A Dream of Paradise

Okay, so this is the way it went down.

We were in love. Now, I know that sounds hokey and everything but it was true; I was head-over-heels in love with this dame, and as far as I was concerned she could do no wrong. She was a real warrior woman, standing tall and erect, and why in the world she had some sort of fascination for a guy like me I’ll never know, but there it was.

Anyway, we were living in some sor tof magical kingdom. No, I don’t mean the one in Orlando. I mean, we were living in some sort of place where magic and the supernatural are taken for granted. It seemed to be a spiritualist camp or religious commune, but it was staffed mainly by older people, while the younger folks wandered around in Dungeons and Dragons costumes being hippies. I know this all sounds strange but you wanted to hear the story, right?

So here I am, dressed like some sort of Teutonic knight, and I am running across this field, and Warrior woman is with me and the sun is beaming and I yell and I end up writing back to my aunt that I have finally found Middle Earth. The Warrior Woman and I know it is love at first sight, and nature seems to thank us as we crawl down deep into aq bosom of soft romance amid the tall grasses and sweeping majestic wheat of the old fields.

But this is only the outskirts of the camp, and inside is where the weird fun happens. Right away I can see that everyone around me is like a character from some fantastic novel; they are all dressed like elves, leprechauns, wandering adventurers, shit like that. The elders of the camp laugh at us from behind their withered old hands, but they leave us alone. We are the Next Generation, the ones that will be taking over the reigns, so to speak, when the old ones go off into the next dimension or whatever they do. So I am a soldier again, and I’m sleeping in these Eastern European barracks with a bunch of gromy medieval soldiers, and someone explains to me that this place is “Maintained by the counsel for any group of soldiers that just happens to be passing through.”

So maybe orcs and hobgoblins have slept here. Maybe.

Anyway, she (Warrior Woman) was there, and I can see just by the look on her face that she has no intention of two-timing me with any of these soldiers, so I feel a sharp tack of relief. Maybe that is an odd way to put it.

At any rate, we go on like this for a little while, me getting to know her fantasy hippie friends better, and all the while becoming a leaner, meaner guy, the kind of guy that really cuts an impressive figure wherever he goes. So after awhile we are all friends, and we have all shared the magic, and now I am dressed like some Dungeons and Dragons fantasy hippie, and all of a sudden Warrior Woman (who is unquestionably mine) gets the bright idea that we need to undergo some sort of special test or ritual to prove the loyalty of our friends.

So we are gathered in a kind of central park, surrounded by the buildings that actually make up the camp, and she says, “You know, what we need to do is build a castle out of wood. Then, when we have everyone gathered together, we will set the building on fire. Then we’ll see who comes to rescue us. Whadya think?”

I said I thought it sounded groovy, but, inside, I wasn’t really hep to the idea of sitting in a burning building witing for a bunch of pasty wannabe adventurers to come and save my ass. In reality I thought that sounded like a Really Bad Idea.

No matter. Construction on the fire palace began almost immediately, and I had to wonder where they found curved wood to use for the towers. Anyway, I had no intention of going through with it, but one night there was some sort of initiation which I can barely remember save that it was the entire camp assembled and Warrior Woman and I joined hands and there were people holding candles and we raised the cone of power and then everything blanks out…and I knew I was a part of it then, body and spirit, and that I damn sure would go through with it.

After all, hadn’t I met Warrior Woman while patrolling the old fields around the camp, dressed like one of the Kaiser’s own, screaming to the high heavens to bring me an enemy so I could spill its blood? Yes, indeed, the way it was, and it was this ferocious savagery that first one me the heart of Warrior Woman.

So after the initiation I started to realise that the hallways and stairways of the Fire Palace were all hobbit-sized, and that it was going to be a problem for some of these guys to get up and down them, and even worse, it was going to be a problem for us to get out of there when the whole place went up in smoke.

For some reason, though, I couldn’t let that trouble me unduly.

So we met a guy that I use to know who worked for a tobacco company, and he shakes my hand, and says “Tom and I are well-acquainted. You’re looking good, Tom.”

In truth, I was feeling good, too. Middle Earth (the camp, whatever) had been good for me, and I could feel the magic of the place rubbing off, making me over into a new being. Hell, I liked everything about it (especially Warrior Woman), liked the folksy peace of it, liked the power and tranquil majesty of the place and the fact that it seemed like anything, I mean, anything, was possible there.

So we all headed out on a highway somewhere, and I wasn’t even sure what sort of vehicles we were driving, and I was pretty upset that we seemed to be leaving Middle Earth. Maybe we were just patrolling the outer territories, though.

It was a long country road, punctuated by telephone poles, and it seemed to go off into the distance forever. We were obviously riding on Mad Max motorcycles.

I remember thinking that Warrior Woman looked to be getting younger and younger, and I wondered just how old she was, because I had never bothered to ask her her age. I wondered of she was even old enough to vote yet, but then my attention was arrested by the messages being beamed over the telephone lines as we sped down the highway.

It was just a vision, but what a vision it was. A giant, fat Venus, with arms like snakes, writhing in ecstasy as she played with a rubber dong. I know, it didn’t make any sense to my either, but there it was. I guess all things serve the will of the Goddess, especially on the outskirts of Middle Earth.

So there was this television actor in one of our hotel rooms, and he was the star of this particularly famous science fiction show that aired about fifteen years ago. And he was in a real pissed-off mood.

I remember he was lying in bed, and I had a box he carried along with him. In the box were a number of discs of his television program, and there was also an odd device that I took to be a prop. Except, when I laid it on the bed, he informed me that it was, in reality, a phone. I remember feeling really embarrassed, and later he sat up in bed and began to strum the mandolin for my benefit.

So anyway his television character appears and they start rapping about how they lost the hearing in one ear, and the actor says it happened at some fictional battle that occurred only within the confines of the box and I am confused but I follow them anyway.

Next, I was trimming lawn for miles…

The Dance

Life is a shuffle; life is a little dance.

Some of us take big steps, sweep around the floor, and make fools of ourselves. Or, distinguish ourselves, depending upon your point of view. Some of us are content to merely tip-toe around, distracting ourselves with the fact that we are moving at all, making time to the music that only we can hear.

Some of us are wallflowers, and we sit in the corner and stare at the other dancers, content to live vicariously through the movements of others. I think that most folks fall into this latter category, and that is not wrong. Nothing wrong about it. It’s just the way things are.

But there is a silent music to life, a sort of frequency that only we can hear, and which every one of us tunes in just a little bit different than the last person. To some the tune speaks rage, to others loss, to still others triumphant joy and pure harmony, but whatever your music says to you, you dance to the rhythm of your heart, and you do the best you can.

But, one day the music stops, the credits roll, and we are left with only the memories of times gone by and dances begun but never finished. We try to waltz around the room on crippled legs, moving to a tune grown fainter and fainter, as the rest of the dancers shuffle out of the ballroom to take up their places outside, in infinity, where the music is always the same.

We can whistle past the bone yard but can we dance past it, kicking our legs into the air to spite the dirty fingers of death as he clutches our minutes to his loveless bosom? I’m not sure that I can. My dance has petered out until all I am doing is shuffling in the shadows, counting down the minutes until the ballroom closes and the partiers are asked to split. I am trying to find my footsteps again, but it is not easy. Some say the sky’s the limit when it comes to dancing, that you’re only as young as you feel and once you get that body moving again, well, it’s just like riding a bicycle: once you know how, you never forget. I’m not sure all those people aren’t born maniacs or liars.

Because age weighs on you. Time weighs on you. You watch as, one by one, lines start to split your face apart like a road map, and the fat moves in on your body, and you are no longer young and lean and ready to take action, to take charge of that dance floor. You are old and withered and your legs barely work, and that man in the corner with the dance diagram may laugh at you and call you a few polite names but you can’t help it…you’ve forgotten where to plant the footsteps,a nd your partner ran out on you long ago.

But, no matter the music, no matter the weight in your legs or the pain in your back, you can still manage to do a little dance. To make a little time to the music. To cut a rug and show the whippersnappers how it is done. I know this to be true. Because I dance to the rhythm of a life with no music, no movement, no sound or fury. Yet I dance.

When I drink my coffee, I dance.

When I eat breakfast at six o’ clock in the morning, feeling the stuff nourish me and send me back from the brink of despair, I dance.

I am dancing while I am writing these words. It is hard to keep my fingers attached to the keyboard.

When I read a good book, it is like dancing.

When I write down a particularly vivid dream, it is also dancing.

I spin constantly in the still moments of my life. I am like a hundred dancers, all rocking to the internal beat, and maybe no one else can hear the music, and maybe everyone else will think that I am quite mad, but I continue to dance.

Without romance, I dance.

Without a future, I dance.

Even in the grip of my most intimate despair, I am still dancing, still moving to that old internal rhythm, still looking forward to that day when I will be joined, like a vision or a waking dream, by a hundred other dancers all ready to join in my particular madness.

So dance the mysterious dance of life. Because you already are, whether you realize it or not.

Iris Dement – “Our Town”

Dying for a Smoke

Today I am dying for a smoke. I have no way to go and get any, as the car is in the garage and it is too cold and dark to walk to the gas station. I am wearing one of those Nicorette patches, and that seems to be helping a little, but the addiction is still strongly calling to me. Kids, I want to caution you to never start smoking. It is a filthy habit that will eat up your time, money, and health and leave you with nothing in return. That said, I feel like I would crawl through a jungle right now to get a cigarette. The craving is just so intense, so severe. Sigh.

J.J.’s Dream

“Hey, how in the hell did I manage to get here?”

The girl, who was dressed like a farm boy from 1933, looked surprised, shrugged her shoulders, and said “Don’t ask me mister. Does it look like I have all the answers?”

“Yeah, but it’s preposterous.”

“Maybe so. So is my predicament.”

“Okay, how much are we talking? I tail your husband, and what do I get out of it?”

She looked like the cat that just got the cream, and said, “I got all the money you need right here. Take a look-see.”

She hefted a wad of greenbacks out of her belt. The shmoe sitting next to her smiled a wide, toothsome, sharkskin grin, and revved the engine of the car. J.J. turned around in bed, stared at the wall, and realized his operatives were standing beside him, all lined up like ducks at a shooting gallery.

“Woodbine…Corsoe…Krebbs…Jeez, am I sure glad to see you guys. Hey. You mind telling me how my bed came to be resting out here at the side of the highway?”

Krebbs shook his shoulders, chewed gum, and looked faintly disinterested.

“It’s a mystery. You’re the detective, boss. You tell us.”

“Okay, okay, I can see you fellas aren’t going to be any help.” He turned back to the girl in the passenger seat of the car. She was still holding out the wad of money, fanning it in his face, as if to say Betcha can’t resist the temptation of all this green, sucker.

He damn well couldn’t, either.

“Okay, I’ll think about it.”

“Think real hard toots. Think real hard, but don’t let it, you know, overtax that big beautiful brain of yours. I need that brain to work for me.”

“Your husband, the pervert?”

“Let’s just say I want to know why he has such an interest in Little League Baseball games.”

“Geez, guy must be a real monster,” said J.J., and pulled the covers up to his chin, staring at a ceiling that seemed to fade into night sky. A car raced by them in the gathering gloom.

“Eh, maybe he just likes baseball,” said Krebbs. Corsoe and Woodbine remained predictably silent, and after a few minutes J.J. noticed they had vanished. Possibly, they were off on errands.

Krebbs popped a monster bubble. J.J. looked down at himself and suddenly realized that he was fully dressed.

“How did that happen? I was in my pajamas and all of a sudden–”

The girl in the passenger seat laughed.

“You’d think, with a life like yours, you’d get used to little surprises. You seem to be a walking contradiction in terms.”

J.J. felt himself grow annoyed.

“Just what’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re the detective. You figure it out.”

“You got a smart mouth on you. One of these days, some lucky punk is gonna come along, smack it right off.”

The shmoe sitting behind the wheel (who looked an awful lot like some old film actor J.J. couldn’t remember) said, “Hey, show the lady a little respect, why dontcha?”

J.J. held out one long finger, and saw that there was a pair of glasses balanced perfectly on the end. He scowled; he didn’t wear glasses.

“How’d those get there?”

“Oh brother,” the girl laughed, a sound somewhat the equivalent of a claw being raked across a blackboard, “for a detective you sure seem to be in the dark about a lot of things! Glasses, silly, so you can see things clearly.”

“But I don’t wear glasses. Anyway, as I was gonna say, I’ll show her respect when she shows me some. As of right now, I am pretty damn close to just rolling my bedroom out of here and back to my apartment, where things continue to make sense in the old-fashioned way. One more wiseacre crack out of this chippy and you can call the whole stinking thing off!”

The girl whistled deep and low.

“Temper, temper, Mister Professional. Now, all I want to know is: are we doing business, or aren’t we?”

J.J. got out of bed, paced around a little, looked at his shoes (which were black and white wingtips), stuck his hands in his pockets, considered the running scar at the end of his nose, and said, “Alright. You got a picture of the galoot?”

The girl smiled, fished in her belt, and withdrew a glossy black and white.

“Surely do.” She handed over the photo. J.J. took it, scanned it briefly, and handed it to Krebbs.

Krebbs took the photo in one gnarled hand, continued to chew his gum reflectively, and handed it back.

“Looks like a real hardcase, Boss. I mean, what a gorilla.”

“I know, I know: a face only a mother could love. Say, what is it you see in this clown, anyway?”

The girl shrugged. The car revved. The driver smiled.

“He makes me happy is all. And I have to know what he’s been up to behind my back. Here, take this. That ought to be enough to get you started.”

J.J. took the huge wad of money, spread it out in two hands in front of his face, fought down the urge to kiss it, and then said, “Thanks. That’s generous. That’ll be enough to cover any expenses I incur during the length of this investigation. Krebbs, have Delia bring in one of our standard contracts.”

Krebbs disappeared through the bedroom door as sirens went by in the distance. The door opened again and Krebbs was followed by a stout young woman wearing overalls and carrying a serving tray. J.J. goggled. This was not Delia. This was the waitress at the café down the street.

“Krebbs I said ‘Delia’ NOT ‘Delta.’ This is Delta, Krebbs.”

Krebbs looked apologetic. “Sorry Boss, I just get those two confused all the time.”

The girl in the passenger seat erupted into a torrent of profanity shocking enough to peel paint off the walls. It caught J.J. by surprise, as it was all aimed at Delta. It was pretty apparent that the girl who had just hired him didn’t like Delta one little bit.

“You get that stinking whore out of my face right this instant, or I’ll jump out of this car and claw her eyes out!”

Delta, who had a sad little face most of the time, looked surprisingly defiant, as if she were about to drop the serving tray and get herself into an old-fashioned catfight. J.J. was having none of it, and put his arm out again, pointing at his new client.

“You, now, you’re going to show her just the same amount of respect as you’re going to show me, or this whole deal is off!”

The girl in the car spit. Her face was seven miles of ugly terrain. Her eyes flashed defiant hatred.

“I don’t show respect to whores and tramps; I don’t have to. This is a free country and a decent one. You want to buddy around with back-alley trash like this, it’s your call me bucko. As for me, I calls ‘em like I sees ‘em.”

Curiouser and curiouser, thought J.J.

The alarm clock called an end to the meeting.

Darling, It’s Time

He grips the banister in terror, looking up into the swirling darkness at the moon face of the old grandfather clock as it chimes out the few minutes until the stroke of midnight.

He has had this dream before, night after night, his legs slogging through space up the darkened stairs, the distance seeming to actually increase as the tick of the clock strikes like a hammer upon his reeling brain. He knows that if he doesn’t get to the top of the stairs something terrible will happen. He must reach them this time, before the stroke of midnight.

Standing at the top of the stairs he sees the woman. She looks as if she is confused, but puts her arms out for him as if beckoning him to her. Up, up he climbs, frantically, trying as best he might to beat the time, but, as always, falling victim to the weariness of his own body.

Up, up, up he goes, until he can see her reflected in the moonlight through the window. It is a lovely woman, radiant blond hair and beautiful face, and if he can just get to her in time tonight, he can save her.

Up, up, reaching out and pulling his hand against the wall.

Suddenly, only a few steps from where she is standing, beckoning, he hears the miserable bell of the old grandfather clock behind her chime out.

There is a figure standing next to her in the darkness.

The figure is wearing a billowing robe and a long hood. Suddenly, as if roused from a dream by the chiming of the bell, the figure sweeps the woman, kicking and screaming, into its embrace. It pulls her back, away from the stairs, into the darkness of a hidden room, and he hears the door slam shut, just as he flies up in bed, soaked in sweat.

In the silent murmur of the night he can still hear that damnable clock, the agonized screams, the slamming of the door.

He looks down at his bedclothes; they are stained in blood. He realizes he is grasping a knife with one hand, and that the knife is also covered in blood. He pulls back the bedclothes.

The sheets and blankets are covered in blood.

He doesn’t know what is happening, except that he has somehow brought a semblance of his dream into the waking world. He lies back down, thrusts the knife from him, and his eyes close on peaceful oblivion.

He is running up the stairs again, faster this time, the woman beckoning to him, the clock ticking, the cloaked figure appearing, the woman wrestling with him, both of them disappearing into the secret room, and he wakes, to find that now there is a lump underneath the covers.

He pulls back the covers. It is the girl from the bar. The pretty one. The one with the blond hair and exquisite face. Blood covers her as she reaches out to him and he feels his mind lurch. He is certain he is still dreaming, and puts his head against the pillow, closing his eyes.

He is racing up the stairs now, faster than ever before, and he is farther up them and closer to the woman, and the cloaked figure appears from nowhere and grabs her and she struggles against him and he drags her back into the darkness…

This time he awakes and the woman is sitting up in bed. She smiles. Her mouth is full of blood, and her eyes look as if she has been crying blood, and he reaches out to her and he is sure he is still dreaming because, behind her the cloaked figure appears.

He closes his eyes and he is running on the stairs again and this time he makes it to the top of the stairs and lunges.

He grabs the cloaked figure and the woman is wrestling between them and he sees that the cloaked figure has a knife and they all fall into the blackness beyond.

Through the secret door.

And the secret door is the door to his bedroom, and the cloaked figure is himself, and he picks up the knife, and the woman in bed next to him says, her lips dripping blood, “Darling, it’s time.”

Unfinished

He squatted over the old bricks, straining to void his bowels, as the clock down the street wailed like a lonely wraith. Somewhere, moving at the edge of his vision, he could see the girl, her hair strung into a fright wig of wild strands, walking around the corner of the building at the back of the alley. Her face was a pale mask of shocked insanity.

He dove behind the wall to get a better look at her. She was wearing a ragged dress that showed her pale legs and dirty stockings. Cast over her shoulders was an old blanket, and on her feet were a pair of wooden sandals that might have been homemade. On the whole, she looked incredibly confused, as if she were wondering what on earth might have happened to turn everything so utterly inside out.

Above them, the sky was taken up with one of the great advertising blimps, and Nick realized that, despite the desolation arrayed about them, they were still not alone here, in this wasteland, but were being steadily watched by other eyes, other minds that were intent on retaining the influence they exerted on the dreaming brain. He slid from behind the corner, his face a choppy mask of emotions, and said, “Hey you! Fancy a quick one?”

He regretted this the moment after he had uttered it. No good frightening off his only prospect. The girl looked at him, puzzled, as if he might have been speaking High Mandarin, and continued to drift slowly across the rubble, her hands drooping at her sides, her flat little breasts hard against the flimsy material of her gown.

A shadow fell across him. In the back brain, he realized he was simply giving himself over to his baser, more psychotic appetites. Damn it all though, he was human, and he was dreaming, and so there should be no moral conflict here. If he were a human animal, then it should be obvious that here, in this new and more radical state, he would want to explore the fuzzy borderland between savagery and civilization. He could feel his pulse quicken, feel his heart begin to hammer in his chest.

He drooped, suddenly aware that, though he knew himself to be dreaming, he would never be able to ravish the wench. No, the angry black dogs would surround him before he could get within a few inches of her, and, as always, the fear would bring him up to a sweating, convulsing state. He would be shocked awake: his heart hammering in his head, his blankets curled around him, sweat soaking the pillows, the memory of the dogs all that remained as his slowly adjusting eyes peered into the darkness.

Enough of that, he thought, and spat a green wad of phlegm onto the shitty bricks. He was no rapist, not even here, where heated imaginings were given room to roam free. No, if he decided that this particular illusion was worth trying to make contact with, it would be on terms that were friendly and non-threatening.

When we stare into the abyss, sometimes the abyss stares back at us.
It was a maddening bit of thought, but it was one that wouldn’t readily leave him. He decided that the girl, who had by now stopped as if entranced by the distant wailing of the clock, was no girl at all but merely a mirage; the longer he stared at her, in fact, the more still she became, until he thought he was looking at a department store mannequin that someone had dragged out into the alley. No enticement there, he thought, and peered up and down the street for a sign of some further life.

It was, architecturally, a design laid out in madness. Old houses stood, side by side, with brisk new buildings, and decrepit little shops stood corner to corner with bizarre structures that swooped at non-Euclidean angles. Above all was the towering peak of Central Intelligence, the great grey stone pyramid where he knew, instinctively perhaps, he could find all of the answers he was seeking. Very well, dogs or no dogs, he had to get over to Central, or risk being stranded, a stranger in a very strange land.

***

The bar was silent and sullen, with only the occasional blast from the jukebox to give any hint of life to the surroundings. He hefted his drink to his lips, set the glass back down on the little wet ring which it left on the bar, and chased an errant fly absently with one hand. He had come in here not ten minutes ago, but already it felt as if he has been in here for hours, and the clock on the wall was perpetually set to 3:30 it seemed.

The barkeep said, “Do you want another?”

To which he replied, “Sure. But I don’t know if I have the time. I keep looking at that clock on the wall, and it isn’t getting any earlier.”

“How can you tell?” asked the barkeep, wiping down the counter with a filthy rag.

He brayed laughter, shot a glance at the weathered grey man sitting next to him, and drained the last dregs of his beer.

“I’m not sure. It doesn’t feel like time is passing in the usual manner here. Tell me: does time pass in the usual manner here?”

The barkeep looked at him as if he might have been growing an extra limb and then said, his hand still absently wiping the counter, “How the hell should I know? I only work here. You want to fix the clock, then go ahead. It’s no great conspiracy.”

Of course not, he thought. It was no great conspiracy to throw him off. The clock was merely broken. He had simply let the elastic nature of time fool him into thinking he was losing track of it somehow.

“Okay, okay, it’s your clock. I just thought I would ask.”

The place reeked of spilt beer, and he wanted to go outside to get a breath of fresh air. On the way out, he ran into a man with a great black dog on a leash. He could feel the snout of the animal sniffing at his legs; feel the intense heat from the slick, muscular body as it flowed from the raw nerves of the beast into his own bones.

“S’okay, she won’t bite you’uns,” said the man, leading his animal through the door and leaving him, for the moment, gasping in terror. A few more run-ins like that and he would be sure to die of fright before he could ever reach Central. Very well, he had wet his beak; he must be off.

The Human Ape

Outside of Bengal there is a little tin shack. Inside, if you pay a man a single rupee, you can meet “The Human Ape.” The Human Ape will be sitting on a little mound of pillows, and is completely covered in hair from head to foot.

Once, when I was traveling through Bengal, I had the opportunity to meet this fine gentleman, who really does resemble an ape in the face. He was most polite, and related the strange story of how he came to be so lonely and despised in his native town.

It seems he was born a strange, hairy infant, and that from the day of his birth he was regarded with some suspicion by the other villagers. They apparently saw the deformity as a curse as well as an omen, and took pains to shun him whenever they could. He lived a lonely, sheltered existence away from the other children, and was mostly kept hidden by his family, who no doubt loved him despite his unusual appearance. In time, circus promoters came calling with offers of lavish wealth, and it was all his poor family could do to resist the temptation to send him away.

He grew to manhood with all the usual yearnings and desires, but perhaps I should let him tell the story in the way he related it to me while sitting upon his mound of cushions, swatting at flies.

“I was born looking like an ape, and the other villagers hated the sight of me. They thought that I was monstrous, and they made no bones about disliking me. A group of them felt I should be sent away to live with the monks, but my mother and father flatly refused, and I was left alone. Little good it did me: I was blamed for every single misfortune that ever befell the village, and in time it got to be so that the other children threw rocks and taunted me when they saw me coming, so that I could not go to school.

“Things went on like this for many years, until I reached manhood. My appearance at this point became so horrendous that I was forced to go around the streets wearing a great cloak and a veil, so as not to disturb the villagers who, at any rate, still hated the sight of me. I spent much time alone, walking the roads around our village, and in time I came to a pathway that led through a park, a beautiful place where the flowers bloomed radiantly and where I finally felt I might find some peace.

“It was here, sitting on an old stone bench, that I first saw the beautiful young woman that stole my heart from me, and made me yearn for her soft kisses and gentle ways. She was sitting under a parasol, and I quickly crept behind her, through the bushes, so that I could be near her and smell her perfumed scent.

“I didn’t know what to do though, so that first day I merely watched her, and then, when she got up to leave I waited and crept out of the bushes, following at a great distance. I was careful to memorize the location of the park and the old bench, as I realized even then that I would return again and again to steal a glimpse of her.

“The next time I saw her she seemed even more radiantly lovely than before, and I crept closer to her in the bushes, liking her smell and delighting in her beautiful appearance. She, unknowingly, fanned a little of her perfumed scent my way, and I found the smell to be intoxicating. Before I even knew what I was doing I had crept forward so that my shadow fell upon her form, and she turned around. She was clearly startled, but she could not see me well as I was still hidden.

“ ‘My, you’ve really thrown quite a fright into me,’ she said, and continued to fan herself while turning and trying to make out my form through the thick foliage.

“ ‘Forgive me,’ I said, ‘I was only trying to steal a glimpse of a most rare and wondrous flower. Now that I have seen it, I shall be going.’

“ She then replied, ‘Well, why don’t you come and sit near me, and we’ll keep each other company? It is such a lonely day, and such a hot one, I would dearly love to have some company while I enjoy the beauty of this garden.’

“I felt my heart grow cold, and I told her plainly ‘I cannot.’ Suddenly, however, an idea flashed in my mind, and I said, ‘I would like though, if I may, to sing you some little poems I have devised, as you may find that they enhance the beauty of this place, and make your day seem full of wonder and merriment.’

“And so I began to sing my poems, and she found them to be exceedingly lovely, and after a few days of my singing to her from the shadows of the bush, she began to press me harder to come and sit with her, which, of course, I knew I could not do, even covered by my cloak and strange hood. However, on that fateful, final day, I sang to her a poem so lovely that it made her nearly weep, and she got up from the bench for the first time, and came around to the shadows, and took hold of my figure as I cowered behind the trunk of a great tree.

“She seemed surprised to see how small I was, and she said, ‘So that is where you have been hiding all this time! How dare you deceive me! Why you’re not much bigger than a child!’

“Before I could make a move to stop her she reached up and yanked off my hood. I stood there speechless, and suddenly her hand flew to her face, and she screamed, and her eyes seemed to roll up inside of her head until I could see the whites. Then she toppled over, dead from fright!

“I learned later, during my trial, that she had been a young woman with a very bad heart, and that she spent her afternoons in the garden as a way to soothe her nerves. I was acquitted of the murder, of course; they didn’t have a leg to stand on as I had never even touched her. It was her own sense of shock, shock at my hideous appearance, that caused her to suddenly expire. And how could I be blamed for such a thing, really?

“Well, there was quite a bit of outrage aimed at myself because of this incident, so when Banjee came and offered me a job in his sideshow, I readily accepted, even though it meant saying goodbye to my mother and father and the rest of my clan. I could no longer suffer the enmity of the villagers, so I traveled to all the most remote provinces to exhibit myself, and did quite well in that regard.”

After he had finished speaking a young boy carried in a plate of food, which I saw was mostly vegetarian. I thought I might ask him a few questions, for, as a reporter, I am always curious to know what life is like for the unfortunate who somehow manage to carry on in spite of things. Yet, when I opened my mouth, I realized that few words would come forth, so that I found myself simply asking whether or not he was in any pain, to which he promptly replied “No.”

I left the tin shack a little mystified, as he genuinely seemed to be content with his place in the world, and I didn’t sense the slightest taint of bitterness or resentment about him.

I continued my travels in Bengal, but have seldom met such an intriguing gentleman as THE HUMAN APE.

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The Kiss

“I wish I could escape like one of those airplanes,” she said, looking up at the sky, her eyes twin moons. I was sipping on a bottle of pop while the sunlight crawled across the streets. It was almost time for dinner, and Ma would be calling across time and space for me to come sit at the red checkered table cloth and partake of what the good Lord, in his bountiful mercy, had bestowed upon us for dinner.

“Someone ought to toss fireworks up at them,” I said, remembering a pesky frog I had blown apart not many days ago. The insides had come apart in a green mush of guts my dog Champ had sniffed at while little Sammy clapped and the bees droned in the hollow of an old log close by. Soon it would be time for dinner, but frog guts had just about poisoned my appetite, and it was poisoning it right now. That, and Rudy’s leg, which was encased in a heavy steel brace and seemed to be no wider than my wrist and reminded me that the Good Lord isn’t perfect but inscrutable.

Somewhere down the street a car backfired. It let out a sound like the rumble of a gun felling a deer, and I jumped, my bottle clamped in my fingers. Heck, I was nervous. One always gets nervous when contemplating the great and momentous turnings in life. Pretty soon, I was gonna ask Rudy to either fly up and kiss me, or I was going to go mad and go over to the barbershop and sit down with my soda and listen to the old men whine about their childhoods. So.

“I guess we’re two folks stuck to the ground sure enough. Heck, I can’t even imagine being in an airplane.”

“I could imagine being a bird.”

“Get out of here. You read too much poetry. Too many fancy ideas rolling around in your head, Rudy Jean Davis. Now, a girl like you has to have all of her priorities straight, lined up like ducks at a shooting gallery.”

She shifted a little on the stop. Hoss Avery, a no-account tosspot if ever one lived, yelled something at one of his bratty kids while they all got into his brick o’ shit truck with a couple of paper bags of groceries. The sky today was a maddening blue.

“You mean to tell me you never wanted to be anything else? Never had a dream about being a coyote or something?”

“Yeah,” I laughed, “maybe a wolf or a bear. Man, think how fast I could make the track team if I had the legs of a wolf. Or think of any fella trying to whoop up on me if I was a bear. A great big grizzly, arrh!”

I put my arms out and started to stomp a little. That made her giggle, and so I swigged the rest of my pop and considered that I was going to have to bring this to a close right before it got any darker. Heavenly shades of night were falling, the wind was whispering through every crack in the surface of the old battered storefronts, and the power lines were swinging in the slight breeze that had picked up. And all of these things I took as signals.

I fished my hanky out of the back of my jeans pocket and wiped my lips, which tasted like sweat and pop.

I had put in a pretty hard day of wandering, going through vacant fields and over old tires, and picking at this and that as I found it lying in the brush. I had cooked myself under the noonday sun, and with no lunch in my gullet except the half sandwich I had carried from home, I was getting a might peckish. But there were some things that were worth waiting for, especially for a man that was coming of age in such a mighty fine place as Widowmark, Indiana.

“Where you been all day, anyway boy?”

“I been around. I been walking. Got to get my exercise. You wouldn’t want for me to get fat, would you?”

“Why would I care?”

I didn’t know how to answer, so I let it go and said, “I been around, oh, back behind the dump and through the park, past the monument…came straight from home. I been walking a long time this morning. Man, was I thirsty. Hey, I got another nickel. You want a soda pop, girl?”

“Sure.”

So I beat it on over to the barbershop and brought her one back. She took it with a look on her face that seemed to say that I had done good and she didn’t expect it and didn’t quite trust it, either.

“So, anyway, I was talking to Pete and he said, that, maybe…you were kind of sweet on me, Rudy Jean. What have you got to say to that?”

I didn’t personally have much to say about it myself, except that I had never had a kiss from a girl other than my mother and I was pretty eager to experience the pleasure. Like I said, when a man gets to be my age, he just sort of expects the finer things of life to come calling.

“I’d say he’s a damn liar.”

“Oh, he’s a liar is he?”

“Uh-hum. He sure as shit is. I ain’t never been sweet on no boy, and I ain’t never gonna be. That way just breaks your heart and leaves you nothing.”

“And where did you learn that from? Some book somewhere?”

I always had a sneaky suspicion about books. That was back then, when you couldn’t get me to peer into a book for love nor money. It was I could do to even open up my schoolbooks, with farm dirt on my fingers and frog guts on my mind. I kinda thought books to always be about the Devil’s business, and thought they probably led to more unhappy thoughts in unhappy heads than anything else in the world.

“No,” she said, “ I just know it to be a fact. Momma told me Daddy broke her heart when she was a girl. Clean got up and left and never came back. And I swore no one was ever gonna do that to me. So you can take your crazy ideas about me being sweet on you and stuff ‘em where the sun never shines, Billy Ray Perkins!”

And she swigged at that pop, and shifted again on the stoop, so she was looking away from me, and I could see through the slanting rays of sunset how pretty she was, and wisps of hair blew across her face as I felt exasperation wash through me. I wanted something, and she was telling me, flat out, that I could never have it.

And what I wanted seemed to me, just then, to be so simple.

“Are you telling me you ain’t never gonna kiss a boy, nor be in love, nor get married and have babies? Lord have mercy, you’re gonna be a lonely girl.”

“So I am. So what’s that to you? You’re talking a bunch of nonsense tonight, Billy. You sound like the one that’s read too many cheap books.”

I thought about this for a moment, and then said, “Well I don’t never peer into no cheap bodice-rippers, but I been around some, and I heard fellers talk, and pretty much all of them say the same thing.”

“Yeah,” she eyed me suspiciously, “like what?”

“Well…” but I stopped because I didn’t know how to continue. You didn’t, in those days, involve women in the sorts of conversations men had around campfires with too much beer in their bellies and their wives safely tucked away at home. So I had been on a couple of those trips with my dad, and had always had a good time listening to the old grunts talk about just what I was trying to get at now. But what was that to Rudy Jean?

“Never mind,” I said, “I don’t think you’d make a very good sweetheart anyway. A sweetheart should be able to cook for a man, and clean for him, and with that leg of yours, I doubt you could do much of either.”

“I get around fine. I do all my own chores at home, and I can cook to knock your socks off. You’re not being very nice today–”

“I bought you a pop.”

“I mean, besides that. And you only did it cause you thought I was sweet on you. And now that you know better your probably wish you had your nickel back, don’t you?”

“Maybe.”

I put my hand over my eyes to block out the thin orange stripes of sunset and looked up at the small plane as it circled overhead.

“Maybe I wish I was up there with that fella in the cockpit. Just flying along, free as a bird, up above it all. I bet he gets all the girls he wants.”

She smiled again, and her mouth looked kind of cruel. But I guess when fate hands you a leg like hers you might become kind of cruel. A little at a time. I knew there was something hard-edged and wild inside of her, and the knowledge, all at once, kind of scared me.

“Maybe so. Why don’t you ask him?”

I looked at her cockeyed.

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“I dunno, I was just being smart I guess.”

“Yeah, well, I guess I’ll trudge on home now. No reason to stick around somewhere where you ain’t wanted.”

“I never said that. You can stay and keep me company if you want. I have to go soon, though. It’ll be dark….”

There was silence for a little bit, and I could hear the wind blow, and the squeal and squeak of things, and another truck or whatever backfire and altogether it kind of gave me the creeps.

“We’re trapped you know. Both of us.”

I didn’t quite understand what she was trying to say, so I leaned back, put my arms across my chest, and said, “Whaddya mean? I ain’t trapped nowhere. I can go anywhere I please. Why, I’ve been all up and down town today, and not a soul had anything to say about it.”

She smiled, as if trying to be patient with me, and said, “That ain’t exactly what I mean though. You’re trapped and don’t even know it. Hell, I bet that guy up in that plane is trapped…he is trapped, he can fly but not like the birds fly. He has to stay trapped in his little cockpit and circle around town. Big deal. He’s not really going anywhere, and neither are we.”

I didn’t like the sound of any of this, seeing as I had been in a good mood all day, and she was bringing down my spirits. Still, there was something about just being in her presence that kind of floored me, so I listened carefully.

“I’m trapped by this leg. I can’t run and I don’t walk real well. I can’t skip rope, and not many boys….” She trailed off and turned back around to me, and I could see that the subject I had brought up earlier had really sunk in deep, as there was a tear or two trickling down the side of her cheek as she tried to put together her thoughts and simplify them for the benefit of my brain, which at that time never thought much deeper than how many firecrackers it might take to explode a toad.

“And you’re trapped here, too. You are. You ain’t never going away as long as you live, and you know it. And by the time we’re old and grey the world is going to have flown by, and we’ll be ready to pitch into our graves. Well, that’s what happens to girls who fall in love, at least that is what Momma says. So, you see, I can never fall in love, because someday soon,” and her voice lowered to a whisper, “I really, really want to get out of here.”

I looked at the creaky, wind-blasted and sun-scorched buildings and the old tinshit cars and the idiot down the street kicking his flat tire with his old dog jumping in the back,a nd I got up all of a sudden, and I could feel my hands down at my sides forming into little balls. I said, “But, but it isn’t so bad, is it? I mean, is it?” But I could see that her face was turned up to me, accusing me of not seeing the forest for the trees or something, and my belly felt vacant and I felt about as small as I’ve ever felt right at that moment. Okay, maybe the place would trap us here, and we’d never be more than a couple of old grey townies, but weren’t there worse fates in the world? Couldn’t a body die and go to hell before ever knowing the first precious taste of a breath of air, or couldn’t a man be born with no legs instead of one bad one, and couldn’t we be living in some rundown shanty town hell instead of nice clean homes with good suppers waiting on the table for us? I wanted to say all these things to her, but for some reason my little frog-like brain couldn’t squeeze them out and all I could do was stare at her in disbelief because she didn’t see, like the preacher man always said, Just how good you kids have it.

But it was all in vain, and I didn’t get my kiss that day. I sat down beside her with a little “humph!” and said, “Well, at least we got each other.”

“Yeah.”

I stood up. A train whistled, came rumbling up in the distance, and the barbershop turned the old sign around to say “Closed” and the grocery would be doing the same thing. It was four stores, a few offices, a funeral parlor, and one stoplight long, and it was home. But was it really a trap?

She stood up. I thought she looked more terrifyingly lovely than I had ever seen her look before. We cast our childhood gazes to the sky and suddenly we saw that airplane cruise over again, as if he were doing lazy figure eights in the darkening heavens, and following in his trail we saw a crow and she looked up and said, “I wish I could be as free as that old crow.”

But I knew that the crow had his habits, too.