Steam Tunnel

Victor had a new job with the university police, and he was teamed up with a veteran, Ed Slack, on Thursday nights. Ed told him right away that he would appreciate it if Victor would do anything related to the steam tunnels, but that he, Ed, would carry his weight in every other way and do most of the work, even show Victor around. He kept his word. Ed Slack was a hard worker, fearless, able and willing to do anything the job called for.

One night there was a call to check out the steam tunnel at the entrance over by the Physical Plant; somebody had heard noises over there. Ed said he’d accompany Victor over there if Victor would kindly go down in there himself and check out the noises. He didn’t suspect there was reason for two cops down there, and besides, one person was needed above ground to be available for other calls. They went over to the Physical Plant together and found the entrance to the tunnels. Victor took a large lamp down there and started investigating the noises. The tunnel was dark, but not especially scary to Victor. He came to a crossroads where the tunnel went off in three different directions.

The tunnels were all about four feet wide, and six feet high; there was a little water on the bottom of them, but not much. They would occasionally widen into areas where there would be pipes connected to each other, or places where crawl spaces went up in one direction or another, in order for someone to reach something that they had to work on, presumably. Victor couldn’t imagine who would want to be down here at a time like this: nine at night, on a Thursday. This is not how Victor would want to spend his Thursday night. He shone his light in every direction; he heard nothing.

He finished looking around, and found nobody. No sounds, no evidence of people down there, no nothing. One of the tunnels led to a locked gate; others went on indefinitely, but he could figure out where they went, and didn’t want to get too far from the physical plant entrance. After a good while, he gave up and came back, so he could file his report and move on to the next call.

Ed maintained that he was willing to do what Victor had just done, but didn’t want to. It brought back bad memories, he said, of twenty years ago. And he made it clear he didn’t want to discuss it or explain it. Case was closed. He did extra work on another of their joint ventures, and Victor had to allow that he’d got the easier end of the deal. There was nothing particularly hard about walking around in the steam tunnels at night; there was no special reason for him to refuse the chore. It was most likely students, and they were most likely unarmed. There was a remote possibility that it could be someone else, or perhaps animals.

He talked to some other people on the force about it, though, and found out that it was, in fact, a tradition going back many years. A large number of students took great pleasure in breaking into the system of tunnels, in one place or another, and exploring the vast network that went under the entire campus, from one end to the other. The workers had a system of locked metal gates, but those gates were often left open, and if they could be opened from one end or the other, the students would figure out how to open them and leave them open for the next people to come through. They didn’t seem to do dark and dangerous things down there; there was no evidence of drugs, for example, or correlation with all the other serious crimes that happened on campus. It seemed to be simply the desire to go where one doesn’t belong, explore in places where there was some risk, some danger, and where one could get caught, if one wasn’t careful.

Ed Slack was getting close to retirement; he had two more football games to work, and he had a very limited number of serious confrontations left, he was pretty sure. Thursday night was still a problem, because anything could happen on a Thursday, but he was looking forward to the day in May, already set, when he’d have his last Thursday, his last report to file, his last possible arrest. He had a motor home ready, and he and his wife were ready to see the country, and get a little less attached to the responsibilities of the police force and the other things he did. It had reached the point where he dreaded Thursdays the most, because of the possibilities that it entailed, and one of those was the steam tunnels.

And sure enough, they got another call from the Physical Plant two Thursdays later; this came at about ten. There was a little more noise on this one, they said, when Victor and Ed arrived. We may have to show you a little, said one guy, where we thought we heard the noises coming from.

The Physical Plant worker, Jeb, led them down into the tunnels, both Ed and Victor, and toward the intersection that Victor had found before. The tunnels were the same: claustrophobic, and slightly wet, with some passages blocked by metal fences.

They turned right at the intersection, went down a ways, then turned left. They had gone quite a ways when they came to a little side-tunnel that went off to the right. Jeb suggested they check up there. Victor went first, carrying a large light. For safety he held onto his gun, even though he was aware that if there were people up there, they would most likely be students. What struck Victor was how tight the tunnel seemed; there was only one way out; there was nobody else who even knew about the place.

Up about a hundred feet, he and Ed came to a crawl space up to the left. And there, in a mud tunnel about four feet by four feet, were three kids – well, one was a little older. Three young men, crouching in the mud, with a lamp, off, and very little else. Their clothes were dirty, but all three had shoes, pants, flannel shirts.

Victor did the talking. He demanded their ID’s and got student ID’s from the two, a driver’s license from the third. He took their lantern. He made them come out in front of him and Ed, and walk back toward Jeb at the intersection. A glint of recognition passed between Ed and the older guy. Ed knew him; he was sure. Victor could see that Ed was having trouble with the memories, the setup of the steam tunnels, the whole thing. And now, running into this guy, down there, that was almost too much.

Back up in the Physical Plant, they handcuffed the guys and put them in the patrol car for the ride across campus. They had radioed for help, and had another patrol car there for the trip as well, driven by a guy named Frank, also on duty. Victor stayed with Ed and the two younger kids; the third went in Frank’s car.

Back at the station they ran into the stubborn truth: there was very little they could charge the three guys with. The two students were not even trespassing, though they certainly were someplace they didn’t belong. Ordinarily a fatherly guy like Ed would give them a lecture, tell them how dangerous it was, and send them on their way. But Ed wasn’t up to it, and he asked Frank, who had some experience with this situation, to do the lecture. Frank was ready. Frank often said that there were two things he liked to make clear in these situations, and he assured them he would do it this time. The first was that kids could die down there, and in fact, someone had died, one time many years back. Frank in fact knew nothing of this, and would tell that to anyone, but he repeated it as a solemn fact, that any students wandering around down there were subject to the same thing. They closed the gates; they trapped people; they acted like they were alone down there. And the second thing he would tell them was, the steam pipes burst occasionally. Once again, Frank knew nothing about this, yet he could repeat it like it was the coming of the great volcano. He made a big story for each kid, and both of them, one at a time, came out white-faced, somewhat embarassed, glad to be released, even glad to be still alive. They might get a call from the disciplinary wing of Student Affairs, but they were basically getting off.

The third guy was a little more of a problem. He was about forty, identified as a resident of the city, and looked like he’d spent twenty years next to a video game. Ed, in the end, agreed to join Frank in interrogating him, knowing that eventually they would give up and let him go, as well, knowing that even trespassing on university property, even in a dangerous and prohibited place, was hardly worth their time in prosecuting him. In other words, he was guilty, and everyone knew it, but it was unlikely that he would even have to pay a fine, although they could probably, with a lot of effort, force him to do so.

The guy, who identified himself as John Barton, had talked the students into taking him down there. He said he was looking for a knife he had left down there many years ago. It happened that the knife was inlaid, a kind of family heirloom, but that he had left it in a crawlspace out of fear, when they were arrested and brought out of there in another incident. When was this? Together they tried to conjure up a date; John wasn’t sure. Ed was looking at him carefully. About twenty years ago, he said, though he hedged a little, changed it in both directions. Ed was getting increasingly uncomfortable; perhaps he was the one involved in this very arrest, or, to be more specific, apprehension. This kid had been told to stay out of these tunnels, what, twenty years ago? John fidgeted, very nervous, and admitted that. They’d caught him in the tunnel; they’d warned him; he’d agreed not to do it again.

But now Ed’s questions became more pointed. Ed, in fact, had brought him out of the tunnel. And Ed suddenly brought up the subject of the kid who had died that night, or soon after. He had gone down one passage that no longer led anywhere, that had no legitimate or possible exits, and when he’d come back to the intersection, it had been locked, with the people gone. None of the kids who had been caught down there that night, John included, had told about the other kid, who had gone the other way. The kid was a friend of John’s, and John was haunted by that. He hadn’t told the police that there was one more kid down there somewhere. He had assumed that his friend would find a way out. But it hadn’t happened, and the kid was stuck down there; he’d starved to death.

Ed, as it turned out, was haunted by the same situation. Had he forgot to ask or inquire about other kids? Had they failed to search the tunnel system afterward? How was it that they were unable to hear anyone, after that, when it was so common to hear them on nights like tonight?

Frank and Victor, also, were floored. Frank was there, basically, hearing John’s admission that, basically, he was in those same tunnels twenty years ago, and had come back tonight. Victor caught it on the camera. There was nothing to say or do now. John finally broke down in tears; he had had twenty years of bad dreams, wondering if he could retrace his steps, if he could relive the experience. He’d become fixated on the knife, which he’d left down there in a spasm of fear. He’d finally gotten up the nerve to go down there, to revisit the place. But it had only made it worse.

In the end, they let John go, just as they let the others go. His bad dreams, his twenty years of guilt and recrimination, were punishment enough. They gave him a talk, told him of the danger. They actually promised him they’d look for the knife, given enough information about exactly where he had left it. The problem was, that information was long gone; even John couldn’t remember exactly where he’d been. And neither could Ed. Thirty years on the police force, and he knew this would be the story that haunted him the most, that he would have trouble getting past, even when he was parked, with the mobile home, on some beach down on the sea. Things happen. You can’t blame those Physical Plant guys for locking the gates.

12-16

Their Own Devices

Laura was like most parents; she longed for a little time to herself. When she had it, she checked her phone, to see if her friends were trying to reach her, or see what they had posted on Facebook. It was adult company she was after; the relentless questions of her two children, 3 and 7, wore her down. Finally she got the older one a phone, and let the younger one use one of her old ones. She got simple games for them to play. It worked well, especially on the subway. She didn’t want them making eye contact with strangers.

They were coming back from Brooklyn one afternoon and she picked a car that had about ten young people in it, almost all of them on their phones, scattered throughout the car. She picked seats in the middle where she was in plain sight of everyone, though clearly, nobody was exactly watching. You had this ethic on these subway cars; you wanted just enough people on there, but you didn’t want it to be crowded, and you wanted people who looked like they weren’t afraid to get involved, if something were to happen. She took mental note of the ten or so young people, and before the train started a couple more entered. All were returning toward Manhattan from Brooklyn.

The seven-year-old, Devin, was playing a game called Virtual Farm, which had levels, and he had said something about getting stuck on level six. He had collected a good supply of animals, and hay to feed them with, and he was able to drive his tractor around the little farm, delivering the hay to the animals, and retrieving the eggs from the chickens, for example. But he was stuck on level six. He would often show his little brother, Chris, how to do various things; Chris had Virtual Farm too. To Chris level six wasn’t an issue; he’d barely got past level two, but it didn’t matter, because he was enjoying it. Laura cast her eyes over at them occasionally to make sure they were still happy and occupied. Then she’d sneak a peak at her own phone, The car rattled noisily from stop to stop, shaking as it went. Above them, there was a map of the entire subway system and some ads that had been there for many years, it seemed.

A homeless guy entered the train. He had a huge beard and was dirty, but didn’t look especially dangerous or menacing. Almost all of the dozen passengers noticed him, as that’s something you do, even when you are entirely preoccupied with whatever your phone offers. The guy’s name was Roger; he had in fact become homeless only recently, and wandered the subway cars desperately, having nowhere else to go, and not sure what to do next. Within a few days he’d noticed that everyone, on every car, was glued to their phones, and he’d become interested in what was happening on the phones. Weather was one thing. By walking the length of the train, and hurtling around as it shook, he was able to notice that of the five phones he saw, three were on the weather. So, at the end of the car, he turned around and said, loudly, “Low of 22! 15% chance of precipitation!”

All three people were rattled, either because they felt that he had personally been looking at their phone (which he had), or that he had read their minds. It was not the kind of thing you’d just say out to a subway car full of people. All three were irritated and, as people do in this situation, considered calling security. Nobody wants to spend their subway ride playing mind games with the mentally ill. Everybody wishes this kind of person would just go away.

But Roger stood at the end of the car where he’d stopped, and smiled benevolently, as if he was at the head of a dinner table, first dinner he’d had in months. He had, in fact, grown up on a farm, with fresh air everywhere, and a real tractor, and hay, and all kinds of animals, but the main difference between there and here was that there, you talked to people all the time, and the weather mattered more, because you were out in it all day long. How he got here, in this subway car, at this moment, was a long and terrible story, but let’s just say that a young guy wants to see the world beyond the farm, and wants the urban experience, though he may not be quite prepared for it.

But now he smiled again at everyone and said, somewhat randomly to everyone but Devin, “Stuck on level six? Put the hay in the loft. That will make room for more hay.” Devin was stunned. The answer was totally right, and he’d never even thought of it. But how did this big guy know about Virtual Farm? Or know that he was stuck on level six? He just about dropped his phone. Laura’s jaw dropped too. It was uncanny that this guy knew about Virtual Farm; he hadn’t come anywhere near their phones.

Roger turned, laughed a little to himself, and walked into the next car, where he would probably do something somewhat similar. He was in fact quite good at it; he knew many of the games; he was sensitive to the slightest of noises from the phones; he recognized the sites people were on. It wasn’t that he wanted to rattle them, though of course he scared almost everyone. It was more that he wanted some conversation; he wanted to be helpful; he wanted some interaction. The fumes of the subway were beginning to get to him. The absolute duplicity of everyone being hypersensitive to the people around them, yet studiously ignoring them, was getting to him. He couldn’t walk right up and talk to anyone; then they’d call security for sure.

And security, in fact, was well aware of Roger and what he did. He hadn’t caused anyone any trouble, yet, but there had been complaints about him, and they’d investigated. He’d promised to cooperate, but he wouldn’t leave the subway; he had nowhere else to go. He’d change lines, or get off and roam in certain stations, but invariably he’d be back on the moving cars, going car to car, One security guy had tried to get him to talk to some social service providers. He warned him that if he kept this up, he’d end up saying hostile things, making people really mad, and he’d end up in jail, which was no fun. But Roger wasn’t interested in social services. He didn’t respond well to people telling him where to go or what to do. He felt a little suspended, here in the vast subway network, well aware that this wouldn’t last forever, but this is what he did, and he hadn’t heard any better ideas.

Laura, for her part, was unusually afraid that afternoon, and, upon getting off the train in SoHo, looked around every corner, behind every supporting post, convinced that this stranger was after her and her kids. He wasn’t; he was long gone. When she got home, she checked all the phones, but again, no sign. He was gone. He had said one thing, but he’d been right on the mark, had read her son’s mind thoroughly. But now, hopefully, he’d disappeared forever.

To Devin, he was an angel from above. He’d come along at just the right moment, and had said just the right thing. Virtual Farm was, in fact, one of the few things Devin really cared about. It was kind of like having an uncle, someone who could give you a kind of family love without any of the attachment or price that other family required. And this was, in fact, something Devin needed. He recognized that all the trappings of a farm: hay, pigs, chickens, eggs, barn, tractor – they were all pretty much unreal. But a guy who knew how to get past level six, that was impressive.

(12-16)

Closer than they appear

Clark set out from Kansas City going east and expected to be in St. Louis in four hours, and at his destination, slightly beyond, in about six. It was December 16, 2016, a busy time on the road, and was about eleven in the morning. Little did he know that a freak ice storm was hitting the state of Missouri at that moment, and causing multiple accidents all over the place, especially in Columbia, which is right in the middle of it. As he got close to Columbia, he saw ice on the trees, on the grass, on the woods on either side of the road, everywhere. The road itself was fairly clear, being almost bumper to bumper, as the drizzle, which was freezing as it landed, had nowhere to land except on the cars themselves. He stayed behind big trucks; when they slowed down, he slowed down. When he pulled off the road for gas the roads into the station were slick, and in the gas station convenience store, they gave him his coffee for free. In the bathroom a truck driver was telling another about the conditions, but he couldn’t quite make out what they were saying; he could only imagine driving a semi in this kind of icy condition. Columbia was a madhouse: cars wrecked on the side of the road, people unable to get on the interstate, or unable to get off, and that’s where the traffic stopped for a while, off and on, for many miles.

There was a frontage road, even in the city, but it was hilly, and this road was clearly covered with ice; several cars had wrecked trying to manage the hills, and others had stopped, where people had given up, trying to go up or down the icy hill. Wrecks were everywhere. One young woman with blue hair was totally distraught as she had skidded a new car into a guardrail. Cars’ flashing lights punctuated the drizzle. Ambulances could be heard in the distance. There was no sign of salt trucks anywhere.

As it got real slow Clark got solace from the radio, where they talked about people stranded in Columbia, trying to get across town; people cursed MO-DOT (the people who should have salted the roads, perhaps), but others defended them, saying that maybe they simply didn’t know it would happen. If a truck jackknifes, how does one know what to do? Or put it this way: with hundreds, if not thousands, of emergency calls, are they responsible for managing traffic as well as trying to salt roads, when it’s too late? It was clear that it had caught people by surprise. Some truckers had slowed down to a crawl on the steep hills before Columbia, but some simply hadn’t realized how fast it was freezing, or how quickly a clear road could turn to an icy one.

He mulled these questions over in his tiny car, glad that it handled well, and that he was comfortable; he had plenty of gas; he wasn’t hungry; he’d had plenty of coffee, and the Missouri countryside was actually quite beautiful, though mostly he was looking at these red-and-white barber pole bumpers of large trucks. It was not too scary, because the road itself was not icy. Once there was space between Clark and some other cars; this was near Columbia, and there, the road was quite slick, and he was afraid of sliding off like so many others had done. But mostly he was able to stick to the road, and the brakes worked fine. In his rearview mirror, which said “Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear,” he noticed how close people got to him, and got nervous accordingly. He decided that that expression was kind of like the “feels like” and its relationship to the real temperature. Clark was a person who always was aware of the actual conditions: temperature, humidity, wind, even pressure. So he didn’t need to be told what it “feels like.” Similarly, if he saw something in the mirror, he was aware how far away it really was. So “closer than they appear” – what was that supposed to mean? He was annoyed whenever he was reminded of such things.

The drizzle continued right through Missouri, a fine rain being blown around by a gentle wind, and freezing the moment it landed, almost everywhere. It was not a strong rain; on the contrary, you hardly knew it was there, except that roads were unexpectedly slippery whenever they were empty for more than thirty seconds. Under those conditions, there was no point seeking shorter routes or back roads; according to the radio, all of Columbia was at a standstill. The interstate was clearly the best bet, and he stayed on it. Traffic remained touch-and-go, through the hills on the east of Columbia.

But at Wentzville, or just to the west of it, traffic stopped altogether, and didn’t start right up again. Now, it looked like everyone was going to just sit there, on the interstate, for a while. And, to his surprise, the westbound lanes were backed up too, and he could see that they were backed up at least ten miles, and probably much farther. In his own lanes, cars and trucks were going nowhere. Ahead of Clark was a truck; behind him a small red car; beside him, several pickups. It was now warmer; the fine drizzle was no longer freezing, and was even dying out altogether. He found another station on the radio. Hundreds of people were in a similar position, stuck, unable to get onto the frontage road (due to hills or ditches), in many cases afraid of the back roads, which were probably still frozen, and unable to get traffic moving in front of them. Clark at least was in no rush, though he had lost several hours, and it looked like he would be losing several more. He texted friends and family. He checked the news. He kept his eye on the bumper in front of him, which, like everything else, wasn’t moving.

There is a question of how far one should get from one’s car in this kind of situation. He was on the interstate, and it seemed reasonable to assume everyone would start up again, and would be going seventy at any minute, as soon as it all cleared up. On the other hand, they’d all been sitting there, what, an hour, two, three, going on four. As time went on, he saw people leaving their cars. In the red car behind him a young woman got out of the passenger seat, onto the side of the road, and started yelling back through what appeared to be an open window. She was an exotic woman, quite beautiful, wearing a red dress. She was angry at the driver and she even pounded on the car at one point. Clark heard her yell something about “Uber” and he thought, whoa, is she going to call one, in which case, good luck, OR, was this guy actually an Uber himself, in which case, he was out four hours for a simple fare? He tried to imagine being an Uber in this situation, and shuddered. But it wasn’t clear what she had yelled; it wasn’t his business either. His windows were rolled up. He avoided watching or getting involved.

Further back in the line people were standing and talking together, chatting or checking their phones. Occasionally cars, or in one case an ambulance, came up the shoulder. The shoulder was usually clear, it seemed, but Clark’s guess was that it wasn’t always clear. He considered using it himself. Shoot up the shoulder behind the ambulance and hope they let you off the road? People by and large weren’t even trying it.

Over in the westbound lanes, on the near side, a truck driver was talking on his phone in a very animated way. It even appeared as if he were quitting his job, saying he couldn’t take such a thing, couldn’t stand it another minute, but of course Clark couldn’t hear him, way over across the median where he was. Nevertheless, he was quite animated, and eventually walked around his truck and out of sight; Clark didn’t see him again.

Back to the “Uber” behind him: Now the guy got out. He wanted to protect his car, as she was hitting it hard enough to make actual dents, or it appeared that she might. She seemed to be trying to cause some damage. Now he was yelling at her too. He was heavy-set, not really a bad guy, Clark thought. He speculated about their relationship. Maybe they knew each other already, and it was over; one of them would run off into the night. But that wouldn’t really work. If they were from the area, they would probably know somebody; surely they had phones? But even if they could call, nobody could come. There were miles of woods in either direction, on the side of the road. Traffic was bottled up everywhere. Walking was the only way out. And there wasn’t much of anything, beyond the frontage road.

Clark chose to stay in the car, with it on, and listen to the radio, because he learned about the back roads and where things were worst, and in fact it was kind of a state-wide disaster. The MO-DOT was a kind of a bad word on this radio show, even though the radio host was trying to be fair and see both sides. The fact is, as someone pointed out, you can’t tell them what their priorities are, and if people are in ditches somewhere, with medical issues, that might be more important than all of these cars just standing out there on the open highway. But Clark soon realized, a lot of these drivers were pretty angry. It was warmer now. The roads were no longer frozen, at least not directly beneath them. He looked over at the frontage road, which appeared now to be not frozen at all; it had an occasional car that drove along just fine, unlike back in Columbia, where the frontage roads had many more accidents than the interstate. Here, it looked like clear sailing. But you couldn’t get over to it; the ditch between the interstate and the road was too steep. And where people had tried, clearly quite a few had failed. Best to sit still.

He thought for a while about those truckers, sitting there in traffic as he was, and staring at one of the barber-pole bumpers. Some, clearly, had jackknifed. Others had slowed to a crawl, lost the same amount of time that he did, and made it through. Quite a few, he could tell, had simply given up and pulled over for the night. Nobody wants to spend an extra six hours of overtime at any job, even one they like. But a big storm was coming, according to the radio, with more snow, and more ice; Clark stuck with the guy in front of him, who was at least still on the road, still pushing forward. Get where you’re going now. Choose to go south later. Clark vowed not to come back through Missouri if at all possible, and wished only to get through it this one time, or at least into St. Louis.

Clark had now spent some time staring outright at the couple behind him, and more time trying to avert his gaze, and find something else to look at. At one point the man had both the woman’s arms in his, trying to prevent her from pounding on the car. He pleaded with her. She was furious, even dressed up as she was, very animated, willing to fight, not afraid of anything. And she appeared to blame the guy for the mess she was in, unable to get somewhere, or stuck with a bad date, perhaps, in an endless traffic jam. That went on so long that Clark had looked away to avoid being the kind of neighbor that always watches a domestic quarrel. But now Clark looked back, and he didn’t see them anymore. Instead, the windows of the car were fogged up, and he couldn’t see anything. Perhaps they had made up when he wasn’t looking.

More surprisingly, the westbound lane cleared up; this was after about three and a half hours. The trucker who had walked around his truck had never reappeared, and that truck remained still, in its spot, and everyone had to go around it. Less than a half an hour later, Clark’s eastbound lanes, too, cleared up, and he went on his way, much to his own surprise. He glanced back at the red car, which did not start up right away. He sped up tentatively through Wentzville, and into St. Louis, which was wet, but smooth, certainly not dangerous roads. On the other side of the river, high on the bluffs on the Illinois side, there was more ice, but by now it was much later, and it was heavily salted. It was way past midnight. Clark remained confused about exactly why he’d lost six hours sitting on one of the busiest interstates in the Midwest, but he was sure it was jackknifes – he never did find out for sure, and he had never seen the MO-DOT, even once. But he was grateful he wasn’t dragging a semi-trailer around the corners, navigating the exits, or coming down the steep hills, or, God forbid, making right-angle turns to navigate around. The back roads, he was sure, were even worse than the ones he’d seen.

12-16

A Dozen Crime Stories

Now available on audiobook!

Short Stories

for the ages!

Clubs are Trump

Edward was teaching a little girl how to play Caveman the other day; it’s a very popular card game in his extended family, in which clubs are trump. There was some question about whether the little girl was old enough to understand the concept of trump. I should make it clear that this was during the Trump presidential campaign of 2016. It was almost like the word had two meanings every time he used it, but he had to use it, to describe the card game.

Edward was retired and living in a public housing complex where rent was cheap. He’d taken to playing solitaire in the courtyard. When one 13-year-old, Ayesha, and her friend, came by, he taught them Caveman. They came around a lot, mostly in the afternoon, after school. This afternoon, Ayesha had brought her sister, Lili. Lili was about six, maybe. The afternoon sun shone into the courtyard. Ayesha, he had gotten to know, over the last few weeks; she was pretty, with olive skin and frizzy hair. Lili looked like her too; she was pretty, with the same dark brown eyes, and a look of innocence.

Compared to the other card games that used trump, bridge, hearts and spades for example, Caveman was relatively simple. On the first hand everyone got one card, and bet, one or zero, based on whether they thought they would win. Next hand, they got two, and bet two, one or zero; and on up to ten, and then back down to one, so there were nineteen hands altogether. The only thing that mattered was whether you bet right. If you bet too much, you got no points. If you scored way over what you bet, you got no points. But if you bet right, you got ten points and whatever you’d made.

Edward focused on teaching little Lili the game, but every time he said the word “trump” he thought about the election. From Edward’s point of view there was nothing much good about the election or the campaign. Trump, it seemed to him, was a shallow liar who just kept changing the subject or refusing to deal with things he’d said or done in the past. But this is not about his campaign, right or wrong, or his character, or the things he believed in, if any. It’s mostly about how you have this important idea, in cards, and now, every time you try to express it, or hear it, you hear this name. As he spoke he realized that he cringed every time he said it. He was no longer able to describe a card game easily.

And to the little girl, it was a hard concept to learn. She had just barely figured out that a nine was better than an eight, which was better than a seven, etc. Now Edward was telling her that clubs always win, it doesn’t matter the number. Two of clubs beat that ace of hearts. Clubs were trump; that means they’re the best, and you can’t argue with that.

The girl made a horrible wrenching face, and Edward couldn’t figure out if the problem was that she was getting the information from an old man, or she just didn’t like the information itself. Ayesha squirmed in delight. She loved the game, and was getting the hang of it, and was eager to gamble whether her single card would win among the three of them. She clearly had had so much fun playing Caveman, in the last three or four days, that she’d gone directly home and told everyone about it. Lili for one decided to come out and try it out. Ayesha was a pro already, quite good at the game; she had no trouble with the concept of trump.

As it turned out, in that hand, Edward had a six of hearts, and Lili had a ten of diamonds, but Ayesha had a three of clubs and won. And she was overjoyed because she had bet one. Lili hadn’t really bet, since it was a trial run, but she was devastated that she lost. Ayesha, in her older-sisterly type way, tried to convince her that that’s the way the game went. To Ayesha, it was simple, and it was a lot of fun.

Lili had a little fit, right there, and turned her lip, pouted, and then cried. To her it was simple. She had a ten, but her sister had a three. They tried to explain it to her several times. Her little lower lip stayed out. She wasn’t buying it. She was clearly unhappy.

Edward looked at the girls in the afternoon light. Little Lili had a bruise on her cheek. These were common in young kids, but it made people suspicious. It made Edward suspicious. They lived with their mom and stepfather. The stepfather wasn’t very nice, or so he suspected, though it was none of his business. It was only his concern, because he was retired and played solitaire a lot. In general, as the days turned into weeks, he tried to stay out of it.

He knew what he knew about the family from Ayesha, because they were actually pretty good friends. Many afternoons Ayesha would join him, and there were many afternoons before they even started playing cards, and a few after they started playing cards. Was it his fault that they liked playing cards? For several weeks Ayesha would come straight out to the courtyard and play cards with him, right after school. It was in plain sight. He was careful not to do anything to arouse her mother’s suspicion. The mother would see them, or watch them, from her kitchen window. The mother was actually pretty nice to him; she’d come out a few times to get Ayesha for dinner. Ayesha, in turn, would tell him about the family, tell him about school, and surely, tell the family everything she could learn about Edward or about such things as Caveman. It was a pretty good relationship, except that the stepfather loomed over it. When the stepfather came out, he was not very friendly. There seemed to be a threat of violence in everything he did. He’d barely look at Edward. It was almost as if he couldn’t bear anyone having influence over the girls except him.

The next hand, Ayesha was the dealer. Edward got a ten of clubs and an ace of clubs, and bid two. Ayesha looked at Lili’s hand and together they didn’t know what to bid; they finally bid one for Lili. Ayesha herself bid one and played a jack of clubs.

Now Edward had a choice – lose on purpose, and give Ayesha her one by playing the ten, or just rolling right over her with the ace and taking both. Either way, Lili would lose. But here he had the impulse to let Ayesha win, and he played the ten.

He had let her win before. She was familiar with his style, and she knew that sometimes he was as cutthroat as anyone, and would play to win; other times he was generous and let a little thirteen-year-old feel good. She would find out, in this case, that he’d let her win. But it all didn’t matter really. If it had mattered, he wouldn’t have let her look at Lili’s hand. He was beginning to realize that Lili hadn’t really mastered the idea of trump, and she was still struggling with the concept of how you figured out who won. In this hand she had the queen of diamonds and the queen of hearts. It was a very pretty hand, but she got zero. She lost to the trump, and she lost to the ace. When she asked what she got, her sister said, “nothing,” and she burst into tears again.

Fortunately it was dinner time, and the stepfather was on his way out to retrieve the girls. Thin and gaunt-looking, with a tattoo on his arm, he looked ominous. All he said was “Girls, dinner,” but the hostility was oozing out of him. Edward couldn’t figure out if perhaps he had hit Lili, or what, and he wondered if this was something he should get involved in. Ayesha made a face, but got up to go with him. Lili was a little slower, still trying to figure out why she got “nothing” and what it meant. It didn’t mean anything, Edward wanted to say; go get dinner. Finally the stepfather said “Now!” and the little girl wet her pants on her way, getting up out of the chair and turning around to run home. She was in tears. Edward had not explained well enough the concept of trump. Or perhaps, he should have engineered it so she was the winner.

The following day he changed his routine. He went out in the courtyard in the morning, and he was gone in the afternoon. He didn’t want to face either of the girls, or hear any more about it. He was retired, and wanted to be left alone for a while. He didn’t turn people in for little bruises; turning in kids and families to the authorities was serious business. But he doubted himself. He wondered if being proactive was better, in case he could prevent worse things from happening later. As usual, he was trying not to get involved. It was the mom’s problem, and if she didn’t want to see what he saw, he figured, that was her business.

But the little card game replayed itself in his mind in the next couple of days. He thought of the way the girl was stuck on the idea of “clubs win no matter what” – it sounded to him, sometimes, like “Dad is right no matter what,” or “just do whatever Dad says no matter how low he is.” A girl like that was naturally trying out her own independence, and taking a little beating for it.

And the news, of course, was full of Trump, Trump this, Trump that, Trump and the 13-year-old girl, Trump and the mistreatment of his underlings at this or that business. Eventually Edward turned off the television too, and took solace in a game of solitaire that was mentally rigorous, and almost impossible to win, but still relaxing, and made more so by a sip of alcohol in his own kitchen.

Eastern Elbow Time

Ken’s job was to sit by Lydia’s side while his wife and her mother, Lydia’s partner, went out for groceries, in a busy neighborhood of Miami. He had known Lydia, a tennis pro, for many years, and they had gotten along well, although now dementia had set in, Lydia was near death, and it wasn’t as fun as it used to be to talk to her. Every few minutes, she’d ask what time it was. Ken would say, patiently, 10:15, or whatever, but he had to bite his tongue to prevent giving him the wise-guy answer from his youth, “Two freckles past a hair – eastern elbow time!”

As a child, growing up in a boisterous family outside Pittsburgh, this answer was almost a matter of pride – that one didn’t wear a watch, and didn’t care, and you could get more precise on how little one cared, but still, anybody who actually wants the time in a place where kids are playing hard, well, they’re pretty much on their own. His siblings and their friends lived a kind of boisterous, outdoor life, and very rarely were focused on the demands of the civilized world. When his little brother would say “Leave me alone!” he would frequently say, “How much, a thousand, two thousand?” with the same kind of torturous reference to a real world he neither cared for nor had any solid connection to.

But now, fifty years later, he sat at the tennis pro’s bedside, and was concerned that a reference to “elbow” might stir unpleasant memories, or at the very least confuse her, at a time when she needed reassurance. He liked Lydia, and cared for her a lot, though these times, when he was in charge of her, were difficult for him. In the past they had shared a lot of stories, and they shared a kind of ruthless competitiveness that probably was hard on both his wife Ann, and her mother, Jane. Ken could tell, sometimes, as Ann and Jane slipped out the door, that they relished their time away from their partners, though it could just be, in Jane’s case, that Lydia had become very difficult to care for. Her decline was rapid, her dementia more serious every day, and, though they had chosen to keep her out of a hospice facility, they were pretty sure her time was limited.

One time, Lydia had come back from a tennis tournament, beaten by a woman whose primary trick was throwing off the timing of the opponent. She’d built in a kind of fake start, and was just unpredictable enough with it so that she’d only serve when she was pretty sure the opponent was off-balance. It worked. She wasn’t a great server or even a great tennis player, but she’d throw off her opponents often enough, that she’d pick up enough points for a win. And she’d beaten Lydia that way.

Ken’s own story had to do with dynamite, though now, he couldn’t remember how he’d related the two stories. A good fifteen years of his life involved dynamite and blowing things up, often in remote places that involved extended concentration over days or even weeks, to get back to whatever bridge, road or building was going to fall. Part of blowing things up was superimposing a countdown on a real world clock and counting back from that zero hour to plan everything else out. At Jane and Lydia’s, he’d tell the stories of blowing things up. Once, though, Ann pointed out that the professional cook had the same situation, counting down with every course of a meal, so that it would all be hot and ready and beautiful at that last zero-minute, all at once. And this had stung him deeply, because the implication was that the cook spent his life feeding people and making them happy, whereas he’d spent his life destroying things. It was as a result of that comment that he changed his career, and became a professional cook. It wasn’t as dramatic a change as you would suspect, and Ken was able to pull it off pretty well; he was a good cook, and even now, was satisfied with his life and where it had gone. Sometimes Ann complained that his competitive nature robbed her of the joy of cooking, but there was no question they ate pretty well as a couple, and were able to feed their friends and relatives pretty well, too. Just last night he had cooked Jane a fancy dinner, and they sat and talked about old times, better times, for a long time into the evening.

Another time when they had been visiting, he had asked Lydia why, in tennis, one would have “love” when one had nothing. At least once every game, he said, one person would have “love,” and that would mean he had nothing. Of course, said Lydia, because the game comes from the French, “love” is actually “l’oeuf” or “the egg.” Actually that player has the egg, which is not really nothing, but kind of looks like a zero. But this answer didn’t satisfy Ken either; it was almost like the explanation was more confusing than the problem itself. And he went back and forth with Lydia; she would ask him why he was in the dynamite trade, for example, or ask him why it was that old man Nobel felt so guilty about blowing things up that he’d gone and started the Peace Prize. Their relationship was refreshingly honest, in a family in which many things went unspoken. She told him bluntly about fallings out in her own family, particularly about her being with Jane, but the same conversations never took place in the rest of Jane and Ann’s family. Lydia and Ken told the truth to each other, almost always, and that made their relationship unusual.

Ken slowly became aware that Ann and Jane would probably be late again. There was no question Miami’s traffic was horrible. And sure, they needed to get away; sure, they’d get a coffee, and perhaps talk, at the grocery store. They’d say things they couldn’t say around Ken or Lydia, and maybe they’d lose track of the time. But on his end, each minute seemed to last forever. Lydia was quiet most of the time, so he listened for every noise in the driveway.

But then, Lydia woke up suddenly, asked for some water, and began to talk to Ken with unusual lucidity, after asking for the time, of course. It was now about 10:28, and he told her so, biting his tongue again to prevent being a wise-guy; he expected Ann and Jane to be back at about 10:50, allowing for Miami’s traffic. She told him, more or less out of the blue, that she had always enjoyed talking to him, and that she had no regrets about her life. She said that she felt they shared that certain feeling that you get in a tennis match, of wanting everything to go right, and turn out well, to do the best you possibly can. He looked at her in the morning light, which came through the bedroom window; she was unusually beautiful, even though death was almost entirely taking over. And she seemed to be carefully telling him everything she wanted him to know, possibly knowing she wouldn’t have another chance. He stopped, almost breathless himself, and simply listened.

He had heard stories of people dying, and in fact had been by his own mother’s bedside just a couple of years ago, as she had died. Sometimes dying people see people who have gone before them, and even talk to them. Sometimes they are sure that a car is waiting for them, or that they are about to meet someone. And he knew that it could be that dying people know more than we do, and see more, and it’s not just the delusions of people who are beginning to lose their handle on reality. With Lydia, it didn’t seem like any of this was happening, but there was no doubt that the time was close. Having said what she wanted to, she fell back into a deep, restless sleep, and he simply sat by her side and watched her. At one point she woke up again, and once more she asked him the time. It was now 10:50, and he told her, once again hearing “two freckles past a hair” clearly in his mind, a clarion call from his own past, wandering around in the woods. Again she fell back asleep. Jane and Ann were expected any minute; undoubtedly Miami traffic was worse than they’d thought.

For a while Ken drifted off into daydreaming; he thought again of times in his childhood when most of what he said was things like “two freckles past a hair,” and “How much, a thousand? Two thousand?” The first, he actually liked, because it represented a simpler time, when one didn’t carry cell phones, and have that electronic fact burned into your home screen; it was a reminder that you could be disconnected, or oriented toward more physical things. The second, though, had an edge to it, and ignored the speaker’s need to be left alone. This was the problem, he thought, with big families, and probably one of the main reasons he never had kids. You were never left alone. No matter how obnoxious your siblings were, you were stuck with them and their big mouths, every minute.

He snapped out of his daydream when Lydia stirred, and something seemed to change. Suddenly, in her sleep, she began to lose her spirit altogether, and she stopped breathing, right in front of him. At the same time he knew it was bound to happen at some time, he was totally unprepared for it, when it did happen; he didn’t cry, or shake her, or try to talk her back to life; he simply watched, surprised. It was not that she hadn’t been able to say good-bye to Jane or Ann, it was more that it seemed, that, if there were no accidents, she had chosen to die in a room alone with him, at that moment. Was that possible? He was shocked, and didn’t know what to make of it. The moment stayed with him, even as he watched the color leave her face; she had clearly died.

When Jane and Ann came home, only ten or fifteen minutes later, they too were shocked, but immediately went into arrangements mode – they called the funeral home; they began to do things that they’d been planning to do anyway – call the family, distribute her belongings. Ken was in a daze for a few days, basically remembering the two images: Lydia, beautiful, by the window, the morning light on her, and Lydia, dying suddenly, slipping away, without warning Ann or Jane. And even though the funeral and beyond, it wasn’t discussed – they simply didn’t talk about such things.

(9-16)

Shower of Fear

Kevin flew into Baltimore on a stressful flight from Dallas at about 5 in the afternoon. The roads in Maryland curved around, with woods and greenery on either side of them. He made sure he would be able to get to his hotel downtown, not far from the airport, but there was a horrific accident on the interstate that filled the shuttle passengers with stress. The shuttle driver himself didn’t seem to flinch, but that was his job; he drove right by it like it was an everyday thing. Downtown, cars seemed to be driving too fast, too aggressively, for Kevin’s taste. He was eager to check in to the hotel, drop his bags off, and take a shower before the evening’s activities.

His plan was to go to a reunion of his battalion in Vietnam, of people he’d known maybe 45 years ago. They were a wild bunch of guys, but they got together periodically to relive their war years, and they usually drank like crazy. The reunion was his plan for the evening, though he planned on skipping the heavy drinking part, to ensure his own survival, and call it an early night. In the morning, a friend of the family, Will Murphy, had agreed to come downtown for breakfast at about ten. Then he’d turn around and head back to Texas. That was it. He was in Baltimore basically overnight.

In Texas they’d warned him that Baltimore had a lot of crime. In fact several friends had mentioned that, and one had warned him to be careful. So before he left he took an old wallet, one he had gotten in Vietnam, and put it in his back pocket; he put his money in his front pocket. This was a trick he’d picked up in Paris one time many years back, that assumed pickpockets or robbers would go for the back one. He felt silly, making compromises to fear, when in fact he’d been in Vietnam for years; having survived a war, he should be able to survive Baltimore.

He couldn’t really tell by looking at it, but it seemed there was a pretty high level of fear here, that he didn’t really experience in Texas. Texas was dangerous, yes, everyone was armed, and half of them were crazy, but here everyone seemed to be afraid, no matter who they were. People looked at him quickly, or looked away; they were in a state of alert, but not direct communication. He’d gotten this impression just from the shuttle and what little interaction he’d had before he checked in.

He took the wallets out of his pants and got ready for the shower. In the shower, as often happened, his war years all came back to him. One night his battalion had been attacked by raining missiles that had landed randomly around their encampment and killed several of his buddies. It was a very long day and a half, in which he’d gotten some sleep, but was so afraid that he rarely slept well, that night or any night after that. And Kevin had only been a radio dispatcher, for the most part out of the worst of the action, not in as much danger as everyone else. But it had still damaged him, left him permanently afraid of things like hail or even falling walnuts. In the shower, occasionally, it would come back to him, and once, back in his drinking days, he’d collapsed in the shower and almost died. It was soon after that that he’d given up drinking altogether. But he came to the reunions regularly. Rather than trying to forget everything, as some of his mates had tried, he purposely relived it, as much as he could, even if it took a plane flight and a weekend to do it. He got it out of his system.

He walked to the reunion dinner, which was at a hotel near his, downtown. People looked away from him as he walked in the streets; it was already getting dark. One old guy asked him for money under his breath, more or less. Kevin stopped and gave him a dollar, and the guy seemed genuinely surprised that anyone would recognize his humanity; people for the most part had ignored him, except for the police of course, who probably would have run him out of there if they’d had a chance. The guy himself seemed to be living in fear, almost as if by standing there he too could be victimized, by someone, anyone, especially if they thought he had anything.

Kevin slowly became more aware of a number of guys like this; they’d come downtown, out of money, out of options, probably feeding off the tourist trade or the Orioles game in one way or the other, criminal in some cases, and probably not, in others; just begging was not necessarily against the law. One guy, though, shuffled past him, mumbling something about cocaine. Kevin knew that if he’d stopped this guy, he’d probably end up seeing the whole city, as the guy took him around, at his expense, trying to get him whatever he needed. Kevin said nothing though. His days of doing that kind of stuff were over; he wanted nothing to do with this. He watched all the people carefully, though. He saw some, dressed in orange and black for the game, or others, just dressed up, wandering around downtown going from restaurant to bar or to the Inner Harbor. Many seemed to be tourists like him; sometimes, you couldn’t tell. The large seagulls at the inner harbor flew back and forth, watching for scraps; the inner harbor smelled like the sea, but it was doubtful that any fish had made it in that far. The seagulls were after tourist food.

At the reunion dinner, he sat with Dave, a guy he didn’t know too well, who was actually from Baltimore. He had to admit to Dave that it was a pretty city, with old buildings, the smell of the sea, old boats in the harbor, crab cakes everywhere, a kind of rustic charm to it. Dave accepted the compliments, and gave him some advice. He was all too aware of the fears people carried around, of just the feeling of having to watch out, downtown, stay out where everyone can see you, and get out of there before it got too late. Dave took all the public transport, which was actually pretty good, he said, and allowed him to go places without parking, which was important. But he said it was a world of its own, and there was fear everywhere. He told about the Lincicum line, and the Howard line, and how there always seemed to be more guys at the bus stop than actually got on the bus, because those were places where you could stand around, and decide what to do next, and not get run out of downtown for having nowhere to go. Kevin admitted that this was new to him; even public transport itself was unheard of, pretty much, in his part of Texas.

A wild spirit prevailed at he reunion, and sure enough all the old buddies, after dinner and ceremony, retreated to some serious drinking around the city. Some of the guys had planned long and hard for this wild drunk, were well prepared, and had even scouted out the best places. They drank like they never drank elsewhere, hard and seriously, and they watched out for each other in the process. But all of them had been damaged in the war. One, Jones, had told the story of how his teenage daughter had made a loud sound behind him once, accidentally, and he swung around and hit her so hard he’d almost killed her. He was sorry; she was his own daughter, and he had no pent up hostility toward her. But he had pent-up something, and it had come out of him so fast he couldn’t even control it. And most of the guys were like that. In a pinch, you wouldn’t want them snapping on you, in Baltimore or anywhere else. So when the program was over and the drinking showed signs of getting serious, Kevin excused himself and made his way back to his hotel.

Now it was more like eleven, and the night was taking a turn for the serious, even though his hotel was maybe only ten blocks away. Another black guy shuffled by him mumbling, and at a bus stop a white kid asked him for a couple of dollars; he said he’d lost his wallet at the game, and was from the Eastern Shore, and was stranded, and needed to take the bus out to where someone could pick him up.

Kevin, a little angry this time, gave him a couple of bucks, and the guy was grateful. Kevin was angry because basically he didn’t believe the guy. And he didn’t feel like it mattered. So he was from the Eastern Shore – did that make him more trustworthy somehow? All the elements of his story – they could be true; then again, maybe not. His uneasiness ate away at him while he walked.

He was glad to make it back to the hotel without incident. He didn’t know how those old guys from Nam did it, staying out beyond eleven, in this kind of place; maybe they were looking for trouble, looking for a fight, or just wanted to see what would happen. Back in the hotel, he washed it all off with another shower. It didn’t quite make him feel better; in fact, it made him wide awake, and finally, he looked out his window for a long while, way down at the street below - the cars, the people walking the streets at midnight. A town like this, he thought, never sleeps.

In the morning Will Murphy was glad to see him, and they ate crab omelets at some place he had picked out as good, downtown. One thing you had to admit about Baltimore, he told Will, and that is they know how to eat crab. Will was in his eighties, with a big tuft of gray hair, and said he didn’t mind coming downtown, as long as it was morning. It was familiar to him; it was home. He liked the Orioles, and being near Camden Yards, but rarely went to games. He seemed reasonably happy, though he’d outlived his wife, and all his old friends, and even two of his children.

When Kevin mentioned the reunion, though, and all his old war buddies, Will told about his World War Two reunions. Most of those guys, he said, are gone now, even the ones who lived through the war, and they had suffered the same kind of trauma and shock that Kevin and his friend Jones had suffered. They had been in a wide area in Germany, on a large hillside, and Germans came through by the thousands, killing almost everyone. It was just by chance, he said, that he himself had been in a kind of ditch, and looked dead already, and they passed him by. There had been nothing anyone could do; they were vastly outnumbered; they couldn’t save their fellow soldiers, even if they had done anything different. In their reunions, the survivors talked about the randomness of it, how three out of four of them had died that night, and the remaining ones often got together and simply wondered why they were lucky enough to still be alive. They felt guilty, he said, because it was all so random, and there was so little anyone could do for each other.

The morning sun came into the restaurant as people came and went, and the waitress brought out plate after plate of food. She had a slight black eye and a hardened look, but maintained her cheerful disposition. At one point, some guy came into the restaurant at the front, disheveled, hungry looking, and with a single dirty look she sent him on his way. Nothing here for you at this moment, her look said.

Will, lost in thought for a moment, finally leaned a little closer to him and said, basically, that the crazy thing about that war was that on some level, he knew those Germans were just like him. He could have been doing the running through the hillside, killing everyone, but he happened to be face down in a ditch. Or he could be firing his gun down on a whole hillside of enemy soldiers, as he was at some point, instead of being on a hillside, having bullets rain down on him from above, as he had been on another night, or maybe a couple of nights. It was all just the luck of the draw. He’d been on both sides. For some reason, he was still alive, and he had a twinkle in his eye.

His spirit restored Kevin’s faith, to some degree. He still had to get out to the airport, and at the same time Will was doing some errand downtown and catching some bus out to the suburbs. But Will was up for it. He liked Baltimore, and was perfectly happy to stay here the rest of his days.

Going home, Kevin’s flight took him through Austin, instead of Dallas; that was a completely different experience. People were more upbeat, looking forward to a good time, and whatever business they were doing, it was likely a different kind of business than what you’d go to Baltimore for. He was surprised, really, that you could fill up a plane with people going from Baltimore to Austin, but apparently they had no trouble filling the plane. The announcements by the pilot always reminded him of his radio dispatcher days, when he heard some really scary stuff, but the pilot welcomed them and told them everything would be fine. He said the weather was good in Texas, but there was a chance of hail out in the plains. Hail is one thing that made Kevin very nervous; he’d go out of his way to avoid it. But on an airplane, and traveling in general, one had the feeling that it was all out of one’s control. You go where the planes take you, and if you happen to hit some turbulence, well, you just hold on until it gets easier. And once you got out on the highway, it was pretty much a straight shot, wherever you were going, anyway. Just stay awake, and don’t let it get to you. He reached down to his pants, and noticed that the wallet was gone, the one he’d gotten in Vietnam. His first thought was that it had been pickpocketed. But then he remembered; he’d left it by the shower in the hotel. Empty as it was, it was a tip for the housekeepers. And he wasn’t really using it much anyway.

9-16

House Party

House Party

Three dogs lit into the kitchen garbage with an intensity and joy that was almost unbelievable, riveting to those who saw it, from the start. The biggest dog, a black lab, was a good climber and also had the best method for opening the lid of the garbage can. He, it seemed, was doing the hardest work. He was being egged on by a medium-sized orangish terrier and a little black Chihuahua. The terrier couldn’t believe his luck. He jumped on his back legs pawing furiously at whatever the lab delivered to him. He barked for more. His shrill cries of joy filled the air.

One by one, the lab pulled empty packages of bacon, uneaten hot dogs, a box of cookies that was down to its scraps, and wadded up paper towels out of the garbage. The wadded up paper towels had been used to clean up the bacon, so the terrier and the Chihuahua lit into them as if they were starved and hadn’t had bacon grease for years. They ripped them into little pieces, swallowing parts of each towel in their frantic excitement. And yet, the lab kept delivering more: this paper towel was full of coffee grounds, which spread out all over the kitchen. And then there were egg shells, which dripped uncooked egg as they rolled around in the pile of garbage on the floor. There were containers with partly eaten lunches in them, and at one point what remained of Chinese take-out – the soy sauce and rice, they spread furiously around the kitchen, as they tore up the cardboard and tried to get at the little meat scraps that were tucked into the folds of the cardboard.

This wild hedonistic party was being recorded by a single cell phone, which had been propped up on a nearby table, with the movie function on, focused at a point about two feet from the garbage can. So, in effect, the viewers saw much of the joy of the dogs, tearing and ripping at the bacon package, for instance, or tearing up the paper towels, but they didn’t see much of the lab, except his tail, and the fact that it was he who actually pulled the food packages out of the garbage can. In other words, there was plenty of evidence that the black lab was the main culprit. But much of the time, you couldn’t see directly that he was doing it. The other two dogs excitedly waited for each piece, and barked at him to keep it coming. The terrier scrambled from one piece to another, barking all the while.

The lab was clearly being egged on by the terrier, and trying to impress him. The terrier acted like he had never been at such a party, never experienced such joy, never tasted forbidden delights like paper towels wadded up in bacon grease. He acted like he’d been cooped up all his life, going to obedience school, obeying his masters, and now, he was free in the world, free to do as he wished, to run with the bad dogs, to indulge in whatever garbage suited his fancy. He moved from one piece of garbage to another, frantically tearing things up and spreading coffee grounds all over the kitchen, but he couldn’t concentrate on any given thing, and in his haste he would often leave delicious morsels, not even seeing them, going from thing to thing in a desperate attempt to experience all the forbidden joys of life.

The Chihuahua, however, was more systematic, more evil, and more experienced. He’d teamed up with the lab before, and he knew how this worked. He knew how to get the lab to deliver to him everything he wanted, and he wasn’t bothered that the terrier got to some of it first. He also knew that there were chicken bones at the bottom of the garbage; he could smell them, and he knew that the lab was the only one capable of getting them and delivering them. But, toward the end of the lab’s frenzy, out came the chicken bones! Some had fallen into an empty donut box with a clear plastic window. Easy enough to rip up the box and pull the chicken bones out one by one. The Chihuahua lit into them knowing that the owners could come back at any moment, ending the entire party. It was a live-for-the-moment experience, like hitting the jackpot at Vegas. Get it all now while you can; you’ll remember this moment forever.

The owners in fact were nowhere nearby; they had gone for a walk, and it was a long rambling walk through the city park and wasn’t liable to end for at least an hour. Because the dogs got a good jump on them, an hour was more than enough to tear into every single piece of the overfull garbage can, and the cell phone caught the whole 55-minute rampage, somehow having enough battery and enough space to make a wild movie. In terms of pure food, there was no doubt that the Chihuahua had gotten more than his share, as he’d been systematic, ruthless and aggressive, whereas the terrier was in such an emotional frenzy that he missed much of it, and the lab, of course, was busy with the art of pulling it out of the garbage itself. The owner of the house, Angela, was actually the owner of only the lab, and lived with a number of roommates of both genders, thus the bad diet choices, but she had been watching, and thus responsible for, the other two dogs. She, of course, was a bit dismayed upon her return, to see her kitchen look like a tornado had gone through it. The Chihuahua belonged to Burt, the guy she had gone on the walk with. Burt was actually a little proud of his Chihuahua, for so aggressively rampaging through an obvious treasure. The terrier belonged to a neighbor; in fact, it was true that the neighbor had been quite protective of the terrier, and the terrier had never been in such a situation before.

It was the neighbor, however, a woman named Laura, who put the entire movie on YouTube, ensuring that the three dogs would be famous for the rest of their lives. The movie got over three million hits, with many people watching it four or five times. One thing that was riveting about the movie was that the action never stopped: bacon package, donut box, fortune cookies, leftover pizza, rat poison…wait! Did I say rat poison? Yes, and in fact, people became fixed on that rat poison, because it added a bit of risk and danger to the entire movie. The dogs were oblivious to the poison, and selective; they left it alone; they had better things to tear into. But there was rat poison in the garbage, and it was clearly visible in the movie; later Angela admitted that she had used it and thrown it away, and thought it was safe from the dogs, wrongly of course.

Another thing that made the movie popular was the clearly different personalities of the dogs themselves, who seemed like they’d never had so much fun in their lives. It was the party of all parties, the wild festival of greasy plastic and food scraps, spilled oil and coffee grounds. For most viewers, it was forty or fifty minutes of the wildest most uncontrolled joy ever witnessed. And the three had a mutually symbiotic relationship. The lab was enjoying being the provider. The Chihuahua, with his constant low barking, made sure that the lab never got tired, made it all the way to the bottom. The terrier in his frenzy made high-energy chaos that really set this off in the world of YouTube – it had something over your average movie.

One little scene at the end, however, showed a very remorseful black lab, with a very guilty look in his eyes, as his owner, Angela, scolded him for being such a bad dog. In fact, as many of the three million viewers pointed out, she was a bad owner, because she had somehow forgotten to put the garbage out of the lab’s reach, and had left three dogs at home alone with a garbage can full of chicken bones and rat poison. The pressure became so great on the local animal control people that they came and served Angela with a citation for endangering dogs, to make the point that one should not allow dogs to do things that so clearly endangered them. Angela ended up being remorseful, not because she had such a huge mess to clean up, but because she had a nasty little fine to pay, and she was famous around town; when she went to the Wal-Mart, even the clerks knew her as the woman whose dogs tore up her kitchen. So many people had seen the movie, so many times, with her face clearly visible in part of it, that she now had a kind of fame around town, where the movie had been seen perhaps more than in other places. One man even found her name and called her up, saying he was looking for a black lab, and hadn’t been able to find one, and figured she might give him hers, since she clearly wasn’t taking very good care of it. She got angry, though, and said she always took good care of the lab; she walked him, and threw sticks for him at the park, and always fed him regularly. She couldn’t explain his orgy of bad behavior, of course, but didn’t feel that warranted having the dog taken away from her. She loved the dog. In fact, she was glad to see that, after the severe scolding, things went back to normal, more or less, except that they were both famous now, whenever they did go on walks.

As for Burt, though, that relationship between Burt and Angela didn’t last long. They had just met each other, but by the end of the walk in the park it was obvious they wouldn’t be a very good match. Both were in school and both had busy lives of work, school, extracurricular activities, other things. It was his attitude toward the kitchen, however, that tipped her off. He didn’t care how much work it would be to clean it up, nor did he offer to help clean it up; he even seemed to get some pleasure out of his dog’s getting the better of some woman that he’d just met. She sent him on his way, and they didn’t see him or the Chihuahua for a long time. She also changed her living situation the following semester. Sometimes, having a dog meant you couldn’t be choosy about your housemates. But you could get away from the extreme kinds of things her present roommates ate.

She did stay in the house, though, until the end of the semester. For many months afterward, when the terrier came over from the neighbor’s house, he would bark at the lab and get into a posture of playing. When he did this, she could almost imagine, and practically hear, the terrier reminding the lab of the party, and wondering when they would get that kind of chance again. The lab, of course, maintained his utmost loyalty to Angela, bringing her a stick regularly, and maintaining his good-natured temperament, as if it never had happened. But he kept his eyes open, prepared for any possible chance that could come in the future. (9-16)

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Hunger

The Western Bar & Grill, which fortunately served breakfast, was just opening when Darryl and his four friends rolled in, parked, and entered. They had been hunting elk all night, without sleeping at all, and finally decided to go to town to get some breakfast, just about the time the sun was about to rise. The bank stood across from the Western, and the trees beyond that; the town was still, and there weren’t more than a few cars in the whole road.

Once they were seated in a booth, Darryl felt a tinge of tiredness, like he would fall asleep before his breakfast even arrived. But the waitress, Angel, brought coffee right away and the five hunters started arguing more or less the same way they’d been arguing all night. They each had brought different skills to the hunt; Hank knew where to find the elk, Gary knew, or claimed to know, how to get them to go from one place to another; Pete knew how to get the meat out of them when they were down. It turned out the little old guy, Jimmy, didn’t know any of that, but Jimmy was able to get them out of the deepest woods once, at about four in the morning, when all the other four were completely lost. Darryl had brought very few skills to the hunt, but he did have a gun, and he had the hunger for elk; he’d much rather be eating that elk right now, than this Denver omelet that was coming to his table fresh.

But the omelet was good, and the coffee was hot and powerful, and pretty soon Darryl was able to focus better on what each guy was saying. They were still talking about the elk; they all had wanted to bag one, like Darryl. The elk were known to come to town, especially in hunting season, and Angel at one point said she thought they knew it was the only safe place at this time of year. The elk was much larger than deer, harder to kill, far more stubborn, but the question was, how smart was it, and did it really know what it was doing when it stumbled from place to place? They debated for a while. One guy they knew would kill them and only take the head, because he valued the antlers, but not the meat, really; Darryl, however, had tasted the meat, wanted the meat, and valued it, in fact, was hungry for it even on top of this omelet breakfast, and barely able to concentrate as he was.

The Western Bar & Grill had an elk trophy on the wall; it wasn’t looking directly at the five men, but Darryl felt that when he looked at it suddenly, perhaps its eyes were turned his way. That’s ridiculous, he thought, it was dead, there was no way it could be looking at him, or anyone else, it was just a head on the wall. But he remembered one time when he’d brought his young daughter to this very room, for dinner, and she’d become upset that there would be an elk head on the wall, and started asking him all kinds of questions about how it had got there. He actually hunted much less now that she was older, and was never quite able to tell her the whole story, but as an avid hunter with the opportunity to go out with these four friends, he’d had to take them up on it, and go out Dry Canyon together.

Now they got into an argument about where they had been, and in fact, on Hank’s advice, they had gone out Dry Canyon as far as they could drive, and had set out on foot through the woods. Hank was the leader, so everyone was willing to follow his advice for a while; they had circled around a bit, got lost, gone in the wrong direction a ways, and finally figured out how to get back to the canyon and back to the truck they had taken. Now, in the restaurant, they began arguing about whether they had done the right thing. At each point in the night, even at 4 am, in the pitch black darkness of the forest, they had to make these decisions together, all five of them. Now, in the process of reliving them, the same disagreements came up. Hank was kind of a showman. He did it for his image of himself, leading his buddies into the forest and bringing back an elk to brag about. But he wasn’t necessarily right about Dry Canyon; much of his brash confidence with the landscape was unfounded. He repeatedly had to defend his decisions against the challenges of guys who also felt they knew the place.

In fact, Jimmy, for one, was becoming a little agitated. You could say whatever you wanted about the elk themselves; he knew elk, he hunted elk, but he knew he wasn’t an expert. But when you started talking about where things had gone wrong, Jimmy knew that. He knew north from south, he knew a half mile from three-quarters of a mile. It’s like he knew every deer trail up and down every mountain in the forest. And in fact, he probably did. You could argue with him on these details, but you couldn’t win. Darryl knew that without Jimmy, they might not have made it back nearly so easily. So when Jimmy started in about some decision they’d made, way back at some god-forsaken intersection of path and deer-trail, on the side of some mountain out by Dry Canyon, Jimmy was probably right.

Darryl sipped his coffee and remembered the moment. Thousands of stars had covered them as they leaned on their guns and argued, and Darryl had gotten the feeling that if they could just shut up they could hear the elk tromping about; that elk had probably known they were coming a mile away. The point was to find a place where the wind was just right, where the elk couldn’t smell the people, preferably up a little, and get real quiet and wait. But in fact they had never found that place, because they could never agree on where the elk were or where they were going. In the middle of the night, they were still arguing, instead of sitting there silently, waiting for a sure kill. Darryl didn’t know that much about hunting, but he knew that much: that if they were still walking, they weren’t going to get anything.

Angel came back around, and kept filling up their coffees and teasing them about not shooting anything; perhaps they could buy some meat from her husband, she said, and each take it home, and pretend they’d shot it themselves. Deep down, Darryl thought that was a good idea, because he no longer cared about actually shooting the darn thing, he just wanted to eat some. He was still a little delirious from lack of sleep, but fortunately it was a weekend, and nobody was in a hurry to get anywhere, except maybe Jimmy, who had some kind of weekend job as a guide. 

But as they paid their bill and walked out of the Western Bar & Grill, into the morning sun, there was an enormous elk, standing out in the middle of downtown, right in front of the bank, watching them impassively. He had broad shoulders and an enormous rack; to some degree, he was what each of them had been seeing or imagining all night.

You couldn’t shoot him here; he was right in front of the police station, and Ed, the town cop, was just getting to work. Just like Angel said, he knew he was safe, right in the center of town, and he was just looking at them as if to challenge them, or perhaps to mock them. Perhaps he’d followed their truck all the way back from Dry Canyon, or just knew where they were, and where to wait to get a good clear look at them.

Hank was the most offended, and even said something to the elk, as he took it as kind of an affront to all his effort, and felt that, in a personal way, this elk was making him look bad. Jimmy grumbled under his breath, in a hurry to get in the truck and get out of there; to him it was a practical matter. Darryl smiled, watching Hank almost walk over and grab the thing by its antlers. But the image of the elk danced in his eyes, as he was still not sure he was entirely awake. The taste of elk was stronger than ever in his imagination, but it was going to have to wait for another day.

The morning sun was now coming over the trees, and people were beginning to come to town for various reasons, noticing the elk in the process. It wasn’t that big as news; most of them had seen an elk downtown before. This one was like most elk; he didn’t much want to move, but finally was persuaded to lope off, when Angel herself came out with a pan and a big spoon to bang it with, practically right in his ear. He had huge antlers that took up a lot of room and pointed toward the sky pretty much no matter how he turned his head. He glanced at the bank, and took a last look at the five hunters, as if he’d remember their faces, and come back for them later; then, he headed out of town toward the woods. 

In the truck now, the men went their separate ways, and when Darryl got home, he told his wife that he’d seen one, but wasn’t able to shoot anything. It’s just as well, she said, since she'd have been unwilling to cook it, if he had.

8-17-2016

Goodbye Tiger Island

I met her in the Bangkok Airport, at a kind of diner-restaurant, when there were no seats except the one right across from her. She was quite pretty, with a Scandinavian face, light hair, and blue, but very sad eyes, and I made sure she saw my wedding ring so she felt a little less like I was trying to pick her up. She was wearing pretty Thai clothing and had a large satchel that I assumed carried everything she needed for her trip. She was, in fact, moving out of Thailand. Her name was Marta. I was simply going through Bangkok for a job interview in a small town, grabbing a meal and going on to my gate. Both of us, then, were suspended between flights at the airport.

She had been working at a place called Tiger Temple, a tourist resort run by a non-profit Buddhist organization, which had recently been taken over by the government. The government had moved in, closed it down, and removed the tigers, because, they alleged, some of the higher-ups were making money on the exotic animal trade. The government pointed to tools found in the rooms of the abbots, physical evidence, they said, of people taking advantage of the wild animals; this was illegal. The trade in endangered species was a sensitive issue.

The waitress came by and took my order, soup and Thai coffee. She gave Marta a quick look, as if she had already been sitting there, pining and not eating, for quite some time. She made no attempt to pressure Marta into ordering anything, and she didn’t. It was a typical airport diner, busy, noisy, an occasional spill of dishes and silverware in the background. One could hear boarding calls for flights to Asian cities: Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Hong Kong. In the airport hallway right outside the diner, people walked by in a steady stream, pulling or pushing luggage, often a little more than they could capably handle.

Marta had grown up loving tigers, she said, and had fallen in with a group of people who worked at the temple to improve the lot of the tigers who lived there. They had, indeed, made a better habitat for those tigers; they’d spent a lot of time, and $1.2 million that had been given to them by tourists and other sources, making a “tiger island.” A lot of money apparently had gone through the place anyway; the abbots didn’t really need to be taking extra money, or making a few thousand on the side. That’s what I asked her. Don’t you kind of assume that these monks above you are living the monks’ life, keeping a minimum for themselves, and helping humanity by keeping these tigers going? She said that that was exactly what she’d thought, and she went about her business, improving the lot of the tigers, and more or less not keeping track of what people above her were doing. Honestly, she said, she didn’t know any more, if they were really corrupt, or if it was just the government, wanting to get back at anyone who they didn’t like.

In fact, the Buddhists had a long history of antagonizing the government in Thailand, acting like they had a corner on ethical behavior, and being, unlike the government, not in it for the money. It seemed to Marta that they were all in it for the tigers. Everything they said seemed geared toward making those tigers’ lives better, with more space, so they could co-exist with the thousands of tourists who came through each year, tourists who had the legitimate desire, if not need, to connect to the animal kingdom. Marta had rationalized the idea of working for a large zoo: it was better for the tigers to have people building an adequate habitat and maintaining it. It was better for society, when people could see them and come close to them without danger. Her own proximity to the tigers had caused her to feel very close to one of them, an older male named Baht (Baht was also the name of the money in Thailand) – and she now was upset over the future of Baht and his other tiger friends.

A couple of times I looked at her in the afternoon light coming in from out by the tarmac. She was an exceptionally beautiful woman, overcome by profound sadness, and all, it seemed, over this tiger who she’d never see again. It seems the government had hauled away all the tigers, and had assured everyone that the tigers would be well managed. But if she couldn’t trust the abbots, how could she trust the government? Somehow she was sure that the tigers were doomed to a pretty miserable life, until the whole mess was straightened out. I sipped my soup slowly; it was delicious, and the Thai coffee also was very good. Marta showed no interest in food, mine or any, and was completely morose.

Finally, she told the story of the police evacuating the premises. It was generally believed among the people she worked with that the police hated the abbots, and that the police wouldn’t find what they were looking for, so the workers pretty much let the police in, and allowed them to search the rooms. They sincerely didn’t believe the police would find anything of interest. When they did, some of the things were easily explainable. People in the past could have been using these tools, or storing the bodies of tigers – maybe to prove they weren’t selling them in the endangered species market? But when they found tools used to cut tiger fangs, and pelts, it was pretty obvious that somebody was making big money from these tigers, even now. Marta’s stomach tightened just talking about it, because she’d known at that moment that she’d never see the tigers again.

There was another man in this story, a slightly older monk who had taken more than a passing interest in Marta, who had spent considerable energy befriending her. Though it was pretty clear now that the head abbot was guilty, the guilt of some of the lower monks was much less clear, she said. But she wouldn’t miss him so much, or any of the other monks, or even the exotic setting. She would only miss her Baht, her favorite tiger.

In the process of talking about it, she’d recovered her composure, but the infinite sadness of losing a loved one forever hung heavy in the air. I remember wondering, as she talked, if people ever recovered from these things.

But suddenly, from within the center of the airport, a young child came walking toward the diner, and when he got to it, he came right through the little entrance and walked up more or less directly to Marta. It was as if he’d been looking for her, or had simply decided she was the best person for him to talk to. He was about three or four, Thai, and he spoke to her in Thai; she answered fluently. Now, I don’t know Thai, so I had no idea what they were saying, but I could tell you that her Thai was very good, and it appeared, based on what she said later, that he was lost, and needed to find his parents. She kept him talking for a while; he was a very gregarious young boy, and while she was doing it she managed to catch the eye of an airport policeman who was walking by, and who came to take the boy off to where they deal with such things. The boy did not appear to be afraid of the policeman; perhaps this had happened before. He had cheered Marta up a little, though, with his earnest three-year-old view of the world. And she, for her part, trusted the policeman entirely to do the right thing, and reunite this boy with his parents.

Later, on my way to my hotel in the small town I was going to, I encountered a Buddhist monk begging. He was a kid, about twenty, with bald hair, carrying a bowl into which I put some baht. I looked at his eyes, looking for indication of sincerity, or innocence, or anything. Unfortunately I am not a good reader of Thai eyes or expressions, and I realized that this didn’t bode well for success, if I should get this new job. If there was a God, and he was impressed by one’s donations to a monk, perhaps my luck would be better. I sent out a prayer for Marta, for the boy, and for her tiger above all.

(6-16)

Your Dead

Martin, aging, balding, a little overweight, drew anime characters for an online production in LA. He let people know what the next edition would be about, and sometimes people complained; since it was online, these complaints were often rude, sharp, and pointed, almost always anonymous to some degree. But one time a kid threatened his life; he said that “if you do that with the main character, your dead.” The bad grammar tipped Martin off; surely he was a kid, he thought; presumably, he was a guy. Perhaps he was a non-native speaker.

The fact that it was a death threat meant that Martin could have gotten the police involved, but instead, he decided to just find the guy (presuming it was a guy), track him down and yell at him if possible. He just felt like it was out of line for a fan to make death threats, and try to influence the creative process that way; of course, Martin hadn’t needed to read the comments at all, but he didn’t feel he could be blamed for reading them, since they were directed toward him and his creative process, and that was a sensitive issue. But “your dead?” Did this kid know where Martin lived? Or that Martin had loved ones? Or that Martin valued his ability to wake up in the morning and go about his business without looking over his shoulder?

The kid had written his comment anonymously, but in fact wasn’t hard to track down; he was the 15-year-old son of a prominent doctor in the city, Dr. Angelo, and his name was Marc Angelo. This Marc Angelo was in high school in the LA area, and Martin actually had the time that week to track him down and find him. Crossing LA often took the greater part of a morning and afternoon, or in this situation afternoon and early evening, but in this case, he figured, it was worth it, and he was grateful that the kid was at least in the same city, more or less. He got out his maps and planned his trip; he figured out what the kid looked like, and figured out what exit of the high school he would use, and when he would get out of school. It was like stalking, except that Martin felt a sense of vindication. The kid had, after all, threatened his life. He intended to make this kid uncomfortable, at least for a few minutes.

On the day he had picked out, he crossed LA and parked near the exit of the school where he figured the kids would come out, at about 3:20. Sure enough, out they came, by the hundreds, and being high school kids many of them ran for their cars, or did some other kind of activity that would make it hard for Martin to track down Marc. But, suddenly, he spotted the kid that had to be Marc; he was walking with another boy, and about a block from the school they parted ways and Marc started on the seven-block trip home by himself. It was a suburban neighborhood; houses were set back, hidden from the road by bushes, flowers and manicured gardens.

As soon as the friend was out of sight Martin drove up to the corner and turned, came back, and screeched his brakes in front of the kid, making sure he wasn’t blocking traffic, and jumped out of his Mercedes, steaming mad, accusing Marc of making a death threat online, and telling him he was going to pay.

Marc, skinny, tall, all Adam’s apple, lost all color in his face, and made no move to run away, or fight, or deny it. He stammered for a little while and then was quiet; he was shocked that an author would come and find him. Finally at one point Martin asked him, “What did you think would happen when you threatened my life? What were you doing?”

But it was pretty clear; Marc hadn’t really been thinking anything. He was a kid. He wasn’t even aware, really, that it was illegal, or a crime, and he begged Martin not to tell his parents or go to the authorities. He seemed to be very sorry he had done it. He admitted, at one point, that he hadn’t really planned it or thought about it much at all.

Martin was aware, for a split second, how much power he had. He could strangle the kid, and probably would be let off. He could let the authorities ruin the kid’s life, or tie him up for years with legal costs. Or, he could be lenient, and hope that he’d taught the kid a lesson. He chose that last one, and finally, convinced that Marc was scared to death, he let him walk home from school, and drove away. When he got home he realized that he’d invested maybe six or seven hours into the process, and wondered if it was actually worth it. He was just a kid, all Adam’s apple, so afraid.

He actually ran into the kid about two years later, at a convention meant for fans of anime and similar arts, where he’d been asked to present something. He was dressed in his finest suit, as a presenter, and Marc was in a flannel shirt and jeans. Now, he looked at the kid, a little older, and the kid recognized him too. Martin awkwardly offered to get Marc a coffee or a soft drink, and he accepted. They sat in an open foyer of the convention center with overpriced drinks and Marc apologized again, profusely, for what he’d done. Apparently he hadn’t done anything like that since; he was a genuine fan, and really appreciated the hard work of the artists. Perhaps Martin had made him aware of that.

But as they were talking, another thing came out. Marc’s parents had divorced a year and a half ago. It was a dramatic, terrible divorce, involving a lot of anger on everyone’s part. Finally his dad, the doctor, Dr. Angelo, had killed his wife, Marc’s step-mom, and there was this big dramatic arrest and looming court case, with thousands of dollars flying around, most of it going to some lawyer. Martin listened in horror as the kid told of the complete destruction of his family. But he actually seemed calmer now than he had been, a couple of years ago; somehow, with his dad in jail, his step-mom dead, and him in the hands of still another relative, everything was easier.

Now, Martin felt a sense of responsibility in the kid’s case. He was, after all, one of the few adults in the kid’s life, and what had he been doing? He was busy making stories about killing, and drama, and violence; that was Martin’s life. Others were actually playing out the stories, killing each other, manufacturing drama. The kid didn’t have a whole lot of other adults in his life, outside his high school, and now even that had changed. And Martin saw where the kid had gotten his pent-up anger and hostility, addressed at an anime author who had just done something he didn’t like. He’d been living in a war zone.

Martin saw, suddenly, how important it was that he be nice to Marc. Marc had survived it all somehow; it wasn’t clear what had happened to his biological mother, or what was going on with the people who were housing him now. Marc was into anime as a way of keeping his head down, keeping his imagination alive, keeping his soul. Martin’s characters were extremely important to him. Marc said that he was trying to draw some of his own, and showed them to Martin. Martin impulsively complimented him, but as he looked carefully at the detail, he had a flood of mixed emotions. Anime was, in fact, a way to express one’s feelings of violence, betrayal, and passion, and Marc was pouring himself into it, however basic his skills. Martin was not ready to be a teacher, and was still mad at him, looking at him, in spite of everything, as a kid who once threatened his life. He realized how self-centered he was, to still be so sensitive about his own work.

And, advice that could be interpreted as criticism, how would that be taken? He looked at the fragile soul across from him with admiration and respect; and suddenly, he had nothing to say. He wished Marc well in his high school studies, and left quickly, since he’d felt the urge to say something sarcastic, or let out the feeling he had, still now after two years, his hostility at what had happened, at this kid who had threatened his life. He smiled weakly and shook the kid’s hand. He really did wish him well, and hoped to see him again, perhaps at the next convention.

6-16