Previously Published Short Fiction

This is my only published science fiction piece. Betsy was a great fan of Star Trek and sci-fi in general. In the fall of 1993 she was sick with a bad cold at the same time I was laid up with a sprained ankle. One morning, she was sitting sadly on the couch and said how she wished she had something new to read and didn’t feel like reading anything in the house. Neither of us could go out to the library so I wrote her a 6,000 word science fiction piece called “Ruined Castles” which I then developed into a 60,000 word sci-fi novel with the working title “Spheres”. She got to read “Ruined Castles” the next day; “Spheres” took me a little longer but I did finish it that weird week when she was sleeping most of the time and I couldn’t walk. We lived at 4 Grove Street then, a second-floor walk-up apartment, and I couldn’t get down the stairs with the ankle so I just wrote whenever Betsy and I weren’t hanging out or watching TV. I never did anything with either of them since I’d written them just for Betsy.

The last science fiction piece I wrote after those two was this one – Beyond the Reach of Time and Circumstance – which was Betsy’s favorite of the three and she encouraged me to publish it. It came out in an anthology called `Sparks’ by Earthbound Fiction Publishing.

Beyond the Reach of Time and Circumstance

            I, alone, carry the memories now.

            Alone on a star.

            In a black void.

            Empty as loneliness.

            But I’ve – won.

            And when the Colonel chose me I was a soul in bliss.

            Blessed with the opportunity of a lifetime.

            To live –

            Forever.

            To journey through trackless space and see what no human eye had ever seen before mine.

            To fly – to truly fly –

                                                                        – just like Amanda wanted to.

            “Ok, we’re down to the three of you. Three. And it’s a hard choice, Ladies, let me tell you. You’re good. Well, hell, you’re the best. It’s just that now we gotta find out who’s the best of the best.”

            Yes. `The best’, he said, hands on his hips. Freshly shaven, of course, his brown hair going silver tousled by the wind out on the tarmac. The pen in his white shirt pocket was silver, I remember, and too large. It made the little pocket droop. It wasn’t a regulation pen. Strange for the Colonel.

            The best, he said.

            Yes.

            But the best at what?

            “Your name?”

            “Nicole Baumann, sir.”

            “Age?”

            “Thirty, sir.”

            “Married?”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “Children?”

            “Ye – no. Not anymore. Sir.”

            “Can you explain -“

            “A little girl. She – died.”

            “I’m sorry.”

            “Thank you, sir.”

            “Good health?”

            “Yes, sir. Top shape, sir.”

            “Well, we’ll see about that after the pre-training. And what makes you want to enter the program?”

            “I – well – it’s never been done before. I – no one’s ever – done it before, sir.”

            “Yup,” he said, sitting back in his chair behind the broad desk. “That’s right. No one has. Ever pause to consider why?”

            I never did.

            I suppose that’s the thing about desire, isn’t it?

            If you pause too long to consider why you want that thing you want more than anything you might just realize you’re making the biggest mistake of your life.

            So you don’t pause. You don’t think. You think too long and you lose the will to win.

            The will to win.

            And I won.

            Strapped inside a capsule and catapulted at the speed of light past Pluto.

            An explorer of worlds unimagined.

            Riding the stars in my nuclear reactor chariot scaring up life forms and beeping signals back to a world I know does not exist any longer.

            “You’re out of your freaking mind. You are out of your mind.”

            “Trey, if you’d just – just stop a moment and listen.”

            “To what? Why don’t you just tell me you want to blow your head off? Hey, I’ve got the three-fifty-seven right down the hall, Nik, right in the bedroom closet. How bout you just trot down and get it? Here’s the key. Here’s the god damned key to the box, Nikki. Why don’t you just trot down the hall and save time?”

            “You’re not listening to me! It’s the chance of a lifetime, Trey. It’s -“

            “This is the chance of a lifetime,” he said, standing in the middle of the living room, pointing with his finger down at the blue carpet. “This. How many people you think get this? Huh? How many people we know live together under a roof and know, really know, they’re supposed to be together forever?”

            “But – but it won’t last forever. It could – we both know it could – end. Any day. Any – second.”

            “She’s gone, Nikki. I hurt too, ok? I think that’s a hurt never goes away. I don’t think it should ever go away. But that doesn’t mean you stop living. Doesn’t mean you give up and get in a ship that takes you out of your life.”

            “This is the greatest honor the Air Force can give. This is my life.”

            “It’s mine, too. I’ve lost a daughter and now I’m supposed to – `support’ you taking yourself away from me? I’m supposed to – what – be happy I could lose my wife?  What are you doing? What the hell are you doing?”

            “It’s my job.”

            “It’s not. You just want out and you’re too chicken to say it. The program won’t even take you, anyway. You’re too old.”

            “I’m only thirty.”

            “Yeah. And that’s too old. Not for flying jets, no. But it sure is for space travel.”

            “I’ve – already been accepted.”

            “What?”

            The blue of the carpet was so deeply dark. It looked so much lighter in the show room.

            “What did you say?”

            “I’ve – already – been accepted.”

            “Well. Huh. Well, well.” He seemed to wilt. A tall, strong plant suddenly blighted by a frost. There in the living room in his white uniform, the black belt, shiny silver buckle.

            “I guess there’s – nothing to say anymore.”

            “Don’t be so upset. I could still not be the one they choose to go.”

            “You’ll be the one. You will.” He looked up, into my eyes. “You’re the best.”

            The best –

                                    – at winning.

            Winning whatever I wanted to win.

            I joined the Air Force right out of high school. I was top of my class. Valedictorian. Could’ve gone to any college I wanted.

            But that was never for me.

            That kind of – safety.

            Feet on the floor behind a desk somewhere in an office.

            Not for me.

            Whatever I’ve ever wanted to do, I’ve done. And I never let anyone stand in my way. Anything I wanted to win; I’ve won. And I never let the thought of losing pass across my mind. Every girl at the Academy wanted Trey Baumann; only one got him.

            And there were no consolation prizes for the losers.

            Never are.

            I hate losing.

            I hate losing anything and I won’t let anyone tell me what I can and cannot have.

            They told me I couldn’t have a career and a child.

            Well, I did.

            They told me I couldn’t manage being a pilot and being a parent.

            But I proved them all wrong.

            I always wanted to fly – and I did.

            I was the best.

            The best.

            There was nothing I could do that day.

            It happened too quickly.

            Amanda. Mandy.

            She wanted to fly, too.

            And she did.

            “Look, mommy! I’m gonna fly again. Watch!”

            “You just be careful. Daddy comes home and finds you with a broken arm it’s not going to be Christmas for you.”

            Putting my presentation down on my desk, turning, “I thought I told you to stop jumping off the couch.”

            Coming out of the study in our housing unit on base, third floor apartment, straightening the front of my uniform, adjusting my tie, passing by the blinking Christmas tree in the corner.

            She was perched on the back of the couch, arms out for balance, silhouetted against the dying December sky outside the tall pane of window behind her.

            Outside brakes screeched and a horn sounded loudly.

            She was startled.

            I remember seeing that look cross her face.

            A second.

            She was there for a second – that look crossing her face –

            And then she was gone.

            “Amanda!”

            She went backwards, arms out, into the sky, like a stricken bird caught by a howling hurricane blast.

            And there was the broken window and the glass tinkling on the floor and the wind blowing.

            “Amanda! My baby, my baby, my little baby.”

            Alone

            On a star

            In a black void.

            You travel at the speed of light, you know, time changes. Oh, not for you.

            We can all only know our own reality, after all.

            But time changes – for them.

            It’s always worse for the one who’s left behind.

            If I climbed into my ship right now and headed back I’d find weeds where my garden grew.

            And Trey Baumann. Lieutenant Baumann. He must be, what, three hundred years dead by now.

            I wonder if he married again. Had a family. Is there any trace of him left behind? If I climbed up into my ship – right now – and headed back – would there be – anything worth heading back for?

            “I suppose I should say congratulations, Captain Baumann. You’re our man – or, woman, rather. You’re heading out.”

            “Thank you, sir. I consider this the honor of a lifetime, sir.”

            “Do you. I consider it the sacrifice of a life, myself. But that’s the service. What it calls for. Maybe I’m just getting too old for this and – cynical. But I don’t see what rocketing off into the abyss of space is gonna profit anyone.”

            “Begging your pardon, sir, but don’t you think this program could bring us benefits that – well – things we can’t even imagine? Sir?”

            He nodded. Brown hair laced with silver and his face looked gray above the white uniform.

            “How’s your – husband dealing with this now? Any better?”

            “We all have things we need to adjust to, sir. He’ll be fine.”   

            “And you?”

            “As I said, sir. I consider this the greatest honor of my life.”

            He pushed his fingers against his eyes and sighed, nodding.

            “Report to green unit O-four hundred tomorrow, Captain. Dismissed.”

            “Yes, sir.”

            Her coffin was small and white with gold trim.

            She would have thought it lovely if she could have seen it.

            The day was a beautiful blue above and the snow lay all around, blanketing the graveyard. Small white hills atop each stone. A crow landed on the barren limb of a nearby Oak tree and cried. And I cried, too. And Trey. Everyone. We all cried under the long blue sky and the breeze blew a December chill and I felt frightened she was cold all alone in that small white box and all I wanted was to climb in there beside her and hold her and hold her and never let her go for an eternity.

            “You’re talking about eternity, Nik. Forever. I’m – never going to see you again. You understand that.”

            “Who cares? Who the hell cares? I can’t live this through. Every day. Every single day I’m afraid. Afraid you won’t come in that door like you always do. Every – single – day.”

            “That’s life. For Christ’s sake, Nikki. That’s just life. That’s what we all live in. Every day.”

            “Yeah? Well, I’ve got a winning ticket. And I’m punching it.”

            “Don’t you care anything at all for me? Don’t you care -“

            “Can’t you see that’s why I’ve got to do it? We have it all, we have everything and – and we’re going to lose everything. Just like we lost Mandy. That’s what happens. You lose. You lose everything. Well, not me. I don’t lose.”

            “But – can’t you enjoy what we still have? Look what – every day brings to us here – the good things we’ve got together.”

            “Loss. Pain. Meaningless misery. Every good thing gets taken from you. And then you get taken from you.”

            “That’s all you can see? That’s all you’ve got with me?”

            “That’s all there is – finally. Who cares how much I love you when it can all end, any day, in a second?”

            “You think you’ll live forever going into outer space? You think you’re gonna conquer death? You think – she won’t follow you wherever you go?”

            “I think I’m not going to lose. I’m not. I won’t have anything anymore to lose. Just me. But it’s my choice. Mine. I won’t have to wait around for the day you fall out some window or get hit by a car.”

            “Those things could never happen, Nicole. Never.”

            “Oh, no. Most things never happen. One thing always does. To everyone.”

            And has it happened?

            Of course it has. Must’ve.

            Three hundred years dead by now.

            Not even a memory, probably.

            How well do you remember anyone from three hundred years ago if he didn’t start a war or invent gravity or write a sonnet?

            Who remembers Trey Baumann back there on earth? A good man with a crooked smile who liked to watch tv in bare feet and drink grape juice with ginger ale?

            And who remembers Amanda Baumann either?

            A little girl with black hair she wore pulled back who chased after butterflies across the long green expanse of the park down the street and spoke proudly of being a second grader.

            She didn’t write a poem or become Joan of Arc.

            She never had the chance to do either.

            And I, alone, carry their memory.

            The girl who left me behind – and the man I did the same to.

            Light years on light years and forever apart from them, I replay those memories I have and they live again –

            Beyond the reach of time and circumstance –

            Even alone

                                    on a star

                                                            in a black void

                                                                                                            I’ve – won –

END

This piece is, unfortunately, based on an actual experience of a friend of mine now long gone. I wrote it one morning in my upstairs study and, soon after I’d started, I became aware I was really hungry. If I’d been writing downstairs, in proximity to the kitchen, I’d probably have just hopped up for a quick snack but I was way up in the back of the house in my little writing room and, further, Betsy had guests over and I would have naturally had to stop and talk with them, however briefly, and that would have pulled me out of the story.

So I just wrote the piece, getting hungrier and hungrier all the way through. A number of friends who have read it have commented on how Alex’s need for a drink is so visceral it made them want a drink too. This is because I was so incredibly hungry when I wrote it. I’ve thought of this experience many times since because we all like to be comfortable but I don’t think that’s always a good thing for a writer – maybe it’s never a good thing for a writer – because comfort does not translate to action. And by “action” I mean anything other than laying on the soft couch watching TV. I think a writer needs a certain level of discomfort to create and, sometimes, the greater the discomfort, the better the piece – which I believe is the case with The Last Chance. It was published by the online magazine Halfway Down the Stairs in 2011. You can still find this piece online but they changed the last line without asking me and I did not approve of the change in the least. This is the original as I intended it.

The Last Chance

     As soon as Alex Pritt woke up that morning, he knew the film was gone. He knew it instantly, all at once, even before he scrambled out of bed, hugging his nightmare head with both hands and squinting in the bright October sunlight streaming through the window of his apartment. He dug through his camera bag by the door fiercely and then sank down on the floor, his face in his hands.

     “Oh God,” he whispered. “Oh God.”

     He was finished. Done. Roscoe had said so. Pritt could hear the words now singing through his mind, behind his eyes. He was just leaving Roscoe’s office yesterday when Dean had stopped him.

     “And Pritt,” he’d said. “No drinking.”

     Alex had paused, his hand on the doorknob. “Of course not,” he’d said. “I never drink when I’m working.”

     Dean sat back in his chair and said, “I’ve known you a long time, Pritt. Remember that. So, ok, you don’t drink on a shoot. But I’ve known you to drink after. When the show ends tonight, your night ends. Go home. After you’ve put that roll of film in my hands you can shoot yourself for all I care – but not before.”

     “Sure, Dean.” He’d opened the door.

     “Alex,” Dean stopped him. “I’m not kidding. We’ve known each other a long time, ok. But I’ve got a publication to get out here. You’ve screwed up for the last time -“

     “That wasn’t my fault, Dean,” Alex said, moving back into the office. “It was a madhouse at that concert, man. You know that.”

     “I know I had to pay three times the amount I cared to for that freelancer because you broke your camera. You broke the camera because you were drunk.”

     “I wasn’t. I -“

     “Alex,” Dean said. “Listen. It’s only because I know you know Vickie Holt I’m letting you have this assignment. Don’t screw it up. That’s all I’m saying. If you don’t have the first drink you can’t have the fifteenth. Remember that.”

     “Sure, Dean.”

     But he hadn’t remembered that. He’d met Bren Wilson, the college intern who’d be assisting him, and they’d gone to the show. It was Vickie Holt’s farewell performance. She was Country’s hottest star who was retiring at thirty-three, a millionaire two times over, to settle down and start a family. She and Alex were friends from high school.

     The show had been as spectacular as promised and Alex had snapped some of the best pictures he’d ever done. Vickie had even let him and Bren into the dressing room, into the tour bus. He’d gone everywhere she went. Bren carried his bags for him and asked him questions and listened to him, to the voice of experience, of genius.

     “I can’t believe I’m really working with you, Mr. Pritt.”

     “It’s Alex.”

     “Alex. I mean, man, you are a legend.”

     “Thank you,” he’d smiled.

     She was a slim, provocative woman of twenty-two with lovely breasts, blonde hair, and tight jeans. Alex was flattered she thought so highly of him. He wanted to take her back to his place and bang her until she squealed.

     He remembered that. He remembered wanting her. He remembered her closeness and the smell of her fresh, clean hair. The show had ended. She suggested they go somewhere for a drink and Alex, his senses floating on the waves of her perfume, her smile, the adulation in her eyes, said, “Sure. Why not?” And the night dwindled into a blur.

     Alex stared down at his camera bag. He’d given the film to Bren, maybe. But why? Why would he have done that? Why wasn’t it in his bag?

     “`Cause you got drunk,” he spat. “Damn it!”

     He squinted up at the clock on the wall. Ten o’clock. He got to his feet, walked to the kitchen and downed three aspirin. He made coffee, feeling tense and jittery inside. He took the Bourbon off the shelf and hesitated over the coffee mug.

     “Jesus,” he said, putting the bottle back. “The hell’s the matter with you? That’s what got you into this mess.”

     He took a sip of coffee.

     Dean’s gonna fire me. That’s what’s gonna happen. And no one else’ll pick me up. Not after this. Jesus. Maybe if I knew where we went. Did I give it to someone? I kinda remember holding it. I’m not sure though. I wonder if we went to the Last Chance? If we went to the Chance maybe Bird saw me give it to someone. But why in hell would you give someone the film, for Christ’s sakes? And why would you take a chick like Bren to that hole?

     “Oh, shit,” he shook his head and looked again at the Bourbon bottle quietly resting on the shelf. “What the hell.” He opened it quickly and poured a generous shot into his coffee. He drank and sighed slowly. There. Much better. Much, much better. Sweet.

     He lighted a cigarette and the phone rang.

     “Yeah.”

     “Hey, how you feeling?” Bren’s voice bright.

     “Hey, Bren. Doing ok. How you?”

     “Great. Man, last night was a blast. You were so cool, man.”

     “Glad you had a good time,” Alex said. Wish I was there.

     “Look,” she said. “You need help developing the rolls? I’d like to help.”

     Alex stared down at the cigarette burning in his hand. He felt suddenly like crying. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I’ve gotta see Dean Roscoe at four. Sometime before then.”

     “Well, when? I’d really like to help. I mean, if that’s ok and all. I don’t want to get in your way or anything. It’s just -“

     “Jesus,” Alex sighed.

     “What? Hey, are you ok? Is something wrong?”

     “Bren,” Alex said. “I -“

     “Is it something I did? Did I do something wrong?”

     “No, no. Nothing like that. Don’t think anything like that. You were great. Great.” He sighed. If he could only remember. Where had they gone? “I’m just still waking up is all. Wild night, huh?”

     “Oh, it was like a dream. Meeting Vickie and then the Sante Fe.”

     The Sante Fe. Yes! He remembered. They’d gone to the Sante Fe after the show for a few Coronas.

     “Yeah,” he said, brightening. “Great place.” The Sante Fe. They opened at eleven thirty. If Tony was on he’d let Alex look around. Bren was talking but he hadn’t heard her.

     “I’m sorry. What?”

     “I said your friend Bird is a great looking guy. I mean, that guy could be a movie star.”

     Bird. So they had gone to the Last Chance. If I gave the film to anyone it was Bird.

     “Yeah,” he said. “He’s a great guy. I’ve known him for, like, a hundred years.”

     “So, what do you say? Can I help? I’d really like to.”

     “Sure, sure. No problem. How about one? My place.”

     “I’ll be there.”

     Alex gave her directions and hung up. It was 10:45. He’d go to the Chance first. Probably wasn’t that drunk at the Sante Fe. And Bird’s on today cause Leon’s vacationing. I remember that. Ok. This could be all right.

     He showered, shaved and dressed. Then he called Dean Roscoe. Marlene patched him through.

     “Pritt. Where’s the film?”

     “And a good morning to you, too, Dean.”

     “Where’s the film?”

     “How about four o’clock?”

     There was a pause on the line and then Dean spoke. “Fine. That’s fine. Tell you the truth I was all ready to hear there was a problem.”

     “No problem at all. Bren’s coming over at one and help me develop the rolls. She was a great help last night. Great girl.”

     “Glad to hear it.”

     “Yeah,” Alex said. “So – four.”

     “Four. Hey, good job, Alex. I can’t wait to see the product.”

     “Me too.”

     He hung up, grabbed his camera bag, and left. Vickie Holt’s band was long gone, he was sure, but the star herself might still be relaxing at the Sheraton. He remembered that. The band was going on before her. He felt sure, now, that he would find the film; but if he didn’t, he’d better have something – like a few shots of the star reclining on her hotel sofa.

     He pulled up in front of the hotel and ran in. Flashing his press pass at the front desk he asked, “Vickie Holt up yet? I’ve got an appointment.”

     “You got an appointment, you’re out of luck,” the clerk said. “She’s up and two hours gone.”

     “No.”

     “`Fraid so. Sorry.”

     Alex nodded and, sighing, walked out to his car. He felt a lump in his throat which he couldn’t seem to swallow down and his stomach was tight and angry. What if he couldn’t find it? What if – “Stop it,” he whispered. “Stop.”

     A drink. That’s what he needed. A shot. Just to calm his nerves. No. Not until you’ve got that film in Roscoe’s hands. Then you can drink. Then you can shoot yourself for all he cares, remember? Take Bren out to dinner after. That’ll work. Get to know her better. Damn, she’s sweet.

     Alex was getting a hard-on thinking about her. He stepped up to the phone booth near his car to call her and realized he didn’t know her number. He didn’t know why he wanted to call her suddenly.      What am I doing? I gotta find that film. Bren’ll come later. Find that film.

     He ran his tongue around his gums. His teeth felt like dry, white stones baking on a desert highway. He shook and felt something tugging at his jaw. Just one drink wouldn’t hurt. That shot in his coffee had done him good. Set him up right. It was almost twelve. Bird would set him up right. He hopped in his car and headed for the Last Chance.

     The bar/restaurant wasn’t open yet when he got there but he rapped on the window anyway. He knew someone would be in there setting up. Ron Burdick, known as Bird, opened the door and nodded at him. He was a tall man with dark hair and a bright smile.

     “Alex,” he said. “Didn’t think you’d be looking so good today. You were pretty well-oiled last night.”

     Alex walked past him and Bird shut the door and locked it.

     “Sorry about last night,” Bird said, striding toward the bar. “But I had to cut you off. You were getting a little rowdy.”

     Alex didn’t remember that at all. “Sure,” he said. “I understand. No problem.” He sat down on a stool and cleared his throat. He stared at all the bottles on the shelves across from him. Bird followed his stare and looked down at the bar.

     “Bird? Did I -? Did you, uh, find some rolls of film here last night?”

     “Nope,” Bird said, standing tall behind the bar, looking into Alex’ face.

     Alex felt all the hope drain from him. Down from the top of his head, down his face, his arms, chest, down his legs, his toes, a tangible thing moving fast, down into the floor of the bar, down and down and down. He dropped his face into his hands and shook his head.

     Bird looked down at him for a minute and then said, “I didn’t find rolls of film. I didn’t cut you off last night either. Though I should have.”

     Alex looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

     “I told you I cut you off just now to see if you remembered the night. You don’t, do you?”

     “I – of course I do. I-” Alex felt the heat rise up in his cheeks. “I -“

     Bird stared at him, arms crossed. Alex sighed and slumped against the bar.

     “No,” he said. “I don’t. I don’t remember a damned thing after the show. I don’t even remember being here.”

     “I thought not,” Bird said. He reached into his jacket pocket, took out three small, black canisters of film, and put them down before Alex on the bar. Alex stared at them then looked up at Bird.

     “What the hell is this? What are you doing?”

     “I took the film off you,” Bird said.

     “What the hell?” Alex stood up. “What the hell you do that for? Jesus Christ, Bird! It’s not fucking funny.”

     “No, it’s not,” the tall man said, leaning back and crossing his arms again. “Not funny at all. You were knee-walking drunk last night, man. And it’s not the first time. You were waving that film all over the place, yelling about how you had the exclusive pics of Vickie Holt’s farewell concert and how you fucked her back in high school and she gave great head. Shit like that.”

     “I didn’t.”

     “You sure did, my man.”

     Alex ran his hand over his face and shook his head. “Was Bren with me the whole time?”

     “No,” Bird said. He came around the bar and began setting chairs down on the floor. The room was dark and silent save for the short rap when the chair legs hit the wood of the floor. Bird paused and looked at Alex. “That all you can think of? That’s all that bothers you about last night? Whether some chick was around to see you making an ass of yourself? That’s all that bothers you?”

     “No, not all. It’s just -“

     “She left around midnight,” Bird said, returning to the chairs. “Wanted you to go home with her. She was a little drunk. Little flirty. You said you had to stay. Told her she was too tempting a treat. You didn’t trust yourself to behave like a gentleman, you said, or some shit like that. She thought you were too cool. That’s what she kept saying. How cool you were. What a real gentleman.”

     Alex nodded. He remembered that now. So cool. Right.

     “I called her a cab,” Bird said. “And once she was gone it was like someone pushed your `Asshole ON’ button. Like I said, I should’ve cut you off.”

     “Yeah,” Alex said. He looked down at the floor. He sighed, reached out, held a canister of film in his right fist.

     Bird put the last of the chairs on the floor, walked over behind the bar, and began filling small, brown bowls with chips and pretzels.

     “I’m sorry,” Alex said, looking down at the film on the polished bar. “I – Jesus.” He blew out a long sigh. “It won’t happen again, Bird. Really.”

     “I know it won’t,” Bird said, putting down two bowls of chips. He placed his hands on the bar and looked at Alex. “At least it won’t in here. You’re cut off.”

     “What? Bird, hey, come on.”

     “Come on nothing. You come in here you can have water, coke, or ginger ale. That’s it.”

     Alex shot up and glared into the other man’s face. “What the hell’s gotten into you? So I got a little drunk, so what? I was having fun. That’s what people do in bars. You’re a bartender. You should’ve maybe seen that once or twice.”

     “They don’t get drunk like you get drunk, Alex.”

     “You’re cutting me off after one night?”

     “No,” Bird said. “It’s not one night. It’s lots of nights. Should’ve done it long ago but you’re a regular. I’ve known you a long time. And you’re a hell of a nice guy and a hell of a talent and you’ve got a hell of a problem drinking. So I’m not serving you anymore juice.”

     Alex glared at him and wanted to hit him. He wanted to feel the man’s face under his fists.

     “Alex,” Bird said, gently. “Do yourself a favor. Get some help.”

     “Fuck you, man,” Alex said. “Who the hell do you think you are? Get some help. I don’t have a problem, man. You’ve got the problem. I don’t know what’s made you such a tight-ass all of a sudden but -” Alex pocketed the film and turned away toward the door. “Fuck this. Fuck this and fuck you. I don’t need this shit hole to drink in anyway. There’s plenty of bars better than this around.” He turned back a moment and said, “And I bet the bartenders there don’t steal the customers fucking film either.”

     He marched to the door and yanked on it – but it was locked. He unlocked it angrily, pulled it open, and walked out. The October sun made the street seem sharp and brittle. Alex shielded his eyes and strode angrily to his car.

     “What an asshole. What an asshole! Thinks he’s fucking Dear Abby all of a sudden. Thinks he knows it all. He doesn’t know jack shit.”

     Alex drove swiftly though the brittle streets of Sanford. His rage was like a tangible thing inside him, beneath his skin, shaking him, hurting inside like a hot soup he’d swallowed too fast. His hands shook as he fumbled a cigarette to his lips and lighted it.

     A drink. That’s what he needed. A drink. Not a fucking lecture on proper bar behavior. No. Gotta get home. I’ve got the film. Gotta get the dark room ready. Bren’ll be there soon.

     He stopped at the red light on Market and stared out down the street ahead of him. He felt the rage now jumping about inside his chest. His breath was coming in quick, short rasps and his teeth gritted and felt like old chalk in a dusty corner.

     Fuck this. Who am I kidding? I can’t work like this. I can hardly drive the fucking car.

     The light went green and he drove straight, then around the block and parked in back of the Sante Fe. He got out and walked quickly in the back door. Tony was behind the bar.

     “Hey, Mr. Pritt,” Tony said. “How’s it hanging today?”

     “Hey, Tony. Set me up, will ya?” Alex slapped a five on the bar.

     “Will do,” Tony said. He poured a mug of beer from the tap and set it before Alex. Then he poured him a shot of Bourbon and set it down next to the beer. It made a small tap on the bar and the amber liquor jiggled in the brightly polished shot glass. “There’s your poison,” Tony said, smiling. He took the five away to the register.

     Alex picked up the shot with shaking fingers and tossed it down his throat. He grabbed the mug and drank it quickly, then landed it hard on the bar. He sighed. The medicine was instantly at work. He felt his mind soften, his stomach relax with a quiet, comfortable glow. His teeth were there in his mouth but he suddenly had no need to take special notice of them. He smiled and slowly shook his head.

     “Let’s try that again, Tony,” Alex said, slapping a twenty down on the bar.

     “Hit the spot, hey, Mr. Pritt?”

     “You don’t know, man. You just don’t know.”

     Tony snatched the glasses up and walked away. Alex sat down easily on the stool and lit a cigarette. He looked around the room now, noticing the other people quietly having lunch. He checked his watch. It was almost one but he’d leave after this drink. It wasn’t far to his place. Maybe he’d be a little late but so what? No biggie. Hell, he had to be in shape to work. And after what that scene with Bird had done to him, he needed a drink or two just to calm down.

     “Fucking Bird,” he whispered, shaking his head. He laughed.

     Tony put the beer and shot down in front of him and hurried off with the twenty. Alex picked up the shot and smiled.

     Three days later he would remember taking that drink. And he would remember taking the next. And that’s all he would remember.

END

I wrote this story while snowed-in one morning when Betsy and I lived at 4 Grove Street, Staatsburg in January of 1994. It was a big snow, no one was going anywhere, and she was caught up in reading a Star Trek novel so I decided I’d write something. I noticed the name “Oculato” in the return address of an envelope on the counter and heard “Mr. Oculato was insane…” in my head and then asked, “Okay, why is Mr. Oculato insane and who thinks that he is?” and that started the story.

The piece has been published at least four times, three of them under the title “The K-Mart of the Mind” and once under the title “Civil Serpents” which is how most people know the story. It may have been published again under either title. I don’t know. I stopped keeping track of it. It’s easily the short story I’ve made the most money from and I do like it but it’s never been one of my favorites. The whole “K-Mart of the Mind” routine I got from my brother Tom who once told me a story about a guy he knew who made his secretary say that phrase.

Civil Serpents

       Mr. Oculato was insane and his three employees knew it. Mr. Oculato didn’t seem to know it himself but it was clear as window glass to Fanny, Sue and Darien. Yet no one wanted to say anything. What, after all, would they do if the truth were told? First of all, they were simply enjoying their lives too much to see it end now and, then, no one wanted to see Mr. Oculato locked up in some psycho ward. He was essentially harmless, they told each other, and certainly much more tolerable in his present state than he’d ever been before. Still, at times lately, he could be a bit disturbing.

       “He asked me the other day if I was aware of my tongue,” Fanny said, in a whisper, standing with Sue and Darien by the coffee maker.

       Fanny was Mr. Oculato’s personal secretary in the Veteran’s Affairs Office in the County Office Building. Sue and Darien were case workers.

       “What’s that supposed to mean?” Darien asked.

       “Aware of your tongue?” Sue said, the steam from the coffee fogging her thick glasses.

       “That’s what he said. That’s just what he said. I walked in there with the briefs and he says to me, `Fanny, have you ever become aware of your tongue?’ And what am I going to say to that?”

       “Well, what did you say?” Darien asked.

       “I said what I always say when he starts talking crazy. I said `Of course, sir, we’re all aware of that from time to time.'”

       “And what’d he say to that?”

       “Well that’s what I’m telling you. That’s why I think he’s getting worse. He said `Really? Really, Fanny?’ in this weird way and he stood up behind his desk and looked down at me, he seemed a lot taller than usual, and he says then, in this low whisper `Incredible, incredible,’ and I got out of there as quick as I could.”

       “Wow,” Sue whispered.

       “Wacko,” Darien said.

       “Don’t tell him I said anything. In case he should ask you.”

       “What are we going to say?”

       “I don’t know. I don’t know what you’re going to say. Just don’t tell him I said anything.”

       “Of course not,” Sue frowned, “We’re in this together, after all.”

       “That’s right,” Darien nodded, “That’s right.”

       They broke from the huddle by the coffee maker and returned to their desks, each one considering this new intelligence. It was not at all startling, simply the latest progression in a string of bizarre and disturbing utterances by their Supervisor-In-Chief.

       All of the three, when they thought about it, could remember precisely when it had begun. Perhaps he had been crazy all along and simply concealed it. But they all remembered the day when they were called into the inner office for a special meeting and knew, collectively for the first time, that Vincent Oculato was, at least, a little strange and, at most, clearly insane.

       “I want to discuss a new policy with you, my friends,” he had said, pacing behind his desk, “It concerns our Northern sister country, that country which lies above Maine and Montana, that country which is not even a country but is rather a territory of these United States and simply is not yet aware of the fact.”

       The three had glanced at one another.

       “Do you mean Canada, sir?” Darien had asked.

       “That’s it!” Oculato whirled on him. “That is precisely what I am talking about. The use of that word in this office and in any dealings we may have concerning this office, in which that name is uttered. Oh, for a thousand tongues.”

       Mr. Oculato turned away from them and stared out his window at the sky, his hands clasped behind his back. He had remained in that posture for five minutes when Sue cleared her throat and frowned at Fanny.

       “Oh, there you are,” Mr. Oculato said, turning back around. “Yes, well, that’s all then. Back to work with you.”

       Sue and Fanny began to rise but Darien, his face squeezed into a mass of confusion, held up his hand to speak.

       “But, Sir, what about the new policy? You said you had some new policy about Canada?”

       “That’s it! Now say it.”

       “Say what?”

       “You heard me, say it!”

       “Canada?”

       “What did I just tell you? Let’s hear it.”

       “You said there was a new policy about Canada but -“

       “I don’t want to hear that name again unless you’re going to follow the new policy in usage.”

       “But you didn’t explain the new policy,” Darien said. “You only explained that you were going to explain it.”

       “Did I?” Mr. Oculato pulled his head, somehow, down into his shoulders and sucked in his cheeks. He stared down at the desk.

       “Yes,” he said. “Well. I can hardly credit that statement, now can I?”

       Darien found he had no response to what Mr. Oculato had said. Fanny and Sue sat back down slowly.

       “Since Mr. Trott has so thoroughly wiped from his mind, tabula rasa one might add, my recent policy regarding that northern territory of these United States, suppose one of you ladies explain it to him?”

       Fanny looked at Sue. Sue looked back at Fanny. They both looked at Mr. Oculato standing behind his desk looking at them.

       “Well?” he said.

       “Could you please repeat it, Sir?” Fanny said. “I’m not sure of some of the points.”

       “Breathes there a man with soul so dead that never knew he was ahead?” Mr. Oculato cried. “How many points are there? There are two. Two, Fanny. And supremely simple to assimilate into your procedures. Point one, and let me make this perfectly clear, I am not a crook, is whenever you mention that afore mentioned pseudo country you are to add `the K-Mart of the mind’. Is that clear?”

       The three of them did not dare look at one another now. They stared at Mr. Oculato and hoped a punch line was coming. Fanny even glanced at the calendar on the wall hoping she would see it was April first; it was not.

       “If it is clear, then say `Yes, Mr. Oculato, we understand.'”

       “Yes, Mr. Oculato,” they all said in unison. “We understand.”

       “Fine,” he smiled. “Point two is equally simple. If, having uttered the name of that fascistic den of iniquity, and having properly named it ‘the K-Mart of the mind’, you should then mention it again, for any reason, within ten minutes of having first mentioned it, and you must then say `and, you know, it is a communist country.’ Is that also clear?”

       This time Darien began to laugh.

       “Okay, Mr. O.,” he said. “What’s the gag?”

       “What is, Mr. Trott?” Mr. Oculato said, unsmiling, hands behind his back.

       “What’s this really?” Darien smiled. “Come on.”

       “You find something here amusing, Mr. Trott? You find it amusing that the great government of these United States is entering into pacts and treaties and business agreements with a heretical sect of bogus Huguenots? You think that’s something to laugh about?”

       “Uh – ” Darien stared up at his supervisor wide eyed. “No sir?”

       “You’re damn right,” Mr. Oculato said. “And never let it be whispered through these hallowed halls that Vincent John Oculato, veteran of these many years, stood by and did nothing while his country was sold to the frogs. Now let’s hear it.”

       “What, sir?”

       “Let’s hear it, Mr. Trott. You first.”

       “Uh, Canada is the K-Mart of the mind and a communist country.”

       “Wrong. Very wrong. You watch and learn and do it again. Now you, Miss Weaver.”

       “Canada, the K-Mart of the mind and it is a communist country.”

       “Wrong. But better than Trott. Now you, Fanny.”

       “Canada, the K-Mart of the mind. Canada, and, you know, it is a communist country.”

       “Correct. Now the three of you together. Let’s hear it.”

       “Canada, the K-Mart of the mind,” they intoned as one. “Canada, and, you know, it is a communist country.”

       “Correct. And the first time I hear one of you utter the name without following the new policy it’ll be down and give me fifty for all of you. Dismissed.”

       They could each remember stumbling from the office, each wanting to cling to the others for support, their minds trying to absorb exactly what they had just encountered. They had all reached their desks, only going so far as to exchange looks with each other, no one daring to speak of Mr. Oculato’s strangely luminous eyes nor his new policy.

       Since that day there had been more new policies. F.D.R. could not be mentioned unless one prefaced the name with “Stalin’s lover”. Mexico was to be referred to as “Southern Texas”. The ACLU became the Anally Clogged Loser’s Union. And every policy was followed by the three of them without question.

       After all, they reasoned together, they had good jobs with very dear benefits. Mr. Oculato wasn’t hurting anyone and, as time went on, they found his madness worked to their advantage. When Darien wanted to catch a matinee at the local lyceum he’d tell Mr. Oculato that he felt he should go out into the field to see what Canadian, the K-Mart of the mind, subversives were stirring up in the entertainment industry.  Mr. Oculato praised his courage and commitment. When Sue wanted to go shopping or Fanny wanted a day home with a book, they were researching the insidious infiltration of the economic foundation of these United States by leftist Mall merchants or communist writers.  Mr. Oculato saluted their initiative.

       Their lives began to unfold more beautifully and perfectly than they could have dared ever imagine. After all, before his madness, Mr. Oculato had been the paragon of slave drivers. Every brief was scrutinized and was usually sent back to them to be re-written. Their sick time, personal time, and vacation time was closely monitored and, when Mr. Oculato felt they were “getting away with too much leisure”, he would pile more work on their desks. If, having taken two consecutive days of sick time, one of them should come in looking healthy, he would demand a doctor’s note and, if none were forthcoming, he would take away two of their personal days. Of course, as Mr. Oculato often pointed out, if they did the work correctly the first time or were not so often concocting schemes to avoid re-working briefs, everyone would get along much better. 

       The job paid well and they were securely entrenched as permanent workers protected by the union. They always fought him and had the personal days returned or found a way around the doctor’s note, but life in the office of Veteran Affairs had seemed a constant battle to them until that miraculous day of the new Canadian policy.

       Now they looked forward to work because they hardly engaged in any of the labor for which they were paid at all. They ate donuts and drank coffee in their small world atop the sixth floor of the office building in peaceful solitude and happy abandon; until the day Mr. Oculato saw the word `Canada’ on an official document prepared by Darien – and there was nothing after the word to qualify it.

       “Mr. Trott,” Mr. Oculato had said. “What does this mean?”

       “Well, uh, Mr. Oculato, I didn’t, uh, recall in your-your policy that, uh, we were supposed to follow the procedure on written documents.”

       Mr. Oculato had folded his arms and stared down severely at his clerk, saying nothing.

       “Well, Sir,” Darien had said. “I didn’t want to be presumptuous. I was, uh, I was only following your direct orders, Sir.”

       Mr. Oculato had begun drumming his fingers slowly on his folded arms, pursed his lips, nodded slowly.

       “Now hear this,” he had cried aloud in the office.

       Fanny and Sue looked up from where they’d been pretending to work.

       “The policy previously outlined regarding that subversive state on the northern border of these United States is to be interpreted in such a way that it shall govern all uses of the name of said subversive state whether it be referenced orally or in written form, within these walls or in your own homes, on the streets and in the schools, from this day forth and forever more, world without end, amen.”

       He had then turned from Darien’s desk and walked steadily into his own office.

       “Well,” Darien had then said. “I guess fun time’s over. It won’t take long for the V.A. to figure something’s wacky in Sanford.”

       “Oh,” Sue said. “And me and Jeff were going to Cancun next week. I have it all set up. I told Mr. O. I was going to check the boundaries of Southern Texas. Now what do I do?”

       Fanny squeezed her face together in a thin smile of contemplation.

       “We just do double the paper work,” she said. “We prepare a copy for Mr. Oculato and a real copy to be sent out.”

       “What about his signature?” Darien asked.

       “What about it? I can sign his name as legibly as he can,” Fanny said, tossing her head proudly, “And this is the first time in my life I’ve found time to read through Durant’s history books without haste. I’m not about to give it up now.”

       “So, all right,” Darien said. “Double the paper work.”

       “I can still go to Cancun?” Sue asked.

       “Go right ahead,” Fanny smiled.

       That crisis passed and Sue returned from two weeks in Cancun. The second crisis arose at a multi-county V.A. business meeting. Fanny, as Mr. Oculato’s personal secretary, was to read certain progress reports to the assembly. The reports had been gone over carefully by Sue to make sure the word `Canada’ appeared in none of them. Sue, however, still giddy from her two-week paid vacation, (which, of course, appeared on none of the office records) had not been quite careful enough.

       On page five Fanny looked down to see the dreaded word at the beginning of the next paragraph – and it froze her tongue with sudden heart tripping fear.

       She looked up to see Mr. Oculato staring at her expectantly. She continued.

       “Jeremy Quick, former adjutant, has retired to his girlfriend’s home in the province of Quebec. He writes us to -“

       “Fanny,” Mr. Oculato said quietly. “Where is Quebec?”

       The other men and women assembled there looked at one another and laughed easily. That was old Vince, all right, a real hard-ass, a real stickler for detail, old Vince.

       “Quebec is a province in the country on the northern border of the United States, Sir,” Fanny said.

       “And where is that?”

       “North of us, Sir.”

       “What’s it called?”

       “Canada, the K-Mart of the mind.”

       “What is it?”

       “I just told you, Sir.”

       “I didn’t hear.”

       “Canada, the K-Mart of the mind. Canada, and, you know, it is a communist country.”

       Fanny blushed deeply as the room exploded in laughter. She continued, red-faced, reading the report and, when she was finished, she slunk to her seat.

       When the meeting was over a tall man in a dark suit approached her.

       “What was all that K-Mart of the mind stuff?” he asked.

       “A little joke we have around the office,” Fanny said, blushing. “It all started with a typo I let slip past. Mr. Oculato never lets me forget it.”

       “I see,” the man nodded. He did not smile. He turned and left the room. Fanny saw him out in the hall way speaking with Mr. Oculato.

       The next day Fanny convened a meeting with her two co-workers.

       “He’s clearly going to do that every time. Any time he wishes. The documents were easy but how are we going to explain this?”

       “I think the explanation you gave yesterday was great. A private joke,” Sue said.

       “But a private joke won’t go over too well if I’m reading about someone’s death or some law suit filed against one of the doctors. We have to think of something.”

       And so they did. They would take the blame. If it came down to it they would mumble the phrase, burst into hysterical laughter, embarrass and humiliate themselves in any way necessary in order to hold onto this pleasure palace which had once been their toil. They all looked forward to work too much now to go back to the way things once had been.

       And now it had been seven months of bliss in the office and it seemed Mr. Oculato was beginning to get worse. This might not be such a good thing, they reasoned. He might actually become dangerous or attract attention from the V.A., and in some manner that they’d all be exposed. So they sat at their desks, mulling over this new `Are you aware of your tongue’ episode and considering their afternoon delights when Mr. Oculato came through the front office door.

       “Good Morning, Mr. Oculato,” Fanny smiled.

       “Sir,” Darien said. “Morning.”

       “Good Morning, Sir,” Sue chirped. “Would you care for some coffee?”

       Vincent Oculato stared at each one in turn, shook his head, smiling, and walked into his office.

       They all looked at one another.

       Mr. Oculato, sans coat, emerged from the office, poured himself a cup of coffee, and regarded his employees with bright, twinkling brown eyes. He leaned comfortably against a filing cabinet and sighed, nodding his head. They looked up at him.

       “Is everything all right, Sir?” Fanny asked.

       Mr. Oculato kept nodding, looking at each of them steadily.

       “Well, I knew it was too good to be true,” he said. “I knew there had to be a rotten apple in Eden.”

       “What do you mean, Sir?” Darien asked.

       “What do I mean, Darien Trott?” Mr. Oculato said.

       “I don’t know.”

       “What do you know?”

       “I don’t know that either, Sir.”

       “You don’t know that either.”

       “No, Sir.”

       “Miss Weaver, what do you know?”

       “Nothing, Sir, nothing at all.”

       “I see. And Fanny? You know nothing as well?”

       “I’m not quite sure yet what I know, Mr. Oculato. If you could explain your reference to the rotten apple in Eden, perhaps then -“

       “Oh, yes,” Mr. Oculato said. “Perhaps then. Perhaps then I’d wring a confession from the viper who has slithered among us these many months, crawling and creeping and smiling that serpentine grin and all the while whispering sweet secrets to the enemies of the Republic for which we stand.”

       The three were silent. They waited for the rest of the shoe to drop.

       “Struck dumb, are we?  Naked in the garden and God’s calling.”

       He dropped his half full cup of coffee into the tin garbage pail near his feet. Reaching beneath his suit jacket he drew out a small .38 pistol. Fanny gasped. Sue turned white. Darien was frozen with fear.

       “One of you denies me, one of you betrays me,” Mr. Oculato said. “And what am I to do about it?”

       “Mr. Oculato,” Fanny said. “Please. Put the gun down. Let’s discuss this.”

       “All right,” he said, easily, dropping the gun on Darien’s desk. “What do you want to discuss?”

       Fanny felt the way she did when she drove the back roads to work on snowy days, unsure what the next moment was going to raise from around the bend.

       “You just said one of us was a traitor.”

       “I said that? No.”

       “You did, Sir,” Sue said. “I heard you.”

       “Really?”

       “Yes,” Darien said, grabbing the gun up from his desk and holding it tightly in front of him. “And I did too. Now you hold it right there. Fanny, call the cops.”

       “The cops?” Mr. Oculato said. “Whatever for?”

       “I know the definition, Mr. O.,” Darien said. “You’re a menace to yourself and you’re a menace to others. You’re going away.”

       “Am I?”

       Fanny hung up the phone.

       “They’re on their way,” she said.

       “Good,” Darien smiled. “We’ll just wait here till they come.”

       “What is the matter with you three?” Mr. Oculato said. “You’re completely insane.”

       “We’re insane?” Sue snorted. “Look who’s talking, Mr. Walking Nut Cake.”

       “I think I should take exception to that remark, Miss Weaver,” Mr. Oculato said.

       “Take whatever you want,” she said. “You’re a nut.”

       “I feel obliged,” Mr. Oculato said, “before the police arrive, to tell you that all of your behavior over the last few months has been very strictly monitored. All the double documents you’ve manufactured, all the movies you’ve seen, vacations you’ve taken, sick days you’ve used. You three, I’m afraid, are fired.”

       “You can’t fire us,” Darien said. “We’re civil servants. We’re protected. You’re crazy.”

       “I’m not the one giggling and choking at county meetings in front of thirty people, am I?” he said. “I’ve never been seen – the way all three of you have – babbling that Canada is a communist country and the K-Mart of the mind before assemblies of doctors and lawyers.”

       “What are you saying?” Fanny asked. “What are you doing?”

       “You three slugs are so firmly entrenched in these jobs it would take an act of God to pry you loose. I’ve taken the liberty of prodding God’s hand somewhat,” Mr. Oculato smiled.

       “Drop the gun!”

       The command came from the door. Darien dropped the pistol and spun around, hands in the air.

       “Who called?” the first officer said.

       He was followed by a second, taller, officer.

       “She did,” Mr. Oculato said. “At my direction. I’m Vincent Oculato, the supervisor here.”

       “And what’s the problem here, Mr. Oculato?” the first officer said, while his partner cuffed Darien on the desk.

       “I’ll come with you to the station and fill out a full report,” Mr. Oculato said, sadly. “But I should tell you frankly that these two women need also be taken in for conspiracy. They’ve all been in this together for months.”

       “In what?”

       “I can’t imagine how it happened but, somehow, they’ve completely lost their minds. I believe they have been planning some sort of illegal take-over of this office. If your partner can handle the situation out here I’ll take you into my office and show you certain documents and memos which will substantiate what I say.”  

       “You okay out here, Jeff?” the first officer asked the taller one.

       “Sure,” the tall one nodded.

       Fanny and Sue stood together staring dumbly at their cuffed co-worker on the desk. The officer named Jeff advanced upon them.

       The first officer followed Mr. Oculato into the office. There he was shown memos, in Fanny’s script, detailing the subversive movements of the Analy Clogged Loser’s Union. There was Sue’s description of Mexico as `Southern Texas’ and her complete surveillance of communist sun bathers. There was Darien’s thick report of the influence of Canadian, the K-Mart of the mind, infiltrators in the movie industry as evidenced by such films as   “Jean de Florette”, “Danton” and “Green Card”.

       “This stuff is weird,” the officer told Mr. Oculato. “Why haven’t you reported this to someone before this?”

       “I have,” Mr. Oculato said. “I can give you the names and numbers of my superiors, all of whom have seen these poor souls at meetings acting in the most peculiar way, all of whom I’ve spoken to about this problem, all of whom can show you the letters and reports I’ve written them over the last seven months. Mr. Phelps, my immediate superior, will tell you that the first day Fanny began behaving strangely I purposefully exposed her at a business meeting he attended so he could see for himself what I was dealing with. Still, I asked him not to terminate them immediately.  I felt sorry for them, thought I could help them. Today when he drew that pistol I knew I was wrong.”

       “If the woman was in with the other two why’d she call us? Why’d she listen to you?”

       “People will listen to anything,” Mr. Oculato said. “If you just say it in the right way.”

       The officer nodded, collected the documents, and walked to the door.

       “You’re coming down to the station?” he asked.

       “Yes,” Mr. Oculato said. “As soon as I close up the office.”

       When the police were gone, with Fanny, Sue and Darien in tow, Mr. Oculato lighted a cigar and stared out his window at the sky.

       “Yes indeed,” he sighed, smiling. “You just have to say it in the right way.”     

END

I wrote this story for my friends Aaron and Jenna Fairfield in 2002 based on a story Jenna told me about an incredibly annoying salesman they had to suffer with one day. Jenna is a fantastic storyteller and I could not stop laughing when she unfolded the whole absurd tale to me one day when we were hanging out. I tried to catch her voice and timing in this piece but failed. I was happy they both liked it when they read it though. When I read it, I always hear Jenna’s original in my head so it was a difficult piece to revise since I always thought it was better than it actually was. I finally left it alone long enough so that I was able to return to it with editor’s eyes instead of writer’s and polished it up.

It was published by an online magazine now long gone out of business – I don’t even remember their name – in 2011 under the title “Death and the Salesman”. It was then rejected when I offered it to another place as a reprint because they objected to the title sounding too much like the famous Arthur Miller play. The next place I offered it to said the same thing. So I changed the title but then lost interest in the piece and stopped sending it out.

The Evangelist of Abundant Life

Karen Hunter stood on the pale blue linoleum of her kitchen, her boyfriend Carlton Tibbs beside her, and glared angrily down at the long legs and torso of Bradley, the water filtration salesman, as he bucked and struggled underneath the sink cabinet.

            “Almost got it,” his voice sounded, muffled, from the cavern into which he’d crawled. A white jug of bleach, a green box of dishwashing detergent, Brillo boxes, a pack of new sponges, various cleaners, were all sitting on the floor to either side of the occasionally bucking legs.

            Karen looked down at the small watch on her wrist, nudged Carlton with her elbow. He looked over at her and she tapped her watch, rubbed at her stomach, bulged her eyes out at him.  Carlton nodded quickly, shrugged. Karen waved her arms in the air,

gestured at the legs, shaking her head. Carlton nodded quickly again and, again, shrugged.

            Christ, Karen thought, gazing down at all the boxes, jugs, and bottles pushed around on the floor by the sink – it had all sounded so simple when they’d answered the phone.

            Lesson to be learned? Don’t say yes. Don’t ever say yes.

            It was last week when Carlton had scooped up the phone, just as they’d been about to head out for dinner, and, as Karen listened, waiting impatiently at his elbow, mouthing `who is it?’ over and over again, Carlton had agreed to have a salesman for the Abundant Springs Clear Water Filtration System visit them and provide a `short demonstration’. As he’d lingered longer – and then longer – on the phone that evening, Karen now reflected, it should have occurred to her that their definition of `short’ probably was vastly different from her own.

            But it had all sounded so simple: they would sit through a forty-five-minute demonstration – no obligation to buy – and, for their time, they would receive five hundred dollars in travel coupons. Travel coupons would sure come in handy now – she needed a vacation – and, really, what was forty-five minutes when five hundred bucks was at the other end of it?

            But glancing down at her watch again she was forced to recognize that forty-five minutes had come and gone two hours ago and, Christ, the guy was still here. He wouldn’t go. He was turning out to be worse than all the parasites in the water he kept talking about. Every other pitch out of his mouth since he’d come in the door was death, death, death – they were all going to die – everyone would die – everyone who didn’t have an Abundant Springs Clear Water Filtration System.

            Guess if you had one of these things you could live forever, she thought.

 Man, she thought, they should invest in development of a filtration system for assholes. They’d be millionaires in weeks.  There was clearly no shortage of assholes in Tarot, Florida, all right. Today, Tarot, tomorrow – the world!

She realized she should’ve known right off – right away there was something wrong with the guy – she just hadn’t let herself recognize it.

She’d opened the door to his brisk knock (she’d already known someone was there with Marvin and Simon O’Christ, their two mutts, barking from the back dog yard) and he’d introduced himself as Bradley Kincaid. He stood on their small front porch, black cases and long bags dangling from his hands. He was tall, black hair and deep brown eyes in a slim face. He grinned warmly at Karen and she, ushering him in, introduced him to Carlton.

“This is Brad,” she’d said.

“That’s Bradley,” Bradley said, shaking Carlton’s hand. “My mother didn’t name me any `brad’. `Brad’ – that’s a nail. I’m not any nail.”

“You’re tall like a nail,” Carlton said, smiling.

Bradley laughed. “Now you are too comical. You are comical, you know that? Is he always this comical?”

“Always,” Karen had said, nodding.

And there – right there – she should’ve known she was dealing with someone who clearly showed the promise of the Supreme Life Waster – but, well, five hundred bucks, after all.

“So,” Bradley said then, looking around. “Let’s get down to the business at hand. I’m sure you good people have places to go and things to do.”

“Oh, we’ve got time,” Karen said.

“That’s good,” Bradley said. “That’s real good. I’m real glad to hear you say that. Everybody these days in such a hurry. Hurry here, hurry there, hurry, hurry, hurry in a rush all over the place. So I’m real glad I’m not dealing with two people like that, God, yes.  `Cause what I’m presenting here isn’t anything you just want to rush on over in, like, ten minutes, you know? This here’s important. If I was to ask you how important your life is to you what would you say – `oh, it’s, like, ten minutes worth of importance’ – would you say that?”

“Depends on what mood I’m in,” Carlton said, hands in his jean’s pockets, shrugging.

“You are the comical one. I can see that clear. You the comical one and she’s the serious one, that what I’m dealing with here? Ok, ok I get the picture – good cop-bad cop. I know the drill. I know what time it is.”

Karen sighed, tried to smile.

“But listen up Good Cop/Bad Cop `because I think I’m going to tell you something’s going to save your lives. I tell people that and they think `What? It’s only water. You’re only talking about water, right?’ Well, wrong, people. Very wrong. I’m not `just talking about water’ – I’m talking about life. I’m talking about a priceless investment in your health. Now there’s maybe other salesmen with some other so-called-product will tell you how great their filtration system is but, listen, there is just nothing, nothing, like the Abundant Springs Clear Water Filtration System. Nothing. We are a totally science-based, fact-based, faith-worthy water system and, I tell you true, we are here solely and completely for folks like you. Completely. Other water systems will only tell you about statistics and how great they are but we tell you the truth. The truth about the whole of life. For example, did you know our bodies are over seventy percent water? Did you know that?”

Carlton shrugged. Karen shook her head.

“I didn’t think so,” Bradley said, and seemed to do a little dance there in the hall by the front door. “Well, it’s true. We’re all – all of us – mostly water. So that’d make the water that’s outside of us our kin, don’t you think? Wouldn’t that make sense? And the water `out there’ that’s our kin, well, it wants to visit with the water in here,” he slapped his chest with both of his long hands. “And shouldn’t we treat visiting kin right? I can’t say, just looking at you here, if you come from big families or small – I’m from a large family myself – but of course you got parents – I mean, you didn’t hatch from no eggs or anything, right? So your parents come for a visit what do you do? You let `em sit outside in the street or you invite them in, make them comfortable, give them a drink or two, don’t you?  You take care of them, that’s my point – you take care of your kin and the water coming out of your kitchen sink and your bathroom shower, well, they’re both just as kin to you as your mama or papa and your kin needs help, needs desperate, desperate help here – and that help’s coming with an Abundant Springs Clear Water Filtration System.”

As he’d been speaking, rapidly, he’d been unpacking one of the black cases and laying various odd-looking devices out on the floor. Karen had wanted to ask him in, move him down the hall to the living room or maybe over to the kitchen, but she felt as though she hadn’t really had a chance to say anything at all.

Bradley stood, now, with a long white cylinder in his hand smiling widely at both of them. Attached to one end of the cylinder was a shower head at an angle and, hanging from the top of the shower head was a small plastic bag with other white attachments inside it.

“You got a glass I could borrow? Like a regular kitchen glass?”

“Sorry,” Carlton said. “We don’t believe in using glasses. Unsanitary. We usually just drink from the dog’s dish – with the dog.”

Bradley stared for a moment at Carlton and then forced a grin, “There’s that comedy again. You are a first-class comic, you are. But, seriously now, could I borrow a glass, please?”

Karen was already moving toward the kitchen as she heard Carlton saying, “Well, I guess we’ll look for one but it’s not promising. Dog dish, though, we could fix you right up with. You haven’t had water till you’ve shared it with your dog.”

“You are the funniest,” Bradley was saying. Then he said, “But, serious, you have a dog?”

“Uh – are you deaf? You didn’t hear the dogs barking? The long-dead heroes of the Revolution heard those dogs barking.”

“Oh, so they were your dogs?”

“Yeah. Our yard – our dogs – that’s how it works here in the U.S. – usually.”

“Well, they good dogs? They – deserving dogs?”

“Huh. Don’t know what `deserving’ means. We have a very serious dog,” Carlton was saying. They were standing now in the kitchen doorway and Karen was heading back toward them with a tall glass decorated with painted green vines and small oranges around the sides. “And,” Carlton was saying. “A comical dog as well. Marvin is serious as the Pope and Simon O’Christ, well, you can probably guess from his name where he’s at.  Whole house is like some Greek playhouse, you know? Tragedy, comedy, two dogs, one water dish. It’s tragical, sure, but it’s also comical.”

“Well,” Bradley said, ignoring Carlton’s treatise on tragedy. “Now this is even more important. It was important before, of course it was, but now – you love your dogs?”

Carlton said, “As a man loves a woman or as a man loves, say, a recliner and beer?”

Karen said, handing Bradley the glass, “Yes, of course we love our dogs.”

She was now officially tired of the whole thing and what the hell was Carlton doing with the jokes? He was just slowing things down. Well, she’d have to make him pay for that later. The important thing now was to hurry this along, get the five hundred bucks of coupons, and get Bradley Kincaid the hell out the door.

“You love your dogs, you say, but you don’t have an Abundant Springs Clear Water Filtration System – that’s the situation I have come into here. So I have to conclude that you maybe say you love your dogs, you maybe think you love your dogs but – when you love something you care for it, don’t you? You care for it the best you can. And there is just no way you’re caring for those dogs best without you have an Abundant Springs Clear Water Filtration System. No how.”

“Now wait a minute – “ Karen said.

He held high the orange juice glass in one hand, held his other palm out toward her face, and said, “Where’s your shower, please? Take me to your bathroom. Before you say one word about the love you have for those poor, poor dogs, I want you to see what you’re really letting them drink.”

Carlton moved down the hall, legs stiff, arms waving, speaking in a robotic voice, “Take me to your bathroom. Must have bathroom.”

Bradley grinned at Karen and said, “He a funny man, you know that? He is a real funny man.”

Karen nodded. She pointed down the hallway, saying nothing.

In the bathroom, down the hall, Bradley filled the orange juice glass with water from the sink and held it up before them. From somewhere on his body, like a magician, he produced a blindingly bright flashlight and shone it on the glass. It looked like – well, just a glass of water, Karen decided.

Bradley said, “Now you don’t see it.” He put down the flashlight, dropped some liquid from a small vial into the glass, picked the light up and shone it on the glass again.

“Now – you do.”

            Indeed – she did. The water was now a yellow-green and it seemed to Karen there were teeny-tiny `things’ floating in the water but, really, she couldn’t tell if that were true or if the light was just blinding her. She couldn’t even tell, really, what the water color was or what seemed to be `swimming’ in it.

“You see this?” Bradley said. “You see? Alligators and fingernails, people. That’s what you got in here. You think your water comes from the springs of heaven? Think again. Government processes the living doo-doo out of this water and you all, living in sad, sad ignorance, drink this believing it’s good for you. Drink your eight glasses of water a day, live healthy, right? Wrong. `Cause you’re drinking eight glasses of alligators and fingernails and – what do you think you get from processed alligators and fingernails, people? You get germs!

“Germs floating in here, people. Germs taking a nice little swim right here in this glass. Living germs is what you’re drinking here – but not just you – think of those poor, poor dogs what don’t have a choice in the matter.  You think germs are good for you? I’ll tell you straight, they’re not. You say, `Well, Bradley, if we want to keep killing ourselves that’s our business’ – but it’s not. It’s not your business. You think it’s your business killing those two poor dogs with your polluted water? Then what they got the SPCA for, huh? `Cause someone’s got to protect them poor animals from this kind of abuse. But let’s forget them doggies for now, let’s just forget them and think about you two. It’s my business to provide you with something so you can stop killing yourselves. So your loved ones can keep on loving you, and you them back. I’m like a human SPCA, is what I am. I save humans from the abuse they heap on themselves. That’s what I’m here for – and I ain’t leaving till I do what I got to do to save you.”

Bradley dumped the glass of water into the sink and marched over to the shower. He turned it on, filled the glass again from the shower head, yanked the water off and turned toward them again.

Again dropping in the liquid from the vial and shining the bright light on the glass he yelled, “How can you live like this? You know you got germs living here uninvited? Oh, no, my fault, excuse me, they’re invited all right – you invited them. And now you made it all comfy for them to stay and make themselves at home. You want, every time you sit down on the toilet, bunch of germs swimming around, lookin’ up, saying `I see your butt’? That what you want? `Cause that’s what’s going on here, people.”

Carlton said, “Can germs really talk like that though? And, being microscopic, would they be able to recognize a human butt?”

“Now, that’s funny and all but – “
            “Wouldn’t they more likely think of the butt as, like, god? Or as, maybe the sky – or, or maybe they just wouldn’t be able see it at all – I mean wouldn’t a butt be, like, enormously huge to a germ?”

“Well, that may be – but I was trying to make the point – “

“Then, also,” Carlton said, finger to his chin, studying the ceiling. “I’m kind of intrigued by this whole germs-in-the-toilet-looking-at-my-butt thing. Kind of makes taking a dump a whole lot more interesting all of a sudden – like, I’m god, right? I mean, to the germs, of course, not in reality. So it poses a real question to ponder here:  To dump or not to dump. I could choose not to dump on the poor little germs but, then – “

“Poor little germs? Poor little germs?” Bradley said, his eyes huge now in his face, staring at Carlton. “You know the diseases those – “

“Look,” Karen said, folding her arms and trying to smile. “I’m interested in seeing the demonstration now, ok? Could we leave off the butts and the germs and just – move it along here?”

“Now don’t go getting impatient on me now – you may not think your lives are worth more than a ten-minute talk but, rest assured, I do. I certainly do.”

Bradley picked up the white cylinder he’d laid down by the sink and, holding it in his left hand, the glass of water in his right, said, “In this hand I got a glass of germs – and, in this one? I hold the gate and lock to keep them germs off your body and out of your house. This is the Abundant Springs Clear Water Shower Filter and it comes along with the whole house package – and that’s what you’ll be wanting, you know, the whole house package.

“The shower filter provides you not only with softer and healthier skin and hair, oh no, it also prevents early death. This little gadget reduces the THM’s, chlorine, lead, and algae. Now, I ask you, you want to shower under a natural, crystal clear water fall – or under an algae dump? `Cause that’s what you got right now, I got to tell you. If you’ll pardon my language it’s just like you standing in here under Mother Nature’s behind while she does a big fat doo-doo on you each and every morning and then you go on and go out into public like that, go on to your jobs and all, wearing Mother Nature’s waste all over you.”

Karen could feel her breath burning down her nostrils as she slowly exhaled. She realized she’d been holding her breath – and she only found herself suddenly holding her breath when she was trying too hard to hold her tongue.

She said, a little more sharply than she’d intended, “Look, Bradley – could we really, really get on with this and leave out all the – “

“Ok,” he said, hands in the air. He put the glass of water down by the sink and stepped into the shower with the white cylinder in his hand. “I got you. I can see you want to see the show, so, ok. Can’t blame you at all. You’re interested in living long, productive lives, same as anyone, you just don’t know how.”

While he spoke he again, somehow, produced a wrench and took off their silver shower head, replaced it with his white cylinder. Reaching out, he grabbed the glass off the sink, dumped the water out and, stepping out of the shower now, his shoes wet, filled the glass with water from the shower.

Turning toward them again with the bright light on the glass he said, “See? You see the difference? No germs. Nothing. Nothing but crystal-clear water. Now that’s a glass of water, that is. Come on. Take a drink.”

“You – forgot to pour in that funny shit from your vial,” Carlton said.

“Don’t need it. This here’s crystal-clear water, folks. No alligators or fingernails in here, no sir.”

“Yeah,” Carlton said. “I’m sure that’s right but – can’t I see it with the funny shit in it like you did before? I mean, just to be fair and all.”

Bradley said, after a moment’s pause, “No. No, I’m not going to do that this time. And I’ll show you why.”

He stepped back into the shower, gestured toward the tiled wall, said, “You see this soap residue here? You see this? Well, now you see it,” he dipped the middle three fingers of his right hand into the glass of water, and began rubbing at the shower wall. As he did so he said, “Soon you won’t. You’re going to see something you just will not believe,” and he moved, slowly, rubbing the wall of the shower with his fingers, dipping the fingers back in the glass, rubbing again at the wall. “You are going to see the power of cleanliness,” he said, and dipped – and rubbed – and dipped the fingers – and rubbed the wall, moving his fingers in tight circles on the blue tile, dropping slowly down, as he rubbed, to his knees, scrubbing with his fingers – dipping.

“Look at this,” he said, standing up straight, gesturing to the shining blue tiled wall of the shower. “You see any soap scum on that wall? You do not. You see any mold in that grout there? I can see you don’t. That’s the power of truly clean water. Cleanliness begets cleanliness, folks. Just makes sense.”

Karen said, “I get that same result when I – do that same thing with my fingers – with my same old water. Alligators, fingernails, and all.”

“Now that,” Bradley said. “I can hardly believe. I’m not saying you’re lying or nothing but – “

Carlton, pointing, said, “I – may have peed on that exact part of the wall, man. Just so you know. And, well, maybe more than once. Ok, ok, plenty of times – it’s my religion, man, I can’t apologize for it.”

“Makes no difference,” Bradley said, gesturing widely, still standing in the shower. “That’s the power of `Clean’, folks – it’s so clean, it cleans up everything it comes in contact with. Pee away, both night and day, and, I tell you, with the Abundant Springs Clear Water Filtration System, you can pee on this wall at twelve-thirty and lick that peed-on spot at twelve-thirty-one with absolutely no ill effects whatsoever.

“Here,” he said, stepping out of the shower, his wet shoes making dark prints on the light blue bath matt, his arm outstretched, offering the glass of water. “Have a drink.”

“Oh,” Carlton said, stepping back, hands raised. “No – no thanks.”

“I’m serious, man. Drink some of this. Hundred percent clean. Perfectly clean.”

“Yeah,” Carlton said, hands up, palms out. “I’m sure it’s great but, you know, can’t tell where your fingers have been. You could’ve been – digging some chunk of yellow shit out of your ear just before we opened the door.”

“Makes no difference at all,” Bradley said. “Not that I was doing any such thing. Here, come on. Have a drink.”

“I told you,” Carlton said. “We only drink from the dog’s dish.”

“Come on, man,” Bradley said, pushing the glass at Carlton’s face. “Take a drink, funny man. Come on.”

Carlton backed away saying, “Hey, cool it – ok, ok, so I don’t drink from the dog’s dish – well I don’t drink from the shower either and, no offense, but we never did get to the bottom of where your fingers have been lately.”

“Drink some.”

“Could I cut out the middle man and just lick your fingers?”

“I don’t want you licking my fingers. I didn’t ask you to do that, did I? I just want you to take a drink of the clean, clean water.”

Karen looked down at the floor as Carlton, then Bradley moved past her and out into the hall, Bradley still pursuing with the glass of water. She folded her arms and nodded her head, her foot lightly tapping the floor of the bathroom.

Those five hundred dollars in coupons better be worth every minute of this, she thought. She turned and followed the sound of the raised voices down the hall.

“Get the hell away from me!”

“Have a drink. Drink it!”

“I don’t want a drink.”

‘Taste it. You don’t know till you taste it!”

“Fingers, man. Get it? Fingers?”

“And I told you that makes no difference. Clean is clean. Drink it!”

And that had been over two hours ago, Karen thought, gazing down at the legs under the kitchen sink. So that meant that, for over two hours, she’d known this guy was wasting their lives and yet, somehow, neither of them had been able to make it clear to Bradley that they weren’t, in any way, going to buy his filtration system – they weren’t going to buy any part of it.

After the shower-water-force-feed battle (Carlton had finally taken the glass and dumped it down the kitchen sink) Bradley had Karen lead him down to the basement where he’d proceeded to lecture – at length – on the speedy death which was coming for them with their present life style and water system.

With their death firmly and clearly mapped out, he’d then gone on to explain exactly how the Abundant Springs Clear Water Filtration System could save them from that fate – twin tanks, each with a three-point-five cubic feet fine mesh and over three thousand grains of fine softening powder, the tanks controlled by a Glide Three Thousand timer so they never had to worry about a thing.

“The BLS process significantly filters the toxins you presently take in every day. Maintenance free, also, I point out. We use a combination of patented trace materials which have been tested to NSF standards of forty-two and sixty-one so you know you can be confident the system’s gonna remove up to ninety-eight percent of your chlorine, sediment, molds, scale, bad odors, rotten taste, and let’s not forget that algae.”

He’d taken them, then, on a tour of the basement, again employing that bright, bright light, showing them how the tanks would work and explaining the added `free bonus’ feature of the ultra-violet kit – free with every `whole house’ installation but a one hundred seventy-nine-ninety-nine value if purchased separately.

“Kills bacteria, viruses and parasites in the water,” he told them. “And what am I talking about specifically here? Kills Escherichia coli, Hepatitis virus, Legion ella pneumophila, influenza virus, shigella dystenteriae, and almonella paratyphi – and many, many more.”

He’d counted them off on his fingers as though they were old friends coming to a party he had planned.

Who could even tell how long they’d spent in the basement – then it was back upstairs, back to the bathroom (so he could remove the Abundant Springs Clear Water Shower Filter and replace their “death’s head fixture”) then to the living room where he’d hauled in the bags and cases by the front door, pulled out all the various strange looking devices, shown them, in detail, what each one would do for them. It became clear to Karen that, if one were to purchase this `whole house system’ one would then need to also purchase the Abundant Springs Clear Water Dishwashing detergent, shampoo, bathroom soap, toilet cleaner – in effect, any sort of household cleanser which would, in any way, come in any kind of contact with the water filtration system.  And one would have to purchase these items, not once, but in perpetuity; it was an eternal life sort of payment plan.

“And people say to me, `Well, we’d like to buy it but it’s just too expensive’ but I say, I bet if I pulled a great big gun out of this bag and held it up to your heads, well, you’d pay me just about anything you got not to pull the trigger. And that’s just exactly what is really happening here people – you got germs here and them germs is holding a three-fifty-seven at your heads every single day and, one day? They gonna pull the trigger and when you’re rolling your eyes toward heaven praying for the death you’ve so richly deserved you’ll be wishing that, instead of the e-coli you got? That you’d picked yourself up an Abundant Springs Clear Water Filtration System.”

Oh, shit…That’s all Karen Hunter could think, staring down now at the wood floor by the couch she was sitting on. Oh – Shit.

It was coming. She could feel it. She was hungry. She was tired of hearing his voice. She didn’t want to hear another word about her impending doom. She was going to crack. It was going to be ugly. It was going to be in the papers the next day – Woman Goes Mad with Meat Cleaver – Salesman Turned to Chunky Feel Good Dog Food – Husband says, “It Was Self-Defense! He drove her to it!”

Carlton, pretending, she could tell, to suddenly notice the time, said, “Well, woah, how’d it get to be two o’clock already? Sorry, Brad, but I think we’ve got to wrap this up. We can – call you?”

“Wait, wait,” Bradley said. “And that’s `Bradley’, you don’t mind. I just have one more thing – just got one last thing to show you folks and I’ll be on my way. Won’t take but a minute. It’s the under counter system that goes along with the whole house system  ( free to you good people, but an eighty-nine-ninety-nine value purchased separate) and, when you see how it works, you won’t be able to understand how you lived before you got it.”

“We’ll take your word for it,” Carlton said, standing up and smiling. “You’ve already done a great job here and, look, we’ve made you go way over your forty-five-minute time limit. You must have other places to – “

Bradley was already walking out of the living room, another white device clutched in his hand, saying, “Won’t take but a minute. Meet you in the kitchen.”

Carlton looked down at Karen on the couch and she slowly raised her eyes from the floor to look back at him. She said, “I want him out of here. I want him out of here now.”

Carlton shrugged. “I tried. What can I do? He’ll do the kitchen thing and he’ll go, all right?”

“I’m hungry, Carlton. I’m hungry and I’m pissed off.”

He patted her shoulder softly, moving past her. “You go then,” he said. “Go eat. Grab a burger. I’ll handle Bradley.”

“Oh, no,” she said, standing up and following him toward the kitchen. “I come home and he’s sitting on the couch, feet up, watching the TV while you’re a thick-limbed corpse on the kitchen floor from sucking his fingers?  I don’t think so.”

“Nothing he could do would make me suck his fingers.”

“He’d be here, all right? You wouldn’t want to be rude and he’d still be here, ok? Christ. Then I really would go mad with the cleaver.”

“What?”

“Just move.”

“Suit yourself.”

So now, in the kitchen, Karen again stretched her neck up toward the high, white ceiling, teeth clenched, arms folded across her chest.

Bradley’s voice came again from under the sink. “Just a minute more, I promise. Awful hard time getting this thing attached.”

Karen looked down at the bucking legs, felt her teeth, tight in her mouth, grinding, her head, also tight, pounding, and heard her voice say, “Get out.”

Carlton looked quickly over at her and then called down to Bradley, “Man, for your own sake, get out now. She’s gonna blow.”

“What you say?”

Carlton knelt down on the other side of the barricade erected by the dishwasher soap, bleach, and cleaner bottles and said, loudly, “Look, we’ve really been patient and all but I think it’s time you left. And, seriously, it’d be best if you really left, like, right now.”

“It’s just one minute more and – “

“Get out now!” Karen yelled, stamping her right foot. “Get out, get out, get out!”

Bradley’s face appeared suddenly and he looked up at her.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

Karen could feel her eyes burning and her face was hot.

“What’s the matter? You’ve been here almost three hours! Almost three hours! I’m sick of you! I’m sick of the sound of your voice and your god damned white things and your god damned face! I’m sick of you! Sick, sick, sick of you! Sick of your germs and your stupid fucking everything! Get out! Out!”

Bradley scrambled to get up and, as he did, knocked over the green box of dishwashing soap. It poured across the floor, white and blue powder, and then his foot dragged through it as he struggled up.

Karen advanced on him – Carlton blocked her, said to Bradley, “Look, I really do think you’d better leave.”

Bradley drew himself up, standing by the kitchen counter, while, at the same time, trying to shake the powder from his right foot.
            “I told you good people I wasn’t going to leave until I’d saved you from yourselves – and that is entirely what I intend to do.”

Karen stopped in her advance, pushed Carlton to the side, and said, “Ok – then how much? How much we have to pay to get rid of you? How much?”

Bradley, straightening his shirt and, still, trying to shake the dishwashing powder off his shoe, said, “If you’ll follow me back to the living room I can give you a rough estimate of the cost of the system.”

“Let’s go then,” Karen said.

She watched him walk out of the kitchen and into the living room, leaving lonely white and blue powder footprints across the floor, then the hall rug, as he went.

While Bradley did his figuring, Karen packed up his bags for him. Bradley continually insisted she stop – she didn’t know which items were placed where, after all, and she shouldn’t go touching other people’s things anyway, really – but when she’d yelled “Shut the fuck up and figure!” Bradley had done just that.

“As I see it,” he said. “You’re looking at seven thousand two hundred and fifty-nine dollars, roughly. It’ll be a little more with installation costs, of course, but – “
            “Get out!”

This time it was Carlton yelling.

Bradley said, “I’m not going until I’m satisfied you good people are safe – “

“You’re going now,” Carlton said, grabbing Bradley by the arm.

“It – it’s just a rough estimate,” Bradley yelled. “I could maybe knock off a hundred here or there.”

“I’ll fuckin’ knock you off,” Carlton said, dragging Bradley toward the front door.

Bradley was squirming in Carlton’s grip, “I only meant the best for you. Think of your poor doggies. If you ain’t going to think of yourselves then think of the poor, helpless doggies!”

“I am,” Carlton yelled at the side of Bradley’s head. “You’ve bored the poor bastards to death. You happy? After I toss you out on your ass I gotta go bury my poor damn dogs because of you.”

“You ain’t serious.”

“As death,” Carlton said. “Your favorite subject.”

“But – ok, ok,” Bradley said. “So never mind the dogs. What about your lovely wife here? You don’t want to buy the system for yourself, think of your lovely wife. What’s she gonna do when you keel over and die one day?”

“What’s she going to do?” Carlton asked, dragging and, alternately, pushing Bradley down the hallway. “I’ve got killer life-insurance, man. I kick off? Well, then she’ll be able to afford your fucking water system.”

Karen hurried behind with all of the salesman’s bags and cases.

Opening the door, Carlton pushed Bradley out and the momentum carried him down the three short front steps. Karen, pushing Carlton aside, tossed the bags and cases down the steps after him.

From the back yard, Marvin and Simon O’Christ began barking wildly.

Bradley turned, pointing back at them both, and yelled, “You’re gonna die! Just as sure as god’s in heaven! You’re gonna –“

Carlton slammed the door closed on him.

They could still hear him, clearly, from outside.

“As god is my witness, people – you are going to regret the day you ever – Ever – go on – go on and try to find a better filtration system! Go on! Ain’t gonna find one! Ain’t gonna find nothing! Nothing! Nothing but death! That’s all!”

Karen turned away from the door, started down the hall toward the kitchen, said, “Well, that was a pleasant afternoon.”

Carlton shrugged. “It sounded good on the – “

“Oh, god damn it – we never got our coupons! We never even got the god damned coupons, Carlton!”

“You – want to go out and get them now?”
            “Forget it. I have got to eat something.”

But as she reached the kitchen she realized they didn’t have anything to eat. They were going to go out for lunch and shopping afterwards.

They heard Bradley’s voice again, it was fainter now. He seemed to be on the other side of the house. The dog’s barking was like some sort of monitor, tracking where the faint voice of the prophet was coming from.

“Well we must have something,” Carlton said. “Ritz cracker sandwiches. How’s that sound?”

“I wanted to eat, Carlton. Eat. That means food – not a snack.”

Now Bradley seemed to be on the opposite side of the house. They faintly heard another `as god is my witness’ and, sure enough, there he was marching past the window.

“Could you please shoot him?” Karen said. “I don’t care what with. Rig something up.”

“I don’t think I’ve got anything to rig with.”

“Hit him with a fucking stone, Carlton. Do something.”

Carlton left the kitchen and Karen heard the front door open. She heard Carlton yell, “Get out of here or I’m calling the cops. No! I’m not listening to any more! Get!”

Karen suddenly jumped where she stood, raced across the kitchen floor, slid on the spilled dish soap, fell sprawling, jumped to her hands and knees and, crawling into the hallway yelled, “Tell him to give us our coupons! We want the five hundred coupons!”

“Give us our coupons!” Carlton yelled.

She heard Bradley yell something back (even over the barking of the two dogs in the fenced-in yard) and then Carlton said, “You know damn well what coupons! Five hundred dollars in coupons, god damn it! Give `em up!”

Bradley yelled something else and Carlton screamed, “Then fuck you!” and slammed the door.

Karen was on her feet by this time, wiping detergent off her hands on the legs of her jeans, limping down the hallway.

“What’d he say?” she asked.

“He said `Come on out and get `em’ and then he, well, made, like, an obscene gesture – like with his hand and –“Carlton gestured to his crotch.

“God damn it,” Karen said. “All that for nothing. Nothing. And I’m starving and I can’t even leave my house with that psycho out there. God damn it!”

Carlton said, “We could slip out the back. You think he’s watching the back?”

“He could be anywhere,” Karen said, waving her arms around, leaning now against the wall in the hallway.

 They could hear him again, yelling off somewhere south of the front door, raging above the barking of Marvin and Simon O’Christ.

Carlton said, “Well, I’m really hungry. What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Karen said.

She pushed herself off the wall and headed for the kitchen. Carlton followed. In the kitchen she brought down the box of Ritz crackers and pulled out a sleeve, tore it open, sprayed some cheese on it.

“That’s not food,” Carlton said. “Come on. We have to eat. What do you want to do?”

Karen crunched the cracker and cheese spread in her mouth, staring out the window at the bright lawn and narrow sidewalk beyond. “I really don’t know.”

“Well we’ve got to do something. We can’t just be – prisoners here in our own house.”

Karen sprayed another cracker with cheese and popped it into her mouth, chewed slowly, looking out the window. She swallowed and said, “Well I am sure as hell not going out there. That guy is grade-A psycho.

“I know,” Carlton said. “I know. Hey – we could release the dogs!”

“Yeah, sure. They sound tough in the pen, Carl, but let `em out? What are they going to do – lick the dumb bastard to death?”

“Right,” Carlton said. “What am I thinking? They might – lick the fingers!”

He grinned at Karen, shrugged.

“The dogs aren’t going to work,” Karen said, then popped another Ritz into her mouth and chewed, looking out the window.

“Yeah,” Carlton said, nodding.

 Karen looked down at the kitchen floor, the spilled detergent scattered around, the powdery footprints across the floor.  She shrugged.

Carlton walked over to where she stood at the kitchen counter, picked up a Ritz, sprayed it with cheese.

“Hey, I know,” Carlton said. “We’ll call up Angelino’s. Get a pie delivered.”

“Are you kidding?” Karen said. “How the hell do you think it’s going to get in here? I’m never opening up that door again, buddy, and – get this straight- neither are you.”

Carlton nodded. He popped the Ritz in his mouth and Karen heard him chewing it slowly, standing next to her, as she looked out the window at the bright afternoon sunshine on the white sidewalk, hearing Bradley’s voice, loudly, just outside that same window, screaming death and damnation down on the filtered and unfiltered alike.

END

I wrote this story one summer Sunday morning in 1999 from a dream. The whole story you’re going to read was a dream I had – I just wrote it down. I always dream in stories but not all the stories make sense or have such a clear narrative form. I’ve written plenty of pieces from dreams but not all of them have turned out as well as this one.

Ashes to Ashes was one of Betsy’s favorite stories. I remember when I finished the first draft that morning she had just returned from church and she read it while I made us all lunch. She was all teary-eyed when she handed it back to me and told me I should send it out just as it was. I waited a while, though, and polished it up but I never made any major changes to it. It’s still pretty much the piece it was the morning she read it twenty years ago.

I don’t know where the story came from. It was a gift from the Universe. It’s always been among my favorites too. It was published in 2004, I think, in a print magazine in Naples, Florida. They changed the title and added some lines at the end which I didn’t approve and didn’t know about until I got my contributor’s copy and check. I don’t remember what the published title was because I’ve blanked it out of my mind as I have the name of the magazine. I only remember the magazine was based in Naples because I had a t-shirt from there I used to wear all the time.

Ashes to Ashes

            The dark waters of the river before them glinted a bone white at the crest of the small waves. The moon hung fat in the purple sky of pre-dawn.

            Sitting on the bench of a weathered picnic table under the overhang of the old gazebo, the old man said to the young girl, “You feeling the cold?”

            “A little.”

            He pulled off his denim jacket and wrapped it around her, poured her a cup full of cocoa from the thermos on the table.

            “Thanks.”

            He stared out at the dark water.

            “Daylight’s coming soon,” he said. “Won’t be long till they get here.”

            The girl said nothing.

            They sat in silence for some while until the old man said, “You know. I got a story might help you some now. If you care to hear it.”

            The girl shrugged. She was seven years old, small in build, and looked even smaller hunched under the weight of the old man’s jacket, gripping her steaming plastic cup with two hands.

            “What’s it about?”

            “Well, I’ll tell it. I’ll tell you about it. Pass the time till they come. That agreeable with you?”

            The girl sipped at her cup and then said, “Sure. Whatever.”

            “Well,” the old man said. “Once upon a time, right here in Galen’s Mills, there was a young couple name of Peter and Meagan O’Reilly. Grew up here together not three miles away from each other. Went to the same church, had the same teachers in the same schools. And, as you might figure, developed some feelings for each other and courted and wound up married. Few years pass and they had a fine looking daughter they named Cora Anne. Fine looking girl, everybody said, and bright too.

            “Pete and Meagan, they were real musical folks. He played the guitar and she the piano, and they’d sing at church and at parties here about. And folks what came to their parties would say they were the best parties give around here. All lights and music and laughing and, they’d say, if you went once to a party at the O’Reilly’s you’d never be able to tolerate a one somewhere else.

            “They’d come down here. Right here. Right where we’s sitting now. And Pete’d take out his guitar and they’d sing and dance and picnic of a Friday night. Sometimes they’d put together parties down here. Sometimes just the three of them. Always the three of them, though, whether there was others coming around or not. Always the three of them.”

            The old man sighed and reached over to the breast pocket of his jacket. He pulled out a scratched and stubby pipe and a pouch of tobacco. As he filled his pipe he said, “Yep. Folks would say there wasn’t nothing like those Friday nights down here with the O’Reilly’s. That’s a fact. I sure would I’d a been around then.”

            “You weren’t around?”

            “Me? No. This happened long afore I was even born.”

            “How do you know it really happened?”

            “I know,” he said, and lit his pipe. He took a few long draws, put the tobacco back in his jacket pocket. “More hot chocolate?”

            She shook her head and said, “So what happened to them? Something happened to them, right?”

            “Something always does,” the old man said. “Came a time Meagan started feeling poorly. Couldn’t catch her breath, that sort of thing. Found out she was in a pretty bad condition. Nothing anybody could do about it. Lungs was failing. Family always had a history of breathing problems, you know.”

            “Like my mommy?”

            “Yep,” the old man said, blowing smoke out and resting the hand that held the pipe on his right knee.

            “Did she have breathing problems when she was a little girl?”

            “Nope. Always seems to catch people later on in life. Not everyone, mind you. It ain’t set in stone or anything like that. Just seems to catch some. Some it passes over.”

            The girl sat silent, her empty cup in her hands on her lap.   “So,” she said. “Meagan died? That’s what happened?”

            “That’s what happened.”

            “That’s not much of a story,” she said.

            “No,” he said. “No. Wouldn’t be if it ended there. But that’s not where it ends. That’s just the start.”

            “So?”

            “So. Poor Pete. He was just crazy with grief. Didn’t know what to do with himself he was so distracted. Couldn’t put two words together that made sense right after it happened. But he had to keep himself together on account of Cora, you understand. She was just a little girl, no older than you are now. Just about the right same age. Anyhow, he had his wife cremated, just like she wanted -“

            “Cremated?”

            “Burned up. They burn up the body and it turns to ash.”

            “Right. Like Mommy.”

            “Like your Mom, that’s right.”

            “That’s right.”

            The old man wiped at his eyes and took a draw on his pipe. The bowl was dead. He said, “So they all gathered, everybody in Galen’s Mills, for the funeral service. And when the service was over and all concerned should’ve been quiet and consoling each other, that’s just when all the trouble began.

            “Meagan’s father, man name of Joe Martin, had the notion that his daughter’s ashes ought to come on home. He had this pond on his property, a pretty thing half-ringed with Poplars, and he told Pete how Meagan had always loved the pond, used to sit there of an afternoon and just watch the water, and he knew his daughter well enough to know she would want it as her final resting place. Pete didn’t think so. He knew his wife, he said, and knew she wouldn’t want her ashes all cooped up in so small a space. She never liked being confined, cramped. A real free spirit.

            “Pete’s idea, you see, he wanted to spread her ashes out here – out into the river. And he thought that way to keep her close to him and, at the same time, set her free to go wherever the current and time would take her.

            “And that’s when the row began. Joe Martin demanded the ashes of his only daughter be given to him. Pete O’Reilly said he could call for the ashes till he, himself, was ashes and it wouldn’t avail him nothing. And the Martin family, Meagan’s uncles and aunts, they sided with Joe. And the O’Reilly family, Pete’s brother and his folks, they of course sided with Pete. And, I heard, there wasn’t a family, not a soul, in Galen’s Mills didn’t hold strong to one point of view or the other on this matter. That’s just how small towns are.

            “Well, things were coming to a pretty unpleasant pass. Pete had the ashes setting in an urn on his mantle and nothing was going to please Joe more than to get into that house and trot back home with the urn beneath his arm. Pete got to moving the urn every couple days. Meantime, Joe was getting mighty fed up with this sort of thing. He had Pete and little Cora up to his place one time and he paddled around the pond in a little dinghy to show how he’d go about spreading the ashes and how restful and pretty the place was and there wasn’t any need for all this fuss. Pete just took his daughter’s hand and went back home. Didn’t say a word to Joe. Not one.

            “So, people being what they are, it wasn’t long before lawyers got called in on this. Joe got himself a lawyer and so Pete went and got himself one too. And now the story was in all the mouths round here and even beyond. How these two men were fighting over this little urn of ashes and neither one was ready to give in to the other.

            “Then, one day, just before the case is getting ready to be heard, Pete shows up at Joe’s place, hands him the urn, and goes on back home.”

            “He gave up?” the girl said. “Just like that?”

            “Well, that’s what some folks said. Some said he caved in. Said he was a chicken to go and do a fool thing like that. Some said it was the right thing to do, that the poor woman deserved to be put to rest one way or another, and all this fighting over her remains was a shameful thing.”

            “I don’t think he did the right thing. My daddy would’ve never done that with you.”

            “I never would’ve put the call on him like that,” the old man said. They were silent for a short space and then he said, “What do you think Pete should’ve done?”

            “Should’ve done what he wanted. You said she always wanted to be free, right?”

            “Right.”

            The girl looked down at the empty cup in her lap and said, “So that’s still not very much of a story.”

            “It’s not over yet,” the old man said.

            The sky was beginning to steadily lighten now, the moon starting to pale and fade away. The thick sounds of the water splashing against the shore and the morning pipe of the birds of early summer was all the noise around them.

            “Far as Galen’s Mills knew the story was over, of course. Far as Joe Martin knew, too. But there’s a part of the story nobody knows. That’s the part that tells of how Cora came downstairs one night and talked to her daddy. Told her daddy that he didn’t have to give mommy’s ashes to grandpa. That there was something she’d thought to do.

            “And the next night Pete and Cora came down here to Hughes Point and walked on out to this dock that, they say, jutted into the water just about over there,” he pointed five hundred yards away to the shore. “Met Pete’s brother there. Jimmy had a boat and they got on board and sailed up north. Reached a point in the river near where Meagan was born just before sunrise. Time just like this time of day right now. Pete opened the urn and poured out some of the ashes while Cora kneeled beside him and Jimmy dropped down to half-sail. And they moved slow and silent, south, down the river, all along the shore that hugs close to Enderkill and Galen’s Mills, until they came right down to there, right out there before us, and the rest of her ashes went into the river and Pete cried and Cora cried and Jimmy drifted in to the dock as the sky was gleaming a purple-blue, laced with golden fire.

            “Jimmy sailed off again and Pete and Cora set to work. They filled the urn back up with the ashes from grills and woodfires of past parties down here. Not their own, of course. They hadn’t held a party since before Meagan took sick.

            “And when the urn was full to their satisfaction, they went on home and, later that day, handed it over to Joe Martin. And saved everyone a lot of pain and nonsense. I think so, anyway.”

            “Yeah. I guess so,” the girl said.

            “And, you know, the years rolled by and Pete never did get married again, even though he was pretty young at the time of his wife’s passing. And he never went up to Martin’s or nothing. Folks would whisper and gossip and wonder how come he never went up to pay a visit to his wife’s pond and one time, over to Jason’s store, this fella by the name of Jake Buch come right out and ask him straight. Pete said `What for? There’s nothing there to visit’ and folks just put that answer down to his grief and how him and Joe never did get on too well after Meagan’s passing.

            “Then one morning, Pete was gone. It was years later. Cora was all grown by then. Had a husband and some kids of her own. Found his jacket and his cap down here by the water, right over there near that stand of pine. A boat full of partiers said they seen a fella, just after sunrise, wading out into the water here. They didn’t think a thing of it at the time. Only later when the story was in the papers.

            “But they never did find Pete’s body. Never did. Currents in this river are mighty strange. You never know where you’ll find yourself once you get caught up in one.

            “Funny thing is, though, that pretty soon after that, on nights when there’s not much wind and not much surf noise, folks would say they could hear guitar playing down here and a woman singing – but not a soul in sight. Folks sitting just where we’re sitting now would claim to hear it clear and real as their own voices speaking and some, who claimed to be specially sensitive in this area, said they even saw the young couple, holding hands, him with his guitar slung down over his back, strolling along the shore, like they did while they had bodies on this earth. And some still say so today.”

            The sun broke boldly on the rise of the mountains across the river and the water rolled an undulating orange to the shore where the waves broke loudly and then lapped with a heavy, dropping sound. The old man lit his pipe and took a few deep draws on the bowl, tapped it out on the edge of the bench, and held it loosely in his right hand, leaning back against the picnic table.

            The girl stood, pulled his jacket from her shoulders and stretched. She sat up on the surface of the picnic table, her feet on the bench, put the cup on the thermos, and tugged the jacket around her again.

            “That’s a good story,” she said. “That was – that was a good story.”

            “I like to think so.”

            They sat silently for a time and then the girl said, “You think – you think it could be true?”

            “I know it to be true.”

            “How can you know if you weren’t even born when it happened?”

            “Because that little girl, no more than your age now, who helped her daddy out when he was all sore and distracted with grief, that little Cora Anne O’Reilly, was my mommy. She told me that story first when my Pa died and I asked her to tell it again and then again till I had it all down in my heart. That little girl was your great-grandmother.”

            The girl nodded, looking out at the river. She sighed and said, “And the other part? The part where Pete and Meagan kept on living after they died? You think that’s true?”

            “I do.”

            “You think there’s ghosts?”

            “I don’t think it matters whether there is or isn’t. All’s that matters is that people remember each other, love each other. Long as a person holds a seat in your heart and a picture in your head, that’s as long as that person lives. You want to call that a ghost, well, you’re more than welcome to.”

            Out on the river, emerging suddenly from the outcropping of pine trees to the north-west of the gazebo, a small sailboat appeared.

            “Well,” the old man said. “Here they are.”

            He stood and the girl stepped down off the table, handed him his jacket, then took his hand once he’d pulled it on. He picked up the thermos and they walked together down to the edge of the land and stood by the lapping water.

            The old man watched as the boat tacked toward the shore in a zig-zag pattern and then dropped sail and coasted slowly. At the tiller in the stern sat his son-in-law, Steven, and, when the boat was still, he dropped anchor, climbed down to the little dinghy, and rowed to shore. The old man helped him out of the boat.

            They shook hands and then hugged tightly. Steven stood back, wiped at his eyes and said, “Thanks, Pete. I just needed that – that little last time alone with her. You know.”

            “Course I know. Don’t mention it.”

            Steven looked down at the ground and said, “I just – just thanks for this. For going along with me on this. I know a lot of the family wanted her buried in -“

            “Don’t mention it. She was your wife, son.”

            Steven nodded, wiped at his eyes. He looked down at his daughter and said, “You ready to go out, Cora? You ok?”

            The little girl hugged her daddy’s legs hard and he knelt down and hugged her back. She whispered in his ear, “I’m ready. I’m gonna help you, Daddy. Don’t you worry. I’m gonna help you.”

            “Sure you will, Honey. I know.”

            He stood up and Cora looked at him and said, “And we don’t have to worry, do we Grandpa?” She turned and looked over at her grandfather then back at her father. “We don’t have to worry that mommy’s gone away. She isn’t gone. She isn’t gone, is she Grandpa?”

            “Not while you hold her in your memory. No, ma’am. Not while she’s living in your heart.”

            Steven looked at one, then the other, he sighed, then said, “We best be getting on.”

            They climbed into the dinghy and Pete rowed them out to the boat.

END