The Man Inside

"He did not care if she was heartless,

vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping,

he loved her.

He would rather have misery with one

than happiness with another."

~~W. Somerset Maugham~~

Of Human Bondage

“Jerry,” she whispered. “Wake up, Jerry.”

“Wh—what?”

“There’s someone in the house.”

He sat up, listening. She rose up next to him, clutching him, her hands fluttering. “There—hear that?”

“Ssshhhhhhhhhh,” he murmured. “I can’t hear a damn thing but you.” He cocked his head, holding his breath, listening. The tree in Mrs. Goldsmith’s yard cast a wavery shadow on the bedroom wall; the curtains wafted in the breeze from the open window. Down the block, the Johnson’s Labrador barked once, twice.

He lay back down, flipping his pillow over to the cool side. “It’s nothing. I don’t hear anything. Go back to sleep.” But she hesitated, trembling, so he pulled her down into his embrace. “You smell good.” He skated his lips into the hollow of her throat and slipped his arms around her waist. Her nervous giggle turned into a warm moan against his neck. Her body, so familiar, undulated against his. Her tongue slipped out, trailing warmly against his ear.

Thump.

He sat up, and heard it again.

Thump. It came from downstairs. The kitchen, maybe the den.

Thump.

Next to him, she whimpered.

“Stay here,” he said, sliding his long legs out from under the sheet. He stood up and moved along the wall toward the bedroom door, stepping over the squeaky floorboard halfway around the room. He squatted next to the doorway, glancing back at her. Just as he figured, she was out of bed. He motioned for her to stay, but she shook her head and scampered around the room to squat next to him, clutching at his t-shirt.

“No way, Jerry. I’m not staying here alone,” she whispered, a plea in her voice.

Thump. Thumpthump.

Definitely the kitchen.

“All right. But no talking, and stay behind me.”

They hugged the wall out to the staircase, then stood in the darkness while he listened again, his respirations and heart rate ratcheting up. Sweat broke between his shoulder blades, trickling downward under his t-shirt.

Thumpthumpthump. Thump.

Slowly, he led the way down the stairs, along the wall through the front hall, where he stopped, squatting next to the coat tree. He could feel her against his spine and reached back, squeezing her thigh. He squinted into the darkness, wishing to hell he could just go back upstairs and lock the bedroom door.

Thump.

In for a penny, in for a pound, he thought. It’s too late now. Hurriedly, before he chickened out, he stood and strode across the den, reaching around the wall to flip the light switch in the kitchen, which was suddenly filled with light.

A young woman in black slacks and a dark red jacket sat at the kitchen table. She held a pistol which she tapped once, briskly, on the table top.

Thump.

Smiling grimly, she raised the gun, pointing it at him. “Wait a minute, lady. We don’t want any trouble here." He raised both hands, surprised at how calm he sounded.

She pulled the trigger. The bullet slammed into the meat across the top of his right shoulder. He spun away, clutching his arm as a white hot sizzle ran down it into his hand and spread upward, into his neck. His knees buckled. He had no idea a gunshot would hurt so bad. There was a second shot.

“Jerry…,” was the last thing his wife said.

Slowly, he struggled to reach the phone and dialed 911, his eyes never leaving the woman with the gun. “Send help,” he said. “My wife and I have been shot.” His voice grated, shook with the horror of it all. He gave the dispatcher the address and a sketchy description of the assailant. “It was a kid…a black male…grey stocking cap…ran out the side ….” He hung up and slumped against the wall, looking up into LeAnne’s smoky green eyes as blood pulsed out of his shoulder and ran steadily down his body. “You better go,” he said quietly. “I’ll meet you in Barbados as soon as I can.”

She nodded once, pocketed the pistol, went out the back door into the alley, and disappeared into the night.

Jerry slid down next to his wife’s cooling body, tears stinging his eyes. Damn, his arm hurt.

If My Dogs Could Talk I Would Tell Them To Shut Up

Lots of people talk to animals.... 

Not very many listen, though.... 

That's the problem.

~~Benjamin Hoff~~

The Tao of Pooh

Rowdi: “Yes, of course. Let’s go outside. I heard suspicious noises coming from the neighbor’s place, several acres away, and as soon as you open the door I’ll run right over there to check it out. What? You say you’re in your housecoat and slippers? That’s nothing compared to that hairdo! If Al Sharpton and Phyllis Diller had a baby, its hair would look better than yours. And that breath! Were you out to dinner with the buzzards, again? Anyway, it’s all good! I’m sure the neighbors would love to see you on your hands and knees trying to grub me out from under their deck. Just don’t breathe on them and it will be fine.”

Spots: “Outside? Out! Out! Out! Yes, let’s go out! I distinctly remember there’s one blade of grass out front I have not yet pooped on. Yes, by all means, let’s go out!”

Rowdi: “You want me to go inside? Inside where? You must mean out there, half-an-acre away from this house I don’t recognize? Don’t get so excited. Jumping and swearing is so unladylike. Besides, when you yell, I can smell that horrible breath. Oh….ohhhhh…you mean inside the house. Well, let’s take the circuitous route to the door, shall we? Don’t yell! The neighbors are laughing.”

Spots: “In? In! In! In! Let’s go in! Wait until we get inside and I show you the pine cone and the Rottweiler turd I picked up in the front yard! Don’t yell! Don’t yell, OK? It’s only a turd. It’s not kryptonite. Jeez, I hate it when you yell. Is there water?”

The Burden of Sorrow

"Death is a challenge. It tells us not to waste time...

It tells us to tell each other right now that we love each other."

~~Leo F. Buscaglia~~

Note: The following is based on a true story.

This happened to my husband's family

while he was at war.

         The doorbell rang. She wasn’t expecting anyone. “Bob,” she called. “Will you get that?” She raised her foot off the sewing machine pedal and listened for his answer.

“Bob?”

“I’m going,” he said, and she heard the rustle of his newspaper, his feet shuffling toward the door. I should have gone, myself, she thought. His arthritis is so bad. 

The front door opened and she heard low voices—something about the tone of Bob’s causing her to rise, blood thundering in her ears. Something was wrong. She hurried out of her sewing room and down the hall, passing Jeff’s pictures, touching them gently as she hurried by, a habit she’d developed since he deployed.

The images blurred as she passed them: Jeff in kindergarten; his first pony ride; receiving his Eagle Scout pin; high school graduation; boot camp; Baghdad. She hesitated, the memory of their parting so vivid. She'd cried, something Jeff had seldom seen her do, clutching at him, so afraid to let him go. He'd been the parent then, patting her, reassuring her when reassurance was futile. "I'll be fine, Mama. Don't worry about me." He'd grinned, actually grinned. "Well, don't worry too much, OK?"

She turned into the living room. Bob stood in the open doorway, talking to someone outside, his big body blocking her view of the people on the doorstep. His voice was low, unintelligible, but the urgency was unmistakable.“Bob?”

He twisted, his face blanched, lips colorless. “Marlys…” He reached for her, went to her, and over his shoulder she saw their visitors.

Two men in dress United States Army uniforms stood on the porch. She was struck by their pristine appearance, their somber mien. One of them was a sergeant and he held a manila folder under the crook of his right arm, his hand folded around its edge. Recoiling, she knew what was in there, and it began, ‘The President of the United States regrets to inform you…’

“No,” she said, as Bob lowered her onto the couch. “No!” she shouted to the men standing on the porch, twisting to snarl at them as they waited there in the sun.

Bob sat next to her, wrapping her in his embrace, throwing a leg across her, pinning her on the couch as she struggled to get free, the madness of denial overtaking her. “It’s all right, Marlys. It’s all right.” He held her, rocked her, and at last penetrated her sobbing, his words finally making sense. “They’re lost. They’re looking for a different address. It’s not Jeff. It’s not Jeff.”

“We—we’re sorry, folks,” one of the soldiers stammered.

And in lockstep the two men marched away, carrying their burden of sorrow, following the directions Bob had provided.

The Search

"Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows nought;

and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad."

~~Henry Wordsworth Longfellow~~

Bill didn't get in until long after dark. It was summer, blistering summer, in California's vast Desert Conservation Area, the temperature that day soaring above one-hundred-ten degrees. His brown and tan uniform was crusted with alkali, as was his skin, which was crazed with bloody scratches. His voice was a whisper, all but gone. Although he washed off the salt and the blood, and although it's now been years, his eyes still grow hollow, his face still contorts when he recalls that day.

As a law enforcement ranger, his patrol sector included large stretches of desert, including the Imperial Sand Dunes, a monstrous recreational area where visitors from San Diego, Los Angeles, and elsewhere still congregate on holidays and weekends, bringing with them an assortment of off-road vehicles in which to enjoy the great outdoors. Southern California is dotted with many areas where off-roaders congregated to enjoy the outdoors. On this particular day, dispatch received a frantic call from a family group camped near Salt Creek Marsh on the north end of Salton Sea. Two seven-year-old boys had gone missing. They'd been riding their child-sized motorcycles in the camp. "Get out of here," the grownups said. "You're making too much noise." So they did.

But that had been before lunch; now past noon, they still had not returned.

The location was miles from Bill's patrol sector, but the ranger in that area, one of Bill's best friends, activated search and rescue, so rangers, including Bill and others, rolled in from other sectors, other counties, to assist. Border Patrol sent in aircraft. Civilian search and rescue teams were activated, and local deputy sheriffs joined the search. Long before he arrived at the location, Bill started 'loading up', drinking water and sports drinks as fast as he could choke them down, knowing. Just knowing. It was too hot…too hot.

At the scene an hour or so later, heat rose off the desert floor in undulating waves. Nothing moved. There was no comforting sound of motorcycle engines in the distance. Bill's stomach plummeted.

Still, trained to save, they all held out hope. If they could just get to them in time…if the boys stayed together they had a better chance…maybe they'd come back to camp…maybe they were in another camp…maybe…maybe.

They tracked the bikes for miles, in and out of gullies and washes, eventually into the Salt Creek Marsh, an isolated alkali swamp, maze-like and thick with tamarisk and salt cedar trees, the ground temperature over one-hundred-thirty degrees, the air stifling, nearly unbreathable, humidity over ninety percent.

They searched on foot, almost frantically, pushing through stickery thickets, wading through noxious, stagnant pools—calling out the boys' names until they had no voices left. A deputy sheriff collapsed and had to be air-lifted out, overcome by heat. Bill carried another one out. He and the others kept on, walking, sometimes crawling. Hours later, exhausted and broken-hearted, they found the children a few yards apart, their little motorcycles nearby.

Both of the boys were dead.

Like everyone I know who deals with death, who hands out grief—who has to be the one to tell, to professionally inform, to see the dreadful dawning of knowledge on the faces of  loved ones that life will never be the same again—Bill was stoic, his regret efficiently compartmentalized, tucked down in his gut, there next to Vietnam, next to car crashes, house fires, murders; nestled in with dozens and dozens of little boxes of other people's pain all mingled with his own—a lumpy, broken mosaic of unuttered woe.

That night, we sat together in the dark for a long, long time. As always, there were no words.

There was just us.

Mud Running and Other Fashion Disasters

"Time is the longest distance

between two places."

~~Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

My phone vibrates, skittering around on my bedside table, playing the opening riff to Ain't Goin' Down 'Til The Sun Comes Up, thus giving me my first opportunity of the day to choose. I dismiss the alarm, roll over and go back to sleep.

An hour later, I awake and realize I'm about to miss my dental cleaning. (Now wouldn't that be a tragedy?) But I am too parsimonious to pay for an appointment I do not keep, besides, it could be six months before I can get scheduled again, so I leap out of bed, stub my toe on one of Simon Winchester's fabulous books, race into the bathroom without my glasses where I step on something that obviously should have stayed in the litterbox in the corner, but did not.

With a sudden and probably terminal case of the Shivering Disgusteds, I jump into the shower and wash my foot, inadvertently wetting my hair in the process, so I shampoo it, too. The blow dryer is for sure going to cut into the window of minutes I have to get to Dr. Allegretti's office on time.

I am out of the shower. I yell to Bill that we're going to need a clean rug in the bathroom, because even without my glasses I can now see the very large smear my misstep created. The cat sits in the window, grinning in the sunshine. I am compelled to poke him, but I don't.

I rush back into the bedroom and pull a clean bra out of the basket of clothes Bill brought up from the laundry room the night before. Grabbing a single beige strap, I come up with a gigantic, mutant wad of brassieres. "Looks like these got pretty tangled," I remember him saying. "You'll have to figure them out." I drop the wad to wrench open my lingerie drawer, latching onto the only thing that pops out: a sheer red number that has the support attributes of overcooked pasta—which would be why it's still lurking in my drawer instead of tangled in the wad in the basket. At my age and vastness, I need a hoist, not a hanky. I struggle into it. It's going in the rag bag as soon as I get home, I tell myself, trying to ignore the generous amount of 'me' jiggling in the dresser mirror.

I rummage through the closet and pick a blouse and slacks. Black, of course. I could wear one of my other colors: gray or navy blue, but it's turning into a black kind of day, so black.

Back in the bathroom, I brush and floss, doing my best to erase three months of slothful neglect. I toss on an assortment of skin products, all guaranteed to make me look younger, brighter, less mottled. Wrinkle free. In the unforgiving glare from the professional makeup lights I had installed years before (now that was brilliant, wasn't it), I just look greasy. I dust on some mineral face powder which immediately settles into the hills and valleys of my face. No blush, no eyes. Anyway, I figure, by the time the dentist and his henchmen finish with me, even the powder will be gone, so why bother?

I dry my hair, applying the goop my hairdresser entices me to buy every four weeks when she cuts it. Once it's dry, I mush it around into a spiky, swirly arrangement. I call it Wyoming Hair  because whichever way the wind blows it, it's fixed.

I am out the door, on the phone. "Tell Dr. A I'm on my way," I beg his receptionist, knowing I have a twenty-minute drive and ten minutes to get there. I glance down at myself only to see a long, foamy glob of toothpaste gracing the right front of my black moleskin tunic. In the truck, I grab a tissue and wipe it up. Barreling down our dirt drive, one-handed, with the front of my shirt in my mouth, I try to wet it enough to get the spot completely off. (Oh, c'mon - you've done it, too!)

I pull out onto the unpaved and pothole infested road to the highway, only then recalling that the county maintenance crew turned and plowed the roadbed two days before, and it's been raining off and on ever since. I put the truck in four-wheel drive, gear down, and work on my shirt, which now has a huge, wrinkled wet patch on it—as though I've been assaulted by a moose—but the toothpaste is gone. I turn the heater up to high and twist the vent toward my chest.

There are two sets of foot-deep ruts in the roadway—one set going north, the other south. Between them are glistening slicks of mud. The bottomless kind that steals shoes, steals car keys, steals balance. It's two miles to the highway and I see the dollar signs involved in a tow if I...Make...One...False...Move. Besides, if I get stuck, I know I'm going to end up on my face in the road.

By the time I reach asphalt, my blouse is dry, but I've been sweating like a pig in the heater air, wrestling the steering wheel, nervous about the road, and I realize I forgot to put on deodorant. So, for the rest of the trip, I alternately smooth the wrinkles out of my shirt front and sniff myself to see if I stink. Do I smell? Do I not smell? Is my blouse dry? Will Dr. A notice? Oh, God! I stink; I know I stink. I'll just keep my arms down. How are my teeth? Are my teeth OK?

I wheel into the parking lot and leap out of my old truck, failing to take preventative action against the stalactites of mud hanging from the vehicle's undercarriage and rocker panels. Thick, oozing glop plasters the back on my left pant leg. I knock off the biggest lumps and hurry into Dr. A's office.

Sitting in the waiting room, because, as the receptionist said with a sniff, "You're really late. They will have to work you in," I try not to get mud on the chair as I consider how my morning, how my day, might have been better had I not turned off that alarm. "Choices," I sigh.

"What voices?" the old lady across from me asks.

“The ones in my head.”

She moves to another seat.

Finally, my teeth gleaming, my dental hygiene habits firmly chastised, lies about flossing, water-picking, and brushing hopping out of my mouth like wiener dogs at their first race, I have my new toothbrush in hand and drive home, the ruts in our country road not nearly as intimidating. Once arrived, I stand in the pasture and scrape off as much of the dried mud on my trouser-leg as I can before I go inside.

I drop my purse in the living room, and go down the hall to the bedroom where I begin changing my clothes, disgruntled at my harried morning. I am standing there, my tunic hanging open, my slacks in the clothes hamper, when Bill walks in. "Wow," he says. "You haven't worn that in a long time." He smiles that crooked smile of his, gesturing toward my chest and the sheer red nylon and lace, which (still failing to perform its primary function), peeks brazenly out of my shirt. He saunters in, closing the bedroom door and then the distance between us.

I still have that bra.

Rebecca's Journal

"You don't die from a broken heart,

you only wish you did."

~~Unknown~~

He disappeared a little over a year ago. He kissed me goodbye and left the house and simply did not come back. Since then, there has not been one word from him. Not a phone call, not a letter.

We've been married 31 years. He has a natural foods-type grocery store in the city, and a small recycling center, too. Thanks to his management team, I've been able to keep them going, so I still have income. We have two children, a boy and a girl, both grown with families of their own. They keep me strong. They are what I live for. Our youngest grandson, Ryder, looks just like his grandpa. Sometimes that makes me cry.

When I reported him missing, the sheriff's department came out to the house. A couple of detectives questioned me while their CSI people went through every room. They searched his clothing, his personal items. "Did he take anything with him?" they wanted to know.

No, he didn't, I tell them. Except my heart, of course.

I can't sleep. I sit on the front porch in our old glider, thinking I'll see him come out of the woods where he has always loved to wander. Or maybe he'll be in the garden patch, preparing the soil for a new planting. Sometimes, my daughter drives over to see how I'm doing and she finds me out there, just sitting in his old bathrobe, and she takes me into the house and puts me to bed, staying with me until I go to sleep.

Once, the sheriff's department made a statement that he had 'vanished without a trace'. For weeks after that I was bombarded with calls from magazines like The Enquirer and The Star, asking foolish questions about kidnapping and whether or not my husband believed in extra-terrestrial life. His disappearance was featured on Most Bizarre on TV. Ridiculous stories appeared online, suggesting he'd been the victim of alien abduction. There were spurious quotations in them attributed to me. My lawyer is seeing to that, now.

Ridiculous.

My family and friends tell me it's time for me to move on. My lawyer says I can do a couple of things: I can wait, and then have him declared legally dead after seven years, and be able to collect his life insurance; I can also divorce him on the grounds of abandonment.

I don't want a divorce, though. I love him. I have since the first time I saw him. Besides, he told me this would happen one day. That he would only be here, conducting experiments and passing on his genetic information, for a few of 'our' years.

He said it would only be a matter of time before our species destroyed itself. He's seen it countless times over the centuries. I asked him how old he was, but he told me I couldn't possibly understand the concept of his age, and not to worry about it, so I haven't.

He'll be back to pick up our children and grandchildren before society breaks down completely. They all know. They have always known.

I am, he told me, too fragile physiologically for the trip, and would die of old age long before arrival at a hospitable planet. But my genes, he said, have added to the strength of his own kind, and our children and grandchildren will become part of a race that will perhaps return to repopulate the earth when the time comes.

In the meantime, my son, thanks to his dad, is marketing technology that composts waste more effectively, turning the byproducts into fertilizer and fuel. My daughter works in cancer research, developing gene therapy for tumor eradication. She has also patented a water recycling method that uses solar energy and works faster than any means heretofore seen on the planet.

I would love to hold him one last time. As I sit here in our old glider, I wonder which of the stars I see is the sun that warms him now. I wonder how many other wives and families he has on other spheres. I wonder what he really looks like.

The bastard.

When Worlds Collide

"Let's be careful out there."

Sgt. Esterhaus

Hill Street Blues

Author's note: Yeah, that's me up there~~back when the earth was still cooling. I'd just walked in the back door of the police department. Jerry Clark, one of our ID techs, caught me in the hall in order to snap a photo for my new sergeant's identification. This was the picture.
Flash forward several years and halfway across the country.

I hope you enjoy the story...

He was lying on his side, half under his big old Harley. From behind the wheel of my truck, I could see he had suffered an open fracture of his right leg, just below the knee and just above his boots—a common injury for motorcyclists hit from the side. The sharp, bloody end of his tibia protruded from his grimy denim pants.

It was bitterly cold. I pulled to the curb and stopped. That old rush of adrenaline slugged me, my heart rate tripping up. “Stay in the truck,” I told my little girl. “Do not get out.” She nodded, goggle-eyed. I turned off the ignition, took the keys and locked the car, trotting over to the injured man. He was trying to kick his way out from under the bike, lost in a maelstrom of excruciating pain. His foot-long, scraggly hair blew in the wind. I dropped down next to him on the asphalt and put my hand on his shoulder. “I’m here to help you, buddy” I said. “Lie still.”

Angry, confused, terrified, he looked up into my face and realized he wasn’t out there on the pavement alone anymore, and stopped fighting the bike. “Are you burning?” I wanted to know, wondering if his uninjured leg, trapped under the motorcycle, was making contact with hot bike parts, quickly assessing whether it could be moved if that was the case. “Are you hurt anywhere else?” I ran my hands down both his arms.

He shook his head. “Just can’t get out.” He ground his teeth, growling with the pain.

A couple of other passersby stepped into the street to divert traffic. A slow parade of vehicles drove past in both directions. A few looky-loos congregated on the sidewalk nearby.

Sirens blared in the distance. “The ambulance is coming. We’ll get you moved as soon as they get here.” I asked him where his ID was and he scrabbled helplessly for a wallet on a chain protruding from his back pocket. With his permission, I removed his license and proof of insurance. I bent over him, sheltering him from the biting wind. He was growing shocky, trembling.

“Jesus Christ, it hurts,” he said, clutching my arm, his eyes filled with tears.

“I know,” I said. “I know. I’m so sorry.”

The ambulance and a couple of squad cars slid up. “They’ll take it from here,” I said, trying to stand, but he hung on. “You have to let me go so these people can do their work.” I handed his papers to a police officer and tried to get up again. The man pulled me down, our faces inches apart.

“Thanks, lady. Thank you so much,” he said, his voice and face fierce with agony. His head rolled against the pavement. I patted him and he let me go. I stood and told the police officer I had not seen the accident occur, and trotted back to my vehicle, where my daughter sat, mouth agape, her hands and face pressed against the driver’s side window.

She was silent as she buckled herself back into her seat belt and we continued on our way, passing the man in the street, now being ministered to by a couple of EMTs. Police officers had quickly set up a pattern and were diverting traffic. I turned the heater up to full. Finally, my daughter spoke. “Is that what you used to do, Mommy?”

I smiled. “Yeah. That’s what I used to do.”

We went home.

Strings

'Here we are, trapped in the amber

of the moment.

  There is no why."

~~Kurt Vonnegut~~

I stood in the darkness and watched them moving together, arms and legs intermittently intertwined, grins, grimaces--frowns flashing, eyebrows twisting--silent but for the clashing of their bodies. Eyelids fluttered down over bulging eyes, only to slide open again, looking too wise, too smart.

The performance ended, the dusty footlights on the outdoor stage going dim. Everyone turned away, back to the sound and excitement of the midway, except for me. I wanted to meet the puppeteer, the man who so masterfully pulled those strings.

He was busy putting props away, his black suit coat draped over a chair, muscles playing across his shoulders under the white broadcloth of his shirt as he packed first one dummy and then another into their cases. He was a severe-looking man, abrupt in his movements, his hurried packing, his stiff-necked turning making me inexplicably uncomfortable. A cigarette dangled from his bottom lip. "You want something?" he asked, looking me up and down. He turned away, humming tunelessly, the music drawing me, pulling me.

I moved closer. "I'd like to learn more about the marionettes."

He smiled, looking back at me over the top of his shoulder, his eyes shining as he pivoted and came to sit along the edge of the stage. He took one last drag on his smoke, then tossed it away in the darkness. All the people were gone now. "Per—perhaps I should be going," I said, stepping back, feeling nervous. But he reached for my arm, his mouth a moue of disapproval.

"No, no, ma petite, come sit beside me and ask your questions. I will answer if I can."

So I—hesitantly at first, growing braver as the evening died—asked him about his job and the dolls he controlled so expertly, while he discovered the curls behind my ears, and how the silky auburn hair there wrapped his fingers like a baby's fist.

He confided how much he loved his dolls, how his craft, his talent, was ancient and had been passed down from father to son. He told enthusiastically of growing up in the Pyrenees, honing his skill at country shows alongside his grandfather. Between the stories, he hummed that tuneless music, his face glowing as he talked about the next town, the next show, his life on the road exactly what he wanted to do, how he wanted to spend his time.

I scooted nearer, seeking his warmth, the treasury of his thoughts. His arms came around me in the hour before dawn, his lips, his strength, pressing me urgently onto the boards of the small stage, his puppets forgotten, watching us solemnly from their cardboard suitcases.

It never was an interest in marionettes that drew me to him, but rather all those lovely muscles beneath that white broadcloth shirt. They dwindled, though, when he took a desk job at Hanley's Insurance so we could stay right here at home. I haven't heard him hum in thirty years, but he makes a decent living. Me and the kids are fine.

Once in a while he'll go up into the attic and just sit up there on an old chair, the four suitcases at his feet, tears licking at their dusty tops as he looks out the dormer window facing north.

Big Brother is ALWAYS Watching

I was in the produce department at Safeway when I saw a small uproar down at the end of the aisle. A handful of women gathered around a grocery cart in which reposed an infant. She was swaddled in pink and attended by her mother, who basked in the glow of appreciation for the beauty and perfection of her newborn, expressed by the women who'd apparently been attracted by new-mother pheromones or perhaps the smell of formula.

Well beyond that age when babies caused my hormones to scamper, I was about to drive on past when I saw him, drooping outside the stage lights, his eyes pools of abandonment as he waited for his mother to recover from post-partum notoriety and finish the shopping, so he could go home to his Legos. He was about four and every bit of the self-esteem that had ever been in him had been sucked out by the squirming alien in the pink blankie, who'd clearly brainwashed all the adults on the rock.

I was equally ignored by the squealing, cooing herd, so I squatted next to the boy and nodded toward his mom. "She told you yet what an important job you have?"

Surprised by this unwarranted attention, he shook his head, watching me, probably figuring any second I'd spring up and hand the new baby the keys to a car or something.

"Well, you know you're the big brother, don't you?" He nodded, so I went on, warming to my subject. "Why, that's about the most important job in the universe. That baby over there only showed up because there was already a big brother in place to take care of her. Fine babies like that one don't just get dropped into a family without a very important and capable big brother around to make sure she stays out of trouble. Besides, no matter what she does, no matter how many people thinks she's special, she's never, ever going to be anything but your. Little. Sister."

He seemed to stand a little straighter, looked a little bit proud, putting a possessive hand on the cart as a grin broke out on his face.

"She a pretty good baby?" I asked.

"Yeah, she's OK," he replied, with an almost geriatric sigh, leaning toward me to whisper, "But I looked and she ain't got no winkie."

"Figures," I said, grinning in return, tossing a head of lettuce in my cart as I ambled away.

A Casualty of Pride

“I'll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don't choose. 

We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, 

it was important and beautiful and not ours. 

It was the ghost ship that didn't carry us. 

There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore.” 

~Cheryl Strayed~

She knew he was gone.

Belinda Carrick turned Jackson and Buck into the round pen and walked across the dooryard toward the house.  Bundled in her short canvas coat, she watched the chimney, wishing for a puff of smoke, a puff of hope. There wasn’t even the smell of a fire gone cold.

She went in through the back door, unlocked as it always was. Snow had blown in between it and the threshold and now sparkled across the kitchen floor. The house was still, even the furniture frigid, radiating cold in the late afternoon gloom. She put her hands to the stove in the corner. It hadn’t been hot in days.

“Richard?”

Her voice rippled against undisturbed air.

She stood in the kitchen, examining the tired oak flooring his father put down fifty years back. There was a clear path in it now, worn by Richard’s mother Kay, and then Richard’s wife Barbara, as they’d each taken their turn as lady of the house.

Belinda had missed her chance.

She stuffed paper and kindling in the stove and turned open the damper, then struck a wooden match against the underside of the kitchen table, lit the lamp setting in its center, and then the paper in the stove. She left the stove door ajar while the fire caught and roared in the stovepipe. She added more wood, finally shutting the door and turning the damper down. In moments, heat wafted through the room. She filled the coffeepot with water from the pitcher pump at the sink, blindly reaching for grounds in the drawer of the wooden grinder setting nearby.

She was delaying and she knew it.

Richard had taken sick in February. She found him one afternoon, resting in a wan patch of sunlight on the porch. It must’ve been no more than twenty degrees. He was coughing. Still, he managed to smile at her, those agate-brown eyes of his brightening as she came to help him up. “I’m glad to see you, Belle,” he’d whispered hoarsely against her temple.

She pulled his arm over her shoulder and took as much of his weight as she could, but he towered over her, outweighed her by sixty pounds at least, the two of them stumbling drunkenly into the house and into the bedroom. She was uncomfortable there. There where they had been so urgently intimate years before, while his mother was busy with her Sunday school class and his father was running the disk in the east pasture. Richard had told her he loved her then. Asked her to marry him. It was the only time he ever did.

And she said no.

She had her own place to take care of, her own stock, her own fields. Pride had stolen the years they might have had together. Nothing, however, could rob them of friendship.

She rubbed her arms and glanced toward the hallway. She’d put Richard to bed and stayed for two days, which was all the time her place and her stock could spare. He’d stripped down to his skin while she stood and watched, and she would have, too, if he hadn’t been so sick. Instead, she killed a chicken and made soup, along with some of the noodles she knew he loved. She went out to the smokehouse and brought up a ham so he’d have some meat in the house, then she baked two loaves of bread.

By the end of the second day, he looked and sounded better and was dressed and sitting up in the parlor. She had to fight him to keep him from going out to feed stock and break water. “It’s already done, Richard,” she told him. “I’ll go take care of things at my place and be back as soon as I can.”

He slumped in the chair, his brown gaze burning her. He reached forward, leaning to pull her close, his big arms lashing her to him, his voice muffled, thick. “You’ve always been here, Belle. No matter what. No man could have asked for a better friend.” He coughed, the sound rumbling deep in his chest. “You’ve been the one constant in my life, besides this place, this land.” He looked up at her, his face as familiar as her own. “You were my first love.”

She swallowed, then swallowed again before she could speak, her fingers in his hair, sifting through the thick silver strands as she tried to smile. “You promise me you’ll stay in the house. I fed everybody up. The troughs will freeze over tonight, but I’ll be back the day after. They won’t die without water for a day.”

Richard pressed his forehead against her waist, nodding as he held her. She felt him taking in great drafts of air, breathing her in.

As she promised, she was back in two days. Richard was up and moving, but he’d kept his promise and stayed in the house. He seemed thinner.

“Let me take you into Laramie to see Doc Fletcher,” she said.

“I’ve seen Doc Fletcher.” He turned away toward the window. “Come to bed with me, Belle,” he said, gazing out across the long pasture. Ice spiked the weeds, heavy mist rising from amongst the naked cottonwoods along the creek.

She stayed for another two days, at the end of which Richard seemed much improved, although the cough nagged him. “No need for you to wear yourself out driving that team back and forth, Belle. I’m fine. Truly. I’ll be fine.”

They sat across from one another at the kitchen table that should have been theirs. Her eyes slipped to the chairs that should have held their children, their grandbabies.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too.”

She’d gone then, returning to her place along the Little Laramie. “I’ll be back in a few days.”

“I’ll be here.” He stood in the doorway and watched her go.

The stove ticked as it warmed, the metal expanding. The coffeepot began to perk. Belle took off her coat and hung it over a kitchen chair, then went up the hall.

Richard was in bed. At the last, he’d thrown the blankets back. Belle covered him to the chin, smoothing his mother’s wedding quilt close around his shoulders.  Stiff-backed and efficient, she went to the dresser and withdrew clean drawers, clean socks. She went to the wardrobe and pulled out his Sunday suit. She lifted the hanger on which he kept his ties, and did not begin to weep until she saw the note he’d pinned to the old blue one with brown dots—the very color of his eyes.

“This one, Belle. It was always your favorite. Love, Richard”