Angel at a 25 Degree Angle… by Andrew Gallix (re-printed from Scarecrow Magazine)

Imperious, impervious, Girl on the escalator going up, pulling her case behind her like a lapdog on a lead, going up. Nifty, shifty, eyeing up Girl going up, naughty, haughty, hoity-toity.

Did she condescend to look down upon you as she went up, Angel at a 25 degree angle? Did she acknowledge your existence as she plucked celestial chords on her flyaway hair and breathed honeyed tones down her cellular phone? Did she fuck. No: your eyes did not meet. You looked at me looking at you looking at her looking up, all high and mighty, pulling her case behind her behind like a slave on a lead, soaring up — she mighty high, you mighty sore. Looked at me you did, with your chastised eyes, all hot and bothered, hot, hot under the collar, your face a slapped arse.

Andrew Gallix © 2005.

As Before by Brent Powers

It is done there. Nothing to be done about it. The funerary burnings have begun, all his awful old stuff, old marked-in books and notes on paper, paper files, lengths of paper tape run over everything, tape smeared with sticky black ink in clumps of his clotted script, the whole of it carrying his stink of cheap smokes, spilled wine, scum of self love … there, so there, ruins of Athens, Rome and Frankland, ravaged by the Goths of restless impermanence. A man not yet dead, no, not yet fully cognizant of a moving on from himself that occurred years before with the disappearance of his wife and friends, the erasure of all that he was in his own memory, leaving only this detritus of paper history. No, no, not yet. He goes on as before, goes on until he can’t any more. Then there is a period of simply waiting. Hoping for something to catch fire. When it does it is the actual fires of loss. Nothing to be done. Nothing to do. But even this is a dream, the dream of an ending.

He wakes before first light on the last day before the Time Change. It is the winter of his first year in formal Exile. He now lives outside a little seaside village in Q, a place of easy retirement. Retirement indeed, for none else are criminal here, merely old, or of middle age early struck down at the futile business of working, by that business, thence put away from society.

He hasn’t yet seen any neighbors, although he does hear occasional earthworks, tractors and cats attacking the bogs which lie among the paradisial trees of what could be taken for a parkland, his loveliest residence ever. He has never even vacationed in such a splendid place.

He had thought to make another accounting of it all. Another falsification of the past, as all accounts must be. Determining to do so one day he discovered that he couldn’t even gin up enough anger to go on for very long. Perhaps he wasn’t even angry any more. Old friends will call and ask him if he’s finally set about the business and he must lie, although he has begun to wonder why he even bothers. It is over with. Over.

It could have been different. With one or two wiser choices he would be someone else entirely. A smug bureaucrat, a shopkeeper. Yes. That little bookshop he’s always wanted. Never really busy yet there is the constant traffic of a regular clientele, people who hang out, bring him coffee or even lunch. It is on the main thoroughfare of a small college town, a place that still holds out false hope. They come and go, come and go. There is talk of books and films, music, politics, the latest religious balloon. Nothing too important happens, although there are rumors. People are always getting something up, even when it’s all taken care of. There can be no peace among humans. Sooner or later someone starts shooting.

One of them comes in and begins simply enough, with a postulate of some kind. From there it follows, marches heavily, like soldiers in the dawn. It would appear to be noble yet it isn’t. One is almost bored. Marching along, as before, marching as to war. What is the war about? Some vague broken promise. An argument at cards. It doesn’t matter, it must be. And so we go on, as before, as always, scratching and biting at each other, blowing each other up. First one dead son, then another dead in retaliation. Then legions, all dead, all burning up with the files and the books and paper, sizzling meat, stench of valor, all of it burning up for no particular reason other than to make way for new conflicts. We don’t like each other very much. Never have. The wise must come down from time to time and remind us to be nice, at least love the neighbor, which is impossible. These are his thoughts, his sometime discourses, admittedly all very comfortable for a bookseller, grand pronouncements made in the safety of a musty indoors, yet all of it somehow necessary. Must keep your hand in, keep at it, generating opinions, for to opine is human, valid as any war.

And yet some time one comes in with a story, even just a small vignette, more rarely a capture of something occurring at the subatomic level which somehow generates a whole mess of sudden springing circumstance, a world born of almost nothing, a Berashith, thus:

Know then that in the year One King Portius rode out grandly with men at arms and claimed Lands to the North, adding these on to his own with the expedition of the flag. Salamander VIII, rightful heir to the North, rose up in contest against Portius and there was war. The plain was flooded. Ships were brought in. There were navel battles. Portius employed Greek Fire. Salamander was defeated. He retreated to Johnswood which is inimical to Portius. “Will we give chase?” asked Bald Walt, hero to Portius. Portius cried Nay. “We must lose our way in the Forest,” he explained, beating his palm with a ruler. “Will we eat then?” Bald Walt inquired further. When the King agreed Bald Walt signaled for his Ensign to blow the trumpet. “Let’s Eat!” Bald Walt cried. Perforce food was put out on long tables. The food was comprised of tacos and pizzas and burgers and fries, all washed down with small beer. For Entertainment there was Suzy, who danced. An argument arose between sergeants and drum majors as to the art of Suzy. One said it was Balanchine inflected belly, the other called it pole sans machinery. Opinions bred out of these like the exaggerations of plague. Let the food fights begin! Hot cheese flying. The stuff of tacos. All the vagaries of burgers. You cannot escape, you cannot escape. Yet the King did nothing but enjoy the show, and it is due to this irresponsibility that History is not kind, for Salamander made insinuation of his troops in the guise of local peasantry albeit surreptitiously armed. After all, one does not throw down with pizza no matter the topping against cold steel. Portius is humiliated. Salamander rides through the Capital with the ensauced chivalry and marchers of Portius under arrest. The gathered citizens are invited to taste of these interesting blends and a fine entertainment was had by all. Again dispute arose, this time among the food journalists. But disputes rarely stay within the boundaries of interest groups, hence this one grew to include the farming community, the tech guys, the recovering alcoholics and drug addicts, our girls in uniform, the baking collective, various lobbies, sundry paid shills, finally the Paris Light Opera entire until there was again dubious warfare …

Once more he finds himself alone. He surveys the historic landscape with an eye for souvenirs. He hopes to establish a business which includes old melted ordnance and the bones of valor beside the usual books, possibly even antique motion picture cameras, music trapped in vinyl grooves, teeth encased in amber, teeth which had broken off whilst they worked at normally soft food which had been stuffed with gravel by the enemy. These are vague hopes but hopes none the less, and he hasn’t entertained such in a long time, no, not since his ambition let him go. But who could be ambitious here? For behold yon northern mulla drawing in his lawn to partake of the customary afternoon siesta, small zs shortly oozing from his little comma mouth to join the flies above as he drifts into guiltless sleep; others following suit short upon, parading various degrees of splendor in their bedding. Even pavilions appear, and suddenly erupting canopies stretched over birch rods cross the sky. All’s well with the world that can be, and much can be well here. In the marina toy ships shift in their slips, wind chimes ring and flicker through leagues of sad air. The boats go creek and the tides reach up and clap and glitter seems to fall from the masts and the breath goes out and out, joining the wind far out to sea, and nothing has changed for him at all except for that loss of breath going out and rejoining the wind and the sea.

I guess since my Blogad at Litkicks re-directs here, I oughta mention
that you can buy the books at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Baltimore City Jail and Other Catastrophes by George Sparling

Pratt Street, the 1861 riots, martyring slavery, I not knowing which side I was on, not the War, of course, but where I stood in worlds of hierarchies and triumphs, their debaucheries and failures of my ill-gotten suburbanite lies, how much I required
justifying myself, so, in ’67, I joined VISTA, panacea for all youthful daydreams, unclotted ideals, its history zoning me in to six-weeks of training.

Introducing myself, I stood before only five correctional officers, telling them I wanted to change jail policy: set up inmate grievance councils, conjugal visits for both male and female prisoners, bring in entertainers in which inmates could identify, especially musicians, more free time out of their cells, no more isolation holes, a healthy diet. Rather mild, I thought. They walked out immediately after my little talk, one saying, “That’s country club shit.”

My first lunch, rather than eating in the officers’ dining room I insisted eating with inmates. The warden balked at first, then, probably thinking the inmates would attack me, accommodated my request. I sat in the clamorous dining room, seated with three other inmates taken by surprise, but I ate the baloney sandwich and drank Kool-Aid. In those days, I wore a sport coat, they in blues. ”Food’s better in the CO’s dining room.” an inmate said. “The warden will have to spend more than eighteen cents a meal to get better chow,” I said. “I’ll lean on him.” They laughed, one saying “He’s too pussy to lean on anyone.” They meant me, not the warden. My words sounded false, something until thenI never realized.

An assistant professor of sociology asked me in the community bathroom, gigantic ductwork hovering in the echoic chambers of dandelion urine and sepia stools, whether I used nutmeg, its psychedelic properties unknown to me, and I said no. I wanted to comeback, saying, “Don’t confuse nutmeg highs with psychosis.” Nutmeg I associated with Christmas and old-time office parties where eggnog and nutmeg flavored our tongues.

I fast-talked, jumping from one subject to another, dirty clothes, their stench, loudly laughing at nothing in particular, inability to communicate as a fluent, middle-class twenty-five year old, my extreme political radicalism, how I decried Big Daddy
Corporate Inc., and withdrawal from socializing with other trainees, though there were exceptions. Social/political/sexual affairs got buried beneath the blatant mental disturbances of the psychotic kind. He left the bathroom just as sneakily as he entered.

Three weeks later, the professor invited me for a cup of coffee. At the restaurant counter, he told me I was a snob because I did not share what I knew. I told him snobs lived in suburbia, sent their children to elite universities, looking down on people like the vulgar middleclass. He meant me; I was a snob. He must have read my application, seeing why I wanted to join VISTA, my lofty ambitions, referencing nonfiction as well as fiction writers about altruism, meaningful change, amelioration, slow progress. Had I
believed what I wrote? No. A snob: no. Desperation to avoid the draft: Probably.

The real reason happened the year before as a caseworker in the New York City Welfare Department, I finding out from a clerk: caseworkers were not exempt from the draft. VISTA meant a thirteen-month deferral. What a naïf I was. One trainee class in particular sealed my fate when a gorgeous black woman, our instructor, asked the class: “What does For Members Only mean?” I shot up my hand as if I were still taking a social science class in college, saying, “For blacks only.” They placed me in the Baltimore City Jail, I having had a black welfare supervisor who filled me in, knowing a bit of black culture, its lore.

During training, Patricia, a trainee, I coaxing her into driving all night to New York City, I having a friend in NYC, a former workplace colleague in ‘66, strictly hands off sexually speaking, though she had good connections, a boyfriend. We had shared a joint, he telling me to make sure to see a psychiatrist at Whitehall Street, the induction center a slice of America’s Empire in which I would not participate. VISTA, in actuality, was just another clog in the War Machine. He said when The Man asks if anyone wanted to see a psychiatrist, yell “I do!” Jackie and her friend perfumed my life and soon I joined VISTA, an escape valve. I drank many cups of strong coffee, telling the shrink all my troubles and instabilities being a homosexual drug addict.

Without uppers, I chose her NoDoz pills making me frail rather than awake, vulnerable and torpid, but her driver’s fury, the MG her amphetamine, reaching an art deco department store; her panty hose had ripped, I not yet intoxicated with sexual fetishism. I waited in the car and she bought new ones, hurrying to the car, driving to Jackie’s tiny apartment in Greenwich Village, cat dander moving through the air like thick asbestos. I coughed, wheezed, sneezed, Jackie looking uncomfortable seeing me with another woman, not jealous but offended that I brought a woman to her tiny, dirty, cluttered abode. Too depressed to clean things, I guessed. I had to leave, and Pat, bored, put out that Jackie had no interest in me as an ex-boyfriend, Jackie and I never had sex other than the time I jumped her in the presence of her brother, drunks on a faded Oriental rug. Pat’s intuition sniffed that out. I was a poor sexual prospect.

Quickly, the turnaround, back we sped to Baltimore, where she lay on her back on my apartment’s stiff couch, I struggling to unbutton her shirt and pull her bra off, hating dating tradition of any kind, I too fatigued to undo the bra, could not see straight,
placing my woozy head on her bosom, craving sleep, not sex, she telling me, “You don’t know how to make love.”

She left two minutes later. I knew she made it with at least one black man I met whose brother worked with a black Baltimore civic action group. I was among six trainees participating with this group which had some kind of arrangement with the activist priest, Father Philip Berrigan, he shaking my hand, thinking I had something to offer but upon hearing a single banality, he quickly left, leaving me alone in an office with the civic action member who had introduced us.

The group tried reversing the white racism inherent in ghetto life, making it better in some tangible way. The only thing that we did, as representatives of the Federal government, was pressuring the landlord to clean debris on a vacant lot. He must have
been contacted by the professor, making us white guys think we had power to change things, that progress could be made.

Pat’s black friend, the brother of an activist member of the group, had talked to me on a stoop, urging me to date Patricia. “She’s yours for the taking, easy as pie,” he said. That was before the NYC escapade. All those years growing up in white suburbia, it took a stranger to clue me in on basic, non-puritanical instinct.

The first prisoner I met showed me newspaper clippings he pulled out beneath the his mattress, Time magazine included, about his homicide charge. During his boasting, one article used the word “inmate,” a derogatory, subservient term. Standing shoulder to
shoulder with him, he not a convict, those incarcerated in state prison next door, they were convicts, but Mac had his case moving through the court system, so he was not guilty of anything. If his case reached the Supreme Court, its decision ruling against him, then he was guilty. He was a major player, a celebrity, a bone fide man of worldly fame, one who needed outsiders to show how powerful a person he was, a man whose dignity flowed through criminal channels, perhaps, but in his mind he wished his case snuck into commercials, Mac playing the next door neighbor in sitcoms. I saw him link his destiny with Earth’s fate, Jupiter seen in nighttime skies.

Forget the specifics of his case, forget his blue uniform, and forget the facial scar. Mac’s essence shined through his gruff voice, our elbows touching, he knowing such a weak-hearted duffer I was, a white boy’s bargain with suburbia. We shook hands again, I
wanting to bow my head, not as in that famous Millet painting, “Angelus,” two peasants supplicating, we were talking 1967, Charles Whitman in that Texas tower, sniping, killing sixteen people, not forgetting Vietnam, the slaughtering fields, vast uprisings having to be quelled by God Bless America’s empire, and myself, drinking New York Cream Sherry, listening to Jefferson Airplane take off with “White Rabbit,” how it ascended crescendo-like, my groin hot, my apartment empty, my solitary mind blanked, Mac & Company terra incognito, at least temporally, always going to the jail with a hangover.

Sometimes in the morning I would go to a bar near my apartment on downtown Eutaw Street, drinking a morning beer before serving as a VISTA counselor, a small, white-painted room my office, but this redneck bar had severed connections with the Rolling Stones “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” not playing after I punched the buttons. I told the barkeep, “Censorship is God, eh?” his face immobile. I walked to the jail tipsy. One day I Zeroxed hundreds of yellow pages in the administrative office, each ending in big letters, “Freedom Is God,” after I arranged with the D.A. office to establish a program enabling qualified prisoners release on their own recognizance. I passed the sheets around, hundreds of prisoners hoping their chance had come. The only male released on his own recognizance was a frightened white boy.

A few days later a near riot occurred, with Mac touching it off by tossing a burning dry mop at guards. I heard the news on the radio, and when I tried gaining entrance, the security guard would not let me in, orders from the warden. I would be among the reasons for the uproar. In a secured unit, a prisoner, charged with rape, sent me notes asking for help regarding his plea of innocence. I assented finally. Eldridge, a taxi driver, pleaded behind bars, I nearly touching his cherubic face, wanted me to visit his family in the ghetto. It took three buses, but I finally sat in a large living room with ample space and three big couches, I sitting on a comfortable settee, its straight-back propping me up, a Federal employee of moral rectitude. His mother, two sisters, three cousins, and an aunt reading me their softened riot act, an uprising of calmness, but using feminine persuasion, a sister gently touching my arm, she handing me a photo album, gathering me up in the fine art of describing his childhood, growing up among caring relatives.

Eldridge had not financially contributed to his only wife, she with two children. I ate freshly baked brownies, one cousin showing me his high school diploma, even suggesting I visit the taxicab office because of his unblemished record, an accident free, courteous driver. I choked up a bit in the swell of his cousins’ tears, his grandmother and church friends explaining how such a kind man prisoner Eldridge was. When I read Eldridge Cleaver’s 1968 “Soul on Ice,” I flashed back to this Eldridge, his tribulations, charged rapist or not, and seeing his mother, how tired she looked, tortured by the belief he might be guilty, I non-judgmental, her damp eyes, her gray hair, her belief in God, his church-going, this and more I believed true, their voices, one by one, yes, but their eyes, frightened, distinguished with doubts, their voices strong.

After an hour, I stood at a bus stop, waiting forever, streetlights out, broken either by gunfire or rocks, few on the street, eleven o’clock. I arrived wearied at Eutaw Street, feeling guilty, the futility of puny gestures, and when I saw Eldridge again, telling him of my errand, he thanked me, but he must have known I was no William Kunstler, a Movement lawyer. I stood at its fringes, Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” should read “Mortality,” death just outside the jail’s gates within same plot of land as the state penitentiary, executions for some of my jailhouse “brothers.”

I, penitential, sad, confessions, not those gained by torturous beatings, but those interior confessions, the foundation of my life, its hold on me amplified with every prisoner I met. The pointlessness of working for the State, I an appendix, a superfluous organ.

A thin young man, in oversized blues, said to me he knew all about religion, rattling off Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, his eight fold path to end suffering, the Four Noble Truths, about suffering, living without suffering, Jains, their shramana dharma were those
without attachments, he saying he memorized the Sermon on the Mount, reciting its verses until abruptly stopping. He had read the Koran, and meditated in his cell, wanting to meet me after his upcoming release date. I gave him my address, so impressed by his intellectual prowess, his memory. I said I would wait outside for him, paranoid this mental giant would rob me, maybe shoot me in the process, but nothing happened and we were driven in what he, Red, having streaks of red in his Afro, said was a ghetto
limousine, cheaper than regular cabs.

Shortly we entered a bar, two white bartenders, man and woman, handing out beers, wine, pouring shots, all black patrons, Billy Holliday on the jukebox, I saying that’s great jazz, Red saying, “No, it’s Blue’s,” he going straight to the bathroom, “I’ll join you
later,” he said, and disappeared. Was he shooting up?

After twenty minutes, he sat next me at the bar, and I asked him, “Could you get me some pot?” I tried once, lucky tokes as it turned out, but maybe Red could sell me stronger weed. He and I left the bar in late afternoon sunshine. The cab stopped, we got out, and he hollered at someone on the second floor of a grubby building, I thinking this was a rundown commercial building, but I saw a hand dropping keys caught by Red, the man attached to the hand had not wanted to know anything Red was up to.

We walked upstairs and Red opened a door, and we entered, Red then taking out a transparent baggie, green inside. “For $7 it’s fine weed,” he said, and I gave him the cash, he rolling me a joint. I told him I could not do that, “I’m all thumbs,” I said, never before using that expression, nerves perhaps, and I smoked it but nothing happened. “You’ll have to smoke lots of pot to break through your mental roadblocks.” We taxied back to my place, Red wanting to come with me, but I first thought he wanted sex, that the Four Noble Truths had been bullshit, then I thought he would kill me, who knew what was on his mind, I feeling that he figured me a chump for falling for what was simply alfalfa, so I dashed out, without the “weed,” and ran to my safe zone, away from a man dressed in street clothes but internally still in jailhouse blues.

A hometown friend, Donny, a Marine stationed at Fort Detrick, visited me, he a very smart high school student, and he made many long distant phone calls to alleged girlfriends, but I thought he was an intelligence operative, an agent provocateur perhaps, in some way trying to scuttle my life, connecting me with The Movement, singling me out for a prison sentence or turning me around, being a snitch in The Movement. Who was on the other end of the line? His handler was undoubtedly giving him instructions about what to do with me, ending life as a “social worker,” sending me to the state penitentiary, running into Mac, the man convicted of murder, unafraid of killing me in our shared cell.

We went to a hip downtown bar, sitting at a table, talking about the suburban town we forsook, and girls, a subject he knew like the underside of his penis, though he might be homosexual, a good-looking guy ensnaring me, turning me into something I considered
anathema, I, Hetero-Man, but homoerotic a better term.

A large balding man walked to our table, I wearing an Army jacket, two corporal stripes on each arm. A snake tattoo circled the man’s forearm, his trimmed goatee, he drew out a pocketknife, saying, “We’re anarchists around here.” Donny sat quietly, unhelpful, both of us strange to Baltimore’s habits, and so I let him poke the blade until the stitches broke loose. “Doesn’t that make you feel better,” he said. “Bye cherie,’ he added, and left us. My friend leaned over and said, “He called you ‘sweetheart’ in French.”

Later, I had another visitor: My mother. She stayed at a plush hotel, and came to meet the warden, sensing my immaturity, lack of confidence, and living on my own. I had been spoiled, in her words, a passive taker, a gimme-gimme guy. We sat in front of the warden’s large desk just as an older inmate, maybe fifty-five, stopped polishing the warden’s shoes. He called him “boy,” without the slightest hesitation. She asked about my duties, and like all figures engaged in law enforcement, he lied, telling her I
encouraged prisoners to read.

I met a black poet in a bar, a local poet well known to Baltimoreans. I had invited him to read his work to prisoners, which he did after getting a haircut from an inmate barber charged with rape. They were from the same neighborhood growing up, the barber
twenty years older than the poet. I had asked to supply the jail with books, getting the Feds to send one hundred paperbacks. The poet read his poetry to fifteen prisoners, I sitting among them. Later, when I received a telephone call in the main administrative
office from a reporter working for the Baltimore Sun wanting to do a story about me, the only piece of interest was getting the books delivered and the poet. Nothing else to offer, he said he would call back sometime. He never did.

Mother and I saw a movie, “Hawaii,” about a missionary and his wife leading the charge, there to soften the natives up, advancing colonialism with the best of intentions, much like VISTA, slipping into the ghettoes, lowering tensions, but, in fact, heightening
the political contradictions. My own contradictions, a young man who should have lived in feudal times, then I could have apprenticed as a baker or blacksmith. The Movement soon included Hawaii in their all-fronts attack on USA’s aggression.

One day at summer’s end the warden called me into his office, saying, “You don’t make me look good.” He would call Washington. This was the imagined telephone talk: “He was inadequate and incompetent, having no practical sense at all, a loafer, a leech,
accepting the $198 monthly pay without doing anything except gathering a large collection of sherry bottles spread out through my filthy apartment. He was a sojourner, literally meaning “under day,” a tiny-eyed mole living beneath the earth, a troglodyte, an
unsociable, misanthropic, obsolete, outmoded person: A Man For No Seasons.”

I flew back to suburbia, finding my parents in grief mode. I asked my father to sell my stock in the corporation in which he held an executive position. He bellowed at me, “You should never sell your capital.”

Now, I remind myself I had considered myself a pariah, but after a few decades that condition had ameliorated. I have traveled around the world, many destinations, except to Baltimore.

 Easy Heat by T.R. Healy

With the wind howling in his face, Ike Rehn ran as hard as he could toward the edge of the cliff. His strides were almost as long as his arms. He felt like a kid again running on the beach with a kite. Just as then, he ran as if he were being chased, his heart pounding so hard he could barely hear the wind. In another moment, he was soaring through the air, the red-and-gold sail of his hang glider swelling in the brisk east wind. Like a giant moth he circled above the meadow beneath the cliff, a chiclet-bright smile spreading across his face. Tightly he gripped the control bar as he maneuvered to find a rising current of air known as a thermal. As usual, the straps of the harness dug sharply into his shoulder blades but he didn’t mind because there was nothing he enjoyed doing more than piloting his glider. Up in the air he was relaxed, in control, completely confident of his skills as a pilot.

Cackling with excitement, he swooped low over a cedar tree, nearly clipping one of the limbs, and soared back toward the sun, cackling even louder.

*

Rehn held the shot glass up to the overhead light to make sure it was clean then, satisfied that it was, placed it on a shelf behind the counter and began to clean another one. A bartender, he had worked at the Wichita Bar and Grill almost five months but it seemed longer so he figured it was about time to move on and find work elsewhere. He didn’t intend to leave the area, though, because the wind conditions were nearly always ideal for hang gliding.

“Slow night,” Cassie, a new server, complained as she watched him clean another glass.

“Wednesdays are always slow.”

She frowned. “Tonight seems slower than usual, though.”

“It’ll pick up.”

“God, I hope so,” she sighed. “I need the tips.”

“Don’t we all.”

The bar was owned by a widower, Abe Calhoun, who lived around the corner but seldom came into his establishment when it was open for business because, as a recovering alcoholic, he didn’t want to be tempted by others to have a drink. About the only time Rehn saw him was when he picked up his check every other week before he started work. He was a pretty gruff character, still mourning the unexpected death of his wife a few months ago, so the less contact Rehn had with him the better he reckoned. He was always worried he would say the wrong thing then have to listen to one of his harangues for four or five minutes as if he were still a schoolboy.

Around a quarter to ten several people came into the bar after viewing the first showing of North by Northwest at the revival theater down the street. Rehn recognized them all because they were pretty regular patrons and, for the most part, was able to make their drinks before they ordered them.

“I understand you had some trouble the other night,” Quinney, a mail carrier, remarked after Rehn served him an Irish coffee.

He shrugged. “Nothing that got out of hand, really. Some guy I’ve never seen in here before complained that I watered down his drink and refused to pay for it.”

Quinney glanced at the young woman he was with tonight. “I heard you brought out the old Louisville Slugger.”

“Yeah, I let him have a peek.”

“That was enough, was it?”

He nodded. “He paid, reluctantly, still convinced his drink was diluted.”

“Some of the other folks who’ve tended bar here would not hesitate to whack a troublemaker across the arm or shoulders with the bat that Calhoun keeps behind the counter but not Ike,” he told his date. “More than likely, he’ll try to dazzle them with one of his tricks. Isn’t that so, son?”

Rehn grinned. “If I can avoid violence, I will every time.”

“Ike, see, is a ball player not a fighter,” he continued, nudging a little closer to the young woman. “He was almost signed by the Pirates right out of high school.”

“Well, I had a try-out with them,” he explained to the woman, “along with a dozen other prospects.”

“That’s impressive enough for me, son. I couldn’t hit a thing the one year I played Little League. Not a blessed thing.”

“It’s a hard game. No question about it.”

“But the things you can do with a bat I bet are as good as anything anyone in the big leagues can do.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.”

“Why don’t you show Patsy here something and let her be the judge?”

“Please do,” she said at once, sounding as if she meant it.

“Maybe later,” he replied as Cassie passed him another order slip, “when it’s not so busy.”

Quinney smiled at his date. “Believe me, it’ll be worth the wait. Ike is a goddamn magician.”

*

Rehn’s father, unlike him, was a professional baseball player who spent two and a half seasons in Triple A ball before a severely torn kneecap forced him to leave the game and abandon his dream of one day playing in the Major Leagues. A pitcher, who threw what one coach called “easy heat” because his fastball was delivered with such a relaxed wind-up, he was also a very good hitter. Indeed, he was the real artist with a bat who taught him many of the tricks he learned first to amuse teammates during rain delays. One of the earliest he remembered his father doing involved a fungo bat. Occasionally, while hitting fly balls to him, he would hit a ball so high above his own head he had time to drop the bat and slip on a glove and catch the ball before it touched the ground. Rarely did he miss, and when he did he invariably blamed it on the sun getting in his eyes even when the sky was gray as a battleship.

*

About midnight, at Quinney’s insistence, Rehn got out the chipped bat and performed a few tricks for him and his date and the three other patrons still in the bar. Carefully he balanced the 34 ounce Slugger on his elbow then his forehead and the tip of his nose. Then he planted the head of the bat on the floor and balanced himself on it for a good minute. He finished with the swinging bat trick which, by far, was the most difficult stunt in his repertoire. With an emply pretzel basket serving as home plate, he assumed his stance above it then swung the bat until the head was directly in front of his body, spun the handle back, and let the bat spin free for one complete revolution then caught the handle again and completed his swing.

Quinney immediately burst into applause, as did the others, and Rehn smiled in appreciation.

“Didn’t I tell you he was a magician?” Quinney said to his date while he continued to applaud.

Rehn smiled even more, always enjoying the enthusiastic reaction he received after performing some of his tricks. Over the years more than a few people had urged him to look into making some money as a performer. He appreciated the suggestion but knew that was impossible because he could not risk the publicity. He had to remain anonymous otherwise he was afraid he would be arrested.

*

“I told my boyfriend about those tricks you did last night and he said he’d like to see them,” Cassie told Rehn shortly after she reported to work.

“Well, I can’t do them every night because I’d get bored but let me know the next time he’s going to come in and I’ll show him a couple.”

“I’ll do that.”

Nodding, he split a pretzel in half and offered her one of the halves.

“You know that guy last night might be right when he said you could earn a nice chunk of change by performing your tricks right out here on the corner.”

He shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know about that.”

“You should think about it, Ike. Everybody can always use some extra money in their pockets.”

Ever since he was a small boy, swinging at pitches thrown by his father in the backyard, he always figured he would earn some money swinging a baseball bat but never imagined it might be as a street entertainer. He was bitterly disappointed when he wasn’t signed by the Pirates, especially after the strong slugging percentage he posted in the playoffs his senior year. His father, as always, was full of encouragement but probably for the first time he considered that he might not be as good a player as his father was and began to wonder if he ever would receive a contract to play baseball. Sill, he enrolled in a small community college downstate and played on its ball club but didn’t hit much above his weight and suspected he was only kept on the roster because his tricks amused the coaches and his teammates.

After he completed his eligibility at the college, he never played an organized game of baseball again, only pick-up games in the park and the occasional game of stick ball. Instead, becoming involved with some former students who still hung around the college, he started experimenting with drugs. And before long he was snorting lines of cocaine through milk straws and doing whatever he could to get money to buy more of the hideous powder. Though he had a part-time job as a cashier in a convenience store, he also cut lawns and washed cars, sold pints of blood at the Red Cross Center, even occasionally shoplifted watches and rings and necklaces that he swapped for cash at pawnshops. But he never seemed to have enough money until Bergman, one of the former students he snorted cocaine with, enlisted his help in torching a cement factory so the owner, who was Bergman’s uncle, could collect the insurance money. He was offered $3,500, and though he knew it was as wrong as wrong could be, he couldn’t resist and made the worst mistake of his young life. The day after the blaze he left town, telling his parents he was going to Las Vegas to visit an old teammate who played for the ball club there, and never returned because of his fear of being arrested.

That was close to two years ago, though it seemed twice as long.

*

Breathing hard, Rehn limped out of the lake and collapsed on the striped bath towel he left on the beach. He had swum nearly half an hour in the bracing water and his arms and shoulders felt as heavy as fence posts. He stared at the sun for a moment then at the silvery white waterfall beneath it. Above the waterfall were several young boys waiting their turn to leap off it some twenty feet into the lake. Each time one of them did the others cheered excitedly. He smiled, tempted to join them, but figured he was a little too old and would not be welcomed. So he just watched until his eyes grew heavy and he nodded off to sleep.

A few minutes later, he was startled awake by a fierce scream and immediately looked up at the waterfall but no one was above it then he heard another scream and turned to his right and saw a pudgy woman in a purple muumuu pointing toward the water. He assumed someone must be in trouble and got up to help then thought better of it and waited to see if anyone else was going in and saw two wiry guys charge across the sand and plunge into the water. Not budging from his towel, he watched them approach a struggling boy from behind and seize his shoulders and haul him back to shore. Relieved, he sat down on his towel, bitterly reprimanding himself for not helping the boy. If those two guys hadn’t responded, he wondered if he would have helped then. He hoped so but he wasn’t really sure because of the publicity that might ensue if he rescued someone. The last thing in the world he wanted to happen was get his picture in the newspaper.

He was so ashamed, so embarrassed, to think that he could have let a young boy drown in order to protect his identity. It was pathetic, utterly pathetic. He was paralyzed by the constant fear that the slightest attention that came his way might result in his immediate arrest. Others involved in the burning of the abandoned cement factory had been arrested and he would not be surprised if they had implicated him in an effort to strike a deal with the prosecutor’s office. Lord, he hated what he had become, he thought, as he stared at the waterfall in the twilight. He had changed his name so often he couldn’t always remember which one he was using and sometimes didn’t respond when others addressed him.

*

The next afternoon, walking through a park on his way to work, Rehn paused to watch half a dozen boys play “Over the Line” on one of the scabby softball diamonds. They were about the age of the youngster who almost drowned yesterday in the lake, he thought, standing against the backstop. He and his father and two or three boys in the neighborhood often played the informal game when they didn’t have enough players to play an actual game.

“You mind if I take a couple of cuts?” he asked after he watched for a while.

The boy at the plate turned around and looked at him, not sure what to say, looked out at the pitcher then looked back at him. “All right, if you want to.”

“Thanks.”

Quickly he stepped around the rusted screen and took the bat from the still puzzled boy. It was so light it felt like a wand in his massive hands. Smiling, he flicked it back and forth a moment then took his place in the batter’s box and nodded at the pitcher to throw the ball. He swung hard but barely managed to make contact and hit a bleeder back toward the mound and the pitcher smiled in amusement. He crushed the next pitch, though, dissolving the smirk from the pitcher’s round face, and was so pleased he burst into a huge grin. He lined the next pitch past the shortstop then another one past him then crushed one over the head of the outfielder.

He felt good about his effort, as good as he had in quite a while, but he always felt better whenever he had a chance to play ball. Somehow he wished he could always feel as comfortable and sure of himself.

*

“You sure you want to go through with this, Ike?” Craven, another paraglider, asked as he stood behind Rehn on the narrow balcony on top of the Heritage Column—the tallest structure in town.

“I couldn’t be more sure.”

“You’ve got a gusting east wind that should be just about perfect for gliding today.”

He nodded, making sure the straps of his harness were secure.

“You know you’re taking a hell of a risk doing this,” Craven reminded him, “and I’m not just talking about flying your glider, either.”

“I know that.”

“You’re absolutely sure now?”

“I am.”

“All right, then, whenever you’re ready.”

He knew it was dangerous to launch his glider from the Column, knew as well that it was against the law. He didn’t care, though, as he edged farther out on the balcony. He deserved to be arrested for his refusal to help the boy at the lake, and if he was, he hoped his picture was put on the front page of the morning paper.

A moment passed, then another, then he was off, rising higher and higher in the core of a strong thermal, the sun burning in his eyes.

 

Screw Cupid by F.N. Wright

It was just C.B.’s fucking luck. He had been living the life of a nomad since his return from Nam several years earlier. He was born and raised in an orphanage in Mississippi and became a loner then and remained one while in the employee of dear old Uncle Sam.

During his time helping out his kindly old uncle he had served three tours in Nam, the last two as a sniper. He would have probably made a career of the military but had tired of a war that made no sense to him and there wasn’t much need for snipers stateside.

On top of that, he wasn’t much good at the spit and polish you had to deal with after all that time in the Mekong Delta and triple canopy jungle so he got out after serving for eight years.

For you curious bastards C.B. wasn’t his name but the handle they’d laid on his loner ass while he was in Nam killing people from long distance. It stood for cold-blooded killer and it suited him just fine for the life he had chosen after his discharge. He figured no one would get close enough to him to need to know his real name.

As soon as he was out of Uncle Sam’s clutches he bought a Panhead and hit the road, never stopping in one place until he started running low on money. He’d find a shitty job, a woman to fuck and be back on the road again as soon as he’d fattened his bankroll or the ol’ lady he was fucking got on his nerves.

It was an unusually wet winter and a good time to hunker down, find a shitty job, do some work on his bike and find a fine-ass woman to fuck when he rolled into Martinez, California when his luck went bad.

He’d landed a job at the Shell Oil Refinery and met a real fine woman when one of Cupid’s arrows came flying out of nowhere and nailed him in his unsuspecting heart. Before he knew it he was in love and engaged to be married. He’d even bought a fucking engagement ring for chrissakes.

He had lost control of his life and was flat fucking in love with a woman who had no love for the road and saw a future for them that included a house with a white picket fence and making babies together and him selling his bike and settling down.

He was renting a small place with a garage when he got laid off at the refinery and the closest job he could find was up in Santa Rosa. C.B. probably could have found a job closer but deep down inside him he probably planning his escape. Problem was, that fucking arrow was about as deep into his heart as it could get.

He found a place in Guerneville and Suzy, who had been living with her parents when they met continued managing the liquor store her dad owned in Martinez and rented an apartment there with one of her cousins.

The rain continued to come down heavy daily yet he rode down on his Panhead almost nightly to be with her, wondering what in the fuck he was doing living in Guerneville.

Fact was, he was lost in her deep, dark brown eyes that little devils danced in but there were nights he’d stay at his place to keep from drowning in them.

For the first time in his life he endured Thanksgiving and Christmas in a family environment and though Suzy’s family wasn’t used to seeing their youngest daughter with a long-haired biker they liked seeing the “apple of daddy’s eye” happier than they’d ever seen her.

As a consequence C.B. was a part of the family and the ones he’d met so far, especially her parents, older sister, younger brother and her cousin adored him. Needless to say, he was not comfortable and could’ve wrung Cupid’s neck if the little bastard had actually existed.

C.B. had managed to survive Thanksgiving without hyperventilating too much but Christmas and the present giving and receiving almost drove him away but those deep, dark brown eyes and that barbed arrow from Cupid’s bow that kept him pinned for what looked like forever.

Suzy’s oldest brother was a navy “lifer” and had just returned from Nam and was stationed in nearby Vallejo and was not exactly happy to see who his little sister was in love with. In fact he was so fucking rude as the presents were being exchanged that C.B. was ready to take him out right there in front of the family and their Christmas tree.

Instead, after all the presents had been opened he excused himself, grabbed a Schlitz from the fridge and went out on the back porch for a smoke to get away from the discomfort the holiday family shit and her asshole brother were bringing him.

He was silently cursing out Cupid and those deep, dark brown eyes when Bill, the older brother came out and asked if he could join him. “Be my fucking guest,” C.B. muttered.

“I’ll get right to the point,” Bill said, “I don’t like you and you better not break my sister’s heart.”

“I don’t like you,” C.B. said calmly, “So I guess we are even there. Now why don’t you leave me the fuck alone. I’ll worry about Suzy.”

“One more thing,” the black shoe navy puke growled, “Are you one of them anti-war protestors? If you say yes I’m liable to kick your ass and end this shit between you and my sister now.”

C.B. took a deep breath then replied in a voice that would’ve chilled Satan to the bone, “I served three tours in Nam, puke. I was a sniper and I killed a lot of people. You say one thing to Suzy or your family and you are dead meat. I’m only telling you to make a point. Forget this conversation or you might disappear. Now, get us a beer and let’s end this conversation real friendly like.”

C.B. didn’t have to return to work for a couple of days so he spent that night and those days at Suzy’s apartment. She couldn’t get over how much Bill had warmed up to him after being rude for most of the day and was surprised since he hated “longhairs.”

Now the whole fucking family liked his ass and all he wanted to do was hit the open road but that fucking Cupid’s arrow and those deep, dark brown eyes were in his way. Though Suzy finally said he could keep his hog, confident his wandering days were behind him.

That following Valentine’s Day night C.B. rode down from Guerneville to Martinez, a ride he could make in his sleep by now. Suzy was just coming out of the shower when he walked into her bedroom. They ended up fucking up a sweat and had to shower together before jumping on his hog and riding down to Alamo to a high-class steakhouse which Suzy had introduced him to when they first met.

It wasn’t the friendliest place but after their first time there everyone had the sense to be civil to them. That first visit C.B. signed the book since they didn’t have reservations and they went into the bar for a beer until a table was open.

The place was filled with fucking polyester jumpsuit, white patent leather shoes wearing fat cats, their blue-hair wives and spoiled rich kids evading the draft and their prima donna girlfriends.

The two of them were seated at a small table for two when a blue-hair seated at the table closest them with her polyester fat cat husband kept making snide remarks about Suzy and him.

She crossed the line when she said, “I can’t believe they allowed a heathen biker and his slut in here. I knew we should have went to the Country Club for dinner tonight.”

C.B. tapped the old fuck on the shoulder and very softly said, “If you don’t shut that fat ass cunt you are with up I’m going to be bringing some serious hurt down on you. In fact, I suggest you get your asses to the Country Club now.”

As he was on his third beer and Suzy her second he realized people who had arrived after them were being paged to tables to eat. He got up, went to the hostess and said, “You best have a table for me real quick or things could get real ugly in here. You wouldn’t want this to become a biker hangout would you?”

Suzy and him were quickly seated at a small table hastily placed near the doors to the kitchen. Not exactly the best seats in the house. It didn’t take much for C.B. to get them a better table.

There was several reasons he took Suzy their on a regular basis after that first night: the food was excellent and whenever C.B. called for reservations, which he made it a point to do, they were seated at what they had declared “their table.” It also delighted him that whenever they ate there they seemed to be the only ones who were comfortable and having a good time.

That night, after a meal of steak and lobster C.B. reached into the inside pocket of his leather jacket draped over the back of his seat and handed Suzy her Valentine’s present. She did the same then said, “Don’t peek until I get back from the women’s room” She then leaned over, kissed him passionately and said, God, you will never know how much I have loved you.”

He waited for her to return for what seemed like an eternity when the waiter placed the bill on the table. Tucked inside the folder was a note that read: Dinner is on me. I’m sorry to do it this way but I no longer love you. Please don’t phone or come by the apartment.

C.B. was stunned. He’d basically received a “Dear John” letter and it was cold-blooded as hell. Just like that, with no warning, she had yanked Cupid’s barbed arrow from his chest, ripping his heart out in the process.

He picked up the two gifts but left her leather motorcycle jacket draped over the back of her chair. It was just beginning to rain when he left the restaurant so he pulled his chaps out of the saddlebags, tossing hers to the pavement of the parking lot.

As he rode back to Guerneville the skies opened up and God and Cupid began pissing on his parade in torrents as he rode hard and fast until he reached his destination, the B & E bowling alley on the river side of the road from his rented cabin

He went straight into the bowling alley bar where a skinny kid that could have been the ghost of Hank Williams sang to the small audience of bar regulars who disliked bowling and ignored him.

The sound of the bowlers and their balls and the clatter of pins virtually drowned out the sounds of the singer’s voice and guitar coming from his small tube amp as the barflies wondered among themselves how high and hard the Russian river was running and if it would flood before this year’s rainy season ended.

C.B. sat at the end of the bar and listened to the singer’s sad songs as he opened Suzy’s gift to him. They had discussed having the singer perform at their wedding reception behind her oldest sister and husband’s barn on their thousand acre ranch just outside Martinez, a day that would never materialize.

He wasn’t surprised to see her gift to him was her engagement ring, wondering why he hadn’t noticed she wasn’t wearing it that night before she left him high and lonesome at the steakhouse.

After he was Goddamn good and drunk C.B. walked down to the river which was running high and hard and tossed the ring and the matching diamond necklace he had bought her for Valentine’s Day into the river, wondering how long they would take to reach Jenner-By-The-Sea where the river emptied into the Pacific ocean.

He gave his boss two weeks notice and began preparing for the open road again though it would be with a heavy heart, or so he thought. A few days later he was taking a piss when an excruciating pain that felt like razors following his urine as it flowed from his cock almost put him to his knees.

The love of his life had not only left C.B. sitting like the court jester at the steakhouse Valentine’s day night but had also left him with a heavy dose of the clap. More than thirty years have passed since then and C.B. has went through a lot of women and a few hogs but he has remained and will die a nomad.

Hustled Again by Brad Hamlin

“Huh?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“It is time.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No, I mean no! This isn’t what I was taught! This isn’t the deal!”

“It is the way.”

“Listen, one lifetime is enough! I’m not going back down there and do everything over again: the bone growing, the gut hunger, disappointment all the time, brushing all those fucking teeth, cleaning house and body and taking out garbage, getting up in the morning, going to work, all those drinks, drinking, drunk all the time, depression haunting the skin, rejection from people you don’t even like, the bad movies, bad music, bad jokes … Do you hear me? I can’t do it all over again! You live the life, you survive, you die, then you get the peace you deserve – the peace you earn!”

“Shall we review your record again?”

“Oh man, not that again!”

“Peace is not earned by living a common life. Peace is forged by learning.”

“Forged? You mean beaten and shaped like a sword under flame and hammer? That it? We’ve got to take the beating to learn something, to become something? Why?”

“Your soul is like a sword, yes. Each lifetime, if you learn in the positive aspect of soul development, you come closer to the light, then, one moment in the lifetimes of your experience, you simply become the light.”

“Bullshit! Why the hell aren’t I the light right now! Do you have any idea what I went through down there? Have you ever been to a poetry reading? Have you ever sat during a one-hour sermon that seemed like a lifetime? Do you have any idea how boring televised sports are – and no one seems to realize? Do you know how many commercials you have to listen to on the radio? Don’t I deserve a rest?”

“The rest comes for those who no longer require respite. Now go. It is time. You see the tunnel? Go there. It leads to the mother. Good luck.”

“Hey, it’s dark in there, bro. You sure it doesn’t lead down, like way down?”

“Are you scared?”

“Yes.”

“You see? You still have things to learn.”

“Well … any advice this time around?”

“Sure, stay away from the coffee shop poets and TV evangelists and … try to remember.”

“Remember? Remember what?”

“Your gardener is a piece of the light. The ice cream man is a piece of the light. The librarian is a piece of the light. The woman working at the DMV is a piece of the light. The man hiding in the shadows is a piece of the light. The children starving in their mother’s arms in foreign lands are pieces of light. And, well, you too.”

“Huh? What? Then why the hell can’t I stay? You said …”

“Next time, perhaps, you will not have to be reminded.”

 

The End

 

Heartbreak Makes the World Go Round by Mike Hammer

Three men, Harry, Jimmy and Tony are in a kitchen with a table and a ceiling fan/light. Harry paces back and forth while he talks, Jimmy and Tony are seated at the table. On the table are bills scattered everywhere, a toaster, gleaming silver, covered and surrounded with breadcrumbs. There is an open bag of bread and an open jar of peanut butter, the lid rests beside it on the table. Jimmy holds a butter knife in his hand covered with peanut butter, there is an unopened jar of marmalade jelly beside the peanut butter.

Harry: The fact is, love doesn’t make the world go round. Heartbreak makes the world go round. When you’re in love, you sit at home and you hold hands, maybe you rent a movie and you cuddle. It’s good to be in love, it’s good to fucking cuddle and hold hands and have someone to keep you warm at night but that’s not making the world go round. Heartbreak runs the world. Heartbreak is the mother of all invention. Heartbreak is the reason men climb mountains and build bombs. Heartbreak looks the same on any block, in any part of town, in any nation. Heartbreak is the great communicator.

Everyone needs a good heartbreak before they start living. Once you’ve had your heart broken you can go out and build mountains, start storms, save rainforests, you can get to it with a vengeance. People who don’t know heartbreak sit at home and read books and write songs about heartbreak. People who don’t know heartbreak have never had a beer, cried it all out and then drank those tears, because they missed them.

It’s girls who’ve had their hearts broken that comb the city streets on weekends, in skimpy outfits. It’s guys who’ve had their hearts broken that go into peep shows in Times Square.

I don’t think we know enough about heartbreak, we gotta study it, harness it and use it. We gotta be able to swallow heartbreak, we gotta eat it like one of them mad motherfuckers who sprays mace in his own eyes and smiles about it.

I wanna see a movie where the ending is a heartbreak, and the beginning is a heartbreak and everything in between is a heartbreak. The whole thing is a heartbreak. The soundtrack is a heartbreak, the scenery is heartbreak, heartbreak is the damn dialogue.

Jimmy: Why the hell do we wanna study heartbreak? Nobody hopes for heartbreak, they hope to fall in love. Don’t you think that once you’re in love, it’s a beautiful thing and we should work on …

Harry: Shit dude, you study your opponent to beat him in a game or on the battlefield – so if you wanna be in love you should study heartbreak so you can beat it, but, fuck love. I mean, haven’t you been listening to me, fuck love. I mean love, love is a great thing but heartbreak, that’s a motherfucking spectacle. Heartbreak is the greatest show on earth. It’ll drive a person from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean, down one side of a cliff and up the other, it’ll make you insane. Now that’s what you want.

Tony: Harry, man, it’s just a, you know, ah, a, uh, whaddaya call it, figure of speech. Just a figure of speech “Love Makes the World go Round” a lotta people say it. I’m sorry I said it, ya know. I’m sorry. It’s just a figure of speech.

Harry: Yeah, just a figure of speech.

 

Driving North by F. John Sharp

A French-Canadian woman I have never met waits for me in a small town by the Hudson Bay, tending bar or selling bait, slapping away friendly hands of the local men she has long ago spent her interest in. She has tried to leave but aging parents are black holes and escape velocity is impossible when one has only maneuvering jets.

My GPS is in the glove box, any road north will do. I’ll stop when I hit water. I can live in my truck till the weather turns, taking odd jobs, fishing for dinner, killing time on a bar stool until yesterday and last week are last month and last year, until I stop wondering if anyone still cares that I’m gone. Escape velocity is easier when gravity is so impotent.

One day I’ll sit at the right bar or buy the right bait, and dull eyes will spark. I will struggle to understand her accent and she will give me a cot in the back. I will explain to her there is always gas in the rocket, and she will say maybe tomorrow or sometime longer than hat.

T-Cut by Zack Wilson

I could tell that something bad was going to happen almost as soon as I pulled up outside the open warehouse door. There was just such a look of idiocy about them all in there, the over-bright yellow lights far too yellow in an October blue evening.

There were a couple of balloons floating around amongst the vast metal shelving units that the three lass in royal blue boilersuits kept tapping around to each other. They looked like they were meant to be otherwise engaged in tasks around the place, tidying the place up at that time most likely, but they kept moving around to tap these pink balloons to each other, grinning like wanking gorillas and whooping and yelping.

I stopped the engine of the truck and got out, asking the bloke who looked oldest what was going on. I’d waited for two minutes in the cab, watching the three of them, but no one had shown any curiosity towards me at all. Now, they stood watching me in a little line, vacant smiles in place.

“I’ve come for the pallets,” I told the oldest, baldest one out of the three, the one who was standing in the middle.

“Oh, in the corner,” he grinned, and waved his left arm like a drunk on a bike trying to tell me where he was going. Then he turned and disco danced towards some pallets which were untidily heaped behind one of the shelving units, in a grimy corner of the warehouse just out of the thick yellow light.

One of his mates lopped up alongside him, clapping as they both began to sing a version of Heatwave’s ‘Boogie Nights’, with some Bee Gees style high notes thrown in. The third stood laughing, his man breasts quaking above his flabby belly. He was a short man with a long torso, and his face shook nearly as much as his chest, his short spiky hair, stuck with gel, sitting strangely still.

“Could you get them over to the truck on a forklift for me then, please lads?” I asked, concerned. At least the question stopped the singing and dancing and that.

“Yeah, no problemo, your dudeness,” the oldest one says, giggling. There was a party going on here for which I hadn’t turned up in time.

“Good,” I replied, “I’ll go and back the truck up a bit to make things easier.” I went outside and reversed the vehicle so it was right up against the open door. When I came back inside the oldest idiot pointed with a flourish to the back of the building, where the third man, a little scrawny fella with short brown fuzz for hair and a heavily freckled face, was hand lifting the pallets into a stack on the forks of a forklift truck.

I headed back there to help but I soon realised I wasn’t needed. The kid wanted to do all the work himself. A thin lad with not much to his physique, he seemed quite strong as he hefted the pallets with some abandon onto the stack. I watched him for a little while.

“That stack’s too high now,” I told him, “it’s big enough. Take them over and we’ll make two trips.”

“No. It isn’t,” he replied, and threw another two pallets on top, whistling ostentatiously. “Now I will drive them to your truck,” he announced, making the sound of a farty trumpet fanfare with vibrating lips. He got the forklift going and I followed him wordlessly, back towards the door and my truck.

I noticed a black Audi sports car pull up outside and park by my truck. No one else seemed to have seen it. By now, they were all singing a Bee Gees song and clapping the forklift driver along on his way. He started swerving it around in little S bends, as though he was driving through a chicane, the wheels squeaking.

“You see!” he interrupted his singing, “no problem with this stack matey!”

I heard the door on the Audi crunch and open and then slam shut. I saw a middle-aged chap in casual suit climb out, the smile on his face switching to a look of anguish. I followed his eyes and then backed quickly away as the forklift swerved in front of the Audi and came to a jarring stop. The stack of pallets swayed in disaster film slow-motion, then the top one fell onto the bonnet of the Audi, denting it, then sliding down its length, leaving long white scratches in the black paint. Then another fell slowly, creating another dent, more scratches. Then a third, but that just hit the gravel of the yard and broke at its corner.

The owner of the car barked, “What are you doing, Stoat!”

I gulped back a laugh at the kid’s nickname.

“It’s alright gaffer,” Stoat stuttered, “a bit of T-Cut’ll sort that out.”

The gaffer rubbed his bald head in anger. His mouth opened and closed, and then he marched into the warehouse, pointing at the oldest of the three and making an emphatic gesture which suggested they both move to the back of the building quickly.

I shook my head and rubbed both my eyes with my flat, dirty palm, rubbing downwards until I could feel the edges of my eye sockets redden. I sighed and resigned myself to a long wait. Someone else needed those pallets.