Underheroes: Stories

Steve Anderson

Copyright 2010 Stephen F. Anderson

Cover Image: Tiny Little Hammers

Novels by Steve Anderson

The Losing Role

False Refuge

Besserwisser: A Novel

www.stephenfanderson.com

In Underheroes, various underdogs and antiheroes grapple with life’s beasts. They come of age, grow up and grow old, often showing an outsider spirit that reflects the go-it-alone mindset of the once ignored Pacific Northwest. A few sense something like hope, if they play it right. A couple aren’t so lucky.

Underheroes includes eight fiction shorts and two essays. They were published in Exquisite Corpse, Elimae and 3AM Magazine among others, and in an anthology for Oregon’s sesquicentennial, Citadel of the Spirit. Some of the stories placed in literary contests, including the Writer’s Digest Writing Competition. Two, “Branding” and “She’s Got No Reverse,” appear for the first time.

I wrote many of these stories in the early 2000s (as “Stephen F. Anderson”) before concentrating on novel-length fiction and stubborn attempts at screenwriting. I hope you enjoy them.

Fiction

The Thing With Chick Is

Feisty old Chick Simon will risk arrest rather than admit defeat.

Bald Wig

Only humble barfly Karl can prevent another man’s violent mental breakdown.

A Cheap Con

A slacker abroad writes to trick his parents into sending more money.

Caving

The right girl can make even gloomy Gordy Holman get a life.

Charity

A husband stands up to his wife’s bigotry, risking all for strangers.

Branding

Sensing a world beyond the cul-de-sac, a nervy suburban kid fights back in his own way.

She’s Got No Reverse

An expat Irishman and an older American woman rebuild their lives together.

Asphalt Jornalero

A homeless man has to find out what killed his day laborer friend or he’s sure to take the rap.

Not Fiction

Team Boracay: 200 Miles South of Manila

I played in the Philippines' beach soccer national championship and somehow survived.

TriMet Summer

Circa 1980: Portland’s bus system and the Oregon Bottle Bill help fuel teen adventures on the river and soccer dreams in the big city.

Fiction

The Thing With Chick Is

Chick told himself to answer clearly — clearly as any old boozer would with that cop’s flashlight blaring in his eyes. First, though, he had to stop swaying. Headlights and streetlights blinked and blurred, blending with the fluorescent storefronts across the intersection, and the sidewalk seemed to dip and swell. Damn traffic, Chick thought. Stupid no-good strip malls.

Beyond the trailer park fence, the Mexican kids laughed and called his name. “Papa Cheeck!” they sang, “Papa Cheeck!” Manuela was there, and little Edgar.

Chick pretended not to hear them. He knew how this would have to go down. It would be a long night on a hard bench.

A car slowed for a look. The bicycle cop waved it on with his ticket book. He turned back to Chick. “So. Do a little drinking tonight?”

Chick’s head spun, and he swayed again. His fingers trembled. Got to show some willpower, he told himself. He was Churchill — no, FDR: he had steel leg braces all the way up to his knees. That was better. He squared his shoulders. “Little,” he said, pointing a thumb at his surefire Schwinn down and out on the sidewalk. “But I’m only riding my ole bikey.”

“Were,” the cop said and grimaced: white teeth replaced his thin moustache. Smartass kid, thought Chick. “How old are you?” the cop said.

“Seventy-seven — wait, seventy-eight. Just able to miss WW Two — and Korea.”

“Lucky man.”

“Maybe. Hell, officer, I was sticking to the sidewalk. And I was just about home.”

“How many you have?”

“Ta drink? Couple beers.” Chick nodded at his words, turning his back to the kids over the fence. “Yeah, couple.”

“Could you step back up on the curb, sir? Hate to have you get hit.”

“Right, right ...” Chick swayed again. Staggered. He tried to think of steel braces but he saw white dots. No good. The dots whirled, sending him into blackness.

The next thing Chick knew he was sitting on the sidewalk, the cop standing over him. “Just sit a while,” the cop said.

Over the fence, behind them, the kids had sat too — all in a line and silent, as if someone had turned on the TV and put in a video.

Another blackout. How long had it been this time?

The cop leaned his patrol mountain bike against the fence. Chick focused on the gleaming spokes and sprockets, and it helped bring him around. In the doctor’s office that morning, he had read how his own generation had cared more about the possibilities of such gadgets than of the gadgets themselves.

“Some trike you got,” Chick blurted. “Bet she’s got 30 gears.”

“Only eighteen, but they’re titanium,” the cop said, purposely not looking at Chick — or so it seemed to Chick. Then, the cop sighed.

A heat filled Chick’s neck, tightening his chest. The cop’s sigh had rubbed him the wrong way. It was a pity sigh.

“What am I doin’,” Chick snapped, “chatting with the cop’s going to bust me?” He rammed his fists in his pockets. “Ah, hell ...”

“Suit yourself, sir.”

To calm down, Chick took deep breaths. He gazed up into the black sky, to find a few stars if he could, but his head spun again. He lowered his head between his legs; he closed his eyes. When he looked up again, the kids were gone. He took another breath. Nice spring night, he thought — cool wind in the trees kind of night. The cop was sitting next to him. His legs were crossed, and with all his gear on looked to Chick like some sort of American Indian chief. They sat in silence.

It was all downhill from here, Chick told himself. Might as well shoot the shit. He cleared his throat. “Used to be a sportswriter,” he said.

The cop’s eyes flashed. “That so?”

“Sure, sure. UPI then the AP, nothing big time — had the local beats. High school, colleges, did the Dodgers for years — Portland Dodgers. Then there was the Trail Blazers, of course, and hockey, Soccer Bowl ‘75 —”

“I remember that: Pele was there, I was like five or something —” Voices screeched on the cop’s shoulder mike. Facing away, he placed his earphone in his ear and listened with a hard jaw. He turned back to Chick. “Where do you live?”

“Just over the fence here.”

“That’s what I thought. The kids —”

“I help out around the park, is all. Trailer’s in my wife’s name — she’s passed on.”

“I see.” The cop unlocked his legs. He talked softly now, like the nurses did at the clinic. “Mr. Simon, you know riding a bike under the influence isn’t better than driving a car. Seen it time and time again — you can still endanger lives, or kill people.”

“Or get myself killed,” Chick blurted, “don’t forget that ...” He stared ahead, trying to think. The blurs of traffic became crisp reds and whites, and across the boulevard the storefronts re-formed. There was the Coffee Cabin, Holiday Cleaners, Deportiva Taqueria — or whatever that said. This moment was clear, but nothing preceding it. He couldn’t even remember the bike cop sneaking up behind him — or wherever he came from. “Cops peddling the sidewalk,” he muttered, “man, that’s rich.” But the truth was, he had blacked out. Lost control. He could have peed his Wranglers.

“Truth is, I can’t remember,” he said, feeling at his inseams.

The cop nodded.

“Hit the fence, did I?”

The cop nodded.

“Didn’t hurt nobody?”

“Luckily, no. Not this time.” The cop sighed again, under his breath now. “Here’s the deal, sir — you could still be hurt somehow. It’s possible. If you let me call you an ambulance, it might just help things go better for you —”

“And what? Spare me some grief? No. Nothing doing.” Chick gave the cop a quick once-over. He saw he wore corporal stripes, and his cheeks shined like waxed apples. Looking away, Chick saw his bike down on the sidewalk. The chain was off; the handlebars were backward; the front wheel was bent. “I don’t know. Probably could salvage the fenders,” he said. He stood, though he had to lean against the fence. There. Damn right FDR.

The cop stood, stone-faced. “Well, in that case, I’ll have to do a few tests on you.”

“Fire away.” Chick planted his feet a good foot apart. In his mind, he could let go the steel leg braces. From here on out he was Chick Simon, Retired Small-Time Sportswriter.

The cop drew a mini flashlight about the size of a nice felt pen. He stood close before Chick. Chick could smell the tang of sweat. Smartass kid must be new to this, he thought. The cop blinked, a little longer than usual. Chick knew that look from pro athletes. The cop was clearing his thoughts. Game face.

He said, “Sir, now, if you could follow my light with your eyes as I move it from side to side, remembering not to move your head or jerk your eyes whatsoever.”

Chick made his head move his eyes. When his eyeballs got to either side, he made them bounce and shiver and jerk. The trick was not to overdo it.

The cop gave him nothing — no nod, grimace, nothing. He shined his bigger flashlight down to the sidewalk, forming a circle of light. He said, “All right, now we’re going to do a little exercise that goes like this.” He placed one foot directly in front of the other, his heel touching his toes, and again and again like some giant toy soldier. Chick pretended the sidewalk was swelling again. He swayed. “I’m going to ask you to do this just like I did, but nine times in succession. All right? Can you try that?”

“Sure ...” Chick lined up just right, like a gymnast on a perfect ten landing. But as he placed his rear foot before his front, his heel to his toes, he made himself wobble. His arms flung out for balance. He tried the next foot but tottered and reeled and landed on his knees.

Silence. Down for the count. Chick stayed down, letting his head hang. That should clear up any doubts, he thought. He caught his breath, and he stood.

The cop clicked off his flashlight. He stroked his thin moustache. He studied Chick with eyes scrunched up like raisins. His cheeks weren’t shiny anymore.

He said: “How many you have? Truthfully?”

Chick threw up his arms, letting them slap at his thighs. “All right, you got me,” he said, adding a sigh and really laying it on. He scratched at his head. “Had a six pack at the least, whisky or two, not ta mention the two pitchers down at The Gravy Train — or was it The Bull Pen? Man, I honestly can’t remember.”

“That so?” said the cop. “You’re really plowed, huh? Really tanked.”

“Mm. Yep.”

“I don’t believe you. No. I don’t think you’re drunk at all.”

“Wha? Am too.”

“No, you’re not. You’re faking. And you just faked failing that test.”

Chick had stopped swaying. His lower lip hung. He tried to summon FDR again, throw in some mean old Joe Stalin if he could, but it was little use.

The cop had tightened his lips — fighting a grin, it looked like.

Chick, avoiding his eyes, said: “I better check out my ole bikey, that all right?”

“Go ahead.”

As Chick bent to pick up his Schwinn, a small, clear, round dispenser fell out of his coat pocket and rolled over to the cop’s feet. The cop picked it up and inspected the pills inside. He read the label. His wide eyes found Chick. “These are prescription,” he said.

“They are? Well all right, so what if they are?”

The cop read on. He looked up. “You’ve ... had a stroke?”

Chick released a sigh, and he lowered his broken old bike back down to the sidewalk. “Couple,” he said. He spoke softer now, so his voice would not break. “But the kids over the fence, they don’t know.”

The cop spoke softer too — less monotone. His eyes moved across the black sky, and refocused on Chick. “My granddad had the same prescription. If you’re taking these, they must have you on a lot of the other ones.”

Chick stared at his bike. He kicked a tire. “A lot? There’s a whole mess of ‘em.”

“Thus the dizzy spells.”

Chick said nothing.

“Has there been any ... senile ... dementia?”

“Demon-what? What kind a word is that? I can handle it.”

“And diabetes too, I would guess.” The cop placed a hand on Chick’s shoulder. Chick let him. “The lights get to you, right? Headlights, store fluorescents, neon. That’s why you don’t drive. My granddad —”

“What about him?” Chick’s fingers ached, and they trembled again. He stuffed them in his pockets. “Here’s the thing — if I forget to take the right pills, well, crazy things happen. And that, officer, is the god-awful truth.”

The cop took a step back. “And you’re that stubborn, that proud, you’d rather sit in detox than admit it?” As he spoke, the cop slid his flashlight back onto his belt. He grinned, and he shook his head at his grin. He said: “Mr. Simon, I’d say you got more than a few years left on you.”

Chick thought about this — especially about that last thing the kid cop said. He shifted his dentures one way, then the other, and his eyes drifted, searching between the slats of his trailer park fence.

Published in 3AM Magazine, 2002.

Third Place, Willamette Writers’ 2001 Kay Snow Award.

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Bald Wig

Carter stepped off the bus and, looking each way, crossed the sidewalk. I let down my pint of amber and watched him through the smudged front glass. Nothing bothered Carter, I thought. He took his time. He opened the door with a creak. Dusky sunlight glowed in his blonde flat top.

“Carter,” Marty said from behind the bar.

Carter sneered at him. This struck me, since Carter was not the sneering type. He came in every Tuesday and always said something. Hey, he’d say. Hey.

Marty smoothed the ponytail frizz around his ears. “So what’ll it be? Usual?”

Carter said nothing, just kept on coming. As he passed I smelled fresh scent sport stick. His jaw was sturdy, his arms thick and pinkish. He looked like a workout trainer. He didn’t fit here, I’d always thought. He belonged in a suburban sports bar. I sipped and lifted the newspaper, stuck my head in. “Gunman Massacres Three at Elms Road Amusement Park,” read the headline. “Boy in Critical Condition.”

Carter found his usual stool, on the opposite end from me. He laid his keys about a foot in front of him, his wallet a half inch to the right of that. He set out a stubby chocolate-colored cigar and rolled it under his right hand, the clipper hidden inside his left like he wanted to do a magic trick with it. Then, he nodded to me. He never did that.

I nodded back. Hey.

“No usual,” he said to Marty. “Not today.”

Marty wiped at his ratty, eight-pocket hiking shorts. He slid Carter an ashtray. “No pint a bock?”

“No!” Carter snapped. He cleared his throat. He showed a smile. “No, I’d like a pint of wheat berry, a bald wig, and a ball peen hammer,” he said. His delivery sounded balanced, as if rehearsed.

“Very funny,” Marty said chuckling. “You hate berry beers.”

“I’m dead serious, champ.”

Marty shrugged. As he poured, Carter clipped his cigar. But he didn’t light it. He slid half the thing in his mouth, and bit down hard. It cracked, crunched. He chewed and swallowed, chewed, swallowed. Flakes stuck to his lips; others floated to the bar and found his fuzzy arms.

Marty’s smile dropped away. He set Carter’s wheat berry on the bar with a pop. Foam crept down the glass. “What the hell you doing?” he said.

“Eating my cigar,” Carter said, a gritty brown slime on his teeth.

Marty frowned with caution, as if fishhooks hung from the corners of his mouth. I felt for Marty. What a spot he was in. Only he and I knew Carter was a cop out in the suburbs. A corporal. Once a year, Marty told me, Carter played a clown in the County Sheriff Charity Circus.

Carter gulped and chewed. I watched from my newspaper. Act normal.

“Want a bald wig there’s that novelty store a block or so around the corner, always been there,” Ellis said as he took his stool in the middle of the bar. Ellis’ narrow, stubbled jaw was the color of lead. He had crow’s feet for eyes and a gnarled, flat nose. Lived in his old tan ski coat.

“Do your crossword, Ellis,” Marty said, and Ellis laughed a little too loud, like a weary department store Santa to a brat. He tore open a pack of Dorals and said, “Come off it, Martin, hey, got no truck with you ...”

Carter stared into his beer, holding it with both hands. I pitched Ellis the crossword and opened the sports section, thinking this will end soon enough. Happy Hour was next, seven to nine. So long to our orange and gray afternoon haze in which newspapers rustle, men in the booths speak low, and old friends vow to quit their jobs. The pub fills up. Marty’s new halogens send the long day shadows to corners, crevices, under the stools; and he turns up the music — his music: moody old Tom Waits and Leon Redbone, Sarah Vaughan. Kurt Weill tunes when he’s bummed. Marty’s dictatorial about his mix but it works: depressing, then elating, daring you to try and leave.

Carter looked up. “Don’t be scared,” he said to Marty. “Really, don’t be.”

“Leave it alone,” Marty said, “all right? Got happy hour soon.”

Carter peered through the swirling blue rays of smoke and thinning dusk — he’d found me. “Do you know what I’m saying, Karl?” he said.

Carter never talked to me; I never talked to him. Especially since my accident. I gave my sports page a shake. “Huh, know what?” I said but I was too late.

Carter said to Marty, “I just thought I’d warn you. Once things get a little wilder in here? I plan to stand on your bar and do a little dance — when I score that wig and that hammer, that is.”

Marty groaned and pulled himself away. Carter chewed down the rest of his cigar and popped the stub into his mouth. I watched openly now; he seemed not to care. He gathered flakes from his arm hairs and emptied them into his wide-open mouth as if it was trail mix. He washed this down and sounded a belch of approval.

Marty returned. He stood farther back, not touching the bar, his hands half-balled at his sides. “Carter, you gotta, you know, get a hold of yourself or you’ll have to go.”

“Why? Am I hurting anyone?”

“Yeah, he’s not hurting anyone!” shouted one of the bicycle messengers in the corner. There were two of them, smoking in the dark. Always.

Marty ignored them; he faced Carter. “Look, you’ve always been mellow. Quiet, polite, good tipper.” Carter said nothing. “Serious, it’s good to have a regular who’s a cop,” Marty added, but he jerked back. “Sorry, you probably don’t like strangers knowing you’re a — yeah.”

Carter’s eyes caught mine, then he glowered at his lighter, keys and wallet. “Doesn’t matter now,” he said.

“Oh? Oh, got ya. Man, I’m sorry.”

“You want a ball peen, got the one out in my pickup,” Ellis said. As he spoke he stared straight ahead, at the taps.

Carter shook his head. “I, I just want to be my own man anymore, you know?”

“Shore do kid,” Ellis said.

Marty snatched up Carter’s empty pint. “Now the both of you are creeping me out.” As he said this the first of the happy-hour crowd pushed their way through the door, three and four at a time — men in new suits, fraternity boys in shorts.

“Jesus, I’m behind, the new help’s late.” Marty set another pint in front of Carter. “I’m gonna leave you alone, let you simmer down. This is your last chance; I mean it now.” And he turned away.

The suits took booths; the frat boys filled my end of the bar, surrounding me. They yelled for Marty, who was in back turning on his music. One of them barked in my ear, “Dude, k’I borrow the sports page?”

I didn’t know what was worse: our new Carter or the outside world. I surrendered my spot for a quick game of video poker down the hall.

I returned four games and twenty lost dollars later. The place was packed. Marty’s new help had never showed. He was pouring pitchers four at a time. Ellis was gone. Carter sat alone, his pint still full. Next to him was the only open stool.

I could have chosen the door. Yet I pushed my way through to Carter. Sweat beads lined his forehead and upper lip, and his neck was blotchy. His eyes darted as I mounted the stool. He looked away. “I thought you’d left,” he said.

“Left? It’s Happy Hour.”

“Good. Ellis is coming back.”

Marty saw me and slid me a pint. I sipped for courage. I waited a few beats, looking around. “You pulled me over a long time ago,” I said.

Carter stared, as if trying to recall the name of a song. “I pull over lots of people.”

“You told me, my burnt-out tail lights were a traffic hazard.”

“Did I let you go?”

“With a warning. Thing was, I was drunk. I feel like an ass getting away with it.”

“Comes around.”

“Yes, and it did.” I tried to chuckle; I snorted. “Few months later? Got hit by a drunk. Shattered a shin, busted my jaw. Sent my girl — ex-girlfriend — through the windshield.”

Carter only shrugged. Comes around.

I took another sip. I said: “Marty told me, you do a mean clown in that circus charity. I just think that’s great.”

Carter pulled his pint close. “Ever since I could remember,” he said, “I liked helping people. Kids, you know?”

“Me too,” I said. “Tried to find a permanent teaching job, yet every year they hire fewer full-timers. And pay less.” I lifted my pint.

Carter let out a sigh. He turned to me. “We’re not the only ones. Did you know Ellis was a fireman?”

“No. I don’t know Ellis.”

“Took a fall in a burning apartment building, went back for a hamster or some stupid shit. Screwed his back. His wife left him.”

“Guy does seem a little bitter.”

“He’s not as bitter as he sounds.” Marty passed. Carter stabbed a finger at him. “Then there’s Marty. Know he has a Master of Fine Arts? That’s right. In music. Wanted to teach and write it — compose, you know? But who’d pay a guy to teach music, let alone write it? Compose it. Now he says he’s not talented enough.”

“Maybe he’ll find the guts someday,” I said, hoping all this was bringing Carter around.

The speakers pulsed above us. A silky voice crooned, “I’ll Buy That Dream.” Carter’s head swayed, just a little. One of the frat boys shouted; others chanted a drinking song.

Carter said, “Karl, don’t you ever give up.”

“Yeah, I know.” I slid my hand along the edge of the bar — it felt dry, and dusty, from ash and tobacco flakes like the ones now melting away in Carter’s stomach. “You told me about Ellis, Marty. I know myself. So that leaves you.”

“Me.”

“What’s with the wig crap? Freaking out Marty like that?”

Carter gazed at me — through me. The frat boys were shouting to a Johnnie Rivers tune. They danced; they moshed. Heads bounced and elbows flew; beer spilled.

“I used to do that,” Carter said, watching the bodies slam. His eyes had narrowed, and suddenly I could sense his mood, as if I’d been around him for years. The guy was getting edgy.

Marty had rushed up. He pointed at the moshers. “See that shit? Carter, need your help. I’m gonna threaten to kick ‘em out but I need a backup.”

“Say the word,” Carter said. He squared his shoulders. He gave me a sideways glance.

The last thing Carter needed was an adrenaline rush. I wondered if he carried a gun off-duty. Yet after five minutes of explaining, and pleading, the frat boys went back to their pitchers and Carter returned. He took a deep breath, chuckling. “Glad that was easy. I hate violence.”

“So do I,” I said, shaking my head, “So do I —”

Carter scowled. The fat vein at his temple bulged red. He slammed a fist on the bar. “Don’t freakin’ patronize me. I really do hate violence.”

“Okay, it’s cool, I know.”

What had I started? Carter threw back his full pint and panted, as if trying to breathe. I drank my beer but couldn’t taste it. He starting bouncing; his knees banged the wall of the bar.

“I gotta tell you something,” he said, “I gotta tell someone ... This morning, I got one of the first calls to Elms Road Amusement Park.”

At first I didn’t understand. Then it seized me, scraping at the back of my throat as if Carter had forced one of his dry cigars down it.

“Gunman Massacres Three at Elms Road Amusement Park. Boy in Critical Condition.”

My gut pinched and rolled, my heart tumbled in my chest like wet sneakers in a dryer.

“First thing I noticed was how still it was,” Carter said. “The elms made the air fresh. Sunlight on the scrubbed paths, smelled like salt. I heard a muffled shriek and a sob, far away ... Heading on, I hear on the receiver they’d apprehended a suspect at the other end of the park. But me, I found something else. I found the boy — the five-year old. He was lying on his back, in the grass. Front of the Haunted House. Funny thing was, you couldn’t see any blood unless you turned him over — damp grass soaks up a lot.”

My heart had stopped tumbling; it had lowered to my stomach, all warm and squishy. My mouth opened but nothing came out.

“He told me his name,” Carter said. “Zack Arthur. He was staring upward, he didn’t blink the whole time. Like he was searching for fun shapes in the clouds, you know? He had these green eyes that twinkled.” Carter cleared his throat. “Little Zack kept saying, ‘Zack is short for Zachary, Zack is short for Zachary ...’ He began to wheeze. Then, looking up at me, right freakin’ into me, he says, ‘Don’t be scared, mister.’ To me! Then his eyes lost their sparkle. He had trouble even blinking —”

“Wait. He didn’t die.” On the bar were stray newspapers. I grabbed at them. “He’s alive, the headline —”

“Is wrong. Zack died about the same time the afternoon edition hit the stands. I heard it on the radio.”

“How?” My eyes stung. “Who could do that? Where you holding the bastard?”

Carter opened his hands and stared into his palms. He said, “You know, I’ve seen a three-year-old stop breathing by the edge of a pool, her little lungs full of water, face pale. Eyes waiting to turn off. In a driveway, a baby under a station wagon. Seen the Horror on a mother’s face.” He sniffed. “It’s funny, though. All that’s left for me now are these ... impulses. Urges to make someone — anyone — pay.”

“I know. Wait, you don’t mean that. Not like that —”

“Don’t you preach to me,” Carter said. His eyes had glossed over. He brushed a hand through his flat top. He smiled. “You don’t get it, do you? Karl, I did Little Zack’s killer.”

I looked around, to make sure no one was listening.

“I called the EMTs, sure I did. But as I sat there with my man Zack, I hear this clicking noise. So I turn around. And the bastard’s standing there.”

“The gunman? But —”

“Must have been in the Haunted House. Believe me, an amusement park’s a bitch to search.”

“But they apprehended him. You said.”

“They said — the papers said. Turns out they’d snagged a homeless from the woods.”

“No.”

“Yes. Talk about hinky. I am screwed. He keeps pulling the trigger but he’s out of rounds. No go. So ... So he tosses the gun, drops to his knees, and he waits for it.”

It? I did not want to hear this. I stalled. “What ... did he look like?”

“Like me, you, Marty. It wasn’t so bad. It was as if someone was doing it for me. I moved behind him and nudged his head forward slightly — like the barber does when he trims the back of your head, you know? Then I walk off into the trees. Took a cab home. Showered, ate, changed, came here on the number 70 like I do every Tuesday.”

“Jesus. You think anyone knows?”

Carter nodded. “Oh, yeah. If Marty would ever get a TV in here we could watch it on the news.”

“This isn’t funny.” I grabbed Carter’s arm. “I mean it. And how could you leave that little boy?”

Carter pounded at the bar; I let go. Faces turned. “Don’t you get it? Wasn’t anything I could do.” He lowered his voice. “Anyway, anyway, won’t take them long to find me here.”

He was right about that. There was nothing more to say. We sat and sipped our beers, Happy Hour blaring all around us. Carter in a world I could not fully grasp, and me in wonder and horror at the same time. For Carter and the gunman had arrived at the same destination, yet from far different origins.

“Did it make you feel better?” I said finally.

Carter drank; he licked his lips. “Nah. More like I was cleansed.”

“Set us up right, boys!” Ellis had squirmed his way through the crowd. He shoved a cracked, vinyl Pan Am bag under our stools, pulled out a bald wig and held it up to the light. The sheer, salmon-colored rubber smelled like glue. Next, Ellis produced a ball peen hammer and placed it on the bar. “Damn right,” he said, snickering at us.

Carter stretched the bald wig over his head, snapped it on tight. It fit well; it concealed the edges of his flat top.

Ellis handed Carter a red nose. “Threw this in for effect,” he said and winked at me.

Carter slipped it on and Ellis cackled. Carter lit a cigar and thick blue-gray smoke gathered above us like a thunder cloud. He chugged his beer and yelled “Whoop whoop!”

“Keep it down,” I said, “Marty’ll call the —”

“Let him,” Ellis snapped. “Let him.”

“Carter the Clown, Carter the Clown!” Carter screamed and I heard myself laugh — anything to kill the panic. I saw Marty retreat to the kitchen.

Carter stopped; he lowered his cigar. Behind us, the bike messengers and frat boys stood arguing. Facing off. One of the messengers pushed at a frat boy.

Carter bolted over. He gathered the messenger’s ragged T-shirt in one fist and the frat boy’s soccer jersey in the other and slammed each against the wall, holding them there — wearing the bald wig. He whispered something in their ears then let them down, and the two disappeared through the same gap in the crowd.

He dropped back onto his stool, dazed. He read the look on my face. He said, “All I told them was, I was going to take them out with me if they don’t behave.”

Marty had bounded over; he’d heard every word. “That’s it,” he said to me. “The guy needs help. I’m calling.”

He didn’t need to. Carter saw the flashing lights before any of us. He flung his keys, wallet and lighter down the bar. He threw his pint at the taps. Glass shattered; beer poured out. Grabbing the ball peen hammer, he climbed onto the bar and almost slipped, kicking at air.

Happy Hour had stopped dead.

Marty started for Carter but Carter pulled a pistol from his sock, the chrome sparkling. All dropped; Marty crawled away. And Carter danced up there like some monster automaton: one leg up, then the other; the hammer up, then the gun.

Cops — Carter’s friends, I assumed — filled the front doorway. Their eyes white and wide.

“Drop it, Carter.”

“Do it dammit!”

“No joke now.”

Carter pranced up on the bar, swaying like a drugged circus bear then hopping like a rabid monkey, swinging his gun and bashing at his bald wig with the hammer, the blood seeping out and racing with sweat. The cops crouched.

I stood; I screamed waving hands. “Wait! Don’t!” My lips moved but I didn’t feel the words. I said: “I know him. He knows me. And I think, I can make him stop.”

Carter lowered the hammer. He grimaced downward, at me.

Published in 12-Gauge Review, 2003.

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A Cheap Con: An Actual Correspondence from a Fink Abroad

Dear Homefolks,

After your last refusal of financial assistance, your son Gordy has decided not to email you with any more bothersome pleas. Therefore I, as a friend of your Gordy, would like to inform you of his sad and increasingly sordid state since being left to his own means.

Prague

Arriving in this former Communist capitol for the first time, Gordy remarked: “I can’t believe how much it’s all changed.” He resolved to earn money from his juggling, and hooked up with an Australian performer named Wayne. Wayne promised to include Gordy in what Wayne called his “brilliant” routine, most of which consisted of Wayne inhaling amphetamines and Pivo before facing the tourist crowds, then toppling from his unicycle and slamming his cheekbone on the cobblestone, only to jump back up for more despite his hamburgered palms and bloodied mullet mane. As it turned out, Gordy was the straight man: his shocked reactions helped get Wayne laughs — and girls. As a friend, I advised against a partner all along. Soon, though, Wayne would hop on a night train to points unknown, leaving Gordy a half-empty fifth of Rebel Yell, three polka-dot bean bags and a sickle. Gordy tossed the beanbags from the St. Charles Bridge. He hocked the sickle at an open-air flea market.

Barcelona

I should not let your Gordy out of my sight for one minute. Here he befriended Dakota, a self-described “commune mother” from Montana. Dakota seduced Gordy into helping her with her so-called business, this consisting of squatting on plazas all day crafting natural fiber bracelets, anklets and “hair braids,” most of which Dakota traded for other travelers’ own natural fiber crap, or hashish, or sex with any man or woman under 20 with an accent (Scottish, preferably). I steered Gordy clear of her and on to the Costa Brava, only to see him nearly beaten up. For on the beach Gordy insisted on wearing his lime-green Speedo swimsuit and Dakota’s piquant patchouli oil, a sight and a scent that enraged a group of Irish soccer hooligans playing cards. One of these tattooed and sunburned men called Gordy a “wanker,” a “bleedin’ green shite” and a “poofter.” Gordy gave this man “the bird.” Thereupon the man “head-butted” Gordy, sending him to the cold wet sand and producing on his forehead a bean-shaped red knob that remains to this day.

Krakow/Auschwitz

Staring up at Auschwitz’s infamous Gate of Death, Gordy remarked innocently to the man next to him: “Dude, I can’t believe they let Spielberg leave all those movie sets up.” The man appeared to be a mild-tempered Swede, but turned out to be a sergeant in the Israeli Marines. Back in Krakow Gordy, nursing a tender jaw and bruised ribs, holed up in his pension and read (for the first time, I believe) several back issues of the International Herald Tribune. Soon after he was telling travelers he’s the bastard son of noted biographer, historian and lecturer David McCullough. He also boasted of being on a Fulbright scholarship. I spent many delicate minutes arguing against this direction, for the only thing worse would be if it were true.

Munich

At the famed Oktoberfest Gordy, ever drunker, danced on tables with Italian teenagers and did the “Y-M-C-A.” Later he was forced to urinate in his liter-size beer and drink from a vast, trough-style urinal after losing a bet with a Finnish businessman — something about the real-life nationality of the actor who played Sergeant Schultz on Hogan’s Heroes (American, it turns out). Gordy would top off the evening by vomiting in a streetcar all over a seeing-eye dog. It was I who argued for his release from deep within the tall, concrete Munich Central Police Präsidium for Mass Transit Crime and Subversion.

Further Episodes? After three months with Gordy I can state, as his only real friend, that his condition has not improved. Gordy concocts schemes daily. He has vowed to write a travel book. Just yesterday, in Belgium, he began rolling his own cigarettes and smoking them despite his ghastly asthma. He also filches the most costly liquor in my stock, absinthe (I am an importer of fine liquors, you understand).

Only my good counsel and a humane largesse can save your Gordy. His peculiar injuries and ailments require certain medicines. Therefore I email you in the hope that you’ll see fit to send me a serviceable sum which I’ll withhold and only disburse to your son in judicious payments based on specific criteria of need and reward as predetermined by me. I’ll leave the amount to your discretion. I suggest, say, $5000 at the very least.

Attached is the relevant bank account information.

Fondest Regards,

Jackie Bachman-Turner, Esq.

<< Swiss United Bank Konto Nr.doc>>

Published in Elimae, 2000.

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Caving

This has got to be the most crowded rest area ever. In the blue dawn fog it’s like a seedy carnival. Red, yellow and white lights flash — SUVs, motorhomes, buses and semitrailers. I steer between the rows of vehicles, slowing way down. People walk with jumbo mugs, they tread in circles talking on mobile phones, they smoke and laugh and chat. Could they all know each other? I wonder. What else does this dreary fog hold? I imagine biker gangs brawling, soft- and hard-core restroom trysts, truck-driver couples square dancing on the dewy grass.

I steer on, peering for a way through. People line up along the sidewalk, as if hailing the first of many taxis. But I’m no taxi and I don’t pick up strangers. I never even talk to them.

I stare straight ahead. Keep it steady. Don’t make eye contact.

Someone breaks from the pack. She lunges for my passenger door. She lands on the front seat.

“What are you doing?” My hands flap as if my wrists don’t work. “Don’t hurt me, what are you doing?”

“Just looking for a ride.” She shows me a toothy smile. “Sorry, you all right?”

“All right, all right,” I mumble. How could I forget to lock the door? “Yes, okay, but — you just don’t jump in people’s cars like that — especially when they haven’t locked them.”

She laughs, holding up a hand. “Never do it again, okay? Ever.”

I take a deep breath; I’m getting a hold of myself now. Got to figure this out. She has a large mouth. She has a petite frame. She has on brand-new hiking boots, a Gore-Tex Thinsulate anorak and she’s still smiling — a sure sign of a perky demeanor. Really not my deal at all.

She slaps her thighs. “So. Heading to Portland?”

A semi is behind us; its horn blares. We start. “That’ll wake you up,” she says.

“Yeah it will,” I say, releasing a nervous chuckle. When did I last chat with a woman like this — or any woman? As I drive on, my heart thumps higher. It wants up my throat.

She’s looking around the car. I forgot to Armor All the shifter. I wonder if she notices. “Your door,” I say, “it’s not shut all the way.”

“So you’re taking me? Primo.” She pulls the door shut. She has smooth skin and manicured nails. That surprises me. She smiles again.

I try a smile, too; it feels slow and heavy on my face, like goo. I peak in the rearview mirror: my forehead is pasty in the blue light, I have dark rings under my eyes and a bed head — my thinning hair has fuzzed up like a senile poodle’s. Still, I’m not looking too bad. We plod along. I brake, we coast, brake. Pass more people smoking. She waves at them; they wave cigarettes. “All that cigarette smoke,” I mutter, “I can smell it even in here.” She keeps smiling and waving.

Then it hits me. “I don’t see it,” I blurt, my head jerking around. “Don’t see it anywhere.” My palms warm with sweat and my voice warbles. “The little coffee trailer with the fading red stripe — you haven’t seen it?”

She stops smiling. “Excuse me?”

“The free coffee. Rest area sign said, ‘Free Coffee,’ I always stop for it. Why else you think I’d come in here?”

“Oh, that trailer. They were here but they left. Rotary Club, I think. With the bus breaking down and all they must have run out.”

“Run out? What bus?”

“My bus. Why do you think we’re all hitching rides? You don’t think I’m going to wait for another Greyhound, do you?”

“No. No, you’re right.” Cars pull out ahead, slowing us again. I sigh.

“Nice folks in the coffee trailer,” she says. “Chatty. One of those cute old guys was a child actor, Little Rascals, I think — but you already know that.”

“No. I’ve never really talked to them.”

“Oh.” Silence finds us. She pushes at her black hair, damp and stringy from the fog.

“There’s a towel if you want. It’s in the glove box.”

“Thanks.” She pops open the glove box. Atop my antibacterial handy wipes, first aid kit, owner’s manual, envelope of repair receipts, paintbrush, prescription sunglasses and no-fog cloth is a hand towel, neatly folded. She spits a laugh. “Wow, okay if I touch any of this?”

“Of course. Just, you know —”

“What? Don’t mess it up? You like things this way, don’t you? Orderly.”

“Is that bad?”

“No, no. Not in itself … The glove box hangs open. Her eyes are lowered. “Look,” she says, “I’m sorry to burst in on you, you’re obviously not used to distractions like this.”

“It’s okay; I’m okay.” Yet I slow, in case she wants out.

“Thanks for stopping for me.”

“Sure. But I didn’t really stop.”

“I know,” she says.

She hasn’t moved to get out. I do the gooey smile again. “Tell you what: I’ll reset the trip odometer — get the exact cost per gallon for when I drop you off.”

“Fine. All right.”

I fight the urge to shut the glove box. We clear the parking lot and approach the on-ramp. No cars follow us, as if everyone except us is trapped in the rest area forever — eternally parking, stretching their legs, getting fresh air, walking the dog, using the toilet without touching a thing. It could have been me in there. Things could always be worse.

Grinning, she holds up the paintbrush with two fingers. “What’s this for?”

“Use it to dust off my dash. Works great.”

She brushes the dash to and fro, and she smiles, as if the vinyl is her skin and she feels it tingle. “Nice,” she says. She sets the brush back in its place, whips open the towel and rubs her hair. Her hair is a deep, rich black. I recall my Lewis and Clark: she, my Sacajawea in scant togs of suede, turquoise choker and feather headband, guiding me to unknown bays and buffalo herds.

On the freeway now. I speed up. She chuckles as she rubs. “Hey, how about we turn on the radio?”

“It doesn’t work. It’s the original — I, uh, wanted to keep everything vintage.”

“It’s a Volvo.”

“Yes. ‘75 144.”

“Nice. Most of these are trashed. Skiers have them, windboarders, more outdoorsy types.”

“But they don’t take care of theirs,” I say. “They don’t take the time.”

“No, I guess they don’t.”

Up to speed. We have the whole freeway before us — four lanes. Here we are in the heart of the Willamette Valley. Vast green fields flank us — the most fertile farmland on earth. I can breathe again. The sun illuminates the lifting fog, shining through, and her olive-brown cheeks glow. She lays the moist towel on the back seat to dry. I let her. I hum and tap at the steering wheel.

“So what’s your name?” she says.

“Mine? Gordon. Gordy Holman.”

“Mine’s Maisie. Maisie Piccolo.”

“Nice name. It’s different.” Silence again.

“I work for the Forest Service,” she adds. “I’m an interpreter — a guide. Caves, mostly.”

“Really? You’re a spelunker?” Again, not what I expected at all.

“By default. I’m an expert on caves and cave habitats. But I don’t get up early or whatever and go caving for the hell of it.” She chuckles. “I mean, not unless there’s a spider colony —”

“What? No way.”

She turns to me grinning. “You don’t like spiders? Then you really wouldn’t like these. Most people don’t know there are whole categories of insects indigenous to caves.”

“Categories?”

“Sure, countless breeds — there in the darkness, crawling along the stalagmites, the allophane —”

“Stalagmites point up; stalactites hang from the ceiling,” I blurt. Why am I telling her what she already knows? Why did she have to tell me about all the insects? This is what I get for chatting.

“That’s ver-y goood,” Maisie sings — her guide voice, I suspect. “Are you into caves too?”

“Oh, no. No. That would be way too confined.”

“You should go. Most all of them are white — the cave insects, I mean. I love bats the best though. They’re really harmless; they just grub on bugs. Hey, can I turn up the heat?”

“It’s up all the way. Wait: you say they’re white?” Now I see Armageddon: me against the untold, underearth legions of albino insects. Have only I considered such a monstrous, sneaking menace?

Maisie stares, studying me. “Of course, if you’re one of these cave insects, and you don’t know about that big, other world out there, then you’re not going to miss that big other world, or even know what you’re missing.”

“That’s possible, too. Which leads me to another thought — maybe they don’t want to know.”

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s it,” she says.

I steal a glance at her. Both hands on the steering wheel. I say: “Did you, you know, learn all this cave stuff because you’re a … did you learn it when you were growing up?”

She glares at me. She sighs. “Yes, I am Native American. No, I did not learn this growing up — though I did live on a reservation, if you want to know.” She looks out her window, away from me. “Worked my butt off for it, too.”

“No, I didn’t think you didn’t. I just meant … I let the words trail off. That’s what I get.

We pass an exit. Cars merge. Some race past us.

“Look, it’s fine,” she says. “Don’t worry about it. Sometimes I’m a little sensitive.”

“Okay —”

“And what do you do?” she says. She’s grinning. “I’ll bet you’re a … you look like you own a record store — a hobby shop maybe. That’s it — a hobby shop!”

“No, wrong.” We pass a controlled crop fire. A monster spiral of muddy smoke reaches high above us. I lunge for the air vents, shutting them tight. “I have allergies,” I say.

Maisie helps me on her side. “Oh, man, so do I.”

I should ask which allergies, but I don’t. I drive a while, trying not to look at her.

She cocks her head at me. “What? What is it?”

“Nothing.” I drive some more. “How do you, just, do that? What you did back there?”

“Do what, Gordy?”

“Just jump in someone’s car. In my car. Be so, you know, outgoing?”

She smiles, but then her chin turns hard, and the smile straightens. “Here’s the deal: when you get knocked down, you either stay down or you get up again —”

“Shit! What’s that?”

A woman has run out into the freeway ahead, lugging a gym bag. I change lanes but she zigzags to anticipate me. I slow down; I have no choice. She’s slender. She wears high heels. She sprints straight for us, waving an arm and dragging the bag.

“What’s she doing now?” I let off the gas, slowing to a halt along the shoulder.

“No way!” Maisie tugs at my arm. “Stop, Gordy, stop, she was on the bus with me!”

The woman has a long mess of dark hair. She wears a red wraparound dress that looks like a vintage von Furstenburg, stretch pants underneath and a pink purse that reads, in sequins, “90% Sweet.” She marches over to my side.

Cars are flying by us now. This is not happening, I think, not on I-5 twenty miles south of Portland. Maisie pushes at my shoulder.

“This is not happening,” I say.

Maisie shouts: “Girl, you are crazy! Good for you!” The woman’s eyes bulge; she gasps and grasps her cheeks. “It’s you!” she screams, “Darling, it’s you!” By now her charade is obvious: she has a large nose and Adam’s apple, and hair on her upper arms. Her voice is deeper than she’d probably like; and she has an accent, something Mediterranean. Maisie reaches back between the front seats.

“Wait, no. We’re not giving her a ride too —”

Maisie glares. “What do you care? Just charge her.” She pops open the rear door. The woman drops in the back seat and twists her rear end into place — grinding the damp towel into my original felt seats. Perfumes and powders sting in my nose.

“Could you, uh, watch the towel —”

The woman’s hard black eyes find me. “Could you have some fucking courtesy,” she huffs in her gruffest she-voice. Maisie glares along with her.

“Please,” I say.

The woman clears her throat and hocks one out the window. “That’s better,” she says.

I drive a while. They whisper between the seats. I hear my name more than once.

The woman kicks at my seat. She barks: “You’re fucking charging me?”

“I don’t normally pick up hitchhikers.”

“Hey, if I was a hitchhiker, I sure as hell would not ride with a nut job like you.”

I shrug. They whisper again. We pass a sign: “Next Rest Area, 11 Miles.”

The woman says: “Can I smoke in here?”

“I prefer you didn’t.”

“Whatever you say, Gordy. That is your name, is it not? Lordy.”

A couple miles pass. Still the perfumes and powders. My nostrils will seal shut in protest. The two of them whisper and giggle. The woman pats the seat and says to Maisie in a flimsy southern accent: “Honey, if you can’t have something nice to say, come sit here next to me.”

Maisie, being petite, wriggles between the seats and climbs in back, and they start talking away, mostly about people on their bus. All the while the woman holds up a hand, as if she was allowed to smoke after all. For once I wish I had a radio. “Going to a party,” I hear the woman say. “Bunch a hairdressers and flight attendants I know, it’s all paid for. Basically, girl, I’m just a party hag — hell, I should rent myself out.”

Maisie laughs and slaps the woman on the wrist. It wasn’t that funny. I don’t like Maisie like this. Besides, somewhere beneath that vintage von Furstenburg resides a man.

Maisie catches me watching her in the rearview mirror. The woman catches Maisie catching me. A brand-new Porsche passes us going twice as fast — a yellow, purring blur. I switch lanes, pretend I’m busy with the road.

A booming voice fills my ears — the woman’s real voice: “My name is DQ,” she says.

“Oh,” I say. DQ? All I can think of is: Dairy Queen.

She and Maisie giggle. “Drag Queen,” the woman says. “I know, couldn’t I be more imaginative? At least be tacky.” She shrugs. “What can I say? There weren’t a lot of us back home. It sounded exotic at the time.”

“Show him the clipping,” Maisie says. “Come on.”

DQ releases a long sigh. She fishes around in her bag. She produces a newspaper clipping in a plastic sleeve.

Maisie leans forward between the seats and holds the sleeve before me. There’s gold dust sprinkled inside, but the clipping is legible. It’s a wire service story ten years old. Maisie, close to me, reads so I can watch the road. Her voice tickles and caresses my ear.

IRANIAN TRANSSEXUAL UNHAPPY WITH EXPERIENCE AS WOMAN

TEHRAN — An Iranian man who recently had a sex change to become a woman finds life as a woman insufferable in Iran, a newspaper said Friday.

The 26-year-old DQ (former name withheld) underwent a sex change last year despite strong parental opposition.

Soon she found it difficult to cope with the “restrictions” surrounding a woman’s life in the conservative Islamic society.

“I can’t go on living here, not after years of living as a man with no restrictions,” she told the daily Iran Mirror.

I can smell Maisie’s hair. Blackberries. I want to pick them. I can’t believe I just thought that.

Sex change operations are legal in Iran, but women struggle under the burdens of a legal code and a value system that severely limit their freedom of action …

Iran has a mandatory dress code for women. They must cover their hair and body. Men get on public transport through the front door, while women must use the back door.… Official statistics show suicide rates among women far outstrip those of men, which is the opposite of Western societies …

As Maisie’s sweet voice fills my ear, I wonder at the guts these two women have. The balls. Meanwhile, I’ve faced life my way. Sure I have. I stick to a highly developed network of rest areas offering free coffee. I speak to no one if I can help it. I Armor All my shifter.

“You just winged it?” I say to DQ. “You just came over here?”

“Of course,” DQ says. Maisie sits back down; she and DQ share a knowing glance. “What matters,” DQ adds, wagging a finger, “is not that you get knocked down. Oh, no. It’s getting up again. For one day you must risk something that matters.”

Maisie nods along, gazing out the window. We are passing a field of sheep.

I feel an emptiness in my stomach, as if I’m hungry though the thought of food makes me nauseous. Some might say I’ve never even let myself get in a position to be knocked down. Never risked a hair. Screw them, I say.

As I drive and think, I feel DQ’s dark eyes on me.

“Tell me,” she says. “What do you do?”

“Guess — no don’t. I’m a courier.”

“Ah. You mean, like one of these bike messengers?”

Maisie watches now.

“No, that’s too dangerous. I drive a little delivery car. Kind of like a taxi driver but without the passengers.”

DQ looks to Maisie. They neither smile nor frown.

“And you have been doing this for some time, have you not?”

I nod. The traffic is denser now — cars travel all four lanes.

DQ taps a finger to her chin. “By the looks of you, Lordy, I dare say you made yourself an outsider. Yes. That black t-shirt. The pale skin. You could have a wonderful tan if you wanted —”

“Tell me one thing,” Maisie blurts. “If you could know all you know now, say, when you were fifteen and listening to obscure new-wave bands or whatever you do in the suburbs, daydreaming about hanging yourself, would you have, I don’t know, gone out for sports instead? Dropped out, traveled? Started your own business maybe. Whatever. Whatever got you out in the world.”

“Huh? No, I …” Heat fills my head. My heart moves all cool and squishy in my chest.

I could drop them off right there, I remind myself. I have the power. I do.

“Well?”

“Maybe,” I hear myself say. “Maybe I would have. I don’t know. How can you know?”

Maisie looks to DQ, who says: “By not making choices in life, by not taking chances, you are still making choices. Avoidance is a choice in itself.”

“It’s worse,” Maisie adds. “It’s missing out.”

I wave hands; I yell: “Wait wait wait. I made a choice here — I picked you two up.”

“Sort of,” Maisie says.

“Fine. Good. Then how’s this for a choice — how about I drop you off right now?”

“Well, that would be your choice,” says DQ.

Next exit, Wilsonville. Portland’s outermost suburb. Wilsonville has connections to city buses. It would take a while, but they could get downtown with no problem. I speed up.

What does Maisie see in me? I wonder.

The traffic is so dense now you have to look, signal and look again to change lanes. None of us speak as we approach the Wilsonville exit. I look for an opening, signal, look again. I steer into the right lane.

Yet I speed on past the exit.

Miraculously, the heat leaves me. We near a blue sign. It reads, “Rest Area,” and below that, “Free Coffee.”

I pass that, too. Now the squishiness fades.

In the rearview mirror, I see Maisie and DQ share a smile.

“Your name,” I say to Maisie, finding her in the mirror, “it’s from Greek, right?”

Maisie beams. “How did you know?”

“I just know.”

Maisie blushes. “It means precious pearl.”

“Pretty,” DQ says. She adds a merry shake of her head.

I’m on a roll now. I smile, letting the sun hit my teeth.

Cars, exits and strip malls everywhere. Connecting highways loom and merge. Portland has swallowed us fast. We drop DQ off first, at the Target store downtown. We stand on the busy sidewalk, and I glare at the people giving us the eye. DQ and Maisie exchange phone numbers. They hug.

DQ turns her broad shoulders to me. She reaches in her pink sequined purse.

I wave a hand. “No, no charge.”

“All right.” DQ smiles. She shakes my hand so tightly that my fingers stick together. “Good luck, Lordy,” she says. And she winks.

“You, too. Thank you.”

Back in the car. Maisie is in the front seat. We sit through stoplight after stoplight. She’s grown quiet. Another stoplight. My hands tighten around the steering wheel. I sit up straight.

I say, “Hey, what kind of allergies do you have?”

“Huh? Oh, dust mites, some grasses. Cat dander, I think.”

“You’ve been checked. That’s good. ‘Cause I was just thinking, I’ve heard about people who are allergic to each other, actually physically allergic, and I wouldn’t want that to happen.” The words tumble out so fast I can’t stop them, as if the things I say are forming my thoughts. I say: “So what would you think about, you know, going to see a movie or something sometime. Dinner maybe. I’m buyin’.”

She sits up straight. Her eyebrows have lowered; she’s smirking at me.

I clear my throat. “I would like it if you did. Because, well, we really need to talk about those white insects of yours. We can outwit them, I think, me and you. I already have some ideas.”

Published in the Paumanok Review, Autumn 2004.

Honorable Mention, 2001 Writer’s Digest Writing Competition.

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Charity

Marshall’s wife Karin drove them far north of the city, where the telephone poles stood crooked and hulking airport freight jets passed low under the clouds. Karin had a map on her lap. Marshall offered to read it but she reminded him, with a huff, that he got carsick that way. Once he’d thrown up on her right thigh — on a brand-new pleated skirt.

“Say you do find these people,” Marshall said. “You can’t ask for it back.”

“Can’t I?”

Glaring at him, Karin accelerated through a yellow light. They passed corner markets with bars on the doors. Taverns had no windows. On any other day Karin, in her crisp blue pantsuit, might have been driving to the Park Village Mall, the Scandinavian Society, Tomorrow Lutheran Church, or the Children’s Hospital where she volunteered leaving voice mails for local society columnists. And there he was — a short and graying fifty-year-old in tight damp multicolored cycling clothes, riding in the passenger seat of an aging Mercury sedan. His silver helmet rested on his lap.

“You’d left before the sun came up,” she said after a long silence. “I rolled over; you weren’t there.”

“I did twenty miles.” He had been getting up earlier, and almost every day, aching for the freedom of his rides. He couldn’t explain why. It surely wasn’t the weight he was losing, since he’d only dropped five pounds in the last six months.

The streets were oily, the few sidewalks cracking and rutted. Overhead, power lines drooped. Glancing at her map Karin turned onto a street called Violin, and her lips locked tight. This happened when she was about to reprimand a waitress, a grocery checker, the teens who never wiped the window right at the car wash.

They passed one-bedroom houses with asbestos siding and chain-link fences, some with gravel driveways. The fiberglass shell of a fishing boat here, there a 20-year-old Camaro on blocks, its engine gone. Out in a yard, a faded plastic baby buggy lay on its side. Karin shook her head. Their own driveway was spotless — pressure-washed every couple months.

Marshall had felt lucky he’d caught Karin just as she was accelerating out of their garage. Now he wasn’t so sure. He could imagine the brief conversation that had sent her on this, her mission. Karin had given their old dining set to a local charity. But Karin, being Karin, had to call the charity and see who got their dining set. The charity had resisted, citing confidentiality, but Karin had demanded and, after adding a kind joke, had gotten her way. Forced out one last chuckle, most likely, as she wrote down the address.

They passed a block-sized park of brown grass, and the houses got better. Karin slowed before a mauve bungalow that had trimmed bushes and a brown picket fence. I could live here, Marshall thought. We could. Life would be simpler. He would travel, write a book, climb a fucking mountain. Something.

Karin pulled in the driveway. “I prefer you stay in the car,” she said, not looking at him.

“Fair enough,” Marshall said. He watched her march up the driveway. By the time she reached the front door her gait had changed to a confident, casual sashay. Like this she could have been a real estate agent, one of those million-dollar producers.

The door opened. A woman’s head appeared, then her stout body. Her hair was short, almost shaved. She was black. Marshall leaned forward for a better look. Karin was talking. In introducing herself she was sure to have stressed, as always, that her name was pronounced “Car-in,” and not “Care-in.”

As Karin spoke the woman fingered the collar of her shirt, her eyes peering, as if she couldn’t hear — as if to say, just what is this really all about?

Drapes parted in a window at the far end of the house. Marshall watched them close and then part barely, just a sliver. He wondered if Karin had noticed it. Doubtful.

The woman led Karin inside.

As Marshall waited the sun broke through the clouds, heating up the car. He began to sweat in his riding clothes, but not like on a ride. The folds of his waist and the back of his knees grew hot and wet. His thighs and arms stuck to the leather. And he was thirsty, and hungry. He should have grabbed a banana, candy bar, something.

A door slammed — the front door. Karin charged down the driveway lugging a chair. The black woman followed tugging at the chair, crying so hard it looked as if she was laughing. Karin’s face had gone hard and pale, as if she had been wronged in some profound yet senseless way. She yanked at the chair, freed it, and continued on down the driveway.

Marshall fumbled with the door handle and hurtled out of the car.

The woman shook her head at his strange and colorful uniform, stepping back —

“No, wait,” Marshall said, “we’re not here to harm you.” Karin was unlocking the trunk and shoving in the chair. “Are we, honey? Karin? What the hell you doing?”

The chair was made of a dark carved wood, like something in a cozy pub. One of four, it belonged to the kitchen dining set they had bought for their first year anniversary. For two years it stood in the kitchen. Karin polished it weekly, at first. Then, for years, it sat under boxes in a far dark corner of the basement.

Karin slammed the trunk shut and started back for the house. Marshall made his way around the hood, his hands out to calm the woman who stepped back, stammering, “Please don’t, it was given to us.”

“I know. And no one’s going to take it back,” Marshall said.

Hearing this, Karin stopped and eyed Marshall as if he was a questionable stranger just showed up — a wild-eyed transient, or some gloomy fill-in mail carrier. Good, at least she’s reasoning this out, Marshall thought. Snapping out of it.

“Karin,” he said. “We’re not going to take the woman’s chair. It’s hers now.”

“No.” Karin pushed by the woman for the front door.

The woman retreated to the porch, tears rolling off her cheeks. Marshall took small steps toward her, his cycling shoes clicking on the concrete. “I’ll sort this out. Okay? I promise.”

Karin was back outside, holding another chair above her head as if she was going to heave it out into the street.

They heard a roar and a squeal.

A weathered old minivan missing half its grill screeched to a halt at the end of the driveway — blocking it. Blocking their Mercury.

A white woman with long black hair barreled out of the minivan. “What the fuck,” she shouted, “I get a call at work and —”

“And who are you?” Karin held up the chair like a shield.

The woman planted herself between Karin and the house, looking down on Karin. “Judith. Judith Page. Wanda’s partner. Who the fuck you?”

Karin gasped. She retreated a step and staggered, as if losing her heel in a driveway crack. Judith stepped forward. Karin retreated another step, feeling for the Mercury’s hood. Judith puckered her lips, and she grinned. “What’s a matter, all this too much for ya honey?” she said in a lower, silkier voice. “That what this is about?”

Karin opened her mouth. Nothing came out. She shook her head.

Judith stomped into the house and slammed the door behind her.

A jet boomed overhead, killing all sound. Marshall glanced one way down the street, then the other. Neighbors stood in their front yards, watching them and smoking. Back at the house, he saw the drapes open and close again.

He clapped his hands together. “Okay, time to go. Honey. Now.”

The front door flew open. Judith tramped down the driveway to Karin with fists balled. “Listen bitch, I see right through your bullshit. Wanda doesn’t, but I do. That dining set was donated.”

Karin backed up, feeling for the driver’s side door handle. “I’m not leaving,” she said, “I’m not leaving till I get it back.” She dropped into the driver seat, locking the door.

“Look, both of you,” Marshall began to say —

“Shut up.” Judith started around the hood for him. He got in on his side and locked his door. Judith stared them down from the front of the hood, her hands clamped to her waist. She spat on the hood and turned back for the house.

A minute passed, then another. Another jet passed overhead.

Karin and Marshall sat rigid, staring straight ahead. “There’s only one way out of this driveway,” Marshall said.

“I’m not leaving,” Karin said, her voice cracking. “They ... they don’t deserve it.”

Ten minutes later. More clouds moved across the sun, painting shadows and light on the hood, filling the sky with gray and dark. Marshall and Karin sat in the car. Karin had gone silent. She grasped at the steering wheel with white knuckles. Fifteen minutes. Neighbors had moved nearer, trolling around on the other side of the street, talking and smoking, hands in the air. Down a few houses sat a white van with a satellite dish on top. Every couple minutes it rolled forward a few feet.

“TV van,” Marshall said. “Oh boy.” Then he caught the glint of blue and red lights. His heart stopped and started in again, thumping. “Please, tell me that’s not what I think it is.”

A police car pulled up and stopped on the other side of the minivan, where they couldn’t see it. Marshall imagined cops in riot gear, he and Karin on TV in orange prison jumpsuits, expensive criminal lawyers. A headline, something like: “Arrest Blows Local Postmaster’s Retirement.” He put on his cycling helmet.

Karen made a snorting sound.

On the other side of the minivan, though, nothing happened. No one appeared.

Marshall put a hand on Karin’s knee. She let him. This was something. He was going to end this right here. All she had to do was give it up. He could talk to them.

“Charity isn’t negotiable. Conditional,” he said. “You gave it to these people, and they deserve it —”

“No,” she said. “No.”

He removed his hand. He looked away, sighing. He was nearing the truth of it all, and it squeezed his chest tight. He got the same tightness when anyone asked Karin if they had children. Karin always gave a hearty chuckle. “Oh, no. Oh, please. We have our little terrier,” she would say. Never looking to him. “Seriously, who has time? I have so much going on, and we travel so much.” Even though their only trip in the last three years was a weekend at the beach.

He put his hand back, on top of her fingers.  “This isn’t about this Judith and the other woman being partners, is it? Not really. Not down deep.”

Karin’s eyes had closed. Her hand was neither cold nor hot. It was a wax form, unmoving.

They heard a car door open, shut. Marshall couldn’t see it. He strained to look, his helmet knocking at the headliner.

Karin bolted — out the car and up the driveway and into the house.

A cop rushed up the driveway. Marshall got out and followed around the hood.

The cop turned and straight-armed him, pinning the back of his knees to the bumper.

“Ow.”

“Sir,” said the cop, “I’m going to have to ask you to wait out here.”

“Okay, yes, sir, but — you don’t understand.”

The cop’s features were lean and spartan, like those of the young cyclists who regularly passed Marshall climbing Iron Mountain Road. The cop gave Marshall a once-over, which apparently replaced any need for a frisking. He said:

“Are you the woman’s wife? — I mean husband.”

“Yes.” Marshall waved a hi.

“You’ll still have to stay out here.”

“But, I could help.”

The cop considered this a moment. His mouth shifted one way. Then he spun Marshall around and planted his palms to the hood. Another police car showed. A second cop came up the driveway, the first cop said, “Stay here, sir,” and together the two cops approached the front door taking long, careful strides. Marshall watched them over his shoulder. They knocked. The door opened. They went in.

The TV van had moved up two houses. A man in a fleece vest was lifting a camera to his shoulder. Marshall didn’t want to face the street but his hands were glued to the hood, since the cop had put them there, and so he stared at the hood, panting, trying not to panic. His heart seemed to swell and rise up his throat. The air was thick and then thin, the street scenes spun around him, he could hear a child two houses down saying “look at the funny man, look at the funny man” and then he heard nothing and his head was heavy and it rushed and whirled and he couldn’t breathe.

He looked up. The world seemed somehow … reset. A kid who had been circling on his bicycle was now far down the street. The cameraman was leaning against the minivan, waiting. Marshall had blacked out, he must have. Oddly, though, he could breathe deep and easy now. He felt light, and strong, like all those young cyclists put together. His hands were not glued after all, he found. He detached them from the hood. He removed his helmet, tossed it in the grass and strode up to the front door.

He turned the door handle and walked in.

It was dark. His eyes adjusted. In the living room he passed Judith and Wanda. Wanda sat on a sofa hugging herself, as if shivering. Judith stood next to Wanda, dwarfing her. Judith shook her head at him.

He kept going. He found the kitchen. The cops started for him, but then let him come.

Light filled the room, from the kitchen nook’s three windows. His and Karin’s anniversary dining set occupied the nook, two chairs left. Karin sat in one chair, her back to the windows and her face dark. She slumped and stared into the table, as if able to see her reflection in it.

The second cop left for the living room. The first cop placed both hands on his belt and said to Karin: “Ma’am, you will be arrested and tried for theft, do you understand? These two nice women are giving you a break. All you have to do, is leave it.” He was repeating this for Marshall’s benefit.

Karin said nothing.

“Make no mistake, ma’am — you will be arrested.”

Nothing. Marshall made eye contact with the cop. The cop nodded — go ahead. Marshall sat, at the opposite end of the table. He could feel the windows’ warmth; his face had to be glowing in the light, and this lent him even more new power. He sat up straight. He cleared his throat.

“I should have done something about this a long time ago, but I didn’t want to lose you. We both pretended it wasn’t there. That we were fine with it.” The words flowed out, effortlessly, as if someone were speaking them and he only moved his mouth. He said: “If you don’t let this go, I will leave you. Right here and now. Today.”

Karin looked up, her eyes still hard.

Marshall banged on the table. The cop straightened; the second one rushed back in. “I’ll give you five minutes,” Marshall added, and he stood again.

Minutes passed. The second cop went in and out, talking into his shoulder microphone. Karin stared into the table.

“Officer, do what you gotta do,” Marshall said to the first cop.

Karin stared on. One tear dropped to the dark wood, glistening.

They heard a voice, faint but growing louder. A small voice. It came from that corner of the house where the drapes had parted.

The cop looked into the living room and turned back smiling. The small voice said, “I just want to see them, mommy.” A small, dark-haired head appeared in the kitchen doorway.

“It’s okay, Max, go on,” Judith said from the living room.

Young Max waddled in, scratching at his cartoon pajamas. He planted his feet far apart and looked around, taking it all in.

Karin’s eyebrows raised. She wiped at her face.

“Well, hi,” Max said to her. He turned to Marshall. “Hi.” He turned to the cop. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Marshall and the cop said.

Judith and Wanda had moved to the kitchen doorway. “This is Max,” Judith said. “He likes sports, but he also likes hobbies. He really likes to paint things. Don’t you, Max?”

“I really like to paint,” Max said. He turned back to Karin. He stood at the table and felt its edge. “What if we painted this?” he said. “Me and you. We could make it a new color.” He added a smile.

Karin’s mouth opened. She smiled.

Max’s face straightened. “Don’t you worry. I’d let you paint too. We could do it together. Just like this …” He ran an invisible brush across the table, and he hummed.

“You know, I think that would help, Max,” Marshall said. “Wouldn’t it?” he said to Karin, looking to her.

And she nodded, yes.

Published in Fiction Warehouse, 2004.

Back to Table of Contents

Branding

“You are going out there,” growled Ronny Wilkie, “you’re going out if I have to make you.” Kirby Ford and Ronny Wilkie crouched behind the picnic table bench set on its side — their only bulwark from the enemy across the lawn. The old wood bench was slippery gray from the rain falling so hard it sounded like shaking chains. Kirby’s knees and elbows were numb from the cold, muddy grass. He liked how this felt. He was like an ancient raider — a Visigoth king, like Alaric the First. The rain was nice, too. It took away the sour smell of the grass.

Kirby had carved his name in the bench. He smiled at his handiwork: “KF the First, 1978.”

Ronny glared at him, squeezing a tennis ball in each hand. He cleared his throat with a screech.

“You can’t bean me,” Kirby said, “we’re on the same team this time.”

“Duh,” Ronny said. “Who you think made the rules? Who let you scratch up my bench?”

“All I m-m-meant was, we only got four balls left.”

“Yeah and we’re getting slaughtered — no thanks to you. You know I’ve never lost a game. So you’re going out when I tell you.” Ronny cleared his throat again. He spat over the bench. “I don’t care if you are the youngest. I don’t care if you do stutter.”

Kirby’s neck filled with heat. So what if Ronny was almost 13. That was only two years older. He blurted: “There was this Visigoth king, Alaric, they say he probably stuttered.”

Ronny sneered. “This what? Huh? I don’t know no Rick —”

Thwack! Thwack! Two hard wet tennis balls smacked the other side of the bench and rebounded into the middle of the lawn where they sat, as plunder. This no man’s land was about the length of a driveway. Every time the other side fired, more balls sat out in the grass to be rounded up. Getting at the balls meant risking a barrage of hard wet warheads, black eyes, bruised ribs, sore nuts even. That’s why the game was called “Brand.” The prize varied: Tupperware bowl of frozen strawberries; beef jerky they stole from the 7-Eleven; can of someone’s dad’s beer; pages torn from Swank, Beaver or Hustler … Or, a promised look at Tami Sweeney, pants down.

Ronny’s head perked up. “Hear that?”

“I don’t hear anything,” Kirby said, though he knew what the silence meant. Bouncing on his elbows, he turned to face the patio. Tami Sweeney stood leaning against the frame of the sliding glass door. She had on tight white bell-bottoms and a denim shirt she’d twisted into a halter top. She smiled out at the yard, fingering the puka shells around her neck, and she sucked on the puka shells. Kirby liked watching her, but watching her confused him. He could guess what a Visigoth chieftain was supposed to do, but what about him?

The other side shouted: “Weenies what ya doin’ over there, circle jerk?” Giggles and banter followed. “Screw you!” Ronny yelled back. In the gray light Ronny looked so pale he was almost blue. His red hair was thick and flappy-floppy on the sides, yet on top it was thin and see-through from the rain. Kirby wondered if this meant Ronny would be bald one day, like Kirby’s dad Marty, a mailman. Ronny would look like Bozo the Clown. Kirby didn’t care about being bald. He hoped that he would never be a mailman, though something about being a clown sounded sort of strange and cool.

“What are you staring at, Ford? You think too much.”

“We need to wait, Bozothaclown. Till they use up all their balls. That’s when we go out for the balls, they’re almost out of them —”

“No. No more waiting. Tami’s here so now’s the time. What did you call me?”

“Nothing,” Kirby said and shrugged, thinking, why didn’t any of them wear rain hats? It was raining, wasn’t it? But Ronny Wilkie said rain hats weren’t cool. He also said blue wafflestompers were cool, while Kirby had decided they definitely were not. They looked like dorks in their blue boots with red laces — Leif Garrett look-alikes, all of them. He preferred chukka boots.

Ronny rose to his knees and looked out. “Bozo,” Kirby added under his breath as Ronny pitched two balls and hit the deck as the other side returned fire.

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! followed by whoops and shouts.

“Got Schneider,” Ronny panted, but Kirby doubted it. Schneider never went out for balls either. The last game Kirby ventured out he took four hits in the leg, which became big brown bruises (like an overripe banana), which forced him to sleep on his back.  All of which hindered his weekly kite flying.

There had to be a better way, Kirby told himself. Brand games lasted hours on end in Ronny Wilkie’s backyard. Teams of equal number took shelter at either end of the lawn, each team behind a picnic table bench on its side. The team that ran out of tennis balls was almost always the loser, because the other team could then charge and make flanking runs and pelt the enemy until their hit totals were up. Whoever got hit ten times was out — and out of the prize. So, Brand was basically about outlasting the enemy’s attacks, and with just enough power left to strike back. Kirby had learned the word for this. It was “attrition.” He looked up words when he was alone reading about Bull Run, The Wright Brothers, Battle of the Somme. It was one of these books, Lives of the Ancient Raiders, that said Alaric the First probably had a stutter, too.

Tami, still in the doorway, pulled the orange drape around her and giggled at them, throwing her head back. Then she disappeared back inside. She had to be today’s prize — the prize they hardly talked about, but always fought longest for.

The rest of Kirby and Ronny’s team had been hit ten times. Kurt, Brett, Ritchie and Gregg were either inside playing Pong on Ronny’s old RCA or going out front to shoot baskets with Ronny’s faded, red-white-and-blue Bicentennial basketball. Old Mr. Ziegelbaum across the street hated the sound of that basketball. He had told all their parents it “sounded like gunshots.” Everyone called him Mr. Z. They often heard him hammering and sawing in his garage but always with the door closed. He had rabbit cages in his backyard. One night Ronny and some older ones sneaked out and spray-painted “Jude” on his cages, and it was supposed to be a big secret deal, because Ronny’s mom’s boyfriend, Kenny, swore Mr. Z was a Jew. “That or he was a Nazi war criminal,” Kenny had told them once inside Ronny’s backyard tent, surrounded by the cool, late summer darkness. Kenny always had a tangy yet charred odor from his generic-label beer cans and Pall Mall cigarettes. Like Kenny, Ronny said the words “Jew” and “Nazi” as if only he knew what they really meant. He’d pause and watch everyone’s eyes before saying them.

Of course, painting the cage had only made Mr. Z meaner. He would shuffle to the end of his driveway, wave a cupped hand at them and curse in foreign words.

Ronny spat again. “But don’t go before I say,” he snapped. Kirby said nothing. He drew his rain hat from inside his sock and pulled it over his curly wet hair. This stiff, plastic, see-through hat was basically a hood without the coat. His mom made it herself, after a design she saw at Kmart (the bus driver had shook his head at it and said, “Man, kid, you look like Aunt Jemima from the 25th century”).

Ronny glared again. “Take that stupid hat off.”

“No.”

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Three more balls in the middle of the yard. Getting closer. Kirby rolled on his back and stared straight up, at the fir branches high above. All around them, twigs, leaves and trunks trickled and dripped. The rain was in everything. It had soaked into Kirby’s brown corduroy coat. The rest all had ski coats or vests; some had rainbow patterns, while others had country yokes and pearl buttons. Went well with their blue wafflestompers, Kirby thought. Visigoths wore fur and suede and leather, not some bright cartoony ski vest.

Ronny was still glaring, breathing heavier. One nostril made a whistling sound. “I said, take it off.” He pushed up the sleeves of his quilted, red-white-and-blue ski coat.

Kirby pulled the hat over his eyes, like a GI at rest. “This is no time to be whistling,” he said.

Ronny flicked the hat from his eyes.

Kirby sat up. “Why should I go out?” he said, glaring now too. “You’ve never gone out.”

Ronny stared a moment. He looked one way, then the other. He leaned closer, and one side of his mouth curled upward. Kirby could smell the whole milk on him; they all drank milk, the Wilkies (they drank it in buckets). Kirby, on the other hand, had been seriously considering a lifetime diet of grape Tang only. Ronny said: “Since I made the rules, since this is my yard, I do what I want. Whatever I want. So if you don’t go out when I tell you, I won’t let you have any of the prize.”

“You mean the T-T-Tami prize,” Kirby stammered. He’d lost his glare.

“That’s right — T-T-Tami.”

Thwack! Thwack! “We got you now Wilkie!” yelled the other side.

Tami was back at the sliding glass door. She sat painting her toenails, one leg high up on the doorframe. She’d changed into a red and white striped tube top. They could see her white freckled shoulders. Kirby felt hot, down low in his stomach.

Seeing Tami, Ronny fell silent too. He stared at his pale blue fingers and, for a brief few seconds, the two of them seemed equals. The Tami prize had evened everything out. Ronny was not older, and certainly not wiser; and Kirby was not younger and smarter. Ronny would not be bald and Kirby did not stutter. Suddenly Kirby was cold all over, and deep in his bones. Ronny, he realized, was the last thing he wanted to be.

Ronny said, growling again, “How many times you been hit today, Ford? None, that’s how many.”

“That’s right. Same as you.”

“So you can get hit six, seven times and gather us up a lot of balls in the process.” Ronny showed him a grin now. Kirby had never seen him like this, bearing all his big teeth. The grin looked strained, and painful, as if he was showing his gums for the dentist. Kirby would rather watch him spit. Ronny scrambled closer. “Yeah, and then we’ll show ‘em, right?” he said, “yeah, and then, Kirb buddy, we’ll keep her all to ourselves, just you and me. Tami I mean. Right? Right. Forget what I said about no prize.” He placed a hand on Kirby’s shoulder. “Seriously. And after that, we’ll play Pong.” He was giggling now, digging his fingernails into the wet grass, so deep that Kirby could practically feel the ground churn, up into his own fingernails, veins, bones, marrow. This made Kirby even colder — frozen even, and his teeth wanted to chatter, which meant a stutter for sure. He had never really feared Ronny, until now.

Ronny went on: “And then, after dark, we’ll sneak out and hit old Mr. Z’s, get him real good this time.” His grin had fallen away. His voice went monotone, as if he was reading out loud in class. “I mean, what the fuck is that accent about anyway? Kenny’s saying the old fart’s a Nazi on the run. I’ll just bet he is; I’ll just bet,” he said, and his voice rushed again: “So whaddya say? Get out there and we’ll kick some ass. Fuck the rest of them; they don’t even have to know.”

Kirby spoke in monotone also — to avoid a stutter. He said, “Mr. Z is not a Nazi. ‘Jude’ means Jew. It’s German for Jew. And that’s what he is, too. I asked my parents. My mom says he’s got a tattoo on his arm that proves it. But ... I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

Ronny re-flashed the grin. “Whatever, man. Just kidding around.”

Thwack-thwack! Thwack!

Ronny peered over the bench, checked the sliding glass door. “Okay, it’s time.”

Kirby peered out. Behind the other bench he saw wet heads bob and muddy backs bounce. He also heard arguing. All this meant the enemy had to be desperate for more balls now, too. At the same time, he heard Tami Sweeney gasping laughs at the patio door.

“Okay,” he heard himself say. It was like someone said it for him. A ventriloquist.

Ronny pumped fists; he patted Kirby’s back. “All right! I’ll cover ya, ‘kay? I’ll cover ya!” He reached out onto the grass and stretched his fingers around the two closest balls.

As Kirby crawled to his end of the picnic bench, he couldn’t help glimpse at Tami Sweeney once more. She didn’t see him. She watched Ronny now. Ronny smiled and showed her a thumbs-up, down low. Smiling back, she swayed her hips and pouted her lips. Ronny clenched the tennis balls and said: “See, ‘cause the deal is, Tami and I we worked out a secret plan. She’s going to help us.”

Kirby stopped.

“That’s right,” Ronny said, adding another smile. He was getting good at smiling. “You’ll see ...”

Tami was doing a dance in the doorway. A Bee Gees eight track played:  “Ah just want to be your ev-ery-thing.”

“Disco sucks!” yelled Tony from the enemy side. Yet no one took up the call. They all watched Tami do her dance except for Kirby, who, facing the final breach, let his eyes lose focus. He imagined punching Ronny in his pasty whistling nose. That would be faster than what he was about to do.

“I been out there,” Ronny said, “been out lots of times. Just ask Tami. Hello? You in there, Ford? Just ask anybody. You were still playing with Legos.”

Kirby regained focus. He crawled out, beyond the bench, as close to the grassy earth as he could, carrying the wet and the mud with him along his chest and elbows, knees and chukka boots. He imagined Tami Sweeney watching him now as she did her decoy disco dance.

He killed this thought with a grab at the first tennis ball, and the second ball, and another. He was out in the middle of no man’s land (just like in the Battle of the Somme). And no one noticed. As he crawled so many balls surrounded him he had to wriggle along over them. One got stuck up in his armpit; another rolled right into his corduroy coat and down his chest. And still no one saw! He scooped up balls as fast as he could, stuffed them in his coat and down his pants; he yanked his socks high over his pant legs so they wouldn’t fall out.

Tami danced on. The music blared but Kirby didn’t hear it. His coat was crammed with balls. He could hardly move in his lumpy stuffed pants. He was the Michelin man.

It was time. Pushing off one knee, then the other, he was barely able to stand. He swayed and tottered, like when his cat stood to swat at treats.

“Hey!” he yelled to the enemy bench, “hey look at me!”

Tony popped up. Mooney popped up. “What is that!?”

Kirby wanted to pound on his chest, the mighty chieftain in his last epic battle, but he couldn’t bend his arms. He pounded on his thighs instead. This only produced a corduroy rasp.

All heads popped up. “He looks like Frankenstein!”

“No, it’s a robot!”

“What the fuck you doing?” Ronny yelled out, just as the eight track ended. Silence.

Kirby pivoted on one leg, straightened out an arm, and flipped Ronny the bird. Lurching forward, he then pitched — underhand — one, two, three balls at the enemy bench.

It was too late to hit them, of course. The enemy was fanning out on either side of him, far beyond their bench.

“Come on out, R-R-R-ronny, I’m stuck out here!” Kirby yelled. He could fake the stutter just as well.

Ronny fell mute, hidden behind his bench.

“Come on,” Kirby yelled, eyeing the enemy, “at least you could c-c-c-cover me!”

They had flanked Kirby, gathering up more balls as they went. As Kirby had hoped, they had calculated that Ronny would not come out. They giggled and crouched, their elbows bent for point blank pelting.

Kirby glanced at Tami. Her palms pressed at the door glass. She watched with a blank face, biting her upper lip. She looked like Ronny had when they watched her dance.

Kirby underhanded two balls; he skimmed one off Mooney’s thigh and missed Carter’s foot.

“Brand!” yelled Tony and they launched the barrage. The shots came as yellow blurs but bounced right off Kirby, he had so many balls stuffed in his coat and pants. Balls ricocheted straight up in the air and into trees and bushes. His plastic hat protected his ears.

“Seven, eight, nine, that makes ten!” they yelled and kept throwing.

Kirby dropped to the ground, laughing out loud. They stood over him with their eyebrows lowered, as if to say, you’re not supposed to like getting branded. Brand hurts. Brand is humiliating. But Kirby couldn’t stop laughing. Tony dropped his balls.

“No, come on, bring it on!” Kirby yelled, gasping laughs still, but they had turned away from him.

They faced Ronny’s bench now. Tami crouched, her eyes wide.

They shuffled toward the bench, their shoulders low, scooping up more balls as they went. They rounded the bench and stood in a circle around what could only be the curled-up body of Ronny Wilkie. And they began to pelt that spot Kirby could not see, down low and as hard as they could, getting their legs and backs into it. The sound was like popping, like fireworks from far away. Then, they all heard the sobs of Ronny Wilkie.

Tami pushed open the sliding glass door. “Stop it you guys! Stop it!”

Tony walked off, silent. The others stared a moment, and turned away. Tami marched to the corner of the patio as they filed out along the side of the house. “That’s cheating!” she yelled, “don’t you see? Kirby let himself get hit — so Ronny had to come out.”

“Yeah, but he didn’t come out,” Mooney said, and he shut the side gate behind him.

Tami stomped back across the patio. She glared at Kirby as she rounded the other side of the house, past the dead rose bushes. “You ruined it!” she yelled at him.

Kirby shrugged. He emptied tennis balls from his coat, placing them on the grass in neat, cannonball pyramids of five each.

Later that evening, they celebrated the epic Brand battle out in the turn-around, straddling their old Schwinns they had stripped, spray-painted and modified to look like the newest BMX bikes. The rain had stopped, the pavement dried. The air smelled of Ovaltine and Hamburger Helper — dinnertime soon. Kirby, in the middle of the bunch, was working on a canteen of grape Tang and a jumbo carton of malted milk balls Tony gave him.

Over at Ronny Wilkie’s the house was quiet, and dark, with all the drapes shut. Work was over, but Ronny’s mom and Kenny would not be home for hours.

The Brand gang all talked to Kirby. For once he said all sorts of things, whatever he wanted. He stuttered and kept going. He suggested uniforms next time. They could talk Sean Cline into painting the picnic benches gold or to look like fake stones — like a castle wall. Mooney protested that this would get them all grounded. They shouted Mooney down. Kirby continued:

“I know: call me Alaric the First from now on.”

“Al what?” said Mooney.

“Alaric the First — he was this king who told Rome to shove it. Then he raided Rome.”

“Oh.”

He suggested team names, secret codes, flags for each side, everything. His mom could make them ponchos armored with cardboard. They laughed and said, “That would be cool,” but Kirby knew they were only saying it. The Romans called this “tribute.” They had no idea he’d read Caesar’s Commentaries. One of these days, though, he might tell them about Gaul, and Little Boots, and Hadrian’s Wall.

As the sun set, and the sky turned purple, Tami Sweeney ventured out wearing a big hooded sweatshirt, hugging herself from the cold. Most of the boys stared at the ground.

“Hi,” Kirby said to her. He held out a handful of malted milk balls.

Tami stood close to him, much closer than she ever had before. He could smell her Bonnie Bell lip balm. Cherry. She gave him a once-over, as if checking out his chukkas. Then she picked the smallest, though most perfectly round and shiny milk ball, and walked off swinging her arms and hips.

As she disappeared back into her house, the others moved their front wheels back and forth, keeping their heads down.

Kirby, meanwhile, had noticed the light was on inside Mr. Z’s garage. “Is that hammering?” he said. “I think I hear hammering.” He drank the last gulp of his grape Tang and started for Mr. Z’s driveway, bouncing on the balls of his feet and rattling the carton of milk balls.

“What are you doing?” Tony said. “He, he’ll freak out on you.”

“Will he? Why? Maybe he could use some help.”

Back to Table of Contents

She’s Got No Reverse

From the start, Sandra had challenged me to a game of chicken. She’d found me in my local in the city, West Side expats pub with dingy stained glass and too many photos of Churchill, Georgie Best, all the rest. I was with the Irish at the far end of the bar, our roll-your-own smoke fogging us in with our stories. I’d always stood in the middle, nice and tall. That was me then.

And Sandra sauntered in. Men pouted and held their pints high to their chests, knowing full well that certain older American women like her can be terrifying creatures. In her fancy pant suit and cashmere shawl, her metallic blond hair pulled back tight, Sandra might as well have been the Head of Immigration. I watched her with one eye. She sat at the bar and ordered a stout, no Chardonnay or sherry for her. Her tan was real, with freckles. Cheekbones so high they kept her crow’s feet from spreading out. She scribbled in her PDA and checked her mobile — Ms. Manhattan do or die.

I watched her with two eyes. She knocked back her pint, strolled right on into our smoke fog and planted her heels far apart, giving our bunch the look-over. Her eyes were level with mine. Like in a cowboy picture. Draw.

She flashed a smile. “Are you hungry?” she said.

She’d said it to me. I grinned at my boys. “I am.”

“Then drink up. I’ll wait outside,” she said, snapping off the words. Throwing her shawl over one shoulder, she turned and left.

A great roar went up.

“I’m in no hurry,” I assured one and all, “not for anyone.”

I downed my pint in two gulps. I emptied my pockets to cover some of one round.

Sandra Markham-Switzer was her full name, real American royalty, used to be an editor on the Avenue of the Americas and long since divorced. “You know, Roy, I probably owe you an explanation,” she told me that very night (she liked to insert my name in sentences, like they did in American soap operas). We were in a posh bar where the piano player knew her. “The thing is, I’m fed up.” Her eyes flashed at those words. “I know I should be grateful, but it’s all become so ... boring. You know, I used to do the most impetuous things? I don’t mean destructive things, mind you. My god, one time I went streaking down Park Avenue. This was 1973, you understand —”

“I understand. You want to be young again.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. If I wanted young-again, I wouldn’t have tried an expat Brits bar.”

Ouch, Sandra. I was only 35, but I don’t think age was what she meant. I sipped my Jameson’s.

“Just listen.” She exhaled and gave herself a once-over, waving fingers at her slim sophisticated self. “All this, I’ve taken it about as far as I dare. It’s all downhill from here.”

“So you thought you’d accost a stranger — and from another class and country at that.”

“Maybe that’s it.” She added a smile.

Sandra’s flat was another country, to be sure — spacious suite on the Upper East Side with sunken living room, original paintings and sculptures, tapestries that looked old but did not smell, flowers arranged so that both night- and daylight hit them just right.

“You may stay the night,” she said, “but we are not going to make love.”

She told me she grew up in the Pacific Northwest — in Oregon. I’d been in the US most of ten years, I told her, much of it without a green card. Sandra had dimmed the lights and undressed. I’d done the same. We were lying in her bed that was handcrafted in Scandinavia for the price of a car.

“I could even drive a tractor,” she said, turning to me, her breath still warm from gin martini. “That’s probably a surprise to you.”

“That you’re from the Old West? No, I could tell.” I didn’t believe the tractor bit either. I moved close to her in the dark. She let me feel her. Her skin was loose, though smooth. Her breath hot now. I whispered: “You got a lovely little gap between your two front teeth. Like Lauren Bacall, from the fillums —”

“Lauren Hutton; you mean Lauren Hutton. You better mean Lauren Hutton —”

“Right. That’s the one.”

I stayed the night, and the third night. Stayed there more and more, used her closets. Her metallic blond hair was not real, I learned. Joking, I called her the Wig Champion. She socked me in the shoulder with knuckles. “Don’t you ever, ever call me that in front of anyone else,” she said, adding a laugh that was more like a grunt.

Sandra was gambling on me. So how could I not on her? I confessed to her I was sick of the local, with the Irish acting more Irish than Irish back home and the English doing the same. Sick of the fights and head butts, the chancers, the endless odd construction jobs and the city league soccer on Sundays, all these young Americans now better footballers than most of the gaffer hacks I knew put together. I told her, “Me da worked in England, then we were back in Ireland, and back in England, all I have to show for it’s this accent.” It sounded cliché to me. Sandra said, “A cliché is not something you are but rather that thing you’re afraid of becoming.”

We made love. I quit going to the local as much. I moved in. In the mornings we sat out on her balcony, the hazy canopies of Central Park unfolding before us like a grand green canyon. We took long walks — uptown, midtown, Theater District, the Village. She dressed me up in casual suits — Kenneth Cole, Paul Smith, Prada. Introduced me to the Met, the Guggenheim. Museums are better when you’re not hung over, I told her. I escorted her to fashion shows, book signings, fund-raisers. Photographers popped out of doorways and elevators. “Ignore them,” Sandra said. “Fix your tie, there, and keep your head up. You have to love ignoring them. That’s it, you have a knack for this.”

One night in bed, in the dark, Sandra sighed and said, “You know, my friends they are having a ball with this behind my back. Me being with you, I mean.”

“So ignore them,” I told her.

A year passed. I didn’t miss the local. It wasn’t the same. Some of the boys were saying I was only with Sandra for the money, and why wouldn’t I be? I stayed away more. Fighting was no thing to rediscover, I told Sandra.

I was about to give up the Sunday soccer. I played one last match, and what did I do but missed a tackle, into the goal post I went and twisted my back all to hell.

And some fat bastard landed on my neck.

My crash landing smashed nerves and fractured my spine, which made my legs go dead. Sandra transferred me from the hospital to a private clinic in Connecticut. Then, I came home. She’d had a ramp installed for the sunken living room. At first she had to feed me and help me with the toilet. She transported me around in black limos and minivans, like so many hearses, and when she had to wheel me out she put on disguises — long red hair with New-Agey dresses, overcoats and tracksuits, short black hair with jeans and leather. Sandra didn’t call her friends back or answer their emails. She declined all events and invitations. I didn’t question it. I was just glad to have her. I hadn’t talked to my family in years.

One morning she said, “We are leaving — for the island of Antigua. I’ll pack you a bag.”

“You don’t have to do this for me,” I said.

“I’m not,” she said.

Six months later. My knees hung out of my Bermuda shorts, all pasty white and spindly. I pinched and pulled at the skin on one thigh. Nothing. I set my ice-cold rum drink on the other thigh. No feeling at all. I threw back a last gulp and chomped hard on ice as I looked out over the bay below me. The water gleamed aquamarine, flecked with the bleached white sails of boats, and spreading all the way up to our balcony were these glorious plants with long, flat leaves like a thousand feathers flapping. Yet none of that moved me, because did you ever try pushing your wheelchair along a beach?

Sandra had placed herself in the rattan chair at the far corner of the balcony.

I tried my finest grin. “Here we are. Fled your New York City and it’s still not bliss, is it?”

Sandra lifted her drink. “Bliss? No, it’s not that.”

I’d just poured myself my fifth rum drinky. I drank and pushed myself forward, letting my dead toes strike at the balcony wall. I coughed and had to spit. It didn’t make it over the edge.

“Nice. Keep drinking,” Sandra said, that little rasp in her throat. “Yes, do. You should enjoy getting sick again. You should enjoy that very much, Roy. I know I love it.”

I popped little wheelies, stealing glances of her.

“Because things could be worse,” she said. “For the both of us.”

“Could they?”

She blinked, once. She touched her hair like she did. Crossed her legs the other way.

I threw back my rum drink. I wheeled around and rolled on up to her. “What were you thinking, running off with a lame git like me?”

She sipped her drink, and closed her eyes. Anything but shake her head.

The fan whirred above, ruffling the hairs on my thighs like plankton in a rough surf. “Right. Yeah. So, maybe it’s best I move on then —”

Sandra lurched forward, grabbed at a wheel and pulled my wheelchair close. She took my hands and rubbed them, as if they were cold. Her wide, bloodshot eyes locked on mine. “We’re still in this together. Aren’t we, Roy?”

I grabbed the wheels to roll off but she held me there. “Together? Where? Here? There? Nothing for me in New York, never was ...” My head burned behind my eyes. I let the words trail off as the tears leaked down and she let me wheel off, back to my corner of the balcony.

What else could I have done? Legging it was out. Roll down the hill and into the first bar I see? Caribbean villages weren’t exactly wheelchair-friendly.

So it was back to the US — and as far from NYC as one can wander. The old buildings in Portland, Oregon were squat with red brick, the skies gray and full of rain and it was supposed to be May. Grass, weeds and trees everywhere. It was like the Ireland I never really knew.

Oregon Health Sciences University straddled hills overlooking the city, like a castle over a medieval town. Daily Sandra signed waivers and filled out forms. Specialists prodded me and poked me. She rented us a downtown penthouse with a sunken living room like the one in NY, and a balcony. I sat and I withered, six-pack or more a day. I ordered digital cable and watched soccer, reality shows, soft porn, and flipped channels looking for other people in wheelchairs. Our doorman had a thick New York voice. Sandra talked to him with a New York accent she never had there. No one knew we were back in the States, as far as I could tell. Sandra stayed in. We hunkered in separate rooms of our penthouse, which made me, in my peace and quiet, drink more. Up at OHSU Sandra stared out the broad windows as we waited for doctors, therapies, prescriptions. All the time she rubbed her hands together, a new habit she’d picked up here.

One Sunday morning, Sandra wandered into my room with her shoulders drawn, hugging herself like a crazy woman. My TV was off. I stared at the black screen anyway. She rubbed her hands together. She touched her wig hair. She rubbed her hands together —

“Why don’t you get outside?” I yelled. “Go on. Sick of you moping around here, feeling sorry for yourself all day long. Go. Out.”

Sandra glared into space, as if she’d walked into the wrong penthouse, and wandered out of the room. I turned away, watching her ghost shapes in the window reflection. Out in the living room she tossed her cashmere shawl over her head, pulled on fat black sunglasses and stomped out, slamming the front door behind her.

“You don’t need the sunglasses, or that fucking pashmina for that matter. It’s raining, look, it’s raining ...”

Sandra stayed out for hours, and hours. I wrestled my legs onto the toilet — twice. I heaved up onto counters to make a sandwich. I wheeled around the apartment, trying to think. I took my binoculars to the window and scanned the streets, wondering if she was even coming back. My chest tightened up. The panic hit. I’d yelled at her — no, screamed at her. At least I hadn’t raised a hand to her. I checked the Internet for nearby British pubs, just in case. Someone there would put me up. I’d be sure to buy the rounds this time.

Late afternoon, I heard the door. Sandra. I was in my chair, in the middle of the sunken living room. She guided the door softly shut. It was dim. She hit the lights.

A smile, on her face? She skipped down to me and pushed me around the penthouse as she talked. “You won’t believe what happened, Roy — I was looking for this bakery that was supposed to have good bagels, and I saw it.”

“It?”

“My house, from when I was little. Sort of a Tudor-style slash Victorian thing, has this steep gabled roof.” She stopped pushing, laughed, and started in again faster, rolling me to a window. She pointed out, across the leaden Willamette River and past all the bridges, at the hills that dipped and rose along the eastern horizon. Specks of the tips of grand houses poked out of the green. “Right there. See it?” She gasped.

The sky was turning as dark as the hills. I couldn’t see a thing. “It’s grand,” I said. I looked up at her. “Listen, I’m sorry,” I muttered, “I truly am —”

“Stop. No, Roy, I want to thank you. Yes. I needed coaxing. “

“Right. I knew that.” I lowered her to my lap. She was light against my stomach, like some girl-sized version of herself. “Tell you what,” I said, “why don’t you take me out? Go strolling like we used to do, eh girl? I demand it, I do. Yes. Lame git like me could use the fresh air.”

The next morning she pushed me around town — without disguise — and showed me the haunts of her youth. The high school was now a microbrewery, the malt shop had become a Crate and Barrel and the skating rink high-rise condos. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Only the memory matters.”

She went out on her own after that and always came back smiling. She told me she even rode the bus.

She did not mention NYC for a whole week.

I continued my physical therapy. Various specialists visited me up at the hospital. Expect no miracles, they told me. I can accept that, I said.

One day Sandra bounded through the door and held my hands in hers. Her face was hard, but I couldn’t tell if she was holding back a laugh or a cry.

“Royo, pack a bag. We’re going.”

She drove us in her leased Mercedes convertible out east, out along the winding banks of the wide Columbia River, as wide as a valley. Jagged, forested walls of gorge rose up on either side, as high as mountains. I gazed in wonder. The clouds were silver. They put me to sleep, but a fine slumber of seconds only, since I was forcing myself awake to see more of it all.

Some time later I woke to discover flat rolling plains, yet another whole new world. I rubbed my eyes. “Jaysus, Sandie, we’re in Kansas.”

Sandra grinned again. She was driving faster out here. The horizon started where the crops stopped. I saw wheat fields, cornfields, white farmhouses and a single tree for shade.

“Eastern Oregon,” she said. “My grandparents, they had land out here. When I was young, I remember we went hiking and skiing on the way —” She banged at the steering wheel. She laughed. She sped up.

We turned off for a small town. We slowed before a low corrugated metal building with a curved roof, what Americans called a Quonset hut. Two rows of tractors stood out front. “Kott’s Farm Machines,” read a sign, “New and Used: Ford, John Deere, Massey-Ferguson.”

Sandra disappeared inside. She ran back out skipping and wheeled me behind the Quonset hut. She stopped me in front of an old tractor. It had heavy knobbly tracks like a tank. The paint was the color of rust. It looked more like rust.

“Oldest one they have,” Sandra said. “They have a field we can test-drive it on, paid them fifty bucks to leave us be.”

“Grand. Wait — we?”

“We. It sits two.”

I ran out of protests. We heaved me up into my seat. “Ready?” Sandra yelled and our old engine was sputtering and spitting out smoke and smelling worse, and she, the would-be toast and roast of Manhattan, was grabbing at levers and pumping the gas. We jerked and popped yet we moved. And lurched. And we charged on out into the dirt field, which was no bigger than a soccer pitch.

Sandra hit full throttle. We were heading toward one end, toward what would be the goal line but there was no goal there, only this bulky wooden fence as tall as our tractor, the posts so old they were gray and covered in sagebrush (or is it tumbleweed?). Sandra was laughing, hopping up and down in the seat. She shouted something. I could barely hear her. Full speed ahead. Fifteen yards to go.

“There’s a fence,” I yelled, “you going to turn or what?”

I thought she nodded but we were also bouncing up and down. Ten yards now. She shifted down and cranked the wheel but she had no turning radius, not like in a rented convertible. My heart was beating high and hard. “Turn, stop, do something,” I yelled, I couldn’t even bail out because my legs would drag and pull me into the growling tracks below, I was sure of that.

Five yards now. Grinding gears, Sandra hit the brakes, evoking a sound not unlike pigs being electrocuted. What brakes, more like.

“I forgot,” she yelled, “it’s got no reverse!”

The fence was taller than the tractor. I saw rusty nails sticking out.

She leaned on the shifter and hit the gas. I covered my eyes. We ducked.

We went right through and kept going, bringing a thunder like mammoth bowling pins crashing. Beams of wood tumbled across the hood and bounced off the tracks.

We slowed to a halt with a grumble and a rumble. Sandra turned off the motor, gasping for breath. A laugh shot out of me. Sandra clapped, laughed. We picked the tumbleweed-sagebrush off each other. It broke up in our hands, smelling a little minty.

“Look,” I said, “just like in a cowboy fillum.”

A salesman was running to us, out across the field. More of the tumble brush, a bunch on my lap. We laughed more. We kissed. She was 60. I, 37.

Her wig had come off and she left it in her lap. She rubbed at her head of thin, thready hair and said, “Roy, my god, I never felt so good.” She thumped me on the chest.

“Ow. And I never felt so old.”

“Good. Then we’re going to stay? Out West.”

Finalist, Swink Magazine 2005 Editors’ Award for Emerging Writers.

Back to Table of Contents

Asphalt Jornalero

The two cops just walked in. That’s what I wanted, why I came in off the street. I’ve gone and sat myself at the bar, back in the dark corner where I can watch them.

I won’t dick around. I’ll tell them: I know who killed my amigo Oscar.

I’ve seen the two talking to the jornaleros — day laborers — who, hoping for work, crowd those four dingy corners of SE Sixth and Ankeny, which is damn near Portland’s actual center on a map. The two wearing Levis and fleece jackets like any contractors looking for extra hands on the cheap. But they weren’t hiring. They were wanting the word on the junkies and wannabe pimp dealers who’ve been slithering into our little cut-rate labor sale, using us for cover.

I’m in My Father’s Place and it’s genuine Eastside in here. The blue-collar, the lost souls, happy campers and the beaucoup sketchy, keno, video poker, vinyl booths the color of sewage. Smells like fryer grease that needs changing and cigarette smoke blown out lungs soaked in shitty whisky. They got a diner out front, a cop haunt. I watch the two undercovers snag a table there and joke with the waitress young enough to be their daughter but looking like their New Wave girlfriend about 1982. Afternoon’s half gone. Soon the kids will be in to play lowbrow loser with their raggedy-ass beards and factory-faded caps, but if they really knew what losing meant they’d run right out into the cold fall rain and keep on going, right for that sweet Iowa girl and the ad agency job they been dodging too long.

Dodge too long and you’ll be living in a crappy little tent like me. I’m down to ten bucks, total. I’m only splurging on Widmer Hefe because it might be my last. All I got left is the bone-dry truth Oscar gave me.

Which makes me think — what if those undercovers over by the window already know what went down, and they don’t want a guy like me to know?

I twist at my empty pint with both hands, wishing I smoked because it sure would help me think. I said I wouldn’t dick around, but now I’m stalling. Going back over it all again. How in the hell I got this far, this low-down.

It’s never like people guess it is. No, I don’t have Tourette’s or hear aliens (who make me yell at you), I don’t pass out and piss myself in doorways and my face isn’t that fried from all the sun and cold and wind. In movies and TV there’s always something clear-cut that puts you on the street — war or disease, some priest or cult, disability, abuse. Those’ll do the trick, sure. But homelessness can also just happen. When I first came downtown, about fifteen years ago, I ran with a dumbass drug crowd and got caught in a chickenshit robbery. Did a year. Never broke laws again. Only thing worse than the street is a small stuffy cell, I tell myself. Before that I thought I owned the city. Ever since the city has owned me. Every job I had seemed to end up in Central Eastside — pulling auto parts, powder coating, dishwasher, humping furniture and pallets. Nothing lasted — business was down, I was always first to go. I got back spasms but had no insurance, who does? Sleeping on the hard stuff can’t help but I tell myself I’m lucky to have the tent — most are getting by with cardboard and blue tarp.

I know what people think. Suck it up, dude, and get a job — you’re only 37. But, poverty’s not that simple. Same way the rich guy gets richer because he’s got the money and the strings, the chances for a guy like me sink faster than a stone in the Willamette River. As best I could, in the spring and summer at least, I’d try to leave the shelters and handouts for the worse off. Usually I camped out under the Morrison Bridge onramp, on that old cobblestone stretch of Belmont between the train tracks and river, the bridge above dripping the size of baseballs when it rained. I got by. I’d collect cans and get paperbacks from the big Goodwill down south on Mill Street, sometimes splurge on a trip to the Slammer, or the Speakeasy, Sassy’s strip club when I could get cleaned up enough. I was going inside to feel human, and drinking only to kill time.

I always had some hope. I was sharing my tent with Amy, when she came around. Amy is just a little thing with a delicate face and big eyes. She’d come find me when the tricks, drugs and rotgut got up on top of her. I’d get her cleaned up. Sometimes we’d move it to big bushes along the river, farther down past the OMSI museum was best, just stay in there the whole day. I could see Amy cleaned up for good. I told her it would happen. She was still young, her body strong despite the scabs and bruises and red veins in her eyes.

Last spring, I met Oscar in My Father’s Place. We played Golden Tee, the golf video game. Oscar knew how it was for a guy like me — as if he himself grew up in a Canby trailer park and not Guatemala like he did. Oscar looked about 20 but was 32 and going on a wise old 100 years in his head. It was like he had this power tool for digging out the truth, fucking reality. Oscar was a jornalero. Day laborers weren’t all Mexicans, he told me — they’re Guatemalan, El Salvadoran, Honduran, even a few gringos. Oscar said I should give it a shot. We could help each other — I had the English and white face while he had skills better than most subcontractors. He even gave me his old work gloves.

We got jobs. Some jornaleros let us have it, mostly in Spanish but I got the gist: Who the fuck Oscar think he was, bringing in a gringo when it was hard enough? Oscar saying, doesn’t matter where we’re from, we’re stronger all working together. Summer came and jobs kept coming. I wanted to quit a few, the way we were treated, but Oscar told me to focus on the upshot. I had enough to hit Goodwill more and the Laundromat. I saw us getting on regular with some contractor. Oscar had almost played pro soccer back in Guatemala, he told me. One bad knee wrecked it and the knee hurt on some jobs but he never felt sorry, not like I did. When my back wanted to spasm out he told me how to stretch it, take care of it, manage that pain.

For Oscar, everything had a solution. That’s why he started confronting the drug types coming in and using us for cover. Most jornaleros stayed clear, let the dumbfucks have one corner of the four but Oscar got in the druggies’ faces, urging them to get help, stop making it worse on jornaleros by spooking businesses and bringing the cops around.

I had stayed clear of that noise. Amy knew the druggies. Oscar said I was not helping Amy by cleaning her up only to let her go back out. I was only prolonging her suffering, like you’d feed and massage a bull for the next bullfight.

Oscar had gotten me — and me Amy — to late October, just before the real cold. Everyone getting tense because jobs would be fewer. But Oscar and I were on this good job that was supposed to keep going.

Then, Oscar went and disappeared. That was two days ago.

We had worked the day before on the good job and were meeting that morning at Sixth and Ankeny for the usual pickup. I asked jornaleros in my shitty Spanish, “Donde Oscar? Tu ve’ Oscar?” “Non,” no no, they said, no one seen Oscar, and they talked about it to each other, eyeing me. Then they were asking me. Of course I hadn’t seen him, I said — that’s why I’m asking you. Oscar lived in apartments way out East Powell, but no one would tell me where.

By ten the job wasn’t happening either — no one came to pick us up. Weird. And all the more reason for Oscar to be here. I stomped off and headed out down Grand Ave, all the cars and trucks revving and squealing, the first good wind of fall whipping at my cheeks and neck and I had to pull on my hood tight.

Across Grand I saw a big black Cadillac SUV pickup, like a Hummer with more chrome, parked outside another new cafe where a coffee probably cost as much as soup and I have to say smelled worth it. I did a Frogger across Grand and onto the sidewalk, coming up from behind. Driver’s window was down. It was him, all right — the contractor for our good job. The main man. He was talking to air with one of those blue-flashing earphones like some kind of cyborg robot. Vacation tan, white teeth and thick black hair. Name of Gerald, I remembered. Gerald’s job supers had us doing the demo for a commercial site nearby — for yet another restaurant coming in here instead of the yuppie Pearl District. Central Eastside had more “character,” I read somewhere. Oscar said that mostly means it’s still cheaper over this side. The work was rough. They gave me a ripping bar to tear apart rusty, grimy metal cabinets and built-ins, clear out the cellar, all kinds of ancient heavy equipment down there, pitted and jagged like boilers from some old ship. Oscar was so good the supers asked him for advice and Oscar used their tools, even a welding torch. He stayed after everyone else left — was staying after again the last time I saw him, I remembered. Gerald always came end of the day, arguing with his supers and meeting people in ironed jeans or suits, off in far corners. Oscar had told me our job had a real tight schedule.

I stepped closer. Gerald had gone quiet, staring ahead as if driving. He had on one of those Adidas sweat tops like in the Salvation Army bins but probably cost more than my tent brand-new. I had on my same Starter jacket, Green Bay Packers. I pulled the hood down.

“You still on the phone?” I said.

Gerald turned, shot me a look. “Don’t have any money,” he said, barking it loud as if I might be retarded.

Of course Gerald had no idea who I was. Why would he? Day laborers just spontaneously appeared, as if formed right from this wet sidewalk.

“Wasn’t asking for any,” I said.

“What, want work? Not today,” Gerald said. Still not recognizing me. He’d played sports, you could tell by the way his neck muscles stretched, but he also had something desperate about him, around the eyes. Stressed. Guys like this had their own types of pressure — cards and car loans and mortgages maxed out, taking on too many jobs to keep it all going, his wife and kids never seeing him. Economy tanking. Gerald seemed all right. He’d given us work and wasn’t one of those scumbags who tried not to pay the cash at the end.

Before I could say a thing Gerald was talking at air again, but peering at me as if trying to decipher some assembly manual. He held up a finger like I should wait, then told someone on the phone he had to go.

He showed me a big grin. “Hey, you’re that guy with Oscar.”

I nodded, yep. “You seen him?”

“Me? No.”

“He work for you today?”

“No. Nope. Yesterday he did — with you, right?”

I nodded. “If you see him, can you tell him I been looking for him? My name’s Jess.”

“Sure, man. Sure.”

“Thanks. Have a good one.”

“No work right now,” Gerald added. “Waiting for codes and shit. Fucking city.”

Cussing for my “street” benefit had always rubbed me wrong. “Okay,” I grunted.

“Don’t know where he went. Man, I hope Oscar’s not doing drugs or something,” Gerald went on.

“He’s not, no way,” I said, done with this. I started off, pulled my hood over.

“Good, well, I’ll tell him if I see him. Later,” Gerald said to my back.

Always with the drugs — as if they’re all addicts, all of Latin America just junkies. Or did Gerald really mean me, like I was the bad seed? As if Oscar would somehow be here if it wasn’t for me? I rammed my hands deep in my pockets, all fists, my knuckles banging together. I passed Tribune and Willamette Week paper boxes and wanted to kick them, knock them right on out into traffic. I hadn’t felt this way in a long time, and I was glad Oscar couldn’t see it.

I bounded back across Grand, screw Frogger, screw the honks and shouts at me. Back toward Sixth and Ankeny. A woman came around the corner of Ash, tugging along a little boy. They were Hispanic. They were heading right for me. The woman pointed. The boy puffed out his little chest. He had a little soccer jersey on under his coat. The woman kept him behind her. She was stout, with a tough round pockmarked face.

“You Jess. When you see Oscar last? When?” she was saying, planting her feet far apart.

“What? Yesterday, afternoon. You seen him?”

They shook their heads. “I his sister. Sister.”

The little boy was tearing up. The sister muttered in Spanish, stroking his head. I reached out for the little guy —

The sister yanked the boy away and turned back, eyeing me over her shoulder like I was going to come after them with a bat or something.

I stood there, hands hanging out in the cold, my old high tops glued to the pavement. Screw them. You try to help, this is what happens? I won’t even tell them when I find Oscar.

I needed to be alone, get my thoughts straight. I headed on down to the river, down past the skateboard park under the Burnside Bridge and across the train tracks, on through below the raised part of Interstate 5. I found a spot near the water looking out on the black skeleton of the Steel Bridge and the floating Eastside Esplanade with its happy bouncing joggers and bicyclers. I’d grabbed an Oregonian from a recycling bin. Reading often helped me, the calmness of it. The paper was today’s. I often read the “Metro” section, especially the short parts inside.

BODY OF MAN RECOVERED FROM RIVER IN CENTRAL CITY

Police are investigating a body recovered last night from the Willamette River between the Morrison and Burnside bridges. The man has been identified as Oscar Morales, 32, of Portland and Guatemala. No cause of death has been determined. A police spokesman said the body had not been in the water for long. No details were immediately available. The investigation is continuing.

I read it twice. Third time. I couldn’t look up. My face ached, hot behind the eyeballs.

They’d found Oscar not far from here, I then realized. So I looked up, eyes wide open to keep them dry, but all I saw was the hovering, hulking underbelly of the Interstate overpasses rising high above, a low, leaden sky of sooty concrete, pillars and ironwork. At my feet, all around me, was just slimy boulders, gnarly wood flotsam, and mangy river crows with their frantic pecking beaks.

My heart was thumping so damn fast I felt like I was falling, like I’d jumped off one of the bridges but couldn’t hit water. The rants and raves colliding in my brain. That’s what you get for working. That’s what you get for helping. What you get in this goddamn world here where it’s every man for himself.

I found my feet. I ended up back on Grand, outside the quickie market at the Burnside light. I sat down along the side of the building, letting the bricks dig into my back, the wet sidewalk soaking through my jeans. It was raining out, fucking pouring. Busses stopped, traffic rushed, idled. A garbage can stood next to me. People threw shit in the garbage can, not even seeing me. I don’t know how long I sat there, but it helped me focus. I needed to think. Oscar would want me thinking.

Gerald had given me a clue, I realized. Around the block to Sixth and Ankeny, I went. The rain had stopped. It was now about three. Most jornaleros had got work or given up. Only the users were left, passed out against walls as if lined up and shot, mouths open, heads rolling around. In a doorway a gang of four had a shopping cart and a radio blaring. I stood across Sixth, eyeing them, my hood up over my head.

Amy ran with guys like this. These were her crew? Her fucking pimps?

The four were passing around a forty in a bag. One crawled into the cart and they twirled him around, howling, hopping up and down.

When Amy wasn’t tricking she was giving these rejects blowjobs behind dumpsters, in the same place they pissed? These losers were plunging their grubby hands down her pants?

I crossed Sixth. I grabbed one by the arm barking: “Where’s Oscar, man? Oscar? What you do with him?”

Another yanked at my hood, pulling me backward. I swung and missed. My shoulder blades slammed at the pavement. My back cramped and burned with spasms, my head thumping. They were laughing, joking in rapid Spanish. The one said in English: “Who the fuck Oscar, man?” Someone cracked open a can, held it over my mouth. I nodded, what the hell. The beer was cold and shocked me clear. I sat up, letting the gnawing spasms fade. In the doorway they had another paper bag. It reeked like chemicals, stinging my nostrils.

“In pain, man? We fix you up, senór, is cool,” one said.

I muttered that I had to go puke first. I stumbled the hell out of there.

That night I set up my tent on Oak near 11th, on the loading area of the old Bressie Electric building, across from the Catholic Charities office and a block from St. Francis parish. I didn’t get a faith like theirs, how only their certified holy house and only their approved holy man could tell you what to believe, all paint-by-numbers style, but I couldn’t knock how they looked after us day after day, no questions asked, no one making me believe. All the veteran street people circled wagons here, safety in numbers. Their tarps and worn tents surrounded me.

Amy came to my tent soon after dark. She reeked of forties and cigarettes and whatever cancer was in that paper bag.

“Take that coat off. Put it outside to air out,” I said.

Amy let her tattered bomber jacket fall off her shoulders. She chucked it out the tent flap. “I’m cold,” she said, chattering her little teeth like in a cartoon. She wasn’t playing. I felt her nose — stone cold. I put my Starter around her. A tear rolled down her face. She probably couldn’t even feel it.

“They didn’t do anything to Oscar,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

“I asked ‘em. I even did it in Spanish. They don’t even know what he looks like.”

I wanted to spit, just thinking about them with her.

“I did ask, Jess. I speak good Spanish,” she said.

“I know. I know.”

“They’re not mad at you.”

“Mad?” I laughed. I could only laugh.

We huddled together a long time, just holding each other. The tent was only a two-man, but with her in there it seemed bigger. She cried again, not out loud, just some shivers and sobs.

“I don’t even want that stupid coat any more,” she said.

“I know.”

I woke in a sweat that night, trickling cold under my clothes. I had never had a thought so clear. It was more than thought. It was like Oscar, in dying, had given me his fucking power tool.

They’ll think I did it. Everyone will. They’ll have to. They’ll need to. I was expendable. No one knew me. Me doing it gave them some sense to their lives. A guy like me made to pay, it was all they had to keep them warm at night.

After that I headed out, leaving Amy snoring. I’d walked and walked, seeing no one and loving that, the whole Eastside bank to myself. I had ended up back down along the water, facing the sparkling Westside downtown skyline on the other bank. I rarely noticed the other side, quit looking across in wonder long ago. Now, in the spot I was in, all the layers of twinkling lights reminded me of all the people who had no clue they were only a shot of bad luck away from being me. How far would they go to keep that from happening? Would they let a guy die? People?

I’d lowered my eyes and was staring at the black, shifting water, as if waiting for Oscar to rise from the mire like some crazy Jesus of a mermaid-man and tell me exactly who killed his ass.

He didn’t have to. Before I had left the riverbank, I thought I’d figured it out.

That’s what brought me here to My Father’s Place, the next afternoon. I’m still back in the corner. The Widmer Hefe is giving me a deep, grim buzz that’s not helping. This building is one of east bank’s oldest and Father’s walls are decorated with flea market junk, with dusty tarnished sailing wheels and lanterns, rope knots and old photos of pale people, ghostly stuff all around me, crowding me, harassing me. They got windows out front but these dingy red-brick walls make it so dark like a cellar — like some cell, funny how the words are so similar. Then some poor alky is peaking out next to me, his forehead banging out an SOS on the bar. But who’s really sending it? Is it you, Oscar? You speaking for all us still stranded here?

Over at their table the two undercover cops were eating open-faced sandwiches, with gravy I could see steaming. They left a while ago. I let them leave.

I slap my money — my last dollars on earth — down on the bar and I’m out.

That night back in the tent, I tell Amy to keep everything I got. It’s only the tent and a couple duffels but it will help. I can tell she knows I mean it by the way she faces the corner, away from me, and pokes at the fabric with her finger.

“Cops will be asking around, Ame. It’s only a matter of time,” I tell her.

Next morning, I walk to Gerald’s job site down along Water Avenue between the Morrison and Hawthorne bridges. It’s a Sunday. No one’s there. I jump a dumpster, score a to-go box of scrambled eggs and potatoes, and find a way through the temporary chain-link. Head on into the two-story building that’s half a demoed shell. I hunker down, up on the second floor where there’s a mezzanine and I can look down. An hour passes. A couple kid taggers sneak in but I yell like a security guard and they clear out. Some windows are gutted and wind and rain blow through, pinging at the exposed studs and girders, and then it’s pouring out, hitting the roof right above me like dump trucks of gravel.

For once, the rain is my friend. The rain brings Gerald, alone. He shows up talking on the phone, flapping his arms and pointing things out, this is fucked and that’s screwed, pulling tarp tighter over materials and electricals. Then he’s standing right below me, surveying his whole mess of a job like a dog just thrown into a cage.

Still talking on the phone. I move forward to listen, but the concrete and patches of tile are slippery and I stumble.

After a silence Gerald shouts: “Who’s there? Up there? This is a job site.”

The mezzanine I’m on is basically a large balcony. Stretches of railing are ripped out, leaving the floor exposed. I’m down on all fours. I crawl forward, to the edge, and show myself.

Gerald’s phone rings. He slaps it off and delivers it to a pocket, keeping his eyes on me. “You want work? Didn’t you say so? I got more people coming any second,” he says.

The hell he does. His voice is harder, more deliberate, like a patrol cop telling me to clear off the sidewalk, that doorway’s private property, you’ll frighten the customers.

“You didn’t kill him,” I say.

“Whoa — what?” Gerald laughs, looking around like he’s got buddies with him. “Who?”

“Your work killed Oscar. This job did.”

“Listen —”

“But the problem is the work, it’s all under the table. That’s how it’s done. How everyone does it.”

Gerald opens his mouth to speak. It hangs open. He looks away a moment, out those gutted windows. “Look, come on down here.”

“No.”

“Then I’m coming up there. All right?”

I nod. I stand but I stay where I am, grasping at the railing. I hear Gerald make his way to the stairs and come up, picking his steps so as not too slip. He joins me at the railing. It’s torn away on either side of us. We’re looking out, at this carcass of a building with its naked frame and piles of debris, the one wide hole in the floor that shows the ghastly cellar with its ancient machinery. Hard to believe anything good will come of this place.

“What happened?” I say.

Gerald takes a deep breath, sighs. “That hole. He fell through there, right into the cellar. It was late, everyone gone home.”

“You were here. The only one.”

“Fuck I supposed to do, huh?” His voice sounding like it’s cracking.

What’s Gerald want me to say? I feel sorry? I’m glaring at him, I’m squeezing at the railing that’s left. No back spasms now. The adrenalin’s taking over.

“I, I tried to stop the bleeding. Oscar, he wouldn’t let me take him in, said had no insurance or nothing. Then he just … went. Fuck was I supposed to do, man?” Gerald was squeezing railing, rocking back and forth. “I mean, what the fuck?”

Did he really expect a response? Yes, you did well — dumping him in the river was a great call. You’re a real self-starter. You deserve a bonus, no better, a kickback.

“No insurance?” Gerald added. “Guy probably had no green card, Social Security, nothing.”

“I got no insurance,” I say. “Lot of people don’t and ones that do barely ...”

“You’re not hearing me. We would’ve gotten a shit storm. The job — “

“We?”

“Holding company. Developers. Investors. You know …” He lets the words trail off. Of course I couldn’t know. How could a guy like me?

I’m grasping tighter, gritting my teeth, wanting to rip the railing right out. “It’s not ‘we,’” I say. “They use you, you dumbshit — and you let them.”

“What the hell you talking about?”

“No one even has to give you orders. You just do it, do it for them, and that’s the way they like it.”

Gerald laughs. “I see. I’m the big loser. Last thing you want to do is end up like me? Right.”

“That’s right,” I say.

Gerald lunges and grabs at my coat, fisting big wads of it. We’re snarling. I smell his warm stale breath, like cheese and wine from hours ago.

“Don’t get smart — go getting all smart,” he says.

I’m shaking my head. They’ll never believe me. And why should they? No one knew me. No one sees me.

“I can pay you,” Gerald says, releasing his grip a little. “We can. Right? Get you off the street. Make a new start — “

I push off and kick at him, across the knees. He stumbles and crouches, glaring at me, looking for a fast way out but it’s too slick up here. I kick again and again, like I’m Oscar in the big game and Gerald’s got the ball I got to get and Gerald yelps, clawing at concrete and wet scraps of tile. Keep kicking like this I’m going to make the pros. I kick and lunge, hurling him to the edge, till all I’m kicking is air.

Published in Underground Voices, 2009.

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Not Fiction

Team Boracay: 200 Miles South of Manila

This little plane is going down. Fifty of us plunge and rise, rattle and shake. The bumps are so bad we’ve quit looking at each other, we’re so gripped by fear. I ate the tiny green cupcakes the flight attendant gave us. Maybe I shouldn’t have. My stomach rolls. I shut my eyes.

Will we never reach the island of Boracay? We must. We, “Team USA,” are here to win an international beach soccer trophy — the Philippine National Beach Football Championship. It’s our last chance at glory. We’ll reach the final and win a thrilling, sudden-death gut-wrencher. Island music will throb and bikinis glisten in the sun as we dance with The Cup high above our heads ...

My daydreams of this are so powerful, they seem to level out the plane. Out the window, the clouds are clearing. Below us lie jade-green islands ringed with white. Tropical islands. Paradise isles. The plane finds a smoother path, and we bump no more.

Before we know it we’re on a narrow wooden outrigger, bobbing in blue-green water. “Banca boats,” Filipinos call these, their homemade craft. It slows about 50 yards out and wiry boatmen lug our gear on their shoulders and heads as we wade to shore. Before us lies a gleaming and amazingly empty beach. Lush palm trees lean toward the tide, as if bowing for our arrival.

Teenage islanders smile. “Hey Joe!” they say, and “Go USA!” Americans never come to Boracay. We’re far more exotic to the locals than the Europeans, Aussies, South Koreans and jaded expats who come here to live, love and forget.

We’re about 200 miles south of Manila. This dumbbell-shaped island is only four and a half miles long (about 75 soccer fields) and little over a half-mile wide at its narrowest midsection. Since discovered by Euro backpackers in the late 70s, Boracay and its two-and-a-half mile White Beach has been named among the world’s best by top travel publications, including Harper’s, the BMW Tropical Beach Handbook, Britain’s TV Quick, and Australia’s Sun Herald.

A tall, lean and easygoing Canadian named John Munro runs the tournament. We stay at his Cocomangas Hotel Beach Resort near the center of White Beach. John came fifteen years ago with a backpack and never left. I wonder why. Then I take a long walk on White Beach. Calm high tides have swept the shoreline flat and smooth. The coral sand is so powdery fine it doesn’t send you tiptoeing from its scorch, since powder doesn’t retain the heat. Even the high humidity is bearable, I find. It takes away sore joints, and dry skin, and will let me wear my contacts for days without itching. I wonder less why John never left.

Then, suddenly, it’s high noon. Clouds clear, the sun burns and I have to shield my eyes even with sunglasses on. I’ve been out on the beach too long. The humidity clogs my breathing. I might be drooling. Large homemade umbrellas of thatched straw dot the beach. I find one quick.

We’re supposed to play soccer in this heavy heat? I wonder how on earth.

Although the Beach Football Association of the Philippines calls this their national championship, the truth is we’ve come for an amateur tourney. We’re eight Americans from Portland, Oregon, and one Canadian. We’re well into our thirties, with jobs and families back home. Most of us were good players once. Some of us had played college ball, semi-pro, even professional indoor.

That was a long time ago. We’re called Team USA only because that’s what the islanders call us. Our real name is Western Flash — the name of a sponsor we have no more.

Two years ago we came and won the cup. Our team captain, Mike, was there. Back home, he had assured us that we all still got it. “Definitely, this is the best team that has ever gone,” he says. But that was before one of our best players dropped out — the day before we left.

To stand a chance, you have to acclimate. We wait until late in the day to practice, yet it’s still the hardest I’ve ever had to work for a soccer ball. In Oregon you play in the rain, wind and mud, even in the sun. Never on sand. Our lungs burn. My legs are lead. We scrimmage British expats ten years older and lose. A defender, Brice, hobbles off the beach for his bungalow, cursing. We’ve lost another player — to a thrown-out back.

After each evening’s practice, the sunset saves us. We wade out toward it, the sky glowing pink and the water orange. Black banca silhouettes pass on the horizon. Again, I get why John Munro stayed.

The tournament looms. Facing four games the first day, we swallow our pride and recruit a backpacking Englishman named James. Our stretch of White Beach has been transformed. The “field” is lined, goals stand ready and advertising banners obscure the horizon, providing shade for the spectators that ring the field. Euro pop pumps from speakers fastened to palm tree trunks.

Our first game we play skilled islanders — John’s own Cocomangas team. The sand game’s so fast, all flicks and tricks, gritty sprints and point-blank shots. Ten minutes in, my head’s spinning from the hot sun. My shoulders scorch; sweat blurs my eyes. Fans shout but I can’t hear them.

At halftime I joke that we might as well have been wearing steel-toed boots and lead boxes on our heads. No one has the wind to laugh. We gasp down water.

Luckily, our recruit James turns out to be a solid back. Our mistakes are many but fewer than theirs. We win — barely. We win the next one.

Afternoon. The harshest sun is out to stay. Our third game is against a team of Germans, diver expats mostly. This one’s rough. Heading the ball I yank a muscle in my neck. We barely win again.

Mike has checked the standings. “Boys, we made the semi-finals!” he reports.

“Great.” Our high-fives are lazy. We break up in search of water. Half an hour later, I can’t move my head from side to side.

The next day, it seems the whole island is out to watch Team USA in the semi-finals — but to win, or lose? We’re playing against even better beach soccer vets — a police team from Iloilo. The music pumps on. Browned Europeans dance in thongs, sarongs and Speedos. Children frolic behind the goals. As we warm up, the adrenaline loosens up my petrified neck.

This game’s even faster. Their striker is thick and quick. Shots rebound off posts, crotches, faces. Ankles crack, toes jab at sand, the ball skitters off raw skin.

Within an hour, we’ve lost our thrilling, sudden-death gut-wrencher. There are many reasons why: indecisive refs, the increasingly choppy sand, our own mistakes. Yet I can find only one decent reason.

As the crowd roars on, I make a straight line for the water. For that sunset. Already the sky is turning pink, and the tide orange. I wade out, passing banca boats. They are anchoring for the night, close to shore. Boatmen steer them in place with long poles.

The rest of the team finds their way out lugging cold San Miguels. We hoist beers and laugh.

“Beach soccer, what a blast,” someone says.

“Who cares we lost,” says another.

“Hey. It’s only football.”

That night John puts on a huge sponsored party. He flies in Manila models for a bikini contest. Team captains are the judges. It’s all comedy, shouting and good times. A mangy island dog wanders on stage and walks the catwalk. It garners more votes than the top model. We drink Cocomanga’s famous “Jam Jars” and trade game tales with the police team. Soon these, the Philippine beach soccer champs, are dancing on stage and raising The Cup above their heads.

Again I wander out onto the sand. It’s dark now. I wade out past my knees. The calm tide is black, as is the sky, dotted by the thousands (millions?) of stars and the moon that illuminates the bancas anchored all around. The boats shine white, like bone.

Lights of a little plane pass overhead, gliding, so easy and calm.

Published in Exquisite Corpse, 2002.

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Trimet Summer

No one said we couldn’t take a river raft on the bus. Two TriMet bus seats barely held the scruffy yellow rubber, all deflated and folded and crammed in there. We grasped at the metal seat handles, peering out windows. Then we’d catch a glimpse of it — the Clackamas River, a vast sparkling sheet beyond cropland and lines of pines.

It was summer, 1980. We had four for this river run, four teen boys from the same tame subdivision of Milwaukie suburbia. The bus driver dropped us off at Carver. Along with the raft we had a sack of cans and bottles. At Carver Store we returned the booty — and stocked up on jerky and sunflower seeds from the payoff. We pumped up the raft with the store’s air hose, shouldered the raft across Carver Bridge and on down to the boat ramp, where the river’s edge had two smells — the fresh scent of rushing current, and the musty reek of water that would not rush.

In a short half hour TriMet bus 31 had delivered us, while our parents worked, into something wilder and freer. We were too young to drive, which definitely was not cool, but TriMet didn’t judge. Our allowances sucked and our crappy first jobs paid little more, but the Oregon Bottle Bill had us covered.

We did a lot of those river runs. We’d have anywhere from two to six of us (me, my brother Dave, Andy, Kelley, Brubaker, Travis, or some special guest star), there could’ve been inner tubes or air mattresses (easier to lug on the bus), and it might have been the summer of ‘79, ‘81 or even ‘82. The ritual remained the same. Floating that short stretch of the Clackamas offered the geography of the world, it seemed then — rocky cliffs, sandy shore, low valley of horses there, bank of river rocks here, then clay plateaus, then overlooks with majestic houses and, in-between, trees and trees with moss on trunks, the high noon sun painting it all in vivid browns, greens, grays and blues. Sometimes it was even flesh tones — if we were lucky we’d pass some “fox” on a towel or lawn chair. I remember aromas of suntan lotion and wild berries, that salty, piney taste of our sunflower seeds. Stop at a rope swing. Jump from a rock. Take the fast rapid again, and again, knocking ankles on river rocks as we plowed back upstream for another go. We might drift without seeing a soul, legs dangling off the side. I don’t remember litter.

Sometimes we scored a six-pack. I don’t know how four teen wannabe river rats riding the bus managed that one. I do know I drank my first beer on the river — a Mickey’s Big Mouth in the stout green bottle, like a grenade. I can still taste the warm bitterness of it, like liquid shrubs. Yet we never got drunk. We could only carry — or score — so much and had to make it last. We didn’t smoke pot then. It just wasn’t us. We weren’t stoners or even nerds — we were soccer players, a new breed spontaneously created a few years hence by the North American Soccer League and a tricky little dude named Pelé. We played morning and night on nearby fields, in backyards, on concrete hoop courts, before and after anything we were told to do. Yet we weren’t jocks — back then, soccer had the same clout as flag team or ping-pong. Only we seemed to know that nylon soccer shorts dried way faster on the river than denim cutoffs.

The river float let us be ourselves, but the ride had to end. Riverside was the safe jump-off point, a sleepy park with a kids’ BMX track and a soccer field we all knew. If we wanted a longer ride we had to stop at High Rocks farther down, near Gladstone and the Willamette River. When High Rocks got close a hulking old rail bridge blocked the sun, its massive supports sucking and churning the water, working hard to make us steelhead bait. Then those jagged high rocks loomed, like mini black Alps. The regulars glared down at us, looking to me like the Manson family with their tattoos and leather headbands, gaunt pocked cheeks and knives and furry shit hanging from their belts, the women stomping around all the while like infantry on patrol. Here the darker 1970s still ruled, all Motörhead and Jonestown and the Gypsy Jokers, when tattoos and Harleys were not stale brands but weapons. The Mansons leapt from any rock, from any height, without even looking it seemed. It was Land of the Lost and Planet of the Apes, we joked, but we had to know it was within us too. They were daring us to jump.

After braving High Rocks, we could do anything. On weekends that same TriMet bus 31 delivered us to downtown’s Civic Stadium and the Portland Timbers of the North American Soccer League (NASL). We’d take back bottles and always get downtown early. At Caplans Sports we’d try on the rare Mitre and Patrick soccer shoes we couldn’t ever afford. At Callin Novelties we’d buy whoopee cushions and fake turds on sale. We scarfed at mom-and-pop joints, lots of bad tacos and cheap hot dogs, and we amazed at Django’s Records and the endless stocks of used LPs that nowadays couldn’t fill one colored room of Powell’s or a page of Amazon.

Along the march to Civic we eyed girls but rarely made successful contact. Maybe it was because we were to them young Mansons from the far-out, pre-New Wave suburbs. And maybe it was best, for we had no clue what to say. Ever rafted the Clackamas? Listen to that band Devo? Hear my whoopee cushion? Inside the stadium, we found our way. A few times we snuck down to the field’s edge for a Timbers game’s last minutes. In 1979, we sat along the midfield touchline as our boys lost to the mighty New York Cosmos in a shootout. After games, the stadium crew often let us soccer rats play on the hard Astroturf until after the lights died down. Once we made it below the westside stands and mingled with players coming out the locker rooms with cigarettes and beers and so many British accents twanging away, none of which we could match to a town or even a country. For one big game we brought our small one-man raft on the bus and, branding it the “Timber Boat,” blew it up and sent it out into the Timbers’ crowd, a kooky teen bonding of river and city. It floated out among the North End’s thousands and can probably be seen, I’m really hoping, in a decent photo somewhere.

That was our Soccer City USA. We never ventured into Old Town, Chinatown, or that dead zone of grimy warehouses now called The Pearl. Like most kids, we took it all for granted. We had no clue downtown’s smaller blocks (compared to other American cities’) helped make that trek to the stadium quick and easy. For us, the Transit Mall and Fareless Square had always been there even though they were only a couple years old. We didn’t care much about Pioneer Courthouse Square being built, about some trolley they were calling MAX. As for the Clackamas River, I certainly had no clue Rudyard Kipling had fished at Carver and they’d named a big rock in the river after him, had no clue endangered coho salmon and steelhead swam nearby Clear Creek and that only years of activism, conservation and grit had brought the noble fish back. The Oregon Bottle Bill was barely ten years old then. I only vaguely thought of it as recycling and probably didn’t see that our returns helped keep the litter off the river.

We were just getting started, yet nothing was what it seemed. The Mansons at High Rocks were partly grotesque exaggerations of my overheating teen mind, and I’m sure the scene was nothing like the psycho summer river riots reported today. At the same time, a grinning contender named Neil Goldschmidt was still the untainted champion of progress Portland, Oregon-style, and the Trail Blazers were those humble scrapping heroes we loved all the more because the national media snubbed them. Out by my house, Clackamas Town Center was about to change a loose two-lane network of sleepy fringe suburbs, farmland and woods into a supersized morass of chain mall, road improvement and mini-mansion that would scrape the green from the hills and, in the end, seduce even old isolationist Happy Valley.

We were those teens who thought themselves different. We’d find out otherwise. Soon we’d get our first cars and loathe the bus, the summer river runs involving complex car shuttles, and more crappy jobs freed us from taking back bottles. Along the river, I’d hope to see that one girl who’d dropped out instead of just some fox. Shorties of Schlitz Malt Liquor would replace sips of Mickey’s, whoopee cushions became bongs, Devo abandoned for Black Flag. Though I’d become a top soccer player locally I quit top-level ball before I turned 19, the collapse of the cocky, overreaching NASL doing my teen malaise no favors at all.

Those easy summers made possible by TriMet and the Oregon Bottle Bill were not to blame. If anything they were character builders that would help us remember later we could make it all on our own — with just a little help. It’s not often you can thank policy for encouraging growth of a human sort. Today, it might be phrased this way: There’s a lot to be said for unstructured play.

Of course, my parents Carl and Jean knew it all along. Did they know their sons were hauling a smelly rubber raft on TriMet to float the big river and taking back bottles like a “hobo” to roam the raw city? I think so. To brave the dark sight of Gypsy Jokers and the ridicule of downtown westside girls? They had to have a clue. My parents were happy to let TriMet and the Bottle Bill give us a better summer while they worked, for us. That’s because Carl and Jean, much older than most kids’ parents, were true children of the Great Depression. They knew a damn good New Deal when they saw one.

Published in Citadel of the Spirit: Oregon’s Sesquicentennial Anthology, Nestucca Spit Press, 2008.

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Thanks for reading.

www.stephenfanderson.com

Novels by Steve Anderson

The Losing Role

False Refuge

Besserwisser: A Novel

Table of Contents

Fiction

The Thing With Chick Is

Bald Wig

A Cheap Con

Caving

Charity

Branding

She’s Got No Reverse

Asphalt Jornalero

Not Fiction

Team Boracay: 200 Miles South of Manila

TriMet Summer

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