This bar is lit year-round with Christmas lights reflecting off the varnished oak, drinking glasses, and liquor stock, and a dozen little tiki lamps sporadically glow from their stationed posts; an aura not unlike votive candles flickering at the feet of the Blessed Virgin.
I’m redefining what it means to sit here in the dark. It’s a shame they won’t be talking about this in the next century: the way he pronounced vacuous when asked to describe the room, or the shot-glass clank tuned in perfect collective pitch. It’ll either be too hot or too cold by then, and reading will be as ancient as laugh tracks and patriotic cowboys, Monument Valley now a beatific dementia that rises with Abbadon and sets with Big Sur.
But I’m not thinking about that right now. I’m thinking about you, whoever you are, wrapped carelessly in a coral, melon-white Mexican blanket on Zuma Beach with your back to me, and whether or not it’s really been ten years since I’ve seen the ocean.
Originally published in Sugar House Review: Fall/Winter 2018
In the warm glow of my reading lamp, together with Mariette as she takes her vows at the holy cloister in Upstate New York, I hear the foghorn cries of a train in the early hours of morning. The track is roughly a mile south and its whistle is frozen in place, wailing like a dying animal in shapeless dark. I imagine a car stalled at a crossing or switchman holding a lantern as he changes course at the turnout or, still being the boy galloping ’round the living room, two-thousand head of ghostly longhorn on the Goodnight-Loving Trail, flooding past the engineer who waits as hooves trample ballast, sleeper, and rail spark to pulp. I close the window, catching the faint hint of cherry blossom, and now, back among the sisters, Mariette performs the Litany of Loreto in amity with a dozen pink and white weightless chaplets piled high for Christ’s newest bride.
Sergio arrived at First United Methodist before eight o’clock in the snow. He stood in line for a hot meal with some of the guys from 62nd Street and asked if they’d seen Georgie. They hadn’t. The men sat at small lunch tables donated by a nearby elementary school, their knees touching the rock-hard gum stuck underneath, and spooned steamy chicken noodle soup with their elbows on the table and warmed their hands over the bowls like burning trash cans under the overpass. Sergio watched the front door. He went up to a woman serving soup and asked for a second helping and she smiled and said of course. When he finished he sat against the wall and waited. In came Lonnie from El Paso Avenue who once stole Sergio’s shoes at knife-point several winters ago. They had since patched things up over the discovery of garbage bags from food trucks after last call throughout the city. Sometimes the food trucks set aside covered plates for Lonnie and Sergio, who then made sure there was enough for Georgie, which there always was. Lonnie hadn’t seen Georgie either and Sergio began to worry.
“His mind wanders,” Lonnie said, “and his feet like to follow.”
“Never thought he’d miss a hot plate though.”
Lonnie shrugged. “Could’ve grabbed one elsewhere.”
They helped one another put on their coats and stepped into the cold, windy night. Sergio sunk his neck down to his shoulders and pulled the collars up on his coat. Lonnie breathed moist air onto his bare hands and rubbed them together. A digital clock in a storefront window read quarter to nine which meant the shelter would run out of beds soon. “It’s going to be a cold one,” Lonnie said but Sergio wasn’t listening. He inched along the icy sidewalk with his head down, arms rigid, hands stuffed in his side pockets. Lonnie watched for a moment before heading in the other direction.
Sergio had the sidewalks to himself. He could’ve walked in the middle of the street if he wanted to. Just a few cars out. Office building and high rise apartment windows were yellow and white and Sergio figured most were bunked in for the night. As he rounded corners to buildings the wind took his breath away for a second like jumping off the dock at his uncle’s place in early spring, so cold the dogs wouldn’t follow him in. Swarms of snowflakes fell in the glow of streetlights. Sergio thought they looked like junebugs. On a night like this he wished they were. He passed a newspaper stand and a vendor named Pigeon handed him a stack of yesterday’s paper. Sergio said thanks and wadded the paper into his deep coat pockets. “Be smart tonight,” Pigeon said, pouring a cup of coffee and handing it to Sergio. “I got storage space if you need a roof tonight. Knock on the door and I’ll give you a key, alright?” Sergio nodded and said thanks. “And you’re sure you haven’t seen Georgie?”
“What’s that you got there?” Sergio sat against the concrete wall next to Georgie. His friend was quiet and stared at the paper in his hands and folded it and placed it inside his coat pocket. “Just an old picture,” he said.
“Can I see it?”
“Not right now.”
Sergio nodded and pulled his knees to his chest. “Well, I guess I can’t tell you where I’m going tonight then.”
“Where you going?”
“Since we’re keeping secrets and all.”
“Oh, come on.”
Sergio smiled and took his ballcap off, revealing his bald head. “A guy that works at the drive-in gave me these after I washed his car for him. He didn’t have any cash but said to come by during his shift and he’ll get me in to whatever I want to watch. Popcorn and drinks included.”
“You’re going to the movies?”
“We’re going to the movies.”
“You’ve got two tickets?”
“I’ve got one and you’ve got one.”
Georgie laughed. “What are we going to see?”
Sergio shrugged. “I have no idea.”
They took the bus to the drive-in theater and the man at the ticket booth recognized Sergio and waved them over. “Starts in a few minutes. Here, take this to that girl at that register there and she’ll get you set up with snacks and stuff. You guys will have to sit toward the back since, you know, no car, but there’s speakers back there so you won’t miss anything. Enjoy the movie!” Georgie and Sergio carried their buckets of popcorn and soft drinks in between cars and pick up trucks until they found a concrete picnic table near the back fence. They were offered candy bars but they discussed it and politely declined since neither could remember the last time they brushed their teeth, which left them embarrassed, but the girl winked and said, “Jeremy said free refills, he’s the manager after all.”
“I can’t remember the last time a woman winked at me,” Georgie said, sitting at the table.
“Almost forgot what that felt like,” Sergio said.
“I can’t remember the last time I was at the movies either.”
The big parking lot lights dimmed and the coming attractions started on the giant screen at the front of the drive-in. A few cars honked back and forth and people laughed. Georgie too. He nudged Sergio who had his hand buried in popcorn and said, “Here.” He handed him a crinkled photograph of a man and a woman, both very young, on their wedding day.
Georgie’s usual hangouts turned up nothing. Jefferson Park was glossed over with ice, park benches with pillows of untouched snow. Madison Park was the same. The library across the street from the I-498 overpass was closed and the side alley empty. There was an old librarian that knew Georgie’s father and let him stay in the basement on hot summer nights, but the librarian passed away toward the end of autumn. Georgie still liked to stop by to smell the books, said it helped clear his head. Sergio walked to the overpass and asked around. One of the guys, Leonard, said to check back in an hour. The shelter tended to fill up before ten o’clock and everyone else would be turned away. Sergio stuffed his hands deep into his pockets and moved forward. He knew the newspaper ink was rubbing off on his skin. A police officer slowed next to him, rolled his window down, and said that it’s too cold, the wind chill is supposed to get negative ten tonight, that he should head for the shelter. “By the time I get there, there won’t be any beds left,” Sergio said.
“Hop in,” the officer said. “I’ll take you.”
“I’m looking for a friend.”
“Maybe they’re at the shelter. Ever think of that?”
“No, I didn’t but he could be out looking for me too.”
“Suite yourself.”
Georgie and Sergio sit in the sun with cold bottles of water on a bench outside the dog park. A small group of Christian teenagers were handing them out with enthusiasm. The dogs ran and chased one another, picking up toys, shaking them madly. The two watched with joy.
“Ever have a dog?” Georgie asks.
Sergio shakes his head. “My uncle did.”
“My parents brought one home when I was eleven or twelve years old, around the time we moved to Rhode Island. This little two-story about a five-minute walk from the shore. I told you about it. The house where my brother Brian became paralyzed. He named the dog Bandit. Grandma would call Brian that when she was alive and for the life of me, I can’t remember why. One of the few words she knew in English. But the dog. When she died no one else called my brother Bandit so he passed it on after Dad found that dog wandering around some parking lot, begging for food. I think my brother meant to honor her in his own way by giving it that name though we all knew she never liked dogs. She’d been bitten as a child a few times by strays in the old country, or so she said. But Bandit the dog was a good dog for the most part. He fetched well and didn’t bark a whole lot. Sometimes at birds. Finches and sparrows liked to dive in just over his head and he’d jump and try to catch them, but they were too fast for him. They enjoyed pestering him and I think he did too. When Dad built a fence to the yard Bandit started digging himself out and I’d have to fill the holes back in. Dad usually found him down the street wandering around or going through a neighbor’s trash can. Once we found him at the beach lying in the sun after a fisherman fed him a bunch of oysters. Ever heard of that? Who would give a dog oysters? Some nights after he ran away, we’d hear him barking somewhere in the neighborhood. I always liked hearing that. Then one day he left and that was that. I cried myself to sleep every night for a week. Well, another week or two goes by and one night my brother goes to the window of our bedroom and gets all excited. He says ‘Look! There’s Bandit!’ and I hop out of bed and run to the window but when I get there, he says ‘Aw shucks, you just missed him, he was there under the tree.’ He did this several times. I caught on eventually but always played along. He was looking out for me, I figured. Couldn’t fault him for that.”
Sergio caught the bus headed uptown. The driver let him on without paying although Sergio had enough for the ride. “No one’s out tonight anyway,” the driver said. “I’d rather you be inside here than walking in the damn cold.” Sergio got off the bus at Highland Park. The driver poured a cup of coffee from a tin thermos into a white plastic cup and handed it to Sergio as he thanked him for the ride. He didn’t like coffee, even though people were always giving it to him, but it would keep him warm, at least for a little while. He vaguely remembered the upscale neighborhood surrounding the park, Pacific Heights. His father used to deliver milk to these houses when Sergio was a boy and on occasion, he’d accompany his father as he went door to door, leaving small crates of sweating jars of milk on welcome mats. He walked the sidewalk as snow crunched under his boots. He let out a “Georgie!” but felt embarrassed in doing so. He sipped the cup of coffee which was quickly losing its steam and admitted it tasted alright and wondered what brand it was. Steps to condominiums were salted and Sergio heard the scrape of shovels, but he didn’t see anyone. He liked the way sound traveled with snow on the ground. It was like being in the woods at his Uncle’s place and he wished for anything to be there now, skipping stones across the placid lake in twilight, the ripples widening forever and forever. He imagined being there with Georgie but as boys building tree forts and fishing and Georgie’s brother is there and he’s not paralyzed and he’s running with Bandit who leaps and catches sparrows in his mouth softly but lets them go without hurting them. In this cold-stricken daydream Sergio’s parents are there too, his mother with dinner on the table calling the boys in and his father poking at embers in the fireplace as he often did before building it back up again. He wanted to cry but his feet were cold and damp and growing numb, so he kept moving up the block of staccato and brick buildings, Christmas trees aglow in the windows. Just ahead he saw the bus stop bench he’d found Georgie once before, during a “season of melancholia”, as Georgie put it, not long after the night at the movies, and Sergio knew the score when Georgie, still as the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, came into view. Sergio wanted to cry out. He wanted to tear at his clothes and fall to the ground and beg for a miracle. He wanted to run and embrace Georgie and hold on until life returned. But he just stood there. He looked up into the sky and let the snow touch his face before melting onto his skin. He then dusted the bench next to Georgie and sat down. He couldn’t feel his toes. He took a glove off and put his hand in front of Georgie’s mouth, then grabbed his wrist for a moment before putting his arms around his friend and sobbed. “I’m sorry I couldn’t find you,” he said, “I’m so sorry.” He leaned in and whispered in George’s ear: “Please, Saint Anthony, would you come around? Someone is lost and cannot be found.” In Georgie’s hands was the folded photograph from so many years ago. Sergio saw movement in the window across the street and a woman he thought he knew stepped outside in her bathrobe, white as her mother’s wedding dress.
Sergio stands in the sun and waves at cars passing on the freeway. He waves till someone honks and he smiles. Georgie lies on his back looking up at the clouds. There’s a taco truck in a parking lot below. “Smells good,” Georgie says.
“I’ve got a couple bucks if you want something now,” Sergio says.
“Nah,” Georgie says, “you go ahead and keep it. I can wait.”
“We’ve still got awhile till they close.”
“I’m okay. Go ahead if you want.”
“I can wait,” Sergio says.
“We’ll eat like kings,” Georgie says, his eyes closed. “In due time.”
The sun falls between skyscrapers miles away. Glass sparkles and shines in the late afternoon. Sergio sits next to Georgie and opens a warm beer. Foam spills over his hands and he wipes it with his shirt. “We’ve got it made, don’t we, Georgie?”
She sat quietly with her lunch, overlooking the Chippewa River through the dining room bay windows as sunlight pierced through the clouds for the first time that day.
From the screened porch I spoke to my aunt and uncle and cousin as grandma watched the bend in the river knee, its banks plump with snow.
I still don’t know if she recognized me standing there, or simply waited for the right moment to speak, but after some time she looked up and smiled and said “It’s good to see you, dear” before returning to the river.
Kodama
I wander the dark house after everyone has gone to bed, looking for any sign of my grandfather’s ghost. Under the streetlamp the streets shine from fresh rain like sweat on a damp forehead. As a child the signs of life were the police scanner in the living room, sometimes accompanied by his silhouette in his recliner, listening in the dark, and later, as an adult, his constant coughs and groans, signs of life from the room below, my grandmother beside him, awake, holding his hand.
But he did not die here. He left in the middle of the night, unable to breathe on his own, seven miles south in a nursing home where he spent the final months of his long life. Maybe his ghost is still out there, wandering, turned around in a cornfield or pulled by the scent of his past life to the creek he crossed as a teenager, the fields of high grass covered in dew, his pant legs soaked to the knees on his nightly walk in the dark to see June, his love, years before they married.
The signs are everywhere, they just are not here.
The white figure out the living room window is not my grandfather and I don’t ask his name. He belongs to someone else, and I wave him on. He heads through the trees to the river where a spirit can travel twice as fast. The ballfield near the river where I chased grounders and pop flies has gone through so many changes, I struggle to recognize my own memories
The light that warms my face is death.
Maybe grandfather’s ghost is ashamed now the family knows of his numerous infidelities, like the woman at the bar he saw often, a ten minute walk from home. Where do you go if you can’t go home? The river lets out at the Great Lake and there it is separated from the sky by a line only the dead are willing to touch.
Mt. Pleasant
We identified the callery pear tree and paradise apple, both white as cherry blossom. Grandma said this was the first time she had sat in the garden, though she had the best view from her bedroom window. She gave her blessing to my sister and her boyfriend and their plans to move to Hawaii and I admit disappointment in myself for not being able to offer her the same.
As we left she gave me a hug and said “If I’m not here next time you visit, you know where I’ll be,” just as she had the last five years, but this time I think she means it. The sun broke through the clouds on the ride home yet the light continues to dim.
I like the cold, overcast days of autumn. Mist freckling the windshield as leaves shiver and take Golden Gate leaps into their savior’s arms, being led across golden shores and into windswept streets and damp alleys, garbage bags, and overzealous burn piles next to mailboxes.
Closets cough up college sweatshirts and blue jeans for girls by the fire, hair as graceful as American flags fanned by the cold, dead breath of Rome, naked and auburn in last sunlight.
The birds that stay turn dusk to dawn with their songs, their meanings so vast even in death we’ll never fully understand.
We will grow tired of raising the flag to half-mast every morning at the post office, the elementary and high school, the courthouse, the fire station. Even at our churches, outnumbering the gas stations in town.
Your neighbors will lose track of national tragedies as the news reports the dead like football scores on the bottom crawl of the television screen.
Pastors, guns at their hip, wonder why the congregation wears black on Sunday and politicians ask Jesus where the youth vote went. Teachers, once worried of overcrowded classes, now count the empty desks, school halls still as mausoleums.
Days we were told never to forget, now too many to remember.
Smoke tangles with tangerine clouds on the horizon like an invitation sealed in a soft cream envelope. The dying breath of day sends an empty beer can down the street into fresh dark, where no doubt it’ll go on forever. One by one neighbors shut their windows but still the laugh tracks bounce off brick and concrete, knowing good and well this life is syndicated.
Next door two boys punch it out in the mosquito glow of the streetlamp – shirts ripped, cursing like their fathers, the neighborhood in silence as this happens all too often. The world just isn’t big enough for boys with two first names. You would’ve pulled them apart.
Last night I saw you in Cape Canaveral as rockets became raptured in ribbons of smoke and you tossed your hair over your shoulder and waved at the camera, laughing with all your body the way honest people do. Before the end you said without Him you were nothing, but even in nothing you were everything.
Often I awake in the dark unsure of where I am, too afraid to move for there are killers on the highway, haunted by white noise from an after-hours television. Maybe it’s applause.
Originally appeared in Art Focus Oklahoma: Spring 2018.
It is hard not to picture their bodies, stark in the contrast of new snow, lying in the frigid shallow waters, their backs to the sky in a final act of defiance – her husband Black Kettle’s final words heard only by yellow goldfinches, preserved like Cheyenne arrowheads hidden deep in pages of red earth, the river playing with her long black hair like bay grass in zephyr, her nine scars a handwoven map leading back to Sand Creek.
The path bends through goldenrod and field thistle, prairie sumac and Virginia creeper as I am gently kissed by honeybees in the late September sun. I ignore power lines, interstate tumult, groans of a distant train, and in the shade of whispering bur oak and hickory, the jagged teeth of stolen history prods at the soles of my feet.
It’s no coincidence the hand soap near the kitchen sink is scented milk and golden honey, and porcelain cherubs sing from hymnals above the toilet, and the shower refuses to get too hot in the morning, and every painting of fruits and flowers, cottages and streams are accompanied by scripture.
In one room there are two gold frames, side by side, twin paintings of hummingbirds dancing among purple hollyhocks, and if it weren’t for the one on the right slightly crooked, I couldn’t tell you the difference.
In the bathroom there’s another, titled: “Burgundy Irises with Foxgloves.” The caption reads whatsoever things are pure.
I note the mini-blinds blocking sunlight with washboard efficiency. I run my fingers along crow’s feet in the drywall, along door frames. I tap the window for the attention of a one-legged cardinal who takes three steps before flight.
I read as daylight drains from the room, the words softening on the page.
Evening Panoply 