en Coda

Coyote and The Aunties

2011-05-31T20:09:00.000-07:00

We‘re sitting around the cabin, Dottie, Sue, and me are, telling stories about Coyote to the kids. A fire on this warm night is not necessary, but we think it adds to the sense of occasion. Kids today do not have much occasion to listen to their elders.

In the stories, my sisters and I are always young, slim, and pretty. That’s hard for the kids to swallow. They try to be respectful, but one of the youngest invariably gets the giggles thinking about such a ridiculous notion. Then one of the oldest kids will swat the giggler on the head . “Stop laughing at Auntie, or I’ll kill you next time.”

Members of our tribe threaten each other with death on a daily basis.

Looking at my sisters and me today, even I have trouble believing we were once young, let alone good-looking. Dottie’s put on about 200 pounds. Sue’s face is a journey via fault lines to the center of the earth. And I can’t walk or see or hear or chew well anymore.

Yet it had to be true or Coyote wouldn’t have bothered with us back then. That’s the way he was. He could get the pick of any litter. And he could get any litter he wanted, too. Fact is, every female in the whole damn kennel would jump all over him.

“He was ugly in the face,” Dottie likes to begin.

“I beg your pardon,” Sue interrupts. “He was the handsomest man this side of the Clan Gathering at Muscate.

Now they look to me. I’m the middle child who settles everything. Well, I’m the middle child if you don’t count Leroi, and nobody counts Leroi.

“Coyote wasn’t handsome, ” I say. “but he wasn’t ugly. His was a plain, ordinary face. But he sure could dance.”

“He could have danced all night, he could have danced, danced, danced---“

Two of the kids are singing and get up to start an exaggerated waltz, and the others laugh until they notice we’re silent and do not intend on proceeding with the story until they shut up.

“Sorry Aunties,” they chime in unision. Once the fire magic has a chance to lull them and once the story magic has its chance to fascinate them, the kids settle down. Unless they are playing secretly with their cell phones.

“The night we met Coyote," Dottie continues, there was a big dance over to Coeur d’Alene. I was 16 and this was my first dance. That Hall was lit up like Heaven itself. For a moment I couldn’t take it all in and I almost fainted. The expression ‘blacking out’ is wrong. Everything went white, and you know that’s bad for a Native American. But someone caught me before I fell. A man. He wasn’t much older than me, though there was nothing of a boy about him. His arms were strong, I could feel that. Then I became aware of his face rising from the whiteness surrounding me. It was an ugly face and - -“

“No!” the Greek chorus of kids protest. “He wasn’t ugly. Auntie Esther says he wasn’t ugly,” they remind Dottie. And before Sue could speak, they address her too. “And he wasn’t handsome either. Auntie Esther says.”

Sue and Dottie look at me sourly.

“Well, his face scared me,” Dottie retorts, “whatever he actually looked like. Nobody can argue with what I saw when I looked at that face.”

“He was handsome to me and everyone else in the world except my sisters, of course,” says Sue. "They couldn’t pick out Coyote from Eagle in a line-up.”

My sisters glare at each other and the audience.

“What did Uncle Leroi think,” one of the kids asks, slyly, that brash Ray-Ray.

I wish he hadn’t brought up Leroi. I know the rest of the them will start chanting “Long Live Leroi.” I'm tired of that old business and suddenly, I’m tired of the younger generation.

“Goodbye, kids. Get out of here.” I say. “Scram, beat it, vamoose, adios, ciao, sayonara. Storytime’s over and there won’t be any squaw candy, either. “

“You shouldn’t have mentioned LeRoi,” Sue shakes her head sadly. “You know how she feels about all that. Why do you torment your elders?” The grooves in her face seem deeper than ever.

“When we were children, we listened to our elders. We learned.” Dottie stands up and scolds, bulk a-quiver, looming above them.

The kids file out, arguing with each other, thumbs twitching on their phones.

One girl stays and draws close to us. "Please, Aunties. I want to hear the story about Coyote leaving his earth brothers and sisters to dance with the stars."

Well then.

We settle down to our storytelling position again, drawing our bright-colored, imitation Indian- designed Walmart blankets around our shoulders, for the authentic touch.

Coyote once told us "If only one person believes in me, I can dance with the stars in the sky." Or maybe that was Jesus. I am old. I forget.

A Twisting, A Turning

2011-04-03T23:58:00.000-07:00

I look in the mirror at myself nude this evening, really look. I wonder what some of the men who loved me once or who lusted for me, would think of this body now.

One lover admired my spine. I suppose he comes to mind because I broke my back a few months ago and though decently healed it doesn't look quite right back there. My age is certainly a factor also. This lover I remember, he would run his hands up and down my spinal cord. He enjoyed manipulating my body into different positions - and I'm not speaking sexually. When I was at my most relaxed that's when he would amuse himself posing me. After lovemaking, I barely inhabit my body anyway, so I didn't care what he did with it.

He said he read once in the Goncourt Journals that a certain sculptor would use only French female models because their spines had the most flexibility in the world, he said. Any little French girl from the streets could give, effortlessly, "a twisting, a turning...the inflexion of a Hebe offering Jupiter his cup."

I no longer have such an offering.

Heart's Content

2011-04-02T12:16:00.000-07:00

I was surprised at the demon's appearance. Not surprised at the fact that he appeared, because I summoned him with a very reliable spell. No, the surprise was how he looked. That’s what I meant by appearance. His was so normal. Normal for a demon, I mean. Rather cliche, I judged. So very… last millenium. You'd think the demon race would demand a makeover by now.

"Nice pitchfork," I greeted him.

He growled. I distinguished the words "damn human" in that rumble of a voice.

Well, obviously I'm going to be damned for this.

"Let's get down to business, shall we," I suggested.

He grunted. "Fame, fortune, love - ho-hum."

"None of those," I contradicted. "It's revenge I want.”

He sneered. "Probably just want him roughed up some."

"Once again you're mistaken, demon. I could have done that myself. What I want you to do is rip his body apart slowly, shred his skin, squash his organs to a pulp - that sort of thing."

I detected a flicker of interest in those soulless yellow orbs he uses for eyes.

"I trust you know your job,” I continued, “so dispose of the parts however you choose. I don't care about anything but the heart. Just bring it to me, intact.”

The Demon spat. Though I took that for assent, I wasn't going to risk any misunderstanding.

“Intact,” I repeated.

“Still beating,” he grinned.

“You know what Ben Franklin said.”

He looked confused.

“When a man dies, the last thing to stop moving is the heart,” I enlightened him.

He made a rude, dismissive gesture when I held out a piece of paper with name, address, cell phone, fax number and other relevant data. Then he disappeared amidst the same flourish of incarnadine smoke in which he had arrived.

I made a mental note that when I get to hell someday, I will approach the one in charge with a proposal for new costumes, special affects, and other such outer trappings. In fact, I thought, reaching for my sketch pad, I could make some preliminary drawings while waiting for the demon’s return.

Holding the pad at arm’s length, I admired my work. I rather take pride in my God-given artistic ability. Though my own heart had become now merely a mechanical object in my chest, I realized for the first time in a long while that life – and the Afterlife - still held possibilities for enjoyment.

What I was about to do with a heart, for instance, to my heart's content.

My Son Is A Beast

2011-03-16T18:13:00.000-07:00

I hope the woman that the main character is based on found peace at last when she left this world.

“My son is a beast,” Miss Evelyn says as I’m changing her sheets.   

Uh-huh. I’ve heard it all before. She’s a quieter person now, thanks to new medication, but the subject of her monologues once she warms up, is the same. Her son is a beast. Her daughter-in-law is a demon. Her grandchildren are monsters.  

I decide this isn’t just dementia talking. I’ve been an aide at the retirement center only a few months, but I sense she must have been like this most of her life. Bitter. Paranoid. Frightened, really. All the other dementia patients have intervals of grace when the world and its inhabitants seem benevolent, or at least neutral to them. But not Miss Evelyn. Like the fairy tale Snow Queen, she must have a piece of enchanted glass in her eye that makes everyone look wrong. More than wrong – evil, hideous.  

I finish the corners, all spit-spot like I do for my own granny’s bed when I visit her. Now, I give the worn flannel an extra pat. She’ll find peace later in this freshly made-up bed, Miss Evelyn will, in body if not mind. That’s all I can do for the poor thing.   I long to brush the grey tangle reaching her shoulders, but I know she doesn't like anyone to come close.

“Is there anything else you need, Miss Evelyn? I’m going off my shift now.” 

 ”Why would you want to do anything for me,” she spits out, and a bit dribbles down her blouse. Automatically I reach over to dab at the spot with my cloth, but her arm cuts mine off with a karate chop movement.That bony appendage of hers is strong. Maybe it has to be, to fend off a legion of imagined enemies.

I notice the cotton of her blouse quivering.

“How about a sweater,” I suggest.  

“Sweater can’t warm you up from the inside,” she says. ”when the spectres that run this place keep it so cold. What do they care, they’re never even here.”

 “I can get you tea or coffee,” I offer.

She frowns up at me. “You part of that coven in the kitchen,” she asks, “the witches trying to poison me?”

She's added spectres and witches now, to the malevolent non-human beings tormenting her.

No ma’am,” I answer. She turns her face away from me toward a white wall devoid of photographs or art. There’s nothing personal in the room at all, except a cheap black Halloween mask with a thin elastic band, on the bureau. Curious. 

I don’t know how much longer I can keep this job. It pays university students better than other places in this town, but some of the residents are too depressing to be around. Most are physically debilitated or lonely and that’s sad enough. But Miss Evelyn is hardest of all for me to handle. Spend time with her and one begins to see a world populated by mythological creatures, and I'm not talking about unicorns and helpful little elves darning socks while you sleep.

 When I open the door to leave, she begins her litany. “My son is a beast! “ she screeches. “His wife is a demon! My grandchildren are mons- -“ I shut the door but still hear her ranting. Maybe I should suggest they up her medication dosage again.

There’s more action in the hallways today, Sunday, than I’m used to. Visiting day. I usually work Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, but am doing a favor for another aide.  

I’m on my way to the staff check-out desk, when I spot them. The tallest one has an enormous bovine head on a man’s body. Then I have to duck as three small winged monkeys fly at my head, hissing. The only thing I see of the one in the rear is a slender darkness. Even its shadow has bleeding red eyes.  

They’re all heading toward Miss Evelyn’s room.

The Backroad To Oklahoma

2011-02-27T12:42:00.000-08:00

Author Note: I must be in a bad mood to write a story with anything bad about Texas in it. I still love the place.

"Don't drive the back road to Oklahoma," the man at the other end of the counter at the Friendly Food and Foundry says to me in a friendly tone.

I look up reluctantly from the menu. Everywhere I go people give me unasked for advice. New York cabbies tell me how to get cheap tickets for Broadway shows as if I'm a rube who doesn't know about the ‘Half-Price Day-Of’ places. Vietnamese teenagers giving me a manicure tell me how to get a husband when my left hand informs them I'm single. Now some toothless old cowboy

with shaking hands is

giving me driving instructions.

Maybe I'm just in a bad mood. I’ve been driving for a long time through a West Texas landscape. The only change during the endless ride was the light of day. I'm beginning to wonder whether I’ll ever arrive at my destination - or at least someplace that made it out of the Palaeozoic Age.

Out of pure frustration I turn the spotlight on my advisor.

"The truck outside, the one with abstract art for a windshield? That yours?" I refer to the fact that the entire windshield is latticed with cracks.

He chuckles. "Yes ma'am, it is."

"Happen on the back road to Oklahoma?" I ask, continuing to bait him.

He chuckles again. "Yes ma'am, it did."

"Where in town did you get that nice orange shag carpet for it?" That was just a guess on my part.

"Must be a trick of the late afternoon light, ma'am. It's avocado green, and I got it for a steal in Marble Falls."

I want to say, “So, you stole it,” but I'm saved from further conversation by the arrival of an elderly waitress. Her skin looks just like the man’s windshield.

"Hi," I say. " What's your special?"

"It's Rattlesnake Taco Day" she responds, in a voice rusty as the unidentifiable pieces of iron I had observed strewn outside, at the "foundry."

"Oh. Well then I'd rather have, let's see, how's your --"

"We're serving rattlesnake tacos today."

"Yes, I understand that's your special but I'm more interested in your, um let's see, in your, um - -"

"No, it's not the special today. It's what we're serving today."

Though I try to pay attention to what she's saying, I'm suddenly concerned she doesn't fall down dead over the counter in front of me. That might keep me in this town a bit longer than I would like.

I choose my words carefully. "Ok, what else are you serving today?" I hold up the menu to help her remember this is a restaurant.

"It's Rattlesnake Taco Day. Like I said."

"You mean --?"

"I mean it's Rattlesnake Taco Day and only rattlesnake tacos are served today. On Rattlesnake Taco Day."

I know she won't let me use the bathroom unless I buy food or a piece of iron, so I order a half-order of rattlesnake tacos.I'm tempted to tell her I want the taco half, not the snake meat, but I don't.

Her face changes formation into what it assumes, incorrectly, looks like a smile to the rest of the world. I know she's pleased. I can tell by the extra flirty flounce of her ruffled skirt as she enters the kitchen to call out "One order snake, Billy" and then comes out again for a potential beverage discussion.Snake venom smoothie, perhaps?

Chalk up another victory for Rattlesnake Taco Day is written all over her.

"Betty, I was jist now tellin this young lady that she better not drive the back road to Oklahoma," the man at the other end of the counter says.

"Well hell, Marlon, them's all the back roads to Oklahoma."

"I appreciate the advice anyway, " I speak up, suddenly on the man's side. Of the two, I like him better. Maybe Billy the cook would win the contest, but I haven’t met him yet so I work with what I have.

Marlon throws some bills on the counter, tips his cowboy hat to Betty and me with as grand a gesture as John Wayne used on Maureen O'Hara and starts to walk out the door.

"Mister," I call.

He stops, turns around.

"Why shouldn't I drive the back road to Oklahoma?"

With that friendly, easy chuckle of his he says, "Because me - and others like me - are out there waitin’ for you."

I turn back to the counter and see my order has arrived. A snake head peers up at me from one end of the taco.

Freakin Weather

2011-02-17T09:52:00.001-08:00

This first appeared on a challenge from another website http://www.combatwords.blogspot.com

I blame the whole mess on the freakin’ weather in Seattle. If it hadn’t rained in August, I would not have changed out my spring-summer embossed dotted ocelot op-art signature leather-lurex Coach hobo purse for my fall-winter heavy nylon sateen backpack.

How was I supposed to know freakin’ summer would come back?

It was, like, all over the media that El Niña was on its way, get ready people for an early and severe winter, blah blah blah. So when it started raining, I figured that was it. I haul around my whole life with me in a purse or pack, so in the rain and snow season, I need a carry-all with special airtight zippers and other waterproof features.

And I was angry that day about the rain because it would spoil Bobby D’s party later, so I, like, threw my empty purse, and I guess it landed on top of the stuff my mother was putting together for the homeless. The schizo weather here fooled her too, into prematurely doing her seasonal cleaning thing.

Let’s not go into the scene at my house when the sun came out again and I couldn’t find my bag. Daddy said he took everything to the Methodist Church Friday clothing giveaway to the homeless. He tried to sneak in a lame history lesson as usual Something about the justice of a hobo bag returning to the hobos. I didn’t know what he was talking about, hopping trains, the Depression. Supes, Dad.

It was Saturday and I had to wait another week. I tried going Sunday but the minister wouldn’t open the basement area where the clothing was. He was, like, right there! Bitch wasn’t being very Christian, in my opinion.

On Friday, I tore through a shelf of the ugliest, cheapest purses I’d ever seen in my life, like vinyl even, but mine wasn’t there.

“Oh that nice big leather bag with the tassles?” the stupid lady at the register asked. “One of the Tent City women took it.”

Tent City? DUDE! They were using my purse for tent parts?

She vaguely remembered a large, elderly black woman with two gold front teeth admiring my purse and adding it to her grocery cart. Helpful.

At Tent City, I was shocked to see the tents were all gone. Somebody sweeping the place informed me it had to move early to its winter quarters due to the rain last week.

“El Niña’s coming,” he explained.

He did remember the large black woman and her teeth though. So I went downtown looking for “Mabel,” he called her. I’d kill myself with a name like that.

I thought of going to the police but figured they might confiscate my purse as evidence in the theft, so I took Haley with me to help.

“Ooh, we’re, like, playing detective?” she squealed. I reminded her this was serious business, that my purse was at stake.

We found Mabel in less than hour. Haley and I are smarter than, like FBI agents. The Tent City manager told me she usually parked her cart at 3^rd and Pike.

I spotted her on the way, struggling to roll the cart uphill. I knew it was her when the sun reflected off her teeth. And I’m sorry, I know it isn’t PC, but I remember thinking she’s a retard who should not be out on the streets. I mean, she chose to take the hilly way to her destination when one block over was practically flat. And who hauls around a life in a grocery cart, anyways.

As I approached, I saw my purse right on top of her pile of junk. My heart ached, thinking what it must have suffered a whole week in that woman’s company.

In less than a minute, I had caught up to her and scooped the purse. I threw a ten dollar bill her direction “for your trouble.” Instead of going for the money, another sign of being mental: she grabbed the purse and started a really lame tug of war with me.

She was amazingly strong. I thought the homeless were supposed to be, like, weak from starving. Well, nobody told Mabel that.

I was so intent on not only regaining possession of my purse but making sure there would be no damage, that I didn’t realize Haley was screaming at all, much less screaming “Stop Thief!” and “She’s killing her!” I didn’t see the police either because when they arrived, I was on the ground with Mabel above, hitting me with the purse. The blood they saw wasn’t from anything she did to me, it was the re-opening of a fingernail cut on my forehead during a Zoomba work-out at the Pro-Club the day before, but the police didn’t know that. It was an honest mistake on their part, I testified to that.

Haley said they were yelling at Mabel to drop her weapon (my purse!) but she just kept on hitting me. It hurt, sure, but only on my arm as I covered my face. Just some bruises. I don’t approve that they shot her, and all that. We found out later she was born without hearing, and I guess the only good thing about her being dead now is that she doesn’t have to be deaf anymore. I mean, like, I would kill myself if I couldn’t hear music.

I’ll say this for Mabel. She must have recognized the quality of my purse, because she hadn’t harmed it any. Haley thinks it smells of gunpowder, but when the police finally returned it to me, I thought it was perfect.

September and October were mostly clear, so I got a lot of use out of it too, before changing it out with my backpack.

I still hate the freakin weather here.

MY CABIN

2010-11-15T15:51:00.000-08:00

I don't like what they've done to my cabin.

They painted it a faux weathered look. Well, it already had the weathered look. From weather.

They rebuilt the deck floor so it doesn't slope anymore. How will their kids practice skateboarding in summer and snowboarding in winter?

When the living room was expanded, somehow the large stone fireplace shrunk, no longer dominating with its warmth and light. What was once my daughter's sweet little bedroom is now a walk-in closet and her loft (at various times a bed, a castle or a fort) has become storage.

The rooms are green now, various hues throughout. They must be going for the effect of adjoining the green outside in the woods, but to me, it diminishes the coziness of being inside out of the elements.

Oh there is one thing that seems okay. The mudroom is now a pantry. Probably more practical for them. They seem the kind of people who can live in the middle of this rainforest and never get muddy.

Otherwise I don't like what they've done to my cabin. Then I remember it isn't my cabin anymore.

THE GLEN

2010-10-31T21:41:00.000-07:00

I say goodbye, put down the phone, and stand motionless for a minute. Five minutes, maybe? Suddenly, the walls inside my small cabin seem unbearably confining, and I run outside. I don't know where I'm going, but my legs do.

without a glance
at the wildflowers in bloom
I run to the glen

Out of breath, I slow down. Should I be running? I don't know! I don't know anything! That realization terrifies me, makes me run fast again until I arrive at my secret glen.

The grass runs wild here. I sit down in my usual spot, resting my back against a log fallen long ago during some winter wind storm years before I arrived.

fallen log
moss-covered, rotten in places
I bless your support

Impossible, winter. No such thing as winter. I run my hands along the top of the grass blades surrounding me. If winter exists, then how did all the fresh green grass get here? Does anyone believe all this growth can sleep, nourished somehow under a hard cold ground?

not believing
I touch my flat hard belly -
pregnant, you say?

I cry and laugh and eventually, fall asleep. A year later, my baby sleeps here, too,on the grasses at the glen.

In later years, she'll play here and we'll read together here and she'll run away from me to come here and she'll take her husband here. We both agree, the grass in the Glen is the best, the softest, the most beautiful green in all the world.

*Eavesdropping in Oxyrhinchites

2010-07-29T08:23:00.000-07:00

Category: A Day In The Life Of A Writer

Author comment: I could live in Suzallo.

At the beautiful Suzallo Library on the University of Washington campus, I'm supposed to be researching Jewish race track owners in the United States, past or present. But I'm having trouble concentrating. I'm more interested in the discussion between two rumpled elderly gentlemen at the next table.

Rumpled and elderly - my idea from childhood of what scholars look like. Put yarmulkes on them and they're arguing Talmud. I'm only picking up every seven or eight words and the rest might as well be Yiddish.

I move closer to hear them better. The younger (maybe 80) and more alert of the two looks up sharply. He tries to disguise suspicion by arranging his features more pleasantly. It doesn't work. His original expression is difficult to change at will after a lifetime of facial occupation. This reminds me to smile more often.

He's making me feel like an industrial spy. Wish I could could explain I'm just eavesdropping for pleasure. I'm not going to sell information to anyone.

It turns out they're discussing the inflation of camel prices at the height of the Roman Empire, and other ordinary chit chat likely to be engaged in by citizens of Oxyrhinchites, a conquered city in Egypt. Here's a helpful hint I overheard: "To keep bugs out of the house, mix goat bile with water and sprinkle."

I'm on it.

The life of an eavesdropper is rewarding. It offers ample entertainment at parties, limitless possibilities for stories, and as mentioned above, potentially valuable information.

*death.org

2010-07-28T15:14:00.000-07:00

Category: death worries transformed via sleight-of-hand

Author's Hand: As sleight as it comes

Death. My friends and I were just talking about it yesterday. Well, we talk about it every day because we are card-carrying members of dead.org. DEAD stands for Death: Easy And Dead.

Our belief is that the only way to remove the fear of death is to die everyday. A basic membership fee covers an easy death, though revival from death does cost extra. It works in a remarkably short time for most people especially those who don't choose the revival option. There's a week-long special, seven days for the price of five, that made it affordable for me. And that's all it took. After dying daily for the week, I was cured of all death fears.

Some of us actually came to enjoy the process of dying. We think that is due to an attraction of the attributes of the state of being dead. A sense of peace, for instance (or to be more precise, the absence of the concerns of life), is quite liberating. Plus, there are no taxes, that's for certain. And I've noted the artistic influence of death on my home decor. Heaven (I've been there) is so big that there is no clutter. My apartment by contrast is small and I was, until dying, a slob and a collector. No more. I got rid of everything except room-size mattresses soft as clouds.

My only problem at this point is trying to compile enough money to die again, as often as possible. I started a home business, which is recommended in this economy, and so far, I've been successful. Paying customers come directly to my home where we have sex on the soft mattresses. My original plan was a week of sex alternating with a week of death. But it hasn't been enough. Enough death I mean. I seem to crave more and more of the death, which leaves me less and less time for the sex. But it's the sex which enables the death. That's a paradox I have to resolve soon, because it's killing me.

*My Death Haiku"

2010-07-28T10:30:00.000-07:00

Category: Haibun (haiku or senryu within musings or a story)

Author's Degree of Acceptance of the haibun's subject: Some. Not moving along as briskly as I could. Dragging my feet, so to speak.

One's death haiku is serious business. It's time to create mine. No premonitions of imminent demise or anything like that. I just think it's as useful to plan for one's death in artistic ways as it is in practical and financial ways.

Senryu is the form of haiku I choose. Senryu is about human affairs. It draws its meaning from human nature rather than nature nature. It offers a wry or humorous look at ourselves.

If I can't be wry or humorous about my death, I'll be in trouble. I lost my sense of humor while giving birth - and when I realized that, I was bummed for the next several hours of labor. Oh, the birth center staff and my husband started cracking jokes, which made things worse. They were all guffawing together while I couldn't muster a lousy chuckle. So I know in advance I'll need to have my wits and wit about me for the few moments before death. I'm working to imprint this information upon my subconscious, even now. I have my heart set on leaving the way I arrived during my own birth, with a smile I was told. Obviously

there was some kind of in-joke I can no longer remember. I'm hoping it's just missing the punchline, which is what the death haiku will turn out to be.

Here's my death haiku made up when a bunch of haiku poets had a death haiku competition:

sake cup -
empty or full
does not matter

Okay,not funny ha-ha but it is wry.

Here's an idea. It's not a death haiku but it is an instruction to leave in an envelope for my daughter, marked "Open In Case I'm Going To Die Pretty Soon" :

pre-death arrangements -
a drama queen must depart
in a thunder storm

If it's not summer, the last line could be: with a gale-force wind. Maybe she could read me the weather report, and if a storm is on the way I could hold out for it, like people hold out to die until after Christmas so they won't ruin the holidays for their grandchildren the rest of their lives. Or maybe they just hold out to see what in the world people got them for Christmas when they were dying.

One problem: haiku are so short. What if I say mine and still don't die? If it's one of those movie scenes with everyone around me in bed,that could be awkward. I'd be annoyed if my grandson (a person who doesn't exist yet) started looking at his watch frequently, while his sister (equally faux at the moment) kept rolling her eyes. There needs to be entertaining bedside activities for these people. I'd better have a pre-made statement ready, so I can point to it with a bony, shaking but still authoritative finger:

Shh - no more talking
let's hum along together -
music of the spheres

But no:

no one will believe
I ran out of words
finally

If I'm very very lucky, I'll awaken briefly, see everyone around me, and like my grandmother at her life's end, I'll manage to smile and say

Oh!
Is this a party
for me?

My grandmother never heard of haiku and never knew she wrote one. But she did die as artistically as the best of 'em.

I suppose in thinking about my death haiku, I ought to have a contingency plan in case I die all alone, in an accident, say my car falls off an icy cliff. I don't want to say "shit" - I mean, after I scream of course. I read once that 'shit' is the most common thing said right before death. Once, I did slide on an icy road, and there was a cliff my car was heading toward and I did say "shit" and that was even before I read the article. However, during the height of this incident, "SHIT" was quickly followed by "NO!" and "GOD" and then I managed to turn the car around - almost flipping it, another danger - but everything turned out okay. I was pleased with my driving, and I was pleased with myself that God would have been my last word before death. Now it serves me again, this time as a reminder that I could die alone. There would be no one around to prompt me, no doctor saying, "Uh, Ms. Jaye, still want me to alert you when it's time to start composing your death haiku?" I see now that dying alone could keep one very busy.

Yes, I did say God at what could have been my death, which makes me happy religiously, but is not satisfying artistically. I don't think haiku should be one word, albeit a teriffic word, an enormous word, like God. The rules have changed for haiku, like, it doesn't have to be 5-7-5 anymore thank goodness, and it can be on one line and not three, but even with the changes, I don't think haiku can be one-word. If I could count on having a few spare moments, I could elaborate on the word God, turn it into a prayer in haiku, as in:

God, please receive me
and remind my dearest love
my life was great, thanks.

(Wow, that's good! I'd better commit it to memory.)

Lately I've been wondering, maybe death isn't meant to be orchestrated by the die-er. Maybe it should be experienced in whatever way it comes. And because the format cannot be known ahead of time, I should be prepared to improvise. If that sounds difficult, remember that it would be like all the time that preceded death, in that period after birth called Life. We should all be accustomed to improvisation by the time we're dying, and we should appreciate how it takes away the necessity for memorization or practice. So, if I can't, at the time, articulate my death haiku outloud or I can't write it, it's probably within the rules to think it inside the mind.

the last dream -

my short simple poem

is over.

*Me Au Naturale

2010-07-20T16:16:00.000-07:00

Category: A page or two from my vacation journal

Author Analysis: Somehow, a lot more than I planned got into this.

A couple of blue jays are taunting me and the cat this morning. I believe they're chuckling because neither of us can fly.

They are nearly ruining our morning. I'm sitting out on the porch in the pleasant post-dawn but can't concentrate on writing, the way those birds are dive bombing us. The cat near my feet has more dignity than I do. He's ignoring them, illustrated by an all-pervasive tranquility as he occupies his patch of sunshine. His tail is swishing however, so I know his true feelings.

Ignoring them is not an option for me. "I can so fly," I tell them. "I just need a machine to do it, is all."

That's not the whole truth, though.

"All right, birds. I need the man too, the man that operates the machine."

"So where is this machine," one calls down from a nearby tree branch.

""Yeah, where," the other echoes from a different tree.

"And where's the man," the first one says on his banked turn above my head, as he joins the second one, to show a solidarity of couplehood.

"Yeah, where" the other echoes.

The cat's bush tail brushes my ankle. I look down.

"They're just trying to piss you off," he says. "Don't give them what they want."

It was too late. I was pissed off already. Mostly at a certain pilot who once flew me around islands and over mountains and along the ocean. He forgot to stop for me one day. Flew straight over the runway, didn't even tip his wings like in the past.

These birds are just trying to rub it in. They know darn well I've been evicted from the sky.

*New Jersey, Broke and Beeudeeful

2010-07-20T00:49:00.000-07:00

Category: Just a story

Author's Spelling: phonetically, when it comes to Jersey

I pick up the ringing phone, and hear someone say, “I got a Schilke B3 for sale. Wannit?”

Wrong number, I start to say, but suddenly the voice sounds familiar. A flat voice, no expression, but even an autistic New Jerseyite has the state accent.

“Bobby D!” I exclaim. “This you?”

“Yeah. Wannit? The horn?”

“Bobby D! Bobby! What a…surprise!

Surprise? Sonofabitch, I almost dropped my antique Limoges egg cup! Putting my breakfast tray aside on the bed, I buzz the intercom for Maria Four to remove it.

“Bobby! I can’t believe… We haven’t spoken since ...how, how did you…even get my number out here?”

“Your cousin down the shore.”

“Which cousin? I’m Italian, remember?”

“Little Lina. But not little now. She’s real fat.”

I laugh to learn that Lina ran to fat from the side of her family I wasn’t related to.

“How many big moles she got on her face ?” I ask Bobby D slyly, knowing he will tell me whatever I want if I phrase it carefully.

“Seven” he responds.

You made my day, Bobby D, and it’s only noon.

I stretch under the silk comforter and look at my stiletto nails. True Jersey girls maintain long, pointy fingernails whatever the current fashion, and we painted our toenails well before it was the in thing to do everywhere else.

God how it all comes back. Jersey.

“How ya doin’, Bobby? Still in the sales business, I’m guessing.”

“Yeah. I sell stuff in my parents’ garage.”

“How are they, your parents?”

“They’re okay. They died.”

“Oh no, I’m so sorry to hear that.”

Really, it’s another shock. His parents, called the Bickersons in our neighborhood, were almost a force of nature. Their battles were heard the length and breadth of a city block. Hard to imagine them at peace.

He described them first as “okay.” Well, I reflect, the dead are okay in a sense. Bobby D has a way with words sometimes.

“So I guess it’s your house now,” I say.

“Yeah. I forget. So you wannit?” He didn’t mean the house.

“”Whatta yiz tryin’ to unload on me? A what? A “B” what? I mean, what is it?” I laugh inwardly, how I’m slipping back into my own accent, 3000 miles and 40 years removed.

“I said. A horn. A trumpet. Present for your boyfriend.”

Though I’m gazing out the window at the Pacific Ocean as he says this, I’m seeing another ocean, the one visible from the boardwalk of Wildwood New Jersey. I’m among a sqeak of squealers heading towards a club called - what else? - On The Boards. Our heels cha-cha in sync with the brakers, and we want everyone to hear them clicking on the wooden planks. We don’t even notice all the holes in which they could get caught. We don’t know from broken limbs and arthritis yet.

Tonight, Steve “The Bad Boy” Sheehan is playing his horn in a band. I’ve just told my five best girlfriends – and Bobby D, trailing at his usual few paces behind - that The Bad Boy and I slept together for the first time the previous evening.

The only reason we parted was so’s he could get to his gig in time. The last thing he said walking out the door was, “Watch my lips tonight when I play, baby. Later, they’ll be back on you.” It’s the kind of line a woman recalls for decades, wincing at her youthful stupidity. It will be my last thought before death, I’m sure.

“It sounds beautiful.” Bobby’s voice is in my ear and the word is drawn out, Philly & Jersey style. Bee-u-dee-ful. “Plays broke Christmas carols real smooth the man said.”

“Baroque,” I say automatically. Bobby D. doesn’t process new information easily, so he generally ignores anything he doesn’t understand. Whatever he learns in connection with the objects he sells, that’s pretty much it as far as he’s concerned. Same thing with people. Last time he saw me, I had a trumpet player boyfriend. Therefore, I will always have a trumpet player boyfriend.

“The Bad Boy and I split up when we arrived in California. I haven’t seen him since. So I’m not in the market for a trumpet, but it was real nice of you to think of me. ” I pause. “Got any anemometers,” I ask jokingly. My current boyfriend has a sailboat and talks about wind all the time.

“I’ll look,” he answers, seriously. “S’long.”

“Wait, what’s your hurry?”

It has been so very, very long.

“All these years…my God! Bobby! We were in kindergarten together!”

“Yeah.” He’s waiting for me to start a new conversation, since he already said what he called me about.

“So, what’s new?” I make my voice overly enthusiastic, to get him involved. “What’s the gossip?”

I haven’t stayed in touch with Jersey. My five best girlfriends went far away, like me. My mother died and I have no interest in the relatives that stole her stuff from me. I don’t even know how Lina got my number.

“My mom didn’t like gossip,” Bobby D. reports to me.

“Well, I mean, who’s left in the old neighborhood? ” I’m determined to get more out of him. He calls me up, brings Jersey right into my bedroom, and I’m damned well going to find out about people. “How’s Fourth Down?”

“Still paralyzed.”

“Who takes care of him? “

“His big sister . She never got married .” He stops talking in a way that sounds like a pause. I wait. “But she got engaged to Pam Polanski at Christmas.”

Ka-CHING! Good one, Bobby D! Lesbian senior citizens coming out in a blue collar New Jersey neighborhood!

“Who else is still around?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who do you run into at the WaWa?”

“It’s a tattoo place now.”

“Well, who’ve you seen wherever you food shop.”

“Mrs. Scott, at the new big WaWa.”

“Mrs. Scott? Our fifth grade teacher?! Holy Steel Pier, she still alive?”

“Yeah, and she don’t have wrinkles.”

“Maybe we just thought she was old because we were ten.”

I lean back on the pile of plump cushions in full nostalgia mode. Sure it’s annoying to have to keep prompting him, but I was warming up to the task. I think Bobby was warming up too, though only an expert could tell. And who was more expert at communicating with him than me, even after all this time.

Another scene from long ago, from kindergarden days, floats to my memory on this rogue wave from the Atlantic. My mother is telling me to take care of Bobby D, to watch over him in school so mean kids won’t hurt him.

“Don’t worry Mommy. He’s not really there, so nobody even sees him.”

I don’t understand why that makes her look sad. He’s just being Bobby D. His parents are the Bickersons. People are who they are. And me? I’m a little girl who dreams of love and other fancy things.

“Okay, who else,” I ask him now

There’s a silence.

“Toldja everyone.”

“Any more kids die?” I know he understands I’m speaking of our generation.

“Pip Lugasa did, cancer, then Angel dropped dead the same day. They only got one funeral.

I pictured these two, sweethearts since junior high. Sneaking a smoke together in the basement bathroom one day, Pip confided to me that she and Angel did it, all the time now.

“Oh it’s the best feeling ever,” she said then. “You just gotta fall in love, so you can feel it too.”

I wanted to, fervently, but was still a virgin at that point. And now, I couldn’t feel too sad about the Lugasas. They had a world class romance for most of their lives.

“Who do you pal around with, Bobby?”

“Mutt “

“Who? I must be getting old. I don’t remember anyone named Mutt.”

“He’s my dog.”

“That’s real nice, you got a dog. What kind is – oh, never mind.”

“Rescued him. They were gonna kill him.”

I look over at Pfeffer, a Shiatzu lightly snoring on her side of the bed. I got her after my last divorce. She rescued me.

My mind wanders a minute and there’s silence, a beat too long for Bobby D.

“Gotta go.”

“Thanks for calling, Bobby. Sorry I don’t want to buy your trumpet.”

“That’s okay. S’long.”

The receiver goes dead.

I sob for maybe 15 minutes straight after that. Life is broke and beeudeeful in California too.

*One Of Wilt's Girls

2010-07-19T01:07:00.000-07:00

Category: Story

Author's Request: To my family: Just forget it's me writing this, okay?

"My wife was one of Wilt's Girls," the guy I’m working for says. He stares at me. I think I'm supposed to react.

"Ok, I'll bite,” I say. “Who's Wilt?"

“Wilt Chamberlain.”

“Oh. And who's that?”

“Wilt Chamberlain? God you’re young. One of basketball's first superstars. AND legendary in the sack.”

He shouldn't be talking to me like that. I'm only 17 and he’s, like, twice as old. But at least his lame conversation, the pathetic story of his boring life, just got interesting.

I'm working for this dude for two days. Very exciting work, right. He hired me to help with a mail-out for his new construction business or maybe it's reconstruction or reproduction. I haven’t read the flyers. I just fold and stuff them into envelopes. 1000 of them. That's a lot of folding and stuffing. We’ve been at it for hours in his office.

It’s not a real office, it’s the trailer where he lives. Temporarily, he says. It’s gross here. Part of the floor is rusted right through to the ground. I wouldn’t be surprised to see toadstools growing up in the hallway, toward his living quarters. Excuse me, “The Bedroom Suite,” he calls it. The whole place reeks “newly divorced.”

After the folding and stuffing today, I'll start addressing the envelopes tomorrow. Hand-written names and addresses, he wants, in a nice handwriting. He asks me where I learned calligraphy. That's what I told him to get the job, that I knew calligraphy. Where did I learn it? I said I went to a special school. Well I did. St. Monica's across the Boulevard. So I didn't actually lie. It didn’t offer calligraphy instruction, but it's still a special school, cost my mom and dad a fortune as they remind me constantly. But it didn’t really prepare me for the working world, and I can only find little jobs like this.

Tonight, I'll search for a "how-to calligraphy course on the Internet and practice what it says. Then finish the job tomorrow. He promised me a hundred dollars.

But now, we're still folding and stuffing together. It’s boring, which I wouldn’t mind if he didn’t talk so much. I’d rather think my own thoughts, until he started talking about sex.

“In what way is Wilt legendary,” I ask.

“He fucked 20,000 women, that's what way.”

“I still don’t see the point.”

“My wife, she, my EX-wife was…umm, she was...”

“One of them?”

“She was one of them, yeah.”

It's like he’s proud of this.

“What number was she?”

“How do I know? I’m not sure she knows.”

It seems to me if she were #1 or #20,000, that would be cool. But if she was, like, #482 or #11,044, how would Wilt even remember her?

When my grades and SAT’s weren’t good enough to get into college, I told my parents I didn’t want to go to a community college. I wanted to learn something useful in life.

I just did.

*The Mallard: A Radio Play

2010-05-12T18:46:00.000-07:00

CATEGORY: Humor

AUTHOR DISCLAIMER: No animals were injured during the writing of this piece: they were already dead before I met them. The humans, however, are a different story.

Hi Buns. I’m back!

Oh honey, I have someth-

Where’s the mallard?

That’s what I -

Where’s the mallard?!

That’s what I -

Where - is - the- mallard?

That’s what I -

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MALLARD?!

Give me a chance to tell - -

I’m listening.

No you’re not, you just keep asking - -

Oh, you mean I just keep asking where the mallard is because it isn't where it's been for the last two decades?

While we were gone, a rodent broke in and - -

Where - is - it?

The rodent?

THE FUCKING MALLARD!

It was...it wasn't...well, you know it had feathers and- -

Did you put it in the garbage?

You don’t want to - -

{sound effects in sequence: slamming door, running footsteps, rattling garbage cans, walking footsteps, opening door}

Thank God there was no pick-up yet!

DO NOT BRING THAT THING IN HERE! IT’S DISGUSTING!

Hah! I always knew you didn’t really like it.

What do you mean? I love it.

Oh I see. You threw it away because you love it.

Don’t be sarcastic.

Okay. I'll be straightforward: You hate it!

I admit, when I moved in with you it was difficult, at first, to enjoy my meals with a dead duck looking over my shoulder.

So you beat me home, realized you finally had it at your mercy and seized the opportunity to - -

Are you implying I've been plotting against a stuffed mallard for three years? Now, if it was one of your ex-wives, okay, you might be on to something,

You're too late. They've already been recycled.

Look, I just never got used to the mallard at the dinner table, okay?

You never said anything.

I did tell you dinner guests are grossed out - and that was even before it got chewed up by mice.

Not my friends.

True, your friends would hunt it down through the house if it had any mobility left. I'm surprised you didn't put the thing on wheels for their target practice. And now...LOOK at it.

I can fix it.

It’s been deteriorating for awhile.

I can fix it.

Fine, but...but... I’m putting my foot down.

You're going stomp to death what’s left of the poor thing?

Despite the fact that you treat it better than you do some of my very much alive friends, the mallard is already dead, remember? And after you fix it up, it’s not going to live on the dinner table anymore. We’re putting it in your clubhouse.

What clubhouse? Am I one of the Little Rascals?

You don’t have to call it a clubhouse. You can call it your workshop or your poker palace or your den of iniquity, I don’t care.

Whatever it’s called, I don’t have one.

Then build it. And the walrus head goes in it too.

He looks great in our bathroom!

Those beady little eyes watch me when I’m naked.

Now a walrus head is lusting after you? Why didn’t you ever mention this before? I can’t believe my sweet little Buns is saying all this.

I’ve been picking and choosing my battles. More than moving the walrus head, I wanted that swordfish off the bedroom wall.

Well you got your wish there.

You only agreed because it stabbed you in the balls when it fell during the earthquake.

You're the one who initiated sex during the quake, said you wanted the earth to move in every way possible.

Now I just want the mallard and the walrus to move.

Which first?

The mallard! I’m the one that found it, remember. I almost threw up.

It’s not like you don’t have any hobbies that affect our relationship, you know.

What’s your objection to my knitting?

None. It’s your meeting men on the Internet I don’t like.

I meet poets, not men.

Literary “chat,” my ass. They just want to get into your online panties.

Only when they take online Viagra. {pause} Honey, let’s not fight. I’m sorry about the mallard. It just looked so awful, I had to get it out of here.

Well, you broadsided me with all your revelations about the mallard and the walrus and the swordfish and the bear - It’s been building, I guess.

I forgot about the bear.

I’m going out to the garage to take care of the mallard.

Honey, are...are the differences between us starting to be a problem? I mean, these separate vacations we took, and now this fight the first time we see each other in a whole week.

Would you mind postponing a relationship talk so I can attend to my mallard?

That’s more or less what you said before our vacations.

I have no objection to talking about our relationship. It’s your timing that annoys me.

The mallard waited all week in that state. Maybe our marriage can’t.

Call those Native American friends of yours and have them bring a peace pipe, okay, or they can smudge us.

This is serious.

Hey, we’ll call my clubhouse a ‘sweat lodge’ in their honor!

Oh, just...go to the garage and fluff up the mallard's feathers. Excuse me, feather now. Singular. I’m going to bed.

Wait, Buns. Can't you understand I'm a bit upset? {pause} I brought you a present.

Was it something you shot? You know I won’t wear death on my person.

Look, I made no secret of the fact that I’m a hunter and fisherman. I told you on our first date and you said you didn’t mind.

You didn’t. You did. I don’t.

That’s big of you.

I can live with the hunting and fishing. What I can’t live with, as I finally realized looking at the mangled mallard, is the display of your murder victims all over the house.

They weren’t murdered. They had a sporting chance.

Guess I should feel grateful you’re not a bullfighter.

Those Native American friends of yours are killers too, you know. Whales and seal pups. Though some of them I’m not even sure are Native Americans, like that blonde-haired, blue-eyed Wolf Ghost.

Ghost Wolf.

How’s he listed in the phone book, anyway ? Plain old Ghost Wolf? Or Wolf comma Ghost ? Or maybe by his wife's name, Eagle Ears or Ears comma Eagle?

That’s his daughter. His wife’s name is Medicine Bitch.

Okay, okay, I don’t want to argue about your friends.

You don't even want to meet my friends. And this isn’t arguing. We’re busy not having a relationship talk.

I missed you, Buns. On my vacation, I missed you.

Me too. NO! STOP! Please don't hug me while you're holding the mallard.

I’m sorry. I’ll take it to the garage {pause} I guess the dinner table really isn’t the most appropriate place.

I AM sorry this happened to it honey. I never wished it ill.

I know that. Let me assess what restoration work I can do, then, well, maybe there’s another kind of restoration needed around here.

I’ve even grown fond of the walrus head. Not in the bathroom, but I am fond of it.

And I think your Native American poetry chants are...um... spiritually uplifting.

{they laugh}

(sounds of kissing and sighing)

Maybe you'll get lucky tonight.

How so?

Maybe I'll move the earth for you again.

Move the bear first, and you got a deal.

the end

*The Others

2010-05-07T14:06:00.000-07:00

CATEGORY: Memoir

AUTHOR HINDSIGHT: Full of myself, I was. Still am.

Of all our mother's boyfriends, my sister Gail and I hated Morris the most. Not just because he was fat and bald. Al the trumpet player was fatter and balder and we almost liked him (though we never admitted it except to each other).

"You won't give any of them a chance," Mommy complained.

We didn’t bother to deny it.

"Gail,” she continued, “you just glare and won't say a word. It scares them."

Gail glared at her.

"Mommy, she glares at everyone."

Gail glared at me.

"And you, Sandy, always with sarcastic remarks they don't understand but can sense are not flattering."

"Can I help it if you pick boyfriends whose combined IQ isn't as much as an 11 year old’s?" I asked.

"Listen girls, I want to get married again, and I'm going to, even if I have to sneak dates with the guy and introduce him to Sandy Smartass and Gloomy Gail, after the fact."

That alarmed me. Mommy was capable of doing such a thing, especially considering her mental problems.

"Al," I said decisively, figuring we should go with the pick of the sorry litter. "We want Al."

"Al?"

"You forgot him already? He's only, what, four boyfriends ago? Let's see, there was Al, then Mickey the mechanic, then -"

"Mickey! Yeah! He had great Mr. America muscles," Mommy said, with a faraway look in her eyes.

"Uh-huh, and he smelled like gasoline and got grease all over the house the minute he walked through the door."

"Al got married, for your information. And it could have been to us."

My heart sank. Best cut our losses and keep going with the review.

"Ok, after Mickey there was umm, Axel?"

"God that man was handsome! Blue eyes like Paul Newman."

"Axel," I said, “who bought an alligator farm in Florida with his brother. Mommy, I just don't see us in proximity to alligators."

She grunted with what I assumed was begrudging agreement.

Obviously, grunters can begat glarers.

Back to the list.

"After Axel,"I reminded everyone,"there was Stevarino."

"Wait a minute," Gail spoke up. "You're skipping Lochinvar. He wasn't creepy like the others.”

"Agreed. He was merely embarrassing. Remember when we were in line to see The Little Mermaid? He recited ‘Down to the Sea in Ships’ to the whole movie line."

"Everybody clapped," my mother said.

"It was by John Masefield," Gail chimed in again.

Mommy looked smug. "See, Sandy. You can actually learn things from some of the men I date."

"I kept all the poems he wrote for me."

I could have clobbered my turncoat little sister.

"That's sweet, honey. I kept all of mine, too."

"Why in the world would you guys keep them? They didn't even rhyme!"

"What if he's famous, someday? They'd be worth a lot of money, girls." She was ever practical when it came to making an easy buck.

"I like them,” Gail said.

"Like them? You don't even understand them," I sneered, finding my own niche among the grunters and the glarers surrounding me.

"No, but they make me think interesting thoughts," she replied, with dignity and without glaring.

"Let’s move on from this fascinating literary discussion, shall we” I said, trying to keep everyone on task. “Now, after Lochinvar there was Stevarino."

"God he was fun. Girls, stick with the guy who's the most fun."

"Good advice, Mommy, but just remember, the man referred to himself as Stevarino. In third person."

"So?"

"I'm not even going to be sarcastic about him. Stevarino. It stands alone in all its glory."

"Which brings us to Morris, girls."

Yes, Morris. The most dangerous of all because he was the current boyfriend.

His fatal flaw wasn't being greasy or raising alligators. He didn’t say "Morrisino wants to go for pizza."

His flaw was more serious: Morris had a lustful eye for little girls. That was my trump card, and I intended to play it to stop the wedding ceremony itself if necessary. I hoped it wouldn't be, because I sensed this was new territory for us, adult territory. I had felt something wrong with Morris without a name to put to it, but when Gail said something to me last week, I knew it was big.

"He's like those bad guys school tells us to stay away from," Gail said. "Pooverts, Sandy. He looks at me funny."

"Good intuition, kid," I smiled at her, but was concerned.

"So here’s what I wanted to tell you girls about Morris. I'm not dating him anymore. His neighbor Ben asked me out. What a dreamboat! He's tall. A lean and lanky cowboy. He's a musician too, plays the banjo, so if you liked Al maybe you'll like him too."

Great, I thought. Does he yodel to the cows as he plucks his banjo strings, I stopped myself from saying. But I didn't want to jinx Ben. Morris was out!

"Do you do this to your father," Mommy asked,"or is this dual treatment of sarcasm and moody silence reserved especially for my love life?"

Gail glared at her.

I sneered.

"So what don't you like about his girlfriends?"

"Well, Carol made us go to the symphony way beyond the norm, which I would say is once a childhood. And Laura had a bratty son who stole candy and stuff from us. Minnie was funny, not Minnie-ha-ha, but funny in the head. Technically, we didn't break them up, though, because she got committed before we could do it. And Devon -"

"That's enough," Mommy laughed. "I get the picture!"

No you don't, I thought to myself. The "picture" is just the four of us. Gail, me, Daddy, and you. Together in one frame. And those others are never seen again. Let them be in their own family portrait.

Eventually, our parents each married an "other." The experience of having a stepmother and stepfather wasn't as awful as we had anticipated. They were both okay people. Anyway, by that time I only had a couple of years left until I could leave home and start screwing up my own life.

*Motherly Advice

2010-05-05T15:09:00.000-07:00

CATEGORY: Pathos

AUTHOR INTRO: Little bit of truth and a lot of sadness about growing up.

Occasionally my mother would wake up and be normal for a day. She would do normal mom things, like make breakfast and give me advice.

"Hi honey," she'd chirp as I was getting a bowl for cereal on a school morning. Then she'd grab a dish towel, the good one with appliquéd strawberries that was just for decoration and playfully swat my behind. "Scoot. Go get dressed. It's MY job to fix breakfast, not yours."

That's more than she usually said in a week. In our version of the mother-child relationship, I was supposed to guess what she wanted or needed me to do. I always guessed wrong, because whatever I did caused her either to sob or threaten to kill me.

But on these 'normal' days - my standard of normal being the moms from books and movies -- she chattered like the best of them. And instead of staying in bed until evening, she was the Mrs. America of Housekeeping. I loved to peek at her in action. I knew it wouldn't last, but that didn't diminish the joy of watching her spin around the cracked, blood-red linoleum like a whirling dervish.

A half-hour later, I was dizzy myself, as she twirled me out the door. My head tingled where she smoothed my hair. I left the house with a sack lunch grown to fit a shopping bag, her final motherly kiss, and a piece of advice.

"Be nice today," were the words with which she armed me against the world. "Everyone loves a nice girl."

One day, I lingered and asked, "Did your mother tell you that when you were young?" My grandmother died when I was a baby, and I didn't know much about her.

She looked off into the distance, puzzled. Then her brow cleared. "Why yes, yes she did. And so I grew up and got a nice home and a nice little girl of my own."

Some years later she offered me more words of wisdom, right before my first date as a teenager. "Don't let boys touch your titties," she said.

I didn't followed her advice that time, either.

*Caverns

2010-05-01T23:07:00.000-07:00

CATEGORY: memoir

AUTHOR LAMENT: All resemblance to my pubic bone and to the main character's is long gone.

Daily, at 10 am sharp, a girl with hair to the waist and skirt to the pubic bone left her no-window office in the basement of San Francisco's City Hall, circa 1970. She carried several half pieces of paper. Though she realized the papers were not documents with the significance for mankind as Hammurabi's code, or The Magna Carta, they were important to her and the city she loved. She and her gingerly held cargo would visit secret rooms well hidden from the public in the cavernous hallways within the vast building. With a look cultivated as professional, she would offer the papers, called 'requisitions' to ancient men who leered at her. Her job was to obtain their signatures. Her personal mission was to do so with as short a leering window as possible. Timing each station made her feel scientific about the whole thing.

It was a tricky business. The signatures needed to fall like dominoes, but not in the sequence on the paper itself. No, the girl had to commit the exact order to memory. Luckily, she had recently graduated from college.

It usually went without a hitch. Lately, however, the girl noted the men were frowning at her, no longer leering. Was her skirt too long today? Did she have a hickey from this morning's pre-work meeting with her boyfriend? No, they were frowning at the papers, not at her. She had to wait while each man picked up the telephone and shouted into it. "What is this 'black argot' shit?"

Every time a new job was created in any city department - bus driver, health clinic worker, court clerk, museum janitor, etc - a requisition was generated. The reason for the vacancy didn't matter. Maybe someone quit or died or was fired. A department's budget might have been increased for several new jobs. Whatever the reason, a new requisition had to be created in the basement, before anyone could be hired.

Then it was hand carried for approval around the building. And lately, the girl noted that more and more requisitions bore not only the name of the job, but the words "Position must be filled by person able to speak Black Argot." The Signature Men didn't like the trend. It took a long time for them to commit their authorization to paper, now. The girl also had a new, final stop added: she walked up the same gorgeous marble steps Dirty Harry did when he wanted to see the Mayor. The Mayor didn't mind seeing the girl, though he never leered, but he did want to see those Black Argot requisitions. The paper size was increased, to leave room for a large, flowery Mayoral signature.

Soon, the ancient men began to disappear, replaced by younger men and women who spoke black argot and leered at each other. Eventually they were out too, and gay men who wouldn't leer at pretty girls took over the caverns.

I'm not sure who's leering at whom now, because I moved on.

*Joke Of The Day

2010-04-27T13:12:00.000-07:00

CATEGORY: A day in my life

AUTHOR'S PHILOSOPHY: As a storyteller, I regard it as my obligation to form a crowd of one for street performers. I'm usually rewarded with a new story to tell.

The street corner display is crude –a tower of three blue plastic crates. I slow down to read the small sign rigged on top. “Joke of the Day. Donations Accepted.”

My jokes are not crude, the proprietor informs me.

I smile, as required.

If you want a dirty joke madam, he says, you can put that dollar bill right back in your Bhopal satchel with the Malavi dialect writing.

I’m thoroughly respectable, I assure him.

He nods and removes the bottom crate, placing it against a store window within a small patch of shade. Patting to make sure it’s steady, he motions with a courtly bow for me to sit. I'm too hot to match his theatricality with my usual flair. I just want to sit down and watch someone else perform for a change.
Meanwhile, passers-by walk around us with the nonchalance of city dwellers accustomed to street antics. When he starts telling me the joke, however, a few people stop to see what's going on.
The joke is about a rabbi, a priest, and a flea in a bar, who meet a farmer’s daughter knock-knocking on the door. I don’t get the punchline, but enjoy the delivery. He acts out all the parts pretty well, I think, with an especially graceful leap as the flea.
During the telling an even bigger crowd assembles, and everyone claps at the end. The dollar bills in his hat mount up.The impromptu audience melts back into the late afternoon sunshine, but I remain sitting gratefully, for an extra moment or two. Then I remember what he said about my purse.

How did you know it’s from Bhopal, I ask. Have you been to India?

He nods. Not only do I know where it comes from, he says, but I can translate the embroidered words.

Really, I exclaim. What does it say?

He holds up a finger for me to wait. Reaching inside one of the crates, he pulls out a thick black marker. Then he begins writing on the other side of the joke sign. When he finishes, he sets it back in place.

“Translations. Donations accepted,” it says.

Fair enough, I think, handing him another dollar.

And that’s how I learn my purse has a dirty joke about eunuchs on it, written for all the world to see. Or at least, for those who claim to understand Malavi.

*Party Games

2010-04-23T13:56:00.000-07:00

CATEGORY: Pure (or impure) Imagination

AUTHOR EXPLANATION: This is why I don't go out much.

Last night I met a wonderful girl at a party. I mean I could really talk to this girl. She approached as I was standing around feeling ill at ease holding a glass of wine, not connecting with anyone. To appear actively engaged in the party, I was shaking my glass a little and holding it up to my ear, as if listening to the tiny tinkling of the party charm around the base. My party charm was a skateboard, though I don't skate. I didn't get to choose my own charm, which I thought was supposed to be part of the fun. If I ever give a party, people will be able to have whichever charm they want. I mean if I owned party charms.

I noticed the girl earlier because she was dressed modestly by today's standards, the only one - male or female - whose nipples weren't featured prominently.

She didn't bother with introductory chatter, after a simple hello. "I want to stick one of my fingers into that fan," she said, indicating the one in the window closest to us. "Do you think I should?"

I advised against it. "I mean if there were fewer people at the party I'd say go ahead."

She nodded.

"I know a fun party game," she suggested. And it was fun! We went around the house guessing how each person was going to die. At first we were conservative. Cancer, heart attack, car accident - your garden variety deaths. Then we became more creative and developed back stories. My best contribution was the surfer dude wannabe who joined his father's relatives in the I.R.A and died with bombs strapped to his body at Heathrow. We regarded his once-gelled hair slicked flat with booze as he downed shots for a stunt. What a glorious death he would have compared to his current shallow life

The game that engaged us the longest was her idea. It was called "Assassin." You follow a drunk guy home from a party, then off him. This led to a lively discussion about method.

Now she's sleeping. I mean in my bedroom, and I'm fixing breakfast which I intend to serve her in bed.

Then we have to decide how to dispose of the body.

*The Importance of Food In A Relationship

2010-04-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

CATEGORY: Part memoir, part wishful thinking

AUTHOR REFUSAL: will not say which part is which

I ran into an old boyfriend today. He looked great, and he must have thought the same about me because he suggested we continue the conversation over burgers and beers.

"I don’t know, Nate.” I shook my head. “That’s quite a comedown from the last time we dined together."

This was in reference to a meal we ate at Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo early 1999.

As a consultant in the airline industry for emerging nations, Nate travels all over the world. Accompanying him on business trips, which I was able to do a few times, was always an adventure in gastronomy.

"Liked that bat stew, did you?" he smiled.

"Hey, I got it down - and managed to KEEP it down," I reminded him.

"Only because I drowned it in the mango sauce," he countered. "I had to pour all of my sauce on your plate, too, when the Mbasa weren’t looking.”

When I asked him where he was going next, he replied, "How do you like your bobotie?"

"Stuffed with currants and flavored with gare masala" I shot back, grinning.

“In or out of a pumpkin?” His eyes narrowed.

I hesitated, unsure of myself.

Then, “No pumpkin,” I said firmly. “The Argentine version with pumpkin is based on a different sect of the Boer culture, the ones who chose not go to the East Indies. So, it’s too far from the source, for me."

He studied me, appraisingly.

Perhaps it's time to renew my passport.

*That Old Tub

2010-04-20T13:06:00.000-07:00

CATEGORY: Memoir, Dream

AUTHOR INSIGHT: Brazil is a fictional place, in reality.

I close my eyes and awaken in my young husband's dream. He wants to be a fisherman off the coast of Bahia, Brazil. I want what he wants.

Now I'm with women all waiting for our men to return on that old fishing tub, Mas Linda. Everyone here thinks it's good luck my name is Linda, like the captain's wife. I think to myself, that old tub needs a lot more than luck.

I'm in a tin kitchen by the sea and they feed me soup made from fish heads. It is flavored with spices timed to explode in waves. First the mouth, then the throat, then the chest.

They laugh when I gasp and cough. Even their laughter is to the beat of samba . I don't mind being teased. It distracts me.

I love being here, truly. The air's so sweet I don't even want to exhale.

But all I can think about is where's that old tub.

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/forums/?ID=51268146

*Bee Boy

2010-04-20T10:32:00.000-07:00

CATEGORY: Memoir

AUTHOR INTRO: If a grown-up Bee Boy should happen to read this, it might help him to know I came to be a pariah of sorts, in time.

When I was 14 years old, I saved my little sister from an attack by Bee Boy at the Greyhound Bus station in Philadelphia. We were there on alternating Saturdays throughout 1962, catching a Baltimore-bound bus to fulfill court-ordered visits to our father.

In those years, east coast Greyhound bus stations were repositories of ancient filth. Like the accumulation of mankind's history stored

at the Library of Alexandria, the grime at Greyhound told stories. You could read the myriad substances produced and disposed of by human bodies. These stories were authenticated by odors trapped in the building for decades, like ghosts doomed to haunt the place their earthly life ended.

"Don't forget to go to the bathroom NOW," I'd remind my sister before we left home.

I was determined our very first visit to the station rest room would also be our last. It was the thick-textured dirt climbing my toilet stall like jungle vines that convinced me.

Unfortunately, my sister was not fastidious by nature. At first, she was not willing to hold in her pee just because I said a plague might invade her panties if she used the station toilets. The word 'cooties' had lost its terror for her - my fault for overusing it when we were much younger.

For this occasion, then, I made up some convincing-sounding disease names. Mackolepsy. Chronic Nostrilitus Lympasematic Syndrome. The former resulted in drowning, because you became unconscious, slipped off the throne, twisted your body around, hit your head, and fell face-forward into the toilet bowl. The latter caused the paramecium viral form of bacteria fungus to enlarge in your blood stream and be excreted from your armpits or unravel from your nostrils, several days after exposure. This would happen in your classroom or the playground, and for the rest of your school years you’d be shunned.

Thank God we had no Internet back then. A kid today would have googled my homemade medical conditions and realized I was lying. Instead, wide-eyed, my sister finally agreed not to use the Greyhound restroom ever again. She was over 30 when she learned the truth. She said she was tempted to stop speaking to me until I reminded her I once risked my life to save her from Bee Boy.

Who was Bee Boy? He was a kid about my age, headquartered at Greyhound. I learned something from him: until then, I thought only in India did the homeless live without homes.

There was no doubt he was without family or home according to station employees. He was in and out of the place at all hours, and he slept there. He lived on burgers and fries customers left on their plates at the station’s restaurant counter, scraped off and saved by waitresses who felt sorry for him. The newsstand owner threw a couple of peanut butter cracker packs and and a mini-carton of milk at him every day, in exchange for a guarantee he wouldn’t come close and bother the customers. Though he was universally pitied throughout the station, the stronger feeling he evoked from others was revulsion.

Now I realize Bee Boy was mentally retarded, emotionally disturbed, nutritionally malnourished, physically disabled - you name it. He suffered from everything but mackolepsy and nostrilitus. In retrospect, it breaks my heart no one thought to alert social agencies about him. Not even the cops on the Greyhound beat did. Deep down inside, no one believed he was ....human. A smallish hunchback perched on his short, chubby torso and the way he rubbed his hands together (and his feet, while sitting) made him resemble a bee. It didn’t help that his only vocalization was a humming, increasing to a sizzle like food burning on a grill when he was angry. I didn’t create the name Bee Boy; the Greyhound crowd did, and it stuck. But I wasn’t nice to him, either.

My sister and I weren’t the only passengers in the waiting room who Bee Boy harassed. We just made it easy for him by appearing like clockwork every other Saturday at 8:30 am for the 9:15 express to Baltimore. Some cunning survival instinct he possessed, registered that fact.

Originally, I assumed he just wanted to frighten us. Soon I realized his goal was to sting. The first few times he buzzed around, we shooed him away with our hands. After that, we came prepared. I armed both of us with a low-tech piece of equipment, the fly swatter. Just a handle with a rubbery flapper at the end to keep him further at bay.

We employed a defense strategy too: usage of a protective wall by sitting in the midst of the maximum number of people available. If our human wall got up to leave on a bus earlier than ours, we changed seats to a population cluster of newer arrivals. Our maneuvers around the station infuriated me because I could see he enjoyed the chase.

One Saturday morning we were earlier than usual because the schedule to Baltimore had changed. There were hardly any people around. Fortunately, Bee Boy wasn’t there either. My sister was nodding off, more asleep than not. Suddenly, I had to pee so badly I briefly fantasized about doing it off in a corner, like Bolivian women who squat everywhere, their act hidden by voluminous skirts. That way, I could simultaneously avoid the bathroom cooties AND be able to keep my sister in sight in case Bee Boy materialized. But I was wearing jeans.

Unfortunately, this time, I had to use the bathroom. I just had to. I figured I would run and be back to my sister well before Bee Boy could reach her, even if he walked in right NOW, I reasoned. The bathroom and my sister were on the far end of the station, seemingly miles from Bee Boy’s Market Street entrance. Possibly I should have awakened her, but I didn’t want her to know I was violating my own rule. Once you lose face in front of a younger sibling, the balance of the entire relationship is knocked off-kilter, forever.

I took a deep breath, ran to the bathroom, and emerged a minute later, still holding my breath. I was pleased with myself for being so swift - until I saw Bee Boy hovering above my sister, who had just that second awakened to the nightmare sight of him about to sting her.

“Leave her alone,” I screached. I sprinted toward them, just as a can of coke catapulted out of the newsstand and bounced harmlessly off Bee Boy’s hump. The surprise of it slowed him down just long enough for me to reach his side and to push him as far away from my sister as I could. “Get away from us you ugly, disgusting insect,” I screamed.

I was shorter than Bee Boy and skinny. What I didn’t expect was to push him with such force that he fell. I don’t know whether he was hurt or not, but he cowered there on the floor, crying. Sobbing, truth be told. My sister was crying too, so I turned to comfort her. I walked her away with me, leaving Bee Boy in a humming heap on the floor.

I steered her over to the newstand and the owner handed us two Hershey bars. “Is she all right” he asked. “I saw what was happening and threw a can of pop at him.” My sister was sniffling while unwrapping the candy bar, and I concluded she was just fine.

No one went to Bee Boy. He laid out on the floor for a long time, and no one went to him. People walked around him, but no one checked to see whether he needed help. Our bus was announced, eventually, and he was still there.

Sunday evening upon our return, I half expected him to see him in the same position, in the same spot. But we never saw Bee Boy again. No one knew anything about what became of him, either.

The newsstand guy retired within a few months and sold his small business. The restaurant closed down because a McDonalds and other fast food places had moved in on the block. The cops we knew were rotated elsewhere. Soon, my sister and I were the only Greyhound regulars who wondered about Bee Boy. It didn't occur to me at age 14, that someone's existence could be forgotten.

Last night before posting this, I searched on the Internet for “Bee Boy” (and Beeboy and beeboy and even beboy). Would he turn up in anyone else’s memoir of the Philly Greyhound Bus Station in the early sixties? Nope. I’m the first to capture him on paper.

Though my own heartlessness back then pains me now, it's understandable. And I'm willing to bear that pain and bear witness to it, if it means Bee Boy will be remembered.

*A Rare Species

2010-04-20T00:31:00.000-07:00

CATEGORY: Memoir

AUTHOR NATURE-OBSERVATION You might wonder, reading this, why in the world my former husband and I ever divorced. Trust me. It was for the good of the planet.

My former husband Lane and I met to discuss the wedding of our daughter Bay and ended up driving to the Ohanapecosh Valley to hunt a fugitive wildflower.

"How long have you been looking for this thing?" Lane asked, amused as always by my obsessions. Since the divorce I've amused him, anyway.

"At least 40 years," he continued, answering his own question.

I couldn't believe he was coming with me on a search for the phantom orchid, aka cephalanthera austiniae. Long ago when we were married, he wasn't interested in my botanical adventures. But after Bay's wedding discussion ended, he asked what I was doing for the rest of the day. When I told him of my quest, he said he'd like to join me.

"We're getting along so well, I'm feeling lucky," he observed. "I think I'll be the one to spot your mystery plant first."

He was making this into a competition. I smiled at the familiarity.

"Why the Ohanapecosh, though?" he asked. "I thought you told me once phantom orchids were extinct around Mt. Ranier."

"I thought they were," I said. "But I stumbled into the blog of someone who claimed to have found a few in the Valley. In four different spots! Oh, Lane, what if I can find them, at last?

"Aren't you glad for the company?"

I was. Then I thought, maybe we've found something rare at this late juncture in our lives. That elusive species between a man and a woman - friendship.

*She Just Blacked Out, Is All

2010-04-19T23:01:00.000-07:00

CATEGORY: A Day in The Life

EPILOG BEFORE THE FACT: I did not renew my contract with this organization after the following incident.

One of my jobs as manager of a private university dormitory is to distribute mail. I notice Alison hasn't picked up her mail for several days, and it occurs to me I haven't seen her lately. I go to her room and find only her roommate Jody there.

Jody mumbles something and slinks past me. My voice pursues her down the hall. Jody! Please tell me where she is.

Reluctantly, Jody turns back to me and says, If you must know, she's in the hospital. But don't worry, she's fine now.

I'm always the last to know these things. Parents hire me to manage young women who refuse to be managed. I refuse to be in this position much longer.

I don't take their attitude personality. I represent authority, and they thought college meant being beyond authority. They don't yet know they will meet with authority throughout their lives. You got to serve somebody, Bob Dylan says. I'm just the first somebody they meet after they thought they were through with all that.

So Alison is in the hospital and her friends have formed a conspiracy to keep me and her parents from knowing. Legally, neither the parents nor I have any rights in this matter.

I don't even bother to ask Jody whether it's alcohol related.

You think it's alcohol related, Jody says. It really isn't.

I don't say anything and suddenly, Jody's talking: She just blacked out, is all. At a fraternity party. The stupid security guards forced the guys to call an ambulance. She's fine. She just blacked out, is all. She just got alcohol poisoning, is all. But that's not alcohol related. It's horrible, forcing her to go to a hospital when she didn't even know what they were doing because she was blacked out.

Jody's too-skinny frame shakes with indignation.

I look at the bulletin board, across from Alison and Jody's room. It has colorful posters with all the important information about alcohol poisoning, eating disorders, signs of bi-polar disorder. I'm sure nobody reads them.

Can I go now, please, Jody asks, torn between manners and her desire to be free of me.

I have only a few seconds to say something meaningful that might penetrate her denial of reality.

Death, Jody.

I choose my words carefully.

Death. Alcohol poisoning can lead to death. Alison might have died if she hadn't been taken to a hospital in time.

Whatever, Jody replies.

I hold her eyes with a steady gaze. And it makes me feel better now, because I can see she looks frightened. She just can't admit it to me.

Whatever.

*Christmas Dinner

2010-04-18T15:23:00.000-07:00

GENRE: Fiction, for those who might wonder

AUTHOR ENDORSEMENT: A Christmas story is never out of season.

“Matt’s "the one. I knew it immediately,” Mallory smiled at her stepmother Ellen as they waited for the last of the Christmas pies to finish baking. Apples and cinammon scented the air.

“Oh, Mal,” Ellen hugged the girl she had raised since the age of two. “We’re all so happy! He just seems perfect!”

The two women were sitting in the kitchen, the largest room in the old farmhouse. Mal looked fondly at the person she called Mother. She was still wearing her faded apron after preparing the enormous breakfast of eggs, pancakes, hash browns – the works! Ellen rarely ventured far from where food was stored, prepared, cooked, served, and cleaned up, so the apron of the day tended to stay on unless she were going out.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t approve, “ Mallory ventured.

“Because he’s black, right?” Ellen always came to the point.

“ Look, I know you and Dad were hippies way back when, and I know you had black friends in the city. Still, I admit to worrying what you would think when I brought home an African American guy. “

“Well, I hope you realize it makes absolutely no difference to us. We could see right away, just as you did, that he’s the one. Even little Petey said it.”

They sat in companionable silence for awhile, ‘til Ellen shooed Mallory out of the kitchen.

“Go on, rescue him from everyone in this crazy family. You should be with him now. There’s not much time left before I need to start getting serious about dinner."

Mallory was glad she had made the trek across country to spend Christmas with her family. She loved their special traditions, and it just wouldn’t have been the same with Matt’s family. Besides, this was her first Christmas as a full-fledged adult, age 21. Their most important tradition was actually her responsibility this year. She had been a bit nervous but later, lingering at the dinner table while munching the last of Matt’s thigh from the bone , she basked in her family’s praise.

“You did a fine job selecting Christmas dinner, daughter,” her father said, making it official.

“I love the dark meat, “ Petey piped up.

They all had a good laugh at that.

*Storytelling, The Haiku Way

2010-04-18T13:34:00.000-07:00

Category: Haibun. An essay or story incorporating both prose and haiku or senryu (the haiku of human affairs).

Author's Insistence: Haiku is not the 5-7-5 version you learned in 3rd grade. It can be 5-7-5 in syllable and line structure, but it is inaccurate to suppose it MUST be. It is usually three lines: short-long-short, but even that is not set in stone. Please, don't get me started on this issue in the world of Haiku! Far more important than syllable count is that haiku needs to be a bite-sized moment in nature or a thought or an experience, incorporating a contrast or change between one line and the other two. And for just a moment, the reader enters the consciousness of the writer to see beauty or irony or whatever it was the writer saw --SJ

I am a Once Upon A Time storyteller of folktales from Long Ago and Far Away and sometimes from as close as my own imagination. Schools, libraries, hospitals, festivals, farmer's markets, ferry boats, churches, bars, city streets, private homes - I've set up shop just about everywhere.

venues -

the storyteller's body

a stage

I have been a storyteller since I was a child,telling stories to younger children. I probably have a hundred tales collected in my head. One of these days I'll catalog them. Meanwhile, the right story always seems to march front and center for the right audience. I do not know how I know what the right story is. Sometimes, I plan a certain one for a certain occasion - but when I'm looking at the audience, another story tumbles out. I just go with it.

My dream once was to be an itinerant storyteller. Now, I wait to be asked.

an invitation

to do what I love best -

my answer yes

I've had some challenging audiences. Older elementary ages for instance, or middle school. They think they're too sophisticated for stories. I don't argue with them or try to persuade them. I just begin with the magic words and enjoy seeing faces change as the story chips away at their cool veneer. Sometimes I bring a puppet 'helper' and, invariably, a young cynic reacts with derision.

your puppet's not a real rabbit-

that's true

but it is a real puppet

Another challenge was an audience of blind children. I worried because my performance 'style' depends heavily on the visual. Facial expressions, hand gestures, body movements - how could a story be good without? What happened illustrates the importance of marching into the lion's den occasionally. One becomes creative, quickly. I added sound effects and participatory actions and made up a song, to my stock Halloween story about a character named Li'l Ogre. I still believe it's the best I've ever told a story and now I tell that version of it to everyone.

Take a deep breath -

just like that, YES, to help

Li'l Ogre run away

Recently, I hooked up telling stories to the homeless. It started after I donated food to a new Tent City in the neighborhood. I noticed they didn't have much for desserts. Well, no one can live by nutrition alone! I bought hot chocolate packs and mini-marshmallows - which must, in winter, be accompanied by a story. I was then asked whether I could tell stories at a shelter too.

small hand at my sleeve -

can the story star a girl

named Akisha?

Viktor chimes in -

an advocate for a Viktor

to be hero

Each child should have their own personal stories in my opinion. Adults too, need stories linking them to the same foibles and problems and triumphs and insights as the rest of humanity has possessed down the ages.

folk tales

a haiku moment

throughout each story

*The Last Time I Had Chocolate

2010-04-17T16:53:00.000-07:00

CATEGORY: Memoir

-When do you get used to the odor of chocolate air, I asked Peter, as we sat out on his deck during the late evening firefly show.

-This is Hershey goddam Pennsylvania, he replied testily. The town was built around the chocolate factory. If you don't like it, go to Utzville.

That's where they make Utz potato chips. Stick your face in an empty potato chip bag to imagine what houses, clothes, and children smell like, in Utzville.

-I'm not complaining, I told him, though in truth the breeze from "Chocolate Headquarters USA" was cloying as only proximity to industrial-sized vats full of liquified candy bars, can be. It was said the very soil in Hershey made chocolate puddles when mixed with raindrops, but I never happened to be there during the rainy season. I can verify, however, that Peter's homegrown medical marijuana was suspiciously sweet.

I was almost enjoying my last night before flying home to Seattle.

-Oh God I'm glad you called me to visit in the summer so we could watch the fireflies together, I said, lighting a new joint.

-I'm happy to oblige you by dying in July. I wouldn't want you to be inconvenienced, having to visit me during a snowstorm.

-And how great is it to be smoking dope legally!

-Technically it's only legal for me, but no one's around for miles. You're safe unless I decide to narc on you.

-All those times when getting high was ruined by the fear of being caught. I love this, now. With you.

-Oh please don't let my imminent death spoil your stoned fun.

He'd warned me there would be remarks like these. Said, ignore them.

So I spoke of the beauty of fireflies, and I recalled college memories, and our travels as lovers. I think chocolate came up in the conversation again: The magic brownies I baked for us and for our friend Jim. At some point, I coaxed a smile from him. At another, we held each other and cried.

I almost declared I'd never eat chocolate again, because I would associate it with our last time together. He'd have said that's ridiculous, don't do it on my account. But I just lost my sweet tooth forever after that last visit.

Another thing I didn't tell him was how badly I'd miss his friendship as I grew older and older, while he remained perpetually 45. That's because I didn't know it yet.

*Skippy The Dog

2010-04-17T04:02:00.000-07:00

Category: Fiction

Author Query: Tom Robbins said, "It's never too late to have a happy childhood." True or False?

Sharon's mother remarried and the new little family moved from Baltimore to Philadelphia, where the stepfather lived. Sharon missed her grandmother and the tidy bungalow with faux chalet shutters and a big yard, the only home she had ever known. Most of all she missed Skippy the dog. No pets were permitted in the cramped apartment house, not even a very small half-Spitz, half-water spaniel.
"It's just temporary, living here," Sharon's mother explained. "We'll move soon and bring Skippy The Dog."

The stepfather described the house they would have as soon as he recovered from a back injury and could return to work. "I love you, Sharon, and I love your mother. I'll take care of you better, very soon. And Skippy The Dog too, of course."

While the stepfather rested at McGuffy's Tavern everyday, the new little family was swamped with financial troubles. Sharon's mother became a Kelly Girl and Sharon babysat afternoons and evenings for a sickly toddler next door The listless child with constantly poopy diapers wasn't as much fun as Skippy The Dog and smelled worse than he did, too. Kind of a doggy smell without the fun of having a doggy. Still, she tried to liven him up. "Here is the beehive, where are the bees?" she would chant, to entertain him with fingerplays and songs she knew. The boy's watery eyes barely gave her a glance. Sharon thought constantly of Skippy The Dog, who used to love listening to her and was eager to learn everything she taught.

"Don't worry, I'll take good care of him, " Sharon's grandmother had promised, but soon after that she got sick and died. Then the bungalow was sold and Skippy The Dog was sold with the house. The stepfather laughed about that, but Sharon asked to see the document from the real estate company. As she read the crisp paper, the words "Skippy The Dog" leaped up at her just as Skippy The Dog himself always did when she came home from school in Baltimore.

Meanwhile, all moneys from the sale went to pay Nana's hospital bills. There was nothing left for the new little family. When he heard that, the stepfather put his fist through one of the walls in their apartment, and he put a fist in his wife's face. The hole in the wall was so large and her mother's face was so battered that Sharon, who had been babysitting when it happened, believed it was her mother's head that had gone through the wall and not the stepfather's fist.

During the confusion of screaming, neighbors, police, and ambulance, Sharon stole back her babysitting money hidden in the plaster of paris gargoyle on the stepfather's bureau. She ignored the gargoyle's evil appearance.

"You don't scare me, " she whispered to it. "The stepfather is handsome and look what he did."

With the money, she took a bus back to Baltimore to save Skippy The Dog. She knew it was too late to save her mother.

When she arrived, finally, at the bungalow, she introduced herself to the new owners as Skippy The Dog's mother. The middle-aged couple invited her in and the three of them sat in the living room making polite conversation about the house and the early life of Skippy The Puppy.

"We love him," they smiled. They had shiny yellow teeth and the bungalow smelled strange. The new owners are aliens, she decided, and they're here to make experiments on dogs.

They served her graham crackers and milk, and though she was hungry, she was afraid to ingest food touched by aliens.
"Thank you for the cookies and milk and thank you for taking such good care of Skippy The Dog, temporarily, until I could come for him," she said.

The couple exchanged glances. "We love him," they repeated their earlier comment.

"As soon as we get settled, you can come see him anytime," she reassured them.

The doorbell rang, and it was two police officers. "We're here to make sure you get back to your parents in Philadelphia, safe and sound," they told her.

She began to cry, then shriek.

"Shhh, hush" the alien wife cautioned, looking worried. "We don't want Skippy The Dog to hear your voice and get upset."

"Well what the hell, do you think I came here just to meet you weirdos?" she spat out. "SKIPPY," she yelled at the top of her lungs. "SKIPPY,IT'S ME, MOMMY!"

Before the adults could react, she was out the door and in the yard. She and Skippy The Dog fell all over each other.

"I love you, I love you, I love you," they sobbed out joyously.

Sharon had to be quick. She started fumbling with the long chain that allowed Skippy access to most of the big yard.

"Where have you been?" Skippy The Dog asked.

"Quick, there's no time to talk. We're on the run!"

They were at the edge of the woods now, behind the house, when Skippy the Dog laid down at the top of the path, resting his head on his paws.

"I can't go with you, Mommy" he said.

Sharon stood very still.

"You left. Nana left. The aliens feed me," he whimpered.

She stared at him.

"And...and, I don't think you can take care of me. You're not old enough. You don't even have a place to live."

She kissed him on top of his silky head and ran into the woods behind the house.

Life became easier after that, even though she spent the rest of her growing up years in a succession of unsuitable foster homes. Where there is no expectation, there is no disappointment. She never bothered to respond to people's supposed concern or apparent affection whenever she happened to run into either.
When you learn that not even man's best friend can be trusted, you're darn sure no one else can be, either.

*The Idiot's Guide to Prayer

2010-04-17T00:33:00.000-07:00

Category: Fiction

Author's Wish: Apparently, everyone's equal in God's eyes, and if that's the way He feels, fine. I just wish He wouldn't require us to agree with Him on that point.

Every morning now, even before my first cup of coffee, I pray. I pray that God will convince Thea to come back to me. I pray He will tell her it’s His will for her to live with me forever.

Meanwhile, I suspect she's praying for Him to send me to rot in hell forever.

How does God deal with all these competing prayers, I wonder.

Esteban walks in and sees me in prayer position by my bed. "You don't know how to pray," he scoffs. “Prayer involves a lot more than just getting down on your knees.”

Esteban is my friend and coincidentally, one of the men attempting to replace me in Thea's bed.

I regard him with the kind of critical eye a woman might have. Thea’s, let's say.

His short hair is slicked back with 'product.' Thea prefers natural hair on the longish side. Like mine.

Esteban has many fitness center-induced muscles. Thea likes men with builds on the thin side. Like mine.

Estheban is a Catholic atheist. Poor guy. He's nothing like me at all. He hasn't a prayer. Oh wait. I forgot. Thea doesn’t know I’m religious now, because I only started praying when she left me.

"You're wrong" I say to him now. "I do know how to pray," and I point to my recent purchase, “The Idiot's Guide To Prayer."

"Well then, go ahead," Esteban suggests, "tell me how."

I focus my attention upon him.

"First you focus attention," I explain. "And then, you umm, umm, it’s kind of, see what you do is, well, it’s very personal."

"You spent money on this guide for idiots?"

"Idiot’s guide," I correct him.

"That's just idiotic. Expecting a book to teach you how to pray.”

“Some people use a book for that, Esteban. It’s called The Bible.”

“Why don’t you read that book then?”

“I’m into technology. I prefer HELP manuals to stories and parables.”

Maybe he’s right, though. All my praying hasn’t worked yet, and it’s been a whole month. Lately I’ve thought I should change tactics and demand Thea come back to me. Pick her up, throw her over my shoulder and carry her through town, like that John Wayne movie.

After all, the Idiot’s Guide said God helps those who help themselves to what they want.

*Murder, Maybe

2010-04-16T14:01:00.000-07:00

If you don't like to laugh at old people, better skip this story. My excuse is that I've been forgetful my entire life. _SJ

On the day she was to visit her home in England for the first time in three decades, Kit was found dead on her floor. The two friends driving her to the airport had pounded on the door, then used the key they knew she hid in the garden.

"At least she was drinking Earl Gray breakfast tea as she passed" said Kit's friend Margaret, referring to the china cup shattered on the floor by the body. "She loved Earl Gray."

"This just isn't LIKE her," frowned Kit's other friend Annie.

"Dying, you mean?" asked Margaret, sitting back comfortably in the recliner, as they waited for the arrival of the 911 personnel, just called. "I agree, it is a bit unusual. She's never done it before that I recall."

"Do you notice how untidy the apartment is," Annie gestured, ignoring the other's words.

Margaret looked around for the first time. "Why no, I hadn't. Being preoccupied by Kit's dead body and all."

"So now what do you say?"

"Why, yes, I agree with you. Untidiness isn't like her."

"So what do you think?"

"You’re the one who thinks."

"Kit was not about to leave a mess like this before a long trip."

"No, she wasn't. " Margaret took a deep breath. "Are you suggesting foul play?"

"I'm suggesting we have only a few minutes before the authorities come to find the clue Kit would most definitely have left."

"Why not let THEM find the clues? That's their specialty."

"Who knew Kit the way we did? We're wasting time Margaret. They're going to charge in here destroying evidence."

"Too bad Kit is dead. She could have helped us"

You take the bedroom," Annie ordered. "I'll stay in here"

"Wait a minute, what are we doing?" Margaret's head was spinning.

"Looking for incriminating evidence."

"What will it look like?"

"How should I know? Kit was a very clever woman. Far cleverer than whoever murdered her. Even more clever than we are."

"I object to that last statement" Margaret objected.

"Object later. Find evidence now."

"You're being rather relentless."

Annie looked at Margaret directly. "Someone murdered our friend. And I'm not happy about it."

Margaret nodded and sighed. "I'm a bit tired today," she said. "So I suppose I should come right to the point."

"You killed her, didn't you!"

"I was about to say the same thing to you!"

The two elderly ladies regarded each other suspiciously.

There was a long silence.

"I think we both did it," Annie said, flatly.

"What?!"

"I think we did it and then forgot about doing it."

"This isn't the first time you've accused me of being senile. And even if I were, forgetting that I murdered my friend is not exactly like forgetting to buy butter at the store.

"We didn't murder her. Technically, we just killed her. In reality, we assisted her to commit suicide."

"That's absurd." Margaret shook her head firmly. "Why would she commit suicide the day she was returning to her beloved home after all these years."

"Because of the letter," Annie reminded her.

"What letter?"

"You see how senile you are, Margaret, you've forgotten that already."

"Show me this so-called letter, Annie."

"That's what we're looking for."

"Well, why didn't you say so before?!"

"Because I FORGOT, you birdbrain, " Annie exploded.

"Do NOT insult my brain, just because I'm senile!" Margaret said, with dignity

Annie's brow furrowed. "What was I saying just now?"

"How should I know. Something about a letter from Kit's fiance Hilary."

"Hilary??!" Annie sputtered. "How could he have sent her a letter? He died during the war!"

"Kit had a fiance fighting in Iraq?" Margaret asked, puzzled.

"Not THAT war! She was 84 years old, remember? It was World War II !"

"Yes, but Hilary died."

"No, he didn't. She just got his letter yesterday, forwarded from her sister in England."

"Wait! This sounds familiar, Annie!"

"That's because she told us last night."

"No, it's a movie I saw with Bette Davis and - oh, what's his name? The handsome one."

"Brad Pitt?"

"Bette Davis and Brad Pitt never made a movie together, silly

"Why are we talking about a movie, when there's a dead body on the floor?" Annie pointed out to Margaret.

Margaret screamed. "Annie! There's a dead body on the floor!!!!"

Annie screamed. "Oh my God, it's KIT!"

"How could it be Kit? She's going to England today, to kill her dead fiance Hilary!"

"I'm confused. How could she kill someone who's already dead?"

"Oh Annie, you're even more senile than I am. Don't you remember the letter Kit's sister forwarded from England? It was Hilary, confessing on his deathbed that he had faked his death in Vietnam, to get out of his engagement with Kit?"

"Vietnam? Kit was too old to have been engaged to someone who fought in Vietnam."

"Did I say Vietnam? I meant World War II."

"I saw a movie once about Vietnam," Annie said, "with that handsome actor Brad Pitt, who gets killed"

"Was Bette Davis in it? Playing his fiance, now really old?"

"Bette Davis is dead."

"Is that who's body is on the floor?"

There was a pounding on the door.

"I wonder who that can be," Annie said.

"Kit, oh Kit" Margaret yelled into the bedroom, tripping over a body on the floor that she hadn't seen before. "Someone is here to see you."

*Old Age Is

2010-04-16T13:38:00.000-07:00

This is not a true story. Well, it's partially true. I'm not telling which parts. _SJ

My friend Lindy and I are meeting for lunch tomorrow. We lost track of each other a couple of years after she went back east with a new husband, and that was mid- 80’s maybe. I’ll have to ask her exactly when. And what is her husband’s name? Dan? Dave? I’ll have to ask her that too. I never knew him well.

I found out she was back in the Seattle area from her first husband Gary. Him I knew. In the Biblical sense, long after our respective divorces. It was an experience never talked about and never repeated. When I ran into him last week, Lindy seemed the safest thing to talk about. He gave me her phone number.

At first, Lindy and I bragged about our kids and then we decided on a time and place to meet for lunch.

“It’s been more than 20 years,” I said. “Think we’ll recognize each other?”

There was silence.

“I’ll be the one with the oxygen tank,” she said finally.

“Fuck!”

“Tell me about it. I have lung cancer. Well, the one lung I have left has cancer, is what I mean.”

“I’m a blonde now,” I offered.

“Me too,” she laughed.

“Mine’s a wig,” I explained. I lost all my hair.”

“Chemo? You’ve got cancer too?!”

“No,” I said. "For awhile, they suspected a thyroid imbalance or lupus. Finally turned out to be plain ol' menopause. That was seven years ago. I don’t have hot flashes anymore or emotional melt-downs. And I don’t have hair, either.”

“How about a man,” she asked? “Got one of those?”

“Nope,” I admitted. “My boyfriend of 15 years or so, we were finally going to get married. Then he sailed off into the sunset with a younger woman. Literally, on his sailboat, her long hair flowing in the breeze. So how are you and, uh, Doug doing?"

“We’re not,” she said. “Three years ago, after my doctor told me one of the lungs would need to come out, he sailed off into the sunset too. Not literally. But with a younger and, I imagine, healthier woman.”

“Seems like we have lots to talk about besides memories of our wilder days.”

“How’s the old crowd? I ask Gary, but he never tells me anything.”

“Let see, Randy's Parkinsons is, apparently, beyond any of the drugs they have for it these days. Bits and Sade each fought cancer for about five years apiece. One in the breasts, one had melanoma. They’re both gone now. Nina had a stroke. We don’t know if she’s there, inside herself or not. Who else, who else. Oh. Junie. Well, when Matthew had a heart attack and died last year, June decided to run the farm all by herself. She got worn down to bare bone, but insisted on driving Matt’s damn backhoe instead of hiring out. It flipped and she was crushed.”

“Seems like you’re the lucky one.”

“Seems like I was, until I broke my hip last year.”

“Getting old,” she said. “It’s…”

Her sentence trailed off. It didn’t need to be finished.

“Yes,” I agreed. “It is.”

*For The Bangers And Mash

2010-03-17T20:03:00.000-07:00

...and in the eternal hope there's a poet around when you need one _SJ

For lunch, for the bangers and mash, Susan told herself, she went to Finn McCool's on the Avenue. Scanning the bar with a practiced eye, she noted there were no poets in residence. That meant no conversation for her. Only poets talked to strange old women in bars. Only drunk poets, she admitted.

The smokiest of scotches, she told the bartender and he brought her one whose name she couldn't remember a few minutes after downing it in three greedy gulps. Tir de limaeagh, she ventured a guess. Don't worry, Susan, the bartender said. It will remember you, and he brought another without waiting for her assent.

Ah, she thought, he was the one who remembered – her name and that she tipped well. She always felt safer with a smart bartender. Maybe she should talk to him about attracting more literary types here.

After the third scotch, the bangers and mash arrived with a fourth glass of... Glenemmet? No, no, Glen Emmet was a man she had been in love with years and years and years ago. How many years, she demanded of somebody walking by her bar stool. He laughed and said, correctly, too many. She didn't hear his answer but his laughter made her feel she had said something clever.

Her long skirt somehow wrapped around her ankles when she tried to climb down to go to the bathroom. She almost fell. Righting herself in time, her only injury was a hard smack as her elbow met the bar. She saw stars, but managed to hold a hand up imperiously, to stop anyone from coming to her aid. She didn't know that no one offered.

Slowly, with the dignity of a duchess or someone trying not to appear drunk, she made her way to the bathroom. Splashing her face with cool water, her vision cleared enough to make her look away from the mirror. It's a good thing no poets are here after all, she decided. No one would write anything pretty about that face.

Not wanting to chance the stool again, she stood for a parting glass and one more. Her chest was on fire. So was her soul. That was all good. Her idea of heaven was a warm place, while hell was as cold as Dante's vision of it.

The bangers and mash were delicious today, she told the bartender before leaving. I'm glad I stopped in for lunch.

She opened the door, and the wind immediately escorted her outside. I'll write my own poem, she thought. About how good bangers and mash make you feel on a chilly day.

*The Macrory Boys End Their Feud

2010-03-15T14:36:00.000-07:00

This is pure fiction. However, I come by my interest in feuds honestly. My family has several going on in any one calendar year. _SJ

When the Macrory Boys spoke to each other again after three decades of silence, the inhabitants of Lochatyre Island felt cheated.

“The Boys should mark the occasion with a wee round for all,” complained Angus Houghton. It’s natural he felt that way. He was the owner of The Lowlander, where the non-existent wee round should have been purchased.

His wasn’t the only comment about a lack of fanfare. It was the general consensus. Hadn’t the islanders suffered all these years, themselves, from the feud? Choosing between the brothers to do business was a tricky proposition. Ladies felt the pressure too. For social occasions, one or the other Macrory wife ended up feeling snubbed.

Islanders learned about the abrupt cessation of hostilities between the two Macrory camps in bits and pieces, and unceremoniously.

"Dougie it was who marched into Dunc's cottage without so much as a by-yar-leave!” This was the report from Biddie Barr to her ailing friend Fenella Campbell. “Then he sat down at his brother's table," the Biddie continued. “Can ya feature those two old coots acting they had a chat jist yesterdy,” she cackled.

Fenella dropped her own little rumor bomb on top of Biddie’s triumphant head.

"That's not how I had it from ma daughter-in-law Marjorie," Fenella smiled. “She text messaged me right afore ya arrived." Fenella was smug beneath layers of quilt and technological superiority.

Apparently, two disparate accounts were circulating the island faster than a cormorant can swoop down to swipe an unwatched kitten. They both – the accounts, not bird and feline - had landed within moments of each other at Fenella’s sick bed.

Biddie glared at the cell phone ostentatiously propped up against the pitcher of water on Fenella’s bed table. She was annoyed at being both scooped and contradicted by the new technology for gossips. Biddie herself just had what her friend now called a "land line." The way Fenella emphasized the word ‘land’ made it seem unfit for geological formations surrounded by water.

Truth be told, Biddie wasn’t sure of her facts. It well might have been Dunc marching into Dougie’s place. And though she was anxious to learn the competitive version, she wasn’t about to admit defeat yet.

“Who said different,” she scoffed.

“Little Annie Roos, who plays dollies with ma granddaughter.”

Hmm. The Roos family lived closest to Dunc.

“And how did ya hear, Biddie?”

By accident, really. When she had left off the morning’s eggs at the parish hall for Pastor Keith, she overheard him telling his son in America, on the telephone. The parish land line.

"So, what ya offer is the fruits of eavesdropping," was Fenella’s sly pronouncement. Ostentatiously, she did not mention Biddie's recent hearing troubles. Fenella's son it was who ferried Biddie to and from her appointments with a Mainland specialist.

Fenella dismissed her friend's method of research, using the same economical gesture also to brush off non-existent smuffer crumbs from the bed. Smuffers were one of the (mercifully) few products of Biddie’s kitchen “Stuff in a muffin” their creator explained. But they were more like “suffers,” which everyone else called them. The dough part was so dense it formed a solid mass from which no crumbs could fall even if they wanted to - and even if the crust allowed penetration with such inadequate weaponry as teeth (human or animal).

“And ya,” Biddie retorted, “gi’ the tale of a child.”

Both were silent as they pondered how to learn the truth, united now in a desire for details.

“Tamara?” Fenella asked.

More silence.

“Teal, then?” and they shook their heads simultaneously.

No, the Macrory wives were not promising sources of information either. By nature - or maybe by long association with The Boys - they were exceptionally close-mouthed about personal business even for Scots women.

Biddie left Fenella's, determined to learn what she could from the Rooses and other neighbors close to the Macrory acreage. She would weave all their observations together. The result would be a story quilted better than the cloth which covered Fenella's skinny old bones, she told herself confidently.

She was to learn that her version of who marched into where was accurate after all. Unfortunately, that wasn’t as important as what everyone really wanted to know. Why, islanders wondered, had Dougie the Dour, as he was sometimes called, done the marching in the first place? And why had Dunc, the more stubborn brother, been so willing to invite his brother in?

Ay, that was Biddie’s God-given mission. To find the why of it.

Had Biddie been a fly on the wall of Duncan and Tamara Macrory’s kitchen when Douglas joined their supper, she wouldn’t be any the wiser now. The words spoken between The Boys were in a dialect she didn't know. They learned it as youngsters from their maternal grandmother Iona Hogg. She had come to the island to care for them while their own mother lay in a TB sanitarium for a year.

At that point in her life, widowed Grandy Hogg would speak only in the obscure dialect from the small fishing village of her own raising up - that is, when she spoke at all. She never knew that for years after her stint as caretaker for the grandsons, the clever little fellows flummoxed their schoolmates by communicating with each other in their grandy’s tongue. They got it right down to the sharpness with which she addressed everyone. The harsh consonants of the dialect so unlike the island’s lazy burr of a speech, were well suited to her sternness and when they grew into manhood, that of The Boys.

But understanding of the dialect was not immediately required when Dougie appeared. He merely nodded. His brother nodded back. Tamara’s mouth fell open, but she shut it quick enough and affected the nonchalance now mingling in the air with the fragrance of supper stew. She got up to the stove, filled another cracked china bowl with tatties and neep – potatoes and turnips – and set it down in front of her brother-in-law.

To watch the three in action at the small wood table, you would have thought this meal sharing was a daily occurrence. Tamara asked after Teal. They discussed cows and the new ferry schedule.

“At thee seekin?” Dunc eventually asked in the dialect. What do you want.

Tamara mumbled something and left the room. Neither man noticed.

“A drink is shorter than a tale,” Dougie replied with an old Scots saying.

Had Biddie the fly been an astute observer, it would have noted a slight upturning of Dunc’s lips as he went to fetch the whisky and two glasses. No matter what the brothers were to speak about, the feud was clearly over.

They drained the whisky glasses quickly and Dunc refilled them.

"Muckle guid," Dougie declared.

Another round. Another. Dunc emerged to fetch more whiskey from the cellar.

"They'll be singin about women soon," Tamara thought, overhearing animal noises from the next room.

Instead, it suddenly grew quiet. Dougie was ready to get down to business.

"No a livin soul but us speak Grandy Hogg's words," he informed his brother.

"No murmur?" Dunc asked.

"Some linguist fellows to St. Andrews College lookin hard. Can't find ane. All dead, where Grandy was born. Ain’t even no village."

"The way, today."

"The St. Andrews linguist fellows be payin guid to them that speaks it, for their recordings and such like."

Duncan grinned. "And we the last two? Even Grandy Hogg ud hev a laugh off that."

"I'd cray’n the pants she coomin to see oos now - would be to scold not to laugh."

"Thee'rt 65 years, man! Time to stand up to the Grandy!"

"Fine woman, fine woman," said Dougie, pointing vaguely upward, until just then he tripped over nothing and his pointing changed direction.

They fell back to ‘kithgatherin’ - telling the family stories that had been bottled up as carefully as rare whisky all these years of the feud. Both took pleasure in speaking them aloud with the only other person who remembered. The singing Tamara predicted came to pass too, eventually.

The Boys passed out at the same instant, draped over each other on the floor. Tamara walked over to Teal's place, where she found Dougie's wife worrying.

"Air ya to tell me they killed each other?” she asked.

"Well, girl, the worst to happen now is your husband will go deaf from the racket in his ear. I'm used to Dunc's snoring, but Dougie hasn't heard it since they was young."

In the end, The Boys had a party at The Lowlander after all and made a fine offer to pay for 25 haggis pizzas. But the CNN producer who was springing for the whisky ended up paying for the food too. The Boys were still a bit dazed from being world heroes, it seemed - but not dazed enough to insist about paying for anything once another offered.

"They ended their feud to save an ancient language from disappearing off the face of the earth," the reporter said into the microphone, trying to preserve dignity amidst the Pub chaos. He looked down with distaste at the haggis stain on his shirt, visible to millions of viewers. The stain had been deposited there deliberately by a wild-eyed Scotsman in kilts who took offense when the reporter wouldn't taste the pizza.

"Don't like haggis?" he growled. The reporter half-expected Braveheart wielding an axe to show up next.

"What was that mess on your clothes," his wife asked when he flew home the next day. Overcome as he was with whisky and being the target of wounded Scots pride, he didn't answer and went straight to bed.

All islanders present at the historic scene - which was all of them - agreed it was a party to remember.

For once, the two rival island gossips stuck together.

"We're being upstaged by the CIA or the CNN - whatever tis, and everyone else too," Biddie said with pursed lips. All islanders had a story about seeing the Macrorys together by now. Fenella was feeling better than she had for months from all the attention. Everyone who'd been the recipient of her gossip in the past wanted to repay her in kind.

"Don't ye fret," Fenella consoled her. "Jist help me be to that party and we'll find new gossip, or invent it if we moost."

But her son had forbidden her to get out of bed.

"He threatened to throw me over his shoulder and carry me out of the pub were I to show up," she explained.

In the end, Biddie and Pastor Keith smuggled her out of the house dressed as a nun from the Catholic contemplative order headquartered on the island next door. The nuns were rarely seen on Lochatyre, and when Father Keith came up with the plan and the outfit, the women exchanged glances. Once the fuss over The Boys died down, they intended to investigate their Pastor's sudden interest in religion.

As for the brothers, they became, truly, as boys again and were rarely apart after the feud ended. Scowls disappeared from their faces and personalities. They took their wives out dancing once.

"I feel like a blush bride," Teal confessed to Tamara the next day.

"Dunc was too busy in the bed to snore much," her sister-in-law confided, giggling.

But this is Scotland. The end to a story can't be too happy or there will be nothing to complain about and no one will be happy, Biddie pointed out sensibly.

They sat in Fenella's son skiff on an ecumenical mission to their nun neighbors.

"Ah, hush it," said Fenella, health back to normal now. "There's plenty news waiting to be spread. Now that the CPR has gone, it's oors, yours and mine, to fight over."

Lochatyre, in all its rocky, uncompromising splendor, retreated in the distance.

the end

*The Mailing

2010-03-13T15:32:00.000-08:00

This story is written from the point of view of a dedicated volunteer, salt of the earth, the kind of person all organizations depend upon for free labor. Of course, you always get what you pay for. _SJ

Ladies and gentlemen of the Board of Regents, I stand here eager to tell you what really happened yesterday at the quarterly meeting of the Newsletter Mailing Committee.

Yes. Yes I can explain exactly how the newsletters ended up in the river: I threw them there.

I understand she has addressed you previously? I’ll get right to the facts, then. There’s not much to tell: Her behavior was unacceptable. I refused to accept it. She was unhappy with my refusal. That's all there is to it.

Be more specific? For starters: as we were applying the pre-addressed labels to the newsletters for the mailing, she came upon a label for Jack Martindale. Which she proceeded to tear up.

Mr. Martindale? He retired here, I want to say 1995, 96 maybe, lived in Sunrise Hills, mostly active in the Lions Club? That’s right, that’s him. Wealthy man, very generous to our little non-profit organization too. Anyway, she tore up his label, and I objected.

Her reason for tearing it up? I have no idea. What she said was that we shouldn’t be mailing a newsletter to a dead person. But that is simply not true. Our job as volunteers is to mail newsletters to whoever has a label. I don't care if the person's been dead their whole life. We should not presume they don't want a newsletter anymore.

Oh sure, telling the staff that someone is dead, that’s fine. Let them make the decision to remove the corpse from the label printer. But no staff was present. Phil, as Office Administrator, usually supervises the mailings, but he was home with the flu. In fact, the whole town seemed to have symptoms that day. And the only committee members to show up were her and me.

Yes, I'm getting to what happened next: I fished the torn label out of the garbage and scotch taped it back together, but it was still too messy to mail. So I decided to make my own handwritten one for him. First though, I had to waste valuable time hunting down blank labels. When Mr. Martindale had his own special newsletter once again, I returned to the task at hand. That’s when I noted how, in my absence, without my diligence keeping her to procedure, she had undone almost all our work up ‘til then! Unbelievable! She had taken the rubber banded newsletters which we spent half the morning separating by zip code and instead, she put several banded zip codes all together in one postal basket! Clearly against bulk mailing regulations. Each zipcode is supposed to have a basket of its very own. Even if there are only 5 newsletters in that zipcode.

That was her argument. That it was merely a transportation issue. Once we got the newsletters to the Post Office, that’s when she wanted to separate them into different baskets. She said it would only take an extra minute or two. Well, I’m sorry, that is a shoddy attitude. A customer needs to be ready for action when it’s their turn in line. I believe that charitable organizations, especially, must hold themselves accountable for professional behavior in public.

Umm hmmm, she said the same thing: Postal workers are there to help and the other customers just have to wait their turn. Well, she obviously has a higher threshold for being regarded as a ditzy old lady than I do. I am scrupulous about avoiding any behavior that promotes such stereotyping of my person. And I am always conscious of the reputation of the organization I represent

She would have fussed with me right there at the post office to the embarrassment of our cause. So I grabbed the baskets of newsletters from her and ran to my car. The shrieking as she fell amply illustrates her penchant for creating scenes.

I am indeed aware I banged into a couple of vehicles in the post office parking lot, but what could I do? I had to get the newsletters away from her! My plan was to return later, to mail them out properly by myself. But that…that madwoman began chasing me with her car! A few blocks later, she forced me off River Road, so after hitting the tree, I took off on foot with the newsletters under my arms.

The witnesses are correct. I wasn’t going to mention it because I didn’t think it was that important. However, I did tuck one small bunch of them in my undergarments, which I thought was quick thinking on my part. Unfortunately, she caught up at the picnic area and tackled me to the ground. She made both of us look ridiculous, but I didn’t care about my dignity anymore, or my injuries or even my undies. The only thing that mattered were the newsletters, which I managed to retain possession of. At that point, the only alternative for giving them to her, even half of them as she suggested, was the river. I got to my feet, made the short sprint to its banks, and saved them from her clutches once and for all.

Frankly, I'm surprised you don't screen volunteers better.

*Beings: Not Quite Human. Type: Plant Deva

2010-03-12T23:57:00.000-08:00

When I lived on an island, I encountered a few magical beings who guard the woods and the shore, the wildflowers and the wild edibles. I cannot explain what they are, but I can verify that they do, indeed, exist. _SJ

A small blackberry deva stands between me and the thickets it is guarding, chubby hands (I’ll call them) on plump hips (for lack of a better word). It scowls at me, looking altogether adorable. I fight an urge to grab it and kiss its darkly stained lips. This would be inadvisable with such a volatile life form. Besides, I'm not sure it's a he. You know what a closely guarded secret their gender is, to a deva.

-May I pass? I ask, with a pretty curtsey. May I collect some of your berries?

-I don't know. I haven't decided about you yet.

It spies my bucket.

-Confident, weren't you, it smirks.

I want to laugh, but I know this cheeky being, however small, can swallow a chain link fence. Not to mention stab me with the thumb-thick thorns up and down its… arms.

-Where are you from, I inquire, changing the subject.

-The hot lovely lowlands of the Himalayas.

Not only are blackberries delicious, but they have poetic sensibilities.

-Ooh, I gush. I've never been there. What's it like?

There's not a deva I know can resist talking about its home turf.

-Very beautiful. Wild. Untamed.

One of its segments bursts with purple pride. The tip of my tongue begins a journey around my lips, until I realize what I’m doing and pull it back in, quickly.

-My name is Rubus, it says. Rubus Armeniacas.

-Hi, I’m Sandra. I reach out to shake the proffered appendage. It feels like jello, unmolded.

I blink and the blackberry deva is no longer there. Permission granted!
Still, I move quickly to fill the bucket. Things can turn sour easily in dealings with people of the fruit and indeed, with all beings not quite human.

*Howdy Doody and Me

2010-03-10T23:59:00.001-08:00

Saturday mornings have belonged to kids since the earliest days of television. And the King of Saturday morning was Howdy Doody. _SJ

My television debut was in 1954 at the age of seven on The Howdy Doody Show. It was the fruition of my then life-long ambition. The experience had a profound effect on me.

So excited was I to be in Doodyville (a suburb of New York City) that I forgot to wave from the Peanut Gallery to my fans back in Baltimore. Family, friends, and neighbors gathered in my grandparents' living room for the great occasion didn't notice my lapse. To them I could do no wrong. I was the cutest, most talented, and smartest peanut in the shell. Everyone was sure Buffalo Bob would 'discover' me. I was the Great Jewish Hope, little girl division. Up until then, most female child stars were blondes, except for Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet. But she was growing up fast and another, younger brunette was needed. One who could ride horses like Liz and tap dance like Shirley Temple, both. That's where I came in.

Turns out I didn't get to demonstrate my shuffle-ball-chain or my sidesaddle on the show, but while there I acquired a new skill. Apparently, I did an uncanny impression of Sandy the Witch, one of Doodyville's minor residents. Never as well known as corrupt Mayor Phillias T. Bluster, or Dilly Dally or the Flub-a-dub, Sandy had a distinctive witchy voice. I can still imitate her today, though it helps no one remembers what she sounded like, including me.

My own memories of the show itself are sketchy, except for amazement at how much bigger Howdy was in person than on TV: he was my size! And when I looked into those earnest blue glass eyes, I lost my heart and forgave him for not returning my affection and not making me a star.

Thus began my life-long propensity for falling in love with unattainable men. Rhett Butler, Franz Liszt, Howdy. A fictional character, a dead man, a puppet.

Unfortunately, I haven't changed. My current love interest is all three.

Damn you, Doody!