guilty, salty tears. I had seriously considered killing
David when he had done absolutely nothing to me, apart from survive his
parents' deaths. I never told anyone about that.
We'd all scrape our
nickels and dimes together to buy ourselves a bottle of grape Nehi, a kid's
candy-sweet soda. Whenever any of us felt the need, we'd find the bottle
sitting there, on a picnic table near the slide, and take a pull from the
shared treat.
Sometimes the Dewitt boys
would come along. The chain-link barrier around the top of the public picnic
shelter inspired us. The warning, the very verbotenness it implied, was too
much to resist. It set us to work thinking up ways to conquer the barrier and
get up onto the roof. Here's how we did it: The fencing ran along the top of
the shelter's flat roof. We climbed, following it along the edge and around the
corner, to where it ended — apparently at the point Parks officials determined
too ambitious a goal for troublemaking kids. The shelter always seemed to be
littered with empty Old Style quart bottles in the mornings, before the
clean-up crews came through.
Beyond the park, just to
the West, flanked by Conger Street to the north and the Cedar River to the
south, stood an old Army outpost, long disused. But gravel pits with
obstacle-course tires remained, as did the boarded-up beige-brick building we
could never seem to find a way into. And the best basic-training hazard of all:
The manhole-covered tubes the Army had left accessible. The steel manhole
covers were heavy for kids our age, but swung up on their hinges with
sufficient effort and determination. They were about eight feet deep and dank,
moss clinging to pocks in the poured cement. Rounded, tread-textured iron rungs
embedded in the concrete served as steps. They were treacherously slick when it
rained.
Life in working-class
Waterloo was a relentless saturation campaign, a marinade of attitudes
suspicious of education, pointlessly aggressive, a walk tough don't act too
smart zeitgest that knocked people down and kept them there. It was something
that the population, somehow, had gotten convinced to perpetuate. We'd see a
kid as optimistic as the rest of us at the end of the school year come back
from summer sullen, reeking of cigarette smoke, picking fights — a kid who'd
given up and decided to go nowhere. A kid beaten by Waterloo. We'd watched it
happen to the Bickners' older brother, Jerry. He took up his father's brand of
cigarettes and anger, found a shitty-wage job at the DX, and dropped out of
high school. Then Waterloo took Johnny, then Joey.
But we were at the park,
we Waterloo kids still too young to have had our dreams beaten out of us by the
constant pressure of that attitude. Even Janet, one of only two girls our age
around, had snuck down to the park with us.
When I came scraping down the too-dry slide, I found
Cullen there, talking with her. Janet motioned me over with a nod that flipped
aside the short, straight, raven hair her half-Japanese ancestry had bestowed
upon her. "Come on," Cullen said with that smile. So I did. They led
David and I across the park, past giant concrete cylinders mounted on their
sides for kids to scamper through, over to the old Army grounds. Between the
two of us, Cullen and I were able to lift the lid on one. Janet descended, then
me, then Cullen. But David wasn't so sure.
"This place doesn't
look safe," he said, a wave of his hand taking in the entire compound. And
he was right — it really wasn't.
"Jeez, David, no
one'll know," Cullen said. His words did not convince my new brother.
Cullen stretched out his hand, offering the bottle of Nehi.
"David," I
said, the fog of shame making me feel more brotherly toward him, "trust
me. It's OK."
David met my green eyes with his deep, walnut-brown
gaze. And he did — he did trust me. After all that. Reluctantly, he nodded. He
scrambled down the ladder after us.
"What's all
this?" I said.
Cullen smiled serenely.
"Janet says she'll show us if we show ours."
Janet grinned, her back
straight as a bolt, her chin jutting, defiant.
And so we did. Don't ever let anyone convince you that
children are free of sexuality, that they are innocent. We were not. None of us
would ever have let on what I'd done with Cullen there, or he with me, or that
Janet had chosen to experiment with David. I doubt I even could have said the
word fuck at that age — or known exactly what the word meant. Our parents would
have had some godawful punishment for us, their sexually naïve,
not-yet-oriented, interracially experimental, anything goes children, if they'd
found out. They would have rounded us up to make sure we all knew none of us
was to see the others again, not even in school. I'm not even sure you could
call it fucking. It wasn't — not really. I think I'd have to say that it was
more a negotiation, kids trying to figure out what it was all about, how,
exactly, it all worked.
But summer was in its final days, and the city, in its
wisdom, had drawn up a new map. To thoroughly integrate the schools, they said.
Like a gerrymandered Texas voting map, a single line snaked up the hill along
Argent and snatched away David and I, leaving Janet and Cullen in our old
school, Lincoln, just down the hill. They could walk to school, but we'd be
riding in one of the dungy school buses across town. The Bickners already went
to Roosevelt — expelled, we knew, from Lincoln last year. Roosevelt would be
our new destination.
The neighborhood parents
were not happy. Roosevelt was a black school, part of the chain of schools that
emptied into East High. Because all of the white families, including those of
Waterloo's petty local politicians, sent their kids to West High, the black
schools were severely underfunded. My Mom and Dad openly talked of East High as
a firetrap. That was where they'd gone, and that was why they'd decided to keep
the house on Hughes, rather than sell off her part of the estate: to keep me in
the West High line of school succession. Now that plan was ruined. Death ran
young in Mom's family. Everything seemed to. The house belonged partly to my
mother, but my grandparents had left it jointly to both her and her brother,
Karl, who wasn't in any hurry to get the money.
I don't know why I went
back to the park alone; maybe I was just bored — none of the other kids seemed
to be out and about. David was home, playing with what were now our toys in
what was now our shared bedroom. Maybe I just wanted to go and play without him
around. Maybe because it had just rained a cold, hard downpour, and playing
with our toys inside was getting old. But anyway, I did, I walked all the way
down the hill to Exchange Park and, bored, decided to climb the picnic shelter
alone. My usual handholds in the chainlink were slick and cold enough from the
rain that my knuckles got sore, my fingers quickly numb. The chainlink along
the flat, tarred rooftop was about 12 feet up. When my lead foot slipped on the
slick, narrow edge of the roof, my stomach curdled. I had no easy way down.
Cold, wet blacktop ran alongside the shelter. My second foot slipped before I
could replant the first, and I hung there from the chainlink and for a second
it seemed like I could just hold on, just hang there, like maybe I didn't have
to fall. But my weight was too much for my cold, sore fingers. The fence bowed
outward, dangling me away from the building, rusty snags biting into my
fingers, and I just could not hold on.
I fell. My stomach
squeezed in on itself. I didn't know what would happen. I've since heard people
describe this moment as though it were flight, but I wasn't flying, I was a
rock, a chunk of asphalt plunging toward a hard, paved surface. I must have
jammed out my left arm to cushion the blow, because it met the unyielding
blacktop with an agonizing crunch. The rest of me crashed down on it. I don't
remember much about the walk back to the house on Hughes, except that it was a
slow, cautious process; if I twisted my body too much as I walked, the pain
whited my vision over like a lens flare, and I had to stop, catch my breath,
and squint back the tears. If I breathed too deeply, that hurt like hell too.
None of us were allowed
to go to the park unsupervised again. My folks made calls to the other parents.
My fractured ulna earned me a cast and sling and a scathing indictment of how
expensive my irresponsibility had been.
The last night before the new school year, the sun was
still high up in the late-August sky at dinnertime, still, unforgivably,
shining bright with invitation. This was what was merciless about summer ending
so soon: Why wouldn't the sunset get in line with the school schedule? David
and I decided we would head out into the neighborhood after the meal and see
who was around while we still could. It was a school night, so we had to be
back early, way before sunset. David finished up ahead of me. I told him I'd
catch up. I felt like I was around him all the time anyway; it was annoying. So
he headed out ahead of me. This was Hughes, our neighborhood — we were safe.
Outside
I heard Fritz bellowing savage oaths of wrath at something, could see him
leaping up against the black wrought-iron barrier that bordered his yard.
I
stepped out the front door, looking to see what was aggravating the huge dog.
Half a block away I saw Joey Bickner holding David's arms, clamping them from
behind, as Johnny, the unlit smoke jumping around in his lips, pounded his
finger into David's chest, yelling. Johnny held an empty grape Nehi bottle by
its neck. He swung it down against the concrete abutment of Agnes' raised terrace.
He must have seen that in a movie, thought it was cool. Fritz snarled. He
lunged with everything he had, bashing his face into the iron fencing, a teddy
bear turned raging beast. And incredibly, I remember thinking, Broken glass?
Kids play around here.
Johnny
waved the sharp, jagged edge of the bottle's shattered bottom at David's face,
the dirty, straw-like burr of Bickner-family hair spraying out at all angles.
Johnny
was sneering, dominant. The only word I could make out from him this far away
was nigger. David was the negative again, no matter what. The bigger boy buried
a fist in David's stomach; David tried to double over, but Joey pulled him back
to his feet.
"Bickner!"
I said. "Get away from him!" I grabbed my bat from the yard and ran
toward them. Johnny Bickner knew it would take me a few seconds to reach them
and decided to get in another cheap shot before I could close the distance. He
dropped what was left of the bottle, cocked a fist back and pounded it across
David's eye, then went after his arm, punching again and again until I was
almost close enough to club them. Joey let go and David sagged, shuddering, the
left eye already swelling. I swung the bat with my right arm, forcing the
Bickners back.
"Whatsamatter
faggot?" Johnny said, sneering. "Don't like yer girlfriend doin'
niggers?"
The
bottom dropped out of my stomach. Niggers? I thought. Faggot? I felt heat
radiating from my face as it flushed with angry, humiliated red. How could they
possibly know about Janet and David? We hadn't told anyone. I swung the bat
again, a wild, one-armed swing, but they were a dozen feet away, laughing. I
never could hit anything with that bat.
"Maybe
your mamma does black guys," said Joey. "Yeah — how else do you get a
black brother? Maybe that's whatcher so pissed off about!"
I
stepped menacingly forward, aiming the bat for Joey's square-headed temple. Way
down Argent, I saw Garland Bickner lope unsteadily onto one of the brown, dead
crabgrass islands that dotted the Bickners' cracked, dirty front yard. The man
wore only blue jeans, no shirt or socks, and low enough they might not even
have been buttoned. His beer belly swung liquidly, bulbously before him. He
leaned unsteadily on the tireless rusted Chevy he had up on blocks. I could see
that dirty gray, strawlike mess of hair atop his head even from that far.
"Goddamn
you little bastards, you get the fuck down here an' eat!" he said.
Johnny
and Joey Bickner snapped to an upright, military-like posture and blanched
white, their faces suddenly bloodless. Silent tears and sudden worry flushed
across their faces. Their eyes flitted nervously at one another for a moment,
then they broke into an all-out run, barreling with everything they had toward
home. Garland Bickner had risen for the day, and he had spoken.
I reached down to help David to his feet, but he
flinched away in pain; my right hand had squeezed his left, where the Bickner
boys had landed so many punches.
I
walked to his other side, slipped my right arm under his, and pulled his heaving
form to its feet. Fritz barked after the Bickner boys from within the
wrought-iron border of his domain.
David fixed his dark-eyed gaze on me, his expression
full of Why?.
I didn't know.
"Come on," I said, "let's go
home."
When the first Monday of
school came, my mother loaded us down with Six Million Dollar Man lunchboxes —
the kind that got us laughed at by the older kids — and tote bags full of
school supplies, and walked us to the front door to see us off to the bus stop.
"Don't go getting yourselves in any trouble," my father said.
"And don't ruin your new clothes."
The
first day of classes at Roosevelt Middle School, I did not even manage to make
it into the building before I went against his wishes. A horde of black kids
saw David and me coming and intercepted us before we could reach the front
door. I'd never seen so many, and not another white kid in sight.
The
ringleader, kind of a short kid with an immense, malicious smile stabbed a
finger into my chest. "Where you goin', White Boy?" he said. White
Boy. He was using it as a name for me, an insult.
I was
terrified. I knew black people — well, some black people, David and his family.
People always said things about them, always said they were violent, dangerous,
criminal; West High kids knew not to walk around near East High. But none of
that was true — I knew people like David and had known his parents. That was
all garbage, stereotypes, stuff for racists.
I
glanced at David, whose eyes stared back, unblinking. This was altogether new
for him, too. There were about 15 kids gathered around us, laughing, jeering,
but only at me — not David. It was the first time in my life I'd ever seen more
black kids in one place than white.
"I
said," he said, "where you goin', honky?"
Honky?
I thought. I'd never been the target of a racial slur before.
The
ringleader, though, was cocky, and my paralysis only made him braver. He swung
a fist out, thumping it into my arm — the left one. The scene disappeared under
a crushing, searing wave, my eyesight whited out by the pain of the attack on
my broken, useless arm. I fell, ripping my pants and skinning my knee on the
concrete. I knew how angry my parents would be at the economic assault on my
new school clothes. There was a numbing strike on my mouth.
When
I opened my eyes again and looked up, the ringleader was looking David up and
down, pacing back and forth. He could not seem to decide what to do about a
black kid he'd never seen before going around with a white kid. He couldn't
seem to find a way to make sense of the two of us, together. The ringleader —
whose name, I later learned, was Darnell Redd — pointed a finger at David and
asked, "Fuck you doin' with White Boy, boy?"
But
his tone was half-hearted. With David too stunned to reply, Darnell Redd was losing
interest. "Come on, y'all," he said to the deafening, obnoxious group
of black kids. He led them, his chest puffed out in triumph, to the playground.
So that was me: the white kid. White Boy. I was the one who didn't belong.
I
thought for a second that no one in our neighborhood had called David
"Black Boy," but then I remembered the Bickners and what they had
called him.
David
was at my side. "Come on," he said. "Come on, get up now."
He was careful to pull me up by my right arm, avoiding
all contact with the left. "Got to be a nurse's office here. Come
on."
The
arm was fine. It ached like hell, but Darnell Redd hadn't managed to do more
damage. My lip was swollen, numb, torn against my teeth. When David and I
walked past the principal's office on my way back to class, there sat Darnell
Redd, a broad grin on his face as he awaited whatever impotent punishments the
principal, Mrs. Jayden, might visit upon him.
As I
looked in on the smug, defiant bully, it seemed to let itself out of my mouth,
form of its own volition. Under my breath, I heard myself say it.
David
stopped. His posture stiffened. And immediately, I wanted not to have said it,
not to have thought it. I would have done anything to un-say it. But it was too
late. I had betrayed him — betrayed my younger brother. I thought I saw him
shudder, but he turned away from me and hurried down the dark hall.
Other students talked to
me, some of the school's meager Caucasian population. They all seemed to slink
along, stealthy kids trying not to attract attention.
"Darnell's
father's in and out of jail all the time," said Danny Sparks, a slight kid
with dirty blonde hair and a posture that said he was ready for a fistfight.
"Darnell isn't afraid of anything on earth but that man. Principal Jayden knows
it, but she can't seem to think up with a punishment that makes any
difference."
"Why
don't they just kick him out?" I said.
"I
dunno," said Dan Sparks. "Maybe they want to give him a chance not to
turn into his dad."
I
nodded. I was beginning to understand. "This place does that to people,
doesn't it?" I said. "But Darnell doesn't seem to care. Maybe he
wants to turn into his dad."
Danny
Sparks shrugged, looking me over uneasily.
"Look,
why you hanging around with a black kid?" he said.
"He's — " I said. I hesitated, not knowing
why. The words just felt out of place, somehow. "He's my brother," I
said, finally. But I knew what he meant — the message at Roosevelt was loud and
clear. Danny Sparks gave me another doubtful looking over. Then he shrugged,
turned, and slunk silently away.
At
lunch, David and I sat together, of course. Why wouldn't we? But we sat alone.
White kids sat in all-white groups in the gym-turned-lunchroom, the black kids
likewise self-segregating at other tables. We ate our bologna-on-Wonderbread
sandwiches, then went out to see the playground. It was dismal. The school's
brick walls were filthy with accumulated pollution, the paved concrete
schoolyard a cataclysm of faults and fissures. We made newcomer mistakes. We
kept tripping as we walked, our shoes jamming into pavement raised at the
cracks. Our occasional stumbles brought knowing, mocking glances from veteran
students. The playground was stocked with decades-old, tarnished jungle gyms
and twirlbars worn to a discolored gleam by generations of black girls,
spinning end over end on them, one knee locked over the bar, as a dozen such
girls did now.
As we
walked along, a girl, a tall, coffee-and-cream-complected mulatto, flashed a
dazzling smile at me. I walked into David, not watching where I was going, not
watching anything except for the girl, her gleaming, long, black braids, her
skin darker, richer than my boring, pallid vanilla, but not as dark as David's.
I smiled back, my fat lip a stretched, red bubble above my teeth. She was
beautiful.
"That's
Trisha," he said sullenly, the first words from his mouth since I'd said
it. "She's in my first class."
I
nodded. There was a sort of man-made cove along this side of the school
building, a brick and concrete inlet, an alleyway with training wheels. There,
in the shadows cast by the bleak, dirty school building, stood Johnny and Joey
Bickner, Johnny now a year older and much bigger than any of the other kids.
Couldn't they have done something with him that didn't guarantee that a school
bully wouldn't also be the biggest kid around? They eyed David and I as we
walked, secretively, but not too secretly, exchanging comments. They wanted us
to see their disapproval.
We
rounded the corner of the playground to an expanse of chainlink and shattered
concrete, more a battleground than a place for children to play. Weeds grew,
unchecked, from the larger fissures further out. And I heard David sob. He
couldn't hold it back anymore.
I
wanted to say something to remove that word, get it out from between us. Un-say
it.
"Why'd
you say it?" he said.
I saw
him through tear-blurred vision; the sky overhead had gone an overcast
watercolor grey.
I
wanted to say, "That was Waterloo talking." I wanted to say,
"I'm sorry, David — I'm so sorry." But I couldn't. Shame cemented me
in place, bound my tongue up in a regret I just couldn't find words for.
David
forced himself to look at me, forced his eyes to meet mine, and with a fallen
look he said, "David?"
And I saw us, finally, for what we were: reflections.
Reciprocals. Negatives of one another — David black, surrounded by white, and
me, white, surrounded by black.
And I knew what he must be thinking; I knew that he
must be rethinking my position among the people we knew, relocating me in his mind
alongside Johnny Bickner and Darnell Redd, whose view of people and their place
in the world was so black and white it could find no room for the in-between
hues of Cullen, or Trisha, even huge old Fritz's rampant shades and tones.
I
wanted to squeeze his arm then, like I thought a big brother should. I wanted
to tell him, "No more. I promise. It's all right now. It's OK. I'll never
say it again. I promise. You're my brother." I wanted to. I really did.
—JØnathan Lyons
