There were other things.

Essex Michael Wharton had a rockabilly band that could have been good, great maybe but his cousin was a shitty drummer and he wasn’t gonna kick his cousin out.

Essex Michael Wharton put a motor on a coffin and drove it around Treforthe, Indiana.

At the Laredo Cafe, with its big wrap around patio, they would say he was just looking for attention. They would be wrong.

He loved that he had made something no one else had, loved that he rode so low to the ground that the grasshoppers flew past his face, loved that the engine was so loud it inspired him to write more songs.

Four of the five cops in Treforthe had given him a warning that his vehicle wasn’t street legal, one of them inviting him to drive it in the Labor Day Parade, maybe get sponsored for it by the cop’s brother’s collision shop in Bayfield.

Motor Mike Wharton wasn’t gonna do that.

He didn’t use his given first name because that attracted too many questions, too many dumb jokes.

He slapped his upright bass like you’d playfully swat a golden retriever on the ass and he drove his coffin and he ignored his lawn and the words “you should.”

Last time he cut his lawn he killed a toad and didn’t eat for three days because he didn’t feel like he deserved it.

Would have gone four days or more but he started passing out at his Gleason, churning out splines for John Deere at Crutchfield Precision, back corner machine,doo rag flattening his thinning pompadour to his scalp.

Spackle Robinson was sitting at the Laredo because before he even moved to Treforthe he heard the loaded omelet was worth walking there naked for.

Couldn’t really afford the fucking thing but before they left Benton Harbor, Michigan to live closer to University Hospital, Leena Yarborough slipped him four hundred dollars in person, outside the GoFundMe, told him to treat himself and Noah and not just throw it at a doctor.

Spackle was thinking about ordering a second omelet, they were that good, when the motorized coffin rumbled down the street, past the row of bushes in the shape of animals at Papillon Nursery, through a red light and away down 51 toward the cement plant.

Saw it a second time, a block from the pharmacy, when he was picking up a prescription for Julie, who wasn’t sleeping at all and her 36 year old hair was starting to fall out from the stress.

***

Grass needed cutting, bad, and Spackle was wondering if the coffin guy had let the Schlitz sign in the window get so badly sunfaded or he had trash picked it like that.

Reminded himself to introduce himself as Steven, his given name.

Nobody in Treforthe could be expected to give a fuck about his Michigan high school football nickname. He was even slightly embarrassed by his physique, wondering if his steroid use had contributed to…

“Need somethin’?” Motor Mike Wharton asked in a manner that suggested he wasn’t inclined to provide anything.

“Sorry to bother you but umm-”

“Then don’t bother me,you’ll feel better.”

Mike was holding a drive chain like a dead snake. Could be a weapon, but Spackle checked himself. He was the one walking onto a man’s property. Couldn’t blame him if it was.

“I’m sorry, really,” Spackle said. The coffin car guy stared.

Spackle heard the ghost of his father say “Money talks.”

He hadn’t until this very second thought about the financial aspect.

“I’d like to pay you to-”

“Mow my lawn? Blow you?”

“Your custom car, umm, I saw your-”

Mike softened, then stiffened again, like an animated deep freeze effect.

“I don’t make em for nobody else. It’s mine. Find a coffin, figure it out. It ain’t hard. Though I wish you wouldn’t. It’s just…”

The thought trailed off, Spackle blurting: “Do you know what Neuroblastoma is?”

“It’s a metal band from-”

“It’s cancer. My son Noah has it.”

Motor Mike dug the toe of his boot into the ground about five feet from where his lawn mower had killed the toad.

“Fuuuuuuuck,” he said, slowly.

“We, um…they… didn’t catch it…uhh…quick. He isn’t…ummm… I’d like to pay you to take him for a ride in your…custom..uhh car thing.”

Mike felt a sesame seed in his teeth. Stuck. Couldn’t spit it.

“They got that wish thing, man. Fucking Colts or the Pacers will treat him to a…”

“He’s a Lions fan. And he’s on a waiting list. He’s seven,my guy. Seven. He loves cars and trucks and…my wife thought…I don’t know…he’d be less afraid if he actually had some fun in a fucking…”

Mike thought the massive dude was gonna cry. He was for certain gonna cry if the guy did.

His toe dug deeper.

For all the tits in Gary, Motor Mike Wharton’s next thought was if the kid would chemo puke on the satin upholstery.

***

It wasn’t difficult to negotiate the deal. Mike asked for a case of PBR, which he almost instantly regretted asking for, but wouldn’t back off it.

His biggest request was no bloggers, no publicity, no fucking Scott CountyTribune. He was gonna take the kid for a ride.

Noah wasn’t feeling up to it the first time they tried, then a thunderstorm wrecked the plans for the second time.

One really, really bad night Spackle made himself a note on a napkin in the hospital parking lot that if Noah didn’t make it and the ride never happened, he would still drop a case of Pabst at Coffin Car Mike’s house.

***

The Coffin Car passed the Laredo Cafe three times, each time Noah Robinson’s wide eyes and laughter hitting his mother like the world’s most beautiful drug.

Her left hand squeezed Spackle’s meaty hand as hard as she could. She absolutely had to give the weird rockabilly guy more than just a case of beer.

The fourth time they passed Julie released Spackle’s hand and waved. Noah was too enthralled to look.

Julie took her now free hand and brushed hair off her shoulder. The sputtering whine of the engine faded down the street, then she thought she heard it accelerate.

***

Julie adjusted her wig,a tight not-quite-a-smile-fake-smile plastered to her face as the millionth law enforcement officer offered their condolences.

Scott County Sheriff’s Department.

Indiana State Police.

Her muted phone showed an unknown caller, almost assuredly another lawyer.

She would repeat herself.

Whatever cop, whatever prosecutor behind the desk would repeat what she had been told 200 times.

Steven chose to be in the lobby, pacing. His wife was stronger than he was, and less likely to strangle a cop.

Julie folded and unfolded her legs.

Yes, she understood, you’ve asked me if I understood every single time. The vehicle in question was not legally sanctioned to be on a public thoroughfare at any time, at any speed.

And then she stood, looking at the cop whose name she had already forgotten.

“My child, Noah, lived two months and four days longer than the brightest fucking pardon me mind at the University Oncology Department said he would.

There have been no breakthroughs in treatments, which are brutal, by the way, since then. His last biomarkers were not the least bit promising, they were devastating.

We did not want our son to die. But we will never find the manner in which he did die to be criminal in any way.”

***

Essex Michael Wharton doesn’t like his prison nickname, Sexy.

He keeps to himself as much as possible.

Sometimes he limps out to the yard. Doctor vetoed lifting or playing hoops, but sometimes he pretends that the pole holding the hoop up is the neck of his upright base.

Steve and Julie send him letters, sometimes together, sometimes separate, telling him they forgive him and love him, even though they barely knew him.

They keep promising to try to get him out. He writes them back and thanks them, but reckless homicide is still homicide.

He told the prison shrink that he hadn’t realized until that day that he had never made a kid laugh before. Told the shrink he would remember it forever.

Through the tiny slit window of his cell he stares out at the yard. He’s not sure if there are toads in the grass out there, but Motor Mike Wharton wishes they didn’t mow.

*****

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The coral had been in the martini glass for months, Lou soberesque for the third time in five years based on a wager with Tommy Finazzo.

Lou wondered if the Feds would charge him with the illegal coral if they raided Uggyve.

Kilt was currently in custody. Lou figured they’d come for the gallery, where Kilt had been scrubbing money for a decade, buying Basquiats for thirty k over market value.

In an extremely desperate and strange moment, even for Kilt, he had purchased a Styrofoam and chicken wire camel off a street artist for five grand and priced it at 20K.

Alice, Lou’s coral pilfering sister, almost bought it on the tail end of a coke bender that might have taken out lesser humans, like Motley Crue.

Lou rewound an old court TV show, absently flicking his Zippo, and the closed caption as he restarted it triggered an avalanche of logic.

He was loyal to Kilt, but that loyalty didn’t necessarily have to end with him incarcerated.

He could backdate a resignation letter, lock the camel, the coral and the latest show, Roman and Arabic Numerals locked in various quasi-sexual embraces inside the gallery space, and simply walk out the door.

Though he had been dry for seventeen days, he could check into Alice’s favorite rehab in the Swiss Alps, where he would be safe for ninety days watching icicles form on the thermometer and where he would win his bet with Tommy Finazzo.

That made sense.

But he wanted to torch the place.

Call it a personal weakness, but he felt like arson was a glaring omission on his personal resume.

He had been a fixer, a scrubber, a snuffer, never a fluffer, and something about his last six years babysitting oil paintings for Kilt Pomeran’s business empire was the type of criminal retiree Walmart Greeter gig that should end with a spectacular rush of accelerated flame and destruction.

The door to Uggyve opened.

The alert was the first few aching notes of Just Like Heaven by The Cure.

It was pretentious, like naming your art gallery in Detroit something that sounded European but was really just a nonsense word.

The notes rang out without the shout of a Fed.

On the security monitor stood a woman and a child. The child held papers in their hand.

Lou stood, flipping the TV remote and his Zippo on the desk.

Part of him hoped that the child wanted to sell fingerpaints to the gallery. He would buy them for a grand a piece, make the child and the mother’s day, and walk out the door.

That simple gesture wouldn’t get him into heaven after snuffing Ronnie Corbett and his nephew, but he could feel good about himself for five minutes.

Part of him wondered if the woman was a very tricky process server.

“Hi,” Lou said in his adopted art connoisseur voice. Welcome to Uggyve…”Lou always held the long A sound at the end like he was waiting for someone to tell him to stop.

The woman cut him off.

“I hate to be a pain, but could we use your restroom?”

The woman’s face radiated genuine remorse for asking.

“Certainly,” Lou said. It’s down that hall on the left.”

As the mother thanked him and hustled the child in her girl scout uniform down the hall, Lou prayed to whichever pantheistic God was in closest proximity to Gratiot Avenue that none of Kilt’s friends had left coke residue or a dab rig in the ladies room. Innocence was rapidly dissolving in the world, but he really didn’t want to be part of any further loss of it.

When the woman and child came out, the mother held the papers.

“Thank you, thank you. I was afraid we were both going to have an accident”

Lou winced. The deaths of Ronnie Corbett and his nephew had officially been ruled an accident, and after that little scare, he had retired to the relative calm of money laundering.

“Are you selling cookies, sweetheart?” Lou said to the child.

The little girl nodded.

“I’ll take all of them,” Lou said with a ringmaster smile. “All of them.”

The mother chuckled.

“Oh my…I don’t think it works that way, really, but we will be happy to accommodate as large of an order as we…”

Lou reached for his wallet. Somehow the air behind him was hotter than the air in front of him.

*****

When Lou woke, he was handcuffed to the bed.

Tommy Finazzo was sitting at his bedside, vaping like he was hitting an asthma inhaler in the middle of an attack.

“I thought you were gonna out-coma our bet,Louie.”

Tommy stayed silent while Lou got his bearings.

“What the…”

“The gallery gone?” Lou finally asked.

“Yeah. Kilt is grateful, actually. Lots of messy paper was in that place.”

Lou nodded, then sat up, yanking tubes, one of which popped out.

“Jesus, Tommy, there was a little girl…”

“She’s fine, Sparky. You took the brunt of the explosion, mostly the office door.”

“The mom,” Lou asked

“She’s fine too. Kilt already settled out of court with her, and they don’t think she’s gonna have a lasting scar from the chunk of coral they had to pull from her forehead.”

*****

Author’s Note: In our once monthly writing sessions at Passenger Recovery, we draw four random prompts ( a living thing, inanimate object and a place both geographic and specific), then we have about an hour and a half to create a short story. My prompts today were camel, thermometer, Honolulu, art gallery.

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Instead of snow, it was leaves falling, rust colored leaves from a tiny plastic tree.

Saw him on a local morning show last week, promoting his fall globes.

Told the anchor each globe took three weeks.

Now I know he lied that the fall globe was just for me.

I found the thing, whipped it into the backyard, it cracked.

Snow will fill it in a few months.

I’ll bring it inside.

The snow will melt, but it will be all mine.

*****

Many of my first stories on Substack were 100 worders. After I finished my first book of them, Humans, Being (Click that if you’d like to buy it) I was thrilled to start writing longer stuff. I pretty much abandoned 100s { I despise the term Drabble. It suggests comedy or frivolity to me}.

Tonight I told my girlfriend ( who happens to be a theatre and English teacher) that I didn’t think I could even write a 100 anymore.

She did not hesitate to say that I could do anything I put my mind to. I could not let her down and immediately wrote this.

*****

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The sound never stopped because cars never stopped driving that stretch of freeway, coming out of that giant cloverleaf, accelerating.

At the dentist’s office there was an aerial shot of the cloverleaf.

Made it look like an engineering marvel.

Ricky Lipscomb liked that picture when he was a kid.

The dentist’s office was the first place he was ever high.

Ricky picked at one of the staples in his knee, tapped his breast pocket.

One last Oxy and a baby dick joint he got from Ashy Fuqua.

The headlight/taillight combo on either side of the freeway was making him a little stoned.

He swung his good leg, his right one, back and forth, lazily, didn’t want to draw too much attention, have the cops think he was gonna jump from the pedestrian overpass, throw him in the psych ward.

Ricky just wanted the joint and the last Oxy, but also he was waiting because he didn’t want the last joint and the last Oxy to be over.

In the morning he was checking into Muirfield Substance Treatment Center.

Had such a good rep that Valium Vince Morton and SuzyPig called it Curefield.

Ricky wanted to go, but he didn’t want to go, nobody wants to go.

He never wanted to eat another Oxy again, except this last one.

He had reservations at Muirfield, like it was a hotel, but it also seemed more like a fancy psych ward.

Maybe I should jump.

Closing his eyes, he let the freeway hiss take over, though he swore he could still see red streaks.

The noise was so present it felt like it could gain decibels until it exploded.

The noise now lacerated with another noise, a new noise that pulsed closer.

Looking to his right he saw an odd shadow.

“Hey, my mom is draggin’ you bloody right now. She thinks you went to The Tommy Gun.”

The noise had been Waylon’s skate board. Waylon’s mom was Ricky’s older sister, ShariBeth.

Waylon kick flipped his deck into his hand and blew a snotrocket through the chainlink fence, down on the freeway.

He noticed Ricky playing with the staples in his lower leg.

“Can I have your Yamaha while you’re in the junkie hospital?”

Ricky laughed through his nose. Right quick, before he changed his mind, he popped the last Oxy.

“You watched your dad bring it home in pieces, right?”

Waylon nodded.

“I wanna fix it. Can I rock it when I fix it?”

“That thing is beyond you fixing it.”

Ricky rubbed the baby dick joint like a genie lamp and regretted eating what he hoped was his last Oxy. Maybe.

“I’ll learn. Don’t snuff my gray matter, Uncle Pills.”

“Siddown.”

Waylon did a little spin for an imaginary audience and sat.

“They built this freeway, this Cloverleaf thing, when I was a kid.”

“Tight, Boom. I know this story. Pop Pop sold the gasket company you were gonna inherit to make room for the freeway and cheese wiped the money on a video store.”

Ricky tried to laugh but it got caught somewhere, hard.

“See that over there, southwest, where it’s dark?”

Waylon nodded again, spinning a wheel on his skate with his hand.

Ricky lit the plump little joint and hit it like it was oxygen after a drowning scare.

“That was a retreat, retirement sanctuary for old nuns.”

“Know that too,” Waylon said,“the sign is etched into the archway that’s still there.”

Ricky said.” There’s an old statue of the Virgin Mary, way in the back. Edible mushrooms grow near the base of the statue.”

“You get hi-viz in your head and dance with Jesus, Rickdog?”

Ricky pulled his legs back from the gaps in the chainlink.

“Not that kind of mushroom, Way. Don’t know what they’re called but you can eat ‘em.”

“This got a point to—“

“Yeah, Thrashy,” Ricky said, climbing up the chainlink,letting the pain from the stretched skin near the staples tickle him alive. “It does.”

“Don’t jump, Rick.”

“I’d never purposely die on this freeway, Way. I never wanted to purposely die. I wanted to die by accident a million times.”

Ricky hopped down, jets of pain shooting up the leg the Yamaha landed on. Hospital wouldn’t write him a scrip for shit, two opioid ODs already on his chart. He knew every house, every record store, every bar, every sideways freak that could materialize a handful of pills, didn’t need the hospital but was still pissed at ‘em.

It was inside out now. He liked to feel the pain, liked to remind himself that he danced in a cloud above where the pills could reach.

He was both addicted and immune, a loser zaphead staring down at a cement mirror and a Stratospheric Dope Tolerance God.

Waylon said “I’m gonna go tell mom you’re not at the bar.”

Below them, the hiss sound morphed into the agonized wailing of brakes, then metal and composite fibers commingling in a way neither engineer nor speed intended.

Ricky wanted to tell his nephew, wanted to tell the world, that freeways and statues both had living things crawling out from underneath them, things that were damaged but refused to not be alive.

Waylon Warren and Ricky Lipscomb looked down at the freeway, Waylon staring at the wrecked cars, wondering if people would emerge soon.

Ricky was watching the cars that swerved left and kept going, kept the hiss hissing and the headlights and red lights streaming.

This creature was alive, and could not be stopped.

******

Officially six years publishing stories on Substack.

Thank you, all of you, for being part of it. Much more to come.

*****

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First he was gonna ask Winter Leary if he could have a coat.

Winter Leary was nice enough, interesting, weird of course. He was getting off the Stebbins bus when the nun got shot in the head, that would make anybody weird.

Winter Leary talked about outer space. He didn’t really claim he had been there, but he described it like he had been, the words he chose.

“Once, the Sukkalites landed their moonship on the tip of a diamond rock, boulder diamond thing. It was, wild man. I wasn’t sure how it stayed balanced. But it still took off when it had to.”

Darin Edlyn would stay and listen to Winter Leary when other kids would walk away mid sentence, and some kids would run.

Winter had a different coat on every day, every other day at least,even in August, that’s why everyone called him Winter.

Winter was getting off the Stebbins bus right behind Sister Mary Frederica Wyatt when Foster Lee Alleman, hanging from the streetlight pole, shot her three times in the head.

Darin Edlyn was 9 years old when it happened. Remembers throwing rocks at rats behind Rialto Transmission, then the streets were filled with cops.

Foster Lee Alleman wasn’t from Braketown, wasn’t from Detroit or even Michigan, he was from Pennsylvania, had a Smith & Wesson with three bullets in it, climbed a streetlight because a demon told him to shoot the first person off the bus.

“On Morrizia the beings, they’re humanoid, they can eat lava,” Winter Leary told Darin once, “but only if they’re related to the royal family of the planet.”

Darin Edlyn was gonna run away from home and lie his ass off to whoever he met along the way, because he didn’t want people to know where he came from. He was gonna do his best to not claim he had been to outer space.

Heyden Morrison hated that Darin listened to Winter’s stories.

“That fuckin’ freak is the weirdest most fucked up pigeon toed weird psycho in the world,” Heyden would say.

Darin would say “nah,” and Heyden would ask who was weirder…

Darin would think about saying “my dad puts my nutsack in his mouth and even grosser shit than that” but he wouldn’t say anything. He’d plot to run away, and steal the best fishing pole that they made, whatever that was, and find a girlfriend, and build a house under a railroad bridge, where the bridge would be the roof, and tell people he was from Pennsylvania, and drink strawberry vodka like he stole from his stepmom once.

He just had to pull together the guts to ask Winter for a coat and take the forty two fifty one he had saved up, plus Heyden would probably loan him a buck, and get on the Stebbins bus, which went almost to the lake.

If he got to the lake he could catch enough fish to live, he was sure, or sure enough, easily enough to make it worth not having his nutsack in his dad’s mouth, and then a stomach twisted into fire every time he saw his stepmom and thought about telling her, which was almost every time now.

Darin figured he could cover himself in one of Winter’s coats on the bus, then less people would report seeing him when he was missing, because he knew his stepmom would report him missing and probably tell the cops he hated powdered fucking eggs out of a box, but all he had to do was make it to eighteen and he had been fourteen for two weeks. Once he made it to eighteen he could say fuck you I’m not coming home, find someone else to put their nutsack in your mouth you gross weird overweight playing Led Zeppelin too loud motherfucker, but don’t, because…

Heyden got the chickenpox, and Darin felt like it was a good time to ask Winter where he got all the coats, and if Darin could have one, or buy one cheap.

He also wanted to ask Winter if he ever thought about getting off the bus first and being the one that got shot instead of the nun.

Darin waited on the rock that was on the corner of Morris and Stebbins, a rock that had a plaque with the address on it, but someone pried off the plaque to take it to Gagne Recycling by the freeway. At least that’s what Darin heard.

Darin was playing with the edges of the rock, the flat parts where the plaque used to be, running his fingers along it, it just felt good, he couldn’t explain it to anyone, when he heard rather than saw Winter Leary running his hands across the fence of the Bendix plant that gave Braketown its name.

Winter had a dumb smile on his face.

Darin kinda thought he knew what Winter was thinking. Sometimes it just feels good to rub your hand on something, just meaningless shit that doesn’t hurt anybody.

“Hey Winter, you think you can get me a coat?”

In Darin’s head he thought he would ask “ Where the hell you get all those coats?”

What came out of his mouth sounded better.

Winter stopped and looked at Darin like he was seeing him for the first time.

He grabbed the collar of the coat he was wearing, a flannel thing with a furry lining that looked like it itched. Darin hoped Winter wasn’t gonna give him that one.

As he got closer to Darin he looked at Darin in a way that made Darin think that maybe Winter thought Darin was in outer space.

Winter’s forehead turned all wrinkly, then he said “You want a coat? Follow me.”

Winter didn’t move.

Darin didn’t move.

A bus went by on Stebbins. Winter looked over, following it as it slowed to the stop one stop west of The Demon’s Streetlight.

Was Winter weird before the nun got shot in front of him? Was all his weird from that one moment or was he different before?

Darin guessed him at about 28, maybe older.

Winter started to walk, shuffly, more like he was afraid to bump into someone than he was afraid they would bump into him, even though the sidewalk was empty.

Standing, Darin followed Winter. He would rather Winter go to his coat stash, wherever that was, and bring him one back, though if Winter tried anything creepy Darin knew he could hit him in the mouth.

Winter shuffled, starting a space story.

“Larravort 5 has no water. Larravort’s don’t have any liquid…”

Darin, not for the first time, asked himself why he didn’t just hit his dad in the mouth. Just hit him in the mouth, tell his stepmom, go live with her brother Sean in Chicago. There was a big aquarium in Chicago…

“Their blood is thick as pudding but when they get cut and it hits the air the blood turns solid. And they die.”

Winter cut across the lawn of the prosthetics and shit bag store and down Pelley.

There were three really nice brick houses left where Pelley hit Avon. Darin wondered if Winter lived in one of them with his family and they were rich and he just had a bunch of coats. Except his coats didn’t always fit right. Rich people had coats that fit.

But what if they were going to Winter’s house?

Winter took a right on Avon.

On that side of Avon there was only the boarded up auto detailing place and Sacred Heart Church.

Darin wondered if Winter lived in the old auto detailing place. That sounded schizo rad, living in a place with a big bay door.

Winter had turned and was looking at Darin.

Darin blushed.

Schizo was short for Schizophrenic, and that’s what Angie, Darin’s stepmom, said Winter was.

Could Winter read minds?

If Winter could read minds…

Darin’s gut crushed like a Dr. Pepper can, splitting in places, painful, shitty…

Did Winter read his mind when he was thinking about his dad’s gross bullshit.

Winter was fully facing Darin, his heels rocking on the curb of Avon.

“Be nice in the church. Quiet. Basement.”

When Winter turned, Darin realized this was the church where the nun who got shot…nunned. He wasn’t sure what they did exactly other than be holy.

Darin’s family didn’t go to church. The excuse was that his dad’s work went on mandatory seven day shifts sometimes, but Darin was pretty sure they just didn’t care.

Darin thought his stepmom’s religion was weed and listening to Bachman Turner Overdrive records. She even talked his dad into getting an 8-Track player for their Maverick.

Winter crossed the street at an angle, Darin following, nervous.

He knew churches gave away clothes and meals and stuff but he didn’t need a coat in the same way a poor or…crazy person?…needs a coat.

“Father Patrick gave me a coat to wear home when Sister Freddie got shot.”

Darin said “Wow.” A silent wow lingered in his head, a wow that turned into a scream, an echoing scream only Darin could hear, coming from his own brain and wrapping it tight in revolving sound.

Winter seemed for real, a green Schwinn frame solid for real like he could read minds, and those words were the first words Winter had ever spoken to him that didn’t involve some made up space planet.

Or real ones. If Winter could read minds, maybe he could see into space.

Maybe he couldn’t.

“Can you read minds, Winter?”

Darin standing there was asking for the Darin who had thought about his father’s disgusting mouth and gross hands and how his dad made these strawberry desserts from scratch, these desserts Darin would eat every day, like a third Darin, a Darin that didn’t hate him…

“No. Um. No… There are space aliens who can read minds. Lots of ‘em. They’re not aliens on their own planets, ya know, they’re just… I’m glad I can’t. People are afraid of me. People…they think…they… I don’t have to read minds. They say stuff out loud ever since Sister Freddie…”

Winter was in front of the church now, a shard of purple reflection from the stained glass cutting over his dirty white Converse.

“Were you and Sister… uh… Sister Freddie friends?”

Winter stared. His eyes changed. They weren’t sad or mad. Darin didn’t know what they were. He knew without being told that he shouldn’t have asked. That Winter would talk about it when he wanted to talk about it but he didn’t want to be asked.

“Tell Father Patrick why you want a coat,” Winter said. “There are hundreds in the basement next to the kitchen, behind the Alcoholics Anonymous room.”

Darin nodded.

“Wh…Why do they have hundreds of coats?”

Winter ignored the question and pulled open the door of the church.

The air inside smelled different.

Little red candles were lit and a whole bunch weren’t.

Darin didn’t know what he would tell Father Patrick. He wasn’t even sure he wanted a coat anymore. It was warm out. He could take his shirt off and get on the Stebbins bus and then buy a shirt at the end of the bus line. Any kid could be shirtless. But it would get cold before he turned—

“Good afternoon, Michael.”

Darin felt like an ice cube cracking in a warm pop. It was just a voice but creepy and unexpected.

“Hi Father Patrick,” Winter said.

Darin looked. Winter didn’t look like a Michael and the priest who called his name didn’t look like a Patrick. He looked 1000 years old.

“You brought a friend. I’m Father Patrick Loughlin.”

The priest held his hand out to shake Darin’s.

Darin hadn’t thought out this part. If he tells the priest his name and then the priest gives him a coat he can’t run away in the coat and…

“I’m Darin.”

“Father Patrick has a magic room where you can tell him anything and he can’t tell anyone.”

Father Patrick smiled.

“Michael means a confessional.It’s not magic, but it can feel…like a weight is lifted. Is there something on your mind?”

“Is this where Winter…umuhh…Michael gets all his coats?”

The priest looked at Winter and back to Darin.

“We provide clothing and toiletries to anyone in need. Michael has our blessing to help himself when he feels the need.”

“Does he have to tell you why he needs one every…time?”

Darin was so proud he didn’t say damn or fuckin in a church he was unaware he raised his voice.

“No, son… no. No one needs a reason. If you’re in need we’ll be happy to provide you one. We were so blessed. Mr. John Smalley was a parishioner as a child. When he liquidated his garment business he left us hundreds of warm coats.

“Father Patrick gave me one at the bus stop. In the ambulance by the bus stop,” Winter said.

Darin didn’t know Winter had been hurt in the shooting. He only knew Winter got splattered with blood.

“The police put a swab on me. For evidence. To see whose blood was whose. There were paramedics and cops and people screaming and TV lights.”

“Michael was a witness to a horrible incident.”

“The Demon’s Streetlight. The nun who got killed. She nunned here, right?”

Father Patrick winced, then smiled, nodded. “She was a beloved member of our church family, yes.

Are you from the neighborhood? Do you have family nearby?”

“He’s from here,” Winter said. “Braketown.”

Darin scrunched his toes.

Now he was gonna be Darin, a missing kid from Braketown, with a coat he got from Sacred Heart Church. The whole stupid thing was a waste of time.

“He’s nice to me,” Winter said. “ I mean, not mean.”

Father Patrick smiled. “That’s great to hear, Darin. Michael has been through a lot. Your parents should be proud. They raised a fine…”

“My mom died when I was too young to remember, asthma attack smoking in the fucking shower. My stepmom is cool, but she didn’t really, like raise me, mostly, packed some lunches a few times and stuff.”

Darin paused, wishing he could crack his toe knuckles.

He didn’t want to talk, he didn’t want a coat anymore. A simple fucking thing, get a coat, hop on the Stebbins bus, run away, never tell anyone his dad sucked his balksack twice a week since he was nine. Simple. All gone now because Winter made him talk to a priest.

“And your father?”

Darin looked at the priest. Could he ask to go in the magic room? The magic room was some bullshit that Winter made up, just like those planets and those—

“My father is mean,” Winter said. “My father…my mom made me spend the night after Sister Freddie got killed. She didn’t want me in the group home on Trachtmore. And I went to bed. My father…”

Father Patrick was nodding.

“I’m sorry your father was cruel, Michael. Lord forgive him for his mistakes and misplaced anger. I was inquiring about Darin’s fath-“

“I didn’t go to sleep, just to bed,” Winter said, talking to himself, but Darin too.

“My mom got me new glow in the dark planets at Kresge and I didn’t go to sleep and my father said, “if that psycho had three more bullets we wouldn’t have to pay for the group home.”

Winter took a taper candle from a holder and lit one of the small red candles.

“Praying for my mothergodresthereternalsoul…”

Winter lit a second candle.

“Praying for Sister Freddie even though I never really spoke to her godresthereternalsoul…

Father Patrick turned to Darin.

“Would you like to come downstairs and pick out a coat? Night will surely be getting chilly soon enough.

“Praying for Foster Lee Alleman,” Winter continued, “May God forgive his sins.”

Darin thought his mind was melting in one of the candles.

“You pray for psycho demon-listening bad guys here too?”

“We ask God’s grace and forgiveness for everyone,” Father Patrick said. “Let’s get you a coat.”

“I changed my mind,” Darin said. “I don’t need a coat. I’m not running away.”

Darin scrunched his toes again, furious at himself.

“Oh…” Father Patrick put his hand on Darin’s shoulder and began to slowly walk. “Would you like to talk in my office, son? I’ll try to help any way I can.

“No, that’s okay. Ya know what? Can I have some candles? That’s what I want, candles.”

Darin would wait until Angie walked her fucking Schnauzer in the morning and burn the the house down while his dad was still sleeping.

They could live at Sean’s, in Chicago, and go to the big aquarium and the lake.

“Would you like to light some candles, pray for the soul of your mother and the continued health of your stepmom and… your father? You haven’t told me about your father.”

Darin looked back at Winter, hunched over the candles in a scratchy collared winter coat.

Then Darin looked at the floor of the church.

“ I can’t pray for my father. He’s not from here… he doesn’t have the same god. He… He’s from another planet. He’s from some planet. Maybe Winter knows what planet. It’s a planet where guys think it’s alright to put their son’s nutsack in their mouth and their middle finger in their ass and make gross fucking moaning noises and…”

The floor in front of Darin’s feet was wet, piss, tears, he wasn’t sure, both maybe.

He felt like an idiot, especially because somewhere in here was a magic room where someone could listen to you talk and never tell, but he wasn’t in that magic room, he was in a hallway and hallways weren’t holy, or special, they were just fucking hallways, like buses without wheels.

He wasn’t going anywhere, at least not on the Stebbins bus. There was one hand on his shoulder. That hand was trembling.

Darin didn’t know why, but it was anger.

Father Patrick Loughlin was furious at a man he had never met, just like he once was furious at Foster Lee Alleman.

There was a second hand on Darin’s shoulder.

This one was bigger, but didn’t tremble.

“On Ruxlon Seven Y, the creatures can’t cry. But they have tears. The tears build up inside their head until their heads are so heavy they can’t walk. Then they die,” Winter said.

Darin nodded, like Winter had told him the 100% undeniable truth.

“On earth they have candles,” Darin said.” And I wanna burn my fucking house down with my dad inside it.”

Darin doubled over so his forehead was touching his belt buckle, hoping he didn’t puke.

He didn’t remember saying he was cold or really saying anything, but he felt Winter wrap him in the itchy flannel coat.

*****

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I would love to read your thoughts. As you might guess this was a little tougher to write than most.

My head is like the fog in a London alley in a black and white horror movie I’m only watching to prove my one openable eye still works.

I don’t think I need a horror movie to scare me.

I am terrified of myself.

Disgusted with myself that I would walk into a bar called The Blue Iguana, amazed at myself that I remember the name of the place.

Maybe the neon burned it into what’s left of my brain.

The Blue Iguana? I’m a Frank’s Place guy. The Lamplighter. Corner bars. Fuck the no smoking law bars.

Gray matter?

I’m no doctor, but mine has to be olive green by now.

I remember standing next to a hardware store, leaning on a hardware store. On the wall, inside the glass was a thermometer, and I wondered if it was working, for sale, a display model, what?

You can’t turn off mercury, right?

A thermometer inside a store wouldn’t accurately tell me the temperature outside the store anyway. I didn’t want to be hot, I knew that, though hot doesn’t make me as angry as cold.

It was too August to be cold, too south to be cold.

The woman at the desk of this motel was kind, maybe felt sorry for me.

She’s probably seen a thousand mes.

I flirted with her, I know I did. I handed her cash through the little slot and tried to touch her hand.

Was my eye swollen shut then?

I don’t remember a fight, or a fall.

There are parts of the night that are just gone, I know that, I’m accustomed to that, I’ve learned to accept that. I am drawing a picture to be turned into a puzzle and I won’t ever put all the pieces of that puzzle in the box.

The purchaser of the puzzle can live with it.

They can connect all the pieces that have been placed in the box and call it done.

Or maybe that’s what I’m doing.

The creature on the screen in the London alley reveals himself, or should I say the camera reveals him, through the fog, hiding, his cloak falling away from his face, a face, a cranium with an unnatural pallor, an undead look, but very much…real, corporeal, not a ghost. Flesh.

I poke at my swollen face.

The pressure hurts.

Somehow I like it.

The pain is comfort.

I open my wallet.

My hand is shaking.

A brown piece of leather is looking at me.

I left my credit card at The Blue Iguana.

I have an excuse to go back.

And no excuse at all.

******

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There’s a video on YouTube of Kevin Slattery, in 10th Grade at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs, answering a question about fermentation on the show BattleBrain.

Kevin was wrong.

Queen of Martyrs came in second of four teams, and each participant got a fifty dollar gift certificate for Crazy Castle Lazer Tag.

Kevin’s mom framed the gift certificate. Kevin probably wasn’t going to use the gift certificate anyway, but he thought it rather odd that his mom would latch on to the slip of paper with a bar code as a symbol of her son’s achievement, especially after he only attempted to answer one question, and was wrong.

Father Thurman was at the taping of BattleBrain, as were the members of Queen of Martyrs basketball team.

The priest decided it was important for the athletes to support the kids competing in academic contests.

Father Thurman checked in on Kevin pretty regularly. He’s in his 90’s now, and no longer able.

Thomas Thurman, Society of Jesus, never quite got used to the scent of burnt popcorn in Kevin Slattery’s home.

He accepted that Kevin knows what he’s doing, that Kevin is comforted by the scent of burnt popcorn, and that Kevin is capable of turning the burner down once he’s achieved the desired scent and before he torches the entire kitchen.

Kevin was mocked pretty hard after the BattleBrain experience. Not so much for the wrong answer, but for giving up after, failing to ring in to attempt another answer.

Excuses were made.

The cameras.

The temperature of the studio.

A grumbling gut from Warsaw Delights All You Can Eat Goląbki the night before.

The true culprit, unknown at the time, was the presence of Easton Lambert.

Kevin Slattery had a huge crush on Easton Lambert, who couldn’t have identified Kevin Slattery as a schoolmate until the taping of BattleBrains.

But Easton knew failure. Easton knew ridicule.

At 6’9 for real and listed at 6’10, he was the tallest player in the Metro Catholic League who wasn’t a starter and didn’t average double figures in points.

He was slow, clumsy, and prone to freezing up under pressure.

Kevin Slattery made a clock.

It’s a nude picture of Sam Rockwell, with two of Sam’s right arms as the hands. Kevin Slattery broke the left arm piece, accidentally, and in a rush to get it done accidentally glued on another picture of the right arm.

Julia, Kevin’s occupational therapist, thinks it’s genius.

For an injury like Kevin’s, it’s an astounding reclamation of small motor function.

Easton Lambert was great comfort to Kevin after BattleBrains.

Kevin didn’t care that Easton wasn’t good at basketball.

Kevin vented about his eccentric, probably mentally ill mom.

Easton vented that he probably couldn’t even work for his dad’s plumbing company after high school because he was just too big to fit into small places plumbers needed to get.

Kevin complained that Easton’s Tuesday night basketball games conflicted with dollar movie night at Harbor Cinema.

Easton complained that the coach gave him a key to the gym so he could work on his game, a game that wasn’t gonna get any better.

Kevin Slattery doesn’t do much complaining these days.

Strangely, to him, he’s become more of a basketball fan in recent years, though sometimes he just closes his eyes and listens because the constant flashes of color up and down the court give him headaches.

It was Kevin’s idea that he help Easton work on his game after hours in the gym, even though he knew nothing about basketball.

He just figured he’d throw the ball back to Easton after missed shots or set up orange cones or…

It was Easton’s idea that they steal Gatorades from the secret room behind the closet where the green and silver Martyrs warmup unis hung, and it was Easton’s idea to kiss Kevin.

Kevin told his mom he had a job at school that started at 9pm, which was kind of reckless because she could check and see that he didn’t and Easton told his dad he was really committed to working on his game.

At halftime of the Pacers Pistons game the news teases a story about a school shooting outside of Memphis.

Kevin Slattery spits on his own area rug.

They’d never let a kid have a key to a gym and be unsupervised now.

They’d never let two kids sneak off into a room off a locker room, drink free Gatorade, talk about life.

They’d certainly never let a plumber walk in off the street, into a chapel to light a candle and pray for his overgrown son to get his basketball shit together and get a college scholarship.

That plumber wasn’t there for the candle as much as he was there to sneak out of the chapel, through the sacristy, down the hallway and into the gym to see his only son. The gym where he didn’t hear his son or anyone else dribbling or shooting a basketball.

Easton’s size 4XL Puma windbreaker was draped over the scorers table, so Woody Lambert kept looking.

Kevin Slattery has never seen Woody Lambert.His eyes were closed. He had Woody Lambert’s son’s cock in his mouth, facing the other way anyway.

Easton told the court he panicked.

He wasn’t lying.

Easton Lambert punched the kid he met at BattleBrains, the kid who knew almost all his secrets, and the kid’s head hit the tile wall of the little room off the locker room where the warmups hung.

Woody Lambert didn’t call that kid an ambulance until 20 minutes later at a pay phone outside a Burger King.

The morning Kevin Slattery was dressing for BattleBrain, he wanted to be a lawyer.

He’s pushing sixty now, and has been going to therapy for as long as he can remember.

He wants to speak better, so he can go to an open mic night. He thinks he has some pretty good jokes about not being very good at giving head.

He’s not quite ready yet.

But he can feed himself, he can get himself to bed.

He can’t explain why the smell of burnt popcorn is comforting to him.

There are no cameras here.

He has the thermostat set at a comfortable temperature, and he hasn’t eaten goląbki in decades.

*****

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The walk sign at Covent and Ashmore has been stuck on walk for two years, the kind of time where you know an old lady took a bus to a city council meeting to complain about it.

Someone is gonna get killed.

No one has yet because I would have known about it.

Big city, but a small neighborhood.

Chuckie Marquardt is gonna ask me for a few bucks before I get on the bus.

Saniyann Winston is walking up Ashmore in a dress so tight her sweat must be building up inside her.

Double Z has a fresh bottle of wine between his legs, smiling. Only time he doesn’t smile is when the Alternachurch Van pulls up and they try to get him sober with Jesus.

Chuckie slaps me on the inside of the elbow to get my attention to bum him some money.

I hate being touched on the inside of the elbow.

No. Lick my ass, Chuckie, you aren’t getting any money today.

The rednecks who live on the other side of Parkway still call Chuckie “Chickie” from when he used to wear eyeliner, used to want to be Mike Ness. Chuckie was a junkie and a shitbag guitar player, which is weird because I’ve known some junkies who were great.

I get to the casino about ten minutes to one.See the same electrician vans in the parking lot I always see. Some deli somewhere is down a cooler because some fuckstick thinks his craps strategy is gonna buy him Lions season tickets.

Maryelle is here, on the Buffalo Gold next to my Dancing Drums machine,her oxygen on wheels next to her. Someone knitted her a little decorative thing to go on it, like the oxygen tank has a hat.Maybe she knitted it herself but if she could knit I think she would have told me.

I pull the chair to the left, closer to the winning ticket cash out than the slot you put your money in.

Positive Mental Attitude.

I’m gonna take more out than I put in.

I crack the knuckle on my left ring finger, the finger that would have a ring on it, probably, if Shannon Adronicz hadn’t been a lesbian. She wasn’t a lesbian when we were freshman, far as I could tell.

I say “C’mon, Pete” after I put eighty bucks in fives in the money slot, right before I push the first button.

Maryelle thought my name was Pete at first, thought I was pumping myself up.

But Pete ain’t my name.

Pete was the name of the harness driver I was yelling at from the rail at Hazel Park Harness Raceway, the night I hit my only trifecta.

Animal rights protesters used to stand across the street saying the race track was cruel to animals.

The race track is gone now.

Wasn’t because the protests worked, it’s because Amazon bought the property. Now it’s a massive fulfillment center, thousands of humans toiling in a building with no windows, and there aren’t any protesters with signs about cruelty to humans.

I tap my left knee with my left middle finger and press the button, max bet, start big then massage the machine a little bit. Decrease the bet, make the machine think you’re gonna walk away if they don’t give you a little win to tickle your endorphins.

Maryelle is leaning in to her screen, looks like she doesn’t feel well.

I don’t ask, because I don’t talk to her. I let her talk to me then sometimes I answer. That way I don’t upset her rhythm, and she can’t upset my routine, not by talking, anyway.

Maryelle hits a mini-Jackpot for 17 bucks. That ain’t even a jackpot, but that’s what they call it. Then she tells me that they are probably taking her drivers license away because her eyesight is so bad.

She’s biting her upper lip with her lower teeth and she looks so damn sad I don’t know what to say and I’m not good at saying stuff anyway. I think lots of stuff, too much stuff, but I mostly keep it between my brain and me.

After a few more spins Maryelle asks what kind of car I have.

“I don’t,” I tell her, “ I take the bus.”

She tells me she’s afraid of the bus.

I nod, because I understand someone like her being afraid of the bus.

Maryelle has been sitting at the slot next to me for about three years. I know she’s got one grandchild who lives in Moscow, Idaho, and that sometimes she leaves the Idaho part out because that sounds more interesting and I know she smoked 2 packs of Virginia Slims a day until she quit the day of her sister’s funeral and I know she won some kind of award for non-profit accounting in the late 70’s but I don’t know where she lives.

I want it to be along the Gratiot line, because Jaquerion Viles rides the Gratiot, almost all day, every day. Jaquerion Viles has issues, big ones, but he wouldn’t let no one touch an old lady on the bus.

Honestly, there are more dudes on the bus like Jaquerion Viles than there are dudes who would mess with an old lady with oxygen tubes in her nose, but that’s not an easy thing to convince people of once that fear burrows inside them.

Maryelle says the doctor says she will be blind, eventually, if she lives long enough.

Because she spoke first I ask her where she lives, then I tap my left knee four times against the Dancing Drums machine because I had 5 Jacks, just not all on the same reel.

She says Grainer Park, and that’s the Lafayette bus line. It’s the next line over from the route I take. I could walk half a mile, take the Lafayette the wrong way to Grainer Park, meet Maryelle, then ride into the casino with her.

I’m thinking this while I feel the slot heating up.

It doesn’t emit warmth, I just mean the way the symbols are dropping on the screen it feels good, feels like it’s ready to pop, feels like it’s going to spit me out some winners.

I rub the right heel of my shoe on the carpet.

In my head, silently, I hum Hail to the Victors.

Maryelle is telling me a story, a long one for Maryelle, about why she likes to drive.

I’m missing details, but that’s okay because the Dancing Drums slot is feeling friendlier, like it is ready, willing, happy to give me a good payout.

She met a man driving.

Queens in both top corners, I touch my knees together.

“Beautiful music,” I hear Maryelle say.

I go max bet again.

Progressive jackpot is at 44,651.

Nothing.

Gonna stay at max bet. Crack the index finger on both hands with the squeeze of their own thumb.

At 44K I can give Maryelle bus fare for a year.

I tell the machine, telepathically, that I need to win to give this old, oxygen dependent, going- blind lady bus fare.

Max bet again.

The reels whir and spin, because that’s what reels do.

Maryelle says “guitar was gone.”

Some people think slot machines are entirely random. But they’re not. They’re programmed to respond a certain way to certain things like bet amount, time of day, etc.

Maryelle says “If I can’t drive, I can’t stop at the park on the way home.”

I max bet again and slip my right hand under my right leg.

Maryelle says “Vincent would absolutely spit out his supper laughing at me for buying a stranger a guitar.”

Vincent was Maryelle’s husband. He took her to Vegas, she told me, and got her hooked on slots. He died on Valentine’s Day. She told me that on Valentine’s Day. I had a good slot day that day.

The reels spin and stop on a tiny, attaboy, keep going win. Not even enough credits for a max bet.

“Anyway, he might be dead for all I know,” Maryelle says, and taps the max bet on her machine.

“Wait” I say, “I thought your husband died years ago.”

“Oh he did, silly. I’m talking about Chickie, the man I bought the guitar for. He played so beautifully.”

I feed eighty dollars into the Dancing Drums.

Maryelle has to be talking about Chuckie Marquardt.

She’s been playing slots right next to me for years. It’s… she’s…comfortable. She’s… I guess she’s my friend.

And I don’t want her to know I know Chuckie Marquardt.

“The buffaloes and elk aren’t cooperating today,” Maryelle said.

“You bought a stranger in a park a guitar?”

“He played me some songs a few times…not a total stranger…I stopped by one day… and he was alone, in the park. Someone stole his guitar…”

No one stole Chuckie Marquardt’s guitar. Chuckie Marquardt sold two guitars.

Maryelle paid for one of them.

I slid my chair slightly closer to the cashout slot.

Cracked the knuckle on my left ring finger, say “ C’mon Pete,” and hit max bet.

Maryelle is pressing the wager button on her slot machine, oxygen pumping into her nostrils.

I wanna push Chuckie Marquardt in front of a bus.

The Dancing Drums slot feels cold.

Maryelle is going blind.

Staring at the machine, listening to the gong, I tell it to spit me out some money so I can buy Maryelle’s car.

I’m waiting for her to say something, anything, so I can ask her if she wants to sell it.

*****

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The word, the word he didn’t know, never heard before, became an animal.

A finger, an outstretched arm came with the word.

The physical gesture was meant to be welcoming. It seemed to be like the chain the dog was tied to, a chain in a sweater, the sweater with a name tag.

She had said her own name, out loud, but his brain was attentive to other things.

Smells.

Sounds that weren’t words.

She began to walk, hand on his shoulder, again, an attempt at welcoming comfort that landed like hot grease on skin.

He didn’t wish to be touched.

He knew he should be listening to her words and not doors closing and footsteps.

His ears tuned to this woman.

Everything was all unknown already.

He had been spanked and slapped and burned,but never taken anywhere outside the house to be punished.

The handcuffs, the cop said, were so he would not harm himself. He had never harmed himself. That’s what other people were for.

He heard a voice in a room, a voice that sounded like a kid his age.

He couldn’t understand the words, but he understood, he felt anyway that the kid asked a question.

The cop, the second cop, asked if he had any questions. He had so many, but not the ones he thought a cop could answer.

This woman seemed like she could answer a question.

A question that would slow the walk.

He did not want to ask if he could ask a question because that was a question. He did not want to be told no.

Not now, not ever again.

He was scared by this word.

“What,” he blurted, “ is a corridor?”

The woman stopped.

Her heels clicked as though they were meant to stop right in that place, snapped, somehow, to that exact piece of scuffed tile floor.

She had been trained in measured responses.

Saliva went down her throat the wrong way.

She did not want to cough or clear her throat.

There was fear in this boys eyes.

Fear, of course, of the unknown.

She wondered what he had seen, what he had done beyond what was in the small file stored on her phone, the same phone with which she texted her daughter to remind her about gymnastics practice.

The word “corridor.”

This little boy had been frightened by her errant use of a word beyond his vocabulary.

“I’m sorry…hallway… the place we’re in now.”

She began to assure the boy that no one would hurt him and stopped, mouth open but silent.

In March she had assured a boy no one would hurt him shortly before he had to be restrained and his wrist was broken in the process.

The woman looked at the boy.

Had this child, afraid of the word corridor, really stabbed his own mother?

He had.

That part of this case was not in question.

She said “follow me,” in the pleasant, soothing tone she had learned in seminars at resorts.

The boy stared past her, down the corridor.

She walked,and he followed next to her.

Soon a therapist’s door would close between them and she would go back to the office.

Above the door of the office there was a cheap plastic sign that said “Intake Processing.”

She understood those words, and for the first time their broad sterility frightened her.

She swallowed wrong again, choked, coughed, cleared her throat, and though her eyes were closed, she saw the boy flinch and shiver as the noise echoed down the hallway.

*****

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The twin viaducts where the train tracks go over 48th Street got some of the best street art on the west side during the daytime, and they look like science fiction demon eyes at 10:37 at night when second shift at Golney Induction Molding gets off and most of the cars are headed north.

One day, right across the top of the viaduct, in thick black letters, someone painted That Shit Aint Good Enough Joey Sobczak

I knew Joey Sobczak since 7th Grade. He won an award for Class Clown and a real school award for Trombone.

Danny Cochrane was sitting on a shopping cart on its side in the parking lot of GroceryGrand, saying whoever painted it was in trouble because it blacked out a gang tag of Jedinstvo.

Auwshanna Matthews laughed like it was the funniest joke in the world and said errybody know who painted it, Valerie Lumm, who was Joey’s baby mama. Besides, she said, Jedinstvo was 14 year old Bosnian kids who got good grades and only got in trouble for riding their BMX bikes in the dug out foundation of the new cancer center they were building next to Ford Hospital.

Teri Volker walked up with a winning scratcher, a 500, and she bought a box of blush and some cups, we stayed in the parking lot drinking and talking and like a dude stumbling on his own surprise party before people were hiding, Joey Sobczak walked up.

I asked him what ain’t good enough, laughing even before I started talking, figuring it had to be a good story, someone mad enough to hang upside down off the twin viaducts and paint like that.

Joey Sobczak stopped.

I mean like everything around him stopped.

The only thing moving on him was the hairs from the wind going through his thin little mustache.

I almost apologized just from his reaction.

I didn’t say anything though.

Joey made a fist and walked right into GroceryGrand.

My father says I’m an optimist, and I was optimizing Joey having a funny joke about the words on the viaduct by the time he walked out of GroceryGrand.

If anything, he looked madder when he came out. Musta bought smokes and maybe scratchers and jammed them in his pocket because he didn’t have a bag or nothing.

Just a look in his eye like he was fit’na kill somebody, and the second he was out of sight Aushawnna said he was gonna kill Valerie.

We started worrying about Valerie…I barely knew her, but we were worrying, then we got back to laughing because a box of wine just does that to you.

Danny was telling his story of getting kicked out of the Marine Corps, and that story is magic because I heard it fifteen times and it’s still funny, then Brittany Lyle walked up like someone wrecked her happy and stole her makeup bag. She said she just got done working a breakfast lunch double at Top Nosh, because…

You coulda knocked us over with one of them little Jehovah’s Witness comic books…

Because Valerie Lumm no call-no showed and Eddie called Brittany in in the middle of the breakfast rush.

In the twin viaducts on 48th street there’s a Martian passing a fat, overstuffed doob to an already high Panda Bear, Spider-Man spinning a record on a deck with a web, some kinda Santa Claus Robot mashup with a whole bag full of nuts and bolts, and an Angel sitting at a realistic plexiglass bus shelter, along with some gang tags and stuff.

I doubt we’ll ever know what shit wasn’t good enough.

We do know that Joey Sobczak didn’t kill Valerie Lumm, because she works at Erotic Avenue, the lingerie and dildo store on Plymouth Road.

She swears she didn’t paint that thing about Joey.

Some people believe her, some people don’t.

Next to the bus stop Angel, in silver paint pen, it says Rest In Heaven, Joey Sobczak.

That’s no mystery. I wrote that, the day after Joey walked past us mad, scratched off forty bucks worth of lottery tickets hoping to win five grand and catch up on his child support.

We didn’t know Joey was gonna hurt himself.

We would have shared our wine and not talked about the viaduct.

Maybe.

*****

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They’re filming the story of Billy Curstell’s life just down Burt Road today. Laura Van Frangham is playing Billy’s mom. Not sure who is playing the dead girl in the river.

They got a bunch of 1987 cars for the movie. Not a damn person in our neighborhood owned a brand new car when all the shit from the movie was going on. And Billy’s mom didn’t look like Laura Van Frangham. She looked more like Danny DeVito.

The people who really know Billy know they ain’t gonna tell the story right. Because the newspapers never did, back when there were newspapers, and the crime re-creation shows like Bullets & Handcuffs never did either.

You probably know part of Billy’s story.

Buncha kids from Evergreen Flats and Brightmoor and the Smith Projects were riding their bikes in Rouge Park, looking for lost hubcaps to sell.

Seven of the kids on bikes got bored, pulled off to the part of the park where sometimes people dump whole cars for insurance jobs, or cars they stole and gagged before they could get it to a chop, or never knew where a chop was in the first place.

There was a girl there, where someone jammed a pallet in the Y of a big oak tree, just kind of the cheapest, easiest tree fort you could make.

She had just snorted a bunch of dope. The kids knew that, coroner confirmed it.

Marcus Ungram and some kid I didn’t know named VaShawn Golden raped her, Puff Hildon busted her head with a big hunk a concrete, they threw her in the river.

Billy Curstell had a fucked up life. His dad was a straight up scale model of an asshole, always screaming about Jesus between pulls of an Olde E forty.

Billy wasn’t perfect, but he was a good kid by our neighborhood’s standards, scrawny like a green bean that got left under the carousel of a microwave and cooked twelve dozen times before it’s discovered.

Billy’s dad found a way to get him thrown in Waterman Remedial, which was for the kids who were like slinging mad dope and punching teachers and shit. Billy was maybe stealing some hood ornaments and shoplifting a Tahitian Treat.

He was just out of Waterman, even shyer than before, skinnier than before like he was afraid to touch the weight bench or even the commissary.

And after Marcus and Puff and the rest of those kids took off, Billy turned around on his bike and pulled that girl from the river by the foot.

I wasn’t there, so I don’t really really know but Billy said the only reason he touched the girl’s breast was he was feeling for a heartbeat, which Billy said wasn’t beating, and about four different medical examiners argued about it in court.

Billy was convicted of accessory to aggravated rape. As an adult. Billy Curstell had just turned 16.

He tried to tell the court he would have helped the girl, but she was dead already.

At the time of Billy’s conviction, the girl was unidentified. Jane Doe. Most likely, according to cops and guys who thought they might know a little something about it, a prostitute.

Billy turned 18 in prison, didn’t have it easy.

I know most of those details ain’t gonna be in this movie with the brand new 1987 cars and the big huge lights.

Before Billy’s nineteenth birthday the victim was identified. Leslie Marie Vindelli. Her parents identified her from crime scene photos and a belt buckle. They are from Friend, Nebraska.

They spoke to Channel 7. On camera. Thanked the cops. Then Leslie Marie Vindelli’s mother said they had prayed on it, and they didn’t think Billy Curstell was guilty of harming their daughter. Thought he was honest, and too young to be incarcerated.

I don’t know if Wayne County Prosecutor Ward Walker told them to blow it out their yappy Nebraska ass or what, but Billy stayed in jail.

Then the Vindellis got serious. They got a lawyer for Billy. Woman named Melissa. I don’t know shit about law except that I have the right to remain silent, but she filed all kinds of motions and arguments and I don’t know what, but they paroled Billy Curstell.

They didn’t overturn the conviction, just lessened the sentence and paroled him.

A woman with a walkie talkie asks me if I wanna be in a church scene. Shit yeah I do, I never been in the movies. I wasn’t even on TV the night Screen Three at the Ford Greenfield Drive In got hit with a molotov, and tons of people were on TV that night.

I see Darrien Permian and he tells me Rick Barry Garner is playing Billy’s parole officer.

We both say “Get the fuck outta here” at the same time.

Rick Barry Garner was in the X Men, he…he aint nothing like Billy Curstell’s PO.

I wonder if Rick Barry Garner is gonna be in the church scene with me. Doesn’t seem like he would be. Seems like the church scene might be Billy and his parents.

Billy’s dad didn’t take him back when he got paroled. Guess he said Billy was nineteen, was on his own. Billy moved in with his cousin Jeff in that little yellow house right behind the Dunkin Donuts.

Went to see Billy. He didn’t want to talk about prison. Didn’t want to talk about the night in the park. Told Jeff that Jeff had to get high outside because his PO could drop by any time. Jeff said okay, but they would discuss that in more detail in February, when it was ten below.

After a few months Billy started getting high, a little, here and there. Just weed,but nobody wanted him to piss dirty and go back to jail. He said it was nothin’, but motherfuckers always say shit like that and it is something, they get a case, a violation.

And Billy never had that swagger like something was nothin’.

They’re making a movie about his life and he still don’t.

They got a whole, gleaming white trailer full of toilets parked at Burt Rd and Keeler to make a movie about Billy Curstell and he just looks lost and kinda scared.

Billy Curstell started drinking, and then I was sure his PO was gonna pop him and violate him.

I was like “ you wanna go back to prison Billy? Victor Kay and Tito and Schoolcraft Mike all like prison. Three hots and a cot.

Billy shook his head when I said that, naw, he hated prison. Wants to get a job inking Marvel Comics or at Isaacman Popcorn making caramel corn in those big ass vats you can see through the north side windows.

I tell him that ain’t gonna happen if he pisses dirty.

Then Billy tells me a secret. He blurts it out laughing, but like his eyes got these red rings around them, and his skin looks like it’s hot when he says it.

Billy Curstell is getting a movie made about his life because of all the crazy shit that happened in Rouge Park and in court, but mostly because of this:

Billy’s PO had a heart attack right in front of Billy and Billy gave him CPR he remembered from the year he tried to be a lifeguard at Brennan Pool in Rouge Park.

He didn’t pass the class to be a lifeguard because he couldn’t lift enough weight out of the pool, treading water.

But they say he saved his PO’s life.

On a commuted sentence.

Because God told a family Billy was innocent of harming their little girl.

That’s gonna make a good movie, I guess.

I’m in the third row in church. They gave me a shirt to wear, and a clip on tie. Took my own shirt from me and put a tag with my name on it.

The actor playing Billy is 20 feet from me. He’s better looking and in better shape than Billy, but everyone is in better shape than Billy was then and even is now.

Here’s the part that probably isn’t in that kid’s script.

Billy’s PO didn’t just have a heart attack. Billy’s PO had a heart attack sucking Billy’s dick.

Apparently after prison Billy preferred receiving to giving. Ain’t my thing, but I guess I can kinda understand.

There wasn’t an internet when Leslie Marie Vindelli was murdered or when Billy Curstell was on trial.

People on the internet now wanna know why Billy could save his PO and he couldn’t save the girl in the park.

They seem to miss the part where Leslie Marie Vindelli’s head was bleeding into the Rouge River like motor oil from an abandoned Tahoe.

If the internet ever finds out Parole Officer Winston Scheefer was sucking Billy Curstell’s dick, they’re gonna be merciless.

Inside Glory Ebenezer Baptist Ministry, the film crew is getting ready to shoot the church scene.

One of the people on the crew tells me to look straight ahead and stay quiet.

For the life of Billy Curstell, I’m gonna stay quiet.

*****

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Lynch fondled the cigarette in his pocket, what was left of a cigarette after a rushed snuff out and pocket jam, the young usher in the lobby utterly shocked that someone would have the audacity or poor breeding to light up inside The Lumen.

The little joint had been a legit theater, then a second run movie house, then a porn theater infamous for booking live appearances by some of the film’s stars. Lynch assumed smoking of all varieties was a regular occurrence in those days.

After the adult theater shuttered, the place was vacant for years, before being resurrected as the art house theater it was today, with upholstered walls and what appeared to be behind the scenes stills from the film Giant.

He couldn’t be sure but in one photo it seemed to be Elizabeth Taylor scratching her butt through jodhpurs.

Craig Anson’s maintenance company had done some work on the place and told Lynch there was a store room of old films, some of which Anson was positive were from the theater’s adult era.

Anson had been complaining that the door didn’t shut properly due to an extension cord being run, and that the films would degenerate to the point of not being viewable.

When he brought it to the attention of the owner of the place, it had been strongly suggested that he was there to epoxy the floor in the gender neutral restroom, and that the gentleman’s brother in law handled the electrical work.

Lynch had the choice of two films being shown. A Turkish drama about a schoolteacher in love with a ceramic statue of the Virgin Mary, and a Russian comedy about a woman who handmade pencils on a home made lathe during a famine.

He chose the screening room with the Russian film and sat in the last row.

15 minutes in, after the only thing that happened was the Siberian widow using the lathe to amputate a frost bitten toe, Lynch snuck down the hall, through the door that said Employees Only under an AI photo of Abbott & Hardy.

At the right at the end of the hall was the door,cracked open with an extension cord running under another door that said Employees Only above a picture of Fred Astaire flipping off a camera like the famous picture of Johnny Cash doing it.

Lynch pushed the door on the right open slightly and it made a noise like an ostrich trying to fake an orgasm for a director it didn’t like.

He decided right then that he had come far enough that he would be willing to fight anyone who opposed him being in the apparently neglected film storage room.

There were two shelving units packed with films.

Some marked.

Some unmarked.

He found a shelf of marked canisters.

Praise Joe Bob Briggs the films were alphabetized!

He was in the R’s.

Ricochet of Love

Raunch Island.

Rabid Mistresses.

He followed his way down the alphabet backwards until a row of N’s;

Nurses on Holiday, Naughty Forever , Nana Knows Best, switched to D’s.

Dunmore Scottish Studs, Desire on Display…Dammit, he needed the K’s.

Lynch made a serpentine route through the dull metal canisters… It would be his luck that what he was looking for would be unmarked, but he had to try.

He accidentally knocked over a container that said “Adrian’s Bar Mitzvah “ and wondered, almost aloud if it was a very niche Triple X film or simply one young man’s rite of passage. Maybe both.

He thought he might have heard footsteps and froze.

In front of him were dozens of canisters marked Spanking, with either Arabic or Roman Numerals designating where they were in the franchise. He briefly pondered how Spanking 10 differed from Spanking X, then continued down the row.

Lynch didn’t believe in ghosts, but something whispered to him to look to his right.

L films.

He was possibly getting warmer, and he was definitely sweating.

After the L’s was a short row of unmarked films, then the K’s.

His heart did a triple salchow, stuck the landing, and he jammed his head closer to the circular tins of celluloid.

If metal with small green labels could sing, one of the containers was belting out an aria.

King Kog.

K-I-N-G K-O-G

He pried open the container with a small pocket screwdriver, hoping the spool of film wouldn’t disintegrate in front of him.

It was intact.

16mm of glory.

********

Lynch was the only male at his mother’s divorce party.

He was also the projectionist.

He overpaid on eBay for the 16mm projector, but he thought it would be worth it.

At first he found it to be an odd, almost distasteful request.

All it took to change his mind was thirteen pictures on Instagram of his 88 year old father in Cabo with Goth Superstar Lili Pentagram.

He had taken end-of-life crisis to the absolute pinnacle or nadir, depending on one’s point of view.

Though Lili had her own money, Roderick Lynch was certain her and her legal team would try to pry away his father’s.

The screen at Judith Ulmer’s-she was already in the process of legally changing her name- divorce party flickered to life.

There was Corcoran Lewis Lynch the Third, appearing as Russell Leeves in King Kog.

It was certainly his father, the birthmark on his neck visible above the collar of his safari jacket.

Corky and his Yale fraternity buddies had bastardized the original story of King Kong. The explorers would discover no such ape. Corcoran Lewis Lynch, whose screen credit on his self-financed adult film would be Bob Swiftly, would be bit by a chimpanzee and turn into the beast.

Somewhere in his gut, Lynch felt weird.

The film was well lit, flowed even if the premise was flimsy, and a few of the guys could even act a little bit.

As clothes started to come off, Lynch wondered again why his mother wanted her friends to see this thing so badly.

His father’s transformation to the giant ape was amateurish…well, c’mon, it was 1975.

Without warning, his mother, whose mobility was limited, stood from her chair.

He thought she might say “I’ve seen enough, girls. “

She did not.

The giant ape plows through a city of miniatures , grabs a tiny woman…more than obviously a doll… and continues loping across a soundstage.

Then he climbs the Sydney Opera house.

Leave it to some rich douchebags from Yale to make a mini replica of the Sydney Opera House.

The camera comes in close on the now nude doll, until its not a nude doll anymore, it’s a blonde actress.

Lynch’s eyes and blood pressure registered a glimpse of recognition.

Then the camera quickly pans down.

The massive ape, whose trust fund paid for the production was far from proportionately endowed.

Judith Ulmer used her cane to point at the phallus on the screen.

“Do you believe I was married to that for forty eight years, bitches?”

The partygoers gasped and howled and spilled overpriced wine.

“That’s enough Roddy,” Judith said to Lynch,” you can stop it now. I’m satisfied.

Then, more quietly, she said “I’m sorry you had to see your Aunt Margaret’s tits, Roddy.”

Roderick stared at his mother.

Judith smiled guiltily. “Yeah, that story about me meeting your dad at the Yacht Club was bullshit.”

*****

This was written in less than two hours as part of the Keyboard Catharsis Creative Writing Program I co-founded and moderate at Passenger Recovery Community Center in Hamtramck, Michigan.

*****

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“I’ve never seen so many limbs scattered on a battlefield.”

Tach Dahnicco observed his new novice… where did the scrawny child come from?...chewed a small chunk of his beard and spit a loose whisker.

“Aye, the GherenJa won’t put a sword through a man’s heart. They’ll cut them anywhere else and let their god decide if their blood should spill.”

Michhen Rahnno hesitated, looked off, over the trees of the Waath.

Tach sniffed. “You’ve something ya wanna say boy. Loose it. I’m your Field Boss, not a Crown Judge. Talk.”

“Looks like their Gods didn’t spare too many of them. They must…be…that thing where they…uhhh… don’t pray right…or—“

The old Sweeper let out a quick burst of breath followed by a laugh loud enough to rattle the nails in the Chuchen Bridge on the far side of the Waath.

The rest of the sweeper crew stopped briefly, then returned to the task of clearing remains from the battlefield.

Tach put his glove on the novice Sweeper’s shoulder, an errant piece of leg sinew clinging to the lad’s drabs.

“Sorry, taylo,” Tach said, using the old Hahten term for young one. “ Just funny to me after all these years. I rarely see the work of merciful gods. I see the result of better equipped armies. And this is only your second bloodfield, correct? Didn’t they send you to me because the fighting reignited by Sasseran Dam? You were the youngest on Vach Isicc’s crew, yeah?”

Micchen nodded, eyed the piece of human flesh on his dark green coverall and said “Leader Vach let us bathe in the water, Leader Tach.”

Tach smiled. “We’ve just begun, taylo,and there ain’t no bathin’ water till we cross back through the Waath, and even then the current of the Yiggo would have you half way to Gheren before your ass was clean.”

Micchen stared off again.

“Let the seeds of thought in your head bloom out your mouth, lad. I know better than most that collecting the dead from an otherwise harmless field will make you think hotter than a midmoon bonfire.”

“Will you laugh at me again?”

Tach chewed his beard, shifted his weight.

“Don’t take that laugh to dinner with your mother, taylo, we got dead boys and young ladies strewn about us because the Cluhns see the need to war all the time. And I mean all the Cluhns…River, Mountain, Meadow and Sea. I try to laugh more than I vomit. I find some things funny that most men won’t. What is it you want to say?”

Micchen bit his lip on the same side of his face that Tach was chewing his beard on.

“I…I was gonna say one thing…but…you said…”

Micchen squirmed, not knowing if he would cry or wet himself or both.

“Whu…whu…when do I get to have dinner with my mother again?”

Zich, the closest Sweeper, dropped a lower leg with bone protruding from two different parts. He made no effort to pick it up, making brief eye contact with Tach before the Field Boss turned back toward the novice.

“You didn’t go to Sweeper school, did ya lad?”

Tach knew the answer and silently chided himself for blurting.

Micchen looked at the lone piece of foot in his bag. In his head it was still warm, might be able to run away on its own.

“No, Leader. The…Council assigned me…no… errr…schooling…they said Leader Vach would teach me what I needed to know. Mostly it was just lifting bodies…with some Draben horsemen riding by calling us ghouls and sword chasers.”

“You’ll get called a lot worse before it’s over, taylo. Draben horsemen and Morric spearlaunchers throw cowshit from outside the healer camps. Doesn’t seem like Boss Vach taught you six barrels of fuck all, Sweeper. But that can’t be yer fault, and I hold it not against your breastplate.”

Micchen looked down at his armorless chest.

“It’s a way of talking,taylo,” Tach said. “ I wasn’t meaning a real breastplate. Like that thing I said before about taking that laugh to lunch with your mother. That’s just a roundabout way of saying don’t take it seriously.”

“I’ll effort that, Leader.”

Micchen reached and put what looked like a shoulder, in his sack, prying off the twisted chainmail and gently placing it in the metal box.

Veteran Sweepers handled the heads, seeming to take special care. A Sweeper with no eyebrows made the sign of the Endless River over a head before placing it in his sack.

Tach followed the boy’s eyes.

Swarms of flies began to blot out parts of the golden sun cradling down to sleep for the night.

“A few quick lessons, taylo, as it seems Vach wasn’t much of a schoolmaster.

Firstly, most of these are Arakun bodies. They don’t pray to their God, they sing high, high notes that very few can hit. They didn’t die because they did it wrong, or because they’re bad singers in the eyes of their God. They died because the GherenJa are born to be two handed swordsmen and their King has enough stolen coin to equip em all with two. The few GherenJa lying here were either old, or unlucky or both.”

Micchen nodded.

To Tach it seemed like he was absorbing the lesson.

“Secondly, no matter what any Cluhn calls us, we serve a proud and noble cause. The healers use what we bring them to make new skin for the burned, new legs for the infirm, and with the help of some elemental sorcerers, even some eyes for the blind.

I’ll be a crimson cave bat playing storm cards for porridge before I can explain to you or anyone else why Cluhns keep going to battle and use bits of the dead to help the living, but that’s the way it’s worked since before the mountains grew from the flatlands. At least we assist in bringing comfort instead of warring ourselves.”

Micchen’s mouth was dry, in the distance another Sweeper was placing a head in a bag, but the boy’s eyes seemed to be awakening to an understanding.

Tach picked up a short blade with a finger still attached. The blade he tossed to the metals box, the finger into his sack. When they were all done in a day or so, a farmer could plow this field and plant Luzzien beans.

“Leader, about visiting my mother…”

Tach Dahnicco spit.

His own mouth was dry, but stringy saliva managed to leave his lip and land next to a puddle of blood inside a bootprint.

“Where you from, lad?”

“Diddin, Leader. The village in the western lowlands, just below the Vattan Mine.”

“Can I ask you why they didn’t send ye to Miner’s School? Your father must like have been a Miner, yeah?

Micchen pushed a fly from his temple with a bloody glove.

“The Vattan Mine collapsed a moon after midsummer, Leader. My father and older brother were lost.”

Tach broke eye contact with the boy and gazed out over the battlefield, looking at his crew, blood pools and shiny objects.

Flies seemed to fight in groups over pieces of carcass, horse and man.

The smell couldn’t be described in words. Possibly, Tach thought, someone could describe it with poorly tuned string instruments, played by someone who had never held a child.

Tach turned back to the boy. His sack, not nearly full, rippled in a breeze that brought no respite from the stench.

“Don’t know how you landed here, with me, specially without being assigned to Sweeper school.

They would have…umm… told ya first day there, if ya ever would have been there in the first place. They don’t assign boys to Sweeper school while their mother lives. This is…well…it’s that thing I told ya about me not really being acquainted with merciful Gods. Once you’re a Sweeper they don’t let you go home. It…I…I never knew a Sweeper in all my years who had a living mother, taylo.

For all the good we do, too many Cluhns believe once we handle the dead we have a curse. I can’t let a promise get tangled in a lie, but…it’s a strong chance you’ll never see your mother again.”

Micchen closed his eyes, and crouched as though he would pick up another body part.

His knee touched the ground, and his coveralls began to soak up a stranger’s blood.

*****

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Frank…I only know him as Frank…locks the second gate on Pastrami Mommy’s one handed, his pistol in his other hand.

It’s a sandwich shop. The way he double chains the first gate makes me think the meat coolers are locked too, the expensive slicer locked up.

It’s 8pm.

In the summer it’s still light out.

The beauty salon has a security guard out front. Don’t know what it’s called, it’s something French, I think, with a sign in chrome in a font I probably couldn’t read in English.

Banger’s Coney is open 24 Hours, but it’s all drive thru. You can’t dine in.

There are way worse neighborhoods than Greenfield Valley, but people… I don’t know man. I don’t know, they’re cautious, scared, sensible I guess…but mostly scared.

My mom was scared of the neighborhood.

Never went out, except to see the psychic next to Kimbeau’s Records (If We Don’t Have It We’ll Find It).

Sometimes I wondered if the psychic helped them find old records people were looking for.

I asked my mom once if she wanted to move to a place she felt safer.

She said no, she was old and dying anyway.

I lied and told her I hit the four digit straight for five bucks, 25k, I could move her into a little place in Belleville on one of them little man made lakes, peaceful and shit.

I should have just did it, man…

Came home one night from wasting time, sittin on the hood of Nacho’s hooptie, not his Saturday car, talking about this one time nothing special happened and this one guy we kinda didn’t like, and mom was gone.

She ate every pill, the ones I knew she had, ones I didn’t know about, and drank this little half pint of brandy.

I don’t tug stems, barely even smoke flower. After the coroner left I started sparking shit like my thumb was the Riverside Fireworks.

Locked myself in the house because I didn’t want nobody important or casual to see me higher than two shooting stars fucking above Mars.

Then I was too high to be in the house anymore.

Didn’t know what time it was, didn’t care, didn’t look, wasn’t thinking and I was breathing through my eyeballs.

Neighborhood was dark like death, sometimes the city just pulls a switch and turns off the streetlights.

I walked, talking to myself, talking to my mom, asking questions of God, Kurt Cobain and some guy I never met.

High the kinda high that makes you never wanna be high again, blessing high, hit your head on the ceiling of hell high.

And I wound up at the psychic.

I didn’t believe in psychics, not even one that could find records, didn’t believe in death, and didn’t know nothing except I turned that psychic’s door knob and the door opened and I walked in.

She did a lot of listening that night, a whole lot, the kind of listening other crackheads don’t even have patience for, talking right over your talking.

Sometime, as the sun came up, I apologized for breaking into her place.

She smiled, the kind of smile that makes a dog stop barking, and told me I didn’t break into her place, I turned the knob and opened the door, that yeah, she was sleeping in the apartment upstairs, but she never locks her door because the stuff she has is stuff no one can steal.

The room had a bunch of tapestries and crystals and weird shit that I knew somebody would steal, and I wanted to tell her that.

But before I could she told me to remember that her door was always open.

She said it like she meant it.

She musta meant it.

I went and paid Yancey Willard for all the product I smoked.

Told me I needed to take a month, maybe more, because he couldn’t have motherfuckers on the stem slinging his shit.

I asked him, courtroom serious, if he talked to the psychic.

He laughed in my face, the kinda angry laugh that makes a dog go runnin, and told me Frank from the sandwich shop saw me on his security camera, standing on the sidewalk, screaming at the sky.

******

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Two cop cars.

Four cops.

Four guns.

Maybe the driver was speeding, doesn’t have a license.

Maybe a few of the guys have dope on ‘em.

Maybe flower.

Maybe powder.

I don’t know much, but I do know this.

At least one of those guys didn’t do anything wrong.

Five guys don’t do crimes together.

How many close friends do you have? Ones that you can really, really trust.

Less than four. 

And you probably don’t rob banks or sell dope or kidnap people.

You lie about how good you are at pickleball and claim you were at a seminar when you were getting your dick sucked at that massage place on 13 Mile next to Lucky’s Prime Rib.

You tell four friends you got your dick sucked by someone other than your wife?

See what I mean? 

You ain’t committing a felony with four other guys.

No way.

The grass is wet.

Cars are zipping by on that curve.

A cop could slip. 

A cop could spook.

A cop could just say fuck it, one guy twitched, and that’s it.

But five guys are on the ground with guns pointed at ‘em.

And at least one of ‘em hasn’t done shit wrong.

Maybe two.

Maybe three.

Maybe they didn’t know the driver had dope on him.

You tell your coworker you take Zoloft? Lithium?

See what I’m getting at?

Cars are rushing by.

Someone will talk about it.

Say the cops caught some bad guys.

How do you know they’re bad?

You don’t.

You see the cops and the guns and assume.

One of those guys is innocent.

Tonight he’ll tell his wife the truth about why he pissed his pants.

You won’t tell your wife the truth about that massage place on 13 Mile.

But you’ll tell her you saw bad guys, face down, that the cops caught on the freeway.

Liar.

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The bear had a little gap in his paw that could hold the joint.

Travis Sater hated when Kelsey gave the bear the joint. And she did it at least twice a joint, pre rolls from the Elevate Dispensary, the one so close to Burger King that the smells thumb wrestled.

“ I wanna open a Chicken Starbucks,” Kelsey said.

“ A what?” Travis asked, standing and taking the lit joint from the bear.

“Chicken Starbucks.Like a place where everyone goes, and they get your name wrong on your order, and the bathrooms are clean.”

“They have those, Kelz.Starbucks.”

“No, I know, but not coffee. Coffee is gross. Chicken.”

“Everybody sells chicken. There ain’t a restaurant in America that don’t sell some version of chicken.”

Travis handed Kelsey the joint, stared at the bear, then pulled a Jolly Rancher from the cracked glass dish on top of the Kyuss record cover on the table and shoved it in the teddy bear’s joint gap.

“I know,” Kelsey said, “but I wanna con…consolidate all the chicken into one place, and…and have everyone go there.And call them the wrong name.”

She giggled, looked at the ceiling, hit the joint.

“What would you call the place?” Travis asked.

“I told you. Chicken Starbucks.”

“Starbucks ain’t gonna let you do that.”

Kelsey turned, looked at the bear, saw the Jolly Rancher where she usually put the joint,  flicked the candy out of the little slit and onto the floor.

It was the most violent thing Travis had ever seen Kelsey do.

“Kelz, can I ask you a question?”

“That was a question Trav.”

“Can I ask you a different question?”

“You just did.”

Travis stood and blurted “if you wanted to share your weed with your teddy bear so bad, how come you cut the slit in the hand and not the mouth?”

Kelsey stared at the bear.

“Guess I didn’t want him to get brain damage.”

“Cannabis can’t give you brain damage, Kelsey.”

“ I hope not,” Kelsey said, “ but coffee does for sure because they keep spelling my name wrong.”

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He doesn’t remember much, yeah, he was working too fast but everyone works too fast on quota Fridays.

Millard was laughing, and that made Jeezel Picanski mad, kinda sad, kinda crazy, but Reynaldo told him Millard was laughing because the 171 spit the part, that 262 spline he was running, the ones that go in them Chevy trucks, and they tested it because they were on Friday quota and it cut perfect.

“Those old ass machines Tullerman keeps refurbishing still cut great,”Millard said.

“Never woulda happened at a union shop,” Jeezel said, and Hahnroy said “Picanskis don’t get hired at union shops because they all got felonies,” and Jeezel let all the saliva build up in his mouth, not wanting to say nothing, then finally saying “I don’t,” but knowing he’d never get into the union because his older brother Ted , Teezel, he shot a committeeman. 

Jeezel looked at his nub, such a small nub he had to learn to smoke with his middle and ring finger. He dropped more cigarettes in three weeks than he ever had in his life up to then.

Went to the bowling alley the night after the 171 amputated his finger, just wanted a drink but left when it hit him in the mouth that he’d never bowl normal again, if at all.

Somehow he knew he could still send pinions into the 171 again, he knew he wasn’t done at Pierson Manufacturing.

He wasn’t nervous about the machines, or nothing like that, but in the week he was out Mrs. Pierson sent him homemade pasties, with a card that said “Feel better soon, Jerry.”

No one had called him Jerry since his mom died.

Hahnroy said no union in America was gonna send nobody homemade pasties.

Jeezel Picanski looked at his nub.

He didn’t have a right index finger or the balls to tell Mrs. Pierson that once you watch your own finger get trapped in the wire mesh of the 171, you really aren’t in an appetite for meat pies.

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No way, no way in hell and twelve rusty Salt & Pepper Shaker rides, was Richard McNorgan letting his little girl go in the tent to see the obese woman.

The tent past Two Ton Tessie- The Fattest Woman North of the Equator- was the Fortune Teller. Okay, it’s bullshit, but the woman in that tent had to have some acting skills, not someone being exploited for…he grabbed at the roll at his waistline.

Siobhan would get a detailed explanation at home as to why one performer was…

Richard McNorgan watched his daughter exit the fortune teller tent with her jaw hanging at an angle Richard hadn’t seen, her eyes as though the woman in the tent had given her an amphetamine.

It was a woman, right? Like the black haired crone with the headscarf painted on the tent?

Siobhan seemed to be stumbling, dazed.

Richard stepped forward, foot crunching over some discarded cheese corn, the strobing lights of a spinning ride in the distance smearing neon red across his vision.

When the red blinked away, he saw a smile, though Siobhan’s eyes still seemed glassy, distant.

“She knew evvvvvveryyyything about me, Daddy! Everyyyyythiiiing!”

Richard knew how it worked.

They asked a few questions, examined wardrobes, jewelry, extrapolated from there, dealt in broad generalities that could apply to a wide variety of people.

Maybe 11 was too young for a fortune teller. Maybe…

“Grandma is in heaven, Nadia saw her.”

“Who is Na—-“ Richard started, realizing it had to be the fortune teller.

“She’s Baroness Nadia, Daddy, but she let me call her Nadia because we were connected in another life.”

Richard paused, contemplating that this roadside carnival fortune teller had covered both traditional western religion afterlife and reincarnation in a reading that cost 12 tickets…he did the math…$5.75.

*****

75 was down to one lane south of Carpenter, a stray orange barrel lolling in the only open lane, cars driving up on the median to avoid it, Siobhan still prattling about the brilliance of the fortune teller.

Nadia knew that Siobhan wanted to be a professional alpine skier, Nadia knew that Siobhan wanted to cure blindness, Nadia knew, Nadia knew, Nadia knew.

When they got home, Rachel’s enthusiastic neck hug for Richard before acknowledging her only daughter positively shrieked that something was wrong.

Sean McNorgan was dead,and strangely Richard’s first thought was that the fortune teller hadn’t tipped Sean’s granddaughter to that fact.

Twenty minutes later, wine in hand, Richard gripped the fact that he was now the CEO of Palette Palace Art Supplies, seventy locations, seventy first going up in Eugene, Oregon…no, Bend, Eugene already opened to a disappointing month in February.

Siobhan cried over grandpa, locked herself in her room, emerged with a rock collage of grandpa fishing, haphazardly crafted with Detours Decorative Stone, Aisle 11 in every location except Nome, Alaska, where for some reason art stones didn’t sell for shit, so they buried ‘em in the corner next to Aisle 18.

The collage was on display at Siobhan’s High School Graduation party. Siobhan was valedictorian, apparently predicted by Nadia, that piece of info delivered during the traffic jam after the carnival, ignored or forgotten by Richard.

Palette Palace was down to 33 stores, the Boise franchise filing bankruptcy paperwork the morning Siobhan FaceTimed to say that she passed Explorations in Euclidean Geometry and would be officially graduating from The University of Michigan.

What followed the congratulations and expressions of pride was a game of close range conversational ping pong.

Richard would throw the best party ever

A party would be unnecessary, frivolous, the accomplishment and diploma are reward enough, according to Siobhan.

Richard thought his daughter deserved celebration.

The party, which Siobhan acquiesced to when Richard’s eyes did that puffy thing that made him look like an elderly sheepdog, was a carnival theme.

Siobhan meandered, repeating to guests that she was going to open a bookstore coffee shop in Romeo, and do contract accounting on the side.

Next to a working mini Ferris wheel of champagne glasses, her father insisted she open a gift.

She slipped the insanely beautiful jeweled watch over her wrist and went to hug her father when she noticed that the card was signed by Palette Palace VP of Property Acquisition Norbert Hart.

Twenty minutes and a glass of champagne later there was a certificate for a time share in Boca Raton from President of Marketing Hanna Washburn, whom Siobhan had met once.

And after a ride on the full sized Tilt-a-Whirl that could not have been a cheap rental, Richard escorted Siobhan to the Fortune Teller tent.

Siobhan’s right knee locked in the shadow of the tent.

Did my father track down Nadia? He barely listened when I tried…

His daughter’s trembling excitement radiated up Richard’s arm. He guessed.

“I couldn’t possibly track down the woman who told your fortune…”

“Nadia.”

“Yes, Nadia. But I hope this woman is on par with—“

“She’ll be wonderful, Dad. Thank you.”

Siobhan, with a broad smile, entered the tent.

Rachel walked over and joined her husband, rubbing his arm.

“Think this woman you hired will have the same charm as Nadia?”

Richard bit his lip.

“Well,our little genius isn’t 11 this time around, but I hope she gets some fantastic life insights.”

Richard and Rachel shook some hands, accepted some congratulations, drank a little champagne… and Siobhan marched from the fortune teller tent.

Marched.

Stomped.

“What did she say, Shivvy?” Rachel asked, watching her daughter’s heels sink into the grass an inch deep.

Siobhan marched past her mother up to her father.

She cracked a cockeyed half smile, bit her lip, took the half glass of champagne out of Richard’s hand and downed it.

“Sooo, Dad, Mistress Sophia thinks I believe family is everything, Dad.”

“Well you do love your—“

“That part would have been tolerable, Daddy, if she didn’t remind me how much I love art, which you might have noticed hadn’t been a thing for about a decade now, but she was sure to remind me I love accounting, then we circled back to family as she guided me through some memories I’m sure you remember and talked about security, loyalty, and the dangers of opening up one’s own business.”

“Seems like she’s pretty tuned into—“

“No, not tuned in, Dad. Coached. Some of the things she knew… forget it. Not going to work for Palette Palace.”

Siobhan pulled the beautiful watch from her wrist and handed it to her father.

“Brilliant idea, dad. Horribly executed. Not joining the PP accounting team. Not doing the corporate grind. Opening my coffee shop, not doing fucking… I don’t know… glitter audits.”

The Salt and Pepper Shaker ride was in the distance. Siobhan McNorgan walked toward it, her father’s eyes following her, wondering which one of them would soon be upside down.

******

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Wooden matchsticks are scattered on an area rug so dirty it looks like someone cut a small rectangle of dirt out of a bigger piece.

There’s a flyer stuck to the front window of the bungalow. Jordan thinks it’s kinda genius for a pizza place to stick a flyer to the window where he’s gotta look at it instead of the mailbox, where he would ignore it.

He rubs his hamstring, wonders why they named it a ham string, remembers when his dad won an Easter Ham from Godwin Truck Plaza.

Jordan rubs the cramp out, places another matchstick between his toes, one in his mouth and spits one matchstick at the other, lighting both matches, then lighting a cigarette with the one between his toes.

He doesn’t remember why he first tried it. Not exactly.

He was grounded for life, he remembers that, for getting busted stealing a pack of Hula Poppers from Dunham’s. Doesn’t remember why he started the match thing.

Tina Fianno said he’d be famous for the match spitting trick if he didn’t have any arms.

Jordan can’t work out in his head how complicated the trick would be if he didn’t have arms, because it always starts with him pulling a match from a box of blue tips with his fingers.

Doesn’t think the fame would be worth not having arms.

The cat wanders into the living room, looks at the matches on the ground.

Tina gave him the cat, thinks it’s his cat, but it can never be his cat because Tina already named the cat Captain Fantastic.

It’s not your cat if you didn’t name it, Jordan believes, and he’s sticking to that, stubborn, spitting matches at other matches and making both matches light seven out of ten tries.

He spits matches even when his cigarette is already lit, even when he’s out of smokes, which is often lately, and the real magic of the trick is that he’s never burned a house down doing it.

Jordan is lining up cigarette butts in order of length. Tina comes over, doesn’t knock, just walks in, and she’s got Liberty Whitman with her.

“Liberty is gonna destroy BlueShare with your sick match stunt, JorJor,” Tina says. “She’s an influencer now.”

Jordan hears influenza and thinks that’s weird. Jordan refuses to use the internet because his mom left his dad for a woman she met playing Sims. He has a phone, but he only uses it to call his cousin Derek, who knows the guys in High on Fire, and to play backgammon against the computer brain.

Liberty starts to explain that she has 21,000 followers and makes 600 a month from her videos. Jordan doesn’t understand how it works but he spits a few matches for her, lights em three times in a row, one time with Liberty’s phone camera almost touching his foot.

She talks about how she’s gonna slow mo it and beast it up with Ganja Dan featuring Yick Gully and it’s gonna squeeze 200k and make fit cash.

Jordan says “well shit, I’m the one who risked burnin’ my toes, I should get some cash,” and Tina says “you ain’t never burned your toes once doing that stupid shit.”

Jordan tells Tina to take her cat back and bring him one that don’t have a name yet. Liberty throws 40 bucks down on the table next to the box of matches mostly to stop the argument and asks Jordan to promise her he’ll get her 20 more followers. Jordan says sure, no problem, though he figures he’d have an easier time winning Braille Monopoly against Buddy Morrison at the Elks Club than he would figuring out how to get followers for anybody for anything.

Tina and Liberty leave, Liberty reminding Jordan to get her at least 20 new followers. Jordan just wants to get a pack of smokes so he doesn’t have to cramp up lighting bent butts with his toe match.

He slips on some bootleg Adidas slides he got at the gas station, then remembers the pizza flyer taped to the window.

Gotta be a new pizza place, and new pizza places usually throw in a two liter of pop.

Tina didn’t take the cat, so Jordan seriously considers renaming the cat Dr.Pepper.

He steps off the porch and reaches for the pizza flyer, which is from the Washtenaw County Building Inspector, saying that the house is Unfit for Habitation and all occupants must vacate within 45 days of this notice.

There’s no offer of a free two liter of pop, and Jordan realizes he has no idea what the date is.

He goes back inside and finds Captain Fantastic, hoping he can teach him to spit a match and burn down the house.

******

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(Sorry there’s no image. Substack seemed to be glitching for me)

Feels very much like the Subscription Model of Substack has perished in the raging sea of social media. Buy Me a Coffee takes a massive cut.

If you’d like to support this short fiction library of nearly 1900 short stories, you can flip me a few bucks on Venmo

The hot dog stand was in the far north corner of Caledonia Beach, more rock than sand, a few carpet runners thrown in front for the more tender-footed of the patrons, not that they helped much.

If hot dogs can be beloved, they were.

Arnie Grafton offered more toppings than most, had three different color ketchups for the kids.

In Popson Shores he was Arnie the Hot Dog guy, they’d call his name, he’d wave.

People would ask “have you always been a hot dog guy, Arnie?” He’d lie and say yes, what could it hurt, who cares, yeah, I’ve always been a hot dog guy, Seminole Lake Municipal Golf Course in Florida, had the Pemberton Community Schools account in Arkansas, basically all over.

Arnie started losing his hair seemingly the night he graduated from high school, always wore an old Braves hat pulled down over his caterpillar-with-a -perm eyebrows. Stepped out of the hot dog stand, took off the hat, wiped sweat from his sevenhead with his forearm, glanced at the beach.

Guy was stepping from the water with a body board, young, too tan for a Michigan summer, zero body fat.

Arnie thought he saw a tiny speckle of gray on the chest hair. A speckle of hope.

“Interest you in a hot dog, Laird Hamilton?”

The guy looked over, looked around as though Arnie was talking to someone else.

Realizing Arnie had to be talking to him he said “oh…um…I don’t carry money on me when I’m…”

“On the house, the shack, the cart,” Arnie said.

The guy shrugged his shoulders, Arnie noticing a hint of skin creping. Maybe the guy wasn’t too young. Of course he was, Arnie thought, but maybe just old enough to take a chance on a 79 year old with a ten year lease on a beach concession.

“Ok, thanks,” the guy said, walking toward the anthropomorphic Hot Dog with the spring arm that allows it to wave in the breeze.

Arnie could feel himself stiffening, generous and mostly unnecessary doses of Cialis flowing through his aging veins.

The guy stopped abruptly, almost as though he noticed.

“Tell you what,” the guy said, “let me go fetch my mother and I’ll buy a hot dog for both of us.”

Arnie’s heart melted at the sweetness, though something else melted too.

Kinda hard to work a guy who was beaching with his mother.

Two with extra relish and sun dried tomatoes went out, as well as a discussion with a woman his age about all beef hot dogs being part beef ear, before the tan body boarder came back with his equally tan mother in tow. They were not Michigan tans. Arnie pondered the origin of the UVA kissed pigment as the guy said “I’m Travis, this is my mother Lucille.”

“I’m Arnie Grafton, the King of the Lake Huron Hot Dog Scene and…”

“Ohhhhhh, the hell you’re Arnie Grafton,” Lucille screeched as though she was a sentient seagull.

“I know exactly who you are, and you know who I am.”

Arnie stepped back onto the bottom aluminum bun rack, twisting his ankle like the curl of a storm wave.”

He opened his mouth to protest when Lucille said “You’re Freddy Friedman. Fantastic Freddy Friedman,” the sarcasm in the word Fantastic threatening to recook the already grilled dogs.

Even her son looked terrified.

“I assure you…” Arnie attempted, watching Lucille shake her head no angrily, inexplicably never breaking eye contact. She turned to Travis.

“You know the story of the worst day of my life.”

“The day dad took you nude hang gliding in Nepal?”

“The other story. The TV show.”

Frederick Arnold Grafton Friedman reached into the relish tray and shoved a handful of neon green in his mouth.

He was looking at LuLu Parneval, his gorgeous, often scantily clad hostess on Fantastic Freddy’s Frolic Factory, Honolulu community access cable television 1982.

Freddy had met a few zoology students in a Marriott bar and they convinced him they had taught a hippopotamus to skate.

He rented the Honolulu Municipal Ice Arena, promoted the show for weeks, put LuLu in a minidress on top of the skating hippo.

His memory played the scene as Lucille stepped forward , reached into the hot dog cart and slapped the relish out of Freddy’s mouth, the greatest spit take in the history of TV, untelevised.

“That poor creature”, Lucille bellowed and hobbled down the beach, her hot, shocked son following.

The zoology students were poachers who couldn’t peddle the hippo.

It didn’t know how to skate. It sprawled on the ice, crushing Lucille’s leg and ending her modeling career.

Freddy did 19 months for cruelty to animals and his TV career was over.

In prison, he thought the hot dogs were awful and set out to correct it.

His cheek still stinging from the slap, Frederick Arnold Grafton Friedman heard someone say “ two with everything”

He looked up.

“Read the sign, “ he said. “I offer thirty-eight different toppings. Six maximum per dog.”

“I want one with everything,” the customer said.

Arnie rubbed his cheek.

“I promise you pal, you can never have everything.”

******

{This was written as part of the Keyboard Catharsis Writing Program I created at Passenger Recovery Community Center in Hamtramck, Michigan. The story was written in less than two hours.}

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