A Walk Through a Cemetery

      The sky was glowing like fire as the elderly couple slowly made their way across the cemetery lawn.  The solemn old man and woman walked side-by-side, without holding hands or talking, along a row of graves that ran from the country road to the edge of the cemetery at the woods.  They were the only visitors at the time, though others had been there recently, as was evidenced by the fresh flowers placed upon several graves that they had passed.  It was a quiet time of day, before the sunlight faded to dusk.  They could hear the fluttering wings of the little swallows that flew through the air before them, and every now and again a car would rumble by on the road.
      The old man walked with a cane in his left hand, and for the most part he stared down at the grass, watching his feet as he walked.  He then gazed west, toward the burning sky, and took his right hand from out his pocket and reached for the hand of his wife.   The palms of her hands were soft and gentle, whereas his were as rough as sandpaper from endless years of labor on farms and vineyards.  His wife, who was wearing a long, rustic dress, received her husband’s hand without looking for it, as she was peering down at the tombstones they passed.  She had been reading the names on each grave and was calculating how old each person was when they died.  Some were only babies and had died before the woman herself was even born.  The sun was sinking lower in the sky and a gentle summer wind drifted through the dying warmth of the day.
“It’s nice how the moss grows on these old graves,” said the woman.
The man looked toward the graves, his were eyes cold and blue, he said, “Mm-hmm.”
They came to a little slope where the graves transitioned up toward a knoll and the man said, “Shall we start heading back?”
Without looking at him, the woman said, “Yes, we’d better go before it gets dark.”
They turned around and walked back along the row of graves toward the service road where their car was parked.
"What would you like for dinner tonight?” the woman asked her husband.
For the old man, the word dinner conjured up thoughts of roast chicken and pork, of steaming yams in cast iron pots.
“We still have that beef.  Perhaps we can make something to go along with the beef,” he said.
“I have some beets,” said the woman, “I can cook some beets.”
“What’s that?” the man asked, not having heard her clearly.
“I can cook the beets,” she said a little louder.
“Oh, I thought you said beef.”
“You said beef,” she said.
“I know what I said,” said the man.
They walked along and the old man thought about his past and he looked toward the location of the grave that they had come to visit and had walked away from.  His eyes began to water but he held back his tears and said, “You know, darling…” he took a breath and his voice cracked, “You know, I can still remember the last thing he said to me.”   The man stopped walking and he lifted his hand which held the cane, and with the back of his hand he wiped away his tears.  His wife squeezed his hand and then held his arm.   The old man was looking west toward the pink clouds billowing in the sky.
“He said, ‘Dad, you’d better not hurt yourself while I’m gone, because... because when I get back we’re gonna have a feast.  And they’re not going to let you eat abalone if you’re in the hospital…’”
Tears were streaming down his face which was taut with sadness.
“And that was his way of, of trying to keep me out of trouble.”
His wife leaned her head against his chest and said, “He was always trying to keep people out of trouble.  And when they were in trouble, he was always trying to help get them out.”  She too began to cry, “He was such a good boy…”  Her tears flowed down her cheeks as she pressed her face against her husband’s sweater.
The old man said, “I didn’t even tell him goodbye.  I was so mad at him from the night before, I didn’t even tell him goodbye or that I loved him.  I wasn’t there for him Mary, I should have been there… my son, my own son,” he cried out.
“No Dick, no,” said his wife shaking her head.  “You were always there – you were a good father.  There was nothing we could do, no one is to blame.”
“I couldn’t have asked for a better son,” he said, “He said he’d come back with the abalone even after we had that stupid fight.  He was trying to patch things up.  God, he was a better man than me.   He knew better about life than to hold grudges over stupid things.  He didn’t hold a grudge, not over money, not when we talked about those worthless politicians. God, he was my boy.”
“You are both good men, and he respected and loved you.  We raised a fine young man,” said his wife.
The old man said, “It just isn’t right, for us to lose him like we did.  For him to go before us, it’s just not right.  He never did anything bad, he never hurt nobody, he was always there for us.  And I wasn’t there for him.  I could have at least been at the shore.”
“You did all that you could for him, and we will be there for his children” said his wife. “He wouldn’t want you to agonize like this, he loved you so.”
The old man buried his face in his hands and wept, “I didn’t even get a chance to tell him how proud I was of him,” he cried.
“He knew,” said his wife, “he knew.”
She held her husband and gazed at the immense clouds drifting before the setting sun.
They walked back to the car – an old Ford pick-up truck – and Dick opened the door for his wife.  Before she stepped in, she hugged him and gave him a kiss on the lips.  The sky was red and the world was spinning along.
The old man looked into the eyes of his wife and she was beautiful.
“I love you,” he said, “I love you with all of my heart.”
They got in the car and drove out of the cemetery, down the country road, and the sun set behind them as they made their way home.

The Man and the Mushrooms

This may very well be my masterpiece:

There was a man named Jim who lived alone in the mountains, in a cabin he built on a beautiful bluff that overlooked the distant hills and the dark valleys and forest below.  During mushroom hunting season, which ran from October to January, he would spend his days foraging for mushrooms in the shadowy forests, sifting solitaire through the duff and sorrel that grew beneath the giant redwood trees, their towering canopies basking in the sunlight above. 

The man wandered through the forest collecting mushrooms, which sometimes grew in such abundance that he plucked them up by the handful and placed them in his pail, and ate many on the spot.  His favorite mushrooms to pick were yellow chanterelles and oyster mushrooms, for these were the only ones he could confidently identify.

One day he was out hunting mushrooms and ate some on the spot.  He proceeded to forage and soon began to feel ill in his stomach.  He sat down on the soft earth, hugged his knees to his chest, and groaned in response to his wrenching gut.  His watery eyes were closed shut as he continued to groan in pain, shifting from side to side but never falling over onto the forest floor.  He felt extremely nauseous and when he opened his eyes he threw up.  He looked at the patch of vomit which contained the remnants of the partially-digested mushrooms he had just consumed. 

He could not believe his eyes, for what he saw were portions of the mushroom goop squirming around imperceptibly.  He got closer and looked at the wriggling pieces of vomit, and then he heard the regurgitated mushrooms moaning in pain.  Still incredulous, Jim picked up a twig and flipped over a part of a mushroom, and to his horror, the mushroom had a pair of eyes that were wide with fear.  “Oh God no,” said the mushroom, “please no, oh God!” it cried.

Jim shuffled back in terror, accidentally knocking his pail of mushrooms over.  As the mushrooms went toppling over a collective wail escaped from the bucket.  He looked to the mushrooms scattered upon the ground and they also had little eyes of horror and they cried, “oh no, it’s him!  Please God no, it’s him!”

Jim trembled and crawled backward, saying, “this is impossible.”  He stumbled up and the trees and forest floor were pulsating and flowing together in rich patterns.  He left his gear behind him and made his way through the forest.  Within minutes, his insides began to twist again, and he leaned up against a redwood tree, struggling to hold down the sludge that was churning in his stomach.  He turned his head to the side of the tree, looked at it, and made eye contact with a mushroom growing from out the bark.  The mushroom let out a high-pitched scream which triggered Jim to vomit again, further regurgitating more pieces of the mushrooms that he had recently consumed.  He leaned down to peer at the vomit and here too the chunks of mushrooms were shrieking in deathly fear of him. 

Though his mind was still beset by horror, his stomach felt better and he was able to sprint out of the forest.  He ran toward his cabin on the bluff, up a hillside path that rose above the redwood tree line.  He caught his breath in the sunshine and looked out toward the forest and mountains.  The leaves on the forest canopy were swaying like waves and the clouds looked like frozen creatures that he had never seen before.  He continued to run up toward his cabin.  Once inside, he climbed into bed and shut his eyes in attempt to sleep.  After an hour of hallucinating colorful visions of things surreal, he finally was able to fall asleep.

When we woke up, things were quite normal.  There were no talking mushrooms nor talking anything, and the sun was setting over the hills.   He looked at the shimmering clouds in the neon dusk and things were as they usually were.  His stomach still felt a little off, so he went to his bathroom and sat down on the toilet.  He passed gas and took a shit, after which he felt much better.

Then, he was suddenly consumed by great fear as a voice called out from beneath him in the bathroom.  He leapt off the toilet seat and looked into the bowl.  His feces was shifting around, it had dark eyes and thick, black lips.   It began talking to him, “You dirty mother fucker,” it said.

“Oh my God,” gasped Jim, “you can’t be real.”

“Oh I’m real you little shithead,” said his shit.  

“Why are you here?” cried Jim.

“Why the fuck do you think?  I came out of your ass you dumb fuck.”

Jim reached to the to handle of the toilet.

“Don’t fucking do it!” said the shit.

“Fuck you!” said Jim as he pressed the handle down.

“Goddamnit!” said the shit as the water rushed into the toilet bowl.  The shit was swirling around in the bowl, heading down the pipe, and before it was immersed in water it yelled out, “You fucking piece of shit!”

Jim watched the shit flush down and then he flushed the toilet again.  He then wiped his ass, inspecting the excrement on the toilet paper to see if it was alive.  It was not. 

Jim stepped outside his cabin and watched the distant sun sink down beyond the mountains to the west.  He was at peace. 

The Bus Ride to the Beach

Part of a short story collection Aaron is writing.  Enjoy!

John Dudley got out of the bed in his house at seven o’clock in the morning.  It was mid-June and the rising sun was clearing the mountains to the east.  The heat was slowly burning off the droplets of dew that covered the outer farmlands and vineyards, and the moisture evaporated from off the blades of grass on the lawns of homes in the small town of Healdsburg, California – population 11,000.  John cooked three duck eggs in a cast iron pot as his coffee steeped in a French press.  He fed his little bulldog and thought about how he would very much like a lady friend or two that he could have occasional sex with.

“You’re supposed to help me get the ladies, pal,” he said to his dog as it ate.  “I wish you were still a puppy, you got lots of attention when you were a puppy.”

John sat down and ate and then said to his dog, “We’ll give it a shot this weekend buddy, we’ll go to the beach.”  His dog paid him no mind. 

            John put on his jacket and stepped toward the door.   The little bulldog trotted after him and received one last good scratching before John left for work. 

            John was a tall and handsome fellow.   He was fairly shy and easily sidetracked, therefore he was rarely able to enter and sustain a relationship with a girl for very long.  John worked as a surgical technician at a hospital in Santa Rosa – a larger town about fifteen miles south of Healdsburg.  Five days a week he commuted by bus to Santa Rosa, and as he stepped past the cafes and stores that lined the quaint downtown thoroughfare, he waved to some of the vendors and shopkeepers that he knew.  The sun was striking the oak trees and their deep green leaves in the town square.  John approached the bus stop and with a smile he nodded to the two other people, a man and a woman, whom were also waiting for the bus.  The man (who was sitting on the bench) and the woman (who was standing beside the bus stop sign) were not a couple, and John had exchanged few words with them since he first began riding the bus to work a couple months ago. 

            The man was fat and worked at a bank in Santa Rosa – John knew this because he had been to the bank and saw him sitting at a desk there.  He remembered the instance because John thought that, at the time, the man looked like he was masturbating right there at the desk, but he couldn’t be sure.  The woman must have worked for some company in a business office because she always wore fancy clothes and today she was wearing heels.  She was quite attractive, and John guessed that she was in her mid-forties and he considered her a cougar.  She never looked very happy and John figured her to be in a relationship, for he had seen her in town twice with the same man.

            John sat down next to the fat man who did not make an effort to move over.   The fat man checked his watch.  It was 7:15am and the bus was expected to arrive at any moment.  The bus had only been late on a few occasions, and these delays could be attributed to accidents or inclimate weather; otherwise the weekday bus was always punctual and the driver was a sound man.  So John, the banker, and the cougar waited there at the bus stop as the sun rode up higher over the mountains to the east and the sunlight saturated all the town and beyond.

“Tom’s running late today,” said the fat man.

“Oh yeah?” said John, not quite sure who the fat man was talking to.

The fat man looked at his watch again.  “He’s usually here at least seven minutes before now, we’re usually on the 101 by now.”

“I see,” said John, who was not concerned about the bus being late.  “Well I’m sure he’ll be here soon.”

The woman spoke up, “I hope there wasn’t an accident.”

Both John and the banker looked at her.  She was holding her purse against her chest and was fiddling with her phone. 

“We can only hope not, or else we’ll be late,” said the banker.

Jesus Christ, thought John.  These were the first sentences beyond perfunctory greetings and farewells that he’d ever heard these two people speak.  He had determined that he disliked the fat man, and hoped that the bus would never come.

The woman said, “Well I hope everyone’s okay.”  John felt that she was making all this sound fairly dramatic, and he began to like her less too, but allowed her some leniency on account of her being a cougar.

“I’m sure everyone’s going to be okay,” said John, immediately regretting having made the remark.  The woman was on her phone and hadn’t heard what John had said, though the banker did and he chose not to respond, and instead leaned forward in his seat to peer down the road for the bus. 

The woman spoke into the phone, saying, “Hi Charlie, sorry to wake you, it’s Linda.”

Charlie, John thought, so that must be the guy I saw that she’s fucking all over town– although he couldn’t be certain about either of these points.  

She continued talking and said, “Can you check to see if there was an accident on the 101, the bus is running unusually late today.”

Why did she call him to check, John wondered, why didn’t she just call the transit hotline?  As he was wondering these things, the woman said, “Oh, nevermind Charlie, I see it coming.”  And John and the banker gazed down the street and watched the approaching bus. 

            The bus was a small one, like a minibus that retarded kids took to school.  It was painted white and blue and on the side of the bus, in big lettering, it read Sonoma County Transit.  The bus seemed to be traveling faster than normal and John figured that the driver was trying to make up for lost time.  It stopped shortly after the bus pad and through the tinted windows John could see that there appeared to be fewer people than usual seated inside the bus – he counted four people, when there were usually around ten.

            The bus door swung open and the cougar stepped on first, followed by the banker and then John.  While paying his fare John looked to the driver, Tom, who had a silly grin on his face and there were beads of sweat dispersed like spores across his forehead.

“How are you?” asked John as he was fumbling for some more coins.

Tom replied excitedly, “Terrific – now much did you put in there?  Fifty-five cents?  That’s good enough for today – have a seat young man, T minus three.”

Tom pressed a button on the dashboard and the bus door closed, and before John could respond or sit down, Tom pushed his foot down on the petal and the bus sped forth.  John swung around and fell back into a seat near the front of the bus. 

            The bus was traveling fairly fast through town, certainly faster than the speed limit.  No one on the bus seemed to mind, but the folks in the back whom had boarded prior to Healdsburg all had subtle grins on their faces – as though they were in on something.  The bus entered the southbound onramp to the freeway.  The intercom crackled and Tom made an announcement.  He was breathing heavily into the microphone and said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, for those of you who are just joining us, I would like to congratulate you for riding the bus today.”  The passengers could see the wide smile on Tom’s face reflected in the rear view mirror.  “Today is my last day a bus driver, and to celebrate, I’ve decided to change our route…” 

John, the banker, and the cougar were equally perplexed, and the passengers in the back of the bus were smiling.  Over the intercom Tom said, “we’re not going to Santa Rosa today folks.  We’re not going to work.  Today, we’re going to the beach!”

The bus was barreling down the 101 and the morning was heating up. 

“Are you crazy!” yelled the banker.   “I’ve got to go to work!  We’re already late, and I’ve got to go to work!  You’re taking me to Santa Rosa, Goddamnit!”

Tom replied, “Now now, you just listen here, I’ve made up my mind.  Today’s my retirement day, and we’re not going to Santa Rosa, we’re going to the beach.”

Someone in the back of the bus cheered and a couple other people were laughing.

In protest, the banker yelled, “No, goddamnit!  We’re not going to the beach!  Have you lost your mind Tom?  You can’t do this to us!  We have to go to work!”

John was sitting across from the banker and was unsure about this spontaneous trip.  The banker was angering him though, and was not making a very convincing argument against going to the beach.

“I don’t have to go to work.”  All heads turned to the cougar.  She spoke up louder, “I don’t have to go to work today, Tom.  I’ll go to the beach with you, it’s going to be a beautiful day.  And congratulations on your retirement.”

“That’s the spirit!” said Tom.

From the back a man said, “It’s going to be sensational.  We’re probably going to make the evening news!”

“This is treason!” the banker shouted.  He was repeatedly pulling the cord to stop the bus, causing the stop requested sign to illuminate and go ding-ding-ding.  He yelled, “Go to hell, Tom!  Go to hell!  Now you listen to me, you’re taking me to work you son of a bitch!” 

An older woman in the back admonished the banker, “Watch your language!  Where are your manners?”

“Manners?!”  The banker was flabbergasted.  “Manners?  What hell are you talking about?  Are you insane woman?  This bus is supposed to take us to Santa Rosa.  This is illegal!  I can sue him!” 

“Oh, shut up,” said John.  He was tired of the banker’s bitching and moaning, and he wanted to go to the beach. 

The banker snapped his head toward John and said, “excuse me?”

“Just shut the fuck up for once,” John said, “we’re going to the beach.”

 The banker was dumbfounded and felt that the other passengers were teaming up against him.   The bus was still on the highway, moving alongside the legions of commuters.  Santa Rosa was ten miles away.  The normal bus route included one additional stop to pick up more passengers before arriving in Santa Rosa.

“This is illegal, what he’s doing,” said the banker.

“So what?” said John, “it’s his last day.”

The banker pulled out his cell phone and spoke up, “Tom, I’m warning you, I’m going to call the police.”

“The police?” said Tom from the drivers seat, “now why would you call the police?” 

“Because, we’re going to beach!” yelled the banker, “you’re supposed to take me to work!”

“I told you,” said Tom, “we’re not going to work today.  We’re going to the beach, by golly!”  Tom had exited the freeway to make another stop and the bus now maneuvered through a small town, traveling on its designated route thus far.

The fat banker held up his phone and said, “Then you leave me no choice.”   He started to dial.

“Put the fucking phone down,” said John.

The banker ignored him and continued dialing, and John leapt out of his seat and snatched the phone away from the fat man.

“Hey!” yelled the banker.

“You are not calling the cops.”

“Give me back my phone!”

“No.”

“Give it!”

“No!”

The banker lurched up out of his seat and attempted to tackle John.  John quickly stepped to the left and shoved the banker who then tumbled down to the floor.  As the banker was struggling to rise up in the aisle John dropped to his knees and manhandled him.

“Get off me you son of a bitch!  Oww!  OWWW!”

“Take it easy back there,” Tom said over the intercom, “no fighting on the bus, now.”

The cougar looked at them and said, “There’s no need for that.”

John kept his weight on the banker, who was splayed out on the floor and struggling to push himself up.  He began flapping his arms about in attempt to strike John who forced more of his weight upon the screaming banker.

John whispered, “shhhh, shhhh, shhh” as though he were some sort of professional killer.

“There’s no need for that, let up on him,” said the cougar.

A man from the back of the bus tried to intervene, and like a referee he knelt down beside John and the banker and made sure John wasn’t hurting the fat man too much, “easy now,” he said, “easy now.”

The bus was slowing down in a residential area to make a stop.  Standing at the bus platform was one person – a young, beautiful lady whom John had seen many times before but had never spoken with.   She was wearing gym clothes and carrying a bag with a rolled-up yoga mat poking out of it.  The young woman stepped onto the bus and was greeted by Tom’s huge grin and all the passengers on the bus were looking at her, including John and the banker he was restraining in the aisle.

“Call the police!” screamed the banker.

“Quiet you!” yelled John.

The young lady glanced around and then looked to Tom.  

“Hi Brittany,” said Tom.

“What’s going on here, Tom?” 

“We’re going to the beach.  Do you want to go to the beach?”

“The beach?”

“It’s going to be sensational.”

“I have to go to my yoga class.  Aren’t you going to Santa Rosa?” 

Tom said, “No, we’re going to the beach.”

Brittany began to step back off the bus, “I can’t, I have to go to work later.”

“Suit yourself,” said Tom.  “Today’s my last day as a bus driver, and we’re all going to the beach.  The next bus should be here in about an hour.  Goodbye Brittany!”

Brittany stepped off the bus and Tom pressed the button to close the door, he turned on his blinker and began driving off the turnout and onto the road.  Soon after, a passenger at the back of the bus yelled, “She’s coming! She’s coming!”  And indeed, the young lady was running toward the bus.  Tom stopped the bus on the roadside and opened the door.  Brittany stood outside the idling bus and was panting, “Goddamnit Tom, are you going to take us back?”

Tom said, “Yeah, well sure… I hadn’t thought about that, but yeah, why the heck not?  I’ll bring you back… I’ll bring everyone back!”

Many of the people on the bus cheered upon this declaration.  Even the subdued banker felt a slight sense of relief.  Brittany stepped onto the bus and received smiles and greetings from many of the passengers – passengers who would normally be buried in books or newspapers or toying with their mobile devices – and as she boarded some of them applauded.  She sat down near the front of the bus and was looking at John pinning down the banker.  The bus was on the move again and Brittany said, “I didn’t even bring my bathing suit.”  This comment was directed toward Tom, but John interjected, saying, “It’s okay, none of us did.”

“I wish we had towels,” she said.

“We can get some towels.” 

“And some beer,” said Brittany.

“It’s eight o’clock in the morning!” shouted the banker from underneath John.

“That’s a great idea,” said John, “we’ll find a place along the way to get some.”

“Why are you holding him down like that?” asked Brittany.

John looked at the banker who was glaring back at him.

“Because he was going to call the cops.”

“But it looks like you’re hurting him.”

The banker said, “He is hurting me!  Owww!!”

John felt uncomfortable and tighten his grip on the fat man’s arm and said, “Well…Well you’re hurting me!”

“Get off of me!”

“Okay, fine, but you can’t call the cops.”

John let the fat man up and they both moved back to their seats.  The fat man rubbed his wrists and stared coldly at John.  Sweat soaked through his shirt from his arm pits.  The bus continued west, toward the coast – passing cow pastures and verdant hills and the colorful landscape swirled around them in beneath the bright June sky. 

“Give me back my phone,” demanded the banker.

“No.”

“Goddamn you.  Look, I have to call my work and tell them I won’t be coming in today.”

John thought about this.  “I’ll call them for you.”

“No!”

“Listen,” said John, “I don’t trust you.  I’ll call them for you.”

“But I get to talk.”

“What are you gong to tell them?”

“I’m going to say that I’m sick and that I can’t come in today.”

“Fine.”

All the people on the bus, including Tom the driver, were watching the exchange between John and the banker.  John had decided to use his own cell phone to call the banker’s work, and agreed to hold up the phone the banker’s ear so that he could communicate with those on the other end of the line.   The banker told John the number to dial and once it started to ring John held the phone up to the banker’s ear.

The banker said, “Hi, this is Dennis, is Marjorie there?”

There was a moment of waiting and then the banker spoke again, “Hi Marjorie, it’s Dennis, I’m not going to be able to come into work today because THE BUS HAS BEEN HIJACKED AND A CRAZY GUY STOLE MY PHONE!!! HELP! HELP! ---”  John pulled the phone away and shook his head at Dennis. 

John spoke quickly into the phone, “Hi Marjorie.  Ha ha ha, what’d a kidder.  This is Dennis’s friend, John.  Sorry about that.  Dennis is very sick today.  He’s sick in the head and has diarrhea and herpes and is far too fat to come into work today.  I’m going to take him to the doctor so that he can get some liposuction and a lobotomy.  Goodbye.”

John hung up the phone and glared at Dennis, saying, “you fat, lying piece of shit.”

Dennis hung his head in shame and mumbled something about how he had to go to work today.  His phone rang in John’s pocket – it was presumably Marjorie or someone else from the bank where Dennis worked – and John took the phone out of his pocket and simply turned it off.  The bus rode on and the road veered through the dry valleys covered in shrubs and wheat, the golden hills shimmering against the backdrop of the light blue sky.  The air grew cool as they neared the coast.

John introduced himself to Brittany and asked her, “So when was the last time you went to the beach.”

“I went yesterday.  What about you?” she asked.

“Oh, it’s been a couple weeks.  I have a little bulldog named Messi, and I was planning to take him to the beach this weekend.”

“That’s cute,” she said, “Do you have a picture of him?”

“No, but…no I don’t.”

“Oh, okay,” she said.

Their conversation ended there, and as the bus passed over another giant hill the vast ocean swung into view.  It consumed the whole world to the west and Tom said, “there she is Ladies and Gentlemen, the great Pacific Ocean!”

The bus carried on downhill and began traveling north, parallel to the coast, and onboard all the passengers gazed toward the magnificent ocean in awe of the beauty of the flowing waves and the immense volume of sparkling water.

The passengers who were talking to each other fell silent as the bus radio crackled, and the stern voice of woman on the other end said, “Bus five-four-eight, what is your twenty?”

The passengers look to Tom who picked up the transceiver and said, “Hi Donna, my twenty is Highway One, north of Bodega.”  He was smiling.

The woman on the radio asked, “What the hell are you doing all the way out there?”

“We’re going to the beach,” replied Tom.   He winked at the passengers in the rear-view mirror.

Donna said, “Tom, do you realize that you have deviated from your route and are late?”

Tom said, “I sure do Donna, I sure do.  Thanks for your help.  I’m going to hang up now.  Goodbye!”  Tom hung up the transceiver and turned off the radio.  He got back on the intercom and said, “Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, as you can see we’re almost at the beach.  I think we’ll go to Salmon Creek.   I overheard some talk of towels and beer and what not, so we’re going to swing by this little store up ahead and pick up some supplies.”  He pulled the bus into the parking lot of the store and then parked.  “I’ll give you five minutes,” he said.  

John saw that Brittany was getting up to go to the store so he got up to go with her.  John looked to Dennis the banker and said, “you stay put,” threatening him with his own phone.

“Give me back my phone!”

“Later,” said John.

Curiously, the cougar comforted Dennis, saying, “he’ll give it back hun, don’t worry.”  And she stayed on the bus with the fat man.

As John was stepping off the bus Tom handed him a hundred dollar bill and said, “drinks are on me son, bring me back the change.”

In the store, John and Brittany and two other people from the bus quickly filled up a shopping cart with beer, liquor, juice, all sorts of snacks, and some towels.  When they returned back to the bus with the bags of groceries and supplies, the destination signboard on the front of the bus, which had formally indicated their destination as SANTA ROSA TRANSIT MALL, had been change to THE BEACH.

The bus pulled out of the parking lot and rode up the Highway One toward Salmon Creek Beach.  They rode along the coast under the blazing sun, and the water and sand grew increasingly appealing.  Tom had the radio tuned-in to a classic rock station and some of the passengers were singing along with the music.   The bus arrived in the parking lot of Salmon Creek Beach which was situated on a cliff above the beach itself.  Tom parked the bus and said, “Alright, we’re here!”

The passengers cheered and everybody stood up and started off the bus.  In the parking lot were a few other beachgoers who watched what looked like a group on a company picnic deboarding the bus. 

            John helped Brittany and the cougar off of the bus and handed Dennis a bag of groceries to carry.  Everyone walked single-file down the rocky pathway that lead to the beach.  John walked behind the cougar and she stopped on the pathway to remove her heels.  He watched her bend over to remove the first heel, and upon realizing that she had nothing to hold onto for balance, he said. “Do you want hold onto me while you do that?”

“Ha, sure,” she said.

She held onto this arm and took off her other heel.  They were standing in the middle of the pathway together, above the sand and rolling waves.

“How come you were able to get off work so easily?” John asked

“Oh,” she said, “It’s not a big deal if I miss work once in a while.  I’m in pretty good standing at my job.”

“Where do you work?”

“San Francisco?”

“What do you do?”

“I’m an escort,” she said, and then she turned and continued down the path.

Upon the beach children were flying kites while their parents relaxed in the shade of umbrellas.  The people from the bus were unpacking the supplies, laying out the towels, and mixing drinks.  John watched as Brittany removed sweater and placed it in her bag on her yoga mat.  The people gathered around together and held drinks or beer bottles.

“Well, Ladies and Gentlemen,” said Tom, “I’d like to thank you for making this the most fun bus ride of my life.  Here’s to you,” and he held up his drink.

“Here’s to you Tom!”

“We love you!”

They sipped their drinks and then John put his down in the sand and scooped up Tom by the legs.  Others joined in and they lifted Tom in their arms and tossed him up in the air again and again.  “Hip Hip, Hooray!  Hip Hip, Hooray!” they cheered. 

It was a wonderful time.   Soon they were all frolicking upon the sand and playing in the waves or exploring the tidepools.  John had rolled up his jeans and was talking to Brittany near the water.  Dennis was drunk and had stripped down to his boxers and was building a sand castle with the cougar, who was in her lingerie.  Tom was laying supine on the towels in the sun and had his cap over his face.  He was almost asleep when he heard the police cars swinging into the parking lot on the small cliff behind him.  There were three cars and their sirens were blaring.  John and Brittany walked over to Tom, who was watching the police inspect the bus on the cliff.

“Damn,” said Tom, “they sure did find us.”

John and Brittany were distressed by the apprehension in Tom’s voice.

“What now?” asked John.

“Now I go face the music.”

“You’re going up there?”

“Yeah, I don’t want them fellas getting any ideas and coming down here looking for me.  It’ll be okay, you guys just stay put,” said Tom.  And he walked away toward the path which lead up to the bus.  Brittany and John watched as Tom made his way up the path and felt guilty and helpless. 

“Should we go up there?” John asked.

“Well, he asked us to stay here.  I think we should just hold on for a second.”

“Okay,” said John, who then reached for Brittany’s hand and held it.  They watched the police interacting with Tom, who was making these sweeping gestures and dramatic driving motions – as though he were turning a big invisible steering wheel – explaining, perhaps with some lies, how things came to pass.  A news truck was approaching the parking lot, and Dennis, the cougar, and some others from the bus made their way over the Brittany and John.

“What’s going on up there?”

“I guess Tom’s in trouble,” said John.

“But he didn’t do anything wrong,” said the cougar.

“Well…” said John.

The banker exclaimed, “He can’t get arrested, he’s supposed to take us back!”

“The news crew is here, let’s go talk to them!” someone said.

“That may be a good idea,” said Brittany, “we can stick up for Tom.”

“Alright, let’s go.” 

John and Brittany went first, hand and hand.  Dennis and the cougar stayed back to dry off, Dennis was mixing himself another drink while the cougar fixed her makeup.  “I’ve never been on television before,” she said. 

In the parking lot the police asked Tom to turn around and they were putting handcuffs on him as the news crew filmed the arrest.  John and Brittany were on the path near the base of the cliff and the others from the bus were about a hundred feet behind them on the beach.  Families were watching the scenes unfold in the parking lot and the children stood still as their kites hovered idly in the sky.  It was going to be an exciting day.

The first thing John noticed was how all the seagulls from the beach and cliff took off into the air at the same time - dozens of them had simultaneously taken flight.  He turned around on the path and looked toward the ocean.

“Hold on,” he said to Brittany.

“Why?”

“Something’s wrong.”

The ground began to quake in a tremendous upheaval and a thunderous noise exploded from the earth.  The world was shaking violently and the beach was undulating like a waterbed.  The waves were shifting from side to side as they inundated the shore like walls of water.  Rocks tumbled down from the cliff and the people were screaming and being knocked down by the waves.  Brittany and John had lost their balance and were huddling together in the sand, away from the base of the cliff.  The earthquake intensified and an immense roar occurred as a section of the beach began to tear open.   Geysers erupted from the trembling ground which was splitting apart and a great chasm emerged that divided the beach and cliff.  Rocks and sand were pouring down into the chasm and in the parking lot half of the people and vehicles, including the bus, fell and went crashing down into the dark maw of the earth.  The entire beach had sunk down and a raging ocean swell raced across the sand like a tsunami, engulfing everyone as it surged toward the crevasse.  The rushing water carried people screaming over the waterfall that poured into the void.  John and Brittany, on the other side of the divide, watched as people sailed down into the depths and John looked for the cougar and banker but he could not see clearly in the turmoil.  He only saw bodies in the rapids rushing over the edge, and some would be followed by kites which were also swallowed up by the crevasse.

John was holding Brittany and she was crying hysterically.  He watched in awe as the water began to subside and wash back toward the sea.  He was petrified but was jolted back to alertness once the disaster sirens began to sound off from coast. 

He shook Brittany and yelled, “we have to leave the beach!”

He pulled her up and they crawled up the mangled cliff toward the highway.  Once they were at the top he stood bewildered and gazed at a gaping scar that ran across the face of the earth along the coast as far as the eye could see.  The San Andreas Fault had opened up and unleashed apocalyptic devastation upon the land, so much so that survivors in the parking lot were on their knees weeping and praying to God, half-expecting to see fire and brimstone and flying horsemen emerge from the vast fissure. 

“My God,” said John.

The ocean could be seen frothing in the distance, but it was not clear if the water would come rushing back at any point.  There were small aftershocks which shook the land.  Through the howling sirens and the weeping congregation in the parking lot came the pitiful screams of a man from within the crevasse at the beach.  The screaming continued and John decided to investigate, partially to see if he could help, but mostly because he wanted to gaze into the abyss.  Against Brittany’s protest, he carefully made his way down the cliff and stepped toward the edge of the crevasse, toward the voice of the hollering man.

He tested the ground near the lip of the pit and slowly peered down.  It seemed to go on forever, there was no bottom that he could see – just pitch-black darkness past a certain point.  Small rivulets were running down the walls of the chasm, and a few tree roots were protruding from out the sides.  The roots had snagged beach chairs and umbrellas and kites, and it was on one such tree root, roughly fifteen feet below John, that the banker clung, gripping on for his life.  He was still in his underwear, sunburnt and crying – he looked like a giant baby wearing a diaper. 

“Hey!” yelled John.  Dennis looked up and saw him.

“Oh God help me!” cried Dennis, “God Help me!  I have to go to work!”

John stood up and laughed.  He shook his head and then walked away.

American Epic - Chapters One and Two. Followed by two draft excerpts.

I

          He has one eye.  He wears an eye patch over the socket of the missing eyeball that was pried out in Afghanistan.  In his dreams they are there.  Nightmares of black operations haunting the primal landscape.  Mercenaries weaving through the night beneath the breathing constellations.  The screaming missiles exploding upon the highland terrain.   The corpse of a village burning in a godless valley of Hell.  A small village on fire beneath infinite stars and the enigma of galaxies beyond.  “Light em’ up,” they would say, and they’d turn their heads toward the stars flickering in the night sky.  The jets sailed through the darkness howling like demons and you could see the fiery glare of the accelerating rockets.  Launched missiles tore through the surface of the shattering earth and the earth rippled like water.  He could see it now— the exploding missiles obliterating the trembling hills, illuminating the clouds in an eerily pale glow.  The bloodcurdling world immersed in eternal violence.  Bombs flashed then faded away and the stars reappeared above the embers of a decimated village.  The smoldering valley soon echoed with the swelling screams and moans of those alive and dying in the night.  Victims squirmed in carnal pain and darkness.  In his dreams they are there.  Bleeding men and women, murdered soldiers and strangers, the slaughtered children – little and blue – all dead in the final aftermath.  

                                                                                 II

          He was back home and the redwood forests prevailed through the gloomy fog enveloping the northern Pacific coast.  The midday sun pierced faintly through the overcast sky and in the distance, above the ocean, fighter jets maneuvered through the clouds.  He was lying on the bed in his room with his one eye closed and listening to the sounds of the jets.  They were performing training exercises off the coast and he had yet to readjust to the noise.  He heard the muffled sound of his father talking to the television in the living room downstairs.  There was a light knock on the door of his room and his mother spoke.

“William? …William, I’m taking your brother to the parade now.  If you change your mind about going, we’ll be sitting by the square.  I’m bringing an extra chair for you just in case.”
He said nothing and listened to his mom stepping downstairs and then assisting his brother out the door.  He heard the van doors open, the electric wheelchair lift moving around, and then the doors closed shut and the engine started.  The van backed out of the driveway and drove away.  Will heard his father continuing to blurt out remarks at the television.  He got up and looked out of his window toward the tree-covered hills and at the low clouds rolling through the evergreen forest.  The tips of the redwoods pierced through the clouds and appeared to be floating upon them.  On a clear day you could see the mountains in the east but since his return last week not one day has been clear.  He saw himself in the faint reflection of the window and he touched his eyepatch.  He sighed and he whispered “Jesus Christ.”  The phone began ringing and his father was hollering downstairs.
“Is anyone here to get that damn phone!?” his father yelled.  It rang a few more times and then stopped.  Will walked down the stairs to the living room.  His father turned to him from the couch where he was watching television.

“The phone was ringing,” his father said.

“I heard it.”

“I think your mother took your brother to the Fourth of July parade.”

“Yeah, they left.”

His father turned back to the T.V.

“Look at this damn parade in they’re having Washington.  It’s a monster!”  He was motioning to the television.  On the screen camouflage military vehicles towing immense missiles and fighter planes rolled through the streets of the National Mall.  The sidewalks and parks were packed with thousands of spectators and American flags.  There were hundreds of troops marching alongside tanks and hummers moving along the streets.  His father shook his head at the T.V.

“It’s a goddamn show of force.  And a goddamn waste of money.  This ain’t China. We’re not in Soviet Russia!” He was pounding the bottom of his cane on the floor.  “Jiminy Christmas, Fourth of July my ass…” 

The phone was ringing again. 

“Goddamnit!”

Will walked into the kitchen where the phone kept ringing.

“Are you gonna pick that thing up?” yelled his father from the other room.

After another ring the answering machine switched on and his mother’s greeting played: “Hi there, you’ve reached the Thompson’s.  Sorry we’re not able to take your call right now, but if you leave a message after the beep we’ll call you back when we have a chance.  Thanks, and God bless you.” 

 There was a beep and then a man spoke, “Good afternoon. This message is for Major William Thompson.  My name is Ian Chambers and I’m a publishing agent for Full Moon Press here in Los Angeles. I’m trying to contact Major Thompson to discuss the possibility of writing a book about his uhh…his experiences in Afghanistan.  I believe I have the correct number.  Ummm…please feel free to give me a call back at three-one-zero, four-five-four, eight-two-zero-five.  Alright, well once again my name is Ian Chambers and my office number is three-one-zero, four-five--“

Will picked the phone, “Hello?”

“Yes.  Hello.”

“Hi.  This is Will.”

“Major Thompson, it’s good to speak you with.  My name is Ian Chambers.  Did you hear any of the message I was leaving?”

“I heard some of it.  Something about a book.”

“Yes sir.  I work for a publishing house called Full Moon Press down here in L.A.  We’re interested in getting your story out to the public.”

“It’s already out in the public.”

“Yes, well, magazines and newspapers articles are quite different than a book.  Have you considered writing a story about your experience?  It’d be an opportunity to tell your side of the story without some journalist distorting what you have to say.”

“I’m not gonna write a book.”

“That’s okay.  You wouldn’t have to do much writing per se.  We can provide a writer for you, you’d just have to tell him the story and he’d write it out.  But your name would be on the cover of the book of course, as if you wrote it.”

“But who’s writing the book then?” Will asked.

“The ghost writer is, but in truth you are.  You’re telling him what to write.  And the ghost writer, or whoever it is, he does the writing.  But it’s your story, all you have to do is verbalize it, we’ll take care of the rest.”

Will look into the living room.  The television screen showed smiling politicians and military officials standing and clapping their hands above the parade of weapons in Washington D.C.  His father was shaking his head at them.  He could hear the agent tapping something against his desk in L.A.

“What do I get out of this?” asked Will. 

“Well, besides being able to dispel any misrepresentations about your story on the part of the media, we’re willing to offer you a large advance for your cooperation, and from there you get a cut of the sales.”

“Is that so?”

“Oh yes.  The cut depends on how well the book sells, and there are things like books tours and speaking engagements which may come along with those, but that’s down the line.”
“I see.  How large is advance?”
“Well, please keep in mind that we’re not a big publishing house, and there’s also a general misconception in the public about how much revenue is generated from book sales, but in your case we’re willing to offer you ten thousand dollars up front if you contractually agree to write with us.”
“Ten thousand dollars?”
“Ten thousand dollars.”
“That seems a bit low,” Will said.
“Yes, well I sorry it seems that way, but it’s quite a lot in the scheme of things, and it’s toward the higher end of the financial spectrum for us.  We’re not a huge company, but we do represent many best-sellers.  There’s a high chance you’ll see more money down the line through sales commissions.”
“Let me think about it and I’ll get back to you.”
“Sure.  Absolutely.  Do you have my number?”
“Yep.”
“Okay, well thanks for your time Major Thompson.  It’s been a pleasure speaking with you and I hope you consider the offer.”
“Okay, thanks, I’ll do that.”
“Major Thompson, I just wanted to add, that if you don’t write this book first – about what happened out there –then someone else will.  Hell, for all we know some reporter is probably working on it right now.”
“Okay.  Take care.”
Will hung up the phone.
His dad called out, “who was that?”
“A salesman from Los Angeles.”
“Los Angeles?” he yelled.
“Los Angeles,” Will replied.
“City of whores,” said his dad.
There was a dried chili pepper ristra hanging from the kitchen ceiling.  It was from New Mexico.  They had moved to Arcata from Albuquerque a decade ago, after Will had finished elementary school and before the developers had begun tearing up the mesas with bulldozers and rock crushers other large machines – leveling whole plateaus and constructing housing labyrinths and shopping plazas – urban sprawl in the Land of Enchantment.  Will thought about the surreal mesas of his childhood and remembered standing outside of their old house at dawn and seeing the colorful hot air balloons drifting across the red desert, the fumes and bright colors floating above the sands of the shriveling Rio Grande – home to roadrunners, jack rabbits, solitary rattlesnakes that slithered through blades of blue grama along the riverbed.  He remembered the little Navajo men that would hop reservation fences and then walk across the road to the Circle-K.  And the roadkill would be dispersed across the interstate that his family traveled upon in car – the entrails of dead bugs scattered over the windshield, the larva of horseflies squirming upon the glass – and in the barren wasteland beyond, twisting dirt devils raged like maniacal dervishes at sundown, trailing off into the desert beneath the apocalyptic sky.  Shades of turquoise swept across the twilight earth and blazing meteors, hurled out from the depths of space, fell beyond the horizon and then burned away into the void.
During his final winter in New Mexico, snow fell upon the desert and the snow gathered upon the frozen cacti and bone-dry tumbleweed.  The cold flakes of snow fell slowly and covered ancient petroglyphs that underworld beings had carved into black lava rock and upon the snow itself lay the tracks of a horned lizard and the traces of blood that had dripped from its eyes.  Will remembered that the snow was falling high upon the Rocky Mountains as he and his father stood inside the tramcar that swayed as it moved up toward Sandia Peak.  Will was holding on to the rails inside the tram and peering down at the dark crevasses that weaved through the cold and treacherous cliffs below.  He remembered his father asking him what he wanted to be when he grew up.  Will looked toward the small city of Albuquerque protruding out from the bleak wonderland in a desert of snow.
“I’d like to learn how to be a ventriloquist,” Will said.
“That’s a good answer,” his father replied, nodding his head toward the clouds.
His father did some looking around, came back, and said to him, “I’m sorry son, you can’t be a ventriloquist.  It’s a dying art, and there’s no one teaching it around here.”
The conversation had taken place in the living room of their old house.  They were playing chess on the floor.
“Oh,” said Will.
“What else would you like to be?”
Will looked down at his doomed little pieces.  He looked over to his younger brother who was rolling around in the corner of the room, leashed to the wall. 
“Well, I’d really like to be a marine biologist.”
“Ha!” his father shot back, “we live in a desert.  And this state is landlocked.  There’s no water around here, son.”  His father captured his queen and said “check.”
Will looked toward his knight and made a move, “well, then I’d like be a solider, like you were."
His father thought for a moment and then moved a piece.  “Checkmate.”

Draft Excerpts:

AT HOME, HIS BROTHER AND MOM

“You know you can’t get out of the straight jacket honey, you’ll hurt yourself.”
His brother began to gurgle and drool, his words jerking forth in a stutter, “I…want to…h-h-hurt…myself,” he exhaled and then babbled away.
“I know you do sweetie, I know you do.”  His mother wiped the drool from his face and patted him on his bald and disfigured head.  She sat beside him on the carpet and cradled the manchild in her arms, shushing him as they basked in the sunlight pouring in through the glass window.  Will’s retarded brother quietly mourned and slobbered in agony, his limp tongue drooped from his mouth and his infantile head was titled and pressed into his mother’s copious bosom.  Between her breasts was a silver angel attached to her necklace.  She rocked her deformed son in her arms lovingly and sang softly:

“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.
You make me happyyy, when skies are greyyy.
You’ll never know dear, how much I love you.
So please don’t take my sunshine awayyy.”

She began to sing the same song again and there were tears in her eyes.  Will looked at them and he shook his head.  That lump of flesh on the floor was not his brother he thought.  There was no connection between them, yet he could recognize that the anguish searing through those lost and monstrous eyes was suicidal.  His mother was singing and his brother was moaning and tossing around in her arms.  He felt sorry for them both.  
“We should put him out of his misery,” he said, and he knew that would anger her.
“How dare you!” His mother had snapped her neck around to face him, her face was flushed and irate.  “How dare you!” she seethed, the hatred in her voice burned pure and raw.  “He is your brother!  He is my son!” she proclaimed, “He is my son…”  She wept and the tears were streaming down her face as she stroked the head of her babbling mutant child.  Her vision was blurred as she looked into his lifeless eyes to assuage him, “you are my darling son and mommy loves you.  Mommy loves you.”  Her son drooled and moaned, his eyes faced those of his mother whom kissed him and said “shhhhh, I’m sorry, I am so sorry…”
She turned back to Will and was enraged.  “Get out of my house!”  She was pointing toward the door with her free arm and yelled, “get out!!”
Will stared at them – his desperate mother, his blabbering and retarded brother – he shook his head in pity and walked to the front door.
“Don’t you ever come back” she said.
He looked at her.
“You mean that?”
“Get out and don’t you ever come back!” she screamed.  “May God save your soul.”  His brother was squirming in his straight jacket, grunting and drooling in her arms, he was staring at Will.  The high-pitched screaming had hurt his ear drums and he was stuttering and saying, “buh, buh, buy-buy, bye bye, bye...”  And Will imagined how he himself must have looked standing there by the door – stoic and indifferent – deadpan, wearing an eyepatch, a mutant in of himself.
“Bye,” he said.
He opened the heavy door and stepped out into the day and slammed the door with such force that the coat hanger on the other side fell down, as did a few framed pictures and paintings inside of the house.  His mother was left sobbing in a lullaby, and in her arms, the son she cradled and rocked said “bye, buh –buh, buh—buh—brother.”   



ON THE ROAD; WILL, CHRIS, SERGIO

Driving down the two lane road Chris was ranting about how the Russians were always going to get us and how the Russians controlled the weather and how the Cold War was not over.  He was behind the wheel and saying that “even the pussy-whipped Chinese government of China is being controlled by the Russians.  That’s almost two billion pussy-whipped Chinese little fuckers preparing for wholesale armageddon.  So America doesn’t stand a chance in Hell against the Russians unless we get our house in order.  And a four-hundred year-old empire ain’t got nothing on a three-thousand year-old one.  We ain’t got nothing.”
Chris stopped talking.  Sergio and Will were silent.
Chris went on, “the Soviets went nuclear for a reason.  They gave the Chinese nukes too, big time.  And the chinamen gave them to the crazy fucking North Koreans.  And the Koreans armed the Iranians.  I’m telling you, the fucking Russians have gone apeshit.  They’re ready to do some serious damage, it’s just a matter of time – they believe in the prophecies of Rasputin.  Mark my words, the Cold War ain’t over, buddy.  They’re even changing the time zones up on us,” he said.
“How do they change time zones on us?” Sergio asked from the back.
“What?” said Chris.
“I said how do they change time zones on us?”
“They just change them up,” Chris said.
“What do you mean?” Sergio said.
“What do you mean what do you mean?”
“I mean what do you mean they just change them up, the time zones?”
Chris breathed out and explained, “the country of Russia controls its own time, so they’re changing their zones of time in order to establish dominance over the world.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” said Sergio.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Chris said, keeping his eyes on the road.  “I’m talking about that Russia used to have eleven time zones, and ---“Will interrupted and said “do you know what you’re talking about, Chris?”
“Yeah.  I’m talking about the same thing you’re talking about.”
“I’m not talking about anything yet, other than asking you if you know what you were talking about or not.”
“Yeah,” he said with uncertainty, “we were talking about the Russians changing up the time zones in Russia.”
“I wasn’t talking about that.  But now that we’re on the subject, do you know how and why Russia is able to adjust their time zones in Russia without it affecting our time zones?”
From the back Sergio said, “Yeah, that’s what I want to know.”
“How about you Chris?” Will asked.
Chris shifted his eyes back and forth on the road ahead.
“How about me what?”
“How about you wanting to know why this can happen?”
“Yeah, I want to know why.”
“Well” said Will, “this can happen because the planet is a twisted fucking place.  Everywhere people are killing other people because some people are greedy and filled with hatred and intolerance. And throughout the history of the world groups of people at the top compete with other groups of people at the top in an effort to control the folks at the bottom.”
Chris was nodding his head agreeably.
“And so all of a sudden Russia has realized that they’ve got a massive country with too many time zones complicating the whole fucking situation.  So to cut down the bullshit they reduced the number of time zones in the interior of the country by changing and merging some of the time zones within, while keeping the time zones at the ends of the country the same.  So the time zones don’t change on the east and west borders, but are reduced and consolidated within the interior of country.  That’s how they change up their time zones without it affecting us.”
“I think there’s a cop car coming up on us,” said Chris.
Will looked in the passenger side view mirror and far behind them was a cop car driving closer to them, and just because the lights weren’t flashing didn’t mean they had nothing to fear.  (In the back seat) Sergio turned his head and looked back.
Chris said, “now why the fuck are you gonna turn your head back around and check to see if the cop behind us is behind us?”
“Just keep driving normally” said Will.
“Fuck” said Chris.
“We’ll be fine,” Will said.
“I know we’ll be fine, I’m just wondering why Squanto here had to check up on the police back there.”
“You don’t got nothing to worry about, man,” said Sergio.
“Whatcha’ mean I ain’t got nothing to worry about?  I’m here transporting some goddamn criminals.  You all are AWOL.  Did you forget about that shit?”
“I ain’t AWOL,” said Sergio,  “you just drive man.”
“I’m driving, nigger.  I’m driving.”
The police car was about a hundred feet away behind them, close enough to see the bumper sticker on Chris’s car which read LOVE MY COUNTRY, HATE MY GOVERNMENT.
Chris wringed his hands against the steering wheel and said, “you fools are some suspected murderers.  And as far as they’re concerned, I’m a goddamned accomplice.  And that makes all three of us terrorists.”
“Don’t worry about it” said Will, “calm down and keep on going like you were before.”
Green pastures and farmland lay ahead before them, the rolling hills of Arcaida and the clouds stood still in the blue and perfect sky.  Chris was looking about.  
“What’s the speed limit around here?” he asked.
Will looked into his rear view mirror.  The black and white paint of the police car was distinct behind them, he could see the dull red and blue of the lightbar, his heart was beating hard.     
“I’m going forty-five. Is that too fast?” asked Chris.
“I don’t know,” said Will.
“Well, this fucking cop is about to start riding my ass.  Is it too fucking slow?”
“Just keep it between forty-five and fifty,” Will said.
Will reached over and turned on the radio in effort to distract himself.  It was on the AM function and he was scanning through the channels.  The cop car was close behind them, and Chris could see the figures of the two officers in the front seats (of the car) in his rear view mirror.
“Stop doing that.  It looks like your hiding something?” Chris said.
“What?” said Will.
“Stop touching the radio, it looks like your doing something down there.”
Will stopped touching the radio dial.  The station that he had left it on was Family Radio.  The announcer was talking about how God was getting ready to do them in.  The old and creaking voice was saying:

…and by and far there is no tyrant that can stand up to the will of God.  There is no force of nature or man that is as powerful as the force of God.  For He is almighty and everlasting. For He is the creator of tyrants and of man and of nature alike.  And our creator, who hath sculpted our world – God – has put before man a test of faith and righteousness.  He has decreed upon the Kingdom of Man a holy date by which we are to submit to His eternal omnipotence or face the scorching fires of Hell.  And through the Holy Scripture He invites us to commit ourselves to the heavenly glory of His Holy Kingdom.  For the day reckoning is upon us all.  The Holy Bible of the word of God reads that this Day of Judgment falls on the twenty-first day of the tenth month in the present year of our Lord. Seek refugee in the word of Christ and the Holy Father God, repent and thou shall be save.  Aye, He calls upon us to commit ourselves to His will, as His one and only son did, and to make a great and solemn sacrifice on the forthcoming Day of Judgment.  Aye, the word of God is no lie, and when we fall upon the Day of Judgment He shall ask us who are his scared children on Earth to commit our lives to the eternal Kingdom of Heaven and to forever  --

 “This guy is nuts,” said Chris.
The cop car was still close behind them.
“He wants us to kill ourselves,” said Will. 
“I’ll tell you what.  I’ll repent if these silly fuckers get off our asses,” said Chris.
There was a green metal road sign posted up ahead on the road, the shiny white text on it read UNITED STATES COAST GUARD TRAINING FACILITY.  NEXT EXIT.
“Maybe they’re going to the Coast Guard training facility,” said Chris.
“Maybe they’re scanning your plates,” said Sergio.
The exit ramp came up and the exit road branched off into the hills of the coast and the cop car remained behind them on the route.  And posted up on the Coast Guard road onramp were a handful of police cars and vans and several military trucks that waited for them to pass before trundling onto the route and driving together in a swift and mechanized following behind the police car.
“Well that’s nice,” said Chris.
There were now about ten police and military vehicles driving in a line on the road behind their car.  Their hearts were racing and it was a beautiful day.  The preacher on the radio was still giving his sermon and warning that the Day of Judgment was upon them.       
“We’re gonna need to gas her up,” Chris said.
“What’s that?” asked Sergio.
“We need gas.”
The fuel light was on.
“How much more do you have?” asked Will.
“I don’t know,” said Chris, “but when this little light here goes on it’s telling me that this car needs gas, and that’s when I like to fill her up.  Because when I fill her up the light goes off.  I’ve never checked to see how much more gas the light means I have left, I just fill her up.  And honestly Will, I’m not sure how long the light’s been on because the cops and the fucking National Guard are riding my ass right now, and this guy on the radio is telling me that we’re all about to burn in Hell so my mind’s all jumbled up.”
Will turned off the radio.
“Well, I’m sure there’s a town up ahead and if we see a gas station we’ll pull in.”
“Won’t that look suspicious?” asked Sergio.
“Won’t what?” asked Will.
“Won’t it look suspicious if we pull in to the first gas station we see?”
“Maybe we can pull in to a deli or something first,” said Chris.
“Well that may look suspicious too,” said Sergio.
“Well what the in the hell am I supposed to do?  I gotta get some gas or else we’re gonna be in big trouble.  The light is on goddamnit, that means she needs gas.”  Chris was upset.
Will said, “we’ll get her some gas. You just keep on going Chris, keep on going right ahead toward that little town in the distance.  It’s just up the road.”
A sign post on the roadside read TWO ROCK. 1 MILE.  On the sign were the symbols of a gas pump and little forks and knives.  They passed the sign and could see the little houses and buildings of the small town visible up ahead.  They kept going – the formidable entourage of police and military vehicles at their rear – and entered the town of Two Rock, population 125.  A gas station was coming up ahead on their right and Chris let his foot off the gas as they approached it.  He was about to switch his blinker on until he saw that at the gas station were several police cars parked in the parking spaces and at the fuel stations.
“What the fuck is going on here?” said Will.
Chris kept going through the town.  The sole street light was green and they passed under it.  There was another gas station ahead on the left.
“Go there,” said Will.
“I’m going.”
Chris put his blinker on and slowed down.  He turned left and into the gas station and the police and military cars that were behind them passed by and kept going down the road and away. 

Excerpts from How to Kill People

I sat on the marble ledge of the Lincoln Center fountain and drank the glass of wine.  It was Saturday night.  I made my way east.  I walked past the lobbies of opulent hotels and restaurants.  I made eye contact with beautiful women whom I would never see again and walked past people whom I never wanted to see again.  There were people walking dogs and the dogs looked very similar to the people walking them.  I went into a store and bought some beer and then walked to Central Park.  I wandered beneath oak trees and sat down on a huge rock.  I heard people snoring around me.  They were sleeping near the rock base and were curled up beside the trunks of trees.  A homeless man stood up and stumbled toward me and I shared my beer with him.

“Is humanity suicidal?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I think that it is.”

“It’s definitely masochistic.”

“We’ve lost our minds.”

“Some of us have gone crazy,” I said. 

“A crazy man doesn’t know he’s crazy, right?”

“Write.”

“You mean right.”

“That’s what I said.”

“That’s not what he wrote.”

“What who wrote?”

He didn’t answer.  I got up and walked away.

I left Central Park and headed south.  I thought about blowing up the banks around Rockefeller Center as I withdrew two hundred dollars from an ATM.  I needed to start counterfeiting money.  I stepped into a bar and began drinking like I was at war with my brain.  I ordered a beer and two shots of whiskey and then spoke to my brain.

“You want a piece of me?”

I took the first shot.

“Take this you mother fucker.”

I took the second shot. 

I watched the news on the television. An act of terrorism had taken place on Capitol Hill.  At the Congressional inquiry into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, during the testimony of industry executives, a crazy man who didn’t know he was crazy was bearing explosives and ran down onto the floor of the hearing room and blew himself up, killing several congressmen and a few members of an oil giant’s board of directors.  In other news, in Port-au-Prince refugee camps, thousands of homeless Haitian earthquake victims were dying of cholera.  Cholera is a bacterial infection of the small intestine that causes severe diarrhea and vomiting which, if gone untreated, leads to dehydration and death.  In Los Mochis, a coastal city in northern Mexico, suspected gang members had murdered and dismembered a man, placing his limbs in different locations around town and stitching his skinned face to a soccer ball that the man had given to his son last year as a Christmas gift.  Christmas is the most magical time of the year.  A tiger had escaped from the zoo in Prospect Park.  Things were getting crazy.  A volcano located on the border of North Korea and China had erupted.  A super typhoon that had already killed thousands in the Philippines was heading northwest across the South China Sea toward Hong Kong.  Several thousand Australians were dead or had gone missing after a tsunami struck Melbourne.  God save the women.  Rescue efforts were underway in Pakistan to save millions of displaced flood victims.  It was inspiring to see people helping others in times of disaster.  That happens in many places.  Except here in America.  Except when it floods in New Orleans.  I thought about what Dante said:

“The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those, who in time of moral crisis, preserve their neutrality.”

Here in America we were at war.  There was a War on Drugs, a War on Poverty, a War on Terror, a War on Words.  Going to war is a good way to get countries out of economic depressions, it is an antidepressant.  The Pentagon had declared a war on nature because it is our most dangerous and unpredictable enemy.  And there was talk of war with Iran.  The last people I want to see dead are Iranian college girls.  The television showed war propaganda of administration and military officials standing in front of teleprompters and discussing the possibility of a preemptive strike on Iran.  These men were trigger happy, their eyes were like doomsday clocks.  They were power-tripping megalomaniacs, they were the menacing warlords of high technology driving Spaceship Earth down the road to Hell.  They were crazy men that didn’t know they’d gone crazy.  The world was a powder keg and these flaming assholes kept on stepping closer to the wick.  I recalled what Einstein about war:

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

I left the bar and walked through midtown, toward the blue lights cast by the giant screens in Times Square.  I entered the belly of the beast.  Hundreds of cars and thousands of people were teeming beneath the flashing lights in awe of the fantastic digital bloom.  People were excited and entranced, as though zealous migrants who had reached the end of some epic and twisted pilgrimage, like cult members who had gathered en masse for some fabled human sacrifice.  There were contingents of tourists spilling off the sidewalks and taking pictures of the billboards and advertisements.  A pageant of materialism, a carnival of consumerism, or whatever word you want to use to describe the human characteristic of taking what we don’t need.  Hordes of people were idling aimlessly, mesmerized by the enormous looming television screens, immersed in some vile hypnosis.  Deranged inmates trapped in a massive insane asylum.  There were thousands of people desperate to buy a product, slobbering like zombies thirsting for material possession, feverishly roaming in search for something precious and vital that had gone missing long ago.  They had lost their minds. 

I pushed my way through the walls of people whom were speaking a dozen different languages.  There were scantily clad women wielding the immense and dangerous power of sex, able to take down entire empires with their one little muscle.  I saw a screaming couple panicking in tears because their infant had gone missing, possibly stolen from their stroller.  I zipped past fat fast food fucks who were gorging on processed meat made in China.  And the people could not stop shopping.  It was like a disease.  They were addicts on the verge of overdosing.  The artificial lights cast from the windows of stores lured them in salivating like hungry ghosts and spellbound alien lunatics transfixed by the toxic glow of a full and unholy moon.  A stampede was occurring as hundreds of shoppers poured into a store, the fanatics trampling their fallen brethren, stomping upon them to death in the name of greed.  The City of Deadly Sins.  The smell of blood.  The Vampire State.  There were mobile observation towers and police security cameras in the area, scanning for suspects on terrorist watchlists and monitoring for displays of antisocial behavior by using remote sensors that measured physiological indications of malintent.  Visions of dystopia and the dreams of machines.  And the people could not stop shopping.  They did not mind the all the cameras because they were not doing anything wrong.  They were the frogs in the slowly heating pot.  I felt a strong desire to possess a rocket launcher.  I finally understood the mentality of the suicide bomber.

The same way I’d willingly burn in Hell just to watch some of these murderous demagogues and war criminals suffer, I’d happily die in the atomic bomb blast which obliterates Times Square just to see it being wiped out.  And if a single mushroom were to be the only thing to rise from the ashes in the desolate millennia aftermath, it would still be more glamorous, intricate, and beautiful than the atrocity which exists there today.  Times Square is humanity’s sucking chest wound.  It is a terminal tumor lodged in the mind of civilization.   Like a gigantic neon parasite, it sucks the essence of life out of all the victims of materialism and hype who have gathered beneath the radioactive static to bask in the eerie light of electric suns.  It can devour human souls, and it feeds off them.  I thought of what Doc said in The Monkey Wrench Gang:

“We are caught in the iron treads of technological juggernaut.  A mindless machine.  With a breeder reactor for a heart.”

The relentless sirens and beeping horns.  Amidst this hectic metropolis, silence was a thing of the past, it is a thing of the future.  Just as the fragmented ruins of the Roman Empire are now being chiseled from out the density of earth which buried that civilization, men, or some other sentient life form, will one day excavate the landmarks of this nation.  They will find the adamantine corpse of New York City, the sandstone vaults of Washington D.C, the plastic and concrete tomb of Los Angeles, the glass coffin of Las Vegas.  Mausoleum America.    They will find sports stadiums and superhighways, car dealerships and amusement parks, malls and megachurches, prisons and military bases, nuclear power plants and cooling towers.  The everyday amenities and variables of life that we experience and expect – the stable economy, the functioning transportation system, the seasonal weather, the rising sun – shall one day or another end.  The world is not a constant. 

Our days are numbered.  And I embrace the collapse of the American Empire, of any empire.  The fewer cluster bombs dropped on innocent women and children the better for humanity.  The less depleted uranium munitions exploded upon pristine ecosystems, the better for nature.  I expect that at worst, by century’s end, the descendants of patriots and traitors in this bankrupt and crumbling republic will be living like the majority of people on Earth today, in moderate poverty, in conditions tantamount to those that most humans have lived in throughout modern history.  It is the transition that is of concern.  It will not be smooth.  Yet it is never the fall that kills you.

* * *

I entered the crowded subway station.  Intense anxiety spread.  A woman was crying because the touch-screen of the subway ticket machine was not working properly and the machine would not accept her imperfect bills.  I descended the escalator and heard the piping of Peruvian flutes and the screaming of a man in pain.  Behavior detection officers and military police wearing camouflage and holding machine guns were patrolling the subway corridors.  A Muslim was being tazed by a solider and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Muslim.  I hurried through the labyrinth and wondered whatever happened to Posse Comitatus.  Whatever happened to Habeas Corpus?  Aegri somnia.  Where did all the conscientious objectors go?  Where did the Miranda Rights go?  Holy shit.  Whatever happened to the goddamn fucking American Dream?  I thought about what the abolitionist Wendell Phillips said:

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, power is ever stealing from the many to the few."

The subway platform smelt like urine and hashish.  The tunnel walls were eroding and dark liquid dripped off the chemical stalactites protruding from the ceiling.  I looked at the train tracks and the saw the melted carcass of a rat that had been electrocuted and fried upon the third rail.  If you can’t make it in New York City, you can’t make it anywhere.  I got on the first train that arrived.   

On board there was a family of midgets and I sat down across from them.  The little mother was reading a self-help book titled Three Ways to Bigger Breasts and Financial Success, and the dad was reading a book titled How to Kill People.  An old woman wearing a muppet costume was counting money in the shell of her muppet mask.  A monstrously obese man sat wiping the sweat off his face with a towel and he was looking at the photographs in a pornography magazine.  An automatic announcement on the intercom stated:

“Ladies and gentlemen, be advised that all backpacks and other large containers are subject to random search by the police.”

A black man with dreadlocks entered the car of the moving train from the car end door.  His dreads were swaying and he stopped to open a book and began reading passages from Revelation.  This is what he was saying:

“And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.  And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.”

The man stopped and asked for change.  He continued to read:

“He was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed.  He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.  This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666.” 

The train stopped and the man with the dreadlocks got off and a white man with a rope stepped on.  The man tied one end of rope around the hand bars above him and with the other end of the rope he made a noose.  He stood upon a seat and slipped the noose around his neck.  I got up to talk with him.

“Are you sure you want to do that?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve got nothing to lose.”

“Don’t you have people that love you?  People that you love?”

“Not anymore.  Things fall apart.  I can never get anything right.”

“But sometimes that’s just the way it is.  Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better.”

“I’m so tired of failing, of being abused.  I work so hard and have nothing to show for myself.  No one cares about me.”

He tightened the noose around his neck.

“I know how it is,” I said. 

“No you don’t. Go away,” he said. 

I went away.  He was right, I didn’t know.  Fuck it.  To stop this man from killing himself wasn’t my responsibility.  For all I knew better things were waiting for him on the other side.  You can’t save people who don’t want to be saved.  You can’t help others until you help yourself.  I sat back down and watched him step off the seat.  He started to choke and turn red and no one on the train moved.  A drunk man got up and I thought he was going to do something about the man hanging from the noose, whose face was now blue, but the drunk just pulled down his pants and took a shit on the train.  He then pulled up his pants and stumbled over to the hanging man to rummage through his pockets.  The train stopped and I got off.  I turned around before the train pulled away and I saw the noose unravel.  The man gasped for air and the color returned to his face.  The train moved forward and the man was sobbing.

 
* * *

                The concourse of Penn Station was filled with tired and poor masses huddling in fear.  They were sleeping on the linoleum floors, beside pillars and behind sanitized newsstands racked with tabloids and celebrity magazines.   The homeless were filthy and reeking of feces and stale beer.  Some were mutated and bleeding, awkwardly splayed and in immediate need of first aid and clinical help.  Feeble bodies atrophying in a slow kill.  There were wretched alcoholics and suffocating drug addicts, war-torn veterans and third world refugees, ragged beggars and downtrodden vagabonds piled up to die at the base of the golden door that had been slammed in their faces.  Whimpering mothers with track marks on their arms and impoverished men who had fallen from grace were holding cardboard signs that said that they were just trying to get home.  I thought about what Frederick Douglass wrote:

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

I believe that that many of humanity’s problems may be solved if we could put ourselves in each others shoes, and that one can ascertain the character of a man and of a society by how they treat the least among them.  And I spared them no change.  Police were prodding them with expandable batons and telling them to get moving.  The homeless groaned and shuffled away, blinking like ghastly underworld trolls emerging from hibernation after a nuclear winter.  There was fear in their eyes and they seemed like children.  And so they once were.  The innocence massacred by darkness.  Tears dripped down their weathered faces, blood dried upon their wrinkled skin.  Over time they had been crippled by drugs and debt and guilty consciences, estranged and disowned, abused and neglected by their parents or by society or both.  They never had to end up this way.  And it is never too late to turn yourself around.

                Upon exiting the station I saw desperate men scratching lottery tickets, superstitious women reading horoscopes, industrious negroes selling handbags.  I maneuvered under the scaffolding and away from the crowds.  The curbs and sidewalks were littered with broken glass and cigarette butts and old pieces of gum.  Shuttered and locked storefronts lined the rundown streets.  I saw vacant lots, abandoned buildings which tilted and drooped, a plastic bag caught in an updraft.  Metaphors of deterioration and isolation.  Traces of chromium and asbestos, ethanol and methamphetamines, formaldehyde and ammonia, life in arsenic.  Along these dim blocks an occasional convenience store or bar was open and you could see the lights. 

                I heard music and entered the venue.  It was a strip bar.  I paid twenty dollars and took a seat.  On stage were black and white women dancing naked in harmony.  There was something wrong with their bodies.  One was missing a leg, one had no legs and was crawling on the floor, another was missing an arm.  They were amputees.  From the audience a black man stood up, and like some drunken witchdoctor he hooted wildly and began to make it rain.  As though not to be outdone, a drunk Hispanic man stumbled up beside the rainmaker and initiated a golden shower all over the strippers whom were struggling to collect the bills.  A bouncer grabbed the Hispanic and dragged him out back.  Seeing all this was worth more than the twenty dollars that I had paid to enter and I left. 

A shrill cry echoed through an alley and a man sprinted down the street gripping the freshly amputated hand of someone else.  I saw chalk lines on the sidewalk and I passed a man who was pulling a suitcase from which blood dripped.  At a fire station across the street, a crying mother was leaving her newborn child in the chamber of a safe surrender site.  In an apartment unit above me, a couple was arguing in Spanish and the argument ended with the sound of a few dull slaps and a woman weeping.  I heard sewing machines hissing away in sweatshops.  I saw insomniacs talking to invisible entities, junkies freebasing crystals, mad hatters injecting mercury, kids playing with rocks and pirouetting space elephants.  There was a man ghost-riding the whip.  There were piles of bloated trash bags on the sidewalks, and in the flames of a burning mattress parasites were sizzling.  I remembered what Empson wrote:  

Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills…
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills

            I walked through old Hoovervilles and across African burial grounds.  Far ahead were two vertically parallel spotlights rising like gypsum pillars into the sky from Ground Zero.  Seagulls and raptors dived through the lunar beams of light and swept up moths and other iridescent prey.  The streets were cleaner here and the buildings were taller.  Hundreds of thousands of people hived within the compartmentalized units of apartment buildings towering overhead were subdued by televisions and the internet, and the exhausted many slept.  They slept like babies with down syndrome, drooling in the blue light of commercials, drowning in their sleep like men who have lost the capacity to dream.  A wayward generation of passivists raised on reality T.V and video games, locked in a monotonous cycle of work and waste, sedated beneath the starless sky.  The inhabitants of these Gotham structures were tame and docile.  They ate prescription drugs for breakfast and spent the daylight hours enslaved in fluorescent cells, forever incarcerated within the diabolical compounds of metallic skyscrapers.  Life Incorporated.  I saw men in offices shredding paper, burning the midnight oil and cooking the books.  They were organisms bereft of earth, divorced from the seas.  They were suffering from the side effects of this lethal separation with nature and had patched their wounds with pavement and silicone and computer chips.  And they wondered why they were more absent-minded and lazy, why they couldn’t draw or write or spell correctly.  They wondered why they felt empty and impatient, bitter and depressed, why they lacked motivation and self-esteem, creativity and confidence.  And we couldn’t even look each other in the eyes anymore when we talked.

 * * *

The clinic was in Brooklyn.  Late Friday afternoon we got into a cab and drove across the Brooklyn Bridge over the East River toward Brownsville.  We were silent and held hands in the cab.  Red clouds rolled through the anarchy of the sky and a flock of crows drifted over the cables of the gothic bridge.  I watched the specks of crows and I watched as they stalled in mid-air and then dropped through the sky.  Hundreds of crows fell in synchronized nosedives and corkscrews and then splashed into the water below.  They were dying in unison.  And beneath the water there was something enormous and stealth and it was moving fast.  The thing was black and you could see it torpedoing through the river.  I thought it was a whale and it began to surface.  From the scuds rose the grisly superstructure of a massive aquatic machine. It was a nuclear submarine.

                The cab entered the broken projects of Brownsville.  The sun set upon the tenements and you could see the teeth and leering eyes of the residents whom were resting on the sidewalks.  There were children playing on the streets.  I paid the cab driver and Elizabeth and I got out.  The clinic was two blocks away and we walked beneath the twilight decay and she was so scared and I could feel her fear and God was I afraid.  There was a small group of protesters across the street from the clinic.  They were yelling and holding picket signs and the photographs on some of the signs were of aborted embryos and fetuses.  The little fetuses looked like pale aliens or nocturnal amphibians lying in pools of blood.  There was an ultrasound image of baby in a uterus and the baby was smiling.  The protesters were yelling things like “say yes to life” and “abortion is murder.”  They had set up a video camera and were filming the clinic.  Elizabeth squeezed my hand and began to slow down.  We were one block away from the clinic and the protesters were standing across the street. 

“Don’t look at them, don’t listen to them,” I said. 

                “I can’t do this.”

                She kept slowing down.

                “Yes you can.  Let’s keep going.”

                “I need to sit down.”

                “Let’s keep going.”

                “I can’t honey, I can’t.”

                She began to cry.

We sat down on the steps of a church and she wept. 

                “I don’t want this to happen,” she said.

                “I’m sorry.”

                “Why is this happening?”

                It didn’t have to happen. 

                “Because we’re making it happen.”

“God, I don’t want this to happen, Vince.  God, this is wrong.”

                She kept crying.  She kept talking to God. 

I thought about the massacre at Ben Tre.  I thought about the millions of genocide victims whom were killed in concentration camps during the twentieth century, about how every move made sense for them until the last step.  I thought about what Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago: 

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: what would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?  The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! 

                Elizabeth was crying in my arms and the protesters kept chanting.  They said that abortion was evil.  They called it wicked.  They called it homicide.  And they were right.  She was right.  She had a human life inside of her and we were about become accomplices in the murder of our own flesh and blood.  The reality set in.  You couldn’t romanticize this.  This wasn’t some profound and beautiful piece of fiction.  This wasn’t some hills like white elephants parable.  You are not Hemingway.  You are not Faulkner.  You are not Fante.  You are nothing like those people.  You are a worthless failure lost in the land of diminishing dreams, a hypocritical lowlife whimpering in the shadows of giants.  This wasn’t the glorious climax of some heroic odyssey.  This wasn’t some crazy endeavor.  It was a petty tragedy, hyperbolic and mundane.  It was a first world problem. 

                “This doesn’t have to happen,” I said.  

                She was still crying. 

                “God, please.  Let’s go Vince”

                “Alright.  Let’s go.”

                We backed out. 

We got up and walked away from the clinic.  The waxing moon was on the rise and the stars did not shine through the contamination of that despondent night.  I looked down and saw the roots of trees breaking through the sidewalk and I felt like putting myself out of my own misery.  I thought about how good life will be when I’m dead and hoped that there was no such thing as reincarnation because I didn’t want to go through all this shit again.  Any feelings of affection that I had toward Elizabeth had been transformed into hatred.  She reached for my hand but I refused hers.  I tried to hail a cab. 

“I’m can’t go through with it Vince.”

“I know.”

A cab was coming.

“What if we have a child in the future?  Imagine how guilty we’d feel, that we killed its sibling.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“What do you mean?”

The cab stopped and I opened the door and she got in.  I handed the driver one hundred dollars.

“Here’s one hundred dollars.  Take her to Battery Park City.  Get her away from me”

The driver took the money.

“No,” she said.

“We’re done.”

I slammed the door and the cab took off. 

I walked quickly and turned through a few blocks and then sat on a bench in front of the Brooklyn Library and thought about how to get back to California.  I consulted the devil on my right shoulder and he encouraged me to abandon Elizabeth and the child.  On my left shoulder there was another devil, and he told me to kill myself.  There was an art deco sculpture of a globe in front of the library.  It was twenty feet tall and was made of spherical bands of gilded metal and looked like a gigantic perpetual motion toy.  I looked to Russia, where in the frozen Moscow dawn an icicle fell from a building and impaled a man through his head.  In a pitch black valley in southern France a woman had jumped off the Millau Viaduct and was dropping through the air in a suicidal freefall.  Under the South Pacific sun, an oil tanker had crashed against the Great Barrier Reef and millions of gallons of oil were spilling into the water.  Dusk fell upon the Chilean coast where dozens of blue whales were suffocating to death on a beautiful stretch of beach.  In the highland steppes of Patagonia, a farmer had discovered the bones of a dinosaur that was larger than the blue whale.  Security forces in Tunisia had confiscated the vegetables of a street vendor and in protest the man had set himself on fire, and as with the assassination of an archduke or the demolition of a skyscraper, that one event set off a chain reaction.  The death of the vendor sparked a revolution in Tunisia, and other acts of self-immolation were taking place across the Middle East.  It was the middle of the night in Egypt, and tens of thousands of protesters were making a statement against tyranny and slavery by dismantling the pyramids. 

                I got up and walked toward Grand Army Plaza.  I could hear animals screeching like crying infants and from out the darkness of Prospect Park marched a hundred men carrying chickens and books and a few held torches as though fanatics on a witch hunt.  Many of the men wore big hats and had beards and were yammering as they swung the cackling chickens around their heads.

                “What are you guys doing?” I asked.

                “Transferring our sins to the chickens.”

                “You think doing that’s going to absolve you of sins?”

                “God forgives a sin.” 

                “How do you know?” 

                “He’s merciful.  He will save those who believe in him.”

                “What about those that don’t believe in him?”

                “They get what they deserve.” 

“A lot of them don’t.”

“God works in mysterious ways.”

“If he can part the Red Sea to save people, then why didn’t he stop Hitler?”

                The man began to respond but suddenly many men were screaming in terror and there was a deep growl and a roar.  Fierce panic and geysers of blood erupted, men swarmed around the victims at the edge of the park.  Several had been attacked by a tiger which ran off into the night with a chicken in its jaws.

* * *

                The night was pleasant.  I walked past row houses in Park Slope and went to a bar where I drank several beers and had a cup of tea.  I walked away from the shops and restaurants and wandered through lifeless neighborhoods beneath the faint glow of streetlights and the orbiting moon.  I could hear people reciting the Nicene Creed in an old stone building.  Through the warped windows of a dilapidated warehouse I saw carriages and white horses chained to the walls within.  Lurking beyond were rotting factories and hollow grain silos and decrepit satanic mills.  The street lights faded away and the stars came out as I walked through the shattered remnants of a fallen industrial kingdom.           

                I crossed a steel bridge and saw gas bubbles surfacing in the water of the reeking Gowanus canal.  The soft current pushed opaque slicks of oil across the water like jellyfish weaving through reefs of plastic.  Enchanted mutagens and glowing toxic sludge dripped from sewage pipes and there was a pale human hand floating upon the water and the ring finger was gone.  I heard music coming from further down the canal.  I climbed down the bridge and dropped onto the ledge of the wooden embankment.  The canal was filled with rubble and shopping carts and trash and I remembered what Pogo said:

                                “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

                I walked toward the music.  Across the canal people were smoking in shipping containers and others were nestled in dwellings hewed out from the embankment walls.  A man was bathing in the viscous water.  Lights flickered in shacks on the banks of the canal and originating from one shack was the rhythmic percussion of drums and the vibrations of stringed instruments.  Docks decayed at the base of the embankment where dark children with damaged brains were opening cans of food with bullets and others slept, tranquilized by their own piss, lying in the warmth of their own excrement, and cats licked up their vomit.  Two children had pulled a suitcase from the water and they opened it and it was filled with body parts.  On the swampy slopes carpet baggers gathered around an oil drum fire and were roasting crows on skewers.  And from out a tin hut in which men were hacking apart a dead tiger limped a little Chinese man holding a jar.  He approached me.

                “You look,” he said.

                He held the jar up and turned it.  Inside was lard floating in a translucent elixir. 

                “You buy,” he said.

                “What is it?”

                “It whale.”

                “No thanks.”

                “Five dolla.”

                “No thanks.”

                “Whale meat.  Whale meat good meat.”  

                I passed families huddling in makeshift tents, destitute exiles languishing in scrapheap hovels.  A man sat covered in cooing pigeons and pigeon shit and he was speaking gibberish.  A stumbling drunk donning rags and a barbed wire crown was slurring in some cryptic gospel, floating in elation with a syringe dangling from his arm.  Crippled outcasts with grafted faces slumped like monsters alongside progeria children and paralyzed basket cases.  A colony of degenerates wasting time, waiting for the world to end.  A native man was convulsing on the ground and frothing at the mouth, grunting spasmodically like a possessed shaman.  I walked up to him.

                “Do you need help?”

                He didn’t respond.

                “Do you want me to get you some water?”

                “No.  Water is for animals.”

                He smiled and I could almost see the circus in his head. 

                I wanted to return to the streets but not the way I came so I moved ahead.  From dark shacks flowed whispers and murmuring voices.  A woman covered in a blanket stepped out from a shack and she was black and skeletal. 

                “You lost baby?” she asked.

                “No, I’m good.”

                “You wanna have some fun?”

                “No thanks.”

                She stepped in front of me and I saw the sores on her face, her rotten teeth.

                “Aw baby, I know you wanna have some fun.”

                Her left arm was covered with the blanket and she was holding something therein.

                “No.  I don’t want to have fun.”

                “It won’t cost you nothing baby.”

She stood in my way and I could see the jaundice sclera of her lurid eyes, the lice squirming in her hair.

                “I’m good,” I said.

She looked desperate and hopeless.  She moved closer and placed my hand on her stomach and I felt a thick scar.  Her face was melting and the thing she held under her blanket was moving.  She agonized and begged.

                “I need some money baby.  I need some money.” 

She pulled the blanket away and I stepped back.  She was holding a child in her arm and the mutilated child fed from her sickly breast, and her arm was desiccated in crusted scabies with cracks enveloping the vermiculated skin like dried mud. 

                “Holy shit.”

                “Just give me some money nigga.”

                I gave her all of my money. 

* * *

                I got on a train to Manhattan and got off at City Hall.  I walked through the quietude of City Hall Park and gazed at the lofty municipal building, the stately juggernaut that had Gatling guns positioned on its ivory roof.  Bats fluttered through the air and snarling little creatures burrowed through the flower gardens.  A bronze fountain pumped arches of water into the night and small fires burned in gas lamps.  Ahead on the cobblestone path was a man sitting crosslegged.  He was greasy and dripping wet, there was a red fuel container beside him.  I got closer and recognized him as the man I had seen attempt to hang himself on the train. 

                “There you are,” he said.

I don’t think he recognized me and that he just said that because I was there.  I tried to walk past him.

                “Can you do me a favor?” he asked.

                “No.”

                “Can you take these here matches and light me on fire?”

He had doused himself in gasoline which was streaming down his face and percolating through his clothes, the raw fuel flowing over the cobblestone in a thick and noxious matrix.    

                “You want me light you on fire?”

                “That’s right.  I’m committing suicide.”

                “Well then, you should light yourself on fire.”

                “I’m having trouble.  You do it.”

                “But that wouldn’t be suicide.  It’d be me killing you.  It would be homicide.”

“I’m asking you to help me commit suicide.” 

                “It would be euthanasia.”

                “Please just set me on fire brother.”

He was holding the box of matches toward me.  I looked into his eyes.  He was bluffing, he didn’t have it in him. 

                “I could go to prison for this,” I said. 

                “You’ll be okay.  Just get it over with.  Come on now.”

I looked around and saw the passing headlights of cars driving by on the streets and there were a few people walking on the sidewalk, but the park appeared empty.  I took the matches.

                “This is a selfish thing for you to do.”

                “I’m not leaving anyone behind.  I got nothing to lose.  Light me up, man.”

I pulled out a match. 

“Who’s gonna clean this mess up afterward?” I asked. 

                “I’ve paid my taxes.”

I lit the match and he closed his eyes.  I was ready to kill him.  I was ready to turn him into a human fireball.  The match was burning and he was breathing heavily.  I was the pyromaniac.      

“Are you ready to burn in Hell?”  I asked.

“This is Hell.”

I moved the lit match closer to his body.  Maybe he wasn’t bluffing.  I snuffed out the flame with my fingers.

“You know why this is selfish?”  I said.

“Jesus Christ.”

He opened his eyes. 

“Because you’re not going down with any cause.   You’re not making a statement against poverty or oppression.  You’re not a fucking monk.  You’re wasting your death.”

“Goddamnit man, just fucking light me up you chicken shit.  You can tell them I did this for peace or for the environment or for the fucking whales.  Quit stalling and fucking do it man.”

“You can still help people with your life.”

“I swear to God, you need to light me on fire before I kill you.”

“No.”

I walked away with the box of matches in my hand.  He grumbled and moaned in the background. 

“Don’t do that man.  Don’t fucking do me like that man,” he said. 

I kept going and heard him yelling in anger and I heard the fuel container being kicked or tossed.  He wept in sorrow and began pleading loudly. 

“You don’t know what it’s like.  You don’t know what it’s like to be in my shoes,” he said.

                I walked fast along the path and I heard the sudden shuffle of feet behind me.  I had let my guard down and he tackled me from behind.  We went down and my face slammed into the ground and my chin split open.  He was very heavy and his knee sunk into my spine, his fist plowed into the back of my neck.  I struggled to free myself and we were cursing at each other.  There was scorn in his voice and he said “sometimes it has to get worse before it gets better.”  He was soaked in gasoline and it was sloshing everywhere.  It seeped into my clothes and ran down my head.  He was grinding my face into the ground and hollering like a madman.  I had been grasping the box of matches and then he started to bash my hand into the ground and pry the matches from my fingers.  I was trying to get away but he was holding me down and holding me down and the gasoline kept spreading.  I could feel it on my skin and it was flowing down my face and burning my eyes.  I could see my blood pooling up on the cobblestone and he hissed in violence saying, “isn’t that what you said? Isn’t that what you fucking said?”  I couldn’t move up and we were both covered in gasoline and he was trying to light a match.  I reached out and slapped away the box of matches and it went flying.  I elbowed him in the head and then rolled out from beneath him and scrambled up to my feet.  He was heaving on the ground.  Blood was pouring from my chin and I tried to catch my breath.         

                “I know what you’re going through,” I said.

                “Bullshit.” 

                 He stumbled up to his feet. 

                “You don’t know shit,” he said.

                He began stepping toward me I and I started to back away. 

                “Do you have a bed to sleep in at night, asshole?” he asked.

                He began fumbling with the matches.    

“Do you get to eat everyday, asshole? Do you have fucking bank account?  Do you have a little jar where you keep your change at home, asshole?  Have you ever tried to kill yourself, assho--“

Fire consumed him.

With a searing swoosh he burst into flames.  His skin burned orange and black like molten lava.  He collapsed to the ground and was squirming in a breathing pool of fire.  His face looked like a jack-o'-lantern and he was silent as he burned alive.  I turned and walked away quickly and several people came running through the park and began shrieking in horror and some ran away.  I looked back and saw the bystanders and the soft fire burning across his body which sizzled like a hot cinder glowing the night.  I recalled what Saadi wrote in The Rose Garden:

The world, my brother! will abide with none,
By the world's Maker let thy heart be won.
Rely not, nor repose on this world's gain,
For many a son like thee she has reared and slain.
What matters, when the spirit seeks to fly,
If on a throne or on bare earth we die?