It wasn’t the best part of town that I was walking through. It wasn’t the worst either, but it was definitely sliding into such a state of disrepair that it would, soonish, become the bad side, until my grandkids’ kids — if I have grandkids, God willing — take up the torch of humanitarianism and gentrify the place. I don’t know what that means for the bad side of town, the current one, if it will get badder, or stay the same. Assuming it remains “bad,” then the city will be walled in by two bad sides, leaving a good middle. A happy median. I have to remain positive about the future.

And as I was walking through the not-so-bad-but-still-unsavory part of town I noticed a phone, a pay phone receiver, dangling by the cord, dancing in the chilly breeze. The phone booth — not really a booth, more of a pole. I don’t know what else to call it, but a phone poll is a different thing altogether, and it was not housed within a booth — it was situated on a concrete slab in between what may or may not have been a crack house — such assumptions just fling themselves at you, you know, and I try to ignore them, or at least suppress them, question them, but I go with crack house. It was almost certainly a crack house — and a severely overgrown lot that might have been the site of a house buried deep back there in the thick of the vegetation, probably with dubious vines coming out of the toilets and a young pine tree shooting up through the baseboards. It doesn’t matter if the one was a crack house and if the other was a house at all, but that dangling phone, bookended by those two sort of ominous and distinct habitudes, caused some serious feelings of apprehension and disquietude to well up inside of me in regard to the otherwise innocuous payphone receiver. So much so that I didn’t want to set foot on the slab. So much so that the slab, which was probably, in reality, no more than twenty feet long, stretched and elongated in my eye like one of those pan-in-zoom-out maneuvers you see in movies when a character realizes something really, really terrible and irreversible has happened, or is about to happen, and it’s important to the plot and/or character development.

I don’t want to give the impression that the phone was somehow calling to me. For one, it’s a terrible pun. For two, when somebody says that someone or something was calling to them, it’s usually in response to an overwhelming stimulus that comes with 1) regret or 2) something inexplicable. Like coincidence. Sometimes it’s both. Things don’t just call. The phone certainly didn’t. Not in that sense, anyway. Nor did it ring. But, and I say this now at the risk of sounding hypocritical, there was something in the pull of the dangling phone that outweighed the foreboding of the setting which made me walk to it and touch it. “Something” is too vague. I’ll explain.

In general, and by that I mean society and culture and that neighborhood and that slab and what-have-you, the phone was out of place. This is because nobody uses a payphone. And nobody uses payphones because nobody carries quarters anymore, unless, of course, you’re sixteen and going to the arcade, or you’re 27 and going to the Laundromat with the pocket of your dressy slacks full of quarters because all your good pants or your regular pants — your nonlaundry day pants — are soiled to the point of repugnance and you’re not going home to visit your parents for another week and a half, where your crazy mother will dutifully wash not just your pants but all of your clothes for you, and your “girlfriend,” who you’ve yet to commit to for nigh-on a year has been bitching your ear off all week about said repugnance of normal pants, so now you’re loaded down with quarters for the Laundromat for fear of not getting a nice, slow blowjob on Friday night after the homecoming dance, which is, coincidentally, the same night as the “anniversary” of the “relationship” you’re in with your “girlfriend.” These are the only reasons people carry quarters around. Arcades and blowjobs.

And so, the anachronistic quality of the phone pole piqued my interest immediately. That, coupled with the even more out-of-placedness of the dangling, unused telephone receiver set it in my mind that this was a wrong in drastic need of being righted. It is wrong that a telephone receiver be out of its cradle. Justice, order, peace and posterity hinged on that receiver being in its place, just as a crying baby must be made to stop crying, immediately. In the name of everything good, I sallied forth across the vastness of the slab and apprehended the dangling receiver with the thrust of a jack-hammer and the wanton grip of a novice masterbateur.

“Hello,” I said, and I said it in a tone which implying that everything was all right. Hello, like we hope God might say it. Hello, I’m here for real and you just rest your silly little noggin about the whole damn business. A hello’s all we need really. It justifies the questions. You can use hello as a question, yes, but when you say it like I said it, like, not as a question, it really solidifies all that haze you were so flustered over in the first place and makes it make sense.

And I can’t say that I was completely surprised when a voice came through from the other end. This is, after all, the reason we speak into phones. There’s a phone off its hook? There must be somebody on the other end of that line somewhere. Otherwise we’re just shouting into the dankness like a bunch of mental patients.

“Hello?” came through on the other end. But it wasn’t a question, nor was it a real statement. It was… I’ll put it like this. Imagine you’ve been going to a therapist for months and months now, and you thought you knew the answer to your problem of never being able to reach orgasm, and also, maybe, why you have some trust issues. You’re just looking for a second opinion, even though you know the
answer. Your answer is: “I was molested when I was very young,” because you’ve seen that diagnosis on television a million billion times over. “You were molested when you were very young,” which solves the problem, and “I’ve repressed it” is your explanation for why you can’t remember it. You’ve gone into this whole therapy rigmarole with some quack who was recommended to you by your lunatic brother, paying exorbitant amounts of money just to have her confirm for you that you were, in fact, molested by some adult or another when you were very young, only to have the shrink — after several months of expensive therapy, mind you — say, “This is all rooted to that experience you had in your fourth grade biology class that you told me about on our first day together,” — she uses the term “together” in a way that makes you slightly uncomfortable, to the point that you don’t expect there to be a bill every month and you’re kind of offended when it arrives — to which you reply, “So I wasn’t molested when I was very young?” And it’s with that tone, that still-uncertain certainty, that the “Hello?” came through on the other end, which was extremely satisfying for me, considering the gusto I’d put into my initial hello. I really felt like I’d accomplished something.

The voice belonged to a girl, a youngish girl, and the voice carried a horribly familiar timbre — and I use “horribly” here in the best and most nostalgically erotic way possible — that reminded me of the girl on the radio, Katie Heath, who used to run the classical music show on Mississippi Public Radio back when I was in college.

With Katie it had been something in her Rs that just really hit me deep. The letter L, for example, is liquid, pronounced with the breath at the back of the tongue, then the tongue to the teeth. The R, on the other hand, is typically pronounced with a primitive gnashing. But, Katie Heath formed the R way down there at the back of the tongue where the L comes from, just above the belly, and didn’t involve a single tooth, molar or otherwise, in the whole business. It rolled up, slithering, like an opium puff, then gathered audibly, somehow, in the bottom of the cheeks and crook of the mandible, and she had no idea about the grandiose sexuality that that R promoted. There was something clumsy about it, and something cutely inelegant about her on the whole, like she didn’t really have her life together, like she didn’t prepare at all for the 4-hour show, but she made it through anyway, every weekday from noon to three, clumsily. And it was this innocent daredevil way of going about things yoked with the girl-next-dooryness that made me want her. That R,
however it happened to ease up her slender, fragile throat, was dripping with sex by the time it came out. Good sex. Sweet sex. The kind that lasts. The kind you sing songs about when you’re sixty and your wife just left you. I never saw Katie Heath, but I knew that throat of hers was as paper white as a Beluga. And, although this person, this youngish girl on the other end of the line, did not let a single R fall from her lips or drip from her cheeks, that timbre, as I mentioned, that waver, indicated to me the potential for a soggy, sultry R that would shoot me back to those Katie Heath, radio-induced erections set to Bartok and Schumann.

With that Hello — and I wouldn’t have thought that this would happen — even now, writing it, it seems odd — I was immediately aware of the cold, dead, glass-littered slab upon which I stood, framed by crack and vegetation, and the fetid pile of human shit next to the phone pole that I hadn’t noticed until right then. You’d think I would have been lost in the moment, waiting on an R, but, really, I became miserably self-conscious and I felt just as out of place as a public telephone in the 21st century. I fought off the immediacy of my locale.

“Hello,” I said again, but this time with assurance rather than that Superman all-is-well bullshit, and immediately followed that with, “The phone was off the hook.”

“I know,” said the youngish girl.

“Well. Were you on the phone with someone?” I asked. “Did they leave you hanging?”

What concerned me about my question was that an acceptable answer would have been “yes,” and, if that were the case, this young woman had been on the phone with a native of this sketchy part of town and, to my mind, it had to — if the answer was yes — involve some shady dealings, like drugs. Bad drugs. In the short span of time between my question and her retort I had managed to convince myself that this was most certainly the case and, just as I was about to slam the phone back into its cradle and head for the hills because I was sure the drug dealer or the person to whom the drugs were being dealt was coming stealthily up behind me from the bowels of the crack house with a dirty needle in hand ready to shove it through my lungs for no reason but black-hearted malice, the girl responded. “No,” she said. Thank God.

“Oh,” I said.

“I’m an operator,” said the girl.

“I didn’t know they had those anymore,” I said. I’d never met a telephone operator before, and assumed all the operating was done by computers.

I had also, until right then, assumed that I knew what a telephone operator — if computers weren’t running the show — looked and sounded like: Grandma-ish and slightly gruff, busy and monotonous and generally pleased in a very professional and distant way, perhaps with a cigarette forever burning unsmoked in an overflowing ashtray or balancing upon a lip, and never, not ever, sharing a singular feature with Katie Heath. This girl was not, unless my ears deceived me, a gruffish grandma.

“You never know we’re here until moments like these. We
don’t get out much,” said the girl, “us operators.”

“Probably for the best,” I said. “This whole side of town’s overgrown and decaying. I’m uncomfortable where I stand. My skin crawls. It isn’t pleasant out here in the world. You telephone operators have the right idea, by gum.”

“By gum?” she asked.

It was a cognitive slip that I’d said “by gum,” just then. A little phrase I use often with my family and, occasionally, my coworkers down at the bottling company, people who know me well enough to know that I wouldn’t use “by gum” seriously, ever. When I say it, I slip my thumbs through my belt loops and rock up onto my toes and then back on my heels like an old Appalachian on an old country porch. I say things like, “And that’s the way it is, by gum,” or “You kids’ll never get nowheres actin’ like that, by gum.” It gets a laugh.

But apparently, I’d managed to subconsciously dupe myself into thinking there was enough familiarity between the girl and me for me to be comfortable slipping a by-gum in there, as if she could possibly know I was being ironic.

“How old are you, man?” she asked.

Man. Christ, because “by gum” is an oldism, a relic from days-gone-by that only grandfathers and dead-peckers hold on to and actually utilize from time to time, like “nifty” or “gadzooks.” And no, I’m not old. I’m 37, to tell the truth, but it got slippery here because I didn’t want to tell this girl I was 37, and I didn’t want to tell this girl I was 37 because she was, at the very least, a decade younger than 37, and somewhere in the back of my mind, beneath Katie Heath’s Rs and the thought of the broken glass upon which I was standing — which really summed up for me the whole miserable ambiance of the crumbling neighborhood and life in general — I was considering striking up an affair with the operator, because nobody would ever have to know about it, and it would only last as long as I could tolerate standing there.

“I’m thirty-one,” I said. “My birthday was last month. I’m a Virgo.”

The thought of a brief affair with the operator sprung up from the same naughty place in my brain that makes me look for open curtains each and every time I pass a hotel, hoping that I might get to see the naked, nimble thigh of a newlywed bride or the silky curve of a mistress’ breast, a shock of lovers’ hair flitting past on the way to the bathroom. A habit I picked up around the age of 15 after seeing some porn that only showed scenes through foggy windows. It’s called Peeping Thom 6: Bay Windows and Boobs, and a VHS copy is currently sitting in a storage unit that my wife doesn’t know about, in a box labeled “Nostalgix,” under a photograph of me and my mother beneath the Eiffel Tower wearing coats and scarves up to our eyeballs. I will give the picture to my oldest son, Robbie, on his wedding day. I will point at the picture and say, “This is the sort of mother your wife needs to be,” which will be completely unfair of me, considering that Robbie will almost definitely not marry a woman like my mother, who turned into a total nut-job about three years after the picture was taken. Robbie doesn’t know the woman in the picture. He only knows the nut. I bought the VHS when I was 19, after winning about two hundred bucks at a casino. I also bought a gold chain with a golden Nike Swoosh pendant and a dozen chocolate éclairs in cellophane wrap, because I was stoned. Two hundred bucks, gone like that.

And so, the whole idea of the affair, mostly because of the voice, and the fact that that voice carried the same value of eroticism as a boob in a window, made me really just want to go for it, so there was no way I was going to volunteer the information regarding those thirty-seven years I had under my belt.

“Really?”

“Really,” I said. “Thirty-one. September eighth.”

“What’s an educated-sounding thirty-one-year-old doing at the corner of Jefferson and Third at half past midnight on a Tuesday?”

It was spectacular the way she said “thirty.” It wasn’t the usual grinding of an R she had. It was more like she pampered it, powder that turns into even finer and sweeter powder when it leaves the tongue, and it was a good question to boot, by gum. A tough question. A question that, had I answered it as the actual me, the thirty-seven-year-old me who was out for a walk in the shitty part of town trying to score some pot because of a minor, non-physical scrape with his spouse over finances, an inability to “really” listen and something about narcissism, it would have sounded much less interesting and much more pitiful than what the thirty-one-year-old me was doing, which was:

“Taking pictures,” I said. First thing that came to mind. “I’m a photographer.”

“Really?” said the girl. I’m sure the other granny operators shushed her and cut her dirty looks at that, what with it being a violent outburst of emotion and intrigue in an otherwise droning and mildly disinterested conversation. “I’m a model,” she said. “I love having my picture taken.”

And I knew I was in. She might as well have put down her little headset right then and dropped her panties I was so in. I considered telling her to meet me at a hotel where we could do it on the third floor with the curtains slightly parted. I considered sprinting to the secret storage unit and pulling out all the classic, immaculate baseball cards I was saving for my second son, Rusty, and selling them online to fund a little one-bedroom flat downtown somewhere where me and the operator girl would meet on lunch breaks and take pictures of one another in wildly suggestive poses, but, instead, I played it cool.

“Oh yeah?” I said. “That’s interesting,” like I stuck it to wannabe models every day.

“What kind of stuff do you do?” she asked, all breathy.

“I’m doing a series on urban life,” I said. “Trying to get some grant money, you know? It’s not what I like to do, but that’s what the bourgeoisie want, you know? Offset their white guilt by quoteunquote supporting the underprivileged. I mean, all they’re doing is exploiting them, you know? Anyway… My first love,” and I knew this would get her, “is noir.”

“Oh-my-God-I-love-noir!” she said. She said it like a machine gun. Rat-tat-tat-a-tat-tat-tat.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s great. Do you know Jean-Paul Viviere?” I asked, as if that were an actual person.

“Ummm…” she said. “I know I’ve heard the name. It definitely rings a bell. Did he do, uh…that thing with the, uh…”

“Life, Pelican, Death’? You’ve heard of it?” I said. That’s not
real either, by the way.

“Oh my God,” she said. “It’s brilliant.”

“I never knew blood could be so thick,” I said.

“Wow,” said the operator girl. “You really get it.”

“No,” I said. “It gets me. He does his job well, Viviere…”

“You’re so real,” she said. “Who are you?”

“I am what I am,” I said.

I heard a rustle over my shoulder and almost squealed. I’d been so wrapped up in the conversation, pretending to be some youngish arty dude that I’d forgotten I was standing on what was, for all I knew, the most dangerous abandoned slab in the city. It was a tiny jolt of reality that I didn’t really want or need just at that moment. It put a bad taste in my mouth, the reality of it. Reality meant wife. Reality meant kids, a loony mother, a secret storage unit you feel sort of ashamed of, a decently paying job down at the bottling company where you’re well-respected but, by gum, you spend the better part of your day mindlessly pecking at spreadsheets, wishing you’d reconsidered going straight into that MBA program at Loyola where, incidentally, you met Connie, your wife, whose father owned a bottling company, that maybe you should have gone off to Colorado or someplace and worked on a ranch for a while like that Seth guy you were acquaintances with who’s now a lawyer for little crippled kids who are the products of industrial accidents. He’s a fucking saint. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. I didn’t mean to say it aloud. It was only
meant for me.

“What was that?” said the girl on the other end. Owing to the fact that she was quite obviously taken with me, she was sincerely and desperately concerned over my well-being, worried that I was about to be stabbed through the neck by a crackhead’s dirty needle.

It took me a moment to get my bearings, to remember the masquerade.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just a cat.”

“Oh,” she said.

“I should probably check on it. I think it’s sick.”

“Well, okay,” said the girl.

“It was nice speaking with you,” I said. I said it like a man
pushing forty.

RUSSELL HEHN is a landscaper in South Mississippi. Some of his other work can be seen in The Barcelona Review, pindeldyboz, and McSweeney’s.

        His voices knew the magic words. They spoke them without provocation, unsealing Bennett’s lips so the incantation could fly audibly from them. Once it did, Bennett would begin to vanish, then reappear somewhere else. A reluctant drifter leaving one life for another. It was contrary to all he believed in. Science
had been for him the last word concerning what was and what could not possibly be. How often had he drummed that into the heads of his high school science students? “If it cannot be empirically proven, what do we have, class? That’s correct. Nothing but hypothesis, pure conjecture. If you can’t take it to the lab and study it, you’re holding in your hand lots of nada, zip, nothing at all!”
        The first time Bennett drifted away, he was in the faculty room finishing a hasty lunch before fifth period. The only other teacher there sat across the table from him, his colleague Dave Rossi, English teacher and poet, with whom he enjoyed arguing about the existence
of God and an afterlife, scoffing at such “infantile preoccupations,” while at the same time defending the superiority of science.
        Suddenly, in mid-sentence, Bennett constricted his throat, locked shut his jaw, all the while screwing up his face in reaction to the burning sensation inside his mouth.
        “What’s wrong, Nat? You don’t look right.”
        Rossi stood up, walked around Bennett’s chair so that he stood behind him. “Are you choking?” he asked, but Bennett wouldn’t speak. He shook his head. Then it was Rossi yelling, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” because Nat Bennett was disappearing limb by limb, his head and torso floating above his seat, his mouth gaping in a soundless scream.
        Rossi’s screams brought the principal, a few of the faculty and even several students barging into the faculty, but by the time they got there, Bennett had completely vanished. Rossi stood there babbling and pointing at the place where moments ago Bennett sat telling him there was neither Heaven nor Hell. Now it seemed to Rossi that Bennett, in one place or the other, was recanting.
        Mrs. Carlin, the Sacramento High School principal, draped her arm around Rossi’s shoulder, trying to console him. In her decades of academic life she had seen two other teachers break down like this. Pressures build up and need to find release. She liked Rossi. She had always considered him level-headed, life-loving, in control, but now she had her doubts.
        “What happened here?” she asked.
        “He was sitting right there. We were talking. Then all at once his face turned blood-red.
        His eyes started to tear. I figured, he’s choking, having a heart attack maybe, but when I got up to offer help, I saw his arm disappear!”
        The principal, the other teachers, and the students glanced at one another, eyebrows raised.
        “I blinked. Okay, it’s a blind spot. This can’t be happening, but by then, Bennett’s head and torso –– no arms or legs! –– were floating in air. I screamed. What else could I do? Either Bennett was disappearing or I was losing my mind. The last to vanish were his eyes.”
        Now the principal was directing the boys to Room 112. “Find Mr. Bennett, boys.”
        “You won’t find him there,” said Rossi. “Not there or anywhere. He’s gone.”

SALVATORE BUTTACI is an obsessive-compulsive writer whose work has appeared widely here and abroad. He was the 2007 recipient of the $500 Cyber-wit Poetry Award.

September

To show: On the first day of workshop the first thing the professor explains is that in true literature there are no happy endings. There can be bittersweet endings. There can be tragicomic endings. Most certainly there will be sad endings.

To tell: No gets out of this program alive.

October

Struggle with duality.

You must open up your soul. Your heart must be unlocked and eviscerated, mined for nuggets of truth and sorrow, the bloody remains left for carrion birds. Every memory must be recalled, molested, touched in unwanted ways. Here’s an important lesson in contrast: there is a sinister meaning under every sunny image, a sunny meaning under every sinister image.

You must harden your soul. Every secret put to paper will be scrutinized. Your classmates will snicker. In red ink will appear the words, Fake! Not buying it! So pointless! You must bare your teeth like a cougar, drip saliva onto the page, and rewrite.

November

In seminar, the professor poses the question, What is the duty of the writer?

A blonde woman from Texas speaks loudly, It is to marry art and commerce into something that the public will buy in mass quantities.

You love her more than anyone else in the program. In workshop, she gives you flippant, derisive comments on the stories you submit. What your stories really need, she writes in her responses, is more space aliens. Why don’t you do more space aliens? When you speak to her after class, who are you and how did you get from there to here? she blows cigarette smoke in your eyes, the sting of it excruciating, exquisite.

Baby, oh baby. Yes. Material.

December, January

Go home for winter break. Get stoned by yourself on the balcony of the second floor of your house, exhaling blue smoke into the blue twilight. Under the glow of Christmas lights, you feel five again, loose limbed and pliant, stupidly giddy with the scent of pine in the air. Smile in your sleep. On New Year’s Eve you kiss no one, not even your own ass goodbye as you head back to school, back to that frozen urban tundra, back to that workshop.

February, March

A classmate introduces you to post-modernism.

It is a disembodied fist on a dirt road, index finger protracted, pointing towards the sunset, like a compass, like an accusation.

It is a broken light bulb lodged in a ceiling too high to reach.

It is during workshop when the woman from Texas dumps the contents of her purse onto the table, a compact, a tube of balm, a wallet as fat and heavy as a brick, faded receipts and gummy bills fluttering down like dirty secrets, her screaming across the room, This, this is what your stories look like!

April

It is the cruelest month.

In the darkness, in the glow of your laptop, read the news and expand your grief:

Bacteria and viruses are getting smarter. The sun is more cancerous. The weather is apocalyptic. A famous author publishes a book about people eating, gasp, other people.

Everywhere, across borders and skins, people are dying unjust deaths.

When people ask about your well-being say, Research.

May

The best you have: A man falls asleep and falls in love with his dream, unsure of which world he has created and which he has left behind. It’s lofty and indulgent and narcissistic and the worst part is, you fucking love it. Call it a memoir.

June, July, August

Back home, your father parades you to his friends like prized livestock, like rare jewelry. My son is going to be a doctor, he says, and when you try to correct him, try to explain the dull intricacies of your degree, this Master of Fine Arts, he pinches you in the side.

Later you tell him, I’m not going to be a doctor, dad.

What? he says. Something inside him deflates. His face begins to melt right before you. Wait, he says. What?

Your mother says little except when she peers suspiciously at the bags under your eyes, asking, Are you on drugs?

Your friends don’t recognize you anymore. Across bar tables and in the passenger seats of speeding vehicles they look like they are mourning. Dude, they whisper, so that’s what it’s like to get off drugs.

September

To show: Who is this person, this character, this narrator, now? What place, a place full of bear traps stuffed with blue cotton candy, are you headed to? When will that pinprick of white light, when will it expand into something resembling salvation? Where are you going with this? Why did you do this to yourself?

To tell: I don’t know how.

JONATHAN PADUA recently completed an MFA in Fiction at NYU, where he received the New York Times Fellowship. His work has appeared in pindeldyboz, Fugue, and other places.

Arturo was so much happier before the revolution. And this is how he should be remembered, performing every night of the week at La Huchina, two shows, some nights three. Old regime, new regime. It didn’t matter to Arturo. His politics ran only as deep as the acne scars on Generalissimo’s brutal face. Arturo poked fun, mimicked, took potshots from the low stage. Then he would retreat and mock himself for three quarters of an hour. His lack of height. His wide ass. His crooked teeth. Arturo flopped onto the stage and pulled hard at the fine hair on his temples, wiped the glossy sweat from his bald pate.

We don’t need another revolution, he’d say. The old one still smarts.

Draw it mild, his agent counsels without disagreeing. You want to be a captive performer in buggerer’s bay?

Fascism can be funny. But you have to tiptoe. Arturo makes a joke about the waterboarding—pretending to confuse the term with wakeboarding. Tiptoe.Tiptoe.

-o-

After the late show, Arturo gets a note from the Minister of Public Affairs and International Relations: Topical, thought-provoking jokes are welcome by the new regime. But take care not to compromise the island’s re-blooming tourism. Don’t you want to be the face on all of the colorful brochures, Arturo?

But what wit can stay shut up with parody the ruling power? Arturo wants to paint a wordless still life of the puppets and seize the island with laughter.

Arturo labels the Generalissimo’s anti-gay campaign as the fight of the fairies. His twelve-piece band plays a leaping tune. Arturo tiptoes girlishly across the stage, then implies in so many words that this battle originated internally for the Generalissimo. Tiptoe. Tiptoe.

Americanos. Canadians. Germans. The happy-go-lucky Dutch. And lately the Irish, who tend to empathize, perhaps, too much. All can generally be described as old but mobile. Men too old to veer from their vacation habits, they come to the little lemon-shaped island with half a million mature lemon trees and half a million carefree women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. They love to laugh at Arturo each spring. They love to see his perfecto impression of the Generalissimo. Without it, their vacations would be incomplete.

Arturo: Lemons are the chief export. Next come round asses and pretty tits.

Arturo is a good son to his aging mother. Forget about the early woes, the beatings that she attended to. All the new foreign coins go to his Madre. Arturo calls her his banko securo. She’d chase away any daring robber with her pistola breath.

Dig a hole, Arturo, she advises. Do it before I die, she says, crossing herself quickly. Dig it deep. And in her prayers Arturo’s mother says, Lord, I will forgive these women of today who have a higher tolerance for filth, but I better know that they wash between their legs to make a clean place for my Arturo.

Arturo to the cute touristas: Come with me. Arturo will teach you the native tongue.

The Generalissimo shares with Arturo the same taste in wristwatches, sunglasses, and young chicas. But when Arturo scores first with one the imported showgirls, the Generalissimo must not know. Still, as the Generalissimo sits at his table with the leggy blond dancer from Texas, Arturo lets his audience in on the secret of his seduction with a nearly undetectable wink right in front of the Generalissimo. Arturo can wink with both eyes at the same time.

Arturo, so sly, smooth: I only taught her to dance the lemon merengue.

Arturo prepares for Ms. Texas a double-rum-lemonita, unsweetened. She sips from a thin straw and her face craters with a painful looking pucker, involving not just her mouth but her eyes. Two days later, she is gone, gone, gone. The Generalissimo has no comment for the press.

The right friends for the island and the right enemies, too. Good rum. A Coca-Cola bottling plant running three shifts a day. The blessed lemons. It’s like they tell the little league ballers: You can’t walk off this island, slugger. Arturo swings away, no matter the count. Ball four is not an option. Always the big swing. Always thinking homerun.

A good tux but ill-fitting, comically snug. Arturo’s passable singing voice:

If you lose the coup the joke will be on you.

And all of your pretty sisters, and their sisters’ sisters, too.

Under his breath, with the microphone behind his back, Arturo sings another couplet:

And all your cousins’ uncles and the man who sells you bread.

Everyone who ever hugged you—a bullet in the head.

Tiptoe. Tiptoe.

At the end of his act, Arturo bites hard into lemon after lemon, shows his sour face to the audience. This is my country, he says. This is my flag.

WILLIAM WALSH is the author of Without Wax: A Documentary Novel (Casperian Books) and Questionstruck (Keyhole Press). His story collection, Ampersand, Mass., is forthcoming from Keyhole Press in spring 2010.

Henry King always worked his own garden. Henry King worked his garden everyday; he was working it this morning. It was just now ten o’clock and already over ninety degrees. Henry King was sweating. The highway toward Macon went past his farm. The traffic on it stayed heavy; this congestion increased the burden of heat with by adding brute noise.

In recent years suburban housing developments had started closing in. Clusters of large houses, of three thousand square feet or more, set on treeless tracts of at least two acres that had been parts of peoples farms were standing within three miles of Henrys’ land. The folks in these houses didn’t farm; Henry didn’t know what they did. There were two golf courses built in the county in five years. There never had been one in the county. The houses and golf places belonged to new people.

Henry King kept working steady; he was close to being done. His heavy breathing and the cuts of his hoe made a sort of rhythm for his thinkings.

He had always lived here, except for the war, when he’d crossed the ocean, seen it, and the killing in France. Henry had always lived on the same land, his thirty acres, in the same house that had started out over a hundred years ago as an overseer’s cabin on a plantation. He’d bought his land, the first land anyone in his family had owned, with a government loan he was able to get when he came home from the war. The last few of the once strong family who’d built the plantation had sold off the place in pieces when the young father, the great-grandson of the man who started it, who’d inherited the place, didn’t come home from the war. With the young major lost, the operation was left with only a sad young wife, the dead man’s mother and her unmarried sister to try to run it. That family took the money from the sale of their land and went to live in the widows’ fathers’ home in Savannah. Henry felt sad for them; but it was his and his kind’s only big and best chance to not work shares until they died.

Some of his kin had gone to Chicago and Detroit to work in plants; they seldom ever came back home after they left. His cousin had been able to go to work for the railroad; he lived in Atlanta. Henry had been all the way to France. He’d come home. He’d gotten the land, improved and expanded his cabin with rough oak sawmill slab he trimmed square with a handsaw. Henry added a wide porch; it was a place for his family to sit in hot evenings. After his first good season of cotton, he’d put on a new galvanized metal roof. It’d lasted. He’d bought a big cast iron fat-man stove the next fall and with the original fireplace, the place was warm enough for his family. The next pair of good cotton years, with selling his produce, and help-work on some neighbors’ farms, paid for the glass windows and screens he put in with Sam his oldest, and young Oscar helping.

The year after the war ended, when he got his place, he’d gotten electric lights, then a Frigidaire. The same well from plantation days had always stayed sweet with plenty enough for him and his. He always fed his family. His vegetable gardening was famous. Henry built a smoke house and made hams and bacon from hogs he slaughtered late each fall
after frost. Henrys’ boys and Louise never missed having a Christmas.

Until this past year, Henry had farmed. For the last four years young Oscar helped Henry make the crop. Oscar had helped out to make Henry happy. Oscar was married now, gone to trade school in Macon and learned air conditioning work, and just didn’t have much heart for farming.

While he and Oscar had worked it, they’d put half the land in soybeans; made rotation with cotton, with both crops they’d made pretty good.

Henry had gotten older. This year, Henry made a lease deal with a big farmer who had put in soybeans. Like always, Henry still made his garden himself, but since his children were married and gone off the place, his wife dead, most of it, went to his children’s families. Henry figured as soon as he was gone; his children would get together, talk a little around someone’s table, and then sell his place to a house developer. He didn’t think his children and their families would
be able to resist cash.

His wife had been dead ten years. She’d always delighted keeping the bare dirt yard swept. She’d sweep the yard twice each day; once right after breakfast and again in late afternoon. Her broom left a pattern in the red sand. The rounded strokes of her tied brush broom had looked like banks of clouds in the sky. Louise used to say clouds in the sky were the resting beds of the angels of tired people who’d got to heaven.

With Louise dead, he could now eat anything he wanted. He fixed and ate as much as he had of what he wanted. Mostly, Henry baked a pan of cornbread in the morning, ate it with butter and the preserves Oscars’ young wife made special for him. His favorite food was watermelon from his garden. He grew a big patch each summer. He mostly ate melon for his meals at midday and night. He loved the big ripe Congo melons, their smell and their rich deep green color. To himself, he thought of their smell especially after he cut one open, as a smell of rain and ground. To him, the smell referenced fertility as potent as the smell between a woman’s legs.

Now, he didn’t miss Louise; he’d stopped the aching of her going long ago. Oscars’ young wife did his laundry, but Henry wouldn’t let her clean up his house; they had fights about that. He’d always treasured his alone with his mind time. He was now able to keep to himself and he relished his thinking time being free of the distractions he had with the duties of a young family man making his way. These days’ whole worlds, ways, and whys came to his mind in sudden and surprising ways. Sometimes his mind time was as vivid as when he’d been spoken to by the rattlesnake.

He’d been real sick from the snakebite. He’d nearly died. He’d been delirious several days. Doctor Williams, and the man Stone, whose hay he’d been bailing that day, had got him through it. They’d told about his being delirious and they thought him a sure goner. His living through was like a transforming story from the Bible.

After the snakebite, he’d been out for a good three hours in the hottest time of the day, in the field beside the tractor where he’d fallen. His employer, Stone, found him. Henry was taken home to die. Stone had stayed on the porch at Henrys’ house waiting with the doctor Stone had sent and paid for, until Dr. Williams decided Henry had wrestled down
the snakes’ evil and had started to get clear of the poison. The two men told Henry his getting out of the bed was as big a miracle as Lazarus being freed from the grave.

They’d told him about the snakebite, but Henry remembered the all of it. He remembered how the rattler struck him from out of a bale of new hay and through the time his fever passed and he could sit up in his bed. He remembered tearing the big snake, a gleaming young one, but a good five footer, it hung from the side of his face, it bit his hand as he freed himself, but he managed to pitch it away from him. He’d watched it crawl beneath the fence. It had coiled, and sat there watching him.

While Henry lay in the sun, beside the tractor, the snake had spoken to him in voices as clear as a choir. Henry King remembered all this. It came in the dreams he’d had when he was sleeping off the snake poison. Over his years, on other nights the dreams from the snake still came. Once, in a gun battle in France against a German tank crew, Henry had heard a voice speak to him, but he hadn’t recognized the voice. That was before Henry was snake bit.

Stone and Stone’s friend, Liege McCondell, had found Henry by the tractor, they’d said they’d searched, but there was no rattler still around. Henry King knew the snake had stayed close and never left because he’d seen him, and heard the songs. The words of the snakes’ songs told Henry how the rattler had put a mark on him; it informed Henry King of the space in the dreams between the two of them.

Both Stone and Dr. Williams always told Henry King he was the luckiest man, black or white, rich or poor, in all of Georgia. The snake poison had left crescent shaped scars on the left side of Henrys’ face, taken Henrys’ left eye, withered that hand, and stolen the good use of his left arm; but Henry was stronger with just his right arm than most men ever were whole. Stone, Henrys’ white friend, and sometime employer, who’d fought the Germans in World War I, came to see him a lot, when they took a drink, Stone liked to say “not even the Nazi German bastards could kill Henry King the mighty man from Georgia. Who’d broke their backs and caused their widows to weep and orphan children cry when he was sent by our Living God to punish them.”

When his kids and grandkids were little ones, the babes would like to touch his snake marks and hold on to his withered hand when Henry would tell his stories about how he knew snakes spoke and carried messages between the worlds. Once, Louise had challenged him, saying such talk was the Devils’ words. Henry had blasted her with “I heard it speak wisdom as clear as hearing a bell rung telling me about the world from the hand of the Good Lord…it be louder than any preacher could shout.” After the snakebite, Henry King never attended church meetings. He knew nothing he could hear there could match or gain beyond what he had heard his day in the sun blasted field.

This day got hotter. He figured the summer would get much worse. There’d been a two-year drought in his part of Georgia. Every one he knew was worn out from it. Brush fires broke out all over, and irrigation on big farms was pushed hard; it wasn’t even deep July, never mind August. He’d hauled up hose and a diesel pump to his well for the precious watermelons and garden.

It was at the hottest yet when he found the third dead cat. He’d found one two days ago, another a week before that. His cats were members of a large inbred tribe started years ago by Louise who was crazy on cats. She’d kept getting more. Henry thought strays crossed all of Georgia and South Carolina to find his place. With Louise gone, they were his best company. He liked them; he fed them every morning. He’d cook them table meat pieces and bought sardines for them. He’d admire any new kittens or welcome a new stray.

Henry had fondness for the cats but would not baby about them. If one got killed on the road, or by quick dogs, or a snake, they just got killed. There were a lot of things in the world waiting on the unlucky. But losing three in a week was a rare odd thing and Henry King was looking out. The third dead cat looked like the other two. This one had died in a hollow place in his firewood stack. The head was swollen just like the first two he’d found under the stairs going up to his front porch. There were no marks or wounds on the swollen small bodies.

His morning was wearing out. He kept working his garden. He was almost done on the patch of watermelons. He’d decided on a particular fine big melon to pick for himself later this afternoon to have for tomorrow. He’d put it in his Frigidaire so it’d get ice water cold.

When he’d started to chop a thick clump of grass, he heard the highbuzz. His hoe cut was in motion. The diamondback was as big as Hell’s Own King and Keeper. It was dusted pale gray- pink on its’ fat sides from the red dirt, it sat in a wide coil like the mooring ropes on the deck of the ship he’d taken to France in nineteen forty- three, was better than seven feet long and was as thick as Henrys’ right arm.

Henry knew it. The rattler had spoken before to Henry King and was talking again in the same voices the words Henry had learned in Stone’s hayfield. At the moment before it struck, the snake locked eyes with Henry King the mightiest man in Georgia. It hit Henry high above his knee, recoiled, and cocked back to come again. As it severed the neck, the impact of Henry’s blow right behind the great creatures’ head shattered the hoe handle.

The snake was as dead as if it had been a man shot through the head. Henry staggered down cracking open the pretty melon he’d decided would be tomorrows’ meal. His leg burned like it’d been pumped full of flaming gasoline. The fire was grabbing him. The burning of it was filling up the inside of his chest and ripping his heart.

A memory picture ran into Henrys’ mind of a day in France, of some German men he’d helped kill, he had won a medal. The enemy soldiers were wrapped in fire; Sergeant Henry King and two other men had blown up their tank. When the Germans tried to escape the wreck, they were aflame from burning fuel. Those solders burned as they ran. Henry remembered the hard feel of the recoil of his rifle from each pull on the trigger. He saw them now. Henry had killed each man and Henry King had killed the diamondback; sadness for it all crossed him. Henry hissed, “That’s all… it’s certain… there ain’t a place for two old fellows in this world now time days. Soon Stone… and McCondell… Doctor Williams gone all them peoples in France… gone now…all of us be goin’ away…”

He stood up tall, tried to lift the huge wonderful snake over his head, but it weighed too much. Henry could not get the full length of the great rattler clear of the ground. The crushed neck remained in the red dust near the severed thick wide triangle head. For the few seconds it hung lifted by the tail in Henry Kings’ strong right hand, the diamondback throbbed and thrashed like a whip being cracked by a mindless moon- blinded child stirring up dust in the middle of patch of brilliant green, fat, and exceptionally sweet-fleshed watermelons where Henry King fell with his wonderful diamondback dead beside him. For only a moment Henry King might have noticed feathery beds of rainless clouds in a searing bright sky.

E. SMITH GILBERT is a pseudonym for a writer living in Tennessee. He is retired from a long business career. He has recently become a writer for documentary film.

OK: your character is named Jennifer. Is she a heroine? To be determined. Let’s see where she takes us. Could we make her a superhero? Literary fiction about a superhero? Has that been done? Look into this. Perhaps for another story. Perhaps this one, if it’s a page one rewrite.

OK, Jennifer. Jennifer is Roman Catholic. A Roman Catholic superhero? I can’t shake that idea. Perhaps that means something. But will it sell?

Back to Jennifer: a Roman Catholic Nurse. Side note: superhero could be The Nurse. Tracks down crooks, treats them afterwards. It’s like how Batman doesn’t kill his victims, taken to an extreme degree. Batman in white. Deadly with a clipboard. This could go somewhere.

But, oh, Jennifer: let’s go. Roman Catholic Nurse. Not a single mother. Single mothers have been done, are done. We don’t need to go there. Marriage is done, too. This is literature for women who don’t have kids. This is an untapped market. This will sell.

So, yes, Jennifer – you are single. You will remain single. You’re not even looking for love. Everyone’s looking for love these days. Love is done. Love is out. Side note: don’t be so upfront about this in the text. People will think you’ve just recently watched Down With Love. You haven’t. But privately: this is Down With Love, but she doesn’t find love in the end. Remember, Jennifer, you’re not even looking for love.

All right, so we have our Single Roman Catholic Nurse who isn’t looking for love. She’s not gay, either. Everyone’s making their characters gay. You’re not gay, Jennifer. Isn’t it possible for a woman to not be looking for love from a man or a woman? What happened to those women? Jennifer, you will be the Emma for that kind of woman.

Speaking of – gosh, what’s the title? You’re Emma, but you’re not going to be “Jennifer.” That’s bland. This needs to sell. I can’t call it “The Nurse.” That’s the superhero literary fiction title. Which, let’s be honest, may still happen. You punch a bank robber in the mouth than take his temperature. I need to keep that, remember that. That will sell.

But Jennifer, back to our title: what’s our title? You’re a Single Roman Catholic Nurse who isn’t looking for love from a man or a woman. That’s too long to be a title, but maybe it’s a subtitle. Short stories never have subtitles. Perhaps that’s my in – John Carroll presents the first New Yorker short story with a subtitle. That’s bound to go on the wire, right? Papers will pick that up. People pick up papers. People buy New Yorkers. This is our business plan.

We have a title, Jennifer. “Jennifer: A Single Roman Catholic Nurse Who Isn’t Looking for Love From a Man or a Woman.” Coming to the New Yorker soon.

But what are you doing, Jennifer? The title almost begs the question. We’ve established so much. The reader is about to skip the short story. But then they wonder: if you’re not looking for love, what are you doing? Now we have them, Jennifer. Excellent work.

Let’s get back to it, though: Where are you? You’re not at the hospital. That’s too predictable. Sure, you’re not looking for love, but you’re not some workaholic. Why would someone even think that? That’s entirely predictable, Jennifer, and if anything, we’ve established that you’re not predictable.

I know: you’re in Duane Reade. Yes, New York. Don’t worry: two years ago, New York was predictable. Now everyone’s getting their characters out of New York. Let’s bring them back to New York. You’re bringing them back, Jennifer. You’re in Duane Reade.

What are you doing in Duane Reade, Jennifer? You’re not looking for love. The stock boy in your aisle is unattractive. In fact, he’s wearing a wedding band. Off-limits. You’re no homewrecker. How could you be? You’re not looking for love, remember.

You’re looking at condoms, though. That’s right, condoms. You’re not looking for love. Not even for sex. You’re not one of those, Jennifer. No, here’s what you do: you make balloon animals with condoms. It’s your quirk. Every character needs a quirk. I think they’re calling it twee, Jennifer. Condom balloon animals: this is twee.

Come to think of it, though, do condoms present too much of an edge? Children read newspapers for the comics. What if they come across our wire story? What if they pick up a New Yorker? Will this scar them? Is this controversial to be twee? I think we’ve veered off into dark comedy, Jennifer.

No more condoms. You’re looking at pens. You collect pens of every color. You find a navy blue pen. A lot of people probably don’t even know that navy blue pens exist. It’s twee. It’s informative. That’s the New Yorker. We’re rolling.

Jennifer! You look to your right. There’s a kid there – not yours, remember, as you don’t have kids, don’t want them, don’t need them – and he’s stuffing something into his shirt. He’s shoplifting. You look back to your navy blue pens. There’s a half-dozen there. You want it, but you feel somewhat certain there will be navy blue pens there later.

You call for the young man’s attention. He knows what you want. He saw you put the navy blue pen – which he didn’t know existed – down. He runs. Little does he know, you run three miles every morning. You’re fit. Note to self: establish this earlier in the story, or people will find this too convenient. Note it as casually as possible. You don’t want people to think it will play any part in the end of the story. In fact, Jennifer, we’ll write about your entire workout, as well as your protein shake, to throw them off the scent. Don’t let them dwell on your running, Jennifer.

You’re giving chase, Jen (can I call you Jen?). You’ll note something – and do it wryly, Jennifer, as you’re a very wry single Roman Catholic Nurse who isn’t looking for love from a man or a woman – about all of the independent coffee shops next to the Starbucks. That will resonate beyond New York. People in Iowa subscribe to The New Yorker, Jennifer. You should know that: you lived there in your early 20s. Note to self: see how many Starbucks there are in Iowa.

Your juvenile bolts into traffic. But you saw it coming. You saw him eyeing an opening and took off moments before him. You go at him at an angle. You tackle him, and you do it at the median. Safety first, Jennifer. Remember, you’re a nurse.

The boy is struggling to free himself from your grip. You reach into the jacket and pull out the box he’s stuffed into his jacket. Robitussin. The extra-sized bottle. He looks up at you. Ma’am, he says, I’m sick. I just need to get better, get back to school.

Jennifer: pick him up. Dust him off. Keep the Robitussin. Look him in the eye. I’ll get you better, you tell him. But first – but first, Jennifer! – we must take him to the police. Then to the Duane Reade. For while you’ll nurse him back to health over the coming days, you must first concern yourself with the law.

For you are The Nurse. And you concern yourself with not just the health of your patients, but with the health of society.

Now, Jennifer, I’ll bang this out and get it to the New Yorker. Let’s meet again tomorrow. We must begin hashing out the screenplay.

JOHN CARROLL is a short fiction author who is currently pursuing a graduate degree at American University in Washington, DC. The fiction is short, not the author. John clocks in at a quite average 5′10″.

“Day Traders” appears in David Moskowitz’s short story collection Sharks On Fire.

It’s only practice, but the boy’s been down too long. You train your kids to get up and back into the huddle as quickly as possible, even if they’ve just given up a big play. Especially then—quick recovery shows confidence, strength. You’re almost men, you tell them, so writhing on the ground won’t draw a late flag: Save the histrionics for soccer, and go look it up if you don’t know what histrionics means.

You had been standing at the other end of the field and don’t know what happened or who is injured, but your assistants have already sprinted to the down player. They run, you walk—not because your knees are as bad as you like to let people believe or because you’re old and out of shape and have a belly that’s first trimester max. No, you walk because a coach is supposed to care, but he’s also supposed to be calm, level-headed, in control. Panic loses respect. You need to pretend it’s a real game: find out who’s hurt and start thinking, Who’s going in? while your trainers attend to the injured kid. Caring and worrying are in your job description, but so are X’s and O’s. You make adjustments in personnel or line formation, not kinesiology.

You can’t, won’t pop a dislocated shoulder back into its socket, or even a finger gone perpendicular the wrong way. Fingers are supposed to be easy, like those noisemakers you get on New Year’s Eve—grab one end, give it a tug.

And pop.

They’re called trainers, but to you they’re medics without sutures and hypodermics. They not only re-align body parts but watch out for dangers worse late hits or chop blocks— sunstroke and dehydration. You only know the vomit rule: once means you’re a man, treating fear like a cat does hair—balling it up inside and yuking it out. Twice means your body is telling you to get inside and call it a day. Three times or more demands a trip the emergency room. That Minnesota Viking, Korey Stringer: he vomited five times in one practice and by the time his brain shut down, he was running a 108 degree fever while submerged in a tub of ice.

But Orange County in October is nothing like the Midwest in mid-August. It’s dry and in the 60’s. Besides, Stringer had belly full of ephedra while even your the varsity players don’t take enough creatine to make pissing the renal equivalent of wind sprints. Sports aren’t their future; otherwise they might risk steroid acne for an extra 20 pounds of muscle. Better yet, their parents aren’t the kinds who’ve been getting tossed from the stands since T-ball. Your boys’ parents understand that for every Earl Woods, Richard Williams or Jack Elway placing a golf club, tennis racket or football into their future superstar’s cradle, there’s a thousand Marv Marinovich’s—even if the kid develops some talent, he’s too unstable to perform.

You blocked for Marv’s boy, Todd, at USC during their Rose Bowl campaign—mostly in practice. An offensive lineman just good enough to get the full-ride scholarship, you rarely started a game and had no illusions about going pro, even in Canada. Todd and his magic arm did reach the NFL—the Raiders—but he got cut for mediocre play and worse conduct. Conduct? The Raiders? It was around the time Guns and Roses booted their drummer: like Todd, he couldn’t handle his heroin.

Heroin? Not your boys. They’re good kids—all of them—and that makes this tougher: whoever’s injured is automatically the last person you’d want to see hurt.

Beer and pot are your biggest concerns, and you can always tell when one of the ADHD crowd has sold his Ritalin: he’ll do something stupid that means extra push-ups or laps around the track—and then he doesn’t seem to mind. One of your favorite things about this job is your power to make teenage boys run laps for anything, even swearing.

But Coach McCullers, they complained, sometimes you just gotta say something—especially across the lines. You know what gets said in the trenches.

In the trenches. You love that: as if the Battle of the Ardennes was fought between the front fours of France and Germany. But you called it war too, and now you’ve got a casualty who isn’t getting up.

The boys kept pushing: So what do we say, coach?

Do more than just insult them, you said in your best George C. Scott-as-Patton, confuse them. If you want to call someone a mother-effer, call him an Oedipus.

“Sounds like a faggot,” one kid snapped back. You didn’t see which one. The others wouldn’t give up the culprit, so the whole team took a trip around the track, in pads. Team unity, then tolerance: teaching one value at a time.

Maybe you should have spent more time stressing that “giving it your all” doesn’t mean abandoning thoughts of self-preservation.

You never say things like, “I teach the game.” You’re a coach. Go to class, you tell your players—behave, do your work, and don’t cheat—and I got your back. And you do: the teachers like you, and give your players some leeway on due-dates and makeup exams. Their big headaches come from the honors kids, with their whining, their hi-tech cheating schemes and their parents who are worse than any Little League taskmasters. These parents track their kids grades and test scores like day traders watching their stocks. IBM and TRW to GPA, AP and SAT.

You still can’t see the down kid, and can no longer lie to yourself about your measured pace: it’s not your weight, or your knees, or some self-imposed sense of calm holding you back. It’s fear and doubt, clinging to your legs like a horde of pee-wee tacklers, maturing with your every step: through Pop-Warner, jr. high, high school—by the time you reach your destination you’ll have Refrigerator Perry and Ray Lewis holding you back.

Would I move faster, you wonder, if I knew whether the kid was really hurt or just got the wind knocked out of him? No, you think, you wouldn’t know how you’d respond any more than you knew this was going to happen when you woke up this morning. Or when half-way through practice you left the main scrimmage to spend some “you’re an important part of the team” time with your place-kicker. You couldn’t know, and that’s how you like it. Knowing the future isn’t worth it. You’ve seen enough Twilight Zone television: People get the next day’s newspapers and are all set to make their fortune playing the lottery, the ponies, or the stock market. Then they find that story. Maybe it’s their obituary or about a presidential assassination and their efforts to prevent the tragedy only bring it about. That’s the lesson: the only thing worse than knowing the future is trying to respond to it.

Ask Oedipus.

One of those shows featured a stock broker who lost everyone’s money, including his own. As he was tearing the eviction notice off the apartment door, he found the magic newspaper on his welcome mat. Of course, nobody he knew with money wanted to talk to him. You changed the channel before you saw the end. It reminded you too much of Leigh Johnson, who played safety opposite you in college. Even then he knew that he was going to became a stockbroker. Others’ greed is more dependable than your own body, he’d say, and if you’re smart, it’s a safe life—just collect commissions. When you told him you wanted to coach, he said that was for has-beens with no money and fewer skills, not the never-weres smart enough major in something other than general studies or communications. Besides, he said, nowadays kids are almost as bad as their parents: You make them run too many laps or not give them enough playing time and they’ll find a reason to sue. Tell the district office you tried to kiss them in the shower.

Now you wish Leigh had reminded you that a stockbroker is only involved in his clients’ financial, not physical, well-being.

The last time you saw Leigh, he said he was out of the business even before you could launch your preemptive, “I got nothing to invest.” Greed was still fashionable, but Internet-trading made brokerage houses obsolete. Day traders don’t need analysis or to know product or personnel. They care no more about a company than the boys in Vegas lose sleep over the pain behind the injury reports. But point-spreads don’t affect the outcome and that’s what makes sports special. You never know when the U.S. Olympic hockey team will beat Russia or Buster Douglas gets Mike Tyson on an off night. Football’s especially rich in random factors: played outdoors with a ball that isn’t round, so you never know how it might bounce.

Or a neck might snap.

It’s scary how calm the scene around the kid is. There’s no shouting, no pointing fingers, no impromptu prayer circles—but the quiet accidents are the worst. Joe Theisman’s broken a leg on Monday Night Football was an anatomical pirouette worthy of a thousand replays and did more for his legacy than his Superbowl wins, but it was still just a shattered bone. Drew Bledsoe walked away from a tackle nobody paid too much attention to and his spleen was in an operating room bucket by sundown. Dale Earnhardt’s fatal accident doesn’t get shown much, but not out of respect—NASCAR’s grand old man died in television’s equivalent of a fender bender.

Please be o.k., you pray. Please don’t be dead. These kids don’t know death with its funerals, grief counselors and special assemblies. These aren’t inner-city gang kids, base kids with fathers overseas, or trailer park meth-lab offspring. These kids have their share of drugs, divorce and domestic drama, but there’s enough in the checkbook to handle the cleanup. These are middle class kids.

No, they’re upper class, like you were.

Still, you had death in high school. One day at lunchtime, a pickup truck ran into a light post while the driver was messing with the radio. All three kids riding in back died. You knew them by sight, but not well enough to recognize their names when the announcement came over the loudspeakers.

You remember the grief, and the questions: Who let these kids off campus? Why were they riding in the back? Who is responsible?

The Irvine World News showed photos of the scene, once the bodies were gone and Caltrans had hosed down the asphalt. Every time you listen to The Doors you think of that accident Jim Morrison saw as a kid—before the cleanup crews arrived: “Indians scattered on dawn’s highway bleeding.” You’ve seen blood on the field. Cuts and scrapes and compound fractures. No crimson fountains up ahead—at least that would mean a beating heart.

One of the fatalities was a goth girl. A senior, she’d actually written a will and wished for Book of the Dead-style photos to appear with her obits. The family sided with school brass in the battle between the yearbook committee and the administration, so the memorial featured pictures from her freshman year, before the makeover.

Nobody recognized her. She had red hair and wore that same smile you see in team photos on kids playing ball just to please their parents.

You don’t look at the other players’ jerseys, so you can’t eliminate names from the possible wounded. It’s better that way. The longer you don’t know whose down, the longer images of his parents stay out of your head. At least by now you’re convinced the lack of activity means he is definitely alive and maybe just paralyzed. Just paralyzed. Maybe he’ll be one of those who become special people because of their disability. You’ll wheel him out to the sidelines during the games—the team’s good luck charm. Everyone can rub his head or his belly and he’ll absorb all of their bad luck. He’ll write an inspirational book. Go on Oprah. Become a motivational speaker. Be set for life. Hook up with Gerald Klein, that crippled multi-millionaire, and co-host an investment show on MSNBC.

No, his money will come from suing the district. You know those liability release forms have the teeth of a Hollywood pre-nup, and you’ll be named as well. You’re in charge. You’re the authority figure. It doesn’t matter that you were on the sidelines. Or that he refused to learn that the play is never over and got hit by a cheap shot. Or that he took the whistle as a license to start daydreaming about blowjobs.

After that accident in high school, your dad asked, What the hell you needed a pick-up for in this town?

Surfboards, you said.

Fiberglass stretchers, he called them. Two decades in the Coast Guard rescuing drunks in million-dollar yachts made him wary of the ocean’s random power. At least the boy’s on land if something happens, he told your mother when she objected to your playing ball. Every time Dad worked in a storm, Mom would get on your ass about homework. Try to steer you into a nice safe job, like lawyer or accountant.

Your future? Co-defendant. Pariah. The man who killed football at Hamilton High. You’ll never coach again. Then what?

“Why did you leave your last position?”

“An all-American kid with hopes and dreams and promise severed his spinal cord while he was under my supervision.”

A kid. You don’t “teach” the game and you don’t call your boys “son.” It doesn’t feel right in your mouth. You have two daughters who are young enough that you don’t get nervous whenever you hear your players talk about their girlfriends. And while this boy may be crippled for life, you’ll watch your girls grow while you sit at home waiting for your wife to come back from the second job she has to take. Sitting there, getting fatter on American cheese and mayonnaise sandwiches, which is all you’ll eat because they’re cheap. You’ll sit there, circling want-ads in front of Judge Judy. Maybe finish off your defense-depleted savings playing day trader, mistiming nickel price swings in stocks, and losing an additional eight bucks with every late response. Prove Leigh Johnson wrong. After all, he suggested you might make a decent day trader: coaches said you could smell what an opposing linebacker was going to do—too bad you were too small to respond effectively.

Ease down, you tell yourself. Nobody’s got their cell phone out. Nobody’s talking to 9-1-1—or their lawyers.

A couple of the other players see you coming and back away, leaving only the injured player and the trainers hovering around him. His jersey has ridden up his body and as you get closer, you feel yourself moving faster, like the exposed flesh below his floating ribs is the ball, and you’re about to kick off on opening day. Why not? If he’s down for good, how much more could it mess up your life?

Get up, you want to scream. Get up, goddamnit.

DAVID MOSKOWITZ is an adjunct professor teaching English on campus at Pacific University (Forest Grove, OR), and online at Ashford University. His work has appeared in publications including The Comics Journal, Vortext, Soundings, Rhapsoidia and numerous magazines covering electronic gaming. He also supplied the movie-length script to the U.S. version of the Japanese computer game Knights of Xentar. He lives in Venice with two houserabbits of his own and a variable number of foster bunnies.

Ingredients.  Yes you’ll need those.  All of them.

You will also need too-many cooks.  Three in a small kitchen should do.  Make them related.  A mother, father, and daughter should do well.  And some Louis Prima to taste.

Take the mother and have her heat a medium soup pot over medium heat.

Take the daughter and have her fumble with a bouquet of parsley as she tries to determine exactly what constitutes a handful before cleaning and cutting all of it and throwing it into the food processor.  It is best to put the daughter in charge of the part of the meal that is supplementary- the gremolata. She is only learning.

Take the father and put him in charge of the veal dumplings…sorry, meatballs… whatever you want to call them.  Make sure the meat is really cold so that he complains about the fact that the meat is really cold as he dives with his tentative pair.

Since there are three cooks in the small kitchen, make sure there is little counter space to spare.  The mother should be cutting her celery, carrots and onions on the corner space by the stove.  The father should monopolize the entirety of the space below the microwave and make it hard for the daughter to get the food processor out of the cabinet.

The daughter can use the space in front of the toaster to chop the parsley and garlic.  You can have her unplug the toaster oven to use the outlet for the processor, but keep in mind she will probably forget and her parents will yell at her in the morning.  Parents like these tend to use the toaster in the morning and assume that it’s plugged in.  Children should not forget to restore the toaster plug because it will anger her parents unnecessarily, but more importantly, because they will want to sleep and extra hour in the morning.

While the mother is opening cans of cannellini and tomatoes puree over the sink so as not to spill on her white and blue tiled floor, the daughter will make the mistake

of opening the anchovies incorrectly and get fish oil all over her shirt.  This will probably ruin the shirt but the daughter shouldn’t care too much.  The mother may fuss and make a small argument of things.  Mothers tend to argue with their daughters over small disagreements such as these.  If an argument happens, bring this argument to a medium boil and the mother will break the tension with some ridiculous remark and cause laughter.

If the expression was particularly funny, you have a good mother, the root of all good reciepies.  Mothers are best when they do silly things that entertain their family: facial expressions, certain noises, or say something funny in a funny voice.  The daughters should repeat whatever made her laugh again and again until the argument has boiled over.  Have the mother bring down the heat as she takes a sip of white wine before pouring the measured cup into the soup pot.

If the father is still complaining about the cold meat, have the mother get a pastry thing.  If you don’t know what a pastry thing is, look it up in the “thing” glossary under “pastry.”  Mother’s often refer to things when they are too busy to say what the item actually is.  You should understand the meaning of “thing” even if the meaning is changeable.  This is the most important skill to learn in the art of cooking with your mother.

The father needs the pastry thing to combine the veal with the Italian breadcrumbs, and parmigiano romano cheese.  He will save his hands from cold meat but his hands will be helpful to measure ingredients rather than venturing across the kitchen to get the measuring cups.  Make sure he doesn’t forget the egg.

He might not forget the egg but he will certainly forget the nutmeg, which mustn’t be forgotten.  He will probably have made half the meatballs to his wife’s specifications before realizing he forgot the nutmeg.  He will have to do everything over again.  Let father sit to the side while making meatballs and turn your attention to the other ingredients.  The mother will also need time to look for her misplaced noodles as the daughter zests a lemon until it is perfectly naked.  The gremolata ingredients are almost ready to be combined in the food processor.

Make sure the mother finishes preparing the stoup before the other two are done.  She should watch carefully as each ingredient go into her pot, including undivided attention to an entire carton of chicken stock as it pours.  Have her bring the pot to a moderate boil before the father places the veal meatball/dumplings into the pot to cook.  She can sink Keeley Smiths part during “That Old Black Magic.”  Her husband can take Louis Prima’s part and the daughter can be sure her parents love each other.

After the song is over, the daughter will probably question when the meal will be ready to eat.  Daughters are very anxious over their mother’s cooking.  Especially osso buco, which is one of her, like, favorite meals ever.  She can continue to zest the lemon while the father starts the dishes.  The mother will thank him after for doing so, but he should not do all of them so there will be some things to clean up after the meal.

It should only take about 6 mother minutes to finish the stoop.  This means the mother will sit in the living room talking with her husband and, stopping mid sentence at the very moment it is done, she will let the family know.  The smell should permeate the household.  A good aroma defines a household.   The table should be pre-set by the daughter.  Have her place the now sliced naked lemon on the table, too.  Forks, knives, spoons, napkins optional.  The salt and pepper, although they may not be used in on a perfectly crafted dish, should take their place on the table as they always do.  Make sure the father cuts the bread because he does the best job.  The daughter, having made more gremolata then necessary, can spread over it the bread with sweet cream butter and some of the extra romano.

Get your own dish.  Serve yourself out of a shallow bowl with some gremolata, which might be a little fishy because the daughter put in too many anchovies.  Just a tablespoon.  A glass of seltzer water with some fresh squeezed lemon would pair well with the meal.

Finish with a compliment to the mother, because it doesn’t matter she only cooked 33% of the meal, this is her house, her kitchen, and her culinary genius.  Praise he as all mothers should be praised, clear the table for her, and finish the unwashed dishes.

Yield: Four perfect servings, one for each of the too-many cooks and you.

CORINNE WAHLBERG is a novice of everything and a master of nothing. A graduate of Rhode Island College, she continues her efforts to make art and make art happen in the littlest state.

I used to drive down the road so fast that it would kick up the dust and blow it in every direction, often laughing at the poor people who had to walk past. That was until I took that walk myself. Now I notice the hopeless old Mexican lady with the napkin covering her nostrils and mouth. I can see the whites of her eyes and the panic on her face before her vision disappears for minutes until all the dust clears and she emerges a different person.

Though immersed in a virtuous profession, mechanics in Mexico are certainly not the most efficient on the planet. They ask for half the money up front and then make you wait months to fix a problem which a proficient mechanic with proper equipment can diagnose and repair in a couple days. It’s no big deal, just one of the concessions an expatriate has to make in order to embrace the good life south of the border.

The Red Dragon is the name of my car. It’s actually my girlfriend’s car, but since mine has been collecting dust with the mechanic for three months we share the monster. We happily named her for the obvious reason of color, both for the exterior and the mysterious puddle of blood that leaks from underneath her engine when she sleeps.

We drive down most other roads with the windows open because the air condition is broken. It’s been broken for years, and I’ve never seen it working. It probably only costs about twenty dollars to fix it, but we will never know because we are idiots who didn’t bother checking to see if it’s anything serious. Maybe it costs two hundred dollars. That’s a big difference for poor people like us.

We weren’t always this poor, my girlfriend and I. We were never wealthy, but it used to be better before we moved into the house too big for us to afford. The views are beautiful and we’re healthy, but it’s tough to pay for food, let alone anything else. All our money goes to mechanics. So we walk down the road now, ever since the Red Dragon was taken out of commission.

This decision to walk was not one which I accepted with a smile. It was a vile idea, but it quickly became our reality. In my dreams I often envisioned the old lady. I wanted to hold her hand and tell her everything was going to be ok. I saw her face almost every day for many months strolling down that road. We never spoke, and she never once glanced in my direction. She was never contentious but just seemed lost in her own world, struggling step by step to escape from the bubbling cauldron of her mind.

As summer fell back into autumn, the weather grew warmer and very oppressive. I began to reason that my plight was a curse from the heavens, a demented punishment for all the seasons I had lived with such burning contention.

On Halloween not even trick-or-treaters had the courage to journey up the road, even though it’s a festive holiday celebrated with purpose and passion in Cabo San Lucas. The tropical weather had become an optical illusion, as my delusions of an easy walk were diminished by a procession of ignorant drivers speeding with derision, without a care in the world for the poor man on the shoulder of the road.

As soon as my flip-flops touched the road a truck drove past, instantly covering the entire vicinity with dust, smothering my skin with sand. I shut my eyes and trod onward, breathing the filth into my lungs, coughing and walking beneath the sweltering sun. I caught up to the old lady about halfway down the road; she was spinning in circles, crying, and trying to clear the dust away from the front of her face. I gradually came closer and noticed that she was much older than I suspected. She looked like a ghost, neglected and I began imagining that she was lost in a cloud, somewhere ages and ages hence.

I grabbed her by the shoulder and told her that we would make it together.

“Quitalo,” she said, slapping me in the neck. “Me asustas guey… que pendejo eres.”

“Esta bien Senora,” I told her, hoping she would let me hold her hand and guide her safely from the cloud, “quiero ayudarte–”

“Estoy bien joven,” she responded, scolding me with another slap to my hand; albeit a much more gentle and playful gesture than the first.

“Por favor Senora,” I said, “pero podemos hacerlo juntos.”

“Gracias gringo,” she said, “pero callate–estoy bien.”

There’s no convincing an obstinate elderly lady about anything, so I let the matter slide and walked to the other side of the road, leaving a trail of footsteps I hoped she might follow. The dust subsided as we approached the main road and we went our separate ways; me across the highway toward the store to buy some cold cerveza and her to wait for the bus.

I got sidetracked and spent the rest of the afternoon doing reckless things I won’t bother to mention, other than to assure you that they were definitely an unproductive waste of a wonderful day. I eventually returned in time to discover the old lady stepping off the bus. It took her what seemed to me an eternity to descend the three stairs, for she was carrying a few bags of groceries and her arms were outstretched like a scarecrow holding her balance. I decided to offer a hand, but before I could speak she rejected my suggestion.

“Estoy bien joven,” she said with a flinch of her elbow, as if she could sense my presence and didn’t need to hear my words. She didn’t turn around, but only gripped the yellow plastic bags tighter as the vehicles began to race past and kick up dust. This time it was a couple crazy motorcycles and other off-road racing vehicles. The construction workers were just finishing work at this hour, and they tore down the road like lizards out of hell, so fast you would have thought they would turn into pumpkins if they weren’t on the highway by five o’clock.

I walked a few steps behind the elderly lady. I couldn’t see her face but her pace was slower than usual. I noticed her dress was torn and dirty, and her slippers were dusty but beautiful. She reminded me of Cinderella and I wondered where she lived. I had always seen her walking this road but never going anywhere other than in and out of the clouds.

“Por favor Senora–let me take your bags and help you,” I said. “Puedo traerlas…”

Just then two trucks interrupted my thoughts, screaming down the road full of workers smiling and laughing, either at us or to celebrate the satisfaction that comes suddenly at the end of the afternoon to those who labor all day, I will never know.

“…quiero ayudarte con las bolsas,” I told her when they passed. “Es nada Senora.”

The residual filth made us both invisible, but I could hear her coughing. I started walking faster to find her but I did not see the disaster I was placing myself in. I had wandered too far from the shoulder and we had become nothing but ghosts in the clouds. The road was almost entirely consumed by a thick cloud of smoke and I could hear vehicles approaching from both directions.

“Ven aqui gringo,” the old lady told me, grabbing my wrist and swinging her grocery bags around my neck. She pulled me toward her with such force that I catapulted forward off my feet and into an enormous pile of sand where the plow deposits the dirt on the shoulder of the road.

“Eres tanto guey,” she said, caressing me by the neck as the vehicles whizzed by in an invisible surge of neglect for those less fortunate individuals without cars, “quieres morir en la calle gringo?”

She kept asking if I wanted to die in the street and I couldn’t decide what to answer. Her bony hands were on my shoulders, still holding the bags, and still invisible; like a ghostly rendezvous nobody will ever remember except for us. She helped me up as the dust finally began to subside. I could see her eyes as she flashed a toothless smile, wider and better than the most beautiful jack-o’-lantern I had ever seen. I felt so alive and grateful.

“Hasta luego–necissito caminar,” she said. “Ahorita ya me voy, adios gringo…”

I watched her walk away as I gazed into the dust which I had become a part of.

“…cuidate,” she told me over her shoulder, “cuidate gringo.”

I was speechless and words were meaningless. I had nothing to offer her except my life.

“Ahorita, ahorita, ahorita,” I muttered to the dust, which was all who was listening. “Estoy bien….la calle esta hermosa, obscura y profundo–pero tengo promesas guardar…y kilómetros caminar antes dormiendo…y kilómetros caminar antes dormiendo.”

I waited a few minutes and watched her disappear into another cloud as I sat there. There was something magical about that old lady. I had seen her hundreds of times, but after our exchange I never saw her again.

I think she must have gotten lost in the dust and floated away in the clouds.

MATTHEW DEXTER is an American freelance writer living in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. He writes novels, memoirs, poetry, journalism articles, short stories of literary fiction, short stories of narrative nonfiction, and everything else in between. When Matthew is not writing he enjoys life by the ocean; beautiful beaches, breathtaking views, reading, and being inspired. But never candlelit dinners on the beach. He’s afraid of pirates.

Cinema star of silence, his sideburns graying, not looking so Hollywood these days. Looks more like the long gone, salt of the sea admiral who drowned on the sands of ignoble shores. Still, he’s more or less the hero he imagined himself to be. Good thing that the mirror went down with the ship and all the crew of forgettable names whose mothers are so easily forgotten. Let the mothers weep in the perpetually darkened wings. He, without any great piece of private vanity to promote, was at a loss of where to place himself for the grand hubris performance for which he had no part. Being the only one in attendance he could have planted himself front row center, or in one of the boxes, but there was no reason to pay such prices, especially since no programs had been printed. For a man without a mirror to follow a spectacle so objectively personal without such a critical item as a program would be an impossibility leading to abject despair. His sideburns grayed a bit more, and the hair on the top of his head fell out. This would have been of minor importance except that the sun was rather hot this day. On days like this he felt a bit like an arrogant boy who’s played the game too long, unaware of the fact that all of his mates had gone off to the army, or the honeymoon beds, but this was a thought that he left behind the moment that he found shade. In the shade he had the strength of a biblical dupe before being conned by the ladies. Being that there were no ladies around, he was safe in the middle of the crumbling stadium.

JOHN GREINER is an American writer living in Paris, France. His short stories and poetry have appeared in numerous international magazines. More of John’s work can be found at http://baronandcrow.blogspot.com .