We met in the steaming shadow of an aspen grove not a hundred yards from the river. The sound of the water on the rocks hovered around us. Stanley hadn’t bothered with a blindfold this time and I was only now recovering from the anxiety of its absence. As we slalomed the green-white trunks, the spongy forest floor beneath our feet, Ivan materialized before us with the sorcery of a snake. He smiled and offered his open hand. Good to see you, he said. Likewise, I told him. We only have about fifteen minutes, he said and sat on a lichen covered boulder and patted the spot near him for me to join. Stanley turned about and wandered toward the morning glow fingering the edge of the hill to the east. I wasted no time and placed the recorder between us and began, So you will defend this forest with firearms? Of course. You must know that to many of my readers this will sound extreme. Most of your readers don’t know the meaning of extreme; they are digested in the belly of extremism and yet refuse to see it. Tell me why a forest? why not a group of endangered bears or some such? What is the difference? Well—. Let me explain a few things, Rick: we are but one on a list of billions of organisms on this planet, possibly third on the list in population but first in cognizance with full knowledge of how fragile nature is; human culture isn't fragile in any way; the smart ape can take a beating; no one ever talks about that, how the human organism as a whole can take a vicious ass kicking and come back to build civilizations that will eventually butcher one another until power is balanced... elephants can't do that; as intelligent and—within a slim list of parameters—more advanced than us as they are, they are deprived of the right to protection? no, sir; in fact, if we choose to examine it as such, it becomes a political issue; you think politics is weird now, wait till whooping cranes get to lobby for the end of their hunting season; but if someone is gonna poison elephants and the consensus is those elephants should be protected, I elect to use the full strength of our weaponry: guns; guns are a natural development of human culture; if human culture chooses to use that advancement to protect defenseless life, I'm prepared to step flatfooted onto that slippery slope, sir, and defend these trees; see, it's about empathizing with defenseless forms of life; there is no need to level these trees, not anymore; we can build homes and furniture and anything we damn well imagine out of other more renewable things; we're a big stupid organism in the throes of spasms of growing pains, the psychosis of gaining wisdom; there's a balance coming, Rick, I just don't think you and I will get to see it even though we will have built it.
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She knew enough about everything to have a concise opinion of it all and this trait more often than not left him deflated and in love with her. Maybe that's what he had fallen for, not for her really but the state of helpless buffoonery with which she rapt him in every exchange. Could he possibly have some unconscious addiction to sitting in front of her at dinner, looking stupid, feeling stupid, knowing the right words lay just beyond his grasp in the darkened confines of his head? He wondered why he put himself through it. He cursed his inability to see beyond her. He wondered if this was what confused young men blamed on witchcraft for hundreds of thousands of years before him. I’m not going out there, Nate, he told me with a smile. You have to, I said. No, I don’t have to do anything but make a decision and I’ve made it. You have to go, I told him, you promised me, Sean. I lied. He draped the ammo belt across the back of the chair and sat down at the table. What if I told you I lied to you too, that I have a gun? You would never lie to me, Nate, you’ve never told a lie as long as I’ve known you. Sean smiled again and closed his eyes, pulling his stocking cap from his bald head. The sweat suddenly flooded his features. They’ll come through the doors and the windows and the goddamned floor, Sean, they’ll destroy you before you ever know they’re here. You don’t think I know that? he told me. I know you know it and it’s driving me crazy! I’m soft, Nate, I’m old and soft; I wish I’d died in the desert. I couldn’t ignore the visions of Sean’s profile against the dark contrast of his rifle, the smell of the gunfire, the cammo, the blood, his red eyes and the soot and grease across his face, the wind, the sand, the heat, the vulgarity, the frustration, the tears. Nate, he said, I’m too old to go back to being a kid. But you’re too young to die, I told him and immediately regretted it. Are you fucking kidding me, Nate? I don’t mean it that way, Sean. Yes, you do, you fuck! Sean—. I’m too young to die? Sean! This is all I’ve ever known, you piece of shit! He lifted the rifle, removed the magazine and furiously thumbed out the cartridges one by one and they rolled across the uneven table and gathered around my feet. I’m a fucking killer! he screamed, and so are you godammit! I made a gentle attempt for his shoulder but he slapped my hand. What the fuck was I supposed to do, Nate? come back here and stab a fucking badge into my chest and spend my days shooting kids and niggers like you did? that’s what I was supposed to do? Sean—! Fuck you, I’m old and I’m soft and I can’t live this way anymore! This is crazy! Goddamright it’s crazy; it’s all fucking crazy so what’s the difference now? I couldn’t look at him. I stared down at the tips of the bullets in strange constellation on the floor, worthless now, worthless as the tiny shards of glass and wood splinters among them. I’m gonna leave now, I said, I’m gonna get in my car and go home; I can’t watch this happen. He was crying. I walked through the house stepping around the debris and opened the door. I think he told me he loved me before I closed it behind me but I’m not sure.
I always thought I’d go before you, Stephens spoke to the flat unassuming grave marker, bits of freshly cut grass sprinkled across its plaque. His eyes blinked slowly under the jetlag. He could smell twenty-four hours of unwashed skin waft from under his collar as memories of his brother in Mexico—where they’d spent the most time together—stitched his thoughts like flashes from a blackout drunk. The time they met a registered nurse from Florida in a seaside saloon. She was drunk enough for Karl to convince her to remove twelve stitches from a recent knife wound in his chest, both of them taking a shot of tequila for every rigid thread plucked from his hairy pec. The time he fell from a hotel balcony and cratered the windshield on a diplomatic limousine. The time he took a bullet in the rain in an alley in an alcoholic stupor. The sponge they left in his gut struggled for twenty years to finally get him. Stephens laughed and shook his head. I thought for sure I’d be hit by a bus or a taxi, he spoke to the grave, I thought I’d get cancer again but nope; here we are, you down there, me up here. Children were playing somewhere down the hill outside the cemetery gate. Stephens closed his eyes and listened to their laughter echo among the stones until it was gone and he walked for an hour before he checked-in his hotel. He was leaning over the sink with his face in the mirror, pressing the swelling on his cheek when she appeared in the doorway, tears still travelling to her chin. I’m sorry, she said. He didn’t answer. He found his eyes disturbing, staring back at him, older than he had ever seen them, a crack in the iris here, a yellow stain there. He wanted to scream. He wanted the strike the glass. But his years kept him steady. Those childish reactions were bodies strewn on the path behind him. So many bodies. So many mistakes. So many lost opportunities. He wondered how festering his body would look in a few years on her path. How far into her body count would she have to peer to see his rotting corpse? Not very far, I suppose, he said aloud, confusing her, wringing more tears from her eyes. I’m so sorry, she told him, I didn’t mean to hit you. Yes, you did, he said. He finally snapped the tether holding his eyes to their reflection and turned to her. You meant everything and so did I. Wes could feel his heartbeat in his gums pushing his teeth around. The others stood watching the sky. The sound of the jet engines distorted by distance and Doppler consumed every ear and the heads tilted, faces grimaced, eyes squinted. One of the captains came sidestepping from his tent with his face instantly arrayed in the same upward manner. Wes imagined them all a strange grove of trees searching the haze for direct light. The wind shifted and pushed the smell of the fires in the barracks over him. The captain had made his way to Wes’ side and gave him a concerned glance. Not ours is it? the captain said in his crooked accent, moving his flattened hand to his brow in a vain attempt to defeat the light shattered by the low clouds and smoke. That’s a bomber, captain, definitely not ours. Should we be concerned? If we were the target, we wouldn’t have time to be concerned. The capital? Probly. The captain yelled out for his assistant to radio the remnants of command still bunkered in the city. Captain, Wes pushed himself to his feet, revealing the crusty body of black blood in which he’d been sitting for almost an hour, we should get these men into the forest. I have orders to hold the camp, Barton, we have to stay. With what, captain? And they both scanned the grove of standing bodies, the dust and smoke lifting around them in dramatic swirls and ribbons. I have orders, Barton. The same dolts who gave you the order to move on the village? Wes reached for his pack and rifle then handed the weapon to the captain. Here, Cestmir, you’ll need this... unfortunately, you’ll also need ammo, can’t help you there. Barton? Then Wes dragged his dead foot through the wreckage of the trucks and disappeared into the trees.
Stay with us, she said, her eyes smiling through the space between the books and the shelf. We both want you to stay. My hand began shaking and the book fell open on tiles beneath me, Mao’s thin eyes staring up from the page at the space between the books and the shelf where Jen had vanished. Last night happened, didn’t it? she said, materializing behind me, her hand creeping around my waist like a snake, fingers flicking my belt loops. There are worse things than being alone, my father’s voice sounded off from some dusty crawlspace in the back of my mind and I thought of Hector out on the water somewhere, jacking off to her picture in the darkened hull of that boat. What about your husband, Jen? What about him? her voice was gone, replaced with the one she used on the phone with her landlord and the girls at the store. I can’t stay, Jen. Her hand came to rest at the button on my jeans just inches above my rebellious hard-on. You’re a piece of shit, she whispered. And now we both stink, I said but she wasn’t there to hear me.
So after that fiasco, I’m now reminiscing with a woman I don’t know and with whom I have no discernible connection. She drinks mimosas for two hours spinning a yarn of events spanning a 2001prom to a terroristic threat arrest only 3 months ago. In rhythmic succession, she removes four bobby pins from her hair, checks her appearance in the reflection on her cigarette case and unbuttons the next two buttons on her blouse. I can see the seam riding the curve of her bra. I estimate her breasts a full size smaller than the garment conveys. Her tongue touches her lips at the end of coy questions or overstated references to her independence as a woman. I ask her if she drove and might I catch a ride uptown? We share a moment where we might both offer the fact that she is too drunk to work a wheel but it passes in the westward path of the vibratory jangle of her keychain as she extracts it, her arm a tiny silly crane lifting the spangle and chrome initials from a lizard-skinned vessel filled with makeup and crepe gum wrappers. In the parking lot she disarms the alarm and winks, works the keys into my hand and slips into the passenger seat of the BMW with a clumsy landing. Her house is huge and elegant but no more huge or elegant than any of the others.
She had skills. I’ll give her that. She strolled in there as if she knew the future, as if she had information that neither these three horny saps nor I was privy. It smelled of socks and mildew. As promised, the big one began unfolding cases filled with DJ equipment and her saccharine smile went to chiseling his defenses. The other two seemed to engage a strange ritual movement about the joint. I figured it for nervous energy. There were other girls en route after all. One of them tossed me a beer and I found a blank space to lean against the wall. She winked at me and ran her hand up the big guy’s neck. Yer a weirdo, dude! she yelled at me. The other three gave me a glance. What’s weird about me? I asked her just as the equipment cranked through the huge speakers. What? she yelled. I said--! Oh nevermind! and she shined me off for the spiraling turntable and flashing monitor, leaving me somewhat diminished from their point of view. She had skills. And when the limo arrived and the big metal door swung open again and the murder of dark hair and black dresses flooded the room as if it had splashed from an overturned barrel, she made her move and whispered in the big one’s ear then disappeared into the rear of the room where she would enter the restroom, open the linen closet and kick her way through the sheetrock into the hidden walk space where the molly sat in vacuum sealed bundles stashed in black garbage bags which she would then shove effortlessly out the rear window after cutting the screen with her tiny cleaver. I had no problem slipping out to meet the bags behind the building. None of them noticed my escape against the flow of other girls and chaperones. She definitely had skills. I might have fallen in love with her then. That’s probably when it happened. I can remember her coming out the window feet first and hissing at me about time. Yeah, that’s when it happened.
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Archives
April 2024
Chrysalis, a growing collection of very short fiction.
That Night Filled Mountain
episodes post daily. Paperback editions are available. My newest novel River of Blood is available on Amazon or Apple Books. Unless noted, all pics credited to Skitz O'Fuel.
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