When I lie down
I see
stairways in the
winding branches
of trees

When I rise up
I see
who climbs their
steps along
with me

Some nurses came rushing in because his monitors had been going haywire, and they kicked me out of his room. I was glad at first, because I was beginning to feel his pain. When he was talking about that little boy, I started to think about my own boy, and how he died with my wife when the car I was driving went off the road. And I started to see his face, all covered in blood, and looking up at me for help, and I remembered how I tried, I tried everything I knew how, but it wasn't enough, I wasn't enough, and he got taken away from me. He and his mom got taken away from me. And I feel as though I died in that crash too, but my body stayed behind. And I've been trying to go with them, but my body won't let me. Not completely. It's like part of me has gone to find them but the rest of me can't catch up, and I'm in agony as I try to pull and push and rip and tear and claw away at whatever's holding me back.

     And I've been trying to wash all that blood from my boy's face, so I could see him, and he would be all right again. But I haven't had anything but tears to wash that blood away. And at first they flowed like rivers, and then like streams, and then like rain. And then slowly they ran out, there just wasn't any more. And sometimes I see his face, and sometimes he's even smiling, and sometimes my wife is there too. But it's not enough, it's never enough. I want more, I need more, I want to feel my boy tugging on my hand, and hear him laughing at my jokes, and watch him catching a ball when I throw it to him. I want to feel his arms around my neck hugging me so tight I can hardly breathe. I want to feel my wife's hand, and her heart beating against my chest when she puts her arms around me. I want to feel her breath on my neck as she smiles and laughs at the day. I want them back so much there's no room for anything else inside me, just that want, that need, that ******* hole of an ache, to have them back again.

     And all these years I've been trying to dull that pain, day after day, hour after hour, bottle after bottle, ounce after ounce. And I've been building scars, like bricks in a wall, to try and keep the hurt away. But listening to that guy in the hospital, I felt like his words had been picking away at those scars and tearing down those walls. And then, after seeing my boy's face again, and thinking about my wife, I felt like l needed that pain. That somehow it gets me closer to them and maybe I'll lose them if I stop feeling whatever is tearing away at me. So I went back to see him the next day, and we talked for a real long time, and made a pact to go up to his village and try to get the herring and seal to recover, and to fight the oil companies, and kumbaya. And I gave him my number to call me when he got out of the hospital if he needed a place to crash, and he said he would. And about a week later I got a call, but it wasn't from him, it was from a deputy sheriff in the next county saying they had found my number in the pocket of a guy who had been beaten to death and it was all he had on him and would I come over and identify the body?

     I went over there and it was him lying on a slab in the morgue. I just couldn't leave him there, so I called that lawyer who got me out of jail and she was kind enough to help me make arrangements to have his body sent to his village for burial, and she lent me some money to go along. I wasn't sure how his father would react, or what would happen when I got there, but I knew that I had to keep up my end of the pact that I had made with my friend.

     It was time now, so I took a final look around. The apartment looked smaller somehow, now that it was empty. Then I grabbed my bags, opened the door and said to the wind, "OK Irniq, let's go home."

Goldie was a fish
swimming in a bowl
where everyone could see
her very tiny role

only when they chose
to look and then
she would disappear
when they would leave

her dreaming of the sea
and reaching for the sky
until the day she found
that she could fly

When I got to the hospital, the nurses told me he was still recovering from surgery for some internal injuries and this and that, but I could go see him for a bit. So I went up to his room and realized that I didn't really know what he looked like, other than blood and bruises, but I could still tell it was him by the way the bandages were wrapped around his head. "Hey Chief," I said, "howya doin'?" This time I knew he was conscious but he didn't say anything. He just gave me this look like he was saying, "Who are you?" and "How do I get rid of you?" at the same time. So I replied, "I know your name is Mitchell, but I figured the only way you'd remember me is if I called you 'Chief,' like I did before." That got his attention and he threw me this sudden, glowering stare for what seemed like a real long time, like he was trying to make up his mind about something. I thought I had ****** him off with that "Chief" crack, but then he said real soft,  "My name's not Mitchell."

     That suprised me a bit, so all I could say was, "But that's who's room this is, according to the nurses."

     "Maybe so. But that's not my real name . . . It's just a name I made up."

     "What, you on the run or something?"
    
     "Something like that."

     "And you ain't a Marine?"

     "How'd you . . . ?" Another stare, and then, "Nope. Not now. I was though."

     "I don't get it."

     "Mitchell was a name I made up when I joined the Corps . . . "

     "So, why did you make up a name? . . . You got a record?"

     "Nothin' like that . . . My real name is Irniq . . . It's an old Inuit name. When I joined up, I thought I was puttin' those days behind me."

     "Inuit . . . What's that, a kind of Indian?"

     "It means, 'People' . . . but you prob'ly think of us as 'Eskimos.' We don't like that name, so we don't use it."

     He stopped looking in my direction and kinda tilted his head back and rolled his eyes back before closing them. Then he took a few real deep breaths, and said, "I grew up in a village that was mostly hunters and fishermen. It was fun, when I was little, kind of like goin' on an adventure all the time. But as I got older, I realized how dirt poor we were and how we seemed to catch less game every season. And then I learned that our tribe owned land that the oil companies wanted to drill, and that the oil money could end our need to hunt, and get us modern, comfortable lives, but the tribe kept clingin' to their old ways. My father said it was oil that wiped out the herring habitats, and caused the seal population to crash, and was keepin' the ice away. I didn't care and thought he was a fool fightin' a losin' battle. I thought I saw the future and that he was goin' down with the past. We had terrible fights and I believed that the man who had once been this mighty hero of mine had turned into a pathetic has-been, and I didn't want to get dragged down with him. I thought that by leavin', I could somehow be part of the future. I didn't have too many places to go, so I joined the Marines."

     "Then what are you doing here?"

     He dropped his head forward, opened his eyes, locked them right on to mine, and said, "I left the Corps a couple of months ago. When I joined up, my father told me he no longer had a son. I guess I didn't really hear those words until I went back home and he shut the door in my face. My mother came out and tried to welcome me home, and get me to stay, but I knew that my father had been right all along, and that it was me who was pathetic. So I got on a bus and went as far as I could until my money ran out, and here I am."

     "What do you mean, about your father being right?"

     He closed his eyes again, brought both hands up to the sides of his face, and said, "When I was in the Corps, I got sent to Iraq. I was pretty gung ** at first, and thought I was fightin' for freedom and the way of life that I wanted, but then it just seemed to get pointless. Day after day of cat-and-mouse with an enemy hidin' in plain sight and no real purpose other than bein' there and gettin' into firefights. Then one day I was on this mission clearin' some homes of insurgents. I was leadin' a squad goin' door-to-door and not havin' much trouble 'til we went to this one house and there's this woman screamin' and tryin' to get past us. A couple of my guys had to hold her down while the rest of my squad got her family to kneel down beside her. The woman kept on screamin' and we didn't have an interpreter, so I went up to her and tried to calm her down. I told her in as soothin' a voice I could that we weren't goin' to hurt anyone, we were just lookin' for bad guys, when I saw this blur out of the corner of my eye. The woman started screamin' louder, and I turned and yelled, 'Stop!!! Stop!!!' a couple of times, but it kept movin' fast and I just reacted . . . I didn't have any time to think . . . it just kept movin' . . . and I was yellin', 'Stop!!! Stop!!!' . . . but it wouldn't stop . . . it wouldn't stop . . . it just kept movin' . . . . . . and I reacted . . . I just reacted . . . . . . and then there was my muzzle flash and this red mist . . . . . . this red mist that just erupted . . . and kind of hung there . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . and then the woman wasn't screamin' . . . and I wasn't yellin' . . . . . . . . . and there was just this little boy . . . . . . . . this little boy, lyin' on the ground . . . . . . with this mush where his face used to be . . . . . . . . . . . and it was quiet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . so quiet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . until I heard this sound like nothin' I ever heard before . . . this kind of moan . . . this deep, hollow, primeval moan that kind of rumbled at first . . . . . . . . and then it grew louder . . . and louder . . . and the pitch got higher and higher . . . . . . until it turned into this ferocious gut-wrenchin' shriek that filled my head and reached way down and ripped my insides out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . and every day I try to put that boy back together in my mind . . . . . . I try to see his face . . . but I can't . . . . . . . . . . . . I can't see his face . . . . . . and I can't get that sound out of my head . . . . . . . . . . . . every single day . . . . . . . . . . . . and all I can see is my muzzle flash . . . and that mist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . that godawful red mist."

They hauled me off to jail and got an ambulance for the guy in the alley. I was booked for assault and battery, robbery, and a few assorted charges thrown in for good measure. It wasn't the first time I had been arrested, so I knew the cops weren't going to believe anything I had to say, especially if I used the word, "innocent." So I stewed in jail for a couple days, until just before my arraignment, when I got to meet the lawyer they had assigned to me. She looked capable enough, but I didn't think she had any time to look into my case, so I asked her if the cops had logged any of the money I supposedly stole into evidence. She asked me "Why?," so I told her it would make the cops look ***** if I actually stole some money and none of it got turned in. But then she said that the guy in the alley had told the cops it wasn't me, but some other guys that beat him up, and he refused to press charges against me anyway, so she could get my case dismissed.

     After I got released, I spent a few days tending to my needs and was lying on the floor next to my fridgette when my mind fuzzed slowly into focus. I was staring at something I couldn't quite make out when I realized it was my reflection on a tequila bottle sitting right next to my face. It was empty, so I pushed it away, and the roaring sound it made as it rolled across the floor felt like a jet plane was landing on my head. That got me up and I got some ice and put it in the sink, which I filled with cold water, and then with my aching head. I didn't feel anything at first, but all of a sudden I felt like I stuck my head in a light socket and it was being soaked and set on fire at the same time. My first reaction was to pull my head up, but I needed that icy water to stop the hurt in my skull, so I grabbed the counter real hard and forced my head back in the sink. My eyes opened wide and I kinda made a blubbering sound as I shook my head from side to side and bubbles flew out my mouth. Then I tried to come up for air, but my shoulder got snagged by the faucet and I started to swallow some water. That got me panicking a bit and I started bouncing around trying to find a way to breathe, until my knees buckled and then I kinda slid out of that sink and onto the floor.

     I coughed and ****** wind for a time, and then I just lay back, spread my arms and closed my eyes. It felt real soothing somehow, like all the fight and pain were draining away, and I just lay there, as if I was floating on a pool of warm Kentucky sunshine. And then I remembered the guy in the alley and how he let me go, both my throat and the police. My lawyer had learned a little bit about him and told me he was a corporal in the Marines, served three tours in Iraq, been awarded some medals, and his name was James Mitchell. She didn't know what he was doing in town or where he was from, but that he had been hurt pretty bad and would be in the hospital for a while. I was feeling a bit curious, and kinda in his debt somehow, so I got up to go see if he was still around.

It was still early, so I took another look around and, sure enough, there was some dug-in grime around where my rickety sofa-bed used to be. I had spent the last 24 hours scrubbing, scraping, wiping and polishing the tiny apartment that used to be my home and although I was exhausted, I couldn't sleep or rest or even sit still for two seconds at a time, so I sprayed that grimy spot with some 409 and scoured it over and over until I found clean.

     Most of my stuff I had already put out on the street to let whoever take what they wanted and then I tossed the leavings to a trash bin. Not much. Mostly personal items and this and that. Things I had survived on, and maybe buried me, these past few years. But I did keep a few things . . . a couple pictures, some old letters, and my son's baseball mitt. It was well-worn but in good shape, even though it was the only one he ever used. I would be traveling light, taking just a few extra clothes, razor and such, and the thickest parka I could fit into my duffel bag. Oh, and a new black suit that I had packed in a separate bag. Also, I would be traveling with a friend.

     I hadn't known him long, maybe a few weeks. When I first saw him he was lying in an alley next to the bar down the street. His face was all bruised, his eyes were swollen, and blood was oozing out his mouth and nose. He was still breathing, but I couldn't tell if he was conscious, so I yelled, "Hey Chief . . . you OK?" He didn't answer, so I looked up and down both ends of the alley, didn't see anyone, and started to check his pockets for anything that I could score. They were empty on one side, so I rolled him over to check the other side when his hand came flying up and grabbed me by the throat. He was squeezing so hard, I thought he was going to break my neck, but then all of a sudden he just let go. I would have been scared shitless but it happened so fast all I could do was gag. Then everything got all bright as a spotlight lit the alleyway and two cops came toward me with their guns pulled.

He found her on a bridge
crying tears into a river

and reached out
as she fell to hold her
in their flight

above her tears
across the sky