Gotta Cross that Bridge

This short piece came out of a writing prompt exercise during the March 2021 Strong Land Writers Group session. The first instruction was - First sentence had to incorporate the words “Gotta cross that bridge” and the second instruction was the last word had to be “glass”.

“You gotta cross the bridge.”

  Milt shook his head. ”What’s my choice in it?”

  Dregs slapped Milt across the jaw, his rough, homemade ring gouged a shallow divot in the thin skin.

Neither one of them had more than poverty deer jerky, strip of sinew smoked over burning newspaper, window frames, fuck it, even smoldering tires would make do. 

  “None goddamnit.”

  Milt wiped away tears, leaned back on his heels, anything to avoid Dreg’s open-palmed slaps that made his ears ring in sharp pain. “Come with me? I can’t make it without you.”

  “One of us has to stay. Now git.”

  “What am I gonna tell Mama?”

  Dregs stole a glance behind them, towards the sun and smoke, might as well have been boiling blood, and just as thick. In a flare of panic he wondered just what boiling blood looked like. He took Milt in his arms, held him as close as bark wrapped around some old growth tree. “Tell her I loved you more than I loved myself. Just like she taught us.”

  He wiped away the blood on Milt’s throat where it streaked. “I’m sorry I hit you. You gotta go.”

  Milt bawled.

  “It ain’t serving a purpose other than slowing you. Please go. I’ll hit you again if you don’t.”

  Dregs kicked off the remnants of his shoes, knelt.

  Milt gripped Dreg’s shoulders as Dregs pulled the laces tight.

  “Now you get. Never look back. You swear to it.”

“I won’t. I won’t swear to it.”

  “When you get acrosst, stick to the trail till you can see the mill. There’s an ice house between the two sycamores. You know which ones they are?’

  “Them big ones?”

  “That’s right. You get in there and wait. Wait till you can’t hear nothing cracking and burning. Then come out, be careful as you can. Then get home.”

  “God I love you Dregs.” Milt turned, then wheeled back around, “I’ll tell Mama.” He ran.

  Dregs reaches for a cooper-colored bottle half-buried in pasty grit, set down by an unknown hand, when the world wasn’t turning on itself, cracked it over a piece of granite, then lowered himself against the hot sand. He squeezed his eyes shut against this world and imagined Milt running like wind and managed a smile. His last. His fingers gripped tight around a shard of glass.

BLOOD CREEK - EXCERPT

Near the northern end of Haagen Road, where Danny lives, was Sayers Hill Road. It lay along One Pine Mountain like a piece of gray thread and then dropped down between One Pine Mountain and Two Pine Mountain. Just fifty yards north from that confluence, sat the house and the land that was the last place my aunts were alive. The same house and the land that they come to find me in the dark of night when I was a six-year-old pup determined to outdo my brother. As I got older, I come to understand how lucky it was that they found me. It was my turn now. Me and Danny’s.

I stopped at the second checkpoint at the intersection of those two roads. I could see about a half mile up Sayers Hill before a sharp, upward bend in the road bit off my line of sight from what was behind. All I could see was the trees and the hill itself. Looking west from the second checkpoint, I could see Oviston Mountain Road running northwest up the mountain and southeast down the mountain into Romola. I could see Danny’s trailer from that spot. Danny was sitting on the porch. 

I thanked the people that gathered at the second checkpoint. They offered me something to eat. I couldn’t say no. That’s who these people are. Taking care of others on the day before Thanksgiving when they should be in their own homes with their own, taking care of the things that was part of their own traditions. But here they were. Stamping their feet like cold cattle. Standing together with guns. And they were there for us. And they offered me food. Like I said, I couldn’t say no. That was how the Lucas family done things. No one we asked said no. And others that wasn’t even asked, showed up anyways.

I finished a plate of hash and ate three strips of pan-fried salt pork. I took another plate and walked up to Danny’s.

“Danny?”

He didn’t answer. Wrapped in a wool Army blanket. Bare feet on the wooden porch. The 788 laid across his knees.

“How long you been sittin’ there?”

Whatever he was looking at wasn’t me. “I don’t know. All morning.”

“It ain’t still morning?”

“Hell. I don’t know then.”

“Where’s your boots?”

Danny sighed. 

I eased up the steps. Set the plate of food on a wood chair next to him. “It’s for you if you feel like eatin’.”

“I don’t.”

“All right.”

“What are you lookin’ at?”

“I don’t know. Hell …”

Danny don’t drink. Anyone else might thing he was working off a hard night of alcohol.

“Danny?”

He didn’t answer. The food sat there. A cat pushed his head out of the weeds across the street. It sniffed at the air. Then retreated. I was starting to feel the same way about stepping up on this porch.

“Where’s your head at?” I asked.

I studied the fields. Not a thing shifted. Nothing twitched. Nothing rustled. No grackles landed to peck at any remaining autumn seeds. A wash of lead paint replaced the sky. A truck rumbled down Oviston Mountain Road, engine braking. It hauled a mesh trailer full of feed corn. Soon, it would all be down. I hated that part. When the corn came down to nubs and the land goes from high and regal to low and messy in the blink of an eye.

There are sometimes like this time that I look out on these fields, rising and falling with the gentle folds of the dirt that makes up Strong Land, and those fields look like oceans. I been to the ocean once. The Atlantic. I was eleven. Mom took me and Pen and Danny. Relda came too. It must have cost them most of all they had between them to do it. They watched from the sand, sat out on blankets they brought from home. I remember running out into the waves and getting tumbled. I did it again. And again. The sand ground my shoulders through layers of skin. The salt burned like hell. I saw fish I’d never seen before twitching and swishing around my ankles. Danny walked far out into the water. I wanted to be that tall. The saltwater equalized our height. Pen and I hooked arms, arched our backs and floated on top of the water. I saw a starfish on the sand. Dead and brittle. I threw it back into the ocean. It rolled back onto the shore. I left it. The next morning Pen woke me up. Come on Nickie, she said. We are going to the ocean again. I told her I ain’t going. Why not? I done seen it. Even then I knew I’d take a field of late fall corn, golden and rustling and smelling of something more than pure, over any ocean. When the last rows were cut down, well, every year, it made me feel like bawling. Goddamn, I hated that part.

“Danny?”

“Yeah.”

“You remember us going to the ocean?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you ever think about it?”

Danny didn’t respond.

I was rushed with a feeling like I shouldn’t have set foot on his porch and I would be best suited to retreat like that cat.

Danny got up. “Wait here.” He come back a few minutes later. His hair was wet and his clothes were changed. “I’m going to the bank.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yep. You comin’ with?”

“We holding it up?” 

Danny grinned. “Nope. Got all the money and things I need right where you stand.”

His food set there. “You gonna eat that?” 

“I ain’t hungry.”

I flipped the food off the plate, it sailed across the street, landing on the grass. I gave it ten seconds. The cat darted out and snatched a slice of bacon and then ran back to the field.

“Thought so,” I said to the cat.

“Don’t talk to my cat like that.”

“Danny, you ain’t got a cat?”

“All right.”

“You want to bring anyone with us?”

“You packing?”

“Yep.”

“Then no, I don’t.”

America's Illnesses (Amended)

America is ill. Her spirit and blood and body suffer from compounded and undiagnosed illnesses. A solemn inventory of her symptoms supplants the passive mindset with a heart burdened by despair and a mind troubled with the self-recognition of our country’s behaviors; racism and classism in the form of our past and continued use of slavery, the ongoing shadow of genocide against Native Americans and the silent and empty structures of Japanese Internment camps. A purposefully dysfunctional justice system. Government facilities along the American/Mexico border housing children enduring fear and loneliness, their crime is inhabiting a world that forces them to flee brutality and poverty, desperately searching for a place of compassionate acceptance. An education system in disarray. Poverty. Greed. Sex trafficking of women and children and untold sexual exploitation within religious institutions. A male-dominated governing body that believes it is within their purview to dictate women’s reproductive rights. Increasing numbers of lethal domestic violence incidents. Biases and hatred that lead to mass shootings and white supremacy groups, and in turn necessitate other groups to develop to defend themselves from inhospitable and malicious forces. Horrific incidences of suicides by our children who are bullied and shamed and disregarded in our schools by their fellow students, who are also our children. Suicides by members of our military who survive their service to her but cannot navigate successfully through the America they sacrificed for. Police brutality. Our churning destruction of America’s resources such as our National Parks and Endangered Species and our willingness to send the men of Appalachia into the unsafe coal mines and then to their graves instead of having them build solar panels, nuclear waste being sent to Native American lands in the southwest, the family farm culture is being decimated by droughts of hope, water and sustainability. Death by preventable illnesses. I am not a psychologist. I am not a sociologist. I don’t have a name for this illness. I am the worried father of a two-year-old child.

A short list of potential diagnoses readily comes to mind for our case study of America: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, addiction, attachment disorder, obesity, depression, conduct disorder, amnesia, cancer, PTSD, trauma. Each of these diagnoses are observed; in clinical terms we are examining a patient who has dual diagnoses. Her comorbid illnesses undermine the functions of her synapses and neurotransmitters and receptors; pushing us into a fight or flight state and the inability to function with strong mental and physical health.  We are damaging her ability to think and reason clearly, and exhibit sound judgement, and feel and act with empathy and civility. Her arteries are weakened. Toxins swim in her clear waters. Poison chokes her sky’s mind; leaden clouds increase the barometric pressures at the intersection of her spine and brain. America is being attacked by her own cells; we must identify the right vaccine and treatments.

Her challenges are vast, at moments appearing insurmountable. Examining her x-ray against the harsh light of reality finds her clouded with gray masses spreading throughout her body. Taken as a whole, our patient's prognosis is dire. Our intentions, whether altruistic or self-serving embolden us to sequester ourselves into our offices and chambers with like-minded colleagues, more and more we refuse to interact with “the other side” and develop plans and treatments to heal her as we see fit.

Potential vaccines and medications that have severe side-effects undermine her personality and cause negative reactions. Mandating these plans as law or social norms in the name of reducing her symptoms and possibility of future infections without open-minded collaboration and objective consultation will not prove to be the most effective strategy. Her proposed treatments are many and varied and divisive and are often applied without a thorough examination of contraindications; increased gun control laws, or no gun control laws? Repealing finance laws? Building The Wall? What about abolishing the EPA instead? What about accepting the devastating erosion of the education system? What about building more prisons than schools and hiring more corrections officers than qualified teachers. What about nixing the electoral college and continuing to condone closed-door gerrymandering?

An examination of the Coronavirus Pandemic sets in motion a staggering amount of concern, shame, fear, and anger.  I watch news from a variety of news media sources, pursing out science and fact from misleading information and ignorance. I look at social media with sadness and bewilderment as friends who I believe to be logical and educated disregard social distancing and mask protection practices. I pay attention to stated reasons people choose to reject the recommendations.  I have cataloged my own responses; if you don’t wear a mask, and you say you are Christian, you are breaking at least three Commandments, Thou  Shall Not Kill, Though Shall Not Steal, Honor Thy Mother And Father. If you believe COVID19 won’t affect you because YOU feel healthy, here are clinical aspects of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (disregard for other peoples feelings, an inability to handle criticism, an inflated sense of self-importance and a sense of entitlement), healthy individuals are asymptomatic and can infect others. If you are involved and support “Black Lives/All Lives Matter” causes, and do not wear a mask, then no lives matter. If you are against outrageous health care costs, and do not wear a mask, then you must accept responsibility for increasing health care costs for all.  If you believe it is a hoax, go to a hospital near you and ask a healthcare provider if COVID 19 is a hoax, and sit with a grieving family member who just lost a loved one. If you say that America is not a Communist country and you can’t be told what to do for the good of your country, make the choice to wear a mask BECAUSE it’s a choice you have the right to make. If you say government cannot shut your business down, but you refuse to wear a mask or not practice social distancing, it is you that will force businesses to shut down when employees get sick.  If you say it is “un-American, or socialist” to wear masks because it is against your rights, study the Preamble of the United States Constitution,

We the People of the United States of America, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, prepare for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the benefits of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…

What about a second Civil War? I have reviewed enough social media from both the left and the right that indicate that this might be essential to “win” for their side. I continually read of entrenched mindsets where people feel their worlds being stolen by politicians and immigrants and strangers or the misconstrued meanings of the United States Constitution and our Bill of Rights. What about a strategy that amounts to a government sponsored free-for- all for the 1 Percenters that would pit them against the rest of America’s people? What about Constitutionally segregated States, divvied up by the color of one’s skin, or by class scale or political affiliation?

These days praying and supporting human rights causes, can get a person defiled and ridiculed. Imagine that. Freedom of religion is a sacred thing, and we hear a strengthening chorus that ridicules prayer as an integral action step. Prayer can look like so many things, and can sound like so many things, and should never be minimized, nor should we condone religious discrimination or discrimination against GLBQT individuals or any brand of hate speech.

As we become more deeply entrenched in our core values we hack away at the benefits of civility and damage our ability to believe in the benefit of fostering something greater than the sum of our parts and the collective accountability for each other’s safety. As we lose our ability to communicate effectively, we pronounce that differing views are unpatriotic. How disheartening and terrifying is it that Patriotism is becoming a flawed standard?

Through our actions we have invented our own disease, one that spreads from the sanctity of our  homes and is then propagated by children who do not understand the weight of the words they speak in their elementary and middle and high schools and colleges and places of work and our government buildings, spreading like a flu virus. This disease, hate, spreads across this nation like swaths of burning forest that flare from one spark and threaten to destroy so many beautiful things. From out corners we urge the fires to burn the other side away, fanning the flame to create a fire that cauterizes the pain we feel as we watch the limbs of her healthy society fall victim to self-amputation. The white blood cells race to eradicate her infections yet fail to save the dying parts of her. This growing hate weakens her like disease or cancer that infects her cells and disintegrates the structure of her bones.

This disease leads to mass shootings and the bombing of our own government buildings and further drives a wedge between us as we struggle to achieve our ideologies of safety and our rights. Try as we might to do admirable and sensible gun reform work, the real issue is the hate that causes one to seek a weapon. I want to save every American life, working together to build a stronger, more accepting and empathetic society is the most important task of all. Those who hate will find a way to express that hate with deadly force. Handguns can easily accomplish the task of stacking up our new definition of mass murders (3 deaths in one incident). America bleeds from this violence, and the loss of blood leaves her heart weakened and staggering. I believe she is tortured and traumatized. We are traumatized. Do not make the mistake of minimizing our collective trauma that impacts our day to day functions as individuals and society.

I can’t help but feel sorrow as I contemplate the reality that our country is addicted to escape; it pains me to believe that our lives are perpetuated on the need to escape. And in our trauma, I believe we seek vices that do not heal, they only mask our pain from moment to moment. Our lives are not designed to live this way, seeking oblivion from pain and boredom of our own infliction until we no longer exist.

More forms of recreational drugs and their proponents lining up behind recreational marijuana as the lobbyists push for it and her stocks are soaring. What other drugs should go on this list? I hear the arguments for legalization, especially the failure of The War on Drugs. One aspect of my response is; how could it have become more important and necessary for individuals to access marijuana and meth and cocaine and heroin, at such a cost of all the lives and resources we have squandered in the name of this war, and yet we kept on using because that was more important to us than setting down our drugs and saying “Not in my name.”

This is a harsh observation, and will not find favor among many, and I can accept that; our culture breeds the sales of these substances. Our culture disregarded the fact that on horrific scales people in Mexico and South America are being murdered as a result of cartel violence, mothers and fathers are in prison for dealing, and we are overdosing on historic levels, and yet, we keep using. The War on Drugs was a failure in accountability and the reasons for this failure in accountability are troublesome; misuse, dependence, addiction, greed, ignorance, marketing, self-medication, attempts to reduce the effects of trauma and an underlying need to escape from the daily burden of stress and dissatisfaction.  Ultimately, the unsuccessful efforts on the War on Drugs, and the results should be a loud and clear message; the power of these drugs is easily stronger than our ability to turn them down. We are society of people with addictions, including alcoholism, that some calculate to approach 30 million Americans. These numbers of deaths and costs related to addiction far exceed the numbers of deaths and costs related to gun violence. Combined, the numbers of preventable illness, accidents and deaths, is staggering. How can we tally these numbers without despair and a wholesale questioning of our priorities?

I worry about our choices; what we allow to happen in the name of free market capitalism and deregulation is troublesome. We have granted America a freedom to poison us. Look no further than the sale of cigarettes. That this country allows the sale of cigarettes is incomprehensible; there is not a single positive benefit to smoking cigarettes, other than corporations making money. If America legalizes marijuana, the government will be your drug dealer. If America legalizes marijuana, there will not be a reduction in cartel violence; their other products will rapidly be produced and sold in larger numbers as our desire for them increases. Legalizing substances is not the answer. Treating our trauma, enhancing our quality of life, building strong children with hope, nutrition, inclusion, experiences in the natural world with people from cultures different than their own, a high-quality education for all students, with plentiful opportunities for employment and fulfilling lives in a healthy environment is the answer. It is imperative we nurture our children, so they have a healthy and sound America they believe is worth nurturing.

My twenty-year career in suicide and substance abuse prevention has demanded my attention to America's symptoms. Each year as part of my work I review student mental health survey data and observe the rates of children who use alcohol and other drugs, feel unsafe in their schools, and contemplate and act on suicidal thoughts, increase.

In my personal life I don’t attend church regularly but am deeply connected to my congregation. I don’t own a gun but frequently contemplate purchasing one to hunt or for home protection. I don’t drink alcohol. I don’t smoke. I gave up one car for another car with better fuel efficiency.

The path of my life emerged from one of my earliest experiences as a teenager recognizing the power of both alcohol and guns came during my freshman year of high school. In 9th grade a group of my closest high school friends got access to a bar on a day that celebrates the consumption of alcohol at the college in our town. One of our crew got drunk, went to school, got caught, and then went home and killed himself with a gun. His father found him.

I am forced to return to this question as the father of a two-year old boy. What country are we offering him, what country or we offering each other? One of unity, empathy, partnership, environmental stewardship, safety, inclusion, respect, one that educates and creates standards of civility in our schools just as equally as standardized testing. Or are we so entrenched that our actions will continue to keep us on these trajectories of divisiveness, hate, greed, destruction and apathy? 

We can take steps, however small they seem, that are important. For example, I launched an initiative called Civil Words Not Civil War to encourage civil dialogue, participation positive and productive partnership and compromise, even when it is incredibly challenging. America's survival depends on our willingness to work together. If we cannot catalog her symptoms, agree on the best strategies to care for her, the very foundations of her beginnings, where our forefathers sought to create a set of laws and guidelines where we would work together for the greater good and self-determination and safety and freedom from persecution, will be as useless as the Treaties with the Native Americans, those same forefathers disregarded and broke at will to suit purposes that only enhanced their own desires. I believe that America was created with great intentions. America has made devastating mistakes. America has offered so much brilliance and hope to her people and to the world. We need to ask ourselves, what is America's purpose?

There are countless initiatives like Civil Words Not Civil War, and I champion them; find one, join them, start them. Vote. Advocate.  In my town, a White Supremacist group left informational flyers on a Synagogue in the middle of the night to terrorize the congregation and community.  I shudder to think that some groups and individuals would denounce my efforts and say they'd rather engage in civil war than consider a change in their world view. But I will never wait for the cover of night to encourage civility. 

I view America holistically, one being constructed of interconnected and interdependent organs; we are free to move within her, like blood and thoughts and chemical impulses, but we are all part of her. And in turn, America, one part of North America, the continent, is but one of seven interdependent organs and functions of the earth; heart, lungs, mind, muscles, blood, survival, love. 

Our decisions to continue to poison her or come to consensus on an array of treatments with the highest likelihood of success, can yet cast a futile and catastrophic example of greed and closed-minded entrenchment, or, return to the original purpose of her creation and again, offer our strengths as a role-model to the world and path to something far greater than we could imagine for humanity. We must prove that at the very least, civility is possible, even when it seems like it is not.

To achieve this, I am no longer certain America needs a political system in charge. I believe we are in dire need of a team of health practitioners that are experts in disease, trauma informed care and environmentally health-related illnesses to lead our country, not politicians.

And we, as her people, must agree to participate fully in the Hippocratic Oath and do no more harm. And she, like the promise of her that so many have sought and fought for and found, might still grant us a beautiful survival. But like any ethical medical professional will tell you, you must personally decide whether you accept the recommendations for treatment, if you want to heal with her. And wear a mask.

Easter Storm

“The leaves, they’re dead Dada?”

I studied Strongland as much as he studied me. He gave me a moment to answer. “Yes.”

He cocked his head, the way I do… “How long did they not dead?”

“One year. They are born in the spring, just about now. They grow through the summer. Some fade to nothing and fall to the ground. Some go gloriously. This ridge will be a royal’s robe of scarlet and gold. It just depends.”

“Dada?”

“Yes?” He wasn’t asking me about the leaves exactly, hell, I knew that much. I wanted to tell him we would live forever but I couldn’t.

If he was gonna ask something he put it off. A dark brown and tawny lizard scuttled across the broken concrete foundation. There used to be a trailer here. I remember eating dinner in it once, when autumn pushed from the mountain, real slow, paused at the highest elevation, then tumbled with a tide of red maple down the north side of the ridge. It has been far too long since when we gathered with Strongland’s cousins around the fire pit Paw set out in a circle. We devour Kaki’s hobo pies when we can’t bear the smell of the spiced meat and onion and potatoes roasting in the embers any longer. They are worth the price of burned fingers, to tease the foil pockets open, and watch the steam escape.

Strongland shuffled through the leaves around the perimeter, poking a crooked stick underneath stone, prying them up one by one. “Look Dada!”

I knelt with him, kissed his forehead. He had disturbed a fire-ant mound, the ants exploded out of their caverns, deep orange rivulets of instinct and determination. Without thought they carried on. Civilization will carry on— without us—in spite of us.

“Where’s mama?”

I pointed back down the mountain, to the south facing wash of down-slope. “At the overlook.”

“Eat, eat, eat.”

I nodded. “Do you want to lead?”

“Carry me Dada.”

I stepped off the cement foundation and carried him across a shallow swath of dry sandy dirt, layered ankle deep with disintegrating leaves and bone white rock. His mama sat on the rocking chair. I gave him to her and he nursed. I took the other chair and scanned the valley, bursting with pockets of emerald and shadowy conifer green. Strongland finished and crawled across the arms of the chairs and sat with me. I pointed out the one object I could find that was made by man.

“Is it a farm?”

“Could be.”

“Who lives there Dada?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are they alone?”

“I don’t know baby.” I considered why he might have asked. Was he still wondering about the leaves? Why they died? He has noticed many dead things lately. The snake on our morning walk. The black beetle, as shiny as it was lifeless. The small toad on our driveway. Was he contemplating there could be a person there? Alone. Who would notice them if they died from the sickness?

“Can we walk there?”

“It would take all day.” His mama said.

Two buzzards careened along the updrafts. We were higher than them still, enough to see the setting sun reflect across the tops of their broad wings.

On the far side of the valley a blanket of chalk-white cloud slid west to east. “The first sign of trouble I guess.”

“No,” she said to me, “It’s too early.”

“The storm mama?”

“Yes baby.”

“Will there be lightning?”

“There could be.”

As she said it Strongland clutched tight. “I don’t like lightning at the night.”

“It will be okay.” I told him.

His mama and I already decided we would pull the mattress into the hall to sleep. I struggled to push my anxiety of the reports of tornadoes pushing east out of Arkansas. The storm would arrive on Easter. If my memory is right tornadoes killed seven people in the county just across the river from us exactly a year ago. I thought of my sins and resurrection and the grace of God and wondered what I was worth.

I am afraid, weighed down with fears I never considered before becoming a father. They wear at me in the dark when I listen to Strongland breath and watch his eyelids twitch as he sleeps. Two nights ago, I dreamt of a black snake emerging from a house I recognized on our morning walks. I dream of people wearing masks, walking the streets, separate from one another, clutching plastic bags filled with any chemicals scrounged and hoarded. I wake and wish I had gun locked away. But I can hear Strongland’s mama asking, “What are you gonna do with a gun, shoot a tornado?” I know I don’t got the guts to shoot a man anyways so I let it lay.

We watched the sunlight shimmer across the early April growth in the valley.

“I want to go home Mama.”

We repacked the backpack, set the chairs in their places on the wood perch and retraced our path to the chain spanning the entrance to the property. His mama carried him across and buckled him in the truck. I kissed them both and we drove back down the mountain. I set the cruise control at exactly one mile an hour less than the speed limit. Nobody passed us, even on the highway. I was in no rush to get closer to the blanket of cloud and the city streets. We drove slowly past the park, and the long bands of yellow caution tape around the still swing sets and empty basketball court.

“We can’t go to the playground because of the sickness.” Strongland stated. It made me want to bawl, this innocent comprehension of the fear and worry that shuts down parks and keeps him home from school. I am in awe of this boy who wants to know how long leaves haven’t been dead and if people live alone and why these things might be.

“Yes, because of the sickness,” his Mama said.

I caught her eyes in the rearviewmirror. She is worried. I know it.  I can’t do enough for her—I know that—there is just too much outside my control.

I pulled the truck into the drive. Strongland’s toys dot the yard; bright yellow diggers, tow-trucks, a small plastic shovel and his green rake. His mama and I collected his things and set them on the brick porch. You couldn’t see the clouds from our house, set down among the towering oaks that line the streets. If you chose to ignore it you could pretend you and your boy and his Mama were in heaven on earth and people weren’t walking the streets in their masks, avoiding each other, clutching plastic bags full of chemicals pulled off of near-bare store shelves.

I can’t ignore this; tomorrow is Easter. A storm is coming. A sickness is here. I went to Strongland and held him. “Time to go in.”

He nodded and followed me through the front door.

“Can we have that?” Strongland pointed to the strawberry cake on the counter he and his mama made in the morning.

We’d already told him it was for after dinner but I changed my mind. “Yes baby.” We ate the dense cake and drank lemonade on the floor before sitting together in the dining room for our meal.

Strongland rubbed his eyes, “The trees are getting dark.”

His mama got up and he followed her and nursed until he fell asleep. In the dark still of night, I watched his twitching eyelids and reconsidered all my sins and resurrection and the grace of God and prayed that I am worthy enough to protect them. I slipped off the mattress and put the coffee on, re-checked the shutters and door bracing and waited for the storm.

Coronavirus and the End of Visiting Hours

My dear Giraffe

My husband does not come here anymore

I don’t recognize the paper faces that hover and are then gone

It is only me and you

My dear Giraffe

Do you remember when I gave you form?

Stitch by stitch when I could work these useless hands

I cannot hold you

Anymore

My dear Giraffe

My daughter does not come

To sing to me

Anymore

I don’t know who I have become

Am I anyone?

My dear Giraffe

Do you remember

When I placed your heart inside you?

My own is now undone

Same as your torn seams

My dear Giraffe

My son does not come

To read to me anymore

I have lost the words

To offer anyone

My dear Giraffe

We wait out these lingering days

Strangers wash my hands

With cool water

Smooth my hair

With a brush that could be mine

My dear Giraffe

The hallways are quiet

Like deserted streets in the middle of the night

I will never walk again

Along them

 My dear Giraffe

We lay alone

Just me and you

Disintegrating like shadows in the dark

And old books

Unopened and forgotten

My dear Giraffe

Stay with me

Until I am gone

Christmas

Strongland ran into a skim of roiling water, his bare feet consumed by the rushing tide. My heart spilled into the Atlantic Ocean. I hear Strongland scream in delight as he throws handfuls of sand on his Mama; laughing, she backtracks, barefoot in the sand. This is what Christmas means.

My sister and I stood, arms hooked, in the cleansing water’s rippling transitions. For our mother, we offered prayers in silence. I held a broken shell, glittering and worn smooth, in my own hands, broken and worn. I gave it to her to take it to our mother. Waves slipped by and disappeared. We replenished the salt water, tear by tear.

Strongland and his cousins leapt and twisted in chrome sunlight, their feet leaving indentations in the water-packed sand, lasting a heartbeat or two before waves scrubbed all trace of them away. We are so easily washed away. Rejoice I say now. Rejoice in the imprint of others before they wash away. It has taken the birth of Strongland and the fading of my mother to understand what Christmas means.

On the beach I contemplated Christmas, two days past. I contemplated Christmas, ten years past. I contemplated Christmas forty years past. In the unraveling ocean I found myself opened, sealed, wrapped in darkness. I found myself discarded and crumpled again and again like wrapping paper. With the memory of Strongland opening presents and grinning and I am released from the darkness. This is what Christmas means.

I considered forgiving myself. I considered accepting what was offered to me. I have always felt guilt, even as a young boy, opening presents. With a grim internal monologue I unwrap each present offered. I never feel worthy of the contents. I have never done enough for the person who has offered me the gift. I am never enough. Please don’t look at me. I have not done enough for you. I am always tormented by the eyes that watch me open each gift. Accept these offered gifts. You are enough. I pray that being a good father makes me worthy. This is what Christmas means.

On the beach I considered my mother, alone in her bed. I thought of my last visit with her, the day before Christmas. I remember holding her hand only once; I was a child. We spent a summer in New York City. I recall her pulling me so fast along the sidewalk I could barely keep up.  A sensation of urgency, not comfort. It was time again. While us both had it. I pushed my hand into hers, now folded like origami, muscles contracted and locked. She smiled. Her hand clamped around mine. I want to read you something I wrote. Her eyes opened wide.

Indian Summer fades. Same as us. Even if we ain’t ready.

Come late November, the sun walks herself out backwards to wherever she lays low. This land gives way to the early reaches of winter. All around us the water drops. Cricks thin out. What was for most of the year, deep pools, usually too deep to wade, narrow down to resemble the closing eye of some old serpent with scales made of stones and polished threads of exposed minerals. Brittle leaves shuffle along the sediment, catch in runs, and swirl across the top of the water akin to caddis flies. Some springs run unbothered by events occurring outside their purpose.

Late Fall has always been my favorite turn of season—a final appearance of regal autumn cornstalks standing erect—a faithful and contemplative congregation. Knuckled leaves fold like hands clasping just-closed hymnals, waiting for the last soft echoes of a beautiful hymn to fade away. The stalks wait patient as their tough summer limbs get whispery and hollow and bow under the weight of the heavy husks. A hush will settle before the preacher’s harsh words warn of what might befall us if we ain’t careful in the ways we account for ourselves.

I’ve come to believe this whole world pauses one last minute to allow itself to turn red and yellow as if Strong Land was set with some last fever or anger at having to wither away to nothing. Whatever sadness they bear they hold to themselves. It doesn’t last much longer than a week. It won’t rain even if the low clouds beg for release. It just won’t. And finally, when nature’s truce gives way to the set course of the seasons, rains will come and begin to wash this world away.

My tears fell to my lap. My mother’s hand in mine. The hand that pulled me so urgently along the New York City sidewalks. Stay with me mom. Stay. I know her world is washing away. Into the ocean, and soil, and light she will go.

But in this moment, she has me, and I have her. My wife and child and my father and sister and niece and nephew and their father are all with her. We are so easily washed away. Rejoice now. Rejoice in the imprint of others before they wash away. This is what Christmas is.

Tree

There was no woman to help. Fever took her one moon’s cycle after she delivered their only child. The man remembered her scent; spring waters, and honeysuckle, ground between his fingertips.

This work was his alone, mirroring his existence. Unchecked tears froze as he carried the boy from the structure. It burned, swallowed by voracious flame, tinging the scrub brush and coniferous trees, orange and scarlet. The man’s shoulder blades had no skin. Charred muscle, exposed and seeping thick dark blood, from where the burning timber frame fell on him as he protected the boy. The man could walk no more with the boy in his arms. His scorched lungs inhaled agony.

The boy was tall now. The man was amazed at how he had come into his own over the summer and his head was equal in height of the man's chest. He collapsed at the base of a wiry hemlock. The boy’s body would produce no more heat. Ever. The man clutched him close.

Snow numbed his backside and froze the coagulating blood in a mat of ice and hemlock needles and bits of charred flesh.

The boy’s skin was as flawless as the day his mother’s blood was cleansed from his skin after their cord was severed. My god he was beautiful, an unmarred foal with fine brown hair left to grow long over the summer and autumn. It had come early. The man wasn’t prepared for the first blanket of snow, calf deep and heavy with moisture from the valley inversion.

More snow fell, flickering in the light of the fires like scorched firecracker paper, and hissed when flake met licking flame. The man closed his eyes and watched the fires dance and flicker across his eyelids. The odor of everything they ever amassed burning to ash meant nothing. The boy was gone.

The fires faded, starved of wood and their belongings. He had not moved. The boy’s hair brushed the man’s eyelids when the wind caught it. Dawn came. He urinated and defecated in his wool trousers such as a helpless infant would. Night came. Wolves howled dread. Dawn came. 

He waited until the raven arrived. It arced through the sky, a devil’s angel, broad and cinder black with eyes even darker. Its great feathers reshuffled themselves into order as the raven folded his wings back into place. It hopped across the snow, feet scratching the crust of ice. The raven cocked his head, disregarding the man. The man knew what would happen and let it come. The raven worked its gleaming beak into the boy’s exposed rib cage. It withdrew its beak from inside the boy, wet with blood near as dark as the bird’s eyes. The man grabbed it. The raven squawked in disbelief.

I will let you go he told the raven. But you must do something for me. The raven went quiet. The man pushed his fingers into his boy’s chest and felt the walls of his young heart and it did not beat. He smeared his boy’s blood on the raven’s wings and beneath his own eyes. He let the raven go. It lifted itself from the boy's chest, landing in a juniper not far from them and watched the man lay the boy on the ice. 

The man’s skin on his hands shredded as he punched through the ice crust to reach the softer snow beneath. Handful by handful he covered the boy with blood stained snow until the boy was encased. The thick frozen scabs on his shoulders split, rivulets of fresh blood streaked down his back.

The clouds disgorged themselves entirely and the snow quit. The man would not, yet. He looked skyward and howled dread. The man would not cover his boy with a cross made from hemlock branches as he had done for the boy’s mother.

The raven dispatched from the juniper branch and circled once before it broke north. Any tracks the men that came to burn him and his boy to the ground were hidden beneath snow. The raven was all he had. He followed. His bare feet ripped and bled marking his tracks in red. He ate mouthfuls of ice and brittle twigs as he went north in the shadow of the raven. The scab on his shoulder froze and split and froze and split and he did not care.

The raven vanished over a ridge and the man wept. The raven reappeared and the man wept and went on. Thick brush tore the skin on his arms. Dusk came and the temperature collapsed and the wolves howled dread. The man howled dread in return and the wolves howled in confusion or dismay and then went silent. His guts quaked and his muscles cramped and spasmed. There were no rabbits to kill. Only men. 

The raven clicked its broad beak and the man pushed himself from the depths of a ravine, scuttled across bare granite, smooth and cold as his exposed shoulder bone, as dense as his hate. His bare feet slipped and the fingers in his right hand snapped as the he tried to arrest his fall. His ribs broke when he slammed against a mammoth beech tree. Coughing brought a taste of copper and despair. The man rose and retraced his route across the granite, guided by his bloodstains. 

Night fell. A seamless void. The only living things were the raven and the man’s hate. The stars wanted no part of him. Wind pressed through crags and rock fissures. He went on. Dawn came and the void relented to the intruders of a low-slung sun and a tormented man. 

The raven clacked and dove low. The man saw it and knew.  His skin warmed as if he was naked beside a fire. The raven returned to him and the man snapped its neck and dropped it to the ground. Nothing was to leave this place but the man.

He stood at the door on black feet. His broken fingers hung like pebbles in a sack. His skin was flush with the promise of the death he would provide. He entered the building and studied the sleeping men. The beaver and bear and wolf pelts they had stolen from him were stacked in bundles he himself wound with dried horse gut from his last mare. It stank of greed and bear grease and wood and opium smoke. A soft glow of a hearth fire was their death aura. The man pried the jaws of a bear trap open and stood above the once seen stranger that tried to burn his life away. He harbored no doubt at the man’s identity and lowered the trap to the man’s skull. He sprung it and the jaws pierced the bastard’s skull before his death chortle emerged. An axe taken from the hearth killed a second man. A Bowie knife killed the third. The same knife severed the Achilles tendons of the last man. He left him alive with smashed wrists from the blunt edge of the axe. 

The man turned lamps upside down, spilling oil on the wood floor and the straw mattresses. He pulled embers from the fire and strew them about the single room structure. The fire caught. He pulled two bear skins from a stack and stepped outside and wrapped himself in a pelt.  He sliced the second skin into strips and made covers for his feet and his head. He watched the fire engorge itself on the structure and wondered if those men had done the same while his boy suffocated on smoke and the wooden beam burned away his skin. The last man screamed at the fire's retaliation. The man turned from this destruction of men.

He walked. Wolves howled dread and he let them rejoice. Night swallowed the world. He walked. Dawn came. He returned to his boy, blanketed with crimson ice. With his good hand he scraped his boy clear of the ice. The man arranged the boy's hair and then broke a branch from the hemlock and set them on the boy’s chest in a cross. Over this he lay the bear skin and tucked it under the boy's body. The man lay beside his boy and wept. He rubbed his fingertips together beneath his blackened nostrils and breathed in the scent of spring waters, and honeysuckle.

Night came and the wolves howled dread.

T-shirt Ride.

I started T-shirt Ride a month ago, then lost track of the purpose of the story. Time has been difficult to stay on top of, let alone stay ahead of. When I revisited the story in preparation to posting it struck me; T-shirt Ride is a Thanksgiving story.

Six weeks ago I had shoulder surgery. Today I saw my surgeon and asked him two questions. To the first question he offered the best news; yes, I could pick Strongland up with my good arm. To the second question, could I ride my bike, no. No was his answer. Absolutely no. I understood why. After the surgery to repair a torn-bicep, frayed rotator-cuff, chipped and worn shoulder socket from arthritis and a million miles on my bike, my surgeon told my wife that the inside of my shoulder looked like cobwebs.

  The past six weeks I started packing on weight. I was suffocating in the weight but it was more than just that. There is another weight on me. My mom is in her hospital bed, her legs won't work right. I was suffocating in that too. My shoulder hurts like hell, but at least I can use it. At least I am free. Someday I won't be. Someday my legs won't work. Today they do, so I pulled on a T-shirt and got ready to ride. I am like that. Stubborn. It's cost me, that stubbornness. But sometimes, it's all I feel like I have.

  When I announced to my wife I was going to ride on the road she looked at me like I was bat-shit crazy. Five minutes later she pumped my tires because I couldn't put enough pressure on the pump handle. Before I left, she asked if I was wearing the T-shirt because I felt fat. Nope, I told her. I feel like just going for a ride. Truth was, there were two truths; I was feeling everything, all that weight on mr, and there was that other part... I just wanted to ride.

  Twenty minutes into the ride I was bawling. Snot and tears streamed off my nose, splotching the faded Miami shirt as it rippled at the snagging wind. The tears broke when I caught the shadow of a butterfly play across the pale cement in front of me. I learned from the Pojoaque Native American tribe when I worked for their suicide prevention program that the butterfly is a symbol of the transition from the spiritual world to the physical world, and the physical birth, to death. This one shadow broke me as I lost it to the reaching shadows from the tunnel of branches I rode underneath. I was overcome by imagery of my Mom lying alone in her hospital bed and my first born less than a month from being two years old. Time compacted and compressed in the flints of sharp sunlight crossing my path. Life races by you in the shadows and light and you can never equal its pace.

  Riding the bike is a constant through my life. A method of two wheeled grace provided by my parents that offered transformation as I shifted through periods of life that brought me closer or increased the distance between myself and my family.

  I don't remember every single bike they bought me but I can get close. My first bike was blue, my second bike was a red one. It was the third bike that flipped the switch on. A light blue Concorde Deluxe 12 road bike with down-tube shifters and black vinyl handlebar tape. From my first cautious rides from my house to the Ohio/Indiana state line about tenbmiles away to rides I kept increasing the distance and the sensation of freedom. That was the bike that I brought to summer camp in Northern Ohio when I was probably 13. The very first day of the week-long bike tour my big bags came undone, spilling everything I packed along the road. I recall my camp counselor saying to me when we pedaled our last mile and unpacked before our parents came to collect us that he was so worried about me from that first episode but I proved him wrong. I like to prove people wrong. At that time, I was already separating from my mom and dad. I was adopted. I had known for years and it hurt more and more over time. I was angry. Even then, at that age I decided that they sent me to camp so far away because they needed a break from me. Over the past three decades they proved me wrong, I just had to see it clear.

  That clarity keeps coming, although there was a decade that nothing was clear but anger. It couldn't have been much after camp that I started drinking, wine from our Episcopal Church, wine from my parent’s cases of wine in the basement. And beer from wherever. Even after I lost a friend, who was drunk, to suicide in 9th grade I kept at it. I kept at it and added pot and acid. I was violent and loved to see my own blood and scar my hands by punching windows out and took such pride in the white T-shirt covered in blood stains from my knuckles. 

  I know how lucky I am to have come through that. Not long ago I heard from Jeff, a kid I drank with in high school. He just got out of prison. Six years. He survived a suicide attemp when he lost his mother. One of his first messages to me was “compared to what you were doing before I never would have thought it would turn our like this. For either one of us.”

  I was heading down a dark path. I stole money, sneaking into my parent’s bedroom and pulling as many twenties as I thought I could get away with to buy pot and alcohol. I used right through juvie and a second ninth grade. The bike was still with me, getting high and hauling ass through the college campus,  using the bike as a means to vandalize over larger distances, riding out into the middle of the country in the pitch black of a farming community night, sleeping in the backyard next to my bike because I refused to go inside. 

  The last two fights I ever got in started and ended on a bike. The second to last one I thought my best friend stole my bike. I showed up at his house to get it back and he came out with a knife. We spent the next fifteen minutes kicking each other’s asses for nearly two blocks before the cops showed up. I split and he got taken in. The last person I ever hit was my dad. After I struck him I walked to the garage, got on my bike and rode away. I hate to think about it. I am sure he does too. But this is a story about the hard things, and forgiveness and love, so I have to be real about it. About everything. The point is, I found comfort, escape and ultimately redemption on the bike, the bikes that they bought me because they loved me no matter what.

After that I was sent to a foster home. I drank the first night there and most every home pass. I drank and smoked pot right until the night before I was going to rehab. Two hits of acid, and a good deal of pot with my closest friends out in the country as a going away blast. I rode my bike home in the middle of the night, smoked the last of my pot and fell asleep, me and my bike, a Trek 400, leaning against a tree my mom planted in our backyard. The next morning, I left my bike and my home and my friends behind and went to rehab. I was seventeen. I've never used a drug or had alcohol since that night. But the bike was there for me when I got home. 

  I would ride around town with long hair, wearing a white T-shirt and cutoff jeans, free again. In my five years of high school there was only one assignment I ever felt good about. In English class I wrote a short piece about a ten mile out and back ride out a road that went passed our backyard, straight out to the very boundary between our town and the farmland that stretched out to Indiana and then Illinois and further west in a near endless patchwork of corn stitched together with asphalt thread. I recall writing how I took in every detail on the ride away from home, each house and car and red wing blackbird and shallow slack of electric wire draped between the telephone poles. It was at the turnaround that all I could remember was the speed I could carry up each rise and the futility of the wind to hold me back. It was a true story, and I wore a T-Shirt on that ride.

  In high school I started racing with the college kids, racing in collegiate races when I wasn't in college. I was fast, and somewhere during my junior year I traded a T-Shirt for jerseys, up until today when I left the jersey in the basket and slipped the T-Shirt, with a wince, over my head.

A lot has happened in the years between those days and now. On bikes I have raced from Quebec to Florida to the very edges of the east coast, in every Midwestern state, all the way to Nevada. I raced against the best Americans, including riders that ended up at the highest levels of the sport. My friend Johnnie, an expert on all things race related told me I was one of the ten fastest American sprinters and that pisses me off because I wanted to be the fastest. But racing wasn't my destiny, in the early 2000’s I started having difficulty controlling my bike, especially descending mountains and in high speed situations. My arms would start to shake till my bike would try and buck my ass off. On hilly rides with other people I frequently would go last on descents to make sure I wouldn't take anyone out. So, I quit racing.

I had experts look me over. Since 2014 my shoulder got to the point that I couldn't stand on the bike, put pressure on my shoulder when braking, let alone sprint. I have watched dozens of sprints go up the road on group rides because I couldn't give what I got. I hope this shoulder surgery changes that.

  I want to ride with my friends. I have never been on a ride with my sister and her husband and her two kids; one day me and Strongland and his mama are going to pull on some T-Shirts and go for a spin. I want those things more than you will know. I want my mom's legs to work. I want her to be able to walk outside, take Strongland's hand and show him the trees, and the cicada husks, and watch their hair shift easily in the light air and I want to walk with them. Taking stock of my life brought those tears. Tears of sorrow and gratitude.

  I thought of my dad and the last time me and Strongland and his mama went to see them. Things are hard on him now. He's losing his wife of fifty-three years to Alzheimer's. And yet he is kind and compassionate and still wants to be my father. He offered to fill my truck up with gas. I think he feels bad about the rough years that seem so long ago. I do too, so I let him. The night before we left, he offered to clean the windshield of the truck. I think he's forgiven me for the rough years that don't seem that long ago. I have too, so I let him. Standing with Strongland, we watch as he takes his time wiping away the grime on the tall windshield, presenting us with the gift of clarity.

  Others come into my mind now, I ride for them; Art who “doesn’t run much anymore”, for Kathryn H. and Jason M. and Tony B., all lost to suicide, and Alison, taken by drugs and a broken body, and Cyndi K. whose body gave out and couldn't save herself, and a guy I know in a hospital bed unable to hunt the deer he see’s out his window, for Mike, a friend from high school, a Marine and marathoner, that is staring down a Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis, and Mac, who just got a pacemaker to keep his kind heart beating.

I feel everything so strongly, and differently as I evolve. I don't need to be fast. I don't need to win. I want to be a good son, and ride in the glory of the everyday, when my mother cannot.  I will be stubborn, if that's the price to pay along with a burning shoulder, so be it. I was desperate for the freedom that a ride offers. I wished I could carry my Mother into the wind and the light and freedom from her suffering. But like I said, life races by you in the shadows and light and you can never equal its pace even when you break your heart trying.

The journey from writer, to author

is ongoing, at least for me.

But, I am getting closer. This is what the path looks like:

On January 5, 2019 I sent a query letter and the first three chapters of BLOOD CREEK to a literary agent I respect, hoping she would take an interest in the manuscript.

On March 6, 2019 I received an email from her assistant stating the agent "would love to read BLOOD CREEK".

On March 7, 2019 I sent the full manuscript in a PDF.

On August 15, 2019 I emailed the assistant with a "nudge"(a brief email requesting an update on the agent's progress through BLOOD CREEK). Sending a nudge is a nerve-wracking endeavor. It could put the agent off and as a result your manuscript could automatically go into the crash and burn bin.

On October 29, 2019 I received an email from the agents assistant; what follows is an excerpt from the correspondence:

Thank you so much for your incredible patience as Stephanie and I took a look at BLOOD CREEK. We both admired the vivid setting and colorful characters you draw, and the murders of Aunt Beth and Aunt Luzerne totally hooked us. I'm afraid, however, that we both ultimately found the voice, while marvelously original, too distractingly strong to really connect with the protagonist and his story. We are sorry not to have better news. Given the subjectivity of this industry, we feel certain that another agent elsewhere will feel differently (indeed, we very much hope so!). Thanks again for the chance to consider. We wish you the very best in your search for representation.

October 29, 2019 Awww man! Crap!

October 29, 2019 Later the same day I sent an email to the agent's assistant (this can be seen as a no-no in the business) stating I was aware "voice" was strong in some areas of the book and when writing it, I committed to the voice all the way. (BLOOD CREEK came out of my mind in three months, I wasn't second guessing myself as I wrote. As writers often say, they don't do the writing themselves. The story writes itself.) I told them I am willing to revise the "voice".

October 29, 2019 I received a follow up email:

Certainly, if you ever revise it to that end, we'd be happy to look at a sample. It's great when a voice sounds true to its origins - for instance, the narrator's voice of John Larison's WHISKEY WHEN WE'RE DRY has a strong sound - but we ultimately just found this distractingly phonetically rendered and discursive. Perhaps it's just our taste, of course, but in any case, we'd be happy to read a revision.

October 29, 2019 Rejoice, with a great deal of trepidation.

October 29, 2019 I email my fantastic editor Val; HELP! I didn't even know what discursive meant. I do now. And I see it. Val thinks I should revise it.

There are simple things I can do do make it less discursive. And there are many things to do that are far from simple.

I talked to my wife that night. And thought about it. Am I willing to revise in hopes to have this particular agent take BLOOD CREEK on? Am I willing to change the voice, to back it down, to change the way the words come off the page, through the readers eye, into the readers own voice?

The answer is yes. I love this book. It is a fictional me. Another me. A life I never got to live. That makes it easier. I can still manipulate the world of BLOOD CREEK and find myself alive there.

October 29, 2019. Revision has begun. We'll see what happens. And go from there.

America's Illnesses

America’s Illnesses 

America is ill. Her spirit and blood and body suffer from compounded and undiagnosed illnesses. A solemn inventory of her symptoms supplants the passive mindset with a heart burdened by despair and a mind troubled with the self-recognition of our country’s behaviors; racism and classism in the form of our past and continued use of slavery, the ongoing shadow of genocide against Native Americans and the silent and empty structures of Japanese Internment camps. A purposefully dysfunctional justice system. Government facilities along the American/Mexico border housing children enduring fear and loneliness, their crime is inhabiting a world that forces them to flee brutality and poverty, desperately searching for a place of compassionate acceptance. An education system in disarray. Poverty. Greed. Sex trafficking of women and children and untold sexual exploitation within religious institutions. A male-dominated governing body that believes it is within their purview to dictate women’s reproductive rights. Increasing numbers of lethal domestic violence incidents. Biases and hatred that lead to mass shootings and white supremacy groups, and in turn necessitate other groups to develop to defend themselves from inhospitable and malicious forces. Horrific incidences of suicides by our children who are bullied and shamed and disregarded in our schools by their fellow students, who are also our children. Suicides by members of our military who survive their service to her but cannot navigate successfully through the America they sacrificed for. Our churning destruction of America’s resources such as our National Parks and Endangered Species and our willingness to send the men of Appalachia into the unsafe coal mines and then to their graves instead of having them build solar panels, nuclear waste being sent to Native American lands in the southwest, the family farm culture is being decimated by droughts of hope, water and sustainability. Death by preventable illnesses. I am not a psychologist. I am not a sociologist. I don’t have a name for this illness. I am the worried father of a two-year-old child.

A short list of potential diagnoses readily comes to mind for our case study of America: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, addiction, attachment disorder, obesity, depression, conduct disorder, amnesia, cancer, PTSD, trauma. Each of these diagnoses are observed; in clinical terms we are examining a patient who has dual diagnoses. Her comorbid illnesses undermine the functions of her synapses and neurotransmitters and receptors; pushing us into a fight or flight state and the inability to function with strong mental and physical health.  We are damaging her ability to think and reason clearly, and exhibit sound judgement, and feel and act with empathy and civility. Her arteries are weakened. Toxins swim in her clear waters. Poison chokes her sky’s mind; leaden clouds increase the barometric pressures at the intersection of her spine and brain. America is being attacked by her own cells; we must identify the right vaccine and treatments.

Her challenges are vast, at moments appearing insurmountable. Examining her x-ray against the harsh light of reality finds her clouded with gray masses spreading throughout her body. Taken as a whole, our patient's prognosis is dire. Our intentions, whether altruistic or self-serving embolden us to sequester ourselves into our offices and chambers with like-minded colleagues, more and more we refuse to interact with “the other side” and develop plans and treatments to heal her as we see fit.

Potential vaccines and medications that have severe side-effects undermine her personality and cause negative reactions. Mandating these plans as law or social norms in the name of reducing her symptoms and possibility of future infections without open-minded collaboration and objective consultation will not prove to be the most effective strategy. Her proposed treatments are many and varied and divisive and are often applied without a thorough examination of contraindications; increased gun control laws, or no gun control laws? Repealing finance laws? Building The Wall? What about abolishing the EPA instead? What about accepting the devastating erosion of the education system? What about building more prisons than schools and hiring more corrections officers than qualified teachers. What about nixing the electoral college and continuing to condone closed-door gerrymandering?

What about a strategy that amounts to a government sponsored free-for- all for the 1 Percenters that would pit them against the rest of America’s people? What about Constitutionally segregated States, divvied up by the color of one’s skin, or by class scale or political affiliation?

What about a second Civil War? I have reviewed enough social media from both the left and the right that indicate that this might be essential to “win” for their side. I continually read of entrenched mindsets where people feel their worlds being stolen by politicians and immigrants and strangers or the misconstrued meanings of the United States Constitution and our Bill of Rights.

These days praying can get a person defiled and ridiculed. Imagine that. Freedom of religion is a sacred thing, and we hear a strengthening chorus that ridicules prayer as an integral action step. Prayer can look like so many things, and can sound like so many things, and should never be minimized, nor should we condone religious discrimination or discrimination against GLBQT individuals or any brand of hate speech.

As we become more deeply entrenched in our core values we hack away at the benefits of civility and damage our ability to believe in the benefit of fostering something greater than the sum of our parts and the collective accountability for each other’s safety. As we lose our ability to communicate effectively, we pronounce that differing views are unpatriotic. How disheartening and terrifying is it that Patriotism is becoming a flawed standard?

Through our actions we have invented our own disease, one that spreads from the sanctity of our  homes and is then propagated by children who do not understand the weight of the words they speak in their elementary and middle and high schools and colleges and places of work and our government buildings, spreading like a flu virus. This disease, hate, spreads across this nation like swaths of burning forest that flare from one spark and threaten to destroy so many beautiful things. From out corners we urge the fires to burn the other side away, fanning the flame to create a fire that cauterizes the pain we feel as we watch the limbs of her healthy society fall victim to self-amputation. The white blood cells race to eradicate her infections yet fail to save the dying parts of her. This growing hate weakens her like disease or cancer that infects her cells and disintegrates the structure of her bones.

This disease leads to mass shootings and the bombing of our own government buildings and further drives a wedge between us as we struggle to achieve our ideologies of safety and our rights. Try as we might to do admirable and sensible gun reform work, the real issue is the hate that causes one to seek a weapon. I want to save every American life, working together to build a stronger, more accepting and empathetic society is the most important task of all. Those who hate will find a way to express that hate with deadly force. Handguns can easily accomplish the task of stacking up our new definition of mass murders (3 deaths in one incident). America bleeds from this violence, and the loss of blood leaves her heart weakened and staggering. I believe she is tortured and traumatized. We are traumatized. Do not make the mistake of minimizing our collective trauma that impacts our day to day functions as individuals and society.

I can’t help but feel sorrow as I contemplate the reality that our country is addicted to escape; it pains me to believe that our lives are perpetuated on the need to escape. And in our trauma, I believe we seek vices that do not heal, they only mask our pain from moment to moment. Our lives are not designed to live this way, seeking oblivion from pain and boredom of our own infliction until we no longer exist.

More forms of recreational drugs and their proponents lining up behind recreational marijuana as the lobbyists push for it and her stocks are soaring. What other drugs should go on this list? I hear the arguments for legalization, especially the failure of The War on Drugs. One aspect of my response is; how could it have become more important and necessary for individuals to access marijuana and meth and cocaine and heroin, at such a cost of all the lives and resources we have squandered in the name of this war, and yet we kept on using because that was more important to us than setting down our drugs and saying “Not in my name.”

This is a harsh observation, and will not find favor among many, and I can accept that; our culture breeds the sales of these substances. Our culture disregarded the fact that on horrific scales people in Mexico and South America are being murdered as a result of cartel violence, mothers and fathers are in prison for dealing, and we are overdosing on historic levels, and yet, we keep using. The War on Drugs was a failure in accountability and the reasons for this failure in accountability are troublesome; misuse, dependence, addiction, greed, ignorance, marketing, self-medication, attempts to reduce the effects of trauma and an underlying need to escape from the daily burden of stress and dissatisfaction.  Ultimately, the unsuccessful efforts on the War on Drugs, and the results should be a loud and clear message; the power of these drugs is easily stronger than our ability to turn them down. We are society of people with addictions, including alcoholism, that some calculate to approach 30 million Americans. These numbers of deaths and costs related to addiction far exceed the numbers of deaths and costs related to gun violence. Combined, the numbers of preventable illness, accidents and deaths, is staggering. How can we tally these numbers without despair and a wholesale questioning of our priorities?

I worry about our choices; what we allow to happen in the name of free market capitalism and deregulation is troublesome. We have granted America a freedom to poison us. Look no further than the sale of cigarettes. That this country allows the sale of cigarettes is incomprehensible; there is not a single positive benefit to smoking cigarettes, other than corporations making money. If America legalizes marijuana, the government will be your drug dealer. If America legalizes marijuana, there will not be a reduction in cartel violence; their other products will rapidly be produced and sold in larger numbers as our desire for them increases. Legalizing substances is not the answer. Treating our trauma, enhancing our quality of life, building strong children with hope, nutrition, inclusion, experiences in the natural world with people from cultures different than their own, a high-quality education for all students, with plentiful opportunities for employment and fulfilling lives in a healthy environment is the answer. It is imperative we nurture our children, so they have a healthy and sound America they believe is worth nurturing.

My twenty-year career in suicide and substance abuse prevention has demanded my attention to America's symptoms. Each year as part of my work I review student mental health survey data and observe the rates of children who use alcohol and other drugs, feel unsafe in their schools, and contemplate and act on suicidal thoughts, increase.

In my personal life I don’t attend church regularly but am deeply connected to my congregation. I don’t own a gun but frequently contemplate purchasing one to hunt or for home protection. I don’t drink alcohol. I don’t smoke. I gave up one car for another car with better fuel efficiency.

The path of my life emerged from one of my earliest experiences as a teenager recognizing the power of both alcohol and guns came during my freshman year of high school. In 9th grade a group of my closest high school friends got access to a bar on a day that celebrates the consumption of alcohol at the college in our town. One of our crew got drunk, went to school, got caught, and then went home and killed himself with a gun. His father found him.

I am forced to return to this question as the father of a two-year old boy. What country are we offering him, what country or we offering each other? One of unity, empathy, partnership, environmental stewardship, safety, inclusion, respect, one that educates and creates standards of civility in our schools just as equally as standardized testing. Or are we so entrenched that our actions will continue to keep us on these trajectories of divisiveness, hate, greed, destruction and apathy? 

We can take steps, however small they seem, that are important. For example, I launched an initiative called Civil Words Not Civil War to encourage civil dialogue, participation positive and productive partnership and compromise, even when it is incredibly challenging. America's survival depends on our willingness to work together. If we cannot catalog her symptoms, agree on the best strategies to care for her, the very foundations of her beginnings, where our forefathers sought to create a set of laws and guidelines where we would work together for the greater good and self-determination and safety and freedom from persecution, will be as useless as the Treaties with the Native Americans, those same forefathers disregarded and broke at will to suit purposes that only enhanced their own desires. I believe that America was created with great intentions. America has made devastating mistakes. America has offered so much brilliance and hope to her people and to the world. We need to ask ourselves, what is America's purpose?

There are countless initiatives like Civil Words Not Civil War, and I champion them; find one, join them, start them. Vote. Advocate.  In my town, a White Supremacist group left informational flyers on a Synagogue in the middle of the night to terrorize the congregation and community.  I shudder to think that some groups and individuals would denounce my efforts and say they'd rather engage in civil war than consider a change in their world view. But I will never wait for the cover of night to encourage civility. 

I view America holistically, one being constructed of interconnected and interdependent organs; we are free to move within her, like blood and thoughts and chemical impulses, but we are all part of her. And in turn, America, one part of North America, the continent, is but one of seven interdependent organs and functions of the earth; heart, lungs, mind, muscles, blood, survival, love. 

Our decisions to continue to poison her or come to consensus on an array of treatments with the highest likelihood of success, can yet cast a futile and catastrophic example of greed and closed-minded entrenchment, or, return to the original purpose of her creation and again, offer our strengths as a role-model to the world and path to something far greater than we could imagine for humanity. We must prove that at the very least, civility is possible, even when it seems like it is not.

To achieve this, I am no longer certain America needs a political system in charge. I believe we are in dire need of a team of health practitioners that are experts in disease, trauma informed care and environmentally health-related illnesses to lead our country, not politicians.

And we, as her people, must agree to participate fully in the Hippocratic Oath and do no more harm. And she, like the promise of her that so many have sought and fought for and found, might still grant us a beautiful survival. But like any ethical medical professional will tell you, you must personally decide whether you accept the recommendations for treatment, if you want to heal with her.

America's Shadows

In the strengthening morning sunlight I carried Strongland up the mountain 

Accompanied by our silent American Shadows we gained elevation east out from the loosely-folded grain covered contours of the Wallowa Valley intersected with the bright glint torn seams of snow-melt streams etched into the amber and sage grasses, carrying forth the earth’s blood to thirsty cattle and fields and small towns below

We had left Georgia behind, exchanged her sweltering heat and cumulus clouds for a low sky awash with the colors of steelhead pushing upriver 

And red clay ground fine as porcelain slip for basalt and snow

And the Muscogee Creek Branch homelands for the lands of Treaty and Non-treaty Nez Perce Native American’s and a Statue of Chief Joseph the Younger and his words of peace and desperation

And plantation mansions for settler's decaying schoolhouses and a home made with salvaged boards from Appalachia, and juniper harvested from its site on the mountain

Splitting the earth from the sun

Our shadow traced across America's skin

Tomorrow is her Independence Day

No matter what variable or measure, state lines cannot be determined from those awesome heights

All you witness below is common ground

 We work our way towards the beating hearts of sons of American boys

And the Pacific Ocean

Her cold waters rush and swallow the ankles of fearless children that scream out across those waters to challenge the swelling waves and the surge of time,

"Turn back!

You don’t know us yet, wait your turn,

Until we come upon out time to relent to you.

Turn back!" 

Two days washed away since those moments in the ocean such as the forgotten name of a child you knew long ago

We are older now

I comment about gray in the beards

And erosion

And cracked and tumbling foundations

Brothers and sons

How we came to be, began long before us 

Strongland doesn’t yet understand this

“Dada” Strongland says, his child’s hand draws a line across the horizon of the world he is coming to know

My own hand, sticky with peach jam made from peaches weighing down the crooked branches of an old solitary peach tree tucked against this windswept Oregon mountain, I pull him close like water smoothing the  stones in the trout rivers below

We clear even the height of the sun just breaching the low hills pulled along the distant horizon

The walls of my heart beat harder against his stocky chest of new muscles and strengthening ribs, through our sweat soaked shirts that separate our blood

Even though it is half the same

Strongland’s arms drape loose around my shoulders; he knows I won’t let him go

Broad-beaked ravens cut arcs in the hood of blue above us, calling out to each other

Their serrated knife- winged shadows spiral across the mountain

I mimic them and Strongland laughs and I feel his breath brush my face like the soft shift of lupine and thistle reaching towards heaven from the cattle dotted meadows that surround us

I pull a piece of tall grass from the side of the dirt road and put it between my teeth

And a second one for Strongland

He held on to his only for a moment before with a laugh, he let it go into the wind 

Together we watched it sail away like a twisting feather, and my heart

Over the berm of the road before catching the wind fluttering towards a sinew of pale cinder gray asphalt streaked with logging trucks and grain haulers that appear no more substantial than a toy truck in Strongland’s broad hands 

We lost track of it, like so many things in this world, but I am certain it has settled in the tall grasses waiting until the earth reclaims it

We walked past an old barn; now just organized decay, perched like the peach tree on the mountain, waiting to succumb to the sun and the updrafts and the snow and time’s relentlessness

We stopped and studied the gaps in the exterior walls, exposing the light and shadow patterns laid across bare and lonely floors

I am tempted to disregard the No Trespassing sign nailed onto the dilapidated fence that separated it from the road

And carry Strongland across the threshold

But this was all Nez Perce land and we have gone too far already

Far below us, cast in metal, even Chief Joseph’s shadow resists his nonexistence

I carried Strongland further up the grade higher as my boots ground against the gravel and recalled stories told that morning

Of a gunshot survivor

A mother

A bullet would take the function of an arm but could not damage her grace

She preservers to raise proud children and teach them about how to make their own way downriver and write their own stories

As brittle as clay tile and as strong as Hells Canyon stone

And others who carry their scars on their hearts and survive when their sons have drowned in roaring waters

Through pain and triumph all America’s shadows are created equal

I scan the ridges above us, dense with pine and near-black ochre crevasses

They say the wolves have returned from Yellowstone to the higher mountains as they don’t mind at all the distinction of boundary or ownership of cattle or the lamb

I wear my Save the Wolves t-shirt, a hand painted gift from a child

I was warned not to wear it, to some, the sentiment is not welcome here

What is the difference between a wolf and the farms growing untold acres of feed corn along the Columbia River Gorge, I cannot fathom

Splendid emerald green, mesmerizing but out of place, drenched with an abundance of irrigation waters sprayed out from massive machines as if they will flow forever

Our American shadows ease along in silence as one

Dapple and break across a spring creek

Alongside the juniper and poplar

Above the sloped barn roofs in the valley, as bright as sun-lit mirrors

Our shadows will go with us I tell Strongland

When we are gone, they will be no more

Strongland rested his head on my shoulder

“Mama” he whispered

We turned back for her open, loving arms

As I carry him back down the mountain

Our shadows fall just the same as everyone else

Through unique to themselves all America’s shadows are equal and undivided

A Red Truck and the Weeping Willow

It was Saturday evening, the day before Mother’s Day. My family and I had driven up from Georgia to South Carolina to visit my mom and dad; a weight pressed on my chest, suffocating like no blanket of late spring humidity ever could. I pulled into a parking spot in front of my mom’s nursing facility; Strongland and his mama in the back, my dad sat in the passenger seat.

My dad opened his door to get out, took hold of grab bar, and then measured the long step down to the ground. “What made you buy a red truck?”

My eyes went to the rearview, found my wife’s; she gave me an easy and understanding smile.

  Beside me my dad steadied himself, waiting for my answer.

  I shut the truck off, a big red Chevy Silverado, and set my sunglasses on the dashboard and shook my head; how in the world are you asking me that? “I got a red one for mom…”

  Later on in the evening, as we drove away, my wife shared that when I had walked out of my mom’s room, or rather, when Strongland had taken my hand and led me out into the hallway, maybe knowing I couldn’t take being in there, that my dad told my mom about that red truck. I wish I could have seen my mom’s reaction; after all, that red truck was parked out there just for her. Only, for her.

  It’s not a long story, but the accounting of it cuts me apart into three parts, each heartbroken; one part of me feels real stupid for how it played out—part of me doesn’t even want to think about it at all because it brings my mom’s desperation to my mind—and then the last part of me is proud.

 A few weeks back I bought a truck; a Chevrolet Silverado, a glimmering Northsky Blue Metallic stunner, part marlin, part Baja-runner beast. That thing just looked alive, or at the very least, like clouds skimming across mountains and oceans.

My last seven cars were Ford Mustangs, one gray one, and then three red ones, followed by three black ones. Now, I have shoulder problems, my right shoulder is busted and torn and ground to bits.  Driving a manual just got to be a nightmare, but the worst part was getting Strongland into and out of the backseat of the Mustang.

So I got a truck. My wife always wanted one, and I can’t get my head around driving “just” a car.  You might have thought that I was going to go for another black vehicle, keep that trend going. But no way. I've had enough of trying to keep their paintjobs in nice condition, let alone pristine.

However it came about, I happened to fall in love with that Northsky Blue Silverado and that's the one I bought. I drove it home at 8:30 at night and parked it in the driveway. I went inside, turned the porch light on, studied it for a minute, and then locked the door. Then I tried to sleep. Laying there in the dark they came at me hard, gnawing visions; my mom, laying alone in her hospital bed, clutching her giraffe, wondering if anyone remembers her, waiting for the night to pass and the loneliness to get pushed away by the light of the morning sun and my dad opening her doorway open to share breakfast with her. That and the visions of two red toy trucks...

As my mom is being pulled deeper into the tar of Alzheimer's, and her mind weakens and her memories disavow themselves of her recollection, one memory has remained very clear to her; one Christmas, when I was just a small boy my mom and dad gave me some presents. Among them was a red toy truck. My mom still loves to tell the story of how I latched onto that truck and disregarded all else in the solar system and went off by myself to play with that truck. I have no idea what became of it, but I truly wish I still had it.

After all these years, I believe that my mom wanted to reconnect with that story and bring a recollection to reality that she could participate in. This past Christmas my mom and dad bought Strongland a red toy truck, a bright red Chevrolet. And Strongland loves it! He adores it. Maybe not more so than the solar system, but I think it means something to him. It sure means something to me... And to his grandmother. 

  That night I could not sleep, overwhelmed with a sense of guilt and betrayal. That morning I drove that bad-ass Northsky Blue Chevy Silverado to work and took in the color as it shimmered and changed in the light like the skin of waves as I drove down the highway. I went to one meeting and then did what I had to do. I called the dealership and told them I couldn’t keep it; find me a red one I begged.

On my lunch break I returned the shimmering blue truck and drove off with a red truck. A red truck because that’s what my mom remembers. I drove it home. My wife was in the backyard with Strongland. My mother-in-law, who had in fact, never seen either the red or the blue truck, was on the front porch. When she saw me pull up she went inside, out the back door and I guess asked my wife if I had a red truck… I would have enjoyed seeing the look on my wife’s face too.

  When I first explained the change to my wife I made up all kinds of excuses why I switched. Ironically all the things I made up about the decision were in fact some of my favorite things about the truck, I just twisted the truth… It wasn’t until later that I told her what really happened. You know your wife loves you when you can tell her a thing like that and not get laughed at. She understood.

On Mother’s Day I dropped Strongland and his mama at the front door of the nursing facility and drove around to the back of her building. There is a weeping willow there; it twitched and shifted in the wind, her long slim tendrils of branch reached towards the grass, still wet with from a just passed rain shower, viridian in a breaking sunlight. I pulled beside the weeping willow, parked and got out. I leaned against the truck and waved towards my mom’s window. I called my wife, she told me they could see me, and she took a picture for my mom to have; her son and his red truck, and the weeping willow.

  Just the evening before, I asked my mom if she could see the tree out her only window. Yes she could she said. Do you know what kind of tree it is I asked her. She couldn’t identify it. It’s a weeping willow I told her.

  My mom taught me most of what I know about trees. You don’t realize how important that is when you are a kid, or maybe that’s just me. It has taken me a long time to figure out what’s truly important. When my sister and I were growing up our mom transformed our empty and bare yard into a carefully planned and everlastingly beautiful tree-filled space. At one of the corners of our yard, on a property boundary stood a weeping willow. She hadn’t been the one to plant it, but it became part of the tapestry of greens that shielded our place from the street. She told me what that tree was those many years ago.

The rest of the visit was brutal. My mom wept and begged my dad to bring her home. My dad, as patient as any person I have ever seen took it all with grace and kindness and love that would stand forever as the perfect embodiment of compassion. Buying a red truck is nothing compared to this. But in one meaningful way I hope that it brings some lasting joy and comfort to my mother. If I could I would have wheeled her automated bed out to the truck, lifted her up and driven her home. My dad would have too. But sometimes, that blunt and cold truth is you can’t take remove a person from the place they most want to escape from. For my mom, it’s not the unadorned taupe walls that trap an underlying stench that no amount of chemicals can mask. It’s much worse than that, it’s my mom’s mind that she wants most desperate to escape from, where the willows weep and her yards and her streets and her strength melt and shear away like the edges of ice banks to drift apart in the oceans.

  And then it was time to go. A world continues on. I kissed my mother’s forehead, “I love you mom,” I told her.

  “I love you too,” she said.

  And then, her son and his wife and her grandson were gone.

I pray that she looks at the picture of me and the red truck and the weeping willow from time to time. And when she does, I pray that the roots of her mind sway in the warmth of a breaking sunlight and she’ll remember, without any doubt, that she was the planter of many trees that have taken root and grown and still live; and I want her to remember, the red toy truck she bought me when I was a baby, and the red toy truck she bought her grandson when he was a baby, and the red truck I bought her as a grown man.

*The photograph of the red truck and the weeping willow can be found in the “IMAGES” section.

No prayer like you would know.

Held by the dark, quiet, a shift between us, a hesitant rising... Strongland pushes himself up between us, his head tilts as he peers at his mama. “Mama?”

“Yes baby.” She says.

A small hand points towards the window behind me. “Moon.” I reach out, sweep his hair across his forehead, damp with sweat. He leans to his mama, she lifts him up, sets her feet on the hardwood, and carries him to the doorway from the bedroom to the hallway. Just at the frame of the open door, “Dada?”

I get up and follow them to the front door. Bare feet on freezer-cold concrete slab. We walk to the sidewalk, just us and the darkness, look backwards to the house, an unlit rectangular wash of dull-white paint, like a single unused pillow set on a bed waiting for someone to lay their head down to sleep. Strongland’s loosely folded hand, like a cowboy’s hand in an old western feigns holding a pistol, reaches up and points at the moon, cold dusty-chrome, a lonely ghost, forever shying away from the light of the sun. The sky has not teased nor promised the light of dawn.

Like usual I am the first one to give in to the cold. “Let’s go back in.”

Back into bed. I can hear him nursing. His mama soothes him to sleep.

I am not a religious man. You cannot prove God to me; I have seen too much the other way, that if there was something out there it was more like a devil. But through this boy… I see myself, a plain thing, aware of the halfway mark of my time. I will not offer a prayer, none the way you might know. It’s all I have.

I have already been to the water

I have already seen the sun

I have already breathed the air

I have already eaten my fill and more again from the mother’s hand

I have already walked across the land

I have already spoken and said more than I ought to say

I have heard the sounds of beasts and birds

I have been clean and unclean

I have shut my eyes and seen darkness

I have shut my eyes and have dreamed

I have sat, still, and quiet

I have screamed and whispered

I have seen my own blood, and know my heart beats

And beats

And beats

And I have waited

I have asked questions

I have searched

And I have found many things

And lost many others

Strongland breaths, lies still, then shifts. An arm across my chest. It won’t last but a short time before his head comes up and he tilts his head in the darkness and says “Mama?” Then he will collapse against her. And she will soothe him. I will lay beside them and continue as close as I can come to prayer.

I will

I will return to the water

I will look again at the sun

I will take deep breaths of air

I will eat again from my mother’s hand

I will walk again the land

I will stay and speak

I will listen for the sounds of beasts and birds

I will become clean and then again become unclean

I will shut my eyes and accept the darkness

I will shut my eyes and welcome what dreams may come to me

I will sit here, still, and quiet

I will scream and I will whisper

I will bleed and feel my heart beat

And beat

And beat

I will wait again

I will ask my countless questions

I will search

In each of these

I only seek to find Strongland

He still lies against me. His soft hair drawn across my jaw like silk. His skin damp with sweat. His stuffy nasally breathing. I don’t dare move.

Strongland

Is the swelling water

Is the churning sun

Is the air I breath

Is what I eat from my mother’s hand

Is the earth beneath me

Is why I stay and speak

Is the sound of roaming beasts and birds

Is why I will become clean

Is the darkness I am unafraid of

Is what I see behind the lids of my eyes when I dream

Is the still, and quiet

Is my scream and whisper

Is my heart that bleeds and I feel it beat

And beat

And beat

Is why I wait

Is the reason for the questions that I ask

Is the reason I search

Is what I found

Strongland

For then the water and the sun and the air and the land and my words and the beasts and birds and my clean and unclean self and the darkness and my dreams and the stillness and the quiet and my screams and my heart and how it beats and beats and beats and the waiting and the questions and my searching and the things I lost and the things I have found do not equal the significance of being this boy’s father.

 He shifts, and rises up and looks across the bed and tilts his head. “Mama?” Outside, the moon has eased on, and the sky has promised the dawn and in that growing light Strongland’s eyes seek mine. “Dada?”

Just then, you might have swayed me towards the existence of God.

BLOOD CREEK - Random Excerpt

Danny swerved. “Goddamn!”

My head slammed against the window. The ass-end of the Avalanche slewed off the road, smashed down into a stone culvert, and jackknifed across the two-lane road. Danny mashed the brakes; we skidded to rest.

“What the fuck, Danny!”

“Son of bitch forced me off the road.”

Craning my neck, I looked back.

“What kind of car.”

“Some goddamned Ford rig. Came right at me. Fuckin’ son of a bitch!”

“You don’t know the truck?”

“Never seen it. Light silver. Lifted. Coulda’ been some college kids. Also coulda’ been some dealers.”

“Goddamn.”

Danny got out. I did too. Walked around the Chevy. All four wheels sat square on the pavement. Nothing looked twisted or broke. “Fuck it. We’ll know soon enough if we should be driving it.”

“Yep.”

We cleared off a clump of mud that got dug out and whipped out onto the road. The back bumper dug into the near frozen dirt next to the culvert. Danny whistled when we saw how close we were to tearin’ off his rear right axle. “Goddamn.”

***

“Are you gonna tell me why exactly we are headin’ to the bank?”

“Can’t say.”

“Oh hell. I’m guessin’ you could say, you just ain’t.”

“Yep. I told you I ain’t robbing it.”

“No shit. We already covered that what you wasn’t doin’. Now I’m interested in the what, are you doin’, part.”

“I haven’t gotten any further than right where we sit.”

“You swear?”

“Nope.”

“Hell, Danny.”

“It’s cool, Nickie.”

I sighed. “All right.”

The Dollar General was packed. We drove passed the Exxon station. I caught a glimpse of Bruce standin’ behind the counter. Time seemed to hitch and I could swear his hand started to come up, like he was gonna wave, then stalled and dropped away and wiped across the counter. Maybe he saw me riding inside and decided against it. I don’t know. Don’t care. I got my answer. He didn’t know anything. Just the very part of me askin’ hurt him. I told myself I should raise my hand in his direction the next time I pass through. Ease his mind. I figure it’s worth doing that for a man when you could. Cruel not to. Which worked when that’s what you wanted to be. I was angry. But I wasn’t cruel. I prayed I’d stay that way.

Danny pulled to the curb in front of the Weaver bank. A semi shuddered behind us. I had a clear view to Mom and Pen’s building just up the road.

I looked across at Danny. The way he was settin’ was the same way he set when I come up on him this mornin’. He wasn’t cruel neither. In fact, it could be he never done a cruel thing to a person in his life. I leave huntin’ out of that whole deal though. Plenty of people might call deer huntin’ cruel. But it wasn’t. Not the way we run chases. Here it’s part of life, and it’s not life wasted. Yep, he wasn’t cruel. But right now, I wasn’t sure what he was.

“Danny, you sure us comin’ down here is a good idea?” I asked, but I already knew it wasn’t.

He reached for the door handle. “Nope.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“You all right?”

“Long ways from it.”

He got out, shoved the door shut.

“Aw hell then.” I pulled the Colt from my waist and shoved it under the seat and went inside. I really don’t think Danny had any idea of what he was wantin’ when he walked in that bank. That’s probably what got underneath my skin the most. I come in. He just stood there in the middle of the bank. I took a seat in a fancy waiting chair. Wasn’t nobody in line in front of him.

Marlene Paulson stood behind the teller desk. “Hi Danny? Can I help you?” She asked it again.

He didn’t budge. Jesus hell is what I thought about how things were going so far.

Marlene looked at me. “What’s wrong with your brother?”

That’s what he looks like when he’s thinkin’ is all I thought of sayin’. But I said nothin’.

Marlene’s eyes went big and she stepped back from her window. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched her arrange some stacks of whatever’s in front of her. Same manner that Bruce had when I went to see him at the Exxon station. Something about standin’ behind a counter for years on end must fuck with your head and give you a narrow-focus god complex and you end up needin’ every last thing in the exact place you think it ought to be. Or maybe you just get bored. I don’t know. I ain’t never done it. Too much time was passin’. Maybe Marlene thought the same thing. Her mouth opened. I thought she was startin’ to say Danny’s name. Instead she backed away, walked real slow like maybe she thought we wouldn’t see her go. I don’t even know if Danny saw her in the first place. He still ain’t moved. Or said nothin’.

“What in the hell, Danny?” I said.

Hallelujah

“Hell, it ain’t right to bring you here.” I tuck Strongland under my coat, rain soaked, lit neon blue from an overhead train hurtling passed. Wet bags cling to my feet, disintegrating into nothing but brown dirt, waiting for the slugs to inhabit their remaining usefulness. This world, this city, wastes away to nothing much more than gray slush, once pure white snow, splashed  along the side of the concrete swaths, broken chunks of cinder and rebar; we used to hold you up they seem to say, now we lay in ruins.

                Strongland don’t seem to mind, tucked into me like a bird clutched to a branch, slick and pale, and rough, but still, a refuge. I thought about the men I used to see as a boy, walkin’ down Route 4, headphones on, god damn, I know they ain’t even got the money for batteries to make them things play. Let alone money for food, or even a drop of booze.

                I don’t have a choice now, but to walk. “You hold on to me, real close, okay?”

                “Dada.”

                That’s his answer; he will. He can walk now, still unsteady, but I ain’t settin’ him down. Not here. Not tonight. The leather of my boots squishes like seal skin, just skinned, slick with blood. Busted street lights overhead, loom, dead seal eyes, blunt faded, orbs, no more light. The city don’t care. To hell with this street. To hell with you. Go on now, scurry in the darkness. Oh, it’s alright, you are out of sight.

                Cold drops of rain come as hard as ball bearings whipped across a close distance from a boy’s slingshot. Welts swelled up like wasp stings on the back of my hands and the nape of my neck. It don’t matter. Cover me with them, it don’t matter. Just as long as Strongland don’t get a single one.

                Strongland’s broad hands pull him tighter. I know he’s cold. I bawl. He don’t know, all he sees is the inside of my coat. Another train breaks the world apart above us. Pebbles and poisoned water arc off the platform and join the fray of desperation below. Down with us. Down with us. Down with us.

                “It ain’t right to bring you here. To the city. Ever. You hear me? There ain’t no life here. Don’t you ever confuse being alive with life.”

                “Dada.”

               He understands. I don’t know how he does, I only know that he does, like the few words that he says that cover all of what he knows. I feel like bawling. I gotta do something to stop it. I sing, halted and ashamed. “You don’t really care for music do ya?” I forget the opening lines of the song.  And most of the ones after. I pick up where I can. “Your faith is strong but you needed proof…” I bawl. “Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew ya.”

                Strongland tugs at my jacket collar, tries to push his head out. “Moon.” He looks for it.

                “Not tonight baby. No moonlight.” I bawl. “Just you… Hallelujah—Hallelujah—Hallelujah.” I’ll walk forever holding Strongland this close. You can have the moonlight. “Hallelujah.”

                I keep walking. Cars go by, fewer now. Faces hidden behind streaking wiper blades and selfishness. I know he fell asleep. He knows I’ve got him. It will take some time to clear this place, to where I can set Strongland down to walk beside me. But for now, it’s on me. Hallelelujah. I got you. Hallelujah.

Do You Remember Me?

“Do you remember me?”

“Yes. Of course, I remember you mom.”

Tears, welled from pain and heartbreak, seeped from her eyes, catching a pale, robin egg blue, a chalk smear of low South Carolina early winter morning light, drawn by a delicate child’s hands beyond the window blinds, forever out of reach.

“You are still, right here, mom.”       

I stand on her left side. My hand lays on her shoulder, I feel sweat and heat from her body, stuck too long in that same position. Her tears continue to drain from her heart, water separated from her very blood. They do not fall away uselessly down onto the thin cotton sheet tucked around her waist. I know with each darkening spot on her clothing, her heart has deteriorated, just as fluidly as her mind is leaving. I cannot fathom the pain in each of those tears.

I remember, when I was young and angry and disloyal, a bastard on most accounts, facing off with my mother at the top of the stairway of our house.  I hate you she said. I know she meant it. I was not my mother’s son. I told her that I was much stronger than her and then pushed her to the floor and walked away.

Now, I am older and angry, and facing off with my mother at the side of her bed, our eyes locked, I am worried and attempting to remove all layers of past disloyalty, but I am no bastard. I am my mother’s son. I love you she said. I know she meant it. I wanted desperately to pick her up from this bed, and carry her away, instead, it was not my place to do so. Instead, it was almost time for me to walk away.

Between my mother and I lay a giraffe that my mother made for my sister’s oldest child. It then went to my sister’s youngest; my son is next in line to inherit it. About three feet tall, covered in fuzzy fabric, colored in bold geometric patterns, faded now.  “Giraffe,” is my mother’s closest companion now, her steadfast guardian and silent confidant that listens to her cry herself to sleep during the stretches of time between visits by my father. It waits with her through the spaces of horror and loneliness between each tick of the clock and each shift of growing and fading light pushing or disappearing between the slates of the blinds covering her one window.  I envy the giraffe, and its loyalty to her. My Mom’s hands, unsteady, quivering, reach for it, her fingers find split seams, white polyester filler bulging out.

“Giraffe, you have holes Giraffe.” She says. New tears cascade from another tear of her heart.

My hand, still placed against her shoulder, rises and falls with the sobs coming from within her chest. My hand, filled with guilt, waits for the moment to pass. My hand scarred and healed, and scared and healed again, offers only a passing shadow of comfort. Her body, loose inside slackening skin, a vessel for despair to thrive, already knows everything within her, and outside of her is passing.

            Again she pleads, “Do you remember me?”

            “Yes mom.” I pray you have forgotten how I was sometimes.

            Just outside the doorway, open to the wide sanitized hallway, brightly lit with florescent bulbs, my wife, stooped forwards, grasping Strong Land’s hands in hers, stabilizing him as he wavered on two feet, offered me compassion with her eyes.

            “Is it okay if I go to sleep?” my mother asks. This is her way now; we all understand. When it is too much to bear, sleep, her last protective barrier against the pain, is a godsend.

            “Yes mom.”

            My mother’s eyes close, her jaw drops closer to her pillow, towards my hand on her shoulder.

             “I love you mom.” I draw my hand back. Her skin has dried. Her tears have vanished. It is my turn now. I leave the room.

            I want to pick my son up and carry him. Just fourteen months old, he is damned sure determined he is gonna walk out of there. Two months ago, that’s all it would have taken my mom to get out of this place, if she could just make her legs work. But they don’t. And we know now, they will not, ever again. And that was too simple anyways. Nothing will be simple about this anymore. Well, the heartbreak is simple. It’s real simple. And devastating.

            My wife and I make our way through the facility; black nurses and white patients, all women as far as I can see. We say hello to the nurses, avoid a patient who seems way too interested in our boy. The only thing that stops him is a live bird display just inside the main hallway. He squeals with delight, watching the birds flit from bar to bird house. He squeals when the birds chirp. He squeals when they disappear into cover. He doesn’t understand. All they have to do is fly away and return to where they belong; they do not belong here—my mother does not belong here—just leave... But it ain’t that simple. God dammit. Tomorrow is Christmas. Fuck Santa Claus; God, what will you bring for my mother?

            Opening the door, stepping outside, I know my mom is in her bed, clutching Giraffe and weeping. I can hear her ask, “Giraffe, do you remember me?”

Outskirts of Living

Besides the markers of those gone I will follow

I won’t question you

You know the streets and hiding places

On the outskirts besides the shallows

Tall like looming angels

Fading robes in silence casting shadows

My heart resides in the beats between the city limits and the light years I cannot travel

Besides I wouldn’t anyway I pay them no matter

Cast aside my faded coat to adjust my bones, broken and hanging on by torn flesh and sorrow

What would I know had I never questioned the laws of some lonely fortitude?

Fortunes wasted and unsaved and tossed aside like faulty pride

I won’t leave your side even though I ain’t beside you

I was in your eyes

A shelter after them million miles through never-mind and blindness

Peace they say to those that seek it

Power they taunt to the powerless and meek

Freedom they cry to them that release them

Wealth they offer for those who stole it

Warmth they promise for those cold and alone

Water they pour for the desperate and the weary

Time they count for those on the run

Dreams set forth into the minds of the sleeping

Coyotes and hummingbirds

Colors and blindness

And I follow behind without question

Besides the markers of those gone I will follow

You know the streets and hiding places

On the outskirts besides the shallows

Tall like looming angels

Fading robes in silence casting shadows

My heart resides in the beats between the city limits and the light years I cannot travel

Besides I wouldn’t anyway I pay them no matter

I exist now in my mind along the outskirts besides the shallows

BLOOD CREEK - Close! And, dang!

Just wanted to share a glimpse into my world of seeking representation for my manuscript, Blood Creek to literary agents. On July, 25, 2018 I queried Elizabeth Kracht with Kimberley Cameron & Associates, and today I heard back from them. In the realm of submitting manuscripts to literary agents, any feedback is useful, and this very kind and encouraging rejection letter is very good news. Well, an offer would be really great news, but to have the agency describe Blood Creek as “a quality piece of work” means a whole heck of a lot! I will email them today and thank them for reaching out to me!

I took a break from querying agents to launch both Strong Land and Civil Words Not Civil war on Facebook, and am in the process of identifying my next selection of agents to contact. And, I feel hopeful.

I’ll tell Strongland about this tonight when I feed him mashed pear and wheat bread.

Anyways!

Dear Andy,

I hope this email finds you well.  As an assistant for Elizabeth Kracht, I am responding to your submission.

I wanted you to know that Elizabeth and I considered your work. Last year was an extremely busy year for Elizabeth causing her to fall behind on her submissions. Because we receive more than two hundred submissions per week, it is necessary to be extremely selective on a very subjective basis. Unfortunately, we have to pass on this project. It's a quality piece of work and I am sure you will find an agent to represent you. 

I wish you all the best in your future publishing endeavors and feel free to submit any future projects.

Brittle, Wind Dancer

I watch my mother as she waits for her legs to work. I watch my mother, waiting for the world to reorganize into some proper meaning. She contains intelligence that cannot be quantified, but now, shoved along in gusts of confusion cannot process how she once could. We are not machines. Whether that makes us goddamned or unbound I cannot say. 

Her thoughts flitter and twist and get swept away from the course of road that lay before her. On their ballet shoe pointes they scrape and claw at the surface of what was, tenuously spin and slide, silent aside from her accompanying breath. 

Her memories, these Brittle, Wind Dancers, vivid colors, sharp creases, unattached stems, individual parts of some disintegrating whole, blurring, a shifting organism, not a machine, but a life I could never qualify. 

We sit, side by side, heart by heart. You are still stronger than me, sharing your tears. I am too weak to show mine. ” I have always loved you,” she repeated. “When you were bad, you were so bad. When you were good, you were so good” she said. Now, mom, I am good, and you always, you always did your best.

I cannot lose you. And you cannot lose me. Or your daughter. Or your husband. We will all grasp tightly the unquantifiable that is still your life. We, the four of us will weave it together, twisting the short and delicate fibers of life into a fabric that will not tear no matter how many times we wrap ourselves within it when we are cold, or use it to shield us from the glaring light of unbearable truths.

When there come times when we feel pain and loss and have no fibers at hand to bind together, we will return to our memories, shear them like the wool from a young ewe, gently work our wire brushes through the strands, imperfect, delicate on their own, tough, when bound together. Again, and again. Lamb after lamb. Season after season. Age after age. Love compounds love. Memory is restored, vivid, still part of this one whole cloth that you yourself have woven. It becomes you, this gift of all ages. I understand love. This, mom, is your greatest gift to me.

Let us hold this woven cloth around you. Grant you some respite from these gusting winds. Let us protect your thoughts, as they push and fade, bringing with them fear and despair. Let us set ourselves as baskets on the ground about you, collecting your precious thoughts to be held sacred within us. Be to the damned, and glory, these vivid and fading colors—they, like you —are the most true of the Brittle, Wind Dancers.

Hazards

Can’t help but see a thing like that, even from miles out. Nothing between us, and the growing light from the fire, nothing at all but shoving wind, and hard pack, ground down into low folds of pale ocher sediment like a dust-caked floor mat shoved up behind an open door.

Strongland looked at me. I knew he was wondering what I was going to do. I pulled over. In a situation like this, you cover ground, try not to make mistakes, watch for things that will catch you up, make damn sure your intentions aren’t something you have to backtrack on your way out of some trouble you didn’t see layin right there in front of you, some issue that only gets in your way when you get careless. If it was just me, maybe I could afford to be just a hair careless. But, I felt Strongland, all brown eyes, looking across at me. Can’t be careless. Even if you don’t have the answer for what might need to get answered when you come up on it.

Another car loomed and wavered and disappeared altogether behind us. I hadn’t seen another car in either direction, hell, maybe in the last two hours. When we came to a spot that wouldn’t get us any closer I flicked on the hazards, eased off the gas, and pulled off the highway, just as far as I could from the outside of the white line. A fence ran along the road, parallel to it, as far as I could see towards the horizon. It just disappeared way out somewhere in front of me. Just ended like a phone call, a line going dead at the end of some long conversation. How much longer would a man try and catch the end of that thing? Or a long ago ended phone call. I don’t know.  Perhaps a great distance.

We got out. Strongland stepped to my hip. Not a word passed between us. I taught him to approach most things like a fly-fisher would a creek. You come up quiet, no use in just barreling in. Wait, and see what the shadows and the rocks, tucked in beneath the surface tension, tell you about the things you cannot see at first.  Then if you get to a place you believe you have learned a way to approach what’s in front of you, without ruining it, then you make your move.

Wasn’t much we could say about what we saw. Maybe a mile out, add another half-mile and you’d be on it. I wasn’t sure if it was a barn, or a house, but it was sure as hell not surviving the fire that swallowed it. No way.

Strongland took my hand. I saw his feet dig against the dust that piled up along the fence line. He had been like that since he was born. You could always tell that boy’s brain was working away in direct correlation to his feet digging in. He was nervous about it. Scared even. “There’s nothing to be done. It’s gone. Or, will be if we tried to get there.”

That car pulled up. An old timer got out. Dressed in a suit. Polyester? I really didn’t know. But it was well looked after.  “That your boy?”

“Yessir.”

He looked Strongland over. “He’s got the same eyes.”

“Yessir.”

His hands, paper thin skin, gold wedding ring, dingy yellow fingernails, wrapped easily around the barbwire fence. Wind rocked us. Strongland leaned into me. His head at my belt.

“You from around here, sir?”

The old man’s eyes lit up like the fires. Then a shadow swept through them just as real as submerging your body into a bathtub full of ice.

“I used to be… hell, yes. I used to be.  I don’t belong to no place now.”

“Sir?”

All three of us watched that thing burn. Smoke curled away from it, long drags twisted like a dragon kite bucking to break off its string. 

Tears welled in the old man’s eyes. I watched two versions of the world emerge on the skin of the tears as they slid and broke down the man’s face, the man’s skin that was exactly like the hard pack laid out from our feet into all directions. He wiped them away with his shirtsleeve.  “That place is mine.” Nodding toward the fire.  “Was mine anyways.”

I was going to ask the man what happened. Maybe he knew it. His eyes betrayed that he had slipped past reasoning. I didn’t ask him. I knew what happened and could imagine his ancient thumb rolling the spark on a forty-nine cent Bic.

Strongland reached out, put his tiny hand on the old man’s hand, clasped around the barbwire.  I didn’t stop him.  “Do you need help mister?”

The old man smiled. “Only if you are God.”

Strongland looked up at me. How’s a young boy supposed to answer a question like that?

“No ‘sir.”

The old man patted Strongland’s hand. “Oh hell, I’m an old fool.” His eyes shifted, he stared at me. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean anything by it.”

I nodded. Grit wedged between my boots, Strongland’s were covered.  It was the first time I realized the old man wasn’t wearing shoes. Just crow-black socks.  There were questions I wanted to ask the old man. But Strongland wasn’t ready for questions like that. Not yet. There would be nothing to prove by asking them. Nothing to gain. Whatever brought that old man to the spot he was in to decide to burn his house down was a long time in the making. A long time I guessed.  “You have any place to go?”

“Well…” the old man laughed, dry and harsh, like splintering wood, “I don’t think so. Not anymore… Like I said, some things, too many things, just don’t make sense to me anymore. They just goddamned don’t.”

I reached out my hand. His own clamped around mine like it was the only blessed thing holding him to the earth. “There’s a lot of the world feels like that these days, sir.”

He nodded. Got back in his car. Pulled back onto the highway and drove away.

Strongland and I stood, together. Wind pushing hard. Already the fire lost its anger. We waited until there were no flames. Who knows where that old man was going. Who knows why the ways of the world were shifting into some unmanageable course. I couldn’t. I stared into Strongland’s brown eyes. Yes, they were like mine. I prayed he would be smarter than I am.  ”Are you ready?”

Strongland looked out at the highway, then back across to the scorched ruin. “There’s nothing to be done here.” He took my hand in his, and led me from the barbwire fence towards the car.

I knelt down onto the hard pack and wrapped my arms tight around the boy. By god I hate to ever release him from them, not now, not in forever. But there was no sense in waiting anything out, no use wasting the time that wasn’t even ours. Strongland studied me again. He has his mom’s eyelashes. I swear he nodded.

Alright, I thought. “Let’s get home.”

We buckled in. I turned the hazards off, reached across to him, put my hand on his chest then wheeled onto the highway. Strongland never looked back at that fire. He never asked why. He had already come to some conclusion that squared it up in his mind. I knew he was already smarter than I ever was. Someday, down the line, I’ll ask him what conclusion it was he came to. Maybe then, I might understand.