Dashboard

Broken glass and a torn screen in the door are signs that maybe the little shack in the middle of nowhere isn't all sunshine and dandylions, and the scattered dust leaves streaks and trails that could be from the frantic movements of a victim fending off a tall man with a knife, or they could be from the shackles dragged here by the already dead.  Sharp grating inside and cold blades outside are a cruel betrayal, because it was never meant to be this way.  But betrayal is a bit of a theme in this place, where there have been more drug deals gone bad than even in the apartment with the missing owner in town.  Twists and knots rake the once untattered brown cord of history that the shack throws across the void that is.  What nobody knows is the builder is still alive, and now he's just praying for someone to give him a lighter so he can cauterize the wound and stop the fraying then and there, before it continues.  Then maybe he'll grab his tools and put new pastel-colored shutters on the place, or maybe he'll just grab his kerosine and burn it all to the ground.

Her Path

Old Bill Yoder's wife died last September. It wasn't much of a surprise - folks had been saying she was slipping for years. There was no specific cause of death; she just went to bed one Saturday night and didn't get up for church in the morning.

Yesterday Bill went about his business as usual. He let the donkey out to run around, milked the cows and left a message on his son who lives in Baltimore's answering machine. After lunch he pulled his tattered plaid coat back on and went outside to chop wood for the fireplace. His bones ached a little with the cold, but he was used to it. He was just thankful for the misty cool he always called "Mississippi weather." It could be a lot worse in Indiana in February.

He dropped his axe twice while chopping wood, and the second time he didn't pick it up. Instead he sat down on a tree stump and looked wistfully down the hill at the path his wife always took through the woods when she needed a think. Bill hadn't set foot on that path all winter. Sometimes he'd wonder if she was down there, walking and waiting for the spring. Sometimes he almost went for a walk, but he always decided at the last minute to let it be. It was his wife's path, not his.

Bill sighed and slowly stood back up, feeling the creaking in his joints. He loaded the wood into the rusty wheelbarrow that used to be green and pushed it back to the front porch.

After a meager supper and two more messages on his son's answer machine, Bill sat down to watch the History Channel. He liked the History Channel because he was seventy and he got to see things that happened when he was nine. At seven-thirty he shuffled to his room and went to bed. He usually stayed up a little later, but he hadn't been to church since Christmas Eve and he wanted to make sure he got up in time to make the fifteen minute drive.

Today is Sunday, but Old Bill Yoder didn't get up for church this morning. Instead he went for a walk on the path through the woods. His wife was there, just like he knew she'd be.

The Cabin

Fresh prints scrunch in the crystalline white layer behind her, new since last night and gently caressing the rolling hills beyond and draping the skeletal trees in its cool embrace. Her lungs are a blazing inferno as she pumps her legs, kicking up plumes of snow like bullets from a misaimed machine gun pittering around her feet, and for a moment she imagines that she's a secret agent whose cover has been blown before she remembers that she doesn't have to imagine at all. Ten paces in the gnarled grasp of a root reaches up and snags her boot, sending her tumbling into the wet like an injured snow angel. She rolls onto her back, feeling the harsh bite of the frost on her face and hands, and summons up all of her inner pain into a shrill scream that would make harpies and banshees quake and flee. She screams unknown curses for forgotten infidelities. She screams hidden pain from the endless assault from all sides, from those who seek to teach her, from those who seek to help her, from those who are blind from their own masturbatory concerns, from the wire she uses to make real all the unplaceable atrocities in the bright red reminder against her pale skin. She screams until her already frozen lungs fail and collapse within her, and her throat feels like she swallowed the glass she put her fist through yesterday.

The sharp smack of the cabin door rings out in the world behind her, and he runs to her, the knight in shining armor but without coat or shoes, his dirty blond hair whipping in the shrill wind. He throws himself to the ground beside her, wrapping his arms around her in a physically awkward, really perfect embrace, hugging her hard because he's trying to let everything melt from her into him. She wishes she could cry but she can't, so she lies silently in his arms for a while, letting the cold chase away the adrenaline until she stands and limps back with him, hoping he is fooled into thinking he helped, ready (only not) for another day just like yesterday.

The Prophet

The dazzling blue flashes stab to the back of my brain with swords sharper than steel, the "ker-chicks" and "ca-chuffs" filling the void around me as I stand patiently waiting the camera to do the spiffy three-sixty swirl that the director loves so much and the lights to come on behind me, silhouetting my figure and making it seem as if I'm some sort of angel sent to berate you for your crimes against God.  But I lost my wings long ago in a hideous battle with myself (there were machetes and chainsaws), and now I stand center-stage to unwelcome applause and unmerited attention wondering, pardonnez mon français, exactly what the fuck I'm supposed to make of it all.  Somewhere out there a woman hikes up her skirt a little too high, and a man holds up his fist and shouts that the revolution is here while the bloated stick-limbed children clamber out of their dung huts, their spindly fingers grasping for food that only Santa Claus can bring and Donner and Blitzen died in a tragic sleigh accident so there goes that hope.  But here I am, alone, fully clothed and utterly uninteresting, hoping that if I try real hard I can sink into the polished woodwork of the stage and pretend that it was meant for someone else all along.

A Secret Place

Somewhere between the bending birch and the murky creek is a soul I once befriended, nameless in the air of the golden wood but well known to every one of the birds that make their homes here, sheltered well from the cats that creep out only after dark and unaware that there is ever a star or a cloud.  I wonder aloud why it is that the seeds carried on the wind denote a presence long since forgotten, but celebrate that there is such a buzz as the one that drifts into my window even now.  The gentle rhythm and molasses clock put me at ease despite the race that's starting just outside my door, and for now I can lay back and become nothing more than somebody's whisper.

Gabriel

The thunderclouds roll in only after the alarm has ceased, the shrill piercing gone and the birds at ease and ready to be snatched up by the tall man in the dark cloak who watches us all with the worst of intentions.  She saw everything despite the failed eyes, spoke words meant precisely for each mortal ear on which they fell, and there could be no denying the waves that lapped merrily in celebration of something beyond all word and feeling.  She was, after all, an angel, and now she's home again.

Crickside

Collections of thoughts on shuffle mode float through my head like drunken hornets, knowing not who they are or where they came from or where they're going but knowing full well that they want to sting me until I'm numb from the pain. I wish they would; numb me, that is, for the sporradic jabs of their stingers aren't doing me any good here tonight. The desk light isn't the sun and the serendipitous ventures of the moon just don't compare to the cool summer breeze that finds me sitting on a fallen tree over the river, watching people go by in kayaks and wishing like hell I were born five hundred years from now in either direction. A pointless wish from a dreamy little boy, a boy who's beginning to think manhood is a lie.

Of Penguins and Polar Bears

The still betrays me, dancing across the pavement and obvious now to myself, watching as I am from the rough wooden tower that is guarded by bears and overlooks a crystal clear lake that you wouldn't think could survive this much pollution.  Yet again I've torn the leaves from a perfectly good tree, but if only they hadn't caught my eye with stars the size of my head then I could be smiling and having tea with penguins and polar bears, who have never shared a home yet unite in their frigid reception that does no good to my Birkenstocks and Lipton.  One day the aurora will sparkle again and there will be no hole in the ice through which to plunge, and maybe the music on the sheet will translate into something with meaning.  Meanwhile, I've nothing but the rain and a piano part that makes me wish I were in a bar, serenading me into yesterday's forever.