Black Coffee, fiction by Dena Rash Guzman

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Rusty

1-

If you were sit­ting here with me and I closed my eyes and asked you what col­or they are, you wouldn't know. You don't see me. The oth­er boy who loves me, I don't love him. I don't love him back at all, because I'm stuck lov­ing you, but he looks at me like I'm made of hap­pi­ness and choco­late milk. He looks at me like I'm a dream he nev­er wants to stop hav­ing. Every time I see him he asks me, “Sal­ly, when you take off them fake eyelashes?”

I don't wear fake eye­lash­es. He says when I look down, it's like cater­pil­lars are sleep­ing on my cheek­bones. He says he wants to take care of me and the babies he wants to have with me. He nev­er says you're no good, but no one has to say that. They all think it. Know it.

 You made me go to that hor­ri­ble doc­tor when I got preg­nant with your baby. You walked me there, smok­ing and silent. You paid the doc­tor, but when I came out of his office, you were gone. I walked home alone. You came home drunk long after mid­night and tried to joke about it. I laughed a fake laugh just so you would smile.

 The oth­er boy, he just smiles. I don't have to try to make him smile. I want to love him, but I can't stop lov­ing you, no mat­ter what you do.

One thing you haven't done in a good long while is show up here at home. You haven't even called. I watch the phone like it's a small child just about to wake up. It lays there, silent and peace­ful in its cra­dle. I check to make sure it's attached to the wall as often as a new mama checks to make sure her baby is breath­ing. My old friend Mona dropped by the oth­er night to see if I was okay. She was wor­ried because I have been miss­ing church. She heard I got fired from my job sell­ing tick­ets at the movie the­ater. I didn't get fired so much as I just stopped show­ing up after you left. I asked her to go home and call me so I could make sure the ringer isn't bro­ken, that the line is up and run­ning. When she called, I answered and hung up as fast as I could. She hasn't been back around. I can't find it in me to care. I am still scared that you tried to call and got a busy sig­nal at that very moment in time and didn't both­er call­ing back.

2 -

 We live just over the right side of the tracks. I still say we live here, even though you are gone. The trains all but run through our side yard. The ones that don't slow down on their way past nev­er catch my notice. It's the ones that stop that wake me from my mourn­ing and inter­fere with my rever­ie. If I'm sleep­ing, I wake up. If I'm doing any­thing else, I stop. I can see the plat­form from the bath­room win­dow. I run to look at the pas­sen­gers get off the train. I hold my breath as long as I can, imag­in­ing that if I can hold it till the last per­son steps down that the last per­son will be you. I make bar­gains with God. “If I can count to 100 before the tenth pas­sen­ger is greet­ed by some­one, he'll be on this train.”

It nev­er works.

3 -

Our radio broke. I can't afford a new one. Now it's just silence in the night, or the sound of trains speed­ing by. I went to see that oth­er boy last night. I cried to him. He said he'd buy me a new radio, but I don't want a new one. I want the old one, the one you used to tune and adjust. We lis­tened to shows togeth­er in the morn­ings some­times. We lis­tened to music when we were in bed togeth­er mak­ing love, sweat­ing late into the mid­west­ern sum­mer morn­ings. We caught the news before I went to work, while I made cof­fee and you smoked off your musician's rough late nights. I took it black, you took it with milk. Nei­ther of used sug­ar. Every­thing tast­ed sweet enough to us then.

4 -

I've tak­en up smok­ing and quit eat­ing. Cof­fee and cig­a­rettes – that's all I can stom­ach. I'm always in a dirty slip and rolled down stock­ings and a head scarf. My hair's always dirty and the sheets are always dirty. The cat's water bowl is usu­al­ly emp­ty and the sink is full of cof­fee cups. The only clean things are the dust­pan and clean­ing rags because I can't be both­ered to dirty them. I some­times do my make­up so that I look pret­ty for my mis­ery. I wear the Shal­i­mar you gave me only because of the mem­o­ries its scent car­ries to my mind, and to cov­er the odor of my body's des­per­a­tion. Our house is dirty all the time, baby. I keep mean­ing to clean it up for when you come home but when I stand up to sweep or wipe the kitchen table, I for­get what it was I set out to do, and go to look out the bath­room win­dow or shake the phone, or cry. I meet with the oth­er boy now and then. I only do it to steal his cig­a­rettes when he's not look­ing. I let him come over with a bot­tle of gin, and I let him tell me I have eye­lash­es thick­er than the for­est in June, but I don't love him. I love you, and I look at the phone and lis­ten for trains the whole time he's over. One day I know that just like you, he'll leave and nev­er come back, but I don't care. He puts no but­ter­flies in my stom­ach. I could nev­er wait for his train the way I wait for yours.

Dena Rash Guz­man is a Las Vegas born poet, visu­al artist and writer of short fic­tion who now lives on the fam­i­ly farm in north­west­ern Ore­gon. Pub­lished in var­i­ous jour­nals and antholo­gies on paper and on the inter­net, her first col­lec­tion of short sto­ries will be pub­lished in 2012 by HAL Pub­lish­ing, a Shang­hai-based inde­pen­dent Eng­lish lan­guage press. Dena is the edi­tor of the arts and lit­er­a­ture jour­nal Unshod Quills. (www​.unshodquills​.com)


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Mather Schneider Interview Reposted

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Rusty

Math­er Schnei­der is a 40-year-old cab dri­ver from Tuc­son, Ari­zona. He is hap­pi­ly mar­ried to a sexy Mex­i­can woman. His poet­ry and prose have appeared in the small press since 1993. He has one full-length book out by Inte­ri­or Noise Press called Drought Resis­tant Strain and anoth­er full-length com­ing in the spring of 2011 from New York Quar­ter­ly Press.

I have declared you the most inter­est­ing troll in the small press uni­verse. How about that?

Ha! You know just how to com­pli­ment a guy, Rusty. Thank you, my eyes are welling. I declare you the most down to earth edi­tor in the small press.

In all seri­ous­ness, you have an addic­tion to telling the truth, even when it hurts. Is that for some effect, or do you feel as if you have a mis­sion from God, like the Blues Brothers?

I am no great truth teller. It’s just that I don’t like to be bull­shit­ted or to bull­shit oth­ers. There is no big plan or sweep­ing phi­los­o­phy behind what I do. I do believe in being hon­est, but do not believe in uni­ver­sal truth. I act on instinct most­ly, just like I write. When my instinct tells me I am full of shit, I try to lis­ten to that too. I can admit when I’m wrong or have over-react­ed or have writ­ten a shit­ty poem. That hap­pens a lot.

Your poems are tight and true, some of the best in the small press, I'd say. How long does it take you to come up with enough mate­r­i­al for a book, and how do you decide what goes in and what gets left out or trashed?

Wow, thank you for that, Rusty. I only have the one full length book of poet­ry, and it cov­ers a span of about ten years. I was writ­ing and pub­lish­ing in small jour­nals long before then (first pub­lished poem in 1993) but I didn’t think most of it was worth putting into a book. For book-wor­thy poems, I looked for stay­ing pow­er, poems that you would want to read more than once, more com­plex poems, poems with meat, longer poems. I want­ed vari­ety, in tone and struc­ture, and I tried to look for any con­nect­ing imagery. In DROUGHT RESISTANT STRAIN I put in a lot of poems that involved the nat­ur­al world, desert ref­er­ences, dry­ness. But in the end the poems had to be the most emo­tion­al­ly and artis­ti­cal­ly rever­ber­at­ing. David Bates, the pub­lish­er of the book at Inte­ri­or Noise Press, helped a lot with this process.

In the var­i­ous small press faux fisticuffs you've had, with HTML­giant and var­i­ous oth­er edi­tors and lit­mags, what always comes through for me is that your accusers don't real­ize that what you're say­ing is pret­ty accu­rate. It's as if your per­sis­tent smart-assed­ness some­how lets them off the hook for what they pro­duce that's pure bilge, no mat­ter who writes it for them. Why do you sup­pose that is? I mean, you've pub­lished, what a thou­sand or so poems? Your 'attacks' have the true gen, as Hem­ing­way would say, and are backed up by these poems, yet no one seems to be able to give you the ben­e­fit of the doubt that you know what you're talk­ing about.

My “per­sis­tent smart-assed­ness some­how lets them off the hook”, that’s fun­ny, I think you’re on to some­thing. I am rude, I do not take the seri­ous writ­ers as seri­ous­ly as they take them­selves, and some of them just get so mad at me that they lit­er­al­ly can’t see straight, and stop hear­ing. And then of course after­ward they can’t read my poet­ry or sto­ries with any objec­tiv­i­ty or per­son­al hon­esty. They don’t care what I’m say­ing, all they think is: look at this left-foot­ed fool yelling in church. I know peo­ple don’t like to be crit­i­cized. I know it hurts, but there’s more to it than sav­ing peo­ples’ feel­ings, isn’t there? There’s more to it than this hyper­bol­ic per­ma-smile. The idea of get­ting stronger from crit­i­cism or of rolling with the punch­es nev­er occurs to them, only moral out­rage. If a per­son gets whacko-upset at some rude com­ments from me, then that tells me they must not have heard any­thing like that before. They must nev­er have been crit­i­cized, real­ly crit­i­cized, in their whole lives. They must nev­er have been told they are full of shit, or to shut up. Can you imag­ine what pro­tect­ed lives most of these writ­ers have lead? So many of them come from com­fort­able, priv­i­leged back­grounds, and it just gets old lis­ten­ing to them com­ple­ment each oth­er, watch­ing them worm around and rub against each oth­er, play­ing grab-ass, writhing and gleek­ing in ecsta­sy over luke­warm lasagna. Every­one likes to talk about vari­ety and bal­ance in antholo­gies and mag­a­zines, with equal air-time for males, females, beings of col­or, dinosaurs, etc. But, when all the writ­ers who make up this rain­bow of artis­tic vision come from sim­i­lar eco­nom­ic back­grounds, sim­i­lar edu­ca­tion and train­ing in the art of mod­ern poet­ry, it’s no sur­prise that all the poet­ry sounds pret­ty much the same, with the same tone, and with all the edge of a but­ter knife. Have you seen the Native Amer­i­can poet J.P Danc­ing Bear late­ly? He looks like Rush Lim­baugh and is now writ­ing like every oth­er MFA clone. The idea of a mix of voic­es or a bal­ance in jour­nals or antholo­gies is almost always pure boloney. How many cab dri­vers they got in those fuck­ing antholo­gies? There is a very des­per­ate, pathet­ic need to be nice, to be fair, to be liked. Writ­ers want so bad­ly to be thought of as intel­li­gent, wise, cre­ative, attrac­tive and above all, cool. It’s about con­trol and dis­tance and smooth vel­vet. It becomes more impor­tant than the writ­ing, it becomes fash­ion. What hap­pens when some writer is found to have cheat­ed on his wife, or lied some­where, or made fun of the female sex, or lost con­trol some­how? He is cru­ci­fied, his face is stomped on, his head is chopped off and he’s buried with a smug and sar­cas­tic eulo­gy. Then they turn around and hype their inter­net bud­dy, “Sleep­ing Inu­it” as the next great lit­er­ary genius. 

What's your favorite poem that you've writ­ten, and can we pub­lish it here with the interview?

Four of the best poems I think I’ve ever writ­ten are sched­uled to appear soon in NYQ and Rat­tle and I can’t give them to you, though I’d like to. From what I can choose from, I’d have to say BETWEEN US AND IT, which is a poem in DROUGHT RESISTANT STRAIN. It’s one of the many poems I’ve writ­ten that were inspired by my wife, who is Mexican.

BETWEEN US AND IT

 

I’m a white Amer­i­can and she’s Mexican
but we’re try­ing to make it work.
We’ve moved in together.
There’s a dump­ster out­side our bed­room window
15 feet away,
a cement block wall
between us and it,
a gray cement block wall that’s full of air
and means nothing.
The dump­ster belongs to the oth­er apart­ment building,
the last of the expen­sive white ones
before it turns Mexican.
At night me and my girlfriend
are fright­ened by people
throw­ing things into the dumpster.
The nois­es are sud­den and vicious, like thunder
or war, as if they are so proud,
as if it was the surest thing in the world
to be throw­ing away a microwave at midnight.
Lat­er in the night we hear the Mexicans
tak­ing things out of the dumpsters
to fix and resell.
The nights are hot in the desert in the summer
and in our sweaty sleep
the blan­ket on the bed gets pushed
and mashed together
between us.
We call it “the border.”
Even on the hottest nights we can’t
toss it away.

 

You and I argued once briefly about the (bale­ful, for me) influ­ence Bukows­ki has on inter­net writ­ers, and you point­ed out your sources of plea­sures in read­ing are a half-gen­er­a­tion removed from him: Hem­ing­way, Celine, Miller. Why not more contemporaries?

I was drunk when we argued, which is noth­ing new. For some more con­tem­po­rary names: Fred Voss was an influ­ence on me, Jim Daniels, Hay­den Car­ruth, Cor­so, Berri­g­an, Ger­ald Lock­lin, Von­negut, Cor­mac McCarthy, Tom Rob­bins, Steve Rich­mond, James Cain, Ray­mond Chan­dler, Stephen King. I often like the work of Charles Harp­er Webb, Ron Koertge, Bob Hic­ock. I like Jim Valvis and Mark Wis­niews­ki and Mike Pow­ers and Dave New­man and David Her­nan­dez. William Tay­lor Jr. hits the mark some­times and so does Justin Hyde. Not too many gals. Sue me. In gen­er­al, though, I don’t feel that many writ­ers right now are doing much at all, which is arro­gant as hell to say, and I don’t mean to say that my stuff is the end goal, because I know it is not and that I have a long way to go. But there doesn’t seem to be much ener­gy in the air, it’s too stuffy, too care­ful. There’s always this prob­lem with lit­er­a­ture, it seems. And the poets who aren’t too care­ful or are just too lazy, peo­ple like Rob Plath, who seem to come from an emo­tion­al­ly hon­est and boil­ing core, but who just don’t work quite hard enough with the words.

You're one of the few writ­ers I know who write about your job as a major por­tion of your writ­ing. Did the poems just come that way, or did you decide you were going to pro­vide a work­ing-class man's point of view in a world where that's begin­ning to be rare?

I’ve always writ­ten about my life. I don’t have much imag­i­na­tion, I’m not that kind of writer. I am more of a chron­i­cler or jour­nal­ist. When I stray from real­i­ty too much I stut­ter and trip myself up, and my bull­shit detec­tor starts wail­ing. I’ve writ­ten about being a land­scap­er, a jan­i­tor, a bar­tender, wait­er, a bill col­lec­tor, a fish­er­man, work­ing in a lum­ber mill, all that stuff, as it came along. For the last sev­er­al years I’ve been a cab dri­ver, and believe it or not it’s the best job I’ve ever had. Ha! Not brag­ging. There is noth­ing con­trived about it, it’s just life. What am I gonna write about? Ele­phants in my refrig­er­a­tor? Remov­ing my organs and putting them in jars before I go to sleep? 

What do you do for fun besides read­ing and writing?

I like to bicy­cle and go for very long bicy­cle rides, either alone or with my wife. We go to the desert a lot, and the near­by moun­tains, for hik­ing and driving. 

Talk about the new book that's com­ing out from New York Quar­ter­ly. Is it more of the same mate­r­i­al you've been writ­ing about, or some­thing new?

It will be out some­time this year, and will be called HE TOOK A CAB. I know, I know, same old sub­ject. Sor­ry! I think this book is very good, and most of the best poems have not been seen on the net, poems that are new and strong and that I am very proud of. Poems to hang my som­brero on. It will be about 100 pages, with a car­toon drawn by me on the cov­er, but much dif­fer­ent than DROUGHT RESISTANT STRAIN. I’m excit­ed about it. And of course there’s that nag­ging stu­pid hope in the back of my brain: maybe it will catch fire. 

If you could ask all your crit­ics or fel­low com­bat­ants one thing, what would it be?

Stop mak­ing fun of my name. 

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Waiting for the Man, fiction by Don Jennings

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Rusty

He didn't flinch when the met­al roof popped on the far side of the trail­er. Just kept look­ing out­side, eyes lev­el, gaze steady. Fin­ger­tips rest­ing light­ly on the windowsill.

 Cops has been watch­ing Lester from the pine for­est out back for days. Maybe weeks. It was hard to remem­ber how long. Seemed like a cen­tu­ry he had crouched at this win­dow, watch­ing and wait­ing. He wouldn't give the bas­tards the sat­is­fac­tion of mak­ing the first move. Besides, he had one more cook to finish.

The floor of the trail­er sagged and creaked as he tip­toed, bare­foot, into the hall­way. He paused by the only door that lead out­side and checked the shells in his twelve gauge again. It was still loaded.

A chem­i­cal vapor per­me­at­ed the mobile home, and grew stronger as he approached the cen­ter. Where the hall­way opened into the kitchen, the stench became over­pow­er­ing. Lester pulled his tee shirt over his nose. He approached the stove and adjust­ed the flame on a gas burn­er beneath a stain­less steel pot. After a moment, he returned the knob to its orig­i­nal set­ting and left the room.

Inside the bath­room, an errant eye­brow cap­tured his atten­tion. He stepped clos­er to the mir­ror and exam­ined it. Took a pair of tweez­ers from a shelf and plucked. Anoth­er over­long hair appeared above the oppo­site eye, sym­met­ri­cal­ly locat­ed. He plucked it, too. Now the longest strand was back on the orig­i­nal side, as if they were grow­ing while he watched. He plucked anoth­er, and another.

A half hour later–maybe the fol­low­ing day, or with­in the next few seconds–he found him­self star­ing above the image of his own bare shoul­der, lost in the depths of the bath­room behind him. Imper­fec­tions in the reflec­tive glass became ocean swells. He leaned to one side, right­ed, then list­ed to the oth­er. The motion felt grace­ful, com­fort­ing, a mother's pen­du­lous solace to a col­icky child. Again he swayed to and fro, inten­tion­al­ly this time. But, as he leaned right a third time, his move­ment stopped abrupt­ly. His eyes shot wide. His teeth clenched, and the mus­cles in his neck snapped tight like a tow chain engag­ing a bro­ken down pick­up truck.

Both eye­brows were plucked clean.

***

 Lester laid the torch aside and raised his hood. With the hem of his shirt he pushed sweat off his fore­head, onto the con­crete floor. A tiny mud pud­dle formed in the dirt beside his boot. The weight of the hel­met made his neck hurt, but he hat­ed to take it off. Folks had stared at his eye­brows all morn­ing, and the hood pro­vid­ed a mea­sure of camouflage.

No one had said any­thing at first. Then the straw boss had wan­dered by, shoot­ing the shit and pick­ing up time tick­ets. “Got damn, Lester, who you sup­posed to be? Alice fuckin' Coop­er? ” The name had stuck. By mid morn­ing, when­ev­er he'd encounter anoth­er iron­work­er at the water cool­er or the bath­room, they'd just cut him a side­long glance, slap leather gloves against den­im pants to release a cloud of dust, and mut­ter, “Alice Coop­er. I be damn.” He'd pre­pared a sto­ry about singe­ing his eye­brows over a camp­fire, but no one had both­ered to come right out and ask.

Damn this bunch, any­way, he decid­ed. Maybe it was time to scram­ble again. Stay­ing put too long nev­er worked out, any­way. Mus­cle Shoals had been cool, but then things went south with Amy. She'd start­ed talk­ing about mar­riage, and babies, and he hadn't been able to cook dope fast enough to keep her hap­py. So he'd lit out for Huntsville. That was okay for a while, too, until he'd sensed the cold, steel-mesh grip of a police net encir­cling. So he'd run out on his apartment's deposit under cov­er of a mid­night thunderstorm.

Now he was perched atop Sand Moun­tain in the north­east­ern cor­ner of the state. One week he drove to Tren­ton for cold tablets from the phar­ma­cy, then up to Chat­tanooga for toluene from an indus­tri­al sup­ply house, and final­ly back home to Bryant for a bot­tle of Red Dev­il lye and a cook. A few weeks lat­er he would reverse the order, always zigzag­ging across state lines, scor­ing dif­fer­ent items in dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties in a des­per­ate effort to mask his trail. Try­ing to con­fuse the data­base in each locale that tracked sales of key ingre­di­ents. Yeah, the tri-state area had advan­tages. But maybe it was time to move on from here, too.

Lester want­ed to run, to fight, to kill and be killed. To end it all, and take some­body with him. That could only mean he was over­due. He removed his hood and laid it, lens up, on the gear train he'd been attach­ing to a J box. Wiped his hands on his pants pock­ets and stalked off to the bathroom.

Locked in a stall, he fished some pow­der onto the tip of his razor knife. There wasn't enough left for anoth­er good bump, so he dipped again and did it all. What the hell. Licked the bag­gie clean, laid it on the toi­let paper dis­penser, and began to piss. He heard the bath­room door open behind him. His nose burned and itched, but he fought the urge to honk it on up. That would be too obvi­ous to who­ev­er had just entered. He'd fin­ish snort­ing behind his hood.

He zipped his pants, opened the stall door, and left.

Back at his work sta­tion, he real­ized he'd left the bag­gie lay­ing in plain view on the dis­penser in the bath­room. Licked clean, but still, god a mighty, how care­less. Maybe this was his last day at work, any­how. A com­fort­able ball, like fuzzy cot­ton muffs in win­ter, began to form around his ears. Sweat streamed down the back of his neck. Yeah, it was get­ting time to cut a trail.

He placed his hood upright on his head with his left hand. Jerked his neck to drop it into place, and pulled the trig­ger on the MIG. He would hide behind his mask for a while. Life was good, inside the cocoon. He'd weld some parts, safe and pro­tect­ed, in the glow of the arc behind which no one else could see. Lester was invisible.

***

 The woods were silent, but he knew they were out there. Knew by the occa­sion­al tell­tale glint of moon­light off a badge, a pis­tol bar­rel, the fat bald head of a sheriff's deputy. Besides, he could sense their pres­ence. Feel their men­ace. Bring it on, cow­boys, he whis­pered like a prayer. Bring it on.

He stood upright and stretched his back, lost for a moment in the swirls of plas­ter on the bed­room ceil­ing. Aban­don­ing his sta­tion at the win­dowsill, he drift­ed into the hall­way and idly checked the shotgun's load once more. Wan­dered into the kitchen, not both­er­ing to cov­er his face, breath­ing deep of the pun­gent odor till his eyes watered and he felt dizzy. Until he felt some­thing more than dizzy.

A crack like a bull whip sound­ed from the woods behind the trail­er. Once, twice, then silence again. There was no win­dow near­by to peer out of. The sound had been fire­crack­ers, car doors. Match­ing shots from a .22 rifle. Lester was out the front door and bound­ing down the steps with­in sec­onds, bare­hand­ed and wear­ing only cut­offs. The time was now. Wait­ing was full.

He tore across the dark back yard, dodg­ing obsta­cles by mem­o­ry, duck­ing beneath an emp­ty clothes­line, around the well's encase­ment, and into the black­ness of the mid­night bri­ar patch. A famil­iar flash of light shone in the dis­tance, moon­light on a bil­ly club, at the far side of the black­ber­ries. Then dark­ness again, and silence. Bram­bles tore at bare legs as Lester dove into the thicket.

As he charged out the far side of the bri­ar patch, eyes wide and head swing­ing like a gun on a tur­ret, he stepped into a hol­low in the earth and turned his ankle. He col­lapsed and lay still on the damp earth, eyes sky­ward, chest heav­ing. When he touched his leg, the fin­gers came away bloody.

The police were no near­er nor fur­ther than they had been before his charge. Come get me, you chick­en shit bas­tards, he screamed, voice­less­ly. There was only black­ness in every direc­tion. The only sound was the pit­ter pat­ter of the sneak­er-clad feet of the agents as they beat a strate­gic retreat into the dis­tance, where they would regroup and plan their next move.

 

Don Jen­nings lives alone in a tiny apart­ment stuffed with books in Rich­mond, Ken­tucky. He apol­o­gizes for being a stereo­type. His sto­ries have been fea­tured in Wrong Tree Review, A‑Minor, Dew on the Kudzu and else­where. A com­plete list of his pub­lished sto­ries may be found at:

http://​oakn​pine​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​1​1​/​0​2​/​r​a​n​d​y​-​l​o​w​e​n​s​-​g​r​e​a​t​e​s​t​-​h​i​t​s​-​c​o​m​p​i​l​a​t​i​o​n​.​h​tml

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First Water, fiction by Court Merrigan

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Rusty

 

The sand­cher­ries and chokecher­ries are in full blos­som in their ordered rows along the bound­aries of the set-aside and in irreg­u­lar swathes branch­ing into the grass, erect blos­soms at full atten­tion to the sun and the bees at them slug­gish with pollen. They have brought shov­els and hoes and are at work clear­ing the ditch and dig­ging in cor­ru­ga­tions for first water, Delia and Sloan and Herb bent silent to the work with Alexa walk­ing along a hedgerow, trail­ing her fin­gers in the flow­ers, loos­ing petals and send­ing bees aswarm. These crawl over her hand and arm with abdomens pul­sat­ing, leav­ing minute trails of pollen but not sting­ing. They start­ed at the headgate at dawn and are work­ing their way down the hedgerow. They came alone. Dad is asleep on the floor in the spot where Delia cov­ered him with a blan­ket when he fell from his chair, putting a pil­low under his head as he curled up like a child cring­ing from night­marescapes. If such nights were not yet habit­u­al they’d become reg­u­lar enough and as Dad offered no expla­na­tions they ceased to think of ask­ing. In pre­vi­ous years come June first water would be all he could talk about but this year he has said noth­ing. Nonethe­less first water would arrive on the same day this year as oth­ers and they every­where observed their neigh­bors mak­ing prepa­ra­tions so maybe it was like Herb said, that he just want­ed to see if they’d do it on their own. So they went out that morn­ing to work. It is sur­pass­ing strange to be with­out him.

 

The ditchrid­er pass­es by on the far side of the ditch. They wave and he rais­es a fin­ger from the steer­ing wheel and cross­es the wood­en bridge a quar­ter mile up and returns to their headgate. Drags a clank­ing chain from the pick­up and runs it through the T‑bar and is clasp­ing the pad­lock through the links when they get to him, breath­less and Herb still hold­ing a hoe.

 

“What are you doing?” says Delia.

 

“Lock­ing this gate,” says the ditchrid­er, spit­ting tobac­co juice neat­ly through the gap in his front teeth.

 

“It’s our gate!” says Herb.

 

“So it is.”

 

“You can’t lock it! What are you doing?”

 

The ditchrid­er rat­tles the pad­lock to make sure it is secure then straight­ens his back and tries to crack his neck. “Got a work order.” They remain star­ing, unim­pressed. “There’s a mis­take the landown­er can take it up at the yard.”

 

“It’s a mis­take,” says Delia. “Why would you be lock­ing our headgate? Can’t you see what we’re doing?”

 

“I saw,” says the ditchrid­er. “But I got the work order. I can show it to you if you want.”

 

“Did you talk to Dad?” says Herb. “Did you?”

 

“I didn’t talk to any­one. I just read the work order.”

 

“How about our oth­er headgate?” asks Sloan.

 

“The one across the way there?”

 

“Yeah. With the wil­low grow­ing beside it.” He points.

 

The ditchrid­er eyes it. “That one goes, too. Look, I just get the work orders.”

 

They rush back across the set-aside, leav­ing their tools scat­tered though Dad has said a hun­dred times they are not even to get a drink of water at home before the tools are prop­er­ly stowed. They have to pull Al along bel­low­ing. She was drawn to the chain, fin­ger­ing the links that lay coiled about the headgate like a skele­tal python around prey it can nei­ther sub­due nor release. Dad is sit­ting cross­legged on the floor, tast­ing the dull morn­ing air, jaws gummed with the accre­tions of slack­jawed sleep, head resem­bling a tim­pani attacked by a mali­cious mallet-wielder.

 

“Dad! Dad!” yells Herb. “The headgate! They locked the headgate!”

 

He blinks at the chil­dren gath­ered round him, each keen­ing in their own way and Alexa scrap­ing the floor with bare­foot soles, bel­low­ing and twirling, out­landish actors in a far­ci­cal min­strel show.

 

“They put a chain right around it, Dad,” Delia says.

 

“Fig­ures this would be the one thing they’d be effi­cient on,” Dad says.

 

“What?” says Delia.

 

“What do you mean?” says Herb.

 

“I didn’t lease the rights out but three days ago,” says Dad. “You got a prob­lem on your ditch, it might take them three weeks to see to you. You close down your headgate, now, that’s a dif­fer­ent story.”

 

“You leased the rights?” says Delia.

 

“What does that mean?” asks Herb.

 

“It means some­one else will be using our water. And we’ll get a check for it.”

 

“Who?” says Sloan.

 

“Who­ev­er bids on it,” says Dad.

 

“I don’t under­stand,” says Herb.

 

“What it means is no irri­gat­ing this summer.”

 

“There’s not going to be any water?” says Herb.

 

“There’s not going to be any water. Hey now. Come on. Don’t you all look at me that way. Come here, Al.”

 

But she will not come. She is bel­low­ing as her foot scrapes the floor, look­ing at it as though it is a for­eign mem­ber. She push­es Sloan and then Delia away. Dad gets to one knee and shak­i­ly rises.

 

“You’d think I’d just giv­en you more a load more work,” he says. “You’d think you’d be hap­py. You should be thank­ing me. You should be run­ning around happy.”

 

“Is it for­ev­er, Dad?” asks Delia.

 

“No. It’s a five-year deal. Option for five more. If we want the water back we can get it then.”

 

“What are we going to do all sum­mer?” asks Sloan.

 

“What­ev­er you want,” says Dad. He smiles and grunts and gen­tly tou­sles their hair. “That was the whole point of the set-aside and every­thing to start with.”

 

“That’s it?” says Herb.

 

“That’s it.”

 

“You sure it’s going to be okay, Dad?” asks Delia.

 

“I’m more than sure. Now go on. Go run around like you ought to.”

Court Mer­ri­g­an has been pub­lished wide​ly​.You can find links to his writ­ing here. He lives in Wyoming's banana belt where he works at East­ern Wyoming Col­lege. This is his sec­ond sto­ry in Fried Chick­en and Cof­fee. Here is the first. 


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Back on Track

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Rusty

Well, the site is up now, and I plan on new content–interviews, fic­tion, essays–here in the next few days. One of the ways I used my free time in the last month or so is to read. I will have much more to say on this book.

It's a good one, all around, but I have some thoughts on how it could have been a lit­tle bet­ter, and I'll try to explain why in a longer post soon. Until then, hang tight, peo­ple. FCAC is rar­ing to go. Please spread the word FCAC is back. Our traf­fic is in the toi­let. Thanks!

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Deana Nantz Reviews Harry Brown's "In Some Households the King is Soul"

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Rusty

Har­ry Brown’s In Some House­holds the King is Soul is a col­lec­tion of poet­ry cel­e­brat­ing the human spir­it. Brown’s eclec­tic vari­a­tions of form invite you to trav­el along with the poet, mus­ing in thought and rec­ol­lec­tions of God, nature, and fam­i­ly. Brown’s poems, sim­i­lar to his pre­vi­ous col­lec­tion, Felt Along the Blood, unearth the poet’s con­nec­tion to the cos­mos; how­ev­er, the poems have a touch of final wisdom—as if the poet has come full-cir­cle, tran­scend­ing his own truths. With met­ri­cal pre­ci­sion and rhyth­mic play­ful­ness, the poet, com­pa­ra­ble to Walt Whit­man, ques­tions his own rev­e­la­tions and is forth­right with self-contradictions.

Brown’s col­lec­tion is divid­ed into five seg­ments, the first titled “smörgås­bord,” which estab­lish­es the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry Roman­tic tone with a touch of down home south­ern appre­ci­a­tion. “BRAHMIN” states that “Those who know / say Thor’ eau.” Wit is car­ried on in sec­tion two with “God is All Ears.” Exact dic­tion and syn­tax are indica­tive of the poet’s rev­er­ence: “Blessed / it is / to lis­ten; / divine, / to hear.”

As a true Roman­tic, Brown places empha­sis on sen­si­bil­i­ty. And although he is an esteemed foun­da­tion pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish, Brown val­ues the heart over the mind in part III, homi­ly: “I hold no zeal on mat­ters epis­te­mo­log­i­cal. / When friends, how­ev­er, stare me down to make me stand, / I hot­ly shout “Heart !” with rea­son for my pas­sion” (“In Equal Parts”). Imagery and pow­er­ful action verbs ani­mate nature in part IV, farm. Con­fes­sion­al verse takes you to Brown’s beloved Paint Lick farm where he com­munes with nature and his chil­dren. “Becom­ing Cow; Or, Eter­nal Arrival,” is a med­i­ta­tion on birth, cat­a­logu­ing the mag­nif­i­cent event from the begin­ning, “Snout and jaws first through, / next a thin mask shows skin tight over fore­head and eyes, the shy rest hid inside a large heav­ing oven, / a black vol­cano straining”—to the end where the moth­er cow is cen­tral focus: “stand­ing in the morn­ing sun sur­vey­ing in sibylline / silence the west pas­ture, unaware in her soli­tude / that the herd lying togeth­er in the east mead­ow / as on every oth­er morn­ing as this hour / lounge and chew and stare, look­ing off into.…”

In “Song of Myself,” Walt Whit­man says, “I am not stuck up and am in my place.” Har­ry Brown’s hon­est voice sooths the ear with allu­sive poems in part V, folks. Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Arthur Miller, Shake­speare, among oth­er great pre­de­ces­sors trav­el along­side the poet in spir­it as he pon­ders life’s enig­mas. In the poem “Andy,” Brown asserts, “they should give of hori­zon only in every direc­tion / but back to andy / I’d add our minds are seers / for ear­ly fear of giv­ing / pre­dicts the grown soul.” Emi­ly Dick­in­son believes “The Brain—is wider than the Sky—,” and In Some House­holds the King is Soul, Brown’s heart is more expan­sive than a body of water, over­flow­ing with spon­ta­neous emotion—river deep.

 

Deana Nantz holds an MFA in cre­ative writ­ing and an MA in lit­er­a­ture from East­ern Ken­tucky Uni­ver­si­ty where she cur­rent­ly teach­es mod­ern dra­ma.  She also teach­es high school Eng­lish and writes poet­ry and fic­tion.  Her poet­ry has been fea­tured in Par­a­digm and an inter­view she con­duct­ed with Chris Offutt is in the lat­est edi­tion of Jel­ly Buck­et.

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The Revival, fiction by Rachel Cunningham

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Rusty

The ush­er man with his bel­ly pooched out in a light-blue suit takes our tick­ets, spits off the side from his chewin tobac­cer, and then con­tin­uin on, he brings us to seats that are bleach­ers offa soft­ball field. Up front is a wood­en plat­form stage with a can­vas top on the dusty field. It don't seem holy to be spit­tin tobac­cer like that, so he must be con­fused with church bein held on a soft­ball field, but some­how I don't think so. Grown-ups seem to know what they're doin and why. They make every­thin they want into fit­tin with some kin­da truth, then call­in it the same as truth; and, then they get mad at us youn­gins for knowin the diff'rence.

I don't say noth­in about how it seems a sin­nin thing to do, spit­tin chew, and in fact I don't need to cause now my two old­er broth­ers are laugh­in about it. Gram­ma tells them boys "hesh up" but they don't hush none, they nev­er do, so Gram­pa takes them off behind the bleach­ers for what he calls a man's talk. He gives my broth­ers too much faith in knowin how to have a man's talk. They're a cou­ple a hoss­es you nev­er see get tamed, and if you know hoss­es, then you already know what don't change. I see Gram­pa knockin a tin a chew offa my old­est broth­er, and I think to myself, it won't make no diff'rence, he'll pro­l­ly get more offa the ush­er man.

Mean­time, Gram­ma wig­gles her­self and me down the bleach­ers to where we sit togeth­er "just us girls" like she's oft to say. She comes up snug to me like a hen, so close to where I can smell her home­made farm soap smell. My maw­maw, she's so big and hap­py. She looks all sorts of lady­like in her yel­low dress, white church gloves, and tan straw hat cov­erin her soft white curls. Gram­ma hands me a piece of hard water­mel­on can­dy, and then she hands me my own Bible. I don't know how she found it. I give Gram­ma a smile to show I'm a sport, but truth told, I cain't stand to be here. The can­dy don't taste as good as usu­al, with my throat dry n' dusty as the soft­ball field isself.

When the boys and Gram­pa come down the aisle of our bleach­er seats, I open up my Bible and refuse to real­ize them boys are near to me. Thank­ful­ly, Gram­pa sits between me and my broth­ers, but I keep pre­tendin to read Scrip­ture and mean­while get lost in my thoughts.

It's awful, what with peo­ple wan­tin to do the right thing and all, which for Gram­ma and Gram­pa means comin down to the revival, some two towns and near­ly a whole coun­ty over, that took an hour in the car with my wild hoss broth­ers pinchin me the whole way. Now we're here and I thought it couldn't get worse, but I been to these before and it's comin back to me, the mem­o­ry of how it goes. I do love my Mama and always will, but right now, I know it's her fault that we're here and I wish it twas her instead.

Mama left us last month, mean­while sayin her good-bye like it twas a good thing, goin and givin her­self a bon voy­age at what hap­pened to be my own birth­day par­ty. Truth told, that made me mad, except the cake was one of the best Gram­ma ever made. Gram­pa cooked up a pig roast and Gram­ma made all the fix­ins, and they had every­one over in the back of the small farm­house, the kin­da place with enough farm to feed and care for your own kin as you go. Not so much able as they once was, even a youn­gin like me knows it wudn't no small thing, this par­ty, though proud as it gets, Gram­ma and Gram­pa would nev­er say nuthin but "eat well and good y'all" and mean it.

They invit­ed fam­i­ly, some farm folk who help out from time to time, and neigh­bors we've known since the old­en times, one of which brought a whole deer in such a way that didn't seem char­i­ty so it was tak­en in good grace. But once word spread that a wid­ow of bare­ly one year, Mrs. Sal­lie Kate Jack­son, was fix­in to leave for Hol­ly­wood, then most cer­tain­ly half the town showed up, and I reck­on that extra deer meat from the neigh­bor saved the day.

There was talk about Mama always tryin to get above her raisin', which I know to be part­ly true, and yet this bon voy­age seemed now to make it all true. Mama dressed up too much, wearin bright-red lip­stick and too much per­fume, dancin around too much with her new boyfriend, a city feller, an out­sider of the worst kind, Mr. John­ny (the Yankee—who was called so in full behind his back, with even the more tol­er­a­ble folk call­in him so). I learnt what Mama and Mr. John­ny said by eve-drop­pin what peo­ple repeat­ed o'er and o'er, as though too much was said about makin piles of mon­ey from movies like Miss Liz Tay­lor cause Mama is pret­ty just like her.

What I know that oth­ers don't is that ever since Miss Tay­lor mar­ried a sen­a­tor from Vir­ginia a few years back in 1976, even before Dad­dy was gone, that's all that got into Mama's head: it was how a celebri­ty could be livin near our parts, though they wasn't tru­ly our parts, but facts didn't seem to mat­ter in that regard, a Hol­ly­wood star was in our parts. All she want­ed was news about Miss Tay­lor, and in the end, I reck­on Mr. John­ny only helped with the thinkin that a life of rich peo­ple could be hers too.

It's a hard shame, truth told, with Mama gal­li­van­tin to Cal­i­for­nia with a man that makes my head hurt. He spits whilst talkin, and he talks an awful lot with a chalky-squawky accent and noth­in off the hard edges on his words, like you got to cov­er your ears to make em not sore inside. Worst of all, he put fool's idears into my Mama about her bein too good for this back­woods town she only ever knew. I get sore with out­sider words like hick and back­woods, but I know my place as a youn­gin, so I keep my feel­ins to myself, but I most cer­tain­ly do not like Mr. John­ny, no sir I do not.

It's now cause of Mama these church folk think we need savin, since word about my Mama got out faster than green grass through a goose. They said Mrs. Sal­lie Kate Jack­son was all but leav­in her kin for dead, even the youn­gins they said, which you cain't alto­geth­er blame with them ornery hell­cat boys but what of the girl they said; and, worse off, Mama goin with some out­sider feller nobody knew from Adam but for his car broke down at Joe Lilly's sta­tion then next he's goin round town like he's one of a hun­dred gen­er­a­tions, goin and takin one of their own; and, sure, they all knew she was like Miss Liz Tay­lor, but not in the looks they said.

And poor Dad­dy, you cain't for­get him. Town folk brought him up all o'er again, and how he must be turnin in his grave. I miss my Dad­dy awful, truth told, all the time, not just when peo­ple care to men­tion him. He passed on not so long ago in a mine acci­dent, but nobody for­gets him since he died a hero for savin his crew. I like when folks bring him up on the by and by, and when they get to rec­ol­lectin. They say I look the spit­tin image of my Dad­dy, but from what I seen, he looks like his own Pa, my Gram­pa, who helps me remem­ber Dad­dy even more than pic­tures on account of their face, hands with dirty nails, and the same raspy voice from minin work.

For sure us youn­gins are goin onstage at the revival for hands layin. We'll get the tongues and the water splashed all over so the clothes are see-through, and for sure there's half my school class some­where in this soft­ball field, in the bleach­ers, in the chairs on the field, or even sit­tin under the tent right up close. I didn't think to wear an under­shirt with my white dress that don't fit to start. Even if we are two towns over, this Preach­er is some­body, and sure near all of east­ern Ken­tucky is here I reck­on. Round these parts, my Dad­dy, Mr. Char­lie Ray Jack­son is leg­end and most cer­tain­ly his soul is with the Lord; and, there­fore, in keepin his youn­gins on his same right­ful path, which is not where his wid­ow is goin with her Yan­kee feller, then an inter­venin of the high­est sort is bein called upon for the wel­fare of their souls. I can feel it most cer­tain­ly, more and more, since I been noticin looks, and I believe it ain't cause my broth­ers are hellcats.

Gram­ma and Gram­pa want a fresh start they say. For the past month, Mama has been a mail­box ghost with her post­cards comin in from around the coun­try since Gram­ma and Gram­pa are old-timers with the phone by sayin long-dis­tance costs too much. Mama don't write that great, so it's post­cards for us whilst they take their sweet time dri­vin to Hol­ly­wood. Sit­tin here and lookin for redemp­tion from sins is like one of these post­cards that come with­out noth­in on them some­times, just a quick hel­lo and "Love Mama". One day I'll have my own pen to decide what gets writ for me, but as it stands now, it just ain't my place to say what's so.

I'm tak­en from my thoughts and pre­tend Bible-readin by my broth­ers get­tin noisy. I cain't stand them boys. Sure enough, they get back to their ways despite the man's talk, laugh­in and cussin all qui­et and muf­fled enough so Gram­pa cain't notice with his bad hearin. I sus­pect them boys drank Grampa's whiskey back at the house. But no way am I sayin so. They ain't got rules about hit­tin girls, even the ones they seem to like.

The revival starts, and after a few songs and the begin­nin of a ser­mon with a much longer one yet to come, the men in the light-blue suits come to our aisle and we're brought towards the stage. The boys didn't see this comin like I did. For once they hush up. I walk behind them with their heads low­ered and I won­der in my always hopin kin­da way, maybe the church can help them? They're both so tall and dirty lookin all the time, but get­tin up on stage, they look scared and hum­ble. I look down, not wan­tin to meet eyes with any­one I might know, and tru­ly givin this savin a chance, with all my hope in this Preach­er who might help. I hold my Bible close, feel­in like a sin­ner for pre­tendin to read it before, and hopin God ain't mad for that.

The Preach­er starts with my broth­ers, and it's almost like I'm not there, qui­et and off to the side, hands fold­ed, lookin down, tryin to pray though it don't seem I'm doin it right but I hope so. The boys soon come out of their qui­et state and start actin like them­selves again, whis­perin to each oth­er, comin up with some­thin no doubt; and, mean­while the Preach­er gets goin on the bat­tle of God and Satan. He gets to hoovin and wavin his hands UP AND DOWN my broth­ers to chase off evil spir­its, sayin "in order to be RIGHT, you must look to God for His LIGHT, and hold the Lord close to you in faith and in SIGHT, and we ALL MUST attack the Dev­il with GREAT MIGHT!!" I hear AMEN from the stage, from the audi­ence, from all over, AMEN.

He's wavin round my broth­ers, still like I ain't up there, qui­et and standin off the side. The Preach­er shouts, "THE DEVIL MAKES HIS WAY INTO YA, but you got­ta PUSH HIM OUT, you can't let evil take a HOLD a' yer SOUL." He's pushin his hands OUT. The peo­ple out there, so many peo­ple, they put their hands up and they PUSH OUT along with the Preach­er AMEN. My broth­ers both lift their hands and start cryin, beg­gin for for­give­ness, and I cain't believe it. The whole revival cain't believe it. These two boys of Char­lie Ray Jack­son and his dis­gracin wid­ow are touched by the SPIRIT! They're bein SAVED! AMEN!

My old­est broth­er gets on the micro­phone when the Preach­er gives him a turn to pub­licly renounce Satan. He starts out AMEN then starts cryin and car­ryin on about sin, how he knows he's a sin­ner, how the Dev­il won't leave him alone and what it makes my broth­er do. Then he changes into some tongue speakin like he's got­ten car­ried away by the Spir­it, but then he finds a way to slip in cuss words with­out peo­ple catchin on, so then I know he's fakin it. But as soon as I know it, he gets to talkin about me.

He's talkin right into the microphone–right to the whole soft­ball field, our fam­i­ly, our neigh­bors, my school from two towns over, the church of ten gen­er­a­tions that's always known us and our kin–he gets to talkin about lust in his heart, watchin me undress, how he wants to be with me, touch me, and then he cain't help but start to laugh­in and so does my oth­er broth­er, and it's the two of them cack­lin for all to see. The Preach­er grabs the micro­phone and hits both my broth­ers HARD with it. Peo­ple stand in their seats, oth­ers rush the stage, every­one shouts cra­zier than a fox get­tin to the hen house. Gram­ma comes and puts her shawl around me so I cain't see, then she shuf­fles me away, my best white shoes get­tin dusty from the field, and I start cryin, I cain't help it, but my heart is sunk cause now there's noth­in for us if the church don't work.

We make our way to the parkin lot and get in the car. Gram­ma puts us both in the front seat, rolls up the win­dows, locks the doors, and real­izes she don't have the keys. She don't know what to do. She makes a deep breath, and cracks the win­dow. Turnin to me, she pulls me close and snug­gles me in the shawl, and I rest my head on her, calmin down. She has a han­ky and wipes my tears, tellin me, "…hesh girl, you're okay now, hesh up sweet­heart, my good girl, you're okay now.…"

No one is in the parkin lot, so we sit there qui­et, lookin out the car at noth­in, which is when I notice the hills out in the far away. There's always hills, that ain't noth­in new, but some­thin about them is pret­ty with a cer­tain light meanin the start of sum­mer before it gets hot and hazy. We sit there in the car, wait­in for Gram­pa and his car keys, and I want this time to last and not for my broth­ers to come back. Some­how the Bible is on my lap with the edges of its leather cov­er as soft as Gramma's hugs; and, in my own deep sigh, it hap­pens to where I feel that with all this soft­ness put togeth­er, I might have to give the new start a chance, on account of how good­ness seems to find its way inside of badness.

Rachel Cun­ning­ham—also goes by Rachellie242, likes to read at open mikes & has since the ear­ly 90s at about 20 or so venues in Chica­go, Boston, New York, and Eng­land [where she stud­ied at Leeds for a year], and is scant­i­ly published/just at Sham​pooPo​et​ry​.com thus far. She's been writ­ing fic­tion and poet­ry for a long time, and is start­ing to sub­mit work more seri­ous­ly now.

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New Poem by Charles Dodd White

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Rusty

Old Bee Colony in a Bro­ken Down Homeplace


You and I, we have come to the relic

Blight­ed with hob­nails, slammed tight to plumb

Where the secret city of insects once

Thrived. The comb, brit­tle as grave­ly sunk bones

Is a sur­prise, a tear in time to cheat

The use of what we should car­ry away.

I set the pinch­bar and you laid on strong.

Three ham­mer­strokes and the clap­board popped free,

So we could build some­thing out in the woods,

Sling up tim­ber for the deer camp which was

Real­ly more of a beer camp, truth be told.

But then we found the colony, some small

Geom­e­try of dirt that exceeds what 

We could do with true lev­els and scaffolds. 

See how the bees ripped through these ash chambers

Pocked like the rain torn stat­ues of dumb gods,

And hear a des­o­late communion

Of silence when they left a griev­ing song

For us to find in the Octo­ber dust.

 

Charles Dodd White was born in Atlanta, Geor­gia in 1976. He cur­rent­ly lives in Asheville, North Car­oli­na where he teach­es writ­ing and Lit­er­a­ture at South Col­lege. He has been a Marine, a fly­fish­ing guide and a news­pa­per jour­nal­ist. His fic­tion has appeared or is forth­com­ing in The Col­lag­ist, Night Train, North Car­oli­na Lit­er­ary Review, PANK, Word Riot and sev­er­al oth­ers. His nov­el Lambs of Men, a sto­ry of a Marine Corps vet­er­an of World War I in West­ern North Car­oli­na, was pub­lished by Casper­ian Books in Fall 2010. He is cur­rent­ly at work on anoth­er nov­el and a col­lec­tion of short stories.

 

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Frackers Finding Some Opposition in PA

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Rusty

frack­ing in Dimock PA

I said I wasn't going to post much about frack­ing in Penn­syl­va­nia, but this was too big to pass up:

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Cit­ing poten­tial­ly unsafe drink­ing water, Penn­syl­va­nia called on com­pa­nies drilling in the Mar­cel­lus Shale nat­ur­al gas for­ma­tion to stop tak­ing waste­water to 15 treat­ment plants by May 19.

Tuesday's announce­ment was a major change in the state's reg­u­la­tion of gas drilling and came the same day that an indus­try group said it now believes drilling waste­water is part­ly at fault for ris­ing lev­els of bro­mide being found in Pitts­burgh-area rivers.

Gas drilling that uses mil­lions of gal­lons of chem­i­cal-laden water has rapid­ly grown in the past three years in Pennsylvania.

In oth­er major gas-drilling states, drilling waste­water is kept out of rivers large­ly by inject­ing it deep under­ground into dis­pos­al wells. But in Penn­syl­va­nia, some drilling waste­water is treat­ed by sew­er author­i­ties, large­ly in west­ern Penn­syl­va­nia, and dis­charged into rivers.

Those waste­water plants, how­ev­er, are ill-equipped to remove all the pol­lu­tants, and Penn­syl­va­nia still allows hun­dreds of mil­lions of gal­lons of the par­tial­ly treat­ed waste­water to be dis­charged into rivers from which com­mu­ni­ties draw drink­ing water.

The state Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion cit­ed ele­vat­ed lev­els of bro­mide in rivers in west­ern Penn­syl­va­nia in its announce­ment. More.

 

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Wounded Knee, fiction by Jason Stuart

Posted on April 2, 2011 by Rusty

"They picked me up in their space­ship about noon," Austin Grantham says to me while pulling up an apple crate to use as a stool. I’m sit­ting out­side the Smith’s Farm Sup­ply and Gen­er­al Store shelling peas because my dad thinks it’s good for me. My dad and I don‘t always agree on such points. Austin’s sip­ping some­thing out of a cof­fee cup that def­i­nite­ly ain’t cof­fee and looks off toward the hori­zon, his long white hair blow­ing a bit in the wind. Cul­lo­den County’s still dry as a bone, last I checked, but I reck­on that nev­er stopped any of these guys anyhow.

“Aliens, I mean,” He starts in again. He’s got the quaint­est grin on his face and I know he’s get­ting excit­ed about it. I’ve heard this sto­ry before, but it’s always dif­fer­ent and I’ve got three more bushels and not a lot else to do.

“They had me drugged pret­ty bad there for a while, so some of this is still a bit hazy to me. They were lit­tle fuck­ers, ’bout four feet five or so, all of them. Green eyes. Didn’t care for ’em, tell the truth. Any­how, they had me tied down to some kin­da alien hos­pi­tal bed and was get­ting ready to stick them probes up my ass­hole and all that shit. Well, I don’t know, but I reck­on they nev­er picked up a dou­ble join­t­er before and you’d think with all that souped-up space tech­nol­o­gy they got they’d have used some­thing stronger than plain old rope.

“So, I popped my arms out that hemp right quick and clocked one square in his lit­tle gray jaw. Cracked in six pieces from the sound it made. Then I kicked two of the lit­tle shits in the face a time or two and after that they was all mak­ing tracks for it.

“I got the rest of the shoe-string off my hands and feet and col­lect­ed my wits about me again, also my jeans. I was def­i­nite­ly in a space­ship, all right. The ceil­ings were real low. Had to stoop quite a bit just to get around. I made a gan­der about the room I was in to see if there wasn’t noth­ing I couldn’t use as no weapon of some kind. As luck would have it, one of them dropped his laser pis­tol on the ground in his hur­ry to scam­per out the door. I snatched it right up and made my way fur­ther up the ship, a lit­tle more spring in my step now that I had a nice piece of artillery in my hand and noth­ing stick­ing up my rear-end.

“I made my way up the fuse­lage of the ship. For such a small bunch of shits, they sure built an awful long bunch of hall­ways. I caught a quick glimpse of a gang of ’em head­ed my way. I took at ’em with my blaster, but the damn thing only turned out to be a fuck­ing TV remote. Next thing I know, all the walls light up with thir­ty two chan­nels of any­thing you can imag­ine. Well, it at least star­tled ’em good, as it did me, but I was quick­er to catch on and took advan­tage. I pitched the damn remote and beamed one of ’em right in the eye. He went down like he meant it and tripped up anoth­er two. That left just one to square off against me and he knew he didn’t have the sand, so he made like a baby and head­ed on out of there.

“After that I made a bee-line for the cock­pit. I didn’t have no trou­ble with the feller at the helm; he lit out like a match soon as I poked my head in. Next thing I knew, there was a bunch of real loud pop­ping sounds com­ing from the back of the ship. I looked out the win­dows and seen all these lit­tle met­al con­trap­tions shoot­ing off the side of the space­ship. Escape pods, I figured.

“Well, that had me rat­tled for a minute, ’cause I knew that meant it was just me and a big emp­ty ship with no one at the stick. And I felt sure they hadn’t had the cour­tesy to leave it on auto-pilot for me. Shitasses.”

***

I first met Austin Grantham when my fam­i­ly moved here from Atlanta last year and I was wor­ried, at first, about being able to go back for col­lege. It was after the storm and all that big jail­break stuff had qui­et­ed down. It seemed kind of cool at first to be mov­ing to some place sort of famous, but the new of that wore off fast. I remem­ber when we first turned down the road to our house and I saw some guy (who lat­er turned out to be our next-door neigh­bor, Cole) dri­ving a wag­on pulled by a team of oxen. That was about the time I start­ed miss­ing Atlanta.

Austin had walked over to say hel­lo and offer up a hand as we unpacked. He lived right across the street from us. Turned out he’d built our house. Hindsight’s 20/20, I guess. My dad shook his hand and he helped us in with all the big stuff. I noticed he seemed awful­ly strong for an old dude.

One time, a bud­dy and I were out front at my house work­ing on a physics project for school one day as Austin rode up the street on his lawn mow­er. He had an old Dodge some­thing-or-oth­er, but nev­er drove it any­more. “She’s retired,” he’d say. He parked in front of my house and eased over to see what we were doing.

We got halfway through explain­ing what a Rube Gold­berg machine was and he said he knew all about it. Said he’d helped an old friend’s son build one once some years back then warned us not to get our hopes up on tak­ing the record for size, cause that one was a “doozy,” as he put it. He offered to help and we let him drill some holes in some ply­wood for us. It was actu­al­ly pret­ty nice of him. I prob­a­bly would have made a botched job of it myself.

***

“Well, I had to think quick.” He con­tin­ues. “She was steady bak­ing for the dirt and me stand­ing there hold­ing the damn bag. First thing, I had to kick the arm­rests off the rock­ing chair just so I could sit the hell down. Damn thing had two sticks instead of one and that shook me. Get­ting the thing under con­trol took a lit­tle doing, but direct­ly I got the hang of her han­dling. There ain’t much land, sea, or air that I can’t jam the gears on, son. She flies a lit­tle like an old spit­fire. Learned on those old boys before I start­ed drop­ping the hot stuff over Cambodia–but you didn‘t hear me say that.

“She’d gone into a spin real bad and I kicked hard to pull her out, but I pulled her out all right. After that, it was clear sail­ing for a bit. And, son, that bird could sing. I can’t accu­rate­ly fig­ure how fast I was going, ’cause all the con­trols and gauges was writ­ten in Space-Jap. But, I know I was at least one better’n Mach 5, and that ain’t piss­ing around, son.”

***

Austin used to be, by most accounts, pret­ty hard­core. No one around has much to say against him dur­ing the old days. He had flown crop­dusters even before the war. Dur­ing Viet­nam he pilot­ed F4’s and sent more than a few com­mies to the “hot place,” as they say.

After that he came back and start­ed crop­dust­ing again. And on the week­ends he’d dri­ve up and down Cul­lo­den Coun­ty from Col­lierville to Coal­wa­ter see­ing how many cops he could get to chase him. This was some­thing he did for his own enjoy­ment. The Cul­lo­den Coun­ty Sher­iffs final­ly caught him one day and took him in on reck­less endan­ger­ment. They beat the blue hell out of that man. Tore his knee all to hell. Kicked him so hard in the head one eye turned blood-red and still looks pink today. Folks say that’s what turned him. Oth­ers say he was always off.

He keeps a scare­crow in his front yard for no rea­son. At least none that he’ll ever give us. He wears the same clothes almost every day: old fad­ed Levi’s and den­im shirts. Even in the sum­mer. He’s got a close­ly trimmed beard just as white as his hair except for the tobac­co stains from his pack-a-day habit. He always offers to get us all we want, but I don’t smoke, nor do any of my friends. He let me try real moon­shine once and that was awful.

He's got an old black dog named Bob. Same as every oth­er dog he’s ever owned, peo­ple told us. Guess he likes things sim­ple. Bob tends to fol­low him around half the time grin­ning like an idiot. I like Austin, but I real­ly hate Bob. He gets in our garbage a lot.

***

“Got the radio a‑going good and tuned to a coun­try show. Loret­ta Lynn was hum­ming as I broke atmo. That’s a fine feel­ing, don’t let ’em fool you. Had a tin­gling in my toes that tick­led me half to death. Cold up there, though, so I dipped back down over Shang­hai and burnt across the night.”

Austin paus­es here to spit and I have to switch bas­kets and notice Mrs. Agnes stand­ing out­side the store watch­ing us. I think she’s always afraid I’m steal­ing some­thing out here.

“You ought not lis­ten to him,” she says. “He ain’t nev­er had sense enough to pour piss out of a boot”

Austin doesn’t even hear her any­more, I think. He takes a sip and moves right along. He’s at his favorite part because he always gets a lit­tle jumpy right here and chuck­les a lot.

“Didn’t get halfway through Cali ’fore I had them damn Apache heli­copters after me. Fuck­ing Yan­kee gov­ern­ment bas­tards. They was slap­ping rock­ets at me left and right and I was slid­ing that heap all over the sky duck­ing and dodg­ing. And if there was a but­ton to fire a laser or shoot a bomb any­where about me, I nev­er found it. I was begin­ning to think these Mars­men didn’t know the first thing about advanced weapon­ry. Soft­head­ed sons of bitches.

“Since shoot­ing was out, on my part at least, I took them blue­coats south­east to Mon­u­ment Val­ley and start­ed weav­ing in and out of them cracks and gorges. Sure enough, that had ’em pop­ping like fire­crack­ers upside them moun­tains. Whooeee! That was a sight. Nev­er a sequel to that in a life of Sundays.

“I touched down in a lit­tle cove in Jamaica. And parked her out of sight and foot­ed on into a lit­tle beach town I used haunt back in my ser­vice days. I hocked a cou­ple twen­ties I had with me for some rum-mon­ey and took a seat at this lit­tle out­door bar called Moek’s. Twitchy sort of place, but a good spot to sip a beer or piña cola­da and kick ‘em back for a few.

“Feller at the bar asks me ‘what can I do you for?’ and I holler at him to pour me some rum with a whiskey chas­er and stick some ice in ’em see­ing it was hot enough cook hog on the asphalt. He goes in that the only drink they serve cold is Red Stripe Beer and how it’ll do me one just as good as them oth­ers. I tell him I got no time for beer. I need some­thing with some pep. Then he starts on about Red Stripe Beer being 15 per­cent alco­hol con­tent which I well know is a damn lie. Ain’t no beer one bet­ter than 6 per­cent that I’ve come across. He goes in then about how it’s all dif­fer­ent in dif­fer­ent coun­tries and I’m get­ting aggra­vat­ed and tell him to shut his ass about Amer­i­ca else I’ll have to slap the black out of his mouth and on and on like that we went ’til, direct­ly, I don’t recall how, I wound up with a tall glass of Red Stripe Beer in my hand and was suck­ing it down like it was God’s own gro­ceries. I declare that was good beer and worth the 80 cents I paid for it, too. So, nat­u­ral­ly I paid anoth­er 80 cents and then anoth­er and he kept ’em coming.”

***

With his knee gone bad, Austin took to work­ing in a lit­tle shop next to the gen­er­al store: Grantham's Car­pen­try, Appli­ance, Out­boards and Air­plane Repair. Build­ing cab­i­nets and tables, fix­ing out­boards or small engines, appli­ance repair, that kind of stuff. As far as I know, no one's ever dropped a plane off for him to fix, but I bet he knows how. Appar­ent­ly some­where in there he’d tak­en the time to build a house and sell it. Least­ways, he made enough mon­ey to keep him in tequi­la which he sam­pled from frequently.

He had a five hun­dred dol­lar smile, as he put it, since he had half his teeth kicked out by the cops and the oth­er half pulled to make room for a fake set. He car­ried him­self like a twen­ty-year old man, despite the age, the booze and a poor diet. Aside from tequi­la, all I ever watched him eat were ham sand­wich­es and hon­ey-buns he bought out of the store.

Once, my mom had me out help­ing her weed the front lawn. She likes to have a clean yard at all times at the expense of my video games. Between her and my dad farm­ing me out to do odd jobs, like the one I’m doing, it’s a won­der I ever get any­thing done.

We tossed all the pulled weeds into a card­board box that we were going to burn. Then Austin came over and asked if he could have them. I shot a half weird look at him, but didn’t think too much of it. It was Austin, after all. My mom asked what on Earth for and he explained that we were pulling up sweet grass and that it was good to eat. Then, he pulled a big hunk out and stuck it in his mouth and start­ed chew­ing like a damn cow. I shook my head and sat down on the car bumper, glad, at least, for a short break. Then he takes some and hands it to my mom and urges her to try it. My mom always tries to be polite and it usu­al­ly gets her in trou­ble. So, nat­u­ral­ly, not want­i­ng to be rude she sticks some in her mouth, too, and goes to gnaw­ing on it. ‘Yeah it is sweet,’ she’d said and turned to me giv­ing a ‘what the hell?’ look. Mom, it’s Austin! I want­ed to yell at her. But, I didn’t.

***

“I don’t recall now how many I had, all told, aside to say I woke up face down in a sweaty bed and short a few more twen­ties. I stood up and had a look around. I wasn’t sure where I was. I had to pri­or­i­tize. First things first, I took a piss. That took a minute. Slow­ly, I remem­bered the beer and the bar­tender and Jamaica. Then I tried to remem­ber how I got there and that part was com­ing up fuzzy. I had the vague impres­sion it had involved some kind of fly­ing, but the exacts of it escaped me. But, then, I had worse prob­lems on the way.

“I pulled my jeans back on and spent half an hour cussing and look­ing for my shirt before I remem­bered I wasn’t wear­ing one in the first place. So, I stole one out the clos­et of the room I spent the night in. Kind of a check­ered blue and white deal, short sleeves. I did hap­pen to notice the pair of women’s panties beside the bed, but didn’t think enough of it at the moment.

“I stepped out the door and head­ed back the way I thought I come, that being toward the bar. I found that same bar­tender, I assume, and give him the third degree on what hap­pened. He claimed I tipped him plen­ty and took off with some Cuban woman half an inch taller than me. Well, that didn’t make a heap of sense. I’m nev­er one to tip a man too much. It ain’t my style. It did at least seem to offer an answer to the panties I’d seen, not that I real­ly need­ed one badly.

“What I did need was a clear con­cept of where the hell I’d come from and most impor­tant­ly how the blue hell to get back. I walked into the main mar­ket area of the town, not know­ing exact­ly what I was look­ing for, and rather hop­ing it would just find me. And it did, of a sort.

“This woman comes up to me, lays a nasty one on my face and rubs her leg up and down the back side of mine. She was about the height the man at the bar described and looked it, too. She spilled half out the lit­tle red dress she had on and that didn’t hurt my eyes a whole lot. She had a face to club a hip­py for and legs long as you like, I don’t care who you are. She was stacked up.”

This part is kind of new. There was a woman last time I heard it but she didn’t fac­tor in much and was cer­tain­ly not as high­ly praised in her descrip­tion. Makes me won­der what inspired the change. Maybe Austin got lucky here recently.

“ ‘Baby,’ she says to me as I’m try­ing not too hard to fig­ure out who she is and why she’s so keen on me. ‘I thought you be in the bed still. You drink too much last night.’ Well, that was a fact. I stared her up and down a time or two more and gen­uine­ly had no mem­o­ry of her what­so­ev­er. She start­ed in about how hap­py she was to be my wife and how hap­py our life was going to be togeth­er and five or six oth­er things of the kind that I only half heard as I stepped on down the block, telling her I had to see about a thing with a guy with a boat, which wasn’t but half a lie. She was fine to look at, but I had her right off as a Yan­kee gov­ern­ment spy done fol­lowed me down this way. May or may not’ve been, but either way the last thing I need was some for­eign woman nip­ping at my heels every­where I go. A wife’ll bring you to harm, son. Remem­ber that one alone if noth­ing else.”

***

Austin was mar­ried once that I know of to a woman named Bertha Ann Mosley from Chero­kee Coun­ty. Some mayor’s daugh­ter or some­thing, but she left him right after the war, I think. She took their son with her and sup­pos­ed­ly had it fixed so Austin nev­er got to see him any­more. At least that’s what I heard.

There’s a lit­tle creek that runs through about a half mile behind my house. I used to walk back there and sit by the bank and pitch rocks at the water, just me and my thoughts. Austin found me back there once and cussed me pret­ty good for being the one scar­ing off all his cat­fish. Claimed it used to be the best fish­ing hole this part of the coun­ty ’til I came along. At first, I was just irri­tat­ed at him for inter­rupt­ing me, but then I did kind of feel bad. I had this image in my head of him com­ing out here to this same place, doing just about the same thing, sit­ting and think­ing. I could see him there with his fish­ing rod, only in my head there still were no fish, just him and the world all alone.

After that we would throw bread­crumbs in two or three days a week get­ting them back used to it being a good feed­ing ground. Then Austin showed me how to bait a worm on a hook just right so it wouldn’t wig­gle off or get stole by a too-clever fish. No one had ever showed me how to fish before. Wasn’t long before we got to where we catch a few, or most­ly Austin does. I usu­al­ly just sit there and hold my pole and lis­ten to him spin yarns about all the bull­shit he half makes up. He talks about atom­ic bombs going off and earth­quakes and giant tigers and crazy cults and about the Grady broth­ers and a lot about some guy named Hank who was, I think, their uncle or some­thing. It’s tough to keep track of. I got that he knew them all, and that Hank was some­body at least as crazy as Austin is. But, he died a long time ago. I guess Austin just miss­es him.

***

“Fig­ur­ing they was wise to me and I was like­ly pulling a tail, I had lit­tle inten­tion of lead­ing ‘em straight back to the ship and get­ting a set of steel bracelets for my trou­ble. So, I shot straight for the docks and thumbed on back up to the Gulf. Made land just out­side of Mobile, thanked a feller and head­ed for the bus sta­tion. Bought a cheap seat back here to Cul­lo­den Coun­ty and breathed a long one glad to be out of a pick­le like that. Had no idea how I was like­ly to get back down there and get that bird back and tell the truth, son, I still ain’t worked out the kinks.”

Austin paus­es here as he always does when he tells this sto­ry. He gives a vacant stare out into nowhere and takes anoth­er sip from his cof­fee cup. He hocks some phlegm into his throat and spits it on the ground.

I have a hard time real­ly imag­in­ing Austin with a kid of his own, some­how. I won­der how old he is, his son, if he real­ly has one. It makes me too sad to think about too long, though. I guess that’s why I’m not sure I believe it. I think, as weird as Austin is, he’d have been an awe­some dad, the kind I’d wished I had when I was more of a kid. My dad is bet­ter at mak­ing mon­ey than mak­ing up sto­ries about aliens. Win some, lose some, I guess.

“Lord knows they must have found it by now,” He says after a while. “I mean how else you think they fig­ured out all this inter­net horse­shit? No way that’s reg­u­lar old human tech­nol­o­gy. That’s them space-midgets’ giz­mos sure as any­thing. Bet me on it.

“Yeah, they prob­ly got it stored in some ware­house half took apart some­where. And it just fur­ther proves they could beat this gas shit any­time they damn well please to, they just don’t care. They milk­ing us six ways from Sun­day on that score, all right. They could strip that bad boy apart and build a car to run the same way or I’m a flat out liar.”

He spits again and sits a long while silent­ly. Direct­ly, I notice a huge white cloud of smoke bil­low­ing up from behind him. It’s com­ing right up from his shop and now it stinks, too.

“Austin,” I say, “You know your shop’s smok­ing real bad.”

He turns to look and then turns back to me, shrugs a bit and sips his drink. The smoke keeps bil­low­ing and I don’t know what to do exact­ly, so I just sit and stare at it a while. The smoke is pour­ing out of every crack and cor­ner of the shop and drift­ing slow­ly south­east. A Fish and Game truck pulls in to the store and Clayt Ram­sey, the game war­den, spills out.

“Hey, Austin, your shop’s smok­ing,” he says.

“I know,” Austin replies.

“Well, all right, then,’ he says head­ed in the door. “Long as you know.”

***

We sit here for a while, silent. I keep look­ing at the smoke while Austin sips and ignores it–the deep­est thought going on in his head prob­a­bly whether he should have anoth­er hon­ey bun or not–and I think about how odd it is–all this. I’ll go back to Atlanta in a month and a half to stay with my grand­dad for col­lege. More often than not my par­ents will come to me for the hol­i­days rather than me to them.

It occurs to me I may not ever see Austin again. I used to won­der if any­thing he told me was maybe part­ly true or his own weird ver­sion of some­thing that did hap­pen, but I final­ly decid­ed I don’t want to know. I think I like his ver­sions bet­ter and I know he does, like the time him and Hank Grady raced across the world to see who could come back with the best tast­ing can of beer, or when they attached a snow­plow to a rock­et-pow­ered eigh­teen-wheel­er and wrecked through a thou­sand police cars. He just does it so peo­ple will keep think­ing he's crazy and leave him alone. I don't think he likes what the world turned into. I know I’ll actu­al­ly miss that about him and all the oth­er things about this place I don’t real­ly understand.

The smoke from his shop is start­ing to taper off and Austin final­ly turns back to look. He sets his cup down direct­ly and stands up to crack his back.

“Well,” he says. “Guess I’ll go see if them roach­es is dead.”

 

Jason Stu­art grew up eat­ing squir­rel meat and moon pies. He once jumped over a rat­tlesnake while win­ning a foot-race against a giant. He picked peas, pota­toes and corn by the bushel every morn­ing most of the sum­mers of his young life and spent the rest of the after­noon shuck­ing and shelling. He loaded chem­i­cal fer­til­iz­er for a while until his foot turned yel­low and he quit (though he still doesn’t care a jot for organ­ic agri­cul­ture). He’s dri­ven a truck (poor­ly, he might add), washed dish­es, tend­ed bar, cleaned up bars, poured con­crete, built hous­es, run a movie house, served process, worked cat­tle, and, at times, lived in his truck. He once had to arbi­trate a gun­fight regard­ing own­er­ship of a chain­saw dur­ing the after­math of a hur­ri­cane. Some­where along in there, he went to col­lege, the par­tic­u­lars of which are not ter­ri­bly inter­est­ing. Alco­hol was involved. He now resides on the beach in Mis­sis­sip­pi and works on an Air Force base, though he is not, him­self, an air­man. He has sev­er­al lawyers but still no agent. He rides a motor­cy­cle and roots for the Gators. He has not, as of this writ­ing, shot a shark with his .357 magnum.

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