Porter's Notebook

This message is probably old as fuck, but I haven’t logged in for at least a year, probably longer. Yup. I bounced. 

It bothers me more that I cannot remember when I forgot my son's name than that I have forgotten it at all. I guess sometimes, screaming out into the house: Isaac. Benjamin. William. Edward. Aloysius. Aloysius.

Who names their child Aloysius?

Perhaps I did. I could have. I could have named him anything. Any word that I do not remember could be his name and I think of the many words that I cannot remember, but as each one springs to mind I know it cannot be right, because there remains a nameless, son-shaped shadow in my mind.

No matter how often I call out for him he does not come to me or answer. And what child would? What son would come to a father who can only bellow out "boy" or "son" or "you there?" What sensible child would answer a man screaming out into an empty house, "Is anybody there?"

Of course somebody is there. My son is there. And the house is not empty. It can’t be empty.

*

We arrived in my beat-up, wheezing two-door on a cold, clear night in early Spring and even my breath had sharp edges. I lifted him from the back seat where he’d fallen asleep and carried him up the hill toward the three-story farm house of red brick and old windows laid in by hand. The house had stood on this hill for more than two hundred years, had seen all its land parceled away to farmers with means. Halfway up the hill my son woke and I set him down so that we climbed hand in hand, my steps matching his sleepy ones. All of the windows in the house were dark, and I was not sure if the lights would work or if there would be heat. On the drive I told him stories about building a real fire and as we walked up the hill I said that perhaps we will sleep in front of one tonight, like settlers I said, like pioneers.

"Are we home, Daddy?"

"We're home, son."

"That's good."

"Hey, can you tell me your name?"

He laughed. "You're silly, Daddy."

I look down at him, but his face is hidden by his hat and I am about to tilt his chin up so that I might see him when…

...I am dragged from the dream as if I sleep in tar, the tangled sheets clutching around me like fingers and vines and tentacles. Something woke me up other than the dream, some sound and it may have been footsteps in the hallway beyond the door. Small ones wearing, I think, sneakers. Maybe that pair of Vans I got him, a link between his childhood and mine. Before we got to the house he liked to ask me what shoes I was wearing, hoping that he could put his on and we could match.

"I'm a skater, daddy."

"As soon as you're old enough we're getting you a board."

And you're right, kiddo, daddy is silly. Very silly. Daddy is so silly he can remember what sneakers you wear but he can't remember your name, not even when he's dreaming. I get out of bed and dress, my leather jacket as cold as the window I lay my hand against to the check the temperature. It is early and the lawn and fields behind the house, the pasture of the cattle farm next door are blue with early spring frost and dawn-filtered light.

"Are you there?" I call out as I walk down the spiraling back stairs toward the kitchen and the back door. "Hello? Son?"

Was that laughter or were those cars driving past? Were those steps or was it birdsong? Did he answer me or was that a cow lowing from the far pasture?

The fields behind the house and to either side are fallow now. Corn one year, soybeans another but I have contributed to growing neither. I sit in the house now, looking out the window, a man whose family bought a castle on land that belongs to other men. I walk toward the sunrise on a dirt and gravel road with empty fields to both sides and a bit of red flashes against a stand of trees, a fox after a mouse perhaps.

I saw a fox once when I was a boy. Dead though. Walking here with my father and a farmer with a black Chevy pickup had just killed one nearby, said it was after his chickens. I saw the fox, its tongue extended and very dead, its shit soiling the bed of the truck.

"Where's your farm?" My father had asked.

"Nearby."

"That so? Don’t remember any chicken farms nearby."

The farm puffed up his chest and leaned toward my father.

"Ya'll live in that house down yonder?"

"That's right."

"City folk, huh?" He said and swaggered back to his truck, the slender rifle he'd used to kill the fox slung over a shoulder. The exchange had the feeling of a contest that my father had lost somehow. Hunter, my father, the fox had lost, dead in the back of a pickup truck without even a little prey’s blood around his muzzle to show for it.

Standing on this gravel road now, I decide to walk to the tree line but when I step onto the field a sheet of black rushes up from the grass, a thunder of sound and shrieking blots out the sky and the dawn and the forest behind. It blots out the fox and the memory and it blots out me, it blots out my son with his forgotten name. The shadow swallow the moon and any moment, wave-like, it will fall upon me where I stand, gap-mouthed in the early dawn. But as it shrieks and rises, it separates and I can see that the is sun still rising between its wings.

Wings. Birds.

Starlings. Hundreds nesting in the tallish grass of the field. Starlings. Only starlings.

I watch and listen as they fly around and shout at me. You're city folk, ain't ya? Yes. I am. No. We are. We are city folk. My son and I, we live in the house.

Am I speaking to the starlings? What sort of man talks to birds?

The sort who can't remember his son's name, I guess.

*

At home I find a bowl of oatmeal gone cold and crusted hard on the kitchen table, a clean spoon beside it. I push my fingers against the oatmeal now rough like sandstone. It must have been sitting here for some time, months or a year. I am sure it was not on the table when I'd gone for my walk just now. In the sink under the running faucet I stab at it with the spoon and spark up chips of dried oatmeal. I leave it to soak in the cold water.

Cold water. I try the hot water tap. Nothing.

I had put on the boiler. I remember going into the basement when my son and I arrived and turning it on, and the thundering chug and whoosh of flame as it stuttered to life after months of inactivity. The last time I'd been here was September and now it was March.

We.

We'd not been here since September.

Us.

There had been an early fall snap to the air, but I was reluctant to turn on the heat for just one night.

"Let’s sleep in front of the fire." I told him. "Go get all the sheets off your bed.

"Mom says that dangerous."

"It'll be fine. You'll see. But maybe don't tell her about this."

He'd laughed. "Daddy's gonna get in trouble."

"Not if you don't tell her. Want to hear a story?"

I read him stories all night until he fell asleep and just before I dropped off myself, I made sure the safety cage was tight and in place. The flames made his face look peaceful, burnished like something adorning a plaza in the wake of a victory or a liberation.

*

It's a beautiful morning with a slight chill when the car pulls up the driveway and stops beside mine. A woman gets out and walks toward the back door where I sip my coffee looking out through the screen. She says my name as she approaches, and she looks relieved. I wave because it’s the polite thing to do, but I don't know who she is.

"You have to come home." She tells me, standing on the other side of the screen.

"Would you like to come in?"

"No, I would not like to come in. You have to come home."

"But I am home. I mean, we are home. My son and I."

"You can’t be… Look, just please come home. I'll drive you."

I shook my head. "We have to stay here."

"But I love you, you can't stay here. Can't…"

"Who are you?"

"Who am I? Please don't do this to us."

"What's his name?"

"What did you just say?"

"What is my son's name? Do you know us? If you know us you must know my son's name."

She stares a me for several seconds and then her jaw drops wide and there is black in the back of her throat, black like hundreds of rising starlings, black like the shape in my head where my son's name should be. She screams it at me, but her impossibly wide mouth is just a shape of silence while the chords stand out in her neck. There is force in this shout and I can even feel the wind from her lungs, the wind of that name screamed around my head, but I can hear nothing.

Still she screams…

…and again I am ripped from sleep, battling sheets damp with sweat. I can hear the sound of plastic wheels on a hallway floor. I can hear a little boy's voice.

Vroom. Vroom.

He is playing truck.

She said that I have to come home, but I am home. We are home. My son and I are home.

Vroom. Vroom.

It is very dark.

"Son? Why aren't you in bed?" I walk out of the bedroom to sharp pain in my right foot and I stumble up against the wall. My toe is bleeding, cut on the grill of a large yellow toy truck sitting in the middle of the hallway. I pick it up and put it on a shelf downstairs. It was his favorite truck, this is something that I know, that I remember.

I know that his favorite truck is called a Tonka. I know its name, but I do not know his.

*

If he insists on walking around the house at night, I wish he'd learn to pick up his toys. Three mornings in a row now I have tripped over that yellow truck, but no matter how many times I put it away it is in the hallway for my toes to find in the morning.

"Son? Aren't you hungry? Don't you want some breakfast?"

I tap the bowl of oatmeal on the table with the spoon next to it like he is a cat, but he doesn't answer. I don't even hear the rumble of his footsteps.

"Son? Breakfast?"

The oatmeal will stay on the table then, it is already cold. I even sprinkled cinnamon onto it, his favorite. I turn toward the stove to clean out the pot I prepared his breakfast in, but it's not there and the stove is cold. I must have turned it off right after the oatmeal had finished cooking. Throwing on my jacket I go for a walk in the field behind the house. The foxes and starlings are not there. He just needs his space, then he'll come down to breakfast. He wants to be alone and that's okay, a boy needs time for his own thoughts. If you knew his name, I thought, he might come to breakfast.

What sort of father cannot even remember his own son's name to call him to breakfast?

It's no wonder his oatmeal has grown cold.

*

I take his yellow truck to bed with me, throwing my arm around it while I sleep so that there's no way it can be in the hallway for me to trip over tomorrow. He'll just have to find something else to play with. A small hope flutters within me that he will come into my room to ask for it back and then we can play together, rolling it up and down the hallways.

Vroom. Vroom.

Maybe he can help me remember some of the words that I have forgotten and maybe one of those words will be his name.

Vroom Vroom.

In the morning I still have the truck and "Tonka" is embossed into the soft skin of my inner arm like I have been branded. I carry the truck downstairs and set it on the table next to the bowl of oatmeal.

"Son. Breakfast." I call into the empty house. No. Not empty. The house is not empty. We are here. We are here and his breakfast is getting cold on the table.

Vroom. Vroom.

It comes from the basement, this sound. He must have another truck because I can hear its little plastic wheels on the stone floor. I open the door and am met with black, black like a sheet of starling rising from a field, black like the inside of that screaming woman's mouth, black like shapes of all the words that I cannot remember.

"Son? Are you there? Come on up and eat your breakfast."

Vroom Vroom.

I can hear the wheels of the truck, I can hear him playing. "Do you want me to turn on the light?"

Vroom Vroom.

My fingers hover by the switch, brush the white plastic that I can barely make out by the daylight coming in the kitchen windows.

"Son?"

Maybe he likes it down there, maybe he's left the lights off on purpose. I drop my hand from the switch and raise it again, drop and raise, drop and raise.

"Son, I'm coming down. It's not safe for you to play in the dark like this." I flip the switch and light floods the basement and I can see the stone floor around the boiler and the stairs leading down into the second level of the basement where the root cellar is. I walk down the stairs listening for the sound of the trucks wheels.

"Son?"

I try the storm doors in case he slipped out there but they are too heavy for a small boy to open, and anyway they are chained from the outside. I look into the root cellar, scanning its stacked shale walls and packed dirt floor. Now I hear footsteps on the stairs, small and fast and heading up toward the kitchen and the trickle of his laughter as he reaches the top.

I race around the corner and up the stairs, calling out. "Son!"

I burst into the kitchen and see the door to the living room slam and I barge through to hear his feet upon the stairs to the second floor. I chase him around the house, these sounds of him audible just over the pounding of my heart and my gasping lungs. Through the house I chase footsteps, laughter, slamming doors.

"Slow down, dammit. Where are you?" Why is he always running? This isn't a game. He hasn't eaten in days, I know because I've prepared his oatmeal every morning and every morning it's grown cold on the table. A growing boy needs breakfast. I hear the wheels of his truck again, this time from the kitchen. The wheels don't slide as well across the linoleum. A long wood hallway is better to push a toy truck. If he would stop I would show him this. Heaving for air I lean against the wall and gasp, a little snot drips from my nose and I wipe it on my sleeve.

"Dad?"

It's so soft I almost don't believe it, just a whisper from the kitchen and the sound of the truck wheels has stopped. I can see him there, sitting and bored with it and the game of chase we just had, and maybe… maybe a little scared so that he wants his father.

"Son?"

"Dad!"

I race down the hall to the back kitchen stairs that spiral down. I'll open the door in full view of the stove and the table where his oatmeal is getting cold. I am sure that I'll see him there with his truck looking up at me and I'll remember his name and I'll make his breakfast again because…

I am falling.

My foot must have hit that first step wrong and I tumble down, the wooden stairs biting into my knees and spine as I careen off the walls. There is a blinding pain in my leg as I burst through the door and fall past the last two stairs. My leg is twisted, something with the knee and I am sick on the kitchen floor. Each heave of my gut twists my leg further and there is so much pain. I look at my hands and wonder why there is so much dirt beneath my nails. What a thing to wonder at now. I push myself toward the wall so that I can lean against it, each inch brings a fresh dry heave as the wrongness of my leg becomes clearer.

Broken. Something is broken. Something is wrong. My leg is twisted. I dry heave and a little bile splashes out onto my chest.

I look around the kitchen for my son, to reassure him that his dad's alright, but he is not there and neither is his truck. His truck is back on the shelf upstairs, of course, just like his oatmeal is getting cold on the table. I can see the dust on the bowl.

These old houses are dusty, nothing left out escapes it. No. That is not the reason.

"Son?"

The croak of my own voice scares me, but I call out again and hear nothing. He does not answer but I do hear something from the basement, faint but audible.

Vroom Vroom.

He Was Ours

They found the egg in a basket between the Twin Towers, the ribbons tied to the handles ruffling in the winds that met and mated and procreated through the glass, stone and steel canyons of the Financial District. Speckled with pink, purple and peuce, the egg would vibrate when complimented and went still near loud noises. They kept it swaddled in cotton blankets knitted by the scientists’ and naturalists’ grandmothers and aunts and even uncles. They bathed it in heat and warmth, and encircled the egg with their arms. They lay their cheeks onto the smooth, warm shell and hummed to whatever was growing inside. They would say ‘you are safe’ and they would also say ‘you are loved.’

It hatched.

It let its first screech onto the world, the warbling sound nothing like the deafening, bowel-loosening roar it would grow into. The women and men who cared for it held it and kept it from the cameras and attention and made sure that the first thing the beast felt was safety.

An evolutionary breakthrough, a walking, living bit of proof.

No, not proof. A loved one.

It grew and ate cows. The city put forth a subsidy for farms to raise more steer.

It was New York City’s monster and no matter the government writ or national pressure or lines of impatient scientists who wanted a chance to poke and prod, they did not allow it. The beast grew and grew and grew. It stalked the streets and tourists came from all over to meet the tame monster of New York and offer it chunks of raw beef sold skewered on long sticks so they could feed it safely. The monster was a delight for small children. Other leaders expressed fear. The Pentago quietly trained a team of pilots in case the beast developed a taste for buildings and pedestrians. Their generals watched monster movies over and over again. The president took pictures with it.

Then the monster knocked over a building.

It’s handlers shouted at it and it cowed its great head, and lowed and was sorry, hiding behind its paws. What was wrong with, they asked? Nobody had ever seen a lizard the size of a skyscraper. Nobody knew what to do.

Then they hit upon it.

They cleared half of Broadway. They built buildings from cardboard, cheap wood and tin. The entire city pitched in for the month, it was a celebration. When it was time, they unleashed their monster and ran screaming and laughing before it. The beast bellowed and smashed the fake buildings in delight and was tossed meat by the crowds running in mock terror.

Their monster wriggled, jumped and danced.

At the end it curled up in its place between the great heatlamps they’d built for it and fell into a deep, happy slumber.

It was their monster, and they were never going to give it up.

Helluva title right? Got you listening. Gets everybody listening. I expect that’s why Decky Edwards, we all call him the Vicar, says shit like that out loud to perfect strangers in the bar.

“I was kidnapped by sirens and they replaced my left nut with a mechanical ball that plays a song.”

It’s not like you just turn away from some shit like that, no matter how jaded and New York you think you are, somebody starts talking shit like the Vicar does and you can probably hear the cows back home mooing, right? Smell mom’s apple pie?

First time he said it, Mark and Sej, this Albanian fuckin’ madman, wanted to know why police and firemen’d been messing with the Vicar’s nuts. In Sej’s case it mighta just been a translation thing, or if we’re talking about Sej and Mark put together, a vocational thing, or a public school thing.

“Sej, the fuck are you talking about?” I asked.

“He says his fuckin’ bole has a siren.”

“No, he means sirens fucked with his testicle.” I said.

“Right. And I want to know, police or fireman?”

Mike nudges Sej. “Why not ambulance? Ambulances got sirens.”

“That is a good point. They’d have all the shit you need too.” Sej says. “Hey, Vicar, why’d an ambulance fuck up your bole, bro?”

It sounds like a joke some shitty kid would tell you. “Why did the ambulance fuck up your nuts?” I let it go. I correct that shit and I’m gonna end up with some permanent fuckin’ nickname like Bookworm or Librarian. What? You think not? We been calling this one dude Fuckface for so long I don’t even know what his real name is. For all I know when he gets pulled over, 5-0 is like: “Do you know why I pulled you over, Mr. Face?” But it wasn’t the cops and it wasn’t the fuckin’ firemen, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t an ambulance, but to be honest those things scare the shit outta me so I’m not ruling it out that the Vicar got drunk or something and they picked him up to put a kazoo in his nutsack or whatever.

Then one night, the Vicar turns on his barstool and says to me.

“You seem like a smart kid. Not a fool like these alcoholics.”

“That fuckin’ tomato juice in your glass, Vicar?”

“I want to tell you a true story.”

This is kinda why we call him the Vicar. Least, I think that’s where it comes from. He gets fuckin’ hammered and wants to have fuckin’ storytime with you like I imagine some priest is when he wants you to come to his office after mass to show you these great comic books he’s got about Special Jesus. “It’s just like Spiderman.”

Trust me, kids, it ain’t just like fuckin’ Spiderman.

“I used to be a sailor.” The Vicar tells me.

“What like sailboats and shit?”

“Don’t play with me, kid. You’re not that fuckin’ dumb.”

I sipped from my drink and ordered another one from Fausto behind the bar. His hands shook so much he could fuckin’ probably carbonate whiskey. “Have one for yourself too, Fausto, before you fuckin’ drop something,” I told him.

“I had a beautiful boat. The sun would turn the wood to gold.”

“You used to be rich, or what, Vicar?”

“No. Maybe. That’s a relative question, kid.”

“So what? You had this boat.”

“I was sailing off the coast of Greece. Near the islands there.”

“Only thing I know about Greece, Vicar is those fuckin’ sandwiches nobody knows how to say their name right.”

“Smartass. You wanna hear this story or not?”

“Yeah, sure.”

And the Vicar said:

The wind died and the moon turned the islands silver. I didn’t mind just drifting, my ears empty of waves and wind. The boat talked, like they do. Creaking. Groaning. Settling its beautiful bones. Then I heard this melody. Figured it was coming from the shore. It got louder and louder. My ears were filled with it, shrieking and screaming beautiful. My teeth rattled in their sockets, two fillings popped loose and I nearly drowned in the musty smell of feathers. Then the sound stole the sky, it stole everything. I fell into darkness.

When I woke up, the moon was nearly gone and the sun was starting to burn the horizon. I spat my two filling out onto the deck. It wasn’t until later that I heard the same sound, a smaller version, coming from, well, my pants.

There’s my story.

“You trying to tell me you got roofied by sirens. Real sirens.”

The Vicar nodded.

“Bullshit.”

“Where’s your sense of magic, kid?”

“Special Jesus stole it.”

“What?”

“You’re fulla shit, Vicar.”

Then this motherfucker does the damndest thing. He asks Fausto for a glass of fucking water. And starts humming this little tune. Really catchy, I think I heard on KTU once. But then he starts slowly drinking the water and the tune keeps going, and I realized it’s not even coming from his mouth. It’s coming from, well, down there.

He winks at me over the rim of his glass and keeps drinking.

The little tune keeps going. I swear to Christ, I’m halfway leaned it toward the Vicar’s junk when I finally snap out of it. I gulp my drink.

“Cute trick, Vicar.”

“It’s a gift and a curse.”

Fausto snorts and says in his quavery voice. “It’s bullshit too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, fuck you, Fausto.” The Vicar said like a little fuckin’ kid you take his toy away.

“He’s a fuckin’ failed ventrilo-something. Dudes with the fuckin’ puppets. He got drunk in here one night and told me.”

I start laughing. “Man, fuck you, Vicar. You keep fuckin’ around with those puppets they’re gonna put you on a registry.”

“They weren’t puppets.”

“What?”

“I said they weren’t really puppets. They were something quite different.”

Fausto shook his head and started dumping glasses into the sink, making more noise than he normally did.

“I’ll tell you about it.” The Vicar said.

“Tell you what, Vicar, you can tell me about how you’re gonna pick up my tab before I tell all the guys you play with dolls.”

“Hey, Fausto. Can I settle up?”

Chains

Chains are a funny thing. My daddy used to talk about ‘em all the time. Chains. We got these fascinations with them, Daddy used to say that when I was just a tyke. I’m old now, but don’t you look at me like that, there was a time when my hair was meant for bows. Metal bent and worked and linked into other metal, flexible and strong. Armor, bondage, criminal, jewelry, sailing, battle, loss of freedom, slavery. We humans love, love, love our chains. Love our limitations. Sometimes we hate them. Sometimes for the good of all they have to be broken, just split and beat and melted to slag. If they’re just a metaphor or not.

But other times you gotta build ‘em strong, build ‘em big so they’ll never get snapped, never get broken. So they’ll hold forever. Heh. Nothing holds forever.

When you gotta chain up a monster, you need strong chains. When you gotta bind down something so big it’ll destroy you if you let it, you build those chains so big and so strong that the weight of ‘em’ll hold that thing down no matter how sharp its teeth or how long its wings. We broke the chains on god because we needed the iron. Let that go. Let that big old love-and-punishment-for-all float off into the ether of idea and imagination where it belongs. It’ll still listen if you ask right, but I hear results are unpredictable when you go speaking to the sky.

My daddy told me about that. He was there when they clipped the chain, when links fell to earth with a noise like nothing else. They rust now, deep at the bottom of the canyon they made when they dropped. God chains. Daddy told me and I know it’s true because he built the chains that hold the truth after we lost our grip. After it grew too big and strange with all these people tugging and cutting and carving and stretching. Iron. Iron rusts eventually, but iron is best he told me. Pure iron. Hammered and shaped and with the other lads in the mill. No more boats, no more guns, no more horseshoes. We mined the earth until it would never turn red again and when my father coughed and hacked on his deathbed it smelled like a smithy in his room. If it was iron, it went to the chains and leaders talked in panic and people called the house and my father wiped the sweat off his brow and put his hat back on and simply said.

“It’ll get done.”

Solid people to build solid things. We needed that then. We still need it, but people are forgetting so you listen good here while I take these last sweet breaths. You smell that in the air? Sharp? Salty? High in your nose like tall sky, recent failure and creeping fear? That’s it. You smell it. I can tell, youngster. You smell it. Good. Hold to that smell, and I’ll tell why.

That’s rust.

My daddy built those chains heavy and he built them strong, but they’re rusting just the same. You better see to them. If they snap? If they break?

You’ll never get them back on again.

On the Street, There Is a Corner

He played every day at 4 o’clock.

Laundry dried, paving stones listened, coffee in small cups chilled on windowsills, on cafe counters, on streetside tables. Cigarette smoke wafted, blown by breath or breeze, dogs were held and hushed and narrow streets cradled his music. School children quieted their shrieking, ran around him like a stone in their river, his eyes closed and his shoulders hunched around a battered violin. On the body was a scratch, on the neck a name half-carved, an A, two N’s and another A. Play to the streets, old man. Play to the stones. Play to the children and the laundry drying overhead. Play to the ladies leaning on their windows and the other old men with black coffee cooling in small cups by their elbows. Play to the empty air and the casual wind. Play to the corner just behind you, the one you haven’t looked at in years.

At 3:30 every afternoon, the old man walks backwards from his home just a few doors away, sets down his case and takes out his violin. Tunes and plays and keeps his eyes closed to never catch an accidental view, not in puddle or carried mirror, not in sunglasses or the glossy surface of a green or brown eye passing him on that narrow street. A deep breath and shaken fingers, he sets the air on music and plays his gentle flames up and down the buildings. A corner never looked at, a turn taken only once. On it there is no storefront, no window. There is a crack in one of the stones, on another there is carved a heart, and at the base there is a rusty gutter wrought of iron and damp with light morning rain. He never looks but sees still the footprints on that street made by small shoes that stepped in a puddle, wetting small socks, small ankles. They are always damp, those prints, always just seconds from fading in the sun that comes out at 4 o’clock.

Ear cocked, head tilted, fingers nimble upon the strings, he listens for small footsteps, excited clicks upon the stone, a sing-song voice calling out his name. He barely hears the music that he plays to the corner he never looks at, to a street full of people that, like him, have not forgotten the reason that he plays.

Not yet.

The Building

The half-broken building is a black shadow in the red dawn. The young man climbs the steps and scaffolds, lugs tools up two final ladders. Routine steps and routine fingers, routine hands hold routine positions. Here is his handprint on the dusty brick from yesterday, and the day before and the day before. Here are his boot prints, here are the marks from his jackhammer.

His tools roar. They are hungry. They bite chips and shards from the building. People must pass by below and the sun overhead, men must work by his side. That is the way of jobsites. He smashes, feet firm upon the thing he destroys. He stops for lunch in the middle of the day, and drinks coffee from his thermos. That is the way of working.

A whistle must blow. He climbs down ladders, steps and scaffolds. Other men talk around him, make jokes, light cigarettes. They must, after all. Work must have an end.

Dusk has turned the sky red. The young man sighs. The building looks the same. Surely that whole day, something was accomplished. Days begin and end, in between things become different under power of will. They must. Surely that is the way of working. Nothing can change that.

Up on that dusty brick wall, a handprint fades from sight as the sky fades from red to black.

Lionel's Thunder

We’d really had it with Lionel’s shit.

Thunder. That’s all he did in the studio was making fucking thunder. Now granted, this was the mystery and drama radio hour and most of the writers on staff figured the best way to ratchet up the tension was to throw the weather at it, but still. Thunder. It’s just a big gong made out of rusty sheet metal. We used to rotate through the different devices so that everybody could get a chance. Rattle the chains. Bang the drums. Cue the sound effects. You need a car horn? There it is. Sad tuba? We got you covered. It’s a good job, creative and for somebody who thinks on his feet, especially if you’re like me and you can’t carry a tune in a bucket.

But Lionel was getting just a little too impressed with himself.

“Bam. Call me Zeus, fellas.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. He laughed then, but then he kept saying it and each time he got a little more serious.

“What’s the big deal? Just a nickname.”

“Lionel, you can’t just give yourself a damn nickname.”

“Why not?”

*

He stared to critique everybody else. The writers were incompetent and didn’t lay out clearly enough how their stories should sound. Or it was our fault.

“You’re really not bringing enough flair to that car horn.”

“It’s a car horn, Nel, not a Stradivarius.”

“A Scandinavian? What? And it ain’t Nel, it’s Zeus.”

“Whatever you say, Nel.”

He got too creative with the thunder too.

“I can hear its voice speaking. You gotta give it a voice, man. This is art.”

“It’s not art. It’s fucking entertainment for the hour after dinner, you schmuck.”

*

We tried to get him fired, but our boss didn’t give a shit about our internal studio dramas. Didn’t help that the station owner came down one day and complimented Ol’ Zeus on the order of his work area and told him he loved the thunder in the programs. Talked about how thunder had always scared him when he was a boy, that folksy bullshit. Nel’s grin split his face like a Halloween pumpkin carved by a maniac. He started getting ideas, figured he was charmed.

“I’m trying my hand at writing.” Nel said.

“Christ, here we go.”

“I’m calling it ‘Eye of the Storm.’”

“Hey, how about ‘Greek Farts’ instead?”

“You wouldn’t know culture if it was chewing your ass.”

“Oh, I think it is. Right now.”

*

A perfect piece. Of whatever, right? Doesn’t matter. Perfect. Those right edges for that right time, or right now. Whatever it is. When the moments’ weird edges fit together and for that slowed-down, strange point in time, all is humming like the strings on a harp. You wait for those, and when you’re in them you savor the glory. After they’re over you wonder how you could have paid more attention, how you could have lengthened the magic for just a few seconds. After. Always after.

We caught our moment and it was perfect.

“What’s the new piece?” Nel asked.

“Some mystery thing. ‘Murder in the Storm.’”

Nel rubbed his hands together. “I’m gonna create my masterpiece!”

“It’s a fucking gong, Nel. You’re just banging a big ol’ fuckin’ gong.”

But Nelly wasn’t paying attention. He should have been.

Ol’ Zeus got too comfortable up on his mountain, banging his gong like a toddler that got into the kitchen cupboard with a wooden spoon. Eyes closed, swaying with the moment, he was waiting for his chance. There was our hero, fedora held in place against the wind and in pursuit of the villain. It was a dark and stormy night, and he raced across the countryside with the barrel of his trusty roscoe leading the way. The story spooled out in our headphones and then it was time for the gunshot that would bring an end to the villain’s life out there in the lonely storming dark. In the moment of climax, lightening flashed and the villain raised his gun, but our hero was just a little bit faster.

The hero snapped up his roscoe, and Mark in the studio raised our trusty .38.

Bang!

*

Jesus Christ, of course we didn’t shoot the silly prick. What do you take us for? Anyway, gun only fires blanks. Good thing, too. We just used a special one with about double the powder in it. Want to hear some thunder, Zeus? There you go. I think he pissed himself a little. Anyway, he quit. Told our boss he couldn’t work with amateurs. I hear he’s in San Francisco now leading a meditation group. Yeah, no shit. Oh, and get this. You know how he lulls his pet schmucks into a trance?

A little bell belongs on a cat’s collar.

Apparently loud noises scare the shit out of him.

Saddlehorn Jenkins, Budgie-Slayer

You can keep Thor. Superman can suck a big ol’ pecker. Nope. For our money out here, it’s Saddlehorn Jenkins. He doesn’t need to go squeezing himself into fancy stretch pants to get it done. What? You stopped for gas. You stopped to ‘see the sights,’ like you do when you’re from the city. Stopped to take pictures you can show to the folks back home, all “look at this! Biggest fuckin’ gun ever. These hill people sure like their guns.” Cities. Pfff. They’re clean now, right? Good for you. Really happy on your eternal behalf and all that, but there was a time all we did was clean up your messes. That’s right. No. You stopped to talk some shit about the gun, so now you’re gonna hear the story so you can’t go talking outta your ass when you get home.

We like our guns because we got pest problems. Yeah. Wince. Look away. You feel guilty? You should.

We might like our guns out here, but we ain’t got shit on you, do we? You like your bombs. About as much as you like birds.

Oh, what? You heard the stories were exaggerated?

Siddown, Slick. I’ll tell you. Kiddies too. They’re not grown. Chance they won’t be as fuckin’ dumb as you and the missus. Let me tell you the story of Saddlehorn Jenkins, Budgie-Slayer, the fuckin’ man.

Pardon my language, kids.

*

“They’re coming again.”

“I’m almost there.”

“Sure we got enough?”

Saddlehorn and his brother Reef looked down at twenty-five shotguns on the table, the acres of wheat behind them ruffled in the wind. Over-unders, twenty-gauge, twelve-gauge, pump action, tactical ones looked like insects.

“Who sent the blunderbus?”

“Wally. Fuckin’ comedian.”

Reef grunted. “Only thing out here got a bigger mouth than him.”

Saddlehorn spat in the dust. “Grain. The fuck I have to grow grain for?”

“It’s tradition, Saddle.”

“I know a guy couple counties over grows pot. He doesn’t have this stupid problem.”

“Least it’s wheat. Not millet. It was millet we’d really be fucked.”

Saddlehorn grunted. “Would been that fuckin’ coin landed on heads. Better get ready.”

They looked out over the fields they’d left fallow in an acre around the wheat as a kind of moat. Heard them first. The hordes.

“WHAT’S SHAKIN’, FUCKSTICK! UNCLE JOE SUCKS HIS TOES! POLLY WANNA CRACKER! PRETTYBIRD, WHO’S A PRETTYBIRD! WEEEEEEEEO WEEEEEEEO. WOKKA WOKKA WOKKA. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK! DOUCHEBAG! WATCH YER ASS LAURA, BURNED THE ROAST! I FUCKING HATE THIS BIRD! BIRD BIRD BIRD BIRD! HELLO! HELLO! HELLO! HELLO! LAURA’S A REAL BITCH! HUSBAND’S USELESS MIGHT POISON HIS MARTINI! SHITFUCKGODDAM! RRRRAAWWWK! RRRRAWWWWK! WEEEO WEEEEO! HATE THAT DAMN BIRD. I HATE THAT GODDAMN BIRD! FUCK OFF AND DIE, GRANDMA! PRETTY BIRD WANTS LOVING! PRETTY BIRD WANTS LOVING! HONK HONK HONK! FUCK!”

They came over the hill in a multicolored, gibberish-screaming fog. Saddlehorn crossed himself even though Revelations never said anything about this particular plague.

“Fire.” Saddlehorn said and he and Reef opened up with the scatterguns on the table. Feathers flew, they blew holes in the hordeclowd and saw the sky for brief moments. Some of them made it past to feed on the tender wheat. Reef and Saddlehorn fired into it, even though it pained them to do the necessary.

“I’m out,” screamed Reef, half deaf.

“Me too.” Saddlehorn called, sucking on the trigger callous he’d ripped open.

“How we looking?”

“Saved most of it.”

The swarm had abandoned the attack, vanished back over the hill, shrieking idiot obscenities and demanding crackers. Reef and Saddlehorn slumped in relief.

“We gotta find a better way, Reef.”

“You got any ideas?”

Saddlehorn picked up a handful of bright blue, yellow and red feathers and blew them off his hand like dust. “Maybe.”

*

What is it with you people and pet birds? We know the truth. Birds are a pain in the ass, less you can eat ‘em. But who the fuck wants to eat a parrot? I want that, I go out and shoot me a goose or a turkey. Maybe quail, if I wanna fuck around with all those little bones. But a cockatoo? Or a parrot? Or the dread budgie? Biggest pains in the ass since actual locusts and you turned ‘em loose, didn’t you? Nah. Spare me the guilty eyes, folks. Of course you didn’t know. Poor you. Just had these fancy critters all locked up in gilded cages until you started fuckin’ around with those WMDs. Who’d a thought those split atoms’d unlock some mutant shit in those little winged fucks. Polly wanna cracker, my ass.

Pardon my language, kids.

*

“When’s the next swarm?” Saddlehorn asked, head bent over his drawings.

“Spotters’re out.” Reef said.

“We got enough metal?”

“Bobby says we do. Says the forge’s ready. Gunsmith too. Mind, they all think you’re crazier’n a rat in a tin shithouse, Saddle.”

“Mm. Might be. Might be we all are.”

Saddlehorn was keeping one of the spotters company when they attacked again. The binoculars were fine. Military issue. Through them Saddlehorn could see the horde of brilliant yellows, electric blues, royal reds and devil-eye greens. Two, three and four times their normal sizes now. Slavering beaks, wings dripping puss and ichor, rolling black eyes, they shrieked and screamed and cut the sky like lightning, like cruiser missles, like God’s own wrath. At the center, issuing commands half in birdspeak and half in repeated english nonsense, were the ringleaders.

“Fuckin’ budgies.” Muttered Saddlehorn.

“Here they come.” The spotter said.

“Yep.”

Saddle descended the tower to where his new guns waited. Three men to a gun. One to hold the barrel, one to aim and pull, and one to brace him.

“Ready.” Said Saddle.

“Aim.”

They waited, hearts in their throats.

The horde was descending, turning the air blue in more ways than one.

“Fire.”

They were blinded by smoke, deafened by barrelspeak. When the smoke cleared, they walked among the carnage, ears ringing. The plague was over.

*

So there you have it folks. Want to make fun of us for liking guns? Yep. I like guns. Got a few of ‘em. Even got a Saddlegun of my very own. That’s right. We named it after him. Man’s a goddamn American hero. So I’m gonna keep my guns. Now tell me something, folks.

You got a budgie?

The Stained Brown Parcel

It had arrived by mail that morning, and Gerland took it to his favorite bench at the train station. The bench and his hips creaked when he sat down. The parcel had stamps he didn’t recognize, and stains he did. That one was coffee, that wine. Oil at one corner and cigarette ash smeared through bacon grease. Whoever had sent it had done so from far away and thought about it long and hard before he did. Gerland untied the string.

A journal no bigger than his hand had a clean white note folded on top, and between the fold, a news clipping.

“Gerland, I hesitated to even send you this. I know you are retired.

-Shoen”

Gerland opened the journal, read a few pictographic lines. Then he got up and left the train station, boarding a plane for Paris. The flight was calm, he drank whiskey and coffee in a one for one ratio. The flight attendants flirted with him the way pretty young women will with old men. Gerland smiled politely and buried his nose in either glass or journal.

The cabbie asked him why he’d come to Paris in broken English. Gerland answered in French that he should be taken to the Hôtel de Ville. There, after much wrangling and bungled French, Gerland was finally conveyed to the sanitation department. He sat down with a whuff into the hard wooden chair. The man across from him looked agitated.

“Do you speak English, sir?” Gerland asked.

The man stared at him. “I am very busy.”

“Then maybe you’d better just show me where the problem is.” Gerland said.

“Sir, I am sure that I don’t...”

Gerland cleared his throat. “Just show me. I can fix it.”

“It’s just a matter of faulty maintenance and pipes in bad need of repair, sir, the war it... It left the city... How do you even know about this?”

Gerland slid the news clipping from Le Monde across the table.

“This isn’t anything the German’s did. You could replace all the pipes with gold and it would not fix this.”

“Gold? You cannot be serious. Surely this is too soft to...”

“Take me to the problem.”

The official led them to his Renault.

At the mouth of the tunnel was a cluster of workers in stained uniforms, smoking and shuffling their feet and looking anywhere but into the maw of what Victor Hugo had referred to as the intestines of the Leviathan itself. As Gerland got closer, he heard the rumbling.

“What are you men doing out here?” Said the official. “You’re supposed to be working to fix this nonsense.”

“Are you crazy? We’re not going back in there!”

Gerland nodded to them. “It’s alright. Tell me, do any of you have any paint?”

“We sent the balls down twice. Nothing. We’re just about to send them again.”

“Please don’t do that again.” Gerland said. “It’s not going to help.”

“What do you know? Who is this guy?”

“We’re wasting time. Do you have any paint?” Gerland said.

“What do you want paint for? You want to make us some signs for when we strike?”

“Now hang on a moment.” The sanitation official said.

Gerland chuckled. “Please, if I don’t hurry they will be stuck here.”

“They?” The sanitation official and the workers asked in unison.

“They.”

Gerland was handed a small tin filled with black, oil-based paint and a brush. He walked into the tunnel, the rumbling sounds washing over his face in fetid sewer gusts. He didn’t need a light. Up ahead he could see the glow they gave off. They writhed in the tunnel ahead, crawling the ceilings and disappearing around tunnels and the corners of his peripheral vision. Pacing him.

“It’s okay,” Gerland said. “No need to be frightened. I’m going to get you home.”

They rumbled and shrieked. They. Gerland wondered. It might only be one, a distinct picture was hard to form. They were rarely ever still and even more rarely were they visible to something as primitive as a fleshy orb reading signals created by bouncing light relayed to another spongy mass. Human instruments were only versatile instruments here.

“This will be easier if you show me where it is.” Gerland called, but they didn’t answer. Somewhere between blind panic and frenzy, he knew they would not be stable for long. They were overheated. It was the only reason they were so sluggish and non-confrontational.

“Ah.”

Gerland saw the writing on the wall just ahead in the glow the bioluminescent glands along its/their spine or tail or ribcage. They/it was moving too much.

Gerland peered at the graffiti. They’d been so close, only missing some of the nuance. Gerland opened up the journal to the right page and saw the sequence, a mimetic combination lock that was at once door, map, language and coordinate. The tendrils of the pictographs reaching toward one another. There was a mistranslation. An easy mistake as their word for look was very similar to the one for be.

“See? You are only partially here. That must be very painful. I am sorry, but I can’t let you stay.” Gerland muttered. Behind him it/they snapped across the tunnel wall in a blink, and coated an entire portion of the ceiling in what might have been eyes or offspring.

“Oh, no. That definitely won’t do.”

He dipped his brush and ended the sequence, and wrote another beneath it.

“There. I’m sorry, but I have to revoke your visa. One ticket home. On with you.”

Gerland's only answer was silence. Their farewells always had so much less fanfare than their arrivals.

The tunnel was now pitch black. Gerland reached into his pocket for the flashlight he’d forgotten to bring. He sighed.

“Shit.”

Gerland didn’t much care for the dark.

Donny La Page was a birth control expert.

He’d paid attention in health class, he knew the deal. Condoms? The pill? Shit, those unnatural methods weren’t the truth. Donny knew the deal, they’d told it to him right there like a secret.

“Your nuts dangle, right? They gotta be a couple degrees cooler than the rest of your body. S’why I don’t wear those fuckin’ skinny jeans, little man. Shits’ll cause permanemanent damage to your huevos, you know?”

So?

“So check it our, right? My shit ain’t for fuckin’ pussies, but the shit’s the only way to render my nuclear baby batter inert, you know? I know my shit’s bomb. My fuckin’ swimmers’ve got little army hats on and guns and shit, bro. Fuckin’ rifles. They don’t fuck around. So I boil water in the kettle.”

And then what, Donny?”

“I soak my balls in the hot water, for like, fuckin’ ten minutes or some shit. I figure that’s enough kill all the sperms.” Doesn’t that hurt, Donny?”

“Fuckin’ yeah, it hurts. But it works. Then I can throw a shot in you and bam, no baby.”

Donny, how many kids you got?

“Yo, my method needs refining, is all. Fuck, it ain’t my fault if my ladies got like catchers mitts up in there, is it? They don’t spill a single Donny drop, you know? On some Maxwell House shit.” How many kids you got, Donny?

“Ten.”

Ten. Donny La Page, king of the boil your gnads school of birth control has ten kids. He’s also got dermatitis and bog nuts. Inside of his drawers looks like a swamp fucked a snowglobe. But this story isn’t about Donny, it’s about the one out of ten.

The one of Donny’s kids who turned out alright.

Marlene.

Down to her mom, really. Marlene’s mom never picked up the phone when Donny called, and she never told her daughter that the bright blue salmon that little Marlene said swam in her bathwater weren’t real. So Marlene got to grow up without all her candles snuffed, and then she got to spin dreams for a living.

“I don’t understand, what’s the big deal if we just make her battle the fuckin’ thing and kill it?”

Marlene rubbed her eyes. “It’s a big deal because violence can’t be the only resolution tool she has.”

“It’s that way in almost every other game!” Michael said. “We’re not making every other game, are we? We’re making one that’s better. I’m telling you. Make the brass fish bigger. Much bigger. She’ll tame them. Ajia’s journey is different.”

“And then maybe we could do a big set piece where the player gets to hitch a ride on them to the next level?” Lucio said, his pencil bobbing between his teeth.

“Sure,” said Marlene, a little irritated they’d gotten where she was thinking before she could say it, but at least there wouldn’t be an argument.

“Still don’t see what the big deal is. Players like blowing shit up.” Michael muttered.

“The big deal is, Michael,” Marlene “That there need to be options other than violence. Violence negates wonder and wonder is what we’re trying to offer.”

“I guess.”

Lucio rolled his eyes. “Michael, give it a rest already, bro. This is what we’re doing.” He winked at Marlene, but she pretended not to see it. Marlene signaled the meeting was over and they filed out of her office. She put up her feet and watched a pair of tiny samurai face off on top of her bookcase, the shelves loaded with art books and fiction. They had steely gazes, the warriors, she supposed. They were wearing devil masks. A shark was swimming in her water glass and she took a careful sip to avoid its teeth. None of her visions had ever attacked her, but it never hurt to pay respect. A slender woman in a tattered waistcoat and shabby suit, who was at once a woman and also a grizzly bear if seen out of the corner of one’s eye, nodded to Marlene from the easy chair in the corner.

“So what happens next?” Marlene asked and the slender woman who was also a bear

“Why, Ajia must find her way to the City of Cracked Stones.”

“That’s a damn good name. What’s in the City of Cracked Stones?” The woman was now more bear than woman, and her voice rumbled about the churches that had sunk beneath the level of the street and now held empty silences in their cellars like aquariums for ghosts. The sky-high wheel of stone that never moved until it stormed, and then the wind plays its grooves and cracks broadcasting the last will and testament of a god. Marlene wrote it all down until her hand ached. When she looked up again the bear-woman was gone, the samurai had put up their swords and the shark had swum back to whatever grotto it had arrived through.

Marlene arrived home and her phone chirped. There was an email from somebody named Donny La Page, claiming to be her father. She scanned it and saw the word closure mentioned fourteen times in the four-paragraph note. Also something about condoms.

“Huh. Spam’s getting more elaborate lately.”

We Should Never Have Left

There had been monsters in the water, her father told her, and storms that shook the boat. Her mother told her when she was older, after she was born in the belly of one of the great ironclads that had carried them away, that she was born from a belly, inside a belly. When she was an infant, it was not a rocking her mother sought to create, but a stillness. The storms saw to that, or the beastly things that looked half crab, half jellyfish that rose from the deep and plucked sailors and soldiers from the deck like they were snacks at a buffet.

“We should never have left.”

What a thing to tell a child. What a refrain, wrapped in a requiem, hidden in a dirge and set to the clickbeat of fancy shoes in a funeral march.

We should never have left.

We’re sorry.

Click click. Thump thump.

She stood looking out at the wrecked ironclads. They hadn’t hesitated, but had run the boats up on the shoals and clambered out. They’d kissed the dirt. Safe. They were safe.

She shivered there on the beach. It was cold early, too early for wool rations to knit at least a scarf for herself.

Thump thump went the factories behind her, the endless lines, the endless clocks and punch cards and check lists and watching eyes.

There was no approval. At best you were ignored.

Waves whispered. Behind her the factories thumped and coughed and hacked black, black curses into the pure blue sky. But the waves, like the ships rusting there, were iron.

A whistle blew behind her and she flinched. Five minutes to get back and punch her card, not a second more. Each second was a consequence. This second was bread, that one was water.

She shook her head and looked at the ships.

“They might as well be our gravestones. You’re right, mother. You’re right father. You should never have left.”

Fifteen Things to Do With a Llama in New York City

1) Take it to Katz’s, ask for a plate of lettuce. When the guy behind the counter gets pissy offer to pay double and then order an egg cream and a pastrami sandwich. Don’t let the llama drink any of the egg cream. Gives ‘em the trots. Eat the sandwich. Assure the llama he doesn’t know anybody in the salamis behind the counter. Probably. Be convincing. Llamas hold a grudge.

2) Take him to the Central Park Zoo. Tell him he’d better behave on this trip or you’re gonna sell him to the petting zoo. Be ignored. Llamas don’t speak English, dummy. Buy him a pretzel and an I Heart New York shirt. Don’t make him wear it. He bites.

3) Stop gendering the llama. Maybe it’s a girl. Make the pronoun in the next several entries “she.” Buy the llama more lettuce so that it doesn’t get cranky.

4) Take her on the Staten Island Ferry, point out the Statue of Liberty and tell her all about Ellis Island and how people used to get to this country on steamships. Realize the llama still doesn’t give a shit because she still doesn’t speak English. More lettuce.

5) Stretch this list out because you titled it fifteen before you started running out of ideas.

6) Listen to the guys on the Staten Island Ferry talk about the llama.

“Is that a fuckin’ alpaca?”

“Nah, that’s a donkey.”

“It’s not a donkey. It’s a fuckin’ alpaca. My wife knits, bro. I should fuckin’ know.”

Inform them that it’s a llama. They’ll argue with you and tell you it’s a camel. Tell them it’s really an Afghan hound. They’ll ask you what their grandma’s old blankets have to do with the wild animal who has just stolen an old man’s cap and is running around the ferry with him in enraged, limping pursuit.

7) Get the hat back for the old man. Careful. The llama bites, remember? So does the old man.

8) Take the llama on a cab ride around New York City, tell her to pretend you’re both in a submarine and she’s the periscope. Tell her to watch out for Russian submarines. Tell her all the public buses are Russian submarines. Expect her to freak out about how big the Russian submarines are and how many are on the road with you, but remember the llama still doesn’t speak any English other than “snack.”

9) Take the llama to the Empire State building and suggest you visit the observation deck. Tell the llama the elevator is broken and you’ll have to take the stairs. The llama will snort and toss its head. You’re learning to speak llama. This is llama for “fuck you.” Wonder if the llama is learning to speak English.

10) Realize you’ve made a huge error when you see the police officers at the top of the deck. One of them shouts. Make a daring escape through the building, down stairs and elevators and service lifts, the llamas hooves clip-clopping on the linoleum floors.

11) The police are after you. Find one of them alone and command the llama to take the cop out. Have you ever seen a llama head butt a guy? A llama uses his whole neck and since its brain is about the size of a prematurely born walnut, there’s a lot of skull to hit with. Take off the cop’s vest and his gun. Strap the vest onto the llama. You don’t want your llama getting shot, do you? Keep the gun. You’re going to need it.

12) Storm the nearest bank. Tell people the llama is a camel and member of Al Qaeda and is thus not fucking around. As the people stream out of the bank, prepare to make your stand in the back. Try to pull the llama behind cover, but realize that even laying down, its head sticks up above the counter. Realize that you have a serious logistical problem and move the llama behind a pillar.

13) When the cops line up outside scream “You’ll never take me alive, pigs!” Poke the llama and get it to bray at them. That bray is llama for “Que nunca me toma vivo, puercos!” Perhaps the llama would understand you better if you spoke Spanish. Realize that in this era of globalization, there is no guarantee that the llama is from South America at all. Even if he is, he might only speak Quechua.

14) Scream at the llama, “Stay here, I’m gonna make my last stand!” The llama will say “Okay, bro.” In confusion as to whether the llama learned English or you learned llama, run out to confront the police in a hail of gunfire. Get shot.

15) As they’re loading what’s left of you on a stretcher to take you to Bellevue Hospital, overhear one cop say to another: “Is that a camel or what?”

“I think it’s an ostrich.”

Call out, “It’s a fucking, llama!” Expire in peace, your mission is completed.

Useless Words in Different Languages

He always passed the psych eval. Every year. Not just anybody got hired for this work. The month leading up to the test, he’d read the right books and go on a trip. Maybe stare at a dandelion in a field for an hour and listen to his breath rattle in his ears. He’d measure a square foot of turf and count every struggling blade of grass on it and give each one a name. So far, he’d named 4,435 blades of grass Jerry. There were fifty Jerries on his lawn, one for every square foot, and he’d begun to stare covetously at his neighbor’s yard.

He’d take his test. He’d go to work. Night shift at the button. Every night. 6pm to 6am. All was well. All would always be well. But there were times...

Seeing a therapist was out of the question and they’d know if you were dosing something that polished the edges. Any funny little white pills, any orange bottles with people named Dr. on the label, they’d know and that was it. He needed the job. Important job. So he stared at dandelions, he named grass, he learned how to say useless words in different languages. Floccinaucinihilipilification, in English, was the act of considering something unimportant.

A thermos of coffee, a packed lunch, a paperback book.

Walls of instruments, panels of buttons, carpet of industrial gray.

6pm, 7pm, 8pm, and on and on.

The red phone next to his hand rang and he snatched it with sweaty hands.

“Yes. All is clear.”

He hung up the phone and turned to stare at a pair of round red buttons. One marked “spin” and the other marked “stop.”

He sighed with his hand hovering over “stop.” It would be so easy, like watching you watch wind down at the speed of one hundred. He breathed in, he heard it rattled. There were fifty Jerries on his lawn. The dandelion flower is actually a tightly packed mass of many tiny florets, and each petal represents a single flower all of its own.

He pressed the button marked “spin,” exhaled and picked up his book to wait for the next call at 7pm.

Jay Loves Christine

“It’s a ship. I dunno. Same contract like any other.”

The roast was getting cold between them on the table, Jay’s beer was getting warm and there was no fire in any oven hotter than the one in Christine’s eyes.

“Jay, c’mon, baby, you been on building contracts before. People are talking.”

“Well, while they’re talking can I eat my dinner? Baby, I don’t know. How many ways I gotta say it? You want me to learn Chinese? Say it that way?”

The “it” Jay was building was just a set of ribs. It had taken months just to build the support cage in which the ship would grow and Jay, like every other guy with half a brain on the line, had to admit it was a little bigger than most. A man came by with a piece of paper and made everybody sign it, but that wasn’t gonna fly with Christine.

“Don’t talk at me like I’m stupid, Jay.”

“Christie, gorgeous, love of my life, it’s just a fuckin’ ship. Gonna haul enough macadamia nuts from down south to fill a whale’s nutsack.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“And you’re gorgeous.”

“Shut up.”

But she was smiling.

Picket lines formed outside the job site. People waved signs with slogans like “tell us the truth” and bible quotes. The crowds grew along with the ship.

“Baby, I got promoted.” He banged in through the door of the apartment with a six pack and flowers.

“Jay, I’m scared.”

“You’re scared? Baby, I got a promotion and you’re scared. C’mon. You gotta relax.” He gathered Christine in his arms and lay his cheek against her hair. She was shaking.

“What if what they’re saying is true?” Her voice was muffled by his jacket.

“C’mon. That’s fuckin’ crazy. I mean, I’m not reading all the shit you’re probably reading, but I’m there on the site and whatever they’re saying, it’s bullshit.”

“You telling me the truth?”

“Of course, Christie. You want a beer?”

Later in bed, staring at the unforgiving confessor that is the ceiling, Jay didn’t believe it either.

The doomsday whackjobs grew in strength and number. More police arrived with shields, facemasks and sticks. Forget his commute, it took Jay an hour for them just to cut a path through the Hare Krishnas.

His buddy Kostas shoved a pink rober with a harmonium out of his way. “Least they’re calmer than the biblethumpers.”

“They’re vegetarians.”

“Must be it.” Kostas stiff-armed a guy wearing a ‘Free Hugs’ shirt. “I swear, dude, you want the fuckin’ apocalypse? I’ll hook you up.”

Christine couldn’t talk about anything else, and with each moment the ship grew, Jay couldn’t figure out any new ways to deny it that didn’t make him sound like an idiot.

“I can’t believe you’re buying this shit!” He said.

“I can’t believe you’re just gonna sit there and tell me the sky’s green when it’s not, Jay. What’re you doing, baby?”

“I gotta work, Christine. I don’t know what else to do. They’re still collecting rent and charging for groceries.”

“They’re not telling us everything.”

“Baby, they never tell you everything. C’mon. It’s for fucking shipping. World’s getting smaller. Gotta haul more stuff, I dunno. Fuck you want me to do?”

Christine crossed her arms and shook her head. “You’re so blind, Jay.”

“I still see you pretty good, beautiful.”

“Shup up, Jay.”

But she was smiling.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Jay. You believe this rain?” Kostas put down his rivet gun for a second and wiped his hands.

“Careful with that.”

“Fuck off, Mr. Supervisor.”

Jay chuckled. Over the side of the main deck, the protesters were huddling in the torrential downpour, their signs turned to mush. They still yelled, but it was hard to make out words over the water screaming down out of the sky.

“It’s fuckin’ crazy alright.”

“You ever think...”

“Don’t fuckin’ start, Kos. You sound like Christie.”

Jay stepped away from the workmen and put his hand out under the rain. It had real weight. It wasn’t just falling out of the sky, it was being thrown down. With spite. He heard the end-of-shift whistle screech.

“The fuck’s that for? It’s only five!” He asked Kostas.

“Flood warning. We’re done for the day.”

“Alright. I’m right behind you.”

Jay slipped down below decks. The hallways were done in warm wood, velvet piping and gilt windows. He walked past dozens of private berths, down and down past deck after deck that pared away in opulence until the rooms were just iron stalls with single curtains. He stood in the belly of the ship, dwarfed by the engine. The god-engine the gearmonkeys called it, it was sort of a joke. Jay didn’t like the glint in their eyes when they said it. All these cages. Stout fixtures and floor to ceiling bars and fresh straw on the floors. Across the way cots were stacked for additional sleeping. He picked up a discarded welding torch and climbed to one of the maintenance catwalks near the ship’s massive ribs. With the sparking, snarling torch he wrote:

“Jay Loves Christine”

And drew a heart around it.

He put the torch down and thought for a minute before he added.

“Even if she drives...”

He stopped and drew a line through the last set of words.

“Nah. Nobody needs to know that.” He said and left the job site, through the sloshing rain and the night watchman’s box.

“You just getting done, Jay?”

“Yeah.”

“Ya’ll were supposed to be off the site an hour ago.”

“Had some things to check, relax, Frank.”

A line of trucks was turning the corner ahead. Moving trucks.

“What’s all this?”

“I can’t tell you, Jay.”

“You can’t tell me.”

Frank waved the line of trucks through. “Fact is, man, I got no fuckin’ idea what’s going on.”

Jay watched the trucks pass him and then we went home, sloshing through the pouring rain that didn’t seem like it was ever going to stop. He wondered if Christine had bought beer.

The Pirate Cat of Galata

Adnan stroked the cat’s mangled ear while it ate.

“What happened to you, eh, my little friend?”

The cat, in their manner, ignored Adnan and continued to eat. Adnan sat beside it on the small stool he put in front of his shop in the morning and drank a glass of tea and smoked a cigarette. When the cat had finished eating, it jumped into his lamp and curled up for a snooze.

“I know where you got the ear, my little friend. It was a fight over a girl, wasn’t it? Yes, isn’t it always with us men.” In truth, Adnan did not know the cat’s gender. The cat, in their manner, was rather private about this sort of thing.

“She had tiger’s stripes. I’ve seen her. She eats over at Çinar’s shop across the street. A good bride for a handsome fellow like you. Your claws and teeth flashed in the moonlight of that alley. Did you win her? I think you chased her other suitor off and then, hmmm. What did you do then?” He ran a gentle hand down the cat’s side and it opened one eye as if to warn him. “Then you sauntered off. Can’t have her thinking you fought just for her, can you?” Adnan chuckled and the cat grunted and hopped out of his lap and slunk around a corner.

“Oh, come now, my little friend. Don’t get offended!” Adnan called.

Adnan sold musical instruments that he made himself in a small shop on Galipdede Street. The street was narrow, wafting like wood smoke on its way down the steep hill from Istiklal Street toward the bridge across Bosporus blue. The tower rose above it all, and around its base were small cafes and teashops. In the evening young people gathered on the wide steps to play music and drink bottles of Efes. Their voices and cigarette smoke gathered around the base of the tower like mist. In the window of his shop Adnan’s precious, 13-stringed oudlar hung like ripe fruit.

He did not see the cat again for many days, but when it did return, winding around his legs and waiting with great patience for him to move his cigarette to his other hand so that it could butt against his fingers, it had a new pink scar along its side.

“What’s happened to you now? Let me see.” Adnan, because he was almost as clever as a cat, though that “almost” is still an insurmountable distance by miles, put a saucer of milk on a little table near his lap so the cat would be forced to sit there to eat. It suffered this indignity, in the manner of cats, with grace. “I know. You’ve been gone so long. You stowed away with pirates, didn’t you? Good treats of fresh fish when one lives among pirates. They love cats almost as much as shopkeepers do, it is known. There was a great battle on the deck of a rich plan’s pleasure boat and in a flashing storm you leapt in the middle of a sword fight and distracted his bodyguard. They paid you in mackerel, but you paid in flesh, didn’t you?”

The cat, in the manner of cats, did not confirm this.

“Very well, little one,” Adnan said, “Keep your secrets. Did you know that without at least one secret, a cat might lose his claws? It is true. All men know this.” The cat curled up in Adnan’s lap, unconcerned about its claws, its secrets, or men either. Years passed and Adnan wove another story for every one of the cat’s absences and for every new scar. The cat led an orphan thief to safety from the street market on the Galata side of the bridge as a man chased the boy with a rusty lawnmower blade. It fought with younger felines for primacy of the alley around the corner and the privilege of eating at Adnan’s shop, who kept the best food, as all men know. It crept into a rug shop near Sultanahmet and slipped into the lap of a young tourist from Australia. The merchant had remarked on how his precious cat allowed almost nobody to touch him, and the charmed young man bought two rugs instead of one. He would give one to his mother and strap the second to his ruck.

Years passed. Adnan got older and so did the cat. He was missing an eye, and he slunk with a hitch. A day came when he arrived and meowed to be lifted into Adnan’s lap instead of tricked, and there he sat the whole day, snoozing against the shopkeeper’s warmth. Adnan lost business that day because he would not disturb the cat. That night when he closed the shop, the cat did not leave and in the morning it curled itself into a comfortable patch of sunlight on the doorstep that seemed to shine just for it.

“Even the sun loves you, my little friend.” Adnan said and tested his tea glass with his fingers to make sure it was cool enough to drink.

“Welcome home.”

A pair of tourists passed, dangling guidebooks and cameras, and wearing boots meant for mountain climbing. A little blond girl swung between them and she stopped, tugging at their hands.

“Look at that lazy cat, mama.”

Adnan shook his head. “Lazy? This cat is the most interesting cat you will ever meet, dear.”

The girl’s eyes went wide and dragged her parents closer.

“Why? He looks like any old cat.” Her parents tugged at her, but she held fast and Adnan winked at her father and lowered his voice to a theatrical whisper.

“Let me tell you about the pirate cat of Galipdede Street.”