New Writings by Dennis L. Siluk, 2007 & 2009

The Rose Room ((Stockyards of Minnesota)(English and Spanish))

2009-05-25T08:55:00.000-07:00

The Rose Room
((The Stockyards of South St. Paul, Minnesota, 1966) (a Chick Evens Story))

Chick Evens went to work for the stockyards one summer in 1966, near the town-let of South Saint Paul, the summer was extremely hot, and you could bake an egg on the sidewalks.
His mother worked at Swift’s Meats (in the meatpacking department), the company, which he now came to be employed at, made a deep impression on Chick’s mind and he never forgot the thoughts and experiences that came to him during those last months of that summer working at the stockyards inside a packing house (cutting up carcasses of hogs), and especially delivering animal waste to the Rose Room!

The traditional puffing forth smoke, which attracted attention to its tall chimneys as they rumbled along and burnt up the remains of pigs, cows, sheep, and goats, slowly over miles of bones and animal waste, circulated the air, and drifted throughout the huge stockyards, second to the nation’s largest in Chicago.
One could see and smell at any section, division or corner of the town-let this putrid smoke, from the stockyards, all the way down to the Mississippi River, some five-miles away, and even across the Robert Street Bridge, to the other side of the river, where resided St. Paul, proper, the inner city, the downtown area; that dark to light gray smoke, rising into the clear morning sky.
Where some of this smoke came from was a dim lit, small room through which an employee brought in stacks of animal throw away, desecrated meats, from throughout the stockyards. From these stacks could be seen glowing and pale pus from hams, torn hides, discolored skin and unusable bones and infected guts, and so forth, nothing to please an appetite.
There was no wind, or windows in this room—this room they called ‘The Rose Room’, just an iron round plate on the floor, heavy as a Cadillac car, it was opened by pressing a yellow button, and machinery lifted this tonnage door about three feet up…then it stopped as if a person might fall or jump into this inferno pit, and there was hell’s fire. You could hear the crackling of the fire, feel the heat penetrating your pores, and smell the punishingly putrid stink therewithal, and near suffocating in the process: it all was close to gagging the lungs, to a point of collapsing.
The fire was equal to the most blazing spot in a forest fire, it grew along the sides of the pit when the iron door was opened, like snakes running up its sides to escape.

∙

In the afternoons I went to what they called the Rose Room, opened up the door to the house of flames, it crackled and snapped under my feet, even the sole of my shoes got hot through the thick stone floor, the smell of this room was putrid, foul, sizzling. It made a man think about going back to school, it did me anyway, learn a real trade—it was a room I swear rented out by the devil or perhaps God Himself, to express where souls go to decay—the repentance abyss.
My mind captured such an image even before I set foot out of this room, the first time I brought in a wheelbarrow of animal waste—I remember I had little to say, looking into that abyss of flames, pouring my wheelbarrow of rotten animal carcasses, soft tissue, over the edge of the iron rounded door, watching the massive fire consume it even before it hit the bottom of the pot, boldly and freely.
∙

The fatty tissue, he poured down, into the pit, became inflamed almost instantly. This was a house with only one window—the fire window. When he had poured the waste over the edge of the opening, the fire leaped back up at him, swept over the rim of the frame that held the iron door in place, it swept all the way to his feet, he jumped back, stood against the wall looking into the hungered fire, as if it was a living beast trying to harm him, and a voice said something, a voice to the side of him, by the door that was usually shut to the room, except if someone else was waiting to commence in the same traditional work he had just finished…

∙

The Employee

Employee: Come on, come on! Let’s get going here sunny, I don’t have all day—give the rose a kiss and get the hell out of there so I can drop my load! (A laugh.)

Chick Evens: It almost got me!

Employee: It’s a suicide escape! ((he declared shrewdly) (he comes to stand beside Evens)) It creeps in when you’re half sleeping, or daydreaming on the job, stay alert in this room kid—now move on out of here, go around my backside, give me some room to maneuver my wheelbarrow.

Note: the stockyards in South St. Paul, created and built the city of South Saint Paul, establishing itself in between, 1885-1887, and built by Gustavus Franklin Swift Jr., and prior to him, his father. Prior to Swift’s And Company, there was no city south of St. Paul, Minnesota. It was one of the largest stockyards in the world, and second only to Chicago in the United States. This story is dedicated to the Swift Family, who in their way contributed to the employment of so many people in some many areas of the United States, and especially, South Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Written 5-16-2009 ((No: 398) (SA/5ds))

Spanish Version

El Cuarto Rosa
((El Corral de Ganado de San Pablo Sur, Minnesota, 1966) (Una Historia de Chick Evens))

Chick Evens fue a trabajar para el corral de ganado un verano de 1966, cerca al pueblito de San Pablo Sur; el verano era tan caluroso que podrías cocinar un huevo en las veredas.
Su madre trabajaba en Swift’s Meats (en el departamento de empaque de carnes), la compañía en la que ahora él había sido empleado, que formó una impresión profunda en la mente de Chick ya que él nunca se olvidaría de los pensamientos ni de las experiencias que él obtuvo trabajando en el corral, en la casa de empaques, durante los últimos meses de ese verano (cortando la carne de los cerdos muertos) y especialmente: ¡llevando los desechos de animales al Cuarto Rosa!
La tradicional nube de humo—que hacía que llamara la atención de sus chimeneas altas mientras éstas sonaban a lo largo y quemaban lentamente los restos de los cerdos, vacas, carneros y cabras, sobre miles de huesos y desperdicio de animal—hacía circular el aire y se iba a la deriva a través del corral inmenso, el segundo más grande en la nación después de Chicago.
Uno podía ver y oler en cualquier lugar del pueblito este humo putrefacto del corral, todo el camino abajo hacia el río Mississippi, aproximadamente a cinco millas de distancia e incluso cruzando el Puente Roberto, al otro lado del río donde residía la ciudad de San Pablo propiamente, el centro de la ciudad; aquel humo oscuro, ligeramente gris, levantándose en el cielo claro de la mañana.
Había una luz tenue de donde este humo venía, un cuarto pequeño donde un empleado traería, de todas partes del corral, montones de restos de animales para botarlos, carnes malogradas. Podía verse, en estas pilas, intensos y pálidos pus de los jamones, costados rasgados, piel descolorida, huesos inutilizables e intestinos infectados, etcétera, nada para complacer a un apetito.
No había ventanas ni corría viento en este cuarto—a este cuarto ellos lo llamaban “El Cuarto Rosa”—sólo un plato redondo de hierro en el piso, tan pesado como un carro Cadillac, éste se abría presionando un botón amarillo, y las máquinas levantarían este tonelaje de puerta, cerca de un metro de altura…luego éste se detendría como si una persona podría caerse o saltar dentro de esta fosa infernal; había un fuego de infierno. Tú podrías oír el sonido del fuego, sentir el calor penetrando tus poros, aparte de oler esa hediondez putrefacta y casi sofocante; en el proceso: todo esto estaba a punto de asfixiar a los pulmones, al punto de colapsar.
El fuego era igual al punto más ardiente en un incendio en la selva, éste crecía a lo largo de los lados de la fosa cuando la puerta de hierro se abría, como serpientes corriendo arriba a sus lados para escapar.

En las tardes iba a lo que ellos llamaban El Cuarto Rosa, abría la puerta de la casa de llamas, esta crujía y chasqueaba bajo mis pies, incluso la suela de mis zapatos se calentaban por el piso grueso de piedra, el olor de este cuarto era putrefacto, repugnante y sofocante. Esto hacía pensar a un hombre en volver al colegio, esto me hizo pensar de todas maneras, aprender un oficio real—este era un cuarto, lo juro, alquilado por el mismo diablo o talvez por Dios mismo, para decir a dónde van las almas a descomponerse—el abismo de arrepentimiento.
Mi mente capturó tal imagen incluso antes de poner un pie en este cuarto, la primera vez que traje una carretilla de desperdicio de animal—recuerdo que tuve poco que decir, mirando en el abismo de llamas, vaciando mi carretilla de carne muerta descompuesta y tejidos suaves sobre el borde de la puerta redonda de hierro, mirando al fuego masivo consumir esto antes que éstos tocaran el fondo del recipiente, audaz y libremente.

Los tejidos grasosos, que él tiraba en el hoyo, eran inflamados casi al instante. Esta era una casa con sólo una ventana—la ventana del fuego. Cuando él vertió los restos sobre el borde de la entrada, el fuego se extendió hacia él, barrió sobre el borde del marco que sostenía la puerta de hierro todo el camino hasta sus pies, él saltó hacia atrás, estuvo recostado en la pared mirando al hambriento fuego, como si éste fuera una fiera viva tratando de herirlo, y una voz dijo algo, una voz al costado de él, por la puerta que normalmente estaba cerrada, excepto si alguien más estuviera esperando para comenzar con el mismo trabajo tradicional que él acababa de terminar…

El Empleado

Empleado: ¡Vamos, vamos! Continuemos yendo, no tengo todo el día—dale un beso a la rosa y sal de aquí para que yo pueda vaciar mi carga (una risa).

Chick Evens: ¡Casi me alcanza!

Empleado: ¡Es un escape suicida! ((él dijo astutamente) (él vino a pararse detrás de Evens)) Este te alcanza cuando estás medio dormido, o soñando despierto en el trabajo, mantente alerto en este cuarto niño—ahora muévete de aquí, anda alrededor detrás de mi, dame más espacio para maniobrar mi carretilla.

Nota: Los corrales de ganados en el Sur de San Pablo, crearon y construyeron la ciudad de San Pablo Sur, estableciéndose ésta en el medio, entre 1885 y1887, construida por Gustavus Franklin Swift hijo, y antes que él por su padre. Antes de la Compañía Swift, no existía la ciudad de San Pablo Sur, en Minnesota. Este era uno de los más grandes corrales el mundo, el primero estaba en Chicago en Estados Unidos. Esta historia está dedicada a la familia Swift quienes, en su forma, contribuyeron a dar empleo a tanta gente en algunos lugares de los Estados Unidos, y especialmente, en el Sur de San Pablo, Minnesota.

Escrito el 16-Mayo-2009 ((No: 398) (SA/5ds))

Stalking and Ambush of the Amazon Puma (a short story; more truth than fiction)

2009-05-09T15:16:00.001-07:00

Stalking and Ambush
Of the Amazon Puma

The Stalking

The trail was a quarter foot deep in the ground and roughly worn where it slanted up, to go down the hill, that looked like an over weeded irrigation ditch, we climbed down it slowly, a short but steep hill, and halfway down on the right we sat there with our backs against the now, two hill tops, and tall grass all about us, and bushes, a few trees. It was very green and warm country, with small hills, embankments, jungle all around: below the rainforest was a thick grassy, bushy plateau, where our lodge resided, just beyond that flatten landscape as the lodge itself was enmeshed into a jungle like setting.
The lodge sat on a cut of land, alongside a tributary that ran— out into the Amazon River, with a few other water courses.
Avelino was jealous of no one at the lodge, as far as guides go. He simply knew he was better than all of them; more of a hunter, a faster tracker, and guide, a no-nonsense person, didn’t drink or smoke, and he had class in almost everything he did, his one fault, if you can call it that, was, he nearly ever smiled. If anyone was jealous it was perhaps his assistants: Jose and Manuel (who managed the boat trips usually), if not possibly Captain Marcelo (the lodges only licensed pilot on the river). It seemed as if or appeared to be, Avelino took command of the show.

This day had almost come to an end, evening was descending all around us; Avelino, myself and Rosa, in the thick of the jungle, had walked about three miles from the canopy, and were a mile from the local tribal village, we had visited in the morning. We had left the canopy area too late to get back to the lodge before twilight—and the trail was becoming hard to see. Avelino said, “This country is like my backyard, I know it like the back of my hands, don’t worry, we only got a little ways to go!”
Even in spite of the puma following us, more like stalking, about one-hundred years to our left side, in the deep, perhaps closer now, it was hard to see.
If it was still daylight, and if you looked away from the jungle, and the hill side, this hilly slope, with its long gradation, of high and low foliage, we were headed toward flattened land down below us, grass burnt yellow and brown, cut in sections by our lodge, so one could see what might be lurking, and across this long sweep, lead right to the lodge’s wooden walkway, and chain of cabins, which lead to the main lodge.
We all sat here, while I got my strength, and energy back, and heart beat went back to normal, and watched the lights go on, one by one, in the lodge, far-off in the distance.

Avelino was looking carefully for the brown, sleek puma, squatting on his heels to see movement in the tall grass, behind a few bushes. We were all weaponless. There was a warm breeze that appeared to come from the direction of the tributary; it blew the tall grass around some, on the hillside. There were many small pale to gray clouds overhead, and there were no trees to speak of, more like tall hedge plants, and shrub, on and round this spot; here the foliaged was so thick—so it seemed—you could almost walk on top of it.
For a quarter of an hour we did not see anything. Then with Avelino’s long white poking stick, as we were about ready to make our descend down the rest of the hill, then to the edge of the rainforest, across the flattened land, and cut grass section to the lodge, I saw something moving over the shoulder of Avelino, towards us. I was sweating so badly, I had to wipe my glasses clear. A flash, I witnessed a reddish-brown-colored something, lighted by the moon, moving slowly, but with quick jerking like motions though the grass, it didn’t seem to me it was the puma though, too near to the ground.
The sky was now filled with dark shadows, and we fought to make each step in the tall grass, pushing head-first, fighting and pushing the grass and bushes to our sides, while we watched for the puma, and at the lights of the lodge.
It was near inky dark now, except for the stars, and the moon, and the lodge’s lights, and we were close to the edge of the rainforest—think, I was thinking, the puma had failed its mission.
Edging down a little further my tennis shoes ruined, feeling roots and rocks and holes under them. I was excited with this night because we had seen the puma, but now it had put me on guard.
The closer we got to the lodge, I could taste the aroma of coffee on my tongue and thought about eating a breakfast, not a dinner; still my heart pounding but now on the flattened land, somehow I felt safer but not Avelino.
“Everyone stay close to one another,” he said, as if the excitement was about to start.
Avelino pointed back towards the edge of the rainforest, watching where he was pointing, his white stick in his right hand, to the left of the stick was a deep gulch, gap in the landscape, and then an open patch of forest, “That is where he is;” said Avelino, and as we a walked towards the lodge, now a shadow and movement followed us in, moving very quickly, and pushing some of the bushes aside, it was now too dark to see a thing, and we all transverse as we walked, we did not see the puma, but we could hear him. We could no longer hear birds overhead, nor saw them flying, but that was all. I stepped in some dung, I could smell it on my shoes, but we saw nothing, not even the green, and no sounds of monkey’s; the lodge and its preemptor was jungle, not as the flatten land we were now on, and we were still 600-feet from the wooden walkway that was attached to the cabins, and main lodge.
I was thinking, maybe the puma had gone back to the main part of the jungle—its home, I knew they were a stalk and ambush predator, and could jump some forty feet, but inside the jungle was cooler, perhaps it wanted to get out of this heat. But that was my ignorance speaking, it was hungry.
I was beginning to feel brave again, and it was nice to be able to walk in an easy stroll, I mean, simply walk, not worried about the puma. Rosa strolled very close to me. Avelino had his white stick resting on his shoulder. And the moon overhead was hot, hot enough to make me sweat, as if its light was burning with the breeze.
Avelino motioned to us two, to stop, in front of us was the puma. It was near eight feet long, brownish coat, perhaps close to 150 to 160 pounds, it wasn’t ambushing now I told myself, it was confronting. But what did I see back on the slope, it was reddish-brown.
Avelino had his eyes staring at the cat’s movement, his stick in front of him waving it, it seemed worthless to do it, but he did it nonetheless. He grinned.
Usually puma’s were shy of humans, so I was told, but I don’t believe that anymore, it was a bunch of hogwash, and we were valuable meat, and the beast was hungry. In a way it seemed natural for it to be here, no longer was it a mystery, nothing odd or unseemly in the pacing of the beast, in a half-circle, or in a man carrying a white stick.

The Ambush

The puma gave a great leap, a jump—Avelino shot his stick up, the cat was several yards from us, he gave a second jump then ran off fast.
“Avelino,” I told him, “What.”
Lying on its side was a large reddish-brown rodent; it looked like an oversized guinea pig, perhaps two feet in length, and forty-five pounds, a rat, a giant rat.
We all stood there a moment, as casual observers, it was a capybara, they grow much larger, and this was perhaps half its size. I think I was more amazed than in shock. To all appearances, he was dead, and the cat had taken what it considered, the least resistant, meaty meal, thank goodness.
I could feel my heart beating as if I wanted to push it back into place—my chest felt hot against my fingers, watching the cat ripping at the beast-rodent as if to show off, “Let’s hurry out of here,” said Avelino.

At the lodge I had scars on my forearms from all the bushes I had to push out of my way; some even on my forehead, some folks asking if I had fallen off the canopy as a bad joke. I had one good, near severe welt on the bottom of my foot, a few broken toenails, holes in my socks, scratched shoulders, torn shirt.
In the morning we all went out to look at the carcass of the giant rodent, Avelino to burying the remains, if there were any. Not sure why I wanted to go along, perhaps to see what the cat had done, could do, does when he’s hungry. The cat had eaten and tore out the rodent’s liver, kidneys as if with a knife, skillfully the cat had slit open the stomach and turned it inside, emptied it out into the grass, must have shook the rat-beast some, like a tree, to have eaten other delicacies in it, I figured, the paws of the cat were large I remember, good for sweeping out the inners.
“You folks go on back to the lodge, and get ready for Jose and Manuel to take you on a boat ride, I’ll get to burying this rodent,” said Avelino, without a smile, just a plain old grin. I was completely happy it was over.

5-8-2009

Eating her Own Death (A chapter story, on WWI)

2009-05-06T16:54:00.000-07:00

Eating her Own Death
((A Chapter story from “To Save the Lopsided Sparrow) (Sequel to: “Cornfield Laughter”))

It was funny to Corporal Shannon O’Day to see Leticia shot at close range. There was something strange, almost comic to it—a bullet and all of a sudden an agitated surprise to the mad woman’s face, a surprise to find inside of her, in the center of her lair, to see her drop backwards (than catch her balance), next—to watch her go frantic in dizzying circles at some robotic electric impulse, as if she was racing ahead of death itself, inside of her. But the great puzzle was—for the moment anyway—the great puzzle of all was, the thing Shannon O’Day shook his head back and fourth about, and had to turn away from was—as she laughed (ashamed he was even looking at this mad woman’s humor) —that she madly ripped at her stomach area, tearing at it, until it split open, and pulling out her intestines and then stood there jerking them out and eating them, jerking them out and eating them, taking pleasure in it, relishing it; Shannon just would shake his head, horridly so, as it was unspeakable.

It was an awful sight. Self eating and devouring of the near-dead, herself, as she was dying; it all became stinking, foul. Death had played a dirty joke, so he felt. He looked around for whiskey, anything to drink, to get drunk on, anything kind of alcohol would suffice, and found a bottle of Watermelon wine under the straw topped bed, the one he was sitting on, and the very one he had recovered from his wound on, the very one he had slept on for eleven days. It was a half gallon of wine, the label read, “Watermelon Wine, aged one year, 2-3 large watermelons, up to 7-1/2 lbs, finely granulated sugar, 3 tsp acid blend, 2 crushed Camp den tablet, 3 tsp yeast nutrient packet Champagne yeast…(makes three galloons). It was in: English, French, Russian and German; someone was not taking sides, and selling his stock of wine to all the future, and potential, War Veterans, and anybody who could pay in general.
Shannon, sat on the edge of his bed started drinking the wine, drinking it half empty, looking at Leticia, drinking faster than he could swallow his saliva, having to spat on the side. He knew he had to get out of the lair, lest he get sick, and he never got sick from drinking, and he pulled himself together, sat outside, nervously holding onto the bottle, drinking it empty.
This was not anything to laugh about, openly or anytime, but he felt somehow superior to and wondered at this, as he looked at her, over his shoulder, her body still on the floor, than staggered out of town out of the war torn hamlet, called Douaumont, once and for all. He knew, instinctively so, that the battle of Verdun was over, if only now he could find his French Battalion.

Fifty day, 5-6-2009, written out on the roof, Lima, Peru · A Chapter story for “To Save a Lopsided Sparrow” · 529

The Farm (The Missing Chapter, to the Novel: "Cornfield Laughter.")

2009-05-02T10:01:00.000-07:00

The Farm
(The Missing Chapter, to the Novel: “Cornfield Laughter.”)

“Yes, brother,” said Gus O’Day to his younger brother Shannon, “a man sees too much if he lives too long: a lot of fellows in a lot of situations.”
He was chatting in a kindly tone with his brother on the porch steps of his farm, Gus’ wife, Mabel, sitting on a rocker on the open air porch. It was a cool evening, and Shannon had spent a good portion of it out in the cornfields drinking by him self.
“All this farm life gets yaw tired I’d think, up the nose with rules and regulations, and if you don’t produce, the government gives yaw money, and if you do, and you want to sell, and the government don’t want you to raise more crops and sell, you can’t sell them anyhow, you end up storing them in some bin, the government steps in, don’t know how you put up with it, but I love your cornfields brother, I love the crows, and the smell of dirt and the yellowish-green in the cornstalks, and listening to the trains go by on those metal tracks, and even when the breaks screech, and one car bumps into to another.”
“Yup!” said Gus, “we done made a bowl of soup out of ourselves on this here farm alright, now all we are, is recipes for the government, if they want stew with corn we plant corn. If they want stew with carrots, we plant carrots; if they want…oh you know what I mean.”
“Man don’t need a backbone anymore, brother (Gus asks for a swig of Shannon’s bottle of whisky, and he hands it to him, and Mabel says, ‘Slow with it, remember your heart, you’re no spring chicken, Shannon’s twenty-five years younger than you, so take it easy.”)
“She likes to bug me,” said Gus, “but as you were going to say brother?”
“Yup!” said Shannon, “man don’t need a backbone anymore, it’s us old critters that have them, I don’t know how big of a wrench it will take to loosen mine up, no need for it nowadays.”

“I reckon Shannon you’d be right lonesome out here just by yourself.”
“I don’t rightly know what you mean by that, why you saying—what you saying?”
“Your older brother Shannon, Gus, he’s picked out his headstone already, matter-of-fact, the other day, says he’s goin’ to need it real soon,” remarked Mabel.
Mabel lit the lantern, it was becoming dark, moved it over a bit by the two brothers sitting on the steps, shoulder to shoulder.
“Can’t see the steps,” said Gus, “my eyes don’t work much anymore, too many shadows in them, I move too slow, breath too hard, get tired too quick.”
“I need to get up,” said Gus to Shannon. Shannon nodded his head up and down, toward his chest, “Yes” he said, but it wasn’t that he needed to relieve himself; it was he needed to get more air into his lungs, his stomach. And he stood up, and held tight onto the railing.
“Nonsense,” said Mabel, “just sit on back down, the strain is too much fer yaw!”
“Honor, and pride and discipline,” Gus told Shannon, “that’s the recipe for a man, and God.”
“I know all that Gus, and trouble is the best teacher, it always comes back to haunt yaw!”
“You know I got to go, got to leave yaw, couldn’t’ do it without seeing yaw one more time though…” Gus told Shannon in an almost whisper.
Shannon knew what he meant, it was Gus who had raised Shannon per near, he was always patient, calm, with him and figured if he ever wanted to know about God, his brother must had been a carbon copy of him. He was a good model, and always kind of put himself in the background, he had a servant’s heart. —Gus didn’t need to tell Shannon twice, he saw him holding his chest, leaning on that rail that extended from the first step to the third, the top one. Gus asked Shannon to stand up by him. Mabel had laid her head back, Shannon stood up, Gus leaned toward him. And here was two men kissing each other on the cheeks, each hugging the other showing outright love, without shame. He said his last words to Shannon, “It will be a long time from now to then.”
Mabel lifted up the lantern to see why Shannon O’Day was crying, a tall, lean, old man had stopped breathing.

Note on this Chapter Story: “The Farm”: Here is one of the missing chapters to the Novel "Cornfield Laughter" concerning the cornfields of where Shannon O'Day does much of his drinking. But in this chapter, left out of the book purposely, didn't have time to finish it, mentally it was there, just not down in writing, is when he meets his brother Gus, for the last time. He owns a farm next to some of Shannon's friends, whom he drinks in both their fields a river creek separating them. Written 5-1-2009. The other chapters yet not written I consider missing, that I felt should have been written during the three days writing of “Cornfield Laughter,” is of Shannon O’Day’s experience in WWI, which he expresses in the book, but not to any extent (and of course in that first story I had really wanted to center it on a certain all around theme, that being, the gathering of the souls surrounding Shannon’s life, with contentment a seeking goal, and therefore, a few other things like the farm and WWI, developed in the near future.

The Last of Sunset (One Soldier, WWII) A Short Story

2009-04-30T18:48:00.000-07:00

The Last of Sunset
(One Soldier, WWII)

((The End) (The Last of Sunset))

Grandfather stood in the last of sunset in the open door, his fingers holding onto the end of his pipe, and his other hand and arm wound strong and steady around a broom, it was the last months of the war, 1945.
When the message came about Frank, he just lowered the broom to its side against hanging jackets next to the screened in door. And went to sit down in a kitchen chair around the corner of the parlor, the table being against the wall, I was eight-years old then, would be nine in two months. Grandpa sat slowly down and looked at the piece of paper, his older son Wally got out of the mailbox on the porch, he had handed it to him. He already knew beforehand what it was. He didn’t speak to anyone in the house. Just looked at the characterless envelope, it had no stamp on it; didn’t need one. He waited for his son, the older one to return, to come down from his attic bedroom.
“I can’t open it. You open it please.” He said to Wally.
“Damn Italy! Damn them Germans!” And then he grabbed his father and held him, trying to hold him. And that was all.

One day there was a call to arms, a war to fight, like my grandfather did in WWI, six-thousand miles away. And he went, and Uncle Frank now twenty some years later, got that same calling. He one morning got up out of bed and had breakfast and he was gone, just like that. He went to boot camp, someplace down south, and then onto Europe, to Italy, and that was all of him.

And in the next months and years to come, he would see pictures at the cinema, and in the papers, of a war that was. Names and pictures of dead soldiers, again, and again, and again. People who loved their sons and brothers, as we all loved Frank.

((The Beginning)(One Soldier))

“I got to go to war Paw,” Frank said.
“Why? He said, hesitantly, “I just don’t see any use in it any more, our country ain’t being invaded.”
“Germany and Italy started one and now Japan hit us in Pearl Harbor, besides it’s the right thing to do.”
“My brother Wally went paw, was a POW, now he’s home, he got a Purple Heart, I need to go.”
“The good it does for anyone I’ll never know. I went to war; Wally went to war, to protect a country that doesn’t need any protecting.”
“Anyway, I’ve got to go, I’m eighteen now.”
“Of course you got to go,” my grandfather said, “those Germans—”
“Go get me a hand full of tobacco out of my bedroom,” grandpa asked Frank.

So Frank got ready. And Uncle Wally came down from the bedroom attic to give him a ride to the Minneapolis’ induction center. Mother washed and mended his cloths before he left. That night I had overheard her talking to Anne, her older sister on the telephone, she said “I want him to go, and paw I think wants him to go, but neither one of us want him to go. I just don’t understand it, and I won’t ever, and so don’t expect me to.”
Then I walked back up stairs to the attic bedrooms, and laid down still and my head fell back into a feathered pillow maw and Aunt Betty, and grandma—before she died in 1933 of pneumonia—filled this pillow with chicken feathers. And I wasn’t talking to myself, I wasn’t talking to anybody, but I heard a voice in my head, “He’s got to go, nothing you can do about it,” it said. And I said out loud, “Them Germans—”
“Shoo,” said Uncle Wally, “we can’t do anything.”
I turned over softly, and kind of heaved over toward the side, looking at the rug beside my bed, on the floor in the dark.
“Anyhow,” said Uncle Wally, “he’ll be alright.”
But I knew, even at that age, folks don’t’ go to war for the amusement of it, nor leave their family for the fun of it, but Wally wanted me to go back to sleep, he said he had to give Frank a ride in the early morning to the induction center, he had to take his oath, I guess. I turned about on my bed onto my back, I told that voice in my head to ‘Shut up,” that secret voice. And fell to sleep.

The next morning we all got up, Uncle Wally, me and Maw and grandpa, and my brother Mike, and Uncle Frank, we ate breakfast, under the dim grayness of the morning, and we all looked a bit grim, all trying to keep busy, Maw trying to put breakfast on the table for everyone and I ate. Then we all finished, and Uncle Frank packed a small suite case of cloths. Maw said, “Honest folks need clean cloths, even when they are headed on to war, and a decent breakfast.”
I brought Frank his coat and hat, it was October, 1944, and maw and grandpa still didn’t cry, somehow I expected them to, but I wanted to, they just stood in front of Frank, and didn’t move. For all she cared, the country and all that was in it, they could have it, so long as they left our family alone. We were not rich, and maw didn’t care to have her brother fight and die for the rich because she believed our blood was as good as any blood anywhere out there, and somehow the rich forgot that, and she wanted to remind them of it. Then she kissed Frank, and Grandpa hugged him, and I hugged him, and held back my tears for later.

4-30-2009 ··

The Vanity of Ernest Hem (or, the Dead Roots Drama) Parts one and two complete

2009-04-25T18:31:00.000-07:00

The Vanity of Ernest Hem
(Or, the Dead Roots Drama)

Three time Poet Laureate,
By Dennis L. Siluk Ed.D.

Part One
Of two parts

Chapter One

I had an impulse, when I was nineteen-years old, to become the editor and publisher of a small town weekly newspaper in Stillwater, Minnesota, it turned out to be a little more complex than I had expected. I think inside of most men they think they can be a singer, own a restaurant, or be a small town editor, and I was no different.
Formerly, when I lived in St. Paul Minnesota, I knew a good many newspaper men and women, met them through contacts when I was quite young, seventeen, eighteen and now nineteen. They all dreamed of getting away from the low tone, hustle and bustle of things in these Midwestern conservative cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and owning their own little place, running it the way they wanted to, and writing books in their spare time, or moving onto San Francisco or New York, something bigger, not like a generation before them, when now, the old folks, came to the city, and all they wanted was to own a corner ma and pa grocery store, that’s all but gone now. With change, comes new generational goals, comes new dreams, or perhaps it is just one dream for me, the dream I always wanted, to be a writer, a novelist, and in the interim, a newspaper man, and it all would start at nineteen years old for me, and it was starting.
This so called writer, a want to be writer, wanted to be a good writer, and write short stories, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, novelettes, novellas you name it, I wanted to write it, articles, essays and so forth. Just to write. I asked an author once, “What qualifies a person to be an author, or writer?” and he said, firmly, and stoutly, “He or she’s got to have a lot to say, or write about.” And I suppose now I am acquiring that.
There it is, I said it, in a nutshell, you see; a windy call to the brotherhood of ink slingers, and plot builders, and theme moulders. I am among them, few hear their calling at nineteen, but I did, I really did, not for vanity sake, yet I suppose I had a little of that who doesn’t. I mean it is one of the seven great sins I hear, but was mine any worse than anyone else’s? I’d say no; perhaps an objectionable vice, not a Christian teaching, but not in the bible per se, I had never read it, nothing to put me into the Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy,’ surely not one of the seven virtues also. I did not have the other six, if indeed Vanity is one: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, envy and pride. Woops, pride, might be the other word for vanity. But I had kindness also, and humility, a raw kind of humility. My mother once said, pride is the most serious of all the deadly sins, and the ultimate source of which all the others arise. She said it is trying to compete with God; Lucifer tried that I mean, not me. I know that is what caused his fall from heaven. Anyhow, I’m talking too much on this subject.
In my own case, I had that impulse; I really, truly felt I did. But I knew I would have to learn the trade, I think that also, my head feels numb, but I will write on: I had to make a living, and this was my main reason to try and get a job as a newspaper editor, and in the process of all these elements, I’d become a writer, because I had a lot to say, a whole lot to say and write about. And the job just kind of made itself available. Almost like genetic manipulation now that I think of it. You know what I mean, like, environmental pollution; it just seeped in, like drug trafficking—it was there, available.
And I did get the job, in the little town-ship of Stillwater, after birthday party, with its deep history dating back to the around sometime in the 17th Century; Stillwater, about twenty-five miles outside of St. Paul.
(The Narrator :) I hate to pop in at such an occasion, but I must explain something psychological, behavior change techniques to improve behavior, such as altering an individual's behaviors and reactions to stimuli through positive and negative reinforcement of adaptive behavior and/or the reduction of maladaptive behavior through punishment and/or therapy, this my dear readers can all be reversed.)

Just making a living was not really the big issue, because back then when I got the job, work was plentiful in America, and Minnesota above all, perhaps a little better off than most states.
I suppose I felt making a living needed to connect with what I wanted to become, and knowing this I spent many hours at making my living, and writing at night, and trying to go to college, after my nineteenth birthday, I quite college, at the University of Minnesota at that point and time, never heard from them again either, they never tried to contact me, and so I left them be, I had one year behind me, and the owner of the newspaper overlooked having a degree. And I figured since Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner never had degrees, why would I have to have one, I mean I was in good company. Prior to this job, I had worked as a labourer, wandering from foundry to factory, just a common employee, for the most part; I needed money only to pay for my one room apartment, and my college tuition.
The sad thing was, I lost the impulse to write after I took that job in Stillwater, unknowingly why, and my new feelings were simply to publish, drink, try to do my college studies through the mail, Mr. Scriber, the newspaper owner fixed that up for me. Some college I never heard of but it was accredited, and that also took time away from my personal writings, no time for sending out manuscripts of my short stories, and so forth and so on. Oh I did sit at my desk and write out a few stories now and then, less then, than before, and less now than ever before. What I’m trying to say is I did not have much spare time, or sleeping time, cheating my body and mind of rest, for work and socialization. Mostly work and the socialization was with elements of the newspaper. But I was young and wild and like everyone else at my age, which’s to say I was any different.
My employer was naturally unaware of what was going on, because I played the game quite well, my time management skills were good. Or if he knew, I didn’t know he knew, and he was then, or I am inclined to thing he was endearingly sympathetic, with such a fellow like me, but I was growing up. My mother and father had passed on before my 16th birthday, and I was the only child. So I had no one to really keep close contact with but a few friends.
All youth have that edge to be the unscrupulous once in a while, to do the unthinkable, like I did at the party once and drank twenty-shots of whisky, and my friend ran down in his car to Ramsey Hospital, to get my system cleaned out, I remember he had sad eyes, where prior to this he had, or we had joyful faces, or we had something like that. It was like my friends became my caretakers, instead of nurtures. And I wanted to show my appreciation, when we had the contest of who could drink more; funny the things we do to get attention.

My first book a novel, had sold very well, “Formless Darkness,” not sure where I came up with that name, it was in my head when I woke up one morning, just like that, as if someone had planted it there, as if I was under a spell, and the name imprinted onto one of my genes. And now I had money, and I bought myself a duplex, three apartments to it, rented two out to friends of Mr. Scriber, this paid for the heat and electric, although it seemed I was paying for more the electric, to keep the place cool, and the summers were longer and winters shorter. I thought of myself as settling down now, leading the simple life, I was twenty-three years old. Already had published a book, now I could consort with nature, read, and loaf about, as long the royalties kept coming in, and I held my job.
Whatever takes place in my life, I thought at this juncture, I mean with my career as an editor and novelist, I would when need be, do all I had to do to live in this simple, and independent, fashion.
During these years between nineteen and thirty, I was kept busy. It was at thirty-one, I began to pay heavily for my indiscretion, or better put, lack of direction. I was drinking too much, seeing too many lovers, they came to my door, at work, and I had so many affairs one right after the other, I had no time to call my friends, and I had not written my second book yet, had it contracted to do so in a year, the year was up, it was a year and half, six months past the due date, and I was told do or die. Meaning, for an American, grind the book out…I will leave that out for later.
Anyhow, I had to try to do what I thought was the impossible. I guess as I look back now, folks often talk about leisure, I had it at such a young age, I didn’t think it would ever fade, but it does. And to be honest with myself, it turns into laziness, and nobody likes to look at the lazy people, and I was as lazy as the day was long, lazy, lazy, and it was a sinful laziness.
My friend was writing eight to twelve hours a day, everyday, seven days a week, so the postcards said; he now changed from phone calls to postcards said he was travelling too much, all over the world, so he had to write by postcards. I was sleeping those hours away at night, and wake up at noon and partied, drank and well, if I got an hour in to write, I was doing well. Like many writers, I could not write at all like C.E. my friend. What was I doing with Greg Hamilton, my agent, who had the contract in my face every other day? I was avoiding him that is what I was doing.
I wandered through the town-let, went fishing, never did tramp around in St. Paul, or go to those night clubs I used to anymore, stayed in Stillwater. I used to visit my friend in Oakdale, Diane Horn, was going to college to become a teacher, at the time, but we only now talked over the phone; her voice changed from year to year.
My country neighbours talked too much, gossip, so I couldn’t ask for their advice, not like I used to in High School with Diane but she gave it over the phone. They were shopkeepers, farmers, restaurant owners, antique dealers.
These told gossipers, were the old idlers sitting up and down on benches along the street. They talked among themselves as if I was a millionaire; far from it. They thought I was a young man going through life not working, and even suspected me of bring a crook, connected to the mob, or mafia. But if anyone looked suspicious, it was them, not me. I kind of felt I was an open book, not closed.
The thing I suppose I liked mostly was that many of them read my book, and asked, “When’s the next one coming?” So I had forces working on all sides of me, and I asked myself, “How was I to get out of it.”

I do not know how to explain how I felt, but perhaps I can this way, it was the same feeling I had when I was nineteen years old at the party, when I drank those twenty-shot glasses of whiskey: here now, I was living in or near a fat agricultural region, one sits in the cornfields, or the carrot fields, or the wheat fields, or out in his backyard on his grass, you acquire a sense of pulling at whatever is near you, pulling it roots, grass roots, in my case, you see the root, you learn in the country, is really the organ of the plant, in this case grass roots, typically lie below you, under you, under the surface of the soil you are laying on, not always but most often, the root is part of the plant’s body, it bears no leaves grant you, nor can be seen, but it is an important internal structure, if you pull on it too hard, you will kill the plant, if you do not give it water to absorb, you will kill the plant, absorption is a main factor in its life. In a like manner, I was not being nurtured, absorbing anything. How could I write, I had nothing more to write about, as the man had said: he who wants to be a writer, must have a lot to say. I had nothing more to say; evidently I said it all at nineteen. And that is how I felt, as if all my roots were being pulled out of its soil. As if I was not being watered.

Chapter Two

As was my policy at that time in living, and running my life at the newspaper, and drinking, I can say most definitely that I have no policy at all other than amusing myself, making the world around me pay, and keeping myself busy. Maybe I only had one book in me. So I asked myself; because I couldn’t, or wouldn’t and didn’t find time for that, to write it.
You should understand, a small town newspaper is not like a big city paper, we didn’t handle any National or International sensational issues, like murders, and there was to rush for the most part, like a deadline. In general, the paper was filled with the comings and goings of the community, its inhabitants, along with: long death notices (or obituaries), marriages, High School commencements, the events at the churches, lodges, and so forth.
I did most of the work myself, the editorial work and reporting. And now at this juncture of my life, at 35-years old, I still had not written my second book. And my agent had all but forgotten me, and only on Christmas did I get a card from him. The publisher sent me one also, saying, “If you ever do write that second novel, it mush come to us, other than that, you’re a jerk,” signed, “the Publisher.” But he was very kind in that, he kept me in mind, and I liked that, in that I didn’t have to go looking for a new publisher, god forbid.
It was now a year after that last Christmas Card, I would be thirty six, come October, the matter of my drinking was brought up at a meeting, Mr. Gene Weatherbee (who lived in one of my apartments at my house), the head of the town council, spoke very emotionally of me, my condition. He said, in so many words: I hate to go home some nights, alone in that big, dark house. It would be alright, he said, if he (meaning me) could have an occasional evening of quiet. On several evenings, he said: “I came out in the hallway, and turned on the lights, Mr. Ernest Hem had invited the devils into his room and they were all dancing, there was a song they sang, but I can’t remember it.”
A counsel member said (the local judge, Judge Albemarle): “You must, Mr. Weatherbee, think rational on what you are saying, and think wisely over your words. You don’t have to injure Mr. Hem’s reputation, just make arrangements to leave.”
“The priest (Father Jose) from the local church said, in a humorous tone, “We are quite sure everyone here would be happier if you leave the house, and be gone, leave poor Mr. Hem, to his business, and see the local psychologist.”
I was of course in shock, thinking: where was I all this time, I don’t remember having parties, and this was all surprising news to me—and his tone of voice increased amazingly. I knew my dignity was at stake, yet the judge and Father Jose, and the rest of the counsel members, all became contributors on my behalf, I didn’t need to say a word, and it made me feel I suppose more indebted to the well-known group.
As you know, Minnesota is a God fearing state. And such thing like what had been said at the meeting is not taken lightly. The voices of my supporters were hot. And I had never been through one of these ordeals in my life. And I did escape this part of Mr. Gene Weatherbee’s accusations.
In the following months, the newspaper acquired 20,000 subscribers, I felt it all was going to be disastrous: too many too much, too quick, so I told Mr. Denny Scriber anyhow, the owner, and that we needed to hire some more workers, and I wanted to get onto my second novel, I had half of it written already. But he had no desire to reform the paper to my liking, and simple said, “I’ll double your pay check.”
“Fine,” I said, but I asked myself: however was I going to escape this editorial master-head. I felt naked, and nailed to the paper, and he said something weird, Mr. Scriber, “I liked your party, that Friday.”
It was all new to me, what Friday was he talking about, and as far as I know, or knew, the last party I had was on the nineteenth birthday. But I didn’t say anything, or ask for an explanation, it was perhaps a mix-wording of something. I had parties in the newspaper room; I stayed at the paper because I wanted to make a living. And he overlooked them, and I did not want to bring that up to his mind, lest he say I could not have anymore female companionship during late hours at work.

Chapter Three

As you see, I have got myself into something, first because I was young and wanted to make a living, then found I could not connect the dotes to my writing, thinking I might, by taking this job. It appeared to me, after being at it for so long, I lost the fun out of life. I don’t see anymore writers, publishers, or agents. It is or was, as if the devil gave me a gift, and was slowly cooking me alive like a frog.
I knew if I left the paper, writing stories for magazines, or pushing out enough novels to make a living, a sufficient income to live on, was a dreary life, but so was this one. I had never married, and now had begun to feel the curse of the hack writer; I needed to be alone for two months, solidly alone to write. Having already written a novel, half done with my second, now at middle age but if I left my job would I starve? It was a thought that came to mind often. I felt a needed go beyond this job but I hadn’t yet.
The first half of my book was really kind of hurried; my craft was at its low peak. It was sad, I no longer had the desire to write—that is, not like I had 13-years prior, or even work as an editor. But I felt I wanted to do something more that I was doing something but it was less, not a challenge anymore, but I didn’t know what that something more was about.
I did discover one thing, and perhaps a way out; by reading all the local newspapers and the bigger ones of course, the Minneapolis Star, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, the St. Paul Pioneer Press. I discovered many of the writers in the newspapers nowadays, were very skilful. And some became writers. And some were better than novel writers. And so I would put a chapter of my book into the paper once a week, that way I’d kill two birds with one stone. And who could make a fuss.
This was a new impulse, and I was in close contact with the community everyday of the year. What could any writer asks for. The name of my new book would be, “The Un-industrialist Town.” A funny name, it just came to me as if a bird dropped it in my ear while sleeping one night.
I agree it was a flare-up of labour and desire to get the book done, and I had hands on information, information at my fingertips now. It had been hold-up much too long; it was in a way, to be very ugly the book. In the following months, I wrote everything I heard, overheard that is, from everybody I saw, talked to. I didn’t give names, just accounts, but I didn’t need to everybody knew everybody anyhow. And the paper turned into a scandal like paper, the counsel liked it, but the town folks complained, as I expected somewhat. They had a love hate relationship with it, and with Mr. Denny Scriber.
The town’s folk had said, “Look here, we are in a lovely town, everything works here, good organizations, working women. Interesting people, and now we are getting news of all the little secrets of everybody we know.” How true that was, the book had thirty-nine chapters of it.
Mr. Denny Scriber, he even came up to me on Mondays now and said, “You should have another good party, Hem.” As if it was part of a joke. Again I figured it must be the winsome girls I was having over during my night work at the office.
I was thinking of moving to Illinois or Ohio, or San Francisco, or even Seattle, just to get away. Here was a town, twenty-five miles away from a metropolitan area, and its paper was selling nearly as many as the big city papers were. We even got big soap advertisements in the paper now, and I changed the name of my book, called it “The Shockingly Young, Old and Feeble of a Little Town” now because the last ten chapters talked about all the youth in the town, what they were doing, drinking, and all the corruption no one saw, the girls they got pregnant, the little boys on dope. This was changed during the second edition, as if it was a new book, with ten new chapters in it.
I talked about the poor, from the hills nearby; and I scorned the older ladies for having nervous debilities, and stooped shoulders, and thin legs. I was going out of my mind in this book. And in 1985, my second book was published.
The critics said it was a combination of the terrible with the magnificent. Whatever that means, believe it or not, the young girls of the town, half fell in love with me after the second book came out, and the second edition didn’t phase anyone in town, not really, their parents hated me, but the hate was short lived, and there is always the old question “Make men rise to nobility, so they can see the nobility of its towns people. And pray they don’t disclose their findings,” and in my case, I told them what I saw and felt, they had no nobility, that was the bottom line. But I liked, if not adored the admiration I was getting, stopped going to church, and Father Jose, and never chased me to get back into the any prayer studies or so forth.

Chapter Four

The town’s folks were not organized as they thought they were. And the book sold 83,000 copies, the first edition. A shrike flared up starting they called it. And I starting to sell more copies of my old book, signing books, and my old publisher, and agent, were happy as to pigs in a muddy pen.
But the town began to organize, Doctor Headman, was the new city counsel’s leader, the Mayor was my friend, and employer, Mr. Denny Scriber. Somehow it seemed those two did not get along. Don’t know if it is called a bit of characteristic stupidity, or what, they argued over every little thing, every issue, like two devils in a pie, and one wasn’t getting it share. Scriber didn’t like the town organizing, or the labour or the industry, or the factory, and he had the local psychologist—I never did get his name, the priest and the judge on his side, and I suppose he had me. But Doctor Headman was getting everybody else. He told Headman, he was going to throw him out of office.
You cannot throw a man out of town because he comes up with a new organization, or way of thinking, or gets a following. I felt we needed a more moderate, if not intelligent mayor, but I never spoke up, he was my bread and butter, sort of speaking, but I really didn’t need him anymore, somehow I just thought I did.
So here were folks now organized that never were, and under the leadership of Headman.
Scriber wrote in his paper, “All of Stillwater is apparently being organized by Doctor Headman…” Now here is the peculiar thing, he writes, “how often I go to dine at his house, and he has parties, and they dance wildly, as if devils, and not only I but the good Father Jose, and our Psychologist, and Mr. Hem’s friend and international writer, C.E. and our good judge, Albemarle, we were all guests, and saw his devil worship.”
It was all a lie of course. None of these folks, meaning, Father Jose, the Psychologist, Albemarle, protested this, C.E., said he didn’t know what he was talking about, as I didn’t know. Mr. Headman, had to lock himself in a hotel room, the towns folk wanted to lynch him. They had lynched someone years prior, the wrong man they found out.

I still didn’t know my position in life, but I was not the writer I wanted to be, and I accepted this, then I found out there was a secret meeting, among the few elite of the city, again the Psychologist, I could not name him because I had not met him yet nor did I come to know his name at this point—as you well know, but they called him Mr. Psycho, and the judge, the priest, and my boss, and several others, merchants of town, these folks all said to me, most of them that is, said to me, many just wave at me—not saying anything, there was a big meeting to be held in the back room of the newspaper, this wasn’t real news, I mean it was often held there, and everyone that came said to me: “Good party Hem.”
People keep saying that, it is turning out to be an unknown mockery almost, as if they were laughing in my face, somewhat laughing, so I sensed, when they said that.
The meeting, there was no doubt in my mind: this was in connection with Mr. Headman.
I thought my boss would let me in, but he didn’t, he never did, he locked the door behind him. There was no doubt in my mind again; harm was going to come to Mr. Headman. There was a wicked side to all these men, I sat outside and did my work as usual.
I wanted very much to go in there, I saw a few more people, town’s folks that are, escorted into the backroom, and it smelled mildew, dirt like. He never allowed me back there, although he told me it was next to the sandstone walls, old mushroom caves, Stillwater is famous for them, and so forward went the meeting.
I got the impression, Mr. Denny Scriber, my boss, had a hand in everything in town, and the longer I got to know him, the more I witnessed this, he was involved with workers from the: factories, and merchant shops, the local gas station, in classrooms, the older kids. He had girls and even his sisters, come over and go in that backroom with him, I think he was a dirty old man, delicately featured. I had more money in the bank now than I needed, near— $760,000-thousand dollars. I said at one million, I’d quite my job, I even told Mr. Scriber that, and he said, “Well, be that as it may, the games over then,” and laughed, I wrote a note to myself in my diary, here it is:

Note from Mr. Hem’s diary: -- They have built a monument in Stillwater; it is at the far end of Main Street, a statue of me. I sense they got a realization of each other. Kind of a religion, brotherhood, they said through my two books, I have brought them national fame, pride. Yet, my life seems very puzzling. Every time I want to leave Stillwater, I get this puzzled feeling, or sensation. The statue is nothing heroic but very fine. There is an inscription on it, it reads “Dead Roots Drama” and has a thin outer coating of cement. Not sure what the inscription means though.

That’s when I was standing by that monument when I noticed a familiar face, yours. One I had not seen since I was eighteen years old, you looked at me, and I at you and then a realization of each other set in:

Part Two

Cheaper Five; End Chapters

(Narrator) Mr. Ernest Hem, had met Mr. Richard Shape, the psychologist, by accident, it was not meat to be. He had died on March 1, 1965, when Hem was eighteen, on November 5, 1966; Ernest Hem was nineteen-years old. How could this be, thought Ernest now standing shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Sharpe.

“I must be in a dream,” said Ernest to Richard, “how on earth can I be seeing you when you’re dead?”
“Ernest, let me explain,” says Richard, “remember when we went to high school, and Mr. Magnusson our Earth Science teacher said: after you’ve checked everything out, and you still cannot come up with the answer, go to the unbelievable?”
Hem looks about, his world looks as it always has, says “Yes, so what.”
“If I’m dead, then you’re dead.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Why, because all you’ve known is the other world? How do you know what world you’re in?”
“Not completely, but all the people I’ve seen and talked to, they confirm I’m in reality, and you are not, you’re a vision of some sort.”
“I know all the people you’ve talk to: the judge, the priest, your employer, and even Mr. Headman, the Doctor. They are all new to Stillwater, matter of fact, Stillwater is new to old Stillwater, and you are in the New Stillwater”
“What do you mean New Stillwater?”
“We all came into your life when you took the job at the newspaper, but you died at the party, you drank twenty-shots of booze, your close friend tried to get you to the hospital, but you were dead on arrival. It is of course 1987 now, in real time, and since 1966 to this time you’ve been under a charade by others, since you had that sensation of your roots being pulled out, the drama has been being played out, twenty-one years to be exact. Here, life gets boring, come with me I’ll show you. Actually, they’ve perfected the drama, called “Dead Roots Drama” named after you, they even built a new underground stage here for you, follow me, I’ll show you, even introduce you to the actors if indeed I can.”

(Narrator; Doctor Sharp led them to a back room, out and into a big auditorium, through underground tunnels, Mr. Hem still thought he was in a dream.

“Look thorough this peep hole,” He told Mr. Hem, asking, “Who do you see?”
Sure enough he saw the judge, the priest, his employer and Mr. Headman, taking off their cloths as if they were costumes, and they all looked so ugly, with tails and long ears, and one with a pig’s face, another with an elephant trunk.
“These are a few of the demigods of hell,” Doctor Sharp said. They will be angry with me for bringing you here, but the game has outlasted everyone else’s, some twenty-one years, they actually built a town like Stillwater, and they kept you talking to them, and I was to be the unseen psychologist, until they found out I knew you, and sent me to a different section of this underworld, and I bumped into you. They numbed you now and then, like you said, roots from the other end, dead roots, and freezing them.”
“C.H., was still alive, when you asked to see him, so we could not allow this, and Diane Horn, was still alive so they could not allow you to see her either, actually both are still alive today, that is why they were unavailable, and only or out of town, or occupied, or engaged, but their voices were dubbed, over their phone, and when you called, it was Miss Harriet Faulkner who did the transfer of the pretend phone call, with a little help of the Henchman.”
“Who’s the Henchman, and who’s Faulkner?”
“Nobodies to speak of, just bored demon, like me, and don’t mention the Henchman, too loud, lest you be heard and sent to his dock on the pier for whatever duties he requires. You see hell has its hierocracy, believe it or not. These were the demons pulling at your so called roots, to have you for their drama, actually before you died, with anticipation you would die; they were strangers among strangers, like I was, but as you can see they have become demonic friends.”
“So you pulled against my roots?” asked Mr. Hem.
“Unknowing it was you of course, yes I did.”
“What were they going to have me doing next?” asked Hem.
“Kill Mr. Headman.”
“Well, how could I if he’s already dead?”
“That’s the jest of it all, you can’t, but you were still in your other mind set, and that was the whole of the game, to see how you reacted, as they acted. The meeting they were having at the newspaper was about you. Think about it, the only time you went into Saint Paul was once, and in that instance, it was a dream, yet what you purchased they somehow created for you when you woke up from your numbed intrusion, which is called in the living and physical world; hypnotism. ”
“Did they have a name for the drama?” said Mr. Hem.
“Most certainly ‘Dead Roots Drama.”’ Said Mr. Shape.

“Ernest,” said Richard Sharpe, “we might just get along better if we go by first names, tell me how it was, you know, tell me the story how it all went from your perspective, your life in a nutshell, we got lots of time here you know.

“Well… (a hesitation) I feel like I’ve already told my story, but I’ll start again:
“I had an impulse, when I was nineteen-years old, to become the editor and publisher of a small town weekly newspaper in Stillwater, Minnesota, it turned out to be a little more complex than I had expected. I think inside of most men they think they can be a singer, own a restaurant, or be a small town editor, and I was no different…”

Chapter Six

(The Appearance of the Henchman)

The Henchman of Hell, Agaliarept

The instant the Henchman of Hell appeared, the whole “Psycho Drama Section” seemed to stand still. The clamour of tongues, the laughter and noise of the crowd were for that moment arrested, and every man, woman, beast, creature, actor, devil, demon, who stood on the stage, couched, lay, stood at attention and faced the imperial Henchman, the general of several legions of hell.
Ernest Hem, of course murmured, “Are we all in trouble?”
The henchman threw a glance at Ernest and without hesitation went straight over and stood before the demonic actor Scriber, who was really Zimmer.
“Hold out your hand,” said Agaliarept, in a commanding voice.
The Henchman looked at the hand with a knitted brow, continued by saying, “I see you have used vanity to its optimum, and brought the worst out of our new comrade, although you’ve been entertained for over twenty-years in the process, which is a prize in itself. You have mastered the art of deception. Tell me how you did it, and I will consider you for a higher position?”

“In the following manner sir, said Zimmer: the treatment technique I used was a in altering his new environment, to function more fully in ours, by limiting him to a smaller town, like Stillwater, and thus, not having to produce big city skyways.
“This technique required of course one needed to apply it on in everyday life, as he knew it to be, the methods and rationales were described precisely to our actors, as need to be, so we could get the right reaction from Mr. Hem.
“I had learned myself; techniques are based largely on principles of learning spherically, and used their own styles, such as operant conditioning, and respondent conditioning, things they responded to in the physical sphere.
“There was a strong emphasis on scientific demonstration, a particular technique was reasonable for a particular behaviour change. Such as, taking his dreams, wishes, desires, and fears, working them in his dreams, and then in reality, securing them for him. We gave him what he wanted, and that was a secure job, money, fame above all, recognition. And then we could pull out all the other deadly sins, like laziness, and overeating, lust, they were already there, he just didn’t see them, they were attached genetically almost to his general make up, he had moulded them into his psyche.
“This was sir, as you know, a long, very long ordeal for all involved, and as its leader, or director of this department, I put strong emphasis on accountably with my staff, for everyone involved, even the old folks who sat along on the benches and smiled at Mr. Hem as he’d walk by. You see, once everyone was in rhythm with this program, everyone involved in this behaviour modification program, we lived, or got to live almost on the same vibration lines he did. That is what I wanted for my staff. Like a person who has a second language, moves out of his country to that country where he had to live for long period of time, thus, he things in that countries language after a while and forgets his.”
“Very well done, Zimmer,” remarked the Henchman.
“Yes,” emphatically, remarked Zimmer.
“Then leave here at once never to return, go from here while victory is fresh in your heart, you are promoted to the personal level of emissary in my legions, which is equal to a sub commander.
Stiffly but sarcastically, the henchman moved away.
“I say,” he then said to Mr. Hem, “you’re going to like the underworld with no stars, I can tell that,” then shouted “the drama is over, silence is ribald!” And it was as before, with all the vulgar sounds of hell.
“Amen,” said Zimmer.

“It all seems so impossible that such a long performance could have remained hidden under false faces,” said Ernest, to his psychologist friend, Richard (Narrator: who was really never a psychologist, he never got the chance to be, like Ernest never got the chance to be a novelist—not really, but in the pits of hell, many things can be achieved during the meantime).
Said Richard Shape, “It was done by the gods, all us damned gods down here, we all knew your high level of vanity, and it was stronger than your faith, as was your self-interest.”
Ernest looked about, “Why it’s going to be a new order of things for me I see, a new beginning, the beginning of a new order of things between one and all I suppose. I see things do change in hell, no more secrets, yet I almost regret I found out.
Suddenly a stink of air seeped into the arena, and into the hallways, and tunnels, and Ernest was swept away, like a hawk in flight, wind depressing his face, aging as a burning candle, through its winding labyrinth of tunnels and caves, and chambers, and to the docks of Hades, the pier, to meet his masters, officially.

Ernest Hem on his way through
The labyrinth of Hell…

The Characters

Main Character: Mr. Ernest Hem
(Writer, novelist, Newspaper man)
Doctor Headman
Diane Horn
(St. Paul, Teacher)
C.E., writer
The Henchman
(Agaliarept)
Mr. Richard Shape
(Psychologist)
Mr. Denny Scriber
((Owner of the weekly periodical)
(Other name, Zimmer))
Greg Hamilton
(Literary agent)
Mr. Gene Weatherbee
(Committee member, renter)
Mr. Magnusson
(High school Teacher)
Father Jose
Judge Albemarle

Note on making of the story: written the night of 4-22 into the hours of the 23rd of April, 2009 (2:21 p.m.). Cchapter 6, written in the afternoon on my patio roof, 23rd of April; written by Dennis L. Siluk, in Lima, Peru. The Vanity of Ernest Hem (or, the Dead Roots Drama) Copyright © 4-2009, By Dennis L. Siluk (7047)

The Boy Poet from Cayuga Street (a short story)

2009-04-22T16:39:00.001-07:00

The Boy Poet from
Cayuga Street

When Mr. Chick Evens turned nineteen-years old, he had now written twenty-one poems. He had Miss Marty Dickenson review them, and retype them for him, along with a bit of spell checking and correcting, back in the summer of 1966. She was twenty-seven years old, and Eddy Bacon, was twenty-nine years old, Marty’s old boyfriend. He was trying to sober up, put his marriage back together. Up to a few months earlier, Marty and Eddy were an item (as he’d often refer to him and Marty; or boyfriend, girlfriend), now supposedly both coming from different worlds, Marty still was drinking heavily.

“You look good today,” said Marty to Evens who had come over to her home on Dale Street to pick up his manuscript of poetry.
“Yes,” said Evens, “I am this morning, I feel great, like a poet I want to be, by the looks of the papers you have really made my poetry look clean and neat.”
“It’s just part of being a secretary, it’s what I do.” She remarked, but was taken back at his comment.
“Yes,” Evens went on “I want to be a great poet someday. I’ve always wanted to be a poet, started writing poetry at twelve-years old; by the time I was fifteen had some published in the High School Newspaper, at Washington High School. That is what I wanted to be at twelve, and now at nineteen, I want the same thing. When I’m sixty, I will still want to be a great poet; or maybe just a good poet; or maybe a good simple poet. For a moment I thought I might be, but I’m too young, and I have only twenty-one poems.
“Oh, you’ll be exactly that, a great simple poet, because when people want things bad enough they get them.”
“I’m unsure now. At twelve it appeared to be simple: at nineteen, I think it takes a lifetime?”
“I’d say you have a good start.”
“No kidding?”
“Of course you’ll be a known poet in your time.”
“No, I’m not all that sure anymore.”
“The odds are for you, that you’ll be a poet.”
“Don’t say I will just to appease me please.”
“Did you see Eddy?” she asked.
“He’s off the booze, getting back with his ex wife, I saw him driving a milk truck. He said you both were no longer an item.”
“He’s going to quite for good, wish I could, but I’m not ready.”
“Maybe you will, I’ll say a prayer for you.”
“I don’t feel like quitting, or dating, or doing much, just kind of sitting around the house seems to comfort me, smoking and drinking, smoking and drinking and going to sleep, and waking up and going to work, and starting all over again.”
“It’s a cute little green house you have here.”
“My parents left it to me, they’re deceased now. I didn’t finish the whole body of work, I did a little over half of your manuscript, I know you’ll understand, I’m just too…just can’t seem to get into it. But you’ll be a poet someday, I can feel that.”
He opened the screened in metal door, walked out of the doorway with a folder of his poems in it, folded under his arm, and armpit, tightly.
“Amigo,” she yelled at Evens through the big bay window, tapping on the window with her fingernails, “If you see Eddy, say hello to him for me will you?”
He could see her, read her lips, her body language, hear her slightly, and nodded his head, confirming a yes, he’d do so. He had a crush on her, she was pretty, thin, short dark hair, but was aging quickly, too quickly, and she was in pain, and she’d kill him with her boxed up emotions; he thought, whispered to himself, “She’d make good poetry like Plath or Saxton I bet.”

4-22-2009

In the summer of '53 (a Minnesota, Chick Evens story)

2009-04-18T19:10:00.001-07:00

In the summer of ‘53
(Ä Chick Evens, and Minnesota Story)

I had left the babysitter, knowing my mother would be at 4:15 p.m., hiking up Mount airy Hill, from the Valley playgrounds, near Jackson Street, she did every weekday after work, Monday through Friday (she worked at the stockyards in the slice bacon department, at Swifts Meats, in South Saint Paul), she’d catch the bus from South St. Paul, to St. Paul, get off at the corner of Jackson and Mount airy, and then up one hill she’d hike, a turn to the left, and up the second hill. We had been living all together, my brother, two years older than I, eight now, my mother and my grandfather. Mike, my brother and I, had been taken off that foster-farm for good: I never wanted to go back there again, I never wanted to see it ever, so I had to make sure she was really coming. Therefore I left our sixteen-year old babysitter, Evelyn, and ran up the block to meet her; I did this quite often, that first summer after we left the farm, back in ’53.
She’d be trekking up that hill, a little tired, a little worn, if not with a cigarette between her fingers, or between her lips, a twig, or piece of grass would be there. Her purse would be on her right shoulder, she had long straps, and big purses, kept everything under the sun in them. I once went with her purse shopping at the Emporium, one of the three biggest stores in St. Paul back then, and she bought the best and biggest purse she could find and carry, it had to be leather, good leather. Other than that, she was frugal. Once I’d see her I’d pick up a twig or piece of grass run down the hill to meet her coming up the hill, and we’d meet somewhere in the middle. I’d grab her hand, hold it tight, sometimes too tight, she’d have to say, “You’re squeezing my hand again,” and I’d stop, let go a tinge, but not much. And she’d hold my hand firmly but softly, and I’d put the stem in my mouth, like her: like to like.
“Mom?” I’d say.
“Yes.”
“You’re home!”
“Not quite yet.”
“Missed yaw!” I’d say, searching for something to talk about, not really caring to talk at all to be honest, something more practical would do, but that is what always came out: I was happy as a butterfly with new wings, almost prancing up the hill now. As if I wanted the world see me and my mother, proud so very proud.
“Where’s your brother?” she asked.
“With the babysitter, he thinks she’s cute; she’s really nice, and plays with us, maybe you can give her a tip on payday!”
“Oh does he now… (she hesitates, and smiles, then continues and says :) she is kind of cute I suppose.”
We continued to walk up the hill together her right hand in my left hand, both with our pieces of stems in our mouths. The sun going down over the edge of the city, but it’s still bright out, just a little on the faded side, slightly faded side of the day, so it got at this time, near the Mississippi. I guess I followed her like a puppy. I felt safe in her hands, that summer, with those sharp warm evenings starting to settle in, in those midsummer days in Minnesota. I felt quite sure, she’d never die.

4-18-2009

Commentary on Poetic Myth: "The Dramatist and the Myth"

2009-04-18T09:33:00.001-07:00

Commentary on Poetic Myth:
“The dramatist and the myth”

The dramatist and the myth, in creating a myth, for my part anyways, is rejecting some features, developing others I will make into an epic or poetic myth, be it poetic prose I use or whatever form of verse, as I see the material I have, and the characters I will be using, looking at myths of course and perhaps within my own, criticizing each character, this creates an unholy passion, despair, did not Plato use this? Do you think that makers of myth don’t drag in the gods for a purpose, for a reason? Of course they do, it was a way to explain the unexplainable, the inexplicable in itself. Tragedy fills us like pasta.
Socrates even indicated: if you cannot relate an event to any cause, bring out the deities, and so I have in many of my myths, filling the gaps I call it. And so it is that a epic perhaps becomes attributed to the gods or should be, it’s better said that way than to ones own imagination.
If evil be of Satan alone and not the nature in man, to be made perfect, who then can we blame? Now we can’t blame anyone for our jealousy or hatred, the gods made me this way, or the gods made me do it, or the demon, or Satan. How about you take the blame? Oh gosh, really.

In all the stories I have worked on in this category the personification of mortal passions, exists, or can exist in the immortal we even take it them our graves beyond. And so is the story of Adam a myth, a story misunderstood? Or is the story I wrote called “Portrait of Tishpak: King of Erech” myth or fact? Or for that matter, Plato’s Atlantis? If a man errs, it is through ignorance, doubt, or wisdom. And when he struggles to share his story, of past myths, fluctuations appear. A lust to know is no longer a lust once grasped. Thus, often times its value is in the unknown, as in the terror of death, once death occurs, perhaps it turns into more of a gift of God.

A Quiet, felt Moment (a short story for old folks only!)

2009-04-17T20:34:00.002-07:00

A Quiet, felt Moment

“It is late,” said the old man’s wife.
“Every night is late, at 11:00 p.m., midnight, 3:00 a.m., and 4:30 a.m.,” said the old man.
In the nights now, the street outside his window was noisy, and so he’d read until he got tired, waited for it to become quiet, and when he felt that moment, he’d lay down in bed, he felt the difference, falling to sleep. The neighbours, new neighbours, the store owner selling beer—unlicensed to do so—strangers, all sitting at the little corner store, outside on chairs by tables, leaning against cars, drinking beer, singing songs, making noise, to all hours of the night. But he would be woken up, always woken up, by the drunks, the car horns, and the loud music from the car radios. He would be woken up numerous times throughout the night, besides having to relieve himself; and then there was the little fat lady with five dogs next door, she had to take them out three times a night and they’d run in the park across the street, into his garden.
“Last week the old man tried to commit suicide,” said one of the two drunks sitting on the edge of the curve across the street from the old man’s house.
“Why?” asked his companion.
“He couldn’t sleep.”
“Why not?”
“No reason.”
“How do you know there wasn’t a reason? How do you know he even tried?”
The two drunks sat on the edge of the sidewalk, on the curve drinking two quart bottles of beer, looking at the old man’s house across the street, at the second story window, where he slept. There were two other drunks sleeping it off under a tree in the park, near the corner, by the bicycle shop, the lady next store to the old man’s house, brought her five dogs out of her apartment to do their duty, to relieve themselves. And they went right for the old man’s garden, where the dim arc light lit them up.
“His wife takes care of him,” said one of the drunks.
“What does it matter, if he complains about all the noise on his block, he can go back to America,” said the second drunk.
“We better move before he looks out his window, thinking we are robbers and shoots us with his revolver.”
The old man now is looking through a hole he made in his curtains.
“What is it dear?” asked his wife.
“These drunks again, from the store.”
“You’ll be tired in the morning if you stay up all night.”
“I never get to sleep anyhow until you get up it seems nowadays.”
The old man motioned with his fingers in the shape of a pistol, at the drunks, they didn’t see him, “a little more and I’ll get back into bed,” he told his wife.
“Now what are you doing?” asked his wife.
“More drunks and the lady, the crazy one next door is allowing her dogs to used our garden as a toilet again.”
“Come to bed please.”
“They think I wanted to kill myself, Angel, the day security guard told me so, how foolish, can you believe that, I wanted to kill them, not me!”
“How would they know?”
“The lady with the dogs, she gossips, makes things up, to get attention I suppose.”
“Oh…ool,” said his wife, in a fading voice.
“No fear for their soul, no respect, no blood in their face.”
“I’m tired dear, come to bed, you get all worked up over nothing.”
“They say I got plenty of money, and they wish I’d go back to America, and they think I stay up all night for no reason.”
“I suppose so, but they don’t have wives, you have.”
“A wife would be no good for drunks.”
“You can’t tell them that.”
“I know. I’m happy to be old. An old man is a scarce thing.”
“Not always, he can be a nasty thing also.”
“I wish it was quiet again.”
The old man looked at the park and the church across the street from his window, had pulled back the curtains, then he looked left, down towards the store, where there was four drunks, all drinking beers, leaning against the cars.
“When they going to finish?” remarked the old man, waiting for his wife to say something, to answer him, and he looked at the bed, she had fallen back to sleep. He then looked at the clock it was 3:00 a.m. He would lie in bed in another hour, and it would be quiet for a moment, and he’d be exhausted and fall to sleep, he knew this, “I suppose,” he said in a whisper, as if he was talking to his second self, “It’s all about getting old.”

4-17-2009 /dedicated to my neighbours in San Juan Miraflores, Lima Peru

The Great Toad Race of Jamaica (a short story, 1983) Flash Fiction

2009-04-14T18:32:00.000-07:00

The Great Toad Race of Jamaica

She is a little heavy at sixty-three years old, perhaps sixty-four, brown thinned out hair, laced now with silver, a pale washed-out white color to her skin, who lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, always has lived in St. Paul. We are sitting at a table at the Americana, a beach hotel in the barroom, the Caribbean outside the doorway, an airy elegant bar, more like a large ballroom, looks as if made of a tropical design, and out of expensive wood, it reminds me a bit of¨ the old 1932 movie, “The Grand Hotel,” with Joan Crawford; what I remember of it, the plot anyhow was the film bringing together several unrelated characters into one setting, which is perhaps a hotels formula, unknowingly. She is drinking a Grasshopper, heavy flavored with mint. Myself, just a bottle of cold local beer, it is October 1983.
Ten toads, brownish colored toads run across the shinny wooden dance floor, a section by where the band will play later on in the evening; one of the toads pauses, it’s the one my mother and I, put a bet on, either it’s a lazy one, or its got some heavy substance in its belly, it’s just standing as if it is the Statue of Liberty. She comments, “Toads, such ugly creatures. They look scary. Brown with those dark spots didn’t know they could be trained to race.”
“I’d have never believed it myself, had I not seen it with my own eyes,” I remark.
During the course of this late afternoon event, she had told me how she loved to sit outside in the mornings, on the patio restaurant that had no sides, just a roof and cemented platform, with elegant dinning tables, and all such dinning utensils, she’d loved the breakfast, feeling the warm wind blow from one side to the other, from the Caribbean Sea, inland to the highway beyond the hotel, having a cup of coffee, and a cigarette. She loved it all.
“Yes, of course I believe it now.” She sips on her Grasshopper.
“I think I’ll bet again, I think mine will win this time.” I tell her.
“No, it won’t, but go ahead and try.” She tells me.
So saying, I do and she takes another sip, a longer sip of her Grasshopper, orders another one. The ceiling fans are rotating above her head. A piano is in the corner of the bar, being moved out for the evening band, there will be a show, where the entertainers will eat fire, and then band, and dance. There are about fifteen people around the toad arena, really the wooden dance floor waiting for the ring of the bell for the toads to race.
Eventually the toads are put into a straight line, still near a dozen, most of them jumpy now, greenish and brown, I think they replaced the one I bet on previously, the lazy one. The bell rings, they skitter across the floor, slipping and sliding and falling. They scatter like pigeons all about, and mine just lost again, but this time only by a hair.
Now she waves me over to her table, I’m with the fifteen others, was giving my support to my toad ‘hip hip horary!’ stuff.
“Well, did you win?” she asks. She smiles she knows the answer. She accepts this as part of gambling, a fact, and continues: “Too bad they don’t have this in Las Vegas,” and takes a drink from her Grasshopper martini looking glass, her new one, and smiles at me, as if she was on top of the world.

4-14-2009

An Afternoon at the Cafe de Flore (or, The Bum's Dog) Flash Fiction

2009-04-13T15:36:00.003-07:00

An Afternoon at the Café de Flore
((or; The Bum’s Dog) (1998 AD))

I left our hotel on St. Germain, Boulevard, walked down to the Café de Flore; it was my first of four trips to Paris, and my third time at the cafe. I sat down at one of the outside small tables, on the brownish-red cloth seated chairs, behind me a wall of glass, an inside restaurant, ordered a coffee, hot milk on the side, no sugar, a ham and cheese sandwich on one of those long hoagie like hard breads, the same thing I had ordered two days ago while at the Café de Flore, it cost me $17.50 dollars, four-dollars for the coffee, and the rest for the ham and cheese, and whatever else they charge for. But I liked the café and service, and all the old writers from the 1920s came here, it gave me a kind of stimulus.
I turned about noticed a male waiter mopping, my waiter standing next to me, he looked familiar, another waiter was sweeping out the café, there was one man sitting to my right, it was 11:00 a.m., still morning in Paris, the outside café near empty, “Will there be anything else sir?” asked my short, stocky, waiter, short crew-cut head of hair, perhaps in his late thirty’s.
“Not at the moment,” I remarked, and he turned about to get my order.
It was April in Paris (1998), and above on the second story of the building of the café, were yellow flowers, people riding bikes, parking them, locking them with chains against traffic sights, a newsstand across the street, and a bum leaning against the building, above the sign that read, “St. Germain, Boulevard,” and next to it, in a cardboard box, with a dog in it, lean, and his fur was a dirty washed-out white, more on the mutt side of the dog race. And he’d every so often peak his head out of the top of that box to see what was going on, look at his master, the traffic, the newsstand, and passers-by, and if a policeman looked his way, he’d hide again. The bum, thin, dark skinned, burnt from the sun, of bygone years, and droopy eyes, like his dog mate, cloths just draped on him like curtains, in his mid fifties I would guess, looked about indifferent on everything in sight—a kind of a so-so look; one of God’s sparrows.
“Your order sir,” said my waiter. He put the tray down on my table, and took each item off with the most proficient of care, as not to break a thing, or spill. He put the cream by me, “Should I pour it sir?”
“No need to, I will.”
There was a loud sound, a truck horn, both the waiter and I looked; it was a block up the street, coming down our way, towards the café and the newsstand across the street.
“He shouldn’t be driving down this street,” said the waiter, “it’s forbidden, especially with outside cafés like this one, and the street, this street isn’t made for that heavy truck.”
“What do you think of that,” I said as a rhetorical question.
“I don’t know he shouldn’t be driving down this way…!” He looked concerned, black smoke leaving a thick cloud behind it.
A policeman on the corner near the newsstand pulled out a pencil as if ready to take down its plate number, and it occurred to me, he might try to stop it, he took a step off the curve. The dog heard the horn, it honked again, loud very loud, and the dog peaked its head out of the cardboard box again.
“I told that bum to get out of here yesterday, and take his dog with him, we don’t want them around here, fleas and all that kind of stuff, you know” said the waiter looking towards me for approval, “I wish the policeman would do his duty.” The waiter just stood next to me, by my side shaking his head, watching the truck come closer and closer, appearing to be ready to cover his mouth from the dark exhaust trailing behind it. Then the waiter went and asked the customer to my right, a man with a light white jacket on, talking on his cell phone, leaning his elbow on a chair, grey mixed into white hair, clean shaven, he asked him something; he was drinking wine it looked, still on that phone. Then there was a scratching and high pitched screeching, of the brakes from the truck. Then a halt, that sounded like it had moved the earth an inch, and the bum looked at his cardboard box, and his dog was gone, and he looked at the truck, and it was between two large wheels, its tail hanging out along side the back truck wheels—two wheels together, and the policeman was walking over to the driver, and the waiter, he stood there, covering his mouth, and shaking his head right and left.
The moment seemed to be frozen in time. The noise had ceased; everything at a standstill. The waiter walked to the corner, he could see well from there.
“He’s dead, like a dead duck,” said the waiter, as he approached me, “Oh, sorry,” he remarked looking at me.
“I’m all right, I can take it.” I said, adding, “You mean the dog is dead?” I confirmed.
“Like mashed potatoes,” He remarked again, “blood all over the place.”
“No fun in that is there?” I commented.
“I didn’t see the dog jump out of that box, must have done it when the bum wasn’t looking.” He said.
The policeman looked at the dead dog, back at the bum, the bum was picking up his box, and other items, and was about to make his escape, but saw several cigarette stubs on the sidewalk, picked them up, one by one, one after the other, several of them, put them in his pocket, looked toward the policeman again, and the policeman was looking at the dead dog, and then turned back to look at the bum, at the driver, then at us looking at him, and as he was about to turn back to the bum, he was gone, he had hightailed it out of there just in time.

4-10-2009

An Afternoon at the Cafe de Flore (or, The Bum's Dog) Flash Fiction

2009-04-13T15:36:00.001-07:00

The Short Grim life of Julia Parra Tapi (& 'To Live, and Not have Lived')

2009-04-12T00:03:00.000-07:00

About Part Two: This is the second part to the novelette "The Green Sea of the Amazon" called "The Short Grim life of Julia Parra Tapi" what you will read here is a normal occurrence along the banks of the upper Amazon, of Peru. The story is taken from actual accounts that have taken place along the swampy, and high grass areas of the Amazon...

Part Two (to 'The Green Sea of the Amazon')

Part Two

The Short Grim life of Julia Parra Tapi
(and, ‘To Live, and Not Have Lived’)

Chapter One of Two
The Short Grim life of Julia Parra Tapi

“Stay here,” said Julia Parra Tapi, to her son, Avelino. His mother was gridlocked, his face stained with tears.
“Why?” he asked, more like muttered.
“Because I say so,” said Julia. She looked angry at Avelino, as if he did not do his duty by watching his younger brother properly and now this trouble, she had been off fishing, and suddenly appeared, and Avelino was frozen in fright.
“Are you going to look for the anaconda?” Avelino cried.
“I have to now, you just stay where you are, stay back. You can see what I’m doing even better from here.”
“All right, mama.” And he said, in a whisper, “I only looked away for a moment, and he was gone.”
Julia grabbed, and pulled out a machete she had in a large bag of fishing items, she then saw the anaconda in the wet tall grass, stepped forward toward it, nodded and said, “Yes, you must die,” looking at an eighteen-foot, two-hundred pound anaconda, in the wet high grass, along the banks of the Amazon, with a bulge in it the size of a six year old boy. The serpent opened up its wide mouth, its fangs as long as her index finger, her six-year old boy was missing, and Avelino, eight, was suppose to watch him.
Then she stepped into the wet swampy like soil, the anaconda was resting in, digesting, fifty little snakes were dashing about her, her litter Julia presupposed.
She crept about, around the snake, examining it, she crept like the snake. The bulk inside the serpent, protruding like she had a long watermelon inside of her, she had just swallowed her meal; she could digest it for a week, or months. She swung her machete, getting a swing in her arm, the snake followed her movements. She brought her right hand into the air, above her head, to get all the thrust she could out of her strength, grabbed the weapon with both hands, and like a hammer she brought it down, it sliced through the back of the snake like hard butter, where the bulge was, the part that was shaped like a head. The giant snake tried to wind about, to the right, it raised itself three feet, and it was pouring out blackish blood.
“You leave me no choice,” she yelped at the creature. She looked inside the snake, saw something familiar, then with rage, she lifted up the machete again, and the litter of snakes started to surround her, went into a panic. She dropped her weapon at the upper part of the snake’s head, cut it almost all the way through, its head still attached, was held on by a thread. She saw a foot.
Then as an afterthought, Julia looked behind her, bewitched, there were eyes of a cat, a puma (a jaguar) and she started to tremble: she couldn’t run, the puma had her zeroed in—or maybe she could a voice in her head said, her second thought, complete thought, was, Avelino, she looked towards him. The new problem demanded a new plan. And she was thinking, all in a minute’s time that seemed like an hour. She felt she had opened a wrong door.
“Just leave,” her mind told her, her second self told her.
“No,” she whispered back to it.
“Why not?”
“Maybe he’s alive?”
“I see, but in a second, it will be too late! You can’t win.”
“Maybe?”
“Too late.”
The large brownish wildcat jumped, leaped out from under its covering of tall grass, leaped onto Julia brought her to the ground next to the large snake, she had glanced at Avelino as she fell, and as she fell, hit the ground, she spotted the bloody face inside the snake.
“Don’t worry,” said her second self, “he’ll stay back, he knows to get out of here.”
And then she yelled, “Go, go, go…oo Ave lin o …!”

Twenty-five yards inside the grass the big cat lay, red mouth, fangs with wet flesh on them; flies circling its yellow eyes, as they blinked, trying to focus on a moving item in the far distance.

Chapter Two of Two
To Live and Not have Lived

In the moments flash, it came to Julia, as a rush, a harsh-tasting hollowness of a rush that she was going to die, like the anaconda next to her.
“What is it,” she said to her mind, her second self.
“Nothing, nothing at all,” it remarked back, “you had better make your peace!”
“Did Avelino run?”
“I don’t know I sensed he did, or was about to. You’ll be out in a minute,” here mind said to her, finally starting to shut her eyes slowly. She was only twenty-seven years old, she had loved very little in life, other than her two boys, perhaps because the Amazon demanded much, too much and she almost let go…

Now in her mind (her second self) she saw within the clap of an eye, her two boys, the death of her husband, how when he got drunk he hit her hard, almost broke her jaw once. She hit him back behind the ear, and then smashed him with a chair. He didn’t even make love joyfully; but he gave her two kids nonetheless. He would go out in the cool night come back to bed passing out, and one day she up and left him before he awoke, and returned home to her village with her two boys.
That same day he got drunk and was attacked by those damned wildcats the pumas (or jaguars). She knew as everybody knew the puma didn’t care to be seen by humans, or anyone, normally brown in color, some black, big and fast, and they need a lot of room to hunt, and roam in. But when they got hungry, they hid, and were good at not being seen: like today.
She remembered the good times with her boys: always picking the finest places to have a picnic. She always though they never had enough time together. The world hadn’t changed much for her, only events.

And then she let go…

Black Water & Breakfast and the Drizzle (Pre Chapers to: "The Green Sea of the Amazon") 4-2009

2009-04-05T11:00:00.000-07:00

Pre Chapter to
“The Green Sea of the Amazon”

Black Water

At noon we were in the air, leaving the Lima, Airport for Iquitos, a Peruvian city along the shores of the Amazon. When we landed, we were quickly picked up and brought to the pier. There were a few other planes in back of us coming in. It had looked like it had just rained, as nearly as I could figure, because everything was watery, and the dock area muddy. Once on the pier, we met several of the Company’s representatives, the driver of the boat that was to take us down river and a few guests, all in all we had worked through a network of people, getting our gear ready to go on an Amazon Jungle safari of sorts (or expedition).
Now, the long Expedition boat, was loading foods and other items on board, along with twelve passengers, not all would be going as far down and deep into the jungle as we, there were a few resort type areas for tourists along the way, not many, and the farther down river you went and into the jungle, the more scarce they became.
Once in motion, heading to our destination, our propeller under the boat was spinning nosily, I could hear it, it sounded like my old 1950 Ford, as if the motor was loose on its understructure; the thing to do now was simply rest and enjoy the ride, the scenery, I told myself.
The Captain’s name of the boat was Marcelo, he was up front, doing the steering of the boat, Jose and Manuel, his assistant workers were sitting with us, one or the other would go check the back, where the gasoline was being stored, along with other items, and then he’d re check us to make sure we kept our life jackets on secure, and smiled. There was a third employee; he would be dropped off about fifty miles down river, a kitchen worker at one of the smaller lodges. The whole trip would be 125-miles down river.
For a long time it seemed no one among us said a word, I think we were in a daze and trying to normalize ourselves, if not acquaint our bodies with the new environment, physically, and mentally, and sensory, all in all, to get acclimated.
“Come on,” I said to Rosa, “say something, it is too boring, I mean the scenery is beautiful, right?”
“We have to hold on tight when we get to the two rivers emerging, two currents hit one another and that causes friction.” Said a voice, it sounded like the captain’s, it came from in front of us, so everyone grabbed onto the railings.
“Dear,” said Rosa, “don’t turn about to quickly you can fall backwards, and fall through these upper railings into the river itself.” And then she started hanging on to me, as if she was going to save me. And it is usually the other way around.
“Let me go, and hang onto the railing, like the man said,” I told her. I put her hand around the metal railing, and she griped it. Once in the Gran Sabana, under a waterfalls, I had to hang onto her, she was on a rope, and had let go to hang onto me as if I was going to slide down into the falls and be gone forever, and I had to grab her, and the rope; and once in the ocean (along side, Copacabana Beech, in Rio Janeiro) she came out to save me from a big wave, and I had to grab her, because the wave swept her up, and was about to sweep her away, I know how she can get when she panics, she’s like a pistol against a man’s head, you got to move her physically or it will be the death of both you. She means well, but becomes dangerous in the process.

Bump! Splash! Bump! Splash! We were like on a roller coaster for a moment, and then it all settled back to normality, if there is such a word in the Amazon.
Then after two long hours (of the six-hour trip), the Captain drove alongside a dock area, dropping the cook’s helper off and two guests, now there were ten of us, plus the captain, and the two assistants. He put the engine in reverse, drove it out, it got stuck in some weeds and roots, and the propeller spun, and then got snagged.
“Well,” said the Captain, “which one of you wants to go in and straighten up everything under the boat?” No one answered, and I wasn’t sure why, it looked like an easy task. But I was glad I did not volunteer, after I found out what I found out.
“Can’t we row to shore and do it there?” asked Jose.
“I don’t think so,” said the Captain, “it will take all day.”
Then the captain went back to the backside of the boat, looked down into the water, “It’s no good, a big something on there!” he shouted back.
“What do you say,” said Jose.
“We got to cut the roots off the propeller, that’s what I said.”
The clouds were shifting above us it looked like rain. The captain turned the engine back on, the rotor spun a foot, but it only tightened the roots around the propeller more so.
“It’s—dead,” said Jose, meaning the propeller. And had they tried any more, the engine would have burnt up.
“Better jump in,” said the captain.
“What about…” Jose didn’t finish his sentence, when the Captain said, “It’s your turn, let’s get to it!”
“What’s the big reason no one wants to go to work on the blade?”
“Senor,” said the captain, we are in a tributary of the Amazon, it is black water, which comes from the roots of the trees, we don’t know what is in the black water, and often there are piranhas all about. They come in hordes, and, well you know what they can do, they rip at your skin, take hunks of meat out of you, in a matter of seconds. Sometimes they nibble by you, give you a running start, and sometimes they don’t.”
“Oh,” I said, and then I heard a splash, and Jose cutting the roots like a madman off the propeller, I could hear his heavy breathing.
“Captain, I got a nibble on my leg,” Jose said, “come over here and move a stick about to frighten whatever is down there away!”
I looked at Jose, through the back opening of the boat, he looked afraid, and I would too I told myself. No money could get me in there, but I would later on swim in the Amazon, although not in black water. Along each side of the boat was a canvas top, one in the middle also, that was now open, the others coverings were over our heads to protect us against the light rain that was now starting to fall.
I watched the captain move his stick about, as Manuel was—I think, saying his prayers he’d not be asked to jump in and help Jose.
“They feel braver in a bunch,” said Manuel, “they take your whole leg off in a matter of minutes.” He commented.
I saw the Captain move back now, and Jose about to leap up, and then, suddenly, he yells, “I think so, one got the bottom of my foot, I think so, I think so…oo!” and the captain swung his long stick in the water, making splashes, hit the fish across the side of its face, no bigger than a sunfish, and it ripped a piece of skin off Jose’s heel, and then he was on board, bleeding.
“Let’s take a look;” said the captain, “I don’t think the fish got all that much.”
“Did you kill it,” asked Jose.
“If not he’ll not…never mind, how do you feel?”
“Do I get a day off with pay for this?” He asked the Captain, seriously.
And the Captain laughed, saying, “Jose, no, it’s not that bad, you don’t get a day off, lucky he was not with his clan, but I bet they are nearby. Put some iodine on it Manuel for him, then write it up as an accident incase I will have to report it, you know,” said the Captain to Manuel and Jose “he’ll be all right, just a sore foot, with a little meat gone. You’ve had worse.”

The engine started and we were back on track, back on our way down river.
“It is a fine lodge you folks are going to but we got to make one more stop along the way, drop six passengers off, and the rest of you will go to the lodge deeper into the jungle,” said Jose, meaning the one we were going to.
Ahead the river got wider and wider, at one point it was six-miles wide, it was like a giant highway, that didn’t cease. We talked some more among ourselves and the boat was going fast against time.

We made our second stop, and it looked a little less elegant than the previous resort, I figured ours would be, even less. I kind of thought: what am I doing here, but it was an adventure I had somewhat dreamed about, I mean who hasn’t thought about going down the longest and most dangerous river in the world, with all its wildlife and unknown secrets awaiting for ones arrival.
The sky was clouding up again, and it was raining slightly, and after ten minutes of rain, it somehow disappeared, we drove out of it. Then we turned down another tributary, and deeper into the Amazon green. The shores looked muddy and across the wet embankments we passed were scattered individuals fishing, kids swimming, dogs running, monkey’s playing, a few long looking black cats racing in the wild, three or four feet long. A few pink dolphins popping their heads up in the river; then we came to a dock area.

“Come one at a time,” said the captain on the dock, his hand extended for us.

It was like a little bridge out into the tributary, that lead up to the lodge, and along side the main lodge, were little huts, and wooden walkways, all leading into one another, and to the main lodge, where there was the cafeteria, lounge and small souvenir shop. The Captain introduced us to the general staff throughout the place.

Breakfast and the Drizzle

In the morning everything was wet, it had rained throughout the night. The mist of the rain was just lifting I noticed outside my window of our hut, I could see the tops of the trees, the inlet that stretched out to the mouth of the Amazon was vaguely visible. The air was fresh but soggy, heavy with water. There were giant bugs on my net that covered the net around me and my bed, bugs with thick long wings, and fat bodies, drooping bellies, long legged bugs, and small beetle like bugs, and bugs with big eyes like headlights, a few as big as sparrows. A few spiders, hairy legs, and bloody-eyed creatures, about the size of a half dollar; I hit the net, and most fell off or flew off or jumped off, I got up, then I walked out beyond the hooch. Everything was wet, the wooden sidewalks that acted as bridges throughout the compound were soaked. There was still a light drizzle, a steady drizzle, everyone was rushing to the main lodge with things covering their heads, umbrellas, newspapers, hats, and so forth.
The cafeteria seemed crowded compared to when we arrived yesterday, a few hours before dusk. In the far corner of the cafeteria, the corner that looked out towards the boats, were three natives, one playing a drum, one playing a flute, the other a guitar, all three harmonizing some song. I sat at one of the tables with Rosa, and I suppose everyone saw my tight- wound, still somewhat muscularly, pure white legs, and said: I bet he’s from the Arctic. A few older women came in, shaking water off from their umbrellas, spreading them out to dry out.
“Breakfast will be ready shortly,” said the cook.
“Jose, how’s your foot?” I yelled as he finished his breakfast with the captain of the boat, at another table.
“Fine,” he said.
“No work to-day?”
“I wish,” he said.
“Where is Manuel?” I asked.
“He’s cleaning the boat.”
“Look,” he said, “Have you met Avelino yet?”
“No.”
“He’ll be your personal guide. He picked you out himself.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
“He heard you like things your way, and being with a group my present some problems, plus he likes big tips, and he thinks you got money!”
“Yes, I see, thanks for the update.”
“Avelino, come here and meet your clients!” said Jose.
“Sit down and join us,” I said to our new guide.
“I can’t now, I’m doing some paperwork, but I’ll see you after breakfast.”
I finished eating, washed up in cold water, from an outdoor fascist.
“Look,” said Rosa, “the manager gave me this note, a message from Avelino, says: ‘Meet you at 10:30 a.m., in back of he last hut, by the opening of the jungle, we’re going to a native village.” Singed: Avelino.
“Well,” I said, “if we can’t find the spot, he’ll simply have to find us.” And Rosa and I had a chuckle.

In the Eye of the Bull (Bullfight in Seville, a short story)

2009-04-04T22:09:00.000-07:00

In the Eye of the Bull
(Bullfight in Seville)

It was a great bullfight in Seville, Spain, in a way. Rosa and I were excited about being introduced to the young good looking matador, he must had been no older than twenty-one. A young couple was sitting about ten-feet away from us in the arena, Americans like us. The bull had gored the young matador; he had caught the blind spot with his eye when the young matador swung his cape in front of his horns, and for a second couldn’t see those long thick horns, and gored him in his armpit, throwing him clear in the air above him. Rosa looked my way caught my attention, and shrugged her shoulders to show her discontent. To my understanding there had not been a goring in a long while here, it was 1997. The second matador was called in, to replace the wounded one, while he was being taken out on a stretcher: both being about the same height, weight, built, and age. Both matadors were slack in their approach, and careless, a lack of skills it appeared, it took the second matador six times sticking the sword into the back extended hump of the bull, before it dropped to its knees, he had missed the mark every time. The bull was a young, skinny bull, weak to start out with, but he wasn’t careless, and he had courage.
Rosa and the other American woman, in her late twenties, were leaning backwards, as I and the young man leaned forward.
“Help me clean my glasses,” I asked Rosa.
“This looks too bloody for me,” she said. (The second matador was pushing in his sword for the sixth time into the bull’s upper back, but somehow as he’d leaped up, and stuck the bull coming down, the sword, dropped down four to six inches beyond its intended target.)
“At least we’re not bored, that’s the main thing.” I told Rosa.

After the bullfight, Rosa and I jumped up into the isle, before we got stuck into the slow moving lava type crowd.
If anything, it was one super high for me. At this very moment my heart was pounding like voodoo drums. As I looked behind me, all I could see were heads and shoulders up and down the isle, all heading my way.
“Where do you suppose everyone is going in such a hurry?” asked Rosa.
“No place, it’s just kind of traditional in such events to hurry up and get out of the place. It’s kind of like throwing your garbage on the floor, our under the chair, no reason to do it, they got dumpsters, but you do it anyhow, without thinking, automatically, as if the other guy is going to find some hidden treasure out in the parking lot, so you got to get there first.”
“You do have a nice way of wording things, dear.”
In front of us was a stand where an old Spaniard sat selling souvenirs.
“Here, let’s look at these things, while everyone passes us by.” I said to Rosa.
“Hello, señor and señora,” said the Spaniard, the seller, and sole proprietor.
“I say, do you have any replica bulls?” I said to the Spaniard, and Rosa added, “Habla ingles?” (Do you speak English?)
“Si Señora,” he replied.
“Sorry, I should have asked,” I said to both Rosa and the seller, then looked about for the replica bulls, and couldn’t see any.
“Oh look,” said Rosa, “the miniature matador jacket and hat.”
“How was the bullfight?” asked the Spaniard.
“Bloody, just simply bloody!” said Rosa.
“Wonderfully bloody,” I added. (The Spaniard was uncertain if to smile or frown, and therefore, gave us both a blank look.)
“It’s was a spectacle!” said Rosa “even the bulls charged the old and weak looking horses, the picadors were on. I couldn’t help but feel bad about it all.”
“Yes, it’s not the prettiest of sights, but you got to look deeper than that, below the surface at a bullfight,” I said to Rosa, hoping the Spaniard would take my side but he was only interested in selling, and remained with an indifferent face.
“Do you feel ok?” asked the seller to Rosa.
“I’ll be fine,” Rosa remarked.
“Dear,” commented Rosa, “will you buy the toy jacket and hat for me?”
“Yes, yes, of course. You weren’t bored at least at the bullfight.” I remarked, repeating, “Yes, we’ll take the hat and jacket,” looking back at the seller.
“Ah, good choice señora,” said the seller to Rosa. I kind of laughed, without laughing out loud, but I think it showed on my face. I mean, it would have been a good choice whatever item she would have picked out, he wanted to sell.
“No,” said Rosa, “who could be bored at such an event.”
“All right,” said the seller “is there anything else?”
“I thought dear I was going to vomit for a moment, when he stuck that sword…you know, umpteen times.”
“He was positively bloody from his upper back to his hoofs.”
“Oh, please be quiet about all this blood stuff, I had enough for one day! Are you turning into a sadist?”
“Maybe, but surely not a pacifist,” I said.
“Maybe you two would like handkerchiefs, with bulls on them?” asked the proprietor.
“Not really, can’t say they do a thing for me.” I stated.
“Dear, they could be cheap, wonderful gifts.”
“Yew, I suppose so. It was a spectacle was it not?” upon reflection.
“That poor old skinny horse he just dropped to his boney knees when the bull plowed into him.” Said Rosa, with a tighten face, and grimace.
“Yes indeed, it was a dreadful moment I suppose for the picador.”
“Do you want to buy the handkerchiefs? And will you be paying in dollars or pesos,” asked the seller.
“I want to go someplace and eat—yes, in dollars how much?”
“Next time Rosa; I’ll not get front row seats.”
“Dear, you are hard-shelled; I never did see the horn go into his armpit,” remarked Rosa.
“I told you at the time the matador was in an awkward position, a blind spot and the bull took advantage of it, he saw it, with his eye, I saw the bull looking at the opening, and I told you, ‘look, he’s going for it,’ and you were looking through your fingers, hoping not to see what you did see.”
“Everything, twenty-dollar sir,” said the Spaniard.
“What! For these little items, are we at the Hilton here or what?” I said to the seller.
“Be a good chap dear, just pay the man, you took up all his time, and all the customers he might have had, he lost because you and I were talking, talking, like a dozen chuckerring birds.”
“Here you go,” I gave the man a twenty-dollar bill and Rosa and I walked up to the street. A car was waiting for us to take us back to the hotel. Smoothly across the city, along the river we rode. You could see the cathedral tower from the car, attached onto the side of the church.
“This bullfight is my last one,” said Rosa as we neared our hotel.
“I don’t think so I said,” and left it at that, knowing Rosa would come no matter what, before she’d let me go alone, she married a sidekick, more than a husband.

4-4-2009 Dedicated to Rosa

God save Us from Our Habits (a short story in Augsburg, Germany, 1970)

2009-04-02T23:15:00.003-07:00

God save Us from Our Habits
(A short story in Augsburg, Germany, 1970)

In those—now, far-off days, the winters were different in Augsburg, Germany, than I was used to in St. Paul, Minnesota, but similar in that it was cold in Augsburg, and there was snow on the ground. It might be hard to believe, but believe it nonetheless, because it is true. This one evening it was snowing, and I was inside my guard shack, at the entrance to the Military Compound, called Reese. There was Chris’ car across the street, her 1970 Green Mustang, with the letters on the side of the car CS, for Chris Steward. It at first puzzled me, but it had German license plates on it, and it was on a public street, and we, as American soldiers in Germany, had already handed over that part of the country back to the Germans, for a long time we had jurisdiction over such matters. I walked out of my guard shack to inspect the car from the distance, knowing there was a concern of sabotage to US Military Bases, and I was part of the Military Security Force. It was just prior to Christmas, and the mess hall was having turkey and all the trimmings, and I was to get a dinner sent over to me so I was waiting impatiently. It was about 7:00 p.m. My shift ended at 8:00 p.m. I walked across the street to check out who was in the car, it was a lady, and it looked like my new girlfriend, the one I was dating for a month now.

All around us at our military compound was the city, and its old towers, and busy streets and across a highway was the US Military PX, and opposite that, a guesthouse I often prescribed to. Directly across the street from the guardhouse, were some four story buildings, and next to that was a large empty lot they had German Fests, actually they had them all over the city, all year round it seemed, and in every little town beyond the city limits. Across the street from the guardhouse, or hut, was the office, Sergeant Daily, a buck sergeant, kind of a foremen type sergeant, was packing some items in his little van and saying his goodbyes to Sergeant First Class Chamblee, he was the main man, the boss man. He was sitting giving instruction to the Corporal Hanson; I was a Private First Class (Chick Evens). Hanson stood up pushed his chair away from the wall; Hanson and I were best of friends, and Hanson was best of friends with Chamblee, no one really liked the Buck Sergeant. He had pushed his chair back to say goodbye for the evening to both Sergeants.

Corporal Hanson was tall, thin, dark-messy short hair, fat lips, sad looking eyes, hands always trembling, afraid of the boss man. Sergeant First Class Chamblee was even taller than Hanson by an inch or two, a father image, or so he tried to display, dumber than a duck with one leg, but kind and understanding. And Hanson could have been his genetic son. The Buck Sergeant, was short, thin a good looking chap, clever, and always thinking of a way how to pull the wool over your eyes. He was the only one married of us four soldiers.

Sergeant Chamblee, carried a bible in his pocket at all times, and if anything was wrong with anyone, he had the treatment for the symptoms in the bible, right there at hand, and could most often, quote what the bible said before he opened the page to man’s down fall, and the reason to one’s dilemma. I for the most part, was always happy, hoping he’d not discover my faults.
I asked him once why he carried the bible around when he had it memorized, and he simply answered: “Private First Class Evens, it is only an aid to my memory, God forbidding, I lose it, and thus far I have not, I would have the aid.”
He tried to talk the talk, if you know what I mean. And was quite sensitive about his book, and his quotes, and his diagnoses; shamefully but true, I was a yes man to him, in fear I’d end up in his hell platoon.
I once did rebuke him by saying, “Sergeant, you really don’t have the credentials to be a minister, do you?”
He told me back, it was one late evening, “Private Evens, I have done everything in my power to take you and Hanson under my wing, you are a member of my special security force, I advise to you, in the name of people you work for, to learn how not to talk to a superior, and not the way you just did, especially when you are drunk.”
As I had stepped further into the office, he smelt my breath, booze and cigarettes reeked out of me. The over-heated radiator made a lot of noise, so he didn’t here me burp, and Corporal Hanson was there and I heard him say, “Sergeant, he’s had a bad time, his girlfriend is two-timing him,” and Hanson put his hand on my shoulder.
“Well why didn’t you say that Private, now I understand,” I then looked at Hanson gave him a little smile, then the Sergeant said in a rough voice, “Gentlemen soldiers,” he said, “here is the affects of extravagance, booze, cigarettes, and women,” looking at me, and I kind of felt he said it with utmost elegance, but nonetheless to shame me.

Anyhow, this night, the green car was still there, and I was waiting for my turkey dinner, and I went to see who it was, and it was to my surprise, Chris Steward, she usually drove a Mercedes around, her other boyfriend’s car. Hanson wasn’t lying per se, Chris did have two lovers, me and a German and she often used his car, but Chris had told me about him—the other boyfriend that is—and him, about me and we agreed on the relationship, she knowing I could go to Vietnam at anytime, be taken out of the 1/36 Artillery at any moment, and be stranded with no boyfriend, god forbid.
“Listen, Chick,” said Chris, “I want to go out and get drunk tonight; I got my car back out of the shop, it was being fixed.”

At 8:15 p.m., we went out to a little guesthouse outside of the city, and guess what, we saw in backroom looking into a movie box, good old Sergeant Chamblee. It was an item you looked into, after putting a coin into its side slot, and wound up, and let it go and as it unwound, it showed you naked women, in funny positions; we have them in Minnesota also.
“Sergeant Chamblee,” I said, “what are you doing looking into that pornography box?”
He turned about slowly, looked at me as if I was a Peeping Tom; Chris was ordering us a table to sit at:
“Private Evens,” he said, “funny seeing you here, it’s expensive,” then he saw Chris coming my way, “oh, I see you made up with your gal, but let me inform you, there’s nothing wrong with me, or this. That’s the way men are supposed to be; nothing wrong at all.”
“It’s wrong,” I remarked, “It’s a sin against cleanliness.”
“No,” said the Sergeant (now Chris standing a few feet away from me.) “It’s a natural thing, and a person should be thankful, you’re much too young to understand of course. But your girlfriend is a few years older than you, I’m sure she understands, right?” he was looking at her now.
“Do what, understand what,” said Chris, and she moved to the table, playing dumb, leaving me with the sergeant.
“There is nothing wrong with looking at a woman’s body,” said the Sergeant “is there?” he asked me.
This all started off as a joke, now it was getting into theology, right and wrongs.
“I’m only looking; I’m not consummating a sinful act against a human being. When you talk so silly, I don’t care to listen to you,” said the sergeant. “Here, come and take a look for yourself,” said the sergeant.
“No,” I said, “I told you it is a sin.”
“But you were kidding, right?”
“I thought I was.”

That was about 10:00 p.m., that evening, before.
“So what happened?” I asked Hanson.
“At four o’clock this morning,” Hanson said, “I received a phone message from our friendly Buck Sergeant, that, Sergeant Chamblee had raped the woman across the hall from his apartment, her husband was out in the field, and he mutilated her with a knife, after doing terrible sexual acts.”
“No,” I said to Corporal Hanson, “it’s a joke.”
“She may die,” he said.
“Die,” I said, “it’s that bad?”
“She lost a lot of blood!”
“He was always so friendly.”
“Well, we mustn’t talk too much about it, lest we get in trouble.”
“Somehow, that was in the back of my mind when I saw him at the guesthouse and he was looking at the phonograph box.” I remarked.
“You’re too damn smart for your own good, be quiet about this. It will all settle itself, all come out in good time, we don’t need to start rumours,” said Hanson, “incidentally, and I ate your turkey dinner it arrived after you left.”

4-3-2009

Zu einem Anderen Land ((Augsburg, Deutschland, 1970)(Eine Geschichte von Chick Evens))

2009-04-02T20:31:00.000-07:00

Zu einem Anderen Land
(To Another Country)
((Augsburg, Germany, 1970) (A Chick Evens Story)

((Augsburg, Deutschland, 1970)
(Eine Geschichte von Chick Evens)

By Dennis L. Siluk

Wir, die Soldaten an der 1/36 Artillerie, in Augsburg, Deutschland verstanden im März 1970, dass der Krieg in Vietnam uns an zu jeder Zeit nennen(anrufen) konnte; wir konnten die Verteilungsliste angezogen werden, und so dass wir Freundschaften formten, möchte Art dessen, die Zeit des Tages zu verbringen. Mein Raum(Zimmer) in den Kasernen(Baracken) wurde undeutlich beleuchtet, und die Flure waren laut und qualmig, und wir hatten gewisse Stunden wir konnten bis und um, und dann Bett-Scheck sein; und es gab immer Feldwebel, die das und das nachprüfen. Andererseits brachten Leute in Mädchen an den Wochenenden, zusammen mit den Mexikanern mit ihrer lauten Musik, und Schwarzen hoch auf Schmiere, und Weißen, betrunken als Stinktiere. Und wir alle nahmen bis zu einem gewissen Grade das Verhalten von den anderen, früher oder einem anderen an. Wir waren größtenteils privates und Private Soldaten Der ersten Klasse, einige Unteroffiziere, nur einige Dollar-Feldwebel innerhalb der Kasernen(Baracken), und es gab vier zu einem Raum(Zimmer) normalerweise.
Und ich nehme ich an, dass ich wie einige von den anderen, patriotisch war, und ich glaube, dass einige meiner Freunde derselbe, aber nicht waren viele von uns waren, wir waren einfach Wehrpflichtige. Zwei von ihnen waren vom Süden; ich denke Alabama, und das Nördliche Carolina. Wir lungerten mit den Adjektiven entfernt herum, und betranken uns gerade, spazierengegangen die Parks und Straßen und besuchten(besichtigten) die Gästehäuser in Augsburg, Deutschland.
Vielleicht brauchten wir einander, so dass es schien zur Zeit war das von einer kleinen Gruppe freundlich, die wir hatten, und Freunde gegen Außenseiter blieben, die Sie sagen konnten. Das war dort in Deutschland weit weg von Haus verschieden gewesen.
Ich schämte mich meines Heimatlandes nicht, aber je länger blieb ich in Deutschland, desto mehr mochte ich es, ich gewöhnte mich an den deutschen Boden, die Nachtklubs, die Nahrung, die Kultur. Ich konnte haben stellen sich vor, einen Europäer wegnehmend, wie sie es nannten(anriefen), und in Deutschland lebend, sobald meine Tour bis war, aber ich in Vietnam geendet hatte, so daß nur Nahrung für Gedanken für eine kleine Zeitspanne(Zeit) war.
Drei von uns, Private Erste Klasse Bruce Wilcox und Dollar-Feldwebel, John Sharp, und wie man sah wurde, ich, Chick Evens, als fast einander, die ersten drei Monate beigefügt ich war in Deutschland, sogar Simon, Privat wie ich, verband die Gruppe, wie wir hier und dort trieben. Und ich mochte sie ganz, dachte vielleicht, dass wir von einander würden nicht getrennt werden müssen, und wir würden unsere Zeit hier in Deutschland zusammen verbringen.
Als ich zu einem speziellen Projekt im Sicherheitsgebiet gefördert wurde, kam diese Frage herauf, von meinen Freunden getrennt zu werden. Sie hatten mich auf der sogenannten Förderung(Aufstieg) Komplimente gemacht, aber jetzt waren unsere Stunden für uns zu hangout unregelmäßig(unordentlich). So dass sie sich wunderten, wie ich mich wunderte, wenn ich dabei war, die Förderung(Aufstieg) zu akzeptieren, war es nicht in Stand eher in Position.
Dies ganz gemacht ich denken, ' die Förderung(Aufstieg) war eine Förderung(Aufstieg) oder eine Degradierung? ' Ich würde einen privaten Raum(Zimmer) bekommen, den normalerweise nur Feldwebel bekamen, würden meine Stunden rotieren, aber größtenteils befestigt, und ich würde zu denjenigen schreckliche dreißigtägige Lehrsitzungen in der kalten einhundert Meilen entfernt Wildnis nicht ausgehen müssen. Aber meine Freunde sagte ich, ' wie steht's mit meinen Freunden? ' Verhör selbst.
Erste Feldwebel-Klasse Myers näherte sich mir; er war vor der Sicherheitstruppe(Friedenstruppe) an WiederOSO Militärbasis, sagte, " Sie haben Ihren neuen Job, wenn Sie es wollen, habe ich mit Ihrem Firmenkommandanten gesprochen, er sträubte sich zuerst, aber ich hatte den Oberst, mich unterstützen, aber es muß bereitwillig akzeptiert werden, sonst wird Ihr befehlshabender Offizier bitten, dass Sie in seinen Befehl zurückkommen. "
" Ich versuche, es in meinem Kopf auszuarbeiten; es hat mehr, um mit Verlassen meiner Freunde zu tun, als etwas. " Ich sagte.
" Mehr eines Dummkopfs, der Sie sind, einen guten Zufallspaß(kritische Zufallslage) Sie dadurch zu lassen, die Sie nie imstande sein können wiederzubekommen. Aber lassen Sie Ihr bewußt Ihr Führer(Markierung) sein, " sagte die Erste Feldwebel-Klasse.
" Na, ist Feldwebel Myers Freundschaft nicht wichtig? " Er schien sehr böse, " nennen(rufen an) mich Feldwebel nicht, ich bin ein Feldwebel Der ersten Klasse, der mein Titel ist, nahm es mich achtzehn-Jahre, um es zu bekommen. " " Schade Erste Feldwebel-Klasse, ich achte wirklich Ihren Stand hoch, und ich sehe Ihren Punkt. " Ich sagte, versuchend, Sachen(Dinge) wegzuräumen.
" Sie können nicht auf eine gute Gelegenheit verzichten, wenn Sie vorwärtsgehen sollen, hier sind Sie mir dort mit dem Kapitän unterworfen(neigend), Sie werden unter ander 160-Männer nicht sogar bemerkt er hat, und vergessen für Förderung(Aufstieg) für gute Taten getan in dieser Position Sie verlieren nichts, und erreichen alles. " Ich wollte etwas anderes sagen, und er sagte einfach, " streiten(argumentieren) mit mir privat nicht, ich habe die Zeit nicht, Sie haben fünf Minuten, um Sie Meinung(Geist) zusammenzusetzen, und dann werde ich Ihre Ersetzung finden, das ist ebenso einfach wie das. " Ich konnte nicht roh sein, so dass ich ein anderes Wort nicht sagte, eher lehnte sich gegen die Steinwand der Kasernen(Baracken) zum Sicherheitsgebäude. Dann in fünf Minuten kam er heraus.
"Oh-" sagte er, " sie beißen ihre Lippen an Ihrem Firmengebiet, um Sie zurück zu haben, sind sie auf Männern für Wachdienst niedrig, und Küche räumt und so weiter auf, ich sagte ihnen, dass ich Ihnen zurück bald senden würde, da das für Sie so schwierig ist, sich von Ihrer alten Aufgabe und Freunden, die Soldaten zu versöhnen, die arbeiten, hier sind auch gute Freunde, sachlich, wohin auch immer Sie in Leben hineingehen, werden Sie neue und gute Freunde treffen, und haben, um adieu die alten zu sagen, der einfach Leben ist. "

" Sie müssen mir verzeihen, um in meiner Wahl(Möglichkeit) so indolent zu sein, als ich an erster Stelle um diese neue Aufgabe-Anweisung gebeten hatte. Ja, ich werde mehr sein als froh, es zu akzeptieren. Sie haben, eine vermisste Gelegenheit recht, können wieder nie erscheinen, und wer weiß(kennt), zu welcher Straße es führen wird. Und es war in diesem Moment mein Vertrauen zu Beschlussfassung wurde vollkommen wiederhergestellt.

Am 2-27-2009 ·

Two-hearted Killer (a short Vietnam war sketch)

2009-03-28T21:45:00.000-07:00

Two-hearted Killer
(A Vietnam War Story)

(Interjectory background) This story takes place in Can Ranh Bay, Vietnam, 1971; it is a deep water bay in the province of Khanh Hoa, inlet of the South China Sea, 180-miles northeast of Saigon. It is considered a significant military base; the Navy, Air Force and Army are stationed there in great numbers. In the past one-hundred years it has been considered a strategic point in the providing port for Military champignons, supplying, and other military adventures. The Japanese have used in the early 1940s to invade Malaysia, the United States as early as 1944, used it as a task force to destroy Japanese facilities thereabouts. In 1964 (to the end of the war in 1975), the Seventh Fleet took up resonance there until the Army took over completely in about 1972, and the Russians used it for twenty-fives years, in the seventies to the nineties, and although there has not been a lot of conflict at Cam Ranh Bay, considered at times to have been a resting area for the US Infantry, away from combat, it has also been a storage area of mentions, which the Viet Cong has on occasion, infiltrated and took large sums of arms to re-supply their troops. In addition, in 1969, and 1971, there were attacks on Cam Ranh, this is a story that involves one of those attacks, in which the author was involved..

The Story

Two-hearted Killer

Chapter One

“Why did you come to Vietnam to fight?” said Frenchie.
“I suppose at first it was for an ideal,” said Chick Evens.
“Will your ideal save you if you get shot?”
“So I have to fight well, and shoot straight.”
“I don’t believe anything I hear, and I don’t believe in luck, but I am like you, I have to do what I’m supposing to do, to survive, for my husband, for my duty.”
“I know, husbands are to be obeyed, and so are Army Officers, and so are the Congressmen in the United States to the President of the United States, it all comes from the top.”
(The wind opens the door, and it shuts again.)
“Are my friends, those sleeping here in the hooch, your customers also?”
“The Buck Sergeant is. He gets very ugly when he is drunk.”
“I know, I had it out with him a few weeks ago, a fight to the death almost. The other two are alright.”
“When you put on your uniform, you are a soldier, and when I put on my makeup and come here, I am working for my ideal, just like you.”
“You’re awfully pretty,” remarked Evens.
“You have nice manners for a soldier,” said Frenchie. “Darling, kiss me!”
“If I do, we stop talking then. I like boozing, and talking and smoking all at the same time.”
“Really?” she commented “whatever you like dear.” Adding, “I read in a book, American men try to get the woman he is interested is, into bed with boozing it up, that’s silly, he and she can’t do a thing drunk.”
“I suppose your right, but you’re a serious lover, Americans are not, sex is like having breakfast, good, and then goodbye.”
“Do you want some more breakfast?” (She kisses him.)
“What do you want me to do?” Evens asked.
“Lift my dress up over my shoulders, I don’t want to get it wrinkled anymore than I have to, this bed is so small.”
“Right,” (he does) “now what?”
“Let’s do the whole thing all over again, make love.”
“Very well, Frenchie, but I hope I don’t go to sleep on you.” (They both start laughing, to the point of almost choking.)

“Twice in one night is too much!” said Evens.
“You owe me six-dollars, remember I’ll collect on payday,” says Frenchie with a smile. Evens drop back down in bed.)
“How long you been in the Army?”
“I got three months to go, been in for 21-months.”
(He looks for the bottle of rice wine they had been drinking, finds it alongside his bed, there is a few drops left, he holds it up in the air, lets the wine dribble into his mouth, it is a little more the than what he thought left in the bottle, and it dribbles on his chin.)
“I know you only charge me a little compared to the rest of the guys, and on credit, but you sleep here every time you come around this company area, and you know you’re safe with me. Here give me your money, I’ll put it under my pillow, pick it up tomorrow morning. Too late to go back to the village now, you’ll be raped by either the drunken GI’s walking about, or the cowboys, those teenage gangsters at the village.”
“Thank you corporal, I was hoping you’d ask me to stay the night, and hide my money for me, like last time.”
(She hands him her money it is in a fat roll, with a piece of cloth tied around it.)
“Wow, this is a lot of dough, how much?”
“Five-hundred dollars.”
“In one night?”
“I charge the other soldiers between ten and twenty-five dollars.”
“Thanks,” said Evens, “come on, we better go to sleep, my First Sergeant checks out the hooch and if he finds you here, there can be problems, although he has his share of girls in his personal den.”
“You never did tell me about any of the people you killed in war.”
“No, please don’t ask:”
(You can hear it starting to rain outside the hooch, Chick Evens gets up and walks over to the door, shuts it, ties it shut with a loose string. And quietly walks back to his bed. Frenchie, a beautiful whore, half French and Vietnamese, reaches under Evens’ bed, finds another bottle of Japanese Rice Wine, and fines the corkscrew and opens the bottle.)
“Look what I found,” she tells Evens.
“Forgot, I had another one there.”
“What’s the matter, dear?”
“You look serious again; I hope I don’t have to pay you $18-dollars on payday.” (And they both start laughing.)
“Move over, let me drink it sitting up.” (She hands him the bottle.)
“I can’t ever talk to anyone about war, they never tell me a thing, I want to know, darling you tell me, it’s just a hang-up. There are two-hundred thousand American soldiers here, and not one will tell me a thing. Why?”
“Don’t be silly, war is no game.”
“But I want to know, know something, anything about war, not just that American GI’s want sex now and then.”
“Two months ago, I was in Saigon, at a hotel, other Americans there, some Vietcong, you know how they dress, just like you and the South Vietnamese Army, you can’t tell who is who, an American soldier is in his room laying on his bed, they come in, three of them, and the boy starts to cry, he sees their AK-47s, the Russian made rifles, and they shoot, I hear the shots, and the cry, and I run to his room, he’s a friend, opening the door, they are jumping outside the window; the filthy bastards, they shot his head almost off his neck. Not one bullet, twenty bullets. That my dear is what you call a dead man; he was supposed to come to Cam Ranh Bay with me, but somebody shot him first. We were in the bush together for six months.”
“Who shot him?” she asked.
“Lady you’re in a war zone, whoever, that is who. Hurry up and drink what you want and give me the bottle.”
(He commences to lie back in the bed.)
“Sorry I had you bring it up…!”
(In a tired voice) “Don’t ask me anything else please. I don’t want to remember.”
“I’d like to ask you one more thing, and you don’t have to pay me the $6.00 dollars you owe me so far.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think people like shooting people for the heck of it? I mean, when they get used to killing do they like to kill more?”
“Yeah, I think they do. The sergeant I got in a fight with here, signed up six times to stay in Vietnam, to kill more…he’s got the bug to kill.”
“Truly?” she asked.
“How do you know?”
“Go ask him, I’ll wake him up for you. Plus I know plenty guys like him.”
“Oh no, I’m scared of him.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know, I can’t remember off hand, but I call him The Crusher, he looks like a wrestler in Minnesota I once saw, went to a wrestling match and saw him fight, both the Sergeant and the real Crusher were muscle-bound, but the Sergeant has no sense.”
“Did you kill anybody?” (Evens starts to choke, takes another drink of wine.)
“On guard duty once, I killed an American who wouldn’t yield, the VC made him approach me with a hand-grenade in his hand, ready to throw it, and they were watching him from the undergrowth, ready to shoot him if he didn’t, it was him or I, it was in the middle of the night, no one else around. I shot him and then into the shrubbery; killed three in the bushes. You satisfied now?”
“Well, I guess nobody understands the war, but you’re all here, are you ever going to write about me and the war?”
“Someday I’d like to put it down in writing, but I don’t know how to yet.”
“If you ever do will you write nice things about me, not how I danced with your friends last time I saw you, remember I danced naked, and did all those things?”
“Frenchie, you made everyone happy, I’ll never forget you, if I do write about you, it will be with the truth, and, well, with a certain amount of thanks and fatigue.” (She laughed.)
“When you write, I wish you a lot of luck!”
“Why did they shoot your friend?”
“I think by mistake, and when they saw their mistake, they wanted to set an example so other GI’s would be fearful of the enemy. They weren’t awfully efficient; we all kill a lot of people over here, and we shouldn’t kill. The trouble is, people put us in harms way, and it becomes them or us, somebody ten-thousand miles away, who don’t have to deal with this dilemma. Politicians, big industry, that is what it is all about, and they get boys like me, men I should say, young men with ideals, and they never watch us slobber our lives away, if they did, they may have some pity on us, and stop such foolish wars like this.”
“Yes. I suppose you’re right.”
“You and I could die alright, we don’t ask one another to do something we’re not willing to do ourselves, but up there in Washington, they sort us out by classes, who are the dispensable.” (Frenchie shakes her head.)
“They are the real killers, right Evens?” (The rain outside is pouring down like cats and dogs, making noise against the door.)
“After killing for six bloody months, my girl, in this country, you get sucked in on all sides, you don’t know who to trust, what is right and wrong, you question your values, and the folks you once believed in. It’s all too bloody much.”
“We ought to go to sleep,” said Frenchie.
“Yes, I’m tired also.”
“That’s right, let’s just close our eyes here, and go to sleep.”
(They both close their eyes; she reopens her’s, looks towards Evens.)
“You sleeping?” she asks. (Evens, no response, she whispers :) “I hope you write nice things about me,” and closes her eyes again, and falls to sleep.

3-28-2009 /Historical Fiction (based on actual events) 1732 “Two-hearted Killer”

Việt ngữ: attack!

Chapter Two

“Cái thằng chồng em nó chẳng ra gì,” said Frenchie.
“I know what that means, said Evens.
“No you don’t,” said Frenchie, “and my name is Mai, not Frenchie,” she commented, “and my ancestors were Muong, Cambodian, and Chinese, Ông ấy. You know what Ông ấy means?”
“I wish you’d let me sleep, stop waking me up, I speak as good Việt ngữ (Vietnamese) as you, or just about as well as you. It means ‘that husband of mine, he is good for nothing,’ and then you referred to me as sir, and I’m not a sir I’m a corporal.”
You really do understand, don’t you?” said Mia.
“Yes Chị ấy (young lady)” said Corporal Evens.
“So all this time you’ve been fooling those around you?”
“Just like you, who just told me your name, Mia? I still haven’t mastered the vowels, and their pronunciation with that inherent tone to them.”
“I teach you?”
“I wish I could teach you to go to sleep and stay sleeping, what time is it?”
Mia looked at her watch, “It 2:00 a.m.” she said.
“By god, don’t you Vietnamese women ever sleep? Be a good girl and let me go back to sleep?”
“You just need to learn the pitch in the language that is kind of the loudness, if you know what I mean?”
“You have to have an ear for that, and that takes too long, I’ll be long gone by then I hope.”
“Why do you GI’s call us gooks?”
“It’s just a way to dehumanize you, so we can kill you, make you less than human, so when we pull the trigger, we think we’re killing rat, not a human being.”
“Oh, I never know why you call that to us. Am I gook?”
“Mia and me have no more bí mật, what will we talk about now?”
“This is not true, I do have secrets, I will not tell you, and I know you have more secrets, but sometimes it is good to keep them to oneself.”
“Gosh, I wonder sometimes why I like you!” said Evens.
“I wonder why I like you, too, darling. It is not very wise, really. You will go, and I will stay, and we will think of each other for forty-years, I wonder what she is doing, I wonder what he is doing, and we old, and never know.”
(They both hear foot steps walking by the door, they stop.)
“Who is that, Corporal?” asked Mia.
“The CQ, he checks things out, he may come in hear, I think he heard us, so he may give us his blessing, and walk on by, if not you will have to go.”
“Does he ever come in the hooch?”
“He never does really, I wished he’d not come tonight.”
“He won’t. He likes you like me.”
“I hope not,” said Evens, with a chuckle.
Sergeant Thompson looks through the door, Mia, hides under the covers, ·How’re you, very well, Corporal Evens?” he asks. He sees all is well, gives the corporal a smile, “thought I heard something, maybe you had some kind of sort you aren’t supposed to have; looks like everything is all right thought: everybody absolutely comfortable?”
“Everybody’s marvelous,” said Evens.
“Well, don’t talk to yourself so loud, you’ll wake up your comrades.”
“Sure enough, Sergeant.” (And he left walking back to the Orderly Room to make out paperwork that all was well on his shift.)

“Tell me what happened last month when I was gone back to see my family in Cambodia, I hear there was an attack?” asked Mia.
“If I do, then will you let me sleep? I wish you’d have been here, you like the action.”
“Damn that electric, everything’s out, it does that every other night, under the bed are some candles, give me the box ok?”
Mia rolled over in the bed and stretched her arm under it, feeling for the box, brings it up, and hands it to Evens, Evens pulls out a short fat candle, lights it, puts it on a wooden crate, used for fruit, he got from the mess hall.
“I was, chửa hoang “ (pregnant out of wedlock)” said Mia.
“Is that why your husband makes you do what you do?”
“He is old man, and marries me when I was sixteen years old.”
“I hope they fix the electricity.” (She reaches for the wine, opens the top, by unscrewing it, and drinks some.)
“He likes to drink a little like you, he just a poor little man, it is a shame he get old.”
“Of course, Mia.”
“I hope this gives you pleasure, it doesn’t me.”
“But I want to know about war, I know you are very brave man.”
“I know I am, every time there is a conflict, or combat, or mission I have to remind myself of that, sometimes even convince myself…so far so good.”
“Say, Corporal Evens, this third bottle I screwed open. Why?”
“Cheap wine, that’s why, from America. So now I have to call you Mia, maybe I can put a hyphen in the middle and call you Frenchie-Mia?”
“You are funny again. Come on, tell me what happened.”
“There’s some left in the second bottle, finish that first, even if it’s only a few drops.” She reaches for the other bottle, puts the stem in her mouth and drops her head backwards, and takes one small swallow.
“Very little,” she remarks, and grabs the second bottle, and takes a gulp.
“And what did you do when the action started, corporal?”
“You’re sure you want to know?”
“I let you sleep if you tell me.”
(Evens and Mia, can here the man called Crusher snoring.)
They both sit back in the bed. She grabs his hands as if the story is going to be spellbinding. He swats a few flies that are pestering him. A cockroach falls threw a hole in the tin ceiling of the hooch onto Evens’ forehead, it is as long as his index finger, and as thick, it bites him, he swats it away.
“Damn bugs. I swear they’re all over tonight; flies, cockroaches and you.”
“Well, Mia—“he began, “it all started around 11:00 p.m., suddenly at night, 107 mm rockets hit the three ammo dumps, Charlie dump was empty, Alpha dump was not, and the Air Force dump with up like an atomic bomb, and they hit all across the bay, slamming down everywhere, the Viet Cong came down from the hills, and nobody had rifles in their hands ready to do a thing, they were all in the arms room, and I opened it, while Charlie (the enemy) ran around all these company areas into the medical clinic and orderly rooms, places they knew people were helpless, and everyone know quiet Cam Ranh Bay, seldom gets hit, it is more a safe zone in Vietnam, so no one was prepared and 19-soldiers got killed, one in the Air Force Ammo Dump, and the sappers ((commandos)(PAVN or Viet Cong)) were throwing satchel charges everywhere, everywhichway (demolition devices like a charge of dynamite, C-4 plastic, a carrying devise like a bag, often times with an triggering mechanism; customized).
They were fast and ready, Crusher was sleeping, the orderly room clerk had no gun, and someone was trying to get through the window of the orderly room, and the CQ, knew it wasn’t an American solider, so he ran and hid behind the water tank. I shot several round from my magazine, and gave several rifles out, but no one know were the gunners were in the hills, so the infantry we have here, me among the few, couldn’t run after them, I think they had some electric devises on those guns they fired from the hills. Actually, we had just finished watching a movie on the outdoor amphitheater. The MP’s (Military Police) next to this company weren’t even prepared. Eleven of us had to go out and search Alpha Dump for Charlie, the rest of the soldiers, about 140, were too high on dope or drunk to fight. Rockets kept coming in until morning, sporadically.”
“Very good, you are lucky,” said Mia.
No. I am not lucky, the hell with luck,” the Corporal took another drink of the wine, “They beat us that day, they truly beat us.”
“Life is like that, we must now make plans about other things.”
“The world for Americans is very small, for us, it is very big.”
Evens noticed how pleasant it still was to be with her, he’d miss her, he knew that, and he fell to sleep. She let him sleep, said in a whisper as she got out of bed, it was 4:30 p.m., taking her money from under the pillow, “You are very brave corporal, and lucky, I’ll bring your luck with me.” She looked at him, he was handsome. Up the road, the young woman was almost sleepwalking back to her village down by the South China Sea, she was so tired, but she didn’t want to get him in trouble in the morning. She knew now he was dreaming about the battle they had talked about because he was saying things to his male companions they only say in battles.

3-28-2009 (based on actual events) 1732 “Two-hearted Killer”
3-29-2009 (based on actual events) 1523 “Vietnamese: Attack”
35036words.

Men Marching (a Novelette)

2009-03-27T20:15:00.000-07:00

“A Midwinter Soldier”
(A None-fiction, Novelette, and Satire on Army Life)
(Fort Bragg, North Carolina) See inner Chapters (1969-1970)

[Sketches of Real life in the Old Army Boot Camp]

Soldiers’ First Day
(October, 1969)

I would learn in time, a Soldiers’ first day, is like every other day in Basic Training, one long, very long day. For me it would be thirteen weeks. Chick Evens

Diary Annotations
(Chick Evens reading his Diary)

Chapter One
The Bus

When we arrived at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Basic Training Camp, in the Fall of ’69, we were greeted (we being, a number of us who had come from the Minneapolis, Minnesota Army Recruiting Station, now coming off the bus), greeted I say, by cynically sneering, and frankly hyper, pie-eyed looking white sergeants, two of them, with Forest Ranger type looking sombreros on their red-necks, I had a ninety pound duffle bag laying by my side.
My lip did something like an Elvis, snicker back at them; my hand did something like a fist.
We all were a little wobbly, staggering like a train coming off its tracks, as we had gotten off the bus, now into the camp area trying to form some kind of formation, that was more of a zigzagged line, looking like a puzzle ready to be put together. My captors faced me, two white sergeants; one perhaps in his mid twenties, the other in his mid thirties; one being a Buck Sergeant type sergeant, the other a Sergeant First Class sergeant, so I would learn these ranks within a few days, this being our first real day in the Army, so, they faced us, I should say, stood in front of us, as we formed this jagged arrangement, line of sorts.
Next, they encouraged us to obey them, as they treated us like criminals, or else they’d tie one of our legs like they do to camels, so they’d not run off; they both somehow produced a beautiful smile in-between their sneers: we were what they called ‘New fish’ (in their aquarium).
They grinned at us, and we grinned at each other trying to figure out what all the grinning was about, it would seem we were parroting them. Then the engine of the bus stopped, turned off, a loud silence seemed to pass over the bus, onto us, and encircle the two Drill Sergeants, as these tow new gods of Caesar’s Army checked us out. They had warned us to be silent, and now without words, their mannerisms were showing it. At this time the sun was coming down, as the two divine sergeants debated on if we should be allowed to eat dinner, while us new soldiers, smiled at one another appreciatively. They paused, looked about the area, and accordingly pointed their fingers, and like the parting of the Red Sea, appeared the mess hall, I looked down through the clutter of buildings, “Yes,” I said to myself, “that could be a mess hall,” never seeing one before, a door was open, although to be honest with you readers, I would have liked to have gone to sleep, I was very, very tired.

(The Mess Hall) Now we were being escorted, if not a bit pushed down a dirt path between these two rows of barracks, to our so called destiny—our new cafeteria home, in America’s city of hope, our temple of shadows where our philosophers were but two simple sergeants with bear hats on; and there the Mess Hall stood in front of us.
I balanced my duffle bag on my shoulders like Jamaican’s do with a bushel of fruit on their heads, as they had instructed us to do, but many of the men couldn’t, they struggled with trying to do it, and gave up, it was too heavy for them, and so they dragged them, another peeve that would come out later on with the two sergeants, they looked at us as little boys to be unwrapped, and brought out of a crackerjack box—and brought to life with their shaping skills, like Pinocchio, and during the process, to put into a sleep, and when awaken, apparently we’d be killer soldiers. I always, well kind of always wanted to be a soldier, so why was I protesting? I really didn’t know, I mean being a soldier went back and forth in my mind many times, but respect was my forte, and here there was a lack of it, and hence, resistance appeared to dominate my cerebellum, and I automatically went into a clandestine war with the Army.
Well, this was the first day, and it was evening, and we were on this pathway, a few of us talking, mostly about them—the sergeants. And we learned quickly to say “Yes sir,” or “Yes Sergeant,” and “No sir,” or “No Sergeant First Class,” until we got tired of it, and a few of us would say, ‘now what mamma!’ under our breaths, or with our eyes, or body movements, as if we were suckling babes, of course I was one of those teasingly fellows that thought most of the Army’s training was easy, and it was for the most part, and in time that would get me in trouble. The Buck Sergeant said “—who said, ‘mamma?” and of course, not a word was spoken to claim the disruption or disrespect, they stared at each other as if the moment would not be forgotten, and it wasn’t we’d suffer later for it.

As this ill-mannered approach dragged on, as it occurred—and continued, the older sergeant, the Sergeant First Class, got what I’d call a devilish smile with eyes big as silver dollars, and so, a few insults reached the ears of the many. That is when I got the smell of their strange cologne, and garlic breath.
Several faces (perhaps for the sake of joyful-sympathy to see the new recruits being pushed about) looked out the barracks windows as we marched forward to the Mess Hall—“What time is it?” a voice said, and eyes looking in my direction, I saw corporal strips on the fellow’s white uniform. I didn’t look at my wrist; I think he wanted me to lose balance of my duffle bag for a laugh—and watch it fall.
“I said, what time is it soldier?” the same voice now in a demanding tone to his question, with the same eyes, but a rougher countenance to his face, as if I was suppose to pee in my pants at his growl. The third time it had a screaming quality to it, as he added a statement to his latter question, “I’ll see you in the mess hall sometime, Private…!” I smiled back at him, and versioned me pulling him by the ear, like my grandfather used to do to me when he had enough of me. He left out what might follow if he saw me in the Mess Hall, and I think that was wise of him I was not one to harbor greudges, but neither was I back in those days, one to provoke unless you had some secret weapon. If in deed he had wished to rebuke me more, he didn’t get the time. I remember thinking: you’d think we were in the middle of a war, not comedy play, and that what it was to me. I did do something back the second time, something I thought was funny, but not to him in particular, and a few of the guys picked up on it. I shrugged my shoulders in disbelief of such nonsense, “Unbelievable.”

“All right, put down your gear, and take off your hats in the mess hall,” said the young drill sergeants that looked like Yogi Bear, the forest fighting bear of the United States, the very one on television, the movie star bear that says, “Keep your forest clean and don’t throw matches!” Now we were standing in front of the building.

I wasn’t hungry, I had eaten with the few friends I had met in Minneapolis, Minnesota, after getting off the plane, and going to a restaurant, we had a pay voucher for $30-dollars, which was a lot of grub, between four or five of us, or enough anyways for a healthy meal, and a small, very small tip. So I figured I’d eat lightly.

Hence, our divine hosts now were pushing us into the mess hall to eat, seating us, by way of pointing their fingers, saying “You go over there. And you several go to the end tables, and you Evens, go join those over there…” and so on and so forth. Not sure why we couldn’t find our own way, we didn’t need a roadmap, or instructions, but we got the latter. Next, they had us push down excessive portions of food, neither one listening to us, or in particular me, when I said “I had just eaten before we got to the base…!”
“Eat anyways so you can’t say we didn’t feed you,” was the reply I kept getting from the old sergeant First Class, and then the young Buck Sergeant, would copy him, like parrot. I think they wanted to see how many people would put up with their evening shenanigans.
Layers of hats and coats fell on the chairs. And I looked about, and said in a mumbling voice to myself: ‘…here I am, god forbid!’ and the older sergeant looked at me. There was no fear in my contours, perhaps there should have been, and he saw that.
As I put down several table spoons of whatever it was I was eating (and I think I was eating spaghetti), along with some bread and milk, I got thinking this is crazy, and looked for the kitchen window, I mean I was stuffed, over stuffed, like a someone one trying to cram an extra cigarette into an already full pack.
When I had first came through the Mess Hall doors, I saw where the soldiers who had finished eating, who were through with their food put their trays, somewhat empty trays—putting the uneaten parts of the food and napkins into a garbage can along side a square opening in a window, laying them inside that opening; one by one, each soldier put his tray through the hole—, now I looked towards it again, it was that same window I ´confirmed, had saw when I first entered the mess hall, so I concluded—then I stood up, looked at the two sergeants that were looking at me—somewhat looking at me, they were looking everywhichway, (not paying all that much attention really, perhaps not wanting a first day confrontation, the other forty solders still eating, the ones that got off the bus with me, I aimed my tray at the hole, like a rocket, and my temper went with that try, (the hole was some several feet away, and I tossed the tray and all the food on it, tossed it like a spaceship, and it landed perfectly on the other trays, gliding over them like a car sliding over ice, into that window, what an aim, and I headed towards the door, to where my duffle bag would be waiting for me, past my masters and we never caught eyes, surprisingly, it was as if nothing happened; but they new now, the trouble maker of the group.
With the sergeants’ faces turn away, I reached for my duffle bag, pulled it alongside of me, lit up a cigarette, fumbled a little trying to light it in the light cool windy twilight, with a gibbous moon over head, and thought: this is going to be an everyday thing, an all day job, from this time on; it wasn’t a pleasant thought.
Both sergeants were busy, still not looking at me, perhaps not caring either, my head bobbing somewhat with the cigarette, as I was thinking, and somewhat pacing in a ten-foot line, in front the Mess Hall back and forth, repeating to myself, ‘…what I am doing here?’

(I would notice later on that evening, tears in the eyes of a few soldiers, perhaps irritation in mine. The Army never bothered me per se, only the disregard I was feeling, overlooked or under or received. I think bachelors are lucky in the Army, confinement less an issue for them, for married folks, to the contrary.)

As I was saying, it was twilight, which now had vanished, and turned into dark or pure-night, a dark, heavy blue night—seemingly a deep midnight was approaching. My stomach heavy, and most of us now had come out of the trance like fog we had first found ourselves in, after getting off the bus, experiencing the Mess Hall, now in the barracks.
Indigestion was setting in, and at the same time, trying to resettle itself, and they, the sergeants perhaps had felt they cleared up enough for the night, let the prey sleep, lull them until tomorrow morning, we’ll wake them at 4:00 am., see how they like it. We were given our blankets and a pillow, with a few grunts of satisfaction, which we tossed back, we took their insults, and taking pain not to show our defeat, as we smiled at one another, wondering what was next. What I was learning, was, enough was enough, there were lines you didn’t cross over, for them, and for me likewise.

(The barracks) Strange tongues, forty strange grins, massive, skinny, tall and thin bare hands moving everywhichway; white, black and brown bodies; feet belonging to strangers, all among one another. Arms stretched out over the beds. This was a new experience for us all, except for the prior Boy Scouts I suppose. The central figures, two sergeants now telling us: “…lights out in fifteen minutes….” And another voice saying, “…let’s hurry up and get a smoke!”
I looked about at the faces: disagreeable, to their liking, curiosity, tired, lonely face, and then I looked out the window with itching fingers to have a cold beer, and get on with the show.

Silhouette of a Soldier
((October, 1969) (Day Two))

Chapter Two
Reveille

(It is always the sound of the bugle that awakens one in the morning, called reveille, in the Army, the sound that tells the solider, to make formation, that begins the day, a signal that it is time to get out of bed, summoned to duty. And all one sees in the morning, in this case, as I prepared for the second day of duty with the many new shapes and outlines of military personnel in a camp, were bodies running like scared rabbits to appease the new Titans in our lives.)

Silhouettes, that’s all we were to them, as I glanced out the window this 2nd day in the Army; soldiers rushing to get into a standing position in what was called a formation, under the autumn sky; the darkness of morning was lifting, an intense gloom alive in the atmosphere: a haunting shady blue sky, extra ordinarily cold for a North Carolina morning.
I had noticed in the distance, throughout the day, across a field, a club resided, Enlisted Men’s Club it was called (EM Club), so I was told: a bar in essence, or so it would be called in my old neighborhood, in St. Paul, Minnesota (called: ‘Donkeyland,’ by the police for its hardheaded drunks that lived and died at two corner bars).

The EM Club

As I saying, I was particularly thrilled to have discovered the Enlisted Men’s Club so close by the group of basic training barracks (mine in particular); whereat, when our two Drill Sergeants, our escorts throughout the day were done with us, I would cleverly leave for the evening to participate in its abundance of alcohol; but beforehand, before they released us to go wash our cloths, or shine our shoes, or get extra sleep, they let us know they’d return at 10:00 p.m., to insure lights were turned off, (which was to them, the very ‘last moment of light,’ to be seen within our barracks, lest we wanted to be disciplined, it was really a curfew in essence; in any case, disembarking for the evening, this would allow me to make acquaintance with the establishment, the EM Club. In outcome, I felt a little at home now, likened to finding something familiar, perhaps my salvation for that moment.
I had my Army green fatigues on, and moved grimly about the barracks, without speaking to anyone (plus, they were too busy trying to be good soldiers, and I was the second oldest person in the platoon, I learned, the younger the soldier, the easier one can be led, brainwashed, and the sergeants knew that).
It was now after duty hours: I had a light and quick dinner at the mess hall, moved quickly across the field to where the EM Club was, it was my plight for the night (and would be for many nights to follow), it was 8:15 p.m., when I arrived there, par excellence in my quick study of the matter, most all the new soldiers had no idea the club existed, I even put on my civilian cloths, so I’d not be questioned of my rank at the club, knowing I was forbidden to drink there, new recruits that is.
The insides of the club were small, and formless, nothing special; mostly square, with figures moving about, to and fro, a crackle of conversations going on everywhere, seemingly sadly suppressed, abnormal for a bar one could say, not lively at all. I was used to deliciously insane bars I suppose, but nonetheless, I was gulping down my first cold Army beer in no time flat.
Everyone seemed to be wrapped in ghostly Army Green, this was to be, I knew, an unearthly patch of the world, hereon, and forevermore, save, I remained in the Army. I leaned on the bar, drank down a second glass of cold mouthwatering beer, and stared into nothingness.

The Corporal

My elbows now on the bar, I got staring at and out the window, a mist had created a moisture onto the bar window, formed a fogginess on its glass; as I scanned the bar, everyone seemed like talking shadows all linked together around the bar, I recognized no one, especially no one from my platoon, that is, ‘D’ Company, 4th Platoon as they called it, called us. I thought briefly about Smiley, a Private like me, a year younger than I, and from the South, I think he said, Alabama, he was easy to talk to, liked to drink, a friend I was glad I found, a worthy friend that is, like to like, mind to mind, heart to heart we were comfortable with one another, most people I accepted as acquaintances, and only a few select would I categorize as associates, or beyond, as a friend, they are far and in-between, he was of the last group.

“You’re the one?” I heard a voice say next to me, a statement-question I took it as, I turned to the stranger, a Corporal sat about seven feet from my stool.
“You were speaking to me?” I said, didn’t care if he had twenty strips on his arms, bar folks get a few drinks in them and try to command the world, this was neither the time nor place to play chief, so I told myself.
“Yaw,” he said, to me, this clean shaven kid, couldn’t have been over nineteen-years old.
“What do you want?” I asked somewhat brusquely.
“You’re the one I asked for the time, yesterday, I work in the mess hall, and you could get in trouble for being here, because new soldiers, or new recruits, are not suppose to come here, you got a place down by the PX, and you can’t go to that until the second week you’ve been here, or is it the third?”
“It’s the third, to be exact,” I told the Corporal, “So are you going to tell, or what?” I asked.
He laughed a bit, and then smiled, “It’s your head, not mine, if they chop it off, oh well.” And I bought him a beer. In time we’d get to know each other better, and he’d even give me excuses to use incase I came back to the barracks late, after 10:00 p.m., he worked with the Colonel often, after duty hours I guess, one time he even signed the Colonel’s name on a piece of paper for me, saying I worked late putting a rug with the Corporal for him, which he had done by himself. And I suppose I named dropped the Colonel’s name here and there, just in case.

Horse’s Hoofs and Old Soldiers
(November, 1969; Week Two in Basic Training)

Chapter Three
Running

In the barracks it was chilly, but so was Minnesota at night, and I liked that kind of sleeping so it didn’t bother me as much as it did the other fellows. The Drill Sergeants sometimes slept overnight didn’t go to their apartments off base, they had some rooms nearby, and on those days, they’d smell bad. Everyone knew my smelled badly, unless they had nose, or sinus problems. So I affirmed it wasn’t me, and why be polite about it, sometimes I just held my nose when they walked by, or coughed, kind of letting everyone know what they already knew, what they didn’t want the sergeants to know they knew about their body smell, and especially the older one, he reeked with alcohol, I think he tried to over do it with Old Spice, and of course, alcohol comes out of your skin one way or another, old spice just makes you smell like a whore more, especially if you overindulge, but we lived with it, and our Sergeant First Class, I think dared anyone to say anything about it. Maybe that was part of the training, it was the most endurable for me, everything else would come easy, matter of fact, I’d have done a hundred-push-ups, if he’d only had taken a shower. There was this other guy in the barracks, a private like us, tall and thin, whitish hair, and skin like an albino, he too, was of the smelly breed, and we had to throw him in the shower one evening, cloths and all, and then told him, “If you don’t disrobe, and wash up, we’ll do it for you.” And he did what he had to do. Not sure what his problem was, maybe he was a female in disguise, I never checked, I was just thankful, he took that shower. You can smell those kinds of folks when you are trying to sleep, and it is not pleasant.
In any case, these were long days in back of me and in front of me, long days running, and longer than normal today’s learning what we had to learn to be soldiers. I had to run around a field three times, two miles each lap, six miles complete, in some specified time, can’t remember it exactly today. I took a number of salt tablets that day as I ran; some of the men were eating chocolate bars, to keep their energy up. I quickly learned running was part of the Army, like the trunk of an elephant’s end-part of his nose, shooting out water.
Yes indeed, running is part of a soldier’s life, I told myself, after two weeks (about to go into the third), running everyday, sometimes with our M14 rifles held over our heads, sometimes carrying our duffle bags full of cloths, and now, today, around in circles. The voice beside me said, “China, China…” a Chinese man, small in stature, who wanted to be an American. In time we would become good friends, and go onto Advance Training together in Alabama, but at this particular moment, it was of course unknown (we would become friends for six-months between Basic Training and Advance Training, and when we got our assignments, after finishing Advance Training, he’d be sent to Vietnam, I suppose because he could speak Chinese and English well, and I would go to Augsburg, Germany, and thereafter, go to Vietnam, Smiley would also head onto Vietnam after his Advance Infantry Training). Anyhow, China, as we all called him, had come to San Francisco, from China, got drafted into the United States Army, given the choice to join, or return to China, but the offer of citizenship was too great to pass up, so he allowed himself to be drafted into the US Army. He was here on a visit of some kind, originally.
The two divine Drill Sergeants were standing on the side of the circle as I passed them, going on and into my third circle, anger on their faces; they only smiled when you obeyed them. Smiley was right in back of me. It was a warm mid-morning, an insane day to be exact, and I was still somewhat drowsy from drinking at the club the night before, my brain that is, felt like mush. And here were all these bodies running, running the length of the field, and China, keeping up with all his 110-pounds; many of the men just dropped to the ground, passed out from heat exhaustion. But us three kept going. It was the whole company today, all four platoons, perhaps 160-men sum total.
One man came along by my side, said: “I say, where we are?” and he dropped to the ground, just like that, and as he dropped I said, “In hell…!”

I think the Drill Sergeant, the older one, was faint from this heat, and felt almost dead from exhaustion, he had run the course, the circled that went around the field, but only once to show us he could; I stopped a few times, my hat had fallen off my head for the 3rd time, “Get moving,” he yelled, the old fart couldn’t do it himself, but expected me, I gave him one of his same old grimaces back; and I’m sure he was hoping I’d drop like the rest.
The third stop somehow allowed me to catch my wind and I started back up after a brief swallow of air into my stomach, Smiley, had stopped, was resting on the side now, couldn’t go any further, I think cramps did him in; next, I got back into my running posture and finished the third circle. Perhaps there were about twenty of us, ready to go into a forth, but the Drill Sergeant, told us to stop, and like the others I rested, found the few select people I liked from our platoon, Smiley among them, and China.
I had for sure disappointed the Drill Sergeant. We all grunted a bit. Moreover, the young sergeant, came up to us and said, “Well,” he then stroked his chin, adding (I merely looked at him with a smirk) “Get down Evens and do fifty pushups,” for being cocky I suppose, and to show the rest of the group how out of shape I was. I said, “Fifty, is that all!” And I did the fifty in a few minutes, got back up, and he said again, “Get down and do fifty more!” And I did, and I got up and said, “I will make note of this…” implying, the necessary sum that he could make me do was at its point, one hundred, and I was not afraid of him, consequently, if he wanted me to do more, I could legally defy him, this he did not want, nor no unsuspected challenges he couldn’t win.

Horse’s Hoofs

I didn’t make any friends this day of course, and felt a little under the horses hoofs, several of the platoon faces, recruits like me, felt I was a trouble maker (for them I suppose I was). And this got back to the Captain, whom would confront me in time on this very issue, in another two weeks to be exact. It was mid November, and we heard we’d be going home for a Christmas leave, and have to return to basic training to finish it, thereafter. One of the soldiers would not have enough money to go home, and we all pitched in from the platoon and made that possible, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
The young Drill Sergeant led us to the front of the barracks, and had us do several exercises, he said it was because there was a soldier with a bad attitude in the platoon, and all would have to suffer from that. The older sergeant vaguely looking at me from afar, but I read his lips, “Evens, you again!”
“Squat, crouch, and walk around the barracks,” commanded the young sergeant. This was not only humiliating for the platoon, because we looked like ducks, but tiresome, therefore, I got a few unfriendly faces, and whispers like: Evens, stop causing trouble, straighten up…and so forth and so on. And I simply went, or said “Quack, quack…” to all this—aloud!
“Who said that?” asked the young drill sergeant, and then he walked alongside of me… “It’s you again, I know it’s you Evens, another walk around the barracks,” he announced, and then I whispered to the guys, “Ok, ok…I’ll shut up ((but I couldn’t help it, I did it a second time, then I shut up)( for now)).”
After it was all done (the duck walk), most everyone collapsed comfortably on their beds, while the drill sergeants adjusted their smirks.
Enormous pomposity was shown in the two drill sergeants, and displayed around me, or perhaps I was the only one that saw these expressions, gestures, everyone else was too busy being nervous about what was next. It was going onto the third week of November that the Captain had called me into his office, and I asked him why he sent for me and he said, “Just wanted to see who you were,” and he kept an educated serious face about the matter, and dismissed me, yet I knew something was coming; but I also knew, I had not crossed over any red lines.

For the most part, I was in a new world, and having a hard time adjusting to the customs, the inexpressible nuance of the pretense they expected out of me, willingly—to appreciate their fine work in sculpturing a soldier out of a neighborhood bum. My uncouthness was not appreciated either.

That night, the night that followed the duck-walk, Smiley was to meet me at the EM Club, it was the end of the second week, and we were allowed now, to buy freely at the PX, and go to the Company Recruits club to drink, 3.2 Beer, that is, beer that tasted more like water than beer. But I was already into the EM Club, and drank there—strong beer. They, the Drill Sergeants had actually escorted us that first day to the PX, like tourists.
I gave Smiley a discussion on my EM Club drinking, and told him to meet me there this evening, around eight or nine o’clock; our bed time now had changed to 10:30, lights off at 11:00 p.m., weekends, lights off at 12:00 midnight, and now bed check, being 11:00 p.m., life was improving.
As I waited for Smiley, I thought about what the older Drill Sergeant had told the platoon, that next week there was going to be a show for us, the 82nd Airborne, whom was stationed there, would jump out of airplanes, parachuting down to where we would be sitting. I told myself, only birds and their droppings fall out of the sky, and thus, let it be at that. But when the day came, the old sergeant asked me, sitting on a hill, an embankment sort of, looking down at me a few feet from him, said “Go down there and join up, Evens!” And I said, “I’m not a bird…Sergeant!” And he kicked me, and I rolled down the hill, and waved to him, from that position. Another peeve he had with me.

Freidan

There was a young German female unmarried waitress, who was the waitress at the EM Club, a daughter I expect to one of the higher ranking sergeants on base; she spoke with a broken English pronunciation but could speak clear and clean German, perhaps twenty-one, or younger; possibly a second marriage I thought between an older sergeant and German woman. Anyhow, she was dangerously appetizing I thought. She was lean, perhaps five foot three inches tall, lovely in many ways, and friendly, and customers liked her. She wore tight dresses, benignant in a way, with breasts that bulged slightly out of her blouse, and had small hands, dark hair—penetrating eyes.
“Well what will you have,” she asked me this one night.
“Just tap beer.”
“That’s all, good bottle beer is better!” she implied.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Can’t sell the stuff?”
“Sure, just trying to help.”
“I can’t afford it.” I said, which was perhaps saying too much.
“Not sergeants yet, haw?” she asked, hesitated, “you never know around here.”
“Why don’t you go bother someone else?” I said snotty, I didn’t want everyone looking at me, and then questioning my right to be in the club.
“Tap beer, that’s imitation beer, absinthe!”
“Are you happy bothering me, just a top beer, matter of fact, I can order it myself, I’m at the bar, you should be asking those folks at the tables.”
For some reason she was not going to leave unless I did something, and so I said, “Ok, to please you, I’ll try the German beer; how about Beck’s?”
“Oh, so you do know good beers?” she commented, grinning, as she had made her point, if not victory, I had guessed she talked to my Corporal friend, and knew I was a private.”
“Don’t kid me,” she said, “I saw you looking at me the last few nights.”
I went to put my arm round her, and she pulled back.
“Never mind, soldier,” she said, “you ought to drink Beck’s in here if you’re going to continue to come.”
“Doesn’t make any difference with me,” I said, let her win, or maybe the bartender put her up to it.
“What are you called?” she asked.
“Evens, Chick Evens.”
“Bernadette, that’s my name.” She told me. “American too, I mean American German.”
By this time, she had excused her said, said she had to attend the tables, for me to order from the bartender, as I was going to in the first place, and I ordered a Beck’s, and the bartender smiled.

During the following weeks, I never did chat with her too long, just a hello and goodbye, I figured I was under observation at the club (and a few young bucks were always around her at the bar when she finished serving her drinks), and as long as I kept to my own, they left me alone, and should I try to get a date with her, they would expose me as a recruit, I was sure of that, and I’d have to go to the main drinking hall, with the rest of my Company. On the other hand she knew I think I was harmless, and had no money and no place to take her, no future with me at all.

Army Beer Hall
(December, 1970; Week Five in Basic Training)

Chapter Four
Confrontation

I had gone to the beer hall this first Saturday evening after returning to Basic Training Camp, from Christmas leave. The Captain was there, I had heard he showed up now and then, but not often, and this was perhaps my third time in the beer hall myself, I preferred the EM Club to the hall, more sedate, but now I had choices. For me it was really the first time I saw him here, a sharp consciousness of being stared at absorbed me, made me look the other way. He was still gazing at me when I turned around, so, it was me he was curious about—therefore I validated, some kind of strained expectancy, he had his eye on me a month ago when he stared at me in his office, like a rat in a cage. More like a psychological Ginny pig, trying to figure me out for the butchering that was going to take place. I paid little heed though, at first, just inquisitive to his prying mannerisms.
After about ten-minutes of this, I asked myself, ‘What is he waiting for?’ I was becoming irritable, ‘what does he expect of me now: to sing the National Anthem for him personally?’ I stood silently a tinge guarded now, as if this was an entirely obvious reaction, as he approached me.
“We’ve both been away for a while, Christmas vacation, I’ve wanted to talk to you before you left, but…well it just didn’t work out, I’m a bit surprised you’re back, and so glad I found you here this evening, Private Evens.” He said in a seriously low and cordial tone, almost a mumble.
At about this time, I was waiting for the punch, the Sunday punch that normally comes with such surprises; you know, someone says a few good words, to get you off guard, off balance, and then bang.

The Captain

(I gazed mutely at him.) The Captain stood now alongside of me, as I leaned back, somewhat comfortable against a pillar in the old WWII beer hall. He said, sincerely said, yet kind of in an official manner, something I never expected to hear, never even saw it coming:
“You make me look like the worst Company Commander in all the Basic Training Camps, here on Fort Bragg, Private Evens. My comrades laugh and make jokes about how you belittle the Army, and its training and our Sergeants… (then he grabbed two beers on the counter, laid down thirty cents, and gave one to me, the other for himself, then continued:) as I was saying, about to say, you do not make me look good in front of my peers. To the contrary, and I’ve thought about this a while, on what to do with you, you are always borderline, actually you would make a good soldier, if you wanted to, it appears you do not want to though (he looked at me deeply and sincerely into my eyes) what did I ever do to you?” He asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Well then, unintentionally, you are making me look like the worse commander at Fort Bragg for nothing? I never drafted you, the Government did, yet it seems you are taking your anger out on me, my Company!”

I felt awkward, not sure what to say. He did not say it loud, but said it firmly, with almost hurt in his face. I knew I was taking it out on the platoon, but there are four platoons to a company, and I didn’t feel I was taking it out on all of them, but he assured me I was, because they rated all four platoons to see which one was the worst and best, and then rated the companies, which were four platoons to company, and four companies to a Battalion, and I was in the 10th Battalion, 1st BDE (Brigade) this I knew already, and I knew we were the worse of the worse. But I never put two and two together that it was me making the platoon look bad, I passed all the physical and written tests, but it was based on more than that I guess.
“I never said it was your fault, Captain,” I responded; as we both walked easily and leisurely a few steps, both thinking. He perhaps had it all figured out, how he would present this to me, it was too cleaver to have had it just pop out of his head at the moment it did, for he added this,
“I’ll make you a deal, you have got two years of this life to deal with, it’s going to be a rough road for everyone involved, even you, everyone you meet. (Smiley walks by, I smiled at him, let him know all was well; the Captain became silent until he passed, then continued), as I was saying, you have a lot of time to fight with everyone, and that is not a good way to live. Here is what I will do for you, or propose. At midnight tonight, I will have two MPs pick you up at the barracks, everyone will be sleeping, and they will take you to the bus station, and not report you’re missing for twenty-four hours, enough time to get to Canada, if that is where you wish to go. You can be out of the country before the AWOL notice goes into effect. Or you can stay here, and please stop making trouble for me (he made this personal)?”

He was I think waiting for an answer, one I never gave him, couldn’t give him, at the moment, so I simply walked away, as he said, “They’ll be out by your barracks at midnight.”
Well, I was there in the morning, as if nothing had been said, standing in formation, as always, reveille (my wake up call), and I’m not sure if the Captain saw me or not, but that was the last time I had saw him, face to face; although off in the distance I saw him here and there. He did one thing if anything, he threw it back on me, I had to make the decision, not him, thus, his conscious was free, and back in those days, it wasn’t hard for an officer to get revenge if he indeed wanted to, and it wasn’t hard for a trouble maker like me I suppose to cause friction for the Army on a continues scale, so perhaps he gave both of us, the Army and me, an ounce of respect, to straighten things out, or let time do it the hard way, for both of us. For the most part, I behaved myself, but not completely. And in time I would turn out to be a good soldier, and awarded a number of medals to prove it. Yes, this was really just the beginning.
But again, I have gotten ahead of myself. When I left the beer hall, I went over to the EM Club to think this matter over.

Bernadette’s Dilemma

I had left the beer hall, ended up at the EM Club that night, to try and figure out things in my head, and Bernadette was there, and only a few others, not many at all and she sat on a stool by me, “I want to talk,” she said. She looked upward, she was very lovely, and tried to say something, big bright-eyed, and I listened as I drank my Beck’s beer; she was trying to talk unimportantly, but it was important, she was next to tears, “I can’t marry him even if I wanted to.” She told me.
I didn’t say a word.
“It’s so childish of me. We fight so much, and then tonight before I came to work I find out, he was always fighting with me because he couldn’t marry me if he wanted to.”
“Well, I don’t know, but you’re a pretty girl, I’d think you could pick anyone to marry, and the guy would be delighted.”
“No I don’t think so, Chick, he has children, and he’s already married.”
She looked at me very dimly.
“I can’t believe it; he’s twenty-seven and has three kids.”
She now looked at me as someone who should have known better.
“Yes, it’s a rotten shame, guys should put their cards on the table, you think one thing because you’re lead to believe it and it is another.” I said.
“And of course, there’s not a thing in the world I can do about it.”
“If he comes in here; don’t let him know we talked about him.”
“I only know the Corporal, Hanson I think his last name is.”
“He wants to take me to New Orleans this weekend; his family is back in Chicago or someplace around there.”
“Maybe he’s just saying that, and doesn’t plan on taking you anyplace, just saying it to pacify you?”
“I don’t think he’s that way.” She said.
“Oh, I think he is, you just discovered you don’t know him, and now you’re telling me, whatever he says is written is stone.”
“Oh here he comes in, don’t say a word.”
She moved quickly from my side, all of a sudden her grief was gone. All that advise, or sympathy, she was seeking was cast into marble, she was pretty happy now. What is it with women, they’re miserable, and then they are fine. I felt like her shock absorber. I do not know how people can ask for more pain; by doing the stupid things that they know are going to hurt them. I simply got up and walked out, hoping I’d not be noticed by anyone.

The Fighting Irish
(January, 1970; Week Six in Basic Training)

Chapter Five
Karate

I came from a Russian extended family, on my mother’s side,
But I was half Irish, on my father’s side…

In the days and weeks that followed—every muscle throughout my body would be aching, head spinning; yet I was not worn down like most of the troops, perhaps I had a lot of training in San Francisco, and back in St Paul, Minnesota in karate, and my body was somewhat hardened, ready for this kind of training. Face to face with the Drill Sergeants, I halfway straightened my attitude out, we, or maybe just I, somewhat came to an understanding, willingly obedient, yet at night I still became a soggy drunk, going to the EM Club in particular, and seeing Bernadette.
On the top bunk, of the bunk bed I was assigned to, myself assigned to the bottomed, in this enormous room we lived in, the bunk beds accommodated forty-four soldiers, in two long rows, eleven to each side, one soldier on top, one on the bottom, old WWII vintage, wooden and square framed, slanted roofed barracks, with double doors, to the right, it lead out into the courtyard, just beyond the doors, straight ahead, was the latrine. The windows in the building were wide, on both sides of the wooden structure, several to each side; the outside painted white, the inside pale white and green; as I was about to say though, a southern boy slept on the top bunk, he didn’t seem to like me, or get along with me all that well, just gave me sneers like the Sergeants often did, he didn’t like me coming into the barracks drunk and coming in so late, I felt it was none of his business, he wasn’t my sergeant, nor my parent. He was a strict soldier, and our attitudes conflicted, so much so, he became quite, bitterness, and he decided to confront me on this drinking issue one evening, just before lights out.
I came in, it was perhaps a few minutes before ´Light’s out!’ and he grabbed me by my shirt (about my height, and weight), said:
“Its two-minutes to lights out, and here you are walking in half drunk.”
He was correct in his observation.
“Oh,” I said, adding “…is that so…!” and broke his arm from my shirt, downward, and a second later, took my palm and pushed him against the wall. He was stunned I had broken his arm hold so easily, I had him almost pinned against the wall. Then I grabbed his shaving cream and squirted it all over him, not sure why, but it was the closest thing to my free hands now and I didn’t want to break any his bones, but perhaps to shame him or belittle him in front of the onlookers, whom were the soldiers now in their bunks. Then I stepped back into a fighting stance, and egged him on. I did not want to beat him without him having another chance to strike me, it didn’t seem right. I mean I could have killed him right there, had I wanted to, his open posture was almost an invitation for a slaughter, but only a professional fighter could have seen that. I had just come from San Francisco and Studied Karate under the guidance of the greatest Karate instructor of my day (1968-69), Gosei Yamaguchi, thus, having two years in warlike arts in fighting; I was ready.
His instinct was good, he backed down, and I never pushed anyone beyond that point, the point of no return, never put anyone in a corner I always told myself, give him a little room to get out, it could save a lot of trouble. That was always inbreed in me, not sure of the why or how it was, who put it there that is.
My thoughts at the time were: why does this wooden man, one I can break so easily confront me like this. The following morning he was standing outside, with two friends, and I came up to him and said,
“Do you want to finish it…?” and added, “let me show you something” and before he could say a word, or blink an eye, I had thrown several punches and a back kick (not to show off but to show him I no longer was going to play with him), and I pulled my punches lest I break his nose or jaw or something. After the demonstration, his eyes bulged out, and he just said, “You’re a trained fighter, it would be crazy to fight with you,” and I walked away, I really think he simply thought I was crazy.

Bernadette’s Ring

Bernadette came up to me, showed me her hand, “Pretty nice, eh?” she said.
“We went to New Orleans, and I met his brother and sister, they are swell people,” she told me.
She was standing at the bar, not working this evening, her leg lying against mine as I sat on a stool, drinking a tap beer.
“Buff is his name,” she said.
“How big is the diamond?” I asked.
“One forth of a carrot,” she said.
“Lift it up, so I can see it better.” And she did.
I laughed, I couldn’t help it.
“Yes. Go on and laugh,” she said. “You don’t know him, he’s going to get a divorce and marry me.”
“Was he very nice to you?”
She raised her chin up and said with a smirk, “Sure.”
“My god, wake up Bernadette, isn’t it awful enough he lied to you for so long, you’re a damn nice girl.”
“Come on, let’s get out of her, go into town, I got a car, and we can get drunk together, just you and me and talk.” She asked.
People were starting to look our way. Buff is on duty tonight, he’s a Staff Sergeant.”
“I’ve got five bucks until payday,” I said.
“You privates, what do you get?”
“I get $93-dollars a month, that’s it.”
“I ought to stay, just in case he gets off duty early, I suppose” she said, “You see I’m not afraid to go places without him, he doesn’t own me.”
“What makes you think I was thinking that?” I asked.
“Well, I thought your words were suggesting it I guess.”
“This is a comfortable bar,” she said, “you always seem to have a good night here, Chick.”
“No, it’s just a bar noting else, just something to do, while we get ready to go to war.” I think I got to disliking this guy, didn’t even know him, just that he was unforgivingly, keeping her hostage for his whims, and I knew in time he’d drop her.
“I got to go, get some sleep before tomorrow,” I told Bernadette.
“That sounds like a good Idea,” she replied. I think she was made because I was not supportive of her and Buff.

KP and Potatoes, Army life
(January, 1970; Week Seven in Basic Training)

Chapter Six
(Kitchen Police) KP

KP, or call it Kitchen Police, Kitchen Duty, or whatever, but back in my basic training, back in 1969-70, ever soldier did it. I was woken up this one morning of my seventh week in training, it was a Sunday, and someone wanted to go to church, so guess who they picked for kitchen duty, me. I wasn’t supposed to have it; I had had it three times before, and was suppose to have been done with it. But the Army never works that way, they just keep putting straws on the camels back until he drops, or says something to stop it, and I was not everyone’s favorite soldier, so I just accepted it, I was close to going onto the next stage, advance training in Alabama, or Ranger training in California, and jungle training in Washington somewhere down the line. So I figured another day on KP would not hurt. Yet at the time I didn’t know my next duty station for sure. I didn’t even know if they were going to pass me, I mean, they could have fixed it for me to stay around a while longer if they hated me so much, and as a result make me suffer, you know, torment me with another eight weeks of this Boy Scout like training as I had felt it was, yet on the other hand I’m quite sure they were more than ready to get rid of me, in the same manner, so they’d not have to put up with me.

“Soldier, get up, you got KP!” said the young sergeant, my drill sergeant, at 4:00 a.m., with a smirk on his face. He was a vulture, “I already had it three times before!” I said.
“You got ten minutes…no more!” he added to his unsightly face. The Buck Sergeant stood outside, waited to see if I was coming, and I was, I rushed to and fro…and was on my way in ten minutes flat.
It was as if by me staying in the platoon touched off a high explosive inside the sergeant’s head, I think he would have liked me to have gone AWOL, run to Canada for his amusement (and to be honest I thought about it a few times and figured I’d think more on it later, when I got my thirty-day leave). As I walked outside, onto the dirt road in front of the barracks, and then on down the dirt road, and across the black asphalt road—that went the opposite way, to the Mess Hall, he looked a bit gloomy, I was turning out to be a soldier indeed, and he wasn’t sure if he liked that.

It was a long day, or would be. First came the dishes, then the pots and pans, and then the potatoes, yes, I hated doing the potatoes, not because it was hard, nothing in the Army is that hard, it was boring, and they had an automatic potato peeler right behind me, staring at my back side, as I sat on the steps in back of the mess hall, peeling potatoes the old fashion way, with a knife, slowly, and a big pot for the skins of the potatoes and one for the potatoes. I think it was based on not wanting us to have something to do, rather than nothing to do and the automatic peeler would only do the job quicker and allow us to have free time. Oh well, it was all part of the show I told myself. And it gave me time to think on many things.

(I thought about Maria Garcia, a young woman I was seeing and had met while on Christmas leave, back in St. Paul, this past December).
She had a kid, and we’d drink a lot together, and she always seemed to be having family, friends, people in general over to her house, a Mexican thing I think, or Spanish thing, the more the company the better; where as for me being the gringo, I was not used to this, and had I suppose less of a family life in that I didn’t have so many people around, more of a loner, a quieter life. But it was nice meeting everyone. She was cute, short, black thick hair, a nice shape on her, and somewhat of a decent lover. And I never told her I was in the Army, and on my last day of leave, I simply left; that is to say, I got up one morning, had my orders to go, and left, never even made a phone call, had I, I would not have known what to say anyhow. And I suppose I figured Buff would do that to Bernadette, why not, men were like that. And surely, I was no better than Buff, except I never had time to buy her a ring, and had she asked, it would have ended sooner.

On my three hundred and forty-forth potato, I got thinking about Sergeant Wolf, a black sergeant, drill sergeant that is. How he’d smoke, solemnly smoke those cigarettes, right to its end. He was there among the other Drill Sergeants often, talking, he was from ‘C’ platoon, I think he liked me, because I made him look good, and our sergeants bad; they always had bets, betting on this and that: saying their platoon was better, and I think my drill sergeants lost many bets. He had a fleshless neck, almost none at all, and a head of an absurd largeness; a stooping body like an ape, dark as a gorilla, and hands that were almost touching the ground when he walked. He was the Judo and Karate instructor; I could have taught the man something, but for what time we had, it was good enough. I think at times his prerogative was to out show me, or out do me, but whatever he showed, or demonstrated, I could do better, he had a horrible agility, dull small eyes, clean-shaven. He darted here and there it seemed, like a spider, stupidly I often found myself looking at him. I wouldn’t miss him, I told myself, in any crowd.
Yes indeed many thoughts were going through my mind this day, this twelve hour day: I remembered the three Generals, the second or third day I had been in boot camp, Smiley, I and Bruce were sitting down in the clothing supply area waiting to get sized up for our dress greens, and here comes three generals, I didn’t really know a general from a captain, but one had three stars on his shoulders, now that I think about it. “How they treating you soldier?” he asked me, I didn’t get up, and simply said, “So, so, I guess,” he smiled, and said something else, and I never saluted him, nor stood at attention, that was a peeve with my young drill sergeant, but he got over it, after warning me, should it happen again, I’d be severely reprimanded; the General saw the sergeant was upset, and told him in so many words: give him a break.
The other thing that came to mind in my daydreaming was the old sergeants appearance, my drill sergeant, when I say old, I do not really mean, old, old, but for a drill sergeant, old: he had a square jaw, like me, but was a few inches taller, not much, a rough looking face, as if he had been around a bit, small eyes, half closed all the time, or seemingly so. At times he was vigorous and at times a cold pathetic look gravitated all over his face to his forehead. He was what many called, a Red Neck, perhaps thirty-seven years old, but he was a vulture nonetheless.

Army Life

I felt at times I was the side focus of the group of drill sergeants, they had beat the hell out of one of the soldiers for not adjusting and getting smart with them, which I really never did, I mean I never disrespected them verbally, I was simply not afraid of them, and they knew it. Moreover I was guarded I suppose, waiting for them to do it to me, or try. And they knew I was waiting, and I think my eyes warned them, be careful, you are treading on unknown ground, and somebody besides me will get hurt also. What I took to be men of honor, among our leaders, disappointment me somewhat, most were fine, but some were not. They had a job to do I know, and this is of course how I was feeling at the time: everyone with gaunt and hard eyes, with gloomy jobs, and often drunk before lights went out for us. The older drill sergeant, my drill sergeant couldn’t talk for two weeks, laryngitis (inflammation of the larynx). Not sure why I thought this was funny, but he couldn’t holler like he’d have liked to.

At the end of the day, I had a few aches and some numbness, my muscles danced, and my nerves—wiggled. Smiley came by once, said: “See yaw at the beer hall tonight…!” And Bruce and Allen would be with him. Both good old southern boys, as they called themselves. Allen was a large figure of a man with glasses and smart. I nodded my head ‘yes’ and kept on peeling those potatoes, and cutting them up.

Stalemate: Army Life
(January, 1970; Week Seven and a half in Basic Training)

Chapter Seven

We marched back and forth like children walking in formation to school, not half miles though, but four and five miles a day now. No one had the right to resort to tears nor calmly and flatly refuse, a few I think wanted to, we had a fat boy in the group, and the sergeants run him ragged (by the time he left, he must had lost forty pounds, he was most grateful to his oppressors) didn’t even fight back, emotionally or physically. Most of the trainees just did what they were told, had to do, thought they had to do. I learned later on in time, one can hate the Army and love it at the same time. And then one becomes codependent on it, with it. This never took place at this stage of the game, but down the road of life it appeared to me it had enmeshed in not only my life, but the majority of soldiers who were in the Army longer than three years.

Chapter Eight

Beer Bash—At Fort Bragg!
(February, 1970; Week Eight in Basic Training)

I had learned, a Soldier’s first day in basic training, is like every other day, one very long day. For me it was thirteen weeks long. Chick Evens

I was motionless, it was Saturday, and we were all standing about in the bus station on base at Fort Bragg, checking out the billboard for our assignments. It was the end of the eighth week of training, and we had but a few days left, going into the ninth week, actually, my 13th week (counting the four weeks I had used up for Christmas leave) belonging to this Platoon of sorts. We all were checking to see where our orders were going to send us, for our new assignment. The Drill Sergeants were sitting in the smoking room, drinking and so forth, having a bash, training was over for the most part, but we had two days left, we had to use them to clear the base, sign papers, bring back our linen, and so forth and then we’d meet back here and take our buses to wherever.
Sergeant Wolf was collecting money, “How about you Private Evens?” he asked (a little kinder than usual), as I’m reading my assignment…
“Well,” said the sergeant with his hat out.
“Collecting money for what?” I said, adding “is this another requirement?”
“So we can get drunk and forget all your faces, and all the work we had to do to get you recruits to be real soldiers.”
I just stared at him, and he walked away, went into the backroom with the door opened, and took a drink of his booze. Somehow I felt sorry for the men the Drill Sergeants, they really thought they were doing a good deed, they felt they deserved it, the change they were collecting, they all surely had some kind of vision, one I did not pick up on. I was in-between, the eclipse I suppose. So I walked into the backroom, “Want a drink…?” Staff Sergeant Wolf asked. We saw things a little differently I suppose, but that is the way life is, even in the Army, and they needed some kind of uniformity and it was over, and I dropped a quarter in their hat.

Chapter Nine
The Rape

The Rape of Bernadette

It was a cool January evening (three days before Private Evens would be assigned to his new duty station in Alabama) and the mist had not yet fully covered the hill top outside Fayetteville, North Carolina, a little ways from Fort Bragg, which had come from the wind. Bernadette had talked Evens into chaperoning her to a belated New Year’s college party (1970), whom Buck Sergeant Mike Rogers, the bartender at the EM Club—who had a very hard crush on Bernadette—pleaded for her to attend, with him, and when she refused, not knowing anyone in particular, at the party, which were to be a bunch of young college kids and a few young solders from base, at the last minute, she asked Evens.
When they arrived they had to park their car below the hill and climb up it, it had patches of wooded and brush like areas, the hill sides full of foliage likewise. Near twenty folks were standing about, and some sitting on a long log, around the fire, cooking marshmallows, and hotdogs, and drinking beer, rum and wine, and gossiping. Evens didn’t care to be her bodyguard, but for some reason he had that old feeling, intuition, she wasn’t safe going there alone, and she just might do that should he refuse her request, and she was if anything, a little misguided by her need to have a good time, to break the boredom of life, and she was lovely, and very shapely to look at and she liked to be adored, given attention.
Roger saw the two as they were walking down a path toward the fire; he jerked his head when he saw Bernadette Benson, as if his plight for the evening had just been fulfilled. Evens noticed the change in his face, from a blank to an almost dangerous look. Roger waved at the two. They waved back, and then once they got close enough for the rest to see them, Roger stepped forward, gave Bernadette a kiss on the cheek, “I’m really glad to see you,” he didn’t look at Evens for a moment, then gave him smirk, “you too, old chap.”
One by one he introduced Bernadette to the group as if she was his property, girlfriend, and Evens was introduced to all of them at once.
Roger stayed by her side like a fly on a camels back, glued. He put his hand around her waist, she felt a little uncomfortable, but allowed it, then he left Bernadette for a moment by Evens, went out into bushes, about two hundred feet from the fire, it looked suspicious, but Bernadette didn’t say a word, Evens questioned his motives in his mind, knew something was up.

•

“Excuse me Bernadette, I’m going to get another beer from the cooler, how about you?”
“No thinks, I’m fine Chick.”
When I came back I looked about for Bernadette, she was gone. I paced a bit over by the folks near the fire, and the log, a number of young college girls were checking me out.
“Hay, Evens, isn’t…?” said one fellow.
“Yaw!”
“I saw you at the Club, you always look so serious drinking, as if you’re thinking, must be thinking about Roger’s girl, haw?”
“I don’t know Roger’s girl,” I said.
“Sure you do, Bernadette,” said the fellow; he seemed to have been doing some heavy drinking.
“Since when did she become his?”
“I bet your were dreaming about her at the club, until Roger told you hands off—haw?”
“If she was Roger’s girl, why didn’t she come with Roger?”
He hesitated for a moment, took a long swig from his wine bottle. “You tell me wise guy,” he said.
“You lousy bum, stand up, and I’ll knock you back down!” I said.
“Don’t get so riled, I was just kidding,” he said.
“Yaw,” said a girl next to him, “he gets mouthy when he has too much do drink.”
“Yaw, I know the type,” I was looking in his eyes, they told me he was a chicken, and he was.
“You work for the Colonel, I know you do, your Corporal friend told me, and so you think you’re a hot shot!”
“Come on stand up,” I said, “get up and fight, I’ll show you who’s a hot shot.”
“What?” he said, “fight, what for?”
“So I can shut your big mouth, that’s what for.”
He wouldn’t move from his spot, asked the girl next to him to go get him a beer he was too scared to get up; I then thought I heard a voice in the woods behind me, in the bushes someplace, somewhere amongst all the patches of undergrowth and turned about to go check. As I walked down the narrow path, I heard Bernadette say, “Go to hell!”
I looked about the shrubbery, couldn’t see a soul, and then I heard, “Help, help, help…please somebody help!”
It was Bernadette Benson’s voice for sure, I confirmed. I looked harder, had the bottle of beer still in my right hand, “Bernadette,” I called.
“Over here, here…!”
I took a left turn, Roger had her pinned to the ground on her back, his pants down to his knees, her dress up over her knees, and he was half inserted, “Hey, stop that.” I said. I put my hand on his shoulder, “I said stop, can’t you hear?”
“I heard you, f… off, get away from me,” he said.
“Don’t you hear?” I repeated myself, I figured he’d stop but he was acting as if he had a right to do what he was doing, and he just turned about and went down on her again, as if I wasn’t standing over him. I also noticed nobody came to her rescue, or to check out her pleas.
“Ask her if she wants you,” I said. Bernadette, cried, “Get him off me pleases Chick!”
I told myself he had no honor, no pity, no anything, and I forgot I had the bottle in my right hand for a moment, and I grabbed him by the hair, pulled his head around so I could see it, and bashed it three or four times with the bottle, and he came off her like a slashed saddle on a horse. And he lay beside her in a daze crying, “What did you hit me with, you didn’t have to do that!”
A voiced from afar, said “Is everything all right out there?”
Funny I thought, they heard his plea, but not her’s.
I looked at him, said, “Yaw, now you’re sorry.” I knew he’d blame me later on for excessive force, but then that is exactly what he was using on her. I didn’t need the bottle to beat the bum, it just happened to be there; like to like, given no pity, received no pity. He looked awful, but that is the way you look when you get hit with a blunt instrument. I was hit once with a crowbar in the forehead, and had thirty stitches, I know how he felt.
“Come on,” said Bernadette, he has lots of friends, and they’ll be more than willing to back him up, we need to get out of her.”
I had fallen for Bernadette also, but I was not obsessed with her, nor would I tarnish my manhood to appease my sexual drive. They never go hand in hand.

Chapter Ten
Faggots and
Lesbians

Faggots and Lesbians

At the beer hall the next night (48-hours before we’d depart Fort Bragg for good, and go on to our advance training assignments), Smiley (Judson Small), Allen and Bruce, were there with me all getting inebriated. I told them the story of Bernadette, how Sergeant Mike Rogers, the bartender at the EM Club tried to rape Bernadette, while at some belated college New Year’s party outside of Fayetteville on some wooded hill top, and I broke a bottle of beer over his head sent him to the hospital. Bernadette’s mother had called me, told me how grateful she was, that if the devil sergeant tried to press charges, they’d get him for rape (that was the last I’d ever hear of it).
“We should shoot the bastard,” said Allen, he was a tall, broad, a stocky man, with glasses from Boston. “Then go get those faggots and Lesbians.”
“Want to hear some more on the rape?” I asked Allen.
“You don’t have any more,” said Smiley, “from what you told me anyhow.”
He was right I just wanted to cool Allen down, he had been angry all night long.
“Oh Allen,” said Bruce, “You think all college kids are faggots and lesbians because they didn’t get drafted like us.”
“You got that straight, you bum.” He remarked.
From underneath his fatigue coat, he pulled out a bottle of red wine. Smiley and I slung our jackets over our shoulders; we were hot, in the New Year’s, night’s coolness.
“This is hillbilly country, right Smiley; we should try and find some moonshine.” I said, looking at both Smiley and Bruce, both southern boys.
“I hate these college faggots,” said Allen, “we’re here and they’re in college, can’t get drafted, the US Government feels we’re disposal, and aren’t we.” It was unfair I knew, but what could you do about it.
“Where’s our barracks?” asked Allen cock-eyed.
“Just follow this road along the middle here, and it will appear just like magic, to the right.” I said. Then pointed out to Allen whereabouts it was.
“It’s a hell of a walk,” said Allen to us three.
“No, not really, you’re just a hell of a drunk,” I said, and all four of us laughed.
“Listen,” said Allen, “I’ve got it figured out, Kennedy and Johnson were both faggots, and Westmorland, he was one to, all lovers, and they all started this little war in Vietnam you see, they got all together in this little cabin, pretending to do business, and figured this war would bring them back for more talks, but it was lover talk they wanted to do.”
“I don’t think so,” said Bruce, “Kennedy liked Monroe, they were doing it in the closet in the White House, that’s why someone killed her.”
“No, that was just a last minute cover up; she was a clandestine lesbian, everybody knows that,” said Allen.
“Kennedy freed the niggers, and ever since they’ve been complaining, right Bruce?”
“Yaw, that nigger woman on the bus started all that trouble. Down in your country, Smiley, Alabama.”
“She was a lesbian too, you should know that guys,” said Allen.
“Why you so bitter tonight Allen,” I asked.
“Yeah, I suppose I am. I’m going to Nam, you know, got my orders yesterday, I’ll be going to Fort Hood Texas, for infantry training, and then to Vietnam; kill some of those gooks, you know those fish. Don’t even know what a gook looks like. And I’m going over there to kill them, what a pity.”
“Say,” said Smiley, “I’ll be keeping you company, my orders read the same as yours.”
“Good,” said Allen, “bad news likes more company.”
“How about me finishing off the wine, Allen, you’re really pie-eyed?”

When I got back to the barracks, I quickly put my Hemingway book under my pillow, in case someone saw it, it was titled, “Men Without Women,” I was afraid Allen would see it, and then god forbid, I’d never hear the end of it, and I liked the short stories (which had noting to do with Faggots and Lesbians), I was at the end of a short story called: “Hills like White Elephants,” where some guy was saying something like: stop talking, talking, talking, so some girl… something like that. Anyhow, Allen would simply never understand.

•

At the beer hall the next night (48-hours before we’d depart Fort Bragg for good, and go on to our advance training assignments), Smiley (Judson Small), Allen and Bruce, were there with me all getting inebriated. I told them the story of Bernadette, how Sergeant Mike Rogers, the bartender at the EM Club tried to rape Bernadette, while at some belated college New Year’s party outside of Fayetteville on some wooded hill top, and I broke a bottle of beer over his head sent him to the hospital. Bernadette’s mother had called me, told me how grateful she was, that if the devil sergeant tried to press charges, they’d get him for rape (that was the last I’d ever hear of it).
“We should shoot the bastard,” said Allen, he was a tall, broad, a stocky man, with glasses from Boston. “Then go get those faggots and Lesbians.”
“Want to hear some more on the rape?” I asked Allen.
“You don’t have any more,” said Smiley, “from what you told me anyhow.”
He was right I just wanted to cool Allen down, he had been angry all night long.
“Oh Allen,” said Bruce, “You think all college kids are faggots and lesbians because they didn’t get drafted like us.”
“You got that straight, you bum.” He remarked.
From underneath his fatigue coat, he pulled out a bottle of red wine. Smiley and I slung our jackets over our shoulders; we were hot, in the New Year’s, night’s coolness.
“This is hillbilly country, right Smiley; we should try and find some moonshine.” I said, looking at both Smiley and Bruce, both southern boys.
“I hate these college faggots,” said Allen, “we’re here and they’re in college, can’t get drafted, the US Government feels we’re disposal, and aren’t we.” It was unfair I knew, but what could you do about it.
“Where’s our barracks?” asked Allen cock-eyed.
“Just follow this road along the middle here, and it will appear just like magic, to the right.” I said. Then pointed out to Allen whereabouts it was.
“It’s a hell of a walk,” said Allen to us three.
“No, not really, you’re just a hell of a drunk,” I said, and all four of us laughed.
“Listen,” said Allen, “I’ve got it figured out, Kennedy and Johnson were both faggots, and Westmorland, he was one to, all lovers, and they all started this little war in Vietnam you see, they got all together in this little cabin, pretending to do business, and figured this war would bring them back for more talks, but it was lover talk they wanted to do.”
“I don’t think so,” said Bruce, “Kennedy liked Monroe, they were doing it in the closet in the White House, that’s why someone killed her.”
“No, that was just a last minute cover up; she was a clandestine lesbian, everybody knows that,” said Allen.
“Kennedy freed the niggers, and ever since they’ve been complaining, right Bruce?”
“Yaw, that nigger woman on the bus started all that trouble. Down in your country, Smiley, Alabama.”
“She was a lesbian too, you should know that guys,” said Allen.
“Why you so bitter tonight Allen,” I asked.
“Yeah, I suppose I am. I’m going to Nam, you know, got my orders yesterday, I’ll be going to Fort Hood Texas, for infantry training, and then to Vietnam; kill some of those gooks, you know those fish. Don’t even know what a gook looks like. And I’m going over there to kill them, what a pity.”
“Say,” said Smiley, “I’ll be keeping you company, my orders read the same as yours.”
“Good,” said Allen, “bad news likes more company.”
“How about me finishing off the wine, Allen, you’re really pie-eyed?”

When I got back to the barracks, I quickly put my Hemingway book under my pillow, in case someone saw it, it was titled, “Men Without Women,” I was afraid Allen would see it, and then god forbid, I’d never hear the end of it, and I liked the short stories (which had noting to do with Faggots and Lesbians), I was at the end of a short story called: “Hills like White Elephants,” where some guy was saying something like: stop talking, talking, talking, so some girl… something like that. Anyhow, Allen would simply never understand.

As for Bernadette, I never went back to say goodbye to her at the bar, I kind of wanted to. But I didn’t want to fall in love with her, I didn’t want to see her again, she was looking for a husband, or something on that order. And I didn’t want to know what was happening in her life, or Buff’s sporting evenings, or Mike Rogers’s recovery. I just wanted to go my own way, live my own life. There were a few things to be said about the way she handled her life, and I suppose a few practical things I was learning in mine. The best thing was to last and get my work done, learn and try to understand, and see where I’d end up.

Note: History of the Novelette: The Burlesque, story “The Midwinter Soldier,” was originally named, “Soldiers’ First Day,” 3-30-2007. Revised, 5-2008, and renamed “A Midwinter Soldier”; revised and edited between November 7 and 26, of 2008, again; in the last week of March of 2009, it was revised and reedited a third time. “Faggots and Lisboans,” and “The Rape…” written 3-27-2009 for the book “A Midwinter Soldier” Originally 9200, modified to 13, 750-words

Back of Book

Faggots and Lesbians ((a chapter story)(1969, Fort Bragg))

2009-03-27T14:08:00.000-07:00

Faggots and Lesbians

At the beer hall the next night (48-hours before we’d depart Fort Bragg for good, and go on to our advance training assignments), Smiley (Judson Small), Allen and Bruce, were there with me all getting inebriated. I told them the story of Bernadette, how Sergeant Mike Rogers, the bartender at the EM Club tried to rape Bernadette, while at some belated college New Year’s party outside of Fayetteville on some wooded hill top, and I broke a bottle of beer over his head sent him to the hospital. Bernadette’s mother had called me, told me how grateful she was, that if the devil sergeant tried to press charges, they’d get him for rape (that was the last I’d ever hear of it).
“We should shoot the bastard,” said Allen, he was a tall, broad, a stocky man, with glasses from Boston. “Then go get those faggots and Lesbians.”
“Want to hear some more on the rape?” I asked Allen.
“You don’t have any more,” said Smiley, “from what you told me anyhow.”
He was right I just wanted to cool Allen down, he had been angry all night long.
“Oh Allen,” said Bruce, “You think all college kids are faggots and lesbians because they didn’t get drafted like us.”
“You got that straight, you bum.” He remarked.
From underneath his fatigue coat, he pulled out a bottle of red wine. Smiley and I slung our jackets over our shoulders; we were hot, in the New Year’s, night’s coolness.
“This is hillbilly country, right Smiley; we should try and find some moonshine.” I said, looking at both Smiley and Bruce, both southern boys.
“I hate these college faggots,” said Allen, “we’re here and they’re in college, can’t get drafted, the US Government feels we’re disposal, and aren’t we.” It was unfair I knew, but what could you do about it.
“Where’s our barracks?” asked Allen cock-eyed.
“Just follow this road along the middle here, and it will appear just like magic, to the right.” I said. Then pointed out to Allen whereabouts it was.
“It’s a hell of a walk,” said Allen to us three.
“No, not really, you’re just a hell of a drunk,” I said, and all four of us laughed.
“Listen,” said Allen, “I’ve got it figured out, Kennedy and Johnson were both faggots, and Westmorland, he was one to, all lovers, and they all started this little war in Vietnam you see, they got all together in this little cabin, pretending to do business, and figured this war would bring them back for more talks, but it was lover talk they wanted to do.”
“I don’t think so,” said Bruce, “Kennedy liked Monroe, they were doing it in the closet in the White House, that’s why someone killed her.”
“No, that was just a last minute cover up; she was a clandestine lesbian, everybody knows that,” said Allen.
“Kennedy freed the niggers, and ever since they’ve been complaining, right Bruce?”
“Yaw, that nigger woman on the bus started all that trouble. Down in your country, Smiley, Alabama.”
“She was a lesbian too, you should know that guys,” said Allen.
“Why you so bitter tonight Allen,” I asked.
“Yeah, I suppose I am. I’m going to Nam, you know, got my orders yesterday, I’ll be going to Fort Hood Texas, for infantry training, and then to Vietnam; kill some of those gooks, you know those fish. Don’t even know what a gook looks like. And I’m going over there to kill them, what a pity.”
“Say,” said Smiley, “I’ll be keeping you company, my orders read the same as yours.”
“Good,” said Allen, “bad news likes more company.”
“How about me finishing off the wine, Allen, you’re really pie-eyed?”

When I got back to the barracks, I quickly put my Hemingway book under my pillow, in case someone saw it, it was titled, “Men Without Women,” I was afraid Allen would see it, and then god forbid, I’d never hear the end of it, and I liked the short stories (which had noting to do with Faggots and Lesbians), I was at the end of a short story called: “Hills like White Elephants,” where some guy was saying something like: stop talking, talking, talking, so some girl… something like that. Anyhow, Allen would simply never understand.

Written 3-27-2009 for the book “A Midwinter Soldier” Chapter Nine

The Resisting Winter (A Novel and Parody)

2009-03-24T22:12:00.000-07:00

The Resisting Winter

Here is a semi romantic, humorous Novel and Burlesque, by Poet and author Dennis L. Siluk, in honor of an era that never did pass; he says: “We’re still waiting… from the ‘60s! “

The Council of the Continental University, Los Andes University, the UNCP University, the Journalist Professional Association and Cultural Center of Peru congratulates and recognizes

Three time, Poet Laureate,

Dennis L. Siluk, Ed.D.

The Resisting Winter
(A Novel and Burlesque)
Copyright © 2009 by Dennis L. Siluk

Front drawing, by the Author
Back Photo of the Author, 1981, photo taken during an interview
In St. Paul, Minnesota

Heart to heart was never known;
Mind with mind did never meet;
We are columns left alone,
Of a temple once complete.

C.P. Cranch.

Contents

Opening stanza from a poem
By C.P. Cranch.

Part One

Cornfield Laughter

Part Two

The Resisting Winter

Part Three

November Slush

Part Four

Man Differs

Part Five

A Era that never did pass

End Poem:
By Shannon O’Day “Woman”

Author’s Final Note to the Reader

Author’s Index of Books

(Notes on Making of the book)

Cornfield Laughter

Part one

Chapter One

Shannon O’Day stood looking into a big foundry type window in St. Paul, Minnesota, it was 1966. Winter would soon be here. Near Shannon, standing at the parallel window, a few feet apart, was Poggi. Could it be that what this poet guy once had said, “When winter leaves, spring is next in line?” would not this be the full truth this year. Poggi Ingway wondered. Shannon O’Day, an obese man with a small rounded head, short. Both stood there and looking at the fully operational foundry in motion. A frost covered the ground, and there were full storage bins alongside the foundry, items to be shipped soon. Before the great snowstorms of Minnesota came. The foundry workers would have to break open those bins, haul down those piles of casings to the Great Northern Railroad Station, load them on the flat-cars to take them away, to the automobile factories. Poggi Ingway looked throw the window as a cold wind blew past his face and chin, and neck, and when he breathed outward, his breath looked like he was smoking, the weather was so chilled he could almost make smoke rings, and on the outside of the window he made little circles. Poggi thought of San Francisco. Perchance it was the busyness of the workers that brought back such recollections of the untiring ‘City by the Bay’ he often thought of it, where he had spent sometime years ago. That one year being the happiest in his life. That was all history now; that and most everything else.

Shannon O’Day had married five times, had five wives, four ex wives that is, and one present wife; as he looked into the window, standing in the wet grass, fat and short, trying to raise himself higher by standing on the toes of his shoes, and rigid with his own flabbiness, he thought of all five of them. One lived in Fargo, another in Fergus Falls, the third, and forth in Minneapolis, and the fifth, the present one, in St. Paul. He had not seen four of them since the previous winter. He looked into the big foundry window, staring as if in a trance, and thought what summer would mean. And how he loved the cornfields outside of town, the yellow cornfields and getting drunk with his friends and his forth wife; he was always very happy when he and his forth ex wife were intoxicated in those fields. They would listen to the trains go by, and walk among the stocks of corn; they’d lay down by one another drunk and would watch the stars appear. They would find their way back to the farm, a friend’s farm, and sit under the oak tree, in a little rut, overlooking the barn and drink, still listening to the trains in the far-off distance, on those iron tracks racing by. They’d drink all night. Often in the summer when all the yellow corn was high, they’d drink for three days straight, and just laugh as if they were crazy. They felt it did them good; made them both burly, happy, like to like, as the old saying goes.

Shannon O’Day had a daughter by his forth wife, whom he teasingly called, Cantina O’Day, her real name was Catherine O’Day.
One morning, when Shannon after they had both drank the night to oblivion, passing out under the oak tree, he looked about for his old lady, they had been drinking three nights, and days, this was the forth day. When he came to, he didn’t know where she had gone, disappeared to, everything was blurry eyed? He walked about in circles, heard the train in the distance; looked into the yellow cornfields. He tried walking through them, calling her name, ‘Gertrude!’ The cornstalks were stiff; he couldn’t find her, she up and disappeared, just like that. He knew she had taken the last bottle of homemade wine; it wasn’t there, unless he drank it and threw it into the cornfields when he was drunk before he passed out. He went back to walking around the barn, and the main farmhouse. Then he started walking into town, trying to hitch a ride, trying to figure out what happened to her, she must had gotten up and found a ride home. Finally he came to the city limits, passed old Washington High School. There was nothing elaborate about it, not like the schools and buildings he had heard Poggi talk about that were in San Francisco. No, he had never been to San Francisco himself. It was not like him, he preferred the small Midwestern town, and the yellow cornfields. That was his friend Poggi Ingway.
Poggi Ingway looked deeper into the window. Soon the horn would sound, and the second shift would start, and the first shift would take their showers, and head on home, they had three shifts. He pushed up the windowpane, just a morsel, and he could feel the warm air melting his chilled face. A cold breeze was blowing on the back of his neck; a numbing wind-chill. The cold wind came through the window, and a few workers looked towards Poggi from within the foundry. He saw the working men cleaning up their areas, as the new shift stepped in to take over. Most of them were Irish, German, or Scandinavian.
The supervisor was a tall, stringy like man. He had once lived in Wabasha Minnesota, a small town seventy-five miles south of St. Paul.
The supervisor put his fist in his mouth to moisten it and held it up in the air. He looked at the window Poggi was looking through, felt the cool breeze on his fist. He shook his shoulders unrepentantly and frowned at the men, a little too harsh perhaps.
“Fine,” he said, grumpily, adding, “the first shift was lazy…boys; let’s show them how real men work!”
Everything went silent for the moment. The foundry men put on their helmets, and some had masks, and gloves. The men next walked to their positions, as if they were trained seals, talking to one another, muttering this and that, a few came out of the washrooms and jumped up by the molds to where molten metal would be poured into.
Outside the window, came sounds of men laughing.

Chapter Two

Shannon O’Day, stood on the sidewalk, by Washington High school looking towards the kids rushing through the doors, not to be late for classes. A mist had been in the air, hard to see anything completely. It had been falling all morning. A car rode by slowly, observed Shannon just staring towards the school and kids. Shannon saw the man stare but didn’t pay much attention to him, he was really nobody to him. Then he walked on down Rice Street.
Shannon kept turning his head to his right as he walked, noticing the activity in the big windows of the school, lights being turned on; inside kids would soon be getting instructions from their teachers, writing down things, learning things; here he understood, was the place the kids would get their knowledge to go onto better things later on in life. It was a time when Minnesota, if not the whole country was concerned about higher education. His daughter, Cantina, who he paid out a hefty $175, 00-dollars for a new dress, shoes, and sweater was on the second floor, her homeroom, about to go to her algebra class. Shannon was proud of her. He was too old to go back and learn, but day in and day out, and during the nights, Cantina would study. She was a learner, that girl, she lived with his brother for the most part, Shannon was known to drink too much, and everyone, it mattered to, thought it better to leave it that way.
Shannon went down to Albemarle Street, where he lived, it was a big two story house, with five bedrooms, it never really mattered to Shannon’s old lady, his wife, but it did to him.
“Shannon,” his old lady would say to him when they first met, and started drinking, “any place will do. All I really want is a warm fireplace to keep the cold out, and tight windows to keep the heat in, with heavy window weights.”
Shannon never did take that statement seriously. Now as he walked down the street in the wee hours of the morning, through the mist and fog, and saw car lights reaching only several feet in front of him, he got a glimpse of the chimney of his home, he felt glad that he had not taken her seriously. It was better he was coming home to a big house, nice and warm, than a little one, he had lots of room to pace back and forth in. He, Shannon was not the sort of fellow who liked a garage for a house.
He opened the screened in door, walked onto the porch, and then the wooden door, and on into the hallway, and to the third door, that led into his living room. He tried to remember that that fellow he met in West Fargo had written, that poet guy, he used to recite it: “There are many paths that lead to Rome, somewhat and somewhat and something more—there’s no place like home.” He could not remember the exact words, but he taught Cantina to sing, “Home sweet home,” that was when she was six-years old. He told his little daughter back then, he could be a song writer, and then laughed, saying “If they can sell that Elvis stuff, why not mine!” If he had had a chance to do such a thing, he might have. Anyhow, he would tickle Cantina until she’d sing it with him, and he figured, this evening maybe he could talk her into singing it with him again, if she didn’t go right home to his brother’s house, she often stopped to visit him before she did.
He was thinking about perhaps stopping his drinking; it was robbing him of his energy, ambition, but he loved it so. Getting drunk in the cornfields among those tall yellow stocks and singing and the train whizzing by, and the crows flying overhead, was better than anything he could think of, no one had ever offered him anything better anyhow, that is, nothing better that could replace his drinking, not even Elvis or the Beatles could have offered him a better life than those cornfields did. So he didn’t like seeing summer leave, and winter come, and when it came he hopped it would dissipate quickly.
When he got really drunk, it all smelled, and felt, so lovely, the wet grass and weeds, dray cornstalks, the mud, the dirt, everything, anything, he drank in those cornfields until the last day of fall per near. Drinking had done all that. It was perhaps not right, but he didn’t have San Francisco, like Poggi to remember, or a guitar like Elvis, or a dog to keep him company.
Shannon walked through the doorway, into the living room, “Gertrude!” he yelled, “it’s me, your husband, I’m home.”
She didn’t answer. Maybe, she really wanted a small house after all, he thought; this place was pretty big, pretty hard to clean. You never can tell with women, plus he could feel a draft coming through the window on the side of the house in the living room. His amigo, Manuel Garcia, had just such a place for sale; he was retiring from the foundry. He had told him once, a year or two ago, if he knew of anyone looking for a small house, the size of a large garage. Poggi had told him all the houses in San Francisco were expensive, if he would move out there he’d have to buy a small house. Only the rich could afford a house like he had in Minnesota, out in Frisco, as he often called the city by the bay. After the Korean War, things changed, houses doubled in price.
“Gertrude!” he called out again, “Gertrude!” No one responded. There was no one in the house, he stood stone-still, in his round obesity, in his own abandoned house, then come the sharpness of the Shannon ears, and he could always hear the most quiet of whispers, but he heard naught.
•
Inside the House

Perhaps it is the dark side of me that I have chosen to introduce vices for the characters, into this work. But I wanted normal human reactions, but believe me they all come under the heading of human weaknesses or bad habits, but I have kept them clear of what might produce, extended evil.

Shannon looked across the table where his wife had been working on a puzzle, the Cathedral in Jackson Square in New Orleans, it was half completed, evidently she had been smoking a cigarette which had been half put out in a nearby ashtray on the table, and there were ashes on the rug he noticed, she must had flicked them, purposely. “I say, she couldn’t use an ashtray?” He looked around to see if anything else was out of place, or disturbed. “No,” he said. He took out a heavy looking steak from the refrigerator, cut off the fat along the sides with a butcher’s knife, sat at the kitchen table as the steak fried, looking across the table into the dinning room where the puzzle was, saw the framed picture of his wife.
“What a pity,” he murmured… “Thanks for leaving me a steak, awfully decent of you!”
He didn’t know if he was joking or angry, Shannon looked at his hands, wrinkled up around the knuckles, fingers, the thumb. He grabbed a bottle of wine out of the refrigerator, gave the top of the bottle a twist, a twirl. “Isn’t she a fool?” He remarked, bringing the bottle next to his mouth drinking it half empty. Found a towel, and wiped the bottle dry, the wine had spilt all over it. Then he held the bottle up with one hand “I like to drink!” He shouted. He sat there staring at the bottle, “This is good wine,” he muttered, “Here’s to you...!”
Then he finished off the bottle, in toast-drinking, “Don’t mix emotions up with wine, you lose the taste,” he told himself.
“I could write a book on wine,” he told the bottle, “all I want out of life is to enjoy it. Let’s finish you off!” he said, but it was already empty, and he turned to look at that steak, “let’s enjoy you then,” he told the steak.

Shannon could be charming sober, a little nutty drunk, he pulled off his shirt, and pulled up his undershirt, he was hot from the wine, the stove, the heat from the kitchen window, the sun seeping through, and the space heater running full blast, his chest was white as a ghost, a big stomach, muscles bulged under the light from the kitchen window, and around his fat. Under the line where his ribs ended was a deep white welt, with ridges, a bullet wound. He touched it, along side that, was a bayoneted scar. He looked at it, goggle-eyed, “I say, you fellows are still there.”
The bayonet had gone clear through. He then tucked in his shirt.

Chapter Three

Shannon left Minnesota. He was through with that city. What could St. Paul do for him that another city couldn’t do, and perhaps do better? He figured, no big deal, simple as baking a pie. You work hard; drink hard all your life and this is where you end up, his wife disappearing, leaving him. His bank account was emptied out, she took it all. Nothing left, not a dime. He hitchhiked to Erie, Pennsylvania, checked the city out, right to the edge, or from the edge, of Lake Erie. Erie might do big things for him. Any dupe could see that. He would buy a building in the heart of the city, near the college district. He’d buy the building at a low price, and then rent out the rooms to the students. Let them pay the mortgage for him. He had learned a thing or two now.
He walked around the city, it was cold, he picked up a half dead rat, put it in his pocket, to keep his hands warm, he had no gloves. The wind coming off the lake made the city even colder than usual. The rat was half frozen, but now was moving about, returning to life, but it nestled close to his warm body, and peeked his head out now and then, his head being the size of Shannon’s fist, it seemed as if it was grateful.
“Poor little fellow,” Shannon said.
A flood of tears dribbled down his cheek.
“That there wind, it’s goin’ to kill us,” he said aloud, as if the rat was his new amigo.
As twilight turned into night, the wind off Lake Erie picked up. Shannon sitting on a bench, noticed two large yellow eyes coming at him as it started to snow, he looked closer, it was fog lights from a snow truck, getting ready for a storm. Shannon leaned back against the wooden bench rested his back as the truck rode by. What is it that that writer said? “All for one and one for all,” but what if it is just one, and no one else, no others? Shannon thought on that quotation, as the truck rode by a second time, as the light snow drifted down, in the arc-light darkness. He could hear the engine of the truck purr, as it hit slush, and it splashed on him. He saw the driver raise the front of his pickup, with its shovel at its end, lowering the shovel thereafter, somewhat. He even had goggles on, as if he was waiting for a Minnesota snow storm any minute, and here he was in Erie. He noticed he had his hand on the throttle trying to get his vehicle to have the engine purr more rapidly, smoothly. Shannon thought of what some Minnesota writer once said, “Here today, something, and something, and somewhat—then gone tomorrow.” That was when he buried his mother in Oakland Cemetery. As a kid he used to jump that same high spiked iron fence and with his girlfriends, and guy friends, sit on a few graves and get nasty drunk. Those moments were mostly dim and blank for him now, as if a dark angel was covering his memory banks. That is when he was fifteen-years old. On Sundays he’d go down to St. Louis Church and go through all the motions most of the adults did, to satisfy his soul, and those looking at him, and the priest, and in case God was watching, and his mother, then that night go get drunk again. He never was satisfied with all the hypocrites at church. They are strange people, those pretending Christians he’d tell himself.
Shannon sat back again against the wooden bench (he had moved forward some), saw that truck again go by for the third time, and now a few more cars, they didn’t sound like the trains he was used to, while drinking in the cornfields of Minnesota. All the cars were hitting the slush purposely so it would reach him on the bench. The windshield wipers were on most of the cars that passed. They seemed to be going as much in one direction as the other, driving slower as first light was breaking.
As morning broke, the cars now looked like a long train, and the snow storm had started, he thought of how he was an expert at hitching a ride all the way to Erie, a first time experience really, but he felt like Jack Kerouac.
The long string of cars passed Shannon as if on parade, or a funeral: who were in those cars: old ladies going to take their children to school, middle-aged men going to work, young ladies on their way to college classrooms, fathers, mothers and grandparents. Who exactly were they. Were they pure American stock, Europeans, the old warn out stock like him. Shannon wondered.
The last car he saw was a police car with a red light on—flashing, he watched it racing down the street, and disappearing into heavier traffic. The snowflakes were getting bigger, wider, fatter, thicker, and the wind was picking up. The rat quivered inside his coat pocket. Perhaps if he found a job he might even be able to go to work this afternoon or evening. The rat quivered again, it was no longer as feeble as it was previously. Shannon put his hand into his pocket onto it, to settle it down a little, the rat was calmed. Shannon walked further down the sidewalk.
After all he did not need to stay in Erie; there were other places he could go. He remembered a critic once said, “The world is my city,” if he could not find a job here, he could head on to New York, or even Washington D.C., or down South, perhaps to New Orleans. He remembered when he was a boy running around the backyard barefoot, his feet would get numb, just like they were getting now, but as a boy it was from running on the rocks and rough terrain, now they were getting frozen from the ice-slush, and winter chill. His mother loved to have a bright lit up Christmas tree each year, once he’d plug in the electric end of the cord, into the socket, her eyes would light up with the tree.
“This snow storm is like Minnesota.” He told his mother as he walked silently down the street, as if she was by his side; she had died some years back. “Look at those beautiful lights, Shannon,” his mother would say, “someday you’ll be rich and famous, you mark my words,” and her voice was like a symphony orchestra.
Shannon had cared for his mother the last several years of her life, she lived with him and his wife. She’d be wrapped in a jacket in a chair in the dinning room, bobbing back and forth on those thin like, tin wobbly legs, fall to sleep: he often wondered how she ever kept her balance, didn’t fall off that lean legged chair, and break her hip or neck or leg, God-forbid: for sure her guardian angel was nearby; he finally bought her a sofa chair, and that was it, she almost lived in it. She had made a great impression on him.

Shannon came to a stop light, it flashed green, he waited, it flashed red, he waited, it flashed yellow, he moved across the street, yellow reminded him of the cornfields of Minnesota, and he started laughing.
“Walk on the green not the yellow!” yelled a police man at Shannon.
For sure, there was money to be made in Erie, if you looked in the right places. He, Shannon, now understood the ways of the world a little more, in his own mind he was certain he could live in this city and do well.
He looked in an animal store window, saw a large cage, one for a rabbit, or small dog, he stopped and stared at it, “Ah, what a beautiful home for you Mr. Rat, I’m sure you’d like it,” Shannon said victoriously looking down at the rat as it peeked its head out of his pocket, talking to the rat as if it understood. The rat quivered, happily now. The snow storm was starting to pick up, drifting across the streets, the wind picking it up and throwing the light flakes of snow into his face. Shannon’s ears were getting numb, his feet had been numb for a while now, far-off he could hear the thumping of a train on its tracks.

The Resisting Winter

Part Two

Chapter Four

Where was Shannon headed? Walking aimlessly down a sidewalk in Erie, in the brisk morning in the beginning of a snowstorm, he had become perplexed. He had started out for Erie, after finding his wife had abandoned him, and his home, and therefore felt it was no longer a home, yes a house, but not a home, not any longer. Why had Gertrude left? He, Shannon, couldn’t tell you if he wanted to. And for the most part, I doubt he cared all that much, although she was a good drinking partner. She had left, and that was old news now. “Don’t look back,” that was his quote to himself today. He was now standing ankle deep in slush, in front of a bus station. On the station it read in big fat letters:

“Greyhound!”

There were stacks of fish piled high in containers lying open for folks to examine one from the other: mostly dead but some still had a tinge of life in them, and wobbled about, all big-eyed fish, with their flipper-tails hanging over the tubs they were in. The market area was on a kind of platform; Shannon read the sign near the Greyhound symbol, “Fish Market!” It was more like a small open market, not big at all, just lots of fish, smelly, unsmiling big-eyed fish, and several folks standing—a few sitting on stools behind, or near their storage bins and tables full of fish: weighing them, gutting them and trying to make them look pretty.
A woman was behind one of the counters, cutting open a fish, other fish tapping on the containers with the last of their will. She looked at Shannon looking. Could she be looking for a fish sales person? Something told Shannon he could be one. He stepped forward, leaped up onto the platform, out of the slush (of ice and water) and approached the woman behind the counter. He noticed she worked quickly. She had long stringy hair, little beady eyes, entrenched into deep sockets, and a high forehead, receding hairline, little ears, about five-foot five, overweight, like him, but thirty-years younger. Her hands were too white for the rest of her body, as if they had lost circulation from all the cold, and fish cutting.
“Are you a fish cutter?” asked Shannon.
“Yes, sir,” said the woman “I’m a good one too.”
“That’s great!”
This woman eye-balled Shannon skeptically, perhaps thinking, what’s he up to with such a stupid question, of course she’s a fish cutter.
“Is it difficult to be a fish cutter?” Shannon asked. He didn’t want to ask her for a job outright, he wanted to be a little smoother about it, more polite.
The woman looked at him inquisitively.
“What’s up mister” she asked, “are you some quack?”
“Absolutely not,” Shannon said. “I don’t even know what a quack is?”
“Well, fine,” said the lady, “but if that is a rat looking out of your coat pocket, you’re a quack!”
“Rat?” asked Shannon, “What rat?”
“That rat that is peeking out of your coat pocket…” Shannon didn’t know what to say. What kind of woman was this, I mean, she spotted everything, and did she go in for detective work or what? Are fish cutters like detectives? He wanted the job but did he have to explain his whole life to her?
“I left St. Paul, my wife left me…” he started out to say, “I passed Washington High School, on my way home—“
“I know a gal in Minnesota,” the woman fish cutter said, “maybe you know her. Claudia Kline?”
It was useless he told himself to continue on this way, he’d tell her just the main facts, cut the story to a few paragraphs. It was getting too cold to stand there and go on and on and on, and then only to find out she didn’t need an assistant, at least it appeared she didn’t need one. He looked at the fish; they were everywhere, on the counter, over the counter on the floor, piles of fish everywhere, stiff and cold looking fish, like him. Perhaps they, like all those folks he saw in the cars driving by had places to go also, and then all of a sudden, woops, they became trapped, and now were being cut open, and she was worried about the rat.
He noticed cats were sneaking about.
“My wife up and disappeared on me yesterday, unexpectedly,” he told her with a grin (repeating himself).
“No wonder she left you, so would I, if you came home with a rat in your coat pocket.” She told him.
“I need a job,” Shannon commented. There was a silent moment now, a moment of terror in his eyes, and empathy had set into hers, upright. They never really hit it off, he knew that. He figured it was a dead moment, and all was lost. There was no use in pleading, she saw the rat, and she was still trying to figure out, what kind of man carries a rat around in his coat pocket.
“There’s the Greyhound bus station, go get on a bus, and go home, I can tell you aren’t like that Jack guy who rode all over the country, and wrote a book about it, the beatnik guy! You know who I’m talking about.” said the woman, “I’ll even buy you the ticket!”
“Thank you,” he said. He turned and walked into the slush, deserting Erie, walking over to the bus station, she had given him fifty-dollars. Luckily, that was less than the cost of the ticket, plus a few extra dollars to boot; perhaps he could get a breakfast along the way. He had sold his house just before he took off to Erie, but the lawyers had put all the money into a bank account for him, he didn’t even know what bank. Why had he even left St. Paul? What was he trying to do anyhow?
Coming down the street towards him were five Mexicans, they checked him out, he put on a mean looking face, like Humphrey Bogart in, “To Have and Have Not (the movie),” so they’d not think twice about robbing him, they didn’t smile, just stared, unchanging faces, blank faces; he knew what was on their minds, but they dare not stop, and they didn’t. Their faces never changed from one step to the next. They went to the fish platform, to the counter where the woman was.

The bright morning Minnesota sun woke Shannon up; hours on the bus, near winter he pulled the blinds down on the side against the sun, the chilled window felt refreshing. He could smell the dirt, and odor of the cornfields. He had taken a jug of wine with him on the bus, it only cost a dollar (Ripple), he had gotten drunk during the night, had a hard time finding his ticket, incase someone wanted to recheck them. It was clear the change of the countryside as the bus came down out of the Great Lakes region. It was a rough ride, that of which he could remember, but he told himself: beggars can’t be choosers.

Chapter Five

The next day, Shannon O’ Day stood in the center of the downtown bus station in St. Paul, Minnesota; he had arrived early in the morning. There was a café and barbershop and shoeshine stand in the station, all on one side. A janitor was mopping the floor; other men just sitting around smoking, some sneaking a quick drink from a bottle of wine hidden inside their coats, mostly homeless folk.
Smoke circled the station; about fifty people on hard looking plastic chairs sat admiring the graffiti on the walls, reflections of the bathroom walls. Should he, Shannon stick around, warm up, or go to the bank get his money out, and find a hotel? After all, he sold his house, had $8,000-dollars in the bank, he just needed to call up his lawyer to find out which one, which bank, and have him call the bank to release the funds. He could do and go, and see whatever he wanted to then. He looked around once again, hesitantly. He was old, very old, maybe sixty-five or seventy.
When he is gone, left this world forever, he knew men would never write books about him (of course he didn’t know me at the time), not like F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was born in St. Paul, and everyone in the Midwest knows about Scott. This was the new young generation all about nobody and everybody; like Andy Warhol once said, and Shannon paraphrased him: everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes, somewhere along life’s line.
Shannon had called his lawyer, his money was in the 1st National Bank, a big gray building in the middle of town, he was up near “Mickey’s Diner” he didn’t like that big ugly grey building, the tallest in the city, the bank was alright, just the building. Shannon looked about again, with his big fat ugly heavy and lumpy old body in the middle of the bus station, folding and refolding his handkerchief, and pushing the rat’s head back so folks would not think he was a wacko, or goofball, he took off his hat and wiped the sweat off his forehead, he still had a bit of red to his hair, it was thinning though, curled around the ears, and coming out of his ears and nose, around his dull bluish eyes, those long eyebrows he could almost lick them with his tongue.
He had a few tears running down his cheek, as if he was lost, in his own old spirit, not knowing what now to do with his life, he tells the rat to simply stay put. The tears run down and his pocket handkerchief and his shaking hands wipe his tears.
Heavy, oh so heavy, his feet felt, the numbness had left. He made a path to the doors of the station, a kid was running with a ball shouting, “Look, look, I can…” then he saw the rat’s head and was about to say “Rat!” Shannon knew this beyond a doubt, and he tripped the six-year old, and whispered, “Shut your fat little mouth, you little rug-rat!” And the little boy looked up at him terry-eyed, forgetting the rat, and yelled, “He tripped me…!” It really didn’t matter to Shannon; it was really an inviting prospect to skedaddle on down to the bank, and draw his money out. Somehow it wasn’t what he wanted to do right away, but better now than never. He wanted to eat; he had three dollars on him, enough for a good breakfast at Mickey’s Diner, but the bank now seemed to occupy his thoughts.
Shannon turned his back on the bus station and headed on down the street to the bank, in this quiet and conservative, near frozen little city in the Midwest, walked down the cemented sidewalks, looking in the stores, as they changed the cloths on the manikins, from fall to winter designs. Car horns honking, people talking about a war in Asia, a dinky little nowhere country called Vietnam. Shannon had said aloud as folks walked by, “Now another little dirty war by our so called patriotic elected.”
He saw the bank, thought about General MacArthur, who had given a speech a few years back at West Point, 1962, he was the head of the American Forces in the Pacific during World War II, and had a final campaign in Korea that lead to clashes with President Harry S. Truman. If he had his way, he’d had ended the war that was starting in Vietnam in a flash, one big bomb, that would do it, not all these little firecrackers, and don’t worry about China, we had a few leftover for them. He had been a soldier in WWI, a rebel kind of. There I sat in the ditch, waited for the Germans, that doesn’t matter anymore though, new wars, there are new wars for the new generations; something to pass the hours away, so we create new wars. And it’s always America who has to come running to the rescue for Europe, the thankless contentment, haven’t they figured it out yet: countries that are not ready, or prepared to defend their wealth, are simply targets for those that are.
His hands where nervous and trembling now; alas, “Here I am at this big ugly building.” With those nervous and uncertain hands he opened up the heavy doors, concealed his rat by pushing his head back into his deep coat pocket.
There were many large square pillars in the bank, he looked at them. Then at the teller counter, he motioned to one of the tellers that was counting money, she looked at him, bowed her head acknowledging he was there, and continued the count. ´She remained him of Popeye’s girlfriend, Olive. He told himself: that is the risk you have to take coming to these big ugly buildings, hurry up, wait. He clapped his hands, his long fat fingers, in the bank. The teller looked his way, facing him more now, gave him a sign, with her big bulging eyes and eyebrows that went upwards, making her forehead seem smaller:

“The Patient man gets what he wants!”

He was hungry, wanted to go back near the bus stop, to Mickey’s Diner, and have that $3.00 breakfast. He then gave her a sign, with his lips:

“Patience is not my virtue!”

Ah, those old timers before him, were sure wise fellows, they built such big banks, with lots of money in them, if only they had some imagination, other than making them look like matchboxes. They never had to advertise much, didn’t see it on the television anyhow, people just automatically gave them their money. They told them on paper signs, “We are the best, number One,” then put a big one on top of their bank, and they were really number ten when they started out, and people believed they were number one, and left the other banks for theirs. He knew how it worked. He looked at the clock above the head of the woman counting the money—the one he now called Olive—it was 11:00 a.m., nearly lunch time. He saw a sign now, it read, “Be Patient!” This wasn’t Mickey’s Diner he told himself; this was someone who had his money, telling him to be patient.
“I wonder,” asked Shannon to a young lady standing behind him, “is this a bank or a waiting room at a hospital?”
“Yes, sir,” answered the young woman, “this is a bank of course, “it is the First Bank, number one!”
“Thank you miss,” said Shannon. He folded his hands and waited. “I would like to have $8,000-dollars of my money out of the bank,” said Shannon to the teller woman.
She called his lawyer, and he assured her, this was Mr. O’Day, and he had placed his money in the bank for safe keeping. She then gave him his money.
“Is that all sir, she said?” And he stood there thinking. “Please move sir, there is a lady behind you waiting.”
“Why don’t you give her the sign that means patience, like you did me?”
He opened his coat pocket, and out popped the rat’s head, placed the rat on the counter, gently. The rat windswept his fur and shook himself, as if to stretch from being cooped up in a small area too long, it was as if it even tried to be tidy about it.
The lady behind him moved rapidly away from him, and the teller, grabbed a pen and tried to push it back, away from her so it didn’t jump towards her. “Isn’t he a manly fury little fellow?” he remarked. “Incidentally,” he asked, almost embarrassed, “next time give money bands around the bills, so they don’t flop all over the place.”
“Bands?” said the woman, “for your money.”
The teller shoved the rat back with her pen a second time, like a wicket witch, and quickly stepped backwards and to the side, to where she felt safer. Shannon had a warm glow on his face and a big shinny smile.
“He’s not a noisy rat, just a happy one,” Shannon mention in passing starting to move away from the counter, as the bank teller threw her arms in the air, yelled in a hysteric voice to her boss: “A rat! Rat, a live rat in the house, I mean bank!” At that juncture, Mr. O’Day walked quickly out of the bank: behind him, voices crying, along his path: “A live rat, a live rat…rat…rat!”
When he got outside, he was tucking his money in his left pocket and in the right the rat.

Chapter Six

“How old is the rat?” asked the waitress at Mickey’s Diner, after delivering Shannon his long awaited breakfast.
“How would I know,” Shannon said. “I just met him yesterday. My wife left me a few days ago to boot.”
“You poor old man,” the waitress said. She poured some steaming hot coffee in his coffee cup, refilling it. Shannon put his finger in it to test its temperature, how hot it was. “We were out drinking that evening, or was it morning, I can’t remember, and I heard the train near the cornfields. I passed out, and when I woke up she was gone, just like that.”
“Maybe she’s trying to get a hold of you right now?”
“Give me the pepper please,” asked Shannon, “now what were you saying?”
“Nothing, just eat old man,” she commented, and walked away.
“I’m a High School graduate,” he told the waitress as she walked away.
“So what,” said the waitress, “eat up, shut up and get out of here, and take the ugly rat with yaw.”
His mind was now drifting, and the rat was hanging its head out of his pocket. He knew the rat was hungry, it looked faint. And perhaps this cold air was too much for it.
“I say,” he said to the rat, handing him a piece of bacon, “I bet you could eat this whole breakfast by yourself.”
The waitress came up now with a large order of potatoes, fried crisp.
“Here,” she said, “for the rat, I hate to see anyone, or thing, go hungry.”
The rat was now nibbling at its food, in the booth area, on the bench like seats, happily, rising up his head looking at his new friend.
“He does that to thank me,” he explained to the waitress.
“They are delicious potatoes, fine, too.” She commented. Shannon grabbed some with his finger tips, the rat almost bit them, and sure enough, they tasted delicious, and so with a nod of his head he agreed.
After eating all those potatoes, the rat was reenergized, as if his head was clear, and eyes could now refocus.
What was this decomposing language the waitress was talking about; his wife might be looking for him, now that he had $8000-dollars in his pocket. If she found him, he had a big surprise for her—nothing; he had nothing for her, her cut was out of the bank. He wasn’t a man to be taken lightly, or made a fool out of: he once heard the saying, ‘Monkey see, monkey do,” and he was doing just that, as far as he was considered, she burned the bridge she crossed.
After finishing his breakfast and the rat his potatoes, the rat had fallen to sleep.
“When he gets tired of sleeping,” remarked the waitress, “best you get on out of here.”
“Sure,” said Shannon.
“Where is your home?” asked the waitress.
“It used to be on Albemarle Street, down Rice Street, past NSP (Northern States Power).” The old man said, with a smile a bit sadly.
Strange man, thought the waitress.
“I was not always a waitress you know,” she commented.
“I’m sure you weren’t.”
“Plus, I also got a High School Diploma, went to Central High School, then Harding High School.” The waitress started to go on and on, about her life. “Do you find my life interesting?” she asked the old man, adding, “if you write a book someday, don’t use my name, ok?”
“Sure, dear,” said Shannon, “If that’s the way you want it.” Then he was quiet, “Incidentally,” he said “mind if I get some more bacon?”
“It’s the best in the Midwest,” the waitress said with a smiled, her face, pale and red, sweaty with patchy rawness from the wind, “You look like that lady from ‘King Kong,’ you know Fay Wray?”
“She was an interesting woman, I met her once, and did you really want more bacon?”
“Yes,” Shannon answered simply.
“And lay off that rat,” said the waitress, Shannon was tickling it.
“Tell me more of your life story,” said Shannon.
“I once found myself in San Francisco, back in the early 40s,” she began, “I was always excited about wanting to see the Golden Gate Bridge, perhaps that is why I ended up there.”
“Go on,” rambled Shannon.
“Like the rat when I got there I remember being really tired, and must had fallen soundly to sleep. When I woke up I was in bed with a man. My mother had disappeared.”
“Who was the man?” asked Shannon.
“A soldier on leave, from WWII…can’t remember his name.”
“Just call him, Igor,” suggested Shannon.
“Yes, that sounds pretty close to his real name,” she said.
“I went downstairs to the lobby to check with the bellboys, and the register, because I though I came with my mother, but it read his name, and mine, and the bellboys all said, the soldier and I were one. It all of course was a surprise to me. I remember then calling up my mother and she said, ‘Where the heck have you been, after the bus accident, you were missing,’ and I told her I wake up in Frisco of all places, everybody calls it Frisco you know. I found out I had been gone two weeks. Amnesia for two whole weeks; can you beat that. How do you like my story?”
“Go on, it’s a killer, said Shannon.
“Amnesia, that is what I had, walking around in a state of amnesia for two whole weeks, I wake up, that’s it, and then I went to see the Golden Gate Bridge.”
“What about the soldier boy?”
“Igor, he gave me a one-hundred dollar bill, told me to go back home, he’d write me, but he never did of course. And I bought my ticket and came back here, and I’ve been a waitress ever since.”
“It’s good to get such things off your mind,” said Shannon.
“Yes,” said the waitress, wrinkles around her eyes, especially pronounced when she smiled. They reminded the old man of the trenches he lived in during WWI.
“You look better now,” said the old man.
“Honestly?” she asked.
“Cross my heart hope to die,” and he had his toes crossed, because he knew he was lying.
Shannon went outside of the diner, an old diner car from a retired train, made into a café.
“You come back again,” yelled the waitress, “but don’t bring that rat with you please!”
“Yes,” said the old man, looking up at the ugly bulky bank, with the number one on top of it. Was it true, it was the number one bank in St. Paul; he’d had liked to have known the truth?
The rat’s head was also looking up at the big one, grimy like, almost emulating Shannon.

November Slush

Part Three

Chapter Seven

Shannon O’Day was seeking out work. He was a man who used his hands more than his mind in such matters. He went back to the foundry, Malibu Iron, over on the eastside of town. He looked through the window, it was inviting, all those people running to and fro to get this and that done. True, it was a dirty, messy job, all foundries are, but they paid well. Men running around naked after being washed up in the showers, and putting on long underwear, so the winds of Minnesota would not freeze them, or get frostbite.
Inside the foundry doors, Shannon beckoned to a woman in the office, “I say do you have a supervisor?”
“Can I help you, sir?” asked the woman.
“What do you think I just said, where is the boss man, do you have a boss man?” Shannon knew the foundries and factories quite well, like the palm of his hand, he worked in enough of them. He was on his guard, they were not going to fool him one iota. He waited by the office door. He read a sign a little ways down the isle:

“Foreman, knock before entering!”

Heck with this noise, he told himself, I’ll go right to the foreman, and he walked down the isle, and saw the door was slightly opened, knocked on it, then walked in.
“Can’t you read the sign,” said a voice behind a desk.
“It said Knock, and I did,” said Shannon, standing in front of the Foreman’s desk. Outside in the isle, he could hear the workmen going back and forth, humming, and talking, and whistling, and cussing.
He was a little man, but well-built, with broad shoulders and big hands, and a harsh face.
“So what can I do for yaw, as if I don’t know?”
“What you do best, hire and fire, today it is hire me, and I can do anything these young whippersnappers can do, and do it better, faster.”
“So you want a job, do you, all right, I got one for you.” Said the foreman, “we’ll put you up by the burner, and you can pour the metal into the molds: how’s that?”
“Just dandy,” said Shannon.
“Poggi, come over here,” he called to a middle aged man, tall and healthy looking, and when Poggi got to the foreman, he looked Shannon up and down.
“I’m a German,” said the Foreman, “do you mind working for a German boss?”
“One kraut’s just as good as the next, or bad, I’ve got nothing against them, we kicked their butts twice, and they are slow learners, that’s all I know, why do you ask?”
“Well that’s honest and good talk, I see you’re Irish, and I don’t have a thing against you potato pickers over there in Ireland either, as long as you do your work here.”
The man called Poggi Ingway, just kept looking and staring at Shannon, as the Foreman stepped aside for a moment to talk to one of the workers.
“Glad to meet you Poggi,” said Shannon. He was looking at his chunkiness, he was as round as he was tall, but solid in the right places.
“We don’t usually see your sort around here,” he said.
“Your Foreman’s the first German I ever met, I didn’t shoot,” said Shannon.
“Oh, he’s really just a good ole American boy, his father came from Austria, and his mother from Germany, but he was born here in St. Paul, and at the end of WWII, he had a tragedy, and I suppose you could call it his nightmare,” Poggi said, as he showed him around the foundry, the Foreman still talking to the worker.
“Were you in the war too?” he asked Shannon.
“Yup, the First Great War, I was in France, in those trenches.”
“I bet that was quite an occurrence,” said Poggi.
“It was cold and wet, men peeing in their pants, and waste piled high as horses, rats all over, it was nasty, but they died brave, awkward, wall-eyed, then one day they just up and stopped the killing, as if they lost the goat, and didn’t want to lose the rope, but they did, the Germans lost it all in WWII.” Then he remembered his rat, he left it in his apartment, forgot to leave out some food for it. “We were all misfits back then, not like the Army nowadays.”
“Aren’t you kind of old to be working?” he asked.
Shannon didn’t answer.
“Don’t take anything out with you, they check you naked after you take a shower, and if they find anything in your locker, or on your person, or in your cloths, it’s curtains, finished for you here.”
“I suppose many men get fired because of that?”
“No,” said Poggi, “not many try, or are so foolish to attempt it.”
“My wife left me,” said Shannon to Poggi.
“Well, I’d not worry about that anymore, it looks like you still got some getup and go, a good job, a place to rest your head, and perhaps a dog or two, right? And finding a good or bad female is no harder than finding a good or bad steakhouse.”
“Yup, I suppose so, everything but the dog, I got a rat.”
“I wouldn’t say that too loud Shannon, people might think you’re wacko.”
“I heard someone once say, ‘No wife is better than having the wrong wife’ something like that.”
“I heard something different, ‘If there are no good wives to pick from, any wife is better than no wife at all,’ but I’d not look forward to that.”
“You listen up Poggi, a piece of advice for you; you’re much younger than me. Get yourself a fat ugly wife, and you’ll be happy all the days of your life. Or some South American gal, they like to take care of their husbands.”
“Shannon,” said Poggi, “it sounds like you know a thing or two, I’m glad we’ve met, and we’ll be working together.”
Poggi put Shannon to work right away, putting him on the second shift, from 4:00 p.m., until midnight; introduced Shannon to most of the workers.
He worked next to Poggi for the following months, shifting iron weights onto molds, holding them steady as the molten metal was poured into them, and when he wasn’t doing that, he was pouring molten metal into the molds, and it seemed Poggi and Shannon got along quite well, working side by side.

•

The Foreman’s Nightmare

Believe it or not, I have no intentions to vilify poor Mr. Schultz, and I have tried to use utmost care in his tragic circumstance, for there is nothing new under the sun; but perhaps had he not had bad habits, this scarce action produced, would not have come about. Who or what do we blame, God?

It was back in 1945, twenty-six years ago, at the end of the Second World War, he, Hans Schultz was drunk, and so was his wife, Marylou, celebrating the end of the war, he took out a package of cigarettes, fumbled with his matches, he had two left in the little box, and he bent over to shelter the flame, with his hands blocking the breeze coming off the Mississippi River, they were walking alongside the edge of the High Bridge, the sides made of wood and iron framed, built in the late 1880s.
Marylou, had taken one of the cigarettes out of his package, he lit his cigarette, leaned against the wooden railing of the bridge, she did likewise, he put his cigarette in his mouth, and lit the second match, with intentions to light her cigarette, she had long hair, she coughed, leaned forward, her hair caught on fire, she fell backwards as Hans tried to put out the fire, pushing her backwards more, unintentionally hard against the railing, the fire was put out, but unexpectedly, his weight hitting her’s was too much for the old wooden railing, and in the late coolness of the night, she dropped to her death, deep into the rivers current, never to be found.
It was a nightmare, and always the same one for him.
He quite smoking that very day, desperation came and left a dark weariness in his soul! Work, work, it was the simplest solution, his eternal medicine, to block those ongoing nightmares. Sometimes he got too tired to sleep, “Things like that sometimes happen,” said the priest, at his local church, what more can you say to a grieving man, except you know where I’ll be if you need a listener.

Chapter Eight

The first day, lead into 364-more days, endless hours to Shannon O’Day, shifting iron weights, and pouring molten metal, and looking at naked men, washing and cleaning, and often bringing his pet rat in, and keeping him in his lunch bucket in the dressing room, and eating lunch alone in that very room, concealed him a few times in his pants pocket, and everyone wondered what he had in that pocket, it bulged so heavily, and wiggled. Poggi had told him: bringing the rat was not the wisest of decisions, but he missed his pet ever so much, even though it made Poggi uncomfortable.
Oh, Shannon was happy he was working, but it took much of his time. Now the week was finished, it was Friday night. And Shannon was on his way to the diner to see Maribel, his new girlfriend; he was spending a lot of time at the diner, socializing with new friends. Her story had kind of bothered him, so he asked Poggi about San Francisco, he knew he had been there. He got him drunk and then got him to talk, drew out some information. He was pretty wise in knowing when and how to get a man drunk then ask the right questions.
After they got drunk, Shannon and Poggi went out to Como Park, by the lake, sat in the car, watched twilight move into place, the lake was starting to freeze up, some kids were ice skating on it, “No reason to rush the relationship with Maribel,” Poggi told him. “All things come in good time, all things come to those who have patience,” said Poggi.
Shannon looked at him mysteriously. Who was Poggi anyhow, I mean, he was no middle aged Plato, just a foundry worker, with a lot of advise to an old man, who was getting older by the day, and perhaps a little undernourished with sex, and missing his cornfields, and the sounds of the trains. Of course Poggi, who had no girlfriends couldn’t understand his needs, isn’t that how it always is, a one way street, on a two way highway, and one driver don’t have a license because he never drove before. He never lived through a war, had four marriages, a kid in high school, living with his brother. Shannon O’Day, opened his car door, the air was cold, “Plato, get out of my car, go tell your bean head girlfriends to wait for their next fix with sex, they’ll drop you like a hot potato.” And then he put the car in gear and took off. Shannon didn’t know Poggi didn’t have any girlfriends, he just assumed he did.

“Good evening,” he said to Maribel, at the diner.
“It’s nice to see you this evening; I’ll get off in an hour.” She told Shannon.
“He sat down at the counter, had a cup of coffee, started reading the St. Paul Pioneer Press, he often read it, liked the paper. Poggi’s comments stirred inside of him.
“I’ve been thinking all day long,” he told Maribel as she walked by—he looked at the other folks in the diner, a few young folks with girlfriends, an old man falling to sleep in his eggs and toast, a woman staring at his rat peeking at her, “hurry up,” he added.
“How cute,” she commented, “a blue ribbon around Rata’s neck. And then she smiled at Rata, the official name Shannon had given him, in lack of a better one that came to mind.
He grabbed Maribel by the skirt, but with dignity, she turned around sharply, “Yes, yes, Shannon what is it?”
“You are my old lady, right?” he said. Tears came down her eyes, “Of course dear,” she responded, “why?”
He hesitated, she said, “You are my old man, correct?” and he nodded his head up and down, giving the yes signal.
“Now what is the matter?” she asked sternly.
Shannon said the word in a whisper, “I’m…you know what, let’s get married, the sooner the better?” He knew he couldn’t keep it any longer a secret; it was what he wanted to say for a while now.
“If we get married, are you going to take Rata every place we go?” she asked (the rat looked at her unhappily, and then at Shannon).
“No, not every place, we’ll look for a Mrs. Rata for him,” and they started laughing, laughing so hard it reminded him how he used to laugh in the cornfields, unabated, with his ex-wife, drunk as a skunk, his long gone, disappearing now ex-wife.

So off they went to make plans. Shannon grabbing his paper, folding it and putting it in his back pant’s pocket.
“I really like that paper, I’ve not read it all the way through yet!” he told Maribel.
She had buttoned her coat up, carried her apron in her hands to wash later on.
“Here, put my hat on, you’ll get a cold,” said Shannon to Maribel.
“No, I don’t like hats, I’m fifty-seven years old, never wore a hat, and it isn’t goin’ to start with you either.”
“It’s your wedding gift,” said Shannon.
“Oh,” commented Maribel, “that’s different,” and she took the hat and put it on her head, and smiled.

Chapter Nine

It was early in the morning of the next day they got married, Shannon O’Day, and his waitress, Maribel O’Day, were one like two peas in a pod. They walked into the diner as man and wife, said hello to Old Josh Jeremy Brown, the Negro cook, he liked playing the banjo when no one was around, he liked his wine also, a bottle hidden here and there, he was about the same age as Shannon, between 65 and 70, not even Shannon knew his correct age, he guessed it at 68. No spring chicken. There was also, the young fancy looking waitress, who wore yellow like Maribel, her name was Annabelle Henry, and the young man who was always sitting at the end of the counter with his guitar, thinking one day he’d be another Elvis, or Rick Nelson, or Johnny Cash, he’d join in playing and singing with Old Josh Jeremy Brown, normally around 3:00 a.m., when it was quiet at the eatery, after the drunks came in for a Porterhouse steak, or early morning breakfast, and staggered back out of the diner trying to find their way back home.
The old black cook asked Maribel, “Youall wants some breakfast, lunch or whatever?” he came up from Alabama back in the early 50s, so he still had some of the southern drawl in him left.
“I’m not going to feed that Rata, of yours,” said Annabelle, with a disgusted look on her face. It was warm inside and Shannon and his new wife sat in a booth, put in a dime for a song on the little booth jukebox, it was Rick Nelson singing “Lonesome Town,” and it brought a tear to Maribel’s eyes.
“I love that song so very much,” said Maribel, “you got that pint of whiskey? Pour some in my coffee before Annabelle comes back.” She told her husband. She liked to drink, not quite as much as Shannon but nearly as much, and Shannon was wondering if she’d like to get drunk in the yellow cornfields, like he and his ex used to do, but he’d not tell her yet—there is a time for everything under the sun, that was one of his many one-liners.
He, Shannon, picked up the Minneapolis Star, newspaper, read the front page, then looked at Maribel, said, “Yes, we are man and wife now, it feels good, and I want to get good and drunk to my heart’s content.”
“We don’t need to say that so loud, dear, we just do it, everyone around here has three ears, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes, dear,” Shannon agreed.
“Would you like a breakfast or a Porterhouse steak dear?” Maribel asked her husband.
“I’ll just take a warm bowel of tomato soup with crackers,” Shannon told his wife.
Annabelle Henry, the young waitress, placed the soup and crackers on his table, as she laid the plate down she saw the head of the rat, her hand almost touched him, he was so far out of Shannon’s pocket.
“Really, do you got to carry that beast around wherever you go?” she remarked to Shannon.
“Let’s hear it Ricky!” Shannon shouted, and now he was playing another of Rick Nelson’s songs, it sounded like “Be-Bop Baby,” and was not paying Annabelle any attention.
“What does he call his rat?” Annabelle, asked Maribel.
“Rata, a simple name,” remarked Maribel.
“Why not something with a little pizzazz to it, like Picasso, or Dali or Elvis Junior?”
“Or why not Annabelle?” said Maribel.
“Because it’s a male,” remarked Annabelle.
“How would you know?”
“Because Shannon refers to the creature like it’s a male.”
“I don’t think Shannon even knows if it is a he or she,” said Maribel.
“I think we got to go, talk to you another time, Annabelle, Shannon’s little beast is getting hungry, and he has to be fed.”

The black cook, Josh, started laughing, he heard everything, and he was sitting at the end of the counter, having his lunch.
“What’s so funny?” asked Annabelle, to Old Josh.
“Rata,” he said, “Rata! Rata! What a name.”
Then she said, “Josh, Josh!” (mockingly), as her voice was rising, “please Josh talk to Shannon about getting rid of that rat!”
There was no answer just the sound of him eating and breathing. He was a man content to leave well enough alone.

Chapter Ten

Shannon’s life seemed to take on a new dimension, working at the foundry now on the morning shift, attending to a new wife, and Rata, his pet rat. Not much time for reading the St. Paul Pioneer Press newspaper, not much time to read anything, not even politics, or war, he liked reading about war, especially the new war in Vietnam, and that fellow called Ho Chi Minh skinny as a bean pole, but he thought he was smart as a whip. I mean, here was a guy washing dishes in Paris one day, and now ruled a jungle and its countrymen, like trained rodents, what more could you ask for in life. He fought the French, the Japanese, and now the Americans. If anything he was a ‘go getter.’ The Vietnamese were a strange people indeed, he concluded. Maybe someday someone will write a book about him and his exploits in the trenches of France during WWI, like Hemingway did about the first war, in ‘A Farewell to Arms’ and Faulkner did in ‘The Fable,’ and that German guy did with “All Quiet on the Western Front.”
Oh well, that’s how it was now, not much time for debating things out. She took on a husband, and he took on a wife, but now the trick was, and she was thinking this, it was written all over her face, anyone could tell she was thinking, “Can I hold onto him now, keep him for my own!” Oh yes, she, Maribel, was wondering this indeed.
Mr. Shannon O’Day, formerly a retired old man, who got drunk weekly in the cornfields of Minnesota, in the summers, springs and falls, now the husband to Maribel Adams, now Maribel O’Day, was working in a foundry, had a good income. But the real reason she was questioning her get up and go, her womanhood, was because Annabelle Henry, was making eyes at him, at her man, her man and husband, she had her own intentions and she was not telling anyone verbally of them, but women can tell such things. And every time Maribel looked into the mirror, she saw Annabelle laughing. This was not good for her morale. The question had come to mind, ‘Could Maribel quit her job, after so many years?’ I mean Annabelle even flirted with Rata occasionally, to appease and get closer to Shannon.
She couldn’t iron those wrinkles out, she knew that, and she couldn’t break mirror after mirror, so for the mean time she simply had to live with the awful thought ‘could she or couldn’t she hold on to her man, her husband?’ Every night at the diner, when Maribel would look at Annabelle, a knot came into her stomach, made her feel oozy. She knew Annabelle had a blueprint on Shannon O’Day, yes him, him, the very him, she married, Shannon.
As far as Maribel figured it, Annabelle was no more than a whore, yes, and a cagey one at that. Couldn’t she find her own boyfriend? She was twenty-seven years old, trying to come between husband and wife that was a whore to Maribel, a cagey one. Be that as it may, Shannon was fascinated by Annabelle giving him the time of day, an old yank like him, never got such devoted attention from such a young shapely pretty girl. She was some southern gal from North Carolina, came up with old Josh, got off the same train, must have met on the same train, and they both got a job at the same diner, at the same time. Maribel admitted to herself, that was mysterious, maybe they had something going, maybe the same game. The only thing that mattered now was finding out the truth, and seeking out her intentions. She had to hang onto her treasure, her man, her husband. Make him want to stay no matter what. When summer came around, perchance the cornfields would do it. He always talked about drinking in the cornfields with his ex-wife, another whore in the eyes of Maribel. She looked into the mirror in the bathroom at the café, another wrinkle appeared.

The cold was starting to freeze up the streets solid, they crack and have to be mended in spring, as usual, as the silent snows drifted lightly down, oh, she, Maribel, dreaded winter, hold it back, tell it to wait. At first the snows seemed to be natural, and then a burden, as Maribel trekked to work each day. Neither she nor her husband, Shannon, drove a car, too expensive, and Shannon feared he was too slow to react nowadays. It was turning out to be a slushy November, and Shannon was still her man, her only man, the man of all men. She even brought him the St. Paul Pioneer Press paper home every night, after work, some customer would normally leave one on the counter, and that made Shannon happy.

Chapter Eleven

Winter was coming. Winter was in the atmosphere.

(Author’s Note. –This is the same day on which the story began, back on the first page, where Shannon and Poggi were looking into the window at the foundry.)

A chill was in the air, men were busy as bees, Poggi was by one window and Shannon by the another, “Are you going to go into work?” asked Poggi.
“Are you still mad at me for kicking you out of my car?” Shannon, asked—his rat moaning from his pocket, perhaps too cramped.
“No, I’m not mad,” said Poggi, “how are you and Maribel doing?”
“I think she doesn’t feel she can hold me, and is like a hawk, always by my side, she wants to take Rata if we separate I think!” said Shannon.
He, Poggi touched Shannon’s shoulder. It was a sign that he understood, life had its ups and downs. “There’s more fish in the Sea,” said Poggi.
“Yaw, my mother used to say that, did you know her?” asked Shannon.
“No, of course not, it’s just one of those old sayings, you know, like that Chinaman used to say, Confucius, ‘Out of sight, out of mind,’ something like that, and so and so and on and on…you know what I mean.”
Then the wind started to blow, a chilled wind, and then a warm wind, and the weather didn’t seem like it knew what it wanted to do, slush and mush, and ice mud, all over the place, grim pushed into more grim making it thicker grim, what little snow was on the ground looked horribly dirty, Shannon’s shoes among them. Then he noticed Maribel coming down the street, she was faint in the distance, but he could tell by her walk, that it was her, she had that wiggle. She hoped he would be glad to see her, she hadn’t been sure all night, since she got off work, and he was sleeping on the coach, and he had not come to pick her up.
Shannon was stirred up by her constantly becoming his shadow, or so it seemed. She now was waving hello at him, a half block away. Poggi still looking in the window, “I think I’m going to work, see you in there,” he said and took off before Shannon’s wife arrived; Maribel coming nearer.
“Good morning, dear,” said Maribel, “are you going into work, or what?”
“Hello Miracle,” Shannon answered. He sat down on the iron rounded fence that was below the windows. She looked at him, tired and with more wrinkles. He could afford to be any-which-way he wanted to be to her but was polite, “What brings you all the way over here dear?” In a way, his wife leaving him, and his trip to Erie had hardened him. His look at her was more eclipsed. More darkened had he shown more than his profile: his mind was near the same.
“Would you like me to buy you a paper?” she asked.
“How about us going down to the diner, forgetting work today?” he suggested.
“Ok,” she said reluctantly, and then with tears from her eyes, she said, “If only I could quit that job, you’d have no reason to go there and see her…!” said Maribel. She wiped her cheek with her sleeve, “I’ll carry Rata, if you want me to,” she suggested.
Maribel hadn’t been out all morning she was hungry, but was afraid to let Shannon know, then that would give him a good excuse to stay longer at the diner, and that was to the contrary of what she wanted.
They caught a bus down Seventh Street, to the diner, never once holding hands, as if they had been married for fifty-years. Shannon kept a sharp eye on Rata, thinking Maribel might try to grab him out of jealousy and runaway with him.
Many folks now knew of Shannon and his pet Rata, they were becoming a team, well known and well liked among his crowd.
As they got off of the bus, they stepped into a pile of slush, ankle deep, ice and mud and just old fashion sludge, Minnesota slush, that has a sting to it, a cold numbing like sting, then onto the narrow sidewalk, up a few steps into the eatery.
Perchance, it was the way Shannon walked ahead of her, or too far behind her, or a distance to her side, whatever it was, it told Maribel, she had too many wrinkles, she was soon to be history, replaced in the life of Shannon O’Day, god forbid, she conjured up in her mind.
Once in the diner, Annabelle looked at Shannon, they gave each other a smile, and that did it, she knew now, her days were numbered with this man she called her husband. Even Old Josh, who was cooking, saw them catch each other’s eye, or perhaps it was all in her brain, and she imagined it, but truth be told, you could not have convinced Maribel to the opposite.

A Note for the Reader, not the printer or publisher: if there are misspelling in this book, or typo errors, it shouldn’t make an elephant’s difference in the long run, every author has them, especially in their first editions, to include Hemingway, and Faulkner, two Nobel Prizes winners for literature, and we can put Fitzgerald into this category, the one who wrote the 20th Century’s greatest novel, “The Great Gatsby” but be assured, the author did not make the error (s), it was either the printer, or the publisher, too many times, it comes back to the author as a lacking to his structure, or impatience to edit his work, when in reality, it is the indolence of the printer, or publisher; enough said on this matter, back to the story.

(If the reader is somewhat confused where we are at in the story, don’t be, let me explain, and get you out of the trip. We are at the beginning of the story, remember, when Shannon and Poggi were looking inside the window of the foundry. With all the busy people running to and fro; and now, being at this juncture, we see Maribel is unsure of her womanhood to keep her husband happy; she’s a little fearful she might lose the old goat to Annabelle, and Shannon is on guard as to protect Rata, incase Annabelle tries to kidnap him, or her. To be frank, if not down right honest, I’m not sure how she can really keep him, she is like his shadow, and most folks don’t like looking at their shadows, but we shall see, as they say: reader beware. On the other hand, we want the reader to like Poggi, and Shannon, that is why they made up, and we do not want to have women hating Shannon because he is paying a little more interest into the life of a young Annabelle, and so forth and so on. So we will try to make everything come out smooth, to the best of my ability anyhow. Would it be any relief to the reader, to inform him or her, I get a number of these anecdotes from a number of my experiences mixed up into one, I do not think that is a violation of the story, we also owe much to the imagination. In any case, we will now go and see what is happening with the characters I’ve just mentioned. As the story opens, he never did go into that founder that day, he went to the diner.
Be assured, it is not easy to write backwards, and front wards, and somehow end up in the proper middle, while at the end of the story, or close to it. If you have criticism or advice, send it to me we can talk it over. Now if you, my dear readers are ready, and can give an understanding ear, or eye in this case, we are at the diner, and Old Josh has just checked things out, what will take place now, I really don’t know, if indeed the reader was here s/he could help me, and my wife is at the doctors, so I got to put it together by my lonesome.)

Man Differs from What Appears

Part Four

Chapter Twelve

Poggi Ingway, got off early, as did most everyone else at the foundry, a snow storm had come, everyone had expected it, winter was here and down the street he walked to catch the bus on Seventh Street, to the diner. The owner of the foundry let everyone go early, lest he be responsible for all the accidents that might occur in the parking lot, and on the way home. He was a smart man, the foundry owner, and wise enough to know, libel can sit on any rich man’s door step, and the longer it sits there, right or wrong, people look, give him bad looks, and that goes into the courtroom also.
Once in the café, Annabelle tried to charm him, but he was not all that interested in her or any female at the moment. Poggi was worried for the most part, something deep on his mind, even when he was at the tobacco store, a few young girls checked him out, he never gave them a second look. He had never been married, and didn’t care to be someone else’s meal ticket, or sugar daddy, not at forty-nine years old anyways.
So the interest for women was kind of out of him, but he still had the love for dogs. He left the diner walked up Wabasha Street, his legs strained from the slippery sidewalks and the snow and sleet coming down upon him, finally winter had come, and ‘Indian Summer’ was long, and now long gone. He looked into the side windows of the stores, the movie theaters, looked at his aging face, pulled out a stick of gum from his shirt pocket, took the wrapper off, and stuck it in his mouth.
He saw a dog running across the street, he stopped and stared at it, the dog stopped also, stared back at him, then showed its teeth, as Poggi came nearer; then Poggi put his hand out to the dog, head jerked back, away, but Poggi moved nearer yet, his tail started to move about, is this all he needed, love, after all, Poggi was lonely too.
Poggi started walking up towards Cathedral Hill, where his apartment was, once on the hill, he turned to the left, to a row of old large brick buildings, they all looked the same, rosy looking brick used for building apartment houses at the turn of the century, they also build a number of churches in the city with those stones. On his right was the dog, a mutt, now looking back down the hill, the snow was coming and you could not see the diner any longer; strange but a wonderful thing that this dog showed up all of a sudden, who walked beside him. A kindred spirit almost.
Poggi looked long and hard down the hill, he knew Shannon and Maribel, along with many of the foundry workers would drink long and hard during the snow storm, they needed an excuse to stay until closing up the bars, and this was a good one. Shannon was happy though, he just didn’t like a pest for a wife, more of a sidekick would do. To the far left of Poggi’s apartment were those high towers, over by where Shannon lived, where they produced Robin Hood Floor, he wondered if their boss let the employees go home early. They’d most likely close down the schools tomorrow, if the storm was all night long. The Mississippi River was not far from the diner, and that was starting to harden like ice bricks.
He looked at his little mutt, would it ever be able to tell him a thing or two, perhaps not, but he might be good silent company. He didn’t know, and he didn’t care, he just let the mutt follow him into his apartment, fed it some chicken bones, and christened him: “The Mutt!”
The snow and darkness crept in slowly that night, and the Mutt, fell to sleep by the space heater in the living room, and so did Poggi, a pipe in his hands still lit, lightly, a book called, “Men Without Women,” on his lap, by Hemingway, and the dog snoring, some place in no man’s land. Had Shannon walked into his apartment as often he did, or climb through the window, if he didn’t leave his door open, he’d have thought they were two dead ducks.
He was dreaming, had rapid-eye movement, perhaps of his younger days in San Francisco, or Shannon’s true or untrue stories he often told to anyone who would listen, about his time in France, during the Great War, WWI. He told Poggi he was in an Ordnance Company, one time, and another time infantry, maybe he was both.
“Listen,” said Poggi to the Mutt, telling him about his time in San Francisco, working for Lilly Ann, a dress designing outfit, in late 1949, and early 1950. He had to think about it, he had almost forgotten that time. His hands still holding his pipe, the dog sleepy eyed, looking up at his new master.
He rubbed his face to wake up more. “I never liked football, or baseball, or the Army, or war, no rough-housing it for me doggie, I liked pleasant things, not too stimulating, that’s old Shannon’s game.” Although Poggi was talking aloud to the dog, he was thinking of San Francisco, but couldn’t put his finger on any one thing. It was difficult to remember, that was seventeen-years ago or so. Shannon’s Army episodes were different; once he told his stories, you could kind of ride them, talk about them, make them more interesting or dull depending on his mood. The war made a lot of people rich, and a lot of poor people dead.
He had once been told by Shannon, he had killed seven men, and he couldn’t believe it didn’t bother him. And Shannon had said, “It doesn’t bother three percent of the population to kill,” and Poggi asked, “How did you come up with that figure?” and Shannon said in so many words: there was a survey taken, and people asked him after the war, did it bother him to kill the people he killed during his war time, and he said no, not one bit. And they told him, ‘You are one of the three percent…”
Shannon had told him, “The first one you kill, you wonder if you really did kill him, you function as you’ve always have, but it gives you a fascination, I never felt any different than before, I was always scared, but not really scared enough to hide, just scared enough to laugh about it. The second person I killed, it seemed to be less potent than the first. Then it became like throwing darts, no big thing. At the same time I never lost my equilibrium, mentally, spiritually or physically. ”
The Mutt had fallen to sleep again, and Poggi gave him some more chicken, this time, a leg with skin on it. When the dog smelled the chicken by his nose, he woke up, “Well,” said Poggi, “how did you like my story?” and put the chicken leg by the dog’s nose. The dog barked, I guess that was his thank you.
“You’re welcome,” said Poggi.
Then Poggi carefully repacked his pipe, lit it, and leaned back in the sofa chair, puffing away.
As it darkened outside, Poggi started to fall back to sleep, the snow on the windows were turning into ice, the blaze inside the space heater was pushing out red, blue and orange flames, sparks, the cracking of the wood of the old house sounded as if it was yawning. It didn’t seem to make a difference to Poggi that he did not want a woman, didn’t want to take the time and effort to court one, although there remained a question in his mind on the matter, it was not all that important, he liked his dog, like Shannon at the end of all things, liked his Rata, and even perhaps more than the rat, he liked those cornfields.

Chapter Thirteen

In the morning, Saturday, the snow outside was three feet deep. Everything frozen; Poggi and his dog, Mutt walked silently down towards the river, they met Shannon and his rat, Rata, and his wife Maribel, and the three walked together, stepping through thin films of ice, into pools of water, and slipping here and there, and lifting their feet up to take another step, the river was frozen from one end across to the other, the Robert Street Bridge, was car to car, going a mile an hour, everyone trying to get to work.
“I see you got a wiggly little dog there,” Shannon stated to Poggi, “it brightens up your composure some,” Shannon’s rat peeking out at the dog, the dog showing his teeth, and Rata hissing.
Along the wintry streets they strolled.
“Suppose old Josh has any boiled eggs at the diner?” asked Poggi.
“No, you got to go to a bar for that.”
“Just a suggestion,” said Poggi.
“Come on, let’s keep going.”
“How was Erie?” said Poggi, in lack of anything else to say, and to continue a conversation. Shannon did a double-take on Poggi.
“Well if it’s of any real interest, it’s a strange city.”
Poggi was making a fuss over his dog’s feet getting cold, then noticed in a taxi that rode by, Jake was in it, it passed them heading down towards the diner. Along the way, many trees that had long been part of the landscape were being uprooted to make way for wider streets, and a throughway across the city via bridges. There were broken walls, of old houses and apartment buildings that were being torn down, now rubble just waiting to be hauled away. Behind them was the St. Paul Cathedral and the white marble State Capitol, the two structures were high against the sky as if ready to block the sun, and leave the trees and all, turn into shadows.
“Want to play some pool?” Shannon asked Poggi.
“Where?” He asked.
“Down on Seventh and Jackson, no…no, down at Forth Street and Jackson,” replied Shannon.
The snow was hard, frozen hard like Teflon, or hard plastic. Maribel walked in-between both of the men; down a main street then over to a side street and then back onto a main street which was Jackson Street.
Poggi opened the door to the bar for the other two, and they all walked inside, there were three pool tables at the end of the bar to the left side. It was dark along the bar counter, but all lit up, over the pool tables. Poggi followed Shannon. No one was playing, it was early morning, and the usual drunks were at the bar, but no one playing pool.
Along side of the pool table were spittoons. The bar was an old type of a bar, it had a mildew smell in it, a reeking beer smell, but it was warm, very warm.
Maribel noticed a newspaper on a chair, she picked it up, in case Shannon wanted to read it. Poggi’s dog sat quietly next to Maribel who sat down on the chair that the paper was on. Three drunks stood leaning on the bar, with their elbows, the bartender snapped his finger at the old waitress, “See what they’re drinking,” he said.
“Where’s the eight-ball?” yelled Shannon to the bartender.
“It should be there unless someone done took it on home thinkin’ it waz…well forget it, ef-in it aint there, then it is jes’ rotten luck.”
“Let’s just sit at the table over there and have a drink,” said Shannon; Poggi answered, “Sure enough.”
“I’ll go check an’ see if the other tables have an eight ball, mister!” said the bartender apologetically.
The waitress was as slow as molasses, so Shannon got up and went up to the bar to get the drinks, “Give it to me,” he said to the waitress, she had three beers on a tray.
“Fine,” she said, the rat’s head stuck out, “A rat!” she screamed, and the bartender came running, “What?”
“He has a rat in his pocket,” she remarked. And the tall burly black bartender broke into a chuckle.
“Just what are you laughing about,” asked the waitress.
The Negro bartender broke into a high-pitched unforgettable laugh.
“I knows it waz a rat, but I says no, cant be so, but it sure is, what’s it name?”
“Rata,” yelled Maribel.
“Very interesin’” said the Blackman, “he git a fat head he does, yessum, he sure do!” staring at the rat.
“Youall wants a beef jerky to feed that thing,” and he started laughing with that high-pitched unforgettable laugh again, and Shannon laughed, and Maribel laughed, everyone laughed but the waitress.
“It’s damn daring of you to bring a live rat in here mister,” said the Negro.
“It’s nothing,” Shannon told the Black man, “you’d do the same if he were your pet, right?” and the big burly black Negro just broke out again into his high-pitched unforgettable laughter, “I reckon so!” he commented, “But I don’t think Ms Hathaway understands your decent concern for the pet, youall better finish up your beer and head on out of her before my boss comes in and fires me on the spot.”
As Shannon and Poggi were finishing up their drinks, the middle aged tall burly Negro now behind the bar, broke out in dark laughter, uncontrollable laughter, “Dog me, if I aint seen it all now,” he said aloud. Then he calmed down, wiped the tears from his face, and sweat from his brow, he had laughed so hard he had a coughing spell, “You is one heck of an eccentric dude,” he told Shannon.
“And you are one good hearted chap, if I don’t say, and I do say.” said Shannon.
“I’m sorry boys,” said the waitress, “I just can’t see anything funny in this,” and she shook her head back and forth. But of course, it would not have been so funny, had she accepted the situation as normal, she created the black laughter and all the other laughter in part.

Then all of a sudden the doors to the bar opened, and two thugs, with black masks over their faces, woolen type ski masks, both with shotguns, gripped tightly, said ((looking at Shannon and Poggi, then towards the bar) (Poggi grabbed his stomach)),
“You all get quietly on the floor, cover your heads with your hands; I’m not going to tell you twice.”
The three bums at the counter bar got down on their stomachs, covered their heads, like Shannon, Poggi and Maribel did, and one of the robbers stood in a corner of the bar to watch over everything. And the other one said, “Open the safe Nigger, or I’ll shoot your black head off your neck!”
Shannon couldn’t help it, he started laughing. Poggi looked at him, saw the laughing white face of Shannon, and started laughing also, “What’s in the cellar, I know you folks got one here,” he asked the bartender, after taking $300-dollars from the safe, hoping to acquired more. The other robber, brought his shotgun to the edge of Poggi’s neck, “What’s so funny?” he asked.
“Him,” he said, pointing a finger at Shannon.
“And so Mister, you tell me what’s so funny?” now talking to Shannon.
There was a sound of sirens coming closer and closer, “Forget the cellar, just grab a bottle of whiskey and let’s get out of here,” yelled the robber that had his shotgun pointed at Poggi.

Author’s Note to the Reader

In case it may be of some interest to the reader, after my wife came back from the doctor’s today, concerned about osteoporosis, I was glad to state I had worked out what I needed to work out in the story, writing the middle part of the book, that was in the beginning of the book, now bringing it into the middle of the book, still sitting at my computer the same way she had left me, hours and hours ago. She, Rosa commented, “Oh, like that movie we saw “Seven Pounds?” which I never thought of during my writing periods on this book. I commented, “I guess so,” trying to figure out how “Seven Pounds” went. Then I lost my concentration, and went to eat dinner, noodles with red sauce and cheese, and grapefruit juice. Then came back to the computer to write this, and therefore wrote this note for the reader, thinking all the time, I got to get back to where I left off, which was with Poggi and his dog falling to sleep, somewhere back younger. But she was surprised I could write such a trying, if not complex, recoiling scene.

P.S. — It is now that I am going to try and draw everything into one big conglomerate, making this a worthwhile read from page one to the very end. I’m sure you are saying the same thing, “Please do it!” As you may already know, most of all my characters are drawn from real people I’ve known; as an editor once said, “Dennis, he always puts himself into his stories,” how right he is, that being Ben Szumskyi, from Australia. The author, personally only comes into the story in these little notes, so I figured, Mr. or Mrs. Reader, believe me, this is meant in the best of spirits, and friendship, that you have a good story from beginning to end, only that, in this case, putting the beginning in the middle, and the middle in the beginning, took place before I could do anything about it, but it worked out ok. As a matter of fact, I may never try it again.

A Era
That never did pass

Part Five

Chapter Fourteen

Poggi Ingway, was walking downtown, St. Paul, along the riverfront, it was Christmas Eve, there was still a little light out, it was a cold, cold night. His dog was with him, and he looked at all the artificial Christmas dressing ornaments throughout the city.
Where he could go, what could he do, what was left in life for him: his dog, his apartment, his job, his only friend, true friend, Shannon? He looked down at the icy cold river, said to his dog, “Mutt, where should we go?”
Well, the dog didn’t know anymore than Poggi knew. And clearly, walking had tired him out some. He looked about, knew many of these people were out of work, yet buying this and that. Going on and on and on and on with life, as usual. He knew about this part of life, it went on, and on and on, nowhere is where it ended up. Every place he looked was the old same damn place he had been a thousand times before, he was either leaving or returning, to these same old places, places he just left. That was life.
“Mutt,” he said “this is what my friend Shannon fought the war for, yes indeed for folks like me, and dogs like you, so we could walk one day down this riverfront, and look at the cold, cold river.” The arc lights then went on, he looked at them, thinking and wondering, and contemplating.
He looked and looked and didn’t know what to say, perhaps because there was nothing to say.
“Speak dog speak,” he said, “What would you have me do?”
Poggi was tired, the holidays made him sad, and more tired, so tired, yet he picked up Mutt, held him in his arms tightly, looking over the railing down onto the river.
There was a lot of trouble going on in the country, the blacks were protesting; a war in Vietnam was building up, and draftees were burning their draft cards; hippies all over the place smoking pot; where was it all leading to? A rhetorical question perhaps, but was it all worthwhile?
He wished he wrote poetry, like that fellow poet who lived in Minnesota, Robert Bly, maybe then he’d not be so sad. A happy poem, one on nature, might cheer him up. He knew Bly liked the cornfields just like Shannon, although Shannon used them for his hideaway. San Francisco, ah yes, good old Frisco, there was still San Francisco, that would be nice to go visit again. Why not? Poggi kept striding on along the railing of the bridge, dog in hand, his mind racing. Then he turned about and walked up to the eatery.

Author’s Note to Reader

It was at this point, or a little earlier, reader, that Rosa, my wife asked me for the 4th time, “Are you finished with that story yet?” Wanting to read it, since I’ve been on it from morning to night like white on rice; yesterday we had company, someone who came over and wanted to meet me, I just had a conference on a book I did on Juan Parra del Riego (a poet, who has been dead now some 80-years), and so I gave her an autograph picture, and she was delighted. But the point I want to make is this: that when one is writing a book or short story, or even a poem, these things happen, although they do not show up in the story. Disruptions can cause the writer to drop everything, and attend to other businesses, then come back. So if this part is not as interesting as the rest that is perhaps why. But it is the risk one has to take, breaking for a moment. Mark Twain had his little hut to run to when writing, a little ways away from his house, and Hemingway, in Cuba, a little apartment, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, whom is from my home town, of St. Paul, hid himself in his room, up around Summit Street. Me, I’m to the contrary, I’m almost in the middle of the house, no place to hide, no place to run to.

P.S. –To the Reader (last chapters)

As we go into these last chapters, and if it doesn’t seem to be so bad, and it fits with the rest of the book, and if you got a laugh or two out of it, well then, your money was well spent, if indeed you purchased it. Go tell your friends to buy a book or two; I got to eat just like you and them.

Chapter Fifteen

Inside the diner, it was near midnight, January, 31, New Years Eve, and the New Year was but an hour away. Poggi sat up on a bench by the counter, talking to Old Josh, the black cook, silently and quickly through the door came Maribel, Shannon was with Annabelle, sitting in a booth at the far end of the diner. The young guitar player, that usually sat at the opposite end of the counter, saw Maribel before she got through the doors, and yelled, “Don’t look, she’s naked!”
A customer yelled, “Get her out of here!” She was forcibly ejected, then everyone heard her trashing through the trash cans along side of the diner, pushing them over, she was drunk, and Shannon was sober with Annabelle. Poggi looked at Shannon, and then outside at his wife, and at his dog, quietly by his side, the other ten customers were faint and shaken somewhat. The guitar boy started playing his Rick Nelson tunes.
“Good god,” said Josh directing his statement to Shannon, “Can’t you afford to cloths her?” And everyone started laughing. There was a note of terror in his eyes: as if a battle was about to start a war, he blanked it out.

Poggi was no longer listening to Josh and the police had taken Maribel away in a squad car. Something happened to Poggi just then, he said to Josh, “I was going to kill myself a week ago, something snapped inside of me, I felt lost, like Maribel I suppose, like Shannon who needs Annabelle now, like Annabelle who needs to capture another woman’s man, are we all on a road to self-destruction?”
“I don’t know, Poggi, I jes’ goin’ on a cookin’ likes I always does,” said Josh. And he walked behind the counter to make a hamburger, he was used to the simple life, simple ways, all this was too complex for him, or perhaps too silly.
Poggi got thinking about his time in San Francisco, when he met a redheaded girl, she was a movie star he had convinced himself, he never really knew for sure, so she looked anyhow, and he fell madly in love with her, they went up onto a hill, laid together, and he fell to sleep and when he woke up she had disappeared, and he got Poison Oak from laying in the grass and weeds, and it lasted for two weeks, he had it on his face, his lips, everywhere, folks thought he had syphilis, he had to hide in a hotel room. He could never find that girl again, and somehow he could never replace her. Today, he saw a woman in the raw, a glimpse of her anyhow, somehow he felt he had lost a lot of beauty in-between then and now. Things were going to change.
Poggi looked about, everyone was talking, talking, talking, or listening, and the boy in the corner was playing his Ricky Nelson songs “Traveling Man,” quietly, and the cook was making a hamburger, and he knew now, Maribel couldn’t hang onto Shannon, and in the long run, Shannon would not be able to hang onto Annabelle, but isn’t that the way it always is, one loves more than the other, and who knows what follows.
Suddenly, he turned around on his stool, and before midnight, walked out of the diner, up the street with Mutt, and figured it would be a nice long wet leisurely walk, and by the time he’d get home, he’d be hungry, and Mutt would be hungry, and the house would be cold, and when he turned on the space heater, it would warm his bones, and that would be better than all the yelling and jumping up and down at the diner, to celebrate the new year, on planet earth.

Chapter Sixteen

A few more people left the diner, Shannon and Annabelle, remained seated, talking, drinking; he knew it was over for him and Maribel, there was only five of them now, plus the cook. Those six looked at one another, talked amongst each other, drank from hidden bottles of vodka, and rum, and whisky, hidden behind closed jackets, and coats.
Maribel was actually dropped off at her house, the police felt sorry for her, and she made no pretense, thinking she could hold onto Shannon any longer. She steadied her shaking body, turned up the heat, and put some cloths on.
She wrote on a letter, “Shannon Dear,” her hand shivering, “I will be at the St. Paul Hotel, if you want me to come home, call me please, if not, I’m going to San Francisco.”
Shannon looked out the back of the window of the café.
“Won’t you come home with me, Shannon?” said Annabelle.
“Yes,” he said, “I don’t really give a damn, but I will, why not!”
Annabelle dropped her head, “Oh Shannon,” she said, knowing she had her answer, she had won him, won him over his wife. It was over for Maribel, she was crying in her hotel room.
Annabelle sat up, she had a request, she was going to ask for something, only one thing, he might refuse her, but she was now willing to take that chance.
“Shannon,” she said in a soft and soothing voice.
“What is it?” Shannon asked, he saw intent on her face and that disturbed him.
“Will you get rid of that rat and can we go to Paris, or San Francisco, or maybe South America, you have that $8000-dollars yet, don’t you?”
“Sure I got it,” said Shannon.
“Thank you,” she said politely to Shannon.
The rat must have sensed something, and jumped out of Shannon’s pocket, and ran off, down into the cellar of the diner and disappeared. It seemed to him, he had just lost a great friend.
“Are you sorry the rat took off?” asked Annabelle.
“It doesn’t matter.” He said.
“Well, what the heck, let’s go to my place,” said Annabelle.
“That’s not my idea of a good time,” said Shannon, “but I guess it will do.”
“We’ll make love!” she commented.
“Don’t bother; I’m satisfied with it or without it,” said Shannon.
Her eyes lit up, not knowing what to say; her body was normally her weapon to all her victories. “I really love you Shannon,” she said sincerely.
“Will you get drunk with me in the cornfields in the summer?” he asked.
She repeated the phrase to him: I love you, I really love you, I do, I do, I love you, I really, truly love you. But somehow that didn’t hit home with him. It was a little fake, hollow, like an empty can of beans.
Into his mind he saw the cornfields, and his old wife, the one he really loved, thought he loved, the one that silently left him. She loved him, she was his woman. They drank together in the cornfields, like alligators swim together in the swamps.
He knew, somehow he knew, Maribel, and even Annabelle would never be enough. But they were enough for the moment. He would always stray away, he knew this; he simply loved those cornfields.

•

Josh, Zam-Zam and Jake
(On the Third Shift)

Affectation, can often be like confrontation, a good thing if handled properly, for those who are affected, it perhaps steams from hypocrisy, or deceit, or even vanity, but it becomes less a burden, less awkward, when one works on who he really is, than on whom he’d like to be …

“Why don’ you get married?” said Annabelle, to Old Josh.
“I want to lead my own life,” he commented.
“Well, then you should get out of this diner businesses, it puts you in a stupor!”
“No. I have it here the way I like it.” He told her.
“I say, don’t be obstinate, look how smoky and noisy and crowded it is in here, people can hardly move, the music is loud the moment people open the door on this third shift.”
“Funny, I don’t hear a thing,” then turned up his hearing aid, “yup, it sure is loud,” and walked away.
Someone had put several coins in the jukebox, and a small black boy was tap-dancing to the music, in the middle of the diner for loose change.
“I like him,” said Annabelle, “what’s his name Josh?”
“Zam-Zam, that’s what they call him anyhow; he comes in every so often a damn good dancer too.”
“I like him,” said Annabelle.
“Yaw, I’m kind of fond of him myself.”

Young Jake Harding was sitting in the back as usually of the counter, alongside it, his guitar leaning against the diner wall, he shrugged his shoulders at the disturbance, it was 3:00 a.m., normally the time he got to sing his Rick Nelson songs, and he wanted to sing “It’s late,” he had practiced it all day. He’d go home when the first shift came on typically. But this evening Zam-Zam had broken his concentration, made it miserable for him to remain in his normal sedate constancy, his friendly mood was changed. Josh had noticed that.
“What’s the matter?” asked Josh.
“I don’t know. I just feel terrible.”
Zam-Zam started to collect his loose change from his hat he had placed on the floor, looked at Jake, and Josh, Josh was hoping he’d not continue, repeat the previous nightmare, that caused Jake to shift into a dark mood.
“Want to go?” asked Josh.
“Let’s go,” replied Jake.
“Alright,” said Josh.
“I’ll go change, down stairs in the dressing room, be back in a minute.”
“Alright.”
“Where you going?” asked Annabelle to Josh.
“Downstairs to change my cloths, I’m taking Jake home,”
She nodded her head. “You mean he can find his way home at daybreak, but not at night?” she questioned Josh, adding, “Don’t be so ridiculous.”
“The streets are safer in the morning than at night,” responded Josh. She kissed him on the cheek, “I suppose you’re right.”
“Ready?” said Josh to Jake.
“Well, maybe…I’ll be here tomorrow night Annabelle, and so goodnight, sorry about having to have Josh take me home, wish I wasn’t blind, then I’d not be a burden on anyone.”

Chapter Seventeen

It is summer now in Minnesota, and the cornfields are high, and the trains are whizzing by the farmyards just outside of the city. Maribel is in San Francisco, she is dating someone. Poggi is walking with his dog along side of the Mississippi River. Old Josh is cooking at the diner. Jake is waiting in his small apartment for the taxi, practicing “It’s Late,” to play in the evening, at the diner. Zam-Zam, is someplace in the city tap-dancing, for loose change. Mr. Schultz, the foreman at the foundry, has been put on some medication for depression, he is working less hours now. The black bartender, we never did find out his name, last time I heard was laughing so hard, he ended up with a hernia, and is laughing about that in the hospital (it’s hard to change I suppose). The folks who own the farm I never did get around to, and to be quite honest, it’s better left that way. Shannon O’Day, has just stripped off his cloths, he’s in the cornfields, looking up at the crows, and he’s got a bottle of red wine, a six pack of beer, and a bottle of rum, he can hear the train coming. He kicks off his shoes, Annabelle, is there by his side, they went to Paris, and she looks as happy as a china rose in full blossom, they have been staying out there everyday, sometimes morning until nightfall, until the moon lights up, drinking away, she cast-off her garments, both feeling free as birds, and the old man, now her companion, and his new sidekick (he told himself he didn’t need a wife anymore, a sidekick was better), examines the bottles, each other and the sky. She’s now a snappy dresser, times have changed. A rat just ran by, it stopped took a long look, and then a train of little rats joined the big rat, and ran deep into the cornfields, “I think that was Rata,” said Shannon, to Annabelle, and they started laughing, and laughing, until they had to hold their bellies. As they lay back, the air seemed to soften the mood. Shannon gets an urge, the warm air is blowing all around them, her lips are moist. Shannon knew what he wanted all along and he got it.

The Cornfields, Woods
And Meadows

The corn had mature and beyond the cornfields there were pasturelands full of poppies. Everything had a green or yellowish tint to it, and the few trees that were around the farmhouse were blossoming also, the stream was cool and fresh that ran by the farm and across the meadows into some wooded hills, way off with a cluster of pines, beech and oak, leading deeper into the woods like an avenue. The sun felt hot and sandy on Shannon’s body, he placed his straw hat over his eyes to keep the sun’s light out. Then he leaned upward and forward, as if out of intuition.
“Come on” said Shannon, “what’s on your mine?” Annabelle seemed almost shy.
“I’m awfully glad I’ve met you,” she said “Maribel and others talked about you so much at the diner. It was nice in Paris, and people were so cheerful, Americans we met anyhow, and I liked our cozy little room. That’s all, I’m just happy, and I think I wanted to tell you, and wasn’t sure how or when.”
Shannon made no remark about it being a very good time in Paris. It seemed as if he was going to say something then forgot what he was going to say. His eyes were peaceful and dim, content, like iron church bells at rest.
It was hot but the cornfields were cooler, fresh and had a mid-morning smell, and it was all so very pleasant laying there on an Indian Blanket, feeling the breeze, as the sun baked its yellow color deeper into the cornstalks.
Had it been up to Shannon, he never would have left those fields in the first place, never wanted to leave them now, and he knew there were only so many summers left.

•

Annabelle’s Advise

The only source around pretense is truth!

Shannon looked up in the sky, his young little mistress looked at him, “What is life all about?” she asked Shannon.
“How would I know,” he said. “I just know everyone is trying to be respectable, while they pick your pocket.”
He knew she could not learn it in the cornfields with him, no more than a matador can learn how to fight bulls, watching television, or reading a book, you had to engage yourself into whatever part of life you wanted.
“Yes, dear, I’ve been around, too much, way too much, drink your wine and beer and be content!” said Shannon, adding after a pause, “this is some really dull talk.”
“How about some of that rum?” asked Annabelle?
“Yaw, give me the bottle,” and she handed it to him, and he drank some straight from the bottle.
“Ok, ok I’ll brighten your future up for you,” he noticed her glass was empty, and filled it half way with rum, “just lie quiet and I’ll think up something rotten, better for you to hear that side of life.”
“Yes. Didn’t I ask you so? I’m ready for the big rotten world, yes, bring it on.” She pulled out a cigarette pack, offered Shannon one, he declined.
“I know things change, and I do not care. It’s been changed for me many times. Let it all change again, and it will. I’ll be gone before you, and you’ll change too, before the end of the world comes. Those long gravel paths I used to walk as a kid, are still around will be when I’m long gone, it makes no difference: I’ve seen it come and go, things that you know, don’t know; I learned I can’t save the world, so let those who can do it. If you get the chance to see it, do it, while it’s still whole. The thing I told my daughter to do was simple: work and learn, make it easy on yourself, you’ll live longer. We all have a story for a book, but we are more than a book.”
“What are you doing there,” asked Annabelle, he was scribbling something down on an old envelope, with a pencil.
“Just a poem,” and then he fell backwards, and passed out.

The Envelope:

Woman
By Shannon O’Day

She’s the spider not the fly—
She has the cat’s eye, not I—
She’s like a serpent in the night,
Beware, beware of her plight!
She’s the Snyder not the fly
something, something…
(not I)!

No: 2580 (3-24-2009)

The End

Author’s Final Note to the Reader

All right, the story has come to an end and life will go on from here, it always does, doesn’t it. It took me all of three days to write the outline (12-hours per day), all day long, and most of the night, to the wee hours of the morning, 3:00 a.m., and a total of six days to edit and revise it, sum total, nine days. But do you ever wonder what is truth and where is it in a story, and what is fiction, or where is it, and what parts are purely imaginations, and so forth and so on. So it was worth the effort, and now let me clear up for the curious reader a few of these points.
Mickey’s Diner is a real location, and the author has been there many times, especially with his wife and mother, the story puts it about in its proper location, it has been there since the 1930s, still is, it is a landmark.
The author also has owned a house on Albemarle Street, and NSP is where the author puts it also. The author did go to Erie, and lives in St. Paul, among other places. He did work in 1966, at Malibu Iron, and the job he described he did do, the shifting of the iron weights that is, as a youth, back in 1966, the time this story actually takes place.
The robbery was an experience the author had while in Minnesota, as well as acquiring Poison Oak, in San Francisco, and meeting the movie star type woman with the red hair.
The rat, it was kind of a pest more than a pet he had in Lima, Peru, in his garden, somehow he got into the story, he’d actually peek his head out of his hole in the mornings and look at the author, unafraid, and his wife, Rosa, poisoned the poor little fellow (should we call Animal Right’s on her?).
He has walked through some cornfields, and fell to sleep once in a carrot field of all places, and when he was a youth, he lived near the train tracks, and he’d hear the train in the evenings and mornings, and so when he wrote this story, he could hear of course those trains as clear as Elvis’s “Hound Dog.”
He was married a few times, and so Shannon has a little of the author in him, in all directions you might say: does he not?
The author did attend Washington High School, graduate class of 1965. And he has been to many fish markets, from Seattle to Germany, and even in Peru, but never did he find one in Erie, sorry about that.
And this amnesia thing came to his attention when he was in his counseling career, in the 1990s, while working for a Federal Agency. Besides all that, such cases were part of his studies, and felt it fitting to add to the story; in one original case, a man did end up in Germany, not knowing how he got there, from the United States. So he figured what the heck, it fits well into his parody of sorts.
If anyone was a drunk in his lifetime, it was the author, he was a professional drunk, in that, amateurs get sick, and he never did. He started drinking at fifteen, stopped at thirty-six, as of this writing, he has been sober for twenty-five years, and he gives that to the glory of God.
He lived in San Francisco, back in 1968-69, likewise. And he once had a friend, Mike Rossert, whom he used to scale the second story building knock on his window, and be let in by Mike, and they’d go about their way, like Shannon often did with Poggi.
The author puts in a scene with Poggi and the dog, and Poggi with a pipe, a reflection of the author’s days living with his grandfather.
The author mentions, Fay Wray, perhaps because he once met her, and he loves the movie, “King Kong,” the original.
There was a man the author knew in Alabama, back in 1977. He stopped drinking when he was forty, he said it was the worse thing he ever did, but he had to keep a job, and pay the rent on his house, and when he turned 62-years old, after his kids grew up and moved out, and he got his pension, and SSAN, at which time he started back up drinking, his wife left him then. The truth being, he waited for twenty years to drink again, that was always on his mind, like Shannon’s Cornfield you might say, and I suppose Shannon’s wife, who was his drinking companion, did not want to return to that life, whose to say. On the other hand, perhaps like the author’s friend’s wife back in 1977, once he started back up drinking, she flew the coop for the same reason. In any case, he returned to drinking as if he never had stopped, and died four years thereafter.
And to be quite honest, the author had a great time writing this story, so he hopes you will like it, buy many of his books; he gets only 20%, per book, and after 7% taxes, it comes to 13% per book which is hardly enough to buy one of those breakfasts at Mickey’s Diner.

†

Note (on making of the book): Story and outline written out on the: 17-19 of March (3-days or 36-hours), 2009; on the 20th, the book was edited, and slightly revised in spots; written in Lima, Peru; Between 21 & 25, corrections were made (spelling, etc), and three descriptive parts added groom 16, 500 words to over 21,000-words (the three parts being about 1500-words). The picture used for the front cover, was drawn by the author on 3-8-3009. The book started out as a short story, then turned into a novelette, and then a novel, as far as length is concerned, Content, it was that of a parody, and remains to a certain degree that; the overall theme, remaining the same, contentment; although there is more than one theme in the book. The poem was written upon getting up in the morning, on 3-24-2009, but had been thinking about the book, and wrote the poem specifically for Shannon O’Day’s last words. Some dialogue, and light description (perhaps 100-words), was added to Chapter 13 on 3-24-2009.; sum total words for the book, 21, 313.

Books by the Author

Out of Print

The Other Door, Volume I [1981] (poetry)
The Tale of Willie the Humpback Whale [1982]
The Tale of Freddy the Foolish Frog (1982)
The Tale of Teddy and His Magical Plant (1983)
The Tale of The Little Rose’s Smile (1983)
The Tale of Alex’s Mysterious Pot (1984)
Two Modern Short Stories of Immigrant life [1984]
The Safe Child/the Unsafe Child [1985] (for teachers, of Minnesota Schools)

Presently In Print

The Last Trumpet and the Woodbridge Demon (2002) Visions
Angelic Renegades & Raphaim Giants (2002) Visions

Tales of the Tiamat [trilogy]

Tiamat, Mother of Demon I (2002)
Gwyllion, Daughter of the Tiamat II (2002)
Revenge of the Tiamat III (2002)

Every day’s Adventure (2002) Pot Luck
Islam, In Search of Satan’s Rib (2002) Opinion

The Addiction Books of D.L. Siluk:

A Path to Sobriety (2002)
A Path to Relapse Prevention (2003)
Aftercare: Chemical Dependency Recovery (2004)

Autobiographical

A Romance in Augsburg I “2003)
Romancing San Francisco II (2003)
Where the Birds Don’t Sing III (2003)
Stay Down, Old Abram IV (2004)
Chasing the Sun [Travels of D.L Siluk] (2002)

Romance and Tragedy:

The Rape of Angelina of Glastonbury 1199 AD (2002) Novelette
Perhaps it’s Love (Minnesota to Seattle) 2004 Novel
Cold Kindness (Dieburg, Germany) 2005 Novelette

The Suspense short stories, Novels and Novelettes:

Death on Demand [Seven Suspenseful Short Stories] 2003 Vol: I
Dracula’s Ghost [And other Peculiar stories] 2003 Vol: II
The Jumping Serpents of Bosnia (suspenseful short stories) 2008 Vol: III
In My Time (Short suspense and Dramatic Stories) Vol IV

The Mumbler [psychological] 2003 (Novel)
After Eve [a prehistoric adventure] (2004) Novel
Mantic ore: Day of the Beast ((2002)( Novelette)) supernatural

The Poetry of D.L. Siluk:

The Other Door (Poems- Volume I, 1981)
Willie the Humpback Whale (poetic tale)
(1982; 1983, 2008, four printings (in Spanish & English
Sirens [Poems-Volume II, 2003]
The Macabre Poems [Poems-Volume III, 2004]
Last autumn and Winter [Minnesota poems, 2006]
Spell of the Andes [2005]
Peruvian Poems [2005]
Poetic Images out of Peru [And other poems, 2006]
The Magic of the Avelinos (Poems on the Mantaro Valley, book One; 2006)
The Road to Unishcoto (Poems on the Mantaro Valley, Book Two, 2007)
The Poetry of Stone Forest (Cerro de Pasco, 2007)
The Windmills (Poetry of Jan Parra del Riego) 2009
Men with Torrent Women (Gripping Short Stories) 2010
The Resisting Winter (A Novel and burlesque) 2009
Back of Book

Says the author, “Here is a semi romantic, humorous novel; reflecting the times of the ‘60s!” It is a satire on the ‘human race,’ with style, substance, and a great narration.

The story is of the intersecting lives of a number of characters, in particular, two: Shannon O’Day, a retired worker of foundries and factories in the Midwest; and Poggi Ingway, past-middle age, working at the foundry. It is 1966. Both are searching for contentment in life. Shannon thought he had it, until his wife left. Poggi seems to have left it in San Francisco, in an afternoon affair. For that matter, all the characters in the story are seeking in one way or the other, that same ingredient, contentment.
Poggi about to commit suicide hesitates after he sees everyone at the diner at the same impasse.
The story ends as all the characters are drawn together, a glimpse of their lives are given to the reader, all find their compensation, to include the promiscuous young Annabelle and her co-worker Maribel, once infatuated with Shannon. And Old Josh the Black Cook from Alabama, who prefers life to roll undisrupted. It is almost saddening to sense the story nearing it end.

This is Dennis’ 40th book, 12th in Poetry, and first novel he considers a burlesque of sorts, on the human race, its funny bone side. He lives in Peru and Minnesota with his wife Rosa, and is finishing up a book of short biographical stories. He has a worldwide audience.

The Sun Also Falls: Jerusalem

2009-03-22T13:45:00.000-07:00

The Sun Also Falls: Jerusalem

“News Report!” flashed on television, “Israel bombs nuclear site in Iran!”
The Israeli prime Minister already knew it, and so did the President of the United States, but this time, the disaster could not be avoided, but the President was now thinking, could retaliation be averted. He had offered five- billion dollars for Israel to sand down, not much in comparisons to what they had been paying out in the previous years, but 2009, was different and 2010, would be even more so.
Chick Evens, saw the morning news, it was Sunday morning, and he was working on a book in Lima, Peru. He had a vision that evening (he had had many visions in the 1980s, all turned out to be truths. He was praying this one would not materialize).
“Is there something wrong?” asked his wife.
“Yes,” he said, loaded down with thoughts and images, “I saw in a vision, in a dream vision that is, the retribution Iran is planning for Israel?” She knew he had visions, and his mother who now had been dead going on five years, told his wife many times, “Delia, all his visions come true, take note of them.”
That week there was much activity in Jerusalem; hundreds of cars were inspected hourly. Chick Evens, wrote a note to the Prime Minister, but it was ignored, as often such things are. And during this time, night after night, after night, he saw in his visions, more details. He saw men working in tunnels, wet, sweating, hard to breath, sucking for air, but they continued like rats to dig, and clear out pounds and pounds of dirt. Then they had three cars that approached the tunnel’s entrance, avoiding the police, and soldiers. The cars were packed with explosives, there was two Syrian bomb experts on hand, one Iranian driver, a Saudi Arabian driver in the second car waiting, and many soldiers digging, and during all this, the police spokesman for the city of Jerusalem, assured everyone things were tight, secure, as an Iranian Spokesman, assured Israel, there was a plot going on to put them under their heels, meaning, to have the whole Islamic civilization topple onto them, like locust.
A small explosive devise went off near one of the Christian sites, and that brought bomb disposal exerts by the dozens to its location, and the Israel police and the Army likewise. This was all telecast on television, worldwide, but Chick Evens, was still trying to get a hold of someone, anyone in the Israeli Cabinet to listen to him, that this was all a diversion.
Part of Evens’ vision was, caution, should he disclose his information completely, to the wrong person, it would be either overlooked, or perhaps he’d be put into harms way, if not in jail for inciting, or misleading, but there was no time for investigation before the incident, it had to be resolved quick.
Speaking at a weekly meeting, at the Israeli Cabinet, on the affairs and state of Israel, one of the members brought up to the other members, that Dr. Chick Evens was an acquaintance by mail to Ariel Sharon. And that he had information of an impending terrorist attack. As far as the Cabinet was concerned, they were aware of all such actions, that they did not need clairvoyance to pinpoint the next attack. The Cabinet member assured the group he was a reliable source, “Then you go and check it out, and let us know,” laughed one of the members.”
During this time, more visions came, and they were filled with hundreds of causalities, images, and an aftermath.
Nobody had really taken Evens seriously, not even the spokesmen that at first felt there might be an incident in the makings that they did not know about, he had retired that thought. We shall call this Cabinet member, Allen for lack of an original name.
During the next meeting, he assured the Cabinet all the security forces were ready for the capture of any perpetrators.
Said the Cabinet member that had rebuked him last time, “Did you ever get back with that Evens guy?”
“Why, no,” he said, “you made me look silly and with no sophistication, so I dropped the matter as I though you wanted me to.” Everyone looked at the outspoken Cabinet member that had attacked Allen in the previous meeting.
“Why do you ask,” asked the Prime Minister.
“I couldn’t get to sleep since that last meeting, every night, night after night, it was disrupted by forces unknown, as if there was an echoing in my brain from this Evens, saying ‘Prevent this attack…Iran will blame you…!’ over and over and over.”
Then all of a sudden there was a tremendous uplift of the earth, an upheaval that knocked everyone off balance. Everyone looked at one another, surely thinking: what just took place; with their very nature they knew it was close, and big. Everything and everybody went on high alert, then a General entered the room, almost out of breath, rushing into the Cabinet meeting circle, whispered to the Prime Minister, “It was, The Dome of the Rock, they destroyed it…! It’s blown off its infrastructure. It’s nothing but rubble.”

3-22-2009

Making of an Author? Hemingway

2009-03-21T14:26:00.000-07:00

We often think great writers just pop up one day out of nowhere: here I am. It doesn't work that way. Ernest Hemingway had a lot of help with his first four books, to include Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and his PH.D., along with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Had it not been for Sherwood Anderson, he might not have even got his first two books out. His style was not created overnight, it was much like Anderson's at first, yes, and he copied him somewhat. And he allowed Fitzgerald to help him get to know, his publisher, so then he could throw Anderson's away, and create a parody in his third book on him. We also like to think of Hemingway as the main character in his books, and he is for much of them, but where he puts the fiction, he would never tell, and there is much of it there; reading between the lines and knowing him, is the secret of course. William Faulkner, was no great author until he got the big prize in 1949, and overnight people started buying his books, the same ones they would never have looked at a year before, he was acclaimed to be a better writer, by many than Hemingway, but then you have to see who is doing the acclaiming. Neither one had a lick of college, that did them any good. And in most of Faulkner's first editions, you will find one to 13 misspellings, and he likes to talk, go in circles have you study him, usually I can find a few in Hemingway's also, and James Joyce, forget it, he should have been born when they had spell check. And Edgar Rice Burroughs never knew what tense he was in, until he got to his 50th book in writing, but these are great authors. What made them great? I'd say a combination of things, events, being in the right place at the right time; having a lot to say, and saying it. Hanging out with the right crowd; money helps, where you are at helps. Colleges can help, prizes can help. Experience and a good imagination can help. Drive can help. A Dictionary is good to have around. Not listening to the clowns that say, "You can't...!" Observing little things, that is what we are all made up of. If you notice what makes the other person react, it is what you need to put into your story.
The First Four Books
Ernest Hemingway, went to Paris in 1921, put his first book together, "Three Stories, and Ten Poems," 1923, with the help of Ezra Pound, checking out the grammar, and Gertrude Stein checking out the content of the stories, and Sherwood Anderson getting his publisher to review the book, and publish it, Elliot checking his poetry. Like everything it was a process. His second book, "In Our Time," and his first real collection of short stories," was written in 1924, along with "The Sun also Rises," both would be published in 1926, "In Our Time," with Anderson's publisher, the other one, held back, while in ten-days, Hemingway completed the parody novel, mocking Anderson, in "The Torrents of Spring," thus, the publisher refused to publish his work, and that created an opening for Hemingway to break his contract, to go to F. Scott Fitzgerald's publisher, Scrieners what he wanted all along, there his book, "The Sun also Rises," an account of his time and days spent in Spain and France, with his friends, at the bullfights, written in the style of Fitzgerald's previous novels, after "The Great Gatsby" 1925. At this point, he killed two birds with one stone, he got his parody published also, "The Torrents of Spring," which was really a well written book, and perhaps, only a little copy of Anderson's narration style. At this point he really did not have his own style, and would not until "Men Without Women," his experimental book, before he went on to bigger novels. "Men without Woman," is perhaps his best written narrations, sum total of his writings. So here we have his first four books, his style was a mixture of reality, fiction, Anderson interludes, and the additives came from Fitzgerald; what was pure Hemingway, there is no such thing. His poetry came from his friend Elliot. You might say, 1926, was like Elvis 1956, a turning point in both their lives, he didn't need anyone beyond this point to help him, he had built up enough momentum to get any publisher interested in his work, what he needed to do was create from the roots of the tree he found himself embedded to, his dialogue, which created Hemingway's style, put him apart from folks like Faulkner and Joyce. He took enough from everyone else, he didn't have much imagination, so he took his exploits, and like pieces of a puzzle that didn't fit, he made them fit, creating a more lively adventure-historizal fiction, you might called it, put it into his short stories, in "Winner take Nothing," which was not half the book "Men without Women" was, and then into a his novel, forming his style, although in many of his later books, he over did it. Not like "A Movable Feast," which is really not a novel, it is simple a book, an account. Or the "The Green Hills of Africa," which is more reporting than a living novel, and there he left out his fiction, and boy does the book show it; although you may call "The Sun also Rises," an account, it is more novel, with bit, and good dialogue, that is not overwhelming. In "The Torrents of Spring," what makes that more of novel than an account, or tale, is that he rides the middle ground. Who's doing the talking? Your guess is as good as mine. But what made this author, was the using of his friends, not missing an opportunity, his first four books, slowly and gradual build up, taking from what he needed from everyone: in the first three stories, and a few poems, then several stories, then a novel that isn't a novel, but historical fiction, and humour embedded into a cleaver style of narration, "The Torrents of Spring," those five years in Paris, and those four books, made Hemingway, Hemingway. Had he not centred himself in Paris, where writers were bumping into writers, or artists, who knows, may the sun would not have risen for him.

The Enlisted (a short story)

2009-03-16T20:18:00.000-07:00

The Enlisted

In 1971 they were flying from Cam Ranh Bay to Saigon on a military mail flight, Corporal Dustan Mather, and Corporal Gordon Wheeler. They were in the process of being discharged from the Army, carrying each a duffle bag onto the one-way flight, where they’d finish their process overseas, and finalize it at one of two military bases in the United States, either in California or Washington State.
Each were swearing to one another how they were happy to be leaving the Army, sick and tired of Army life, its food, and hours, and the Vietnam War, matter of fact Corporal Dustan Mather had been shooting his mouth off on this very subject with his friends over beer and wine and shot after shot of whisky, at the local Enlisted Men’s club on Cam Ranh Bay for some time now.
Both Corporal Gordon Wheeler, and Corporal Dustan Mather had suffered much while in the bush fighting Charlie, as they called the enemy, and had spent the last several months at Cam Ranh Bay, a more sedate location in Vietnam (an ordnance support company), but both were Comrades in Arms you might say; and at the 611th Ordnance Company, they got to know each other much better than in the bush.
When they got to Saigon, landed, and were assigned a room and bunk beds, Dustan was shy and quiet throughout the first day, of three days he’d be out-processing in Vietnam.
That first evening they went to the local Enlisted Men’s drinking club on the air force base where their barracks was located, a night club of sorts, and both sat at the bar drinking one whiskey and sour and beer, after the other, each other taking turns buying a round of drinks, until they closed the bar.
During the out processing, Wheeler was having a hard time, being called in by sergeants and officers as they tried to persuade him to reenlist, offering him a promotion to sergeant and a bonus of $2500-dollars, but he refused, in spite of what he thought were great offers, saying in essence: he simple had enough of taking orders.
Again, Dustan and Gordon met that second evening at the Enlisted Men’s Club, and had drink after drink, likened to the first night, “How was your day?” asked Corporal Wheeler to Dustan.
“As usual, boring, why?” asked Dustan, as if it was a peculiar question.
He gave Dustan a kind of odd look, said, “That’s funny, I’ve had everyone under the sun try to get met to reenlist, what a day, I mean, all those dirty looks when I told them—no!”
Dustan didn’t say a word.
Then walking back to the barracks, Dustan said to Gordon, “I got to tell yaw, I mean, you’re a friend, and friends don’t have secrets, so I got to tell you, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before, I’m not going home, I’m going to Hawaii, I reenlisted. I never did hate the Army, just this silly war. Matter of fact, I’ll be a sergeant tomorrow, and I’ll get a bonus of $5000-dollars, and a year in Hawaii, it was hard to pass up. If I go home I’ll just sit around and get drunk, see my old friends, try to find a job and like the recruiter said, ‘You’re already trained,’ so why not take it.”
“Yes,” said Gordon, quietly, almost under his breath, “that makes sense,” very shyly, he didn’t want to say anymore.
Corporal Mather looked at Corporal Wheeler, said, “I hope you’re not mad at me, or think less of me for not being up front with you”
“No,” said Wheeler, “it sounds like you thought about your decision, and Hawaii sounds great! We’ll keep in touch.”
And they both exchanged address.
“I got a bottle of vodka in my duffle bag back in the room, let’s go polish it off,” said Dustan.
“I’ve never drank vodka, straight, just a few times, with sour.”
“It’s not bad.” Said Dustan, and they walked to the barracks, as Gordon talked about his Minnesota, and Dustan seemed a little relieved he could now speak freely about his new assignment.
At the barracks, two other soldiers were assigned to the bunk beds across from theirs, they had a bottle of scotch, “Let’s share,” said one of the two guys, and Dustan didn’t argue, shook his head up and down, as if to say, ok.
Then Dustan jumped on top of the upper bunk, and Gordon on the bottom, and the other two on their beds, and they drank the whole two bottles dry, drank until 4:00 a.m.
At 6:30 a.m. they had to carry Corporal Wheeler onto the jet, give him oxygen once in flight.

The last time he heard of Sergeant Dustan Mather, which was about eighteen-months after they left each other in Saigon, he was among the MIA (Missing in Action) list, in Vietnam.

3-16-2009