My Eighteen-Foot Starcraft

My Eighteen-Foot Starcraft

       by Duggles

if evers you feel lonely

if evers you feel blue

if evers you would only . . .

there's only one of you

"Sweeter than all the world." Who in all the world, I asked myself one morning, would come up with foolishness like that? I asked myself this as I handled my daughter's laundry. I was folding it because it had been left on the spare bed. I had been restless in the night and finally risen and brought my bedding to the spare room. There were stacks of laundry on it, folded. I estimated there to have been twenty plus piles. It was too dark to see them but I could tell by the time it took to throw them off the bed into the corner. I put her jeans on four stacks, her blankets on three piles, her shirts on six piles, her various tops and tanks on six piles, her towels and linens on eight piles, her panties and bras on two piles, her socks on another big pile and so on. It took an hour to fold it all, maybe more. She lived downtown, five miles away, and had gone home on her bike with her daughter yesterday just before dark. I would need to bring these to the car and deliver them.

       She has had six serious boyfriends since she was eighteen. Now she is twenty-six. They are always young men who have part time work. They work on construction during the summer months from April to October or November and go on pogey from November to March. They go to Guatemala or Honduras for the winter months and have friends at home send in their UI claims. They learn to snorkel when they are there. They know the names of the beer available in South America and Central America. They do not know the names there of cities, hills, ranges, cars, families (though I wish to be careful not to vilify them), buildings, politicians, train routes, ships, bays, islands, books, authors, paintings, artists, underwear, clothing lines, shells, roadways, restaurants, bordellos, ice-cream, or churches.

       One was a body builder who stayed at my house once for four nights even though I told him when he arrived from Missouri that he could not be here in the morning when I woke. Another talked slowly and made you listen much longer than you would like to by working successfully the pace of his words and the steadiness of his gaze at your eyes. The third one, a little man with narrow shoulders and a massive beard, read the papers a great deal. You could find him with his face in a newspaper at twelve noon, at two p.m., at four p.m., at six p.m., at eight p.m., at eleven p.m., and at one a.m. Number five did marijuana frequently and was quite loud. He drank a lot of beer and wine. He engaged me in strong conversations without patience or listening built into them but full of bravado. He wanted to be loved and admired. All of them smoked cigarettes.

       I love her little daughter. She is a sweet girl. She has blonde hair, quite wispy and fine. The other day, when her mother said, "Let's cut your hair," she cried loudly, loudly and with vigor, and sounded terrified. I was in the bathroom shaving and called out to her what was the matter. She just cried some more so I went to the living room where she was sitting at the dining room table with her head on her arms, sobbing. When I asked what was wrong she cried even louder and said that mommy wanted to cut her hair. I held her and stroked her hair and said no, it was fine. I did not think mommy would cut it. She was just teasing, I said. My daughter told me that she was not really serious but didn't know what to do about the stain she had got in it and it was sticky and clumped. My daughter has raised her very well. The little one has quite a temper and if it had been me raising her I am afraid that I would have resorted to hitting sometimes, to my shame. Certainly yelling, and probably a little shaking. But my daughter doesn't hit or shake. She does not even yell. She hardly raises her voice but somehow, often by stern tones and certainty of purpose, gets the little one to obey, even if it meant, in the early years, a dreadful tantrum that left me running for the door to get outside and go for a walk till it blew over. Yes, my daughter is exceptional at raising her girl and being good to her.

       My wife works in another town and comes home Tuesday, Thursday and Friday nights. She drives her Accord, though sometimes she commutes with a carpool. She and I have found ourselves speaking less over the last five years. She can speak more easily with friends and acquaintances than with me. I can speak more easily with people who are not close to me than I can with her. When you love someone, I think, you converse with difficulty. She does the laundry and I do the dishes. That is our work-sharing system. I build fences, check oil in vehicles, keep tires secure and filled, do house repairs and such. She cleans, makes food, organizes the division of labor around the house, and generally is the domestic general contractor in our domicile. We live at 679 Niagara Street. You can tell the place by a large ugly, too-old evergreen in the front yard, reddish-brown brick on the corner of the street entrance, a Honda with rust spots and two missing hubcaps and a high planter out front. The neighbors have two dogs and one of them barks. I don't want to start a feud with them. The other neighbor is a widow of seventy who got us to give her a part of our ally way dirt space right up against the garage when we first moved here three years ago. She came the first week and outright asked for it. We did not know her well or any of the neighbors and wanted to fit in so we gave it to her. My wife wishes she had it back to plant rhubarb in.

       I am in the process of changing the plumbing in our house. It is galvanized and cast steel and needs to be upgraded for sanitary reasons. I intend to go back to work on that when this piece of reflection is finished. My son has moved home again. He works for a landscaper who is not around much and so does not require him to be there at given hours. At least, he cannot check if he is working. My son has slept in again this morning. It is getting on toward ten o'clock and he is supposed to start at eight. In Kenora, K-Sport is putting a new ninety-horse Honda outboard on my eighteen foot Starcraft. It is very exciting for me. I feel tingly inside like a little kid.  

Mortimer Poindexter

Mortimer Poindexter

       by D. D. R. R. (the Stammererer)

Nothing I write is intended to instruct you.

(Bill Clinton in an open letter to the nation after the Lewinski affair)

There are in all my words no surprises or tricks meant to make you think that there are two immediate planes of being, one in which you reside, and one in which you might reside if only you figured out the secret of the message you are in the act of reading. I bring you words of good cheer. I bring you words of love. I bring you glad tidings. You will not find St. Paul in anything here. Neither will you find James, the brother of John. Women are quiet and stay in the background in my pieces. Women are loud and outspoken in my pieces. Women never stand for anything in my pieces. My name is Mortimer. I live on Wobeegad Street in a suburb of Pensicola. Yesterday, I had my third car accident in one month. It was a fender bender and the other driver got very angry at me and claimed it was my fault. I thought it was not my fault at all. I did not entirely stop at a stop sign and the other person drove too fast  and smashed into my front passenger side. I have a sister whom I have not seen for many years. She lives in Pensicola, too. My brother phones me each day and wants to talk for an hour at a time. Since I dislike the phone, I usually cut him off after ten minutes. My parents, Sue and George, were sharecroppers in Nebraska. They moved to California during The Great Depression, then to Nebraska again and purchased back their old farm. They had made a great deal of money picking oranges and now lived without having to farm the old place if they did not want to. My other sister, who lives with me in this house, sings all the time. She sings and plays the accordion. Her favorite type of music is blues. "Somebody else's mule's been kickin' in my stall!" she sings from the shower. My older brother, Hans, worked in the northern parts of Canada for a while, above Winnipeg, and he came back a bitter man after ten years. He is now living in an asylum where, he tells me, the nurses dote on him and treat him with special attention. If I ever catch the bugger who broke into my garage and stole my poitificator I will break every fiber of his body. I wish to leave you now and go to a better place, namely, to bed. I am always tired these days. My doctor is worried. I hope it's not incurable. Good night, everybody, and sweet dreams.

Love, Mortimer. 

Krisaldimum's Great Wealth

Krisaldimum's Great Wealth

       by Default Doug

                        when upon life's billows you are tempest tossed

                        and you are discouraged thinking all is lost

                        count your many blessings, name them one by one

                        and it will surprise you what the Lord has done

                        count your blessings name them one by one

                        count your blessings see what God has done

                        count your blessings, name them one by one

                        count your many blessings, see what God has done

It dawned on Staniuslaus that his sister (Riat Riata Singh) might just be hiding the fact that she knew something about the family inheritance now that old Krisaldimum Kechkov had finally died. At eighty-eight, Riat would no more, and had not for many years if the truth be spoken, need much of anything to live on. He would keep a sharp eye on her interactions with the attorneys and on the attorneys themselves to try to circumvent any embezzling. He did not mind embezzling as such, but in this case he stood to lose big time, so he minded.

       The day of the reading of the will arrived. The lawyers sat about a table in a room in the old woman's home. Riat was there with her husband, twenty years her junior. This man seriously required care, thought Staniuslaus. Medical men and psychological clinicians as well as clairvoyants and spiritual leaders needed to unite their efforts on his behalf. The upshot of such a pursuit would be the declaration that he (Bill Bob Singh) was incurably insane and deteriorating. Bill Bob would be looked at, he would be asked a few questions, eyebrows would surreptitiously be raised, fearful smiles exchanged, and discrete telephone calls made to bring in the police and hospital attendants trained in the handling of the desperate. He, too, Bill Bob, sat there near Riat with arms crossed as Antolio read the will.

       Radium Singhapore played with his tie and white shirt button at the neck. Big, a former sportsman, hockey being his profession, now sports announcer on national television, he had debts that he would like to clear up. He owned a palace in a grand suburb of the city worth at least six hundred and fifty thousand, maybe twice what he could afford. In his possession, although mortgaged and not his, and never to be, was a Land Rover worth eighty-five thousand, as well a Jaguar that his wife drove worth an additional ninety-five. He himself wore costly, fine, woollen suits, rings with precious stones, thick-soled shoes from import stores and always accessories such as socks and ties and underwear that matched in expense and in fashion the lifestyle he attempted to lead. Staniuslaus knew that though Radium appeared well heeled, he owed his soul to the devil.

       More of the family who stood to receive a legacy of possibly nine hundred thousand apiece, or even more, the total of the old woman's estate not being fully understood by them, waited in expectancy about the table. Each, from the bearded scholar, Kentucky Knowles, to the delinquent thirtyish woman-child, Crappusel (last name of Porrin) crossed his fingers hoping for the best. Knowles's books (he had published some four or five) had not done financially as well for him as he, at the threshold of his retirement, and beginning to show signs of some mental equivocacy, would have hoped. Now money and security, in the time of life when he would not spend any of it but put it in the bank, meant much. It was his last great possibility.

       Ms. Porrin, too, hoped for money to reassure herself that she had been worth it, nothing else in her disorganised life having managed to do that. She did not play an instrument, did not understand the intricacies of any scholarly discipline, knew nothing of the workings of anything mechanical, had never learned songs, memorised poems, played in a sport, run more than a city block, exercised regularly, or learned to cook, much less read a magazine or newspaper through two issues in succession. Her deepest desire was that money would vindicate her and leave her clearly valuable to herself and to the world at large, as well as to her God who expected works and accomplishments.

       The will was read by a thin-faced lawyer whose day job was with the federal tax branch, and it went this way, the important part of it: ". . .I bequeath all my monies, all my valuable certificates and bonds, all my capital holdings, all my companies, all my shares, and all my personal effects such as jewelry, gold and silver coins and trinkets, rare books, etc. etc. to the Catholic Church, a lawyer representing which will be present at the reading of this declaration and last testament. My six pets (Rover, Barko, Grouchy, Hiss, Whine and Sparkles) I give into the hands of Bill Bob with the expectation that they will be well cared for and pampered. Crappusel will receive my diaries if she promises to keep them well and faithfully in a secure place where no weather or children might harm them. . . ."

       First there was silence. Then Bill Bob jumped up and ran to the lawyer reading the document. He grabbed it from his hands and tore it to shreds. Then Crappusel began to cry and lifted her dress up above her waist as if to take it off. Riat blanched, for she had had it from one of the lawyers that she might well be inheriting a tidy sum. Staniuslas made as if to defecate on the floor. He dropped his trousers and showed himself for all to see. The rest all engaged in similar acts of personal violence. Bill Bob went out of the room saying, "Where's those cats. Let me at those cats." Crappusel soon had the said diaries in her hand and was tearing out pages at a great rate, flinging them into the snow through a casement she had got unstuck. Riat had disappeared and was nowhere to be seen. The lawyer who had lied to her still sat at the table glancing about in worry lest she appear again.

       The family degenerated after this affair. All of them died within six years of the reading of the will. Each and every one suffered from high debt load and found that the banks refused them any more loans or guarantees. Had Krisaldimum only seen fit to give her vast wealth to her children!  

         

         

Maybe a Green Knight (cont'd 2)

Maybe a Green Knight  (cont'd 2)

       Doggy the Kid

              trueth ant courteisie

No one spoke. No one stirred. And then, just as the King himself was about to meet The Green Knight's challenge, faithful Gawain rose and stepped into the middle of the room.

       "It is not the King's place to face danger when his trusted guardians surround him. I stand instead between my liege and your predation, Sir! None dare enter unchallenged the sacred domains and rooms of my King and master," he began. He reached neither for sword nor knife. No sign of fear showed in his stance. Poised, lovely in his adornments of mail and chain, he faced the swarthy green and waited. Of a sudden, impatient of an answer, in one motion Sir Gawain drew his sword and with a wide swipe severed the head of green from its fertile body. It fell to the floor with the sweepsweep of a cabbage tossed from the harvest wagon.

       To the horror of the assembly, the beheaded knight, unimpeded, stood firm as before. And he laughed, a merry laugh that resounded in the hall. "Next year," he said, "at this very day and hour, I will meet you again, Sir Gawain! I will meet you at my castle where you will be expected to find me and allow me one stroke of the sword at your head. Then, I guarantee, you will feel less inclined to mock me and laugh at my expense, if laugh at all you will!" With that, the headless villain leapt on his horse's back and galloped out the door. Those about the board sat for a minute, quiet, doubtful, and then loudly with fearsome purpose began to speculate about the identity of the vision just now disappeared. Only Gawain sate on, quiet and contemplative. A year from this hour he would lose his life. That much was clear to him.

       With only four weeks of the year left, my diminutive audience, twelve months hence, Sir Gawain rose one morning weary with unslept hours and whispering a quiet goodbye to his sleeping mate took up his sachels, sword, guires and helmet and left the rooms of King Arthur's castle for the last time. Much occurred before his journey came to an end, but suffice it to say that at the eve of Christmas he arrived at a place that he could feel had his destiny in its secrets. He had until now found no trace of the Green Knight in all the lands through which he rode. No one seemed to know of him or of his domains. Still, instinct led Gawain northward ever further into the forests and glens of  barbarous lands where neither king nor priest dwelt in all its regions. Few souls of any sort showed themselves to his eyes. Many hours often passed with neither sight nor sound of human enterprise.

       But then, my little listeners so rapt in wonder at my feet, just before midnight on the eve of the day that the savior first breathed our air, Gawain saw before him, some miles distant, a grand castle of solemn hue and wondrous height. Hastening, hoping for goodness and cheer at the hands of strangers, he came to the bridge before the castle gates and called out in a weak but willing voice. Someone on the walls hailed him in return. Before long there were introductions made, exclamations at his pitiable state and condition, and loud lamentations from the kitchen about the tardiness of all cooks and kitchen help. Wine appeared, and beer. Assorted fishes arrived baked in ovens the day before with also fresh and tasty breads and butter. Soon, Gawain felt so refreshed that he began to answer the many curious requests for information of his homeland and of his purposes. He told them his tale keeping back nothing, not even the sad fears he felt at the challenge given him to meet the knight of verdant color who was to be the instrument of his demise on New Year's Day. All who heard him wept and sighed at his heartfelt telling of such lonely tales. They mistook not the sincerity of this man for folly. They knew the courage he had shown and the resourcefulness of his journey into strange worlds of which he knew naught.

       One night, soon after his first rest in the castle, the lady of the manor came to his room, tapping at the door, entering at Sir Gawain's request, and laying down beside him on the bed. Children, you may blush at this, but she spoke so fondly of her feelings for the spirited knight that he took her in his arms and loved her till the very mechanisms of love gave out and groaned to a stop. Each night thereafter this scene of joy and fondness repeated itself until the eve of the New Year and only then did Sir Gawain confess to her his terrible dilemma. He had heard recently from the lady herself, during one of their many conversations, of a grotto to which the Green Knight would come on holy days and where he often could be found praying. Her bedfellow determined that very hour of this discovery that now the time had come for him to prepare himself for the dreaded encounter. The lady beside him lamented that she would see him no more. They held each other while Gawain tried to comfort her. Then, just before he left their bed for the last time she bade him wait. She loosened a kirtle under her bed dress and dropped them to the floor. She picked them up and gave them to the knight, announcing that they had magical powers. They would, she tearfully said, if he faithfully wore them, protect him and he surely would not suffer death from the sword of his enemy.

       Now children, do not be afraid. Good will yet come in this tale. Gawain thanked the kind lady and inquired whether she could really spare the lacy garment. Then, he left. He arrived at the grotto. He encountered the knight, green as ever, praying. He introduced himself. The Green Knight stood. Gawain lowered his head to present his neck. The Green Knight swung his sword. But, he missed! He swung again, and missed once more. The third time he swung he nicked the crown of Gawain's head. A drop of blood fell to the earth and from it sprouted, at that very instant, a rose of crimson hue. But then, to Sir Gawain's utter astonishment, the green tree of a knight began to laugh! My children, he laughed and laughed until the leaves about his person shriveled and died and fell in bunches to the ground at his feet. He said then, as if in final parting, "Sir, and how did you enjoy the company of my wife all these many nights?"

       Bright with shame, green with surprise, Sir Gawain leapt on his steed and galloped hard for home. Galloped hard back to the civilized world.