Very Short Novels

Small News

davidbdale — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 14:52:41 +0000

I bought the newspaper out of pity before I boarded the local. It felt thin, and looked like nothing new. I swiped my card near the fare box and at the same time watched myself do so on a monitor showing me from behind, shot by the camera above the door. Other cameras grabbed me from other angles and built a composite that would have been recognizable to anyone who knew me. I took my seat opposite a fidgety man with very big hair parted awkwardly. Monitors throughout the car showed other passengers taking their seats on this train and others, and sports stars being interviewed about off-the-field infractions, and luxury items, and frivolous foods. One showed my wife getting off a Number 7 train with overflowing shopping bags, in surveillance grays, from her good side. Predictions in the paper were dire. Apparently pension payments to municipal workers were causing a budget shortfall; the clear remedy was that they should give them up. The nation’s youngest fashion designer, age 8, was asked about her influences. On the next page, looking fidgety even in his photograph, the man with big hair was interviewed about losing his job to reverse discrimination. The poor sap, he looked it. I would have fired him too. I stared at him until he moved and watched him fade on the monitors. My own story, however, was not accurate. The picture of me getting off a train had been retouched, I believe, to make me look forlorn. The details of the stock transactions had me placing bets no sane investor would ever have risked; the whole thing lacked credibility. The hat I wore, for instance, did not look right for senior management, but I knew where I could buy one. I got off one stop early.

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The Mascot

davidbdale — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 01:48:26 +0000

I owe the Xuuxu my life but no gratitude. Once they flushed us from our valley and stood us naked, side by side in the long grass under the sickle moon, lowlands clansmen that the colonists favored—by which I mean tolerated and bestowed with courtesies that felt like slaps on the jaw—they had to kill the lot of us, including my parents and sisters, the one I liked and the one who died knowing I didn’t. They should have killed me too, and I wish they had; instead, they spared me as a witness to their petty ferocity. When the warlord swept his hand above my head to point me toward my exile, I flinched all the way to the ground, thinking my turn had come, and all the stupid killers slapped their weapons across their thighs and laughed and spit until I would have silenced them if I’d had a weapon of my own. They kept me as a mascot. They never tired of slicing the air above my head with their machetes to see me dive, and I, to my shame, couldn’t help but throw myself into the dirt. You could stop reading now, I know, and I wouldn’t blame you. I haven’t described the machete blows that fell that day, their singing swiftness, or the sound of chopping down trees that meant they had struck another bone. I don’t think I can. I know I don’t want to. A woman they had tied standing to a tree, a friend of my mother’s, looked at me with pitying eyes, but nothing could prevent them from holding me by my shoulders and hips and forcing me into her again and again. They laughed and told me I was a man but I felt like something less.

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Tunnel of Love

davidbdale — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:14:41 +0000

The water flows both ways through the tunnel of love, depending on which rusty lever I force! Like life, this tacky carnival ride with its soggy boats bobbing in a curving trough is not a circle but a figure-eight, or an eighty-eight, that doubles back and gives us second chances to be noble or to wet the seat of our pants. Where the streams cross, with my over-education I can steer the couples through the wide or the narrow entrances to tapered, covered corridors and either squeeze them together or wedge them apart, depending on their fitness for each other—and all for the minimum wage! Take this gentleman for example and his uncertain girlfriend. If I wobble their boat just slightly as they step into it and he steadies her by the shoulder and elbow, his small but certain gesture will beguile her. I could put myself in his place at that moment and she would want even me! On the other hand, if I collide two boats before the tunnel, I can sunder the pair that responds with annoyance—and at the same time cinch the two who share a laugh about it! The two I denounce will smell the mildew from the trapped water of an aging ride that should be condemned. For the two I affirm, ample to themselves, the tunnel and its weeping walls will fade away like other people’s problems. I should be paid what couples counselors get for my discernment! The uninspiring and the doomed I leave alone for the gears of the drive chain to propel toward their insipid certainties, but those I can, I help, to find one another or to flee. It would be selfish not to when the merest twitch of my fingertips is all that fate requires.

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Our Littler Town

davidbdale — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 01:08:11 +0000

Although I could be fired for asking out loud, your city council have all been wondering if other towns are shrinking too, and if so, what’s being done to stop the trend or reverse it. They ask as if we’d already proclaimed our town is getting smaller, which we haven’t, but should. The change is almost imperceptible but measurable and as real as the sun setting earlier each day by a minute, or a lover going vividly gray, or taxes rising relative to lot size. Last spring, a surveyor sent to stake a home-site reported the first anomaly but blamed his instruments. Now we know that every property is verifiably smaller; we know the rate at which they’re shrinking, and how soon the first houses will stick their toes beyond the borders of the yards that should contain them and into the vegetable gardens of the lovely young neighbor who digs the beds in shorts and little else to nudge and shyly part her tender shoots. Let me be clear, our houses are no smaller. Still formed of six-inch bricks, of 2x4s, of lumber cut to lengths that match our rulers, they cover the same ground as ever. It’s the ground they cover that hasn’t stopped diminishing. And the trouble isn’t limited to home-sites. Parks and streets are shrinking as well— parking spaces! Our cars, already too big, drive with two tires on the sidewalk now or sideswipe one another. Of course as citizens, you’ll want the fairness question answered. If other towns are expanding, are they towns that somehow deserve our land? Or can we annex them to get it back? For now, let’s be happy we fit inside our houses, close as they may be to one another, and find ways to get comfortable with our neighbors.

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Shadow Brother

davidbdale — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:47:01 +0000

He’s not always easy to see. I can be talking to him in my room on a rainy afternoon with the radio playing and sharing a blueberry pie, and my dad will open the bedroom door and Deuce’ll be gone and it looks like I’m eating a pie by myself and talking to the radio. And just like that he’s melted into the melting pot and achieved the American dream. And good thing too because Dad would broom stick me with vigor if he knew Dusek was living here and alienizing our air. When I found him, Dusek was living at the port authority—where my dad worked—inside locker 43, which he had learned to lock from the inside, in the dark. I heard him snoring while I was eating my lunch. I kicked the door until I woke him and passed some crackers through the vent and coaxed him out when the coast was clear. He was about a half a boy. Together we might have weighed what my dad weighs. We’re bigger now. Home, I said. I drew one with spit on the locker door. Let’s go? I got his story a bit at a time, between meals. He’d hit his dad with a hammer in Checkovakia and come all this way to live with an aunt who was dead by the time he got here; at least, that’s how I understand it. He lives in my room now. We call each other Deuce because I’m a Junior, so I’m the second, so I’m a two. I don’t care if he understands that. The time will come, I know, when Dad will see that Deuce is here and that he eats and pays no rent. I only hope that for my sake Deuce sees him first.

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First Will and Testament

davidbdale — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:08:56 +0000

Some of my stuff I want to keep after I’m dead, but Ariel can pick out three things from my toy-box, not three of the same things, like not three ponies, or not even two insects, but a pony and an insect and a piece of furniture would be good, and she can ride my bike when she’s big enough. Then if you could sell the rest of my stuff at the library sale so they can get some better books because the children’s section is so pathetic. You know what I like. I want some books left open on my dresser, or wherever, in case I can’t turn pages, so you can turn them for me whenever you think of it. Tell Ariel to turn them forward, not backwards, if she can reach them. Beasty Boy should get my room unless Mom and Dad have a baby, and he can use my pillow for his bed like he does anyway. If I have any medicine left, I would give it to that boy in the hospital with all the pudding or that girl who cries. Also, I want Colleen to play center forward, but Coach doesn’t think she’s good enough, but if it’s in my will he has to give her my position, I think. And he should quit and let Dad be coach if I can do that. My report card will be good; maybe I can give that to a girl who needs good grades and she doesn’t have parents who help her and they make sure she does her best. Mom and Dad should adopt her so she can live here and finish up my life because they’ll miss me too much if they don’t. And I could watch and see how I turn out.

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Tan Lines

davidbdale — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 02:11:39 +0000

We boys had a club in the attic of Mitchell’s garage, the whole time I knew him and until he disappeared. We had handshakes and irrelevant passwords to guard against infiltration attempts that sadly never occurred. We thought we knew what a club for men should have, so we hired my sister to dance for us nude for a quarter, at a time when a dime was good for a full-size Milky Way bar. We swapped comic books and practiced sword moves and we listened to scratchy 45s of long-haired bands from England and thought of ourselves as mods. We sang along or argued about baseball or girls we knew from other schools who might do it. It was summer, and she’d been alternating bathing suits of several styles, so her tan lines were smudged and blurry, but one sharp line high on the thigh showed she’d been flashing a bit of cheek at the boys at the pool. Mitchell as host and de facto leader, if we had one, set the hours of operation and the occasional agenda, and decided what girls could entertain, which meant he ran auditions. I had brought some Lucky Strikes I had swiped from a careless adult at a picnic and was practicing smoke rings when Mitchell gave me a conspiratorial look and nodded in the direction of my sister, who was stepping out of her shorts. We hadn’t been caught, but I felt caught. I wanted to wrap her in a blanket and take her home before she realized what she’d been doing. Mitchell grinned at me and winked and I thought I might hit him, but it wasn’t he who had failed to protect her. The needle came down on the record and Mitchell got up to dance with the dancer.

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Night Doctors

davidbdale — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 11:38:00 +0000

Before it grew too big to lift, the hospital could have moved to a better neighborhood or invested in its neighbors. Instead it pushed out handymen and cleaning ladies and street hawkers like my uncles and nudged their tilting houses down, clearing room to stretch out one expansive wing after another, each named for a rich benefactor, north and south along the boulevard. Then, when the dispossessed had no place to go, it paid them to submit themselves to research, or didn’t pay them, or snatched up subjects after dark and ran its experiments to better mankind, if not us. My aunt said Uncle John was used in terrible ways before he died, but she wouldn’t talk about it. She didn’t have to: we had comic books; we’d seen twisted science in the movies. Knowing we were suggestible, our mothers invoked the night doctors to keep us off the streets after dark. Of course, no one could corroborate the rumors while we were kids, but we grew up paying the hospital, more than it deserved, a respect that was not all fear. Then my life occurred and promptly stalled. I got sick and made a career of it that outlasted every remedy. I am in need of the night doctors. Soft spotlights rub the face of the hospital after dark. Traffic lights cycle while past this low bench vacant men walk with extraordinary care, feeling the ground ahead of them before setting their feet down to cross the street. Whatever I have is no more credible, except to me, than the stories old wives tell after their husbands flee. I need someone daring to take me in, someone who isn’t afraid to break a few eggs. If need be, I’ll even go in through the front door.

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Neighbors Forever

davidbdale — Sun, 02 May 2010 19:24:06 +0000

Our shabby little houses look like conjoined twins inexpertly separated. Her family’s house got the worst of the porch, ours got the sagging gutters. What used to be rivers of green grass flowing between the houses and the street, and between the houses and the houses behind, our families divided with chain link fences and choked the life out of, two squares each. Our yard we filled with fractions of cars. Her parents, my parents, are the salt of the earth, in other words, dirt made palatable. That sounds cruel. I think hers would treat me better if we were to trade; she thinks mine would her. Because every window in our house faces a window in hers, when she’s in her bedroom and I’m in mine, I imagine we’re sharing a double. We’re careful not to catch each other catching a look at each other, but if my light’s on and hers is off, I have to try to act as if I don’t think she might be watching. I sit at my desk occasionally turning a page of my civics book and tap my pencil against my upper lip for a studious effect. I’ve never told her that I know she kicks her shoes off from across the room, making scuff marks at the back of her closet. I don’t know what she doesn’t tell me. When I’ve finished pretending to study, I turn off my radio, but I hear the same station from her window, and the staked-out dog from down the block, and the shrieks from the shock absorber factory that runs all night. I’m out on our steps; she’s out on her steps, so close I can see down her shirt, and I think to myself, if I loved her, this would be heaven.

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Machete Smile

davidbdale — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 22:29:38 +0000

I picked it up on a minor island, the one with the grimy harborfront, I think, and the spine of useless mountains like a broken back along its northern coast as if it had been stepped on. The guidebook called the inhabitants a joyous and friendly people, and perhaps they are to one another. Their fruit was good if not always clean. They certainly appeared to love Jesus. I pitied them one minute, admired them the next. At home, when I reflect on what I’ve seen, one or the other impression will usually fade, often depending on whether I’ve gotten what I came for. In the dusty general store, displayed along the pegboard, the blades of the local machetes gleamed like garden tools oiled against rusting, and so they were made and sold to be used, though I knew in the hills, in certain hands, they enforced a fearful peace. The local merchant showed me handle styles and lengths of blade. The wooden handle was painful to grip; the hard rubber handle had no understanding of fingers. The handle of bone was warm like something living and fit like a handshake. She saw how much I liked it and while smiling drew her finger across her throat in a gesture that locally must have meant something else. I bargained, got the best of her, and paid. The blade is a razor that sings when I withdraw it from its cowhide sheath; ssssing and it slices the young calf’s throat; sssssing and I skin it by turning it inside out. I’m clearing the poison ivy from my yard with deep hacking cuts when I notice the blood on my shoes, and then on my pants, then my shirt. I put my hand to my neck and I dare not look.

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Money Box

davidbdale — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 02:34:32 +0000

My dear wife, the gentlemen who detain me do not understand why you neglect to send what they ask for my release. Try to appreciate that when they saw us get out of your patron’s car at the embassy, they took us to be valuable. I think they will not bargain as long as I live, so do what you can. Ask your cousin, or someone at the school. Or sell the house if it’s enough. I think they’ll keep me body and soul, but if my price should drop, get proof of life. I’m not the only guest. I hear others pulled from their boxes—or so I judge from what happens to me—and educated as I am educated. I would pity them if my heart had room. Instead they infuriate me. I have to love myself to keep counting the days. I have learned to turn to the wall when I hear two knocks at my door and to wait for the hood and the links of the chain to drape heavy across my collarbones. You cannot imagine how I welcome the change. Outside the box tastes blood like pain but it is not the box. They won’t let me fix what I’ve written. Don’t look at me when you see me, please. And now my shameful question. I see a boy. I think of you when I can picture anything in my mind, of course, and the girls, of course, Francesca and Flor, their names are prayers to the bare lightbulb that spits my light of day. But the boy I never see clearly. I can’t trust him. Is he ours? Whatever you can do, my darling, please, before they take the rest of my history and I’m no longer your husband, whatever they ask.

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Very Early Retirement

davidbdale — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:57:50 +0000

You’re right. Management is at fault, not your hard work. The board of directors should lose their jobs; hell, they should probably spend time in jail, but we both know that won’t happen. Instead, you’re going to take the fall for their bad choices. Hold that thought. I’m still talking. You say you know some details of the public funds appropriation process that would embarrass me if divulged, and I grant you the tidbits you’ve teased me with are impressive, as blackmail items go, and might do you some good if the board didn’t know them, but there’s your problem. Hey. I’m still talking. You were at that conference with me. You met with the lobbyists. Fast-forward to the day you go public. Was I there with you? Well, reality is flexible, more so for executives. You could disavow it all, claim you were framed, and you might win, but you don’t want to have to, sport. Justice deferred is too goddamned expensive. I tell you now I delivered them cash in a briefcase, if only to impress on you how little I care what you know. The briefcase that makes it into evidence will have your monogram. Oh. And worse. I have immunity. I’ve been a justice department investigator since the last influence peddling scandal. See this? It’s sending our conversation to a collection unit on the fifth floor. Tiny, isn’t it? American product! Clear as crystal. Again, I tell you because you matter so little. So, listen. Read over the package. Talk about your options with your wife Pam, your two boys, the dogs. I think in a day or two you’ll find the terms downright generous. Then, if you still want to talk about the other option, get back to me with something I can use.

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The Rest of the Story

davidbdale — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 02:55:32 +0000

Grammar and my own impatience landed me in jail. If I had only turned the page, I would have seen my healthy ex-fiancee smiling for the camera on the day of her promotion, very much alive in the finance section. Instead, I took a single appearance of the past perfect progressive tense in the article about her to mean that she had died, and imagined the rest—my complicity in her early demise, the inevitable investigation, my imminent arrest. “Had been receiving treatment” for an undisclosed but life-threatening ailment, the story had said on its first page. That was enough to send me out of the café and into the night, hailing a cab and heading uptown to her parents’ home, where I’d always been welcome. I might as well have gone to the police. “I just heard about Christine,” I told them at the door. They seemed perplexed but let me in and sat me down with coffee. I’d never stopped loving their daughter, I told them, even after things between us had turned cordial. I’d thought that herbal meant safe, I said, that dosages were recommendations, and that if ancient cultures had used a substance for generations to improve relations, it surely should work for us. They only stared in disbelief and let me blather on. She’d never known what she was taking, I told them. And only after she had left me had I discovered the powder I’d been putting in her smoothies was probably killing her liver. Christine’s father left the room to make a call while her mother pretended to console me. Shortly after, I was read my rights, which turn out not to be much use when you’ve already confessed, even if nobody died, or should I say, if nobody “had been dying.”

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The Wanting Sea

davidbdale — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 12:22:21 +0000

So, this is the ocean, I thought. The poets call it everything but what it is, poison from here to the horizon. My girlfriends in their candy colored bikinis ran ahead to the pier. They knew better than to be around me. How does it take rain and make it bitter, and why are we not angry, I asked the little crab who burrowed back into the wet sand as often as I unearthed him. Which is it, crab? Do you panic in the sun, or do I interrupt something like pleasure for you when I pull you out? My girlfriends were back with their ice creams; worse, they’d met a boy—boys! The crab had gone too deep. I saw only their bottoms from where I crouched, digging in up to my elbow. This one the boys will find irresistible. She’ll fight them off or let them play or pick the one she wants. This one will have to work for a living. This one just wants to be friends. The land at least grows crops and holds up buildings, whereas this soft sand gently yields and leads us on, until we’re in over our heads and the sea can suck us down. The boardwalk is all the sand can support, a porch to play on, a lure for the young, its underside lapped by the spray. Of course they’ve picked out one for me. This is how it begins: build or bury, sink or swim, choose what’s offered. I frighten him. I ask his name and he says something. I force his hand into my pants. This is mine, I tell him. Do you understand? He does. He says he does, but nobody does. We’re all thirsty, the water sparkles, and most of the world is salt.

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Box of What You Need

davidbdale — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 04:49:57 +0000

Dad has gone and left me with this box of I don’t know what. It has stood like a book on the cookbook shelf with undiscarded yellow pages and other worthless paper, but I never called anyone whose number I didn’t know, or cooked anything I couldn’t figure out, or needed to save my life. I was eight when I first got sick, and Dad showed me the box while I was lying in the hospital bed playing with plastic dinosaurs on a landscape of sheets a hundred kids had used. I had no fear of dying, but I could tell my adults were terrified. He never told me what was in it. Be wise in how you use it, son, he told me. This box will solve all your problems but only once. I picked up the spiny green tank-like creature with the open mouth and a tail like a spiked club. Take that, deathosaurus, I told him. Throughout my bumpy youth of loss, of deprivation and pain, my illness, my accident, my long recuperation, I never opened the box. When Mom died and I suffered a small amputation, I wrapped it completely in duct tape to reduce the temptation to see what was inside. It sits before me now on the kitchen counter utterly orphaned, scuffed, frayed, faintly ridiculous. I’m drinking wine that tastes like someone meant to make it better. I always thought that something worse would happen that would call for a bit of magic, and now that the worst is upon me, I know I’ll get through this too without opening the box. And anyway, I know what’s in it. I’ll probably pass it along to my daughter if ever she seems to need it, just as my grandmother passed it along to Dad.

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Bob’s Double

davidbdale — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:01:31 +0000

We hired a double for Bob so that the Bob the world required could be places Bob could not be. We oversucceeded. Immediately, Bob was a fraud. He was not intrinsically as entertaining as his double, and while he was older by a day, and then a year, and eventually the father of himself, the doubles could always be Bob. The first—plucked from a stingy neighborhood and handed fame—quickly adapted to luxury and instantly felt cheated that his real talents were rented out to Bob. We found another, and another, and the public never went without its Bob. This meant shielding Bob from cameras and outbidding the tabloids for the occasional candid. To Bob, it meant trading a global persona for an unimaginably diverse but cramped private life most men would envy for a weekend but not for a lifetime. Nothing was too expensive, but he could only have what he could order in. We tried to nudge the market, but product Bob was a paradigm that any change, even improvement, diminished. Enhanced Bobs made promoters itchy and were at any rate ruled a breach of contract by the judge who specified what in future would constitute the Bob experience. Fans knew, I always have to remind myself, that what they were investing in was an image of a Bob. Theirs are the motives I can’t comprehend. Needless to say, the Bobs could not meet. The one night Bob and a Bob double shared my limo, I had to excuse myself and ride with the driver, though I’m not sure the double knew who sat beside him. By then, Bob was a different man, almost literally, doing 200 nights a year as Woody, of whom he was a presentable facsimile, and who had been dead for decades.

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Proof’s Hammer

davidbdale — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:22:43 +0000

Black and White each had doubts that the other existed, but for White the question had consequences. “At a minimum,” insisted Black from his seat on the tenure board, “Professor White should offer proof, before being declared permanent, that he temporarily is.” White replied, without indicating externally what his internal condition might be, that the question before the board was rightly “not whether White is but what White is,” as evidence for which his resume was “sufficient to form a justified true belief” of his qualification for the Epistemology chair. He clasped his hands behind his back and waited for the board’s reply. A board member coughed. White smelled peppermint. Black was unconvinced, or so White concluded from the smug look on Black’s face and the dismissive way he tossed the undisputed pages into the air. “The resume,” Black countered, was “evidence that paper exists, not White,” and that students who could be taught by paper would not pay tuition and therefore would not sustain White’s salary. “Perhaps,” Black suggested, “if all White can prove is his likelihood, he might agree to lecture on the likelihood that he will be paid?” Without replying directly, White suggested a thought experiment. “Close your eyes,” he told the board, “and the furniture of the world disappears.” The board closed their eyes. “This board room, your colleagues, the esteemed Chairman Black,” continued White, “even this gavel, solid though it seems to me whose eyes remain open, to you might be in doubt.” Black put out his hand and felt only the sound block on which the gavel had rested. He yanked his hand back and opened his eyes just as White brought the gavel loudly down. “Chairman Black has doubts,” White told the startled board, “but he will act as if gavels exist.”

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Unscheduled Stops

davidbdale — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 16:09:08 +0000

The 5:42 to Belgenhagen left the station without our engineer. He chased it desultorily to the end of the platform waving his pastry in vain at the empty locomotive car as we pulled out from the shed into the icy dawn with certain questions. Among them, since the train had departed early, should we still call it the 5:42, and furthermore, since our destination was no longer assured, could we confidently call it the train to Belgenhagen? What landmarks we might have recognized lay smoothed below a foot of fresh powder and the turnings of the track we had always neglected gave us no clue which way we were traveling. The girl who pushed the coffee cart thought she recognized a barn, but when the train made its first stop beside a frozen lake, she merely shrugged and asked us if we wanted cream. My daughter must have disembarked then from a forward car; I saw her, as we pulled away, standing by the lake with no promise of a return train. There were no platforms where the train made its stops, so those who wished to leave us we helped down into the snow, some alongside deep pine woods, some within sight of distant towns. We passed through Belgenhagen without slowing, right on time, and crossed a bridge I have never seen, and came to rest near the foothills of mountains I know from maps. The snow has piled up nearly to the windows and continues to fall. There are no tracks; but, while it lasts, the coffee is good, my son is still on the train I believe, and the faces of the passengers on passing trains are peaceful as they make their way toward Belgenhagen. Would they seem so unconcerned if there were cause for alarm?

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A Christmas Sort of Story

davidbdale — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 16:16:31 +0000

You are not an accident, little one. You were in my care even before you were born. You have a place inside me still and always will. I have big plans for you, little one, plans as grand as galaxies and as unfathomable, but they mean nothing. Please, I beg you, scatter them and build yourself a world I can’t imagine. You owe me nothing. I release you, and though it destroys me to let you go, nothing will separate us for long until we are joined again at the end of the briefest of days. Already you know what it is to be cold and wander but, banished or lost, you will always have a home. Where there is sky, you will find my face. Where there is running water, I will wash you. Where there are voices or a whisper of wind, I will sing you to sleep or wake you, depending on the hour. Everything in its own time, anxious one. Compared to stars the years are counting candles, blown away like wishes. Don’t hurry; the moment is all you need for eternity. The end can wait—I’ve seen it. I got here first; I’ll be here when you arrive. Be careful who you travel with, there are temptations, but with my thumbs I left my mark upon your temples. Find me there if you need guidance and feel my heart. It beats in time with yours. What else can I give you, gifts? You are the gift. Companionship? Compared to what you bring the world the people you meet are wrapping paper, greeting cards, yours for a moment and gone. I want you to do something for me out of love not obligation. Think of what that might be. Now do it for someone else.

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Middle of the Road

davidbdale — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 02:36:28 +0000

Halfway down the block from where we had just seen Uncle Mickey, Dad stopped the car and sat with his foot on the brake. He’d been crying, I think, my unfortunate uncle, or his eyes were bloodshot for no reason, and probably he’d been pacing the block looking for courage. At the driveway, he told Dad he’d been clean for six days and a lot of other lies. Uncle Mickey thought he was being quiet, like a kid who believes if he closes his eyes he’s invisible, but I’d heard everything, as usual. Hands on the wheel now, Dad looked at me for a three count, then shifted into park; so, this would be a heart-to-heart. You don’t need to worry, Mickey, he told me. I know, Dad, I replied, but I was guessing. I looked at my gameboy and counted to three and wondered what he might mean. I love Uncle Mickey, I told Dad, but I won’t end up like him. I understand he was a brilliant kid, but now he’s a lost cause. You try to protect him, but you know he’ll never straighten out. Every time he quits a job or borrows and loses, you’ll be there to bail him out because you love him too and he’s family. You think he’s too smart for a paycheck world; well, he knows who to come to when he’s about to cash out. Someday he’ll lead real trouble to our door, Dad. You think I’m not smart enough to have his problems, right? You think I’ll get a job and pay my bills and drink a few beers on the weekend. Thanks. I’m glad you want what’s best for me. But I would have cut Uncle Mickey loose a long time ago. Is that what you meant?

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Going in Hope

davidbdale — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 22:37:17 +0000

Where we live, the troopers are always on call, even if their kids are in the patrol car with them on their way to the shoe store. I’m twenty minutes out, is all Mom said to the dispatcher, but I could tell from the road we took she wouldn’t be dropping me off. There was no safe haven where we were headed. Have they found the boy?, I asked her. We’re on his trail, she said. We passed a steaming, unfamiliar lake, then followed the flashers that bounced off the trees from the ravine. In her sunglasses too the tree trunks silently flashed and faded. She had to know I had questions. Her grip on the wheel said Later. The Chief was there ahead of us, with backup already and dogs. I knew to wait in the car, but my mind raced ahead across dry leaves to the last place the boy was seen running. Toward what? Away from what? The kid was just a name from another town, but Mom struck out into the woods to maybe get shot at or who knows taken hostage. I locked the doors and sat with her backup piece in my lap. They came back at dusk, bearing the boy, and laid him in a cruiser to wait for the pointless ambulance. When I reached them, I still had the gun in my hand. I dropped it when Mom shrieked and the leaves swallowed it up. I would have learned something from hearing them talk, about how they can keep doing this job when they always arrive too late. But I had squandered the chance, and Mom was too angry, or frightened, or just too sick in her heart to say anything as we drove toward the boy’s home heavy with news.

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An Hour with the Ogre

davidbdale — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 03:31:04 +0000

We sit at a table in The Glade—a room named for the sappy paintings of pastoral scenes on its walls. Their grasses and trees are carefully balanced and in them nothing lurks or lives. Their author may never have been outdoors. My son stomps through these flat meadows sniffing for something to tree, to bother, to chase, to eat, to kill. He’s eight. His father sits across the table smiling beatifically. It is so good to see me doing so well. My new hair suits me. What do the staff think of my progress? While he sits with his questions, I take up the glass from the table and decorously into it spit. For two weeks I’ve been spitting whatever this tang is—new health, or the aftertaste of my favorite poisons. My glass is now half full. When I don’t answer, he offers an overly detailed runthrough of their plans for the day. Occasionally, our son corrects him, not for my understanding, but to let Dad know who’s boss now that his parents can’t conspire to shape his day. Come sit with your mother. She misses you. Although she hasn’t said so. He stands before me tall, fit and undeniable. I act as I always do. Taking my hands in his, and stepping on all of my toes, he pulls back and yanks me into an unsteady stand, unwillingly up from my chair, clutching his shoulders for balance. I do the safe thing as always and don’t react. We stroll the painted meadows until it’s time for them to go. Halfway to the exit, he says something to his dad and they bust up laughing with great relief and don’t look back. They’re joking about me. I don’t mind, compared to the fear they’ve already moved on.

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Leaving Miller’s Farm

davidbdale — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:39:10 +0000

The children want to learn from me, but not until they know I’m someone with a knowledge. You’ll see at the assembly the moment they turn receptive, at which point you’ll know you’re getting your money’s worth. I have myself lowered from the flyspace on a pair of gymnastic rings, my arms outstretched in the iron cross—it’s most impressive—holding myself crucified above the stage and, while still aloft but gently descending, I call out “Hello, students!” then settle slowly into my waiting wheelchair, all with the use of my arms. “Like you, I tell them, I’m very good at some things, but I’m stupid at walking. Any questions?” They never ask about gymnastics, only why I can’t walk, and that they only care about because of what I can do. “Leaving Miller’s farm after a Senior Week kegger,” I tell them, “I drove my car into a cow.” That night, my first ever drink was forced on me by teens who took their democracy seriously. The very few sober seniors were kidnapped from our homes to Miller’s Farm, where Miller was spurring his sons to excess and imposing a flexible undress code. Corrie Wiener and I were delivered from the trunk of my own Plymouth, laid out on a table, and not offered options. In minutes we were skunked and in love with our stink. We cursed our sober high school years and swam the liquid night in beery benevolence thinking we and the world were beautiful. We hit the cow at eighty miles an hour, the police said. Somewhere between the driver’s seat and Miller’s ditch I broke my back and Corrie never had a chance. I tell the kids I’ve forgiven the Millers. It keeps me in bookings and makes the story inspirational. You’ll see.

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The Gallagher-von-Durfeldoms

davidbdale — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:02:52 +0000

We are the family of everyone who means us no harm, whatever the results of what they do. We love Pizza Friday, snow days, and getting into pajamas in the afternoon when we’ve spent the day at the beach. In fact, Gallagher-von-Durfeldom heaven is a Friday snow day near the ocean sharing a pie in our pjs. We hate things too, but nothing in common. Our only prejudice is that there is always a better way. As far back as we can remember, we have held jobs that suit our skills but more importantly suit our temperaments; hence shall ye know us by our satisfied smiles. If we have shortcomings, our bosses learn to deal with them. Now, anyone is welcome to adopt our way without joining the family, but whether by accident or from biological inevitability, we marry from families who act like Gallagher-von-Durfeldoms. Call it a tradition. It’s what we do, not what we say that makes us who we are, and we say what we say only so as not to say nothing. Keep an eye on us anyway. Though no more likely to cuddle with strangers than any other family, we press our faces for comfort or warmth whenever we need either to the faces of other Gallagher-von-Durfeldoms of any age or gender. If that makes you uncomfortable, you’ll never be G-v-D, but neither are we inviting you. We are sufficient. Wives who enter our family become everybody’s wife; husbands too, though this rarely happens, and children are watched by so many eyes they feel as if everyone is a parent. We neither subscribe nor prescribe; instead, we warn our youngsters, if the world begins to look like Gallagher-von-Durfeldom, beware whether it has changed to become like us or whether you have lost your way.

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An Offering

davidbdale — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 02:16:50 +0000

—Nevertheless you did kill him?
—I was present at his death.
—Present with a knife.
—Mine was not the only hand on that knife.

—You left the young men below?
—As we often had before.
—And took your son up the mountain alone?
—As was our custom.
—Did you meet anyone?
—Nobody you would see.
—You exhaust me.
—And yet you keep questioning.

—Your boy carried the wood?
—My son was not a boy.
—Did your son know what the wood was for?
—Yes, and the knife.
—Why would he carry them?
—He had always done so.
—He trusted you.
—He believed in sacrifice.
—But you had brought no offering.
—I was summoned to the mountain with my son.

—You bound his hands and feet?
—I helped him bind himself.
—I find that hard to believe.
—Nevertheless, I was too old to overpower him.
—I see. Exactly how old are you?
—You wouldn’t believe that either.

—Once he was bound, you cut him.
—First we prayed.
—Of course.
—I heard his confession.
—Of course you did.
—He had doubts.
—He had doubts?
—Or so he confessed to me.
—But by then you had bound him.
—In keeping with the covenant.

—Nevertheless you did kill him?
—I was present at his death.
—Your son was bound. You held the knife.
—His rightful father guided my hand.
—How many fathers did he have?
—
—You exhaust me.

—You burned the body afterward?
—As we always have.
—On wood your son had carried?
—Yes.
—And came down the mountain alone.
—I did.
—And yet you expect to father nations.
—It has been promised.
—In keeping with the covenant.
—Yes.
—An old man with an old wife whose son has died.
—I don’t ask you to believe.
—Are you sorry?
—I regret my weakness.

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Under the Bed

davidbdale — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:31:48 +0000

I had no magic as a child. I would have used it if I had, to stop the Boots from kicking me where I hid. Flat against the bedroom floor with the floor of the sky just inches above my nose, I knew no safer, more anonymous place to be, but even so certain shoes and socks meant trouble. The more I saw of the grownup world from under the bed, the more I learned to predict behavior from ankles and feet. Sneakers wanted to slide in with me. Polished tried to drag me out. Scuffed and sockless went down on a knee to offer me only his hand to hold and squeezed mine back and could have asked me to kill for him and I would have. When they all went away, I taught myself to cling to the floor of the sky, so nobody swinging a broomstick under the bed would know I was there. It’s a pity. She could have healed us so easily. She could have said, I know it’s hard. I know the choices I make mean trouble for you but I’m suffering too and I want something good out of life; do this for me. She never said it. Whenever they kissed and she lifted her heel from the floor, she was making an offer. They either set her back, or took her weight and stood for a while off balance, or lifted her and placed her somewhere above me where she wouldn’t fall. After that, there were no surprises. Barefoot men are all alike. I lay against the floor and touched my hand to the breathing sky as it moved, and waited for the day when I would either find my magic or grow up enough for a place of my own.

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Salt Toast

davidbdale — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 14:41:52 +0000

In photos of my daughter’s wedding, I look thinner than I was and not at all as if I wanted to strangle the groom. There stands Sheila, radiant as always against a bank of pallbearer suits. Looking back over her shoulder, she lures the eye with one of those cheekbones and the reckless promise of that long neck, for the moment, single, while just inside the frame and staring the camera down, the heedless groom in black has no idea he doesn’t belong. He turned this day into her dream by depriving her of others. In all their time together, since the day I hired him to wash cars, he’s found way after way to diminish her. For every course she enrolled in, he found another system for losing at roulette. Money that should have gone to her tutors went instead to pay his hypnotist. She swapped certifications and a real career for bail bonds and court fees, or startup costs for businesses that never showed the promise of a profit. Each failure they punctuated with a pointless vacation to a place she loathed where drugs were cheap. I didn’t kill him. He couldn’t wash a car but she loved him so I let him live to plan this wedding and stick me with the tab. He rose to offer an unexpected toast. He loved her, he said, as no man has loved a woman. She was the only star his heaven needed. She hadn’t met her full potential, they both knew, but he hadn’t fallen in love with her potential and he was a patient man. I waited with the cake knife for a sign. She caught my eye. The look she sent said: See? So, I was wrong. I’ll say it once for Sheila, I was wrong.

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Separate Trains

davidbdale — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 02:00:58 +0000

They looked married. In what they took for granted, the other riders saw they had been together forever. He read the map of the system posted by the door, tilting his head to follow the lines, and kept his balance with a hand on the pole. She clung to the same pole and looked at the knees of the regular riders. Their fingers touched. Without looking at her, he read her the names of the next four stops, landing metaphorically on the fourth stop with both feet. She looked almost at him and nodded and began to count. At the third stop, she said, Oh, Christopher! That’s very near the square! Well, he answered, If you want to, make it happen. And she was off the train just as the doors slid closed behind her. He clutched the rubber seam and, through the door, at her, in wide-eyed panic spoke clearly, Wait here! But had she heard him? And why had he not said, instead, which made more sense, Come to the next station! In two minutes he was off the train sweating in the stifling heat of a subway platform, watching a rat cross the tracks in his direction and disappear. If she hadn’t heard, she would arrive on the next train. If she had, and thought it wise to wait, it would frighten her if he were not on the return train; he should hurry back. But if she had seen the folly in his plan, he should trust her and wait. He wiped the stinging sweat from his eyes and looked for the rat. Not knowing where it had gone was unbearable. This could be worse, she thought. I can go or I can wait, and he will know I love and trust him either way.

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Clarity

davidbdale — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 06:19:48 +0000

The Computative Assistant to the Acting Vice-Director of Apportionment Compliance for the local subdistrict stopped counting. For an hour he did nothing but stare at his screen and its pattern of numbers that veiled the white certainty beyond. Keys clicked throughout the office except at his desk. Over several fiscal quarters, he had not thought about the purpose for his computations. Results had occurred to straightforward data out of simple operations and formed neat stacks of finished work product that met their own needs. He’d known he was finished when the last page printed. But an hour into his day, the day he stopped counting, he read the number 4774 as Allah. It was all he could see. The inconceivability of there being not just one but several meanings for the pointless signifiers in the innumerable columns took his breath away. Other words appeared, both more and less meaningful than the one that had broken the code. By the end of the day, he had produced nothing new that would pass as work, so he submitted a second copy of the previous day’s reports. The following day, he did the same. It was all he could do to choose a route to the office. The path of his commute was a geometry of turns which, seen from above, spelled words he could almost decipher. The first word of each page of a book read through told the story of man in a sentence. At the same time, nothing meant anything it was intended to mean. Not a consequence followed from his new approach to apportionment computation, but from his clear-eyed reading of the same report each day and from his openness to every meaning of which each sign is capable came a richness of awareness that was utterly incapacitating.

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Borrowed Luggage

davidbdale — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 04:41:57 +0000

A simple man named Abraham Kosofsky watched his tiny town of Berezovka grow tinier every day. Fannie, he asked his wife, What will become of us when all our neighbors are carried away by this coughing fit and buried? But Fannie was too sick to answer. She lay in their bed in the grip of a fever and sweated through the night. The doctor blew into the room, white like a sail before the wind and thin as canvas. His bag was empty. When Fannie and the doctor died, Abraham gathered Benjamin and Rebecca Kosofsky and traveled with them to the home of Rose Kosofsky Yachines, took her to collect Lena Kosofsky Rosen and Sonya Zelniker Kosofsky and together they trudged the forty hard miles to the Baltic Sea as the icy roads thawed and turned to mud. They sold their silverware, the samovar, all their pelts and the gilded frame that held the family photograph to book their passage on a steamer to New York. Besides the clothes on their backs, they had no possessions, but Charles Kosofsky of Kaliningrad gave them an empty steamer trunk to carry on board to hide their shame. The first day of their journey, Lena succumbed and her clothing went into the trunk. As passengers died, their clothing too went into the trunk, with crusts of bread and tins of sardines, an orange, cooking utensils and things they found or were given or earned, or traded for or noticed untended. When they landed, the men in coats said, Drop the luggage, Men this way, Women and children that way. Abraham told the others, Go. It’s more than we’ve ever had. Go where they tell you and hope to meet back here. The fewer we are, the sadder and richer we will be.

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Trade Rumors

davidbdale — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 03:39:31 +0000

—Dad, are you trying to trade me?
—What would make you say that?
—Mister Moyer said you offered me for his daughter.
—Not just his daughter, son. That was a package deal.

—Why would you want to do that?
—Do you mean why or do you mean why now?
—
—I don’t think you’ll ever be worth more.

—But I’m nothing but potential!
—
—What if I go somewhere else and thrive?
—That’s what I’m hoping.
—Oh, so you’re doing me a favor.
—
—Is it my grades?
—You think I care about your grades?
—I don’t know, but you can’t just trade your family!
—No? Your mother managed it pretty well.

—Is this something I can veto?
—You can beg. You know I like that.
—What if I’m not happy where you send me?
—I didn’t think you were happy here.
—I’m very happy here.
—You don’t act it.
—This is how a happy teenager acts, Dad.
—
—At least let me stay in the same school.
—With those grades?
—
—Anyway relax, there’s not much out there.
—Maybe your standards are too high.
—Why, because I won’t take on someone else’s liability?

—Dad, just admit you don’t like me and let’s move on.
—I couldn’t do that, son.
—You think it’s better not to say it?
—

—This isn’t fair.
—What, fathers and sons? It’s inevitable.
—If that were true, your dad would have traded you.
—Yeah, well. I might have been better off.
—Oh, Dad, is that what this is about?
—
—You think I won’t get enough chances living with you?
—
—Look. Grandpa was an asshole.
—Yeah?
—Yeah.
—Yeah?
—Yeah. You don’t have to be.

—So, what do you think of the Moyer girl?
—She’s cute, but she’ll never tell you the truth.
—Yeah.
—Yeah.
—Play some ball?
—Let’s play some ball.

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The Antidote

davidbdale — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 02:29:07 +0000

Although aspects of the procedure must be painful beyond enduring, I’m not among the noisy many who call it cruelty to harvest an essential medicinal from its only source, but I admit I don’t envy the donor. Her lips are blue from blood loss and the trauma of repeated donations, and chapped from breathing through her mouth, and nobody has heard her speak for weeks or seen her eat except through the tube in her nose. If we could keep her comatose, out of mercy we would, as we tried with her predecessor, but she and we are more likely to live if she’s conscious, medically speaking. She gives her marrow twice a day, not willingly, so that all of us can fight off the killing infection. For all her pain, she doesn’t make nearly enough, so thousands who die daily do so cursing her, not the disease. In the house where she was found were the dead or dying bodies of all her relatives, suppurating, bloated by the final stages and smelling of evil. She’d been living on god-knows-what, too young to use a can opener and weak from hunger but otherwise, to her perpetual sadness, inexplicably healthy. Since then she’s been in what is called my care, making more of what saved her so I can steal it. Before procedures, a metaphorical light will sometimes enter her eye with such subtlety I can’t describe what about her face has changed, nothing probably, a needle skipping, her own awareness, or mine, that there will be no youth for her. Our families had quicker fates. On efflorescent nights like these, when the staff’s been dismissed and every last breath sounds the hall, I give her more relief than is prescribed, in gratitude, and calculate at what cost we survive.

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The Yellow Pages

davidbdale — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 20:10:39 +0000

Had they been a less practical couple, my parents might have had children by accident. Instead, one night, before I was born, at the wobbly table in the breakfast nook, Dad drew a line down a page of yellow paper to separate the pros from the cons of Kids, then a second page for No Kids. Mom stirred the ice cubes in a diet cola with her pinkie, freely associating, and offered suggestions for Dad to codify and record. Lips closed, he beamed at his neat columns and marveled at his wife’s abundance and variety, then added imaginative mothering to the list. A common mistake is to neglect the second page, thinking it redundant. To a novice making that mistake at the very same table, in my rocket ship pajamas, on a list of little consequence, Dad would patiently explain that there is no opposite for chocolate ice cream, only alternatives: other flavors, different desserts, other foods entirely, no food at all, or chewing gum, to name a few. The opposite of a richly fulfilled man could be a richly fulfilled woman or a miserable bitch. Now, a sandwich eaten with the non-preferred hand leaves the writing hand free, so when they decided to renew their vows, I ate a grilled cheese and composed a list for Dad about staying together and one about splitting up. He didn’t thank me but sat down to edit while I poured drinks. Dad’s rebuttal to “get a fresh start” convinced me I’d never known him, or that writing the lists was not about balancing truth with truth. Since finding them, in times of doubt, I had treasured the yellow pages that had brought me to be, until I watched Dad move “permanent truce” from one side of a list to the other.

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Terrorist’s Wife

davidbdale — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 11:29:39 +0000

Something so good and pure at the core of a man like my husband hardens to a bullet in the forge of an inhuman world. He might laugh at me for saying so. He doesn’t need me to sing his praise. Those who don’t know him will never admit his humility. They don’t know how strife can temper a man, or that his failings can be strength. They’ve never heard him laugh or cry. (I know he wouldn’t want me saying this.) I’ve seen tears in his eyes at the mention of a baby in distress, but compassion propels him, even as he debriefs the other men with details of the sacrificed, past the whining flesh to the crowning beyond. That’s when his jokes are at their wicked best. That’s when they know he is their leader. Nobody is innocent, I hear him say, but action can purify. At night he has to impress only me. I contemplate the back of his head on the pillow. Nicks in his hair are all that remain of the violence of things that went wrong in the field, unless he’s dreaming of those troubles now. I breathe the endless night. This is the consummation of my life, to lie with his snoring champion’s body, and have it to myself. How many other women would trade with me! I lift the sheet and follow the line of his backbone as far as I dare and keep my motions small. I touch a place that makes me think of him, and gently a place on him that feels like a man, and remember times when we had no mission but one another and all the time in the world. I bite my lip to keep from crying out with the splendor of it all.

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Forgiveness

davidbdale — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:49:06 +0000

She was never my girl until you took her and now that I will never get her back, I have reclaimed her. She’s certainly no part of you. For coaxing her off the bus in her plaid skirt and knee socks and taking her shopping for makeup, I forgive you because I was not able to give her everything she needed. For confining her in the motel rooms, I forgive you because I have no choice. If black humor is all I get, then I will laugh in my hell about how she got to travel. We never found the time. I understand you worked as a team during my daughter’s ordeal. One of you was the kind one, then, whose voice I hear like syrup sizzling on the tapes; to you I’m grateful; the two of you I forgive. For closing her mouth, I forgive you. She had more questions, I know, than I had answers, and more than once I raised my hand rather than try. She stepped off that bus and never came home and I forgive you. You think I’m naïve but you don’t know me. I have a complicated understanding of my feelings, one that doesn’t change if someone thinks they’ve sighted her somewhere. I know she’s not alive and that you never meant to bother me. Not having factored into your thinking used to hurt but I’m over it now. The tapes are a consolation and an anguish. They show her in her discomfort to be hopeful to the end. Frames of it are all I have of her beyond a certain age. If you know where it is, and I’m not asking, I don’t want the body back. I know our bodies are but husks and nothing will make me mourn one.

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Life Plus a Day

davidbdale — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 13:38:44 +0000

I stole a brick from my neighbor’s house. With ease he had me convicted of stealing the whole thing, all three stories and the land it gouged, and rightly. We understand there is no difference. The one brick’s independence caught my eye. Almost unmortared it was and loose it seemed, nearly dislodged. In fact I needed almost an hour to pry it out with my ballpoint pen and a credit card. But it came free. And nothing fell when I took it away and used it to balance the barbecue. I would have taken each of them one at a time had I not been tried and locked in jail. Nothing, not even lack of need, would have stopped me once I started taking. You might think there are fewer temptations here but a sliver of soap is irresistible if another prisoner owns it. A preferred chair, the dry pillowcase, is wealth. We need to take it not own it. My cellmate tells me his brother came to visit, lifted a pack of cigarettes from the guard station, and was never released. There’s no release. Even the guards stay overnight. The longer we serve, the more time is added to our sentences. Already more of us are inside than out and neighborhoods of houses like my neighbor’s stand empty or are turned into prisons and the freshly convicted arrive every day looking hungry for whatever we have. I’m watching a serving of mayonnaise in a waxed paper origami cup that looks to be not well guarded. Either I will have it or I will render it distasteful. Sorry I’m cranky. I woke up on the wrong side of the argument. Will the last judge when he sentences the last of us kindly please pull the door shut behind him?

Too Like Truth

davidbdale — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 01:42:04 +0000

The kid who glared across my desk at me had stolen our petty cash. We’d trusted him with a job and with proximity and access or acted as if we had. Suddenly, we needed to fire him or have him arrested, or somehow get him to pay us back, or all of the above. It sickened us to see him in the office, sickened and infuriated us. His moping depressed us; on the other hand if he dared to laugh we felt like slapping him. I had to poll the staff at a meeting for approval to keep him around. The women held their pocketbooks in their laps. I know now that what troubled me then was how to tell the story. Among the details, I wanted to suppress his race. The truth seemed shabby and stereotyped. Of course, facts are no excuse for sloppy narrative, but there you are, if you want to be honest, stuck with what is. With no satisfaction, I’d gotten him to confess. When he finally admitted to taking the money, for the first time I doubted he had. I’d made it clear no other explanation would do. Perhaps he thought perversely it would save his job and for a time it did. I’d wanted to get rid of him, but now I kept him on to run errands and buy our forgiveness. I haven’t told it right. One thing is certain, that while he was making restitution and worried I might have him arrested I told him I didn’t care if he stole to make his Friday installments as long as he didn’t steal from us. What that was supposed to prove I don’t like to think. The day he paid us fully back I fired him from my life, I hope, forever.

Too Like Truth by davidbdale is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at davidbdale.wordpress.com.

Inaugural Address

davidbdale — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 14:51:07 +0000

Our country is a mess, my friends, and no president can do much about it. The economy is what you believe. You wanted change? Start believing. At most, and only if good citizens like you comply, a president sets a tone for the national conduct. If his example doesn’t persuade, he has no power to compel millions of citizens except by martial law. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. I’m sorry, this should be an auspicious occasion. You’ve traveled long distances to stand in the cold; you’re not here to be overtly threatened, but listen: I can veto but not legislate, appoint judges but not fire them. The Congress will not allocate me a penny to spend as I wish. I can, however, declare war and unleash annihilation wherever I like. What kind of job is this! My chief of staff has tried to explain with his favorite sports metaphors. The President does not play, he says: he cheerleads, he grandstands, he coaches. Perhaps others before me have, or maybe the chief doesn’t understand politics, or me, as well as he understands football. I have an agenda, America. You’d better impeach me now if you wanted a coach: it will take years to unseat me; I have lawyers by the boatload. Meanwhile, expect to see me travel a bit. They’ve given me a plane. Wherever it touches down is American soil. My friends, all we have done as a country, for good or ill, has brought us to this frigid day on the nation’s lawn amid monuments to our past achievements, blah, blah, blah. There is no looking back, friends. We’ve been at odds with this planet long enough. You will follow me or not, but I will make our presence felt in the world as never before.

Boy on the Roof

davidbdale — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 01:51:23 +0000

On the roof of our apartment building my son waited for his father to arrive so he could jump. Meanwhile I, the attending parent, persuaded the police chief not to upset, by storming the roof, what balance our child still clung to at the edge of a forty foot drop. Everyone wanted a show. Gawkers the patrolmen kept back on the pavement. Ladder trucks the fire chief held out of view. At such a height the boy was incongruous beaming against the placid sky in his badly stained t-shirt erratically pacing and suddenly very important. Not my arms, my voice, nothing could reach him. He wouldn’t see me. Has he been depressed? the negotiator asked me. It’s laundry day, I explained. They have it on tape. Talk to him, the police chief told me. Tell him you love him. Is that the right thing? I asked. The father arrived in a ridiculous car with a girl of course and talking into his phone. What the hell have you done? he asked me. The girl couldn’t stay in the car. She clung to his arm as if he needed steadying. A deputy peeled her away. Son! he called up; I’ve got you, son! There’s nothing to be afraid of! I saw my boy lean forward trusting at the edge of the world. Nothing to be afraid of! I saw his toes creep over. I can’t believe this was the plan. The girl came back and I slapped her hard, then tore into my husband with my nails and teeth and took him down before he could kill my boy. I didn’t know they had cops on the roof and one on the fire escape. I only know my baby cried out Dad! as he tilted and spun against the sky.

Boy on the Roof by davidbdale is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at davidbdale.wordpress.com.

Love is Like

davidbdale — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 20:48:44 +0000

The light I saw flickering in my wife’s eyes as we sat at the little table we use for dinners that don’t involve watching reruns and the radiant golds that shimmered behind her, framing the face I love best after my own, may have sprung from my devotion or may have been reflected flames from the house fire down the street, but the smell of smoke was no metaphor. Fire filled every window and the heat we felt from the sidewalk was peeling the faux stone façade from the front of the home, one of the finest on the street pre-catastrophe and for the time being standing on an exquisite lot. Where are the fire trucks?, we asked our neighbors, the charming young couple whose home would soon be a smoldering blight on the avenue. We didn’t call them, he replied. She looked at him and smiled without showing her teeth, as if they shared a secret joke. She hooked her arm around his waist; he pulled her shoulders close and together they gazed at the inferno. Were you home when it happened?, my wife was asking at the same time I asked, How did it start? She showed us a book of matches and smiled. Other couples, worried about sparks, wondered what was keeping the fire company. We’re alive and healthy and we have each other, she said. Still, I said. She wouldn’t let me take anything, he told me. I knew it!, she shouted. I knew your stupid stuff would come between us! Several cell phones sprang to life and frantically called 911. We casually strolled home in silence, deeply breathing the soft air spiced with others’ misfortune. Our fingers touched by accident, then interlaced like cards from two stacks in the hands of an expert dealer.

Perfect Season

davidbdale — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:05:44 +0000

Some teams just don’t have it; they suffer their greatest loss before the season begins. Others never win a game but end the season undefeated. My daughter plays for such a team. Perhaps you’ve heard of them, The Lower Sloughton Savings and Loan Mini-Mites, proud defenders of the league’s Most Consistent Performance title. They play a game much like soccer, on a soccer field with a soccer ball wearing soccer uniforms, but instead of stifling their creativity with “positions” or “defense,” they gleefully swarm the ball wherever it goes and, following a score, equally gleefully disentangle one another from the net of their own goal. Except for fans of the sport, they are a joy to behold. To watch the Mini-Mites, one might think they had never learned the fundamentals of the game, but as their coach I can tell you we practice often and hard, though it’s possible we disagree about what’s fundamental. I came to my position by default, as you may have gathered, the only parent of any player willing to suffer the criticisms of all the other parents. We are the very model of a different sort of team. We vote, for instance, before every game, whether to defend our goal or use it as an additional target. Though they are mostly ten years old, and girls, I call my players men. The captain tells me what she and the men have decided. We substitute on the basis of who has to potty. No team we face is as good as my men at keep-away, accidental collisions, and playing dead, and no team hugs, hugs everybody, like my men do when time runs out. On the way home from almost every game my daughter asks me, “Did we win, Dad?” I love that question.

Reasonable Suspicion

davidbdale — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 22:32:07 +0000

Doorbell. Door opens.
—There’s been a report of abuse at this address.
—Somebody’s already reported that you’re about to get hurt?
—There’s no need to threaten me.
—Good.
Door closes.

Doorbell. Door opens.
—I know why you’re upset.
—No you don’t.
—All right, maybe not, but I’m obligated to investigate.
—By what authority?
—Child Protective Services.
—Wouldn’t that be me?
Door closes.

Doorbell. Door opens.
—May I speak to the child?
—We haven’t established I have a child.
—Who’s that, Dad?
—Not for you, Chris.
—May I speak to your daughter?
—Chris is a boy.
—My report says a girl.
—Exactly.
Door closes.

Doorbell. Door opens.
—May I start again?
—I think you should. Next door.
Door closes.

Doorbell. Door opens.
—Why? Was there abuse next door?
—I would imagine so.
—Do you have a reasonable suspicion?
—I do. I suspect there’s some sort of abuse or neglect in every home, don’t you?
—Why would you say that?
—I grew up in one.
Door closes.

Doorbell. Door opens.
—May I ask you one question?
—If you answer one first. Who reported me?
—I can’t say. He wasn’t a mandated reporter.
—He volunteered? And what was his reasonable suspicion?
—Your child is too compliant.
—Compliant.
—Too compliant, too eager to please.
—I see. You had a question?
—Do you abuse your child?
—I imagine he would say so. If he thought you wanted him to.
Door closes.

Doorbell. Door opens.
—Do you have anything to say?
—In my defense? I have a theory.
—I’ll take it.
—I have reason to believe my accuser, who thought my boy was a girl, did not find him compliant enough.
—In what regard?
—In some regard. And not having gotten what he wanted, filed a complaint.
—That’s an outrageous and reckless allegation.
Door closes.

Déjà Vécu

davidbdale — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:16:23 +0000

Every shelf is stacked with books I’ve read and reread, or so it seems. This depleted room, these spine-cracked volumes rubbed of their wishes, cannot detain me long. If only the wider world offered something new instead of cheap diversions and bloodless familiars. I need a future. I would settle for a present. In the parking lot, the woman on her cell phone, the cop, the two nuns pushing carts are the same nuns, same cop, same woman I know from the last time, the same shopping carts, the same wobbly wheel. You say I’ve never been here but I remember it all and this argument. This is not the first time we’ve talked about coincidence and memory in this parking lot. Things recur, I understand. Weekends follow workweeks; people order the usual; we do the same thing every New Year’s fucking Eve, for Christ’s sake, I get it. Why don’t you admit that this is more than the seasons repeating and my subconscious? Everything has happened already. Pork loin is on sale again. This song is on the radio just like last time and you want to argue. Why do you keep asking me what will happen next? Whatever happened last time! You give me that look? The nuns roll by loaded with pork? The cop knocks on the window and asks if I’m all right. I back out into the nuns. Take your pick. You snatch the keys from the ignition. Like last time. I leave the car and stride halfway across that busy highway and wake up in the hospital again to your helpless fucking face. Don’t touch me. Don’t pity me. Don’t try to talk me down. You’re no help at all. I’ve never been hit by a car, you say? We’ll see about that.

Blood Feud

davidbdale — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 05:13:46 +0000

I will never be friends with Besmir Hoxha, but he didn’t let the baby die, so I cannot expect my children to hate his children. Besmir Hoxha’s brother Jetmir beat me with a stave he took off a truck along Rovena Road and kicked me while I was down. His brothers and Kastriot Moisiu meant to kill me, I’m sure of it, all because I had looked at their cousin Qendressa at the tavern. Why can I not look at Qendressa? I wouldn’t have shot Jetmir for any reason, but I was armed and they had me at a disadvantage. I was as surprised as they when the gun went off. For eight years after, I lived in fear, even though the courts acquitted me of Jetmir’s murder. I knew I could not live. You see the walls I built around my house and on top of that the shards of glass and barbed wire. I made myself a prison and filled the yard with hungry dogs that barked at every sound. My children were raised inside these walls. My wife and I couldn’t work. We lived on what we grew, but into our despair God sent a baby we couldn’t feed. We had eaten the cow. We had eaten the goat. My wife could make no milk. We wrapped the baby in the Gazeta Shqiptare and crept from our house to the house of Besmir Hoxha at midnight and left the baby on the doorstep and ran back home. For twenty-four hours we waited. The next night Besmir Hoxha called. You have made your point, he said. We do not kill babies. Your son is as ugly as you, but he is healthy and alive. He cries for his mother. You may come and pick him up tomorrow.

Executioner’s Apprentice

davidbdale — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:51:45 +0000

I never talk about my job but, since you asked, I’d like some extra copies of the paper for my church. So. By the time I arrive, the prisoner is strapped to this crucifixion table here, arms and legs spread like a snow angel but with velcro at his wrists, elbows and shoulders; ankles, knees and hips; and this one across his chest; powerless unless he’s telepathic or diabolically persuasive, or unless I’m a merciful girl. Don’t put words in my mouth. Just listen. I know I have a calling because they leave me alone with these pre-cadavers, each one a charmer, speculating about whether I wear panties, who thinks he has nothing to lose. Although I know, I ask him about his offenses; his lies go into my book. I tighten the forehead strap so he will see me when I want him to, and wedge the filthy mouthpiece in to stop his noise, and slap him hard to remind him to breathe through his nose. All of this makes him uneasy. I speak to him of forgiveness then, to send him quietly home, but first, I rest my hand on his chest to touch his humanity. As I recite the list of his victims and how they were hurt, I feel his heart remember and confess. I place my other hand between his legs until he understands there’s nothing I can’t do. I move my face above his face and ask him if he’s sorry. When I’m not satisfied, I pinch his nostrils closed. The first time tests the restraints. When he cries, I let him briefly breathe. I survey him about cruelty and whether he thinks the sentence he’s serving is unusual. Though he can’t speak, he makes himself understood. His answers go into my book.

Pushcart Nomination

davidbdale — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 17:33:45 +0000

Little Worm has been nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize by the editors of east to west: bicoastal verse, where the story appeared in the Spring ’08 edition.

My sincere thanks to PJ Nights and Ray Sweatman, co-editors, who placed the story into nomination. The odds against an actual award are very, very long, but so were the odds against this deeply appreciated nomination.

Please support the work of east to west by visiting their website and buying books through Lulu.

Read Little Worm here.

Squeegee Man

davidbdale — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:25:05 +0000

He slops his filthy water across my sparkling windshield and across my gleaming hood and over my shining fenders three mornings a week when I pause at his intersection, caught by the light. I watch him concentrate on sticky traces of bugguts and each time examine the star-shaped divot a pebble chipped from the glass precisely in my line of sight as I followed a beat-up construction pickup on the interstate a year ago, a breach in the shield which like a mote in my eye disturbs my outlook wherever I point my car but which has never sent out a crack toward the seal or grown any larger. Today, though, a droplet forms at the center of the star and dribbles toward the dashboard on the inside of the glass, and another after that, on the inside of the glass, and a third. I pay him a dollar every time he assaults my car, for long enough now that by today I might have bought him a windshield. Perhaps he’s put a new one into whatever he drives, financed by me. We should trade. I open the door as the light turns green and step out into the clamor of drivers wanting me to move. Somehow from the impact of my getting out, he has fallen to the street. As I help him up, I lift the keys and a wad of cash from his overall pocket and hand him back one of his squeegees, then run with his bucket away from the scene in search of soap and fresh water. When I come back, my car is gone but in my pocket a good day’s pay at nine in the morning and somewhere nearby, with a windshield that doesn’t leak, a car that will match these keys.

Two Giraffes

davidbdale — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 03:19:37 +0000

He’s never done me any good, as far as I can tell, nor any harm. I hope He’s as ambivalent about me. We’re at Halloween mass and the children have come as animals from the ark. Two giraffes are fidgeting in their seats beside me; bumblebees buzz in the pew ahead. Mom at my side only trembles, except that on cue she wants to be helped into kneeling and standing, as if the world depended on her posture. She knows those moments in the service better than her son beside her in his believer costume. That’s me, lapsed lazarus, drowned in the flood. As I watch the smiling animals proceeding down the aisle on all fours two by two, it occurs to me that those who want faith can’t have it, and those who have it never give it a thought. Mom’s had a stroke and doesn’t speak and doesn’t walk alone and so depends on me for worship. She doesn’t know I bring her here to sing because nothing else works. I see her sway when the hymns begin and catch a glimpse of something of that spark of the animal divine. Me she recognizes, I think, but not her church and not the people who know her here, and what she makes of the zoo in the pews I can only imagine, but the organ chords might as well be her own heart humming they are so familiar. And the chords in turn call out the words. And the words shape her tongue and lips and open her throat. “He daily spreads a bounteous feast and at His table dine,” somebody sings, “The whole creation, man and beast,” Mom puts her hand on my forearm and I help her stand, “And He’s a Friend of mine.”

Graphic Novel

davidbdale — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 12:16:55 +0000

He had leveled eleven trees to unobstruct his view of the gulf, trees he had planted in a neat row every six paces along his waterfront at a time when the gulf was the last thing he wanted to see. He’d been arrested and charged and brought to court for changing his mind, because the trees had statutory rights and he, apparently, did not; they’d been declared protected since he’d planted them and he, it seemed, was not. The trees had license to bully him. It was my father’s land, the son of the governor’s land, he told the judge, before it was mine. But the trees had standing where the governor’s grandson had none. The gulf came onto the land, he told the judge, and took the land by surprise and all who were on it, including the son of the governor, and swept them out into the churning salt and left the land bereaved, your honor. We all know what happened to your daddy, the judge replied. He plucked a flake of tobacco from his tongue. You’ve cut down some trees, son. How do you plead? From his oversized briefcase, the governor’s grandson produced a sizable chainsaw, which he raised to the bench. Impressive exhibit, the judge allowed. But I am not a cypress. He lightly spat. Whatever else he may have said was drowned by the snarling saw. The defense table soon was splintered. The gallery benches didn’t resist. The bailiff could have shot the governor’s grandson, and might have if he hadn’t been a friend of the governor’s son. Instead, he fled with everyone else and listened from the marble hall while the governor’s grandson and his saw brought down the jury box and the judge’s bench and every piece of wood a court contains.

Enough Asparagus

davidbdale — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 02:17:54 +0000

I feel as if I’d met you yesterday though it’s been thirty years and at my age that means I die tomorrow or at best the day after. So what shall we do this blue evening streaked with gray? If I’m to cook you one last dinner, I want to know you’ll enjoy it. If only you weren’t so complex! You love the simple joy of something simple, simply done, I know: a fish intact, its organs and bones excused, brushed with butter and heated until happy. That said, you also love a dish of flesh that fills your mouth with blood and tastes like something running for its life. Shall I start with what agrees with you or should I try again to make you resolve your dispute with asparagus? I think I know your answer. Let’s not argue with dinner. There is a time, or better an age, for picking fights with appetizers and waging war on desserts, but we have long outlived that age and found our peace with meals. From now on let’s try something new just once, if at all, and if we don’t love it immediately, leave it for the kids. I’ve tracked down something from the yard you might like, burrowing it was beneath the porch a day from entering our lives; I think it will grill nicely. I’ve paired it with the fruit I foraged from the back of your closet that has almost turned to syrup. Before I’ve finished cooking, something else will turn up, I’m sure. Every room can be harvested. We scarcely need to shop, now that all we’ve planted has come into season. The table is set. The candles sparkle like something new. I stand behind your chair in a bloody apron ready to push you in.