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Trying to spread poetry in all it different ways. IG: Mushroompoetry
Poems
guy scutellaro
Oct 2019
The rain ****** through a darkening sky.
The man's eyes grow bright and he smiles. Softly, he whispers, " Man, you're the biggest, whitest, what hell are you anyway?"
The pup sits up and Jack Delleto caresses her neck, but much to the mutt's chagrin the man stands up and walks away.
Jack has his hand on the door about to go into the bar. The pup issues an interrogatory, "Woof?"
The rain turns to snow.
The man's eyes grow bright and he smiles, "My grandma used to say that when it snows the angels are sweeping heaven. I'll be back for you, Snowflake."
Jack shivers. His smile fading, the night jumps back into his eyes.
Snowflake chuffs once, twice.
The man is gone.
The room would have been a cold, dark place except the bodies who sit on the barstools or stand on the ***** linoleum floor produce heat. The cigarette smoke burns his eyes. Jack Delleto looks down the length of the bar to the boarded shut fire place and although the faces are shadows, he knows them all.
The old man who always sits at the second barstool from the dart board is sitting at the second bar stool. His fist clenched tightly around the beer mug, he stares at his own reflection in the mirror.
The aging barmaid, who often weeps from her apartment window on a hot summer night or a cold winter evening, is coming on to a man half her age. She is going to slip her arm around his bicep at any moment.
"Yeah," Jack smiles, "there she goes."
Jack Delleto knows where the regulars sit night after night clutching the bar with desperation, the wood rail is worn smooth.
In the mirror that runs the length of the bar Jack Delleto sees himself with clarity. Brown hair and brown eyes. Just an ordinary 29-year-old man.
"Old Fred is right," he thinks to himself, "If you stare at shadows long enough, they stare back." Jack smiles and the red head returns his smile crossing her long legs that protrude beneath a too short skirt.
The bartender recognizes the man smiling at the redhead.
"Well, Jack Delleto, Dell, I heard you were dead. " The six foot, two-hundred-pound bartender tells him as Dell is walking over to the bar.
"Who told you that?"
"Crazy George, while he was swinging from the wagon wheel lamp." Bob O'Malley says as he points to the wagon wheel lamp hanging from the ceiling.
"George, I heard, HE was dead."
The bartender reaches over the bar resting the palms of his big hands on the edge of the bar and flashes a smile of white, uneven teeth. Bob extends his hand. "Where the hell have you been?"
They shake hands.
Dell looks up at the Irishman. "I ve been at Harry's Bar in Venice drinking ****** Mary's with Elvis and Ernest."
Bob O'Malley grins, puts two shot glasses on the bar, and reaches under the bar to grab a bottle of bourbon. After filling the glasses with Wild Turkey, he hands one glass to Dell. They touch glasses and throw down the shots.
"Gobble, gobble," O Malley smiles.
The front door of the bar swings open and a cold wind drifts through the bar. Paul Keater takes off his Giants baseball cap and with the back of his hand wipes the snow off of his face.
"Keater," Bob O'Malley calls to the Blackman standing in the doorway.
Keater freezes, his eyes moving side to side in short, quick movements. He points a long slim finger at O'Malley, "I don't owe you any money," Paul Keater shouts.
The people sitting the barstools do not turn to look.
"You're always pulling that **** on me." Keater rushes to the bar, "I PPPAID YOU."
As Delleto watches Keater arguing with O'Malley, the anger grows into the loathing Dell feels for Keater. The suave, sophisticated Paul Keater living in a room above the bar. The man is disgusting. His belly hangs pregnant over his belt. His jeans have fallen exposing the crack of his ***, and Keater just doesn't give a ****. And that ragged, faded, baseball cap, ****, he never takes it off.
When Keater glances down, he realizes he is standing next to Jack Delleto. Usually, Paul Keater would have at least considered punching Delleto in his face. "The **** wasn't any good," Paul feining anger tells O'Malley. "Everybody said it was, ****."
The bartender finishes rinsing a glass in the soapy sink water and then places it on a towel. "*******."
Keater slides the Giant baseball cap back and forth across his flat forehead. "**** it," he turns and storms out of the bar.
"Can I get a beer?" Dell asks but O"Malley is already reaching into the beer box. Twisting the cap off, he puts it on the bar. "It's not that Keater owes me a few bucks, "he tells Dell, "if I didn't cut him off he'd do the stuff until he died." Bob grabs a towel and dries his hands.
"But the smartest rats always get out of the maze first," Jack tells Bob.
Cigarette butts, candy wrappers, and losing lottery tickets litter the linoleum floor. Jack Delleto grabs the bottle of beer off the bar and crosses the specter of unfulfilled wishes.
In the adjacent room he sits at a table next to the pinball machine to watch a disfigured man with an anorexic women shoot pool. Sometimes he listens to them talk, whisper, laugh. Sometimes he just stares at the wall.
"We have a winner, "the pinball machine announces, "come ride the Ferris wheel."
"I'm part Indian. "
Jack looks up from his beer. The Indian has straight black hair that hangs a few inches above her shoulders, a thin face, a cigarette dangling from her too red lips.
"My Mom was one third Souix, " the drunken women tells Jack Delleto.
The Indian exhales smoke from her petite nose waiting for a come on from the man with the sad face. And he just stares, stares at the wall.
Her bushy eyebrows come together forming a delicate frown.
Jack turns to watch a brunette shoot pool. The woman leans over the pool table about to shoot the nine ball into the side pocket. It is an easy shot.
The brunette looks across the pool table at Jack Delleto, "What the **** are you starin at?" She jams the pool stick and miscues. The cue ball runs along the rail and taps the eight ball into the corner pocket. "AH ****," she says.
And Jack smiles.
The Indian thinks Jack is smiling at her, so she sits down.
"In the shadows I couldn't see your eyes," he tells her, "but when you leaned forward to light that cigarette, you have the prettiest green eyes."
She smiles.
" I'm Kathleen," her eyes sparkling like broken glass in an alley.
Delleto tries to speak.
"I don't want to know your name," she tells Jack Delleto, the smile disappearing from her face. "I just want to talk for a few minutes like we're friends," she takes a drag off the cigarette, exhales the smoke across the room.
Jack recognizes the look on her face. Bad dreams.
"I'll be your friend," he tells her.
"We're not going to have ***." The Indian slowly grinds out the cigarette into the ashtray, looks up at the man with the sad face.
"Do you have family?"
"Family?" Delleto gives her a sad smile.
She didn't want an answer and then she gets right into it.
"I met my older sister in Baltimore yesterday." She tells the man with sad eyes.' Hadn't seen her since I was nine, since Mom died. I wanted to know why Dad put me in foster homes. Why?
"She called me Little Sister. I felt nothin. I had so many questions and you know what? I didn't ask one."
Jack is finishing his beer.
"People drift away, some leave, some disappear. If you knew the reasons, now, what would it matter, anyway."
The man with the black eye just doesn't get it. She lived with them long enough. Long enough to love them.
She stands up, stares at Jack Delleto.
And walks away.
It's the fat blondes turn to shoot pool. She leans her great body ever so gently across the green felt of the pool table, shoots and misses. When she tries to raise herself up off the pool table, the tip of the pool cue hits the Miller Lite sign above the pool table sending the lamb rocking violently back and forth. In flashes of light like the frames from and old Chaplin movie the sad and grotesque appear and disappear.
"What the **** are you starin at?" The skinny brunette asks.
Jack pretends to think for a moment. "An unhappy childhood."
Suddenly, she stands up, looking like death wearing a Harley Davidson T-shirt.
"Dove sta amore?" Jack Delleto wonders.
Death is angry, steps closer.
"Must be that time of the month, huh," Jack grins.
With her two tiny fists clenched tightly at her side, the brunette stares down into Delleto's eyes. Suddenly, she punches Jack in the eye.
Jack stands up bringing his forearm up to protect his face. At the same time Death steps closer. His forearm catches her under the chin. The bony ***** goes down.
Women rush from the shadows. They pull Jack to the ***** floor, punch and kick him.
In the blinking of the Miller Light Jack Delleto exclaims," I'm being smother by fat lesbians in soft satin pants." But then someone is pulling the women off of him.
The Miller Lite gently rocks and then it stops.
Jack stands up, shakes his head and smiles.
"Nice punch, Dell," Bob O' Malley says, "I saw from the bar."
Jack hits the dust off of his pants, grabs the beer bottle off of the table, takes a swallow. Smiling, he says, "I box a little."
"I can tell by your black eye." O'Malley puts his hand on his friends shoulder. "Come on I'll buy you a shot. What caused this spontaneous expression of love?"
"They thought I was a ******."
2 a.m.
Jack Delleto walks out the door of the bar into the wind swept gloom. The gray desolation of boarded shut downtown is gone.
The rain has finally turn to snow.
His eyes follow the blue rope from the parking meter pole to its frayed end buried in the plowed hill of snow at the corner of Cookman Avenue.
The dog, Snowflake, dead, Jack thinks.
The snow covers everything. It covers the abandon cars and the abandon buildings, the sidewalk and its cracks. The city, Delleto imagines, is an adjectiveless word, a book of white pages. He steps off the curb into the gutter and the street is empty for as far as he can see. He starts walking.
Jack disappears into empty pages.
Chapter 2
Paul Keater has a room above Wagon Wheel Bar where the loud rock music shakes the rats in the walls til 2a.m. The vibrations travel through the concrete floor, up the bed posts, and into the matress.
Slowly Paul's eyes open. Who the hell is he fooling. Even without the loud music, he would not be able to sleep, anyway.
Soft red neon from the Wagon Wheel Bar sign blinks into his room.
Paul Keater sits up, sighs, resigns himself to another sleepless night, swings his legs off the bed. His x-wife. He thinks about her frequently. He went to a phycologist because he loved her.
Dump the *****, the doctor said.
"I paid him eighty bucks and all he had to say was dump the *****." He laughs, shakes his head.
Paul thinks about *******, looks around the tiny room, and spots a clear plastic case containing the baseball cards he had collected when he was a boy.
He walks to the dresser and puts on his Giant's baseball cap. Paul sits down on the wooden chair by the sink. Turns on the lamp. The card on top is ***** Mays. Holding it in his hand, it is perfect. The edges are not worn like the other cards.
It was his tenth birthday and his dad had taken him to his first baseball game and his father had bought the card from a dealer.
Oblivious to the loud rock music filtering into his room, he stares at the card.
Fondly, he remembers.
Dad.
*
It arrives unobtrusively. His heart begins to race faster.
Jack Delleto rolls away from the cracked wall. He sits up and drops his legs off the bed.
Jack Delleto thinks about mountains.
When he cannot sleep he thinks about climbing up through the fog that makes the day obscure, passing where the stunted spruce and fir tees are twisted by the wind, into cold brilliant light. Once as he climbed through the fog he saw his shadow stretching a half a mile across a cloud and the world was small. Far down to the east laid cliffs and gullies, glaciated mountains and to the west were the plains and cities of everyday life.
The army coat is draped over the back of the chair. In the pocket is his notebook. Jack stands and takes the notebook from the pocket. When he sits in the wooden chair he opens the book and slides the pen from the binder.
When he finishes his story he makes the end into the beginning.
Chapter 3
"I want a captain in a truck." The 10 year old boy with the brown hair tells his mom. "I want it NOW."
His blonde haired mom wearing the gold diamond bracelet nods her head at Jack Delleto. Jack looks up at the clock on the wall. It is only 9a.m. After four years of college Jack has a part time job at K.B. Toy store. "We're all out of them," he tells her for the second time.
"Honey," Blondie tells her boy, "they're all out of them."
"YOU PROMISED."
"How about a sargeant in a jeep?
"OK, but I want a missile firing truck , too."
Delleto turns to the display case behind the counter. Briefly, he studies his black eye in the display case mirror and then begins searching the four shelves and twenty rows of 3 inch plastic toys. He finds the truck. His head is aching. He finds the truck and puts it on the counter in front of the boy.
"Sorry, we're all out of the sargeant," Jack tells the pretty lady. The aching in his head just won't go away.
"Mommy, mommy, I want an ATTACK HELIOCOPTER, MOMMMEEE, I WANTAH TTTAAANNNK..."
Jack Delleto leans over the counter resting his elbows on the glass top. The boy is staring at the man with the black eye, at his bruised, unshaven face.
"Well, we haven't got any, GODDAMED TANKS. How about a , KICKINTHE ***."
Finally the boy and his mother are quiet.
"My husband will have you fired."
She grabs the boy by the hand. Turns to rush out of the store.
Jack mutters something.
"MMOOOMEEE, what does..."
"Oh, shut the hell up," the pretty lady tells her son
The assistant manager takes a deep drag on her cigarette, exhales, and crosses her arms to hold the cigarette in front of her. Susan looks down at Jack sitting on the stool behind the counter. He stands up. "Did you tell some lady to blow you?" She crushes the cigarette out in the ashtray on the shelf below the counter. "Maybe you don't need this job but I do."
"Sue, there's no smoking in the mall."
"Jack, you look tired," the cubby teenager tells him, "and your eye. Another black eye."
"I was attacked by five women."
'Oh, I see, in your dreams maybe. I see, it's one of those male fantasies I'm always reading about in Cosmo. You're not boxing again, are you Dell?" Sue likes to call him Dell.
"I go down to the gym to work out. Felix says I've got something."
"Yeah, a black eye." Susan laughs, opens the big vanilla envelope, and hands Jack his check.
She turns and takes a pair of sunglasses from the display stand. "You 're scaring the children, Dell ." Susan steps closer looks into Dell's brown eyes and the slips the sunglasses on his face. "Why don't you go to lunch."
It's noon and the mall is crowded at the food court area. Jack gets a 20oz cup of coffee, finds a table and sits down.
"Go over and talk to him. " Susan says. Jack turns his head , looks back, sees the Indian walking towards his table.
"Hello, Kathrine," says Jack Delleto.
"My names not Kathrine, it's Kathleen."
Jack pulls the chair away from the table, "Have a seat Kate."
Her eyebrows form that delicate frown. "My names Kathleen." As soon as she sits down she takes a cigarette from the pack sticking out of her pocketbook. "I had to leave. I told the baby sitter I'd only be gone an hour. Anyway you weren't much help."
"So why did you come over to talk to me?"
"You were alone, the bar full of people and you're alone. Why?"
"I like it that way. You've seen me there before?"
"Yeah, sitting by the pin ball machine staring at the wall, and sometimes, you'd take out your blue note pad and write in it.
What do you write about? Are you goin to write about me..."
"Maybe. How many kids do you have?"
"Just one. A boy, and believe me one is enough. He'll be four in June," Kathleen smiles but then she remembers and abruptly the smile disappears from her face. "Sometimes I see Anthony's father in the mall and I ask him if he'd like to meet his son, but he doesn't.
Kathleen draws the cigarette smoke deep into her lungs, tilts her head back, and blows the smoke towards the skylight. Suddenly caught in the sunlight the smoke becomes a gray cloud. " I didn't want to marry him anyway, I don't know why he thought that."
She hears the scars as Delleto talks, something sad about the man, something like old newspapers blowing across a deserted street. She hears the scars and knows never, never ask where the scars came from.
As Jack walks towards the bank to cash his check, he glances out the front entrance to the mall. It is a bright, cold day and the snowplows are finishing up the parking lot plowing the snow into big white hills. That is the fate of the big white pup plowed to the corner of Cookman and Main buried deep in ***** snow. At that street corner when the school is over the children will play on the hill never realizing what lay beneath there feet.
The snow must melt; spring is inevitable.
His pup will be back.
Chapter 4
The 19 year old light heavyweight leans his muscular body forward to rest his gloved hands on the tope rope of the ring. He bows his head waiting to regain his breath as his lungs fight to force air deep into his chest. Bill Wain has finished boxing 4 rounds with Red.
Harry the trainer, gently pulls the untied boxing gloves from Red's hands. "Good fight, he says, patting Red on the back as the fighter climbs through the ropes and heads to the showers. Harry hands the sweat soaked gloves to Felix who puts one glove under his arm while he loosens the laces on the other 12ounce glove. He makes the sleeve wider.
"Do you want the head gear?" Felix asks.
Jack Delleto shakes his head and pushes his taped hand deep into the glove.
The old man takes the other glove from under his arm, pulls the laces out, and holds it open. Without turning his head to look at him, Felix tells Harry, "Make sure Bill doesn't cool down. Tell him to shadow box. Harry walks over to Bill and Bill starts shadow boxing.
Jack pushes his hand into the glove. "Make a fist." Jack does. Felix pulls the laces and ties it into a bow.
Felix looks intently into Delleto's eyes. "How does that feel?"
"About right."
"You look tired."
"I am a little."
"Are you sick or is it a woman."
"I'm not sick."
A big smile forms across the face of the former welterweight champion of Nevada. The face of the 68 year old Blackman is lined and cracked like the old boxing gloves that Jack is wearing but his tall body is youthful and athletic in appearance. Above Felix's eyebrows Jack sees the effect of 20 years as a professional fighter. He sees the thick scar tissue and the thin white lines where the old man's skin has been stitched and re-stitched many times. As he gives instructions to Jack, Felix's brown eyes seem to be staring at something distant and Jack wonders if Felix has chased around the ring one time too often his dream.
"And get off first. Don't stop punching until he goes down. You've got it kid and not every fighter does."
Jack and Felix start walking over to the ring.
"What is it I've got?" Jack Deletto wonders.
Felix puts his foot on the fourth strand of the rings rope and with his hand pulls up the top strand and as Jack steps into the ring, "You've got, HEART."
In the opposite corner Bill Wain waits.
"Will he be alright?" Harry asks.
"Bill's tired, " Felix replies, then he tries to explain. "It's not about money. I'm almost 70 and I want to go out a winner." Felix pauses and the offers, he can hit hard with either hand."
"Yeah, but at best he's a small middleweight and he only moves in one direction, straight ahead."
"Harry, I love the guy," Felix puts his hand on Harry's shoulder, he's like Tyson at the end of his career. He'd fight you to the death but he's not fighting to win anymore."
Harry puts his hands in his pocket and stares at the floor. "Do you want me to tell him to go easy." Harry looks up at Felix waiting for an answer.
"I'm tired of sweeping dirt from behind the boxes of wax beans and tuna fish. I'm sick of collecting shopping carts in the rain. A half way decent white heavyweight can make a lot of money. It's stupid for a fighter to practice holding back. Bill's a winner. Jack'll be alright."
Felix hands the pocket watch to Harry so he can time the rounds.
Bill Wain comes out of his corner circling left.
Jack rushes straight ahead.
Felix winks at Jack Delleto and whispers, "The Jack of hearts."
Chapter 5
The front door of the Wagon Wheel bar explodes open to Ziggy Pop's, "YOU'VE GOT A LUST FOR LIFE." Jack Delleto steps over the curb and vanishes into the dark doorway.
"HEY, JACK, JACK DELLETO," The lanky bartender shouts over the din.
Delleto makes his way through the crowd over to bar. How the hell have you been Snake?" Jack asks.
"Just great," says Snake. "You're lookin pretty ****** good for a dead man."
"Who told you that? Crazy George?"
The bartender points across the room to where a man in a pin stripe suit is swinging to and fro from a wagon wheel lamp attached to the ceiling.
"Yeah, I thought so. Haven't seen Crazy George in a year and he's been telling everyone I'm dead. I'm gonna have to have a long talk with that man."
Snake hands Jack a shot of tequila. The men touch glasses and throw down the shots.
How's the other George? Dell asks.
"AA."
"How's Tommy? You see him anymore?"
"Rehab."
"What about Robbie?"
Snake refills the glasses. "He's livin in a nudist colony in Florida, he has two wives and 6 children."
Jack looks across the room and sees Bob O'Malley trying to adjust the rose in the lapel of his tuxedo. Satisfied it won't fall out O'Malley looks up at the man swinging from the lamp. "Quick, name man's three greatest inventions."
"Alcohol, tobacco, and the wheel," Crazy George shoots back.
O'Malley smiles and then jumps up on the top of the bar and although he is over six feet and weighs two hundred pounds, he has the dexterity and grace of a ballerina as he pirouttes around and jumps over the shot glasses and beer bottles that litter the bar.
Wedding guests lean back in their chairs as strangers fearful of his gyrations ****** their drinks off the bar. Bob fakes a slip as he prances along but he is always in control and never falters. Forty three year old Bob O'Malley is Jim Brown who dodges danger to score the winning touch down.
When Bob reaches the end of the bar he jumps to the floor, pulls two aluminum lids from the beer box, and with one in each hand he smacks them together like cymbals.
Some guests clap. The bemused just stare.
In the back of the room sitting at the wedding table the father of the bride leans over, whispers into the ear of his crying wife, "If I had a gun I'd shoot Bob."
The bride raises a glass of champagne into the smoke filled air and Bob takes a bow but then heads towards the kitchen at the other end of the room.
" Hey, Bob," Jack Delleto shouts to the groom.
O'Malley stops under the wagon wheel lamp and turns as Delleto steps into the circle of light cast onto the floor.
"Congratulations, I know Theresa and you are goin to be happy. I mean that." Delleto offers his hand and they shake hands.
"Thanks, Mr. Cool."
Jack takes off the sunglasses.
"TWO black eyes. Your nose is bleeding. What happened?"
Dell takes the handkerchief from his back pocket, wipes the blood dripping down his face. "It's broken."
"What happened?" O'Malley asks again.
"Bill Wain."
"He turned pro."
"Yeah, but he's nothing special. Hell, he couldn't even knock me down."
O'Malley shakes his head. "Dell, why do you do it? You always lose."
"If you don't fight you've already lost."
"Put the sunglasses back on, you look like a friggin raccoon."
Dell smiles. The blood running down his lips."Thersa's beautiful, Bob, you're a lucky guy."
"Thanks Dell." O'Malley puts his hand on Dell's shoulder and squeezes affectionately. Bob looks across the room at Theresa. "Yeah, she is beautiful." Theresa's mother has stopped crying. Her father drinks whiskey and stares at the wall.
O'Malley looks away from his bride and passed the archway that divides the poolroom from the bar and into the corner. With the lamp light above his head gleaming in his eyes Bob seems to see a ghost fleeting in the far distant, dark corner. Slowly, a peculiar half smile forms uneven, white, tombstone teeth. A pensive smile.
Curious, Dell turns his head to look into the darkness of the poolroom, too.
At night in July the moths were everywhere. When Dell was a boy he would sit on his porch and try to count them. The moths appeared as faint splashes of whiteness scattered throughout the nighttime sky, odd circles of white that moved haphazardly, forward and then sideways, sometimes up and then down.
Sometimes the patches of moths flew higher and higher and Dell imagined the lights those creatures were seeking were the stars themselves; Orion, the Big Dipper, and even the milky hue of the Milkyway.
One night as the moths pursued starlight he saw shadows dropping one by one from the branches at the tops of the trees. The swallows were soundless and when he caught a glimpse of sudden darkness, blacker than the night, he knew the shadows had erased the dreamer and its dream.
His imagination gave definition to form. There was a sound to the shadows of the swallows in his thoughts, the melody and the song played over and over. Wings of shadow furled and unfurled. Perhaps he saw his reflection in the night. Perhaps there are shadows where nothing exists to cast them.
"Do you hear them, Bob?"
"Hear what?" Bob asks.
"All of them."
"All of what?"
"Shadows," Delleto candidly tells his friend, then, "Ah, Nothin."
O'Malley doesn't understand but it does not matter. The two men have shared the same corner of darkness.
Bob calls to Paul Keater. Keater smiles broadly, slides the brim of his Giant baseball cap to the side of his forehead. The two men disappear through the swinging kitchen door.
Chapter 6
"Hello Kate." Jack Delleto says and sits down. She has a blue bow in her hair and make up on.
"My names Kathleen."
She fondles the whiskey glass in her slim fingers. "Hello, Dell, Sue thinks Dell is such a **** name. Kathleen takes a last drag on her cigarette, rubs it out in the ashtray, looks up at him, "What should I call you?"
"How about, Darlin?"
"Hello, Jack, DARLIN," her soft, deep voice whispers. Kathleen crosses her legs and the black dress rides up to the middle of her thigh.
Jack glances at the milky white flesh between the blue ***** hose and the hem of her dress. Kate is drunk and Dell does not care. He leans closer, "Do you wanna dance?"
"But no one else is dancing."
"Well, we can go down to the beach, take a walk along the sand."
"It's twenty degrees out there."
"I'll keep you warm."
"All right, lets dance."
Jack stands up takes her by the hand. As Kathleen rises Jack draws her close to him. Her ******* flatten against his chest. He feels her heart thumping.
The Elvis impersonator that almost played Las Vegas; the hairdresser that wanted to be a race car driver; the insurance salesman with a Porche and a wife. Her men talked about what they owned or what they could do well.
And Kathleen was impressed.
But Dell wasn't like them. Dell never talked about himself. Did he have a dream? Was there something he wanted more than anything?
Kathleen had never meant anyone quite like Dell.
She rests her head on his shoulder. "What do you what more than anything? What do you dream about at night?"
"Nothing."
"Come on," she says," what do you want more than anything? Tell me your dreams."
Jack smiles, "Just to make it through another day." He smiles that sad smile that she saw the first time they met. "Tell me what you want."
Kate lifts her head off of his shoulder and looks into his eyes. "I don't want to be on welfare the rest of my life and I want to be able to send my son to college." She rests her cheek against his, "I've lived in foster homes all my life and every time I knew that one day I'd have to leave, what I want most is a home. Do you know the difference between a house and a home?"
"No. not at all"
Her voice is a roaring whisper in his ear, "LOVE."
The song comes to an end and they leave the circle of light and sit down. Kate takes a cigarette from the pack.
Dell strikes a match. The flame flickering in her eyes. "Maybe someday you'll have your home."
"Do you want me to?"
"Yeah."
Kate blows out the match.
"Can you take me home?" Kate asks slurring her words.
Kathleen and Jack walk over to where the bride and groom are standing near the big glass refrigerator door with Paul Keater. When Paul realizes he is standing next to Jack Delleto he rocks back and forth on the heals of his worn shoes, slides his Giants baseball cap back and forth across his forehead and walks away.
O'Malley bends down and kisses Kathleen on the cheek and turns to shake hands with Dell. "Good luck," says Dell. Kathleen embraces the bride.
Outside the bar the sun is setting behind the boarded shut Delleto store.
"That was my Dad's store, " Jack tells Kate and then Jack whispers to to himself as he reads the graffiti spray painted on the front wall.
"TELL YOUR DREAMS TO ME, TELL ME YOU LOVE ME, IF YOU LOVE ME, TELL ALL YOUR DREAMS TO ME."
Chapter 7
An old man comes shuffling down the street, "Hello Mr. Martin, " Jack says, "How are you?"
"I'm an old man Jack, how could I be," and then he smiles, "ah, I can't complain. How are you?"
"Still alive and well."
"Who is this pretty young lady?"
"This is Kate."
Joesph Martin takes Kathleen by the arm and gently squeezes, "Hello Kate, such a pretty women, ah, if I was only sixty," and the old man smiles.
Kathleen forces a smile.
The thick eyeglasses that Mr. Martin wears magnifies his eyes as he looks from Kathleen to Jack, "Have fun now, because when you're dead, you're going to be dead a long, long time." And Martin smiles.
"How long? Delleto inquires.
The old man smirks and waves as he continues up the street to the door leading to the rooms above the bar. He turns to face the door. The small window is broken and the shards of glass catch the twilight.
Joesph Martin turns back looking at the man and young woman who are about to get into the car. He is not certain what he wants to say to them. Perhaps he wants to tell them that it ***** being an old man and the upstairs hallway always smells of ****.
Joesph Martin wants to tell someone that although Anna died seven years ago his love endures and he misses her everyday. Joesph recalls that Plato in Tamaeus believed that the soul is a stranger to the Earth and has fallen into matter because of sin.
A faint smile appears on the wrinkled face of the old man as he heeds the resignation he hears in his own thoughts.
Jack waves to Mr. Martin. Joesph waves back. The mustang drives off.
Earth, O island Earth.
Chapter 8
Joseph pushes open the door and goes into the hallway. The fragments of glass scattered across the foyer crunch and clink under his shoes. The cold wind blowing through the broken window touches his warm neck. He shivers and walks up the stairs. There is only enough light to see the wall and his own warm breathing. There is just enough light like when he has awaken from a bad dream, enough to remember who he is and to separate the horror of what is real from the horror of what is dreamt.
The old man continues climbing the stairs following the familiar shadow of the wall cast onto the stairs. If he crosses the vague line of shadow and light he will disappear like a brown trout in the deepest hole in a creek.
By the time he reaches the second floor he is out of breath. Joseph pauses and with the handkerchief he has taken from his back pocket he wipes the fog from the lenses of his eyeglasses and the sweat from his forehead.
A couple of doors are standing open and the old man looks cautiously into each room as he hurries passed. One forty watt bulb hangs from a frayed wire in the center of the hallway. The wiring is old and the bulb in the white porcelain socket flickers like the blinking of an eye or the fearful beating of the heart of an old man.
When he opens the door to his room it sags on ruined hinges.
Joesph searches with his hand for the light switch. Several seconds linger. Can't find it.
Finds it and quickly pushes the door shut. He sits down on the bed, doesn't take his coat off, reaches for the radio. It is gone.
Joseph looks around the room. A small dresser, the sink with a mirror above it. He takes off his coat and above the mirror hangs the coat on the nail he has put there.
Hard soled boots echo hollowly off the hallway walls. The echoes are overlapping and he cannot determine if the footsteps are leaving or approaching.
The crowbar is under his pillow.
He grabs it. Holds it until there is silence.
He lays back on the bed. Another night without sleep. Joseph rolls onto his side and faces the wall.
Earth, O island Earth.
Chapter 9
Tangled in the tree tops a rising moon hangs above the roofs of identical Cape Cod houses.
Jack pulls the red mustang behind a station wagon. Kathleen is looking at Dell. His face is a faint shadow on the other side of the car. "Do you want to come up?" she asks.
Kathleen steps out of the car, breathes the cold air deep into her lungs. It is fresh and sweet. Jack comes around the side of the car just as she knew he would. He takes her into his arms. She can feel his lips on hers and his warm breath as the kiss ends.
They walk beneath the old oak tree and the roots have raised and crack the sidewalk and in the spring tiny blue flowers will bloom. The flowers remind Jack of the columbines that bloom in high mountain meadows above tree line heralding a brief season of sun and warmth.
"Did you win?" Kathleen asks as she fits the key into the upstairs apartment door. The door swings open into the brightly lit kitchen.
Dell, leaning in the doorway, two black eyes, looking like the Jack of Hearts. "It doesn't matter."
"You lost?"
"Yeah."
Crossing the room she takes off her coat and places it on the back of the kitchen chair. When Kate leans across the kitchen table to turn on the radio the mini dress rides up her thigh, tugs tightly around her buttocks.
The radio plays softly.
Jack stands and as Kathleen turns he slips his arms around her waist and she is staring into his eyes like a cat into a fire. His body gently presses against the table and when he lifts her onto the table her legs wrap around his waist.
Kathleen sighs.
Jack kisses her. Her lips are cold like the rain. His hand reaches. There is a faint click. The room slips into darkness. It is Eddie Money on the radio, now, with Ronnie Specter singing the back up vocals. Eddie belts out, "TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT, I WON"T LET YOU LEAVE TIL..."
When Jack withdraws from the kiss her eyes are shining like diamonds in moonlight.
The buttons of her dress are unfastened. Her arms circle his neck and pull him to her *******. "Don't Jack. You mustn't. I just want a friend."
His hands slide up her thighs. "I'll be your friend, " says Jack.
Her voice is a roaring whisper in his ear. "*** always ruins everything," He pulls her to the edge of the table as Ronnie sings, "O DARLIN, O MY DARLIN, WON'T YOU BE MY LITTLE BAABBBY NOOWWW."
They are sitting on a couch in the room that at one time had been a sun porch.
Now that they have gotten *** out of the way, maybe they can talk. Sliding her hands around his face she pulls him closer.
"Jack, what do you dream about? You know what I mean, tell your dreams to me."
"How did you get those round scars on your arm?" Dell wonders.
"Don't ask. I don't talk about it. Do you have family?"
"Yeah. A brother. Tell me about those scars."
My ****** foster dad. He burned me with his cigarette. That's how I got these ****** scars.
And when I knew he was coming home, I'd get sick to my stomach, and when I heard his key in the door, I'd *** myself. And I got a beating.
But that wasn't the worst of it.
When they didn't beat me or burn me, they ignored me, like I didn't exist, like I wasn't even there. And you know what, I didn't hate him. I hated my father who put in all those foster homes."
Chapter 10
Spring. All the windows in the apartment are open. The cool breeze flows through her brown hair. "You're getting too serious, Jack, and I don't want to need you."
"That's because I care for you."
The rain pounds the roof.
Jack Delleto sits down on the bed, caresses her shoulder. "I hate the rain. Come on, give me a smile. "Kathleen pulls away and faces the wall.
"Well, I don't need anyone."
"People need people."
"Yeah, but I don't need you." There is silence, then, "I only care about my son and Father Anthony."
"What is it with you and the priest?" You named your son Anthony is that because he's the father."
"You're an *******. Get out of here. I don't love you." And then, "I've been hurt by people and you'll get over it."
Then silence. Jack gets up from the bed, stares at her dark form facing the wall. "Isn't this how it always ends for you?"
The room is quiet and grows hot. When the silence numbs his racing heart, he goes into the kitchen, opens the front door and walks down the steps into the cold rain.
"Anthony," Kathleen calls to her son to come to her from the other bedroom and he climbs into the bed, and she holds him close. The ghost of relationships past haunt her and although they are all sad, she clings to them.
On the sidewalk below the apartment window Jack stops. He thinks he hears his name being called but whatever he has heard is carried off by the wind. He continues up the dark street to his Harley.
High in reach less branches of the old oak tree a mockingbird is singing. The leaves twist in the wind and the singing goes on and on.
The ringing phone. The clock on the dresser says 5 a.m.
"Who the hell is this?"
"Jack, I'm scared."
"Kate? Is that you?"
"Someone broke into my apartment."
"Is he still there?"
"No, he ran out the door when I screamed. It was hot and I had the window open. He slit the screen."
"I'll be right over."
Chapter11
"How hot is it?" Kathleen asks.
The bar is empty except for O'Malley, Keater, a man and a woman.
"98.6," says Jack. The sweat rolls down his cheeks.
"Let's go to the boardwalk."
"When it's hot like this, it's hot all over."
"We could go on the rides."
"I've got the next pool game, then we'll go."
"It's my birthday."
"I bought you flowers."
"Yeah, carnations."
Laughing, Paul Keater slides the brim of his baseball cap back and forth across his forehead.
Jack eyes narrow. He starts for Keater, Katheen steps in front of Jack, puts her hands on his shoulders. She looks into his eyes.
"Who are you Jack Delletto? What is it with you two? But as always you'll say nothing, nothing." As Jack tries to speak she walks over to the bar and sits on the barstool.
"It's my birthday," she tells O'Malley.
When Bob turns from the horse races on the T.V., he notices her long legs and the short skirt. "Hey, happy birthday, Kate, Jack Daniels?"
"Fine."
Filling the glasses O'Malley hands one to Kathleen, "You look great," he tells her.
"Jack doesn't think so. Thanks, at least someone thinks so."
"Hope Jack won't mind," and he leans over the bar and kisses her.
Kathleen looks over her shoulder at Delleto. Jack is playing pool with a woman wearing a black tight halter top. The woman comes over to Jack, stands too close, smiles, and Jack smiles back.
The boyfriend stares angrily at Jack.
When Kathleen turns back O'Malley is filling her shot glass.
Jack wins that game, too.
Chapter 12
"Daddy," the little girl with her hands folded in her lap is looking up at her father. "When will the ride stop? I want to go on."
"Soon, Darling, "her father assures her.
"I don't think it will ever stop."
"The ride always stops, Sweetie." Daddy takes her by the hand, gently squeezes.
When the carousel begins to slow down but has not quite stopped Kathleen steps onto the platform, grabs the brass support pole. The momentum of the machine grabs her with a **** onto the ride, into a white horse with big blue eyes. Dropping her cigarette she takes hold of the pole that goes through the center of the horse. She struggles to put her foot in the stirrup, finds it, and throws her leg over the horse. The carousel music begins to play. With a tremble and a jolt, the ride starts.
Sitting on the pony has made her skirt ride well up her legs. The ticket man is staring at her but she is too drunk to care. She hands him the ticket, gives him the finger.
The ticket man goes over to the little girl and her father who are sitting in a golden chariot pulled by to black horses.
"Ooooh, Daddy, I love this."
"So do I," The father smiles and strokes his daughter's hair.
The heat makes the dizziness grow and as the ride picks up speed she sees two of everything. There are two rows of pin ball machines, eight flashing signs, six prize machines. All the red, blue and green lights from the ride blend together like when a car drives at night down a rain-soaked street.
Kathleen feels the impulse to *****.
"Can we go on again?" The little girl asks.
"But the ride isn't over, yet."
Kathleen concentrates on the rain-soaked street and the dizziness and nausea lessens. She perceives the images as a montage like the elements that make up a painting or a life. She has become accustom to the machine and its movement. The circling ride creates a cooling breeze that becomes a tranquil, flowing waterfall.
The ponies in front are always becoming the ponies in the back and the ponies in back are becoming the ponies in the front. Around and around. All the ponies galloping. Settling back into the saddle she rides the pony into the ever-present receding waterfall.
You can lose all sense of the clock staring into the waterfall of blue, red and green. Kathleen leans forward to embrace the ride for a long as it lasts.
Just as suddenly as it started, the ride is slowly stopping, the music stops playing.
Coming down off the pony she does not wait for the ride to stop, stumbles off the platform and out the Casino amusement park door. "****, *******," she yells careening into the railing almost falling into Wesley Lake.
She staggers a few steps, sits down on the grass by the curb, hears the carousel music playing and knows the ride is beginning again, and all of her dreams crawls into her like a dying animal from its hidden hole.
And it all comes up from her throat taking her breath away. A distant yet familiar wind so she lies down on the grass facing the street of broken buildings filled with broken people. From the emptying lot of scattering thoughts the mockingbird is singing and the images shoot off into a darkening landscape, exploding, illuminating for a brief moment, only to grow dimmer, light and warmth fading into cold and darkness.
"Your girlfriend is flirting with me," Jack Delleto tells the man. "It's my game."
The man stands up, takes a pool stick from the rack, as he comes towards Jack Delleto the man turns the pool stick around holding the heavy part with two hands.
There is an explosion of light inside his head, Delleto sees two spinning lizards playing trumpets, 3 dwarfs with purple hair running to and fro, intuitively he knows he has to get up off the floor, and when he does he catches the bigger man with a left hook, throws the overhand right. The man stumbles back.
His girlfriend in the tight black halter top is jumping up and down, screaming at, screaming at Jack Delleto to stop, but Jack, does not. Stepping forward, a left hook to the midsection, hook to the head, spins right, throws the overhand right.
The man goes down. Jack looks at him.
"You lose, I win," and Delleto's smile is a sad, knowing one.
CHAPTER 13
"It's too much," and Jack looks up from the two lines of white powder at Bob O'Malley. "I'll never be able to fall asleep and I hate not being able to sleep."
" Here," Bob takes a big white pill from his shirt pocket.
Jack drops the pill into his shirt pocket and says, "No more." He hands the rolled-up dollar bill to Bob who bends over the powder.
"Tom sold the house so you're upstairs? O Malley asks, and like a magician the two lines of white powder disappear.
"Till i find another place," Jack whispers.
Straightening up, O'Malley looks at Dell, "I know you 're hurting Dell, I'm sorry, I'm sad about Kate, too."
"Kate had a kid. A boy, four years old."
Jack becomes quiet, walks through the darkened room over to the bar. Leaning over the bar he grabs two shot glasses and a bottle of Wild Turkey, walks back into the poolroom. He puts the shot glasses on top of the pin ball machine. "We have a winner, " the pin ball machine announces. Dell fills the glasses.
"Felix came in the other day, he's taken it hard," Bob tells him.
Bill Wain knock down four times in the sixth round, he lost consciousness in the dressing room, and died at the hospital."
"I heard. What's the longest you went without sleep? Jack asks.
"Oooohhh, five, six days, who knows, after awhile you lose all track of time."
They take the shots and throw them down.
"I wonder if animals dream," Jack wants to know. "I wonder if dogs dream."
"Sure, they do, " O'Malley assures him, nodding his head up and down, "dogs, cats, squirrels, birds."
"Probably not insects."
"Why not? June bugs, fleas, even moths, it's all biochemical, dreams are biochemical, mix the right combination of certain chemicals, electric impulses, and you'll produce love and dreams."
Jack Delleto goes into his room above the bar, studies it. The light from the unshaded lamp on the nightstand casts a huge shadow of him onto the adjacent wall. Not much to the room, a sink with a mirror above it next to a dresser, a bed against the wall, a wooden chair in front of a narrow window.
The rain pounds the roof.
The apprehension grows. The panic turns into anger. Jack rushes the white wall, meets his shadow, explodes with a left hook. He throws the right uppercut, the overhand right, three left hooks. He punches the wall and his knuckles bleed. He punches and kicks the blood-stained wall.
At last exhausted, he collapses into the chair in front of the open window. Fist sized holes in the plaster revel the bones of the building. The room has been punched and kicked without mercy.
The austere room has won.
The yellow note pad, he needs the yellow note pad, finds it, takes the pencil from the binder but no words will come so he writes, "insomnia, the absence of dream." He reaches for the lamp on the nightstand, finds it, and turns off the light. Red and blue, blue and red, the neon from the Wagon Wheel Bar sign blinks soft neon into his room. The sign seems to pulsate to the cadence of the rock music coming from the bar.
Taking the big white pill from his shirt pocket, he swallows it, leans back into the chair watching the shadows of rain bleed down the wall. The darkness intensifies. Jack slides into the night.
Chapter 14
The rain turns to snow.
With each step he takes the pain throbs in his arm and shoulder socket. His raw throat aches from the drafts of cold air he is ******* through his gaping mouth and although his legs ache he does not turn to look back. Jack must keep punching holes with his ice axe, probing the snow to avoid a fall into an abyss.
The pole of the ice axe falls effortlessly into the snow, "**** it, another one."
Moonlight coats the glacier in an irridecent glow and the mountain looms over him. It is four in the mourning and Jack knows he needs to be high on the mountain before the mourning sun softens the snow. He moves carefully, quietly, humbly to avoid a fall into a crevasse. When he reaches the top of the couloir the wind begins to howl.
"DA DA DUN, DA DA DUN, HEY PURPLE HAZE ALL AROUND MY BRAIN..."
Jack thinks the song is in his head but the electric guitar notes float down through the huge blocks of ice that litter the glacier and there standing on the arête is Jimi, his long dexterous fingers flying over the guitar strings at 741 mph.
"Wait a minute, " Jack wonders, stopping dead in his tracks. The sun is hitting the distant, wind-blown peaks. "Ah, what the hell," and Jack jumps in strumming his ice axe like an air guitar, singing, shouting, "LATELY THINGS DON'T SEEM THE SAME, IS THIS A DREAM, WHATEVER IT IS THAT GIRL PUT A SPELL ON MEEEE, PURRPPLLE HAZZEEE."
Slowly the door moans open.
"Jack, are you awake?" her voice startles him.
"Yeah, I'm awake."
"What's the matter, can't sleep?"
Jack sifts position on the chair. "Oh, I can sleep all right." He recognizes the voice of the shadow. "I want to climb to a high mountain through ice and snow and never be found."
"A heart that's empty hurts, I miss you, Jack Delleto."
"I'm glad someone does, I miss you, too, Kate."
There is silence for several minutes and the voice comes out of the darkness again.
"Jack, you forgot something that night."
"What?" The dark shape moves towards him. When it is in front of him, Jack stands, slips his arms around her waist.
"You didn't kiss me goodbye."
Her lips are soft and warm. Her arms tighten around his neck and the warmth of her body comes to him through the cold night.
"Jack, what's the matter?" She raises her head to look at him, "Why, you're crying."
"Yeah, I'm crying."
"Don't cry Darlin," her lips are soft against his ear. "I can't bear to see you unhappy, if you love me, tell me you love me."
"I love you, I do," he whispers softly.
"Hold me, Jack, hold me tighter."
"I'll never let you go." He tries to hug the shadow.
*
The dread grows into an explosion of consciousness. Suddenly, he sits up ******* in the cold drafts of air coming into the room from the open window. Jack Delleto gets up off the chair and walks over to the sink. He turns on the cold water and bending forward splashes water onto his face. Water dripping, he leans against the sink, staring into the mirror, into his eyes that lately seem alien to him.
Chapter 15
Someone approaches, Jacks turns, looks out the open door, sees Joesph Martin go shuffling by wearing a faded bathrobe and one red slipper. Jack hears Martin 's door slam shut and for thirty seconds the old man screams, "AAHHH, AAAHHH, AAAHH."
Then the building is silent and Jack listens to his own labored breathing.
A glance at the clock. It is a few minutes to 7 a.m. Jack hurries from his room into the hallway. They pass each other on the stairs. The big man is coming up the stairs and Jack is going down to see O'Malley.
Jack has committed a trespass.
When the big man reaches the top of the stairs, the red exit light flickers like a votive candle above his head. The man slides the brim of his Giants baseball cap back and forth across his forehead, he turns and looks down, "Hello, Jack, brother. Dad loved you, too, you know." An instant later the sound of a door closing echoes down the hallway steps.
Jack Delleto is standing in the doorway at the bottom of the steps looking out onto the wet, bright street.
"Hey, Jack, man it's good to see you, glad to see you're still alive."
Jack turns, looks over his shoulder, "Felix, how the hell are you?"
The two men shake hands, then embrace momentarily.
"Ah, things don't get any better and they don't get any worse," shrugs the old man and then he smiles but his brown eyes are dull, and Jack can smell the cheap wine on the breath of the old boxer. "When are comin back? Man, you've got something, Kid, and we're going places."
"Yeah, Felix, I'll be coming back." Jack extends his hand. The old fighter smiles and they shake hands. Suddenly, Felix takes off down Main Street towards Foodtown as if he has some important place to go.
Jack is curious. He sees the rope when he starts walking towards the Wagon Wheel Bar. One end of the rope is tied around the parking meter pole. The rest of the rope extends across the sidewalk disappearing into the entrance to the bar. The rattling of a chain catches his attention and when the huge white head of the dog pops out of the doorway Jack is startled. He stops dead in his tracks and as he spins around to run, he slips falling to the wet pavement.
The big, white mutt is curious, growls, woofs once and comes charging down the sidewalk at him. The rope is quickly growing shorter, stretches till it meets it end, tightens, and then snaps. Now, unimpeded by the tension of the rope the mutt comes charging down the sidewalk at Delleto. Jack's body grows tense anticipating the attack. He tries to stand up, makes it to his knees just as the dog bowls into him knocking him to the cement. The huge mutt has him pinned down, goes for his face.
And begins licking him.
Jack Delleto struggles to his knees, hugs her tightly to him. Looking over her shoulder, across Main Street to the graffiti painted on the boarded shut Delleto Market...
FANTASY WILL SET YOU FREE
The End
To Tommy, Crazy George and Snake, we all enjoyed a little madness for a while.
"Conversations With a Dead Dog..."
The man's eyes grow bright and he smiles. Softly, he whispers, " Man, you're the biggest, whitest, what hell are you anyway?"
The pup sits up and Jack Delleto caresses her neck, but much to the mutt's chagrin the man stands up and walks away.
Jack has his hand on the door about to go into the bar. The pup issues an interrogatory, "Woof?"
The rain turns to snow.
The man's eyes grow bright and he smiles, "My grandma used to say that when it snows the angels are sweeping heaven. I'll be back for you, Snowflake."
Jack shivers. His smile fading, the night jumps back into his eyes.
Snowflake chuffs once, twice.
The man is gone.
The room would have been a cold, dark place except the bodies who sit on the barstools or stand on the ***** linoleum floor produce heat. The cigarette smoke burns his eyes. Jack Delleto looks down the length of the bar to the boarded shut fire place and although the faces are shadows, he knows them all.
The old man who always sits at the second barstool from the dart board is sitting at the second bar stool. His fist clenched tightly around the beer mug, he stares at his own reflection in the mirror.
The aging barmaid, who often weeps from her apartment window on a hot summer night or a cold winter evening, is coming on to a man half her age. She is going to slip her arm around his bicep at any moment.
"Yeah," Jack smiles, "there she goes."
Jack Delleto knows where the regulars sit night after night clutching the bar with desperation, the wood rail is worn smooth.
In the mirror that runs the length of the bar Jack Delleto sees himself with clarity. Brown hair and brown eyes. Just an ordinary 29-year-old man.
"Old Fred is right," he thinks to himself, "If you stare at shadows long enough, they stare back." Jack smiles and the red head returns his smile crossing her long legs that protrude beneath a too short skirt.
The bartender recognizes the man smiling at the redhead.
"Well, Jack Delleto, Dell, I heard you were dead. " The six foot, two-hundred-pound bartender tells him as Dell is walking over to the bar.
"Who told you that?"
"Crazy George, while he was swinging from the wagon wheel lamp." Bob O'Malley says as he points to the wagon wheel lamp hanging from the ceiling.
"George, I heard, HE was dead."
The bartender reaches over the bar resting the palms of his big hands on the edge of the bar and flashes a smile of white, uneven teeth. Bob extends his hand. "Where the hell have you been?"
They shake hands.
Dell looks up at the Irishman. "I ve been at Harry's Bar in Venice drinking ****** Mary's with Elvis and Ernest."
Bob O'Malley grins, puts two shot glasses on the bar, and reaches under the bar to grab a bottle of bourbon. After filling the glasses with Wild Turkey, he hands one glass to Dell. They touch glasses and throw down the shots.
"Gobble, gobble," O Malley smiles.
The front door of the bar swings open and a cold wind drifts through the bar. Paul Keater takes off his Giants baseball cap and with the back of his hand wipes the snow off of his face.
"Keater," Bob O'Malley calls to the Blackman standing in the doorway.
Keater freezes, his eyes moving side to side in short, quick movements. He points a long slim finger at O'Malley, "I don't owe you any money," Paul Keater shouts.
The people sitting the barstools do not turn to look.
"You're always pulling that **** on me." Keater rushes to the bar, "I PPPAID YOU."
As Delleto watches Keater arguing with O'Malley, the anger grows into the loathing Dell feels for Keater. The suave, sophisticated Paul Keater living in a room above the bar. The man is disgusting. His belly hangs pregnant over his belt. His jeans have fallen exposing the crack of his ***, and Keater just doesn't give a ****. And that ragged, faded, baseball cap, ****, he never takes it off.
When Keater glances down, he realizes he is standing next to Jack Delleto. Usually, Paul Keater would have at least considered punching Delleto in his face. "The **** wasn't any good," Paul feining anger tells O'Malley. "Everybody said it was, ****."
The bartender finishes rinsing a glass in the soapy sink water and then places it on a towel. "*******."
Keater slides the Giant baseball cap back and forth across his flat forehead. "**** it," he turns and storms out of the bar.
"Can I get a beer?" Dell asks but O"Malley is already reaching into the beer box. Twisting the cap off, he puts it on the bar. "It's not that Keater owes me a few bucks, "he tells Dell, "if I didn't cut him off he'd do the stuff until he died." Bob grabs a towel and dries his hands.
"But the smartest rats always get out of the maze first," Jack tells Bob.
Cigarette butts, candy wrappers, and losing lottery tickets litter the linoleum floor. Jack Delleto grabs the bottle of beer off the bar and crosses the specter of unfulfilled wishes.
In the adjacent room he sits at a table next to the pinball machine to watch a disfigured man with an anorexic women shoot pool. Sometimes he listens to them talk, whisper, laugh. Sometimes he just stares at the wall.
"We have a winner, "the pinball machine announces, "come ride the Ferris wheel."
"I'm part Indian. "
Jack looks up from his beer. The Indian has straight black hair that hangs a few inches above her shoulders, a thin face, a cigarette dangling from her too red lips.
"My Mom was one third Souix, " the drunken women tells Jack Delleto.
The Indian exhales smoke from her petite nose waiting for a come on from the man with the sad face. And he just stares, stares at the wall.
Her bushy eyebrows come together forming a delicate frown.
Jack turns to watch a brunette shoot pool. The woman leans over the pool table about to shoot the nine ball into the side pocket. It is an easy shot.
The brunette looks across the pool table at Jack Delleto, "What the **** are you starin at?" She jams the pool stick and miscues. The cue ball runs along the rail and taps the eight ball into the corner pocket. "AH ****," she says.
And Jack smiles.
The Indian thinks Jack is smiling at her, so she sits down.
"In the shadows I couldn't see your eyes," he tells her, "but when you leaned forward to light that cigarette, you have the prettiest green eyes."
She smiles.
" I'm Kathleen," her eyes sparkling like broken glass in an alley.
Delleto tries to speak.
"I don't want to know your name," she tells Jack Delleto, the smile disappearing from her face. "I just want to talk for a few minutes like we're friends," she takes a drag off the cigarette, exhales the smoke across the room.
Jack recognizes the look on her face. Bad dreams.
"I'll be your friend," he tells her.
"We're not going to have ***." The Indian slowly grinds out the cigarette into the ashtray, looks up at the man with the sad face.
"Do you have family?"
"Family?" Delleto gives her a sad smile.
She didn't want an answer and then she gets right into it.
"I met my older sister in Baltimore yesterday." She tells the man with sad eyes.' Hadn't seen her since I was nine, since Mom died. I wanted to know why Dad put me in foster homes. Why?
"She called me Little Sister. I felt nothin. I had so many questions and you know what? I didn't ask one."
Jack is finishing his beer.
"People drift away, some leave, some disappear. If you knew the reasons, now, what would it matter, anyway."
The man with the black eye just doesn't get it. She lived with them long enough. Long enough to love them.
She stands up, stares at Jack Delleto.
And walks away.
It's the fat blondes turn to shoot pool. She leans her great body ever so gently across the green felt of the pool table, shoots and misses. When she tries to raise herself up off the pool table, the tip of the pool cue hits the Miller Lite sign above the pool table sending the lamb rocking violently back and forth. In flashes of light like the frames from and old Chaplin movie the sad and grotesque appear and disappear.
"What the **** are you starin at?" The skinny brunette asks.
Jack pretends to think for a moment. "An unhappy childhood."
Suddenly, she stands up, looking like death wearing a Harley Davidson T-shirt.
"Dove sta amore?" Jack Delleto wonders.
Death is angry, steps closer.
"Must be that time of the month, huh," Jack grins.
With her two tiny fists clenched tightly at her side, the brunette stares down into Delleto's eyes. Suddenly, she punches Jack in the eye.
Jack stands up bringing his forearm up to protect his face. At the same time Death steps closer. His forearm catches her under the chin. The bony ***** goes down.
Women rush from the shadows. They pull Jack to the ***** floor, punch and kick him.
In the blinking of the Miller Light Jack Delleto exclaims," I'm being smother by fat lesbians in soft satin pants." But then someone is pulling the women off of him.
The Miller Lite gently rocks and then it stops.
Jack stands up, shakes his head and smiles.
"Nice punch, Dell," Bob O' Malley says, "I saw from the bar."
Jack hits the dust off of his pants, grabs the beer bottle off of the table, takes a swallow. Smiling, he says, "I box a little."
"I can tell by your black eye." O'Malley puts his hand on his friends shoulder. "Come on I'll buy you a shot. What caused this spontaneous expression of love?"
"They thought I was a ******."
2 a.m.
Jack Delleto walks out the door of the bar into the wind swept gloom. The gray desolation of boarded shut downtown is gone.
The rain has finally turn to snow.
His eyes follow the blue rope from the parking meter pole to its frayed end buried in the plowed hill of snow at the corner of Cookman Avenue.
The dog, Snowflake, dead, Jack thinks.
The snow covers everything. It covers the abandon cars and the abandon buildings, the sidewalk and its cracks. The city, Delleto imagines, is an adjectiveless word, a book of white pages. He steps off the curb into the gutter and the street is empty for as far as he can see. He starts walking.
Jack disappears into empty pages.
Chapter 2
Paul Keater has a room above Wagon Wheel Bar where the loud rock music shakes the rats in the walls til 2a.m. The vibrations travel through the concrete floor, up the bed posts, and into the matress.
Slowly Paul's eyes open. Who the hell is he fooling. Even without the loud music, he would not be able to sleep, anyway.
Soft red neon from the Wagon Wheel Bar sign blinks into his room.
Paul Keater sits up, sighs, resigns himself to another sleepless night, swings his legs off the bed. His x-wife. He thinks about her frequently. He went to a phycologist because he loved her.
Dump the *****, the doctor said.
"I paid him eighty bucks and all he had to say was dump the *****." He laughs, shakes his head.
Paul thinks about *******, looks around the tiny room, and spots a clear plastic case containing the baseball cards he had collected when he was a boy.
He walks to the dresser and puts on his Giant's baseball cap. Paul sits down on the wooden chair by the sink. Turns on the lamp. The card on top is ***** Mays. Holding it in his hand, it is perfect. The edges are not worn like the other cards.
It was his tenth birthday and his dad had taken him to his first baseball game and his father had bought the card from a dealer.
Oblivious to the loud rock music filtering into his room, he stares at the card.
Fondly, he remembers.
Dad.
*
It arrives unobtrusively. His heart begins to race faster.
Jack Delleto rolls away from the cracked wall. He sits up and drops his legs off the bed.
Jack Delleto thinks about mountains.
When he cannot sleep he thinks about climbing up through the fog that makes the day obscure, passing where the stunted spruce and fir tees are twisted by the wind, into cold brilliant light. Once as he climbed through the fog he saw his shadow stretching a half a mile across a cloud and the world was small. Far down to the east laid cliffs and gullies, glaciated mountains and to the west were the plains and cities of everyday life.
The army coat is draped over the back of the chair. In the pocket is his notebook. Jack stands and takes the notebook from the pocket. When he sits in the wooden chair he opens the book and slides the pen from the binder.
When he finishes his story he makes the end into the beginning.
Chapter 3
"I want a captain in a truck." The 10 year old boy with the brown hair tells his mom. "I want it NOW."
His blonde haired mom wearing the gold diamond bracelet nods her head at Jack Delleto. Jack looks up at the clock on the wall. It is only 9a.m. After four years of college Jack has a part time job at K.B. Toy store. "We're all out of them," he tells her for the second time.
"Honey," Blondie tells her boy, "they're all out of them."
"YOU PROMISED."
"How about a sargeant in a jeep?
"OK, but I want a missile firing truck , too."
Delleto turns to the display case behind the counter. Briefly, he studies his black eye in the display case mirror and then begins searching the four shelves and twenty rows of 3 inch plastic toys. He finds the truck. His head is aching. He finds the truck and puts it on the counter in front of the boy.
"Sorry, we're all out of the sargeant," Jack tells the pretty lady. The aching in his head just won't go away.
"Mommy, mommy, I want an ATTACK HELIOCOPTER, MOMMMEEE, I WANTAH TTTAAANNNK..."
Jack Delleto leans over the counter resting his elbows on the glass top. The boy is staring at the man with the black eye, at his bruised, unshaven face.
"Well, we haven't got any, GODDAMED TANKS. How about a , KICKINTHE ***."
Finally the boy and his mother are quiet.
"My husband will have you fired."
She grabs the boy by the hand. Turns to rush out of the store.
Jack mutters something.
"MMOOOMEEE, what does..."
"Oh, shut the hell up," the pretty lady tells her son
The assistant manager takes a deep drag on her cigarette, exhales, and crosses her arms to hold the cigarette in front of her. Susan looks down at Jack sitting on the stool behind the counter. He stands up. "Did you tell some lady to blow you?" She crushes the cigarette out in the ashtray on the shelf below the counter. "Maybe you don't need this job but I do."
"Sue, there's no smoking in the mall."
"Jack, you look tired," the cubby teenager tells him, "and your eye. Another black eye."
"I was attacked by five women."
'Oh, I see, in your dreams maybe. I see, it's one of those male fantasies I'm always reading about in Cosmo. You're not boxing again, are you Dell?" Sue likes to call him Dell.
"I go down to the gym to work out. Felix says I've got something."
"Yeah, a black eye." Susan laughs, opens the big vanilla envelope, and hands Jack his check.
She turns and takes a pair of sunglasses from the display stand. "You 're scaring the children, Dell ." Susan steps closer looks into Dell's brown eyes and the slips the sunglasses on his face. "Why don't you go to lunch."
It's noon and the mall is crowded at the food court area. Jack gets a 20oz cup of coffee, finds a table and sits down.
"Go over and talk to him. " Susan says. Jack turns his head , looks back, sees the Indian walking towards his table.
"Hello, Kathrine," says Jack Delleto.
"My names not Kathrine, it's Kathleen."
Jack pulls the chair away from the table, "Have a seat Kate."
Her eyebrows form that delicate frown. "My names Kathleen." As soon as she sits down she takes a cigarette from the pack sticking out of her pocketbook. "I had to leave. I told the baby sitter I'd only be gone an hour. Anyway you weren't much help."
"So why did you come over to talk to me?"
"You were alone, the bar full of people and you're alone. Why?"
"I like it that way. You've seen me there before?"
"Yeah, sitting by the pin ball machine staring at the wall, and sometimes, you'd take out your blue note pad and write in it.
What do you write about? Are you goin to write about me..."
"Maybe. How many kids do you have?"
"Just one. A boy, and believe me one is enough. He'll be four in June," Kathleen smiles but then she remembers and abruptly the smile disappears from her face. "Sometimes I see Anthony's father in the mall and I ask him if he'd like to meet his son, but he doesn't.
Kathleen draws the cigarette smoke deep into her lungs, tilts her head back, and blows the smoke towards the skylight. Suddenly caught in the sunlight the smoke becomes a gray cloud. " I didn't want to marry him anyway, I don't know why he thought that."
She hears the scars as Delleto talks, something sad about the man, something like old newspapers blowing across a deserted street. She hears the scars and knows never, never ask where the scars came from.
As Jack walks towards the bank to cash his check, he glances out the front entrance to the mall. It is a bright, cold day and the snowplows are finishing up the parking lot plowing the snow into big white hills. That is the fate of the big white pup plowed to the corner of Cookman and Main buried deep in ***** snow. At that street corner when the school is over the children will play on the hill never realizing what lay beneath there feet.
The snow must melt; spring is inevitable.
His pup will be back.
Chapter 4
The 19 year old light heavyweight leans his muscular body forward to rest his gloved hands on the tope rope of the ring. He bows his head waiting to regain his breath as his lungs fight to force air deep into his chest. Bill Wain has finished boxing 4 rounds with Red.
Harry the trainer, gently pulls the untied boxing gloves from Red's hands. "Good fight, he says, patting Red on the back as the fighter climbs through the ropes and heads to the showers. Harry hands the sweat soaked gloves to Felix who puts one glove under his arm while he loosens the laces on the other 12ounce glove. He makes the sleeve wider.
"Do you want the head gear?" Felix asks.
Jack Delleto shakes his head and pushes his taped hand deep into the glove.
The old man takes the other glove from under his arm, pulls the laces out, and holds it open. Without turning his head to look at him, Felix tells Harry, "Make sure Bill doesn't cool down. Tell him to shadow box. Harry walks over to Bill and Bill starts shadow boxing.
Jack pushes his hand into the glove. "Make a fist." Jack does. Felix pulls the laces and ties it into a bow.
Felix looks intently into Delleto's eyes. "How does that feel?"
"About right."
"You look tired."
"I am a little."
"Are you sick or is it a woman."
"I'm not sick."
A big smile forms across the face of the former welterweight champion of Nevada. The face of the 68 year old Blackman is lined and cracked like the old boxing gloves that Jack is wearing but his tall body is youthful and athletic in appearance. Above Felix's eyebrows Jack sees the effect of 20 years as a professional fighter. He sees the thick scar tissue and the thin white lines where the old man's skin has been stitched and re-stitched many times. As he gives instructions to Jack, Felix's brown eyes seem to be staring at something distant and Jack wonders if Felix has chased around the ring one time too often his dream.
"And get off first. Don't stop punching until he goes down. You've got it kid and not every fighter does."
Jack and Felix start walking over to the ring.
"What is it I've got?" Jack Deletto wonders.
Felix puts his foot on the fourth strand of the rings rope and with his hand pulls up the top strand and as Jack steps into the ring, "You've got, HEART."
In the opposite corner Bill Wain waits.
"Will he be alright?" Harry asks.
"Bill's tired, " Felix replies, then he tries to explain. "It's not about money. I'm almost 70 and I want to go out a winner." Felix pauses and the offers, he can hit hard with either hand."
"Yeah, but at best he's a small middleweight and he only moves in one direction, straight ahead."
"Harry, I love the guy," Felix puts his hand on Harry's shoulder, he's like Tyson at the end of his career. He'd fight you to the death but he's not fighting to win anymore."
Harry puts his hands in his pocket and stares at the floor. "Do you want me to tell him to go easy." Harry looks up at Felix waiting for an answer.
"I'm tired of sweeping dirt from behind the boxes of wax beans and tuna fish. I'm sick of collecting shopping carts in the rain. A half way decent white heavyweight can make a lot of money. It's stupid for a fighter to practice holding back. Bill's a winner. Jack'll be alright."
Felix hands the pocket watch to Harry so he can time the rounds.
Bill Wain comes out of his corner circling left.
Jack rushes straight ahead.
Felix winks at Jack Delleto and whispers, "The Jack of hearts."
Chapter 5
The front door of the Wagon Wheel bar explodes open to Ziggy Pop's, "YOU'VE GOT A LUST FOR LIFE." Jack Delleto steps over the curb and vanishes into the dark doorway.
"HEY, JACK, JACK DELLETO," The lanky bartender shouts over the din.
Delleto makes his way through the crowd over to bar. How the hell have you been Snake?" Jack asks.
"Just great," says Snake. "You're lookin pretty ****** good for a dead man."
"Who told you that? Crazy George?"
The bartender points across the room to where a man in a pin stripe suit is swinging to and fro from a wagon wheel lamp attached to the ceiling.
"Yeah, I thought so. Haven't seen Crazy George in a year and he's been telling everyone I'm dead. I'm gonna have to have a long talk with that man."
Snake hands Jack a shot of tequila. The men touch glasses and throw down the shots.
How's the other George? Dell asks.
"AA."
"How's Tommy? You see him anymore?"
"Rehab."
"What about Robbie?"
Snake refills the glasses. "He's livin in a nudist colony in Florida, he has two wives and 6 children."
Jack looks across the room and sees Bob O'Malley trying to adjust the rose in the lapel of his tuxedo. Satisfied it won't fall out O'Malley looks up at the man swinging from the lamp. "Quick, name man's three greatest inventions."
"Alcohol, tobacco, and the wheel," Crazy George shoots back.
O'Malley smiles and then jumps up on the top of the bar and although he is over six feet and weighs two hundred pounds, he has the dexterity and grace of a ballerina as he pirouttes around and jumps over the shot glasses and beer bottles that litter the bar.
Wedding guests lean back in their chairs as strangers fearful of his gyrations ****** their drinks off the bar. Bob fakes a slip as he prances along but he is always in control and never falters. Forty three year old Bob O'Malley is Jim Brown who dodges danger to score the winning touch down.
When Bob reaches the end of the bar he jumps to the floor, pulls two aluminum lids from the beer box, and with one in each hand he smacks them together like cymbals.
Some guests clap. The bemused just stare.
In the back of the room sitting at the wedding table the father of the bride leans over, whispers into the ear of his crying wife, "If I had a gun I'd shoot Bob."
The bride raises a glass of champagne into the smoke filled air and Bob takes a bow but then heads towards the kitchen at the other end of the room.
" Hey, Bob," Jack Delleto shouts to the groom.
O'Malley stops under the wagon wheel lamp and turns as Delleto steps into the circle of light cast onto the floor.
"Congratulations, I know Theresa and you are goin to be happy. I mean that." Delleto offers his hand and they shake hands.
"Thanks, Mr. Cool."
Jack takes off the sunglasses.
"TWO black eyes. Your nose is bleeding. What happened?"
Dell takes the handkerchief from his back pocket, wipes the blood dripping down his face. "It's broken."
"What happened?" O'Malley asks again.
"Bill Wain."
"He turned pro."
"Yeah, but he's nothing special. Hell, he couldn't even knock me down."
O'Malley shakes his head. "Dell, why do you do it? You always lose."
"If you don't fight you've already lost."
"Put the sunglasses back on, you look like a friggin raccoon."
Dell smiles. The blood running down his lips."Thersa's beautiful, Bob, you're a lucky guy."
"Thanks Dell." O'Malley puts his hand on Dell's shoulder and squeezes affectionately. Bob looks across the room at Theresa. "Yeah, she is beautiful." Theresa's mother has stopped crying. Her father drinks whiskey and stares at the wall.
O'Malley looks away from his bride and passed the archway that divides the poolroom from the bar and into the corner. With the lamp light above his head gleaming in his eyes Bob seems to see a ghost fleeting in the far distant, dark corner. Slowly, a peculiar half smile forms uneven, white, tombstone teeth. A pensive smile.
Curious, Dell turns his head to look into the darkness of the poolroom, too.
At night in July the moths were everywhere. When Dell was a boy he would sit on his porch and try to count them. The moths appeared as faint splashes of whiteness scattered throughout the nighttime sky, odd circles of white that moved haphazardly, forward and then sideways, sometimes up and then down.
Sometimes the patches of moths flew higher and higher and Dell imagined the lights those creatures were seeking were the stars themselves; Orion, the Big Dipper, and even the milky hue of the Milkyway.
One night as the moths pursued starlight he saw shadows dropping one by one from the branches at the tops of the trees. The swallows were soundless and when he caught a glimpse of sudden darkness, blacker than the night, he knew the shadows had erased the dreamer and its dream.
His imagination gave definition to form. There was a sound to the shadows of the swallows in his thoughts, the melody and the song played over and over. Wings of shadow furled and unfurled. Perhaps he saw his reflection in the night. Perhaps there are shadows where nothing exists to cast them.
"Do you hear them, Bob?"
"Hear what?" Bob asks.
"All of them."
"All of what?"
"Shadows," Delleto candidly tells his friend, then, "Ah, Nothin."
O'Malley doesn't understand but it does not matter. The two men have shared the same corner of darkness.
Bob calls to Paul Keater. Keater smiles broadly, slides the brim of his Giant baseball cap to the side of his forehead. The two men disappear through the swinging kitchen door.
Chapter 6
"Hello Kate." Jack Delleto says and sits down. She has a blue bow in her hair and make up on.
"My names Kathleen."
She fondles the whiskey glass in her slim fingers. "Hello, Dell, Sue thinks Dell is such a **** name. Kathleen takes a last drag on her cigarette, rubs it out in the ashtray, looks up at him, "What should I call you?"
"How about, Darlin?"
"Hello, Jack, DARLIN," her soft, deep voice whispers. Kathleen crosses her legs and the black dress rides up to the middle of her thigh.
Jack glances at the milky white flesh between the blue ***** hose and the hem of her dress. Kate is drunk and Dell does not care. He leans closer, "Do you wanna dance?"
"But no one else is dancing."
"Well, we can go down to the beach, take a walk along the sand."
"It's twenty degrees out there."
"I'll keep you warm."
"All right, lets dance."
Jack stands up takes her by the hand. As Kathleen rises Jack draws her close to him. Her ******* flatten against his chest. He feels her heart thumping.
The Elvis impersonator that almost played Las Vegas; the hairdresser that wanted to be a race car driver; the insurance salesman with a Porche and a wife. Her men talked about what they owned or what they could do well.
And Kathleen was impressed.
But Dell wasn't like them. Dell never talked about himself. Did he have a dream? Was there something he wanted more than anything?
Kathleen had never meant anyone quite like Dell.
She rests her head on his shoulder. "What do you what more than anything? What do you dream about at night?"
"Nothing."
"Come on," she says," what do you want more than anything? Tell me your dreams."
Jack smiles, "Just to make it through another day." He smiles that sad smile that she saw the first time they met. "Tell me what you want."
Kate lifts her head off of his shoulder and looks into his eyes. "I don't want to be on welfare the rest of my life and I want to be able to send my son to college." She rests her cheek against his, "I've lived in foster homes all my life and every time I knew that one day I'd have to leave, what I want most is a home. Do you know the difference between a house and a home?"
"No. not at all"
Her voice is a roaring whisper in his ear, "LOVE."
The song comes to an end and they leave the circle of light and sit down. Kate takes a cigarette from the pack.
Dell strikes a match. The flame flickering in her eyes. "Maybe someday you'll have your home."
"Do you want me to?"
"Yeah."
Kate blows out the match.
"Can you take me home?" Kate asks slurring her words.
Kathleen and Jack walk over to where the bride and groom are standing near the big glass refrigerator door with Paul Keater. When Paul realizes he is standing next to Jack Delleto he rocks back and forth on the heals of his worn shoes, slides his Giants baseball cap back and forth across his forehead and walks away.
O'Malley bends down and kisses Kathleen on the cheek and turns to shake hands with Dell. "Good luck," says Dell. Kathleen embraces the bride.
Outside the bar the sun is setting behind the boarded shut Delleto store.
"That was my Dad's store, " Jack tells Kate and then Jack whispers to to himself as he reads the graffiti spray painted on the front wall.
"TELL YOUR DREAMS TO ME, TELL ME YOU LOVE ME, IF YOU LOVE ME, TELL ALL YOUR DREAMS TO ME."
Chapter 7
An old man comes shuffling down the street, "Hello Mr. Martin, " Jack says, "How are you?"
"I'm an old man Jack, how could I be," and then he smiles, "ah, I can't complain. How are you?"
"Still alive and well."
"Who is this pretty young lady?"
"This is Kate."
Joesph Martin takes Kathleen by the arm and gently squeezes, "Hello Kate, such a pretty women, ah, if I was only sixty," and the old man smiles.
Kathleen forces a smile.
The thick eyeglasses that Mr. Martin wears magnifies his eyes as he looks from Kathleen to Jack, "Have fun now, because when you're dead, you're going to be dead a long, long time." And Martin smiles.
"How long? Delleto inquires.
The old man smirks and waves as he continues up the street to the door leading to the rooms above the bar. He turns to face the door. The small window is broken and the shards of glass catch the twilight.
Joesph Martin turns back looking at the man and young woman who are about to get into the car. He is not certain what he wants to say to them. Perhaps he wants to tell them that it ***** being an old man and the upstairs hallway always smells of ****.
Joesph Martin wants to tell someone that although Anna died seven years ago his love endures and he misses her everyday. Joesph recalls that Plato in Tamaeus believed that the soul is a stranger to the Earth and has fallen into matter because of sin.
A faint smile appears on the wrinkled face of the old man as he heeds the resignation he hears in his own thoughts.
Jack waves to Mr. Martin. Joesph waves back. The mustang drives off.
Earth, O island Earth.
Chapter 8
Joseph pushes open the door and goes into the hallway. The fragments of glass scattered across the foyer crunch and clink under his shoes. The cold wind blowing through the broken window touches his warm neck. He shivers and walks up the stairs. There is only enough light to see the wall and his own warm breathing. There is just enough light like when he has awaken from a bad dream, enough to remember who he is and to separate the horror of what is real from the horror of what is dreamt.
The old man continues climbing the stairs following the familiar shadow of the wall cast onto the stairs. If he crosses the vague line of shadow and light he will disappear like a brown trout in the deepest hole in a creek.
By the time he reaches the second floor he is out of breath. Joseph pauses and with the handkerchief he has taken from his back pocket he wipes the fog from the lenses of his eyeglasses and the sweat from his forehead.
A couple of doors are standing open and the old man looks cautiously into each room as he hurries passed. One forty watt bulb hangs from a frayed wire in the center of the hallway. The wiring is old and the bulb in the white porcelain socket flickers like the blinking of an eye or the fearful beating of the heart of an old man.
When he opens the door to his room it sags on ruined hinges.
Joesph searches with his hand for the light switch. Several seconds linger. Can't find it.
Finds it and quickly pushes the door shut. He sits down on the bed, doesn't take his coat off, reaches for the radio. It is gone.
Joseph looks around the room. A small dresser, the sink with a mirror above it. He takes off his coat and above the mirror hangs the coat on the nail he has put there.
Hard soled boots echo hollowly off the hallway walls. The echoes are overlapping and he cannot determine if the footsteps are leaving or approaching.
The crowbar is under his pillow.
He grabs it. Holds it until there is silence.
He lays back on the bed. Another night without sleep. Joseph rolls onto his side and faces the wall.
Earth, O island Earth.
Chapter 9
Tangled in the tree tops a rising moon hangs above the roofs of identical Cape Cod houses.
Jack pulls the red mustang behind a station wagon. Kathleen is looking at Dell. His face is a faint shadow on the other side of the car. "Do you want to come up?" she asks.
Kathleen steps out of the car, breathes the cold air deep into her lungs. It is fresh and sweet. Jack comes around the side of the car just as she knew he would. He takes her into his arms. She can feel his lips on hers and his warm breath as the kiss ends.
They walk beneath the old oak tree and the roots have raised and crack the sidewalk and in the spring tiny blue flowers will bloom. The flowers remind Jack of the columbines that bloom in high mountain meadows above tree line heralding a brief season of sun and warmth.
"Did you win?" Kathleen asks as she fits the key into the upstairs apartment door. The door swings open into the brightly lit kitchen.
Dell, leaning in the doorway, two black eyes, looking like the Jack of Hearts. "It doesn't matter."
"You lost?"
"Yeah."
Crossing the room she takes off her coat and places it on the back of the kitchen chair. When Kate leans across the kitchen table to turn on the radio the mini dress rides up her thigh, tugs tightly around her buttocks.
The radio plays softly.
Jack stands and as Kathleen turns he slips his arms around her waist and she is staring into his eyes like a cat into a fire. His body gently presses against the table and when he lifts her onto the table her legs wrap around his waist.
Kathleen sighs.
Jack kisses her. Her lips are cold like the rain. His hand reaches. There is a faint click. The room slips into darkness. It is Eddie Money on the radio, now, with Ronnie Specter singing the back up vocals. Eddie belts out, "TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT, I WON"T LET YOU LEAVE TIL..."
When Jack withdraws from the kiss her eyes are shining like diamonds in moonlight.
The buttons of her dress are unfastened. Her arms circle his neck and pull him to her *******. "Don't Jack. You mustn't. I just want a friend."
His hands slide up her thighs. "I'll be your friend, " says Jack.
Her voice is a roaring whisper in his ear. "*** always ruins everything," He pulls her to the edge of the table as Ronnie sings, "O DARLIN, O MY DARLIN, WON'T YOU BE MY LITTLE BAABBBY NOOWWW."
They are sitting on a couch in the room that at one time had been a sun porch.
Now that they have gotten *** out of the way, maybe they can talk. Sliding her hands around his face she pulls him closer.
"Jack, what do you dream about? You know what I mean, tell your dreams to me."
"How did you get those round scars on your arm?" Dell wonders.
"Don't ask. I don't talk about it. Do you have family?"
"Yeah. A brother. Tell me about those scars."
My ****** foster dad. He burned me with his cigarette. That's how I got these ****** scars.
And when I knew he was coming home, I'd get sick to my stomach, and when I heard his key in the door, I'd *** myself. And I got a beating.
But that wasn't the worst of it.
When they didn't beat me or burn me, they ignored me, like I didn't exist, like I wasn't even there. And you know what, I didn't hate him. I hated my father who put in all those foster homes."
Chapter 10
Spring. All the windows in the apartment are open. The cool breeze flows through her brown hair. "You're getting too serious, Jack, and I don't want to need you."
"That's because I care for you."
The rain pounds the roof.
Jack Delleto sits down on the bed, caresses her shoulder. "I hate the rain. Come on, give me a smile. "Kathleen pulls away and faces the wall.
"Well, I don't need anyone."
"People need people."
"Yeah, but I don't need you." There is silence, then, "I only care about my son and Father Anthony."
"What is it with you and the priest?" You named your son Anthony is that because he's the father."
"You're an *******. Get out of here. I don't love you." And then, "I've been hurt by people and you'll get over it."
Then silence. Jack gets up from the bed, stares at her dark form facing the wall. "Isn't this how it always ends for you?"
The room is quiet and grows hot. When the silence numbs his racing heart, he goes into the kitchen, opens the front door and walks down the steps into the cold rain.
"Anthony," Kathleen calls to her son to come to her from the other bedroom and he climbs into the bed, and she holds him close. The ghost of relationships past haunt her and although they are all sad, she clings to them.
On the sidewalk below the apartment window Jack stops. He thinks he hears his name being called but whatever he has heard is carried off by the wind. He continues up the dark street to his Harley.
High in reach less branches of the old oak tree a mockingbird is singing. The leaves twist in the wind and the singing goes on and on.
The ringing phone. The clock on the dresser says 5 a.m.
"Who the hell is this?"
"Jack, I'm scared."
"Kate? Is that you?"
"Someone broke into my apartment."
"Is he still there?"
"No, he ran out the door when I screamed. It was hot and I had the window open. He slit the screen."
"I'll be right over."
Chapter11
"How hot is it?" Kathleen asks.
The bar is empty except for O'Malley, Keater, a man and a woman.
"98.6," says Jack. The sweat rolls down his cheeks.
"Let's go to the boardwalk."
"When it's hot like this, it's hot all over."
"We could go on the rides."
"I've got the next pool game, then we'll go."
"It's my birthday."
"I bought you flowers."
"Yeah, carnations."
Laughing, Paul Keater slides the brim of his baseball cap back and forth across his forehead.
Jack eyes narrow. He starts for Keater, Katheen steps in front of Jack, puts her hands on his shoulders. She looks into his eyes.
"Who are you Jack Delletto? What is it with you two? But as always you'll say nothing, nothing." As Jack tries to speak she walks over to the bar and sits on the barstool.
"It's my birthday," she tells O'Malley.
When Bob turns from the horse races on the T.V., he notices her long legs and the short skirt. "Hey, happy birthday, Kate, Jack Daniels?"
"Fine."
Filling the glasses O'Malley hands one to Kathleen, "You look great," he tells her.
"Jack doesn't think so. Thanks, at least someone thinks so."
"Hope Jack won't mind," and he leans over the bar and kisses her.
Kathleen looks over her shoulder at Delleto. Jack is playing pool with a woman wearing a black tight halter top. The woman comes over to Jack, stands too close, smiles, and Jack smiles back.
The boyfriend stares angrily at Jack.
When Kathleen turns back O'Malley is filling her shot glass.
Jack wins that game, too.
Chapter 12
"Daddy," the little girl with her hands folded in her lap is looking up at her father. "When will the ride stop? I want to go on."
"Soon, Darling, "her father assures her.
"I don't think it will ever stop."
"The ride always stops, Sweetie." Daddy takes her by the hand, gently squeezes.
When the carousel begins to slow down but has not quite stopped Kathleen steps onto the platform, grabs the brass support pole. The momentum of the machine grabs her with a **** onto the ride, into a white horse with big blue eyes. Dropping her cigarette she takes hold of the pole that goes through the center of the horse. She struggles to put her foot in the stirrup, finds it, and throws her leg over the horse. The carousel music begins to play. With a tremble and a jolt, the ride starts.
Sitting on the pony has made her skirt ride well up her legs. The ticket man is staring at her but she is too drunk to care. She hands him the ticket, gives him the finger.
The ticket man goes over to the little girl and her father who are sitting in a golden chariot pulled by to black horses.
"Ooooh, Daddy, I love this."
"So do I," The father smiles and strokes his daughter's hair.
The heat makes the dizziness grow and as the ride picks up speed she sees two of everything. There are two rows of pin ball machines, eight flashing signs, six prize machines. All the red, blue and green lights from the ride blend together like when a car drives at night down a rain-soaked street.
Kathleen feels the impulse to *****.
"Can we go on again?" The little girl asks.
"But the ride isn't over, yet."
Kathleen concentrates on the rain-soaked street and the dizziness and nausea lessens. She perceives the images as a montage like the elements that make up a painting or a life. She has become accustom to the machine and its movement. The circling ride creates a cooling breeze that becomes a tranquil, flowing waterfall.
The ponies in front are always becoming the ponies in the back and the ponies in back are becoming the ponies in the front. Around and around. All the ponies galloping. Settling back into the saddle she rides the pony into the ever-present receding waterfall.
You can lose all sense of the clock staring into the waterfall of blue, red and green. Kathleen leans forward to embrace the ride for a long as it lasts.
Just as suddenly as it started, the ride is slowly stopping, the music stops playing.
Coming down off the pony she does not wait for the ride to stop, stumbles off the platform and out the Casino amusement park door. "****, *******," she yells careening into the railing almost falling into Wesley Lake.
She staggers a few steps, sits down on the grass by the curb, hears the carousel music playing and knows the ride is beginning again, and all of her dreams crawls into her like a dying animal from its hidden hole.
And it all comes up from her throat taking her breath away. A distant yet familiar wind so she lies down on the grass facing the street of broken buildings filled with broken people. From the emptying lot of scattering thoughts the mockingbird is singing and the images shoot off into a darkening landscape, exploding, illuminating for a brief moment, only to grow dimmer, light and warmth fading into cold and darkness.
"Your girlfriend is flirting with me," Jack Delleto tells the man. "It's my game."
The man stands up, takes a pool stick from the rack, as he comes towards Jack Delleto the man turns the pool stick around holding the heavy part with two hands.
There is an explosion of light inside his head, Delleto sees two spinning lizards playing trumpets, 3 dwarfs with purple hair running to and fro, intuitively he knows he has to get up off the floor, and when he does he catches the bigger man with a left hook, throws the overhand right. The man stumbles back.
His girlfriend in the tight black halter top is jumping up and down, screaming at, screaming at Jack Delleto to stop, but Jack, does not. Stepping forward, a left hook to the midsection, hook to the head, spins right, throws the overhand right.
The man goes down. Jack looks at him.
"You lose, I win," and Delleto's smile is a sad, knowing one.
CHAPTER 13
"It's too much," and Jack looks up from the two lines of white powder at Bob O'Malley. "I'll never be able to fall asleep and I hate not being able to sleep."
" Here," Bob takes a big white pill from his shirt pocket.
Jack drops the pill into his shirt pocket and says, "No more." He hands the rolled-up dollar bill to Bob who bends over the powder.
"Tom sold the house so you're upstairs? O Malley asks, and like a magician the two lines of white powder disappear.
"Till i find another place," Jack whispers.
Straightening up, O'Malley looks at Dell, "I know you 're hurting Dell, I'm sorry, I'm sad about Kate, too."
"Kate had a kid. A boy, four years old."
Jack becomes quiet, walks through the darkened room over to the bar. Leaning over the bar he grabs two shot glasses and a bottle of Wild Turkey, walks back into the poolroom. He puts the shot glasses on top of the pin ball machine. "We have a winner, " the pin ball machine announces. Dell fills the glasses.
"Felix came in the other day, he's taken it hard," Bob tells him.
Bill Wain knock down four times in the sixth round, he lost consciousness in the dressing room, and died at the hospital."
"I heard. What's the longest you went without sleep? Jack asks.
"Oooohhh, five, six days, who knows, after awhile you lose all track of time."
They take the shots and throw them down.
"I wonder if animals dream," Jack wants to know. "I wonder if dogs dream."
"Sure, they do, " O'Malley assures him, nodding his head up and down, "dogs, cats, squirrels, birds."
"Probably not insects."
"Why not? June bugs, fleas, even moths, it's all biochemical, dreams are biochemical, mix the right combination of certain chemicals, electric impulses, and you'll produce love and dreams."
Jack Delleto goes into his room above the bar, studies it. The light from the unshaded lamp on the nightstand casts a huge shadow of him onto the adjacent wall. Not much to the room, a sink with a mirror above it next to a dresser, a bed against the wall, a wooden chair in front of a narrow window.
The rain pounds the roof.
The apprehension grows. The panic turns into anger. Jack rushes the white wall, meets his shadow, explodes with a left hook. He throws the right uppercut, the overhand right, three left hooks. He punches the wall and his knuckles bleed. He punches and kicks the blood-stained wall.
At last exhausted, he collapses into the chair in front of the open window. Fist sized holes in the plaster revel the bones of the building. The room has been punched and kicked without mercy.
The austere room has won.
The yellow note pad, he needs the yellow note pad, finds it, takes the pencil from the binder but no words will come so he writes, "insomnia, the absence of dream." He reaches for the lamp on the nightstand, finds it, and turns off the light. Red and blue, blue and red, the neon from the Wagon Wheel Bar sign blinks soft neon into his room. The sign seems to pulsate to the cadence of the rock music coming from the bar.
Taking the big white pill from his shirt pocket, he swallows it, leans back into the chair watching the shadows of rain bleed down the wall. The darkness intensifies. Jack slides into the night.
Chapter 14
The rain turns to snow.
With each step he takes the pain throbs in his arm and shoulder socket. His raw throat aches from the drafts of cold air he is ******* through his gaping mouth and although his legs ache he does not turn to look back. Jack must keep punching holes with his ice axe, probing the snow to avoid a fall into an abyss.
The pole of the ice axe falls effortlessly into the snow, "**** it, another one."
Moonlight coats the glacier in an irridecent glow and the mountain looms over him. It is four in the mourning and Jack knows he needs to be high on the mountain before the mourning sun softens the snow. He moves carefully, quietly, humbly to avoid a fall into a crevasse. When he reaches the top of the couloir the wind begins to howl.
"DA DA DUN, DA DA DUN, HEY PURPLE HAZE ALL AROUND MY BRAIN..."
Jack thinks the song is in his head but the electric guitar notes float down through the huge blocks of ice that litter the glacier and there standing on the arête is Jimi, his long dexterous fingers flying over the guitar strings at 741 mph.
"Wait a minute, " Jack wonders, stopping dead in his tracks. The sun is hitting the distant, wind-blown peaks. "Ah, what the hell," and Jack jumps in strumming his ice axe like an air guitar, singing, shouting, "LATELY THINGS DON'T SEEM THE SAME, IS THIS A DREAM, WHATEVER IT IS THAT GIRL PUT A SPELL ON MEEEE, PURRPPLLE HAZZEEE."
Slowly the door moans open.
"Jack, are you awake?" her voice startles him.
"Yeah, I'm awake."
"What's the matter, can't sleep?"
Jack sifts position on the chair. "Oh, I can sleep all right." He recognizes the voice of the shadow. "I want to climb to a high mountain through ice and snow and never be found."
"A heart that's empty hurts, I miss you, Jack Delleto."
"I'm glad someone does, I miss you, too, Kate."
There is silence for several minutes and the voice comes out of the darkness again.
"Jack, you forgot something that night."
"What?" The dark shape moves towards him. When it is in front of him, Jack stands, slips his arms around her waist.
"You didn't kiss me goodbye."
Her lips are soft and warm. Her arms tighten around his neck and the warmth of her body comes to him through the cold night.
"Jack, what's the matter?" She raises her head to look at him, "Why, you're crying."
"Yeah, I'm crying."
"Don't cry Darlin," her lips are soft against his ear. "I can't bear to see you unhappy, if you love me, tell me you love me."
"I love you, I do," he whispers softly.
"Hold me, Jack, hold me tighter."
"I'll never let you go." He tries to hug the shadow.
*
The dread grows into an explosion of consciousness. Suddenly, he sits up ******* in the cold drafts of air coming into the room from the open window. Jack Delleto gets up off the chair and walks over to the sink. He turns on the cold water and bending forward splashes water onto his face. Water dripping, he leans against the sink, staring into the mirror, into his eyes that lately seem alien to him.
Chapter 15
Someone approaches, Jacks turns, looks out the open door, sees Joesph Martin go shuffling by wearing a faded bathrobe and one red slipper. Jack hears Martin 's door slam shut and for thirty seconds the old man screams, "AAHHH, AAAHHH, AAAHH."
Then the building is silent and Jack listens to his own labored breathing.
A glance at the clock. It is a few minutes to 7 a.m. Jack hurries from his room into the hallway. They pass each other on the stairs. The big man is coming up the stairs and Jack is going down to see O'Malley.
Jack has committed a trespass.
When the big man reaches the top of the stairs, the red exit light flickers like a votive candle above his head. The man slides the brim of his Giants baseball cap back and forth across his forehead, he turns and looks down, "Hello, Jack, brother. Dad loved you, too, you know." An instant later the sound of a door closing echoes down the hallway steps.
Jack Delleto is standing in the doorway at the bottom of the steps looking out onto the wet, bright street.
"Hey, Jack, man it's good to see you, glad to see you're still alive."
Jack turns, looks over his shoulder, "Felix, how the hell are you?"
The two men shake hands, then embrace momentarily.
"Ah, things don't get any better and they don't get any worse," shrugs the old man and then he smiles but his brown eyes are dull, and Jack can smell the cheap wine on the breath of the old boxer. "When are comin back? Man, you've got something, Kid, and we're going places."
"Yeah, Felix, I'll be coming back." Jack extends his hand. The old fighter smiles and they shake hands. Suddenly, Felix takes off down Main Street towards Foodtown as if he has some important place to go.
Jack is curious. He sees the rope when he starts walking towards the Wagon Wheel Bar. One end of the rope is tied around the parking meter pole. The rest of the rope extends across the sidewalk disappearing into the entrance to the bar. The rattling of a chain catches his attention and when the huge white head of the dog pops out of the doorway Jack is startled. He stops dead in his tracks and as he spins around to run, he slips falling to the wet pavement.
The big, white mutt is curious, growls, woofs once and comes charging down the sidewalk at him. The rope is quickly growing shorter, stretches till it meets it end, tightens, and then snaps. Now, unimpeded by the tension of the rope the mutt comes charging down the sidewalk at Delleto. Jack's body grows tense anticipating the attack. He tries to stand up, makes it to his knees just as the dog bowls into him knocking him to the cement. The huge mutt has him pinned down, goes for his face.
And begins licking him.
Jack Delleto struggles to his knees, hugs her tightly to him. Looking over her shoulder, across Main Street to the graffiti painted on the boarded shut Delleto Market...
FANTASY WILL SET YOU FREE
The End
To Tommy, Crazy George and Snake, we all enjoyed a little madness for a while.
"Conversations With a Dead Dog..."
AnnaMarie Jenema May 2014
Out of a Fairy Tale
AnnaMarie Jenema
May 2014
Mom should’ve been here by now. I sat on my frilly blue and purple polka-dotted bed waiting for the knock on the door telling me mom found my dress. Finally, it raps on my door. “Mom! Did you find it?” My eyes widen as the silky blue sways in her arms, it’s beauty sings as a caged bird let free. I gasp in admiration. “I-It’s wonderful!” I pick it up and it glides down into a perfect fit. “I’m glad you love it. Come down after you finish getting ready.” The door thuds after her. Looking across the room I note my honey brown hair that curls into pigtails. Restraining the squeal that is caught in my throat, I travel the length of my room to the mirror.
The mirror sits on an antique dresser that my mom found at a garage sale. At first I didn’t care much for the ancient wooden junk that is at least half a century old. Now the gold-tinted metal gleams with pride once again. Rusty gems were in carved into an arc surrounding the mystic glass. “Lydia! Can you go upstairs and get that box down for me?” Mom’s request interfered with my thoughts. … Go in that dusty attic? “Sure mom!”
Out the door and into the hallway stood a door like any other in our house. It squeaked open as eerily as what you’d expect in a haunted house. ‘A box, a box’ than out of the side of my vision I thought I saw motion. I shook it off as just being a spider or mouse. Soon my footsteps lead me to come across a dresser and mirror identical to the one in my room. It was cluttered with cobwebs and spiders. “Not very well taken care of, are you?” I muttered the joke. I looked into the mirror expecting to see a light blue dress covered in dust and sparkly silk material, but there was no reflection at all. I looked even closer at the mirror, before realizing, there was no mirror at all.
I looked around until I found it behind the dresser, sitting on the ground. I touched one of the gems that surprisingly glowed despite the rust. Something shone until I was blinded. A tingle ran through the hand that brushed the mirror’s gem and flew through my arm until it encompassed me, racing into my every feeling until I couldn’t feel anything. My eyes shut and refused to open themselves.
A gentle breeze grasped my hair, as music descended from the air. I could smell what seemed to be a banquet of some kind, mixed with perfume. Slowly my eyes lifted their veil to lock with waves pounding against a brick wall. I was looking down from a balcony into the erupting sea. The white brick-made balcony was large and lonely even with the brush of people walking by. I hid behind the rose-red curtains to look around. People danced and talked. Some ate. The music paved the trail for their feet to follow, all very gracefully. The men wore suits that tails drip to their knees. Their white shirts buried under sashes of gold, red, or blue. Sometimes holding medallions, some only dressed in ties. The woman wore Victorian dresses of every color and shade. Frilled hats with flowers were arranged on their heads.
Wait, I’m not supposed to be here. I was in the attic, going to the café with mom. What was I doing? My head ached from the effort to recall my actions. Why can’t I remember? I stumble backward only to reach the balcony’s edge. Where is this anyway?
I dive back into the curtain to search for my answer. The softness of the curtain was a rose pushed to my nose. I peeked through the small gap to find a page carting some clothes past my hiding spot. I sneaked next to the cart being wheeled into a doorway, planning to find a way out. I lost the page and walked around until I went through an archway door. The cool air spiraled against my silk-trapped skin. The scent of flowers bloomed around me. I found the garden labyrinth.
Walking through the maze’s hedges I arrive at a beautiful fountain displaying crystal clear pouring waters. Everywhere I gazed, flowers embraced the greenery. My breath deprived my lungs of air as I took in the sight. It was so magnificent under the light of the full moon. A few lamps lighted a sidewalk path maneuvering along the hedges. I circled the fountain, taking in the surroundings. My silk dress was shining in the dim glow. The sceneries beauty entranced me.
I didn’t see a shadow before me, and almost fell to the ground. In a graceful swoop an arm latched around my waist to pull me to my feet. “Be careful to look where you’re going, please my lady.” He bowed his head while his slim rimmed glasses started to fall off of his face, suddenly he looked up at me; sliding them back on with a slight wave of a finger. “That garb isn’t from around here.” He noted my sky blue dress with interest. I’m not even sure where I am. “I seem a bit lost. Will you help me?” he stares at me closer, a deeper curiosity shines in his green eyes, daintily brushed by his dark hair. “My dear, if it brings you comfort to know, we are in London at the Buckingham palace.”
I gasped; London was so far away from New York. It’s across seas. I gulped at my next question as sweat pricked the nape of my neck, “What’s todays date?” His eyes sparkled at the question. “Why, it is June 28, of 1838. The entire castle is bustling at these very words. It’s a day to remember. Now my dear, I must take my leave and see to the ballroom. Farewell.” He bowed, than turned to leave. His slow stride seemed like a dance all on it’s own. My gaze was caught on his figure following the foot trail until he had disappeared. I sighed at my first encounter with someone in this grand place. The Buckingham Palace, in 1838. …1838!! That can’t be right, it’s 2014. Then the shock hit me as if bricks fell from the castle onto my forehead; the clothes, the language, the pages, and royalty. This couldn’t be London in present Great Britain.
I circle the garden once more before I decide to go back inside. The young noble had realized my clothes didn’t belong here, probably anyone who sees me would recognize this too. I start off towards the footpath. The melodic rhythm still swirled in the breeze. Than for a second I thought I heard a footstep. My head twists back only to see a shadow move. The cool air now seems icy. Multiple possible things to say to the night air gallop through my mind. “ Such a lovely night,” is the one I decide on. From behind me a few feet back I imagine a sigh. No, not imagined, but actually there. It’s too real. I turn on my heels just to catch a glimpse of a black cape caught in the wind, as it’s master floats into the open. “My, It is lovely. However, I didn’t realize such a strangely dressed commoner as you could enter this palace.” His smirk shows sarcasm as easily as his eyes. “I never intended to visit a palace, even less in London.” My honest answer only has him conceal his laugh.
“I’m sure you didn’t. Yet, your dressed for a fine occasion.” His hand reaches for mine. I pull away from the willowy figured glove. “Why not allow me this dance in the garden?” I back away, aware that his voice is too prescient and I should be careful. “Are you going to be wary of me?” his gaze turned pained, his blue eyes that were once full of playfulness now melted into hurt. I unintentionally reach out for his gloved hand. His laugh echoes past the foliage. “Such a naïve girl.” Dread decided that this nobleman should be avoided at all costs. I ran towards the palace. “And so the chase begins.” He snickers and rushes after me.
I pass through the archways, glancing back now and again to find the caped captor flying along my tracks. If only there was some way to lose him. I ducked into the nearest doorway. At the far end of the hall I could see a door with a sign saying, “Dressing room”. I flung myself under a table and tablecloth to hide myself as my pursuer rounded the corner into the hall. I tucked my head between my knees and waited for his footsteps to fade. The warm place that held me trapped was close and too easily discoverable. I held my breath and tried to sink into the darkness. I’m not here. No one can find me.
After enough time flew by to ensure my safety, I crawled out from under the table. The cloth draped over my head. I looked back and forth, half expecting to see a smirking smile, and haughty eyes. A girl stares down at me. She’s at least ten years old. “Shhh.” I press my finger to my lips and gently smile at her as if we’re keeping a secret between us. She giggles, copies the motion to her own mouth, than delightfully skips away. I let out a sigh and stand up. I follow the hall to the dressing room. The door creaks open and I look around once more, startled by the sudden noise.
I sneak inside hoping find that the room is abandoned. In the darkly lit room, only my footsteps sound. As far as I can tell, no one has entered lately. I walk over to the carts of clothes and run my hand over the first one on the stack. It’s a ruby-red dress with fine material and some gems similar to those in the mirror. … The mirror. Not in my room, but the attic. My head hurts again, but I know I touched its gem before winding up here. How? I look through the dresses until I find a light blue and white one. The bowed sleeves come down to my elbow with frills encasing the bottom. The neckline forms a squared area of similar white frills. A small white sash acts as a belt that drops into the skirt of the dress. Two similar white ones come down each side. I pick up the light material and set it near my feet.
My old silk dress easily slips overhead, making way for the new clothing. After tugging tight sleeves and bodices into place the light dress swoops over my feet. I spin through the dark room only to stop at catching someone’s eye. I immediately turn towards the frozen face. It is my own reflection in a mirror. I face myself as my sight settles on the dress I wear. My honey brown hair curled over the dress from my pigtails. My eyes sparkled it’s matching blue to the dress. In the corner of the room, next to the mirror, sat a large wooden box. I looked through it to find that it was full of jewelry and accessories. I prodded its contents until I found sky blue bows to wrap in my pigtails.
I walked into the open hallway, now littered with people going to and fro. Anyone from passerby’s, young nobility, servants, and pages. Once the hall emptied I fled the room, hurrying through the corridors until I met with the room that created the harmonious trance. At the ends of the great ballroom sat crowds eating and laughing. Clusters of on-goers danced and chatted. In the middle of the farthest side of the room sat a throne that was embroidered with metal marks from centuries of legends. On the throne sat a woman at least eighteen of age. Her regal crown shone despite other attractions surrounding the dance room. A page strode over to her as she flourished her hand for his service. He stood and listened intently to her whispers. Finally, he stood and roared for the room’s attention. From his mouth spilled cheer and wistfulness, as he demanded the crowd’s ear. “Our young Queen Victoria’s coronation has completed. Now starts a new era! Let the celebration proceed.” The room reverberated with hope, love, and admiration for their new ruler.
‘Queen Victoria has been crowned’ having no clue how to find a way home, I disconsolately decide to join in the festivities. The crowd moves into a larger room. I stagger after them; the mass pushing everyone forward. We pass the kitchens. The aroma of cakes and deserts of every kind rises into the cool night air. The only smell more perceptible than delicate delights is the perfume penetrating the entire castle. We enter a by far more spacious ballroom. Empty amphitheater seats loom overhead, tied into the walls for onlookers to watch the ball unravel. Once again I glance at these to notice black material hangs over the edge. A head moves as people fill the seats. A nobleman with a black cape and familiar blue eyes takes their seat next to men and woman of high status. I walk into the mop to hide myself, while watching him. He laughs and chats with them as if he’s known them all his life.
Unable to watch where I’m going, I trip. The harsh, solid ground hits my knee as if I’ve met a tornado. I wince at the pain as I strain myself to stand. A firm, but careful hand grabs mine. I look up into green eyes shaded by recognizable glasses. “My dear, you are very clumsy.” He smiles at me as I pat my dress back into place. “I see we’ve met again.” My response comes weakly as the sore from my knee makes me flinch. “I don’t think you’ve told me your name.” I inquire. “You have not requested my name, so I haven’t told it. However, if you do me the honor of a dance, my secret may be leaked.” He bowed and offered me his arm, as I timidly accept it.
A new song disrupts the last, as new pairs take the stage. He walks me onto the floor, and diligently starts to dance. I watch my feet, not wanting to mistake my pace. “Lift your chin, my dear. You don’t seem to but much of a church-bell.” I looked up at him puzzled. “Church-bell?” As he tried to conceal a grin, his glasses couldn’t suppress the laughter in his eyes. “Your rather quiet. And most likely not from around London, are you?” I looked to the ground once more. Should I tell him or not? Will it start problems, or will I be okay? “It’s fine, I shall not expect you to answer a question you wish not to.” I looked up at him, solemnly. “I promised to introduce myself, correct?” I nodded, as the music that echoed around us faded into the next song.
His movements were so fluid; he was a wave at the end of the day, flowing into the sunset. “Miss, I am known by most as William Anderson. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He procured my sweaty palm into his, tenderly swiping his mouth to my fingers. I let my hand be brought back into the dance as I searched for words to speak. Once the dance ended a few moments later, I curtsey and murmur, “It’s nice to meet you. I am Lydia Olsen.” At my gesture he bows, and requests once more, “Am I trustworthy enough to understand why you are in a mysterious place you don’t understand?” My answer had been decided and started to splatter from my mouth. “Y…”
The next sound bounces along the room, it’s symphony starting. My words mix into the noise. In my vision of the seats above, snowy dots shoot arrows in my direction. Blue eyes gaze down at me, their iciness piercing me as icicles prickle my skin. I exchange a glance with William, nod and answer, “You are. I’ll explain.” My discomfort is surely recognizable. I often peek over my shoulder above as we dance. The shadow with a glare starts his voyage through the seats to reach the stairs that pillar into the wall. He descends from the tower, only adding to my panic. My hand seizes Williams, as I give him an apologetic smile. We hurry from the room, stumbling over each other’s feet. His graceful prance, now a faltering wreak.
Once we are outside the ballroom, I turn towards him. “I trust you, so please understand, I live In the USA in 2014. Not London, not Even in the 1800’s.” His expression is masked, but I’m sure that I’ve confused him. “I went back into time, from the future.” The simple words struck a chord with him, his glasses tilted off his nose as he listens intently. “The future? How?” even I don’t know how to answer such questions. “I’m not sure. I was in the attic with a mirror, than … ****! I’m here.” Confusion once again wonders onto his face. “I went into a storage room with old things, and found a mirror, touched a gem, now I was here.”
“I see, but why did we run away from the celebration? I was looking forward to another dance with you.” His casual smile does nothing to conceal unasked questions. I’m not sure how to answer them ei
The mirror sits on an antique dresser that my mom found at a garage sale. At first I didn’t care much for the ancient wooden junk that is at least half a century old. Now the gold-tinted metal gleams with pride once again. Rusty gems were in carved into an arc surrounding the mystic glass. “Lydia! Can you go upstairs and get that box down for me?” Mom’s request interfered with my thoughts. … Go in that dusty attic? “Sure mom!”
Out the door and into the hallway stood a door like any other in our house. It squeaked open as eerily as what you’d expect in a haunted house. ‘A box, a box’ than out of the side of my vision I thought I saw motion. I shook it off as just being a spider or mouse. Soon my footsteps lead me to come across a dresser and mirror identical to the one in my room. It was cluttered with cobwebs and spiders. “Not very well taken care of, are you?” I muttered the joke. I looked into the mirror expecting to see a light blue dress covered in dust and sparkly silk material, but there was no reflection at all. I looked even closer at the mirror, before realizing, there was no mirror at all.
I looked around until I found it behind the dresser, sitting on the ground. I touched one of the gems that surprisingly glowed despite the rust. Something shone until I was blinded. A tingle ran through the hand that brushed the mirror’s gem and flew through my arm until it encompassed me, racing into my every feeling until I couldn’t feel anything. My eyes shut and refused to open themselves.
A gentle breeze grasped my hair, as music descended from the air. I could smell what seemed to be a banquet of some kind, mixed with perfume. Slowly my eyes lifted their veil to lock with waves pounding against a brick wall. I was looking down from a balcony into the erupting sea. The white brick-made balcony was large and lonely even with the brush of people walking by. I hid behind the rose-red curtains to look around. People danced and talked. Some ate. The music paved the trail for their feet to follow, all very gracefully. The men wore suits that tails drip to their knees. Their white shirts buried under sashes of gold, red, or blue. Sometimes holding medallions, some only dressed in ties. The woman wore Victorian dresses of every color and shade. Frilled hats with flowers were arranged on their heads.
Wait, I’m not supposed to be here. I was in the attic, going to the café with mom. What was I doing? My head ached from the effort to recall my actions. Why can’t I remember? I stumble backward only to reach the balcony’s edge. Where is this anyway?
I dive back into the curtain to search for my answer. The softness of the curtain was a rose pushed to my nose. I peeked through the small gap to find a page carting some clothes past my hiding spot. I sneaked next to the cart being wheeled into a doorway, planning to find a way out. I lost the page and walked around until I went through an archway door. The cool air spiraled against my silk-trapped skin. The scent of flowers bloomed around me. I found the garden labyrinth.
Walking through the maze’s hedges I arrive at a beautiful fountain displaying crystal clear pouring waters. Everywhere I gazed, flowers embraced the greenery. My breath deprived my lungs of air as I took in the sight. It was so magnificent under the light of the full moon. A few lamps lighted a sidewalk path maneuvering along the hedges. I circled the fountain, taking in the surroundings. My silk dress was shining in the dim glow. The sceneries beauty entranced me.
I didn’t see a shadow before me, and almost fell to the ground. In a graceful swoop an arm latched around my waist to pull me to my feet. “Be careful to look where you’re going, please my lady.” He bowed his head while his slim rimmed glasses started to fall off of his face, suddenly he looked up at me; sliding them back on with a slight wave of a finger. “That garb isn’t from around here.” He noted my sky blue dress with interest. I’m not even sure where I am. “I seem a bit lost. Will you help me?” he stares at me closer, a deeper curiosity shines in his green eyes, daintily brushed by his dark hair. “My dear, if it brings you comfort to know, we are in London at the Buckingham palace.”
I gasped; London was so far away from New York. It’s across seas. I gulped at my next question as sweat pricked the nape of my neck, “What’s todays date?” His eyes sparkled at the question. “Why, it is June 28, of 1838. The entire castle is bustling at these very words. It’s a day to remember. Now my dear, I must take my leave and see to the ballroom. Farewell.” He bowed, than turned to leave. His slow stride seemed like a dance all on it’s own. My gaze was caught on his figure following the foot trail until he had disappeared. I sighed at my first encounter with someone in this grand place. The Buckingham Palace, in 1838. …1838!! That can’t be right, it’s 2014. Then the shock hit me as if bricks fell from the castle onto my forehead; the clothes, the language, the pages, and royalty. This couldn’t be London in present Great Britain.
I circle the garden once more before I decide to go back inside. The young noble had realized my clothes didn’t belong here, probably anyone who sees me would recognize this too. I start off towards the footpath. The melodic rhythm still swirled in the breeze. Than for a second I thought I heard a footstep. My head twists back only to see a shadow move. The cool air now seems icy. Multiple possible things to say to the night air gallop through my mind. “ Such a lovely night,” is the one I decide on. From behind me a few feet back I imagine a sigh. No, not imagined, but actually there. It’s too real. I turn on my heels just to catch a glimpse of a black cape caught in the wind, as it’s master floats into the open. “My, It is lovely. However, I didn’t realize such a strangely dressed commoner as you could enter this palace.” His smirk shows sarcasm as easily as his eyes. “I never intended to visit a palace, even less in London.” My honest answer only has him conceal his laugh.
“I’m sure you didn’t. Yet, your dressed for a fine occasion.” His hand reaches for mine. I pull away from the willowy figured glove. “Why not allow me this dance in the garden?” I back away, aware that his voice is too prescient and I should be careful. “Are you going to be wary of me?” his gaze turned pained, his blue eyes that were once full of playfulness now melted into hurt. I unintentionally reach out for his gloved hand. His laugh echoes past the foliage. “Such a naïve girl.” Dread decided that this nobleman should be avoided at all costs. I ran towards the palace. “And so the chase begins.” He snickers and rushes after me.
I pass through the archways, glancing back now and again to find the caped captor flying along my tracks. If only there was some way to lose him. I ducked into the nearest doorway. At the far end of the hall I could see a door with a sign saying, “Dressing room”. I flung myself under a table and tablecloth to hide myself as my pursuer rounded the corner into the hall. I tucked my head between my knees and waited for his footsteps to fade. The warm place that held me trapped was close and too easily discoverable. I held my breath and tried to sink into the darkness. I’m not here. No one can find me.
After enough time flew by to ensure my safety, I crawled out from under the table. The cloth draped over my head. I looked back and forth, half expecting to see a smirking smile, and haughty eyes. A girl stares down at me. She’s at least ten years old. “Shhh.” I press my finger to my lips and gently smile at her as if we’re keeping a secret between us. She giggles, copies the motion to her own mouth, than delightfully skips away. I let out a sigh and stand up. I follow the hall to the dressing room. The door creaks open and I look around once more, startled by the sudden noise.
I sneak inside hoping find that the room is abandoned. In the darkly lit room, only my footsteps sound. As far as I can tell, no one has entered lately. I walk over to the carts of clothes and run my hand over the first one on the stack. It’s a ruby-red dress with fine material and some gems similar to those in the mirror. … The mirror. Not in my room, but the attic. My head hurts again, but I know I touched its gem before winding up here. How? I look through the dresses until I find a light blue and white one. The bowed sleeves come down to my elbow with frills encasing the bottom. The neckline forms a squared area of similar white frills. A small white sash acts as a belt that drops into the skirt of the dress. Two similar white ones come down each side. I pick up the light material and set it near my feet.
My old silk dress easily slips overhead, making way for the new clothing. After tugging tight sleeves and bodices into place the light dress swoops over my feet. I spin through the dark room only to stop at catching someone’s eye. I immediately turn towards the frozen face. It is my own reflection in a mirror. I face myself as my sight settles on the dress I wear. My honey brown hair curled over the dress from my pigtails. My eyes sparkled it’s matching blue to the dress. In the corner of the room, next to the mirror, sat a large wooden box. I looked through it to find that it was full of jewelry and accessories. I prodded its contents until I found sky blue bows to wrap in my pigtails.
I walked into the open hallway, now littered with people going to and fro. Anyone from passerby’s, young nobility, servants, and pages. Once the hall emptied I fled the room, hurrying through the corridors until I met with the room that created the harmonious trance. At the ends of the great ballroom sat crowds eating and laughing. Clusters of on-goers danced and chatted. In the middle of the farthest side of the room sat a throne that was embroidered with metal marks from centuries of legends. On the throne sat a woman at least eighteen of age. Her regal crown shone despite other attractions surrounding the dance room. A page strode over to her as she flourished her hand for his service. He stood and listened intently to her whispers. Finally, he stood and roared for the room’s attention. From his mouth spilled cheer and wistfulness, as he demanded the crowd’s ear. “Our young Queen Victoria’s coronation has completed. Now starts a new era! Let the celebration proceed.” The room reverberated with hope, love, and admiration for their new ruler.
‘Queen Victoria has been crowned’ having no clue how to find a way home, I disconsolately decide to join in the festivities. The crowd moves into a larger room. I stagger after them; the mass pushing everyone forward. We pass the kitchens. The aroma of cakes and deserts of every kind rises into the cool night air. The only smell more perceptible than delicate delights is the perfume penetrating the entire castle. We enter a by far more spacious ballroom. Empty amphitheater seats loom overhead, tied into the walls for onlookers to watch the ball unravel. Once again I glance at these to notice black material hangs over the edge. A head moves as people fill the seats. A nobleman with a black cape and familiar blue eyes takes their seat next to men and woman of high status. I walk into the mop to hide myself, while watching him. He laughs and chats with them as if he’s known them all his life.
Unable to watch where I’m going, I trip. The harsh, solid ground hits my knee as if I’ve met a tornado. I wince at the pain as I strain myself to stand. A firm, but careful hand grabs mine. I look up into green eyes shaded by recognizable glasses. “My dear, you are very clumsy.” He smiles at me as I pat my dress back into place. “I see we’ve met again.” My response comes weakly as the sore from my knee makes me flinch. “I don’t think you’ve told me your name.” I inquire. “You have not requested my name, so I haven’t told it. However, if you do me the honor of a dance, my secret may be leaked.” He bowed and offered me his arm, as I timidly accept it.
A new song disrupts the last, as new pairs take the stage. He walks me onto the floor, and diligently starts to dance. I watch my feet, not wanting to mistake my pace. “Lift your chin, my dear. You don’t seem to but much of a church-bell.” I looked up at him puzzled. “Church-bell?” As he tried to conceal a grin, his glasses couldn’t suppress the laughter in his eyes. “Your rather quiet. And most likely not from around London, are you?” I looked to the ground once more. Should I tell him or not? Will it start problems, or will I be okay? “It’s fine, I shall not expect you to answer a question you wish not to.” I looked up at him, solemnly. “I promised to introduce myself, correct?” I nodded, as the music that echoed around us faded into the next song.
His movements were so fluid; he was a wave at the end of the day, flowing into the sunset. “Miss, I am known by most as William Anderson. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He procured my sweaty palm into his, tenderly swiping his mouth to my fingers. I let my hand be brought back into the dance as I searched for words to speak. Once the dance ended a few moments later, I curtsey and murmur, “It’s nice to meet you. I am Lydia Olsen.” At my gesture he bows, and requests once more, “Am I trustworthy enough to understand why you are in a mysterious place you don’t understand?” My answer had been decided and started to splatter from my mouth. “Y…”
The next sound bounces along the room, it’s symphony starting. My words mix into the noise. In my vision of the seats above, snowy dots shoot arrows in my direction. Blue eyes gaze down at me, their iciness piercing me as icicles prickle my skin. I exchange a glance with William, nod and answer, “You are. I’ll explain.” My discomfort is surely recognizable. I often peek over my shoulder above as we dance. The shadow with a glare starts his voyage through the seats to reach the stairs that pillar into the wall. He descends from the tower, only adding to my panic. My hand seizes Williams, as I give him an apologetic smile. We hurry from the room, stumbling over each other’s feet. His graceful prance, now a faltering wreak.
Once we are outside the ballroom, I turn towards him. “I trust you, so please understand, I live In the USA in 2014. Not London, not Even in the 1800’s.” His expression is masked, but I’m sure that I’ve confused him. “I went back into time, from the future.” The simple words struck a chord with him, his glasses tilted off his nose as he listens intently. “The future? How?” even I don’t know how to answer such questions. “I’m not sure. I was in the attic with a mirror, than … ****! I’m here.” Confusion once again wonders onto his face. “I went into a storage room with old things, and found a mirror, touched a gem, now I was here.”
“I see, but why did we run away from the celebration? I was looking forward to another dance with you.” His casual smile does nothing to conceal unasked questions. I’m not sure how to answer them ei
Kaycee33
Jun 2013
The Quest for the Damsel Fish by Keith Collard
Author's Atmosphere
On the bow of the boat, with the cold cloud of the dismal day brushing your back conjuring goose bumped flesh you hold an anchor. For the first time, you can pick this silver anchor up with only one hand and hold it over your head. It resembles the Morning Star, a brutal medieval weapon that bludgeons and impales its victims. Drop it into the dark world beyond the security of your boat--watch the anchor descend.
Watch this silver anchor--this Morning Star--descend away from the boat and you, it becomes swarmed over with darkness. It forms a ******-metallic grin at first as it sinks, then the sinking silver anchor takes its last shape at its last visible glimpse. It is so small now as if it could be hung from a necklace. It is a silver sword.
Peering over the side of the boat, the depths collectively look like the mouth of a Cannibalistic Crab, throwing the shadows of its mandibles over everything that sinks down into it--black mandibles that have joints with the same angle of a Reaper's Scythe.
I am scared looking at this sinking phantasm. I see something from my youth down there in this dark cold Atlantic. I see the silver Morning Star again, now in golden armor. I remember a magnificent kingdom, in a saltwater fish tank I had once and never had again. A tropical paradise that I see again as I stare down into the depths. This fish tank was so beautiful with the most beautiful inhabitants who I miss. Before I could lift the silver anchor--the Morning Star--over my head with only one hand, turning gold in that morning sun-- I was a boy who sat indian style, cross legged--peering into this brilliant spectacle of light I thought awesome. I thought all the darkness of home and the world was kept at bay by this kingdom of light...
Chapter 1 Begins the Story
The Grey Skies of Mass is the Name of This Chapter.
Air, in bubbles--it was a world beauty of darkness revealed in slashes of light from dashing fluorescent bulbs overhead this fish tank.
Silver swords of fluorescent energy daring to the bottom, every slash revealing every color of the zodiac--from the Gold of Scorpio to the purple of Libra combining into the jade of the Gemini.
In the center, like a dark Stonehenge were rocks. The exterior rocks had tropical colors like that of cotton candy, but the interior shadows of the rocks that was the Stonehenge, did not possess one photon of light. The silver messengers of the florescent energy from above would tire and die at their base. The shadows of the Stonehenge rocks would stand over them as they died.
When the boy named Sake climbed the rickety wood stairs of the house, he did so in fear of making noise, as if to not wake each step.
Until he could see the glowing aura of his fish tank then he would start down that eerie hall, With pictures of ghosts and ghosts of pictures staring down at him as he walked down that rickety hallway of this towering old colonial home. He hurried to the glowing tank to escape the black and white gazing picture frames.
The faint gurgling, bubbling of the saltwater tank became stronger in his ear, and that sound guided him from the last haunt of the hallway-- the empty room that was perpendicular to his room. He only looked to his bright tank as soon as he entered the hallway from the creaky wooden steps. Then he proceeded to sit in front of this great tropical fish tank in Indian style with his legs folded over one another as children so often would sit.
The sun was setting. The reflections from the tank were beginning to send ripples down the dark walls. Increasing wave after wave reflecting down his dark walls. He thought they to be seagulls flapping into the darkness until they were overcome as he was listening to the bubbling water of his tank.
" Hello my fish, hello Angel, hello Tang, hello Hoomah, hello Clown and hello Damsel … and hello to you Crab...even though I do not like you," he said in half jest not looking at the crab in the entrance of the rocks. The rocks were the color of cotton candy, but the interior shadows did not possess a photon of luminescence. All other shadows not caused by the rocks--but by bright swaying ornament--were like the glaze on a candy apple--dark but delicious. Besides the crab's layer in the rock jumble at the center of the tank which was a Stonehenge within a Stonehenge--the tank was a world of bright inviting light.
The crab was in its routine, motionless in the entrance to his foyer, with his scythe-like claws in the air, in expectation of catching one of the bright fish someday. For that reason the boy tried to remove the crab in the past, but even though the boy was fast with his hand, the optical illusion of the tank would always send his hand where the crab no longer was. He did not know how to use two hands to rid the crab in the future by trapping and destroying the Cannibal Crab ; his father, on a weekend visit, gave the Crab to the boy to put into the bright world of the saltwater tank, which Sake quickly regretted. His father promised him that the Crab would not be able to catch any of the fish he said " ...***** only eat anything that has fallen to the bottom or each other..."
A scream from the living room downstairs ran up the rickety wood and down the long hall and startled the boy. His mother sent her shrieks out to grab the boy, allowing her to not have to waste any time nor calorie on her son; for she would tire from the stairs, but her screams would not, allowing her to stay curled up on the couch. If she was not screaming for Sake, she was talking as loud as screams on the phone with her girlfriends. The decibels from her laugh was torture for all in the silent house. A haughty laugh in a gossipy conversation, that overpowered the sound of the bright tropical fish tank in Sake's room that was above and far opposite her in the living room.
" Sake you have to get a paper-route to pay for the tank, the electricity bill is outrageous," she said while not taking her eyes off the TV and her legs curled up beside her. He would glad fully get a paper-route even if it was for a made up reason. He turned to go, and looked back at his mother, and a shudder ran through him with a new thought: someday her appearance will match her voice.
Upon reaching his tank, Hoomah was trying to get his attention as always. Taking up pebbles in his big pouty pursed lips and spitting them out of his lips like a weak musket. The Hoomah was a very silly fish, it looked like one of Sake’s aunts, with too much make up on, slightly overweight, and hovering on two little fins that looked incapable of keeping it afloat, but they did. The fins reminded him of the legs of his aunt--skinny under not so skinny.’
The Tang was doing his usual aquanautics , darting and sailing was his trick. He was fast, the fastest with his bright yellow triangular sail cutting the water. Next was the aggressive Clown fish, the boy thought she was always aggresive because she didn't have an anemone to sleep on. The Clown was strong and sleek with an orange jaw and body that was built like a tigress.
Sake thought something tragic about the body if the orange Clown and the three silver traces that clawed her body as decoration -they reminded him of the incandescent orange glow of a street lamp being viewed through the rainy back windshield of a car. The Clown fish was a distraction that craved attention.
The Clown would chase around some of the other fish and jump out of the water to catch the boy's eye.
Next is the Queen Angel fish, she is the queen of the tank, she sits in back all alone, waving like a marvelous banner, iridescent purple and golden jade. Her forehead slopes back in a French braid style that streams over her back like a kings standard waving before battle, but her standard is of a house of beauty, and that of royal purple.
Lastly is the Damsel Fish, the smallest and most vulnerable in the tank. She has royal purple also, rivaling the queen. Her eyes are lashed but not lidded like the Hoomah. Her eyes are elliptical, and perhaps the most human, or in the boy’s opinion, she is the most lady like, the Hoomah and the Queen Angel come to her defence if she is chased around by the Clown. Her eyes penetrate the boys, to the point of him looking away.
Before the tank, in its place in the corner was a painting, an oil painting of another type of Clown donning a hat with orange partial make-up on his face (only around eyes nose and mouth there was ghost white paint) and it had two tears coming down from its right eye. The Clown painting was given to him by his mother, it seems he could not be rid of them, but Sake at first was taken in by the brightness of the Clown, and the smooth salacious wet look of the painting. it looked dripping, or submerged, like another alternate reality. The wet surreal glaze of the painting seemed a portal, especially the orange glow of the Clown's skin without make-up. . If he tried to remember of times before the Clown painting that preceded the Clown fish, he thought of the orange saffron twilight of sunset, and watching it from the high window from his room in the towering house. How that light changed everything that it touched, from the tree tops and the clouds, to even the dark hallway leading up to his room. The painting and the Clown fish did not feel the same as those distant memories of sunset, especially the summer sunset when his mother would put him to bed long before the sun had set.
Sake did not voice opposition to the Clown.
Then he was once again trapped by the Clown.
The boy was extremely afraid of this painting that replaced the sunsets , being confined alone with it by all those early bedtimes.
Sake once asked his mother if he could take it down, whereas she said " No." That clown would follow him into his dreams, always he would be down the hill from the tall house on the hill, trying to walk back to the house, but to walk away or run in a dream was like walking underwater or in black space, and he would make no distance as the ground opened up and the clown came out of the ground hugging him with the pryless grip of eight arms. He would then wake up amid screams and a tearful hatted clown staring somberly down at him from the wall where it was hung. Night made him fear the Clown painting more; that ghost white make-up decorating around the eyes and mouth seeming to form another painting in entirety. He could only look at the painting after a while when the lights were on, and the wet looking painting was mostly orange from the skin, neck, and forearms of the hat wearing clown. But the painting is gone now, and the magnificent light display of the tank is there now.
Sake pulled out the fish food, all the fish bestirred in anticipation of being fed. The only time they would all come together; and that was to mumble the bits of falling flakes: a chomp from the Clown, a pucker from the Hoomah, the fast mumble of the Tang, and the dainty chew of the Damsel. The Queen Angelfish would stay near the bottom, and kiss a flake over and over. She would not deign herself to go into a friendly frenzy like the other fish; she stayed calm, yet alluring like a flag dancing rhythmically in the breeze, but never repeating the same move as the wind never repeats the same breeze. She is the only fish to change colors. When the grey skies of Mass emit through every portal in the house at the height of its bleakness, her colors would turn more fantastic, perhaps why she is queen.
He put his finger in the top of the watery world; the warmth was felt all the way up his arm. After feeding, his favorite thing to do was to trace his finger on the top of the warm water and have the Damsel follow it. She loved it, it was her only time to dance, for the Clown would descend down in somewhat fear ( or annoyance) of the boys finger, and the Damsel and he would dance. The boy, thought that extraordinary.
Sake bedded down that night, to his usual watery world of his room. The reflective waves running down the walls like seagulls of light, with the rhythmic gurgling sound and it's occasional splash of the Clown, or the Hoomah swooping into the pebbly bottom to scoop up some pebbles for spitting making the sound "ccchhhhh" --cachinging like a distant underwater register. The tank’s nocturne sound was therapeutic to the boy.
Among waking up, and being greeted by his sparkling treasure tank--that was always of the faintest light in the morning due to the grey skies of Mass coming through every portal to lessen the tropical spectrum-- the boy would render his salutations " Good morning my Hoomah.....good morning Tang, my Damsel, and your majesty Queen Angel.....and so forth. Until the scream would come to get him, and he would walk briskly past the empty room and the looming family pictures of strangers. His mother put him to work that day, to "pay for the fish tank" but really to buy her a new cocktail dress for her nightly forays. The boy did not care, the tank was his sun, emitting through the bleak skies of Mass, and even if the tank was reduced to a haze by the overcast of his life, it only added a log to the fire that was the tropical world at night, in turn making him welcome the dismal day.
On a day, when the overcast was so thick, he felt he could not picture his rectangular orb waiting for him at night. He had trouble remembering what houses to deliver the paper. He delivered to the same house three times. Newspapers seemed to disappear in his hands, due to their color relation to the sky. Leaves were falling from the trees—butterfly like—he went to catch one, he missed--a first. For Sake could walk through dense thorned brambles and avoid every barb, as a knight in combat or someone’s whose heart felt the painful sting of the barb before. He would stand under a tree in late fall, and roll around to avoid every falling leaf, and pierce them to the ground deftly with a stick fashioned as a sword. He could slither between snow flakes, almost like a fish nimbly avoiding small flakes.
After he finished his paper-route , he went to his usual spot under an oak tree to fence with falling leaves. As the other boys walked by and poked fun he would stall his imagination, and look to the brown landscape of the dry fall. The crisp brown leaves of the trees were sword shapes to him. He held the battle ax shape of the oak leaf over his eye held up by the stick it was pierced through, and spied the woodline through the sinus of the oak leaf lobe. The brown white speckled scenery, were all trying to hide behind eachother by blending in bleakfully; he pretended the leaf was Hector’s helmet from the Illiad—donned over his eyes.
“ Whatchya doing Sake?” asked a young girl named Summer. Sake only mumbled something nervously and stood there. And a pretty Summer passed on after Sake once again denied himself of her pretty company. He looked to the woodline again, a mist was now concealing the tall apical trees. It now looked like the brown woodland was not trying to retreat behind eachother in fall concealment, but trying to emerge forth out of the greyness to say "save us."
“ Damgf” he uttered, and could not even grasp a word correctly. His head lifted to the sky repeatedly, there was no orb, and the shadows were looming larger than ever; fractioned shadows from tree branches were forming scythes all over the ground.
He entered the large shadow that was his front door, into the house that rose high into the sky, with the simplicity of Stonehenge. He climbed the rickety petrified stairs and went down the hall. Grey light had spotlighted every frame on the wall. He looked into the empty room, nothingness, then his room, the tank seemed at its faintest, and it was nearing twilight. He walked past the tank to look out the w
Author's Atmosphere
On the bow of the boat, with the cold cloud of the dismal day brushing your back conjuring goose bumped flesh you hold an anchor. For the first time, you can pick this silver anchor up with only one hand and hold it over your head. It resembles the Morning Star, a brutal medieval weapon that bludgeons and impales its victims. Drop it into the dark world beyond the security of your boat--watch the anchor descend.
Watch this silver anchor--this Morning Star--descend away from the boat and you, it becomes swarmed over with darkness. It forms a ******-metallic grin at first as it sinks, then the sinking silver anchor takes its last shape at its last visible glimpse. It is so small now as if it could be hung from a necklace. It is a silver sword.
Peering over the side of the boat, the depths collectively look like the mouth of a Cannibalistic Crab, throwing the shadows of its mandibles over everything that sinks down into it--black mandibles that have joints with the same angle of a Reaper's Scythe.
I am scared looking at this sinking phantasm. I see something from my youth down there in this dark cold Atlantic. I see the silver Morning Star again, now in golden armor. I remember a magnificent kingdom, in a saltwater fish tank I had once and never had again. A tropical paradise that I see again as I stare down into the depths. This fish tank was so beautiful with the most beautiful inhabitants who I miss. Before I could lift the silver anchor--the Morning Star--over my head with only one hand, turning gold in that morning sun-- I was a boy who sat indian style, cross legged--peering into this brilliant spectacle of light I thought awesome. I thought all the darkness of home and the world was kept at bay by this kingdom of light...
Chapter 1 Begins the Story
The Grey Skies of Mass is the Name of This Chapter.
Air, in bubbles--it was a world beauty of darkness revealed in slashes of light from dashing fluorescent bulbs overhead this fish tank.
Silver swords of fluorescent energy daring to the bottom, every slash revealing every color of the zodiac--from the Gold of Scorpio to the purple of Libra combining into the jade of the Gemini.
In the center, like a dark Stonehenge were rocks. The exterior rocks had tropical colors like that of cotton candy, but the interior shadows of the rocks that was the Stonehenge, did not possess one photon of light. The silver messengers of the florescent energy from above would tire and die at their base. The shadows of the Stonehenge rocks would stand over them as they died.
When the boy named Sake climbed the rickety wood stairs of the house, he did so in fear of making noise, as if to not wake each step.
Until he could see the glowing aura of his fish tank then he would start down that eerie hall, With pictures of ghosts and ghosts of pictures staring down at him as he walked down that rickety hallway of this towering old colonial home. He hurried to the glowing tank to escape the black and white gazing picture frames.
The faint gurgling, bubbling of the saltwater tank became stronger in his ear, and that sound guided him from the last haunt of the hallway-- the empty room that was perpendicular to his room. He only looked to his bright tank as soon as he entered the hallway from the creaky wooden steps. Then he proceeded to sit in front of this great tropical fish tank in Indian style with his legs folded over one another as children so often would sit.
The sun was setting. The reflections from the tank were beginning to send ripples down the dark walls. Increasing wave after wave reflecting down his dark walls. He thought they to be seagulls flapping into the darkness until they were overcome as he was listening to the bubbling water of his tank.
" Hello my fish, hello Angel, hello Tang, hello Hoomah, hello Clown and hello Damsel … and hello to you Crab...even though I do not like you," he said in half jest not looking at the crab in the entrance of the rocks. The rocks were the color of cotton candy, but the interior shadows did not possess a photon of luminescence. All other shadows not caused by the rocks--but by bright swaying ornament--were like the glaze on a candy apple--dark but delicious. Besides the crab's layer in the rock jumble at the center of the tank which was a Stonehenge within a Stonehenge--the tank was a world of bright inviting light.
The crab was in its routine, motionless in the entrance to his foyer, with his scythe-like claws in the air, in expectation of catching one of the bright fish someday. For that reason the boy tried to remove the crab in the past, but even though the boy was fast with his hand, the optical illusion of the tank would always send his hand where the crab no longer was. He did not know how to use two hands to rid the crab in the future by trapping and destroying the Cannibal Crab ; his father, on a weekend visit, gave the Crab to the boy to put into the bright world of the saltwater tank, which Sake quickly regretted. His father promised him that the Crab would not be able to catch any of the fish he said " ...***** only eat anything that has fallen to the bottom or each other..."
A scream from the living room downstairs ran up the rickety wood and down the long hall and startled the boy. His mother sent her shrieks out to grab the boy, allowing her to not have to waste any time nor calorie on her son; for she would tire from the stairs, but her screams would not, allowing her to stay curled up on the couch. If she was not screaming for Sake, she was talking as loud as screams on the phone with her girlfriends. The decibels from her laugh was torture for all in the silent house. A haughty laugh in a gossipy conversation, that overpowered the sound of the bright tropical fish tank in Sake's room that was above and far opposite her in the living room.
" Sake you have to get a paper-route to pay for the tank, the electricity bill is outrageous," she said while not taking her eyes off the TV and her legs curled up beside her. He would glad fully get a paper-route even if it was for a made up reason. He turned to go, and looked back at his mother, and a shudder ran through him with a new thought: someday her appearance will match her voice.
Upon reaching his tank, Hoomah was trying to get his attention as always. Taking up pebbles in his big pouty pursed lips and spitting them out of his lips like a weak musket. The Hoomah was a very silly fish, it looked like one of Sake’s aunts, with too much make up on, slightly overweight, and hovering on two little fins that looked incapable of keeping it afloat, but they did. The fins reminded him of the legs of his aunt--skinny under not so skinny.’
The Tang was doing his usual aquanautics , darting and sailing was his trick. He was fast, the fastest with his bright yellow triangular sail cutting the water. Next was the aggressive Clown fish, the boy thought she was always aggresive because she didn't have an anemone to sleep on. The Clown was strong and sleek with an orange jaw and body that was built like a tigress.
Sake thought something tragic about the body if the orange Clown and the three silver traces that clawed her body as decoration -they reminded him of the incandescent orange glow of a street lamp being viewed through the rainy back windshield of a car. The Clown fish was a distraction that craved attention.
The Clown would chase around some of the other fish and jump out of the water to catch the boy's eye.
Next is the Queen Angel fish, she is the queen of the tank, she sits in back all alone, waving like a marvelous banner, iridescent purple and golden jade. Her forehead slopes back in a French braid style that streams over her back like a kings standard waving before battle, but her standard is of a house of beauty, and that of royal purple.
Lastly is the Damsel Fish, the smallest and most vulnerable in the tank. She has royal purple also, rivaling the queen. Her eyes are lashed but not lidded like the Hoomah. Her eyes are elliptical, and perhaps the most human, or in the boy’s opinion, she is the most lady like, the Hoomah and the Queen Angel come to her defence if she is chased around by the Clown. Her eyes penetrate the boys, to the point of him looking away.
Before the tank, in its place in the corner was a painting, an oil painting of another type of Clown donning a hat with orange partial make-up on his face (only around eyes nose and mouth there was ghost white paint) and it had two tears coming down from its right eye. The Clown painting was given to him by his mother, it seems he could not be rid of them, but Sake at first was taken in by the brightness of the Clown, and the smooth salacious wet look of the painting. it looked dripping, or submerged, like another alternate reality. The wet surreal glaze of the painting seemed a portal, especially the orange glow of the Clown's skin without make-up. . If he tried to remember of times before the Clown painting that preceded the Clown fish, he thought of the orange saffron twilight of sunset, and watching it from the high window from his room in the towering house. How that light changed everything that it touched, from the tree tops and the clouds, to even the dark hallway leading up to his room. The painting and the Clown fish did not feel the same as those distant memories of sunset, especially the summer sunset when his mother would put him to bed long before the sun had set.
Sake did not voice opposition to the Clown.
Then he was once again trapped by the Clown.
The boy was extremely afraid of this painting that replaced the sunsets , being confined alone with it by all those early bedtimes.
Sake once asked his mother if he could take it down, whereas she said " No." That clown would follow him into his dreams, always he would be down the hill from the tall house on the hill, trying to walk back to the house, but to walk away or run in a dream was like walking underwater or in black space, and he would make no distance as the ground opened up and the clown came out of the ground hugging him with the pryless grip of eight arms. He would then wake up amid screams and a tearful hatted clown staring somberly down at him from the wall where it was hung. Night made him fear the Clown painting more; that ghost white make-up decorating around the eyes and mouth seeming to form another painting in entirety. He could only look at the painting after a while when the lights were on, and the wet looking painting was mostly orange from the skin, neck, and forearms of the hat wearing clown. But the painting is gone now, and the magnificent light display of the tank is there now.
Sake pulled out the fish food, all the fish bestirred in anticipation of being fed. The only time they would all come together; and that was to mumble the bits of falling flakes: a chomp from the Clown, a pucker from the Hoomah, the fast mumble of the Tang, and the dainty chew of the Damsel. The Queen Angelfish would stay near the bottom, and kiss a flake over and over. She would not deign herself to go into a friendly frenzy like the other fish; she stayed calm, yet alluring like a flag dancing rhythmically in the breeze, but never repeating the same move as the wind never repeats the same breeze. She is the only fish to change colors. When the grey skies of Mass emit through every portal in the house at the height of its bleakness, her colors would turn more fantastic, perhaps why she is queen.
He put his finger in the top of the watery world; the warmth was felt all the way up his arm. After feeding, his favorite thing to do was to trace his finger on the top of the warm water and have the Damsel follow it. She loved it, it was her only time to dance, for the Clown would descend down in somewhat fear ( or annoyance) of the boys finger, and the Damsel and he would dance. The boy, thought that extraordinary.
Sake bedded down that night, to his usual watery world of his room. The reflective waves running down the walls like seagulls of light, with the rhythmic gurgling sound and it's occasional splash of the Clown, or the Hoomah swooping into the pebbly bottom to scoop up some pebbles for spitting making the sound "ccchhhhh" --cachinging like a distant underwater register. The tank’s nocturne sound was therapeutic to the boy.
Among waking up, and being greeted by his sparkling treasure tank--that was always of the faintest light in the morning due to the grey skies of Mass coming through every portal to lessen the tropical spectrum-- the boy would render his salutations " Good morning my Hoomah.....good morning Tang, my Damsel, and your majesty Queen Angel.....and so forth. Until the scream would come to get him, and he would walk briskly past the empty room and the looming family pictures of strangers. His mother put him to work that day, to "pay for the fish tank" but really to buy her a new cocktail dress for her nightly forays. The boy did not care, the tank was his sun, emitting through the bleak skies of Mass, and even if the tank was reduced to a haze by the overcast of his life, it only added a log to the fire that was the tropical world at night, in turn making him welcome the dismal day.
On a day, when the overcast was so thick, he felt he could not picture his rectangular orb waiting for him at night. He had trouble remembering what houses to deliver the paper. He delivered to the same house three times. Newspapers seemed to disappear in his hands, due to their color relation to the sky. Leaves were falling from the trees—butterfly like—he went to catch one, he missed--a first. For Sake could walk through dense thorned brambles and avoid every barb, as a knight in combat or someone’s whose heart felt the painful sting of the barb before. He would stand under a tree in late fall, and roll around to avoid every falling leaf, and pierce them to the ground deftly with a stick fashioned as a sword. He could slither between snow flakes, almost like a fish nimbly avoiding small flakes.
After he finished his paper-route , he went to his usual spot under an oak tree to fence with falling leaves. As the other boys walked by and poked fun he would stall his imagination, and look to the brown landscape of the dry fall. The crisp brown leaves of the trees were sword shapes to him. He held the battle ax shape of the oak leaf over his eye held up by the stick it was pierced through, and spied the woodline through the sinus of the oak leaf lobe. The brown white speckled scenery, were all trying to hide behind eachother by blending in bleakfully; he pretended the leaf was Hector’s helmet from the Illiad—donned over his eyes.
“ Whatchya doing Sake?” asked a young girl named Summer. Sake only mumbled something nervously and stood there. And a pretty Summer passed on after Sake once again denied himself of her pretty company. He looked to the woodline again, a mist was now concealing the tall apical trees. It now looked like the brown woodland was not trying to retreat behind eachother in fall concealment, but trying to emerge forth out of the greyness to say "save us."
“ Damgf” he uttered, and could not even grasp a word correctly. His head lifted to the sky repeatedly, there was no orb, and the shadows were looming larger than ever; fractioned shadows from tree branches were forming scythes all over the ground.
He entered the large shadow that was his front door, into the house that rose high into the sky, with the simplicity of Stonehenge. He climbed the rickety petrified stairs and went down the hall. Grey light had spotlighted every frame on the wall. He looked into the empty room, nothingness, then his room, the tank seemed at its faintest, and it was nearing twilight. He walked past the tank to look out the w