“Have a tough time rockin’ out with this,” Nick would say, flashing a wedding-ringed stump—the remnants of a circular saw mangling.

But no words of warning could stop Sam from joining the roofing crew. For one thing, he needed …

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Mom mumbled that Uncle Larry didn’t know how to take care of a kid, that it would be a long drive back to Detroit, and—at least five times—that he was “troubled.” I knew all that already, though what troubled him exactly was hard to say. At least no one said it when I was around. I was just glad she was letting me go with him. His car was full of crap he’d found on the road—bottles, car parts, clothes, magazines. Same reason Mom insisted on taking a cab all the way to LAX from the family reunion in Bakersfield. No way she was getting in that car.

A half hour after she left, me and Larry hit up a 7-11. Two jars of Skippy, three loaves of bread, a fistful of Slim Jims, gallon jugs of water, and a big green bottle of Squirt landed between us on the big bench seat. There was no room in back of the Buick.

There were a lot of things, normal things, Larry didn’t like. Interstates, hotels, gas stations—unless we needed gas. Because of that, we peed on the side of two-lane highways and slept in the car. Sometimes when we stopped, he’d pull out a camp shovel and dig stuff up. Rocks and little stuff in the dirt, I suppose. He never talked about them. By day two, I stopped asking.

On the third morning we were only about halfway through Utah. The sun was bright, but it was cold enough to see your breath. In the rearview, I saw Larry packing the shovel away along with his latest road treasures. I walked around back to take a look. The trunk of his ’71 LeSabre, even though it was a huge trunk, was already overflowing. It didn’t seem possible he could fit anything else.

“They’re all in here,” he said plainly.

It was just my uncle saying something weird. Nothing new there. But the words sounded far away, like they were echoing from deep in the trunk. I stepped away, saying I had to take a leak. I didn’t want to look anymore.

Once Larry got the trunk closed, he climbed in silently and drove us back down the gravel road toward the highway. When we got up to cruising speed, he clicked on the AM. I guess the FM was broken. There was only one station coming through, a religious show with a preacher who sounded like he’d been recorded a hundred years ago. The corny sermon he gave was full of old English words like “thee,” “thy,” and “brethren.” Larry finally turned it off and said,

“Let’s sing a Jimbo.”

Jimbo Bingham was Larry’s favorite songwriter. He was mine too, though I didn’t know much about songwriters at thirteen.

“Gimme Back My Gator, recorded 1968 for Reconditty Records. Best album ever made. You know, ol’ Jimbo was from Harlan County, K-Y, like me and yer Mama,” Larry told me for about the millionth time.

Though I had never heard the actual record, I’d been listening to my uncle play those songs on guitar since I was a baby. So many times, I knew exactly what the record sounded like.

“Can we get from here to there… without going there?” I sang along with Larry, driving down a desolate Utah highway.

“Here to There”—side A, track one.

I had to grab the wheel during the solo so Larry could play air guitar. Funny enough, a church bus passed in the opposite direction while he was rocking out. The look on their faces, scrunching and gawking like that, made us belly laugh for at least ten minutes straight. When we finally caught our breath, we sang the next four songs in a row—“Smoky Came Around,” “Gimme Back My Gator,” “Back Door Frontman,” and “Last Bubble in My Beer.” At the end of side A, I made a hissing noise, like the needle skipping in the runout groove, and pretend-flipped the record over. We did all five songs from side B after that.

By the time we finished singing “the Jimbo’s,” we had crossed the Colorado border. I tried the radio again and found some rock ‘n roll.

“How come they don’t play Jimbo on the radio?” I asked.

“Ol’ Jimbo fell through the cracks, son,” was all Larry said.

Four days later, when we got to Detroit, Larry moved into our basement. I was happy to have him there. I’m not sure how Mom felt, except that she was stern about him not bringing junk in the house.

I started ninth grade that year, but my real education came from Larry. Every day after school, I went straight home, straight down to the basement, to spend time with him and his guitar. I followed best I could while Larry ran through every chord, riff, and run of the Jimbo’s. When I messed up, which was always, he straightened me out hard. Mean mugs and reprimands. The way he was teaching, you’d have thought my life depended on learning those songs.

One afternoon when I came home, Larry’s LeSabre was gone from the curb. Where it used to be was just a puddle of transmission fluid, reddish-brown like drying blood. I ran to the basement. His old, off-brand guitar was laid out on the couch where we always practiced. Next to it was a sixty-minute cassette of Larry playing the Gimme Back My Gator album. A note stuck to it said, “They’re all in here.”

I was mad at Mom, figuring she had kicked him out. Not that we talked much anyway, but after Larry left, I really kept my distance.

A sheriff called a few weeks later. He said the LeSabre had been located off the side of 61 Highway near Issaquena, Mississippi. When they dropped it at the tow yard, they found Larry’s body in the backseat, buried under a pile of garbage. Mom wasn’t surprised. I was devastated.

Took about a month for me to set foot in the basement again. It was hard at first, listening to Larry’s voice on that tape. But sitting down there with his guitar, playing along, was almost like he was still teaching me.

There was one place on the recording, though, where for about thirty seconds the music faded out in a weird way, like Larry’s voice and guitar broke up and scattered into little pieces. I popped out the cassette and scrolled the tape carefully. There were no chewed-up or crinkly spots that I could find, no explanation for the audio dropout. When I popped it in for another play, the same weird fadeout happened, but something else happened too. Other noises, really creepy ones, came through where Larry should’ve been. I played it again and again. The dropout was the same, but the noises after were a little different each time. Sometimes kind of gloopy, like a thing getting pulled out of the mud. Or screechy, like the sound of a hurt animal. Other times it would go totally silent. But not ordinary silent. It was like all the sound had been sucked out of the living room and swallowed by that little tape recorder. I know it’s strange to say, but in those moments, I thought Larry was communicating from the other side. It bugged me out. Of course, I kept practicing with the tape. But as the days and week went on, whenever I came to that dropout spot, I’d fast-forward real quick, like a kid running past a haunted house.

In any case, with the help of the cassette I got better at playing. But I didn’t want to rely on my uncle’s licks alone. I looked everywhere, from record stores to libraries, searching out Jimbo Bingham’s music. Not one person I met had ever heard of him. I figured Gimme Back My Gator must be a super rare record, which made me feel special to know about it. But then another thought crept in—what if Larry made the whole thing up? I finally asked Mom about it. She said she’d seen the record years before, or at least she thought she had.

“Dig around the stereo some,” she said, probably hoping I’d catch onto something else.

I’d been through Mom’s collection plenty. She had some decent rock ‘n roll and blues, but it was the Jimbo’s that always got me going. Gimme Back My Gator really was the greatest album ever made, even if it was only my uncle playing on a homemade cassette.

Ignoring homework, chores, and everything else, I practiced with Larry’s tape five or more hours a day. Mom seesawed between anger and worry. She couldn’t believe it when I graduated high school.

By the time I turned eighteen, I thought I was a real guitar wizard. I played open-mics here and there. Did some busking too. Everywhere I went, people said they loved my songs. Though I felt funny about it, I never told anyone who the real author was—because in a way, they were my songs. I’d spent years learning them. I knew them inside out. I knew them better than anyone. Anyone except Uncle Larry, of course.

As I became better known around the open-mic circuit, bar and cafe owners started offering me paid gigs. Mom couldn’t believe I was “turning a buck with that busted ol’ box.” I hated the way she said that. Soon as I could afford to, I moved out of her basement.

Other musicians always wanted to jam with me, so it was no problem putting a solid band together. Knowing already how the bass, drums, and lead guitar should sound on the Jimbo’s, I showed the guys which notes and rhythms to play. They thought I was a control freak at first, but hearing the songs played live, fleshed out like that, was amazing for everyone. I recorded them onto cassette, made copies, and spread them around the local clubs. In no time we were headlining the best spots in Detroit.

Our notoriety in the local scene grew so fast, it was no surprise to anyone when the record deal came. I knew exactly which songs to record and what order they’d be in before we set foot in the studio. It was easy enough to figure out the title, too: Gimme Back My Gator by Jimbo Bingham.

I kept the five-thousand-dollar record advance for myself—they were my songs after all—and considered how best to spend it. Though it wasn’t enough to buy a new car, it just so happened there was a mint-condition ’71 LeSabre sitting in a lot down the street from my apartment. It drove super smooth and the FM worked. I bought it that day.

The label had good publicity and radio coverage for us ahead of a national tour. They put together everything—a van, a tour manager, hotels. Even weekly “per diems.” We were stoked to be hitting the road.

The first couple shows, warm-up shows, were in college towns. They had decent attendance and went off well enough, but by the third one, Chicago, the crowd was way bigger. There were a lot more people backstage when we finished, too. Of course, I got most of the attention. When the guys acted annoyed, I reminded them we were billed as “Jimbo Bingham,” not “such and such band” or “Jimbo and the blah-blahs.” Nobody really cared who was on bass, drums, or lead guitar.

We had a day off between Chicago and Cleveland, so I asked the tour manager to drive us back to Detroit. He tried talking me out of it, saying the label’d already paid for two nights’ stay at our Chicago hotel. I said, “see you in the van.” He got the picture.

Six hours later, when we pulled up at my place, I let the guys know I’d be driving myself the rest of the tour. Though no one dared say it, they were happy to be rid of me. I couldn’t wait to slide behind the wheel of my LeSabre.

Next morning, on the way to Cleveland, I saw something shiny by the side of the road. To the ordinary eye it might’ve appeared as a simple hubcap, which it was, but to me it was so much more. It’s hard to explain, but I had to have it. I pulled over and popped the trunk. As I retrieved my treasure, cars wizzed by like there was no tomorrow. Some leaned on their horns. I decided to stay off Interstates from then on. Driving away, I felt a sense of security, knowing the hubcap was back there traveling with me.

When I got to the Cleveland show, I was amazed to see a line around the block. The marquee said: TONIGHT - JIMBO BINGHAM - SOLD OUT.

I signed autographs and shook hands on the way in. Soundcheck went smooth as silk. The way everything was falling into place made me think of my lucky hubcap. At showtime, people were pushed right up against the stage, all smiles and “right on”s. The drummer kicked us off—side A, track one, “Here to There.” By the jaws working in front of us, it seemed the whole place knew my lyrics. They were on fire, dancing, waving arms. I worked the crowd on clap-alongs and sing-alongs. They got their money’s worth, you can believe that.

Afterward, the band settled together in a corner of the room while I navigated the backstage crowd. I realized then it would be better if I had my own greenroom, separate from the other guys. I told the tour manager. He said he’d take care of it.

The next days went by in a blur. Autographs, soundchecks, front-of-stage crowds, backstage crowds, liquor, hotels. What I remember best are the drives between gigs. In the mornings, after checkout, I couldn’t wait to get back in the LeSabre. I’d click on the FM and flip around the dial, listening for my songs as I drove. Though the label assured me we were getting plenty of airplay, I never did hear myself on the radio. Seemed the only thing I could pick up were corny religious shows or crackly static. The FM didn’t work so hot after all. The best part of the drives, of course, was hunting along the roadside. Between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, I found a rusty framing hammer. Pittsburgh to NYC: a kid’s t-shirt, pink with a heart on it. NYC to Philly: a half-deflated basketball. Philly to Baltimore: a broken vinyl record. And so it went.

In the beginning, I limited myself to one road find a day. But it got away from me pretty quick. I don’t know how to put it except to say each item I found needed to be with me, needed to be with the others, too. By the time I hit the Tennessee border, the LeSabre’s trunk was full.

In Knoxville, we played to another packed house. I’ll admit, by that point it was just another night, just another show. Same stage, same songs, even the faces singing along looked the same. But there was one thing about that night I’ll never forget. At the end of our last number, I glanced down at the setlist, trying to decide on an encore. A small piece of paper sat at the edge of my mic stand. I picked it up, figuring it for a request. When I opened the note, there was a song title alright: “Closer to the Truth”—side B, track five. It was the only number from Gimme Back My Gator that didn’t make it onto my album. The label said it was too much of a downer, that it didn’t fit with the rest of the material. I disagreed but didn’t push it.

The thing is, other than the band and the record label, nobody knew about that song. I dropped the paper and peered out at the audience, afraid someone had pegged me as an impostor. The eyes staring back seemed to narrow, squeezing me into something small. I waved the guys offstage without an encore.

Our label rep had been waiting in the wings. He steered me toward the greenroom, blathering about a new Jimbo album that was to be made soon as the tour ended. Words flew out of his mouth so fast I could barely keep up—flights to L.A., a luxury pad near the beach, a hotshot producer. To top it all off, he said, they were going to cut me another check—for ten grand this time.

When I didn’t reply, he reminded me that I had signed a three-record deal, which had to be fulfilled within two years. I smiled best I could.

“You’re gonna be massive, Jimbo!” he said, pumping my hand.

When the rep walked out, I stood staring at the graffiti-covered room, still thinking about the weird note onstage. Best I could figure, it was the label guy’s idea of a joke. What wasn’t a joke was the two albums of original music I owed. I didn’t have time to give it much thought, though. As per usual, people came piling in, handing me drinks, talking my ear off. After knocking back a few, I put it all out of my head.

The next night in Nashville was the biggest yet. We must’ve put on one hell of a show, because at the end, a thousand people were chanting my name—”Jimbo, Jimbo”—all in unison. I strolled up to the mic, ready to start the encore when I saw another scrap of paper at my feet. I bent down anxiously. There was only one word this time: Closer.

Panic-stricken, I ran offstage and hid in a bathroom. There were no stories I could tell myself, nothing that made it better. I was trapped.

When I finally came out, the tour manager was right there, waiting for me. I said it was stomach cramps. He knew there was more to it. I took the two Valium and the beer he offered.

I left the venue and started walking, scoping the street for collectibles, special things to put in the LeSabre. When I passed a payphone, I had the sudden thought to call Mom. It rang a while, but she finally picked up. I talked fast, telling her I was having a hard time. She stayed quiet at first. I figured she was mad since I’d been out of touch so long.

“Larry? Is that you?” she said.

I said, “Mom, it’s me, Jimbo.”

The line got real crackly then. It sounded like she said, “Sorry you have the wrong number.”

With the connection being so bad, it seemed best to try some other time.

The next day, in Memphis, I asked for more Valium. The tour manager said he had some “pain medicine,” too. I took the pills along with several stiff drinks. By showtime, I was more than loose. Seemed like the audience was as stoned as I was. They laughed at my jokes and stage antics and didn’t seem to care when I played songs in the wrong tempo or out of tune. Toward the end of our set, I dropped my guitar pick. The old wooden floorboards were so dark with grime I couldn’t spot it anywhere. I was about to ask the lead guitarist for one of his when something strange caught my eye. At first I thought it was an optical illusion, something to do with the stage lights. But when I bent down, I definitely saw an object, a sliver of paper, emerging from between the boards. I jumped away, bumping into the drums and cymbals. I almost knocked over my amp, too. The band hit the beat real heavy, thinking I was doing another of my theatrics. When I glanced back, the paper wasn’t moving anymore.

I didn’t panic that time, probably because of the drugs. There was no point in reading the note. I strummed the intro to “Closer to the Truth” and stepped toward the mic. The band looked confused at first but jumped in after a few bars. About halfway through, I could hear people crying in the audience. Wailing, really. The venue was near-empty by the time we finished. I guess the record label was right; the song really was too much of a downer. Afterward, I grabbed all the backstage booze I could carry and drank in the LeSabre ’til I passed out. I couldn’t’ve handled another night in a hotel anyway.

Our show the next day was in Jackson, Mississippi. I took old 61 Highway all the way down, keeping eyes peeled for road finds as I moseyed along. Just after a town called Rolling Fork, I found a quart-sized bottle lying in the gravel. It was a faded green, like old money or a sailor’s tattoos. The kind of bottle meant to have a note inside, floating down a river. A strong whoosh—more vacuum cleaner than ocean sound—came as I held it to my ear. There was no room left in the LeSabre’s trunk or backseat. I set it on the pile next to me and drove off.

Arriving at the venue, I could hear the guys partying. There was plenty of booze in my room, too, but I had something else on my mind. I walked straight to the stage, got down on hands and knees, and investigated the gaps between the big wooden planks. Everything looked normal. Just another dumpy venue with a disgruntled sound guy pulling cables and yelling at people.

I hit the booze and pills hard so after soundcheck, I was weaving by showtime. We were late getting to stage. The crowd was thin, way thinner than usual, but loud as all get out, busy yapping through every song. It threw the band off for sure. I didn’t care anymore. I stared at the floor the whole show, avoiding eye contact with the audience, waiting and watching for the note.

At some point, I heard the tour manager shouting my name from the wings. He waved me over, saying the promoters had somehow double-booked the venue, that we had to get offstage right away. Behind him, impatiently waiting with their gear, were a group of rocker dudes decked in overblown hairdos. I staggered back to the mic and announced we were playing our last song.

“About time!” Someone yelled from the audience.

As the crowd’s laughter died down, the band met eyes for a moment. Amazingly, we started “Closer” in perfect unison. It was the only song we played well all night.

There was no applause at the end. No boos either. Nothing at all to indicate that we’d been standing on a stage doing our best to entertain a group of ungrateful customers for nearly an hour. Completely humiliated, I faced away from the crowd and crouched down to pack my gear. I glanced around at the guys—the bass player, drummer, and lead guitarist—looking for empathy, support, a little camaraderie at least. But in that moment, as I searched their faces, I realized I didn’t recognize them. I couldn’t even think what their names were. It suddenly dawned on me that I’d never known them at all.

There was an eerie silence then, like the dropout spot on Larry’s cassette. After a minute, I heard, “Hey you, hurry up!”

I packed my cables, pedals, and guitar quick as I could and then reached over to unplug my amp. As I yanked the cord from the socket, there was a sudden, strong pull like being sucked down a drain. Down and down until there was no stage, no band, no audience. No light either, other than a tiny shaft shining through a crack above my head.

And that’s how it’s been ever since.

If you’re up there reading this, if these notes made it through, I have so much more to share with you. More than I can fit on a scrap of paper.

I know what you’re thinking, and yeah, I made some bad choices, collected the wrong things. But you don’t have to go through all that. What I’m getting at, what I’m trying to explain to you, is about the songs. They’re like nothing you’ve ever heard before. And the thing is, they can be yours. Every one of them. They’re all in here. All you have to do is look down. See the cracks? Yeah, that’s it. Keep coming. You’re almost there. Now just bring your ear a little closer…

“Check this, dude. There’s a women’s rehab by my place… DOWN, Ralph-O! They’re always looking for free clothes.”

The box of women’s V-necks sitting on my table — Dean’s idea, my money — seemed to grow larger the longer I stared. They weren’t nearly as costly as other music-related investments I’d made: the recording sessions I’d paid for a year earlier, the pallet of unsold CDs stacked in my basement, the flat-tired tour van sitting at the curb, or, worst of all, the loan bills coming from the college I dropped out of to become a full-time musician. But the shirts were just plain stupid.

When Dean said, “we gotta make women’s shirts,” I went along with it, knowing good and well women never showed up at our shows. But Dean was a great drummer, maybe the best in Chicago. I needed at least one solid player in the band.

I reached over and pulled one of the neatly folded tees off the top. No one had considered the problem. Not me, not Dean, not the silk screener who printed them, and definitely not the bass player and keyboardist who didn’t give a crap about anything other than getting paid.

The problem was that the deep V design, meant to flash maximum boob, ended up cutting the band logo in half. So instead of showing the image I paid for—a man in a children’s party hat sitting on a ledge—it was just a pair of legs dangling over a line, like the bottom half of Humpty Dumpty or Kilroy in reverse. The only thing fully legible was the band name, “Bridge Jumpers,” with the words stamped on either side of the big V-neck.

“Think about it… STOP RALPH-O!” Dean yelled again. “A house full of chicks promoting us everywhere they go.”

Where would they go? I thought. Court? Twelve-step groups? It was just like Dean. Perfect Dean. A dumb idea mixed with a way to prey on wounded women. I almost wanted to commend him for being so much himself.

“You should leave them alone, man,” I said.

“Dude. I wouldn’t even. Those chicks? I’m just saying. It’s a win-win.”

When I hesitated, Dean threw in something about another band he played with and how great they were doing. He knew how to get to me.

Soon as we hung up, I got the tire fixed on the van and dropped the shirts by his place. I felt funny about it for sure, but it was a relief having that big box out of my cramped apartment.

A week later, on the way to my job at the box fan factory, I saw a woman at a bus stop wearing one of the V-necks. I did a double-take. It was exciting to see the words Bridge and Jumpers popping off her chest. The logo didn’t look so bad anymore, either. When I heard honking and yelling behind me, I put my eyes back on the road and drove off. I was embarrassed. Not just for staring at the woman’s boobs, but for turning away when she smiled.

Though I only saw her for a minute, she didn’t seem like a druggie to me. Her skin was smooth, and her hair looked salon-styled. She was well put together in every way. It’s true she was waiting on a bus, but maybe her car was in the shop. It was hard to imagine her as a recovery house resident.

I drove by the same bus stop on my way to work every day, but never saw her again. After a week or so, I stopped by Dean’s place on the pretense of having a band meeting.

“So, we’ve got that big show next week at Wayward Wayne’s, opening for Side Fries.”

“We’re opening for the opener, dude. GET OFF HIM, Ralph-O!” Dean yelled.

Ralph-O licked my work boots and then my hand. It was gross. I continued, “Yeah, but there’s a label guy coming to see us.”

“A label guy?” Dean asked skeptically.

“I mean, yeah…he said he might come. It’s a newer indie label with an office on North Avenue. Hit Bottom Records. Their roster’s amazing. We should get together this weekend, tighten up the songs…”

Dean agreed to a rehearsal only after I promised beer and pizza. On the way out, I asked if he’d seen any recovery house women wearing our V-necks.

“Once or twice,” he said, smiling.

“You give the shirts to anyone else, like non-rehab chicks?” I asked.

“Man, I’m busy now,” he snipped, flipping on the TV and patting for Ralph-O to jump on his lap.

It was best not to push it with Dean. Though he let me call him “my drummer” at gigs, Dean made it clear every chance he got that he wasn’t a devoted Bridge Jumper. I went the extra mile for him anyway. With Dean in the band, I knew we’d get a record deal sooner or later. It was just a matter of persistence.

When our show at Wayward Wayne’s came around, I offered to pick everyone up in the van, thinking it would be good for team spirit, like being on tour, but they drove themselves instead. Inside the club, there were a lot of musicians standing around with their gear, trying to look cool. It turned out there were four bands on the bill instead of three. A note by the stage said Bridge Jumpers was up first. Side Fries were a popular act. I guess everyone wanted to share the stage with them. Problem was, their fans wouldn’t be coming early enough to see the first of four bands, to see our band. I was pissed.

Soon as my band showed, the soundman hustled us on stage and told us to start playing. There was no one around except other musicians and their girlfriends. The label guy was for sure not there. I told the soundman we needed a little more time.

“We’ve got a schedule to keep. Don’t play more than twenty-five minutes,” he said dismissively.

I argued that we were promised a forty-five-minute set, that we were supposed to be third on the bill, and that we needed a soundcheck. In the middle of my rant, just behind him, I suddenly saw her.

People usually look better in dark bars than they do in broad daylight. She didn’t. Even from the stage, I could see how haggard she was. Disheveled hair, bruises, a missing tooth. She was wearing the V-neck, or maybe I should say, was still wearing the V-neck. It was torn and dirty like she hadn’t taken it off since I’d seen her at the bus stop.

The sound guy stormed offstage, saying we had five minutes to start or we weren’t playing. I ignored him and walked toward the bar like I was going to order a drink.

“I’m with the band,” I heard her shout at the bartender.

“Yeah? Which one?” He asked, mockingly.

“Him,” she said, pointing a chipped fingernail at me.

The bartender raised an eyebrow in my direction. She was wearing our shirt. What could I do?

“We get free drinks, right?” I asked.

“Drink tickets. Two each. She’s already had three.”

I gathered tickets from the other guys, everyone but Dean, that is, and covered her tab.

“Sheila,” she said, offering a hand while slurping cocktail dregs through a red bar straw.

“I’ve only got one ticket left,” I said, embarrassedly.

“You’re cute. What’s your name?”

“Tim,” I muttered, “Nice shirt.”

“I love you guys. I’m your biggest fan,” she said, snatching the last ticket from my hand, waving it at the bartender.

I racked my brain, wondering where she might’ve seen us before. No sooner had the bartender arrived with the drink than Sheila tossed it back.

“You get high, Tim?” She whispered close.

Her breath was heavy with alcohol, cigarettes, and something like a dead mouse doused in bleach. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing.

“I do…get high. Sometimes.”

Sheila wheeled off her stool and dragged me toward the rear exit. I looked back at the stage. The guys were taking their places.

***

Two nights later, when I finally got home, there were several messages on my machine. The first was from Ronnie, the keyboard player. He said getting stage fright was understandable, given how many people had shown up for our set. Then he bragged about doing lead vocals in my place and how much everyone loved it. He finished by saying my amp and guitar were at his house, and I could get them whenever. The next message was from the bass player, George. He said he hoped I was ok, and then he went on about what a killer set they’d played and that a label guy bought them drinks afterward. The last message was a long, rambling one from Dean. I was too hungover to follow everything he said—until he got to the part about Bridge Jumpers being signed to Hit Bottom Records. When I heard that, I ran to the bathroom and threw up. Looking in the mirror, I saw my shirt caked with blood and ink. Slowly, painfully, I separated Hanes cotton from crusty flesh until my chest was in full view. The words Bridge and Jumpers scrawled below my nipples, along with two legs dangling over a ledge etched across my sternum, caused an involuntary laugh to burst from my mouth. It was the half-band logo, exactly the way it appeared on the V-necks. There was even a big V scratched into my skin where the neck hole would be. As I studied the strange display, laughter morphed into sobs, then into uncontrollable wails. I turned the shower on full blast and stepped in. That calmed me down a bit.

I don’t usually pee in the tub, but I had to go pretty bad—no doubt from all the cheap booze I drank with Sheila. As it streamed out, I realized it was painful. I looked down and saw that my penis was red and raw. There was a tinge of blood in my urine, too. Panic-stricken, I turned the water off and inspected myself. It looked like someone had taken a cheese grater to my privates. The word cheese sparked a memory. It was something Sheila had repeated toward the end of our time together:

“Gotta score some cheese to come down from this shit.”

Thinking of Sheila brought the whole thing back. Her glass pipe in my mouth, the first hit filling my lungs, me clutching my ribs, sure I was having a heart attack in Wayward Wayne’s parking lot, her laughing and unzipping my pants. And then, us doing it right there, right up against a greasy dumpster.

As we finished our alley sex, I pulled out and orgasmed on the asphalt. Sheila started crying then. I thought I’d done something terrible. She said she needed money right away. I said I’d do anything to help. We jumped in the van and found an ATM down the street. I was so wrapped up in Sheila, I lost track of everything else.

Our next stop was a dilapidated frame house near the Chicago River. She knocked three times on a tinfoiled window around back. A skinny biker dude named ‘Rilla let us in. “Short for Go Go Gorilla,” she said. Sheila exchanged my money for a bag of jagged white slivers. We smoked some with ‘Rilla, smoked some more in his backyard, and then went on a liquor run.

Once we were stocked with booze, Sheila took me to the Lathrop Homes housing projects. It was a rough-looking place, but I didn’t judge. I asked how long she’d been living there and if she had any roommates.

“Nobody lives where we’re going,” she laughed.

We came to a door with a green spade spray-painted on it. Sheila jimmied the lock with my debit card and got us inside quickly. The words “Insane Deuces” were graffitied on the walls along with pictures of pitchforks, upside-down crosses, and more spades. Sheila said this part of the projects was “Deuce ‘hood.” By the way she said it, I got the impression the Deuces were her friends. Broken electronics, bike parts, and other junk were piled up all around. In a corner of the main room was a twin mattress covered in dried blood and grime. We had sex on it soon as we got in the door. I don’t know why, but it felt good adding my stains, our stains, to the filthy bed. We smoked more drugs, had more sex, and talked a lot, though mostly it was Sheila talking.

When she got tired of being indoors, we went out and wandered nearby alleyways. They were full of treasures other people couldn’t see, she said. We brought the best ones back and added them to the already-packed apartment.

For the next forty-eight hours, we were on a cycle of ATM withdrawals, drug scores, sexual interludes, and dumpster dives until my bank account and semen both ran dry. Before it was all over, ‘Rilla tattooed my chest and told me I was a “solid bro.”

“Gonna call you Bro-lid for short,” he said.

We partied at ‘Rilla’s until he crawled under the kitchen table mumbling about ‘copters, cameras, and the CIA. I was worried about him, and the surveillance too, but Sheila dragged me out of there, saying we needed to come down, we needed some cheese. Some black dudes outside the projects were selling white powder wrapped in tinfoil. We bought some with the last of my cash.

The next thing I knew, I was lying on a sleeping bag near the Chicago River. Sheila was gone. My wallet and van were too. It was a long walk home.

I collapsed in bed after the shower, telling myself everything would be ok. Bridge Jumpers had, after all, signed a record deal. And Sheila liked me. She even called me her “boyfriend.”

When I woke up twelve hours later, I replayed the messages. That’s when I heard the rest of what Dean had to say. The first part was a long rant about his “great promotional plan,” which, he said, was how Bridge Jumpers got signed to Hit Bottom Records. Apparently, all the recovery house women had shown up sporting our V-necks. Dean implied that one of them had hooked up with the label guy after the show. He went on to say that Hit Bottom was specifically looking for a power trio and that Bridge Jumpers was a perfect fit. “Trio,” he repeated.

“It’s outta my hands, dude. You’re outta the band.”

After a couple hours staring at the ceiling, I went out looking for my van. It took all day, but in the end, I found it a block from ‘Rilla’s place, full of Sheila’s dumpster stuff. After emptying it out, I drove by Ronnie’s to pick up my music gear. Neither he nor his girlfriend would look me in the eye. No surprise there.

Then I drove by Dean’s. I could hear Ralph-O barking inside, but Dean wouldn’t answer. I drew a message on the hood of his filthy car. It was short and to the point: My band A-HOLE.

From there, I went to Hit Bottom’s office in Wicker Park. Their logo—a hand slapping a woman’s butt with music notes popping off it—was decaled to the door. Inside was a guy with bleach-tipped hair, jamming out to The Smashing Pumpkins while he typed on a computer.

“I heard you signed my band, Bridge Jumpers,” I said matter-of-factly.

The label guy let out a sigh. It was clear he knew who I was.

“I signed the band I saw at Wayward Wayne’s. Dean’s band. I don’t see how you fit into the picture…”

He was just like Dean. A perfect match. Two peas in a shit-pod.

***

I picked up more hours at the factory to replenish my bank account and take my mind off things. Every day on the way to work, I passed the bus stop where I’d first seen Sheila wearing the V-neck. Of course, she was never there. I thought about her a lot. Not only because the most exciting two days of my entire life had been spent with her, but also because of the extreme pain in my penis.

When it became unbearable to pee, I went to a local free clinic. A woman doctor—they were all women there— wanted to stick a giant Q-tip up my urethra. I didn’t believe it would fit. She jammed it in before I could protest.

A few days later, when my tests came back positive for chlamydia, I tried to be mad at Sheila, to disown her memory. But we still shared something, even if it was just a bacterial infection. That was meaningful to me. The doctor said I should let all my sex partners know right away. Sheila was the only sex partner I’d had since leaving college two years earlier. Finding her was the responsible thing to do.

Though I didn’t want to talk to him, I called Dean, figuring he might know of her whereabouts. Surprisingly, he picked up on the first ring.

“S’up dude?” He asked like nothing had gone down between us.

“I’m calling about this girl, Sheila. She came to Wayward Wayne’s…”

“Don’t know any Sheila’s, dude. Hey, wanna sell your van? I got a big tour coming up…”

That was Dean. Perfect Dean. He wasn’t content just to rip your heart out. He wanted to eat it right in front of you, too. Hell no, he wasn’t getting my van. For one thing, I needed it to find Sheila.

Retracing our steps, I drove to the Lathrop Homes. I walked around and around the sprawling brick buildings, but they all looked the same. That’s Chicago housing projects for you. The only identifying characteristics I could make out were the occasional gang graffitis spray-painted here and there. Following the Insane Deuces’ tags like a breadcrumb trail, I eventually came to the door with the big green spade on it. Excitedly, I jimmied the lock with my new debit card, same way Sheila had done. Inside, I found a man and woman sitting naked on the dirty twin mattress, on top of our stains. The couple turned from their pipes and scrunched their beady eyes at me like trapped rats. When I asked about Sheila, the woman yelled,

“You can’t come in here without a warrant!”

It was strange being mistaken for a cop, but I went for it.

“No one gets arrested… if you tell me where Sheila is.”

The man looked me over menacingly. “You’re not five-O,” he growled.

“Beat his ass, Johnny,” the woman commanded, throwing an empty beer can at me.

I ran out of the building quick as I could. When I realized the guy wasn’t chasing me, I paced along the Chicago River, considering my next move. I already knew where to look next.

When I got there, ‘Rilla was in the backyard benching weights with a couple of burly bikers.

One of them came at me, hollering, “The fuck you want, creep?”

“It’s cool,” ‘Rilla said. “How’s the chest, Bro-lid?”

’Rilla, it seemed, was the only person in my life who cared how I was doing. I pulled up my shirt and showed him. The pus-filled tattoo was a perfect match for my state of mind. The bikers nodded in appreciation.

“Some of my finest right there,” ‘Rilla said proudly.

But he hadn’t seen Sheila.

“Maybe she went and got clean again,” he laughed. “Check Salvation Army.”

When I thanked ‘Rilla for the information, he fist-bumped me and asked if I needed something “to get me going.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d never done drugs before Sheila. As I walked off, I heard him repeating that I was a solid bro, his “Bro-lid”, and that I was welcome at his place anytime. A small comfort, but a comfort just the same.

I found the Salvation Army drug treatment center on Clybourn Avenue, just a few blocks away. Not knowing Sheila’s last name, I gave a description to a man at the front desk.

“She might be wearing a Bridge Jumpers’ shirt,” I said.

“What’re you saying, she’s suicidal?” The man asked.

I’d never thought of Bridge Jumpers that way before. For me, it was about fun times and good memories. In DeKalb, when I was a kid, me and my friends would jump off this one low train bridge into the Kishwaukee River. Everyone did it on their birthday. It was a tradition. I tried explaining that to the Salvation Army guy, but he waved me off, saying they didn’t give out info on “program residents.”

At home, I compiled a list of every drug treatment place in town, same as I’d done previously with music venues and record labels. Each day, I drove by one on the way to work and one on the way back. After a couple weeks, having driven past them all and still no sign of her, I started back at the beginning again. And that’s when I found her, strutting down the street, right around the corner from the Salvation Army. Amazingly, Sheila looked like she did the first time I saw her: clean skin, salon hair, well put together in every way.

“Oh god… you look like shit,” she said when I pulled up next to her in the van. “I don’t hang out with users anymore. Stay away from me, ok?”

It’s true I was overworked and stressed out, but I didn’t think I looked like shit. I parked and caught up with her, explaining that I hadn’t used drugs since I’d seen her last. She turned, looked me dead in the eye, and said, “Yeah, what’s your sobriety date?”

Not knowing what that meant, I imagined going someplace nice with her, like a museum or a park— a date without drugs and alcohol. I was still thinking about it when she raised her voice and snapped, “That’s what I mean. Lowlifes like you don’t know shit about sobriety. Buzz off, tweaker.”

Before I could say anything more, Sheila’s recovery crew came thundering out of the rehab and bullied me back to the van. There was no way I could tell her about the chlamydia, or the new junkies on our bed, or how much she was on my mind. Not in front of all those people.

I passed ‘Rilla’s street on my way home. Considering he was my only friend, I decided to stop by. When I didn’t find him around back, I knocked on his tinfoil-covered window three times, like Sheila had done. I could hear whispering inside.

“It’s me… Bro-lid,” I said.

There were some shuffling sounds and floorboard squeaks. The door suddenly cracked open an inch. It was ‘Rilla’s eyeball.

“You seen ‘em?” He whispered.

“Helicopters?” I asked.

The eyeball nodded.

“Not so much,” I said.

“Better be straight,” ‘Rilla gritted through his dozen or so teeth.

“Maybe a couple. Kind of far off though,” I said, not wanting to be disagreeable.

In a second flat, ‘Rilla’s skinny arm was through the door, yanking me inside. He hustled me to the kitchen. The two bikers I’d seen before were under his table, shaking and grinding their teeth. ‘Rilla pointed at his ear and then at the guys. I understood. The helicopters couldn’t hear us under there.

Once we were all safely below the table, I nodded hello to the guys and told ‘Rilla I wanted something to get me going.

“Bro-lid,” he said, pointing to my chest.

I took off my shirt to show him the tattoo. He closed his eyes and ran his fingers over the scabs like a braille reader. It seemed to relax him. It kind of relaxed me, too.

After selling me a little baggie of translucent crystals, ‘Rilla pulled out two cigarette lighters, naming their colors, “green…red,” as he handed them to me. Sticking my cash down his pants, he gave a go sign and ran with me to the back door.

I found an aluminum can in a nearby alley and poked holes in its side like I’d seen college kids do for toking weed. Lighting up all the slivers at once, I sucked through the mouth hole, breathing in whatever I could as the dribbly mess melted inside the can. When it got too hot to hold onto, I dropped the can and kicked it across the dirt, wishing I had Sheila’s pipe, wishing I had Sheila.

As I walked along, stepping on dirt, weeds, bottle caps, and glass shards, I suddenly realized that every texture, every detail of the items underfoot, could be felt through my shoes. It was like finger-touching, but more sensitive. Before I could give it another thought, the intensity of my breathing had taken me over. When I exhaled, it felt like I was creating wind for the entire world. ‘Rilla got me going, alright. I ran back to the van and started driving.

There was too much zinging through my brain to make a plan or choose a destination, but my hands and feet knew exactly where to go. When Wayward Wayne’s marquee came into view, I pulled over and stared up at it. I read the words forward and back. I read them out loud: This Friday – Dean-O and The Bridge Jumpers – SOLD OUT

***

There are a lot of bridges in Chicago, but most don’t have proper ledges. Not like that one train bridge over the Kishwaukee in DeKalb. It took a lot of driving, clear to the Southside, to find a good one. I parked at the bank of the Calumet and climbed the criss-cross girders all the way up. When I got to the top, I took off my shirt and hollered at the top of my lungs like we did as kids. Sitting there was the first time in a long time it felt good to be alone. I laughed when I saw my legs dangling over the ledge. They looked just like the half-band logo on my chest, except for the scabs, of course. I closed my eyes and ran my fingers over the lumpy tattoo like ‘Rilla had done, wondering if it would ever heal, hoping, just a little, that it wouldn’t.

On October 21st, 1962, Hurley Brennan climbed behind the wheel of his Chevy Apache and headed to Pocatello on errands. When he could no longer see his farm in the rearview, he flipped on the radio, for it was Hurley’s secret pleasure to tune in pop music shows broadcasting out of Idaho Falls or Salt Lake City when he was alone. And alone he was on that day, in that truck, when he first heard Dee Dee Sharp describing in verse a dance named after the foodstuff that was the primary source of his financial and dietary sustenance. The bouncy bubblegum ditty was instantly familiar to the farmer as it shared the same melody, four/four drum pattern, and high backing wha-oo’s as The Marvelettes’ 1961 hit “Please Mr. Postman.” But it was the theme of the new song, the potatoes, that drew him in.

In church, he’d been told repeatedly, as the whole congregation had, that rhythm & blues and rock ’n’ roll were the Devil’s music, that where they took hold of an ear they’d snatch a soul. Hurley rationalized his indulgence in the dubious entertainment with the excuse that he needed to “know the enemy’s tactics,” as Bishop Taylor had often preached. But driving to Pocatello that morning, Hurley had a hard time believing that Dee Dee Sharp, a woman singing a peppy song about mashed potatoes, was his adversary.

It seemed an odd coincidence to Hurley that “Mashed Potato Time” was also playing on the RCA color televisions in Block’s display window as he walked toward the department store’s entrance. Hurley looked both ways, lest there be any fellow parishioners around, before ogling the scantily clad women doing the Mashed Potato dance on American Bandstand.

After buying needed items at Block’s and running a few more errands around town, Hurley made his way home, purposefully leaving the radio off—as he did most return trips—to offset his earlier intemperance and leave room for the Lord to speak should He desire to do so. Though he waited patiently for a message from above during the hour-long voyage, all Hurley heard was Dee Dee as if her voice were still crackling through the truck’s single speaker.

It was a joy to pull up to the farm at the close of a sunny afternoon and find his two daughters playing in the yard while his wife, Margaret, hung clothes on a line between their home and a river birch tree. Hurley stepped out of the truck and gathered the boxes and bags from Block’s. Debbie, his youngest, scrambled toward him, flashing a smile devoid of front teeth.

“What’d you get me, Papa?”

“Something to keep you warm this winter.”

“Is it pwetty?”

“Not too pretty.”

Debbie made a pouty face and went back to playing with her older sister, Clara.

Hurley, with all five of his sense organs and his thinking mind too, took in the thirty-seven-acre potato farm stretched out before him, relieved for the end of harvest season and happy for the extra income the seven new acres had brought in. Walking toward the front door with an armload of purchases, he stopped to watch Clara dancing a large potato dressed in raggedy doll clothes with Debbie’s Barbie.

“Been digging your own harvest?” Hurley asked.

Clara smiled and held up her dolly.

“Lookit my tater lady, Papa,” she said proudly.

It happened now and again that potatoes grew fissures, deformed and knobby, that resembled body parts. It wasn’t altogether uncommon to find one that had grown “arms” or “legs.” Some even appeared to have heads with faces. But the potato Clara held up not only had a head and four stubby appendages, it had something else, too.

Hurley set down the packages and took the curious doll in his meaty hands. He couldn’t understand it. Not just how human the potato looked, but how feminine.

At first, Hurley thought, the two bumps under the doll’s blouse must have been added by Clara, who was herself just beginning to form chest bumps. But upon lifting the homemade blouse, Hurley was shocked to discover the two round shapes were inseparable from the peculiar potato.

“Stop, Papa, we’re pwaying wif her,” Debbie cried as Hurley shambled toward the house, stripping off the doll’s clothes.

“No, Papa! Bring her back! Please...” Clara called.

Staring at the deformed tuber, Hurley walked trance-like through the doorway and collapsed onto the sofa. He blinked his eyes, shook his head, and looked again. What he witnessed upon removal of the doll’s skirt was stranger, even more improbable than the rest. There, between the humanlike potato’s stubby legs, were detailed outlines of a labia. And when Hurley squinted and looked even closer, he spied the legendary “little man in the canoe,” as his high school classmates had called the pleasure button that sat atop a woman’s private parts. Invasive images of past lustful deeds suddenly took over Hurley’s mind, adding more confusion to the moment.

Seized with a sudden dread, Hurley moved swiftly to the kitchen and grabbed a butcher knife. The girls came in crying just then, shivering as they watched their father, with red face and twisted brow, chopping their dolly to pieces.

“Where’d you girls find this...thing?” Hurley yelled, staring nervously at the decimated potato, as though its parts might grow back together at any moment.

When they didn’t respond, Hurley grabbed the girls by the arms and made them walk him to the place—one of the new fields far out back of the house—where they’d discovered the potato lady.

The hole the girls showed their father was at least three feet in diameter and as many feet deep. It seemed to Hurley too large a pit to have been dug by his daughters, but before he could ask if it was their doing, they had run away.

Over the next hours, Hurley shoveled the hole deeper and wider, occasionally finding other odd-shaped potatoes. Some were quite large and buried at unusual depths. None were human in shape, but they weren’t the normal kind either. After scrutinizing each one for feminine features, Hurley tossed them over his shoulder and kept shoveling.

“I’ll dig clear to Satan’s cupboard if I haffta!” he thundered.

As the sun was setting, Margaret swung the front porch dinner bell until its yoke nearly gave way. The girls, who’d been hiding since the destruction of their dolly, eventually answered the call and pointed dirty fingers in the direction of their daddy. Margaret marched that way until she saw dirt and potatoes flinging above the flat earth.

“Supper’s on, Papa. Best come while it’s warm,” Margaret hollered toward the hole without question or concern for Hurley’s doings.

After his wife’s words hit the hole, Hurley lifted his chin toward the darkening sky, waiting for the Lord to speak. A long minute later, with no words from above, Hurley scrambled out of the pit, suddenly afraid he might fall through the earth at any moment.

The family was sitting quietly at the table when Hurley arrived. The girls stared at the floor, breathing uneasily. Following Margaret’s lead, they joined hands with Hurley as he took his seat, their fingers fidgeting in his tight grip.

“Dear Lord, our Father, we thank you for the bounty you have given us. We ask you to forgive our indulgences. To watch over and keep us in your grace. To bless this house and this family...”

Margaret, thinking Hurley was about at the amen part, began to let the girls’ hands slip from her own, but when she saw her husband’s tight, twitching eyelids, she realized he was meaning to say more. And more he did say.

“Father... please don’t forsake us! If these are the last days, show us how to follow the path to your Kingdom.”

Hurley looked up, as if from a bad dream, and stared blankly ahead. Moving on from the moment, Margaret began placing meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and green beans on the girls’ plates.

“You stop at the bank, Hurl?”

“Yeah.”

“What’d they say ‘bout the car loan?”

“We have plenty collateral.”

Hurley dropped his gaze to his food-piled plate. A few bites later, he scooched his chair from the table and left the house without a word. As he walked under the waning moon, memories, like city traffic, came and went, crowding his head ’til it hurt.

“That’s when people still believed, Lord,” Hurley said to the sky.

They were just cartoons that played when he was sleeping. Bad cartoons. Hadn’t occurred to him to say anything to anyone. Wasn’t ’til he caught a whooping for bedwetting that Hurley told what he’d been seeing, what showed itself to him some nights. When they found out about it, three of the elders—ones who still put faith in apocalyptic prophecy—took turns listening, writing down details, and encouraging the boy to testify at service. Some church folk said he was “anointed,” others said he was “touched.” Young Hurley could barely pronounce pock-a-lips, judge-men day was easier.

As Hurley came of age, and as his visions became increasingly strange, and as the older, true-believing elders were no longer living or no longer willing to share in his enthusiasm for the end times, Hurley found himself increasingly isolated with the scenes that played out in his mind. Parents, elders, and other parishioners nearly convinced him they were just nightmares, imagination run wild. But the last one— “the incident” as they later called it—had come to him so clear. It was as if someone had suddenly parted curtains or wiped smudge off a dirty window.

Halloween, 1952. Hurley, having come straight from the fields, walked into the school gymnasium wearing jeans and flannel. Though his hardline Mormon parents didn’t permit him to celebrate the ghoulish holiday, he went to the party anyway, hoping to see girls in skimpy getups, wanting to be part of something other than farm work, church, and studies. The other high school seniors dressed as vampires, Franken-steins, ghosts, and zombies, made fun of their uncostumed classmate. Hurley was used to being the butt of jokes, but this time something was different.

It was the odd way of talking that first caught his attention. Hurley thought it was a gag, an inside joke, until the kids started bickering with one another—snippy remarks that became nasty comments that became the worst kind of cussing. The type of things that, if said at all, could only be said in private, behind someone’s back. As the exchanges grew more heated, Hurley noticed how tortured, how desperate the whole thing was, as if his classmates, for the sake of their own survival, had to emit such blasphemous phrases.

And then, one by one, they began taking off their masks. It was almost funny how caricature-like they looked underneath, as if the worst trait, the most negative part of each personality, had risen to the surface, projecting right through their noses, mouths, eyes...

It was the music, Hurley thought, the Devil’s music that was activating their bad behavior. The rhythm & blues kept slowing down and speeding up until it was hard to tell what the song even was anymore. The high schoolers twitched and contorted to it—hunching, snarling, writhing in circles—waiting for a signal, Hurley thought, that would come any moment. A signal for them to stop pretending to be people.

As he bounded from the gym and away from the school, Hurley saw a huge explosion in the sky. He ran clear to Elder Baumgarten’s house, demanding the elder call the Bishop. Though they listened to the rantings with measured patience, neither the Bishop nor the Elder could calm the hysterical boy. They told him repeatedly that he’d only been daydreaming, that if it’d been a true prophetic vision, he would’ve seen signs and symbols, the appearance of ancient figures, the righteous vindicated and the opposition vanquished, and, most importantly, he would’ve seen Jesus making his triumphant return.

It wasn’t until two years later that news of “Operation Ivy,” the first testing of a hydrogen bomb by the United States government, was acknowledged to have been conducted on Nov 1st, 1952—the day after Hurley’s vision. The 82-ton bomb detonated that day was said to have been 500 times more powerful than the deadly atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Its blast vaporized an entire island in the Western Pacific, leaving in its place a fifteen-story crater more than a mile in diameter. Though Hurley initially thought himself vindicated by the news, he soon found that people had lost interest in “the incident.” From that point forward, Hurley realized, there was no one he could rely on but God Himself.

As he grew tired of pacing the fields, Hurley returned home, climbed into bed with Margaret, and closed his eyes. Best not to mention the girls’ potato, he thought. Throughout the night, along with his fitful sleep, dreams came as if broadcast through an RCA color television. He tried changing channels, but every station played the same show: American Bandstand. On the TV, he saw himself, his family, and a group of brown-skinned people dressed in ancient robes dancing the Mashed Potato to a performance by Dee Dee Sharp. As the music played, as the people danced, cameras occasionally panned the TV studio’s windows. Outside and all around the building, Hurley glimpsed nuclear blasts vaporizing the planet.

When Hurley awoke the next morning, October 22nd, 1962, the intense dream was still playing in his mind. And unlike previous visions, Hurley thought, this one had all the characteristics of a true prophecy. Signs, symbols, ancient figures—even the return of Jesus Christ.

Margaret was already sitting up at the time Hurley arose. When she saw his gray-blue eyes peek out from under the lids, she started sobbing.

“Jesus is coming,” she said gently, wiping tears and laughing.

The couple held each other close, laughing and crying with joy. For not only had they both seen Jesus in their dreams, they’d both seen the same kind of Jesus. And, strangely, the dream-Savior they both described, the one they both knew to be Jesus, was not white. And not only was He not white, but He was not a “he” at all. The Christ in their dreams, the One they both bore witness to, was a Black woman.

Hearing the commotion, Clara and Debbie had awoken as well. They cracked the door to their parents’ bedroom tentatively. Hurley waved them over and patted the bed.

When the girls climbed in, Hurley asked excitedly, “Did you see it too?”

Clara and Debbie looked to their mother’s soft, smiling face and then nodded.

After several joyful and affectionate minutes together, Margaret went to the kitchen to cook breakfast. Hurley, dancing throughout the house with the girls, took in a whiff of the delicious food and suddenly understood what had happened.

“It’s the tater!” he shouted.

It was as clear as the big blue sky. “Mashed Potato Time” meant the apocalypse, Judgment Day. That was the message from God’s dark-skinned Daughter, Dee Dee. The potato lady his girls had discovered was none other than the holy sacrament, the body of Christ. Margaret must’ve cooked its butchered pieces along with the other spuds.

Hurley raised the steaming pot of mashed potato leftovers above his head, realizing that the chosen ones, the true Latter-day Saints who would join Dee Dee Christ in the Mashed Potato Time, must first partake of the sacred spud as he and his family had done.

Frantically, Hurley called his church friends, recounting the vision, the potato doll, the second coming. Few listened more than a minute.

With the pot of leftovers by his side, Hurley jumped in the Chevy and drove straight to Bishop Taylor’s house in Pocatello. Interrupted from his breakfast, the Bishop answered the door and hesitatingly invited the young man in. He bit his tongue while Hurley rattled on about a radio song, a female-shaped potato, and ancient figures dancing on TV. He remembered well the boy’s apocalyptic rantings from years before but had hoped he would’ve outgrown such nonsense. When Hurley got to the part about a dark-skinned She-Jesus, the Bishop could take no more.

“Now you listen to me, son. A true prophet, Nephi, once said, ‘Satan seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself,’ and you, my boy, are looking mighty miserable right now.”

The Bishop went on to tell Hurley about the dangers of demon-led visions. Further saying that Satan was using Black people to destroy the agency of God’s children, enticing them with rock ’n’ roll and lewd dancing.

When Hurley saw there was little hope of convincing the church leader, he dabbed a spoonful of spuds on a tea saucer in case the unbelieving Bishop later changed his mind. From there, Hurley stopped at Brock’s Department Store, where he purchased a portable record player and a 45 RPM single of Dee Dee Sharp’s “Mashed Potato Time.” On the drive home, Hurley flipped on the radio, for unlike Bishop Taylor, he now knew that the Lord spoke through Black rock ’n’ roll singers.

That evening, while Hurley and his family danced the Mashed Potato, waiting for Lady Jesus to carry them home, John F. Kennedy gave a television address from the Oval Office of the “highest national urgency.” The president revealed to the American people evidence of Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba and spoke of how far the missiles could travel—all the way to Washington D.C.

Several fellow parishioners who watched the president’s frightening speech that evening, and who pieced it together with Hurley’s prophetic phone call, went immediately to the Brennan home seeking help. The dozen or so church folk who showed up at his door were welcomed inside and invited to partake in mashed potatoes—both the food and the dance—while they awaited the Judgment.

In the days that followed, with the world still standing—and no sign of Jesus—word got around about the “rock ’n roll orgy” that had occurred at the Brennan place. In response, Elder Baumgarten, other elders, counselors, and even some who ate and danced that night in Hurley’s home, demanded the Brennans be excommunicated from the Mormon faith.

A disciplinary council came to order soon thereafter. When Hurley would neither denounce his visions nor his actions, he and his family were disfellowshipped and told never to darken the doors of a Mormon temple again. Bishop Taylor was the only high-ranking member who did not vote to expel the “false prophet.”

Unwilling to remain in the hostile environment, Hurley found a buyer for the farm. Loading his family and needed possessions into the pickup, he began driving south toward Mexico, where he’d heard other Latter-day Saints, outcasts like himself, had made a home. There, in the Sierra Madre Mountains among other exiles, Hurley testified and bore witness once again. Though the Mormon transplants appreciated his fervor for the final days, none welcomed talk of a Black Lady Jesus or believed it appropriate to use pop music for prophetic practice. Hurley, noticing that many in the group were engaged in polygamy, didn’t feel comfortable with them either.

Outcasts once again, the Brennans left the American Mormon enclave with no direction and, even more devastating for Margaret, no church affiliation.

Piling his family back into the pickup, Hurley flipped on the radio, hoping to hear the Lord speak through one of his rock ’n’ roll messengers once again. But as they traveled deeper into Mexico, and farther from the “border blaster” stations that played American music, they found themselves completely immersed in Spanish-language programming.

As the days went on and they traveled further south, Margaret worried openly about the girls’ lack of home, school, and church. Hurley, who’d continued to dream of the dark female Christ, and who was certain they were getting closer to Her, encouraged his wife to hang on while sharing details of his visions.

“She comes to me every night, darling. Speaking Spanish now. Spanish!”

When they stopped in villages for food, toilets, and gas, Hurley had his daughters, who’d been quick to pick up Span- ish words and phrases, ask the locals about a Black woman Savior. They had little luck the first few days, but one afternoon, at a roadside lunch stand, a stocky woman making tortillas nodded affirmatively at the girls’ query. Flashing a gold-toothed smile, the woman spoke to the Brennans of La Morenita, The Dear Dark One. When Hurley, excitedly, asked where they could find Her, the woman replied mysteriously that the Santa Madre, La Morenita, was everywhere.

With a renewed sense of purpose, the Brennans continued their journey south, asking about The Dear Dark One at every opportunity. Several villagers they met along the way told them of a place called Tepeyac, a hillside north of Mexico City, where La Morenita was known to appear.

When the Americans arrived at Tepeyac, they were wel- comed by other pilgrims on their way to visit La Morenita at her home, the Basilica of Guadalupe. There, both inside and outside the cathedral, the Brennans found many devotees praying to a dark-skinned Virgin Mary. Among the faithful rubbing rosaries, offering candlelight, and kneeling in prayer, the family met some who claimed that Santa Maria, La Morenita, was more than just the mother of Jesus, as the Católicos believed. One such devotee, an old man named Don Pepe, put it to them this way,

“How can She be the mother of God, and not be the mother of Everything?”

When Hurley and Margaret indicated they were eager to hear more, Don Pepe invited them to join his camp nearby. As the Americans approached, several copper-skinned people who sat gazing into a fire acknowledged the newcomers with a simple nod of the head. Hurley waited some minutes, and when no one spoke, he jumped headlong into a description of his visions. Clara and Debbie kept up with their father best they could, interpreting with gestures and broken Spanish, though it wasn’t clear what, if anything, was getting through. At the conclusion of Hurley’s monologue, the campers talked quietly among themselves in a language unrecognizable to the Brennan girls or their parents. After several minutes, Don Pepe turned his attention back to the Amer- icans. Speaking slowly in Spanish, he explained that there are people in his own village, people like Hurley, who dance, sing, and eat sacred plants to bring visions. These people, he said, are called curanderos.

Don Pepe’s wife, known to others in the camp as Abuelita, called the Brennan girls to her. She played a game with them, something like patty-cake, then guided them to touch various rocks and plants nearby. When they were finished playing, Abuelita announced, matter-of-factly, that the girls had special gifts and that she would like to train them. After camping two more days with Don Pepe and Abuelita, the decision was made.

The Brennans followed their new friends to Huautla de Jiménez in the northern corner of Oaxaca. Abuelita and Don Pepe helped the Americans settle in with Los Mazatecos, as the people in the community called themselves. Hurley joined in with the farmers while Margaret shared in the many tasks of housekeeping. The girls were enrolled in the local school but took their real education from Abuelita.

As Los Mazatecos shared their ways with the Americans, the Brennans, in turn, offered a few of their own. The Mashed Potato dance in particular was an instant hit. It was not long before “Baile de Papas” blended in with other ritual dances, becoming part of the local harvest ceremony.

Margaret, over time, found a place for herself as a teacher of English and mathematics at the local school. Clara and Debbie, after receiving full initiation into the Mazatec tradition, became sought-after healers in their own right. Hurley, who occasionally ate sacred plants with the Mazatec curanderos and curanderas, continued to have visions for the duration of his life, though he stopped speaking of “the last days” until his own last day, when, on his deathbed, he called out to Margaret, “It’s Mashed Potato Time.”

A few old-timers in southeastern Idaho still remember the Brennan place and what happened there on October 22nd, 1962. No one has dug up a potato lady since the Brennans left.

In fifth grade, I was obsessed with Jocelyn Ramirez. I swooned over her soft, round face, bubbly voice, long dark ponytail, and slender fingers that drew beautiful cursive words. At my desk each day, I’d spell out her name in block letters, crisscrossing my own name, Ryan Tierney, into it as the header for the “I like you” notes I took great care to write, but inevitably ripped up and dropped in the trash.

Like most kids at school, Jocelyn didn’t seem to notice me. But one particularly sunny December morning at recess, she acknowledged my existence with one simple sentence:

“Hey, you! I dare you to step on this crack.”

I stood frozen, taking in the situation. It seemed Jocelyn and her friends were playing dare—like “truth or dare” without the truth. I didn’t know if they were inviting me to join them or setting me up as the butt of a joke. No matter the case, answering the call of my dream girl was a choiceless move.

With the group eyeballing me, I strode over as nonchalantly as possible and placed the toe of my right no-name sneaker on the crack.

“That’s not enough,” a boy behind Jocelyn shouted.

I hadn’t developed many superstitious beliefs up to that point in my life, or wasn’t aware if I had, but with the kids making such a big deal of the dare, I began to feel self-conscious. Slowly, deliberately, I raised my foot above the crack and stepped on it.

“Still not enough. You gotta jump on it with both feet!” I heard someone say.

I searched Jocelyn’s face and saw her eagerness for me to fulfill the command. Dramatically, I placed my feet just behind the crack—like an athlete at the starting line—and crouched down. I jumped as high as I could, maybe a foot in the air, and landed both feet onto the broken pavement. There was a moment of silence afterward.

“Bet you won’t dance on it,” came the next dare.

The thing is, I loved dancing. I watched Soul Train and American Bandstand religiously. At home, in my room, I danced for hours in front of a mirror, trying to perfect the moves I’d seen on TV. But I hadn’t yet danced in front of people, only my Rottweiler, JoJo.

“There’s no music,” I told the dare group.

After leaning in and whispering to each other, two girls in the group started singing “Flashlight” by the psychedelic-funk band Parliament. The others joined in with backup vocals, bass lines, and handclaps. My heart raced. I knew every moment of that song. It was one of my favorites to dance to.

I stood on the crack, swaying slowly to the beats they were making. The more I moved, the louder the kids clapped and sang. Pretty soon, I was full-on dancing—a combination of The Hustle, The Bus Stop, and The Funky Chicken, but with some signature leg wiggles, head rolls, and turns that were mine alone.

Other kids came over to watch, adding more claps and sing-alongs.

I heard someone say, “That white boy can dance.”

At the end, everyone applauded. Jocelyn beamed at me. For the first time in my life, I felt truly seen.

Suddenly, someone from the dare group informed the audience,

“He danced on a crack.”

The kids made a collective, “OOOOOOO!”

“Dang, best hope yo’ mama don’t die,” one boy said.

“You done broke your ’ol lady’s back, son,”an older kid said.

The recess bell rang before I could think of a reply.Trailing behind the other kids, walking toward class, I worried about what I’d done, suddenly noticing every crack in the pavement. The following week, my Dad, who was a truck driver, got hurt while loading big frozen food boxes into his trailer. At the hospital, he told us how he’d slipped on a patch of ice hidden under a thin blanket of snow and had fallen hard on the cement. If that wasn’t bad enough, he said, the heavy boxes had landed on him too. The X-rays showed Dad had a broken back and two cracked ribs.

I told myself that Dad’s broken back was just an accident, that it wasn’t my fault, but a few days into his hospital stay, another bad thing happened. It was Saturday morning. I was in the living room watching Soul Train when I heard Mom on the phone.

“Oh my god, yes, that’s our dog!” She cried.

I guess JoJo had gotten out the back door when no one was looking. We drove three short blocks to Belmont and Ashland and loaded him into the car. Someone said he’d been hit by a bus. The vet told us JoJo’s back had been broken, and he would never be able to play, run, or even walk properly again. We had to “let him go,” Mom said. She told me it wasn’t my fault; I knew otherwise.

With Dad in the hospital and JoJo gone for good, I felt increasingly haunted by what I’d done. I stopped watching dance shows and stopped dancing too. I moved my bed out from under the ceiling crack in my room and stayed away from cracks in the walls as well. But no matter how many cracks I avoided—up, down, or sideways—I couldn’t help but accidentally cross some.

At school, it seemed everyone had forgotten about my death-defying crack dance. They pretty much went back to ignoring me, except for Jocelyn, who’d started passing “I like you” notes my way. I returned waves and hellos sheepishly but couldn’t bring back the feelings I’d once had for her. It wasn’t long before she took her affections elsewhere.

With my heightened awareness of cracks came a fear of looking directly at them, as if seeing one straight-on might make it open and swallow me whole. Afraid to let them go completely, I kept them in my peripheral vision. But in my side view, they shifted and moved around, making them almost more threatening.

One day in homeroom, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a crack in the wall that for sure looked like it was forming letters. Though I tried to stay focused on the blackboard in front of me, I couldn’t keep the shape-shifting crack out of my mind. When I finally turned and faced it head-on, the letters were gone, but I had already registered the word they spelled: closer.

That night, at home, letters started forming in ceiling cracks above my bed, too. I closed my eyes against them, but the word—the same one as before—had already imprinted itself in my brain.

On the way to school the next day, I saw the word form- ing in sidewalk cracks as well. I walked in the snow and ice to avoid them, but closer popped out of ice cracks, too. Panicking, I ran the rest of the way to school. Luckily, by the time I got there, the word had stopped coming at me. I fell asleep on my desk during first period and was awoken by my homeroom teacher, Mr. Napoli, after the bell rang. He asked if I was ok. I was afraid he knew what I’d done.

Mom and I went to visit Dad in the hospital that night. After we’d been there a few minutes, I said I had to go to the bathroom. It was just too depressing seeing Dad like that. Roaming the hallways, I got turned around and walked into a janitor’s closet by accident. I would’ve backed out right away, but I saw something on the wall that stopped me. In flowing cursive writing, as if written by the hand of Jocelyn Ramirez, closer was throbbing in a plaster crack.

Realizing the door had closed behind me, I turned and grabbed the knob. It was locked. I pounded and yelled, but no one came. After a few minutes, realizing there was no choice, I faced the crack. Just as I had obeyed Jocelyn that fateful morning at recess, I had to obey the word popping through the plaster.

“What do you want?” I yelled at the crack.

There was total silence. More than silence, it was like all the sound had been sucked out of the little room. I’m not sure how to describe what happened next. It was like hearing, but the sounds came from inside rather than out. And then other sense experiences—sights, smells, feelings—emerged from inside as well, showing me glimpses of the past—snip- pets of the most painful times in my life—as if they were happening right then in the present moment. The memories, if you could call them that, came and went, taking over my body, rattling me. One of them showed my mother leaving me at a grocery store when I was three. Another showed the time I fractured my arm jumping into a pool when I was six. Strangely, things about my parents and their pasts started coming through as well. Mom, as a lonely little girl, receiving almost no care or attention from her own parents. Dad, as a young man, downhearted as he made the decision to quit college when Mom got pregnant. Then I saw Mr. Napoli struggling with the death of a loved one. And it didn’t stop there. The painful visions just kept coming and coming. I witnessed horrible events happening to kids I knew from class—Steve finding his junkie dad overdosed, Carlos’s family being deported back to Mexico. There were even people—kids and grownups—that I didn’t recognize, every one of them going through something terrible. It was all too much. I collapsed against the wall and started crying.

And that’s when I fell through the crack.

I wasn’t in a closet anymore. I wasn’t even in the world anymore. There was no pain or suffering there, mine or anyone else’s. There was only vast, endlessly dark space. It was beautiful.

Before I had a chance to think about what was happening, I felt someone’s hand on my shoulder.

“Oh my God, Ryan! We were so worried about you,” Mom yelled from behind the janitor—the exact words she’d used after the grocery store incident.

When we got home, I heard Mom on the phone whispering to someone. The only thing I could make out was,

“He was hiding in a closet...I’m sure he knows.”

She was wrong, I didn’t know. But I found out soon enough.

The next day, when I got home from school, Dad called from the hospital. He told me Mom was leaving him for a guy she met at work and that they were getting a divorce. He asked if I wanted to live with him or her. It was hard to answer. All I could think of was the janitor’s closet—the pain and suffering on this side of the crack, and the freedom on the other side. I don’t remember what else Dad said, just that he cried a lot.

When we got off the phone, I walked through the apartment inspecting every crack—floors, walls, and ceilings, peripherally and straight—but I didn’t see closer anywhere. I started moving furniture around, searching for cracks I didn’t know about. It took a while, but I finally found one behind a mirror in the bathroom. I set the mirror on the floor and stared at the crack for a long time. Though I didn’t fall through, like in the janitor’s closet, gazing at the crack calmed me down a bit. And as I became more relaxed, I began to notice things more sharply. First, it was my heart beating and my blood pumping. Then it was the hum of the light and some distant street sounds. As I gave over to the noticings, it seemed like the bathroom was becoming bigger, or like the space itself was growing. Although I wasn’t moving, staring at the crack reminded me of dancing—like me and the crack were dance partners and the space and noticings were the music.

I heard Mom turn the key in the front door lock and realized I’d been in the bathroom a long time. She stayed quiet while she cooked dinner and set the table, but as soon as we sat down to eat, she started crying. I felt her sadness inside of me, just like all those experiences in the janitor’s closet.

When Dad got out of the hospital, we moved to a new neighborhood about a mile away from the old place. I saw Mom most weekends. Dad got us a new Rottweiler puppy. I named her “Bump”—not after the disco dance like Dad thought, it was just that she bumped into things all the time. I went back to watching Soul Train and started dancing again too. But I didn’t practice in front of a mirror anymore. I knew I was a good dancer.

That was all a really long time ago. I still see the cracks— not just in solid things like pavement or plaster, but in thoughts and feelings too. They’re always showing up, split- ting things open, calling me to come closer. When I follow their command, they bring the noticings and the big, fresh space. And the more I let go into that space, the more freely I’m able to dance.

.

In front of a strong-smelling shop in the first corridor, a smiling lady stands at the ready with lotion sample packets. When someone gets there before me, I pretend search the window display and quickly move on.

A string of repeated words ties up the air nearby. “Today only” is all I make out. Turning the corner, I see a sporty youngster, a full-third too thin for his beige suit waving a clipboard near a sign for discount phone plans. Nano-secondly glimpsing me, he turns to hawk his wares in the opposite direction. I catch my reflection in the window behind him and look away just as quickly.

In the food court, a middle-aged woman extends an impaled meat morsel—smile indicating gift, stance suggesting weapon—as if she’d been waiting for me always. Her oversized, plastic glove brushes my fingers as I accept the challenge. She repeats “tasty” several times in both statement and question form while I chomp the sweet and sour chunk.

“Tasty,” I agree, ordering the three-item combo.

Collecting my tray, I mumble “thanks” toward her pivoting face as she baits a toothpick just in time for the next would-be customer. Three inches above my open palm, a young cashier drops change with great precision, the heat of his hand still in the coins.

From the sole empty table, I watch grownups engage children with detached familiarity. It seems the divorce was just yesterday. I tell myself to think “one year” not fourteen months like a baby’s age. A few bites into my meal, I rise and dump the tray’s contents into an overfull bin, rooting for every rubbery thigh nugget, heat-lamp-hardened noodle, and mushy vegetable to make it through the smudged THANK YOU of the receptacle door, identifying with the ones that don’t.

A pot-bellied T-shirt emblazoned with a U.S. map makes me think of routes the U-Haul might’ve taken. Illinois to Arizona. Five states between no matter which combination of borders they crossed.A completely different place.That’s what Lydia said. But the mall, her oasis, is bound to be the same in Scottsdale as it is in Schaumburg.

Map-shirt man sees me staring and shoots a look. I glare back, imagining it’s new guy.

Lydia hates driving. New guy probably drove the whole way. I wonder if at any point during the trip, at any lull in the conversation, he considered how many times she and I laughed, fought, ate, stroked each other, and screwed on top of that big leather couch he hauled seventeen hundred miles to palm-tree heaven—a couch we bought at this very mall. By now, they’ve done all the same things on it, left all the same stains. The erection poking at my zipper bothers me more than any of it.

A group of high school girls, maybe college, pass with arms easy around each other, best friends in a hot pink forever. I don’t realize I’m following until we near the exit. Their giggles fade with the first set of doors. After the second set, they evaporate completely.

“Fifteen or half hour?”The main concourse masseuse asks.

“Half hour, please,” I say, leaning into the face-down chair.

I feel his strong fingers over my shirt; the same one I wore last time. I wonder if he notices.

Another pop anthem streams through mystery speakers. Lydia’s music. I bring it close this time, cranking the bass and drums from within. It doesn’t mask everything, but if I concentrate hard enough, it covers the automated hum running through this place, running through all of us

.

“Washington, Ramirez, Pucinski. Yep, we got him.” A laugh from behind startles Steve. The joy in it reminds him of his mom. He was only four when she died, but he remembers her voice, how playful and musical it was. “Pure country,” people used to say. Nothing like the hard Chicago talk—with rocks in the consonants and the threat of throw- ing them at you in the vowels—that comes out of Ernie and everyone else in the neighborhood.

Steve turns to see a man in tatters mumbling between giggles, searching the walls as if he’s lost something there.

“Hey you, warming center’s down the block. Get moving,” the desk sergeant orders.

The laughing man’s eyes land on Steve as he makes his way to the door. The two rest their gaze on each other a moment before he sets off to giggling again and walks out of the precinct. Eager to hear more of the joyful laughter, Steve almost follows him.

“Bail is two bills. Got that on you?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, pulling a wad from his pocket.

The desk sergeant accepts the rubber-banded roll and eyeballs the boy.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Steve Bardo.”

“Let’s see some ID. Why aren’t you in school, anyways?”

There had been a birth certificate a long time ago. Steve saw it once when he was little. Baby Boy Bardo, it said. He thought it was a special document, one just for babies, to show what sex they were. He figured the real one would come when he was older. Truth was his parents never legally named him. He was a full-year-old when his mom saw Bul- litt starring Steve McQueen and took to calling him after the movie’s leading man. Before that, he was either “the kid,” or Ernie’s favorite—an initialism from the birth cer- tificate—“Triple B,” or just “TB.”

“I got a pass from the principal,” Steve says, handing the sergeant a note written by Ernie’s girlfriend, Loraine.

The sergeant reads the bogus letter, shakes his head. “Which school you go to?”

“Schneider,” Steve says, hesitatingly.

“Who’s your homeroom teacher?”

“Mr. Napoli.”

Within his first month at Schneider, it became clear to Steve’s teachers he couldn’t keep up with classwork. As such, he’d earned the label “learning disability” and was moved from Mr. Napoli’s room to a special class in the basement that didn’t have a regular homeroom teacher. A group of differ- ent-aged kids—fifth to eighth grade—were in that basement place for special reasons too. Along with the learning dis- abilities were “bilinguals” who came from foreign countries and “social adjustments” who yelled a lot and threw chairs. Steve understood the bilinguals needed English, but what the rest of them were meant to learn remained a mystery.

“Pull the guy, Tommy,” the sergeant says resignedly, returning to his desk and handing the cash to a younger cop. “Your count is off by three bucks,” the younger cop says, flipping through bills.

Steve pretend-searches his pants for the three dollars he’d hoped would go unnoticed. The young cop smiles at the would-be con.

“Gotta find your place in this world, kid. Otherwise, the wrong kinda place’ll find you. Catch my drift?”

Steve moves to the window and watches heavy snowfall turn parked cars on Western Ave. into white lumps. A few minutes later, the clang of a metal door announces Ernie’s freedom.

“If I see your kid here again, I’m calling family services,” the young cop says, marching Ernie into the lobby like the free world is just another, bigger cell that Chicago PD holds the keys to.

“I hear you, officer. I’m going back to A.A. anyways,” Ernie says, with a wink aimed at Steve.

Six months earlier, Ernie brought the kid along to the court-ordered meetings. Steve figured the church basement groups were like social adjustments or learning disabilities for grownups. Whatever they were teaching down there didn’t take hold for Ernie. But Steve had come to realize something important sitting in the bowels of God’s house. There were different floors for different folks, and Ernie and him belonged on the bottom. They were basement people. Not meant to be upstairs praying in the real church, studying in the real school, working in the real office. Coming to this realization brought a certain amount of relief to Steve. For one thing, it stopped him from struggling with homework, trying to get back into Mr. Napoli’s class. But what it didn’t do was show him how to fit in down there, how to become a good and proper learning disability. Ernie, on the other hand—whether he was “doing hole time” at the state pen, living in a dingy basement “between places,” or sitting in the cellar of St. Therese’s sipping Twelve-Step coffee—was a bonafide bottom dweller who knew how to engage every aspect of lower-level life.

“I knew you’d come through for the ol’ man, Triple B,” Ernie says with a canned laugh, steering his son toward the door.

Over time though, Steve began to suspect that nobody really fits in with anybody anywhere in this world. It doesn’t matter if they’re basement people, upstairs people, or even penthouse people. What gives it away is the struggle, the desperation. The huge effort people put into acting and sounding the same. The maintenance of acceptable words and actions. The tight boundaries they dare not cross lest they be forced to face the reality of their non-belonging. But the most painful part for Steve, the thing that clues him in every time, is the fake laughter.

“Got any cash left?” Ernie asks as they step into the cold. Steve shakes his head.

“Fuck. I’m dog sick. Loraine’s ass better be on the street.” Passing the warming center, Steve runs to the window and looks inside.

“They got coffee and rolls,” he says.

“Grab ‘em quick, TB. We gotta get moving.

“He just won’t listen, James!”

“Did you go through the steps like we talked about?”

“You don’t know what it’s like when you’re gone for weeks at a time.”

“You knew what I did for a living when we met.”

“I thought you might consider your son’s welfare at some point…”

“Nope. Don’t want to go there, Lis. My job supports this family.”

“I’m just so… I’m frustrated, James!”

“Oh, for Christsake. Let me unpack my gear then I’ll talk to him.”

After locking his gun in a cabinet and emptying his suitcase, James gives a listen at Joshua’s door. The inharmonious sounds emanating from within—a mixture of electronic whirring and buzzing and heavy metal grunting and grinding—make him grimace.

“Josh… it’s Dad.”

From down the hall, Lisa shoots her “just do it” look. James tightens his already tight jaw, twists the knob of his thirteen-year-old’s door, and pushes through the barricade of dirty clothes, food scraps, and computer equipment.

When Joshua won’t look up from the computer, James places his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

The scream that comes out of his son just then is horrific enough, James thinks, to make his neighbors wonder if someone is being tortured right there in the Pierce home. Removing the unwanted hand, James retreats to the hall where Lisa is looming with folded arms and her “I told you so” look.

James closes the door, shaking his head.

“It’s bad,” he says.

“It’s really bad,” Lisa confirms.

In the kitchen, the couple aim weary eyes at one another until Lisa starts crying.

“Time for level five,” James says coolly.

“You and your goddamn levels. This is not Gitmo, James!”

With renewed firmness, James pushes open his son’s door, makes his way to the computer, and yanks each of the overfull power strips from the wall with a meaningful grunt.

“What’s the matter with you?!?” Joshua yells.

“I’m your father and I have a duty to you, to your mother, and to our country to deal with your behavior. You’ve given me no choice. It’s not just your computer this time. I’m taking away your name.”

“You can’t take…wait. What?”

“You heard me. You’re not Joshua anymore. From now on you’re just ‘hey you’ or ‘hey kid.’ Understand?”

James watches confusion turn to panic on his son’s face and then lifts the computer monitor, marching out the door with cords and video game accessories dragging behind him.

—————

“Thompson, Renee.”

“Here.”

“Simmons, Edward.”

“Here.”

“Pierce, Joshua.”

When no response comes, Mr. Lutkus, the kid’s aged homeroom teacher, lowers his readers, peers out at the room, and calls again.

“Joshua Pierce, are you present?”

The kid raises his hand sheepishly.

“Why don’t you speak up, son?” Mr. Lutkus asks.

“I have a note,” the kid says.

The teacher waves the boy to the front of the room and takes the neatly folded letter from his hand. As he finishes reading the two-sentence message typed below an official government letterhead, Mr. Lutkus raises his thick gray eyebrows and takes a deep breath.

“I see,” he says. “Well, have a seat… you.”

At recess, a few kids from class read the note left on the teacher’s desk. Word soon spreads of the boy who no longer has a name.

—————

At eighteen, when the kid graduates high school, he enlists in the Army to get as far away from home as possible and to shoot real guns instead of electronic ones. The military-issue shirts he receives at basic training have his last name, Pierce, emblazoned over the right breast pocket. It’s heartening for him to be among young men, like himself, who are known by last names only.

After two years of active duty overseas, Pierce returns to the States and takes a job as an electrician—a trade he learned in the military—where he once again keeps the company of men who respond to last names only.

At twenty-one, Pierce marries Sophia, the sister of his Army buddy “Schlotsky,” at St. Edward the Confessor church in her hometown of Appleton, Wisconsin. As the priest finishes the ceremony he says,

“I now pronounce you Mister and Missus Pierce.”

Pierce cringes at the word “Mister” as it sounds too much like a first name.

“Pierce and Missus Pierce,” Pierce corrects.

The priest, taken aback, glances into the groom’s eyes and quickly amends his wedding pronouncement.

Three months after he turns twenty-three, Pierce’s wife becomes pregnant. When the ultrasound informs the couple that their baby is a boy, Sophia, excitedly, begins talking names.

“A Bible name. Don’t you think he needs a Bible name?” She asks, though it’s clearly more of a statement.

The half-smile on Pierce’s face indicates his lack of interest in, but amenability to, her decision.

Over the next several days, as Sophia goes through her list of Bible names, she begins repeating one more than the others. As the selection gains momentum in her mind, she starts humming and then singing a popular hymn based on the chosen Bible character.

“Joshua fought the battle of Jericho. Jericho. Jericho. Joshua fought the battle of Jericho and the walls come tumbling down…”

Pierce, no longer offering his usual half-smile, objects firmly to the name. Sophia is crestfallen—not only by the rejection, but by the hardness in her husband she had hoped would soften with parenthood.

By the time Isaiah is born, Pierce is spending the majority of his hours on the job or at a bar among last-name-only men. Sophia shifts the entirety of her love and attention to their child.

A rare phone call from Pierce’s mother comes one evening while he’s working a twelve-hour at a nearby power plant. When he arrives home late that night, Pierce finds the dinner leftovers waiting on the kitchen table along with a note written in the utilitarian style he and Sophia have come to employ with one other:

George Washington Univ. Hospital. He’s dying.

After a sleepless night, Pierce calls in sick for the first time in his life, and books a flight to D.C. He doesn’t bother packing the suitcase Sophia left next to the couch for his travel.

As the plane makes its descent toward Ronald Reagan Airport, the pilot informs the passengers of the local time and weather.

“Local time and weather,” Pierce repeats, viewing the Washington Monument through the porthole window, like a finger pointing up at him.

Arriving at the hospital, Pierce is led through the cancer ward by a young nurse. They stop, finally, at a door with Pierce, James written in purple marker on a wipe board.

“Who are you?” His father asks.

“Pierce.”

“That’s my name.”

“It’s your son, Mr. Pierce,” the thoughtful nurse says.

“Oh. How are you, kid?”

“I want my name back.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“I don’t make those decisions anymore,” James says resignedly.

Holding his father’s gaze a few moments, Pierce leans over the bed and whispers something in the old man’s ear. He watches confusion turn to panic on his father’s face before stepping out of the room.

As the door closes behind him, Pierce pulls a carefully folded handkerchief from his pocket and rubs his father’s name—first and last—off the wipe board.

When he returns home, Pierce greets his wife with the half-smile she hasn’t seen since before their son was born. Isaiah, as if expressing the welling emotions in his mother, or the buried ones in his father, cries uncontrollably in Sophia’s arms.

People dedicated their lives to tracking me down.
I was seen mostly in the country, rarely in the town.
But times are tough with all this tragedy, war, an evil president.
Can’t get no coverage. Can’t be a homeless shelter resident.
Seems like nobody wants to see my beautiful hair, my big long feet, my other worldly stare.

(All the Bigfoot children sing)- I’m trying to get back in the news.
(Hey Bigfoot)- I’ll do interviews.
(Hey Bigfoot) - Come on people. Poppa needs a new pair of Bigfoot shoes.

Went to the unemployment office the other day.
Had the nerve to ask me if I’m from the US of A.
Said, “Are you of such and such or such a race?
What are you? Episcopalian? Australian? Illegal alien.
You don’t cut your hair I can’t take your picture cause I can’t see your face.”

(All the Bigfoot children sing)- I’m trying to get back in the news.
(Hey Bigfoot)- I’ll do interviews.
(Hey Bigfoot) - Come on people. Poppa needs a new pair of Bigfoot shoes

Look here, I’m down the mountain from all of this deforestations, altercations, and general human degradation.
Now if I do exist I go to jail, and if I don’t I’m just a sham.
Well, I’m praying for y’all. I really am.
Telling me if I want to stay in this world I got to become necessary. Contemporary. Work on my repertoire. Write a bouncy little ditty for NPR.

(All the Bigfoot children sing)- I’m trying to get back in the news.
(Hey Bigfoot)- I’ll do interviews.
(Hey Bigfoot) - Come on people poppa needs a new pair of Bigfoot shoes.

Let me see a pair of beige espadrille. Thirty nine and a half. Triple Z.

Like a lot of hungry songwriters in Nashville, I took paying gigs where I could get them. Mostly cover bands: Top 40 for tourist joints. Classic country for honky tonks. 60s rock for one-percenter clubs. I was as good as anyone on the scene, but no one ever asked me to join their band. I was always “the fill-in guy.” I’ll admit I played a little loud and squeezed my own music into sets when I could, but hell, everybody did those things. It was hard to get original songs out there. I ought to know.

Twice a week I hoofed it up and down Music Row, dropping off demo CDs and promo sheets. I could almost hear my records hitting the wastebasket on the way out. It got so the only outlet I had for playing my own stuff was busking on Lower Broadway, and you can believe there was no glory in that. Felt like I was a janitor at a member’s only club, hoping they’d ask me to join one day.

One night, I picked up a spot with a country band called Hill and Holler at a downtown dive bar. We must’ve played five hours straight. The asshole singer kept yelling, “Play it diff ‘ernt,” like I was supposed to know what that meant. At the end of the night, when they divvied up the tip jar, I got only eighteen bucks. That was the breaking point. After three years in Music City, I was ready to give up for good.

The bass player on the gig, Chad, said he needed a lift home. On the way to his place, I told him how sick I was of Nashville and the low-paying gigs, that I was ready to leave. He said I complained too much. I thought that was funny since he was catching a free ride in my car. Then he started jabbering about church gigs, saying they paid better than bar bands, and it didn’t matter if you knew the music or not.

“Same five chords you already hit on that old six-string. Only difference is the words—they only sing on one subject. Ha ha,” he said.

Through some kind of gospel grapevine, Chad knew of a weekly spot for a guitarist at New Life Pentecostal out in Duck River.

“Course, I’d take a small finder’s fee for hooking up a money gig like that,” he added.

Like a lot of sidemen in Nashville, Chad was a bottom-feeder, only looking out for numero uno. The more he talked, the worse the church thing sounded. At best, I figured it meant wearing a second-hand suit, sitting through boring sermons, and strumming along to corny confessionals in a sterile, overly-bright room. At worst, I imagined bible-waving rednecks trying to convert me to their snake-handling, tongue-talking ways, withholding my pay ’til I got baptized.

Most of what Chad said went in one ear and out the other, until he got to the part about free fried chicken. I perked up then. Considering I was living off rice and beans, and didn’t have enough cash to leave town anyway, I agreed to check it out.

A couple days later, I called Chad’s contact and drove out to New Life. It was only an hour southwest of the city, but my beat-up Toyota looked out of place soon as I got off the Interstate, following country roads toward Duck River.

I pulled up in front of what looked to be a repurposed funeral home. The sign out front and the cross stuck on top let me know I was in the right place, though. Somebody was moaning a hymn inside. There was nothing in me that wanted to go in there, but my hand turned the knob and creaked the door open anyway.

“Welcome,” a voice called from the chapel, “you must be Steven.”

An older man near the pulpit waved me to an empty seat across from his.

“I’m Elder T.W. Peabody,” he said, motioning me to sit down.

His grey hair was pomped in a conservative Elvis kind of way. He wore an old-timey herringbone suit—probably bought twenty years before I was born.

“Tell me ‘bout yourself,” he said as I sat down.

“Well, I’ve never played gospel music before. Or been inside too many churches…”

“I’m gonna stop you there, Steven. Rather than tell me what you haven’t done, how ‘bout telling me what you have done. I hear you write songs, is that correct?”

“Yeah. I mean I haven’t gotten much going with them yet, but…”

“There you go again ‘bout whatcha haven’t done. Why don’t you just play me something.”

The Elder chewed some tiny thing between his front teeth while he waited. I fumbled the latches on the guitar case and placed the instrument on my knee. I thought, if this was an audition, it was the weirdest one of my life. There was nothing in my repertoire that matched the occasion. Every song I’d written was about love gone wrong, drinking to excess, and revenge. I picked what I deemed my least offensive number. It was called “Ruffled Feathers.”

“Ruffled Feathers on bumpy skin. A bumpy face bottle of gin. Bumping you was my joy in life. You rolled me like loaded dice. We played ’til the games got rough. I called you mine, you called my bluff. But I squeezed outta that pigeon trap with a ruffled feather in my cap…”

When I finished, to my surprise, Elder Peabody was smiling.

“Good. Very good, Steven. But, as the drunk said to the bartender, ‘Got anything stronger?’”

I watched him make the little chewing motion again, wondering what to do. I started on the heavier stuff then: alcoholic anthems, smutty stories, murder ballads specific in how I’d accomplish the dirty deed. After playing an entire set of my darkest tunes, the Elder applauded.

“You’re just the fella I’m looking for.”

He stood and waved for me to follow. At the basement door, he fumbled through a large ring of keys, unlocked a couple deadbolts, and started his descent.

“This is where we keep the snakes, Steven,” he said, turning toward me with an earnest expression.

Before I could think what to do, the Elder let out a belly laugh so hard he had to hold the railing to keep from tumbling downstairs. When he turned on the lights, first thing I noticed was an old-school printing press.

“We write ‘em, draw ‘em and print ‘em ourselves. Have done for fifty years,” the Elder said,

handing me a small booklet with a picture of Jesus and Satan on the cover, locked together in a wrestling hold.

There were stacks of the things everywhere bearing different designs. One showed a man accepting a bible on his deathbed. Another showed a nuclear fireball burning people alive while a few floated safely toward God in the sky. I’d seen them before. Little five-by-three-inch comic books handed out on street corners and left on buses. Whacko things about salvation, sins, and “the end times.”

“Whatever this is, I’m not interested,” I sneered, backing toward the stairs.

“You got me wrong, son. I’m not trying to turn you. Thing is, your songs have the bump and grind of Satan in them. I could almost see his big red hips just a-switching side to side whilst you belted ‘em out. See now, that’s what these tracts need. The syllables have to sing out and grab ya’ like lyrics. Like your lyrics. That’s the key, right there. They gotta have that deep maroon in the setup. If they don’t match Satan’s vibrations, they cain’t do a thing. You gotta open that dark door inside a man where the Devil hides ‘fore you can plant the seed of Christ. My bible tells me ‘Make a joyful noise unto the Lord.’ Yours is the noise part. The chaos. My part is planting the seed. Helping people follow a new leader…”

“You want me to write religious tracts?” I interrupted.

“You’d be surprised to know who we’ve hired in the past. People with big names in country music…”

“What’s it pay?”

“He he… there’s that maroon again. Three hundred per,” the Elder laughed.

“But I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Satan’s all around, Steven. All you have to do is look.”

Driving away from New Life, a red warning light flashed on my dash letting me know I was low on fuel. I stopped at an off-brand gas station outside Duck River and pulled three smashed dollars, like aborted origami, out of my pocket. A pasty yokel with a bowl cut smoothed them out with his meaty paw, down-smiling at me like I was the biggest loser he’d seen all day. By the look of him, he was bound to be a New Lifer. I imagined him on Sundays, feverishly flapping his fat hands in the air while the Elder spouted Satan’s-gonna-getcha sermons.

Gas prices must’ve gone up again. The three dollars I pumped into my rust bucket didn’t even shut off the fuel light. I banged on my dashboard and cursed when I saw that. Weirdly enough, an idea for a tract came to me just then. I scribbled it on a napkin so I wouldn’t forget.

On the way to work one day, Johnny stops to fill his tank. But when he sees that gas prices have gone up from the night before, he only adds a couple gallons. At lunch, he goes to buy a sandwich from a truck, but it costs so much he can only afford a bag of chips. When he gets home that night, his landlord tells him he’s raising the rent. On Friday, when payday comes, Johnny decides he’s better off spending his hard-earned wages on a gun so he can rob a bank.

At home, I wrote it out like a song and called it “Rob a Bank to Fill the Tank.” It wasn’t too bad. I came up with an arrangement on guitar too, figuring I might as well fill out my own catalog while working on the Elder’s Christian cartoons.

When I drove back to New Life the next day, I was greeted inside by an old deacon who was cleaning the place. He introduced himself in a mumbly way and pointed me to the basement. I expected to find Elder Peabody down there, but instead there was a young woman. She sat at a drafting table with her back to me, like she hadn’t heard me come in. By the shininess of her red hair and the way her dress hung on her curvy figure, I knew she’d be pretty before she showed her face. After a minute of standing there, and her not acknowledging my presence, I asked where the Elder was.

“You talk to me from now on,” she said flatly, sketching on paper with a colored pencil.

“I wrote a tract.”

She turned around then. Her freckles, full lips, and little blue veins shining through translucent skin gave an otherworldly look. She was beautiful alright, but in an alien or ghostly way.

“Give it here,” she said, snatching the notebook from my hand.

She sighed and shook her head while reading it.

“Why Elder brings you half-wit musicians around here, I’ll never understand. First off, it’s not a goddamn poem. There are no couplets in a tract. Second, it’s not a children’s story. You don’t call the protagonist ‘Johnny.’ Third, the story has to be believable, something people can identify with…”

Her voice was high and twangy with a slight lisp. It would’ve been charming if she hadn’t been cutting me to shreds.

“Do I get paid or not?” I asked.

She turned back to her drafting table, pulled a fresh page from her sketchpad, and pencil-carved it into three boxes. In the first one, she sketched a grinning devil inflating gas prices with a bicycle pump. In the next, she sketched a dopey-looking man toting a guitar. The ears were bigger than mine and the gapped front teeth more pronounced, but it was clearly a caricature of me. Behind the man, she sketched her same devil creeping up and making a maniacal face. In the last box, she drew me and the devil again, this time with him inserting his pump hose into my backside, causing cartoon-me to fill up with anger. I was embarrassed, but it was amazing to see my story come to life.

“I might be able to fix it,” she said, dialing an old rotary phone on her table.

“Pay him half,” she told someone on the other end.

The old deacon was upstairs waiting with an envelope. I counted out one-fifty in my car, half of what the Elder promised, trying to understand what’d just happened.

Embarrassment turned to anger on my way out of town. I stopped at the same gas station as before, dropped a twenty on the counter, and dagger-stared the cashbox yokel. No down-smiling off his ugly mug that time.

Driving home, I saw a bunch of shiny show print posters stapled to telephone poles. They advertised a tent revival featuring none other than his holy-rollerness, the Elder T.W. Peabody. I imagined him up there, bamboozling superstitious bumpkins, lining his own pockets with bible-greased greenbacks while he wouldn’t even pay me what he promised. But it was the caricature lady and her humiliation tactics that really got to me. As I considered how to settle the score, an idea for a new tract circled in my mind. I wrote it out when I got home, making sure not to rhyme sentences or call the protagonist “Johnny.”

The next day, I bolted out of bed early, ready to confront the rude redhead with my new story. When I got to New Life, the old deacon let me in and showed me to the basement without a word. She was down there, sitting at her table like before, ignoring me like before too. I stood there and waited.

“You again?” She asked, without turning around.

“Might like this one,” I said.

“Doubt it,” she sing-songed, spinning her wheely office chair to face me.

When she finished reading it, a slight grin lit in the corner of her mouth. She turned back to the table and sketched wildly. The drawings—caricatures of me and her—were more elaborate than what I’d written. She added Satan into the mix too—small at first but growing larger in each scene—as a spectator, watching her and I in various intimate positions. In the last frame, she drew the Devil masturbating furiously while he watched me take her from behind, bent over the drafting table.

When she looked at me again, there was no hint of humor in her face.

“Is that what you want, fucker?” She asked, holding up the pictures.

Though I’m sure the lump in my pants told the story, I nodded anyway.

“You wish,” she said disgustedly, erasing the images of herself from the sketchpad, leaving only me and the Devil.

When I got upstairs, the deacon was standing in the middle of the chapel with a broom in his hand, staring at me. I wondered if he knew what’d just happened.

“What’s her name?” I asked.

“Who, Doreen?” he said, moseying over and handing me an envelope.

In the car, I counted three hundred in envelope cash. I was puzzled about being paid, but even more so about Doreen, wondering what made her tick. I replayed the details the whole way home.

It wasn’t just what she drew, but how she drew it that made it so strange. Especially the way she sketched herself. Her cartoon face feigned surprise, but there was nothing passive about what caricature-Doreen did in those scenes. The more I thought about it, the more I realized she had made herself the story’s main character. She was the real ‘Johnny.’ Me and the Devil were just following her lead.

For the next few days, I funneled my obsession with Doreen and her drawings into a new tract. It was about an attractive woman too proud of her beauty and talents to be kind to others. In the story, she spends her days hunched over a sketchpad drawing fanciful pictures while avoiding the real world. On the rare occasions she looks up from her art, everything and everyone appear to her as ugly little specks littering the landscape. The only one good enough for her is God up in heaven, though she even takes issue with Him at times. When she complains to the Big Man about how awful others are, how nasty the world is, he pats her on the shoulder and says, “I know, Sweetie.” As the story goes on, as her arrogance intensifies, we see that the god she’s been worshipping has sprouted tiny horns from his haloed skull while the shade of his glorious skin shifts from light pink to deep red. I couldn’t wait to see what she’d do with that one.

On a clear, bright morning, with my notebook by my side, I drove the long way to Duck River—meandering past farms and country houses, wondering if Doreen lived in any of them. When I got to New Life, I walked purposefully toward the entrance, ready to one-up Doreen at the humiliation game.

The deacon, who was outside trimming hedges, put his shears down and called to me.

“That it?” He said, pointing to my notebook.

I ignored him and tried the door. It was locked.

“She ain’t here,” he said.

I searched his wrinkly face. Not sure what I saw there. Maybe pity. He pulled an envelope from his overalls and reached for my notebook. I scribbled my phone number on the back before handing it over, telling him to make sure she got it.

On the way home, I convinced myself it was all just part of the game. She was probably in the basement reading my story at that very moment. I was winning. She would see that.

When I pulled up to my building, I heard a phone ringing in the distance. Somehow, I knew it was mine. I leapt up the stairs three-at-a-time and jabbed my key into the lock, but I was too late to catch it. The little red light on my answering machine was blinking when I walked in.

“Steven, this Elder Peabody. I’m calling to terminate our partnership. You held up your end of the bargain, and I held up mine. Satan’s dark door is open wider than we’ll ever need for my tracts, and it’s dangerously open in you. I pray that you invite the good Lord to set up shop in your heart before it’s too late. But not in my church. I mean it. Don’t come back.”

I paced my apartment a while, motherfucking him and motherfucking her. It was just a crummy church in Duck River, but it felt like I’d been kicked out of another of Nashville’s closed clubs. Doreen was behind it. I knew that much. She had made the Elder call me, just to see if I’d come crawling back. No way I was going to give her the satisfaction.

I wrote a new batch of tunes over the next week. Maybe you’d call them love songs. I’d say they were hate songs. Of course, they were all about Doreen. I took them down to Music Row, hoping to pitch them to publishers, but it was harder than ever to get a meeting. When the big shots froze me out, I went crosstown to Lower Broadway and set out to busking.

Though I played all morning, the only tips I got were little jingly coins from the bottom of people’s pockets—the lint-covered ones they wanted to get rid of anyway. My guitar case looked like a trash can for tourists’ pocket corners. Then, as I was belting out my darkest Doreen song,

something else dropped in the case. The man who tossed it walked away quickly, handing the same little booklet to everyone else on the block. I stopped mid-song and picked it up. It was titled: The Devil’s Pump by Elder T.W. Peabody.

It was my story, alright. They even kept the protagonist’s name as “Johnny.” Out-and-out plagiarism is what it was. It’s not that I wanted my own name on it, but the Elder was making money off it somehow, and I knew I’d never see another dime. I thought about the two of them, the Elder and Doreen, wondering if he was screwing her, or if she was his daughter, or maybe both. In a fit of fury, I upended the nickels and dimes from my guitar case and stormed off.

I went over to Chad’s house, the bass player who sent me to New Life in the first place. He said he didn’t know about Doreen or Peabody or the tracts they made, and that, anyway, he was about to leave on tour with a top-name act and didn’t have time for me. I said I wanted to get the hell out of Nashville too, asking if he knew of any tours I might get on. As he was closing the door in my face, he stopped and asked,

“Want to sell your guitar?”

I knew Chad was a scumbag, but I didn’t expect him to snake me like that. He must’ve seen how desperate I was. In the end, I took three hundred cash for my handcrafted acoustic—which was worth far more than that—and went home to gather my things.

It didn’t take long to load my little Toyota. I left the furniture, kitchen stuff, and even the stacked-to-the-ceiling boxes of shrink-wrapped demos. It was time to move on from all of it.

Unsure where to go, I headed West on the Interstate, imagining a new life on a California beach. An hour later, when I got near Duck River, I passed a billboard for Bud’s Guns. I’d seen it before, driving to and from the church, but this time there was a poster for Peabody’s tent revival stuck to it. And then I noticed something strange. My body felt kind of flat, two-dimensional, like it wasn’t a real body at all. I imagined Doreen hunched over a little drafting table in my head, drawing my hands on the wheel and my foot on the gas, leading me frame by frame through another comic strip. I pulled off at the next exit.

As I stepped out of the car, I felt fuller, stronger. In fact, I felt great. I knew exactly what I wanted before walking in the store. Of course, Bud tried upselling me on foreign models and fancy grips, but I held my ground and bought a simple snub-nosed .38. I was through with assholes and rip-off artists.

There’s not much more to tell, or that I should tell, except that I wound up back in Nashville when all was said and done, just ten miles from Music Row. You could say I made it into one of Music City’s closed clubs after all.

It’s not so bad. There’s a hell of a band here. Best I’ve ever played with. Besides that, I’ve got plenty of time to write music. And the people here, they appreciate my songs. I haven’t played a cover in years.

Speaking of covers, I saw a little five-by-three-inch tract lying on a table in chow hall the other day. There was a sketch on the front of a man behind bars, looking up at Jesus in the sky. I flipped through it. The story was pathetic, the drawings were too. Nothing like what Doreen and I did in that church basement way back when. Nothing like that at all.

Thompson, Steven—Inmate #00225301

Riverbend Maximum Security Institution

7475 Cockrill Bend Blvd, Nashville, TN 37209

“We got him,” the cop said proudly, stuffing me in the back of a brand new, ’81 Crown Vic. It had that nauseating new car smell mixed with sweat, stale coffee, Italian Beef. They must’ve just had lunch.

As we started driving, the pudgy plainclothesman in the passenger seat turned to face me, shooting a look I had come to call the “glare of the conqueror.” I stared back. When he saw I wasn’t so easily shaken, he let out a dismissive snort, faced forward, and radioed it in:

“Suspect matches description. White male. Thirties. Medium build. Facial scar…”

Apparently, I resembled a burglar known for stealing high-end tchotchkes from old folks’ homes in the area. It was the third time I’d been picked up that month. I knew the process well:

-Cops spot me, excited to be the ones to nab the “bric-a-brac bandit.”

-They run my I.D. and find out I’m not their guy.

-They get mad at me for being the wrong guy and try to find something else to hold me on.

-I walk a mile and a half home from the precinct, hoping not to get picked up by some other jag-off cop.

But this time was different. For one thing, they didn’t run my I.D. I had mistakenly left my wallet in another pair of pants when I went to work that morning and—though I told them where it was—those gung-ho cops weren’t about to turn around and take me home. Another difference was where they took me. Downtown, 11th and State, not the local cop shop. I figured these clowns were planning to march me into the chief’s office looking for a promotion.

When we got there, they yanked me out of the car so hard I almost fell on my face. Definitely harsher treatment than usual. Inside, I was printed and then tossed in a holding cell.

The idea of going to prison for a crime I didn’t commit had been a fear of mine as a youngster. A common fear, I had assumed, for guys like me who grew up poor in Chicago—we’d all known people put away for doing little to nothing wrong. By 1981, at thirty years old, the Chicago P.D. had just about ground the fear of mistaken identity out of me with their unintentional “exposure therapy.” But as I sat in the basement of police headquarters that morning, the old anxiety crept back in. It didn’t help that a guy two cells over kept yelling, “I ain’t did nuttin’,” every ten minutes or so.

After what seemed like hours, I was led to a room with loud lights, a table, a few chairs, and a long two-way mirror—an interrogation room, just like in the movies.

“I’m not the bandit and you know it,” I said.

“Alright, Jerry,” a tall, chiseled-faced cop said, pointing for me to sit down.

It was odd to be called by my childhood nickname. I’d been known as Jerome, or just Rome, since at least the age of twelve.

Another cop came in a minute later, shorter, with a pasty, pock-marked face. By their suits and demeanor, I could tell they were big-shot detectives.

“Tell us about March 15th,” the shorter one said, sitting down across from me.

The look he gave was so intense I barely registered his words. It wasn’t the conqueror’s glare, but something more jaded, matter-of-fact. The room seemed to shrink all of a sudden. I could see everything as if it were pressed up against my eyeballs. The anticipation forming on the cop’s triangular Slavic skull. His wide right thumb slowly rolling a booger against his finger. The mustard stain on his tie—a bright yellow dot like a tiny headlight shining on me. My hands felt like they’d been stuck in a freezer. I placed them under my thighs, worried the cops would see me shivering.

“It’s alright, we got time,” the tall one said, taking a seat next to his partner and popping the top on a can of Coke.

I couldn’t find my tongue in my mouth.

“March 15th, Jerry,” the short one repeated.

It made no sense how they could know.

“Let’s start with something simple. Where’d you wake up that morning, Jer’?” The tall one asked, sliding the Coke toward me.

The carbonation escaping the can was a hissing snake in my ear.

“Were you at your place or somewhere else?” The short one asked.

I repeated the words your place and somewhere else in my mind.

“Somewhere else,” I said, struggling to get the syllables arranged.

“Was it an apartment or a house?”

I saw it then.

It’s just one night, Mom said as she rolled up the window.

“House.”

I carried the carnations through the overgrown weeds and up the narrow path to the door.

“Whose house was it, Jerry?”

Harriet acted surprised, though Mom dropped me there every year on the night before her birthday.

“My aunt’s.”

She was gluing egg cartons to her walls, baseboard to ceiling, to keep out the sound of pigeons shitting under a viaduct a half mile away. She made me help.

“Alright, what’d you do when you got up?”

Cake and coupons, Jerry! Harriet hollered in the morning, handing me a plate of discount bakery gloop, a pair of scissors, and the Sunday inserts. We cut them out and stacked them alphabetically by product—J for Jiffy, K for Kool-Aid—while daytime soaps blared from her console TV and two portable ones.

“Stay with me, Jerry. What’d you do then?"

I was bigger that year. Maybe eleven. Harriet tried putting a greasy brown hair wig on me, same color as hers. I wouldn’t let her do it that time. She followed me around her filthy house, saying it louder each time. Just look in any mirror and you’ll see it, sweetie…

“Jerry?”

I yelled for her to stop, but she wouldn’t. I turned with the scissors still in my hand.

“March 15th… where the fuck were you?”

She stopped talking so loud then.

Running out the door, I heard, it’s not your fault, son. I kept running before it became my fault. Mom went to the funeral alone.

A uniformed cop walked in just then.

“Computers back up,” he said, glancing toward me and shaking his head at the detectives.

“You gotta be shitting me,” the shorter one said.

They held me for a while after the prints came back. I sat alone in that room, staring at the mirror, wondering if anyone was watching from the other side. It must’ve been midnight by the time they released me. I didn’t have enough change to ride the El. It was a long cold walk home.

The next day, I went out once. Just to get the paper. A headline in the Sun-Times said:

Knic-Knac Nabber Sought in Connection with Homicide

There was a mugshot and a caption underneath: Ernest Gerard Bardo - aka “Jerry” Bardo. I recognized him from around the neighborhood. He didn’t look that much like me, except for the scar on his forehead. When they caught him, just a few days later, Bardo admitted to the burglaries, but it turned out he wasn’t responsible for the murder. I don’t know if they ever solved that one.

The only case of mistaken identity I’ve experienced in all the years since then has been the occasional, “You look like someone I know,” from strangers in public places like restaurants or bars. Though I never ask, I sometimes wonder if their friend is Jerry Bardo.

As far as Harriet goes, I can’t say if she was my real mom or not. There’s no one left in the family to ask about it either. I’ll tell you one thing though, every year the pigeons get a little louder. It’s nearly impossible to block them out anymore.

.

Don Goodrich cleans and shaves the body of his current tenant while the oldies station, KQRS, hums in the background. He begins replacing blood, bile, and urine with embalming solution just as the 12-string guitar intro to The Eagles Hotel California comes weeping out of his wall-mounted speakers. The oft-repeated recording—itself embalmed and immortalized, spinning incessantly from a DJ-less digital hub somewhere in space—is comforting to Don as it is to the millions of other classic rock connoisseurs who know every verse and movement of the perpetually presented pop relic. Not wanting to foul his stereo with the dead man goo dripping from his rubber-gloved hands, Don reaches his elbow to the volume knob—cranking up the tune while serenading the cleaned-up corpse in an off-key sing-a-long.

As the song ends, Don turns down the radio and reviews his handiwork. Disturbingly, the tall, white, middle-aged man with receding grey-brown hair laid out on his table looks much like himself. The paunch of front belly, side belly, and gravity-humbled breast blubber hanging on the body cause Don to look down and pinch his own puffy pads.

“Time for group, chubby,” he says to the stiff as he grabs his coat and makes his way to the rear exit of Goodrich Mortuary Services.

When he arrives at Pilgrim Lutheran in his shiny 2004 “Eagle Coach” Lincoln hearse, Don checks his watch: 2:45 PM on the dot. He’s fifteen minutes early, same as every Saturday. Plenty of time to set up and, most importantly for Don, to claim his special spot in the center of the church basement. After unfolding and lining chairs in perfect rows, Don places a memory foam cushion on the shiniest of the bunch—the chair he disinfects at least once a week—and sets it in the center of his arrangement. From his Goldilocks position, he greets group members as they slowly filter into the small, wood-paneled room.

Though Don never says much, the fact that he’s there holding down the same seat each week has a comforting effect on regulars and newcomers alike. No matter what troubling inconsistencies plague their lives, there’s always Don, decked out in beige slacks and blue button-down shirt, offering reassuring nods, waves, and smiles to everyone who enters. He’s been coming to the Saturday afternoon gatherings for over twenty years, making Don the longest-standing member, not only of the current recovery group, Overeaters Anonymous, but of every 12 Step fellowship that has congregated in Pilgrim Lutheran’s basement before them.

When Don first started coming, it was Narcotics Anonymous who held the 3PM Saturday slot. In those days, Don had been experimenting with “sherm," as embalming fluid-laced cigarettes are known on the street.

“An occupational hazard if ever there was one,” he was known to say at meetings.

Don soon found that attending N.A. gave him a sense of purpose and belonging unlike anything he had previously experienced in life. In no time, he’d adopted a slew of 12 Step slogans and began using them to great effect during group discussions.

Being a tidy type, Don also took it upon himself to empty the wastebaskets, set up the chairs, and make the coffee. Group attendees appreciated that Don came early, especially when snacking on the donuts, cookies, and other sweet treats he left near the coffee urn each week. Good old Don. An addict who had really turned his life around. An inspiration to newcomers and old-timers alike.

One Saturday afternoon, two years after Don joined the group, Pilgrim Lutheran’s pastor came bursting into the downstairs doper’s meeting demanding that Narcotics Anonymous and its members leave the premises immediately and permanently. The church elders, he said, were fed up with finding hypodermic needles and glassine baggies in Pilgrim Lutheran’s bathrooms, pews, and parking lots.

“We have children here. Children!” The pastor exclaimed.

As other group members sauntered out of the basement discussing which N.A. meetings they might disperse to, Don, immobilized by the minister’s reproachful remarks, clawed his fingers into the folding chair that’d long supported his khaki-covered bottom. The locations his neighbors mentioned moving to sounded so far away. Not just geographically, but emotionally, spiritually.

Though it seemed simple enough for the erratic cohort of intravenous itinerants to jump ship, there was no way Don could abandon his station so easily. That particular spot in that particular basement was where he'd learned to listen to the troubles of others and had, on occasion, even shared a few of his own. It was his place of ease and his place of power. It was the one place in life where the world settled perfectly around him.

And it wasn’t just Don who knew it. Other attendees referred to the center seat as “Don’s spot” as well. The meeting's secretary had often called on people during the sharing portion of the program in terms of their proximity to the group’s most devout member—“Guy next to Don,” or “Lady behind Don.”

And it wasn’t only the people. The fluorescent lights, wood paneling, chipped linoleum, plastic chairs, and coffee machine were also waiting each week for Don to come in, to set up, to take his seat, to bring stability to the space.

The deeper he contemplated the dilemma, the more desperately Don’s fingers gripped the seat, as if searching for a hand to hold within its plastic parts. With mind and hands thusly occupied, it was difficult for Don—the room’s last holdout—to understand Pilgrim Lutheran’s pastor when he said, “I’m talking to you, mister,” while pointing a stiff arm and long finger toward the exit.

The next Saturday at 2:45PM, Don returned and waited outside the basement door, hoping the minister and methadoners might reverse course, but sadly it was not to be. When Don went back the following week there were still no addicts assembled in the church’s lower level. But on the third Saturday following the group’s demise, Don pulled into Pilgrim Lutheran’s backlot to find several smokers standing nonchalantly near the rear entrance. Excitedly, Don strode toward the basement door. There, in its window, he saw a triangular sign advertising an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. It was scheduled for 3PM that very day.

Don was more than happy to “keep coming back” as the famous end-of-meeting chant instructed, not at all concerned that the focus of sessions had shifted from drugs to booze. It was no problem for Don to take the first step—admitting his powerlessness over alcohol—when he considered the time he had awoken to find several permanent marker penises scribbled on his skin after a drunken dorm party.

Though the physical and emotional hangovers he’d experienced his first year in college kept him from ever drinking again, after encountering A.A., Don became certain of a latent alcoholic condition residing within himself—ready to take hold if he stopped attending meetings.

As before, Don came early each week to clean up, place chairs, and power the percolator. He studied A.A.’s Big Book rigorously, learning to quote passages and page numbers as well as picking up the proper verbiage for presenting his personal account of living with alcoholism. Other group members appreciated that Don utilized well-worn one-liners during his brief shares, like “put the plug in the jug,” “keep an attitude of gratitude,” and “I suffer from alcoholism, not alcohol-wasm.” He was one of the good guys. Someone to look up to. A true recovering alcoholic.

After sixteen years of one drunk helping another, the Saturday afternoon A.A. group—having become quite popular—outgrew the little church basement, necessitating a move to larger locale on the West Side of St. Paul. As previously, Don didn’t leave with the others but instead kept his long-settled spot in the center of that particular room in the bowels of that particular building.

And because Pilgrim Lutheran’s basement had, by then, become a much sought-after recovery space, it was only one week later that a new 12 Step group took over the 3PM Saturday slot: Gamblers Anonymous.

It was no problem for Don to “qualify” for G.A. when he thought back to his Las Vegas elopement with Dolores—a woman he’d fallen hard and fast for after the two hooked up on his embalming table during a Goodrich funeral service ten years prior.

On the second night of their honeymoon, Dolores came down with a migraine and insisted Don attend the Englebert Humperdinck show alone.

“Front row seats, Don. You gotta go,” she’d said.

Though he preferred not to leave her side, Don did as his bride instructed and caught a cab to Bally’s casino. Less than halfway through the performance, however, he thought it best to return to the hotel with two pints of Dolores’ favorite ice cream. With the chilly dessert bag in his hand, Don crept quietly into the room. He took a long sneaky inhale and was just about to say “surprise” when he heard grunting. Stepping further in, Don saw a very tan, naked man with a giant pompadour wig doggy-styling his beloved on their honeymoon suite California king. Ketchup-stained food wrappers and bottles of cheap booze littered the giant mattress, framing the corrupt couple like a lurid laurel wreath. Neither Dolores nor the Elvis-impersonating wedding officiant who’d married them the day before heard Don standing near the bathroom muttering “no” under his breath while they did the dirty deed. As his heart sank through his body and fell all of the hotel’s thirty-two stories down to ground level, Don, following his vascular organ, slipped from the suite, placed the Ben and Jerry’s by the door, and disappeared into the lowest level of the casino. After plonking five hundred dollars worth of hard-earned quarters into Stardust slots that night, Don caught an early flight back to St. Paul, had a lawyer draw up annulment papers, and swore off relationships for good.

At G.A., no one pried into the details of Don’s compulsive gambling. It was enough that they saw the hangdog look on his face when he alluded to the “soul-crushing casino” where he “shook hands with the one-armed bandit.” In any event, Pilgrim Lutheran’s new anonymous crew didn’t last long. With the pass-the-basket money continually disappearing into the pocket of one desperate soul or another, financial instability caused the group to dissolve after just three months.

Two weeks later, in late October of that year, the basement’s 3PM Saturday spot was filled by its first foreign language group: Neuróticos Anónimos.

Great opportunity to practice the old High School Spanish, Don thought, though “Mi nombre es Don y soy neurótico,” was the most he felt comfortable saying out loud.

As per usual, Don ingratiated himself by coming early to set up chairs, snacks, and coffee. The small, mostly male congregation, welcomed Don warmly, happy to have the gringo mascot in their midst, especially considering what a buena taza de café he made.

Though Don didn’t believe himself burdened by neurosis when he first joined the ill-at-ease Latinos, he soon found that he couldn’t stop scribbling his name as Dón—with an accent mark above the o—into the many spiral notebooks he’d begun bringing to group. The repeated Dón doodling gave Don a sense of closeness with the others—in both idiosyncrasy and idiom—no matter that it was not the correct Spanish spelling of his name.

The neuróticos meeting, never very large to begin with, began to shrink in numbers as Winter set in. Eventually, only two people remained: non-Spanish-speaking Dón and a short, bald man with a robust facial tic named Juan José. Over the span of Neuróticos Anonimos two-man tenure, Don, unable to understand his Hispanic counterpart’s hour-long monologues, instead focused on the twitch that zig-zagged from scalp to chin and back again across Juan José’s face during the brief moments the Spanish-speaker stopped speaking. The remarkable feat of facial dexterity was an inspiration to Dón who practiced his own eye jerks, nose wiggles, and mouth contortions in the mortuary mirror between meetings each week—sometimes even performing the well-rehearsed facial oscillations for departed souls tabled in Goodrich’s lower level.

For Juan José, it had been no problem that the gringo Don was the only other attendee of the recovery sessions, but the lack of proper heating in the church basement was another thing. As brutal January temperatures froze the city of Saint Paul that Winter, the group’s last Hispanic and his unusual spasm stopped making the chilly trek to Pilgrim Lutheran, leaving Don without a single neurótico to make coffee for.

After Juan José’s departure, Don, as he was compelled to do, continued popping around the church each Saturday to check on its 12 Step status. Sometimes he even went in, set up a few chairs, and sat alone thinking about his former anonymous allies, wondering where they were and who was making coffee for them.

But as the room remained empty week after week, depression sent Don down a dark path. Though he fantasized about drinking beer, playing the slots, and even smoking a little sherm, Don instead succumbed to what he deemed the least harmful addiction in his repertoire: filling spiral notebooks with Dóns while chanting, “Mi nombre es Dón y soy neurótico.”

One Saturday at the beginning of Spring, as Don and his Dón-filled notebooks drove by Pilgrim Lutheran, he noticed a sandwich sign set outside the church’s back door that read: Overeaters Anonymous today, 3pm. Excitedly, he pulled his hearse into the church lot, chuckling to himself about the term sandwich sign together with the word overeater. Wiping the judgmental joke from his mind, Don stepped out of the car, pulled the band of his beige slacks down a bit, and let his belly protrude.

“Oh yeah,” he said, rubbing his newly freed paunch. “You’re a natural for this.”

The first few weeks in O.A. were a dream. Don memorized the names of regulars and adopted the group’s style and vernacular quickly. The overeaters were comforted by their new member's presence and appreciated his setup skills, though they dissuaded him from bringing snacks. More than ever, Don fit right in. And best of all there was no sign of the “Big Bummer.”

The thing is, Don was not the only one who kept coming back throughout Pilgrim Lutheran’s twenty years of 12 Step transitions…

“Name’s Ralph an’ I’m a attic,” he introduced himself loudly at his first Narcotics Anonymous meeting.

Don was immediately rankled by the newcomer who was opposite to himself in every way. Where Don was consistently early, Ralph was always late. Where Don sat in the same spot every session, Ralph moved from place to place—now in the front, now in the back, now standing up, now sitting down—even shifting spots several times during an individual meeting. And where Don, without fail, showed up each week—even if it meant hiring another funeral director to officiate a service—Ralph came and went, sometimes disappearing for a month or more at a time.

While the man’s tardiness, lack of commitment, and inability to pick a permanent place had been irksome to Don, Ralph’s sloppy clothes, bad personal hygiene, and repeated interruptions of personal shares had been even more irritating. And there were other issues too: Ralph drinking more than his share of the coffee, never contributing when the basket was passed, brazenly flirting with the group’s women, and, most painfully for Don, his perpetual misquoting of the renowned end-of-meeting slogan: “Keep coming back, it works if you’re worth it.”

On top of all that, Ralph exaggeratedly imitated the addiction of whichever 12 Step tenant currently occupied the basement, declaring compulsions he seemed to have come down with only upon joining that particular program. In N.A., he presented a rubber-cement-huffing problem. In A.A., he proclaimed his powerlessness over Bailey’s “Wild Irish Cream.” In G.A., he disclosed an inability to stop dropping dollars at “the bingo.” Don, suspecting the Big Bummer of being a big phony, wished the man would leave the recovery room to addicts, like himself, who truly needed it. With the arrival of the neuróticos, Don’s wish came true.

“Wonder how you say ‘so long Big Bummer’ in Español,” Don laughed, realizing his rival had quit due to a lack of language skills.

The basement remained entirely Ralph-free through the neuróticos run and exactly four weeks into the overeater’s takeover. At O.A.’s fifth meeting, however, Ralph reemerged, waving cheerily at Don as he waded through the crowded room well after the session had begun. Don winced, not only because the Bummer was back, but because his nemesis had put on a little weight since last they’d met.

Trying too hard as always, Don thought. An even bigger bummer than before.

And so it was, much to Don’s displeasure, that Ralph became a semi-regular in the room once again—only this time, Ralph really looked the part.

As he watched Ralph’s physical form round out week after week, Don became competitive. But the extra desserts he added here and there weren’t enough to keep up with his counterpart. The only way Don could catch up was by doubling portions at every meal…

Three months into O.A. membership, and twenty-five pounds heavier, Don is now more certain than ever that this particular group in this particular place is where he truly belongs. As the last of the overeaters take their seats, Don checks his watch again: 3PM on the button. He drowsily closes his eyes, hoping the Big Bummer won’t show today. But once the sharing portion is underway, Don is awakened by the familiar parlance of his overeating adversary.

“I know whutcher talkin’ ‘bout, Pam. Them Dairy Queens is a big trigger for me too…” Ralph blabs, interrupting the woman next to him.

As Big Bummer’s nasal resonations fill the room, Don recalls being cornered at the previous week’s meeting.

“Look, I need a sponsor and you’re the only guy here wit’ real time unner his belt. Or over his belt in this case, haha. Look, what I’m sayin’ is, I wanna be more like you, Don…”

It was horrifying to hear at first, but the more Don thought about it, the more he realized it would be good if Ralph were more like him—clean, quiet, punctual—especially considering that the unkempt oaf wasn’t likely to leave the Saturday support group anytime soon.

Though he had agreed to take on the role, it wasn’t clear to Don which 12 Step program he should mentor Ralph in. Never having had a sponsor himself, Don figured the best bet would be to point his pupil toward the proper literature, leaving it to the wisdom of the written word to cure his chaotic counterpart’s character defects.

And so it was that Don picked his favorite self-help bookstore, Endless Evolution, for their first meeting to take place, setting the date for this Saturday after group.

—————

Meagan Sullivan arrives at Endless Evolution to meet her sponsor, Katrina after their Saturday afternoon Al-Anon meeting. It’s a weekly ritual both have come to appreciate over the six months they’ve been working together. But at a recent Co-Dependents Anonymous session—Meagan’s seventh 12 Step affiliation since beginning her path to recovery—she was told by long-time group members that having a sponsor is simply "too co-dependent” for someone with problems like hers. Though the words rang true for Meagan, her difficulty with confrontation has kept her from letting go of the many mentors she has in various sex, love, and debt addiction programs. Knowing she’ll never rid herself of those relationships until she first fires her closest sponsor, Katrina, Meagan’s mind wriggles, searching for the right way to go about it.

As Katrina’s yellow VW pulls up, Meagan twists her mouth into an overly excited smile and waves emphatically.

“So, what’s happening with Step Four?” Katrina asks, as they stroll toward the bookstore’s coffee bar.

“Yeah… I’m still working on it,” Meagan says.

“Don’t want to get stuck there, girl. Put all those gory details onto paper and let’s talk it out. That’s when things start to change. You’ll see.”

“I know…” Meagan says listlessly as she does a quick scan of the room. “There’s a couple of books I want to pick up. Meet you up front in a few?”

“That’s my girl, always seeking more support,” Katrina says, lifting her vanilla latte and gliding toward the newly expanded Incense and Candles section of the store.

—————

“Hey, Don.”

“Oh… hi, Ralph,” Don says drably, tucking a book entitled Overcoming Obesity in Obtainable Ways back on its shelf and checking his watch.

“Sorry, I’m a little late,” Ralph says with a shrug.

“You might be interested to know they have an entire section here dedicated to punctuality.”

“Had to stop for gas. Then traffic…” Ralph explains.

“As you’ve likely heard in the rooms, you need a spiritual solution to your malady,” Don interrupts, pausing to let the words of wisdom sink in.

Ralph is about to speak when Don starts again,

“This store has many fine selections to help with all sorts of maladies. And because your maladies are likely different than mine, you should take a look around and see if there’s something suitable for you. I assume you already have the 12 Step literature?”

“You bet. And I’m ready to jump in…”

“Whoa… hold your horses. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. How about you figure out your top three or four maladies and see if you can find some books here to address them.”

Sensing his protégé’s hesitation, Don offers another thought.

“Or, you can simply wander the store and see what speaks to you, as I often do.”

Don begins a slow stride through the shop with Ralph trailing behind. Passing rows of books on self-improvement, self-empowerment, and self-development, astrology, numerology, and parapsychology, ascended masters, Zen masters, mastering oneself, and meeting one’s shadow, Don finally comes to a halt at an endcap rack of half-priced recordings sitting near a CD listening station.

“Oh yes!” Don exclaims, picking out a CD and wagging it at Ralph’s eye level. “This is very good. And well priced.”

Ralph leans in to read the title:

What Do You Hope To Gain From Your Life? - An audio series by renowned life strategist John Lynwood.

Ralph accepts the item and stares at it blankly.

“And look, it’s already in the listening station so you can ‘try before you buy’,” Don instructs, pointing at headphones hanging from the CD stand.

As Don follows his malady-mending divination back down book aisles, Ralph turns, bumping into a curvy woman with dyed red hair and cat eye glasses pulling on a pair of headphones at the listening station adjacent to his.

“Hey. Wow. Didn’t see you. Maybe I need glasses too, haha…” Ralph says awkwardly.

The woman smiles intensely but doesn’t speak. Ralph, unsure of what’s happening, smiles back, pulls on a headset, and holds up his John Lynwood CD. The redhead lifts a copy of the same CD and nods in affirmation. They press play simultaneously.

What do you hope to gain from your life? Let’s try that again. What-do-you-hope-to-gain-from-your-life? That’s the big question, isn’t it?

Ralph points at the earphones and smiles playfully at the question. Cat glasses lady responds by pooching her lips and raising her eyebrows along with an ‘I dunno’ shrug.

To begin with, let’s consider each word in the sentence slowly and carefully. ‘What’ makes it a question. ‘Do’ makes it an action. ‘You,’ it’s all about your personal journey. ‘Hope,’ the dreams that are hidden underneath, desperately waiting to be fulfilled…

At the word “hope,” the woman nonchalantly undoes the three top buttons on her vintage-style blouse. Ralph’s eyes widen.

‘To,’ a direction or movement forward. ‘Gain,’ more than there is now.

Playfully undoing a fourth button, the woman looks down at the swelling lump in Ralph’s pants.

‘From,’ the opposite of to—we’ll speak more on the power of combining opposites later.

Ralph glances nervously around the room as the woman suddenly seizes his zipper.

‘Your,’ it inherently belongs to you. ‘Life,’ something that exists.

Ralph watches speechlessly as she spits in one hand and pulls out his penis with the other.

Altogether, you have a question, an action, a journey, the hidden dreams waiting to become known, the movement that takes one forward, abundance, the power of merging opposites, the inheritance, and finally…the spectacular movement from the energetic realm into full existence.

After a few gentle strokes, Ralph grimaces and stifles a shriek while the henna-haired hottie expertly side-steps the squirting semen emitting from his member.

Now, let’s repeat the question. What do you hope to gain from your life? Let this query work its way through your being…

As Ralph finishes zipping his pants, he looks up to see the woman walking away.

“Miss… can I call you?” He asks, dropping the headphones.

-————-

“What you did in there…” Katrina says, pulling Meagan out of the bookstore.

“I know, I’m sorry,” Meagan says in a little girl voice.

Just then, two men step out of Endless Evolution, interrupting the women’s conversation. Meagan pretends not to recognize the one smiling weakly in her direction. As the men turn toward the parking lot, Katrina continues,

“There’s no point in taking you through the steps if you’re just going to act out like that!”

After Katrina storms off, Meagan smiles to herself, happy to have taken the first step in working out her co-dependency issues.

—————

Don digs into a double-order fish and chips platter sitting on his embalming table.

“Least it’s not burgers,” he tells himself.

After the last bite, he washes his hands thoroughly in the slop sink, turns on the oldies station and pulls on a pair of rubber gloves. As he gets back to work on the body, the strummy guitar intro to The Eagles’ Peaceful Easy Feeling comes radiating from the radio like sonic sunshine.

“Oh, yeah…” Don says, reaching his elbow to the volume knob, feeling how perfectly the middle-of-the-road melody meets his mood.

Don hums along as he matches the cadaver’s hair to a mall-style glamor shot lying on its chest.

It’s good to be a sponsor, he thinks.

When the song comes to an end, Don turns down the radio and focuses on his last stage of prep.

Wiring the mouth shut and adding caps under the eyelids, he ensures the sense organs will remain closed from here on in, or at least until the body is deep in the ground.

“Isn’t this lovely,” Doris says, digging through her bulky brown purse, “those other girls always seemed so, I don’t know, stuck up. Let’s see… I’ve got some good ones here.”

It’s been difficult for Helen to attract new blood since beating top players Marcy and Adeline in a humiliating round of draw poker her third week at Peaceful Gardens, Inc. With pickings as slim as they are Helen agrees to let “Coupon Lady,” as Doris is known by both residents and staff, join her and Eunice at the weathered card table this afternoon.

Helen sets the terms and shuffles the deck. “Five card stud. Nothing wild. Ten cents of coupon to a penny. Low card bets first.” She deals a first hand. Then a second. Then a third.

By the fourth hand, Doris’ earnings are up a little and she’s feeling confident.

“I’m gonna do twenty cents… off Gold Bond Foot Powder that is,” she says.

The stacks of Sunday cutouts in front of her opponent remind Helen of a day, many years ago, when she visited her eldest son, Rick, at his hovel in East Saint Paul—an apartment she’d paid for with money poached from her husband, Bob. The piles on top of piles crammed into Rick’s festering three-room flat were comforting to her son for reasons Helen would never understand.

“Let’s cut cards,” she said that day, “you win, I’ll buy you a fifth of Jim Beam. I win, you clean this lousy place up.”

“You’re a cheat ma. I’m not playing you.”

“Call your dear mama a cheat? I’m just lucky that’s all.”

She reached for a bag of clippings crammed in a corner, one of many he’d been collecting since his teen years.

“Don’t touch those, Ma,” he whispered as if she were waking a baby.

The bottom gave way when Helen pulled the handles, dumping a load of discount vouchers at her feet. She picked one off the sticky carpet and held it to the light.

“Let me see that,” Rick said, snatching the yellowed paper from her hand. “It says ‘Five dollars off’, Ma,” he declared, hoping to appeal to Helen’s frugal side.

“Also says ‘Expires August, Nineteen-Ninety-Two’, guess you missed your chance on that Jazzercise class, kiddo.”

“Bond Goldfinger… do I know him?” Eunice asks, bringing Helen’s mind back.

“Foot powder, dear. It’s a twenty-cent coupon to you,” Doris says kindly.

Eunice pushes one of her caramels into the pot—not an officially sanctioned currency in Helen’s game, but agreeable to the players nonetheless.

Helen deals a last card down, including a third king to Doris from under the deck. No one notices her smooth move.

Doris, peeking at her hole card, says, “It’s getting down and dirty now!”

Eunice blushes and smiles knowingly.

“I am feeling lucky to-day,” Doris sing-songs, dropping another clipping atop the pot, “two dollars off Snyder’s Pretzels. That’s almost free.”

The mention of pretzels causes Helen to tear up. There was a time when that was all he would eat. Poor Little Ricky. Ricky the sicky. Everyone, including Helen, had called him that as a boy. Many, including Bob, continued calling him that as a man.

When Bob found out about the apartment he stopped payment and left his son to be evicted.

“It’s time he learns to be a man!” he had shouted at Helen.

Helen, who’d learned the art of culling from her cardsharp father, came up with the idea to start a poker game in the living room when Bob was away. It didn’t take her long to win some money and lose some friends. She gave the proceeds—over five hundred dollars—to Ricky, who bought a beat-up station wagon with the winnings and stuffed it with as many coupons, magazines, and knick-knacks as he could. Somehow he managed to sleep in it too.

Ricky’s homelessness was hard on Helen. She drove around looking for him most days if only to bring a sandwich or a few dollars. Sometimes she found him, but even when she did, it didn’t feel like she’d found him. He became a stranger to her, not just in demeanor, but in physical appearance too. After a time, Helen no longer saw any trace of family resemblance at all. It was as if her boy’s DNA had been evicted from his body just as he’d been evicted from his home. Toward the end, she knew him only by his overfull and filthy car.

Gasping for breath like a diver who’s been in the deep too long, Helen brings her focus back to the game, fixing her grey-blue eyes on Doris’ face.

“Ten American against all you’ve got,” she says, pushing a roll of quarters toward the pot.

In a rare flash of lucidity, Eunice asks, “What would you do with all those coupons, dear?”

Helen pictures him parked by Lake Phalen feeding the geese. The leaves were mostly gone then. She called to him repeatedly, but he didn’t respond.

“Don’t feed it to the birds,” she’d said, leaving a roast beef sandwich on the hood of his car.

She imagines going back there now. Spotting his wagon. Waving to him.

“I’ve got some good ones,” she’d say.

He’d find it right away.

“It says two dollars off, Ma!”

A kerfuffle at the table snaps Helen out of her daydream.

“Is the game over?” Eunice asks.

“It is for me,” Doris says, packing little stacks of paper into her purse, “This game isn’t friendly. It just isn’t friendly.”

As Doris huffs back to the dayroom, Helen pinches the pretzel coupon off the pot. Slim pickings, she thinks. Eunice smiles and nods as if in agreement.

Tonight’s Sermon by Jake La Botz

The people moving swiftly up and down corridors, getting in and out of workstations, talking loudly and slamming doors cause Gerald’s shoulders to squeeze all the way up to his earlobes. At times like this, he imagines the small room where he works to be set squarely in the center of a twelve-sided Rubik’s Cube being twisted savagely in the hands of a giant angry child who’s never able to line up the colors and solve the puzzle.

“Out there chaos. In here order. Out there chaos…” he repeats, bringing his mind back to the panel of pictures he’s meant to decipher.

The door to his little office flings open just then.

“Busy week ahead, Ger-o. You should really get your quota up,” Bernie, Gerald’s boss, says, slamming the door on his way out.

While the next set of images loads on his monitor, Gerald recalls the sign he saw outside The Vertical Church the night before: Tonight’s Sermon: I Am Not A Robot

Below the title were pictures in square panels with a single sentence at the bottom: Select all images that look like Jesus

Of the Jesus images on the marquee board, there was one carrying a cross, one hanging on a cross, one with a halo crown, and one with a crown of thorns. Of the non-Jesus images, there was one of war raging, one of a junkie injecting drugs, one of a man stealing an old lady’s purse, and one of a woman hitting a child.

Given his job in the button room, there was no way Gerald could ignore the captcha-inspired signage. He walked into the large brick church, took a seat in a rear pew, and listened attentively.

“We all know what it’s like to be told what we should do. People go ‘round telling others what they should do all day long,” the pastor began, inspiring a few chuckles. “But when we accept Jesus as our Savior we open to His truth. For Jesus unlocks that within us that which knows what is right and what is wrong, which one is God’s command and which one is Satan’s temptation. Brothers ‘n sisters, we have a moral captcha to maneuver in every situation and with every person. Not on a computer screen, but in our God-given, ever-lovin’ hearts. Say it with me now… I am not a robot!”

“I am not a robot!” Gerald says, poking the big red button on his computer’s keypad, correctly signing off on a captcha with a full thirty seconds to spare. Then, as he does every time he answers a challenge correctly, Gerald picks up the six-sided Rubik’s Cube on his desk and gives it one quick twist.

Reaching into his jacket, Gerald fishes out a pocket-sized religious tract given to him after the church service. The three-word title—Are You Ready?—along with a black and white drawing of an industrial clock on the document’s cover, immediately reactivates Gerald’s shoulder/earlobe tension. Seesawing between curiosity and aversion—shoulders down, shoulders up—Gerald finally flips the pamphlet open to the second page where he finds a sketch of a nuclear mushroom cloud exploding outside the window of a home. Inside the home, a couple and their children are filling a “go bag” with a numbered list of items: 1. Bible 2. Prayer 3. God’s love 4. Food 5. Flashlight 6. Raincoat

Gerald stares out the tiny window of his tiny office, imagining the puffy clouds in the distance to be the product of a nuclear bomb. An alert on his computer rings just then, reminding him that his time to answer the next captcha has expired. Gerald returns his attention to the screen as a new set of pictures loads. He gets back to clicking images, blazing through the rest of the day with his focus intact. Trees. Rubik twist. Fire trucks. Rubik twist. Airplanes. Rubik twist. Ladders. Rubik twist…

At the end of the day, Gerald takes the crowded elevator twenty-three stories down to street level and steps into the brisk evening, being watchful, as the Pastor warned, of the moral captchas he is bound to encounter.

Several events on the walk home perk Gerald’s curiosity:

A man bumping into him on the sidewalk without apologizing.

A couple kissing in public.

Litter being thrown from a passing car.

A teenager in a doorway holding a cardboard sign that reads: Anything Helps

Uncertain which are God’s commands and which are Satan’s temptations, Gerald takes his best guess in each situation, imaginarily pressing the big red button and tangibly twisting his Rubik’s Cube at the completion of each moral captcha.

When he arrives home, Gerald retrieves a backpack from the closet—the one his mother gave him for his twenty-ninth birthday—and starts prepping a go bag. He stuffs a flashlight, canned tuna, a windbreaker, and an extra Rubik’s Cube inside, but because he doesn’t own a bible, and is unsure how to place “prayer" or “God’s love” into a bag, Gerald determines it would be best to speak with the Pastor before continuing.

The next morning, Gerald straps on his half-full go bag and stops at the Vertical Church on the way to work. Finding the front door unlocked, he roams the empty chapel and halls until he hears voices emanating from an office.

“Excuse me, reverend sir. My name’s Gerald. I saw your sermon two nights ago…”

“Got another one, Sally!” The Pastor calls over his shoulder.

"You’ve come to the right place!” Sally says, entering the room cheerily.

“Are you ready to accept Jesus as your personal Lord and savior, Jerry?” The Pastor asks.

“It’s Gerald, sir,” Gerald answers.

“Will you follow His command from this day forth?”

Gerald nods his head weakly while readying his lips to ask a question. Before he can utter a word, the Pastor and Sally close their eyes tightly and begin praying.

“Heavenly Father we bring you this lost and weary soul who comes seeking your salvation…”

Gerald, having deduced that keeping Satan’s temptation out of one’s field of vision is a necessary precursor to letting Jesus in, squeezes his eyelids shut too. Out there chaos. In here order, he tells himself.

When the church people get to the “amen” part, Gerald peeks his left eye open enough to see Sally filling a Dixie cup at the office sink.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit I baptize thee!” The Pastor effuses, flicking tap water at the bald spot on back of Gerald’s head.

How do you feel now, son?” The Pastor asks.

“Good, I guess. Real good.”

“Hear that, Sal? This fella’s feeling real good! That’s Jesus in your heart. He’ll be walking and talking with you now, Harold.”

“Gerald, sir. The thing is, I’m in need of some items… for my go bag.”

Promising to return for Sunday service to learn more about God’s love, Gerald purchases a bible for nineteen dollars—“at cost” the reverend says—and hurries off to work.

Outside, as Gerald finishes tucking the good book into his backpack, he suddenly sees it…

A yellow car drives through a yellow light nearly running over a pedestrian wearing a yellow jacket. Gerald takes down the license, vowing to call the police when he gets to work.

A block later, he spots a red bird flying over a sunburnt man who’s panhandling next to a fire hydrant. Gerald drops a few coins into the man’s cup and wishes him good luck.

Then, as he nears the office, Gerald sees a woman drop a green scarf on the green grass near a green trash can. He quickly fetches it from the ground and returns it to her.

God’s command is just like Rubik’s Cube! He thinks.

When he arrives at his little office in the giant building, Gerald pushes his go bag under the desk, takes his seat confidently, and flips on the computer. Still elated from his moral captcha breakthrough, it takes a moment to register the peculiar images materializing on his monitor. The usual nine square panels appear—three down, three across—but what’s inside them makes Gerald’s face scrunch. Confusedly, he clicks the refresh icon—something he rarely does—and shakes his head as the next captcha loads. Not only can Gerald not understand what he’s looking at, there are no written prompts indicating what objects he should be looking for. On top of that, the computer’s color contrast seems to have gone out. Clicking the refresh tab a second time, Gerald scours the new captcha for clues but can’t find any similarities between the nine black-and-white, blob-like images occupying his screen.

An alarm goes off above Gerald’s computer letting him know his time has run out. Bernie, his boss, flings the door open just then.

“We’ve moved up to level four, Ger-o. They’re more difficult now. You’ll have to maintain your quota to stay on the team.”

Three hours later, after a bitter morning of misidentifying captchas, Gerald decides to take an early lunch outside. Before he gets to the elevator, Bernie waves him into the big office. Gerald nods along with the lips flapping, the words coming toward him, but nothing Bernie is saying lands.

On a bench in a nearby park, Gerald opens his go bag and pulls out a ham and cheese sandwich. As he nibbles distractedly, a sudden realization pushes all other thoughts aside:

No one has ever explained what the captchas are for.

While his shoulders and earlobes reach toward one other with an excruciating level of tension, Gerald seeks out rationalizations for the troubling predicament he’s in.

It was enough to find a job I was good at, it was enough that no one bothered me at work, it was enough that Mother was happy having me out of the house… it’s not my fault no one told me!

But right now, sensing that the button room may well be Satan’s temptation and not God’s command, none of those thoughts are enough to lift the burden of responsibility from his painfully compressed shoulders.

Finishing his last bite of sandwich, Gerald pulls his Rubik’s Cube from the backpack and gives it one hard twist.

Bernie has some explaining to do, he thinks.

Gathering his lunch garbage, Gerald stands and marches toward the solitary trashcan at the park’s exit. But the overfull bin, he soon discovers, leaves no room for his rubbish. As he angrily stuffs the wrappers into his own pants’ pocket, a woman’s scream suddenly cuts through the air.

“Help! He has my purse!”

Ransacking the purloined purse, the thief—a scraggly man in a hoodie about Gerald’s height and build—runs toward the exit and, consequently, toward Gerald. In the blink of an eye, Gerald palms his Rubik’s Cube, winds up, and hurls it at the robber’s head. The brightly colored puzzle rotates through space, hits the purse-snatcher’s forehead, and crashes on the pavement. A moment later, as if in slow motion, Gerald watches as the thief’s fist closes in on his face.

——————

“How you feeling sweetie? When you didn’t come home I called your office. The secretary told me they let you go today. Is that why you were fighting in the park?”

As he scrutinizes his mother, Gerald wonders if she’s sick or simply isn’t wearing makeup. Before he can give the matter another thought, a large picture is shoved in front of him.

“No concussion. Just a nasty contusion around your left eye. Probably want to ice it a little more when you get home,” the doctor says, pointing at the X-Ray.

Gerald squints at the black-and-white image then lifts his gaze to the black-and-white industrial clock hanging over the door. Reaching down for his shoes, he realizes they’re black-and-white as well. Shockingly, it dawns on Gerald that the entire room and its contents—the medical items, the bed, the landscape print on the wall, the nurse, the doctor, and his mother—are all black, white, or some combination of the two.

“Where’s my Rubik’s Cube?!?” Gerald blurts out.

“Oh, yes. Apparently, a woman gave it to the ambulance driver when they came for you. It’s just there, next to the bed,” the nurse points.

Gerald investigates the six-sided puzzle, now missing a corner from its earlier collision. He rotates the cube this way and that, but no matter which way he arranges the rows, they remain solid gray—no colors to line up, no puzzle to solve.

In the car, while his mother chats nervously, Gerald gazes silently out the passenger window. Three blocks from their house, as they near the Vertical Church, he suddenly exclaims,

“Let me out here.”

“I will do no such thing. You’ve had a serious injury, hon.”

“Stop the car now!”

When his mother stops at the next light, Gerald leaps from the car and dashes down the street.

Bursting into the church, he finds a custodian sweeping aisles.

“Where is he?” Gerald asks.

“Who you looking for?”

“The Pastor.”

“Ain’t no church Tuesday night. He be here tomorrow.”

“Is this… are we in level four?”

“If this level… what?”

“The moral captcha. Is this level four?!?”

As Gerald continues yelling, the janitor unscrews the long handle from the broom’s head and holds it up like a bat.

“Best leave on yo’ own feet ‘fore I go upside yo’ head.”

Heeding the warning, Gerald leaves the building hastily, passing the marquee board out front that bears a new black and white message: Tonight’s Sermon: Eternal Happiness or Eternal Heat—Your Choice.

Up and down streets and boulevards, through alleys and parking lots, Gerald runs until his sides ache. Eventually he slows to a fast walk and then to a slower one. Sometime later, in a part of town unfamiliar to him, Gerald takes a seat on a curb. A broken bottle in the gutter catches a glint of light from a streetlamp overhead. Gerald picks up the biggest chunk and runs its jagged edge against his tender skin again and again, feeling chaos and order blend, black into white, until his tired gray eyes droop and finally close.

.

“Anyone see us?”

“No one even knew about it.”

“How’re you so sure?”

“It was on a broken lectern with junk lying all around it.”

Sam knew microphones. No doubt about it. But he didn’t know a thing about stealing. I, on the other hand, had been in and out of custody so many times I still woke up in the middle of the night thinking the toilet would be next to my bed.

The microphone in question—an “Electro-Voice 664 high fidelity cardioid dynamic,” as Sam was always saying—was an old vocal mic with a streamlined 1950s space-age design. They weren’t usually worth much, according to Sam, but the one we nabbed was special. It had a slightly different shape. An extra notch in the middle where the engineer’s initials—“LB” for Lou Burroughs—had been etched. It was a prototype, Sam said. One of its kind. That alone wasn’t enough to make it real valuable, but Sam knew something else about it, too. Namely, that it had been used by Hank Williams Sr.

The only “proof” I saw before agreeing to look for the thing was a grainy black and white photo Sam showed me of Hank at the Skyline Club in Austin just before he died. The mic in the picture looked similar enough and, like I said, Sam knew his stuff when it came to microphones. I guess what convinced me, though, was finding out the Electro-Voice 664 didn’t hit the market ’til 1954. The picture of Hank was from December ’52.

“The problem will be finding the right buyer.”

He got that part right. I knew fences, but no one I’d trust with that piece.

We drove to my place in Bucktown since I lived closest to the college. Of course, I knew better than to risk my job—not to mention the possibility of a parole violation—but Sam said the thing was worth fifty grand, minimum. I guess I believed him. At least I wanted to.

When we got to my apartment I put on a pot of coffee. I like the dark stuff. Bustelo. Got the habit from a Puerto Rican chick I dated in Humboldt Park the last time I was out. Sam kept looking out the window, like he suspected someone followed us. I closed the blinds and laid the mic on the desk I use for a table. Sam sat down and stared at the thing like it was a crystal ball. I drank my mud, mulling over how I’d come to know this crazy fucker in the first place…

I’d been pushing broom at the school for about three months when he came on crew. I ignored him in the beginning. He didn’t ignore me. I’m not sure how many people at the college knew I was an ex-con. My jailhouse sleeves poked out a bit at the cuffs and my neck tattoo probably saw light of day when I bent over, but I didn’t think the average Joe would notice or care about a janitor’s tats. Sam went right at it.

“You get those inside?” He asked his first week there.

I asked what he knew about it. He said he’d known people who’d done time, that’s all.

You’d never guess Sam was into H by looking at him. I mean to say, the guy was all right angles. Square as they come. At least on the outside. When he offered me a taste one day, I was a kind of surprised, but not interested. My tangle with hard stuff had ended years before that.

Sam got high at lunchtime most Fridays. He’d come out of the john half on the nod talking about sound equipment. It was boring, but less boring than eating lunch alone. Other than giving him a lift home now and again, that’s all there was to our “friendship”. Then one day he brought in a photo of an Electro-Voice, saying that once-upon-a-time they were used in schools like ours. He asked if I’d keep an eye out for something like that, since I cleaned the whole fine arts department, including the auditorium. I didn’t bite. A few weeks later, he brought in the picture of Hank, and said he had “reason to believe” that special mic, the prototype, was in the school somewhere…

While I paced my apartment, thinking about our next move, Sam pulled out his gear and started cooking a bag at my desk, without even asking. That pissed me off. As I was about to say something he blurted out,

“Ernie, you’re the only one I can tell this to…”

He found a vein, registered, and slammed his dope real fast like a pro. I watched his pupils turn to pinholes and then noticed all the tracks on his arm. The guy was more than the weekend warrior I'd made him out to be.

“Not just Hank…”

His eyelids folded.

“There were others.”

He was getting pale.

“Their souls, Ernie…”

His lips turned blue around the edges. I got scared and slapped his face. He opened his eyes just then.

“Their souls are trapped inside…”

“Sam!” I yelled as he slumped forward.

When a guy ODs in your apartment and you’re on parole with a stolen microphone lying on the desk you use for a table I guess you don’t call 911. I didn’t anyway. But even if I had, it would’ve been too late.

I paced my apartment drinking Bustelo and cursing Sam. I could see myself back in the joint shitting next to my bed again. I tried to make sense of what he’d said, wondering if he was totally off his rocker or what.

My first problem was getting Sam’s body out of my place. I didn’t want it coming back on me. As I got his gear together, I noticed the glassine baggie the dope came in. There was a brand name stamped on it like the stuff they sell in NYC. It said “Fireball”. I smelled it. It was strong to the nose.

When it got dark out I zipped Sam into a sleeping bag. I waited until the whole building was asleep before pulling my van around back. He wasn’t a big guy, but damn he was heavy. The best thing I could figure was to drop him on the Westside near a major drug zone.

I drove ’til I found an empty alley, hauled him out, and dropped him on the ground. The zipper was stuck on the sleeping bag. I kept yanking at it, which only made it worse. As I was wrestling the bag off him, an envelope fell out of his clothes. That fucked with my head. It hadn’t occurred to me to check his pockets. I stuck the envelope down my pants, leaned Sam against an abandoned building, and got the hell out of there.

When I was back at my place I emptied the envelope onto the table. It was full of photos but not as grainy as the one of Hank. They were promo pictures. Headshots. I recognized the people. Billie Holiday. Janis Joplin. Jim Morrison. Each of them was singing into an Electro-Voice 664. When I looked real close, I could see the little notch with the initials etched into it. It was the same mic lying on my desk at that very moment.

On Monday, I was back to sweeping floors and plunging toilets. No one seemed to notice about or Sam, or the microphone for that matter. Even so, I worried people were looking at me funny.

Two days later, the boss called us in at lunchtime saying he’d gotten word from the authorities that Sam had overdosed. There was no mention of a memorial or anything. The cops never came around, or if they did I didn’t see them. I didn’t know what to do with the mic, but I didn’t want it at my place. The only thing I could think was to take it back to the college and stash it in a bathroom air vent while I figured my next move.

A couple weeks after that, and still no heat on the Sam situation, I went by his apartment in Bridgeport. There was an open transom window over the back door. I wasn’t so slim anymore, but I made it through. The first thing I noticed were the bare white walls. It was completely undecorated. No pictures. No plants. Nothing personalized at all. The only furniture was a table, two chairs, a bed, and a dresser. I went through the drawers—socks, underwear, t-shirts, not much. But underneath the dresser, I found another envelope with pictures inside. In one of the shots was a medieval-looking, wavy blade knife enclosed in a glass case. It had the same insignia, the “LB”, that was etched on the mic. Another photo showed a closeup of an old leather-bound book titled Libertas Bestiae. I understood then that the letters on the Electro-Voice weren’t Lou Burroughs’ initials after all. I also understood that if Sam was crazy he was part of a bigger crazy, and I wanted nothing to do with it.

I tried to put it all out of my head. I even considered quitting my job, but the terms of my parole required gainful employment and I didn’t have any other prospects. I stuck it out.

Whenever I scrubbed the john where the mic was stashed, I thought about Sam. I also thought about fifty thousand bucks and how I’d spend it. One day, when I was in there cleaning the mirror, I locked the door behind me and pulled the Electro-Voice out of the vent. It felt heavier than I remembered. For some reason, right then, I looked in the mirror and held the mic up to my mouth. I was just goofing off, because, believe me, I’m no singer. But all of a sudden, a beautiful melody came out of me. It was effortless. I could see my lips moving and hear myself singing, but it wasn’t at all my voice. A knock came just then.

“Yeah, be right out,” I said.

I flushed the toilet and put the mic back quick. When I opened the door, the director of the theatre department was standing on the other side.

“Oh… hi. Thought you were one of our performers when I heard you in there.”

I had to think fast.

“Me? No. Never. It was just the radio.”

“Really? It sounded so live, so rich. What’s the name of that song?”

“Oh, man. I don’t know. I was just flipping the dial.”

I got out of there before he could dig any deeper. Shuffling past the young singers and actors doing warmups in the auditorium, I rolled my mop bucket out to the hall and kept my head down til the shift was over.

When I walked out of work that evening, two big guys came out of nowhere and hustled me into a black sedan. I figured them for undercovers. I was sure it had to do with Sam. One pushed me in the back and climbed in next to me, the other got behind the wheel and started driving. In the passenger seat was a well-dressed old man wearing purple glasses. He was no cop.

The old guy leaned over and asked plainly, “Where is it?”

When I didn’t answer, the big dude on my right punched me in the side of the head. Hard.

“Where is it, Ernie?”

Hearing my name like that, I thought I was gonna puke. I knew I was about to get thumped again too. Just then a strange idea flashed in my mind.

“Libertas Bestiae!”

I don’t know if I said it right, but when those words came out of me they were loud and musical, like something from an opera. It was the same voice from the mirror, only more powerful. The old man looked shocked, almost pained when he heard it. The guy next to me looked stunned too. I took advantage of the confusion and jumped out of the car, doing a barrel roll into oncoming traffic. Cars slammed on brakes in both directions. I was on my feet and deep into the neighborhood before they could get to me.

I hid in a gangway ’til sundown, knowing it wasn’t safe to go home or back to work. When I finally got up the nerve, I ran to the El and caught a northbound train to Uptown. I spent my last few bucks on a chickenwire room at The Wilson Men’s Hotel. The place was full of vagrants, winos, and day laborers. Seemed like as good a place as any to hide.

The next day, with no money and no other options, I went back to my old ways—breaking and entering. I had always been a good burglar. In and out. No muss, no fuss. I could tell by a person’s furnishings where their valuables were likely to be hid. My specialty, though, was lifting tchotchkes. “Tacky treasures,” as my ma used to call them. I knew which ones were worth something, and those little goodies were usually hiding in plain sight.

The other thing I took up again was shooting dope. I went from zero to dopefiend in a week. I guess the shit on the street had gotten stronger since the days when I was chipping. Pretty soon, I didn’t care if I had a roof over my head or not. I slept on loading docks, alleys—anyplace I could score a bag in a hurry when I woke up.

Stealing and slamming wasn’t what I planned to be doing at thirty-five years old. But what I really hadn’t counted on was the singing. It wasn’t the same as the day I did it in the mirror—not as powerful—but I could still carry a tune better than most. They were made-up songs, I guess. At least I didn't recognize them when they came out of me. The weirdest part, though, is that I wasn’t even trying to sing. I didn’t even want to do it. But I had to. It was like I needed to get something out of my system, something I needed other people to hear before I could let it go. The thing is, no matter how many songs I sang, more kept coming. Guys on the street started calling me “Smackhead Sinatra.” It stuck.

The heavier my habit got, the bolder the burglaries became, and the lazier I was about where I did them. Pretty soon, I was pulling jobs in the middle of the day up and down the same blocks I’d already hit. One day, coming out a window with my pillowcase full of knick-knacks, I got nabbed. I was almost relieved to see the men in blue waiting on the sidewalk. Maybe I had been trying to get caught. When they slapped the cuffs on me, I started singing.

“Looks like Smackhead Sinatra is our Bric-a-Brac Bandito,” one of the coppers said.

I didn’t know my moniker had made it all the way to the precinct.

I was given the max, seven years, for the breaking and entering. They tacked on another five for the parole violation. I copped a plea so I wouldn’t have to sit in Cook County Jail waiting for trial. That gladiator school is no place for an old con.

Soon enough, I was back in the pen with a toilet next to my bed, which, incidentally, comes in handy when you’re kicking dope. It’s not that I couldn’t get drugs inside, I had just lost the appetite once I was back in the big house. Funny thing, you can get heroin in prison but not Bustelo. I would’ve paid plenty for that dark roast. I made do with the generic instant they sold at commissary.

As soon as the junk was out of my system the singing stopped too. I couldn’t’ve made a melody if I tried. No more smackhead, no more Sinatra. Just plain old Ernie Bardo. Inmate number A17589.

I got back into the routine soon enough. Keeping my head down. Killing time. Shooting the breeze with a couple guys I knew from previous incarcerations. I never talked about the mic. Not that any of those clowns would’ve believed me anyway.

About six months into my stretch, I was watching the tube and saw a clip on the local news. It was a hometown-girl makes good kind of thing. I recognized her right away. She was one of the pretty students from the college’s theatre department. The anchorman said she’d just won big on a music competition show, scoring a contract with a major label. They showed her rocking out hard for the judges, and, yeah, she was singing into that Electro-Voice 664.

Anyone could tell by her moves and voice that she was a star in the making. Those of us savvy to a junkie’s ways could see she was on stuff—the deep circles under the eye makeup gave that away. But I was probably the only one watching that night who saw the total desperation in the girl’s face.

Of course, Shawna Taylor became a household name overnight. Seemed like everybody knew the words to her damn songs that fast too. There was nowhere, I mean nowhere, you could go in the prison to get away from them. It got so bad I finally stabbed a guy one cell over when he wouldn’t shut up with that noise. Truth is, I wanted to go to the hole so I wouldn’t have to hear them anymore.

When they put me in isolation it felt like I could finally breathe again. I cleaned the toilet and tucked in the sheets, setting up my new space to get comfy for the long stretch ahead. But that night, when the guard making his rounds, I heard whistling. And yeah, it was one of her songs. I tried stuffing my ears with toilet paper, covering my head with a pillow, yelling over the sound, but everything I did seemed to amplify it instead of drown it out…

It’s gotten to the point now where day and night, guard or no guard, the songs just keep coming. They call this solitary confinement, but I have so many cellmates. Hank, Billie, Jim, Janis. Shawna. There are others too. People whose names I don’t know. Each one of them trying to out-sing the rest. Each one trying, impossibly, to sing their way out of here.

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“You hear that?”

She turned away and pulled the pillow over her head. I tapped. Then I tapped harder.

“What?” she asked too loud.

“I said did you hear that? It sounds like someone talking.”

She swatted at me blindly, nearly scratching my eye. I tapped her on the head, which she hates.

“It’s probably just the baby,” she said.

Our daughter was inches away in the bassinet. I don’t know how she thought the low rumble of a grown man’s voice in another room was coming from a four-month-old girl lying next to her.

“Where’s my cell?” I asked.

“No EMFs in the bedroom.”

It bothered me that she’d moved my phone out of the room. It bothered me more that I didn’t know what her weird initialism stood for. It’s the type of thing my brain chases tirelessly. I ran several possibilities in my mind. One stuck out more than the others: Esoteric Meat Fragments. I pictured two cops standing over our dead bodies the next morning—one sipping coffee, the other shaking his head and saying, They’re nothing but esoteric meat fragments now, Frank.

I thought about escape routes. The most obvious was the bedroom window, but it was blocked.

“We should’ve taken the air conditioner out,” I said.

“We used it just the other night.”

“Every year it’s the same. Leave it in ’til the frost comes. Now someone’s breaking into our house and we’re stuck here.”

I considered nearby weapon-like objects. The stainless steel water bottle my wife totes everywhere should’ve been on the nightstand, but for the first time, it wasn’t. I’d have to find something else on the way.

“I’m going to look,” I told her, hoping she’d stay alert.

“You always do this,” she said.

“What are you talking about?”

“You know you do…”

“Would you shut up and listen? There’s someone out there,” I whispered hard.

I slipped my feet out from under the covers and stood up. Just then something fell and thudded on the bedroom floor.

“What was that?”

“Would you stop? I have to get up early tomorrow.”

“Did you leave your book on the bed again?”

“I don’t know, maybe,” she said.

“You don’t even read them. They’re just booby traps.”

“Look, if you’re going to play intruder alert get on with it but I have to sleep.”

“Please keep your voice down so I can hear what’s going on out there.”

Then the baby started whimpering.

“Are you going to get her?” she asked as if that was our biggest worry.

I scooted my toes in front of me until they came to the fallen book. At least it was hardcover. I considered the irony of her unread self-help book saving us from getting chopped into esoteric meat fragments. Then the baby whimpered louder.

“Yes or no?” she asked.

“I have the book…”

“Oh my god. You’re going to beat a burglar to death with a New York Times bestseller? That ought to make the news.”

Her version of irony lacked humor.

“Will you please stop talking? He’s getting closer…”

She did stop talking then. I guess she heard it too. Even the baby got quieter.

“Are you going to look or not?” she finally asked.

When I heard the fear in her voice I went from scared to completely terrified.

Since the baby was born, I’d learned all the places to step so the wood wouldn’t creak, but my heart was beating so loudly I was sure it could be heard in the next room. When I came to the door, I felt the smooth cool brass of the knob in my hand and wondered if someone was doing the same on the other side. I stood there holding the book over my head, feeling the blood emptying down my arms and into my torso, ready to smash whoever might be there.

As my eyes adjusted to the dark I could see my wife pulling our daughter into bed and under the covers with her. That was a bad sign. I felt a sudden pang of remorse for all the unkind things I’d said and done in my life, especially to those two.

The sound came again. As I listened closely it seemed to be emanating from the living room. I got up the nerve and twisted the knob. The door squeaked slightly.

When I reached the hallway I tipped my head around the corner so I could see the kitchen and the back door. Nothing. I continued toward the front of the house.

Then the baby cried. I hoped the intruder would be scared off—either confronted with a moral dilemma about committing crimes near an infant, or worried about a stiffer prison sentence for breaking into a house with one in it—but I didn’t hear anyone leave.

When I reached the living room I saw the mess. It looked like a cyclone had hit it. Baby books, clothes, couch cushions, pizza boxes. I moved slowly through the space, waving the book in front of me like a bible in the hand of an exorcizing priest. The front door was locked. The windows were all shut too. But the noise was coming from somewhere nearby. I braced myself.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the glowing blue light of the baby monitor on the bookshelf. I didn’t remember leaving it on. Moving toward it, I realized the sound was emanating from its fuzzy speaker. I grabbed the little device off the shelf and held it in front of me. What I saw there was confusing. I blinked and looked again. The outline of a dark face began filling the screen. It seemed to be looking back at me too. With the monitor in one trembling hand and the book in the other, I hurried back to the bedroom.

“Did you see anything?” she said.

“Where’s the baby cam?” I asked frantically.

She pointed toward the dresser. It was there alright. Aimed at the empty bassinet. I held the monitor near my wife’s face.

“I don’t see anything,” she said.

I looked again. I didn’t see anything either. She snatched her book out of my hand and thumped it on the bed in a huff. I went back to the living room and wrote this all down so I wouldn’t forget…

—————

My therapist handed me back my notebook and gave me a ‘concerned’ look.

“Ok. I’m going to stop there Jerry. Let me ask, how did you feel about her taking the book from you?”

“I don’t know. Relieved? Angry, maybe? I think you’re missing the point though. Did you read it all?”

“I read enough. Here’s the thing, I think we’ll get to the heart of the matter more effectively if we talk about what’s happening in your life rather than you giving me stories to read.”

“You said I should journal.”

“That’s right, but I didn’t mean you should bring me your journal… hey… are you writing right now?”

“I’m still journaling.”

“Well…please listen to me. My take is that you need to work on your relationship with Sheila. I think your writing has become a substitute for genuine connection, perhaps even a competition with the books she’s reading. Did you notice that you never once mentioned her name in the story?”

“What about the man’s voice and the face in the monitor? I’m pretty sure the house is haunted.”

“Ok. Maybe your house is haunted, but what if you’re being haunted by your disconnection from your wife? It’s not uncommon for couples to go through major difficulties when their first child is born.”

“You’re saying Sheila is the face in the monitor?”

“Jerry, look, our time’s about up, so I’m going to give you some homework. I’d like you to pick up a book called Evolving the Marriage-Friendship. I think it’ll offer some practical advice for your situation…”

“Whoa. EMF. It’s Sheila’s initialism again.”

“See you next week, Jerry. Take good care.”

————

“You shared all that with him?” Sheila asked as she handed my notebook back.

“I’m pretty sure sharing is what people do with a therapist. By the way, it’s she, not he.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me? I mean, I don’t care that it’s a woman. But you should have told me.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think you’d care. Anyway, it was your idea for me to see a therapist.”

“I’m reading that book you know.”

“Are you actually reading it?”

“Do you honestly care? You know, you didn’t put her name in the story either. Maybe you need to work on your connection with your female therapist.”

“Oh, that’s real good. That’s just great. Her name is Sofia by the way.”

“You call her by her first name? Hey… would you please stop writing.”

—————

“…but it’s getting weirder now, mom. I don’t know what you’d call it. I guess he’s becoming a compulsive writer? Yes, I know Dad was an alcoholic when I was little. Of course, other people have worse problems. Look. Mom. Stop for a minute. Do you want to hear what’s going on with me or…OH MY GOD! No, not you. It’s Jerry. He’s been sitting on the other side of the door listening… and writing! I gotta go. What the hell? You cannot eavesdrop on my calls! Stop it. Stop writing!”

Sheila stormed out of the room. For some reason hearing about her alcoholic dad made me thirsty. I walked to the bar.

“Pilsner please.”

“That’ll be five.”

“I’ll have another.”

When I finished the second beer I left a two-dollar tip and went to the men’s room.

“You write when you’re pissing? Better not be writing about my dick,” my urinal neighbor said with zero sarcasm.

“No, I’m just writing what you’re saying.”

“That’s fucked up dude. Stop it.”

The guy aimed his phone at me, which, incidentally, he’d been looking at the whole time he was peeing.

“I’m posting this so people know about the creepy shit you do in bathrooms, freak.”

“It’s called journaling, pal. You might try it sometime.”

I tried getting out of there before the confrontation got worse but I slipped in a puddle of pee. The guy must’ve thought I was coming at him. He knocked me down. My notebook got wet. My right hand was hurt too.

—————

Sofia handed me back my urine-stained notebook a bit disgustedly, I think.

“Jerry, I’m not reading anymore. We talked about this last week.”

We sat silently for a minute or two.

“I used Sheila’s name this time.”

“Yes, I noticed that. It sounds like you also invaded her privacy as well as the privacy of a stranger in a bathroom. Why do you think you did those things?”

“Now that I think about it, the guy’s face looked a lot like the one in the baby monitor.”

“Please put the notebook down and look at me, Jerry.”

“Sorry, I can’t use my right hand so well since the whole urinal thing. Give me a minute to catch up…”

“Jerry, I’d like to speak directly to you, not your notebook. Is that possible? Ok… doesn’t look like you’re stopping. At this point, we need to shift our focus to your writing compulsion. Can you describe for me what it feels like when you write and what it feels like when you don’t write?”

“If I stop to think about it I won’t get it all down on the page.”

“And what would happen if you didn’t get it all down on the page?”

A horrible feeling crept over me when she asked that. I got out of there quick.

Walking through the front door of the office complex, I looked over my last few sentences, making sure I’d written Sofia’s exact words. It’s so important. I see that now. If I don’t get them down just right…

—-———-

“As I was walking and writing a guy came barreling down the sidewalk. I didn’t notice until it was too late. Maybe getting run over by a bicycle doesn’t sound like a real thing, but believe me, it is. The guy on the bike was large and heavy. We were both hurt badly. Me worse than him. Oddly, his name was Edwin Michael Fisher. EMF all over again. And yes, I know now that EMF stands for ‘electric and magnetic fields’. It’s just weird those letters keep popping up over and over.

The doctors put casts on both of my arms and will soon put screws in one of my hips. Edwin’s insurance will cover the bills. I haven’t been able to get out of the hospital bed yet. I can’t even use my fingers well enough to write.

On the good side, I’ve started reading that self-help book, Evolving the Marriage-Friendship. I’m enjoying it and I really do think it’s helping. Truly. I’m not just saying that because Sheila is sitting next to me writing this all down. Ha ha. You know you don’t have to keep writing, honey. We could just spend some time…”

“I just… sorry, I have to go home now.”

“Oh. That’s too bad. Will I see you tomorrow?”

“I’ll call you later.”

“Alright, well… give Lisa a kiss from daddy.”

—————

I got out of there before he figured it out, though I must admit I don’t fully understand myself. After the accident it all happened so quickly. The ambulance driver handing me Jerry’s journal. Me reading it, just to make sure he wasn’t hiding something. And then, the blank page at the end. Pulling me in. Inviting me to write too…

“986 Laurel Avenue,” I said, stepping in the cab.

Mom called again. I know she wants me to come get Lisa. But there’s no way. I can’t take care of her right now. I can’t do anything else right now. The thing is, I know everything will be good again if I can just get the words down properly. They must be organized. They must be complete. They must be perfect…

My God, there’s only one page left in Jerry’s notebook. There must be a store open.

“Excuse me, sir, I need to stop at the Walgreens…up there on the left.”

“It’s Harold,” Marcy says cheerily.

“Dear, that’s not even the same kind of bird as yesterday,” Eunice objects.

“I know my Harold when I hear him, believe you me. Same bird. Nuthatch. They make different kinds of peeps. He wants me to take two,” Marcy says, extracting two cards from her hand and pushing them guardedly toward Adeline.

”An egret flew over the day we buried my Irving. I knew it was him,” Adeline offers along with two fresh cards.

Marcy, Adeline, Eunice, and Helen sit at Marcy’s card table in a U-shaped nook off the dayroom at Peaceful Gardens, Inc. Helen, the newest resident, is joining the ladies for the first time since her youngest, Johnny, moved her in three weeks ago. She sits at the least inviting side of the nook—neither facing one of the two windows that flank it, nor the dayroom, but instead aimed at a pictureless wall, the bottom of the U.

The unattractive seating area is the likely reason, Marcy thinks, that it’s been so difficult for her and the ladies to find a fourth for cards. Nonetheless, she refuses to move the game away from the south-facing window where she can watch for Harold at the bird feeder.

It’s Eunice’s turn, but she can’t remember if they’re playing hearts, spades, pinochle or poker.

“Five card draw, dear,” Marcy says understandingly.

”Yes, I know,” Eunice replies and then continues, “After Marty passed I had the mourning doves. They landed on the balcony every day. Same time we would’ve had cocktails. In the afternoon, mind you.”

“You can’t take five cards, sweetie,” Adeline says, “You wanna do four?”

Eunice nods, exchanging four cards.

Helen, quietly listening, has been watching a fat black spider on the wall above and behind Eunice. If Bob came back he’d be that one right there, she thinks, tracking the arachnid as it scurries towards a freshly caught fly squirming in silk at the juncture of wall and ceiling.

“Your turn Helen,” Marcy encourages.

Helen lays her cards on the table. Three queens. Two fours.

“Oh, isn’t that something,” Eunice remarks.

The ladies push their cards towards Adeline while Helen rakes the small pile of nickels and dimes toward the juncture of the table and her breasts.

A bird lands on the window sill and peeps loudly just then causing everyone to turn and look.

“What’s he saying, Marce?” Adeline asks.

“That’s not my Harold.”

Ernie came around the foster home saying he needed my help. It was a school day. Mrs. Williams said if I missed any more of seventh grade they’d send me to The Audy Home, but she said a lot of goofy stuff when she was drinking. One time she even claimed to be my real mom.

“That's the voice of cheap vodka right there,” Ernie’d said.

I still remembered Mom. She definitely wasn’t Mrs. Williams.

I asked, “Where we going again?”

“Boneyard, Slim,” he said, as we stepped into a busted-up van.

It was funny being called Slim. I guess it sounded more grown up than “Kid” or “Triple B.” But less personal, like I was any old sidekick.

We pulled into the parking lot, which already looked like a boneyard. He pointed at the sign.

“U Pull It. Named after your favorite pastime.”

He made that canned corn laugh that always hurt my ears.

“It says Pick a Part. U Pull It is the other place,” I told him.

He said, “Guess all that pullin’ improved your eyesight, Slim. Goes the other way for me.” Then he did the corny laugh again.

The office guy was wearing blue coveralls with a name patch sewn on. Ernie wanted to know which way to a ‘71 LeSabre.

“What do you need off it?”

“Not much,” Ernie said.

The office guy pointed a finger and went back to reading the paper.

We walked in that direction a long time. The snow was up to my knees. It looked like those rows of rusty cars went on forever.

Ernie said, “I could spot a LeSabre a mile away.”

I was getting cold.

He told me, “You carry the goods, I’ll buy you a burrito the size of your arm.”

I already figured that.

Ernie got to work pulling parts. I got behind the wheel pretend driving away from Chicago like always. I felt around the seats for change. Didn’t find any. Opened the glove box. Empty too. Got out and popped the trunk with a screwdriver and hammer the way Ernie showed me one time.

Just the usual stuff. Tire and jack. Rags. Half-full quarts of oil. But there was an envelope poking out from under the spare. That was funny to me. I tried pulling, but it was stuck pretty good and I didn’t want to tear it. I was thinking it might have something important inside like cash or a ransom note.

After I got the spare moved there was more grease on me than Ernie. I wiped my hands on my pants trying not to smudge the envelope. There was just one piece of paper inside, the kind with lines like you use in school. The lady’s handwriting was nice.

Dearest Tom,

You can say whatever you want, but I will always be yours. And no matter what you think, the baby is yours too. I don’t know what happened or why. And I don’t care what Jimmy or anybody else told you. Oh, but I wish you still had even a crumb of care for me. I love love love you. Is there any reason to live other than to be with you? I hope hope hope you get this before something bad happens. Please don’t forget us. Please don’t let something bad happen.

Yours forever and ever,

Stacy

Ernie called me over and said, “Take this linkage and that rod.”

I had to put the long metal part down my pant leg. It made me walk stiff like I had a cast on. I was sure the office guy would notice. Ernie told me to keep moving while he paid for some cheap part. I walked to the van quick, not so much afraid of being caught, but I thought if I looked, the office guy’s name patch was going to say Tom like in the letter.

We got big burritos at El Ranchero after and then went to fix the LeSabre. I handed Ernie tools and sipped his Old Style when he wasn’t looking. He joked about his beer evaporating. After a while, I got more bold and took a whole tall boy for myself. Then another one. Ernie was busy wrenching and didn’t notice or didn’t care. He was a good mechanic when he stayed off stuff. At least that’s what Mrs. Williams said.

When I felt the beer in me, I climbed inside the trunk and laid there watching the garage roof spin. Ernie woke me later and carried me to the van. It was really freezing out then. I rubbed my jacket on the window and saw a guy pay him for wrenching on the LeSabre.

On the way back to the foster home, Ernie said he needed to make a stop. I knew it was the West Side by the abandoned houses. Some were half burned down. It was like a boneyard for buildings instead of cars. He ran inside one and came out quick. I knew he was fixing in the back of the van so I didn’t look. When it got quiet, I climbed over the seats and shook him, saying it was time to go.

He opened his eyes a little and said, “Yeah? Well, you got drunk on beer.”

He was too high to do the corny laugh.

Ernie didn’t come around much after that. I guess he stopped wrenching on cars.

For a long time, I kept the envelope in a tobacco can under my bed at Mrs. Williams’s place. I’d pull it out and read it once in a while. Usually just a sentence or two. Sometimes I wondered what she looked like, or what Jimmy said, or if something bad did happen. Sometimes I wondered if I should put the letter back where I found it.

Ernie pulled a paper ticket out of a machine, handed it to me, and chin-jutted toward the back of the room. I dragged myself over there and found a seat. It was easier to focus on faces past the low wooden gate than the ones nearby.

“I ain’t s’posed to do more papers. I given y’all that last time. I need my check.”

“If you want a check this month, bring proper documentation by the end of day,” the office lady said, talking over the complaining woman’s shoulder as if warding off an evil spirit just to the left and behind her.

The scrappy back and forth about paperwork, IDs, and dollar amounts made the overhead fluorescents glow brighter. A bailiff squinted at the desk.

“Bitch, please,” the angry mother said, snatching a document from the welfare worker’s hand and dragging her little boy back to the waiting side.

The wooden gate separating the government side from the waiting side was nothing compared to the wall behind the welfare lady’s face. For people like us, the ones on the waiting side, she was no different than cops, judges, teachers, bondsmen, or any other authority type we needed to vent on. You could yell forever and never get past that wall.

When our number was nearly up, I went to the bathroom to find Ernie. I walked past smokers and urinal pissers toward the sit-down toilets. The stall doors had been removed to stop bad things from happening inside. It didn’t. In the first stall was an old man doubled over a seatless crapper, grunting and crying. In the next one, a man in ragged clothes was arguing with a woman who wasn’t there—or maybe he was practicing for later. In the third stall, a tall skinny guy was yanking on his thing with both hands like he was trying to rip it off his body. I tried not to look, but I did. It was the biggest thing I’d ever seen. In the last stall, the one I knew I’d find him in, Ernie was slumped back with one eyelid cracked open. At least he put his funny gun away, I thought.

“Number’s up,” I said.

“Gotta be kidding me. I just got here,” Ernie said.

It’d been thirty-five minutes, but Ernie didn’t understand time the way other people did, the way a clock did.

“Fifty-one, last chance,” the bailiff said.

“Fifty-one!” I yelled as we turned the corner.

The bailiff pointed to a desk.

“Ernest Bardo?” The welfare lady asked the space behind Ernie.

“Present,” Ernie said with a gravelly chuckle.

—————

When we were almost back to Lathrop Homes, Ernie handed me a sixty-five-dollar book of food stamps. It was the first time I’d noticed the Liberty Bell on its cover. In Social Studies we were reading about American independence. The teacher said we were free to live as we wanted because we had fought hard for that right.

“Why’s the Liberty Bell cracked?” I asked Ernie.

“Same reason people are cracked,” he said, chin-jutting toward Nino’s bodega.

I walked inside and handed the fresh book of stamps to Nino. He looked past me through the window and popped the register.

“I keepin’ the five he owe,” Nino said, handing me forty-seven in cash—the usual eighty cents on the dollar minus Ernie’s five. I put a dollar in my pocket before walking out.

“That pork chop bastard beat you,” Ernie grunted, counting the cash.

“You owed him six.”

“I’ll crack him like the fuckin’ Liberty Bell,” Ernie threatened half-heartedly, hustling toward the dopespot.

I rode the El downtown to catch a triple feature at The Oriental. After paying the dollar entrance, I pushed past people til I saw the broken middle-row seat with a split running up its back. I was glad to find it empty, even though it usually was. I sat down, fidgeting the grooves in the armrest where I had carved and re-carved my initials so many times, waiting for the lights to dim, waiting for the people to disappear.