cud for your brain.

Been an interesting week or so in this land going nuts with soggy heat. I could tell some sort of story about it but I blew out the candles on the pity party and my arm is getting better from a brown recluse bite so I ain't got a whole lot to be fucked up about.
I wrote this story at work last week on a notepad while the machine ran. It's mean but I like it until I hate it in about a week. The next story will be happier.

A parable of confused portions.

Redmond Wallace

A little ways back, the same year he got his first new truck, a ¾ ton Dodge, Jeremiah Stallings ran into an old friend, Tysun Slapweld. The two grew up in the same block of shanties on the edge of Clarksdale, running through the Crossroads with nothing but ignorance and youthful enthusiasm.

They went they went to grade school, had crushes on the same girls, learned to fix cars, fish, and fight. By whatever fortunes, Jeremiah ventured into High School and graduated while Tysun stayed behind to fish and drink. He got strung up with a plump and decent woman from Coldwater whom he had three girls with.

Jeremiah got a scholarship to Hattiesburgh and graduated with a degree in business. He took a job in advertising in Memphis but discovered that he couldn't stand a boss so he left after a couple of years and started a local gardening company.

He installed and maintained vegetable gardens for the suits and scrubs that were t0o busy to have one. Mrs. Stallings had always had a garden and figured that,“If you ain't using the rich earth, you are just letting the good Lord down.”

Her son had been working in the inferno of August tirelessly. He had the rough skin of summer and dirt permanetly streaked with sweat swirling around his face and hands, organic tattooes of the working man. After harvesting the remainder of one client's Caspian Pink tomatoes, Jeremiah decided to buy himself a beer.

“Hey man.” Jeremiah was startled by runny molasses accent as he opened the door to the bar. He could feel a push of cold air that made the dim pub all the more inviting.

“Don't waste your money in there. I got a cooler in the truck.” The urban farmer turned to see his childhood buddy, Tysun, leaning out of a battered red truck, sucking down a sweat-cold beer.

“I'll be. How you doing, you old redneck?”

“I ain't old, yet... and you're just as red as me, don't matter how dark you are. Hop in. I've got some shit to do around town. Came up to drop a load of copper off. Got a wad of cash and an old friend so it must be time to get drunk.”

“Yeah buddy.” Jeremiah climbed into the pickup and with a roar, they headed west.

“How's your momma?”

“Pretty good. Her feet are getting real bad but she still gets around.” Tysun handed Jeremiah a beer. “I see your mother in her garden. You come by it honest... Scrapyard gave me two-bucks a pound. Now I got to get to the River for a bit. Found a fellow over in Helena who pays some good money for driftwood. I figured since it got so high and just came back down I'll find a bunch of stuff for him.

“What's he do with it?”

“He makes all kinds of crazy furniture and shit. Jeannie Biminy said that she saw some magazine saying he was the man to have your stuff made if you needed to be hip. He makes some cheese cause I could get 700 bucks for the good load we find today.

Tysun reached below the seat and pulled out a bottle of blue-top vodka. Jeremiah let the breeze blow away his past and heard the sights of his city and saw his friend droll on about everything going on in Clarksdale.

“Where are we going?” Jeremiah asked as they turned north after hitting the river.

“We got a better score in the bluffs above the city, folks pick over shit down here like flies on ribs.”

The flat land picked up some hills and the buildings turned to forests. A few houses lined the road with signs for work and Jesus. They made a left and the new road wound through dripping woods that guarded the truck from the pulsing sun, a blurry circle past thick skies.

They turned again onto a rutted gravel drive. Tysun stopped the truck in front of a plywood cabin, shut it off, chugged on the bottle and handed it to Jeremiah, “Let's go say hey to my pops.”

“You go ahead, I'll stay here.”

“Hell, he ain't leaving his chair. Just stop in and say howdy and we'll get our shit done and finish the rest of our beer."

Jeremiah walked in behind Tysun as he opened the screen door. The room of smelled cigarettes and pus. A box fan tried to bring something of calm to the place as a TV flashed stupidity from a milk crate.

“Hello, Mr. Slapweld,” Jeremiah feigned pleasure and delight.

“I see you still got your nigger friends, boy.”

Jeremiah tried to watch the other side of the fan blades.

Tysun walked up to his decaying older resemblance on a blue-plaid sofa.

“You remember the way you done me and momma?”

“Thwack”

Jermiah turned to see the old man rocked back with a broken jaw and Tyrus cocked back for another swing. He sucked on the bottle to silence his brain.

“Let's go get that wood.” Tysun walked by and let the door spring shut with a cheap clap.

this is from way back.

It's difficult to read this english up to down but that is the was this goofy stuff works. This is the finale of something mistaken for a novel-in-progress from earlier times. I actually have much of the front end of a big story written but I 'm a lazy puke pile of rancid chicken shit and can't seem to get past myself and find some kind of other motivation to finish it besides just myself struggling to complete one thing in my life. jesus, I am tired of reading my own words. I see it and how much needs changed and become overwhelmed by the mind-fuck(I tried to think of a different modifier but could not, none replicate the force of that word) it can be to choose ideas and images and all that other crap I want one day to end up in a piece of writing that I do.

Epilogue

Calvin sat on the Arkansas bank of the river and looked at the Memphis skyline a half mile across. The pyramid, a few miles north started the jagged line of steel, concrete, and glass that ran down to the trio of bridges a half mile south of Calvin. The thick brown water swirled and gurgled in front of him and he thought of diving in and being dragged under by the legendary Mississippi undertow. Every year someone would get sucked under the river and maybe show up miles downstream.

Calvin jerked the pole back and he could feel the triple hook sink into the fishes jaw. The rod bent over and the drag whined as the fish swam for its life. Calvin knew it was going straight to the bottom where thousands of years of humanity was stuck into the mud. Boats, people, cars, trash, DDT, shells, boots, cans, bottles, planes, bales of cotton, cannons, heroes, cowards, and everything else that made history was being preserved by the deep water. The fish was trying to find some kind of cover to get away from the triple barbs in its mouth among all the refuse of mankind.

As soon as reel slowed down its backwards spin Calvin started to pull and wind the fish in. HE pulled and worked the fish for about half an hour when he could see the water swirl around its sleek brown skin. Then he saw a paddle move the water around and the hook sticking through it. He realized he caught a spoon-bill, a rare breed of catfish. Calvin couldn’t see the rest of the fish but he could tell that it was huge, upwards of sixty pounds. Then he saw the tail pushing water as hard as it could and almost yelled at a the sight of a five foot catfish. Calvin reached for his net when “Snap!” He watched the front foot of his pole fly into the water and swore not at his loss but in sheer amazement of it all. The big fish went down to the bottom of the river, dragging the stick of graphite behind it. Two hooks went through his bill and would take a while to get out. The fish rested in the mud for awhile and then continued its never-ending journey for food. A Volkswagen Beetle sat sunk in the mud to the windows. The fish swam through it and the rod caught the roof, after a brief struggle he had snapped the line that had tangled around the rod and swam only with the two hooks sticking through his mouth and the third hanging below them catching nothing but water, sticks, and a boot. The fish had the boot stuck to its head for almost a week when it got wedged between a rock and the drive shaft of a paddle-wheeler. He struggled to break free but the two hooks in his mouth made the fight almost impossible. With one last shake and flare of his head he ripped his mouth from the steel barbed bait hooks and left the boot for some poor fisherman to catch.

stories are important

I've been working on this and have almost given up on the idea of making it any less bad. I hope you enjoy your time with my tale and let me know what you would change. I put this shit up for you to read and the main way for me to get any better is for someone, anyone to help me out. A writer is no one without a reader.

High thoughts in low times.

by Redmond Wallace

My bedroom’s getting wet, the young woman said.

Fraid that won’t be all, her father replied. He walked back to the truck to get his binoculars, dragging his left leg behind him. A bullet shattered his hip in Kuwait and the operation shortened his left leg an inch.

He looked at the far side of the bloated river. It had rained for a week and the sun was finally coming through.

Looks like Fowley lost his dock,

His daughter watched the water creep up the side of her house. She had tried to get everything but her mind had not been working right since she had left Memphis. She bemoaned the quilt her great-grandmother had given her. I was probably worrying about the damn T.V.

It ain’t easy not knowing. That’s the whole fucking problem with life. You know what you should have done after you didn’t. It’s just dumb luck or the good Lord when you get anything right in this forsaken place.

How you doing Mr. Sykes, Mumps Black asked. He lived in Old Joe and was dry.

I’ve been better.

You’re here and many people ain’t.

I guess I can be thankful I get a chance to rebuild all that shit.

You always hated that house.

They watched the water come up through his daughter’s car.

How’s she doing? That’s a whole lot of living for anyone to bear.

They say its better than dying but we could be wrong. Maybe that’s why ain’t nobody come back from there.

Please don’t be true. They heard Typhus’s daughter cry out.

Pappa, I think.. I can’t remember…I left my photo album on the table. I was grabbing it to make sure it got in your truck and then I forgot cause I was thinking about something or other and I don’t care since those pictures is from when Jalen was a baby. Them were the pictures I look at when I want to… She looked at Mumps. They all knew she left Memphis to get away from drugs and the men who carried them but she could not talk about it with such a decent fellow around. You know what I’m saying Daddy.

The water ain’t that high on your place yet and the rain stopped. We may have something to be thankful for. Besides, you might have put them pictures some place safe. It could have been one of those subconscious things.

Typhus was not much for consoling words. He had stopped drinking whiskey and his insanity of yore had died down but he could never understand his daughter.

Y’all want to come up and stay at my place tonight. We can stay in the garage and June Lynn can sleep inside. I’m sure my wife would welcome the company. You ain’t gonna get nothing done here but watching until that river comes back down. We just went to the store so I got plenty of beer drink and I got some backstraps left from a deer Victoria shot in the fall.

What if some of those fools from town come and try to take folks’ stuff down here like they did down in New Orleans. I aim to shoot them if they do. I ain’t got much left and I’d prefer not to lose it too.

Mumps looked at the boats and tractors scattered around the high ground. The sun burned comfortably in the distance and the washed blue sky made the river sound less angry. Small streams rilled down the stone hills in the gullies worn by the torrents of earlier.

You’ve gotta get out of here and not worry for a few hours. I know you need to get off that bum leg of yours.

It sounds nice.

I’ll go ask Coby and Fran if they’ll keep an eye out. June walked up the road to where a small house overlooked the flooded valley. She was scared of going to town because she knew that all she wanted was clear the pain. The dope dealer would give it to her in the name of kindness when they both knew it was a trick. There were so few people in town and they all knew each other’s story, or at least, thought they did. Going with Mumps would be bad but she could not stop herself

Hi June Lynn.

Hey Mr. Coby. Mumps was trying to stay in town with him but daddy’s all bothered that some dumb kids are gonna come down here and take the only things we got out of that damn house. I was wondering if y’all can make sure nothing foolish happens.

Mr. Coby stepped through his screen door with a cigarette in his mouth, wearing a pair of cut off slacks, holding a revolver. I ain’t letting nobody touch nothing down here that don’t belong to them.

You ain’t going to shoot nobody are you?

That’s up to them.

Well, don’t go hurting someone on account of what I got piled up. Typhus might tell you different but he’s a damned fool.

You go get you some rest and we’ll clean this mess up in a day or so. They say he river’s gonna drop faster than an elephant shit when it comes around to it.

Thank y’all. Thanks Mrs. Fran.

June climbed into the passenger’s side of her dad’s truck without seeing how much further the river had come. There ain’t a drat thing I could do but be more upset, she told herself.

They rode to town, stopping at the store for cigarettes and a book for June Lynn to read. She never read before but since she came back from Memphis and left Jalen in Jonesboro with his aunt and uncle she found she could forget about getting high while she was caught in words. The store had a library that was two bookcases of dusty paperbacks and an Encyclopedia Britannica from the 70s. Most of the pictures were missing from when kids used them for school projects but it housed the greater body of knowledge for Galatia for some time.

After finding a haggard copy of Little Women, they drove down the gray asphalt to a place in a bowl below the top of one of the eroded Ozarks, once mighty now a land of mythical hillbillies and forest dwellers.

Behind the endless nights of rain, an early spring day gusted in. Colors dormant through the long and evil season reappeared. The first down tendrils of green were shooting from the soiled covered rock. June Lynn checked herself in a compact prior to hopping out of the truck to see Mrs.Victoria Black.

I’m sorry to hear about y’all’s place. It always seems like bad luck follows folks that is already trying to get back up.

You look lovely Mrs. Black.

I like your shoes.

I had to change into something besides those muddy boots I was wearing earlier. Everything is all junked up down there.

Three sat in the garage while Mumps busied himself with the grill.

Mrs. Black smoked a long cigarette. Typhus opened another can of beer.

You were right, Mumps, I needed to get out of that place and sit in this nice garage of yours.

It ain’t done yet. I’m hoping to get most of the junk upstairs and move my shop into here. Damn fuel is getting outrageous and it’d be a lot better if I didn’t have to drive 30 miles every time I wanted to get something done. I tell you what, some son of a bitch is making a lot of money while them boys are dying. It ain’t right.

I don’t know if nothing’s right about politics. I stopped voting after I got back from Kuwait. It don’t make a damn what we think. Folks is gonna run as ragged and we can’t do a damn thing about it. I know I’m supposed to stand up for myself but I got a screwed up hip from doing that and I’m tired. It’s enough to worry about how I’m gonna live another day, much less all these rich people problems they got us fighting for.

I’m gonna go for a walk. All this talk of fighting and whatnot ain’t causing me to forget about water in my bedroom.

June Lynn picked up her book and stepped through the door closest to the old house. She had taken to finding a quiet spot in the valley to read her books. The fresh breeze lifting off of the talking river would pass past her as she would sit on a sand pile among a stand of cane. Away from the grim sounds of the city and the cat calling dealers and the glittering stench, she could wrap herself in the comfort of another story and the sounds of a world without people.

She walked up the driveway and turned left, away from town. She knew the road well for the McKenzies lived down the way and Carlton went to school with her. His mobile home appeared through the naked trees and she could tell that Carlton was no different from when she last saw him. The same cars were in the same state of disembowelment.

Get in here you dumb shit. Momma Mckenzie yelled at an old pit-bull mix that yelped when smacked it with the backside of her hand.

June could smell the sick and alluring smell of cyrstal cooking in the shed.

You think June’s gonna be all right out there. That damn MckNezie boy ain’t up to no good and she looks awful wore down.

I don’t know Mumps. She’s got her mother’s strength but I ain’t sure if the drugs is stronger’n that or not. I won’t lie. I’m worried but she’s a grown woman and she’s got to face this on her own. I’ve got, or did, a place for her to stay but that’s about all I can do.

June Lynn stepped behind a thick trunked Chestnut and eyed the comings of goings of the house she knew well. Carlton was in a fit, darting from the shed, searching through heaps of alternators, wheels, bolts, grills, bikes, junk and more junk for whatever it was to attack his newest problem.

He had always been a tinkerer but when he was hopped, jacked, and twisted he hell bent on diabolique invention of useless proportion. He made match-fired boats, smoke proof pipes, magnificently efficient can holders. He would someday make the machine that would save humanity, he swore.

Muttering and scowling, he pulled bits of wire out of the part pile.

She had little sense that this was going on. A hung-over smog of chemical need was pressing in upon her world. All she wanted was to feel right.

She turned and sat down. The ground was soft of moss and mud. A car roared in the distance and birds twittled around. She sat and thought how much she wanted to flick a lighter and feel herself evaporate.

And the world proceeded with its boring talk of tequila and basketball. The news of lives under duress was not anything worth a damn to the people avoiding a world falling apart. What should they care in a time with doomsday devices and explosive plagues? They lost themselves in a digitized space with stories of happiness and fictional depravity.

A family on vacation from Kansas City drove to the original house of Gallatia on its open purchase well above the river bounding through the trailers. The son pulled out his new camera, feeling something for the hillbillies’ homes but mostly he was a spectator in the dramatics of Nature.

You could get a boat for real cheap of you wanted to go swimming.

I bet you could just wait down river and catch one.

We have a boat, Carl, what would we do with someone else’s. Besides, they look like they use theirs more than we ever do.

The tired man sat with the husband and wife, chewing his food.

That’s a damn fine piece if meat. I wish you hadn’t wasted it on me.

The Lord has blessed us through the kindness of others and I only hope to return the favor.

Well, I appreciate it and I’m sure June will be thrilled at her plate whenever she gets back. I hope it ain’t too long from now. I’m tired.

I don’t imagine you slept much last night.

I tried to lay down for a minute but that rain kept banging away on the roof, reminding me it was coming for me. I just went ahead and made a pot of coffee and did the best I could. I think June slept okay but she’s been doing a lot of that since she got back.

You’re supposed to rest when your sick and she had a spiritual ailment. I’m worried. Should we go look for her?

She’s a grown woman and I told her that I think me and her momma did a pretty good job raising her. She should know how to make a few good choices now and again. If she don’t… then maybe I wasn’t the father I should have been.

She could taste the glass, feel the smoke, hear the burn as she watched the blue sky drain to red. Flickering shadows swung over the street, bats dancing in the darkness. The tree frogs set to clamoring and she watched a possum scample down the embankment on the near side of the asphalt that turned blue in the light of a new night.

How sad and funny you are.

Her voice startled her. With so much going on in her head, she forgot that she lived in the world with the possum, the Mckenzies, and her father. The possum stopped at her voice, looked up, and scooted a few yards until it found a chicken bone. It sniffed and picked at the decaying animal, hoping that it was still edible.

June admired the efficiency of the animal and its rich coat as it cracked the bone in bits. Her stomach ached at the sound of food.

I wonder if they ate all the deer. She asked the marsupial.

June stood up, frightening the animal to run down the road with half the bone between its teeth, brushed the dirt from her jeans, and walked back to find her father snoring and a wrapped plate in the refrigerator.

It's an old story but it's new to you.

A Hare’s Tale.

by

Redmond Wallace

I know of the men but I know nothing of the hare’s tale so I am forced to deduce it from the men involved and the circumstances of the situation I know of from personal life. Honesty and moral fiber force leave me no other choice than to tell that this story is from a past I have only present knowledge of. I have taken considerable efforts to verify all necessary details but I am only a man and not capable of God’s perfection. I merely wished to tell this tale in the real.

The hare ended his life under the paint shed at Steel America, Inc. The shed was on the backside of a building originally erected by United Warehouse, but long since abandoned. When land was worth something around here, they built tall warehouses of brick and windows. Thousands of squares of glass walled whole floors, letting in an abstract light of antiquated difference. Jerry Hallowell leased out the first floor in 1982 and started up Steel America. Originally, he was the company’s only employee and boss, working 80-hour weeks to make a name in a trade of masters. He could not afford his first help but he could less afford to not have it. Slowly, the shop grew in all ways, filling out a space far too vast for a one-pony show. When the hare came along, the 11 men worked in the shop and a one masterful woman handled all the office affairs.

Steel America and several other shops shared the lazy blocks with shotgun houses and churches along Ohio Street. Some blocks were grown over fields while others were chained off parking lots to long closed manufacturing houses and stores. A candy plant covered the cheaper scents of piss and alcohol with the chemical sweet smell of bubble gum. In the right light, one could see the natural order of entropy breaking down the geometric forms into organic piles of rubbish. The leaning churches appeared to have grown from the soil; the empty lots were small meadows in that light. Under the suffocating noon sun, one could see them for the wrangle of weeds they were. That magic light was forgotten, as the skies had been mean and gray for the past two weeks. An endless cloud spat rain just long enough to make concrete sweat oil.

The hare lived in a stack of railroad parts. He had more twists and turns than even he knew what to do. The long rain had soaked his hole and he could find no way to be comfortable in spite of his handsome pelt. Steel America was about two hundred yards from his hole, which was an awful distance to be going. If the dogs found him that far out, it would be a nightmare but his curiosities got the best of him. He moved in short hops so he could keep track of the world around. His dapple brown coat did not look like much but when he stood stock still in the shade he was almost invisible. In this tortoise fashion, the hare made his way under the shed of Steel America, Inc.

The hare had been around the two-legged animals to know a few things. They jumped about and hollered, flapping as they shouted all manner of weird things to each other. And the dark-skinned one under the shed was still drunk. The hare could relax some for the teetering man was as harmless as a two-legged dog, for once, he could explore the world beyond his world.

He hopped onto the gravel and smelled his way around the perimeter, one eye on the man at all times. Half of a peach rewarded him for the first part of his adventure so he continued his path along the back wall. There was no easy escape from this place so he would have to be sneakier. The journey along the corrugated metal wall yielded nothing but a small patch of clover that tasted of nothing he had ever tried and of such foul proportions that he almost developed a concept of evil from it. Of course, he knew nothing of paints, thinners, cleaners, primers, pre-primers, or any of the other concoctions spilled, sprayed, or otherwise disarrayed all over the shed.

The search was becoming uncomfortable, no longer could he suppress escapist instinct with curiosity. And so he began the sneaky march back to the known world. Just past a set of sawhorses holding up a swirling nouveau handrail, he found most of a salad. The pieces looked so delectable on the ground, no hare could resist. Sugar crunchy emerald leaves of lettuce made a lovely bed for pieces of light crimson tomato and the medley of vegetables and nuts that make a salad more than an appetizer.

He never had a chance to wonder what might have happened, there was no pulse racing escape. In fact, the only thought he had was for a piece of lettuce followed by nothingness.

A rock was lodged in his skull and the drunk was running toward his him as the red came swirling down before his eyes. Something grabbed him by his ears but he was too close to death to know.

“Ha!” Ernest Clark shouted as he picked up his prize, admiring the rock lodged in the rabbit’s skull. The excitement washed away his hungover drunkenness and now he was dancing about the yard whooping and hollering in quite a state of triumph tempered by insanity.

“What in the hell is all this commotion about?

Duwayne Smith, the shop foreman, came out of the shop glaring at the raving lunatic. Having worked with the man for five years he was accustomed to such antics but they had work to be doing and he could ill afford his painter wasting time. Duwayne was a real steel cat to whom the clock was the divine interlocutor in the church of work. Growing up in Crawfordsville, he learned to drink whiskey and chase women from his father. He chased one of them to town where he soon found himself a high school dropout father. “I needed the paycheck so I went to work unloading barges. I found the harder and more I worked, the less folks bothered me. Ain’t nothing like solitude and sweat.” For the past eleven years, he had worked his way up Steel America until he was running the floor. With a voice like a grinder, he started to tear into his painter whose back was turned to the world in his celebration of his triumph over the mighty rabbit.

“Ernest, I’m sick of this. I don’t know what I’m gonna do about you dancing and lollygagging when these handrails gotta be out today.”

“I was just having a little fun,” Ernest exclaimed as he turned around to Duwayne with the hare in his hand.

“What in the?” I can’t believe you finally got the bastard, told you it would go after that salad.”

“Sorry boss, but I got to get this thing on a fire.” He was not one to care what his boss thought. To tell of Ernest’s past would only serve to reiterate the truth of his present. He was a man of the world but these few lines will be perhaps his only remnant. Ernest Clark was born in the delta but he managed to break from his family and the alluvial fields and paint Oldsmobiles in Lansing. He still drives his ’73 convertible. 56, lean and mean, head shaved bald, he wears a closely managed gray beard. Was a pimp, always a hustler. He did time for lots of things but most of it was for robbing a liquor store after his partner forgot to fill up the gas tank before the stick-up. Lives with his old lady…sometimes. Drinks nothing but blue top vodka. He always loved making things look good and that is what painters do.

Ernest had pulled out a small folding knife and cut a small hole in the rabbit’s stomach. With that hole, he could grab the skin and tear it around the body. Grabbing the fur on both sides where he separated it, he pulled until he unpeeled the tail like a lab glove. Next, he set the animal on a piece of cardboard and cut the head off. He wielded the knife with great skill but it was still difficult as the animal’s head was far bigger than the dollar store blade. At last, the blade cracked the neck and he was able to work the two sides apart. With a quick slice, he opened up the rabbit’s stomach and chest. Entrails spilled out and he set to the task of removing everything he could get. The eerie smell of blood and feces mixed with the paint fumes to create an unholy bouquet. After he threw the rabbit guts into the trash he found a hose and cleaned the remaining headless form. The muscle tone of game is always perfect and Ernest admired the iridescent striation radiating along and through each piece of muscle wrapped around the small skeleton. He was not a churchgoer, never finished the Bible, and distrusted preachers with a passion but he found God in the places that mattered.

“You better hurry cause I got food but I ain’t got time for you to be dicking around.” Duwayne hollered from the shop.

“Man, can’t you tell I’m about done. Why don’t you go do some paper work or whatever it is you do,” Ernest snapped back as he walked into the shop. Inside was the usual array of equipment for tearing and mashing steel into useful shapes. It was a cramped room and Ernest had to twist and dodge his way through the pieces of iron scattered between the men and their welders.

Beyond the hulking masses of dirty equipment, Ernest found a small alcove that housed a few chairs and a refrigerator. Back here is where most of the shop took breaks and where Ernest stored the necessities if such an occasion would rise. Once the animal was prepared and wrapped in foil, he made his way to the steel table closest to him. There, he found Calvin Williamson bent over a welding machine, trying to untangle a ferociously twisted mess of wire from the machine.

“Look here, I got a proposition. You let me hook up that heater of yours you can have a piece of this rabbit.”

“It’s too hot to be setting any more fires in here. Besides, what if I don’t like your shop style cooking of something I’ve never had. I think you’re trying to pull one on me.”

“You ain’t ever had rabbit? Well you don’t know what eating is until you had a good piece of cottontail. I’m sure it’ll be better than peanut butter and jelly of yours. You got to be getting some groceries in you to do this type of shit. But you’re young and don’t give a damn. When I was your age I’d drink all night put three or four women to bed and still get fifteen hours in. Can’t do that now, now I’m lucky to finish a pint and real lucky to keep it up long enough for any type of fun.”

“I guess you can use the heater, Graybeard.”

The idiot scholar was none other than Calvin Williamson, a living refrain for the chore that life is. He knew he wasn’t doing the right thing but didn’t understand what that was. 28. 5’10. Short dark hair. Coffee eyes. He painted oil derricks in Oklahoma and silos in Nebraska. Bike messenger in Chicago and a bartender in Baltimore. He had an earring ripped out in a bar on the Pine Ridge, and a woman took his sanity at the Mandarin Oriental in New York. Climbed any mountain worth a damn in Glacier. He hates USA Today and the New York Times as they only published pop crap. Avid sports fan but prefers to read about it in the local daily rather than watch it on TV. Owns no CDs but listens to radio incessantly. Wants nothing more than to spend his life hiking the Appalachian Trail. Fell into steel while he was waiting to get a job for a towboat outfit. It was out of season and they wouldn’t call back. He needed cash and Steel America Inc. would pay him on Friday.

The two rooted around until a pile of dirt smeared objects until they found an open face propane heater. Ernest hooked it up to a tank that had been there since the final cold days in March. A prior worker had attached a small grate to the top so he could warm his gloves and once the he got the thing lit, Ernest set the metal wrapped meat onto it, explaining, “You don’t need to watch it real close but it’s got to be turned every thirty minutes or so. If it starts flaming up, make sure it don’t blow nothing up. Got it?”

“Hey Elmer, if you spent more time painting and less time hunting wabbits I wouldn’t be yelling at you for my damn handrails.” Duwayne shouted from the office door.

Ernest pretended not to notice while he made his may back to the paint shed.

When Calvin first turned the rabbit, precisely one half hour after it touched the fire, he could just start to smell the sweet flavor of roasted game. An hour and a half later, he was ravenous and could barely stand to not look. Work was getting ever more difficult while hearing the fat sizzle as it dripped into the flame. For Calvin, it was almost less the thought of how good the meat would taste and more the idea that it came from the Earth. He felt a sense of liberation swell up that he had searched the continent for. His greatest hope was to break from the twisted vice of society and he saw an opportunity in this moment. His overeager thought process leapt at the chance, “We think we’re rats in the cage only because we let ourselves be. How do they do that? How does the system coddle us and make us feel safe walking into their shop, doing their work, making them rich? The individual is the one with the strength. I can become master of my world through the right work. If we all do such, if we all grow our own food, write our own stories, sing our own songs, build our own houses we will tear the meat from the system and leave nothing but a stack of bones for the wolves to fight over...”

His beeping watch awoke him from his insanity, reminding him to attend to his culinary duties. When he got back to his paying job, he lost track of his rant and found himself thinking about the most mundane of things. The nothingness had reminded him of a pimple he popped back in high school. His greasy teenage skin had created an extra feature on the side of his face. When he squeezed the infected lump, it looked like a bowl of custard exploded in the bathroom. Calvin chastised himself for wasting his memory on such things but could not shake himself of his lesser qualities. He would never be the great man he dreamed himself to be; great men don’t waste their time on zits. They’ve got things they gotta be doing. Where are they? What happened to the T.E. Lawrence’s of the world? It’s tough being a renaissance man when you’ve got to have three years experience or an advanced degree to do anything beyond the mindless.

“Hey, you ready to eat some of that rabbit. I been thinking about that all morning. Man, that rock hit it clean as you please.”

And so Calvin dropped his monologue to save the world and decided it was time to try some of this delicious smelling concoction of God’s abundance. Ernest opened up the foil Calvin’s layout table, letting the steam pour out and drawing half the shop over to see.

“Try some. That’s way you do this up. Good meat, real game, you don’t need all them spices.”

“Really?” Tony, one of the other fitters, asked.

Mr. Hallowell had come out from the office to witness and answered for Ernest who was busy demeating the bones and handing out choicest morsels to all who stuck their hand out, “You didn’t know, the meat we get at the store, they feed those animals all kinds of mean and awful things so you’ve got to cover it up.”

“Damn, that’s good.”

“Man, I can’t believe you got that with a rock.”

“You a regular Annie Oakley.”

“What? She used a pistol. Don’t you know nothing.”

“Of course I know she did but I’m just saying he can hit what he aims at.”

“Not when he’s painting.”

“Hell naw, then he hits everything he ain’t shooting at. Park your car over in West Memphis and he still gonna get that shit on there.”

Ernest handed Calvin one of the rear legs, “Tell me what you think, baby boy.” It was too hot to eat but he could not wait after standing next to it all morning. The meat was a little tougher than he expected. It wasn’t tough as leather, but it was no veal. Of course, this was a real animal, not some monster created by our freakish whims of intelligence. The trash talk kept going as he enjoyed the authentic meal.

“It’s good, ain’t it?”

“Best meal I had since breakfast.” Another wave of laughter rolled around the table as they all held cruel reality at bay for a just a little longer.

Clear Nights of Fire

Redmond Wallace

Jay Miller sat on his front steps and pondered the early fall evening and the sounds of the empty street. He could sit in his space and relish the lack of sights and sounds assaulting his weary senses. A soft breeze shook the first leaves of the dying season and loose trembles of paper skittered down the asphalt.

He held his hands over his closed eyes and thought of the black behind them in an attempt to regain control of himself, if only for a minute. The blistering array running through his head began to drift into the darkness and be carried off by the breeze, flitting down the street, another overused bit of paper.

“Pop! Pop! Pop!” The shots were close enough to shake him to immediate considerations.

“We’ve got shots fired on the north side of campus.” Francis Strundle stated over the radio to the rest of the University Security. Francis pulled the Aggravated Assault and Injury Guidelines from the top drawer of her gray, metal desk and set them before her. She called the Med to get an ambulance on the scene. Her next call was to the police and then protocol reactions to the situation.

“Shots fired.” The words were stuck in her skull. In her fifteen years at the University, she refused to think of them. School was a place that worked to erase the ignorance of violence. She herself had spent five years getting a degree in Anthropolgy.

“What did you do with that?” Her high school son asked her when he told he wanted to drop out to be a pro skater.

“It doesn’t matter what I did with it. School is important. It is one of those things that you’ll find out. If you don’t go, you’ll regret it every day.”

“And if I do go, what is so damn special?”

“No matter what you do, you will grow into a man. What type of man do you want to be?”

She could not convey what it was to learn reason and decency, that they were the great traits of the evolved society. In her years since academia she had forgotten how to make epic statements of Truth but she lived by them.

“Officer Strundle, can you make a call to the President. Let her know that we have deceased student and it looks like a homicide.” The man’s voice sounded like steel about to tear.

“Dear Lord. Yes, I’ll get to her immediately and the police should be there now.”

She dialed the number to Dr. Jennings, the University President, and failed at hiding her emotions.

Marcus Steward was not scared shitless. He was lost in the immediate past; high on power, he pedaled through a labyrinth of cul-de-sacs and roundabouts. He could not remember if he set out to kill the guy but he could still see the man’s body snap at the third shot and turn to get away and collapse around the lead in its chest.

He showed the dead man that he was no bitch. “I ain’t taking shit from no one. If they want to get into my game I’ll blow a hole in their head.” He said to himself as he pedaled through the well-manicured neighborhood. “This shit should be mine. These white folks don’t understand.” He figured his dad might be proud of him for the first time. He looked at the burn on his arm, staring at him with its agonized smile. His dad had put his forearm over the gas burner and made him hold it there until he could smell his own flesh cooking. “You’ve got to be strong to be man. You can’t let no one ever think you’re their bitch. If you do, then you are.” He handed the last of his quart of whiskey to his son who was trying to fight back the tears of pain.

Marcus’s mom ran the bastard off after that. Marcus, in his youth, figured that was just the way the world operated. He saw the kids at school play house or cops and robbers but could never play with them since they seemed wrong and boring. People did not take care of each other, they only worried about themselves. And that is all he was trying to do when he offered the college student four CDs for twenty dollars. The swolled up bastard looked offended at Marcus, “Damn, little man, shouldn’t you be at home studying or playing ball.”

“Are you trying to tell me what to do?” Marcus fired back.

It's too late out for a young buck, like you. I don't like it out here and I eat weights.”

“Man, I ain’t taking shit from you. I’m a grown motherfucker and I’ll show you why.”

It was the look on the man’s face that Marcus really got off on. The eyes were wide and the body was frozen in fearful confusion. He could see that look on anyone now. He knew the way to power and he was a man for it.

In his wandering, he found himself onto the streets he knew and began pedaling toward his refuge. No one would expect anything of him. No one on his block cared. His bike creaked under his steady movement forward.

Jay heard someone riding a bike down the street. Its moans were rhythmic and uncared for. He looked up from his perch on the steps to see a boy riding by. He wanted to tell the kid he should get home, that it wasn’t safe out for an adult, much less a child. He could see something in the kid’s face that kept him from speaking. The youthful body had the face of tormented ghost and it scared the breath out of Jay Miller.

One more for the fun of it.

New Morning, Same Story

Redmond Wallace

Working on something so hard to do in the foul air of laziness. It smells of the barrel of fresh killed dove carcasses on the opening day of season. All the folks come out as genteel though most sure as hell ain’t. They just know how to do it real good so they can get what they want out of folks. Like a damn dove hunt. Just standing around slaughtering birds all fucking day.

I was walking the streets one winter night. I was 24 but I don’t know what day it was. I do know it was cold and dark out. I hadn’t had much too eat in the past week and too much sleep. My mind was driving me crazy and the only escape was in the concrete in front. Many tales have been told of the weird night and many more will come. Something about the drak skies and insane lives that come out under cover inspire us all to wishing we, too, could be a part of it. Even the cruel and grotesque circus of sin that revolves around the diseased clubs and puke stained bars is the romantic’s playground. No one dreams of the nine to five and the daily battle with the alarm clock, they dream of wearing wild costumes and being part of the scene. I watched some of these cats stumble about in every level of intoxication. The drunks are the most annoying but the junkies get you feeling like no place could be more revolting. In those times I amble the streets, I prefer the silance of solidarity to the company the sick creatures make. They speak only of how fucked up life is and I am usually in a state too close to that reality to want someone else’s opinion on it. All I really want is for her gentle caress. A hot meal would be good but kindness is at a premium these days. It seems most have found they can get what they desire through ambitious greed and us givers are used like toilet paper.

Rolls of shit rags is all they see us as and we are the ones that sing the songs they dance to. They come and shake their asses to our blues, read our sad tales, and then treat us like such scum. Selfish pigs think I am talking about them when I say I am so sad and blue. I feel like such drivel is the boredom of nonfiction. We have become boring and so have our memoirs, so I must resort to the lies of a fuller life.

I just looked back at the first bit about dove hunts and it reminded me of a time not so long ago when a young cat I knew realized his father was, like everyone else, a fuck up. Jeremiah Chesterfield was his name. He was a fairly normal lad who led a fairly normal life. He grew up in an unsettled household until he lived in two unhappy houses somewhere near his fifth birthday. Too young to remember the details, he could vaguely recollect a different time before his mother found a worn out apartment on the other side of town.

“I don’t know what to do but I don’t think it’s right to move you away from your father.” She told Jeremiah as they made his new bed with train sheets and a well used stack of blankets.

In her fight through the everyday, she managed to raise a tall son with broad shoulders. He would never know quite how tough it was for her. She took it as her job to shield him from the shit storm so he could live life like the rest of the normal people. He failed his job for he could only succeed at being himself. They did not know better in grade school, hated him for it in High School, and stopped caring by college.

As he grew up, he learned that his father was not always a man of rigorous moral fiber and his mom was justified in some of her irrational decisions. Jeremiah refused to attend to those facts for his Dad was the hero of his world and it takes a lot to take off a hero’s mask.

That was in the early days and our story comes along several years later, but background is an important thing or else these would just be names with no lives and why would you care? With that little bit of information we find ourselves with Jeremiah out on the fields along the West bank of the river.

Not many hours before, he was enjoying merriments with an old friend around a cooker fire. He spent much of the time reminding himself to get some rest since he knew an early morning with his father was confronting him. Whether it was the lies being told, the cold beer, or the warm fire, he could not break himself from the festivities before much of the night had drifted into pleasant memory. As they do, the dreams of the night turned to a difficult morning. Rent was due, his mother needed some money for her light bill and he was stuck at a menial job making just enough to stay broke. “Why do I waste so much damn time doing nothing?” He asked himself as he made the drive to the dove field. “This damn hole can’t be my own doing but no one lends a hand. All I’m supposed to do is go in to the same stupid office every day and change nothinng in the world but make it more of the same....” His pity party usually lasted the first part of the day. As he made the first exit after the old bridge and gone through every reason to detest his lot, wandering through that moldy alley to the open fields of his mind that carried him through life. They looked like the one he was driving along but they weren’t owned by anyone but himself.

His father’s truck was parked under the bridge; he could see his old man sitting on the sit with the door open, a cup of coffee in one hand and a pair of binoculars in the other. Jeremiah remembered the truck like his favorite blanket. Not even the Communist horde could stop them, his Dad was in control and that was all that mattered.

When Jeremiah pulled up beside his father at the designated game killing area the Eastern sky was starting to blister under the new sun. He looked forward to watching the firey orb scorch the heavens of their peaceful evening glow and show to all the dynamic sorrow of the new day.

“This way.” His father directed. His hair was gray but Elijah Chesterfield had the broad shoulders and determined walk of a man that society hangs its hat on. He carried the same shotgun for twenty years. Jeremiah used it once when he was thirteen and ended up staring at the clouds after he pulled the trigger.

The two walked northeast across the faded fall palate field. A friend had told them about the spot near the river where the birds came in and in the first light the rumor spoke of truth as Jeremiah could see fleeting figures sleek in the air overhead. After a few hundred yards they found a small stand of oak trees to hide under and wait. Shooting light would not come for another half hour; even if the hunters knew birds were near, they could not start shooting until they could see them in legal clarity. Jeremiah could find much worse places to wait for the world to turn his way.

Meanwhile, Elijiah was clearing his mind of all worries and honing his senses to the immediate world. Hunting was his release for it closed the door on the past and future in order to place absolute importance on the present.

“Pair, two o’ clock.” Elijiah cooed.

Jeremiah looked to see the two birds flying straight toward them. They twisted around each, dancing in the ethereal fluid overhead. He dropped to one knee, pulled the gun to his shoulder, and made himself a straight line to the place where the bird would be. The boom of the gun was silenced by the sudden fall of the larger of the two birds. He could hear a muffled thump as the body with wings folded in hit the dirt five yards away.

“Good shot. Single, five o’ clock.

For the next hour, a steady stream of birds came through and the son managed to bag six while the father was sitting over a full dozen. Jeremiah had killed eight but he lost two in some bushes in the lowest section of the field. Both times he had not heeded his father’s advice to spot and retrieve a downed bird before firing at another. Their sanded gray backs disappeared into the ground unless one watched them fall and marked the spot within a yard.

“It’s wrong to kill an animal and not get it. Then you just killed it for sport and hunting is something far more than that. It is something you must understand to be a man.” His father had told him on many a drive home from the field, stand, or blind they had used for whatever game it was they were after. Jeremiah understood this but he could not always temper his useful exuberance in the heat of the moment. He tried to explain the problem to his dad but the same answer always followed, “The key to a life of integrity is discipline and the key to discipline is good habits.” He was a man of ritual and habits. Woke up at 4:30 every morning to run the dog 2.5 miles and then read both the Wall Street Journal and the Christian Science Moniter while eating grapefruit, granola, and washing it down with two cups of strong tea. The rest of his day followed in a similarly productive and effecient manner. Of course, he had a myriad of bad habits but those were not the topic of conversation as he was only trying to tell his boy the means to a decent life.

Jeremiah saw the bad habits. He knew where the rusted and rotted plates were in the armor of discipline the old man surrounded himself in. He once called him on it but his father ended that charge with a sharp tongue lashing.

“Birds, eight o’ clock.”

Jeremiah turned to five birds speeding briskly away while one twirled to the ground, a wing stuck out in a final gesture of hope. It floated down like the seed helicopters he spent a large part of his childhood trying to catch. Chasing down the darting and twisting bits replaced his boredom with an unpredictable chore.

As he watched the flight speed away he watched the one on the right break from the group and make a wide turn, flying along the backdrop of the downtown with it’s various stone and steel icons of work. The lone dove continued sweeping around until it was headed back toward the field.

The bird was moving a little slower, as if it was looking for something. It flew t near where his Dad was bent over picking up he bird he just killed and started to circle clockwise to get a better look. Jeremiah remembered the game manual the state supplied with their licenses. Each page described habits and identification of a different species of game. They also gave interesting facts in a small gray box titled “Interesting Facts”. The one for doves mentioned that they mate for life. A sudden conflagration fueled by frustration and sparked by his father wringing the head off the animal in his hands flared within the young man.

Jeremiah raised his gun, squared up to the world and leaned into the shot. For a few seconds his world narrowed down to everything between him and the sighting bead on the end of the barrel. Anything else he saw was just a part of that process.

“Nice shot. Now go find that bird.” His Dad spoke out, breaking the human silence along the river.

“Sure, you taught.” Jeremiah muttered to himself as he made a beeline the patch of ground beneath where the bird once flew. As he walked up on the animal, he could see that it was still alive. A beady brown eye was staring toward him in shock, the small body was trying to breath and make it through another day.

He walked back to his camo bucket, loaded it with shells, dead birds, his camera, told his Dad “I’ve gotta go,” and made his was toward his truck.

And if that wasn't enough.

Labor Day Blues

Redmond Wallace

“It’s hard to find hope these days,” Gabby Bondra told the old man next to her at the bar.

“Ehh, it wasn’t ever to be found. Them bitches at the top got it all to themselves. They just like to sell us a little bit when we really can’t make do without. In the meantime, we get just drunk enough to forget.”

The two stared blankly at the great screen hanging on the wall before them. The red team was losing and to one guy, in a matching jersey, it was very important. They could hear that fellow on the verge of tears at the fate of his team like Hector, son of Priam.

“You know, I got fired today.” Justine told the old man.

“It’s labor day. People don’t get fired on Labor Day.” He lit a wretched generic cigarette.

“At least, I’m not everyone else then.”

“Here’s to that.” He raised his glass and the ice went “clink” and the liquor was gone.

“Get me two more. Make hers a double.”

The calm bar light eased her weary spirit long enough for it to walk away. The liquor in her chest burned away enough of the worry for her to remember to smile.”

“Is this how people become drunk?”

“It’s the only reason. I’ve seen many a fine man pack hope into a trash can of empty bottles.”

She sat in the high stool and smoked and enjoyed the intricacies of it. The paper crackled and smoke swirled into fan blades overhead.

“We’re doomed,” the red shirt guy moaned.

She did not want to think about her life but the alcohol was only strong enough to let her look at it without getting scared for the future.

“Why do bosses only think about money? They make decisions on numbers, forgetting that it’s people’s lives, hopes and dreams that they toy with.”

“They have to. I know this one fellow who ran a plant that made clothes. He threw a 4^th picnic one year, had everyone show up with their families. He just wanted to do something to make the guys feel appreciated, part of something. At some point, this fellow looked at the group a hundred families with kids running around and parents chasing them from sharp sticks. He looked at them and saw that he was responsible for three meals and a roof for all of these people. He told me he couldn’t take another step after that. So he walked away from the plant he had built up and ran for 25 years.

“I bet he was a good man.”

“One of the few left. Now he just takes care of his gardens.”

“Does that leave only the assholes running the show?”

“Makes you want to get drunker, doesn’t it?”

“I should go. I have a family of my own to get home to.”

“Take care of yourself.”

She stepped outside as the sun began to tuck the world in. The warm streets were embracing in the cool shadows of twilight. A bag lady was shuffling a cart down the street, muttering to the man who was not there, searching for something worth something. A haggard gentleman scrambled up to her and made her stop and turn around. His thrift store suit was tight across his chest and falling off his waist but he had a carnation in his buttonhole. In his hand, he had a clump of inpatients tied with twine.

Justine watched as he gave flowers to the bent up woman and gave her a kiss on the cheek. He turned around and skipped off toward the setting sun. The bag lady returned to her basket but kept staring the flowers as something worth something because they were given to her and they were pretty and Gabby walked home.

Here's Something To Read

Today Won’t Come Tomorrow

Redmond Wallace

“I hate you,” she said with a steel-piercing gaze. He sat silently. “Everything that is you, I don’t like and I am stuck with you, lying to all who ask about how great you are and wishing I could believe it. I can’t stand it, them, us. We have nothing. We are nothing but a failed dream of you being a man.” Still he sat; her anger was as fierce as her passion. “Do you have nothing to add? I can’t believe that you, of all people, have nothing to say.” “How could I have nothing to say?” he said to her. “With the world dying at its seams and you yelling in my brain, telling me that I ain’t worth a damn, how could I have nothing to say?” She turned and went to the bathroom mirror, where she could continue speaking while hiding her grace behind a veil of carefully applied powders and compounds. “I don’t mean to offend you but I just don’t see a future with you. I can’t find that reason that made me feel like you were the one because I don’t believe it anymore.” She spoke as she pulled her hair back from her face, cursing the few strains of grey peaking out the flowing mane. She brushed a powder over her face in the first step to hide the lines next to her eyes. He felt a deep sadness looking at her when he could see that she had cried more than anyone had known. She would clench her jaw in the face of suffering in public, but felt tremendous sorrow at the world and worry over her place in it. The foundation could not hide the deep lines from the sad curve of her mouth. She liked to believe that she was a happy person but the handful in her circle knew differently. The sign of age bothered her.

He had tried to remind her that aging was not ugly. “Aging shows the depth of a person’s experiences,” he told her over peanut butter and jelly sandwiches he made one afternoon they had used to refinish a pair of yard-sale chairs. “Oh, come on, do you think old people are pretty?” “Why is pretty so fucking important?” “So people don’t know how filthy life is.” Her response made his chest shudder and made his eyes want to cry. He closed his eyes and listened to the breeze bring mollifying change to all things. “Is life really that wretched?” “Some days, yes.” “Today?” “No, today is all right,” she smiled at admitting what she had become afraid to feel. That memory flitted through her presence as she filled her brush with something to shade her features. The make-up kit’s smell, reminiscent of that time, pulled the past to her and she could feel the leaves dance together in those branches so high overhead. The beautiful woman looking back at her surprised the memory to its elegant vault and brought a smile to her eyes.