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Archive for November, 2007

Accident Report-Joanna M. Weston

Friday, November 30th, 2007
Accident Report
By Joanna M. Weston
       
under investigation
 
three males, one female
taken for observation
 
pedestrians watched
        them hurtle
 
birch blossom fraying
bodies scattered   bruised
ready for ambulance
tossed beauty careless
in ecstasy of shock
 
gather them flat
stretched to stretcher
masked against mobility
strapped to oxygen
 
children of the future
dispersed by speed

while the girl slept

Copyright C. 2007 Joanna M. Weston

 

Laughter is Not The Best Medicine-Jeanna Cole

Friday, November 30th, 2007
Laughter is Not The Best Medicine
By Jeanna Cole
 

the Chinese neighbors are sitting on the balcony
playing a game we do not recognize

making interesting noises,
clink cllllllink woooooooooo
clliinkkkk

baker makes fun of them, calls them origami people
(origami makes me think of bees)

i laugh

i do not find it funny
i do not understand
if i do not laugh, baker will ask why and i do not have the energy to fight

we are friends, barely
he is rarely around

mutual understanding
don’t touch me and i won’t slap you

cllllinkkkk woooooooo clllinnkkk

he laughs hysterically

tomorrow at work he will tell this story
he will exaggerate and they’ll all laugh

not knowing the price of those laughs

and their kids will some day come home,
after learning about origami

just the syllables in the word
will send shivers

as their children begin to laugh
they will recognize
how far they fell

i will not be able to smile though,
even when the realization becomes a thickener in the air

for i once went along,
never innocent,
with all the wrong things.

Copyright C. 2007 Jeanna Cole

Fishing for Love-Jeanna Cole

Friday, November 30th, 2007
Fishing for Love
By Jeanna Cole
 

You asked me why I don’t fish
So I showed you the hook around my lip
You said you weren’t trying to catch me
As you flung another into my hip

I flipped around
Showing my fins
Waiting to be skinned

“You know I didn’t bring my net; I can’t carry you home”

Your words as you tossed me back into the water

I watched as you left me to sink inside my blood
You thought your hooks went deep enough
I pulled them out
And made my way back to land

Found you sleeping on the couch
Guess my scent on the bed was too loud

I found your rod
And grabbed the fishing line
Got some hooks
I was gonna make you mine

Carried you back to the water
Hooks inside and out

“I would have come back for you! I just needed time!”

Your screams are pointless
My wounds are deep
Save your voice for the sharks
They’re ready to eat

I like to fish now
As long as you’re my bait
I would have been yours forever
All you had to do was wait.

Copyright C. 2007 Jeanna Cole

Under An Orwellian Sky-Chris Sorrenti

Friday, November 30th, 2007
Under An Orwellian Sky
By Chris Sorrenti
 
I smile upon reading of the
hidden camera paranoia
1984’s Orwellian prophecy
partially fulfilled
in apartment lobbies
department stores / street corners
lenses no larger than
myriad blinking stars above
and though I don’t relish the thought
of a spy cam in my living room
I’ve gotten quite used to the unseen eye
 
from my earliest days
always a sensation of being watched
unrecognizable movements
in peripheral vision
angelic watchdogs keeping tabs
on everything I say and do
surveillance extended
to every living soul
until we move on
all suspects world wide
 
and so to those
legally sanctioned voyeurs
this life long exhibitionist says
“be my guest”
though also be warned
for in the final judgment
of evidence presented

the ultimate security guard’s cameras.

Copyright C 2007 Chris Sorrenti

French Class Blues-Chris Sorrenti

Friday, November 30th, 2007

French Class Blues
By Chris Sorrenti           
 
I’ve got the French class blues
He’s got the French class blues
I’ve got the French class blues
He’s got the French class blues
 
So bored that I’m sleeping
Trying to write this song
Dreaming of the sun outside
And the day when I’ll be gone
 
He’s got the French class blues
I’ve got the French class blues
He’s got the French class blues
I’ve got the French class blues
 
I’d like to be a winner
But all I do is lose
Trying to put the words together
A noun a verb an adjective
They’re all the same to me
As they reprogram my classmates
With the passé composé  
 
I’ve got the French class blues
He’s got the French class blues
I’ve got the French class blues
He’s got the French class blues
 
Sitting by the telephone
Waiting for your call
For a little bit of English
To keep from crawling up the wall
 
He’s got the French class blues
I’ve got the French class blues
He’s got the French class blues
I’ve got the French class blues
 
No I’m not really prejudiced
And I know it’s not nice to complain
I’ve made my home in bilingual Ottawa
So I guess I’ll have to stay
Just wake me up when it’s four o’clock
So I can hit the road
To see my friends and family
Back at the chez moi
 
I’ve got the French class blues
He’s got the French class blues
I’ve got the French class blues
He’s got the French class blues
 
Il faut que j’aille cinq jours ‘semaine
Et je crois j’ai besoin d’un autre brain
J’aime les gens mais pas leur langue
Mais qu’est-ce que on peut faire
Quand on peut dire rien?
 
He’s got the French class blues
I’ve got the French class blues

He’s got the French class blues

I’ve got the French class blues…

Copyright C 2007 Chris Sorrenti

 

Showing Off Mary Lou-Bob Liter

Friday, November 30th, 2007

Showing Off Mary Lou

By Bob Liter

My attempts to impress Mary Lou Angelini started with my big brother’s ghost costume when I nine years old. The black costume’s white lines suggested bare, skinny bones. The face included a diabolical grin. Jay’s frayed and dirt-smeared canvass tennies added what I thought was a scary touch.

I sneaked out of the house and crouched behind a bush near the front sidewalk. Buster, a little brown and white dog that got more attention from Mary Lou than I did, trotted by. I jumped out and growled. The trot became a mad dash preceded by a yelp.
           
            Later, as I had hoped, Mary Lou came skipping down the sidewalk on her way to Jeannie Welk’s house where they played house and other girly stuff. Sunlight glanced off her shining, dark hair and reflected in her brown eyes as she glided along. She was almost past when I remembered my mission. I jumped out and made what I imagined were ghost noises. The oversized shoes became entangled and I sprawled on the sidewalk in front of her. She stepped around me, still gliding. Laughter faded as she continued down the walk without turning back. I managed to duck her for several days, but she saw me kicking at a soccer ball and caught it when it skidded toward her. She gazed directly into my eyes as a wonderful smile spread across her face. She turned her head slowly from side to side and tossed the ball toward me. I stumbled and failed to catch it.
           
One of my attempts to impress her during high school involved a spotlight and a blown fuse. Mrs. Forster, the English and drama teacher, talked me into being a part of her variety show. I had rehearsed it several times with the spotlight operator, Harry Will. He was supposed to direct the spot around the stage while I called, "Here spot." The spotlight was supposed tot land in my outstretched hand and disappear when I pretended to stuff it in my pocket. The curtains rolled back and Mrs. Foster shoved me on stage. I was numb with fright, but after a second or two of silence I managed to call, "Here Spot." Nothing happened. I called again, louder this time. Still nothing. People in the audience snickered and then laughed out loud. I mumbled, "I guess Spot’s not here," and ran off the stage.
 
             It got a big laugh from the audience of my classmates and their parents. I imagined I heard Mary Lou’s voice among them. It did no good to explain what was supposed to happen and that a burned out fuse put the spotlight out of business.
 
            "Where’s Spot" was a common comment for months afterward whenever most   students came near me. But not Mary Lou. When we passed in the halls she just smiled and shook her head.
 
            The next semester the basketball coach, Mister Brand, said I could be a star because by then I was six feet tall. I didn’t believe him, but Mary Lou was often seen with Brad Thomas, the star of the team. So I went out. After a few days of stumbling around I was sent in as the center during a scrimmage. Brad was the point guard and his job was to feed the ball to the other players when he wasn’t making three-point shots.
 
            He dribbled, passed and moved so fast it was hard for me to keep track of him and at the same time move around near the basket like the coach said. I was backing against a defender near the basket when Brad whipped a pass in my direction. The ball bounced off my head. Practice stopped and laughter erupted among the players and the students who were scattered in the bleachers. I thought I heard Mary Lou’s laughter, but I didn’t have the nerve to look. Coach Brand led me off the court, insisted I sit, and practice resumed. Later he said it was the first time he ever saw a player get a black eye from a basketball.
 
            From then on I shunned after-school activities. I even dropped out of the computer and science clubs. I spent a lot of time in my room learning things from books and the computer and writing stuff.
 
One of my letters was published by the local newspaper. It was about geopolitics and how it had meaning for everyone, even the citizens of our town. I wrote other letters. Soon most of them were published and by my senior year in high school I was a regular contributor. One letter about global warming was published by the Chicago Tribune.
 
            My dad, a truck driver, and my Mom said they were proud of me, but the few kids at school that noticed seemed to think it some nerdish thing that didn’t compare with the ability to catch a ball of one kind or another.
 
            Soon after the war broke out I joined the Navy. Nearly everybody was either drafter or joined up. I managed to get my hands on various science books and studied hard even when I was seasick, which was most of the time. I entered the state university a month after I was discharged and wrote scientific articles for the college paper. Some of them were reprinted by other papers. I hoped Mary Lou was somehow aware of this, but I doubted it. Last I heard she was dating a variety of guys and studying journalism at Columbia in Missouri.
 
            It was agony thinking about it. I supposed she still was wearing those tight, fuzzy sweaters that outlined her breasts. I had visions of her slender legs extending above bobby sox that had the privilege of caressing her ankles.
 
            Eventually I got so involved in my studies I didn’t think about her for hours. By the time I earned a BA degree Dad had retired and he and Mom were living in Florida. I took a job that summer as super at Elmwood Apartments. I had time to study and write essays. I wasn’t much of a super. But at times it was exciting. Like the time the woman got her toe caught in the hot water faucet of the bathtub in Room 103 and I had to get it loose.
 
            Elaine Hopper, that was her name, was kinda fat but still there were points of interest when I examined her naked body while I freed her toe. She clung to my leg when I was done, but I managed to get out of there. 
 
            I was reading chapter ten of Elements of Physics when she came in to my basement office below the apartments. I didn’t recognize her voice when she cleared her throat a couple of times to get my attention. I marked the page with a Greeley Office Supply paperweight and looked into the smiling eyes of Mary Lou Angelini. She seemed taller, more assured than ever. God, she was beautiful. Later she insisted she might be beautiful in my eyes – she hoped she was – but that she was as common as your average movie star or fashion model. It was a few seconds before I realized the humor in her remark.
 
            "Harold Weeks, as I live and breathe," she said.
 
             The top of her partially unbuttoned sheer blouse stretched. It was even more impressive than the sweaters she used to wear.
 
            "I saw the ad in the Daily News. I need an apartment. I suppose I’m too late."
 
           I managed to stand and said, "There’s only one."
 
            She smiled. "One is all I want. May I see it?"
 
            "How have you been, Mary Lou?"
 
            "Fine Harold. Just fine. Except for my divorce. But even that was for the best. I’ve had it with living with my parents. I need a place of my own."

            I stumbled getting around the desk and led her to Apartment 103. Miss Harper, the one with the caught toe, had moved out and left a mess behind. 

            "I haven’t had a chance to clean yet. The previous occupant just moved out a couple of days ago."
 
            "Harold, you’ve filled out. Not so skinny."
 
            "So have you," I said and wished immediately that I hadn’t.
 
            "I’ve always had big knockers. Hope my ass hasn’t added too much padding."
 
            She turned with her back toward me and said, "What do you think?"
 
            "I think you’re the most beautiful woman in the world."
 
            She smiled and shook her head slowly.
 
            "Remember how you used to try to show off for me. It was so funny. You kept me laughing all the way through elementary and high school. I didn’t understand what a compliment it was. Looking back, I think you were in love with me." 
 
            "I was. I am."
 
            "Still?"
 
            "Yes, still. I mean, well, I’m no good at this personal stuff. I’m sorry."
 
            "How much?"
 
            "What?"
 
            "How much rent for the apartment."
 
            "Oh," I managed to say. 
 
            I told her the amount of the monthly rent and she said, "I’ll take it if you’ll help me clean it, wash my back when I call, and keep trying to impress me."
 
            Desire took control of my brain. I bent to one knee, nearly lost my balance as it rested on the floor, and whispered, "Will you marry me?"
 
            "Why Harold. This is so sudden."
 
             I feared she was making fun of me but blurted out, "Well, will you marry me?"
 
            "Of course not. I’m just getting over divorcing Brad Thomas. You remember him. The jock. He ran off with a blonde. Elsie Goodwin. I don’t think you knew her. At first I was furious, but it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m glad he’s gone."
 
            I struggled to my feet. She smiled and shook her head.
 
            "Let’s get started," she said. "I want to move in as soon as possible."
 
            We hauled partially empty cereal boxes, some rags left in the closet, and a broken chair out into the hallway. I swept the kitchen and living room floors. While she spot cleaned the carpet in the living room I cleaned the bathroom.
 
            As I scrubbed the tub I imagined her in it and me washing her back. Of course she didn’t mean it, I told myself, but still . . .
 
            "I’ll be back tomorrow," she said. I nodded as she left.
 
            It all seems so long ago, in some ways, but in other ways, well you know.
 
            We live in a house on Elm Street now. Have for fifty years. She and our daughter, Eleanor, are talking in the living room.
 
            "What’s he doing now?" I heard Ellie say.
 
            Couldn’t hear Mary Lou’s reply.

            I stirred the stuff in the pan on the stove. Bean soup. Mary Lou seemed to get nervous when I cooked. Something about too much spice or not following the recipe. She’d probably want to eat out again. Instead if showing off for her I loved showing her off.

Copyright C 2007 Bob Liter

Sight-Ann Hite

Friday, November 30th, 2007

Sight

By Ann Hite

 
            Mama always said I had the sight, ever since I was two and saw Daddy, Hark Parker, standing behind our cabin, smiling real big. He died two weeks before I was born, selling corn whiskey for Hobbs Pritchard the meanest white man on Black Mountain. Hobbs shot Daddy in the stomach for stealing. He had dern near bleed to death by the time he made it home and died in Mama’s arms.
 
            I never gave spooks and such much thought until the summer 1944. The war threw mountain into the real world. Mama and me we just did what the Dobbins told us too. Mama had worked for them since she was old enough to help her own mama make beds. I started even earlier because Elizabeth Dobbins—the only child of Pastor Dobbins and his wife—took a liking to me as a baby. Elizabeth turned six the month I was born and she used me for just another of her play toys. Mama was right proud because she could get more work done. That girl was everywhere Mama took me, so I didn’t even notice the change from the doll-baby to personal maid. I just fell into caring for Elizabeth real natural: washing her clothes, making her bed, and later when we was grown and she was off at college, I readied her room real nice when she visited.
 
            Miss Elizabeth came home that summer moaning and groaning about how all her friends were on vacation. She wanted her a vacation too. Mrs. Dobbins reminded her that the war was serious and it just wasn’t the proper time to have fun. Pastor Dobbins preached at Black Mountain Baptist Church. I never heard him preach because we were colored and it just wouldn’t be proper for us to attend their church. But it was okay for me to wash their underclothes. Mama had her own beliefs. They came from way on back when her and her family lived in Louisiana. Oh we read the Bible every night, but Mama was known for her conjuring.
 
            I just had me a time trying to imagine Pastor Dobbins’ sermons. He seemed to be God’s personal friend the way he talked to him under his breath all the time. Somehow I just heard those sermons in my mind as dray as three day old bread with hard crusts. It’s those hard crusts that could break a soul’s tooth. Anyway, there was just something about Miss Elizabeth that made that man bend over backwards. I couldn’t figure it out. If I talked to Mama the way Miss Elizabeth did him, she would have jerked a knot on my head.
 
            So, I wasn’t a bit surprised when he decided to take the family on a vacation to the coast of Georgia. Some friend of his had a beach house. I took all this talk in from my perch in the kitchen where I chopped greens and radishes for a salad.
 
            “I will die of boredom there. Who is the world goes to Darien, Georgia? I’ll be the laughing stock of school.”
 
            “It’s settled, Elizabeth. We’re going to have a nice family vacation.” Mrs. Dobbins sounded so sweet, but she had this edge to her words that took the skin right off the listener’s ear.
            I just sat there snickering and tossing my greens.
 
            “Shelly Parker, you know not to use your bare hands on Mrs. Dobbins’ food. She’d faint over dead.” Mama named her Shelly because she always wanted to leave the mountain and go back to the ocean.
 
            “Don’t it bother you none, Mama?” I had just turned fifteen that month and questioned ever rule forced on me, especially the ones that were stupid.
 
            “What?” Mama’s voice grew tired like an old tractor that won’t turn over because of a bad battery.
 
            “The way Mrs. Dobbins won’t let us touch her food or sue the same linens and plates as her family. I mean you’ve worked for them all your life. I’ve been here all my life. You’d think we could eat off the same plates.”
 
            Mama opened her mouth to fuss, but the voices from the dining room caught our attention. “I have to take Shelly.” Elizabeth whined. Of course she did. Who would clean her clothes and fold down her bed?
 
            “Oh no, dear. We can’t do that. The church would think we were uppity, not only taking a vacation, but taking our help along. It’s important in times like these we look like one of them”
 
            Did that woman think any soul on the mountain thought her family was one of them? It was plain as the sunrise in the east that Pastor Dobbins didn’t depend on the land for a living. He didn’t want for nothing. All his money was family money.”
 
            “We’ll take Shelly to keep you ladies company. I just can’t imagine you two looking after yourselves. Besides, it will do her good to leave this mountain. The house is quite large so she’ll need some extra help. I will be back here on the mountain most of the time.”
 
            “I thought this was a family vacation.” Mrs. Dobbins sounded down right pitiful, and I felt kind of sorry for her. It was plain as the stars in the sky that Pastor Dobbins didn’t hanker after his wife too much.
 
           
            We left for the coast of Georgia on the twenty-first of June. Mama stood on the front porch of the main house, a dishtowel in one hand and three wrinkles carved into her forehead. When I came close, she pulled me close. The smell of Mama’s bosom, even at my age, brought me peace and comfort.
 
            “You behave, girl.” She spoke in a whisper. As I tried to pull away, Mama pinched my arm. “Do it all Shelly. See the ocean for me. And, don’t you forget to bring me back my shells.”
 
            A dread washed over me and my mind turned inside out like some child woke from a deep sleep by night monsters. There I stood, nearly a grown woman, with a big sloppy sob pressing against my ribs, cutting my breathe in half. I climbed of the car.
 
            Mama stood on the porch, stiff, straight, but soft as the color blue. Folks on Black Mountain had a saying: Any soul who left the mountain never truly came home. Their spirit wandered the earth searching for more.
 
 
 
            All them pine trees on the mountain just continued on down the road with us until the sight just put me right to sleep. When I woke, my face was stuck to the car seat. Drool ran from the side of my mouth. I swiped at it looking at Elizabeth, who read a book so thick she had to put her knee under it to hold it up. This exposed her thigh.
 
            “It’s hotter than hell in Georgia.” She kept her stare on the book.
 
            “Please Elizabeth, let’s stay decent.” Mrs. Dobbins looked over her shoulder at Elizabeth’s bare leg.
 
            “God Mother!”
 
            “I’ll not listen to that talk. Is that what college teaches you?”
 
            “Really dear, it is hot and we’re all losing our tempers.” Pastor Dobbins spoke to his wife like some people speak to a worn out animal used way beyond its useful years.
 
            The hot wind rushed in the windows and the scenery rushed past, brittle, brown, and flat.
 
            After Atlanta with its tall buildings, cars, and busy streets, the road turned lonely and long. Me, I thought I would pop if I didn’t pee and wanted to hug Pastor Dobbins when he pulled into a service station. A neat lettered sign read: Whites Only. My bladder ached as I watched Elizabeth and Mrs. Dobbins leave. I spied a group of trees behind the store. I scooted into those woods without a soul noticing. I hiked up my skirt and pulled down my panties, dancing a little to hold back. Flies and mosquitoes buzzed around me, but I relaxed into relief.
 
            “You! You!”
 
            I cut that stream of pee off just like a water faucet and yanked my panties up.
 
            “You! What are you doing there?”
 
            I searched for a face that went with the voice. “I’m sorry. I had to go to the bathroom.”
 
            A colored woman, leaning on a cane, hobbled out from behind a tree. Her clothes seemed old fashioned. “You know what them white folks in that store will do if they catch you out here? They’ll beat you dead.”
 
            “I had to go. I couldn’t take it no more.”
 
            “You get back to them folks you came with and be careful, girl. Things are never what they seem.” The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as the woman moved closer. I thought for a second I could see through her. “Just when you think you’re safe, something comes at you sideways. Remember my warning, child.” She turned and hobbled away.
 
            “What are you doing out here, anyway?”
 
            The old woman just shook her head and kept moving. “The child don’t even know what her own eyes tells her.” When I looked again, the woman was gone, just vanished into thin air.
 
            I was sitting in the car when Mrs. Dobbins and Elizabeth came out of the store with cokes. It was a good thing they didn’t buy me one—even though I wanted one so bad I would’ve given my right arm for a taste—because it would have caused me trouble before we made it to the beach house.
 
            The first thing I saw that was different was the clouds building in the sky, dark and light gray stacking one on top of another. On the mountain, clouds sat on us, foggy blankets. The air turned salty, fishy. The ground went from red clay to sand and long wispy hair-like plants hung from the twisted oak trees. I thought of the woman leaning on her cane, how people looked like trees and flowers sometimes. Mama looked like bluebells sprinkled through a garden. Elizabeth reminded me of a tall bright orange gladiola, bursting into bloom. Mrs. Dobbins wavered like a colorful tulip, beautiful one day, a stem the next. Mr. Dobbins twisted around people like a vine with beautiful green leaves, which hid sharp thorns. And me, I was a silly daffodil, smiling on a windy spring day. I took a deep breath, silly, silly, thoughts.
 
            My home for the summer was a giant house sitting on four posts high off the ground, but close to the beach. I hung back while the others went inside. The beach stretched in both directions. Large twisted trees leaned in toward the house like tired soldiers. The water roared into the sand and pulled out, leaving foam behind.
 
            “Shelly, get those suitcases and bring them in.” Mrs. Dobbins stood behind the screen door. “I just don’t think I can take this heat. You could cut the air with a knife.”
 
            A breeze washed over my sweaty arms. The ocean was the reward for any heat. I grabbed a couple of suitcases and left.
 
 
            The first I laid eyes on Ada Charles a cold chill walked across my head. She stood at the kitchen sink preparing crabs for steaming. Some misguided part of me thought she saw bad in me. The way she looked at me with her stone cold eyes.
 
            “Ada, this is Shelly, who has been with us since she was born.”
 
Ada just stared, a big blue crab in her hand.
 
“She’s here to help you. Is there a room out back for her?”
Pastor Dobbins smiled, but Ada stared him down.
 
            “No sir, there’s no servant quarters here. You’ll see we don’t have much use for such in these parts. She’ll have to stay in the house.” Ada said the words fast running them one into the other, but the challenge riding the current in her look was plain. Pastor Dobbins missed the whole scene by staring across the top of her head.
 
            “Oh that just won’t do. It’s entirely inappropriate.” He looked around the kitchen as if it held a solution, like a box in the corner for a pet. “Shelly, you may have to return home with me.”
 
            Ada lowered the blue crab into the steaming water. “I just love crab, don’t you?” A hissing cry came from the pot. She looked at me and went on speaking to Pastor Dobbins. “The girl can come home with me. I have a spare room. I live on Sapelo Island. I told you. We have to leave on time each afternoon to catch the ferry.” The dark muscular woman turned a cold look on the pastor.
 
            “I don’t know. The ladies might need help in the night.”
 
            Ada shrugged. “Suit yourself.” The words clipped the air like a pair of sharpened shears cutting through thick cloth.
 
            Pastor Dobbins looked at me as if I were a ham hanging in the smokehouse. I cooked the man’s meals, washed his clothes, breathed the same air as him, and he just couldn’t bring himself to allow me to sleep in one of the many vacant rooms.
 
            “I’ll stay with her. No reason for me to go home.”
 
            “Hmph.” Ada looked less angry. “We’ll leave at four-thirty to catch the ferry.”
 
            I nodded. “What can I do to help with supper?” It felt real good to make a decision for myself without waiting for Pastor Dobbins’ reply.
 
 
            We left the food covered in the kitchen and took out at four-thirty. We didn’t have to walk far before we reached the ferry dock. Colored folks stood on the walk, waiting to load onto the boat. A rough looking man with a gray beard checked some ropes on deck. “I don’t know about you folks but I’m ready to go home for the day.”
 
            The crowd pushed into the boat. Ada stopped in front of the captain. “This here is Shelly. She came with the preacher’s family. She’ll be staying with me for the summer. There ain’t no servants quarters at the Buck house.”
 
            I took his outstretched callused hand. “Nice to meet you, sir.”
 
            “Your mama taught you manners. That’s a good sign. Just be careful out at the Buck place. It’s got all sorts of haints. Ask Ada. She’s met them often.”
 
            “John, don’t frightened the girl to start.” Ada laughed, which transformed her face into a carefree woman.
 
            “I mean it. There’s spirits walking all through that house. Some not so good.”
 
            I wanted to ask him what he meant, but he moved to the ship’s cabin. Ada turned to face the ocean. “He knows what I seen in you.”
 
            “What?”
 
            “You got the touch, the sight. I seen it when you walked in the backdoor. You stirred that house something bad.”
 
            “I don’t know what you mean.”
 
            She shook her head. “You just refusing to see. That’s bad because one day you going to have to see them. You got three spirits following you. One you picked up on the way down here. She’s old with a cane. One’s a man, young maybe your father.” She stood looking at the sky. “The last is too hard to tell. It’s a woman. You don’t know her, but she’s waiting for you.” She pointed at the island as the boat bobbed through the waves. “Back in history there was more slaves on that island than owners. It’s ours. No one but us wants it now. And, we’re all leaving one by one. One day all that will be left is the spirits.”
 
            I couldn’t utter a word. The ocean breeze cooled my sticky face.
 
            “I got the sight too, girl. It’s a curse not a gift.” Now I knew ghosts were just some soul’s imagination, but Ada’s conviction almost convinced me.
 
 
Her home was clean and her food was good. Things went along as normal until one day a couple of weeks later. Pastor Dobbins had left, and Mrs. Dobbins took to laying on her bed every afternoon with a cold washrag on her forehead.
 
            “Shelly, Shelly,” She’d whine. “Come up here and give me a fresh rag.”
 
            “I’d like to take a cool rag and stuff it down the woman’s throat!” Ada fried chicken and I sliced peaches for a pie. She looked at me. “You best go get her one.”
 
            As I walked up the staircase, a fancy looking colored woman stood on the top step. She wore a right smart black suit and carried a little box purse. She disappeared when I came closer. Now that shook me up enough to send me back to the kitchen.
 
            “Shelly, Shelly!” Then I heard her footstep stomp across the hall to the bathroom.
 
            Ada watched me. “What’d you see?”
 
            I described the woman.
 
            “That’s the third spirit following you. Just watch her. I don’t know what she’s up to.”
 
            On the ferry ride, I found the nerve to speak. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
 
            Ada just laughed, “But, they believe in you child.”
 
            That night Ada and I ate shrimp over an open fire in her yard. Her friends came with food too.
 
            One of her neighbors brought his fiddle and played lonesome tunes. I ate my food, keeping to myself. A boy not much older than me came to sit on my log. He was the color of night, tall, with a soft face.
 
            “You’re staying with Ada.” He watched Ada laughing and eating shrimp. “She’s one woman. She must like you a lot.”
 
            I shrugged.
 
            “She ain’t never let anyone stay with her. She’s a real loner.”
 
            “I don’t think she likes me much.”
 
            “Ah, she’s just like that. Don’t worry. She likes you.” He looked around. “You’re here with a white family?”
 
            “Yes. I come from Black Mountain, North Carolina. I work for Pastor Dobbins and his family, always have.”
 
            “I ain’t never heard of Black Mountain, but I ain’t never been anywhere but this island and right around it. To be something I have to leave this place. This island is going to die. All I can do is go to the mainland and work for white people or work on a shrimp boat for some white man. My life will be working for whites. I’ll never own a thing except some little chunk of marsh and that will never get me anywhere. I want to be a doctor ever since I was little.”
 
            “That’s good.”
 
            “What do you want?”
 
            Now no one had ever taken the time to ask me this question. I had never asked myself this question. “I like stories. I wouldn’t mind writing stories. But most of all I want to own the main house.”
 
            “Now there you go!” He held out his hand. “My name is Samuel, Samuel Morgan.”
 
            I took his warm hand in mine. “I’m Shelly Parker.”
 
            “Would you like to take a walk on the beach, Shelly?’
            “Why not.”
 
            The moon shown in the sky and the wind made it hard to hear. So we walked together. Samuel placed his hand in mine. We walked until Samuel stopped and picked up a shell from the sand.
 
            “This is for you. The ocean is inside and you can hear it anytime.” He pulled me to him and gave me my first kiss. I wanted to stay there the rest of my life.
 
 
            It was probably that puppy love feeling that dulled my senses and made me forget the ghost in the beach house the next day. Mrs. Dobbins and Elizabeth left for some shopping. Ada went to the seafood market. I cleaned the house.
 
Pastor Dobbins must have woke early that morning, maybe even during the night and decided to make a surprise trip. Maybe he just decided to outrun some evil after him. Anyhow he found me in Mrs. Dobbins’s room, where I was admiring some jewelry, thinking on Samuel. The ghost woman appeared in the mirror. Fear twisted her face into a scary mask. I stood still, waiting for the ghost to disappear. Pastor Dobbins’ face replaced the ghost. He looked ragged, worn, strained around the eyes. He smelled sour like whiskey.
 
            “What are you doing with Mrs. Dobbins’s jewelry?”
 
            “I’m putting it away.”
 
            He moved close behind her. “You’ve no right to handle her things.”
 
            A little voice inside me warned of danger, but it was too late. Pastor Dobbins touched my breasts. I was so shocked I just watched, frozen. He pushed close to me, pinning me against the dressing table. I struggled, but he grabbed and pushed me on the bed, wrapping my dress around my head. He touched me in places that just wasn’t right.
 
            “I’m going to show you like I did you’re mama.” He pushed his hard thing into me splitting my soul into a million pieces. After that, I just saw light flashes in front of my eyes. I screamed and screamed until my voice grew horse, but he pumped up and down until the pain turned numb and I thought my spirit died. Then, I heard stomping on the steps.
 
            “You son of a bitch!” The words split through the air almost inhuman.
 
 
            He stopped pumping. I realized I had thrown up inside my dress. He pulled away and I pushed the dress away from my face. The ghost stood beside Ada, who held the fireplace poker up above her head. She hit Pastor Dobbins in the side of the head before he could move. She continued to hammer him long after he lay still in a growing puddle of blood. And, I was glad. God forgive me, but I was glad.
 
            After what seemed like forever, I moved. “Ada, Ada!” I grabbed her arm.
 
            She turned a face full of rage, distorted, to look at me.
 
            “Enough. We got to do something. Mrs. Dobbins we’ll be back. We ain’t dying for the likes of him.” I saw the devil himself on the floor.
 
            Ada’s eyes cleared, but she still gripped the poker. “The bastard got what was coming to him. He can’t just do what he wants and hide behind God.”
 
            Ada was in a whole other time and place. I could see it in her face. “Ada, we have to get out of here. They kill people for less than this. You killed a preacher and ain’t nobody going to listen to your reasons.
 
            Ada marched from the room still gripping the poker. The blood, Pastor Dobbins’s blood, seeped into the rug with the bright rose pattern. The roses began to run together. I followed Ada onto the front porch. “Ada, your apron is covered with blood.”
 
            In one smooth action, she yanked it from around her, using her free hand and balled it around the end of the poker, wiping. “Fingerprints.” The stains on her dress didn’t look so bad.
 
            I nodded.
 
            “Get my basket from the seafood market.”
 
            Ada dropped the poker and apron down an old abandoned well near an empty house on the way to the seafood market. She tied the apron around the poker, closed her eyes, and dropped it into oblivion. Seconds later we heard a small splash. At the seafood market, we strolled like gentry, making double sure many saw me and her together. Nobody cared that we looked all wrinkled and messy. I hopped Mrs. Dobbins and Elizabeth made it back before us.
 
            An hour or so later, we started home with the crab. It had begun to smell, but neither of us spoke. We just walked our death march. I thought of Samuel and how I would never see him again. I was thinking about Pastor Dobbins and how he smelled of whiskey, how he spoke of Mama. I was thinking on how folks hide behind carefully created masks that work to their own selfish advantage. I thought on how Ada was just true to the core of her soul. But, she didn’t save me from Pastor Dobbins. He already got what he wanted in the most horrible way, but it gave me revenge. He never lived long enough to enjoy what he did to me. She ended his destruction. God understood that. He wouldn’t let her die.
 
            The sheriff’s car sat out front right next to Pastor Dobbins’s car and the ambulance. Mrs. Dobbins’s wails filled the house and spilled into the yard. I broke into a run. It seemed natural as if someone else worked my actions. I ran into the house with Ada right behind.
 
            “Hold on there! What you doing?” The sheriff threw up an arm, blocking the entrance to the living room where Mrs. Dobbins and Elizabeth sat. I seen Miss Elizabeth real clear, not a tear in her eye. She just looked at me as if she knew my soul. We shared more than we knew.
 
            I looked the sheriff dead in the eye. “I’m checking on my missus. Is she hurt?” I cried.
 
            “Me and Shelly’s been buying supper at the market. We got carried away looking around and stayed longer than we planned. What’s happened Mr. Paul?”
 
            The sheriff relaxed. “Hi there Ada. The missus says thanks for the birthday cake. It was mighty tasty. Take this child on out of here. There’s a mess upstairs. There’s something about this house, Ada. It was ten years ago this summer when that fancy colored woman was killed in the same room by that white man, both of them from New York. Now that was a mess too, trying to explain to his family why he was staying with a colored in this house. He never did a bit of time. It seems our good Pastor got his though. His pants was down around his ankles. You just can’t tell about folks nowadays. We ain’t telling his wife that part. We’ll try to find the killer, but they didn’t leave nothing to go on just a bloody mess.”
 
            Ada pushed me out of the house. I turned to look at the bedroom. In the window stood the woman, looking down at me, holding the lace curtain in her long fingers.
 
 
            The last I saw Ada was that afternoon when she got on the ferry. I grabbed her hand. “I love you Ada. I’ll never forget you.”
 
            “Now, you hush that mess. It’s best we forget each other and this day.”
 
            “Tell Samuel to be a doctor.”
 
            She nodded and her eyes latched onto mine. “Shelly, you are a good one. You raise that child you’re carrying. He can’t help how he came into this world.”
 
            I just prayed she was wrong.
 
            When I laid eyes on Black Mountain, I thanked God. Mama was standing on the porch of the main house as if she never moved the whole month. I was home. I handed her the seashell Samuel gave me and showed her how to hear the ocean. I was scared to look into the house. I was scared I’d see him all bloody, but he never showed himself and eventually I relaxed.
 
In late spring of the next year, Ada appeared to me. I was working Mama’s vegetable garden. I knew Ada was a spirit by the way she smiled, all the hardness gone. She reached out and touched my large stomach. “You take care of that boy, now. I’ll always be with you.”
 

            I tried to put some store in her words as I turned that hard cold ground.

Copyright C. 2007 Ann Hite

 

Dreamin’-Robert Hyers

Friday, November 30th, 2007
Dreamin’
by Robert Hyers
 
Rob sat in the living room and drank while I spun drum n bass our bedroom. We fell in love about seven years ago, and moved into a cramped one bedroom together in Asbury Park, along the Jersey shore. Before Rob I had fallen in love with the drum n bass scene: the records, the ravers, the drugs. As the years went by and Rob and I became more serious, I slowly lost contact with the ravers and the drugs. But never with the records. I cued the record with the skull and crossbones label. I applied slight pressure to the record with my small middle and ring fingers, making sure the platter still spun beneath. I played the record in my headphones, sliding the pitch up, then down, until the tempo matched the other record already playing. I repeated the process, fine-tuning the tempo until it matched exactly. By now I had done this more times than I can count; the motions were an intimate part of me. I have no idea who this artist is, or what the song is called, but I love it because its bass line is intoxicating. And because Rob hates it.
 
I released the record for the last time. The skull and crossbones spun at 45 RPMs and I slid the cross fader to the center position. I imagined Rob in the kitchen, with the all his supplies lined carefully on the crumbling Formica table, mixing together the liquors: the Midori, the Absolut Citron, the Malibu Rum, the peach schnapps. I slowly turned up the volume on the new record, introducing its hi-hat cymbal and snare drum. Then the bass drum started on the first beat and returned right before the fourth. The synthesizers that played in a sequence of whole notes grew stronger. Then Rob would add the splashes of pineapple juice, sweet and sour, and finally, 7 Up. The mysterious voice, female and ethereal, began with a loop from the first line of the verse.
 
Leave this world…
 
…Leave this world behind…
 
I imagined the ice cubes clinking against the metal as he shook the ingredients in his silver tumbler. Then he would strain. The beat stopped. Only the synthesizers played now, an electronic imitation of a violin quartet. The voice returned to finish the verse. It surrounded me, caressed me, completed the trance begun by the first syncopated drum beat.
 
We’ll leave this world behind…
 
…We’ll go dreamin’…
 
…We’ll leave this world behind…
 
…We’ll go dreamin’…
 
Finally he would take the tumbler and the shot glass into the living room, where he’d sit on the black leather couch and take shots at his leisure. After the tumbler was emptied he would rise, return to the kitchen, and begin the process again. I don’t know why he just didn’t keep all of the ingredients out on the coffee table. Maybe it was the ritual he liked.
 
The beat returned with a simple, three note bass line. It was so beautiful, so hypnotic, that sometimes I’d get lost in it and forget to cue the next record. I imagined that signature look of disgust I hoped Rob had right now. His eyes would widen, then the right side of his top lip would curl slightly upwards, and the far end of his right nostril would crinkle. That’s when you knew he was pissed off. As much as I enjoyed imagining his discomfort, about halfway through the song I remembered I had other things to do. I carefully lifted the needle off the record and locked the tone arm back into its resting position. I shut off all the lights and dials, took the record off the slip mat,and slid it back into its sleeve. Shemesh would be here any minute, and I figured I should tidy up before she arrived. Not that I was going to clean every last corner for Shemesh. She had been my best friend since high school, so there was no reason to impress her. But I felt cleaning up the rotting Chinese take out on the dining room table and picking up Rob’s dirty boxers from the hallway was appropriate. I came out of the bedroom at the end of the hallway, threw in the dirty underwear, and proceeded to the dining room. I passed Rob in the living room. His normally alabaster skull and gaunt cheeks turned red as his stomach and organs tried to process the unending flow of alcohol. He wasn’t wearing his signature look of disgust. Damn. When he sat and I stood, we were at eye level. Although we made eye contact, neither of us acknowledged the other. Just when I had finished scraping the last piece of dried out lo mien into the garbage pail, the doorbell rang. Walking down the flight of beige carpeted steps that led to our doorway, I heard the leather couch unsettle with small, screech-like sounds when Rob rose and returned to the kitchen. That ugly leather couch. I loved it when I first bought it; it was my first really big purchase. But that was almost six years ago, and my tastes had changed. That ugly leather couch, along with some clothing, and the turntables and records, were the only things in
this apartment that were mine. Everything else came with Rob.
 
I opened the front door to find Shemesh standing there with her new hookah. I helped her skinny frame up the stairs with this souvenir she’d purchased while in Israel. Shemesh’s tiny hands had trouble holding the hookah as we slowly made our way up the steps. Once in the living room, she decided the best place for it right now would be the coffee table. With my back turned to the kitchen entrance, I heard the tumbler. Then I felt him coming up behind me.
 
"How’s it goin’ Rob?" Shemesh said. She forced a smile and showed her beautiful white teeth surrounded by a thin strip of pink lip.
 
"All right," he said, slowly nodding his head. His speech was slurred. "So I hear you wanna fuck my girlfriend?"
 
"What?" Shemesh’s smile disappeared.
 
I turned around. "What the hell are you talking about?"
 
"I know she wants to fuck you." He curled his lip slightly and widened the hazel eyes, now fixed on Shemesh.
 
"Are you saying this because I might be a lesbian?" Shemesh said.
 
"You’re not a lesbian," I said with a waving hand. I turned my attention back to Rob. "Is this because of Cynthia?"
 
"You told him about Cynthia?"
 
"Yes, of course."
 
"But that was like last year. It was so long ago—"
 
"Who cares how long ago it was," Rob said. "She cheated!"
 
"Look," I said, "we’ve already had this conversation. I thought everything was all right now."
 
"I’ve decided I can no longer trust you."
 
An uncontrollable anger appeared in the pit of my stomach and quickly took over my body. This wasn’t Rob talking; this was the alcohol. One sentence escaped my gritted teeth: "I hate you when you’re like this."
 
We usually included Rob in the smoking, but not tonight. I informed Shemesh that we would be moving the party into the bedroom, so we lifted the heavy and cumbersome contraption, weighed down with ornately carved brass, and carried it into the bedroom. I kicked the dirty laundry on the bedroom floor into one pile, and we put the hookah down on the stained carpet.
 
"What the fuck is wrong with him?" Shemesh’s little black eyes peered out from behind her small, wire-rimmed glasses.
 
"I don’t know. I mean, he used to not be like this. Or was less like this."
 
"There has to be a reason, right? Something must be wrong."
 
"He told me one time it has something to do with genetics, something about alcoholism running in his family."
 
"Is he really just angry over Cynthia? Did you tell him about what I did with Meira?"
 
"Yes." I rolled my eyes. "I told him about that this afternoon."
 
"Maybe that’s what it is—"
 
"That’s not what it is, Shemesh!" The anger that had knotted itself in my stomach during my exchange with Rob now ached, and this outburst momentarily soothed that ache.
 
Shemesh stared at me with her angular face drawn downwards. It was very easy to wound her. We’d been friends since grammar school; I should’ve known better. "I’m sorry, Shemesh. Look—can we just smoke?"
 
"Sounds good."
 
Shemesh held the square block of coal with tongs while she heated it, then placed it inside the bowl. The hookah had golden, arabesque carvings that rose into a pointed top. Shemesh inhaled first, then handed me the multi-colored hose. I took it and inhaled, making sure to avoid the pink feathers that surrounded the gold metal mouthpiece. The strawberry tobacco cut into the pot tasted good. When I brought it up, Shemesh informed me that that was how they smoked it in Israel. Shemesh took the hose back, inhaled, let out the smoke, and asked me in a slow, deep voice, "Who…are…you?" We laughed. Everything became heavier and slower. Shemesh returned to the possibility of her lesbianism. While in Israel she had experimented with this one girl, and now she was a lesbian. I did more with Cynthia than she did with Meira, and I didn’t even consider myself a lesbian. But I acquiesced. Even went with her to the Asbury Park Pride Festival a few weekends ago.
 
We walked in the brutal heat of late June down Ocean Ave, following a small parade of mostly older gay men waving rainbow flags and dancing on a flatbed trailer that had been converted to a stage. We passed the murals from Asbury’s glory days, the colorful roller coaster against a marine blue background winding through the phrases "Tunnel of Love" and "Funhouse," with each letter a different color. All the colors, the oranges, yellows, reds, blues, all once vibrant and alive, were now faded and chipped thanks to decades of abuse from the salt air. We passed buildings ravaged by the 1970 riots, used up and tired, reduced down to their structures and left to rot, now barely skeletons of their former selves.
 
All the while Shemesh played the role of the newly self-discovered lesbian, talking to the old dykes in their leather jackets and their short gray haircuts. She pilfered everything that was free and a rainbow: stickers, magnets, posters, you name it. I hated this part of Shemesh, the part that didn’t know who she was, the part that was trying to capture everyone else’s identities, trying to fill herself up with a decoupage of stolen beliefs and ideas and dreams, and always falling short in the pursuit. She was almost thirty now. She was getting too old for this shit.
 
I inhaled a few more times. The smoke infused my central nervous system and Shemesh’s voice became echoes. I could no longer tell the difference between what she was saying and what she had said. I motioned with a raised index finger for her to pause, slowly rose from the floor, and journeyed over to the turntables. I turned the lights and dials back on, slid the record from its sleeve, rested it on the slip mat, and lifted the needle from out of the resting position. I put the needle on the small strip of shiny black plastic at the outermost rim of the record, and sat back down. With a slow nod I motioned for Shemesh to continue, and waited for the first groove to catch the needle. When the beat started, it brought me back to the day I had bought the record.
 
We had gone into Philly on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, one of those afternoons where the sun and the mild springtime air invite you to venture out into unexplored territory, find places you never knew existed. Cynthia had grown up right outside Philly, and took me to one of her favorite places, South Street.
 
…Leave this world behind…
 
We walked past Victorian looking buildings swiped with stripes of reds and yellows and blues. We perused a few stores that smelled of sandalwood and sold large, wooden, overpriced Buddhas, and others with dozens of pairs of jeans imported from Italy hanging throughout. The selection of colors and flavors at the condom store overwhelmed me.
 
…We’ll leave this world behind…
 
The record store was about a half-block off South Street, down Bainbridge. It was a tiny store, with a dirty cement floor and a small island display of records. Next to this were four turntables for previewing the records before committing to a non-refundable purchase.
 
…We’ll leave this world behind…
 
I pored through the records in the drum n bass section and pulled out about five or six. We moved over to the turntables. Cynthia insisted that she listen to my picks as well. So after I listened to one I would hand her the headphones and cue the record. She’d slip the headphones over what she called her "roaring twenties bob" haircut and close her brown eyes. When she nodded, I’d let the record go. I would watch her pale eyelids until they revealed her eyes again, and she would give me her decision. We did this several times. By the fourth or fifth record the movements became routine.
 
…We’ll go dreamin’…
 
I played the one with the skull and crossbones. I really didn’t like it then, but Cynthia did. I told her I didn’t like it, but she insisted that I have it. So she bought it for me.
 
…Leave this world behind…
 
When we got back to Asbury Park the comfortable day had turned into a chilly night. We decided I should see her apartment and she pulled into the dark parking lot of a large brown and white apartment building. The hallways were narrow with slim stairs. As we climbed the three floors, I asked her how she could’ve gotten any furniture in the place.
 
"I had to give away half of it," she said, periodically looking back at me as we moved upwards. "Anything I needed I bought at IKEA and assembled in the apartment."
 
I nodded.
 
We entered and she gave me the grand tour. We made ourselves comfortable in her tiny living room and smoked pot. Then I spent the night.
 
…We’ll go dreamin–
 
The dreaming abruptly stopped. Rob towered over us at the doorway, with his bright red skull and crinkled nostril.
 
"You know, as your boyfriend I don’t have to take this shit."
 
"What shit?"
 
"You two, so buddy-buddy over there." He waved his unsteady hand at us.
 
"What?–Do you think we’re gonna dyke out while you’re in the kitchen making one of your fucking lunch boxes?"
 
"Don’t try to make me look like the idiot. I know exactly what’s going on."
 
"Nothing! Nothing is going on! You’re so fucking drunk, you’re paranoid!"
 
"Paranoid?" He turned and pointed to Shemesh. "Who can’t be paranoid with this horny little bitch around?"
 
"Little bitch?" Shemesh yelled. She lunged towards him, stopping herself midway.
 
"Don’t come near me. I’ll kick your fake fucking teeth into your fake fucking face—"
 
"–Rob!" I yelled.
 
"–and take your fake little body and throw it against the real fucking wall!"
 
"Rob! Shut up! Shut the fuck up!"
 
"No, you shut the fuck up!"
 
There were no more echoes. No more heaviness. Time became precise again.
 
Rob turned back to Shemesh. "If you don’t want the shit beat out of you, I think you’d better leave."
 
"Rob, you’re scaring me," I said.
 
"Maybe I’d better go."
 
"No," I said, with my index finger pointing at her and my eyes fixed on Rob. "I’m going with you."
 
"What? You can’t leave!" Rob screamed.
 
We’ll leave this world behind…
 
"I can do whatever the fuck I want!"
 
We’ll go dreamin…
 
"Well then, so can I!"
 
We’ll leave this world behind…
 
We’ll go drea—
 
I heard a piercing, hellish noise, like an entire schoolyard of children crying, as Rob pulled the record from under the needle. The needle snapped off and the record flew across the bedroom. The record broke into three pieces against the far wall. The intense anger that the pot had dissipated returned and radiated from the pit of my stomach.
 
"Come on, Shemesh, let’s go!"
 
I charged out of the bedroom, through the hallway, and down the stairs. Shemesh kept close behind me. By now I didn’t need to look behind me. I knew Rob was trying to catch me, and stumbling from the poison lunchboxes. When I heard the front door close behind me, I imagined Rob motionless on the living room floor. He’d be crying, with his long fingers and pale hands covering his red face, mumbling something about all this running in his family, his thin lips brushing against his moist palms with every syllable. He’d remove those hands and have a certain boyhood look on his face, the look a child has when he knows he’s made a mess of something but doesn’t want to be reprimanded for it. He just wants someone more responsible to clean up the mess. But I was used up now, tired. I was tired of cleaning up messes.
 
Our fights had never ended like this before. Usually he’d be crying, and I would lock myself in our bedroom. If I didn’t spin records, I would lie on the bed and relive the memory of that first time in
Cynthia’s apartment. I’d remember the tour she gave. I followed her through the front door into the living room. On our right was the couch, which she informed me was actually a futon. The cushion had a beige cover over it, set against a black metal frame. The opposite wall opened up at both ends, and had a television and CD player at its center. On the left side was the entrance to a small kitchen. On the right side was a hall. The bathroom was down the hall on the right. At the end of the hall was the entrance to the bedroom. There was just a queen bed in there, and one set of shelves.
 
I’d run through that layout over and over again. If Cynthia didn’t want me in the bedroom with her, I could easily sleep on that futon. If the TV and CD player were moved over a little, the turntables could fit. The records could go in milk crates and be stored next to the turntables. During our conversation that night, Cynthia had complained about not always being able to pay the bills. I’m sure my contribution would help.
 
When I entered the apartment complex’s parking lot, the mild summer night reminded me of that day on South Street. I opened the door and hoisted myself into Shemesh’s parents’ dark blue minivan. I settled into the passenger seat and Shemesh did the same in the driver’s seat.The black stereo, surrounded by a beige fabric, was situated right below the center of the dashboard. I knew I had made a mix CD for Shemesh with Cynthia’s song on it. I was hoping I would hear it when Shemesh started the minivan. It would be a sign to start something new, to move in a new direction. I would call Cynthia and see if she’d let me stay, see if this insane living arrangement I had been refining in my head for months now was something Cynthia wanted too. Shemesh settled into the driver’s seat. She inserted the key into the ignition and turned it forward. The engine turned over. Then all of the dials on the dashboard lit up in an alien green and the music started. "Joy To The World" by Three Dog Night. Not what I expected. Her mom must’ve been using the car earlier. But that didn’t matter. As soon as we got to Shemesh’s and I was settled, I would call Cynthia. We would smoke. I would feel out the situation. Then I would ask her. I’m sure she’d say yes.
 

Then I thought about getting my stuff out of the old apartment. It wouldn’t take long. Just some clothing, the turntables, the records. And that couch. That ugly leather couch. If we used this minivan, the couch might fit, but it would never make it up Cynthia’s stairs. That didn’t matter. I didn’t want it anymore.

Copyright C. 2007 Robert Hyers

Down The Road From Arkham: An Interview With Doug Jones

Friday, November 30th, 2007

 

Down The Road From Arkham: An Interview With Doug Jones

By Gabriel Ricard

1.) I guess we should start at the beginning and ask how you got started as a writer.

When I was five years old my grandmother gave me a typewriter. And I thought of it as a toy. It had glass windows on the side so you could see how the keys worked. And you could put paper in it, and put words on the paper, and move them around and make them rhyme and play with them. I still have the first two poems I wrote on a piece of orange construction paper. One was about a bunny and one was about a frog–thematically speaking, things that hop. And I fell in love with that kind of wordplay. And I was lucky, in that I had teachers who encouraged and challenged me. I published a few short stories and poems while I was in graduate school, and my Master’s thesis in Studies in Scottish Literature. I wrote some radio commercials and a couple of training films. My first play was actually a favor for a friend. He was the assistant artistic director at Theatre IV in Richmond. He had a badly written script, knew I’d done some writing, and asked if I could repair it for him. I was touring as an actor for the same theatre. He had two weeks before rehearsals were supposed to start. So I’d tour during the day, then write one scene each night. At the end of two weeks I had a play. So I sort of fell into playwriting. Now I’ve written and seen produced over forty of them, and some short films as well.

 

2.) You were another one of my instructors from the New Voices program in 2003 (Ed Note: New Voices is a theater program based out of Richmond, Virginia. Run by Theater IV, the program chose the seven top playwrights and seven top actors/actresses from Virginia high schools to participate in a theater festival) And I remember one of the distinctive elements of having you for a teacher was the way you combined elements of psychology with the writing exercises you gave us. I was wondering if you could tell me about that.

People fascinate me. If I hadn’t majored in English language and literature, I would have majored in psychology. Either way, you’re studying people. I chose fictional people because I realized that if I went into psychology, at the end of the day I probably wouldn’t be able to leave my clients and their issues at the office. They would haunt me, and follow me home. So I have both interests, and they leak into my teaching. I just finished teaching a class at the VA Museum of Fine Arts called "Writing the Shadow," which takes its title from Jung’s insight that we all have a shadow–a part of our psyche that is unknown and/or repugnant to us. Every light casts a shadow–and the brighter the light, the darker the shadow. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross said that if we want to get in touch with the Mother Teresa in ourselves, we must first acknowledge the Hitler who is also there. We have to learn to live with both, and see what they can learn from each other. It’s really a good thing we can’t read each other’s minds. Because that information would paralyze us. It would make relationships impossible. We all have thoughts and feelings that must remain secret, if we are to get along with other people in this life. When the Shadow class ended, my students said: "We want to keep meeting. And we want you to charge us more than the museum did. Because you’re under-valued." I swear I’m not making this up. And I am charging them more, but only a little bit.
 

3.) Through your career you’ve been lucky enough to move pretty seamlessly between historical and educational material, to literary adaptations, to original works. Do you have a preference?

Hindsight being 20/20, writing plays for young audiences was a good place for me to start writing plays because young audiences are honest, and honesty can be brutal. So when I went to see my plays for young audiences, I didn’t watch the plays. I watched the audiences, to see when they began to fidget or lose interest. I know when I was a child, I could tell when a story was talking down to me or patronizing me. So I made it a point always to drop down to one knee and say– "This story is for you." Also from the beginning I wrote on several levels, to keep myself (and the teachers and actors) engaged as well. I enjoy literary adaptation because part of the work is already done, and the challenge is to figure out how to make it theatrical. That being said, however, that challenge can be enormous. Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, for example, is about 85% subjective–the thoughts or imaginings of its protagonist. Translating that into action and dialogue was labor-intensive. Deciding which of James’ lines to keep, which to revise and what to simply invent was equally difficult. I spent nine months reading every ghost story I could find, reading and re-reading the novella, listening to Ravel and the Benjamin Britten opera and a recording of Susannah York reading the novella, and taking notes.   Then I wrote the play in three months, and most of it in the last month. There’s a lot of personal material in the play too, which no one reading the book or watching the play would ever guess. I invest as much in an adaptation as I do in original work. For me, original work comes from everywhere and often takes me by surprise. I pay a lot of attention to my dreams. I read about people who are remarkable or un-remarked or unusual or forgotten, and I think, "There’s a story there." I empathize (my wife calls me an empath, like Counselor Troi: "I sense fear, desperation"). I collect newspaper clippings. I buy odd books.   I watch certain films over and over–sometimes not sure what I am learning from them, but instinctively aware that I am learning something. I watch people. I eavesdrop. I borrow from the experience of friends and family and students. I steal shamelessly.
 

4.) Tell us about Songs from Bedlam, which I understand took you seven years to complete.

In summer 1997 I was playwright-in-residence for the New Voices for the Theatre program. Donna Coghill, Director of Education and Outreach, asked me if I had anything I’d like to give a staged reading. I said I’d come up with something. Then I wrote two monologues, and a one-act for two players. Soon after the reading I wrote a third monologue about Christopher Smart, a poet I’d first studied as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago. I realized the three monologues could be part of a full-length play. After that, I worked on the play–off and on–for seven years. Songs from Bedlam takes its name from Bethlehem Hospital, which in 1547 became London’s main hospital for the mentally ill. The name was soon shortened to Bedlam, which also described the antics of its inmates. For a modest sum, Elizabethans could watch the antics of the "Lunatickes" at Bedlam. Like the exotic animals at the Tower of London, the mentally ill were on display. The hospital became overcrowded so quickly that its patients were routinely turned back out onto the streets half-cured, where they became homeless beggars. A lot like today. I used this historical framework to put together a collection of songs and monologues about persons who are, in one way or another, disadvantaged: homeless, alcoholic, schizophrenic, etc. Bedlam is in many ways the most personal work I’ve ever done. When an interviewer asked me where the characters came from, I said "They’re all me. I am a homeless man, and a call girl, and an alcoholic."  I was only partly kidding. A local actor came to me after the show. He was in tears, and told me that his brother has been schizophrenic for all of his adult life–and no one ever wants to hear about it. The play had given him permission to talk about it, even to grieve about it with me. Backstage said the script "translates into pure electric poetry." The Richmond Times-Dispatch praised its "richly metaphorical language" and "soaring, searing poetry." And D.C. Studio Theatre described it as a "rare and magnificent balance between brutal reality and sublime fantasy." But even with those kinds of reviews, so far no one has picked it up for publication.
 

5.) I know you do a lot of work teaching and lecturing at universities and colleges around the country. What do you specifically teach? What do you want someone to leave your class with?

I’ve taught literature, playwriting and creative writing at the University of Virginia, the UVA Center for Continuing Education, Henrico Center For The Arts, The Virginia Opera, The Collegiate School, St. Catherine’s School, Generic Theatre, New Voices for the Theatre, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, SPARC, and The Visual Arts Center. For the last few years I’ve taught adult classes at VMFA and The Visual Arts Center.  I also facilitate writing groups, mostly students who’ve stayed with me over the years. What do I want someone to leave my class with? That’s an excellent question. A best-selling author who shall remain nameless recently told a friend of mine that she isn’t a writer unless she’s published a book. I have zero tolerance for that bullshit. I want anyone who takes a class with me to know that if you write, you are a writer. If not that, what would the definition be? Are you a writer when you get published? Are you a writer when you get paid for it? Are you a writer when you get paid a certain amount for it? Are
you a writer when you win a prize for it? Van Gogh died penniless and insane. Does that mean he wasn’t an artist? Bullshit. If you write, you are a writer. If you write well, you are a good writer. If you make a lot of money writing, you can buy a big house.
 

6.) Tell us about Bojangles, your first full-length musical, which premiered in 1993. I understand you got to work with Academy Award-winning lyricist Sammy Cahn on that.

And with composer Charles Strouse (Annie, Bye Bye Birdie). Strouse and Cahn had written the songs for the musical about twenty years before, and had given it to four or five playwrights to write a book that would hold the songs together. For whatever reasons, the combination of the book and songs had never worked. A mutual acquaintance of Strouse’s and mine knew my plays for young audiences, and asked Strouse if he’d let me write a treatment for the first act. He agreed, and mailed me a tape of the songs. I did a fair amount of research on Bill Robinson, music and dance and the vaudeville circuits. I don’t remember how long it took–but I wrote a ten or twelve page treatment for Act 1 with some sample dialogue and the structure of the Act. I sent that to my friend, who sent it on to Strouse. I’ll never forget his response. He called my friend and said, "I think we’ve got our playwright. And I’m so pleased you were able to find a black writer." My parents were white–so I consider that quite a compliment. I spent two and a half years researching and writing Bojangles. The show sold at 97% capacity during its premier eleven-week run. Ben Vereen came to see it–this was a couple of years after his accident, and he was well enough to dance again–so there was a lot of buzz about touring the show, with an eye toward getting it to Broadway. Unfortunately, Sammy Cahn died while the show was in rehearsals (I had to write the last lyrics myself)–and after the run ended, his lyrics got tied up in his estate. Strouse didn’t want to do the show without Cahn’s lyrics, and cannibalized his melodies for other projects. My wife still thinks Bojangles has a future. I appreciate her optimism.
 

7.) Do you feel like it took a long time of work and struggle to get to where you are now as a writer? Do you feel it was worth it?

Finally, a short answer. Yes, it took a long time. Yes, it was worth it.
 

8.) Do you ever feel compelled to move away from script writing and try something else in the creative field? A novel, for example.

I write short stories, and an occasional poem. I’d like to write the libretto for a chamber opera. And I wouldn’t rule out a novel. I started one in college–actually I thought it was a short story, and when a professor told me it was the first chapter of a novel I panicked and put it away.
 

9.) Though some may not know it, Richmond, Virginia has maintained a very healthy theater scene for many, many years. As someone who has certainly been a large part of that, would you willing to tell those who may not know Richmond a little bit about it?

I’ve had the pleasure of working with extremely talented people in Richmond (I’m not going to name them, because then I’ll forget one). And I’ve seen scores of theatres and theater troupes open and close since I moved here. The fact that so many open here speaks to the community’s energy. The fact that they close speaks to a lack of sustainability. This isn’t just a local problem; it’s national. So I guess I’d answer your question by saying that Richmond’s theatre scene is healthy because the people who maintain it work awfully, awfully hard.
 

10.) Who are some of your influences?

Walker Percy, Romulus Linney, Lanford Wilson, Tony Kushner, Harold Pinter,
Marsha Norman, Sam Shepard, Horton Foote, Peter Straub. And everything else I’ve ever seen or read. If I see a bad play, I’m inspired–"I can do better than that!" If I see a good play, I’m inspired–"That’s why I love doing this!"
 

11.) What do you currently have lined up?

I’m working on a one-act play about Alexander Graham Bell. An actor will play Bell, and an actress will play all of the important people in his life: his father, his mother, his wife, his assistant Watson, Helen Keller, etc. Necessity is the mother of invention: I can only have two actors. I have a horror story in mind for a chamber opera, a literary adaptation. And my friend and gifted composer Ron Barnett and I are considering writing new songs for Bojangles.   He’s Musical Director for the Fulton Opera House in Lancaster, PA, which did a first-rate production of my The Turn of the Screw two years ago.   So we’ll see.
 
Copyright C 2007 Gabriel Ricard
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Adventures in Netflix #2-Gabriel Ricard

Wednesday, November 7th, 2007
Adventures in Netflix #2
By Gabriel Ricard
 
Well, we’re back. Which means that either this is actually going to work, or the sheer power of my low-budget ego has compelled me to continue this column with the hope that someone besides my mother will enjoy it.
 
For the sake of my ego, we’re going with the first choice.
 
Nothing to complain about this month, so let’s just run down the line, throw our hands up in the air, and hope like hell that we catch something that’s worth watching.
 

Fay Grim (2007)

Directed by: Hal Hartley
Starring: Parker Posey, Jeff Goldblum, James Urbaniak
 
As someone who counts writer/director Hal Hartley’s brilliant Henry Fool as one of his top-five favorite films of all time, the announcement of its sequel, Fay Grim, took on something of an Episode I vibe for me. I’m not going to lie. I had extremely high expectations for this movie. Not only because it’s a sequel to a favorite, but because it’s another work from the mind of one of film’s most underrated and under appreciated names. The fact that this movie almost completely failed to meet the unreasonable hopes I had for it is just the start of the problem. The story’s pretty far removed from the events of 1998’s Henry Fool, but that’s not inherently a bad thing. I have no problem with revisiting Parker Posey as Fay Grim, watching as she heads off to Paris to retrieve her supposedly dead (Henry Fool) husband’s notebooks, which may or may not contain information that could threaten the security of the Unites States. I knew the basic plot going in, and I was more or less fine with it. Even the performances are in pretty good shape, especially Parker Posey in the title role, Liam Aiken as Henry and Fay’s son, James Urbaniak returning to the wonderful character of Simon Grim, Jeff Goldblum as a CIA agent with ties to Henry, and, of course, the vastly talented Thomas Jay Ryan as Henry himself. Everyone seems to be having a good time, and everyone turns in some good work. The problem, in the end, comes down to the execution of the plot and the motivation of the characters. As you might expect, there’s a lot going on in this movie. A strange, almost desperate combination of spy movie clichés, Hartley’s trademark approach to filmmaking, and the world of Henry Fool as we left it in 1998. It occasionally comes together and gives us a good scene. But for the most part, it doesn’t work and only creates a feeling of frustration in the face of pointless twists and further delving into characters like Henry that we didn’t want or need to begin with. Hartley better have a third film in mind, if he expects us to believe everything he throws at us from start to finish. Almost everything Hartley tries in the movie comes off as either tacked on, pointless, confusing, or all of the above. Hartley’s greatest talent as a writer and director is his ability to roll with the offbeat or to breath fresh life into a stale idea. There’s no question in my mind that he’s trying that here. You could make a good argument that he’s taking on too much at once, but he tries to juggle everything all the same. He occasionally succeeds, but it’s not enough to keep the movie afloat. The movie ends on a note that solves very little, and we’re left with a movie that will stand as one of three things, depending on what you were after. If you’re a Hartley fan, it’s a mixed bag that can go either way, if you’re just a filmgoer, it’s probably going to be the same, and if you’re a Hartley fan who loved Henry Fool, you’re in for a pretty big disappointment.
 

Scarecrow (1973)

Directed by: Jerry Schatzberg
Starring: Al Pacino, Gene Hackman, Dorothy Tristan
 
This movie more or less failed in 1973, and I can kind of see why. Plot-wise, there’s not a whole lot about it that really stands out. You’ve got Gene Hackman as a tough ex-con and Al Pacino as a likable loser, and you’ve got them meeting up at random and deciding to hitchhike across the country together to start a car wash business. It’s an early-70’s character study. Even now, that doesn’t sound very thrilling. But it’s worth your time. Believe me when I tell you that. On the strength of Al Pacino and Gene Hackman alone, this is one of the great, underrated gems of the 70’s that proves without question the power and range these two possess as actors. Like The French Connection in 1971 and The Godfather in 1972, Scarecrow is a lookat two guys who were at the top of their game in the early 70’s. Their individual performances are perfect from start to finish, and their chemistry together is hard to ignore. Any problems with an uninspired plot will quickly vanish, and by the end, I’m willing to believe that you’ll be wondering why these two didn’t work together more often. Couple it with a great script and some strong, well-paced direction from Schatzberg, and you’ve got a pretty damn shot at a great couple of hours on your hands. If you’ve never seen this, dig up a copy as soon as you possibly can.
 

10 Items or Less (2007)

Directed by: Brad Silberling
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Paz Vega, Jonah Hill
 
You may not know the name Brad Silberling, but there’s a good chance that you know his work (Casper, A Series of Unfortunate Events, City of Angels). And if you’ve enjoyed any of those films, there’s a decent enough chance that you’ll like this one as well. What makes the movie fascinating though is how it maintains interest through its entire eighty minute run, in spite of its lack of any real point. Morgan Freeman plays a Hollywood actor slumming it in an independent movie, whose research on his character brings him to a small grocery store. There, he meets a check-out girl (Vega) and spends the rest of his day following her around, giving her advice, and engaging in the sort of bonding you’d expect out of something like this. And of course, by the end of it, he learns a little bit about himself. That’s pretty much the story from start to finish. There’s no real surprises, no conflict to speak of, and the movie never once breaks out of the leisurely pace it establishes from the first scene. So, why bother? There’s nothing about this movie that stands out, and if you miss it, you’re really not losing anything serious. But if you do watch it, you’re likely to walk away feeling as though you just had a really nice conversation with a complete stranger. Nothing exciting, nothing breakthrough. Just nice. It’s as simple as that. Freeman’s enthusiasm almost sells this movie on its own. It doesn’t take a lot of insight to see that he’s having a really good time essentially playing himself, bouncing some great dialogue and chemistry off of the beautiful, talented Paz Vega, who will hopefully continue to grace our presence in future films. It’s these two that make up essentially the only thing about this movie that even sort of stands out. The key thing here seems to be just having a good time, and to that end, the movie works as well as it could ever hope. I suppose the most impressive thing about this movie is how it pulls off the challenge of being light and easy to digest while somehow managing to not treat you like an idiot.
 

The Long Goodbye (1973)

Directed by: Robert Altman
Starring: Elliot Gould, Nina Van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden
 
It must have been an interesting sell in 1973. Take Raymond Chandler’s legendary gumshoe Phillip Marlowe and throw him into the 70’s. As hard as I try, I really can’t think of anyone who could’ve pulled off this nearly impossible concept as well as Altman did. The legendary filmmaker made a career out of going against expectations and turning offbeat ideas into brilliant films, and this one is no different. Gould is Oscar-worthy in his take on a character that’s also had the honor of being played by Humphrey Bogart. That’s not an easy guy to live up to, but Gould pulls off what is easily my favorite performance of his long, consistently impressive career. He gives Marlowe more of a lovable loser vibe than Bogart’s tough guy persona. In The Long Goodbye, Gould’s Marlowe is well in over his head, with almost no choice but to simply wander through the surreal landscape of his life and adventures and simply come out alive on the other side. It’s the kind of performance that makes a career, and through the entire film, Gould is never anything less than mesmerizing. The rest of the cast is fine, with a good Hemmingway esque performance from Sterling Hayden, and some good troublesome female work from Nina Van Pandt. They’re fine, but in the end, this is Marlowe’s story and Gould’s movie. And it’s made even better by Altman’s understanding of the material and the subject. Sure, there’s a plot, but Altman is clearly putting it on the back burner, giving us just enough to have something basic to go on. The story itself is not meant to be our concern beyond the face that there’s enough story to move things from point A. to point B. Altman wants our attention on Marlowe most of all, a living anachronism who has no business in any time but his own. He wants us to see the difference a couple of decades can make in style, personality, and attitude. And possibly more than that, he wants to break down Marlowe to just another confused soul trying to make sense of the relentless, confusing madness that makes up the repetitive tune of everyday life. And in all those regards, Altman and Gould succeed brilliantly. Essential viewing for fans of either man’s work.
 

The Drew Carey Show: The Complete First Season (1995)

Directed by: Various
Starring: Drew Carey, Christa Miller, Ryan Stiles
 
One of the minor mysteries of the last few years of my life has been trying to figure out why The Drew Carey Show, at its best one of the funniest sitcoms of the 90’s, was consistently failing to make its way over to DVD. Especially when shows like The Waltons have been available on the format since pretty much day one. But now, I can finally quit my bitching and settle in for a personal favorite. This isn’t the best season of the show, but since we’re (hopefully) going to see the entire series, this is a good and obvious place to start. The story is pretty standard sitcom stuff. Drew Carey plays a loser trapped in a perpetual nightmare of a corporate gig at a major Cleveland department store. Between his horrible job and lack of success with women and pretty much every other facet of life, the only thing our hero finds solace in are his friends, the wonderful ensemble of Christa Miller, Ryan Stiles, and Diedrich Bader. Sounds kind of standard, I know, but it works to near-perfection all the same. That’s definitely due to the comedic talents of the cast, especially Kathy Kinney as Mimi, Drew’s perpetual nemesis. Without their talent, this would’ve just been another bad sitcom. But because of them, the show holds up as well today as it did over a decade ago. This first season may stumble a little as it tries to find its voice, but there are still great lines, moments, and scenes. And if you’re at all like me on this, you know that the first season is a hell of a lot better than no season at all. The special features could be a little better, but at this point, I’m just happy that this show is finally getting some due on DVD.
 
 
Next time, I’ll reveal the very secret, very sinister reason why this column is better than anything those other jackasses are writing on Netflix.
 
 Copyright C 2007 Gabriel Ricard