Category: Fiction

I have sat and looked at this boat for five days now. It is quite a nice boat to look at, thirty feet at least and creamy white with deep blue trim and a polished brown wood swim deck and a strong looking tower for spotting fish. It is surely more expensive than the rest of the little fishing boats lined up at this dock. I am not sure if it is a yacht. I am sitting here next to my friend and I ask him when a boat becomes a yacht. I should say that I am really sitting here because of my friend. The responsibility has fallen to me somehow. I believe that he is thinking or meditating or self-medicating with UV rays or sitting here for some purpose or other. I am supposed to be with him so I am here watching this boat for lack of other things to look at. At the very least I should learn about boats while I am here. There are waves and houses across the inlet and some slow-flying birds, but I prefer the boat. I have seen a lot of boats and been on many boats, mostly small ones, and I could watch an inlet for many hours if it was crowded with boats passing and boaters waving at one another, but not five days. We use lots of sunscreen and go inside only for turkey sandwiches and watermelon at lunch. He sometimes takes his shirt off and spreads himself out with his back on the dock and drinks lots of water and says that it would be a nice change if it rained once in a while here or that it’s a shame people build such big houses and only spend half the year in them or that he can feel the fish swimming under the dock or that there are nearly fifty species of dolphin in the vast expanse of creation or that I should go back inside and cool down.

The wood is very hot and burns my feet so I keep my sandals on and try to sit without moving. He says this dock is too small for yachts, which are generally known to be boats that begin at forty five feet and can sleep two people comfortably. He must be correct. I ask if fishing boats are probably not also yachts and he says that is correct. A boat built for fishing is generally not considered a yacht, so this boat we are watching with its fishing tower and space near the bow for many fishing poles is not a yacht. My friend knows many things about boats. I know a few things about small boats. He once flew to Alaska and walked onto the first dock he saw and asked a boat captain for a job. The first captain said no but the second captain said yes and so my friends spent sixty seven days catching salmon and halibut and crab thousands of pounds at a time and talking about conspiracy theories and redacted government files and holistic eating  specifically unprocessed bread with the second captain who had a long white beard and was afraid of chemicals and only went onto land so that he had better reception for Sunday morning gospel radio. My friend called me the day before his flight and asked if I wanted to make six thousand dollars in two months but I said Alaska got too cold and I would likely become sea sick. A month after he left I considered taking a trip to the Everglades but it was a four hour drive and the peak of summer was not a good time to travel there because it was too hot for the animals to come out and there would bee too many bugs.

I saw him two days after he returned and he showed me the calluses on his hands and told me that they had hauled in a twelve foot salmon shark and thrown it back and that he had new reasons that the moon landing was faked and why every corporation except for soy processors is afraid of plant-based eating. Perhaps I should have gone to Alaska. I have fortunately never been susceptible to even the best conspiracy theories. We both know fisherman who like to talk. The fisherman who like to talk are always smug.Everyone with a boat down here is a smug fisherman who will tell you when the redfish are running or how many weeks until the tarpon start biting or whether the night before or the night after high tide is the best chance to catch mahi mahi. I wonder if that is the only type of person we both know. No, we both know people who can recite hundreds of verses from holy books and people who are interested in buffalo and middle aged men who talk too much about craft beer. I am not sure actually if we know the same type of people who are interested in buffalo. My uncle has a buffalo head on the wall of his cabin that he claims he shot in the woods but I fail certain it is illegal to hunt buffalo and my uncle has never broken a law so I am suspicious that he bought it at a flea market. My friend once was in a car with the conspiracy theory boat captain who saw a pack of buffalo on the road ahead and stuck his head out the window yelling at the buffalo while chasing them down the road and off the road into a field until the pack split up and the car had to be pushed out of the muddy field back onto the road. It must be illegal to attack buffalo with a car even if it is a small car but I do not think there was a large police presence where the buffalo were walking. Perhaps neither of us knows anyone who really likes buffalo. I wonder if chasing buffalo in a car is better or worse than mounting one on a wall. I don’t ask my friend that question because he does not talking about life and death or doing dangerous things in cars.

We have been visiting this beach town and this dock for many years. Our mothers were high school best friends and very similar types of people who loved to run on the beach with kites and drink tall Styrofoam cups of sweet tea from gas stations and say they only do this on vacation and go snorkeling early in the morning before anybody else is awake so they don’t have to wait on their husbands. There was a time when we did very little sitting at this dock or anywhere, really. We might run across this dock quickly enough to get splinters on our way to our boat. I used to ask what he wanted to do today and he always answered with try to find someone who would let us borrow a jet ski or wait until it was dark and go diving off the bridge or gather up all our one dollar bills and pay poker against his older cousins. I said we should just go for a swim. Sometimes we fished for crabs with bits of fruit tied string on the end of plastic spoons, but the crabs with their grabbing little claws held more interest for my friend than for me. I did quite enjoy our boat while we had it. We ate lots of shrimp for dinner and bags and bags of popcorn at the closest movie theater which was twenty minutes away and fried fish and potato salad at his family’s family reunion each year. I was invited because his mother invited my mother. My friend very much desires peace and quiet now, perhaps because so much has happened to him recently and he believes some quiet time in the sun near the water will stop so much form happening to him so quickly. I am not sure, but that is my best guess. I feel more sure about that than I do about my knowledge of boats and their features and categories and the names for the birds that would rather sit in palm trees than have to fly and expose their feathers to this heat.

Very little has happened to me but I would rather not be sitting here doing very little and looking only at a thirty foot fishing boat that is not quite a yacht because it is not quite long enough and because it will never be a yacht as long as it is meant for fishing. At one point I thought that a lot of things happened to us here. I learned to water ski and kneeboard and scuba dive. We were too young to scuba dive but my friend’s father rented three tanks and told the woman at the dive shop they were all for him. After thirty minutes of looking at the sandy bottom and some silver and brown fish I knew the basics and floated back up to the boat but they stayed under for an hour more and brought some sand dollars and a very smooth conch shell up with them. My friend went tubing with his uncle and broke three fingers when the tube flipped and caught is fingers in the handle and wasn’t allowed to leave his condo for three days when he stole his aunts bottle of white wine. Those things are not like the things that are happening now and now they feel so small and simple that they were not things that happened at all but rather things that filled the time before the real things started to happen.

So yes that is where I am now and perhaps a bit has happened to me but certainly more has happened to my friend here and the things that have happened to him are markedly more interesting and involve far less of the everyday things that happen to people like taking a new position at a a younger, smaller firm with an espresso machine or traveling to a new state that is famous for its barbecue and good hiking. For instance I found out that he was a Mormon just two months ago. My first thought when I found out that he was Mormon, before I even thought that all I know about Mormons is that they are polygamous and are not allowed to drink Coke, is that before he became a Mormon he was the best lizard catcher I ever saw. He would chase lizards when we were kids and grab them by the tail and hold them up to show me and then make them bite onto his ear like a wobbling and gaudy black and brown earring. Sometimes the tails would tear away from the lizard in his hand because their tails were meant to regenerate as a way to escape predators. I was always a bit scared of lizards and I did not want to end up with a bloody lizard tail in my hand. Now it seems a bit absurd that a Mormon would chase a lizard. My friend is face down on the dock and his back is very red and I ask if he thinks learning to scuba dive is different than trying caffeine for the first time. He says that I can have some of his water if I need it.

He gave me a copy of the Book of Mormon the first day we sat looking at the boat and from then on I decided that Mormons must not chase lizards if they did not drink Coke. Before he became a Mormon he moved to Los Angeles for three weeks before someone found him in asleep in his boxers on a street with Spanish style homes with circular driveways and pools where people paid a lot of property taxes so that nobody about to undergo a religious conversion ended up nearly naked on their curb.

It turns out that Mormons are no longer polygamous and that he now has a quite attractive girlfriend who I am supposed to meet soon and who the family loves and I am looking forward to meeting. It also turns out that Mormons call kissing smashing. I am not sure because that is just what they call or because they want people who are not Mormon to think they are having a great deal of sex. It seems odd an odd thing for a Mormon to want so I should ask my friend about it later. Or perhaps I won’t ask him because then he will ask me if I am dating anyone and he may call me a fornicator. Even though I have not fornicated in too long and wold like to do some smashing, the Mormon type or the regular, type I would like to avoid that. There is a bar near the beach not far from this dock that I should go to whenever we leave. At the moment I can’t think of anything worse than being called a fornicator. It sounds very absolute and sinful, if that is the type of thing you believe in.

I am happy for my friend, even if I don’t want to spend a sixth day on the dock. I don’t see it getting better soon for me, so at least it has been getting better for him. Maybe I should take a fishing charter tomorrow to give myself somewhere to be. No, that would not be enjoyable alone. It would mean a whole day of small talk with a boat captain that would start with where I’m form and what I’m doing down here and how many times I have been fishing and end with him asking me what I really see myself doing and telling me that his wife really thinks it’s time he sell the boat and find something more stable to do. I do not like talking to fishing captains or marina workers or boat mechanics. They are always so smug. I am not sure what value they believe their knowledge of tides and engines and the corrosive capabilities of saltwater to be but they feel it is something deep and mystical that I will never grasp. That may be true, but I would forget those types of things quickly. They are not useful anywhere but here. I can just imagine myself trying to sound impressive at a dinner party in some house on the water with big glass windows by explaining how much I know about the different shapes of fishing hooks and the difference between a yacht and a plain old boat and forgetting if yachts started at forty feet or fifty feet and sounding not impressive but quite boring and useless.

-There are cities south of the equator and west of Africa and east of the South Pacific with long histories of immigration and grand cultures of dance and corrupt presidents and with white apartment blocks that are not too tall but not in disrepair and square green parks with many trees and pink and blue graffiti and places to eat near the water where things slow down in the afternoon.

-Winter taps one of these cities for a week and people’s gloves and heavy jackets stay on for three weeks long after the heat has returned to burn the crowded morning buses that are hot because the buses are for the slow and the poor and the trains under the ground are quick and cool and for the men and women in suits who work in the district of these cities where there is all the architecture and glass.

-They met in one of these cities.

-He was not from one of these cities and she was not from one of these cities but like him she was there for work.

-He stared at the color of her hair but it was not uncommon in this city and she made everyone laugh in the mornings when they asked how her weekend had been.

-He did not think more of her until he visited her office again and saw her laughing with the same man again and until his next visit he thought about her white shirt and he wondered if the man from her office had seen her wear it before.

-Some of these cities have little bars behind flower shops that open only long after the flower shops close and have painted sea gods on the wall and serve strong drinks with absinthe from tall menus made of heavy paper and have bartenders with bad beards but good enough English to explain the ingredients and serve other drinks named for important years from history and revolutionary leaders who would in their day never pay more than two pesos for drinks with clear foam and sprigs of thyme.

-The first time they had drinks in one of these cities they sat at one of these bars with two friends in between and ordered different drinks.

-Some of these cities are filled with runners because jogging is new there and neon running jackets and devices that measure their distance and steps and pace and sweat are new there and look like something they have never seen in the old parks and the boulevards bursting with tiny round cars and the runners find space after dusk in the lull after late dinners of milanesa and pasta and coffee and tea in bowls made of gourds in the hours before the streets would be populated again and the lights would come back on in the cafes across from the parks.

-He was from a city that was not like this one and he had thought about going back once but then remembered his old job and how much he liked the coffee and toast for breakfast in the café below his apartment and so he thought he would go back when he grew tired of breakfast here.

-He tried to run on nights when work did not go late.

-He once spent half a day at her office but left early and asked her if she would like to run but she said she was not a runner so he ran hard on the stone streets when they were empty and dark and he thought of her wondered if she enjoyed the nights here as much as he did or if she noticed how the stone streets sounded beneath people running.

-It was hard to think in one of these cities during the day in the light but it was easy to think in one of these cities during the night when the air was just warm enough that you did not have to think about the cold or remember to bring a coat in case it got cold because the nights never got colder as they went on they only got darker and quieter.

-It was hard for him to think about her during the day because there were never five minutes when he did not have to make sure he was not walking the wrong way towards the wrong bus stop and asking for the wrong directions in the wrong language so he wondered if she would laugh when he asked for directions and he hoped she would not mind if they were walking together and they turned a block too early.

-The days in one of these cities were long in the spring and there was lots of time to be spent outside and people were often drinking wine at tables very close to the street and reading on benches and university students always seemed to be out of class and sitting and talking all over the city and there were lots of people letting their dogs who were always small run freely in front of them and there was often the smell of meat smoking on a grill about but it never felt too heavy because the days were light and never too hot.

-He tried to stop thinking of her during the nights because he had no reason to but he did not do well at stopping once he had started.

-There was a work outing to a ranch for both of their offices and so they sat together on the long bus with wide windows meant for day trips.

-It was a tourist ranch because there was no longer enough money in selling beef and chicken and pork and eggs and lamb.

-There was a tour of the ranch and a meal of the meats it had once sold into the city, chorizos and flanks and ribs.

-There were cuts of pork that immigrants had brought when they came into the city and that he had never seen or tasted.

-There was blood sausage that he tried to hold in his mouth and savor and swallow but he could not finish and she had waved it away and smiled when she watched him eat it and struggle and frown.

-He thought about her most in the dark at the end of the day when the news on the television was read too fast and he didn’t know where to find food after midnight and it did not help him that the nights in one of these cities were so dark and he did not like to wear his glasses because they were not in the style of that city and the streetlights and even the blinking of televisions in apartments above the street that struck out into the dark through old thin curtains on the windows did not brighten things enough to stop the long nights that fed the weekends of the city and made them long and dense.

-The ranch was not far from one of those cities but it was past a town built of brick with brown dust in the roads and a dry cement canal that looked too old even for the old town so that it felt like the ranch was very far from the city and that it had been a long day away when it had only been a few hours because the day at the ranch could not last beyond the regular work hours of the offices of the city and even for the foreign workers and their guests so as he looked out the window the bus ride looked long, hours and hours, but they returned to the city before it was enough for all of the café lights to be on.

-Days later they had dinner at a steakhouse in one of these cities.

-He didn’t often eat steak but he lied and told her that after the ranch he wanted to eat it more often and try all the best places in the city.

-People said the city was famous for its steakhouses and for pairing wine with steak.

-They ordered red wine that was dry and steak that was wider than the plate.

-The wine tasted good with the steak and they did not order dessert because they wanted to walk.

-Some of these cities do not have many bridges because they are port cities that do not have rivers and the water is not in the lives of the people who live there but only in the lives of those who live near the port that opens into the Atlantic and the shipping industry is dying and there are only bridges over canals and the canal is too small for ships so it is not in the life of even the port workers so there is a low bridge that is only used for walking and decoration and it is tall and stark and plain white and the buildings nearby are new and expensive but are nice to look at while walking.

-They walked across the bridge and stopped halfway to look up at its white spire.

-They looked at the black wires that help up the bridge but were meant to be hidden by the sky so that only the white of the bridge could be seen.

-They asked a tourist carrying an umbrella for a photo and they did not recognize the language of the tourist but they thanked him and said it was a good photo.

-He could not help but think of her in the days after because he liked to think about her standing next to a sheep and riding a horse at the ranch.

-The sheep was white and dirty because it had been lying in the dying grass of the ranch all day.

-It was used to visitors and liked to be petted on its head and her hair fell onto the sheep as she petted it and her hair was shiny and now noticed it again in the photo on the bridge and stared and stared and wondered why it had not struck him in this way when he first saw her and he remembered how she held a glass of clear white wine and dirtied her shoes in the dirt by the sheep so he thought about the sheep and her the next day and then in the next days about her and the horses and he had ridden before and she had ridden before and they had been ahead of the group and looked back and were further ahead than they expected.

-The next time they met in one of those bars they did not sit at the bar on either side of two friends.

-They sat close on stools and their knees bumped and bumped and rested against one another.

-They talked with the bartender and tasted each other’s drinks and ordered more and left together after a what was a long time at a bar but not so long that the bartender stopped asking them if they needed another drink.

-For some days after that he did not have work and he walked often and rode the bus on routes he had not tried and looked out the sometimes clean but usually dirty windows at people sitting close together at restaurants at all times of the day and he thought about the pale color of her jeans.

-The clubs in some of these cities open at two after late dinners and after the runners have come inside and after naps of an hour or two and after two cups of coffee and maybe a cigarette.

-They went to a club in one of those cities.

-It was expensive but he had nothing else to spend money on.

-He had not been out with her like this so he folded too much money into his pocket and hoped they would stay out late.

-They were there too early and the club was not as loud as he hoped and they sat out back where there were big metal heaters and hard plastic chairs that didn’t feel like they were meant for sitting.

-They talked for a while but the drinks were not strong and she did not like how roughly the bartenders worked and that they would not make her a good drink and she did not like that he had taken her to one of these clubs.

-They left through the front door past a line that was not long but that was moving slowly and into the street that was not crowded because it was too early for the cabs to line up there.

-She grabbed and pulled him through the street and away from the club and towards her apartment but it was a long walk and it would have been easier to take a cab so they sat on a bench for a while with her hand on his shoulder and her other hand on his hip and his head on her shoulder and then they stood up and continued to walk and there were fewer and fewer streetlights and nothing was open and it took her several tries to unlock her door.

-Some of these cities have long fashions of dance that everyone likes to talk about in heavy ways but that not everyone likes to practice except for the old people who do not want to see the old ways die and some of these dances start with one step forward and one step back two steps forward and two steps back and the man should always take the first step unless his partner steps quickly in that case he must follow and twist and turn as she does and spin her when she asks and keep his hand on her back firmly so that she does not step without his knowing it and he does not step without her feeling it.

-She awoke before him and was clear-eyed and aware and her skin was clean.

-He awoke after her with a face that was too warm and he could feel how he had not showered though she had already showered and left and returned.

-She said she was not hungry for breakfast because she had already had a coffee but that he should try one of the cafes in the neighborhood.

-He asked why she had not woken him and she said it was already late when she left and she thought he would be gone when she returned.

-He had not left but he had laid in her bed because he was not sure how long she would be gone and her bed was larger than his and he turned onto his side and onto his back again and it was a cool morning so he remembered in his first weeks in one of these cities when he had nowhere to go so he visited the waterfalls outside the city and the bus ride was bumpy until his legs began to hurt but someone had said the waterfalls were the eighth largest or widest or fastest in the world and so he looked right into the mist though it moved fast and around and past his head and stung his eyes and wet his hair and the falls grew louder and louder.

-He had been asleep when she left and so he had not noticed what she wore in the morning.

-Outside the parks were empty and everything was empty because in mornings after the clubs were open there was not much movement in one of these cities until later when the light was less fresh and this early the buses would hardly be running and one should be quiet to let others sleep for another night to come.

-He had imagined that she wore a white shirt and he wondered if he could show her the falls and he imagined the water and rock would grow taller and wider and closer and closer to one of these cities and he imagined that the mist would spray her hair and white shirt and the falls would rumble and roar behind her until she smiled and waved him closer and the falls would shrink and grow quiet.

-She was back now and standing over the bed and not smiling and he looked at her for some moments in her yellow dress that was not the white shirt he had imagined and asked again if she wanted breakfast and she said again she was not hungry but there was a good café on the corner that he should try so he said that they could wait and have dinner there but she said she had eaten there many times already.

-Her neighborhood was far from his and it was one he had not been to often and all of the shops were small with reserved blue awnings that cast shadows over the windows and he could not see inside or guess what food the restaurants served and so he walked a few more blocks.

-He saw a man and a woman drinking coffee at a table on the street and their cups were large and steaming so he ordered a coffee there and sat near them.

-The man and the woman spoke loudly and laughed often and so he drank the coffee quick and was glad to be back to walking.

-The streets were wide and quiet and only Spanish was spoken in the neighborhood and it was Spanish with too many new words for him to understand so he would never live there when all of the neighbors and all of the waiters at restaurants and bartenders and workers in the corner store would speak too quickly with new words and ask him many rapid questions and so he would not like this neighborhood even with its wide streets and large apartments and few cars.

-He walked home and did not stop at the last café on the corner although it smelled good from the street.

-Some of these cities were Spanish but not for long enough to still eat Spanish food and now they eat pizza and pasta and have a cathedral with no Spanish art and there is only one building left from when the Spanish were there but it is next door to a big white church that looks Spanish but it is not even though it is whiter than all of the white apartment buildings in the city and when the Sun is high it looks like it is always being hardened by the heat but it is cool inside and it is a good place to meet because it is cool inside and is so white that one cannot walk past it and mistake it for another building.

-They met there to walk the Sunday tourist market which is famous because it is so long and on a narrow street that makes it look even longer and because the market is named after the saint who is supposed to save all the sailors drifting out to sea in the waters outside the city.

-He asked if she had been to the falls.

-She said she had been twice already and so he asked when.

-She had been to the falls once in her first weeks and then soon after that because a man she had met wanted to take her and she had lied and told him she had never been because he danced so well and she felt like their chests were always in line and their feet moved well so they had gone to the falls but she did not want to ever go back because the mist and the water were so cold and harsh and that man had since moved away.

-He did not buy anything at the market because he had been to the market before and many of the stalls sold the same things meant for tourists and he watched a tall woman in a baseball hat buy the same white llama ornament woven from string that he had bought on his first trip to the market after a while there was nothing new to see or buy.

-There was coffee sold from carts at the end of the market and they bought two cups.

-She did not finish hers and she said she had to go and that they would talk again but only when he had to come to her office for work.

-His apartment was always smoky because he had a balcony and there were balconies above and below where people smoked early in the morning and late at night.

–Everyone in this city smoked and he often left the door to his balcony open because the glass was dirtied from the smoke and he wanted to see the park across from the balcony.

-He always liked to have the door open when the park was full and runners and outdoor lunches between two people sitting towels of all colors and sipping tea.

-In the days after the market he woke up and coughed because there was a wind moving smoke into the bedroom.

-He shut the door to the balcony and locked it so that he would remember not to open it again.

-Later he moved to another one of those cities but it was a different city and he ate coffee and toast for breakfast there always.

It was always hard for him to be pleasantly drunk once the stories began and when the porch was crowded with the cousins and uncles and fathers in those nights after long family dinners in one of the restaurants in town at the bottom of the mountain where they served bloody quail and squash from the hills but everybody ordered the pork chop and biscuits because he had to be careful not to laugh too loud or to slur a word or ask the wrong question that he didn’t know the answer to.

     Say, boys, your grandmother sure can talk I mean damn I don’t think she stopped asking questions all night, and then she started answering her own questions and then she forgot the questions she already asked me and started all over again, I mean wow dinner took three hours, and all I could think about was why didn’t I sit at the other end of the table, I’d rather talk to my wife than answer all those question three times I guess that’s the price when Grandma is buying dinner.

It was always getting harder and harder for him to be pleasantly drunk on this porch when there were many open beers and a few cigars ashed on the wooden railing and he looked at an uncle rocking back and forth and resting his feet on the big dog that stayed at the house and he saw the cowboy boots and old bleached jeans and leather belt and tucked in denim shirt and brown trucker hat from the barbecue place and growing line of empty red Budweisers and watched him laugh and envied him and wondered how that could be his uncle by blood.

     I remember, I must have been no older than six, say, Jimmy you remember this? we used to walk down the train tracks to get across town, and there were some bridges but you had to walk across because that was the fastest way home, and sometimes the trains would come and there were little crannies on the sides and you would have to run to the cranny before the train and only two people could walk at a time cause three couldn’t fit and there were some close calls, but good thing I’m so damn fast I always made it and that’s why I’m still sitting here.

The danger of getting too pleasantly drunk was that the stories would always turn a way they weren’t supposed to and he remembered the first time he told one that went too far and he was halfway through it and his cousin started laughing and the uncles started frowning but he had to finish the story once he had started it but he didn’t say much else for the rest of that night and now he could tell things were headed in that direction because the night had sunk in and the sky was black and there was no more warmth from the day hanging around and everyone had a jacket on and cigars were beings smoked more quickly for the warm smoke and when it got this late there was never any telling who would start things heading in a way they probably shouldn’t.

     I tell ya, you’re not fast any more, Steve, too many steaks these past few years, you would be dead on those trains tracks so fast, but I guess that’s why nobody goes back to that town since nobody wants to get damn near killed by a train everyday, but I bet ya I could outrun those trains, I remember in college when I was still playing football I used to make a killing racing fools out back of the bar, they would get drunk and tell me there was no way I played football and I’d bet them a twenty I could outrun them and damn near every time I took that twenty and it bought me a few more rounds until those boys got tired of being hustled and one too many started eyeing me from the door and it was time to cut my losses and leave a nice tip and get out of there but I’d be back for a few more races the next weekend and they’d all line up and try again and I’d just keep taking their money.

The uncles were starting to one-up each other and second cigars were lit and the younger cousins were sent back to refrigerator in the garage for more red Budweisers and it was getting colder and some of the aunts were sticking their heads out the back door to ask when everybody was coming inside because it was getting cold and there would be a long day tomorrow but the uncles waved them off and the aunts said they were heading to bed and blew kisses goodnight and the youngest cousins were back with more cans and some of the other cousins were wanting to tell stories.

     None of y’all were ever as fast as I was, and y’all are all sixty now and can’t touch me in a race, let me tell you you’ve never seen somebody as fast as I was last year you should’ve seen how fast as I was running this one night I was at this party and we had been drinking all night and we were at this guy’s house and I knocked his glass out of his hand, and all his friends were there and this dude was four inches taller than me and thirty pounds bigger and I ran out the front door so fast you’ve never seen anything like it, and I thought he was about to beat my ass the next day at school but he forgot all about it but everybody saw me book it out of there, trust me, I’m the fastest one in this family by a mile.

The stories were silent for a moment and an aunt opened a door and one of the cousins stumbled onto the porch and this one was one of the little young cousins with a head of hair that was still patchy and growing in and he walked unevenly always but especially now on this new surface and he grabbed onto the leg of a second or was it a first no probably a second cousin who swung him out towards the railing and over the edge of the porch and the little cousin smiled and shrieked and swung out his arms and knocked over a bottle and an ash tray with half a cigar and an uncle grumbled and the tray and the bottle clinked in the air as they fell the long way to the grass below but the grass was soft and they did not break and the little cousin looked all the way down to the grass below and was happy to be put down and to be safely in the lap of one of the uncles back away from the railing and the grass all that way below and he looked around at all of the uncles and sons and fathers and cousins with his eyes that were always wide because he was young as they started to speak again.

     Shit, y’all don’t know a damn thing about fast, boys, you aunt never seen anybody running away like they were about to get killed, and I’m not talking about shot and killed, I know some of y’all been in the army, that’s not the type of killed I’m talking about, I’m talking about the type of killed when you got you’re hand on somebody’s wife’s ass at the corner of the bar where you thought it was dark and you thought she was still married but she told you different and you knew better but hell she was drinking the same thing as you and how often does that happen and it seemed dark enough in that goddam corner until her husband comes through the door and shit oh she’s sure as hell still married and you know the husband and I swear to God I out ran three cars and a dog down that street I was moving like a tick bit my ass with all his teeth, I’ll tell ‘ya, none of y’all ever ran that fast, not even on the football field boys.

The stories stopped for a moment and now the uncles that were past pleasantly drunk began to grumble and reach for more beer and the crickets started up for the first time that night and the little cousin looked around and around and began to cry as the crickets got louder and louder because he wasn’t up this late too often and the crickets were a new sound to his ears and his eyes got wider and wider before he started crying again and one of the uncles told another cousin to take him inside and that was the only word for a few minutes until another one of the uncles finished his beer and stood up and said to no one in particular but really to the last storyteller uncle that these stories weren’t worth nothing until they started being worth something to the rest of the family and that before he’d married in these uncles never knew him and didn’t want to hear about anything before that so he might want to stop telling them out here or at least wait until all the cousins were inside his and he flicked some cigar ash in the direction he was speaking and all the uncles and fathers stood up and the cousins sat further back in their chairs and all the beers clanged down hard on the tables but one of the aunts opened the door looking for a cousin and every body sat down deep in their chairs and told the cousin to go inside with his mother and some of the chairs started to rock and creak again on the wooden porch and one of the chairs creaked deeply as one of the cousins who hadn’t been hustled inside yet stood up and set down his cigarette next to his water.

     Y’all don’t know anything, all y’all talking about going fast, y’all don’t know, y’all don’t know fast until you know slow, and not this kind of slow, sitting around on a porch in the mountains drinking and talking and taking three hours at dinner and cracking jokes about your wives, that ain’t this is still fast, soaking it all up for a few days and going back to work before you’ve slowed down, I know more about fast and slow than all of you put together, slow is when you’re just a couple states over from here and five states over from where your parents think you are and you’ve taken so many pills you forgot your own phone number and the names of your friends and you’re sitting on the curb outside your house in boxers and one white sock with a broken foot and a broken ankle and no skin on the foot without a sock, and there’s nobody to call and you just sit there and cars go by real slow but don’t stop and people just turn their heads at you and every minute is slow until the pills wear off and things start to hurt again and you remember to crawl back inside and find someone to put you back in bed and you stay there for three days and the days are slower than they are here and nobody talks until they take you to the hospital.

That cousin’s father looked down and took a long pull on his cigar and looked around at all the other uncles until one of them stood up too fast and knocked the ash tray from the arm of his chair and this time it shattered on the porch but not before the uncle was up with his hand around the throat of the cousin who still had an ankle that wasn’t quite straight and he pushed the cousin to the railing of the deck and yelled that he knew better than to tell that story out here and that everyone knew enough about it already from whispers around their own kitchen counters and hushed voices on the phone that it didn’t need retelling especially in front of his cousins but even more especially in front of his father who had already seen his son with a broken foot and ankle and eyes rolled back in his head and his voice got louder until the only baby cousin left on the porch coughed and burped and let out one of those little shrieks all the uncles had heard enough to know meant a bigger shriek and bigger crying was coming and so an aunt was called to bring the last little cousin inside and now it was just the big cousins and all the uncles and fathers and all the men looked around and could see there was no one upping anymore and the stories where at that point where everything was on the table or nothing was on the table and it was time to put out the tobacco and clean up the beers but it wasn’t dark enough for that so somebody would have to tell one more until it was time to go inside and by morning forget all of the stories from the night before.

The weathermen in Polk County measure their careers in hurricanes. After they’ve covered two hundred, there’s a commercial on the eight o’clock news. They’re far enough inland that they don’t get the worst of the winds. Everyone in Polk County remembers the name of their first hurricane. Jeanne. Rita. Gordon. Earl. Debbie. No one in Polk County remembers the lost time somebody lost a roof or a mailbox or a dog to the winds and the rain. The weathermen put another tally and another tally on their career. Agnes. Dora. Ike. Opal.

—

His jaw would have made for a handsome face if it weren’t for all of the teeth stuck inside it, jammed on top of one another. Ray Ray’s was a face that would have looked stronger on a taller man. But he was too short for his head and often looked sickly and far too angular. If a hurricane would ever come, it might lift him up by his flat, straight hair and drop him in the Gulf. He would have liked to be lifted up by the hair in a real hurricane.

—

All Polk County had for him were stories. Stories about hurricanes and other things. There were no marks from the storms. New Orleans had its flood lines and Miami had its palms split in half and thrashed away. Even Zephyrhills had a few broken houses.

—

Ray Ray had thought about New Orleans when he was younger and imagined riding the flood waters into the city and kicking through windows and peeling roofs apart at their weak nails. He would sit atop the waters until they dried out and he would run to the river to find more. But now he thought about sitting and waiting for the water to come and turning to lie face down as the lakes and the canals overflowed.

—

Polk County had nothing but stories and weathermen who had covered three hundred hurricanes without having ever boarded a window or flooded a car or tasted the wet wind that stuck between their teeth and pressed their tongues back. They had never known a hurricane and Ray Ray would never know a hurricane. All he would know were emptied out stories, bleached by light rains and smoothed of their flair and guile by the breezes of retelling. Every day he thought about the same stories. The stories held his father and his father’s father and uncles and aunts and aunts-by-friendship in place. No one would listen to their stories anywhere else.

—

His father liked to tell a story about Jai Alai. His father’s father had always gambled on the matches until they outlawed it in Florida. It was still legal in Miami, but it wasn’t worth the five had seen a player break his nose. They could throw the ball one hundred and twenty miles per hour. His father liked to say that the crowed had cheered. They cheered until the player walked off the court. Then they began to boo. He was costing them money. He had been the favorite and it was a Saturday. Saturday was a big betting day. The crowed loved the blood until he quit. His father always laughed at the end of the story. That’s Polk County, he would say. We love violence.

—

Ray Ray wasn’t sure if they loved violence. They never had any violent hurricanes. They didn’t do too many violent things. Polk County hosted two battle reenactments each summer. There was no more high school football in those months. The first commemorated a Civil War skirmish that the county had stolen from southern Georgia. It was unclear who knew that and who didn’t. Ray Ray had only found out in the third summer after he was old enough to watch. He had asked an old man where in Polk the battle had really taken place. He had looked like someone who only had stories, but there had been no one else to talk to. The old man had asked him what he knew about history.

“I know some history,” said Ray Ray.

“What do you know about this battle?” asked the old man.

“It was the only one in Florida.”

“The old man looked towards the field and laughed.

“There weren’t no battles in Florida, son.”

“Except for this one.”

“Not even this one.”

“What do you mean?”

“Too many trees.”

“Too many trees?”

“There are too many trees here.”

“Too many trees for what?”

“For this battle. For all the horses.”

“I don’t see any horses.”

—

Ray Ray tried to imagine a hundred horses standing next to one another. It seemed that they would populate the trees and tear them down if they all ran at once. Ray Ray’s father had owned a horse named Trigger. Ray Ray thought about a picture that he had seen of his father’s horse. It was grey with white spots on its sides and still young when his father’s father sold it. His father had ridden it to school each day. Ray Ray thought his father rode it in middle school. He could not remember if it was middle school or high school. His father had not named Trigger. Ray Ray’s father’s father had bought it for cheap and it already had the name. Ray Ray’s father had taught him to ride but he had been young. He wondered why they stopped riding. His father told him Ray Ray had ridden to fast and fallen off once. Maybe they had stopped riding after that, but Ray Ray thought he would like to have a horse and ride too fast. He would not ride it to school.

—

“They haven’t ridden in yet.”

“Where are they?”

“The soldiers are hiding them.”

“Where are the hiding them?”

The old man turned his head.

“In the trees.”

“How many horses are there.”

“Fifteen on both sides.”

“That doesn’t seem like many horses.”

“It’s a lot for these trees.”

“They should have fifty.”

The old man laughed.

“Is that too many?”

“Too many to run through these trees.”

Ray Ray looked at the tress. There had been no battle here. The stories about the battle were stories about a story. No one had died in Polk County. The battle from the Seminole Wars had at least been real. It had been more of a slaughter than a battle. Ten merchants had attacked a Seminole camp. The Seminoles had been hunting a mile from their village. The merchants thought that was too far from their village. Ray Ray saw it for the first time when he was nine. He had not known they would not be using real guns. The reenactment lasted an hour. The Seminoles did a lot of shouting and then a lot of screaming. Ray Ray knew two of the men playing the merchants. One ran the hardware store and one owned the diner. Ray Ray had wished the Seminoles had real guns.

—

The weathermen had said it would be a Category 4. They called it George. That was the day he decided to leave. If it would be his last day, he would go to the beach. There is only one beach in Polk County. He wasn’t much for beaches, anyway. The worst that could happen at a beach was sunburn. There were no manta rays in Polk County, and no sharks on the West coast of Florida. They preferred the cooler waters of Cocoa Beach and the Atlantic. The waves there were propelled by higher tides and bleaker winds. The beach in Polk County was stone grey and flat, the sand packed hard with wet air and disuse. There were not footprints for the quiet waves to smooth over. He thought about death and about what death would look like on a beach. It would look uninteresting here, low and deflated. It would look better on a white beach, deep but short and cut by the brief dunes furrowed by the high point of the tide. Death would be strange and new there. Here it would be unremarkable. He wondered if anyone would notice death on this beach. He wondered if anyone had ever noticed death in Polk County. He sat at the back of the beach, on the sand furthest from the water. Four minutes after he had closed his eyes the rain came. He knew if had been four minutes because he did not want to sleep and he had counted the seconds between the tapping of thunder from out in front of him. The last Category 4 to hit Jacksonville had pulled the columns away from the front of the county courthouse and almost flooded the Old City in St. Augustine. The thunder that day would not have awoken Ray if he had dozed off. The rain was only enough to make him leave the beach because it was a cool day. It had barely wet his hair and he could still dry himself with his towel.

—

Ray Ray’s father had told him about choosing the name Ray Ray.

“Did I ever tell you how we named you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did I every introduce you to Ray McCloud?”

“No, sir.”

“He passed away last year.”

“Was he your friend?”

“Nope, he painted the house back when we first ought it.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Nineteen years ago. Right when I married you mother.”

“Why would you introduce me to him?”

“You’re named after him.”

“But he wasn’t your friend.”

“I didn’t know anyone else in this county named Ray.”

“So why didn’t you just name me Ray?”

“Do you like your name?”

“Yes, sir. I don’t know anyone else named Ray Ray.”

“That’s why I didn’t just name you Ray.”

Ray wondered if death would look different on the beach because he was named Ray twice. He wondered if Polk County would know if its only Ray Ray died. He wondered if the sand would look a little whiter and if death wouldn’t look so normal on the beach for Ray Ray.

—

Ray Ray’s only job at been at a fruit stand. There were fruit stands with huge billboard with oranges with eyes and smiles. Ray Ray had not worked at one of those fruit stands. It had a wooden sign that say “Strawberries.” It was one of three stands near a tall piece of stone said “Welcome to Polk County.” Ray Ray had always wondered why Polk County welcomed visitors with a tall tombstone. It was tall enough to shade the first two fruit stands. The third worker to arrive each morning would be in the sun all day. The sun in Polk County was hot and the tombstone shade was cool. His boss drove by in his truck once a day. He owned seven stands. He never left the truck, just waved when he saw that someone was working. He would have found someone new after he drove past an empty stand a few times. It wouldn’t have been the first time he found a new worker without warning. But Ray Ray had time to tell his boss he wouldn’t be back. So he walked to the fruit stand and waited for the truck to drive by with a wave. This time he waved back and ran to the road. The truck slowed down and stopped.

“Ray Ray, I gotta make my rounds.”

“I know, Boss. But it’s my last day.”

“Alright, Ray Ray. I gotta find a new guy.”

“Sorry, Boss. You’ll find someone.”

“I know, Ray Ray. I always do.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You find a new job? Too good for my stand now?”

“No, sir, boss, I’m headed out of here.”

“Out of where?”

“Out of here, boss.”

“Where to?”

“South, maybe.”

“Why South?”

“I want to try fishing, boss.”

“Alright, Ray Ray, good luck.”

The truck clicked into gear and pulled back onto the road.

—

Ray Ray hitchhiked South. He was in Cape Coral in twelve hours. There were fishing boats docked in the harbor. Ray Ray had heard a few boat stories in Polk County.

There were more boats here so he thought they would have had more boat stories. He had found his job at the fruit stand by asking the owner if he could work there. So he walked until he saw a building with a huge shrimp painted on its side. The building was concrete painted pink and the shrimp was white outlined in bright blue. He was glad the concrete was not sandy grey. He walked inside asked if he needed to fill out an application. The man behind the counter barely looked up.

“You ever been on a boat, son?”

“Yes, sir, twice, I think.”

“Just twice.”

“I think it was twice. It might have been three times.”

“Three times is good enough. You from Florida.”

“I’m from Polk County.”

“Oh, Polk County. Y’all are all warm and safe up there. No wind and no floods.”

“Yes, sir. That’s what everybody tells me.”

“So why are you down here?”

“Everybody keeps telling me the same stories. I work at a fruit stand.”

“Ain’t no action at a fruit stand, son.”

—

Ray Ray thought about the stand and how he had sat behind it looking at the road. The two stand nearby each had two workers and Ray Ray listened to their conversations. They often talked about the fruit business and business of growing fruit. Ray Ray thought about the trees that grew oranges and grapefruit and tried not to think about the short, round bushes that grew strawberries in the dirty soil. He wondered if the oranges were burned by the sun and why grapefruits had lighter skin that did not burn. He wondered how he would burn as he dangled at the end of a branch. He would be too heavy and weigh the branch down, pulling the tree always to one side. He hoped the tree would lean towards the Sun so he would burn more quickly. He would be the color of a grapefruit and then turn orange and burn past that orange to red until there was no more skin and the sweet juice was burned from inside of him and all that was left was flaky flesh. And he would fall from the tree.

—

“That’s true, sir.”

“I see, I see. So how about I tell you about fishing?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know what can happen to you on a fishing boat?”

“You can make some money.”

“Oh, yes you can. What else can happen.”

“That’s all I know.”

“A fishing boat can kill you.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“If you fall off a tall enough fishing boat you’ll die when you hit the water.”

“Won’t you float?”

“You’d float if all your bones didn’t break when you hit the water. You can get killed by the anchor too.”

“Is that it?”

“You might get caught in the net and lose an arm. And we get caught in the storms on long trips.”

“Which storms?

“The big ones. You’ve probably never seen one in Polk County.”

“No, sir.”

Ray Ray wondered what a hurricane would be like on a boat. The waves would be big enough for surfers, he thought. He knew surfers could die under waves. He wondered if the boats could die under the waves too. He wanted to ask. He wondered if he might make the man angry. Ray Ray needed the job. He wanted anger later, out on the waves, not here. He didn’t ask.

They always had to gather to pray. Before any meal dinner, the whole family gathered to pray. Before my cousin’s eighteenth, they gathered to pray. He hated every second of the attention and every prayer for better grades and less drug use. Before letting the baby cousin eat his PB&J, at least two of the aunts had to gather to pray. In quiet, tiny restaurants they had to gather to pray, no matter how uncomfortable it was, no matter how inappropriately loud we all knew my uncle’s voice would be. Always gathering to pray. At least on Thanksgiving it made sense. But Thanksgiving was the longest prayer gathering on the day everyone was the hungriest.

It was always my mom who gave the gathering the first go.

“C’mon y’all, time to pray!”

“Let’s go everybody, I know y’all are hungry.”

“Hey guys, everybody is ready to eat, let’s go ahead and pray.”

It never worked the first time around.

There was still football on and it usually wasn’t halftime yet. None of the uncles or grandfathers or cousins payed any attention. Maybe my mom could tally one or two of her sisters.

The aunts. This time around was always a little bot more harsh. People were actually getting hungry.

“Hey, let’s go. Get off the couch.”

“Get up, it’s time to pray. Right now.”

“Brian, Curtis, Leanna, circle up. We have to pray.”

Always blaming it on us, the cousins.

“We’re coming. Wait on more play.”

“They’re about to score, one minute.”

“Sorry, I was playing with the babies. I’m coming now.”

Four plays, a touchdown, and three more minutes with the baby cousins and we’re n trouble. In trouble with the aunts.

“Now!”

“Curtis, get over right now and hold my hand. Let’s pray.”

“Get in the circle right, Leanna. We’re all here.”

It took three or four tries, but we were gathered.

Before we could pray we had to talk about praying.

It was always the same.

“Who’s saying the prayer today?” one of the aunts would ask.

“Jimmy, do you want to do it?”

“I can do it, but maybe Papa wants to do it,” Uncle Jimmy would say.

“Oh no, he’s happy for you to do it.” Mimi would say.

She loved to answer for Papa.

“Now, wait a second. I’ll do it, but let’s ask Steve first,” Papa would say.

Always gracious.

“Y’all don’t want Steve praying today. He’s already had four beers,” Aunt Linda would say.

Chuckles. It was easy to laugh at the uncles.

“Hold on, now. I’ll give everyone the best prayer they’ve ever heard this afternoon. But we should let Father Sam do it,” Steve would say.

He really didn’t want to pray.

Father Sam was the other grandfather. The grandfather to the Greek side of the family.

He was a Greek Orthodox priest, retired. He never turned down a chance to pray. It’s probably not great for a priest to say he doesn’t want to do the prayer.

That has to be sacrireligious or something.

“No, sir. Steve, I’ll leave it up to you. I prayed last year. It’s gotta be your turn.”

Usually it was settled here.

“Okay, I’ll go ahead and pray.” Steve would say.

Or Jimmy would jump in, “I’m ready to eat, y’all. Let me do this one quick.”

Jimmy played linebacker at the University of Florida. He likes to eat. He was usually serious about being hungry.

This year, no one stepped in. People just looked around. There aren’t many awkward moments in our family. Things go as they usually do. According to plan. The normal way.

“Shit, I’ll do it,” I said.

The normal way was boring anyway.

“Brian Aubrey Smith!” That was my aunt. No one uses my middle name.

“Bri, you can’t say that on Thanksgiving,” my dad said.

He usually didn’t care what I said. Maybe that was too much.

“Sorry, I mean shoot. Shoot, I’ll do it. Sorry, I’m hungry.”

“Really,” my mom mused.

“Sure. I guess. I don’t want to let Uncle Steve get embarrass himself,” I said.

When I said it’s easy to laugh at the uncles, I really meant Steve. It’s easy to laugh at Steve.

“I appreciate it,” he said. “You always were my favorite nephew. No offense, Curtiss.”

“None taken if it’s helps us finish this prayer.”

“Alright, Brian, let’s hear that short prayer of yours,” Mimi said.

“That short one’s my favorite,” Aunt Linda added.

“The shorter the better,” from Jimmy.

“I love short prayer. Right to the point,” said Papa.

They think it’s funny to repeat after one another.

“Hey, Bri, is it gonna be short?” from my dad.

No one laughs. He’s always too late. Takes it too far.

“Can I just pray so we can eat?” I ask.

“Y’all be quiet. Go ahead.” said Mimi.

“God our Father, once again, we ask your blessing. Amen.”

That was the first prayer I learned.

It rhymed so I guess that’s why they teach it to little kids. It’s the only one I use because there’s nothing worse than having to come up with a heartfelt prayer on the spot.

My mom hates that prayer.

—–

Thanksgiving dinner is always held at Jimmy’s house. Jimmy the linebacker. It’s Uncle Jimmy, Aunt Liz, Nicole, Melissa, and Curtis. Jimmy’s parents are full Greek. One hundred percent. Born and raised in Tarpon Springs, Florida. That’s the home of the sponge industry in the United States;. It’s also home to one of the most famous Greek communities in the country. It’s deeply Greek and deeply traditional. Every year they throw a cross in a lake. Every full-blooded Greek young man in the Church dives in after it, jumping from dingy little boats that probably should not hold their weight. One kid comes up with the white cross and has good luck for a year. I’m always happy we don’t have to drive out there for Thanksgiving. I wouldn’t know what to do with all that Greek tradition. The most Greek thing we have at Thanksgiving is the grape leaves wrapped around rice and lamb. Unbelievably delicious. Sometimes Jimmy cooks up some baklava. It’s not as good as the grape leaves. The rest of dinner is pretty classic American. I guess traditional would be the word. Traditional would probably be the word for the whole family.

Mashed potatoes with a ridiculous amount of butter. Creamed corn with a ridiculous amount of salt. And a ridiculous amount of butter. Green beans with barely too much butter. Sweet potato casserole with too much butter and too many marshmallows on top. Ham with way too much fat. Mimi’s biscuits that Aunt Linda insists on buttering way too heavily. The turkey is good. I don’t think you can really put butter on a turkey.

The seating situation is traditional. Three tables. Two for the adults and still a kid’s table. Curtis is the youngest kid left in the family. He’ll be 21 in a month. The kids table sticks around because we like it. But it wouldn’t be our Thanksgiving without the kids table traditional. It’s best that we have it, though. The cousins don’t see each other that often. We don’t talk about a lot. We like to tell each other we’re going to travel together.

“I want to run with the bulls this summer,” I say.

“Do they do that in Italy?” Melissa asks.

“No, in Spain.”

“Barcelona?” she asks.

“No, Pamplona.”

“Ohhhh, I want to go,” says Leanna.

“Come with me,” I say.

“My mom will never let me go. She’s too worried.”

Linda. She worries a lot.

“Yeah, she worries too much. You’ll be with me,” I say.

“Doesn’t matter. She won’t even let me go to Boston by myself,” she says.

“Oh well.”

Curtis has different plans.

“We’re all going to Vegas for my 21^st.”

“Shut up,” Melissa says. “Dad will never let you go.”

“Are you serious? He wants to go with us,” Curtis says.

“I’m in,” I say.

Nicole just shakes her head and keeps trying to feed Malachi and Joshua at the same time. She’s on her own because Tim, the new husband, likes to sit at the adult table.

He always wants to talk politics with Mimi.

Sometimes we’ll talk about other stuff. Boys and girls, mostly.

“How’s Adam, Melissa?” Leanna asks.

“He’s good. I wish he was here today. I miss him,” Melissa responds.

I look at Curtis . We know they’re getting married soon.

“So when is he proposing,” he asks.”

“Shut up!” Melissa laughed and turned red.

Curtis nods at me.

Linda pops her head n the door.

“Got yourself a girlfriend yet, Brian?” she yells.

She can’t hear so she’s always yelling.

“No m’am, not yet,”

“We’re all waiting in you, she says.”

“You’ll be the first one I tell,’ I promise.

I always make the same promise. I don’t think I would ever tell her.

She gossips enough with my mom. She would find out soon enough.

“You better. Y’all want some dessert,” she asks.

Everyone gets up.

—–

Dessert always comes with a seating change. Mimi always like to talk to me during dessert. She likes to bring up big topics during dessert. Tim talks politics with her on purpose. I avoid these conversastiosn at all costs. Once a year, during Thanksgiving, I can’t avaoid them anymore. Politics and religion. It’s all she talks about. She knows I hate going to church. She knows I never say the prayer when we gather. She knows I don’t want to talk about it. So of course she calls in the aunts so we can talk about it.

“When was the last time you went to church, Brian” Mimi asks.

“On Sudnay,” I say. “With Mom.”

My mom nods.

“When was the last time you went to church without your parents,” Mimi asks.

“I’ve never done that,” I say.

“I mean at school,” Mimi asks.

The aunts look at me. Not a good time to lie.

“I never go to church at school.”

Mimi leans back and scowls.

“I think we need to do something about this,” she declares.

“That’s a good idea,” agrees Linda.

“Good call, Mom,” Liz says.

“Sure, let’s do something,” says my Mom.

“You can’t do anything,” I assert. “It’s school. I have to study on Sundays.”

Mimi believes she can do something. She contends that I need to send proof of one church visit each month or I don’t get any birthday money. I wonder if I am suddenly twelve again. My mom shuts me down, saying I need to have some respect. Mimi theorizes that I should also be the prayer guy from now on. I scoff. The aunts glare. That’s Papa’s job, I argue. Mimi doesn’t think he will mind. He wants the best for his grandson. I argued. The aunts agreed. I’m the prayer guy now. Another good Thanksgiving, they agreed

“Again. Again. Again.”

“I’m hitting it as hard as I can.”

“Don’t hit it, grind it.”

He looked up, through the glass doors backing the kitchen. The sun had just risen at 7:30, late for a South Carolina summer day. When he had stayed there with his grandmother as a kid, she always told him she would be up with the sun. He tried a few times to wake up before her. He loved to watch her made breakfast. Twice to hit the snooze button only one time. Both times the eggs were on the table before his head broke from his pillow. Once his grandmother had eaten all the peaches before he put his pants on. The sun would come hot and early tomorrow.

—-

The house had been there before the Sunday flea market had begun to draw tourists and it would be there when they stopped driving in from Asheville, though he wasn’t sure when that would be. At that flea market a headstone store had moved in and moved out all while the house was being built. The house had grown up with the pines and it would die with tilted crabapple tree in the yard. The house peeked over the hill, only the brown roof and peaks of green paint above the black wooden doors visible from the road above the plummeting driveway of white marble gravel. It looked so perfect where it stood that the locals laughed. They thought it was tacky. No character. The builder, his great-grandfather, had polished all of the character out of it on purpose. For a man like that character wasn’t something a house could have. If it was, he didn’t want it. This family needs some class, he said.

—-

 

“Again. Hey. Fucking Again.”

“Will you shut up? Give me a minute here.”

“Just playing. You know how get when I’m bored. And fucking hungry.”

“I’ll get it done.”

The bowl rattled to the granite counter, circling and ringing and clanking and circling until it shimmered to a loud stop. He clamped his left hand to his hip, his right hand hanging down at the end of his dangling arm, beginning to curl tightly.

“Remind me why you aren’t doing this.”

“I’m not supposed to handle sharp objects.”

“This pestle isn’t sharp. It just crushes the pills.”

“The patient should not handle items or objects which could pose a threat to himself or others. I’ll show you the doctor’s note again if you want. I have that shit memorized.”

“No, I got it. Who are you going to hurt with this thing?”

“Did my mom show you all those photos in my file?”

“Yeah, they were nasty.”

“Remember the pictures of my fingers? I did that with a spoon.”

“I did that with a spoon.”

“Oh. I guess I should handle this, then.”

“Thanks.”

—-

At one point he had hoped to fill the house with children. His grandparents had always loved when the house was crawling with them. His cousins climbed trees in the front, played catch in the back, tore the swing of the tree across the street after pushing each other for hours. The house sprawled then, wide and expansive with potential. Now, just the two of them, it was shriveled, always uneasy with enclosing only two visitors. He dreamed of filling it with a family. He assumed there would be children, but he spent more time imagining the wife. That’s how he spent most of the time when he wasn’t grinding pills or calling insurance companies or picking up prescriptions or scheduling appointments with one of the psychiatrist’s three secretaries. One of them was nosy, one always forgot his name, and the third was always late to work. “Beautiful Aryan babies,” is what his friend said should be filling the cribs in the master bedroom, the second bedroom, and the three guest bedrooms. There had always been cribs all over the house and no one had ever bothered to move them. Now there wasn’t the money or space or consecutive free moments to even put them in the garage. The garage was stuffed with all of the books on addiction, recovery, self-help, and nutrition that could be found in southern South Carolina. The cribs couldn’t fit, and making space would have meant that the two of them would have to discuss the books.

—-

He never told himself he was imagining his wife, never admitted how much the idea filled his head. He was a romantic, he told himself. Grow up, it can’t happen. You have a bigger problem. A dangerous, pill-popping problem. He thought about her most in the dark. The nights in the mountains were naturally dark, free of the yellow blink of third-world streetlights and the spilled light of half-broken TV sets through thinly woven blinds. That was where he thought he had seen her first. In that darkness, she melted, a bolt of blinding, ski-bum blonde hair sinking into the incomplete, mottled urban darkness. Melted into the surroundings the way he had watched the still sink into the trees when his grandfather sprayed the glinting tin dark green. She would look different in the mountains, at the house. She wouldn’t sink. Maybe he had met her already, maybe he hadn’t. He wasn’t sure.

—-

The Sun did rise early the next morning. He was awake when it rose, listening to the crashes on the other side of the house. The windows in the guest rooms were being shattered again. That would make the third time in a month they would have to be replaced, along with the furniture that was

The first time it was a luxury to replace the creaking splintering furniture from the older wing of the house. The second time he tried to pick cheaper furniture. This time he probably wouldn’t replace it. He walked to the room from which the most recent crash sounded and knocked.

“Leave me the fuck alone.”

“We can’t afford new windows.”

“Leave me the fuck alone.”

“You’re going to have to sleep without windows.”

“You’ll just buy me some new ones.”

“I can’t afford them.”

“Fine. Did you bring me my pills?”

“No. You can get them this morning.”

“Leave me alone if you don’t have my pills.”
He opened the door and walked in. Four of the five windows were shattered and one had a long crack in its bottom half. The desk chair sat on its side beneath the last half-intact pane. There was less glass than usual on the carpet, but there was beneath the window nearest the bed. He spread out the pile tossed the longest shard he could find to the source of the debris. He caught it with both hands without flinching. The glass was already bloody. Maybe there would be kids and a wife in the house after all.

 

The tourists always wonder why Guadalajara is deserted in the mornings. They think it is because of the gangs. Gangs come out when it’s dark. Sometimes it’s still dark at 6 A.M. 7 A.M. So they tell their tourist friends the gangs are why no one is the cafetinas frying eggs and serving coffee or setting up their stalls and hawking mangos and oranges when there’s barely enough light to walk down the streets without tripping on a gato sleeping on the sidewalk. They think everything happens because of the gangs. They like to talk about what they see on the news in other countries and their TV shows with the shootouts and the blood on the bodies. They assume I’m not one of them. I don’t blame them for thinking it’s all about the gangs. But we’re used to it. Everyone is worried about us. The gangs are going to get you in the light or in the dark, they don’t really care. If the day gets too bright too early they’ll just wait until it’s dark again. It gets dark at night in Mexico just like everywhere else. If it’s too windy at night they’ll take care of you during lunch. Guns and knives and blindfolds and white vans work at night and in the afternoon. Maybe it’s 5:30 AM. Some pandillero who just spent all night guarding a cookhouse or driving eight suitcases of cash through six checkpoints doesn’t want to be up shooting at anyone before he can see the sun. He’s asleep just like you and I want to be, but probably in a softer bed with a better A/C unit stuck in his bedroom window and a girlfriend with a bigger ass sleeping on the only pillow in the house that’s not covering a gun. But really, it’s not all about the gangs. We’re not that bad. They’re not that bad.

Really.

En verdad.

En serio.

—–

 

Sometimes in the mornings I thought about what Mama used to tell me. We always talked during breakfast, sometimes before I went to school and sometimes before I went to work with Papa.

“Mama, Mama. Yo quiero leche, no jugo de manzana.”

“How do you ask?”

“Por favor.”

“No.”

“Por favor, senorita.”

“No. En Ingles,” said Mama.

“Mama, can I have milk instead, please?” asked Dolores

“Of course, Dolé,” said Mama.

“No quiero hablar Ingles, Mama.”

“I can’t hear you.”

“I don’t want to speak English, Mama.”

“You have to. What does Papa always say?”

“Ingles esta la via el la cima.”

“Excuse me?”

“English is the way to the top,” said Dolores.

“He’s right,” said Mama.

“But los gringos speak English and they yell so much.”

“Where do you hear the gringos yelling?”

“They yell at all the other girls. At the prostitublo.”

“DOLORES! You do not go down there!”

“Papa took me down there.”

“When did he do that?”

“When we visited tía el sabado.”

“Which day?”

“Saturday. Papa taught me some new English, too,” said Dolores.

“Like what?” asked Mama.

“Hijos de putas. Sons of bitches.”

“DOLÉ!”

“And cocksuckers. Mamon. That’s what he calls la policia.”

“DOLORES! You do not speak like that!”

“I know English, Mama.”

—–

Hace calor.

Siempre.

Always.

Really, it’s the heat.

Guadalajara is hot, and it doesn’t cool off at night like it does in Acapulco or Puerto Vallarta. By February, it’s too hot for the kids to come outside and play before school. When it’s too hot for the next Chicharitos and Guardados and Messis to bicker over who gets to play striker first and kick each other in the dust until they’re so late they forget their backpacks in their rush to grab the ball and sprint towards the bell. It’s too hot for anyone to wake up early to frying fifty cent churros for the pasty Euros who can’t wait to get back to the tequila and las tetas. The heat in Guadalajara sits and stinks. I’ve seen pictures of Acapulco and Caracas and Rio. They like to make their heat tropical and pretty and paint their building all different colors. It’s all greens and oranges and reds and blues bumping against each other at sharp angles. A mezcla that looks like one of those blankets they sell in our square as productos tradicionales, all bright yarn and clashing patterns and no anything someone would use in their house. Walk three blocks there and all those colors are whirring and simmering and you might break a sweat. It’s hotter than that here. It’s the kind of heat that slaps you in the back of the head when before you can open your door and then seeps into your chest and down your back and into your feet before you can even decide which way you want to walk. Nothing is green or blue. The buildings are brown and the street dogs that started off grey have brown fur that’s never going back to grey no matter how much they beg for water outside the cafes. The dust and the brown sucks in the sun and spits it back out at your face.

The tourists love to imagine they are in danger. The love to blame the gangs. They forget to blame the heat.

Think of your favorite movie gangster.

Your favorite jefe de las drogas.

Does he seem like the wake up at 5 AM to be on the street by 6 AM type?

I’m probably not your favorite gangster.

We don’t do things like they do in the movies the tourists watch.

I still don’t want to leave my pillow before sunrise.

I think I’ll stay inside until someone calls me.

Where it’s cool and I can rest.

Tiempo es dinero.

Horas de sueno.

—–

Sometimes I think about Mama while I’m at work.

“Mama, por qué todos mis amigos tienen que trabajar?” asked Dolores

“You know that I will not answer that,” said Mama.

“Why do all of my friends have to work?”

“You know that I will not answer that.”

“Do we have more money than them?”

“Look at my dress, Dolé.”

“You look fine.”

“Look at these windows. Do you think we have more money than them?”

“No. It looks like we have a lot of broken windows.”

“Exactly, Dolores.”

“It looks like we have a lot less money than them.”

“You’re right,” said Mama.

“Claro. So porque are all the other girls working?” asked Dolores.

“What?”

“So why are all the other girls working?”

“Do you want to work?”

“I already work, Mama.”

“You work for people who protect you.”

“They don’t protect me.”

“Didn’t they teach you how to shoot a gun?”

“Si, pero the girls who have to work are protected.”

“Not as protected as you are.”

“Why?” asked Dolores

“The other girls don’t have your father,” said Mama.

“So what?”

“What did Papa teach you today?”

“He showed me how to stab.”

“Was that all?”

“He took me on a drive.”

“And he told you what he was doing?”

“Si, claro. And he told me what all the drivers do.”

“Do you think the other girls learn those things.”

“I don’t know, Mama.”

“They don,t, Dolores. They don’t”

“But what am I protected from?”

“Do you like the tourists? The gringos.”

“No.”

“Neither do the other girls. Trust me. They them. You should thank your father.”

“Why?”

“You will not ask questions about this.”

—–

Amarillo.

“Juevos con frijoles.”

“Agua fría. Dos pesos.” Cold water.

When the morning is over and the sun is full everyone wants cold water.

They stock the cars with plenty of cold water. When I’m driving there are usually two barrels of it in the passenger’s seat and five or six in the back seat. The border patrol officers see the barrels and all they can think of is cold water and air coniddioning and a cold shower and a dark rrom away from the sun. When I pass a checkpoint it looks like the busted Impala is sinking onto its back axle because of all the water I am carrying para mi familia. That’s what I always say. Just water for my family. They suspect nothing. Work is easy for me. Only the heat and the repetition get in the way. Every morning is the same. Nubes, por favor. Clouds, please. Dios mio, lluvia, por favor. Give us some rain. By nine the sun is up and I can see the orange ring around its sharp yellow core. There will be no clouds or rain. I can smell the grease cooking from downstairs and I can hear the vendedores shouting. I hear American English and I roll over and sneer and spit. I have eight stops to make. It will be an easy day. No one will give me trouble.

For some of the other drivers it is harder. La policia know most of the members in Guadalajara. All of them have been arrested a few times. Most of the officers probably recognize which banditos they have arrested. It’s hard to avoid double takes and closer looks when your both sides of your head are shaved clean and scarred from what was once a fresh tattoo but has now rotted and twisted and knotted and turned your scalp red. The bandanas can cover the markings on the nose and chin but the letters on the forehead give the rest away. For those guys, work is hard. A constant scramble of bribes, smiles, winks, threats, scowls, gestures, nods, and the occasional shot. Every stop a little dance, ritualized but lethal. No one would believe them if they said they were crossing the border with water for their families. They don’t look like family men. They always want me assigned to more dangerous duty. La nina, they call me. “Send the girl. No one will notice her.” They never do. I act like I don’t hear them. Lately they say it more often and they say it louder to let me know they want me to hear. I don’t think I will be protected for much longer.

I wonder if his protection is running out.

Dios mio.

Mi padre.

Seguridad.

—

Bruja.

Puta.

Cabrona.

Preguntas. Questions.

I am so full of questions, but I do not think they are good. All they care about are the questions as they drag me away. “Why are you talking to the other girls? You are a stupid girl. What do you want to know? What more do you want? Do you think you are that special? You don’t have to work. Stay away from them. Who do you think you are? Do you think your father can still protect you? Protect you from your stupidity? What did you think would happen?”

“We should make her work now.”

“She is too old to work. An old woman. Take her bandana.”

“Get her gun, boludo. No, no, no, hombres. Don’t touch her. Estupido. Think of her father. Her father hasn’t been here for ten years. What can he do?”

“We’ll make her work for one night.”

“She speaks English.”

“Her mama taught her.”

“She would have been our best girl.”

“Her old lady was always smarter than that old bastard.”

Mama would have had questions.

Puta.

Bruja.

No mas preguntas, chica.

—–

“Bow your head, Dolores,” said Mama.

“Porque?” asked Dolores.

“Dolores,” said Mama.

“Why?” asked Dolores.

“Because that is how we pray.”

“I don’t think these statues are going to help us.”

“They’re not statues.”

“They’re statues. Look at them.”

“That is Jesus and that is Mother Mary. They will save you.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then pray to your father.”

“I thought we didn’t pray to people.”

“Well, you won’t pray to God.”

“Why should I pray to Papa?” asked Dolores

“You should believe in him,” said Mama.

“Why?”

“He can actually protect you.”

“Why doesn’t he have a statue?”

“People don’t put scary statues in churches.”

“Why is he scary if he can protect me?”

“He will protect you. He scares other people.”

“Dios te salve, Papa, llena eres de gracia…”

“Dolores. English.”

“Hail Papa, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…”

—–

Arbol con sangre.

Tarde.

Marron. It is evening and everything is brown and still.

Now I know why Papa taught me how to stab and how to drive and how to protect myself and gave me his protection.

Now I know why Mama always reminded me to pray to Papa and be grateful for his protection and remember that I was not like the other girls and appreciate what my father did for me and what he taught me.

He had taught me so much and I had seen so much.

Sometimes when he took me to work I thought that I wasn’t supposed to see what I saw.

That he would be upset if he found out how man bodies I had seen and that I had seen them hanging from trees and bridges and statues in squares and intersections all over the city.

Maybe he drove me through those places on purpose. So I could see.

—–

 

The tree had never held one of the gang members for very long before. Some of them used to climb it one at a time to tie a rope around its thickest branch and then again a week later, when even the two red bandanas tied over their mouths and noses could not block the smell. It’s leaves were always falling off, crumpling to the ground. The soil was too dry and the air too hot for growth. The leaves grew green for a week or two in the spring and then died, their color indistinguishable from the bark and from the dirt that barely covered the roots. The branches were strong, though. Guadalajara has a dozen trees. Half of them are in the jefe’s backyard. The rest persist around Muchachita, Little Girl Pond, in one of the squares in another neighborhood. Not a neighborhood where the tourists can go. It was once a fertile pond, they say. The water is dark, but it is murky. It is brown near the bank where it is shallowest and the light can touch the mud at the bottom. The light that reaches the trees is marred and broken, peeking through the most cramped apartment towers the city offers. The day is fading, stuck somewhere between the afternoon that has been baked into the ground and the hotter evening that is rising up from it. Nothing is clear: the water, the day, the light. It is an unfamiliar part of the day in Mexico. The day has its heat and its work and the night has its dark and its time to hide away. I just want to get through this in between time. The tourists call it twilight. Ocaso is what I call it. I can hear Mama. “Dolores.” “Twilight, Mama.” Twilight is a nice word for an ugly time. I don’t know what Papa would have said. I won’t be up at 6 mañana. No one will say we should send la niña. I still hurt between my legs and my lip was swollen and my back was bruised. I had watched them climb the tree before so I could still manage. Papa had brought me to this tree to see what happens to the disloyal ones. The ones who talk to la policía or take a cut off the top or want to stop working. Sometimes their whole bodies would hang from the tree, sometimes it was just the head. I tie the three ropes on the big branch and I hope it holds. It has held a body and a half before but never two and a half. It’s really three quarters of two bodies so I guess two and a quarter. One didn’t have arms and I took a leg of the other. The last one doesn’t have a whole head and I start sweating as I tie the rope around an ankle. The rope is a little too thick and I have to pull tight tow secure it. It didn’t have to look nice. The tourists wouldn’t see these. It is dark and I pull the ropes tight over the branch. It is evening and the pond is black.

Hace calor.

 

Still. Tranquilo. Todavia.

Forgotten in the weeks before they left were the goodbyes and the farewells, the last suppers and the final visits.

Nothing except the rain felt different. The rain had always been home. A descending grey sphere, diffusing and touching everything, evenly and in common. Now the grey was heavier and stickier as it dampened the preparations.

Rake’s grandparents called to attempt a breakfast on the last day, but it was too late. There was packing left to do, and his parents would have found another excuse even if they weren’t so infatuated with that one. It had worked for his father’s last day at the hardware store and his mother’s last behind the counter at the County Liquor

“It’s the same thirty customers every night. Ten of them just left the bar, ten of them          pay me with quarters, and ten of them think I don’t know they’re sixteen. I don’t want        one of them damn screw-ups to tell me they’ll miss me.”

Rake had tried it for his last day of Sunday school, but it didn’t seem to work on his parents.

“Son, we are going to church today and you are getting in that car if I have to drag you to      it by your jacket collar.”

“I don’t want to have church on our last day here.”

“There’s church whether you like it or not. We’re having lunch with Father Clayton               today and he will ask you about Sunday school. What are you going to tell him?”

“I’m going to tell him I liked it.”

“You’re going to tell him which fuckin verse you read and how long it took you to                     memorize and what dress Mrs. Betty wore and that you shared your snack with your               goddamn neighbor.”

“But John stole half of my snack.”

“I don’t care what John did. You’re going say you liked it.”

—-

Rake watched a neighbor leave a tray of food on the good front step one late afternoon. The bottom step shuddered under the weight of a foot and the top step was missing two of its wooden slats, so the middle, faded but stable, offered the only surface for resting the tray. Though it was the only usable step, it had gone years without new nails, and it was always slippery with a sheet mud that the weak Northwestern fall sun could never dry.

She rang the doorbell three times. Rake knew better than to answer and waited in the kitchen until she stopped ringing before he scuffled to the door.

“It was Mrs. Elizabeth,” he shouted back into the house.

“Thank God you didn’t answer it.”

A plain white card rested on top of three pots covered in aluminum foil. The foil was cold. He opened the card carefully.

“We hope you’re doing better. We’ll miss having you next door and wish you all the               best!!! We’re praying for Rake and Melissa.”

Scrawled at the bottom was, “P.S. —- I called twice yesterday and rang the doorbell three times today but no one answered. Wish I could have caught you!”

“Does she think we’re having a funeral? Doesn’t she know you only bring food for                   funerals? Or when people are sick?” his mother barked from behind him. “I thought             they would be happy we’re getting out of here.”

Rake drooped the card back onto the foil and whirred around, presenting the tray to his mother.

“And it’s cold,” she said. “Three cold casseroles. She really does think someone’s                   died.”

—-

Rake was one when his parents bought the house they were preparing to move out of. Their stories about it were some of the only that didn’t bore Rake with retelling. His father had a rotating wheel of reports about his drinking buddies from work that he would tell when he got home three hours after dinner had cooled. Four too many beers, spin the wheel, get the story about Dave, whose wife waited to hadn’t cooked him breakfast in a year. Take an extra shot of bourbon, spin the wheel, get the story about Jimbo and why he got first dibs on the overtime hours even though he wasn’t the best salesman on his own shift. His mother didn’t have any, unless they were about old neighbors who got divorced or new neighbors who yelled at each other and kicked theirs dogs.

“It was a little grimy piece of shit – but it looked nice on your mother,” his dad would             begin.

“We moved in this house back when South Bend was nothing more than three streets,           two docks, and a diner. Back when you didn’t have to pay to dock your boat in the                   harbor.”

The house had been there before the Sunday flea market with its nautical theme had begun to draw tourists and it would be there when they stopped driving in from Olympia, though his father said that couldn’t happen soon enough. Across the road from that same flea market a headstone store had moved in and moved out all while the house was being built. The house had grown up with the pines and it would die with tilted crabapple tree in the yard. It peeked over the hill, only the brown roof and peaks of green paint above the black wooden doors visible from the road above the plummeting driveway of white marble gravel. That was how his father said it looked when they bought it. Rake had watched his father paint it once when he was ten.

“One coat is all she needs.”

It had needed several coats then and several more in the years since. The Pacific rains were salty and they sucked the cheap paint off the walls, lifted the gravel out of the driveway, and teased the planks off of the steps.

Sometimes the story took this turn or that. Maybe his father would remember the old couple with three cats that had lived next door or the time the police came for the man down the block whose garage door was always closed. There was a joke about the broken windows that never really seemed to work. The delivery hadn’t really improved in all the years. His father always finished the story with a summary.

“I came in this town looking for work, but no one wanted to trust the new guy who was         staying at the motel paying in cash. Your mother found a job because her boss was an           old pervert. It got so bad for me that I went to the church to see if they might know               anyone hiring, even for a couple days at a time. Turns out they had this house needed           repairing. Some crazy old widower had died and left it to the church a couple years                 before. No one would buy it because the old man had himself a reputation. Anyway, it           had been sitting there for a couple years and Clayton told me if I could fix it I could have       it until he sold it. I guess it never sold.”

Usually this was a dinner story, but Rake’s father had started in even though it was breakfast and they were headed towards tardiness. Church started at 11:00. On time for his father was somewhere around 11:10, but it was 11:15 and he hadn’t even finished his cereal. Rake usually had a series of questions about working on the house, but that required at least another fifteen minutes.

“So why are we leaving, Dad?” he asked.

His father paused.

“I’m about to tell you about building the front door.”

“Why are we moving, Dad? You built this house.”

His mom swooped in to fill the glasses on the table.

“Rake, are you done? Stop pestering your father and clean your plate.”

“We’re leaving because of your sister.”

“What?”

“We have to move because of Melissa.”

“Why?”

“Your mother says people are talking.”

“About what?”

“About Melissa.”

“She doesn’t live here anymore.”

“But we’re her family.”

“I know. So what?”

“People talk.”

“About what?”

“Rake, put your plate in the sink. You’re not even dressed for church,” his mom blurted      from the kitchen.

“I am ready for church. Dad, I don’t get it.”

“Goddamn it, Rake. Get what?”

“What people are talking about.”

“Honey, not now,” said his mother. “We have church and an important lunch.”

“Damn, you’re persistent, aren’t you?” said his father.

“Honey, we don’t need to talk about this today. Maybe when we’re all settled after the          move.”

“I want to know why we’re moving. Dad fixed this house himself. We should stay here.”

“He’s got a point.”

—–

Everyone in South Bend had heard about Westport. It was the largest fishing harbor in the state. Rake had heard his dad say the really big boats docked in Kodiak, but Rake wasn’t sure where that was. He had seen on TV that the big Deadliest Catch boats docked in Kodiak, but he had heard that they stopped in Westport sometimes to fuel up. He thought Kodiak might be in Canada, but he didn’t think it could be in Washington. It sounded too big for Washington. He had asked his parents about Westport once. They had been sitting in the backyard.

“You don’t need to know about Wesport,” said his father.

“At least tell him where it is,” said his mother.

“Let him go look it up on his own,” said his father.

“I’ll ask one of my teachers,” said Rake.

His mother squinted at his father and flicked a glance at Rake before saying that she needed to use the bathroom.

His father shook his head, leaned back in his chair, and told Rake that he received the greatest piece of advice of his life in Westport.

“If you don’t know what you want to do with your life, work on a fishing boat for a                   month. Then you’ll know what you don’t want to do.”

“I think about that every time I have to teach someone at the store how to use a                       screwdriver,” he told Rake.

Rake could hear the a door close quietly inside the house. He thought it was his parents’ bedroom door.

—–

“Are you serious?” Rake asked his father.

“I am, son.”

“Why did she leave?”

“She said the town was too small for her.”

“You told me Westport isn’t much bigger.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You said that at dinner the night she left.”

His father stared at Rake and crossed his arms.

“Anything’s bigger than this place.”

“How big is Westport?”

“5,000 people. 10,000 when the season is good.”

“Why would she want to go there?”

“She said she wanted to see more of the world.”

“Where has she been since she left?”

“Alaska, mostly. Canada once.”

“What is Alaska like?”

“About the same here but colder. And darker.”

“But it’s always dark here.”

Rake’s father uncrossed his arms. He touched his hair and crossed his arms back across his chest.

“It’s darker in Alaska.”

“So why are people talking?”

“That’s a different story, son.”

“What are they talking about?”

“Us.”

“Us?”

“Us. Me. Your mother. Your sister.”

“Why?”

“They think they know why she left.”

“Why do they think she left?”

“The people here don’t like us very much, Rake.”

The doorbell rang again.

This time it was a whole family of neighbors.

“For Christ’s sake,” yelled Rake’s mother.

“Keep it down,” urged his father. “They’ll hear you.” He shut off the kitchen light and        sat back down in his chair.

“It’s Mr. and Mrs. Brooke,” said Rake. “I didn’t know they had kids.”

“They don’t like us either. We never introduced you.”

The doorbell rang twice quickly and a third time after a minute had passed. No one moved for the door.

Mrs. Brooke turned and placed a wide tray on the bad first step. The tray wobbled and flipped into the mud under the step. Mrs. Brooke crouched down and put a hand over her mouth. Mr. Brooke placed a hand on her back and said something before kneeling to pick up the tray. The dark mud clung to his light blue jeans. Mrs. Brooke pinched a card from the mud, wiped it with her hand, and placed it in front of the door.

“I think the food spilled,” said Rake.”

“It was probably just another casserole,” said his mother.”

“Should I get the card?” asked Rake.

“It’s covered in mud. Leave it outside,” said his father.

—-

Lunch with Father Clayton was right after church. Rake didn’t have time to sneak into the bathroom to wrangle his way out of his tie and sweater before Clayton slapped him in the back.

“Heya, Rake, how are you on this fine day?”

“I’m good, Father Clayton.”

“How was Sunday school today?”“It was good. I learned about Abraham.”

“Wonderful! How is Mrs. Betty today?”

“She was OK. She wore an ugly skirt.”

His mother grabbed his shoulder before Father Clayton could begin to chuckle.

“Never speak that way about your teacher.”

“It’s fine, Rake. I appreciate your honesty. Ready for lunch?”

—–

“So, how is Melissa?”

“She’s fine, we think,” said Rake’s mother.

“Have you spoken to her?”

“Not for a couple months.”

“She called me last week.”

“Are you serious?”

“I am. She asked about you three.”

“Why did she call?”

“She was hoping I would visit her.”

“Will you?”

“I told her she should see you all first.”

“We can’t see her.”

“Why not?”

“People talk.”

“She’s your daughter. You should see her.”

“People will talk.”

“You’re moving anyway. What the people in this town say doesn’t matter. But you know      they’re not wrong about what happened.”

“Yes they are.”

“Why do you think she left?”

“This town was too small for her.”

“Westport is barely bigger.”

“It has 10,000 people in a good season.”

“We all know that’s why she left.”

“We can’t see her. People will talk.”

—-

Father Clayton told Rake where Melissa was staying in Westport and put him in a pickup truck with a fisherman whom he said attended the church. Rake didn’t recognize him. He took Rake as far west as Randle, a drive of half an hour that took two because a propeller slipped out of the bed of the truck and the man’s employees weren’t allowed to carry their cellphones on the job. They repaired the boats and conditions were dangerous so no distractions were permitted. It took a while for help to arrive and lifting the propeller back into the bed was a four-man job. The man didn’t like to be called a fisherman because he owned and operated the business and coordinated all the fleets and ordered all the parts and made the flights for his crewmembers to Northwest Washington and to Alaska and back to their homes in California and Oregon and Michigan and Alabama.

“Where are you from?” he asked Rake after they had tried for twenty minutes to lift the      propeller themselves and then decided to wait for help.

“South Bend.”

“Where’s that?”

“Washington?”

“What part of Washington?”

“Southwest Washington. On the Willapa.”

“The Willapa what?”

“The Willapa River.”

“Near Seattle?”

“Near Olympia.”

“Is that near Seattle?”

“It’s near Portland.”

“How big is it?”

“We just left it.”

“Oh. But how many people?”

“Like a thousand people I think.”

“Damn, that’s small.”

“We’re moving. My dad says people talk.”

“That’s true. You ever been to Seattle?

“Yeah. I’ve been twice.”

“Just tell people you’re from Seattle. It’s easier.”

“But I’m not.”

“Trust me. It’s easier.”

“What if they ask me about it?”

“Lie. It’s a big city. Tell them you love it. Make it up. They won’t know.”

“Is Seattle better than South Bend?”

“Trust me. It’ll be easier.”

“Can you give me a job?”

“A job? Doing what?”

“Fishing.”

“How old are you? 15?”

“No.”

“No, kid, I don’t think I can give you a job. Maybe in a couple years.”

——

Randle wasn’t far from Westport. Rake had heard they had two high schools and all-you-can-eat fried fish restaurants. He paid for three orders of French fries with ketchup at the counter of the first diner he could find, sat at a booth, and counted his money. He asked his waitress how much a bus ticket to Westport would cost.

“Sweetie,” she laughed, “They’re not gonna let a little thing like yourself buy a bus                 ticket. The rules say you have to be eighteen and you don’t even look seventeen.                     Nobody wants to get fired so you can make it halfway across the state and get yourself           lost.”

He had never been in a taxi but he thought they were expensive, so he didn’t want to take one. His dad always moaned about the price when he came home later than he should have.

“Damn Dave, takin my damn keys like I’m a damn drunk. Cost me twenty-five fuckin           dollars just cuz he thinks I can’t drive.”

He asked the waitress if she would drive him to Westport.

“I’ll pay you as much as I can. I have eighty dollars left so I can give you forty.”

“Honey. I can’t drive you that far. Let me call your parents.”

“No.”

Rake stood up quickly, bumping the last basket of fries and nudging the waitress and he pushed out of the booth.

“Do you know anyone who can drive me? I have forty dollars.”

“The gas alone will cost you thirty.”

“I can pay fifty.”

“Why don’t you just hitchhike? Plenty of people will be happy to pick up a little guy like      yourself. They’ll just be happy to have someone to talk to and they don’t think you’ll            rob them. Or kill them.”

“I tried that already.”

“No one would pick you up?”

“The guy told me I should say I’m from Seattle. I’m from South Bend.”

“Well, that’s just smart advice, honey. People like big city people.”

“I’m from South Bend.”

“Uh-huh. Let me see if I can help you.”

“Will anybody drive this young man to Yakima for fifty dollars?” she bellowed from              behind the counter.

“I’ll do it for seventy,” shouted a man at the corner of the counter.

He was wearing a suit but his tie was slung in front of him dangerously close to a dash of spilled mustard. He had a burger, a beer, and a milkshake in front of him and was making strong progress on all three.

“I only have eighty dollars,” he told the waitress again.

“Offer declined,” she said, nodding at the man in the suit.

—-

The waitress was right. It didn’t take long for someone to slow down for Rake as he stood on the curb in front of the diner, his hand in the air, his stuffed blue duffel on the ground beside him, one foot wobbling in the air as he tried to balance on the other.

 

There had been no white shoes at Rose’s first Mardi Gras. She thought that was the way it should be. There’s no room for hip white shoes at a parade, she thought. People should try to have some flair.

It wasn’t that she could ever say it. But she knew New Orleans and she felt New Orleans. And she had watched New Orleans parade past her for so many years, and she felt and what she knew was that it could never give you what you wanted. It might give you something you asked for, if you asked for a few extra pounds or the best Bloody Mary you’ve ever had or your first bite of alligator. Rose wanted the New Orleans of her youth and the first year of her marriage and a daughter who stayed out too late. Rose wondered if she wanted too much.

She thought that New Orleans should be famous for a lot of things. It should be famous for its streets, southern-sweet and oak-framed. It should be famous for its houses plucked straight from the plantation, for better of for worse. It’s famous for beignets and Bourbon Street and hurricanes that destroy and Hurricanes that come over the bar in a cup over ice. And she knew it should be.

But she also knew it should be also for famous for color. Color. Not just purple, green, and gold, those colors that shout New Orleans in the ears and eyes of whoever sees them. New Orleans should be famous for its red and orange and shadowy black and grey, the twilight colors, hot spark on flint. The colors of a hot day sinking back onto the city and dragging the Sun through the streets behind it. New Orleans never cools off after sunset.

Mardi Gras was done right an egg and catfish sandwich, an Abita, an hour of sleep and a shot of Fireball, she thought. Not on a nice soft bed and an outfit laid out the night before and bright white shoes scrubbed clean of the red clay that came out of the ground when it rained. People should let their feet get dirty sometimes.

She thought it had been boots at her first parade. Green shin-high boots.

She put both hands on the porch railing and leaned forward. She saw a pair of black boots. She wondered why it was all black boots and white sneakers. She thought about the white boots her daughter would have worn. She didn’t have much say over what anyone in her family wore anymore. A daughter might have still asked to borrow something from her closet on a parade day. Gil had always talked about kids. Then he thought Clay had been enough for Rose to handle. For a while, he had been. She was a new mother and Clay was a new son. A young mother raising a young son in that maternal city. Her turn to train him had ended quickly and he had bound to Gil before she had emptied herself for him. Gil fathered by admonition and information and he abided his son through Jesuit and Lafayette and LSU Law and this first month back home. Rose had done what her mother had done and taken Clay everywhere. Her mother had taken Rose everywhere and introduced her to everyone and Rose understood. She was meant to be in the city and of the city in whatever way she chose.

Now she was left on her lawyer husband’s porch hearing her lawyer’s son apply everywhere in town and ask his father which Baton Rouge firms were growing and she was left wanting to ask how a downtown office could be better than a one-story in Mid-City.

“Look at all these white shoes,” said Rose.

“Where?”

“Walking down the sidewalk right in front of you, Gil,” said Rose.”

“Oh, sure, you mean all those Tulane girls?”

“How do you know they’re Tulane?”

“That girl’s shirt says ‘Green Wave,” said Gil.

“I didn’t know those eyes still worked that well.”

“When you tell me to look at some college girls they do.”

Rose turned back towards Gil and smirked.

“I just wanted you to look at their shoes.”

“I guess they’re all wearin’ sort of the same pair, huh?”

“All of them, Gil. They all wear those white sneakers with the little green mark on the heel.”

“Well ain’t that something. Where do you think they’re headed?”

“Which parade is today?”

“Is it Dionysus today?”

“No, Dionysus was Sunday. I think its Krewe d’Etat today.”

“Is it Wednesday already? I’ll be damned.”

“Of course it’s Wednesday. You’re holding the paper in your hands.”

“Didn’t even heck the date, Rose. Skipped rights to Sports.”

“Check the parade schedule.”

“Is it on the back page?”

“Second to last page in the Picayune.”

“That’s right. Yes m’am, Krewe d’Etat today.”

“You think they’ll stay down by the parade route”

“They sure seem to always come back around campus. We’re in for a loud night.”

She knew Gil was right. Krewe d’Etat ran down Jefferson and Napolean and turned onto Magazine just at its end. It was too far from Bourbon Street for the kids to want to make the walk. Rose had made that walk. It was long enough to sober up. No one wanted that. So they would drift back to Loyala by the end of the night. Around 1 or 2, early enough to bring the parade noise back with them and late enough to need one or six more Abitas.

“Yep, they’ll be back. Back with all their white shoes.”

Gil paused halfway through a laugh.

“Don’t worry about the shoes, honey. Next year it’ll be black shoes.”

Rose shook her head.

“I hope not. Some red shoes would be nice. Maybe they’ll all wear orange. I

“Uh-huh.”

Gil had turned back to the sports page. The Saints had lost again and there were columns to read about the struggles of the defensive line.

Rose sat down in one of the purple rockers next to Gil’s favorite white wicker chair. He never used the purple or gold rockers just the staunch, boxy white. She hadn’t wanted to move it from the backyard to the porch. She thought it looked dull from the street, but he wanted to sit in it when he read the paper. It was the only thing he had asked for in the house. Everything else was Rose. She had always thought her honeymoon had really begun in that house and on that porch. They had gone to Maine after the wedding, but only because it seemed like the proper thing to do. Rose had sat in their rented house and watched the lake begin to freeze. She cooked Gil breakfast each morning and declined his invitations for hikes after the first day. She had packed both of their bags on Friday for their flight home on Sunday. Other couples liked to tell stories about they had missed return flights after their honeymoon because they just couldn’t seem to get out of bed. Rose and Gil were at the airport early and landed ten minutes ahead of schedule.

He shrunk into the chair, enclosed in its tall white rectangle, while she always thought he looked better in a purple rocker, stately on their dark stained porch.

She put her feet up on the stool in front of the rocker.

Gil sat with his feet square on the floor in his tan loafers, ankles sockless beneath his cargo pants.

“Do you remember your first big parade night?”

“I think it was Orpheus.”

“How old were you?”

“I was probably 10. Feels like a long time ago.”

“It was a long time ago, Gil.”

She still wondered why he didn’t remember more.

“I guess you’re right.”

“Do you wish you remembered it all?”

“I’ve seen plenty of parades since then. Can’t remember ‘em all.”

Rose wondered how many of hers she could remember. Gil was right, it couldn’t be all of them. But she had tried. In elementary school and high school and middle school and college she wouldn’t leave a parade until she had caught a crew bead, marked with the crew logo and year. When she was old enough, she realized a simple lift of the shirt was enough for a whole bag of crew beads. Before that, she would hurry along the route after the parade, picking up bead after bead until she found the one she needed.

He didn’t ask if she remembered all of hers.

“Mine was Argus. I think I was fifteen. My mom took my sisters and I shopping before. She sure wasn’t going to let us buy any white shoes. Couldn’t wear those to a parade then.”

“No ma’am, I don’t think you could.”

She turned to look at Gil and opened her mouth but closed it again. He hadn’t moved in his chair and he was only getting deeper into his third Saints column.

She thought about those tall green boots. Her mother would have insisted on a long yellow dress to go with them. Maybe a string or two of beads. White or purple. Nothing too gaudy.

“Do you remember those boots I had when I was nineteen?” asked Rose.

“Mhhmm. The brown ones?”

“No, the green ones.”

“You got rid of those after you ripped them,” said Gil.

“I got them fixed.”

“Oh. Those stood out more than those white shoes, anyway.”

“That’s why I wore them so much.”

“I think you look better in brown boots,” said Gil.

She had bought a new pair of brown boots to watch him in court for the first time. Green didn’t feel right for the courtroom. It was all brown suits and blue ties and black robes. Hardly any more seersucker suits. Maybe a white-haired judge could pull one off on a Friday if his caseload wasn’t out of hand, but she was hoping for one or two lawyers in seersucker or white. She was disappointed when there wasn’t even one.

She had laid out his royal blue suit for him the night before. Her favorite suit of his. She wanted to put out the pink tie, too, but she knew he wouldn’t go for that. Better to hedge her bets. Blue suit, light blue tie, white shirt.

It was closing arguments so he was up before her and put away the blue suit. When he was younger, he would wake up with his moussed hair still in place from the night before. He would wear whatever she had hung up in the closet and she would watch him dress. For this first trip to courthouse, he was dressed and in the car waiting for her before she had brushed her teeth. He wore a brown suit and a green tie. He had kept the white shirt.

He told her it was an assault case. He spread himself all over the courtroom, gripping railings theatrically, maneuvering from the judge to the jurors to the nose of his opposition, serious and grave and stern and unrelenting as a wet season flood in his brown suit and white shirt. She had wished there was more color in the courtroom.

Maybe that blue suit would have looked silly. Gil was lanky, but not the kind of lanky that made a tight suit look good. Rose thought that his tight suits disguised his thin wrists. He had always worn his suits tight because a regular cut hung off him arms and the suit sleeves made his wrists look far too think for a Louisiana man of the law. When she didn’t dress him, he favored grey suits and solid ties. Even in the blue suit, he still would have won. That’s what people would remember. She had wanted him to win in what she had picked out so she could remember him that way.

“What time do you figure we’ll have to close the windows tonight?” she asked.

“No later than nine, I bet,” said Gil. “Those houses on the next block always get loud real early. And it might rain.”

“Hmm. I wonder how long Clay will be out tonight.”

“Who knows? I thought I heard him come back at eleven last night.”

“That’s early.”

“I like when he’s back early.”

“He needs to stay out late tonight. These are his prime parade years.”

Rose knew Clay had been home by 10:30 the night before. She wished more people would appreciate a late night.

10:30 wasn’t late enough. The drive-through daiquiri store wasn’t even open when he had come back home. She had always loved the after-parade hours in the streets. If the drive-through daiquiri place hadn’t opened yet, it was too early to come home. After the parade, after the bars, after the house party, after the last beer picked up from the 24-hour corner store. The streets covered in broken beads and shattered bottles and abandoned chairs and coolers and bras and shirts and lone shoes and sometimes pants. That was when she used to like to sit on the curb and look up at the tree branches sagging with beads and look at the colors in the dark as it turned to light.

That had been her favorite part of her first night with Gil.

It had been their senior year at Tulane and he had asked her to go to Bacchus with him. It was the last big parade of their last parade season. They had know each other since their first week of classes. It wasn’t Rose’s first parade date. If they didn’t end with sitting on the curb looking up and at each other it wasn’t going anywhere. Gil and her had sat on the curb watching the streets empty for two hours. The streets wouldn’t be truly empty until the next morning. When they were mostly empty, they lay back on the blanket Gil had brought in case they became tired of standing. They laid back and looked at the sky turn from blue to black to purple and tried to spot beads falling from the trees.

She had hoped they would do it every year after every parade.

Gil was still sitting on the porch.

Clay knocked on the door that led from the kitchen to the porch.

Rose asked him if he was going to Krewe d’Etat.

He planned on staying in.

Rose asked what he had done last night.

Clay said he had been at The Boot for a couple hours. Had two drinks and left his friends. Clay thought the guy singing was making the song up as he went along. She knew the guy he meant. Or one close enough. The Boot had a type. He would sing with the house band for a week or two and leave before anyone had to watch him twice. He would be wearing a black vest and a round, grey hat. He would bounce side-to-side on the stage in the corner of the bar and spin back towards. He would hold a long note and grin wide. His lips would stretch garish, spanning jaw. The bass line would start again and he would turn towards his band, the grin gone. Clay had thought he was a decent show. She knew he would have his good nights and his bad nights.

He had told her that the men at the crawfish stand were eating them raw. She knew which stand he meant, two blocks away from The Boot. She remembered the men with their unwashed white hair and sharp mustaches. The crawfish would be brown, still wearing the swamp mud they had been pulled from. They would be alive, slapping their claws open and closed hopefully. One of the men would spit out the half that ended up in his mouth. The other would take a big gulp and swallowed his whole. He would be wearing a hat made from the bag that comes with a bottle of Crown. He would have fallen over twice already but he would keep biting.

Clay was surprised the daiquiri place was closed. He thought it was always packed during parade season. She knew the daiquiri place was not how to gauge a parade week. She knew it closed early and opened early. Daquiris were a drink for the daytime or the last drink of the night. Tourists rented cars just for the privilege of buying the strongest daiquiri in the South while behind the wheel. She wished Clay knew more about daiquiris.

Clay said he had met a girl. He said she went to Loyola. Rose knew the Tulane girls wouldn’t go for Clay, so maybe a Loyal girl might work out. Rose knew which girl he would be talking about. She had been a Tulane girl and she knew what would happen. The girl would have been wearing a short green dress. Or a long Green Wave t-shirt that went down to her knee. And white shoes. She would have a few beads around her neck. A dozen at most. Too many would distract from her outfit. The girl would come from a Tulane family. They would expect her to marry a Tulane man in her own year. Maybe she would give Clay her number. She would always be too busy to see him. Sometimes it was because she didn’t have a car so she couldn’t leave campus. Another time it would be finals. Finally she would stop picking up. Her first week at Tulane she would have already met the man she wanted to marry and she wouldn’t be swayed, no matter what happened.

“Gil.”

“Rose.”

“Do you remember what they used to wear at the drive-thru?”

“Yeah, sure. Red vest, red pinstripe shirt, purple top hat.”

“When was the last time you were there?”

“Couldn’t tell ya. Probably the last time we went there.”

“It’s been a while.”

“Sure has.”

“You figure they still wear those hats?”

“Clay told me they don’t.”

Rose shook her head and stood up and walked to the front of the porch and looked at the white shoes.

“Let’s go to a parade this year.”

“Us?” laughed Gil.”

“Yes, us.”

“No ma’am, no thank you, not me,” said Gil.

He laughed again and popped his paper and flipped the page. Rose thought he might be on the back page Saints column, which he always read twice when they lost by more than a touchdown.

She thought maybe she would see a parade this year. One she hadn’t seen in a while. Maybe Endymion.

“Gil.” His eyes kept scanning the page.

“Gil, when is Endymion tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow’s times aren’t in the paper. Only today’s.”

She knew Endymion was a night parade. She remembered how dark it would be just before the parade began. Then the torches would come down the street before the parade and the colors would follow. She knew the beads would be the most dangerous part of the night parade. She knew to keep her eyes open for the flying swivels of color. The beads would fly whether she was looking or not. She knew the torches would be bright enough for her to see the beads and the colors in the air and those colors on top of the mud and clay and empties and trash and that would cover the ankles of the assembled before the parade had ended.

I had only been there for thirty minutes before I had to ask the question.

“Do they do that every year?”

I figured I would be doing it again. No reason to fake it.

“Oh, yeah,” Margot said, “That’s kind of a big tradition.”

“Damn.”

Two men with white hair were pulling crawfish out of a bucket and biting them in half. The crawfish were brown, like they were still wearing the swamp mud they had been pulled from. They were wriggling, slapping their claws open and closed hopefully. One of the men would spit out the half hat ended up in his mouth. The other took a big gulp and swallowed it. He was wearing a hat made from the bag that comes with a bottle of Crown. He had fallen over twice already but he kept biting.

“That’s my Uncle,” she said.

“Really.”

“He’s my Dad’s friend. I call him my Uncle.”

“Wow.”

“This is his favorite part of the year.

_____________

 

“Is that normal?”

“It was illegal for a few years but they just brought it back.”

“They look happy about it.”

“They are. Not much is illegal here. Except those baby gators with the crawfish craws they were selling.”

“Those scared me.”

“That’s a tradition too.”

“These guys look happy.”

“They’re drunk.”

“It’s barely noon. They look insane.”

“Don’t say it too loud. People won’t like that. Especially my dad. You’re worse than they are, anyway.”

She wasn’t wrong. I had gotten started on the plane. The girl on the streetcar in the red coat and the red lipstick was worried about me. She kept her hand on my back as I stepped on. I thought her hair was red then. It was brown when we sat down. I thought it was red when we finally got off, too. The haze was already setting in at that point.

I couldn’t hear it but I assumed it would be loud up close. The bar behind us left its doors open. We had to shout. The music from inside was live. No one recorded with a voice like that. The crowd inside sang along. I didn’t know the words.

“Down where the blues was born, It takes a cool cat to blow a horn, On LaSalle and Rampart Street, The combo’s there with a mambo beat.”

Margot hummed.

“You know this?” I asked.

“Everyone here does.”

Someone tapped her on the shoulder and she turned around.

“HEYYY YOU!”

It was another one of her cousins or old friends or acquaintances from her middle school or high school or soccer teams. They were wearing the same shirt, striped in purple, gold, and green. The new girl’s shirt had a lobster on the chest. Maybe it was a crawfish. I thought Margot’s had the same thing. I couldn’t see now. The logo wasn’t on the back.

I took a pull from the flask attached to my beads. The flask was shaped like a doll’s head. I hadn’t caught it. It hit me in the face and I picked it up off the ground.

“This is creepy,” I said.

“It’s tradition,” Margot said.

Now I was glad to have it. I thought it squirmed as I sucked out of the top of its head. I spit out the brown liquor. More Captain, unfortunately. The haze was getting thicker.

I showed the bouncer my real ID and ducked into the bar. I didn’t need another Hurricane or Miller Lite or Bud Lite or anymore Captain. I had had plenty over course of the past three days. Margot wasn’t happy about it. Oh well. I drank. She socialized. If she didn’t introduce me I kept drinking. She had seen a lot of old friends and I had plenty to drink. It worked for me.

_____________

 

I thought the guy singing was making it up as he went along. He sounded proud of it. I peeked in. He was wearing a black vest and a round, grey hat. He bounced side-to-side on the stage in the corner of the bar and spun back towards. He held a long note and grinned. He grinned wide. His lips stretched, garish, too wide for his jaw. The bass line started again and he turned towards his band, the grin gone.

The haze moved in further. It had been warm, a little bit red. Now it was cold, green and blue and purple. I saw the same colors yesterday and the day before and on Wednesday.

The music had stopped. People stopped clapping and moved away from the stage. The bar was filled more evenly now. The speakers couldn’t watch the volume of the singer’s voice or his grin. I could hear it outside now.

Margot poked her head in the door. The bouncer let her in.

“Come watch.”

Threee… Twoooo…. Ooooonnneee….

Sssss….

I could see it now. The fuse burned down. The cannon was black, unsmooth.

“It’s from the Battle of New Orleans.”

“Damn. It looks old.”

A woman stepped in front of it and it fired. A bag of beads plopped onto the ground in front of her. She scooped them up and pranced away, beads raised over her head in triumph.

“It doesn’t fire very well. That’s why it takes so long to get a winner,” Margot said.

 

Threee… Twoooo…. Ooooonnneee….

A man stepped in front. He was shirtless, maybe thirty years old. His shorts were purple and well above his knees.

It fired more quickly this time. The beads hit him in the face. They hit him hard. His face popped and broke. The man who had fired the canon turned away and threw on a pile of beads. It came out blue.

“Shit,” I said.

“That doesn’t usually happen.,” she said.

“Too many Fishbowls.”

“Did you try one?”

“No.”

I had had three last night and one this morning.

“He’s the winner,” she said.

“What do you mean he’s the winner.”

“He just won. That’s it.”

“Why?”

“That’s how it works. It’s an old tradition.”

I just shrugged. The haze was in my mouth now. I could taste it. The last shot out of the doll’s head had done it. It tasted sweet and syrupy so I took too much. I knew it wasn’t sweet, though. Anyway. There I was.

“Now they stop?” I asked.

“Obviously.”

“Why?”

“That’s how they do it. And that guy just died.”

“So?”

“You want them to keep going?”

“Sure.”

“Are you drunk?”

“No.”

“Let’s go talk to my aunt and uncle. You haven’t met them.”

“Sure.”

“Are you sure.”

“I love meeting your family. Almost as much as your friends.”

I took another pull out of the head and threw it at some people on the other side of the street. They were wearing the same shirt as Margot. Theirs had a white stripe. I think I hit one in the shoulder.

“Stop it,” Margot said.

“Why?”

“Don’t do that.”