No Good or Bad Men or Women

No Good or Bad Men or Women

       By Ribbon Ribeye Reimer

                  Nettie noffered ninety ninja's nookie
               Celia kindly curried Krajek's cookie
               Brian bindled Betty Bradford's bootie
               Sammy sail-surfed Summer's scented spoonie


So sang Lewis to Demi one day by the river Thames where he had taken the girls to enjoy a picnic on a brilliant summer’s day. Their parents were not there to hear him and that was good. Demi hardly understood anything but she understood that and that was bad. Because she liked it and wanted to try her hand at all the implieds. Not only her hand. She was precocious. That was a good word for her. Simply precocious. You cannot call a canary stupid for not reading Sarte. You may not claim with any credulity Fido’s ignorance because he resists barking out versions of Mozart’s more difficult numbers. Neither have you the right to make any logical connections between the sleepiness of cats and the general state of their intelligence. All of the above are forbidden anyone with a sense of purpose and direction in this western world. But you would have been right to call Demi not only mildly unresponsive to cognitive stimuli, but profoundly immobilized by that particular manifestation of energy. She excelled at stretches, naps, scratches, shut-eyes, lie-downs, zees, massages, sheet-foldings, languidities, Lazy-boys, lawn-sprawls, lap-lays, head-rests, rubbings, tubbings and many other sorts of easy-goingness the practice of and so even a mild perfection at an even slightly ambitious individual would have shunned. She, not being one of these latter, however, did excel at and did practice all of them both.

       On the given day Lewis ventured forth with his wallet slung over his shoulder, a nutting crook in hand, old clothes (husbanded at his mother’s insistence) and a mysterious something or other tucked into the pockets of his large overcoat. He wore an overcoat because of the weather that, coming down straight from the Bay of Biscayne, tempered anyone walking on the moors. Tempered: that is, put into a bad temper if that particular subject of a hypothetical scrutiny had forgotten to throw on a warmer wrap of the sort with which the truculent and thoughtful Lewis had provided himself. Straight away as he stepped out of the small cottage on Lady Cherry’s Downs, not far from the same pub at which Blind Bill gave to the Captain the black spot, a black cat moseyed mildly from the neighbour’s hedge and slipped indifferently across the road at Lewis’s feet. Lewis said not a word but picked up a stone and threw it into the bushes to startle the feline and let it know that he was not a soul to be tampered with. He personally would have none of this fear of black cats. Lo and behold, the stone went through the neighbour’s pantry window. Lewis heard it crash. He glanced neither quickly left nor right to see if anyone had noticed. He retained his composure entirely, compromising his dignity only to the extent of tucking down and picking up his pace to take advantage of the effect of distance between his person and that of the offended.  

       Travelling thus with unusual alacrity Lewis shortly arrived at the door of his charges. He found them ready and waiting, huzzaed loudly toward the treetops, and with a flourish and a wave at no one in particular he and his two consorts kicked off their adventure, conscious only a little of a mile and a half of ground to cover before the grass received and comforted their tired bottoms. The girls chattered as brightly as the grackles above them. They called out riddles to their guardian as they walked and then sang a song for a few minutes or more, suddenly turning to pick wild flowers that they imposed on Lewis to carry for them, if nowhere else then in his lapel button they said, winking and smiling, tucking them in and running off after some new pursuit. After which they hurried far ahead and sat waiting under a tree in the shade or by a knoll with a shady side, for it was hot and the sun already beat down, early as it was. When he caught them up they implored him to lie down a minute or two and offered their laps to rest his head. He relented invariably, and not only for a minute, but for five or ten. 

       When they reached the river in an hour or so the day had declared it necessary to open their lunch basket to discover its insides. There they found the most splendid repast. Bread, freshly baked by Cookie herself! Cheeses of three or four scented varieties, one decidedly ancient, passed nose to nose with laughter and pointings. A small spice cake announced its deliciousness so sharply that they all had to keep each other from reaching for it. Sandwiches wedged about, cut in triangles of the sort that girls especially enjoy. Ah, and two bottles of wine lay red and dark, cooled in wet linen, the corks already loosened by a thoughtful kitchen maid. And other small delights tickled, enough to keep them happy for all of the many hours of daylight left to them.

       They fell to with not a single thought of restraint. They tasted viands, cracked nuts, knacked sausage, sampled drink, slurped jellies and sauces, spooned up jams, tilted tankards, snuck tidbits, tapped bottles, and then really began to dig in and help themselves. They feasted till they could eat and drink no more and leaving the remains of their dinner to fend for themselves for now, they thought over what should come next. Demi felt sleepy at once and said so. She insisted quite certainly that she would consider nothing else until that appetite, too, had been allayed. Placing her curls and forehead down on Lewis’s lap, she fell asleep, small snores emanating from her nosthrils. He stroked her hair and lightly patted her shoulder with a similar attention he would have allowed his cat, Simms. Demi’s sister, Cynthia, younger, more vivacious and energetic, and petulant for only a forgivable minute, hurried off down the bank to watch the waves. Her skirt blew and flew in the breeze as she ran from them. Her legs painted each bush she passed with sunlight. Lewis, taking quite seriously his guardianship of the sleeping damsel, resisted sleep himself, nodded his head, shook his head, and then, finally, when he could bear no more, laid down, too, beside the girl. His arm encircled her waist and even before his head had settled he slept.

       When he awoke it was already late and the birds had stopped singing. The girls were both lying on the blanket sound asleep, one behind him with her arm cast over his shoulder, the other before him with his arm over her. He roused them, calling out how late it was. 

“We must leave for home at once,” he said, beginning to gather their things. The girls obeyed unwillingly, but soon they all set out. Before long, taking less time for stops and larking, they reached Mumford Grange where they parted company. Next, he got to the hedge where the cat had startled him. Soon after, he made his own cottage that, he saw to his utter amazement, had burned to the ground in his absence. Only the smoking ruins of the chimney and an old steel cupboard still stood. The rest resembled a sand castle in downpour.     

         

Big, Actually

Big, Actually

       By Dumpster Doug Dempster

Papa played “Pretty Pines” plenty of times at those dances in the thirties. You’re asking me to tell you what it was like and what he played. I was young then, maybe twelve or even only eleven. He was a black-haired and lively little guy. He was big, actually. I saw him once in the bath when I was old enough to know about such things and he was a big guy down there. I walked in to go for preserves and there he was with it! He stood only five feet tall and could fiddle like a chicken with her tail on fire. In those days you drank at these dances in the Pembina Hills. We made our own because you couldn’t buy it anywhere. Because of the prohibition. My uncle Raymond, Raymond Jacuzzi, from up around Crystal City, drove a grain truck of whiskey up into the Pembina twice a year and that tripled his farm income. Girly, our neighbour’s catalogue model of a sprightly thing, sixteen then, got to go along with Raymond on one of his trips on a frosty night in December and she would never do it again afterward. She liked it, you could tell, but she said later it was for men.

       You wouldn’t want to know about my ma so I won’t answer that. No, she was not a gentle person only a good one. She plucked a hen each Saturday for our Sunday dinner. We would get our bath water warmed as we sat in it. I remember calling to her that it was too cold and she told me to wait, she would be right there. Then the kettle would arrive and she would get me to scrunch right over to one end so I wouldn’t get scalded. Mama never drank liquor. She didn’t care for it and called it the devil’s tonic. She drank tea, coffee, water, buttermilk and sometimes a glass of wine. She made her wine from chokecherries. Lift that stone jar lid and the smell knocked you back.

       Grandpa? No, he never lived with us after the incident with the harrows. Papa said he needed to learn to be independent and so he ended up at the Kovajak’s across the allowance. We were not homeless, quite. Grandpa got to keep the baby but afterwards the Mrs. Kovajak wouldn’t let him near it and said it needed a mother more than him. That boy is now reeve here, did you know? He’s doing a lot for the hay farmers. They could use a knight. The grain farmers can’t get him to say a word on their behalf, though. Larks abound along the river in May this time of year. They flit about as if their lives depended on it. Other birds, too but the larks outnumber all the rest two to one. We had a gift shop along the allowance for a few years selling carvings and corn. We made enough to keep us from going hungry those years. Pity. Billybob died after the fourth year when townspeople had just started to come round to buy from us. I do roll my own, yes. Now, in the last year of the depression we had no other income than what we as a family could generate and the children earned a quarter now and then stooking hay for the Stmikvas over the allowance. None of them were strong and three died during the early forties of allergy-related illnesses. But we survived those ten years of depression anyways, and here I am. The girls were the strongest. 

     One of them plays the double bass even now for the Round-up Boys over in Mather. They sing at a lot of local events. I think she is one of the most beautiful women I have ever met. She wonders if I will ever get married. At cards the other night she beat me as she usually does. We don’t play together often the way we once did in our sandbox by the chicken coupe. The one time the pigs got out and we were surrounded in the sand. They looked so big I wanted to run but Bretullia, that’s my friend, well, my sister, whispered to stay put. I did and a pig bit my arms. Here, see. Chickens are wonderful. I find that the books on farming have declined. The sales of them has increased. Mama wrote a Best Breast bill for the medical team that came here in the fall of fifty-six. They pictured her on it. She was so thrilled. I need to run. I’ll be back in ten minutes. The outhouse is only just behind the pig barn.     

Hungry, and Proud of It

Hungry, and Proud of It

By Dougy Big Gulp

These stories have no socially redeeming virtues. No social conscience, that is. They are simply tales of blind and hungry beggars who made good. You get hungry beggars and blind beggars in all the great literature. The work with Scheherazade in it, for instance. A Thousand and One Nights. Great Expectations. Yes, I think of Magwich as a beggar, don’t you? He catches Pip, tips him upside down until the boy sees the steeple and sky underneath themselves, and then sends him home with dire warnings to bring him “wittals.” He’s so hungry, is why, of course. He’s not mean. He makes good in the end, but he wasn’t blind, was he? And, in “The Pardoner’s Tale,” you’ve got the Pardoner who gets rich by his begging. None of them are blind. In Treasure Island, though, the beggar, if he can be called that since he’s a pirate, is not exactly a beggar but he acts like one, tapping his cane, calling out in a whining voice, and then when the horses are about to run him down, just before his death, he runs back and forth across the road calling for his old friend to help him now. Bill. Of course, they don’t, being pirates and all. He turns the wrong way at the last second and runs right under the thundering hooves. 

I like Robinson Crusoe, too, don’t you? The way Friday begs for his life and Crusoe sees it all unfolding before him with such a sense of Christian pride and duty. He kills the one cannibal and then kills the second one, too, who has fallen behind in the race to catch Friday whom they hope to bring back to the laughing crowd at the campfire and eat. They eat the other prisoners they have brought with them after sending some emissaries to find out what happened to the first two scouts, all of whom Crusoe finishes off. And the part I like the best is that then, in the middle of their feast, Crusoe shoots and kills almost all of them. He’s brave and trustworthy and courageous and that’s what I like about him. And I like the beginning, too, with the prodigal son who goes against his father’s wishes to sail on adventures and make his fortune. He gets caught up in a series of storms that almost kill him and prays that if he ever reaches land he will never sail again. When the storm abates and he is calm once more he forgets the promise made in each of his crises and finally is shipwrecked on that island off the Mosquito Coast where he spends thirty years paying for his early willfulness. The Protestant God is a tough one, boy. He makes you pay through the nose for any sins, especially disrespecting your parents and having pre or extramarital sex. Anyways, I like the way Crusoe comes back to the island as an older man after being rescued, coming home, finding that his tobacco crops have made him immeasurably rich, kindly paying off the cook or servant or house owner who kept his papers for him, and, all of this like Job, praises God for his good fortune in the end. When he returns to that island of his marooning (God marooned him there), he is a changed man. He has troubles with wolves, too, going around by land (to avoid sailing), where was it, through some forest and over some winter mountain pass where a thousand of them attack his entourage and just about succeed in wiping them out. I’ve always liked the story of Dives, too. Hungrily gathering crumbs under his master’s table. When the old man dies he goes to hell and when Dives dies he goes to heaven and the old rich man implores him from below to give him even one drop of water. See, water was not the issue in the earth part of this story, but food was. Not a morsel of extra sustenance did that miser provide. Then, when he dies, it is not food he needs but water. An ironic twist. And in Kim there were beggars everywhere but I don’t recall any specific story of begging. The whole book was conceived around a begging atmosphere. The tone is lighthearted and begging does not constitute sorrow but a culture. A begging culture. Young Kim travels with that mullah who is on the lookout for a certain magic river, which, if they find it, will make him young again. They travel, and not episodically so much as dramatically. They bump into ner-do-wells and shysters who neatly steal, finagle, bilge, outsmart, lie, cheat, nip, trip up, outsmart, wangle, sneak, connive, pinch, pilfer, press, hoodwink, slink, trick, pickpocket, lift, cradulate, cavort and extort with joyful results and a wonderful sense of lightness of being. All ends well, with Kim finding his parents and enrolling in school. Like Huck Finn, this is an adventure story. Unlike it, Huck starts off domesticated and at home and later goes travelling, while Kim starts off travelling and then ends up home. So, beggars, class, make a fascinating topic. Like mice in beer bottles. Tomorrow we’ll study piracy literature. Wednesday? Right, Wednesday, not tomorrow.  

     

Barking

Barking

       By That Guy There

“Milk makes up an essential part of a healthy individual’s daily food intake.”

Dr. Wesley Penner, President, International Health Organization

“The last thing you want to feed your children is milk. Milk is for calves, not humans!”

Dr. Jane Upgaarst, Vice President, Coalition for Healthy American Children and Animals

Vanderbelt was called in to be milked, as he put it later to his colleagues at the Toff and Stuffy, by a matronly nurse who smiled to reassure him as she turned to have him follow her down the short corridor. He sat in the chair and read about the importance of hair follicles to the health of the entire being. Dr. Groinly (unfortunate name for a fellow in that business, he also mentioned to the same men at the lounge) arrived very late and seemed in a hurry and impatient. But that did not matter. This was not surgery. He attached the modified milking machine to Condolisa’s penis, started it up, and left the room. While the machine sucked quietly at him, pulling and releasing, tugging and letting go, Condo tried to move about enough to see all sides of the contraption. No shut off anywhere that he could tell, though it was, he saw suddenly with relief, plugged in at the wall. He would have to straddle the machine to get to it but at least it was there. A minute later the doctor entered and looked at him suspiciously.

       “What are you doing out of your chair?” he barked, peering around the door as if he expected accomplices. “You should be sitting down for this important procedure. A healthy sperm count depends on quiet co-operation and sitting. If you move about during sex, you are much less likely to conceive. Did you know that?” His white sleeve was a little red at places, pink, as if he had not successfully washed the blood from it after his last crisis.

       “Yes,” Vanderbelt nodded. “I should be still.” The doctor tried on two pairs of rubber gloves before he seemed satisfied and left again. He said he would be back in ten minutes. Again, Van realized, he had forgotten to address the problem of the shut off.

       “I’ll just relax,” he said out loud. He leaned back in the chair and waited. It was not working well. His erection had not yet occurred and five minutes had elapsed.

       Maybe I should think about Molly,” he said to himself, again audibly. Molly was a student in one of his seminars who sat in the front row and wore thin sundresses that showed her lace and underwear. He did that, and soon it worked. Not long afterwards, when he was finished, he thought about his dilemma. The doctor had not arrived. The clock above told him that fifteen minutes had gone by. He stood up with the damn machine still whirring and sucking away.

       “Jeez,” he said aloud. He waited. No one. Not a nurse, even.

       “Hey!” he shouted. “Is anyone out there? Could I have some help here?

       He yelled a few epithets and then began walking around the machine as far as the hose would let him, which was not that far.

       “Damn,” he said, thinking about the fact that each edge was smooth without buttons or anything else protruding to push or pull. Maybe underneath. He knelt down and felt at floor level. He got up and looked at the cord on the far side. He waited. He called for the doctor again. He leaned forward and laid his stomach on the chrome and stainless and reached for the cord. He slipped forward and hit his head on the floor, the hose stretching his penis. Now he reached the cord and was about to pull when the doctor stopped him.

       “Don’t!” he yelled. “What are you doing up?”

       “I’m finished, you moron!” Van roared at him. Stop this damn thing or I’ll kill you!”The doctor touched the switch on the side and the machine stopped. The hose fell limp and Van pulled up his pants immediately. He walked to the front desk, signed the necessary forms, and huffed towards home.

Till Next Time Then, Goodbye By Douglas Goldstein Deceit. The Oxford-Uzbek dictionary defines deceit as the act of hiding true intentions from those males who would most need to know in order to escape damage to themselves and their possessions. There once ruled a king on the desert region bordering on Afghanistan who hated deceit and denounced it rigorously at every turn. He despised deceit and flew into a rage whenever he spotted it anywhere, even among the lowliest of peasants who he found frequently, despite their pleasant demeanors, attempted to get something for nothing, or even obtain an item for less work than that item was worth. When one of his retainers gave up retaining for him and retained for himself, the King denounced him in public and had him whipped to within an inch of his life. You must remember that this was circa 1740’s and so more understandable than if it had been the practice to be so violent today! “You swine,” he would say, and grab the whip from another retainer near to hand and lash the very hide off of the offending retainer’s back and buttocks. If a concubine slept with a visiting official without first having applied for that privilege and being granted same through official channels, the king so personally belaboured her and with such severity and so long duration that she never again attempted to make similar forays to the very last days of her hideless life. And so on, not only domestics and officers kept their behaviors above board in this king’s domains but brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, children, and even uncles preferred to discard creeping thoughts of selfish gain and secret takings. Now, one November day when the hills already showed their snowy tops to a cooling world, a young shepherd boy found, to his surprise, that the arm of the law extends even into the remotest corners of the kingdom. Bored with sheep, hating the endless routine of keeping the beasts in a pack, momentarily diverting himself by throwing rocks at objects, he aimed a number of his stones at a target generally out of reach of even his practiced arm. He had, on one of these attempts, a particularly fine throwing rock in hand, smooth, the exact right size to move through the resisting air, and this he hurled with surprising success at a cave entrance up in the cliffs above the valley. It arched, he held his breath, and then, sure enough, it entered the opening and crashed there into some yielding substance that tinkled and crunched. He heard it all the way down where he stood. Taking a look at his sheep to make sure they were all tired, too, and they were, laying down for a sheep’s nap in the early afternoon sun, he left them there. He climbed with interest higher than he had ever dared go before. Up, up, up he went till he came despite grave danger to a sheer height of sandstone, which would have, and had for all, been too daunting in normal circumstances to attempt. He attempted. He won over it. He climbed then to the lip of the cave and with trepidation looked in. There, behold his surprise, he saw before him row upon row of huge masonry jars, all filled to the brim with gleaming gold and glittering jewels. A horde of such splendor and magnitude lay before him that he knew he never would in all his years manage to cart it out and if he took two trips daily seven days a week up to it with a backpack for the rest of his life. Gold coins there were. Gold necklaces and gold ornaments with chains and of curious design lay limply there. Silver broaches and rings tumbled from the clay lips of the jars. Diamonds, emeralds and sapphires, as large as stones from a brook, winked and smiled. A thousand rubies lay embedded in the masses of gold and glimmered in the weak light, adding to the very illumination the sun threw into the small opening. He leapt in, took a small handful, admired it, kissed it, rubbed it under his armpit, and then pocketed it. He would tell no one, he decided, not even his father who beat him too frequently. He would hide it all, bury it all, keep it all, and use it all himself. Nothing for sisters, brothers, mother, father, uncles, aunts, cousins and in-laws. And that is what he did. I will return to this story of the brother of Omar in another episode of The Adventures of the Wealthy Shepherd Boy later in this series of broadcasts. Till then, this is Oscar Sheriff saying, “So long, and God Bless! Till next time, goodbye. And simply believe. God has good things in store for you.”

Till Next Time Then, Goodbye

       By Douglas Goldstein

Deceit. 

The Oxford-Uzbek dictionary defines deceit as the act of hiding true intentions from those males who would most need to know in order to escape damage to themselves and their possessions. Speaking of which, there once ruled a king in a desert region bordering on Afghanistan who hated deceit and denounced it rigorously at every turn. He despised lying and flew into a rage whenever he spotted it anywhere, even among the lowliest of peasants who he found frequently, despite their pleasant demeanors, attempted to get something for nothing, or even obtain an item for less work than that item was worth. When one of his retainers gave up retaining for him and retained for himself, the King denounced him in public and had him whipped to within an inch of his life. You must remember that this was circa 1740’s and so more understandable than if it had been the practice to be so violent today! “You swine,” he would say, and grab the whip from another retainer near to hand and lash the very hide off of the offending retainer’s back and buttocks. If a concubine slept with a visiting official without first having applied for that privilege and being granted same through official channels, the king so personally belaboured her and with such severity and so long duration that she never again attempted to make similar forays to the very last days of her hideless life. And so on, not only domestics and officers kept their behaviors above board in this king’s domains but brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, children, and even uncles preferred to discard creeping thoughts of selfish gain and secret takings.

Now, one November day when the hills already showed their snowy tops to a cooling world, a young shepherd boy found, to his surprise, that the arm of the law extends even into the remotest corners of the kingdom. Bored with sheep, hating the endless routine of keeping the beasts in a pack, momentarily diverting himself by throwing rocks at objects, he aimed a number of these at a target generally out of reach of even his practiced arm. He had, on one of these attempts, an especially fine throwing rock in hand, smooth, the exact right size to move through the resisting air, and this he hurled with surprising success at a cave entrance up in the cliffs above the valley. It arched, he held his breath, and then, sure enough, it entered the opening and crashed there into some yielding substance that tinkled and crunched. He heard it all the way down where he stood.

Taking a look at his sheep to make sure they were all tired, too, and they were, laying down for a sheep’s nap in the early afternoon sun, he left them there. He climbed with interest higher than he had ever dared go before. Up, up, up he went till he came despite grave danger to a sheer height of sandstone, which would have, and had for all, been too daunting in normal circumstances to attempt. He attempted. He won over it. He climbed then to the lip of the cave and with trepidation looked in. There, behold his surprise, he saw before him row upon row of enormous masonry jars, all filled to the brim with gleaming gold and glittering jewels. A horde of such splendor and magnitude lay before him that he knew he never would in all his years manage to cart it out and if he took two trips daily seven days a week up to it with a backpack for the rest of his life. Gold coins there were. Gold necklaces and gold ornaments with chains and of curious design lay limply there. Silver broaches and rings tumbled from the clay lips of the jars. Diamonds, emeralds and sapphires, as large as cobbles from a brook, winked and smiled. A thousand rubies sparkled, embedded in the masses of gold, and glimmered in the weak light, adding to the very illumination the sun threw into the small opening.

He leapt in, took a small handful, admired it, kissed it, rubbed it under his armpit, and then pocketed it. He would tell no one, he decided, not even his father who beat him too frequently. He would hide it all, bury it all, keep it all, and use it all himself. Nothing for sisters, brothers, mother, father, uncles, aunts, cousins and in-laws. And that is what he did. Each week for many, many years he climbed to his treasure with a rucksack and hauled way as much as he possibly could without falling downcliff as he left. I will return to this story of the brother of Omar in another episode of The Adventures of the Wealthy Shepherd Boy later in this series of broadcasts. Till then, this is Oscar Sheriff saying, “So long, and God Bless! Till next time, goodbye. And simply believe. God has good things in store for you.”     

         

     

At the Y

At the Y

       By Him

Sneiko (that’s not pronounced like the watch but as in “hide” and “abide”) bullied his way to the front of the line and demanded some attention. He was a Slav (slave--as we all are to ours--to his culture). You can tell by attending to his name, by its look and sound. Sneiko, Kreiko, Javeikochuf. All Slavic names, right?

       Anyways, Sobchuk walked up to the MacDonald’s waitress and yelled at her as if she were deaf: “I want a burger and fries! I’m in a hurry!” She continued doing something on her little monitor and did not raise her eyes, as if she were accustomed to men who yelled and bullied. She suddenly looked at him in her sweet way and, bending toward him from the waist, actually pulling her slight frame up onto the counter and leaning as far into his face as possible, screamed with highest energy, “Get off my case, you asshole! You’re all alike! Fuck off! Just FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF!” And then she went back to her studied figuring and smiling while she punched in numbers and selections of food and drink.

       Sneiko stood there for a minute and then reached in over the counter and took aholt of her shirt at the throat and tried to drag her up and over. Big mistake. In a twinkling, before he could have a thought or even part of one, she felt under the counter and out came a butcher knife that gleamed as she raised it and then came down frequently, fast, like in speed that someone might achieve who has ADHD and is playing a piano arpeggio. Into his face, across his nose, twice into his throat and down his hairline with blood spurting and him realizing all this only once the cutting was done. She put the knife back in its place after rinsing it and after sliding back off the counter. 

Again she went on with her figures and then smiled at the next customer, bending at the waist to one side to look around Sobchuk’s large frame, who stood there transfixed and worried. He realized after she had finished with the person to his rear what had happened to him and instead of showing the good sense of turning and leaving he sat his bum on the counter in order to put his legs over so he could really get at her. Now she was angry. Grabbing his hair while he was off balance, she pulled him onto the floor with surprising strength. She dragged him over to the French fry vat, him kicking and screaming and calling her a slut and worse, and without any sign of deliberation or slowness she hoisted him up with a single heave and shoved his head up to the chin into the boiling fat. He sizzled and it hurt him. You could tell by the way his legs thrashed and his arms flailed trying to grab something by which to pull himself out. When she’d had him in there for a little while and his resistance was lessening, she lifted him bolt upright and hauled him to the ice cream dispenser. She held his puffy, golden-brown face upside down under it. She pulled the lever and the ice cream twirled into his mouth, which she had propped open with a plastic fork. When it was overflowing she asked him if he still had any complaints and dropped him. Leaving him lying there, she returned to work. No one said anything. The Slav lay quiet now behind the counter on the floor and all the waiters stepped over him with burgers, fries and milkshakes. 

At the Edge of the Bathing Party

At the Edge of the Bathing Party

       By Douglas Plenty Toys

Pocahontas played by herself while her mother and father cleaned blueberries. She sang a small song under her breath as she lined up pebbles and twigs to make a square in which more squares represented a group of people. They were bathers in a creek and included those in her immediate family as well as others from the camp. There were mother, father, aunty Mohawk, aunty Ojib, uncle Leslie, Paul, the Undertaker, Whisper, Whispering Pines (these last two both her cousins by her aunty Who Goes There), Philipina the Brave, Gathering Dust (a beautiful woman who had recently come to the camp by way of capture), Rocking Horse Winner (a famous warrior and rider who could make it to the Great Mountains in two weeks with just one change of horses), Kinikinik the Strong One (a small man but renowned for his large loin cloth), Missy Running Reindeer (who preferred the company of forest animals to any humans, though that did not keep her from attending ritual bathings and large get-togethers for she loved a good meal and especially the personal consumption of much intoxicant), Pay Back Time, a weakling brother of Pocahontas’s who spent much of the time on sleeping mats next to his mother’s and whom the mother comforted by crawling under the blankets with him whenever he sniveled at length and demanded more attention, Grandfather Lewis who had spent many winters alone in the far northern woods defending against the Dené and the south keeping the Sioux out of their territories, Grandmother Wisconsin, a once very attractive woman who had by dint of the years grown old and less so, and five girls and five boys of Pocahontas’s age all arranged in the willows at the edge of the bathing party.

       A ruckus outside made her look up from her play. Horse hooves thundered, voices screamed, children calling for their mothers thumped on the ground, an arrow came through the tent. A roving band of Sioux had ridden through the camp and destroyed half of it. Everyone left in the village hid, waiting to see if any of the marauders would return and then began to load onto their travois all their remaining belongings. After burying their dead they headed northward under the direction of Old Ned the Horse-lover toward the inhospitable country of the Red Sucker Clan. There they would meet with hostility but not slaughter. This Pocahontas knew as surely as did her mother and father, all of whom had survived the attack.  The Red Suckers were not an armed band in the same way that the Sioux were. They did own each man and woman either an ax or a blade or a spear but these were more intended for use in the field against animal or surprise       attack. The Red Suckers would get accustomed to them in their neighborhood.

       Next fall, some six months later, Pocahontas married Moose Head, the Sioux Control, and the resulting alliance kept death and carnage at bay for the next twelve summers. All those intervening years, however, Pocahontas remembered the moments when she played at the hearth as a girl with her friends and relatives bathing in the Lacroix River. The very stations of the figures seemed burned into her memory at the instant of the sudden turmoil. Though she placidly paid homage to foreign gods, learned to sing worshipful songs about strange kingdoms, kept house for Moose Head and his brother, The Lame One, fed and watered the horses of the chief when he wished her to, and generally carried out all the chores necessitated by her new family arrangement, she despised all of them, or should I say, she limped mindlessly through these duties without much thinking about herself.

       She had a plan, though, and arranged a mysterious set of figures in a dirt corner of their abode, a corner where she alone held sway. It was a small nook, not much of a space, but with the persistent effort of giving and withholding she eventually made that little piece of ground her own to do with as she chose. A bathing scene again, it had in it members of Moose Head’s family, mother, father, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts and their closest friends. These always seemed, to her husband, to be floating in motionless permanence, in a creek or watery hole of some sort. He thought little of it, knowing how lucky he was to have a competent woman taking care of domestic arrangements.

       One day, Pocahontas’s people, now renewed in purpose and led by a great warrior of unusual strength and will, snuck up to Moose Head’s camp and in the dead of night attacked it with grave ferocity. Not a man, woman or child was left alive or uncaptured. Pocahontas received the blessing of Man of Many Arms, their leader, to do with Moose Head and his clan as she wished. She had them all led down to the creek nearby and drowned. Then she floated them together, each unliving body, with rocks for anchors and with dry reeds as floatation, in a lively circle where they lay in still imitation of the play objects she till then had necessarily had to be content with. She reckoned that, her need for play now satisfied, never again would she spend her idle hours lining up sticks and stones to represent people important to her memory of things past.           

     

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

       By Winkler’s Only African American

When Marionette and Elena got tired that first day of biking they decided they’d had enough of physical exercise and would turn south and go to the cabin on the Bayou instead. The Bayou was a swampy extension of Cross Lake near Grand Rapids, Manitoba. When the hydro company had flooded this lake in the fifties some new bays had formed that were almost inaccessible by boat because of all the fallen and submerged timber. The Schleppsteins called it the Bayou and they had once upon a time camped there twice a summer but in the last five years no one had done that and as far as the family knew the interest in hunting moose and fishing for big Jacks in the watery underbrush there had disappeared the way it had come.

       A ski trail had been cut to the cabin by some unemployed and persistent cousin and though he had only ever taken it in winter, Marionette got the bright idea that they could use this ski trail to get there now in summer.

       “We’ll swim, cook, lay in the hammock and just soak up the rays. Really, who wants to bike the last week before classes?” she said to Elena, picking up speed and showing all the signs of renewed interest. The girls had been on the road for just that morning and had travelled as far as Buffalo Lake, a distance of twenty miles. Elena nodded. It was too hot. She thought yes, it would be much better to rest than travel. Five miles further on they turned down a cut-line under some hydro towers and a half mile down that they angled right on a path marked with a red ribbon on a Jack pine.

       The way proved difficult at first with roots and branches everywhere. Cousin had not done a good job of the clearing, Marionette said, swearing. After a while the path got wider and cleaner of obstacles and they made good time. Toward evening they saw a shimmer of lake and in half an hour, just after sunset, the outline of the little cabin.

       “Yay!” they yelled and clapped each other on the back. Tired, they lit a candle, opened a bottle of wine from the case in the corner, and rested on the front step while they listened to the near cry of a loon and the distant call of a wolf. How lovely this evening felt to them. The fading light fell on the blue ribbons in Marionette’s braids. Her hair was the color of polished oxfords in the sun of day. Elena put her head on Marionette’s shoulder and said, “I love you, Marionette!” The eyes of her friend showed the girl that the feelings were mutual. They drank most of the bottle before they blew out the candle and fell asleep on cots that they drew close together because they did feel some apprehension so far from nowhere alone in the bush, which here gets as dense and wild as it does anywhere in the world.

       They woke up in the morning hung over and curious about the African American sleeping between them. “Good God, what’s he doing here,” whispered Elena over his head to Marionette who had herself just hauled her mind out of sleep. Both girls rested on their elbows facing each other. Between them, snoring occasionally, slept a figure whose face was covered with a blanket, whose gray curls showed above it and whose arm, stuck out and under his pillow was the color of an ebony statue.

       “I don’t know,” Marionette shrieked in silence, mouthing the words. Marionette carefully lowered her legs over the side of her cot and tiptoed round to Elena’s side and got in behind her. She rested her hand on Elena’s side and looked over her shoulder. The two girls watched the stranger sleeping there. When he didn’t awake they began to prod him a little, expecting to arouse him momentarily. He lay there impervious.

       “What the hell?” Marionette spoke into Elena’s ear. Elena called out, “Hey!” in a small voice as loudly as you might speak to someone you recognized in a library a desk or two away. No response.

       “Hey!” they said together, Marionette hugging Elena, shivering. Nothing. Marionette reached over Elena and gave him a quick push. He groaned and moved and stretched and then turned to face them, still asleep. They could see his face now. He looked rather old, about sixty, and happy as if in the middle of an excellent dream. They both reached out and pushed him and then shook him until he opened his eyes.

       “Oh,” he said, staring at them, drawing the blanket up about his neck. “Sorry, I slept in, and there wasn’t any other bed last night when I got here. I hope I didn’t wake you. I tried to get under the covers as quietly as possible!” He looked from one set of wide eyes to the other, his own also big and full of wonder.

       “No,” said Elena, looking back at Marionette, “we never noticed you get into bed.”

       “I’ll get you some breakfast,” he said. He looked slim and handsome despite his age. The two girls could tell watching him dress. His stomach had a bulge, true, but it was small and there were signs that this was a hard-working man. His muscles rippled across his chest and his legs and thighs were as taut as any young man they had thought of taking to bed. He put on his undershorts and pants and went naked from the waist up to the cupboards a few steps away and soon bacon and eggs were frying. Coffee had never tasted so good. The girls sat about outside after eating and said little. When the sun came up high enough to clear the tops of the Jack pines and throw its ferocious heat at them against the cabin wall, they decided to tan by the water. Elena lay on the dock and Marionette put down a blanket on the sand.

       “Let’s get an all-over tan, Elena,” Marionette said and Elena nodded. They removed items of clothing and threw them helter-skelter on the edge of the dock and soon the sun warmed them from head to toe. Leander came down the path afterward and walked over with lemonade and ice. From where he got the ice the girls marveled at but didn’t ask. He talked to them. He came out with drinks, some dainty snacks such as pickled eggs and later smoked cold whitefish pieces on crackers with a mustard sauce to dip into. Wine came too, clear and cold as the ice itself. After a while when the girls had filled themselves they declined his offerings and fell silent in the drowsiness of enough to eat and drink. He lay down on the dock, too, with his head in the opposite direction to Elena’s. Was he tanning or just enjoying the sun, the girls asked him and they all laughed.

       The three spent the rest of the week there like that eating, tanning and drinking, sleeping in the two cots shoved together. The girls both dreaded going back to school and said so to each other almost hourly. Grade twelve will be no better than grade eleven they lamented. Who wants to study maths? Yuck! The week did end, though, and before long they found themselves back on their bikes on the trail and then at their school in Winnipeg, just off Pembina highway. To their surprise, already from the first day back in classes they found themselves thoroughly enjoying their studies.

Small Men in Trees

[Note: I welcome comments and opinions and all forms of response. Please note that I will be only erratically within access of internet in the next month. I will post stories as I can for that period.] 








Small Men in Trees

       By Trevor Reimer, MA. Sc.

A sycamore tree invites weebles, and these within a few years generate the primacticillia that make homes possible for the desert owl whose main source of food thrives only near a site of primacticillic protein. One such tree of remarkable height and girth grew near the city of Bethlehem. The radius of its lower branches equaled, I would say, sixty feet, a giant among that species. Kids played in it, let me say for the sake of momentary diversion. And, if you will bear with me, as a break from the routines of botanical science, I will describe some of the activities I noticed around this particular tree on a day spent in its kindly shade one holiday oh so many years ago when Maggie and I first met. We went there to Bethlehem on a whim, the first idea for a destination that hit both of us as funny and crazy.

       So, our honeymoon was spent under its care. I say “care” because we took our pleasures under its canopy day and night for five weeks. Something in the air, some feature of its being, whether a magnificence or simply a plentiful supply of oxygen, or possibly even its oddity as a place of human concourse I cannot say. We did not think about the reasons then but simply lived joyfully for thirteen days, as long as the sycamore rained love down and accepted our adorations. We did not adore the tree openly; never mistake us for idiots. That spirituality is a product of my more recent meditation on those loving days. We adored by living piquantly within its circumference. We actually, can you believe it, set up a tent. We had intended to stay in a hotel for the duration. The first few nights we did just that but with the madness of Arab speech of which we understood not a word and the bustle of the bazaar in the square a hundred yards down the hill from us as well as the incessant knockings on our door by the hotel keeper (who I think was simply trying to catch us off guard naked and in the act, you know) we bought a length of canvas from a seller and fashioned our own tent.

       We laughed and you, too, would have laughed to see cloth billowing about us in the wind. And then, tangled up in yards of white we lay there out of breath and happy. Now, we ate and played cards during the day. Because Maggie is a damned fine guitarist we sang such songs as our own “Frera Jaqua” and “The Canadian Railroad Trilogy.” Even kids’ songs like “I Know an Old Woman” and “The Song My Paddle Sings.” But Bethlehem wine is awful so we paid some merchants to go down to Zanizibart for a case of Karemzailzak Rouge and when it arrived we had feasts, I tell you.

       Long before the arrival of the wine we already spent our nights in moonlight frolic. We stayed put. Where we were. No need to do anything anywhere but under old Syc. When she stood there naked after everyone else had gone for the night, of course, white as light in a white room or snow-shine at night and the hot wind blew her hair about her face so for a second she couldn’t see me, then I loved her as the primrose loves the bee. As apple petals love the dark wet branches that bear them up. All those nights. All those days, too, looking forward to the wine, the night wind, and the freedom of protean clothelessness.

       And then my Maggie sickened and died and we were left separate. We had been married long enough to love each other, not just to have fallen in love. She died, it is likely, from a virus carried by birds. She was thirty-nine then. Our parakeets and canaries are most likely to have been the source. Birds incubate a set of viruses deadly to humans in the presence of particular proteins. I wish I had my Maggie back with me. Maybe she will come again if she sees fit. I will first have to convince her though that I can choose a better site for a honeymoon, I think.

       As I was saying, to get back to business, the Corbet Owl lives in a tree that has, over decades, established for it a particular benevolent culture. 

And So Oppenheimer Made the Bomb

And So Oppenheimer Made the Bomb

By Douglas, the Small-minded

No. Science is the most susceptible to training of all the world’s disciplines. It seems objective and independent of history while in fact it not only is determined by history but makes sure that futures follow the same values as the cultures that came before.

       Like writers. Well-known writers do not encourage new writers of worth, much as they seem to. Encouraging what competes with one makes no normal sense. A writer, especially a famous one, writes in order to be famous and great. If he is, as writers are, mediocre of thought and prodigal of talent and, so, witless and tightfisted with assistance, keeping with vigilance to what has been taught him, and only making great efforts to appear independent, then it stands to reason that he will encourage those who are struggling in his own area of expertise. The publishing industry, staffed by failing writers, in cahoots with successful writers, wears frippery. The strong need the help of the weak.

       One day Oppenheimer, long after the bomb’s construction, tested in Nevada and then released on the multitudes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, walked in his friend’s garden and helped himself to a tomato. His friend was not there and so he took it without asking. He looked over his shoulder, took the fruit and ate, and it was good. He then took an cucumber of fine proportions, green, slender and succulent and it, too, went after its companion down the good man’s gullet. Similarly, after a few minutes to digest the sensations of good vitals going into the stomach, O (we shall refer to him as O from here on in) masticated another cucumber, a celery, two asparagus, a rutabaga, a cabbage and, finally, both a sweet and a hot pepper, one round as a bell, the other elongated and slim as ever might be. Full to the brim (browsing of ivy, one could say) he decided to sleep. He slept for one hundred years and when he awoke his stomach felt empty and ready for another gargantuan sit-down at table. His friend not being around, dead by this time and long just dust, O made another tour of the garden and this time he focused on less likely edibles, for what reason he himself had no answer, though he did wonder at his odd principles of selection. He ate: dandelion pods; vanilla leaves; wisteria blossoms (the purple, sweet ones that leave the aftertaste of aluminum to the rear of the esophagus); sensa roots, which are revered in eastern Asia for their odiferous qualities; papaya peels, the insides not recommended at that time of year, about the third week in June when fish flies lay their eggs untimely in exactly that species of botany; and, string bean stems that secrete an fierce and fiery liquid that first burns and then numbs the palate.

       Satisfied, O slept again, this time for a short week or two, and getting up he found himself not so much hungry as constipated. For constipation he knew no cure, having been always a reluctant student of natural medicine, paying little attention to his mother’s lectures on the ameliorative virtues of this or that shrub. He did what a child would do for such an ailment. He stuck his finger in his anus and pulled it out again without success. No plum. No substance black and congealing denoting an unblockage of anything there. What next? He tried, among the things he found in his deceased acquaintance’s garden, everything that looked promising. He worked techniques with these items that suggested themselves to him. And, they suggested themselves thick and fast. He made good use of bramble, for instance. He wedged in a stick and worked it in and out as quickly as he could. He then tried stones. Onto those with sharp and pointed tops he sat down with some abruptness in order to force a dislodgement of matter in his intestines. He lept bumfirst onto stones from a distance, at a run, zeroing in on these granite projections, but with little effect.

       Next he thought of frogs. He found the biggest and most sonorous of these, a Striated Gobi bullfrog, and stuffed him nose first up his dallywog. O felt the expansion of the amphibian’s bellows, he experienced the sensation of the first release of  air, and then heard, as from a distance--like listening to the music in a seashell--a croak of great magnitude, resembling more a Holstein’s bawl than anything. There came to him a distant woooommmpppphhhribbbettttt. But, no deliverance. A fart, perhaps. A modest explosion of gases from both the anus and the lips. But, no lucky release of tightness in groin and abdomen. Next he tickled his nethers with moosegrass, that long and stringy grain natural to the northern deciduous. His friend had cultivated some of it in a shady corner of his herbarium. He plucked a stem of it, the thickness of his thumb, with tufts of feathery grass on its head, and pried and rubbed this in and over his buttocks to attempt to make that region laugh and, laughing, release its load. No dice. No luck. Luckless O.

       When he finally shat it had little to do with flora and fauna so much as a weariness with the game of figuring out how to make himself do so. He simply shat, wiped himself on whatever available plantage he could lay hands on (it happened to be a bunch of tiger lily growing next  to the juniper under which his steaming pile lay), got up and went back to sleep, wondering what new problem his wakeage would bring.