Guest Writer: Gita Smith

Tale of a Salamander

“Not drinking has added an element of uncertainty to my life,” Nicki laughs. “I used to know how I’d die.”

She wraps long, elegant fingers around an iced tea glass and gives it a practiced shake, her old bourbon-and-soda gesture.

Nicki lived in Savannah with Joe above his used furniture store during her drinking days. Mornings, she’d awaken to the sound of sofas and chairs being scraped out to the sidewalk in front, to the thud of crates landing on concrete. She would test the air on her face and mouth before opening her eyes. If the salt air was gently moist, she would chance it and ease up gingerly.

There was a space between the Nicki of the early morning hours and the self she would be by noon. In bed alone, with the window open and a sea breeze stirring the sheer curtains, she relished being clear, flying solo. By noon the feeling was replaced by a whiskey thirst that reached to her knees.

Joe had been a seafaring man for most of his life. And, like a sailor’s chest, he had seemed sturdy and safe in the beginning when she first wandered into his store, looking for lamps. But now, good solid Joe was a highway to nowhere, and Nicki saw herself as only a dotted line on their map. Day by day, she felt herself fading, felt like she soon might disappear.

Nights, they would sit at Joe’s scarred formica kitchen table and drink. Now and then a pal of Joe’s would wander in with half a bottle. Sometimes Joe would go downstairs and meander through the store, sitting in every chair, “so no one feels left out,” he said.

Then she’d hear him bellowing his sailor’s songs.

Farewell to Nova Scotia, the sea-bound coast
Tho’ your mountains dark and dreary be.
When I’m far, far away on the briny ocean deep
Will ye ever heave a sigh and a wish for me?”

Or, Joe would lean across the table and take Nicki’s hands. His words seemed to come from far away although he was right in front of her.

“Baby,” he’d say, “I want to give you everything. Someday we’ll have it all: Louis Quatorze and Frank Lloyd chairs and Baccarat crystal. Lalique. The works.”

He would gaze at the long, cool length of her and get lost in her olive-green eyes. Nicki would regard his broad, pale forehead and half-shut lids. “I know,” she’d say. On some nights Joe would scoop Nicki up and carry her on a looping walk around the store. Inevitably, the bourbon overtook him and he’d stumble and drop her. The next day they would pretend not to see the bruises.

The day Nicki stopped drinking, she did it without Joe. She awoke with eyelids blue as plums and just as swollen. She looked in the mirror and looked away. There had been a new chip in a tooth, she’d noticed; some capillaries showed in the flesh of her nose.

Nicki started keeping a journal and hid it in her douche kit. She wrote down her dreams and poems and feelings. She looked up AA in the phone book and slipped away to meetings at hours when Joe was delivering furniture. She met Alana and Katya at an all-woman’s meeting, and she hung around with them in coffee shops.

Alana was Nicki’s sponsor. She had graying hair and amethyst eyes that gazed levelly at the world. One time, after a meeting, high on a coffee buzz and fellowship, Nicki said, “You know how they always say a woman is like a flower? Like her parts down there are like an orchid, and all?”

Her new friends were attentive now.

“Yeah,” Alana took up the thread, “like the romance novels always say ‘her petals opened,’ and all that crap?”

They were laughing harder.

“Well mine is nothing like a flower,” Nicki said. “Flowers need a gardener to move them around. Mine is like a salamander -- it’s moist and alive!”

Katya shrieked.

Nicki was down to pleading. She hid bottles and, in the process, found other bottles Joe had hidden, who knows when? She tried to drag him out for walks, for booze-free outings to Cumberland Island where they could camp on the beach and watch shorebirds.

Joe was unmoved, unimpressed, un-sober.

She mocked him. She begged.

She called their life “the days of wine and roses,” and Joe laughed. “What’s wrong with roses?”

He called her a dramatist.

“A drahh-ma-teest, a DRAMA-TEST.”

He brought her a rose and pulled the petals off, soaked them in wine and pasted them with small slaps onto her belly, in concentric circles. Each one stayed in place until the wine dried. Nicki said nothing. She felt weightless now. She felt like she would blow away with the next coastal storm.

The afternoon that Nicki walked out on Joe, she’d been sober seven weeks. Joe was helping a customer load a camel-backed sofa onto a flatbed truck when a taxi pulled up. Joe took in the scene – Nicki stepping carefully down the cracked pavement with luggage, her blue-white grip on the handles, the taxi trunk ajar -- and felt an icy fear. The words welled up, “You CAN’T!”

He plunged towards the curb.

His mouth was an O full of “NO!” and “DON’T!”

But that taxi was already gone, bearing his Nicki away like a flower on somebody else’s lapel.

© Gita Smith 2010

Gita Smith is a career journalist, whose work has appeared on The Sphere, Fictionaut, Pen10, Not From Here Are You (The NOT), and her reporting on the South appears at LiketheDew.com, a news site.

These Shoes (I Dare You Challenge)

This week Jo Prescott’s I Dare You challenge at her site JM Prescott - A Reader's World came in the form of clothing..."Clothing can set the scene as certainly as a wedding dress, predict plot like a ski mask and laytex gloves, or reveal character like chaps and spurs."
Herewith, my response to the challenge:

These Shoes

These shoes have walked all over London. They have traversed Bermuda and the Bahamas. They have climbed to the caldera in the Azores and stood atop Gibraltar. They have walked all through the worst parts of Lisbon until they made my feet ache, and some of the best parts of Hamburg, where again my feet were hurting at day’s end. In Barcelona, they walked a good part of las Ramblas. They have stood on the tarmac at the little airport a short distance from the edge of the Pyrenees and taken me through olive groves and parks where flamingoes danced and balanced on one leg. They, these shoes, not the flamingoes, helped me walk all around Las Vegas to take in everything there was to see and do for free, and because my feet were sore, I credit them with keeping me from losing more than $40.US in those oh-so prevalent slots. I did pick up another pair in Denver, but they’re really the same shoes, and at the end of the month they will take me back to Costa Rica.

These shoes have walked the decks of many ships and the aisles of dozens of airplanes. They have gotten me to airports early and to church late. They have guided me through shopping malls and into cinemas and across the streets of New York City against the light. They have walked me from the Battery to Harlem, from Sutton Place to the Chelsea Piers, from somewhere to no place. These shoes have walked me from childhood to my maturity.

These shoes are my guide. They are brogues. They are sandals, boots and loafers. I have walked a mile in another man’s moccasins and returned home in these shoes. They wait under my bed to greet me in the morning and take me to new places and the same old places. They can get there without a map. They have marked the mileage and taken into account my weariness. These shoes will never fail me. They are ruby slippers and if I click the heels together three times and wish solemnly for something, well, you know where that will get me. I have not yet been to Kansas, but I understand we all wind up there one day.

I have never drunk champagne from a woman’s shoe nor has any drunk from mine but the possibility is not ruled out.

Every so often, I remove these shoes and flex my toes on a sandy beach or swim in a pool or bathe, but for more hours of the day than I have them off, I have them on. The natural condition of my feet, it would seem, is to be inside these shoes. Sometimes I wonder why we have made the earth so hard and dangerous a place to walk barefoot that these shoes are more a necessity than a whim.

I am attached to these shoes, and have contributed to the fortunes amassed by men like Thom McAn and Mr. Florsheim, if there was such a person, and if there was, he must have been very attached to his shoes. Why else dedicate his life to providing them for so many others. He had not much work convincing people they needed their shoes. Everybody takes this for granted here in the first and second worlds. We are working on those in the third world, getting them to see the necessity of shoes.

Someday, everybody in the world will admit how much they are attached to shoes. Then, we will work on hats.

© Michael D. Brown 2010

Guest Writer: Harris Tobias

FILL ‘ER UP

They’re after me. I haven’t much time to write but I’d like to get my story down before I’m caught, strapped to a table, and forced to surrender my precious fat.
Ever since passage of the Liposuction Act of 2012, it’s no longer safe to be a fat man in America. If you’re even 20 lbs overweight you must pay the fat tax. This is not a tax you pay with money, rather it’s forcible liposuction. Our fat is sucked from our bodies then turned into a bio fuel and sold back to us at the pump. Our government has marketed this unjust law to the people as a virtuous act. As if trampling on the rights of fat people was the right thing to do. Talk about spin. I have to admit, it is a win win situation for the state, it solves two of their big problems—obesity and our dependence on fossil fuels.
No one ever asked us fatties how we feel about it. Well I’ll tell you how I feel about it: it’s a violation of my civil rights not to mention a damn inconvenience. If you’re fat in America these days, you can be marched against your will to a suction station and your weight reduced by ten percent. For a guy my size, that’s thirty pounds. Sure, maybe I look better to you skinnies, but who gives a damn what you think? For months after, nothing fits right. Let’s face it; it’s a pain in the butt, literally.
Well they’re not getting any more of my fat. Not this time, not if I can help it. They caught me twice before. They got their pound of flesh and I don’t intend for them to get anymore. The suction reduced my waist size by several inches and a lot of skinny people remarked that I was "looking good”. Their idea of looking good looks like anorexia to me. What they don’t seem to realize is that I like the way I look. It takes me months to put the weight back on and feel myself again. You want to look undernourished, that’s your choice. Me, I like the well upholstered look, big. round, meaty. Another thing no one talks about is that liposuction hurts, and that sound, it sounds like fifty teenagers sucking up the last of their milk shakes from the bottoms of their glasses.
I’ve heard all the arguments about lipo-fuels being the patriotic thing to do; about it being for the common good, in the nation’s best interest and, as they’re only too happy to point out, in my best interest too. Well, the national interest be damned. What about a man’s right to look the way he wants to look? It’s my blubber and I intend to keep it. I’m not a national resource. I’m a thinking, feeling human being for God’s sake not some stinking oil well.
After the fat riots in 2013, things simmered down some. The National Fat People’s Alliance (NAFPA) succeeded in winning a few protections. The much heralded Fat Person’s Bill of Rights guarantees that fat folks cannot be subjected to more than two lipos a year and that no more than ten percent of body weight can be extracted. Even with these restrictions, 25% of the nation’s fuel comes from its fat citizens. I’m secretly proud of that fact despite my public statements to the contrary.
Our lipo-fuels program has become a model for other countries. I recently read that Brazilians have changed their national diet from rice and beans to Doritos and cookies. It’s estimated that America has the largest fat reserves on the planet and it’s a renewable resource. Most of the world envies us. Those skinny Arabs are eating their hearts out. They simply don’t have the long cultural tradition of unhealthy eating and sedentary living that we do, not to mention the poor snack infra-structure in much of the undeveloped world.

My girlfriend Shirley and I are on our way to seek asylum in Mexico. We’ll miss the thousand calorie bacon burgers, but we value our freedom more. Besides, the easily available tacos, gringas, huaraches, and so forth provide plenty of high fat, high salt snacks and there are plenty of fat Mexicans who are free to live their lives as they see fit and are not forced to surrender their precious blubber to some misguided notion of public health and fuel economy.
It’s a long drive. We’re taking back roads to avoid roadblock weigh-ins. They’re another humiliation we fatties are forced to endure. They make us get out of our cars and get on a scale. If your weight doesn’t match their chart, you get a summons to report to a lipo center. If you don’t show up, they come and get you. It’s worse than a speeding ticket—it not only slows you down, it ruins your appetite for the entire day.
The trouble with taking back roads, though, is the limited eating choices they offer. But we are managing. We picnic often and eat at small restaurants only. The bigger places, especially the all-you-can-eat places are always watched by the fat-baggers, that’s what we call the lipo-cops. You can always tell a fat-bagger, they’re invariably thin with a wolfish look, like food was a personal affront rather than the pleasure it is.
My name, by the way, is Oliver Hardy, the same as the silent film star. Unfortunately, that’s where the resemblance ends as I weigh 308 pounds and stand fife feet five inches tall. Shirley is built the same. We’re both fat but it’s not our fault. I have a gland condition and Shirley was abused as a child. I love Shirley. I love her roundness, her acres of flesh and her unending plumpness. And I’m sure that she loves me. She calls me her ‘rolly polly’ and I call her ‘quivers’. All we want is to be left alone, preferably with a double cheeseburger and a large fries. It used to be that a man could be as fat as he wanted but those days, it seems, are gone for good. A man’s fat is his castle and no government should be able to take it from him. Revolutions have been fought for less reason.
Shirley has been driving while I write. She has one hand on the wheel and the other deep in a bag of potato chips. She points a greasy hand at the road ahead and sprays the windshield with soggy crumbs. Her arms are the size of Virginia Hams, I can see flecks of salt on her lips. It makes me hungry just to look at her. Shirley sees a Dairy Queen up ahead and wants to make a pit stop and maybe get a bite to eat. I think that’s a good idea and she pulls into the parking lot. I decide to wait in the car and write. The car along side of us is filled with skinny teenagers. I hear them hoot and jeer as Shirley makes her way toward the counter. “Hey, fatty, how about a fill up,” one of them yells. Rude and nasty skinnies. Don’t they realize that their hurtful remarks only add to Shirley's insecurity? If they mock us in Mexico, at least we won’t be able to understand them.
Shirley returns with a double cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate shake for each of us. It feels good to eat. It’s stressful being on the lam. I pull in to a filling station and get out to fill the tank with bio-fuel. I chew my burger and sip my shake while the gas pump ticks off the gallons. I wonder if I’ll like Mexico. I wonder if Shirley is going to finish her fries. I wonder what will happen at the border. It may cost me thirty pounds of lovely fat to be free. I snitch a couple of fries from Shirley's pack. She slaps my hand away and pulls out into traffic.

Grandma Bixby's Teeth

Everyone loved Grandma Bixby. You could tell by the big crowd at her funeral. There must have been a hundred mourners passing by her coffin. My Mom knew her and dragged me there and I have to say, the old bat never looked better. The funeral home did a swell job with the clothes and the makeup. I hardly recognized her as the line of mourners shuffled closer to the coffin. Her hair was neat and her teeth were polished. You never saw the old lady actually wearing her dentures. She always kept them soaking in a glass of water next to her bed.
The reason I know about the glass with the teeth in it is because I saw them first hand. She wasn't wearing them the last time I saw her, at least not so I noticed. She was walking down the street looking just as feisty and messy and old as always. She walked pretty good for an old lady. Sure she used a cane but she moved right along. I was standing on the corner drinking 40s with my man Shooter. We were just passing the bag back and forth when Shooter stopped her.
"Hey Grandma, where you goin'?" said Shooter. "You like a hit?" offering her the bag.
Grandma stopped and fixed us in a steely gaze and pointed her cane at me and said, "Norman Jefferson and Marcus James, why ain't you boys in school? Standin' on this corner, drinkin' and wastin' your life away. I knew both your daddy's and they was hard workin', god fearin' men. You boys get yourselves to school now, hear? Don't you want to amount to something?"
Me 'n Shooter just laughed and Grandma cast us an evil eye and walked off muttering to herself. I don't think she had her teeth in then, she hardly ever wore them but I really don't remember. But I do remember Shooter takin 'a good pull off the 40 and sayin', "I bet she's goin' to the bank to cash her social security check. I hear she takes that money home and hides it away. I bet she's got a shit load of money sittin' in a drawer somewhere."
Well. maybe it was the beer, but before we knew it we was climbin' the fire escape to Grandma's apartment not fifteen minutes later. I swear, it was a piece of cake. Shooter knew just where she lived on account of her being his momma's aunt and all. Her window wasn't open but it didn't take all that much to get inside. The place looked like it was a hundred years old which was probably not too far from the truth. Old black and white photographs in old fashioned frames hung on the walls. The furniture was old, the linoleum was old, even the refrigerator looked like it came from an antique store. Anyway, Shooter got right to work lookin' for the money. He was dumpin' stuff out of drawers and closets and makin' a tremendous mess. All he found was old lady hats and old lady underpants and funny shit that nobody wears anymore. But there was no damn money. Shooter was gettin;' angrier by the minute.
I was lookin' under Grandma's bed and checking out the mattress when I noticed the glass with Grandma's teeth in it. It gave me the creeps because those teeth were following Shooter around the room like they were watchin' him. I tore off Grandma's bedding while old Shooter began dumping out the kitchen out of pure meanness.
Just then, the door opened and Grandma walked in. She looked from Shooter to me and just shook her head from side to side. She never got to say a word before Shooter grabbed her cane and began beating her over the head with it. It was a good solid cane and it didn't take too many blows to drive the life right out of the old lady.
The whole time, the teeth in the glass fixed their gaze on Shooter and when he delivered the fifth or sixth blow, the teeth began to chatter. That's when I ran from the room and down the fire escape all the way home. I never saw what happened to Shooter. I heard they found his body in the alley. They say he must have been attacked by a pack of dogs, he was so chewed up. I don't know. I never saw any dogs when I was running home.
The line moves so slowly. Lots of people from the neighborhood crying and saying goodbye. The funeral people did a good job on her. You can't see her bloody head. She looks peaceful. A lot of people are putting flowers on the coffin. My mother is just ahead of me. She lays a rose on the wooden box. Now it's my turn. I put my rose on the coffin. I don't want to look at her face. I'm sorry for what I done. I try to say I'm sorry to Grandma but before I can open my mouth I see that grandma has opened hers. Her teeth look at me and chatter.

© Harris Tobias 2010

Harris Tobias was raised by robots disguised as New Yorkers. Despite an awkward childhood he learned to read and write. To date Mr. Tobias has published two detective novels, The Greer Agency and A Felony of Birds, to critical acclaim. In addition he has published short stories in Down in the Dirt Magazine, Literal Translations, Electric Flash and Ray Gun Revival. He currently lives and writes in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Guest Writer: Adam Byatt

Comic Superhero

Andrew swept up the pile of comic books from his desk and stashed them into his folder with his homework.  He had a couple to return to his best mate Jackson and hoped to borrow some in return.  With his schoolbag packed he headed out the door for the walk to school.

Jackson’s route intersected with Andrew’s at the corner store.  He was walking out with a carton of strawberry milk and raised it in greeting.

“Finished your Modern History homework?” said Jackson.

“Yeah and the Biology stuff, too.”

“Bugger.  Forgot that.  Mr Perkins won’t be happy.  When’s Bio?”

“Just after lunch.  You’ll have time to finish it then.”

Jackson changed topic quickly, “Hey I got the new Wolverine comic yesterday.  You can have it when I’ve finished.”

The pair continued the walk to school chatting about their comic superheroes.  Jackson favoured Superman while Andrew liked The Phantom. 

“But how can The Phantom be a superhero when he doesn’t have a superpower?” argued Jackson.

“Batman doesn’t have a superpower.  And besides, it’s not the ability that makes someone a superhero, but the attitude.  That makes The Phantom a superhero.  He’s just classy.”

“Yeah, but having a superpower just makes you a little bit more awesome,” countered Jackson. 

Secretly, Andrew longed for a superpower.  All his childhood comic book heroes were bestowed with them.  Jackson wanted Magneto’s ability to control metal. 

“Could you imagine having Magneto’s power?  How awesome would that be in Metal work!”

Above the power of flight and physical strength, adamantium claws and laser weapons, Andrew craved one power: the power of invisibility.  Not like the Invisibility Cloak of Harry Potter, but an ability to be seen and not to be noticed. 

“What’s up first this morning?” said Jackson.

“English.  Which means we are going to get our essays back.”

Jackson groaned and faced the sky, knowing his inevitable outcome.  “At least you’re going to get a good mark.  Everyone knows that you’re The Quiet Achiever.  You always get good marks but you never let anyone know.  You’re kind of like the Clark Kent of English.”

“Maybe, but I still have to beat Emily Lewis.”

“You two have had a thing going on since Year 7.” 

“She’s a know it all.  She always smirks if she beats me and it is so infuriating.”

“Just be careful you don’t do the same.  If you make her look stupid she’ll unmask The Quiet Achiever.”

Andrew had learned the art of being a chameleon at school where his school uniform provided an exoskeleton.  Beneath was no costume, just the fragile skin of adolescent ego.

“At least I don’t wear my underpants on the outside,” said Andrew. 

“Yeah, but you’d look good in spandex,” said Jackson and they both fell about laughing. 

“We’d better hurry,” said Andrew as they entered the school’s grounds.

Andrew and Jackson took their seats on the left of the classroom, just back from the middle.  It gave them a good vantage point to see Emily who preferred the front.  Mrs Motherwell came in and the class sat up in Pavlovian response, eager for their marks.  The chat escalated as papers were returned and marks were compared.  Andrew said thanks as the paper was delivered but he turned it face down, resisting the urge to look.  He wanted to wait until Emily had received hers. 

Mrs Motherwell handed Emily her paper who glanced quickly at the offending red mark at the top of the page before turning it face down on her desk. 

“Emily, what’d you get?” said Andrew.

“Eighteen out of twenty,” she replied.

Andrew whipped his paper over to see his mark.  Every superhero has an Achilles heel, their kryptonite.  Andrew succumbed to the most basic of tragic flaws. 

“Ha! In your face, Lewis.  Twenty!”  His hubris exalted him to dizzying heights.

Emily turned to hide her face, the shame of ridicule blushing her cheeks.

Mrs Motherwell interceded, “Mr Andrew Hansen.  That is uncalled for.  Despite the fact that you scored a perfect mark, it does not give you the right to gloat over us mere mortals.  In the words of King Solomon, ‘Pride precedes disaster, and a haughty spirit before a fall.’ ”

Jackson hid a smirk.  “You got burned.”

“I knew it was a mistake once I’d said it.”

“Looks like The Quiet Achiever is no more.  But you know every superhero needs a nemesis.”

Andrew spent the rest of the lesson feeling naked and exposed.  Suddenly his identity was no longer a secret.  He kept sneaking glances towards Emily, but never held his gaze for long.  The bell for the end of class came as a relief for Andrew.  He stood to pack away his books but was confronted by the stormy face of Emily inches away from his own.

“I will beat you Andrew Hansen, if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

She turned and as she flounced away, her dark tresses flowed like a cape.

© Adam Byatt 2010

Adam Byatt is an English teacher and a drummer with an interest in literary pursuits, rhythmic permutations, theological amplifications and comedic outbursts.  He inhabits the cracks around the following websites:
http://afullnessinbrevity.wordpress.com/
http://adampb.wordpress.com/
www.twitter.com/revhappiness

52 Pick-Up

Open publication

Guest Writer: Grey Johnson

Staying True to Her

Not all of her extra weight came off after the baby, and it made me want to slip up behind her and circle her chubby waist with my arms. I feel protective when I look at her in her swimsuit. The cut of it stirs me up, it makes me want to kneel and plead, to worship her legs, even with their bits of cottage cheese. Maybe I should have knelt and pleaded before the baby, to keep things the same, but I wasn’t given the chance. Seeing that she is busy at the kitchen counter, I decide to let my arms hang quiet and still empty, so they can't interrupt her. My arms are not becoming accustomed to this, even now.

We used to lie on the sofa and watch TV together, head to toe. Sometimes we even ate from the same plate. Picking up the last bite, and pushing against my lips, she liked to command me to eat it. I like that, more so now than then, because it doesn‘t happen anymore. One summer we spent so much time on yard work that we sweat-stained the seats in my truck, and I had to sell it because we couldn't get the smell out. Whenever we pruned or planted, we didn’t talk at all, and the quiet was never heavy.

Then came her baby fever, which was unimaginable to me after all our time together. And just before the baby came, she moved an hour away from me with her husband. The distance to her became far enough away for it to be a pain in the ass to visit, but close enough to feel guilty for not doing it. I didn’t see her get big because I didn’t really want to, and I tried to knit a blanket even though I never finished it. I still wonder why they moved, wanting to know whose idea it was first. Probably hers.

Today we are taking her little boy to the beach with Grandma. Snacks are packed, and she absently places my towel in her bag without telling me. She loans me a travel bottle that matches hers. I am thrilled by these small gestures, and I feel embarrassed by my hope for some secret importance in them. Whenever we go anywhere, she always drives, and when her mother rides with us in the car, I volunteer to sit in the back seat with him. So now my role is to laugh and talk with a little boy as he points out the window, naming everything that passes. His favorite place is the mini-golf spot with the pirate ship. She says he likes to play there, pretending to shoot down helpless ships and steal their treasures.

You know you are lonely in the back seat of a car when the only conversation you can produce consists of one loud question and one pitiful response. My question to the front is, "Have you seen Avatar?" My companions put aside their dread, and tell the truth by saying no. I am compelled to enlighten them about the many excellent characteristics of the movie, the most important one being that Avatar is not hype. “Really, it is so much more than you might expect, not hype at all,” I spout. When I finish, I need a drink from the travel bottle I borrowed, but I have to get her little boy to show me how to do it. He sweetly shows me the button, how to push it, and says “See?” with perfect concern for me. I watch his dirty Crocs thump the back of the driver’s seat and wonder if it is still annoying or whether she has just become accustomed to it.

When we get to the beach, he rejoices in the water. She grasps his hand and he jumps fearlessly through the waves. I watch him with great interest, as I always do, for his strength and spirit are a beautiful reflection of hers. Their eyes and hair were crafted from the same precious stuff. That fact makes looking at him a challenge to my heart. Each time he crawls in my lap, and I brush against his skin, I am reminded that it is probably the closest contact I will ever have with her. Whenever we three are together, I think that this will be the day that I learn to accept things as they are. But as they play in the surf before me right now, I can barely meet her eyes and return her smile. But I do smile, when I pretend that what once was mine has never gone.

© Grey Johnson 2010

Grey Johnson lives in a small town in northeastern South Carolina. Her garden is very important to her, and so are her dogs. She reads and knits rectangles, but seldom knows what to do with them. She doesn’t have a blog or website, but writes some on the Six Sentence Social Network.

Guest Writer: Peter McNiff

Anger Management

                         There’s a rocket in my pocket
                         Play it cool boy, play it cool....
                         —Stephen Sondheim West Side Story

My friends tell me I am much too serious and you know, I think they are right. I need to lighten up a little, stop thinking about all those bad things we are doing to each other, you know, us having all the jobs and taking all the profits from those other countries that we keep wrecking.
So, I made my mind up I’m going to be positive, rid myself of those negative thoughts about people dying of starvation, murders, drug cartels, police and political corruption, soldiers coming home in coffins; and as for those among them who lost their legs or arms, or brains, fighting for me and you because that’s, well, downbeat right?
I need only to think of the freedom I have, the space, the sea, the mountains, the good air I have to breathe, and the fact that where I live I can write and photograph just about any damn thing that pleases me. I can sit here on this park bench and write poetry or cross the street to that fine bank with its marble walls and daub it with graffiti and nobody will shoot me because I live in a democracy, thanks to all the good cops, politicians and soldiers, and civilian men and women who in times past put their lives on the line for me. Well, yes and for you, too, I suppose but I know you don’t want to talk about that. So, let’s not dwell on their suffering for too long — when for example, one of them takes a bullet in the face, or steps on an APM. We don’t ever want to think about that.
Nice — nice abbreviation there, don’t you think? APM, it keeps the horror of its real meaning tucked neatly out of sight, all wrapped in a soft acronym, hiding what it really is, an anti personnel mine, a bomb that just sits there waiting for you to step on it and then boom it blows you into little pieces. Or if not you, an innocent on the way to market to sell a few vegetables, or a child or a woman and child or an entire family—but there I go again. I mean, I must be positive and think of the jobs created in the manufacturing sector from making munitions that blow up human beings, towns, cities and continents, like those ingenious fragmentation phosphorous bombs and armour piercing shells that can punch holes through concrete and ricochet around the inside if a armoured tank, or maybe someone’s private house, wrecking things, furniture, ornaments, school books, family photographs while killing the living in them, grandma, mama, papa, brothers, sisters, and maybe leaving just one family individual to remember the dreadfulness of it all. Oh, and the cat, the shelling missed the cat, so that’s OK. That’s good.
Yes, I must be more optimistic and think of the profits that go into corporate pockets and arms dealers’ wallets and the backhanders that are paid to the people to induce them to buy this warhead over that warhead, this chopper over that chopper. That must be delightful, right? Spreading the largesse around?
Later, not much later, downstream are stationed all the other private companies with their safety nets, the sub contractors who handle the ancillaries like security, drugs, wheelchairs, coffins, insurance, and so on and so forth, all focussed on picking up the pieces and so having employment and a few dollars in their pockets to buy a meal and enjoy a DVD or a Superman comic.
Really, I do need to listen to my friends more when they talk about football and movies and books because this will get me right back on track. I shall talk about something happy and fragrant, like flowers for instance but without mentioning the blooms they put on coffins or the wreathes they lay on the graves of dead soldiers and dead peace-making civil servants and journalists shot up in the name of the Fourth Estate.
Another thing, I must resolve to stop going to the airport to salute the poor bastards they bring home in wheelchairs and on stretchers, and crack down on my impulse to expose what is going on by writing it up and expect big headlines and double-page spreads in newspapers and magazines that I used to write for. Because enough is enough, it is too sickening. It might offend the readers, not to mention advertisers. I mean we don’t want messy stories with gory pictures about the maimed and the dead, anymore than we need to keep going on and on reminding ourselves of the losses and cost to families and to the budgets of the nations involved, when it will all be taken care of in the future by our grandchildren’s great-grandchildren who will inherit all our wisdom and live forever in peace? Right?

Which reminds me, I got some good advice from an editor recently who made his name as a fashion writer and gossip columnist, before he made it in the big-time: “If we must place those awful pictures of the wounded and starving refugees adjacent to our glossy corporate brand names, once a year might be fine, say, around Christmas and Thanksgiving when the advertising is down a tad. It is all very well to remind ourselves about such matters occasionally but, the economy being in the state it is in, we need the commercials. Any of you who feel compunction towards this kind of material, edit the stuff tightly and slip it inside, towards the back of the journal with the horoscope. Say, ten lines and we can lose it in a single column between the big display ads. And then we can salve our consciences and the conscience of our readers all in one, right?”
“Thanks, Ed. No, really, thanks very much — ‘chop it all up and boil it down’ — got that. And if you like, I will just print the dog in the picture; I mean a dog’s eyes are symbolic enough, are they not? And you can, like, airbrush out the blood on the doorstep?”
“I like your attitude. It’s good. Advertisers appreciate when we do this for them because they come right back with even bigger commercials. You wait and see. They want self-censorship — they’ve come to the right place.”

From now on I am going to focus on wholesome things like porridge and rice pudding, salads and beefburgers and write passionately about delicious recipes, arts and crafts and sod the poor and the bleeders.
Already I can feel the change coming over me, just as my psychotherapist said it would. I mean I actually feel lighter, as if the town sewerage works just relieved itself. Really, my feet are not sticky any more.
From now on I am going to concentrate on things that make me laugh. All I have to do is close my eyes and think of other things. Think of nothingness. Make my mind a complete blank. But...I can still hear the gunfire and the rumble of tanks and sordid pictures flood into my mind of children with bloated bellies and flies crawling out of their mouths.
Wait, I think some one’s coming this way....I’ll ask this man.
“Oh, Sir, excuse me, Sir. If you wouldn’t mind, Sir, could you just place those pieces of cardboard over my head?  Thanks, that’s great. No, I don’t need your money; give that to the guy over there with the crazy look in his eyes. And, Sir — would you mind covering the rest of my torso with the copy of the Wall Street Journal you have in your hand. That would give me a bit of class and thank you, Sir. I think it’s going to be frosty tonight.”
Now I don’t have to look at anything, I can lie out here with the homeless and destitute and the drug addicted and the vets who came back from Vietnam, whenever that was and still they are rolling around in wheelchairs. They may look as if they are home, but really, I know for a fact that white haired guy over there is still stuck in a trench in the Tet Offensive.
On the bright side, they were all children once, innocent with age and now they have lots of new friends for company home from Iraq and Afghanistan who have lost their childhood, too, and can share memories about the war with their buddies in the public library on the worst days of winter.
“Oh, and, Sir — excuse me, Sir, before you go, would you just reach out and toggle the switch on my laptop, otherwise it will just go on and on churning and I know how sick and tired all my friends are with this stuff.”
I get so tired myself these days, because there is not a damn thing I can do except write and take photographs of the people around me who sleep in doorways and park benches, people whose anger was once a given.
“Yes, Sir, that’s the button you have your finger on just hit the swit—“

© Peter McNiff 2010

Peter McNiff, current affairs producer based in Ireland, independent documentary film maker and web designer; short fiction broadcast by RTE and BBC; included in short story anthologies published by Heinemann (London) and Phoenix (London).  Has a Jacobs Award for television work; a Hennessy/Irish Press/New Irish Writing award; Cultural Person of the Year (2004) in his home town Greystones, Co. Wicklow.

http://www.petermcniff.com
http://www.wicklowgold.com
http://sixsentences.ning.com/profile/PeterMcNiff