Five-Second Rule

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The Interloper

Steve lived in a small cabin about two miles from his Oklahoma town; he walked in to work his dishwashing shift at Irene's Diner every day. He had happened upon Irene's Diner one day when his van was making a terrible noise, and got the job; soon after that, he'd found this cabin that was in an isolated glade, the landlord more or less permanently out of town. It was a great situation, but he was right about the van, it was some kind of transmission thing, and would take more than a couple of paychecks if it was even worth fixing. He had plenty of time to brood about it, out in his cabin, as fall settled on this beautiful part of Oklahoma.

The trouble was, some raccoon was settling in directly under his bedroom; he heard it, for about a week, then saw it one early morning on his way out the door to walk to work. He knew what it was up to; winter was coming, it was going to have babies, come spring, if it was comfortable. Steve hatched a plan to make sure that didn't happen. Friday morning, he prepared a tent, sleeping bag and camping supplies to take with him to work. Before he left home, he found an old AC/DC cd that his roommate had given him; he had a stereo that would play it in a continuous loop. He jammed the speakers into the air ducts so the music would rattle in the pipes and go directly under the bedroom where the raccoon was trying to set up house. He turned the music on, turned the volume up loud, walked out the door and went to work. AC/DC was a raunchy, grating kind of hard rock, was how his friend described it, though Steve agreed with the raunchy and grating part more than the hard rock part. Steve didn't especially like the music, but it didn't matter; he'd be gone all weekend. 

Nevertheless, it kind of stuck in his head as he walked to work; it did have a catchy element to it.

At work it was a rough shift, being Friday and all, and everyone teased him about the tent and sleeping bag which he'd stored in the corner. In this town you couldn't grow a single hair without everyone noticing it, but that's the way it was, he was still kind of enjoying the place in spite of everything. Instead of camping that night he ended up at a work friend's house where they were sitting around on old overstuffed couches and had no problem with him just staying there, as long as he wanted, whatever. The place had the smell of stale beer and cigarettes and had people coming and going more or less all Friday night, drinking a bit, listening to music. Steve's impression was that, although many of their friends tended to excess, drugs or alcohol, these particular people were pretty mild, and would do little more than drink a few beers that night.

At one point they put on a band called Cross Canadian Ragweed, an Oklahoma band that, as far as Steve could tell, was a kind of modern AC/DC, a bit raunchy, but not bad. One friend told the story of how, down in Big D, which was what they called Dallas, they were supposed to get a hotel room, but this particular band had just moved out of the room they were set to occupy, and it took the hotel seven hours to restore it to the point where they could re-rent it. The story teller had gotten a discount, he said, because he'd been waylaid for seven hours before he could get his room.

In the morning Steve was glad to get out of the friend's house, and get out into the fresh air, which was his original intention, but first he went back to Irene's to get a stack of pancakes and talk to all the regulars. When he finally got to going out to the park to pitch his tent, it was the middle of the afternoon, and finally, he made a campfire and had a pretty decent dinner as the sun fell, way back in the back of the state park where he'd be left alone. The countryside had a peaceful feeling to it; he seemed to have the park to himself, though there were clearly deer around. It occurred to him, he didn't really know Oklahoma; he'd never know who lived here first, what had happened, why it was the way it was today. The sound of animals in the forest crept in on him a little; his food was well protected, strung up in a tree where nothing could get it. Folks had teased him in town for camping; they couldn't grasp the concept. But Steve had camped hundreds of times. Nothing was more comfortable to him. The sun set, and he slept deeply.

The following day, Sunday, he went back to his cabin to check on the raccoon situation. The music was still on, loud, the speakers now facing the center of the place. The cabin was a mess, though, trashed out; it appeared that someone had broken in. Toilet paper was all over the place.  Pots and pans and papers were strewn all about. He quickly looked for his prized possessions, his money, his passport, his inlaid-pearl harmonica, and they were all there, untouched; that was odd. His guitar was scratched up, though, strings broken, gauges in the polished wood. He looked at it quizzically: why not just steal it? Then it occurred to him: it was the raccoon. The raccoon had popped the speakers out of the heating ducts, come up into the house, and trashed the place completely, but was still unable to turn off the music.  And had finally left, as far as Steve could tell.

It took him hours to clean the place back up,  and for days, he listened for signs of the raccoon under his house, but heard nothing. As far as he could tell, he had that cabin to himself again. His plan had worked, and he didn't have to kill anything, though his guitar would carry the scars forever.

Staying Put

John and Red had both moved to the high Sierras for the same reason, to get away from it all. They had met in a cafe in Sonora and learned that they lived in the same valley, maybe two and a half miles from each other. Each lived in a small cabin totally surrounded by high pines and national forest. Now the forest nearby was burning in a huge fire that threatened to overtake them and destroy their valley.

John had a van and had it loaded already; he had an old business partner down in the Bay Area, but wouldn't go down there until he absolutely had to. Ordinarily he spent time out in the mountains, trapping, hunting or fishing; he was retired. But now he was glued to the television set and the computer, trying to find out news of the fire. Yosemite Ridge. Paper Cabin Ridge. He knew these places and he envisioned the huge fire just swallowing them up and coming slowly, or rapidly, his way. Having bought about three weeks of groceries, he was determined to stay and protect his cabin against all comers - bears, fleeing deer, news reporters, whoever might come by. Nobody came though, except Red.

Red came up the driveway in his old pickup truck on Monday, after calling to say he'd drop by. His reason, he said, was that he didn't have television or computer, and had no other source of news besides going into town, and in town, he was getting tired of the commotion and the people hanging around the public places. He was a solitary kind of guy; ordinarily he enjoyed his peace and quiet, and he wouldn't need television or computer, if it weren't for this enormous fire threatening to overtake them and destroy their lives.

For a while, they shared information about the fire. Certain roads were closed already; their options were limited for actually leaving the place, though both knew how they could still do it, given the roads that were still open. Their area was now under an advisory, meaning they were advised to leave, though not forced to; presumably, if the fire got close enough, fire marshals would actually come by, knock on their doors, and tell them to leave, as part of the next step, which would be mandatory evacuation. On the news, they heard of the places that were being given advisories and mandatory evacuations, and they surmised from the facts where the fire was moving and how fast. There was still no telling if or when it would hit their valley, but it was getting closer. And, it was unpredictable. Wind could pick up or change direction, so it could jump over roads, or move up one mountain and come down the other.

They sat in John's kitchen, drank coffee and listened to endless reports from various sources. A pot of coffee would finish and John would make another. He offered Red food repeatedly, but Red would pass. They were old and didn't eat much anyway. John envisioned Red going home and opening a can of sardines as he'd probably done every night for years; it seemed, the last time he'd seen Red, he was in the store stocking up on them. John himself couldn't bear sardines; they reminded him of being poor.

As it turned out, they'd both been victims of World War II. John was from a family of political dissidents that had been forced into a labor camp on the Polish-Russian border. His cousin had escaped; they knew the authorities were coming. The cousin had slipped away in the middle of the night, but very likely died; there was no way of knowing. All those years, his family had labored away in those camps, talking about the cousin in hushed tones at night. For John, that didn't resolve the issue, flee or stay put? Fleeing brought the fear of the unknown, the lack of a home, the cruel world, the overbearing enemy. Fleeing conjured up the image of his cousin, which had in fact never been resolved; he'd never found that poor cousin again.

Red left late at night, with the final news being that the fire was creeping ever closer to a small lake known as Lone Wolf Lake. And in fact, John didn't see him again until Thursday. By Thursday the fire was at a much scarier stage, though there still had been no mandatory evacuation in John's valley. John had fallen into a routine, eating lightly, leaving most of his supplies in the van, staying glued to radio, television and computer. It was becoming background noise; his mind was wandering. He wanted out; he wanted to hunt, or trap, but going out into the woods was too dangerous. The possibility of being suddenly surrounded was too great, and it was actually the roads and the road system that was one's greatest safety hatch, because it was harder for a fire to cross a road than, say, a creek. Winds could change too; really much of it depended on the wind. The wind could take a fire and throw it across a valley.

Red pulled up in the driveway in that old battered truck, and got out with a look of familiarity and relief; the truck somehow looked older. John and Red caught up on developments as if they were fast friends, though really in some ways they didn't know each other very well. Red, it turned out, had left; he panicked on Tuesday morning, as the news of Lone Wolf Lake had sunk in, and, truck loaded to the hilt, began to drive out and down the hill, the back way, a little closer to the fire, but on a road he knew was still open. But, about a mile down, he came to a turnoff where he'd often drive to Lone Wolf Lake, just a couple of miles off the road, to fish or collect his thoughts. He knew the news; he knew he was taking a chance. But he didn't think he could leave the area for good, without seeing the lake one more time. He judged that he would be safe, if he just drove straight to its bank, and turned around.

As he told this story, his face became pale and John feared for his health; it occurred to him that he could die, right here at the kitchen table, telling the story. He backed up to describe the way he had loaded the truck, such that he was worried, if the fire were to overtake him, would his few prized possessions burn as well? The fire did in fact come and surround him, just as he was at the lake, dipping his hands in the water and washing his face, one more time. Back up the road, the fire was coming up to the edge, and then, jumping across. This little access road was dirt, a narrower two lanes, forested for the most part on both sides, except for a little area that was open, back toward the lake. He'd passed this open area on his way back to the main road, but had been overtaken by smoke and flames as he tried to make it back up to the main road; then he'd panicked, and tried to back up, back toward the lake, to a place where he could turn around on the road. Smoke was everywhere. In the process of backing up, he backed into a ditch and got stuck, and right around then, he'd passed out from the smoke. But he was lucky. Not only was he at the clearing; there was no fire right at that spot; but also, he'd basically backed right into a little stream trickling down the side of the road, on its way down to the lake. His wheel, in fact, was in the stream; that's why he was stuck. When he woke up the smoke was gone, the fire had moved on as well; the cool water in the stream sustained him.

His story had a small rambling part, where there was a little hole in the floorboard of the passenger side of the truck; where fresh air had come up the hill, perhaps from the lake, and into the truck, to save him as he was passed out; and finally, where a mouse climbed up through there and joined him, in his sleep, probably escaping the fire and its effects nearby. Strangely, in this part of the story, John had trouble keeping his mind on the story, because it reminded him so much of his childhood, that memories were flooding him.

Breathlessly Red retold the story, and told of how he got the truck back out of the ditch, and back up the road to his house. But oddly, by the time he got home, he had now decided not to flee. He was going to stay at his cabin until the bitter end, he said.

This stirred John up; he of course had been grappling with this question for days. John now said, if the fire comes right up against your cabin, you have to go. They'll tell you to go. You can't let a fire just come and take your life.

I just did, almost, Red said. Sure, I took back roads that only I knew about, I put myself in danger's way. They wouldn't have let me back there, but they didn't know I WAS back there. I did it myself, I put myself down in the path of that fire, and got stuck down there. But now, I'm up on the hill; I can get home, and I'll stay home. I'm staying put, no matter what.

John watched his resolution in silence, after he had served coffee. It seemed clear that Red would die in that cabin one way or the other anyway; it didn't matter to anyone much, whether it was by fire or some other way. As they were talking, he found out a little about Red's war experience; he'd been a boy also; his small family had escaped Hitler, snuck through European cities divided up, mother and older brother ending up in Canada; he and his dad ended up in the USA and many years later reunited with the brother who was still alive. Relatives who had stayed, died, almost certainly, at the hands of Hitler. Red was haunted by visions of those cousins, and a picture of their razed village that he saw many years later, nothing left of the places that they'd loved as kids.

Again, the bottom of the coffee pot; again Red refused dinner, though again it was a little scarce and didn't seem to matter. The question of whether to leave for good, still, it seemed, hung in the air. They were both protected by highways, on this hillside; it appeared life would go on, with no imminent disaster, at least tonight. It matters to me, John said, whether you are ok over there at your cabin, call me if it gets to you. He walked Red out to his truck, and stars twinkled above; the wind was carrying the smoke from the fire in another direction tonight. Rocks crackled beneath their feet. John got the sense of each carrying a lifetime of experience, a kind of baggage that could, in fact, influence whether they lived or died.

Nov. 2013

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Camo

Rosalinda lived with her mother and two younger brothers, Pedro and Juan, in the Heart of Lubbock neighborhood. Her Uncle Tio and Uncle Estaban lived nearby and visited often. Another uncle, Uncle Ramon, had moved back to Mexico a few years ago; or rather, one time when they were visiting, he refused to come back to the USA. Rosalinda's mom and her grandparents left him there; what could they do? He was eighteen and old enough to make his own decisions.

Estaban claimed it was because he didn't want to join the Army, and there was some truth to that. A lot of Mexican kids joined the Army as a way of being more American, of fitting in, but Ramon didn't want to fit in. He was tired of trying to fit in. In Mexico he figured he wouldn't have to fit in; he'd already be Mexican. How wrong he was, but you can't tell an eighteen-year-old he's wrong.

One day Rosalinda bought two camo shirts, a brown one and a gray one, in a Lubbock store, because she liked them. At the time she had no idea that they were related to the army, or even hunting; some people said it was all about hunting, but when she bought them, it was just because she liked the design. But soon after, when she was wearing the brown one, Trent, a white kid in her class, taunted her, and asked her what she was doing wearing a shirt like that, as if Mexican kids shouldn't be wearing shirts like that. When she came home Uncle Tio and Uncle Estaban were visiting, and she told the story. They got mad. Both of them had joined the Army. Estaban was going back for a second time around. 

Estaban said yes, the shirts originally came from the Army. But Mexican-Americans joined the Army all the time; they were just as American as anyone. They had a right to wear those shirts. Their niece had a right to wear them. She should wear them anytime she wanted, Estaban said.

Uncle Tio listened quietly. He was Rosalinda's favorite; when she was a young girl, she didn't know that "Tio" meant uncle and just thought it was his name. Everyone thought that was kind of funny but kept calling him "Tio," at least in the family. Outside the family everyone called him Ernesto, which was his real name. Ernesto was a painter; he painted houses. At night he was tired and ate a lot, especially when Rosalinda's mom cooked. 

Rosalinda's real decision was whether to tell Ricardo, a friend of hers in school, what Trent had said. Ricardo would beat Trent up, Rosalinda was pretty sure. Ricardo was looking for an excuse to beat Trent up; if she'd told Ricardo, that would have been a good enough excuse. Rosalinda didn't like Trent. On one side of her, she wouldn't mind seeing him beat up. But she couldn't bring herself to do it. 

At the dinner table they talked a little about Ramon. Ramon had trouble getting a job in Mexico because he was too American. People said he thought like an American, and he even talked like one; he hardly knew the Spanish language anymore. He was having trouble down there, but he didn't want to admit it; Tio had heard that from other family members. 

Estaban brought up the camo shirts again. He said he'd gone hunting several times, and you wouldn't even want them for hunting around here. The original idea was that if they looked like branches and leaves, black and brown and all, they would look like the woods and fit in. But there weren't that many woods around here. If you wanted to fit in you'd wear plain brown. But he also said, they don't really mean anything. They're just shirts. Anybody can wear a shirt. 

Later on Rosalinda asked Tio whether she should tell Ricardo about what Trent said. She told Tio that she was pretty sure Ricardo would go straight to Trent and beat him up. Tio told her, it's better not to get involved. Ricardo will probably fight Trent eventually anyway, there's no use getting in the middle of it. Forget about it, Tio said. Rosalinda tried. The closest she could get to forgetting about it was not wearing the shirts anymore.

Many years later, Rosalinda was sitting with her mother at her garage sale, and the two camo shirts were together, for sale, barely worn. Her little brother Pedro was now grown and about to go off to the Army. A white woman with twins came by and bought the shirts for a quarter each. Her mother knew her, she said later, because she was a neighbor; she didn't live too far away. In fact she was Trent's wife; she and Trent were now about 22, as was Rosalinda, but Rosalinda didn't know the wife. She knew, though, that Trent had gone off to Afghanistan and had been killed; that had happened maybe a month ago. She had seen a tear in the woman's eye as she'd bought the shirts, as if she were thinking of Trent when she did it; the shirts, though, would fit her twins perfectly. 

Tio had come by to help set up the sale, and he came back later to put it away, especially the heavy tables. Estaban came by too, but Estaban had been injured in the war and couldn't walk; it was always a huge production for him to get his wheelchair out of the van, which he had to park over on the side, so that he could get out, and come over and join everyone. Ernesto had the worst time, because he couldn't work, and he had to use his wheelchair everywhere he went. The worst thing, he said, was that his leg had been blown up, basically, in an accident, he wasn't injured by the enemy, but rather by someone misfiring something on our own base. 

Everyone was tired and hungry after the garage sale, and they ate a lot. They spoke English when the grandparents weren't around, because it was easier (This was the downfall of Ramon, Tio said). They mentioned the neighbors they had seen at the sale; most of the ones they got along with at least stopped by to say hello. Some would probably never say hello. It was unusual that they'd had a sale, but in the end, Rosalinda felt that it was even more unusual that Trent's wife had come over, as if she'd known those shirts were there all along, as if she needed them.  That was a kind of grace, or coming full circle, in a way. 

Outside, there were signs of a dust storm picking up, turning the air a kind of brownish color. This would be trouble for Estaban, who would have to load his wheelchair into the van, and who wasn't such a great driver even in the good weather. Rosalinda was glad she wasn't married, wasn't taking care of anyone, and wasn't going anywhere; she took comfort in her mom's little decorations around the house. After dinner, her uncles argued about baseball, and she took a nap on the sofa, but she dreamed about soldiers, soldiers who were running around some faraway desert place, and who had no choice but to look like soldiers.

Evolution

I was way out in the middle of Texas somewhere in my old International Travelall, one of those wagon-type trucks that was impossible to get parts for, so when the choke broke, I had rigged up an old wire through the dashboard to pull on when it needed more gas. It wasn't that safe because sometimes you needed an extra hand, but way out there there were only two speeds, very fast and old farmer, and I was kind of like the second one, so it didn't matter.

I was looking at the vast expanses of cattle country, miles of open range, the early morning sun in my eyes to the east, the dew melting off the wildflowers, when I saw this dirty old hitchhiker with a small pack that looked like the dust it was sitting in. I stopped and he threw the pack in the back. He had dirty hair and an old beard, his jeans were torn at the knee and a dirty old leather coat was also kind of worn out. But he was friendly enough, didn't smoke, thanked me for the ride, and wiggled around in the seat enough to get comfortable as we started again.

He eyed the homemade choke warily but I assured him that it was ok, it was handmade, but what can you do, you have to write away for International parts and even then you couldn't get them, and that took years. He said he was going to Dallas, and we established where I would drop him off, a hundred miles up the road or so. The sun was coming up over the horizon and shining an orangish glow in his beard as he turned a little to keep it out of his eyes. A strange beeping came from his coat and it kind of alarmed me, but it turned out to be a cell phone which he promptly answered. He turned away and kind of mumbled into it even though the reception was probably terrible; we were way out in the middle of nowhere. I had no idea what he was doing, but was grateful that it wasn't a gun, because theat could get ugly. It was probably just young kid business but who knows. I know so little about what young folks do on these things that I just concentrated on my driving and left him alone. And sure enough the call was over quick enough and he put it away.

But then a big old cockroach fell out of his pants and onto the floorboard of the truck. He stomped it out with his cowboy boot and it sat there squished up until he kind of pushed it over into the well at the side. It was one big ugly old dead cockroach by the time he was done with it. My jaw must have dropped about a mile, not because I'd never seen anything so hideous, but more because, way out in the country you don't see cockroaches so often. They're kind of city things. You see crickets, mice, armadillos, all kinds of stuff, but not cockroaches.

"Big ugly b---ard," he said, smiling. He was a little embarrassed, to his credit.

"Don't worry about it," I said. "It's not like I'm trying to keep the truck clean."

"You ever heard the cockroach theory of evolution?" he asked.

Well, it was still a long way to Dallas, and I figured, I got nothing else to do, so I figured he might as well tell it.

"In the beginning of time," he says, "there were these two cockroaches. They were friends. But one day they got into an argument. 'I could evolve into something better than you,' says one. 'Yeah, but we cockroaches are already pretty good. You don't need to evolve,' says the other. 'I think I'll evolve just to be better than you,' says the first. 'You go right ahead and do it,' says the second, 'I'll just stay the way I am.' So they went back and forth like that, and pretty soon it was a dare, and the first one set out to evolving. So he turns into a fish, and then a frog, and on up the ladder, and it took a number of generations, of course, but the second one just stayed a cockroach, he didn't evolve at all. And every time that frog or armadillo or whatever looked back at that cockroach, he saw that look of hatred, that look of recognition, in his eyes. Because I'll tell you something, one thing you can say about the cockroach, he's always watching, he's always ready to run and hide. He's always watching what we'll do next. Because you can guess what happened, all the way up that ladder...monkey, ape, human, whatever, that cockroach was still watching. And now, we're humans, and they're roaches, and you know what? There's no animal we hate more than cockroaches. NOne. There isn't a single person around that wouldn't tell you they're the most evil, most wicked, filthiest, sneakiest animal alive. And do you think they're any worse than any other bug? Not really. They're a little more aware of humans, maybe. They're a little more tuned into what we're up to. And that's why we hate them."

"So you can guess how this story ends," he says. "We evolve until we blow ourselves up. It's inevitable. Humans are smart, they make the bomb, they survive for a while, they hold off from destroying each other, but eventually, somebody blows everyone up, and then, you know what? The cockroach survives. Know why? Because all he is, really, is a shell, and a pair of eyes. He never got past that perfect and simple state where he was simple enough to survive the bomb. And why not? Because he chose not to. He knew what evolution entailed, and he didn't want it."

He laughed a little, and settled back into his seat again. Out the window, the wildflowers were picking up, shining in the morning sun, and there were signs of civilization again, houses, motels, gas stations, and the like, as we were coming into the outskirts of Fort Worth maybe. I'd never heard such a theory, but I"d never really thought about it, and I had to admit that most people including myself hated cockroaches way beyond what they were worth, when you turn on some light, and they all go scattering under some dirty stove. And it made me think some more, you know, sometimes it feels like the world is full of your friends, people like you, who think and feel all the same stuff you do, but other times, it just seems to be full of evil creatures like the cockroach, evil personified, the opposite of us, who are watching, waiting for their opportunity, just completely opportunistic.

Now this kid, he was nice enough, a little different from me, but a nice kid, and I had to say, he seemed to put his finger right on that aspect of life. And I had to thankhim for that wisdom, for after all, that's what you hope to get out of a hitchhiker, a little relief from the boredom and the monotony. When we got to the exit, I let him out, wiht his dirty old pack and his gentle smile, easy manner. He was a survivor. What he'd do in Dallas, I don't have a clue, maybe that's what the cell phone call was about. He collected his stuff and walked down toward the other highway. I pulled out that old wire choke, and headed off my own way, down the ramp, feeling better. Helping someone out gives you a good feeling, regardless of the circumstance, a warm feeling, entirely different from a hot Texas morning in an old truck.

(written 3-21-05, originally appeared in Unloading.

Kerrville

Jacob woke up from a long nap and sat at a picnic table in a little clearing at the Kerrville Folk Festival in May of 2013. The Texas sun had been beating down where an old tree had fallen; they'd cleared the tree, but now it was sunny and bright most of the time, and they'd moved the picnic tables over toward the shade a little, away from a little stage that was set up at a little table where they sold CD's. People played varieties of folk music on that little shaded stage: first an accordion and a fiddler, then a couple of guitar players hacking away and competing with each other a little with their singing voices. The folks at Kerrville served food at that clearing at all hours, for a price, of course, so the place was always social and interesting, a pleasant break from Jacob's IT job in Wyoming, and his long boring drive down to the hill country of south Texas. The kinds of characters who passed through were interesting, too, but what was most interesting was the way it was the center of a wide, yet tight community, bound together against the outside world; people knew each other from previous years, and maintained a vocabulary or set of words that they used only at the festival.

A couple of young people came through; the man had matted hair down to the middle of his back, and the woman was quite pretty, with frizzy hair unwashed and wild at the edges. They introduced themselves as Matt and Debra. They had hitchhiked in from North Carolina a few days earlier and were going to hitchhike on up to Montana for a gathering later in the summer; they thought maybe they'd find a ride here if they looked hard enough. They smoked a joint with their coffee and offered it to Jacob, but he refused. Jacob said he'd be going to Wyoming in maybe four days; that would be most of the way, probably, and they were welcome to join him. They wavered. They appreciated the offer. Debra was a little more wary than Matt; Matt figured that a ride three quarters of the way was a pretty good deal.

Matt and Debra worked shifts at the festival, which ensured that they didn't have to pay the entrance fee; the main stage at the festival would be starting soon, so within a few minutes they were off to work their shifts. Time appeared to be a little different at Kerrville; now it was dinner time, but people were just waking up, going to work. The show would be seven to ten maybe, or eleven. Then the fun would start, apparently, from eleven on into the morning. But then of course, the sun would come out, and people would want to get some sleep, and get away from the heat.

Jacob, tired from a long drive, spent much of the evening at that picnic bench. Matt and Debra joined him again, later that evening, when the main stage show was over and things were getting a little livelier. Again, they were smoking pot with friends. Now their story was a little different; they couldn't work at Kerrville any more. Jacob asked why. It wasn't that they were high on their shift, they said, but what happened was that they'd been caught smoking publicly, which the workers weren't supposed to do. Easy come, easy go, Matt said; they'd gotten the job, they'd worked a few days, and now that gig was over.

Oh, to be young, Jacob thought, as he watched them; he was now 58, was just beginning to get his folk music onto the stage, and looked back at a lifetime of basically fitting into the system, making money, living in a single place. And he'd given up pot, maybe 36 years ago. He'd had some traveling days, though, at the age of nineteen, and had actually hitchhiked through San Antonio and this part of Texas, on the way into Mexico and all the way to Guatemala. Mexico and Guatemala had a different culture, different laws, different people; his Spanish was ok or barely functional, but he'd had a good time and met a lot of people. Near the Guatemalan border an American Army soldier had given him a ride; he was probably going to Nicaragua, this being forty years ago. The soldier explained that he was driving his own car, because he wanted to have it down there, while he was on base.

But he'd pulled out a bag of marijuana and insisted on smoking, and having Jacob roll one as he, the soldier, drove. Jacob had rolled one, but then when the aduana came up on the horizon, they had to hide the bag under the seat and throw the joint out the window. An aduana was a customs house; they were entering Guatemala. Jacob asked to be let out and enter the country separately, but it was too late. The customs house was quite formal; the officers checked the visas and the passports, while Jacob thought about the bag under the seat. It was no problem, however; the officer waved them through, and soon they were in Guatemala, again on some remote mountain road. The soldier again insisted that Jacob take out the bag and roll one, quickly, and he had, reluctantly. But now another aduana appeared on the horizon. As he found out later, they had entered the country first, but then had to enter its first state. This time, Jacob was a little rattled, and didn't hide it as well. As they stopped this time, the officer, a little overweight and with a gold tooth shining in the sun, laughed at them; he could tell, perhaps, that he'd find something, and in fact found a seed on the floorboard. He held the seed between his thumb and finger and said something in Spanish, his gold tooth shining in the sun. The sun beat down on them. The soldier got out of the car and walked the policeman over to the little house, telling Jacob to sit still.

Perhaps over there they'd come to some agreement, which involved transfer of money to the officer with the gold tooth. In fact it was transfer of Jacob's money, but could have involved transfer of the soldier's as well. This was almost the last of Jacob's money; he had only about sixty dollars, and the officer apparently demanded fifty. Jacob never found out for certain what the soldier himself had paid, if anything. But the issue was resolved, and soon they were on their way. Jacob had feared for his life. The soldier could have been guilty, or more likely could have simply believed that being a soldier would get him through, as he argued accordingly, and seemed to have been surprised that this argument hadn't worked. The memory had stuck with Jacob all these years.

Back in Kerrville, now much later in the evening, Jacob listened calmly as some young boy explained how marijuana was now legal in Washington and Colorado; however, there were complications, because it wasn't legal elsewhere, and it was still illegal at the federal level, and most employment was governed at the federal level. People also were getting used to it, used to growing it, smoking it, leaving it in their car. It was like gay marriage: there were complications, for people who traveled regularly. While they discussed this, people shared virtually everything Jacob saw. A guy bought a dinner and split it three ways. People passed bottles and joints around, sometimes surreptitiously. One woman gave another woman a piece of jewelry, turquoise, bought at the festival. People gave Jacob food and drink, and offered him things to smoke occasionally. Usually he refused; he wasn't quite used to it.

At about three in the morning, he sipped another coffee; on the stage nearby, two different people played music together, music which filled the air and floated up the hillside. At the table with him now were two women, who called themselves Eve and Mariah. Eve and Mariah were from Ohio and Connecticut respectively; they'd met at Kerrville. They each had boyfriends who were supposed to meet them there. Eve's boyfriend was coming in from Washington State, where he'd had a job and worked for about a month out on an island somewhere. It was a long hitch down from there and she really had no idea when he'd arrive.

A man, Kyle, came to join them at the table with his own coffee. Kyle was a little older, a veteran of Kerrville festivals, apparently.

Mariah's boyfriend had a different story. He'd been in San Francisco, and was supposed to hitch to Texas from there, but instead had been diverted to L.A. because of some kind of family emergency. This, however, meant that he'd hitched straight across ten, the road through Tucson and El Paso. Just this side of El Paso there was a roadblock.

"Wasn't that roadblock intended to catch illegal immigrants?" Jacob asked.

"Yes, but they can call out their dogs if they want," Kyle said. "And they do. Sounds like he got caught in a familiar trap; I've heard of this before. In these small towns, it's partly a matter of money. If they can get someone for a few days, they get hundreds in court costs. Oh yeah, they'll let him go eventually. But it'll take days, maybe weeks, a thousand or two, and that's not to mention what it'll do to his record."

Mariah put her head in her hands and slumped into the picnic table. On one level she'd known this when she'd first heard the news; it was only now sinking in as reality. She herself would probably have to go out and get him.

The sun was beginning to rise in the distant hills; Texas hill country was most beautiful at this time, when the searing heat had eased up a little, and a cool breeze drifted up from the valley fog. It would be another hot day, though, you could tell.

Jacob, in his mind, saw the shining gold tooth.

be a Reader

This is how it works. I send you the documents as attachments to e-mail; you take some time to read them; you give me some advice, then, when it's all over and they are published, as a story or novel or whatever, you get one, for free. It may take me a while, but I will have one sent to you. If you want it signed, you'll have to find me, but anything is possible.

My fourth collection of stories is just going to press. Really, I needed readers for this one, but didn't quite manage to find people and get it to them in time. I became impatient and just published it. If you want a copy I can still send you the document; if you're a reader, I'd be glad to show you. But what I really need now is someone to go through all four sets of stories and help me compile a "Best of" volume. The first (Unloading) was never published at Amazon and the doc file is actually lost; the other three will be easy to send you. Let me know, though, and I'll figure out how to get all of them to you.

I have thin skin and don't take criticism well. I'm doing my best to reform though. If you are shy and don't want to tell me why something is bad, don't. Tell me what's good & I'll infer. If you can't do that, tell me anything. I need to hear it. I'm beginning to write my novel, and I have lots of poetry out there. Interested? write me. Don't be shy!

e pluribus haiku 2013

Available on Amazon
Paperback $3.59
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Over 750 haiku, most from a journey in the seventies, from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Whereas most contemporary haiku masters scorn the 5-7-5 syllable American haiku, this volume embraces it as a way of having a unifying structure for many different experiences, and celebrations of place, that these haiku illuminate.

Unsweet

Debbie was new to Texas, but brought with her one habit from Michigan, where she'd been before. On rainy days, which were rare here, she'd get kind of thoughtful, and would mull things over on her walk to her job at a writing lab in the university. Ironically, she lived near a street called Flint, and walked on it every day; because she only lived a few blocks away, she couldn't justify driving and paying a fortune to park in the garage. 

But on rainy days, the water would collect at Flint and 19th street, and there'd be a huge puddle there that she'd have to cross to get the three blocks to her job, and this could be a huge ordeal. On this morning a guy in a truck splashed her as he drove past; he was angry, and in a hurry; it was possible he didn't even see her. Generally people were polite here; they didn't do that. The intersection was orderly, more so than those in Michigan, but it was so wide and busy that people didn't always see everything, so it was always a challenge to get across it; it still scared her.

They told her about the playa lakes that were common in the plains; this is where the rain would collect on days like this. At first she thought they were talking about the huge lake that collected right there at the corner of Flint and 19th. But no, they were talking about parks and fields, large low places the city had set aside to collect the water when it rained, because the city didn't really have a good sewer system to haul the water off. So these wide open low parks would collect the rain water, and  the water would sit in the middle of these parks for a few days, and eventually evaporate, because the ground was so hard that most of it couldn't get back down to the water table anyway. This didn't make much sense to Debbie, but lots of things didn't make sense. For example, in her neighborhood, why did they water lawns so much? The water table was running dry. Rain didn't replenish it, and neither did anything else. Most days it was sunny and dry and everything evaporated, even the water she'd put on her flowers. 

Outside the writing lab was a little courtyard, with a statue and trees that often had mockingbirds or doves in them, especially if it rained. Today she got to the writing lab, put away her umbrella, and got ready for work by cleaning up a little, what had been splashed up upon her. She liked her job; most of the students were friendly, and polite; they'd call her "ma'am" all the time, and she came to like this. People were friendly all over town. She couldn't help but think: if she had just a little water left herself, she might not be nearly so generous. Nevertheless, they were incredibly welcoming to her, and she'd also gotten used to drinking tea everywhere, though she'd have to specify "unsweet" or she'd get this really sugary tea that she couldn't handle. She liked "unsweet" though, and now was getting it almost everywhere she went in the city.

Once she'd found this little canyon, Yellow House Canyon, that snaked through the city, had some water in it, and seemed to be about the only place for hundreds of miles that wasn't flat. Someone told her that the plains itself was once called the Comancheria, the place of the Comanches, but that the Comanches had met their end in this very canyon. They were fighting over buffalo, apparently; the settlers were taking the last of them. But she'd read, at one point, that killing all the buffalo was the problem with the water; if they'd let the buffalo wallow in the playas, like they used to in the days of the grasslands, they'd muck it up just enough that the water would get through the wallow and replenish the aquifers. But by killing all the buffalo, they'd let the land get hard, and now the aquifers were running dry.

It made sense, she thought, as she cleaned off her boots, but she had to admit, she didn't really know. Neither did the people in charge, probably. How do you measure how much water gets back down to the aquifer? You can't. You know when it's running dry, but that's all you know. Out in the country, she'd heard, they had to drill their water wells deeper every year, they used up so much water in the drought. The cotton farmers and the frackers were using it by the millions of gallons. People were watering their lawns like crazy. And here in the city, it would rain, and just sit in the playas and evaporate. 

At work she got some tea and settled in at a table. Outside, the sun came out and it was drying off already. Her first client, though, looked very familiar to her, and she figured it out: he was the guy in the truck. She drank a sip of unsweet. This might not be one of her better sessions.

N Train

Eric and his wife Vanessa got on the elevated subway in Queens, headed to midtown Manhattan to meet Vanessa's uncle, who was in town for a reunion of army veterans. He had come from Kentucky, had spent a good bit of money to plant himself in midtown for a few days, and it was her duty as a niece to go recognize him and have a drink, so Eric went along. It was rare that they took the subway these days; they both had cars, and had even drifted apart in the last few years because of it. They had other reasons, though, that they had drifted apart. Recently they'd had a fight over whether he could spend family money buying a building in Second Life, an online computer game. He wanted the building to make a bar where his friends could come and talk. She absolutely couldn't understand paying real money for that, and put her foot down. They were at an impasse.

The subway, as usual, was full of many diverse and interesting people, some Greek, some Hindi, some Mexican, some Eric couldn't even guess. A young mother had trouble controlling her young children. A couple of teenage boys in muscle shirts made plans for the evening; it was about seven, and it was in May. The night was young. Lots could still happen.

A mariachi band came into the subway car, and each member set up quickly and they started a tune. Eric tried to figure out how they picked which car to step into. He saw in the leader's face, a kind of tiredness, as if they'd played this tune a million times. It was a sad, Mexican song with a sweet accordion that played against the natural rumbling of the car. Some of the passengers looked out the window, or averted their eyes. Eric rummaged for a dollar, found it, and gave it; this was more or less what was expected.

Toward the end of the song a ten-year-old kid came up to the band and complained bitterly that he'd heard that same song just last week in this very car. Didn't they have any other songs? The leader's face fell; he wanted everyone to be happy. Quickly they agreed to play another; they had plenty, and lots of them were good. But the train lurched into the station before the second song really got to its climax. The band had a choice to make, and the leader chose to close up shop and get out of the car. It had something to do with how easy it was for a band to get across the station and back into another car going the other way. Quickly, with no fanfare, they packed up and left. But they left that second song, a bit more lively, yet still with the sad accordion, hanging in the air.

He rode in silence with his wife for a while; he looked at wisps of her hair gone a little askew; she herself was looking out the window, lost in thought. It occurred to him that one night, on this very subway, she'd confessed to him that she'd had a mini-crush on a guy at work, just some bloke that had appeared one day. Nothing came of it, she'd assured him; he, Eric, was the only one for her. They'd been married what, fifteen years, they ought to be used to each other. But this had crushed him, inside, and he'd never quite forgiven her. He thought for a while about his experience in Second Life. Basically, online, you had this city where everyone was busy exercising and realizing their wildest fantasies. If they wanted to kill people all day, they did. If they wanted to have wild virtual sex, they did. Whatever they wanted, they did. One of the things they did was be rude, routinely, to each other. He was quite used to it, and comfortable in this world. You could build your house with a glass roof, or with no windows or doors, whatever you wanted. He knew what he was doing, and he knew what he wanted; he just wanted to buy this one piece of virtual real estate on a particular corner.

The problem was, it didn't quite translate to her. There was a gulf there; she couldn't understand the attraction. When he took her there, online of course, it only got worse. Everyone had an avatar, and these avatars had purple hair, and beautiful bodies, and spoke rudely, of course. In one bar it appeared that nobody was even talking, but that's because all the interaction was online. You just couldn't hear it. She'd become frightened and insisted they leave.

Back on the subway, the car hurtled underground as they got into Manhattan; they were almost midtown. They talked about little things for a while; she'd promised him they'd be home by eleven. They could have taken their cars, but were naturally frugal people, and there was no good reason to take a car into Manhattan, with all the expense that entailed, on a trip like this. On some things, they still had a good natural agreement.

Down in midtown they got out of the subway and went up into the classy hotel where they'd agreed to meet the uncle. It always seemed to Eric, walking in midtown, that he saw famous people, people like Woody Allen, heads down, walking, coming to or from the MoMA, or wherever. The problem was, he'd been somewhat preoccupied with Second Life, not to mention his job, and he was a little less in touch with who was famous these days. Some of these people could be famous, for all he knew; they walked with their heads down, and he'd try to figure out what they looked like, as they passed each other briefly on the street.

Up in the hotel, they found the uncle and ordered drinks, and sat down at a lounge somewhere in the middle of the hotel, maybe on the second floor. The uncle was older, maybe about seventy-five, well-dressed, and knew the occasional person as they walked through that second-floor lounge. He not only knew them, he'd been in their division, their company, in Germany one bleak winter when the division was being routed and lots of people were dying. That was the essence of the reunion, the uncle explained. Unfortunately, the only people who could be here tonight were the ones who lived through it, and among them, lots of them hadn't made it this far, either; they'd lived through the war, maybe, but hadn't made it the next fifty or sixty years. Eric, who needed to hear this for some reason, got the uncle to talk about guys he'd known who had died right in front of him, or had died in one of the hideous encounters the division had with the enemy. These people, as it turned out, were still very important to the uncle; he lived with these memories every day, more so now that he was retired. It was hard, he said, to come all the way from Kentucky to Manhattan, at his age, and be here tonight. But he wouldn't have missed it for the world. It was just freak chance, he said, that some of the guys in his company were alive, and others dead. The least he could do for the ones he'd known, he said, was to come up here from Kentucky, to hang around with the ones who were still alive. His wife, back in Kentucky, had to fend for herself for a few days; she didn't understand, maybe, how important it was to him.

They talked New York for a while; Vanessa told him how to go to MoMA, in the morning, if he wanted to, and where he could get a good breakfast. She knew the city with confidence. Eric remembered how it was that he'd fallen in love with her.

Going back to Queens that night on the subway, Eric resolved to give up Second Life, and that entire fantasy world. He'd go visit, yes, but he'd live without buying that corner building. He was tired now; the drink was clouding his brain. Vanessa let him rest his head on her shoulder as they warily watched the car fill up, again, with strangers. No mariachi band this time. This time they sat so that, between the buildings that they looked out at, some lit up at night, they would occasionally see the river and be able to look across at Manhattan, which glowed a little at night. Other riders, coming home from work, maybe, would be totally unimpressed. Eric, still remembering stories of bloody death in Germany in mid-winter, felt he was the luckiest guy in the world. When the subway stopped he went first through the turnstile gate, and waited for Vanessa, then walked down the stairs together into the late night street which was, as common for any street in New York, never entirely asleep. The one thing people had in common, in this city, he thought, was that they were all comforted, to some degree, by that constant activity. As he scanned the street, he was aware that 11:00 at night wasn't the best of times to be there; he could certainly sense that feeling in his wife as they walked the remaining blocks. But it was better than Second Life, where any time was no time, and people came from every time zone, and so didn't care, or maybe they'd been on there for five, ten or twelve hours straight anyway. As they got to their flat, on one of the side streets, he felt like he was returning home after a long absence; he'd forgotten to notice some of the details; fortunately, Vanessa had been keeping track. The apartment was clean and quiet, and flowers hung in the windows. He was comforted that it hadn't changed much, in his absence.