Square Off

Square Off

       by Big Ducat Dougie Duvet

Wilber and Piccadilly squared off over the girl. She officiated. She had started it. They fought in the Pavilion. Outside it was too cold and snowy. She wore a dress with a red cardigan over it. Wilber sported new running shoes of which he felt a bit smug. Pic divested himself of his t-shirt. He always wore t-shirts. They would take one blow each. Then, if they both still stood they'd each take another. And so on until one of them fell. I know this because I am Wilber's attorney. I have here before me the notes I made the day Wilber came to lay the complaint. As plaintive he deserves my support, but in fact I tend to believe Piccadilly's side of the story. 

       Ivy said go, they drew lots, Piccadilly struck first, a great blow on the top of Wilber's head. He fell like a log and never regained consciousness. He claims never to have regained consciousness. When he spoke to me he apologized for his inexactness. I wrote down what he said and read it back to him. He said it was different than that but it would have to do. Piccadilly stands six foot eleven inches and weighs two hundred and eighty-seven pounds. I keep my scale handy in case events require me to make judgments about a client based on his or her weight. Wilber tops the scale at one hundred thirteen pounds seven ounces. He smokes, drinks beer, speaks often of starting an exercise program one day and suffers from a bad cough that he cannot shake. The girl has a very pretty face. At two hundred and forty-three pounds, and six foot four in her stocking feet, she has caused many a man's heart to skip a beat.

        She proposed the fight and then, when Piccadilly had won, she walked over to him and dealt him such a blow to his nose that he fell over backward and lay there unconscious. Now they all live together. They stand a better chance of resolving issues that way. They don't have to wait for a convenient hour to speak but, unemployed all, and living on welfare, may take their jolly time to articulate their reasons and complaints any time of day, day or night.

The Stiffening of Her Legs

The Stiffening of Her Legs

       by Big Dong Reimer

                   an acquaintance of mine
                   became a homosexexual 
                   at the age of thirty and now

                   she is heterosexual again
                   married with a kid.

On the Yangtze River there is a place, apparently, where, when you go there they have to take you in. That's the difference between thought and knowledge. There are two kinds of unconscious, the forgetting kind and the memory kind. The memory kind, with a prodigious capacity for recall, and which can never be done with anything, is sick. The Chinese have a saying about this, too. They say that tanpan is not good for your digestion for it stays there and stays there, knotting things up inside until all you can think about is how to finally stop eating and get anorexic, and thus to control the whole show that way. A normal digestion would avoid tanpan at all costs. See, the anorexic (that entity with the digestive problems) thinks back unslakingly to all it has seen to discover if there or there or there lies its sudden error. It always finds the reason in part at every stop, at every little wayside picnic area, and sleeps nights satisfied that this time it has found the answer.

       Gonzalo loved his king because that individual ruled him and he, a loyal servant, had learned well at his mother's knee. He well knew the folly of an Antonio or Sebastian, talking others into crimes or being talked into it by others. Crime paid one with disreputability and that would never do for one able to imagine all new--clothes, skin, sky, land, mind--just from a dip in a strange sea. Why would it? "All new!" is a fine sentiment and a lovely feature of living to have arrived in one's thought. "Let us kill!" is a dreadful and "You are evil!" sort of thought to have come and to reside there. Gonzalo defended his king from onslaughts, at his bidding he threw books into the leaky bark of one subject being set adrift and unbeknownst to them living now on this very island, he called for the punishment of those guilty, he felt no guilt himself, and he divined the possibility of a brand new world here on this enchanted isle. Yes, we walk into the wilderness with Gonzalo and we do so willingly.

       Wickenham Jones, a singer and a writer of folksongs, performed at the Winnipeg Folk Festival only once. He succeeded greatly, drew many spectators to his workshops, and presented to adoration and applause at the main stage event the second night of the weekend. However, he ate something at the Whales Tails Concession that turned his stomach and his mind and he consequently never returned to Winnipeg, though the artistic director implored and offered him double the seven hundred they typically paid average bands. He'd sat down to eat a whale's tail. He did also just finish a Thai chicken noodle veggie combo before this dessert. And as he sat he noticed two girls holding hands and mooning over each other near him, on the other side behind him of the picnic bench on which he reclined. They laughed in a girly way, touched each other's shoulders and hair, giggled at nothing, and dipped and turned and glanced about with a quotient of secrecy that showed to great affect all the coynesses of which they were capable. They were on public display, after all. He loved this scene. The softness and grace of slight women was never lost on him. It isn't on singers and songwriters. With two of these slim ones gracing each other, how could he help but watch and pray.

       Soon, however, he felt terrible pangs in his midriff and thought he would throw up. So as not to make the young waifs think that they were the cause of his indigestion, he hurried to the row of blue plastic toilets where he could jettison his food unseen. He came out when he'd finished and sat down by the fence in the shade to rest. The music from the different stages had grown loud and disturbing to his ear. Near him on the grass two slight girls were wrapped in each other's arms and moving rhythmically together. They seemed oblivious to their surroundings. Their dresses, of pale, sheer material, one lime green, the other lavender, had ridden up their legs in an unseemly way. Wickenham noticed this clearly. He thought about what to do but could and did do nothing. He lit a cigarette and simply watched them, this time not pretending not to. They were close, within a few feet. They never did ask him to desist and lay off. They continued to cavort until one or both of them experienced a transformation on the spot, which made itself plain by the stiffening of her legs and then the slackening of her arms and neck.   

       Wickenham noticed these goings on with disgust and compulsion. When he left the park the next day back to Louisiana where he lived on a farm and grew berries and raised domesticated possums, he not so much vowed that he never would return as he never did so, even when entreated with sincere flattery and forceful request by the artistic director of the event.    

TheTent in the Woods

The Tent in the Woods

     by Gaylord Sedgwick Reimer-Penner


        love is just a game
        and lovers all have names
        that's the part that leaves us feeling free



A young man who felt alien at home snuck out finally into wilderness territory to find a place for himself where society would not negate him. Here, nature provided him with a solid sense of self. Named plants and trees impacted his stay but little. The rivulet beside his tent contributed fresh water. Food came to him via his fish line. Traps and snares set out in fall and winter netted him enough animal for meat and clothing. A town some distance away served as a suitable destination on those awkward occasions when urgency drove him out from his serenity. A hive above a group of poplars in a granite cliff he accessed for honey now and then, smoking the bees into submission first, as he had learned from readings on the subject. Winter proved trying, but the other seasons promised and provided an abundance of delight and solace.
        Wesley Ryan Whitaker had taken to carrying a switchblade to school each day in response to the taunting of fellow students. His mother and father as well as his sisters and brother gave him no end of further grief mixed with no small measure of insult. Friends he had none, acquaintances few. Fed up with this cocktail of bitter medicines, he resolved one day to concoct his own future, put the knife aside, exchange humans for animals and generally reclaim that which had turned against him.
        He studied a map of northern Ontario for some days, imaging the particularities of this or that lake. Some suited his sense of a good name but lay too close to a road or town. Others offered a suitable bay and forest but stood isolate from any such larger bodies of water that might entertain the fancies of an adventurous spirit. Wesley settle on a large body of water accessible by marine craft only, remote, but not to the exclusion of the possibility of exit with a day's effort.
       He left in the Whitaker suburban on a Sunday when all the family slept, traveling in the dark along the Trans Canada highway past Richer, Hadashville, Spruce Siding, East Braintree, Birch River, Falcon Lake, and Kenora, and then turned south onto the #71 where he passed Rushing River, Adam Lake, Granite Lake, Luther Camp, Black River, Musky Lake and White Moose Lake. When he came to Old Woman Lake he parked the truck, launched his canoe and crossed the mile of weedy water to a portage. He did all this in the dark with the aid of a powerful flashlight. He carried his canoe and then his packs, three times altogether, a dark quarter mile into Highwind Lake.
         The night was quiet and fine with a light mist descending, but warm as toast. He arrived at the far end of Highwind and camped, again organizing his activities with the aid of a torch, on a sweeping granite shelf he had known he would find there. Next day, in the dawning light he moved his camp further back from shore so that it would not be visible to any passing stranger on snowmobile, boat or plane. And there he made his home for the next ten years.
       Seven times in that decade he left his home on a trip into Sioux Narrows, paddling over Highwind's six miles of open water, portaging, crossing Old Woman Lake, and then walking the ten miles into town. Here in the bank he exchanged his gold dust for money and then spent a week cavorting in the local pubs as well as taking in the fine dining and entertainment at Sioux Narrows' Pilot's Point. One morning on each of these seven trips would find him once more gratefully returning to his canoe carrying additional groceries and hardware, recrossing Old Woman Lake, rewalking his gear back over the quarter-mile portage, recrossing Highwind's miles of open water, and resettling gratefully into his routines at his tent in the woods.

The Curse of the Ring of the Deadly Viper

The Curse of the Ring of the Deadly Viper

       by Double Glasses Reimer

you sniveling piece of pumpkin pie

The wind shifted sharply as they rounded Danger Point. Chet called for more windlass. Danny tried to play it out but the ropes caught and for a second their sails billowed uselessly. Fear gripped Danny's heart and his hands fell weakly to his sides. At that critical moment, however, he remembered what his father had always taught him, that in the hour of need the Lord can be depended upon to care for his children. Chet fell to his knees, praying with real conviction, and found himself suddenly strengthened enough to rise and tackle the sails once more. He shouted out encouragement from the foremast and soon they had their small ship plying the waves with the stout heart they all knew she possessed.  

       "Say, Joe, nice dreams?" called Chet to that sleepyhead tousling his own hair as he was wont to do when he first entered the world of the waking. Frank, on the steps below him, pushed at his brother, wanting to see what the chatter was about. He wore a nightshirt still, the one Fenton Hardy, his father, had presented him from his own extensive wardrobe. He'd purchased it in Istanbul on assignment there many years ago, an assignment of such a secret nature that he still would not discuss it, even with his sons to whom he entrusted most of his clandestine dealings.

       "What happened up here?" he suddenly shouted when he noticed the debris littering the upper deck. Frank was Joe's older brother and spoke always with an authority that the younger sometimes resented. Branches and bracken lay awash along the rails; bird feathers and flotsam had the deck resembling a nuisance ground.

       "We'll fill you lazy dudes in over breakfast," Chet laughed and instructed Danny to set the course straight ahead and tie the wheel in place. They filed into the hold for a bite of the fine food Fenton's cook, loaned to them for this trip, prepared with a good will each morning. The currents now less noticeable and the winds decidedly decreased since they'd rounded Danger Point, their sleek yacht rose and fell like a seagull on the briny in the stiff breezes off Cataraz. The sun shone down with a benign countenance. All seemed well. An hour from now, however, their strong backs and quick minds would be required of them against a threat far more fearsome than the waters had been.

       Fenton Hardy had made them a loan of Samuel the cook for a reason that he dare not tell his sons. He knew of the wildness of their project but also of its connection to evils greater than the boys had imagined. He battled within himself whether to let them go or even to alleviate their surprise on discovering later just what they were dealing with. But, his professional duty came before family needs. The agency had informed Fenton of the menace to the entire nation--nay, to the world--of the Ring of the Deadly Viper. Somewhere, off the east border of Spain, a group of gold diggers had set up a missile base with which it meant to disrupt the lava flows of the Kinley Range and divert its hidden wealth into a secret valley of which they alone knew the location.

       The accumulation of wealth in and of itself concerned the agency less than the possession of weapons of such massive destructive power as to be able to burrow far into the earth and there set off blasts enough to cause quakes and start and stop lava flows. Such activity threatened the fragile seismic stability the Pacific's tectonic plates. And, nations along the Pacific Rim might themselves be ready to employ nuclear weapons against the threat if they became aware of it, this threat of the villains busy in the remote Spanish mountains. Samuel was to keep an eye on the situation and inform Fenton at once if the boys came up against trouble they could not handle. An old hand at such encounters, with youngsters of great intelligence and experience already, despite their youth and boyish appearance, Samuel had willingly agreed to accompany the expedition, and he cooked with a hearty will the food that would prepare them most effectively for the onslaughts ahead.

       They dined today on Spanish sardines and toast and drank coffee imported from Germany. When their hunger was satisfied--all except Chet, whose appetite was an endless source of marvel among them--they stretched out on their bunks for a brief respite. They were all too aware that the next leg of the journey would require all their strength. A few minutes later a resounding "huzzah" from near the launch brought them all to their feet.

       "What was that!" Danny whispered. The boys raced to the deck and froze. Beside their ship loomed a vessel of such gigantic proportions that it made their boat seem like a skiff in comparison. It bristled with soldiers holding automatic weapons, all pointed at them.

       "Anzaitolic croajva ta slit maijolivic blie!" shouted a sailor in a voice that left no doubt about his mood.

       "Pardon me?" Frank replied, hunching up his shoulders to indicate that he did not understand. The commanding officer motioned toward Frank and shouted an order to his men. Ropes were flung over the side and twenty sailors swung down to them in an instant. The intruders tied the boys' hands and hustled them toward the ropes. The men above hauled away and soon the quartet stood aboard the dangerous vessel. No one had thought to look below decks where Samuel had hidden himself in a cubbyhole he had discovered in the kitchen under a counter. He stayed there, and when the other ship left he radioed Fenton the terrible news. What transpired next will have to wait till the next installment of "The Curse of the Ring of the Deadly Viper."    

The Jism Trail (cont'd)

The Jism Trail (cont'd)

       by Dan Gerous

the trail leads home

the trail leads home

i will no longer roam

despite the drive

despite the drive

i'm glad to be alive

hell's gate is past

hell's gate is past

i'll see my home at last

i'll never leave

i'll never leave

my wife again to grieve

she'd love to leave

she'd love to leave

her man at home to grieve

. . . frontiersman who knows little of the culture to which he comes and carries with him a harpoon instead of rifle. Barbed wire indicates unwanted technological advancement into a peaceful world better experienced in its sparsely-populated, free-range-animal-and-human thereness.

       Laconic surpasses garrulous, with the proof of that being the hero drawing his gun regularly on the talkative one who, as a consequence of speaking when he should have been shooting, finds himself bloody in the dust (with a chicken pulling at a vein in his neck) instead of standing over the one there in that condition. Heart attacks and cancer never plague cowboy mankind and come into their force in those who mistake the city for a place to live. Children do not speak, and seldom are seen except when happened upon dead and mutilated by the rampage of outlaw band or Indian war party. The smoking remains of a log cabin and the knowledge that the loved little ones lie there in the charred remains, with burned gingham dresses and singed slingshots, tell the reader all he ever will or needs to know about their silent existence. Adults appear complete with girlish figures already formed and manly muscles firm and broad, indicative of a commendable potential for the strength under fire soon to be required of them.

       Wesley became conscious, too, of the scarcity of money in the world, how many no-good patriarchs had it at their disposal, and how some few generous patriarchs had it in banks in large cities and with which they had purchased great tracks of fine ranchland. Most members of the roving society, in contrast, lived from hand to mouth, owning a six-gun, a single set of clothing, and enough coin to purchase a satchel of tobacco to have to hand

       Music came by way of a single instrument in the hands of a shortsighted farmhand and then it would be a guitar or a harmonica. Occasionally a piano graced a wealthy, good rancher's parlor, but these were only said to have been played at a time when no member of the cast of domestic workers, busy at any given hour, were present to have heard it. Organs, mentioned once or twice, belonged in churches, but since church-going remained a staple in the lives of all, yet never actually saw itself in the act of happening, they played insignificant roles in the lives of the ones one intended to be.

       When Wesley died the Wild West died, too. Guitars are now played by so many. I, myself, belong to a bluegrass quartet and play a wonderful vintage C. F. Martin D28. Ladies smoke cigarettes almost more regularly than men do. Children call out their needs into the middle of adult conversation. The lonely individual earns our pity rather than our respect. Long guns no longer stand at the ready in glass cupboards. Indians, First Nations Canadians, pick wild rice, perform marriage ceremonies, act as legal judges, and in all ways participate in the promotion of social groups. Dresses now seldom contain any gingham. Tobacco pipe smokers have left the country. Wickedness in patriarchs can be found or seen hardly at all. No one reads Zane Grey. It has been years since I considered cracking a Western mysrlf.   

The Jism Trail

The Jism Trail

       by Dan Gerus Doug

ride rails

carry pails

eat snails

furl sails

pieced tails

heavy hails

lost grails

white males

hazy trails

snore maize

Wesley grew up reading cowboy stories such as Riders of the Purple Sage and The UP Trail. When he turned sixteen, however, a tractor tipped onto him at a culvert and he died, so this proclivity had done him no good.

       He learned many lessons of value in these Westerns, some of which came to their meaning in him slowly. A girl riding bareback did not mean shirtless but saddleless. This discovery--and thus value--featured in his education. He thought of the bareback girl regularly. But let me dwell not on matters animated by their sexual content and I already regret making the above my first example. Others abound, which many I will attempt to present without that appeal to the libido of readers that makes writers susceptible to criticism of the sort that belittles their intelligence, and for good reason since writing sex is the easiest means by which writers of fiction entertain and teach.

       Sometimes in stories sex hardly appears and in fact is inferred without being shown. Then again, often sex plays a pivotal though arbitrary role in the narrative. Too frequently sexual material enhances a text. But, then, at times, it hardly appears except as a moment the reader approaches and is not allowed to witness in its completion. When sex "enhances the text" the text suffers the danger of becoming episodic, becoming simply a graphic series of pictures that leaves the reader irate and unsettled for its prevalence.

       I will make only one more reference to this subject for I wish to illustrate Wesley's cowboy narrative schooling. This example is of the 'absence of information' variety. Wesley found himself pondering a young cattle herder's "activities" on the range when Zane Grey had him spend a "breathless" hour alone behind a copse of poplars, emerging "satisfied" as if he had just come down the Chisholm trail with the long labor of bringing a herd to market completed.

       Wesley also learned that old men of sturdy build and lonely constitution excite general interest, as if such characters live here and there in a world of their own making, solitary, savvy, wily in survival, and loved by all good people though satisfied to have nothing to do with them. Further to that, Wesley discovered that young women socialize always and always come away with the heart of the lonely cowboy devoted to them from some critical moment of first encounter onward with an unbridled though unspoken passion, one fierce as ever can be imagined in our ordinary passage through this life.

       Tobacco, and especially hand-rolled cigarettes, makes the solitary life bearable. Tobacco pipes remain the solace of the old, the lonely old Indian matriarch outside her far-flung cabin or adobe hut, and the frontiersman who knows little of the culture to which he comes.

to be continued.   

  

       .