Ashley Chambers

2013 Honorable Mention, Goldenberg Prize for Fiction

***

1

The grieving family members haven’t left the patient’s room by the time you arrive at the hospital. The woman in admitting tells you they’re still grieving, and she remembers you. You are a contracted hospital regular. Your sneakers squeak as you walk to the intensive care unit, where you sit down in the waiting room. You play Plants vs. Zombies on your cell phone and avoid eye contact with the unit secretary. The waiting room and its keepers dematerialize as you strategically place puff-shrooms and scaredy-shrooms with your thumbs on your cell phone’s touchscreen in preparation for this morning’s first wave of zombies. What this means is you’re being paid seventeen dollars an hour to play Plants vs. Zombies while you wait to cut the eyes out of another dead person’s head.

2

You realize you’re leaning against the waiting room’s fish tank when you sense small blue-gray creatures approaching you in your peripheral vision, thrashing their tiny bodies against the algae covered glass.

3

With indignation, the grieving family members identify your black recovery case on their way out. You agree that your recovery case is large. It’s larger than the grieving family members’ smallest child. You attempt to convey this agreement with your facial expression. This means you still have a face. You look away and you remember you haven’t eaten breakfast yet, and you suddenly feel lightheaded. You imagine a banana in your pocket. You taste the banana in your mouth. You’re in the middle of imagining a handful of almonds when you see the grieving family members waving their arms. You watch as a seasoned nursing assistant whispers something to the unit secretary, pointing her finger at you. You detect the grieving family members coming at you, but you do nothing to discourage their assault. Even the smallest child seems to know she’s supposed to go after you. You’re okay with anything the grieving family members want to do to you.

But she isn’t dead yet! they scream. Just a few minutes ago, we swear to God she was still blinking!

It is one of those families.

4

The charge nurse ushers the grieving family members out of the intensive care unit’s lobby. Security is summoned to transport the patient’s body downstairs before you have time to request that you complete your recovery in the patient’s room. You’re so intent on fabricating a reason why you need to perform your recovery in the intensive care unit instead of the morgue that you forget your cell phone in the waiting room. This will be a problem after your shift is over in eleven hours and you have to drive back to the hospital just to collect your cell phone.

5

You don’t want breakfast anymore, and you imagine the face of the janitor who is required to clean the hospital’s fish tanks. You wonder how often this janitor cleans their tanks, or if there’s a special position just for fish tank cleaning. You also want to know where the fish are stored while their tanks are being cleaned. This is a level-three trauma center with at least thirty or forty waiting rooms, and you imagine all of the hospital’s blue-gray fish together in some kind of giant waiting tank at the same time, the fish tank cleaner scrubbing the grimy walls of their homes as quickly as possible one after another. You wonder if fish who were previously friends are sometimes separated from each other during the dividing process once their tanks are clean. You console yourself with the thought that these separated friends might be reunited during subsequent tank cleanings in the future.

6

In fact, you’re only capable of following security downstairs to the morgue because you have a fantastic imagination. You imagine your face is composed of sculpting clay, and that your insides are rotten, and then you imagine the grieving family members clawing at your clay face as they ought to, and by the time you arrive downstairs you don’t have a face anymore. At first this is a great relief. This means you won’t need to worry about facing another dead person. And then you’re worried your facelessness might frighten the patient while you complete your recovery. What if your face actually looks like the inside of a gutted butternut squash from all of the clawing, inverted and then re-smoothed as if with a soft baking spatula? How are you supposed to know what you look like without first checking in a mirror? This would prove you never had any blood to begin with. This would certainly prove you’re not even a person, and you’re the expert on not being a person.

Do you need anything else? security asks, locking the gurney in place. The patient’s body shifts toward you inside her body bag with the abruptness of the locking. You feel her weight shift toward your left hip. Your recovery case is getting heavy but you don’t set it down. You let your right arm go numb.

No, I don’t need anything, you tell security, and security leaves you alone outside of the morgue’s entrance with the dead body.

7

Your girlfriend wears a headset in a call center just outside of a local hospital’s morgue, four miles from where you stand. Her headset lights up in fluorescent blue when she makes and receives phone calls. All day long the fluorescent blue flickers and illuminates the tangled brown hair just above her left ear. You know she’s Facebooking between taking donor referrals, speaking with grieving families, and waiting for you and other remote technicians to call in their recovery times. You know she’s especially poised for the moment when you will call in after this morning’s recovery, when she’ll hear your voice from the depths of another morgue.

Sitting in the call center of death, your girlfriend is like an umbrella leaf plant. Her powers include keeping track of and protecting all of the recovery technicians out in the field today from bungee zombies and catapulting zombies during The Final Wave, from internalized demons related to the demands of a job that necessitates cutting eyes out of dead people’s heads. That, and your girlfriend isn’t upset anymore about the argument you two had last night. This morning she’s ready to offer to spend the night at your house for the remainder of the work week because she knows it makes you happy, and she knows your job is worse than hers, but she also knows she can’t offer this when you call in with your time of recovery. You still have your job, and so does she, and the line is recorded.

Like the other donor coordinators working twelve-hour shifts, your umbrella leaf girlfriend has a fast recharging rate, a quality shared with your coworkers in the distribution department of the eyebank. The only difference is that she’s ready to forget the donor referrals and the argument, sitting in her cubicle prepared to inform you just with the tone of her voice that she’ll be sleeping with you in your bed tonight. Your conversation will actually be documented in the donor database as “T.O.E. of 0945 “T.O.E.” means more than just “time of enucleation.” You’ve both learned to listen for tone and for sanity, or for a lack thereof. You hold each other differently after work based on ten-second long conversations on a recorded line.

8

You imagine having sex with your girlfriend in your own bed tonight. You imagine having sex for a long time. It’s when you reach for your girlfriend’s breasts that you realize your cell phone isn’t in your pocket. You’re still standing outside of the morgue with the gurney waiting next to you, the thick rubber body bag now intimately settled against your left hip. Who knows how long it’s been since security departed. You can’t make that journey upstairs to the intensive care unit to obtain your cell phone because if you do, you know you’ll never return to the morgue to complete this recovery, and this recovery is what’s at stake. You wait with the gurney thinking about how your cell phone is upstairs for as long as you can remember. You wait until you remember your job isn’t to wait, but to cut.

You are here to retrieve ocular tissues from the confines of that thick rubber body bag, and you are here to retrieve two posterior poles from the depths of that lady’s head, and you are here to peel back that lady’s eyelids without thinking about the reality of what it really means to peel back the eyelids of a dead lady, and you are here to do so perfectly. By the time the recovery is complete, you will be holding corneas in your hands, but you will have forgotten yet again that your cell phone is upstairs, and this means you really will have to drive back to the hospital after your shift just to collect it.

9

You place your recovery case on top of the body bag and wheel the gurney inside the morgue. It happens like a sigh of relief and also like you’re still holding your breath. Today there are four bodies in the morgue, five if you choose to include your own. You use both of your hands to close the morgue’s heavy door behind you. You cry yourself back into your body. The tears lubricate your intentions to move your limbs in the direction of what you know you’re supposed to be doing down here. You’ve never been a crier before taking this job, but now you cry daily in the basements of local hospitals, funeral home preparatory rooms and medical examiner offices. You say I’m here for sure out loud and your voice echoes against the white brick walls.

10

You unzip the patient’s body bag as the fifth body in the morgue. You tell yourself that you are The Fifth. You are in charge here. You identify the patient of the grieving family members and you adhere to universal precautions while you do it. You raise the gurney six inches and you compare the patient’s name on the consent form with her name on her toe tag. The patient’s toenails were recently painted gold, probably by a granddaughter or a daughter during the patient’s hospitalization, but you are here to check for signs of diseases. Blue or purple spots, for example, on the patient’s skin, or white spots on her mucous membranes. Abrasions, signs of intravenous drug abuse, prior surgical scars. Without any other significant findings to report, you document the color of the patient’s nail polish on the body inspection form as a shimmery golden bronze even though it doesn’t matter to the eligibility specialist who will eventually clear her chart. You dislike prying open the patient’s mouth to check for oral thrush, teeth, and what always upsets you most: a single, stiff, meaty tongue.

11

The familiar smell of untended shit and bleach returns to you immediately after you finish identifying the patient. It’s at this point that you always remember the first recovery you observed during training. When your trainer removed washcloths from the patient’s mouth as necessitated by the standards of a full body physical inspection, seemingly unlimited quantities of loose fecal matter cascaded up and out of the patient, down and onto her naked chest, flooding the space between her exhausted, sagging breasts the way a river moves with uncompromised intention after a life-changing storm.

That’s when you tore off your facemask in what was supposed to be a sterile environment and threw up in the hazardous waste bin. You were on your knees, and your partially digested salami sandwich, extra mustard and pepperoncini, drenched the bloody tips of anonymous syringes and soiled paper towels and latex gloves. That’s when you remembered, still dry heaving, nothing left inside of you, that this eye donor had just hours before been a grandmother.

Happens sometimes, your trainer told you, speaking and breathing like someone who had clearly gone swimming in shit before.

It’s especially typical of GI bleeds.

12

You’re unable to draw blood from the patient’s subclavian vein in her neck, so you refer to your paperwork to determine whether or not the patient will also be a tissue donor, the majority of which is filled out in your girlfriend’s handwriting. This patient is ineligible for heart donation because of her age and cause of death, so you’ll need to draw blood directly from her heart: a valve, the aorta, whatever you hit first and with the best of luck. You check your paperwork again to confirm the patient isn’t having an autopsy, and you proceed with the heart stick. You’re successful after ten minutes of strenuous work.

This is how you move in the world: inserting an 18-gauge needle into the chest cavity of an old woman until you reach what you pray isn’t fixed blood, pumping backwards, pulling with all of your strength, hoping like hell you suction something, anything, from between her frail upper ribs and without breaking one in the process, so that you won’t need to track down a pre-mortem blood sample at the laboratory.

But you’ve succeeded, and now you’re expelling the first ten milliliters of fluid into the morgue’s rusting sink and documenting the process on the blood sample worksheet. This part is like using a coffee bean to wake up a sleeping mushroom plant in Plants vs. Zombies. You go back into the old woman’s heart. Her heart sleeps like a mushroom plant in a daytime level until you, assuming the identity of the coffee bean, apply your magic touch. Is it you who goes back in? You’re holding a vacutainer serum separator. The patient’s blood flows into the separator effortlessly. The blood tube now contains an adequate blood sample. These are your hands.

13

In your oversized blue scrubs you might as well die, too. You are the master of aseptic technique. You and your patient are living in a sterile world, and you created it. You elevate the old woman’s head, her hair coarse, thin, and white. You irrigate her eyes with sterile ophthalmic solution, ensuring both round surfaces are free from debris. You are diligent in keeping the tip of the bottle from becoming contaminated by the old woman herself, because once you’re dead you can contaminate yourself, and in order to do so you imagine your girlfriend standing before you in the morgue, radiant, taking off her heels, persuading you to go to a different restaurant for dinner tonight after work. You wipe the patient’s lids with alcohol pads, wet against your fingertips, working medially to laterally. Drowning in your blue scrubs, your girlfriend now standing in your bedroom with her work clothes in a pile at her feet, you employ no less than one pad per old woman eye.

14

Except now you hear your girlfriend’s voice from just a couple of hours ago. You’re standing next to her in the call center earlier this morning, minutes before she dispatched you for your 271st ocular recovery. Your girlfriend’s keeping track, and your girlfriend’s on the phone with your immediate future.

If you can just place lightweight icepacks on the patient’s taped eyes for now, yep, that’ll work, uh-huh, just fill latex gloves up with crushed ice if that’s all you’ve got.

It’s so rehearsed it’s not even her voice, and she hangs up. She looks at you.

Donor’s ready, she says.

15

Except now it seems to be Thanksgiving, just after everyone’s finished dinner, and your mother’s here with you in the morgue asking you to apply medical cold packs to your grandmother’s swollen, edematous feet.

They’re in the side door of the freezer, she says. Grandma’ll be so happy if you do it. She loves being waited on, and you hardly ever see her.

You’re digesting double servings of turkey and potatoes while standing above your patient’s draped face. Your girlfriend’s still undressed, too, but now she’s in the basement of your grandmother’s house, waiting to make secret love to you while your family watches Jeopardy! upstairs, and your grandmother is ready and waiting, too, leaning back in her favorite recliner, extending her enlarged, purple, cracking feet to you as a kind of offering, what she considers a gift but only because she doesn’t even know who you are, an eye-cutter still standing in the basement of some hospital, another morgue. You leave your naked, aroused girlfriend waiting in your grandmother’s basement, and your grandmother falls asleep in her recliner after your mother applies the medical cold packs because you seem to have disappeared from the kitchen where you were just standing at the freezer, and you choose your patient over your girlfriend, your mother, and your grandmother, and you lean in toward your patient’s left eye, which stares back at you, blue-green, cloudy, a single cataract, only minor epithelial damage.

Grandma? you don’t ask, instead rolling the patient back into her body bag. You zip yourself in, too, and you fall asleep spooning the patient, her eyes still intact, no blood. You imagine falling asleep inside of the body bag while spooning the last dead person you’ll ever have to see.

16

Except you can’t sleep, and it’s warm inside the body bag because you’re still alive, so you count: two hundred and seventy two, two hundred and seventy three. This time you imagine falling asleep inside the body bag spooning your own grandmother, her eyes also still intact, but when she looks at you she sees someone else, not her grandchild, a different eyebanker in this world, and she’s both alive and awake, and she wants answers.

She asks, Who are you? and then Where am I?

I don’t know, you tell your grandmother. You really don’t know who you are or where you are, and you don’t know what else to do, so you ask your grandmother if she’s tired. She tells you she is tired, and you both fall asleep, and it turns out your grandmother’s dead body is actually the last dead body you’ll ever have to see.

17

After you’ve performed all of the necessary pre-ocular tissue procedures, you place an underpad over the area on the patient’s face where you established a sterile field just twenty minutes ago. You follow the logic of undering the overing in the same way you imagine crawling into a dead person’s body bag to die. This is a woman’s face. This is what you were trained to do, and so you do it, and you do it in the language provided during your training. You follow the logic of undering the overing because there is no other way to survive in a world of cutting eyes out of dead people’s heads. You tell yourself you’re restoring sight for the next surgical candidate in need of a cornea.

This means that on the underpad you must open a sterile in-situ recovery kit, allowing the inside of the blue outer wrap to function as a second sterile field within the first sterile field. It’s almost too much even for you, but you transfer two single fenestrated eye drapes to the second sterile field, and open two corneal viewing chambers anyway. You make sure to unscrew the lids. You examine the Optisol GS for color, clarity, and package integrity. You pour the Optisol into the corneal viewing chambers, careful again to avoid contamination, careful not to contaminate the lids or engage the threads of the jars with the lids.

What this means now is that you’re laughing. You begin to sway back and forth, kind of like a dance. No, let’s be honest, you’re dancing beautifully in the hospital basement’s morgue while cracking up. While you dance you imagine your girlfriend dancing with you in near darkness tonight, but this time it’s darkness without dead people.

You separate and organize your instruments on your perfectly sterile field. You distinguish inside instruments from outside instruments. You place instruments you don’t anticipate using for the procedure at the top of the field. You look at your tissue forceps, your corneal forceps, your tenotomy scissors, your lid speculum, your muscle hook, and your cotton tipped applicators.

No, you think, staring at today’s configuration of tools. The gauze sponges form a mouth. You thought you were going to make it through at least one more recovery, but the hemostat forms a nose. Yes, you are talking to no one again, the surgical blades (#15), those are most certainly eyes.

18

You pull it together yet again, and it’s after you do so that you aren’t afraid to tell the patient’s face that you prefer your girlfriend’s face post-cry. A good, hard, long cry, you say out loud, your voice small in comparison to the vast silence that’s always surrounding you. With your eyes closed, dressed in full protective gear, you compare and contrast the white-blue of the patient’s face to the pink of your girlfriend’s face last night post-cry. The inside of your facemask becomes warm with the only breath in the room. You hear your girlfriend’s voice again and you smile this time.

It’s rosacea, she says, the doctor prescribed antibiotics. When I’m old it’s going to get worse, and it’s going to be gross.

Well, you wish you had said, you’re only twenty-six tonight and your rosacea is the most beautiful rosacea in the whole world.

19

You drape the patient’s face with a new fenestrated field. You say fenestrated field out loud, too, because it reminds you you’re still a person who likes the way things sound out loud. You expose only the patient’s right eye this time. Using one of your cotton-tipped applicators, you gently open the superior lid by pulling toward the top of the patient’s head. You insert the closed lid speculum under her upper and lower lids near her ice-cold nose. You slowly open the speculum while moving in the direction of the middle of her eye, taking care not to make even a moment of contact with her cornea.

Using the forceps and tenotomy scissors, you lift and cut the patient’s conjunctiva at the limbus three hundred and sixty degrees around her cornea. You separate adhesions between her conjunctiva and her anterior globe, confirming her conjunctiva doesn’t come into contact with her anterior globe within five millimeters of her limbus. You don’t know what this means either, even though you’re the one doing it, and you begin to shake. What this means is it’s a long sentence for you, too. You’re fluent only in a language that encourages making it through ocular recoveries.

This must be part of the dance, and because you’re dancing that’s how you’ll remember that you’re speaking correctly, right? Wait, what do five millimeters mean again? And her right eye is beginning to bleed.

If necessary, you breathe back, responding directly to the blood, you will make several relaxing cuts in the conjunctiva radially to accomplish your task. These are the words you were trained to repeat when overwhelmed during a recovery. “You will make several relaxing cuts” is the mantra for an eyebanker under pressure.

Using an outside scalpel blade to scrape the conjunctival remnants, you remove as much of the tissue as possible without compromising the patient’s cornea. You simultaneously realize it’s not the patient’s cornea anymore. You’re dangling the cornea of the grieving family members’ daughter, mother and grandmother from your forceps in a lonely morgue located in the basement of a level-three trauma center.

20

You are alone again in the morgue, and you are running out of beautiful metaphors in the morgue again, you think, no wait, you see, how it is, to cut eyes, out of dead people’s heads. You snip and snip. The snipping sounds like scissors cutting human tissue, except the scissors are real and you are holding an actual person’s tissues in your hands. You exit your own human body, and you exit that body quickly and before dropping this woman’s cornea into the corneal viewing chamber, and you imagine eating oysters tonight with your girlfriend after your day at work, just another day at work. Oysters are her favorite, and as you imagine tilting your head back just like the head in front of you, which rests uncomfortably on a styrofoam head block, angled at exactly forty-five degrees per your girlfriend’s directions to the patient’s caregiving nurse earlier this morning, you drop a raw oyster into your own open and waiting mouth.

Daniel Pope

Outside the train station a man lies on the concrete brick walkway, his head resting in a pool of blood. His skull is buzzed and the blood leaks brightly out of a wound above his left temple. Just beyond the pool is his camouflage-patterned cap.

You’re so taken aback by the sight that at first you walk right by it. You consider pretending you haven’t noticed, swinging your gaze up past the movie theater to the clouds clotting at the pink horizon. But instead, you stop and turn. A sense of social responsibility compels you to be seen doing something.

A middle-aged guy in sunglasses stands above the injured man, studying him. Another man in a sweaty tank top stands a few feet away, talking into his phone. His shoulders are the color of hot dogs. From the look of it he’s having a casual conversation. Across the street, people file past the theater; around you, people file past the bleeding man.

The bleeding man raises a hand and presses it into the concrete. The guy with the sunglasses bends down so far it looks like he’ll keel over on top of him. Staring down through his aviators, he cups his hands around his mouth and yells: Don’t get up!

The wounded man seems to mumble something in response, but you can’t hear. At the edge of the pool, the blood leaks down into the spaces between gray bricks, creating a tiny map of an apocalyptic city, its streets lined with gore—a city that’s perhaps only one stop away for most of us. 

Lie down! the guy shouts again through his hands.

The bleeding man, who hasn’t lifted himself an inch, drops his hand back at his side, where it rests beside his army-surplus cap. 

A woman wearing big hoop earrings and a purple dress walks by rubber-necking, then stops where you are. 

Is he okay? she asks you. 

You’re startled by how close she is. I don’t think so, you say.

Should I call an ambulance?

I think he is, you say, and you point at the man in the tank top, who paces back and forth, his phone to his ear. 

Okay, she says.

His sun-damaged shoulders shake in laughter.

Or maybe not, you say.

She remains there, next to you. Together, you stare at the blood. At the edge of it, where it stops flowing through the canals, the color seems to fade out. It looks like water. You wonder what the deal is with that.

Nobody is in charge here. Some people in raincoats and hoodies with a boombox sit on a low concrete barrier encircling a planted tree. The tree withers like a scolded dog. The boombox plays hip-hop, and one of the people on the low concrete wall plays a harmonica over it. You wonder if any of them know how lonely they are.

You approach them.

Excuse me, you say. Has anyone called 911 at all?

They’re not picking up, says the man on the phone behind you.

Don’t get up! the guy in sunglasses shouts again.

The injured man has sat up, clutching at his face. He appears drunk, his head lolling in his palms, but it may be the concussion. Purple blood sits in his beard like jam. On the ground, where his head was, it looks like ketchup smeared around on a plate. 

Stay down! sunglasses guy shouts again. You’ll make it worse!

Why don’t I try calling? you say to the man in the tank top, who doesn’t seem to hear you.

You call. It rings for a whole minute before you hang up and try again. You let it ring for two minutes, then hang up and try again. Meanwhile, the woman in the purple dress steps closer to the injured man, who has lain obediently back into his blood puddle. She whistles low.

Lotta blood, she says when she returns to you. Think he’s going to be okay?

You hang up the phone again. I think probably not, you say. But I’m no doctor.

You’re a doctor? she says, outraged. 

I am not, you clarify.

To think, she says, not missing a beat, to think we just have all this stuff—she points to the blood—inside of us. This whole time.

She looks you in the face. Her makeup is running.

And do we deserve it? she says, gesturing sharply with one livid hand. To be cursed with these bodies? 

You’re startled. Nobody ever talks to you like this. 

Just—fragile containers of goop? she goes on.

Goop? you say. 

Jars of goop, she says. Jars made of paper-thin glass, full of goop. Do we deserve to be such fragile, paper-thin glass jars of—

Hold on, you say, putting a finger up as you answer your buzzing phone.

You called 911 and hung up, the woman shouts over the line.

Yes, you say. I’m outside the train station. There’s a man here with a head injury. There’s a lot of blood, and—

We know, the woman says. They’re on their way. Was that all?

Oh, you say. Yes. That was all. Bye.

One wrong move, the woman in the purple dress is saying, shaking her head. Her earrings ring against her jaw and she runs a pink enameled nail lightly across her neck, staring dreamily at the blood. It really makes you thankful, she says. 

You think a moment. I thought it was unfair, you say.

What?

I thought we didn’t deserve to be paper-thin glass goop jars.

Maybe she thinks you’re making fun of her. Life is a wonderful gift, she says angrily.

Life is a beautiful curse, you say. 

She shakes her head. You don’t understand, she says. You’re young. You’ve probably never seen anything like this before.

No, you say. I haven’t. 

You don’t tell her that you’ve pictured it. You don’t tell her you almost jumped.  

Don’t get up! sunglasses guy shouts down at the ailing man, emphasizing each word.

Earlier, as your train came to a stop, the one across the platform started running the other direction, jarring you with the illusion of continued movement, with no way out. You panicked for a second, but then the doors whooshed open. Floating backs of heads were replaced by floating faces. This is the last stop on this train, a recorded voice blared.

Now, standing out here with all these apparitions under a throbbing dark sky, you wonder what you were so afraid of. Where were you going, anyway? All of us are bound for the same place: the shining city on the hill, or the grave, or just the next in an endless series of identical platforms full of identical people, stepping in and out of our collective stillborn dream.

Your phone buzzes you out of your thoughts.

Hello? the same woman says. You called 911 and hung up? Her voice sounds sulky, offended that you have done such a thing.

Yes, you say. I just talked to you. The man with the head and the blood.

What?

At the station.

How many times did you call? she says, now horrified.

Just twice, you say.

They’re on their way, she says sadly, as if pitying you. 

When you hang up, the woman is gone. You hear a clicking noise and look around for a moment before you realize it’s the injured man. He has turned onto his side and is now staring up at you. The carmine blood glitters under the streetlamps like a massive garnet adorning his forehead, and a streak of it is painted over his ear. With his face tipped up into the dim light, you can see clearly that his skull is cratered in above the temple. Blood oozes slowly toward your shoes. How much could be left inside of him?

You realize suddenly that you’re looking at a dying man. And he has no idea. It gives him an awful power. 

He clicks his tongue a few more times and shouts: Do you hear that?

You point at yourself.

Yeah, you!

I hear it, you say.

What?

You step between channels of blood in the gray bricks and kneel down close to him. His eyes are blue, rimmed with pink. You nod gravely and shout: I hear it!

Are you shouting? he says.

Can you hear me? you yell.

He frowns. His eyes glisten.

Am I going to die? he asks.

A crack of anger runs through the ground, like a canal of blood, cutting him off from you. Why should you be the one who has to tell him? But then you pause a moment, and the anger lies down and becomes melancholy, which is dark blue, like the deepening night sky beating helplessly against the blank shoreline of distant buildings.

We’re all going to die, you say softly.

What?
We’re all going to die! you shout. 

The man looks confused for a moment. Then he says: Hey, hey. It’s cool.

He reaches a hand out and pats you on the face. His fingerprints are distinctly outlined with grime. You realize you’re crying. 

Am I talking right now? the man says.

You nod. He drops his hand. 

Did you just nod? he says.

From a distance comes the soft whine of sirens, slowly increasing in volume. Two cop cars, SUVs, careen around a corner, pull a U-turn, and drive up alongside the curb beyond the tree. A large man with tiny arms gets out with his partner, a short red-haired man with no eyelashes. They lean against their car and cross their arms. Nobody gets out of the other car. 

Am I going to die? the man asks you again.

His voice is so low you can barely hear it over the boombox. His eyes are dull. You are bent over him like a surgeon. You don’t know what to say, so you give him a thumbs-up and stand. The guy with the aviators has gone to talk to the cops.

Then what’re you doing here? he’s shouting. If you’re not taking him, then what’re you here for?

Calm down, sir, says the large cop.

Just making sure everything is above board, says the short cop.

Your phone buzzes.

You called 911 and hung up, the same voice says again.

Sorry, you say. I guess I called three times.

What?

Another siren—this one lower, making whooping sounds, like a monkey—tears through the air. It’s the ambulance, finally, swerving around the line of brake lights. It shoots past the theater across the street, zooms around the median, and pulls up behind the cop cars, its alternating red and white lights hurling frenetic, dancing shadows against the pavement. The withered tree sways. The boombox people applaud and the one with the harmonica does an impression of the siren. You put a finger into your other ear to hear the woman on the phone better. 

What the hell is that racket? she says.

We just talked, you shout. About the guy at the station? I guess I called three times, but I mistakenly told you two. It’s just a misunderstanding. I’m sorry!

Unbelievable, the woman says.

Does this happen a lot? you shout.

It’s my first day, she says. Or maybe she said: Every day. It doesn’t matter. She has hung up.

You crouch again over the man, who has turned onto his back. He looks up at you out of his enormous and childlike face. The dried blood on his forehead shines like gold leaf in the swooping red light. His clay cheeks bear the thumbprints of whatever wrathful god created him. 

You have to get out of there.

They’re here, you say. You’re going to be great.

What? he says.

Have a good evening, you say.

He closes his eyes. A tear clings to his chin, utterly still, like dried glue. Or maybe it’s snot. He makes a clicking noise with his tongue again. A halo of blood flashes around his head.

You stand and turn to walk across the street. The cops don’t even glance your way. Behind you, the man continues clicking. It seems to you that some fault line runs down your chest, splitting you in two, and that you have to press the two sides of yourself together to continue upright. When you get to the other side of the street, you don’t look back. You just keep walking around the theater and through the parking lot and up the next street, then turn right, then left, then cross the street to your apartment building, which stands next to a funeral parlor. Men in black suits are gathered along the sidewalk, nodding. One of them looks at you, and in a throaty, practiced tone meant to convey comfort, says: And are you here for the service?

Please don’t talk to me, you say.

Up in your apartment you lie down in the dark in your bed with all your clothes on. For a while you continue hearing the clicks. The blood creaks in your brain. Then you must fall asleep.

You open your eyes and you’re lying in a coffin, pitching along upon a river of blood, a spindly dark city rearing up on all sides. The air is like a red velvet drape resting against your face and the sun a lightbulb shining through the bright pink bladder of a fish. The air tastes like pennies and you can barely breathe for the stench. But then the phone rings.

You called 911 and hung up, the woman says.

Oh God, you say. Yes. I did. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Laura Adamczyk

They are all of them adults, but even so they will bring stuffed animals, pillows shaped like hearts, and scraps of blanket with satin borders hanging on by threads. The technician will, one at a time, hook them up, turn out the lights, and through a Plexiglas window watch them sleep. It is dark but for the blue from a streetlamp outside, the tiny lights of the polysomnograph beside the bed, electrodes running out like arteries from their chests and forearms. A different man or woman each night but the same restless sleep; they thrash and shift over the machine wires. He makes sure they stay connected.

Diagnosis

They are inevitably all diagnosed with the same condition. Simply, that while asleep, they stop breathing. In doing so, their bodies wake them. It happens dozens of times per night, though they do not remember most awakenings, if any. 

Their bed partners tell them they snore. How the snoring churns, churns louder, and then seems to catch. A popping, struggling motor. A piece of string pulled smoothly from a knot, then stopping, knotting again. The catching is the awakening and the awakening is the apnea and this is the diagnosis.

The Technician

He wakes the woman in the morning. Turns on the lights gradually, one at a time. How did you sleep? he asks. Are you tired? Drowsy? More or less than usual? Do you remember waking up in the night? The woman is middle-aged and overweight. They are nearly all middle-aged and overweight. She’s sitting herself up in bed, sighing, cracking her neck. She pinches in her brows and rubs the space between them, as though this were all an imposition. As though this were her bedroom and he an unwanted man entering.

He knows the woman’s twisted, crumpled face, like that of so many others. Their adult lives have become a phantom tiredness, as though a spirit entered their bedrooms at night and stole their breath from them, leaving only red morning eyes. They go to bed earlier than their friends, wake up limp and heavy. All this without the romanticism of insomnia, the mysterious hours spent awake in the dark.

He takes her temperature in her ear. She crosses her arms, asks when he’ll be done. The skin of her face is washed out and pocked like dough. Her wrinkles bare, not trying to hide anything behind makeup. He thinks of his mother. Any woman brought to impatience or anger reminds him.

Without looking at her, he points to the bathroom, tells her she can get changed. He ejects the clear plastic tip of the thermometer into the garbage beside the bed. 

When she emerges in a dark sweatshirt and jeans, exhaling sickly sweet toothpaste, he tells her that she will get her results in a few weeks. Although he already knows, he is not allowed to say (the physician will glance later at his report and sign her name and degree on a line). While the woman slept, the technician had watched the polysomnograph’s spider-leg etchings unfold across the scroll, counted more than fifty times in the night that her breathing stopped and woke her.

It is like having a dream of a person who does not know you’ve dreamt of her, he thinks. What he knows, but they do not, about themselves. He thinks of this as he leaves the hospital in the mornings: birds screaming at each other, buses heaving themselves down the street, people hustling to work carrying paper cups of coffee, hair still wet from their showers.

Back at his apartment, black plastic over the bedroom windows, daylight pulsing in at the edges, he will get into his bed and try to sleep.

Falling

The ones who do remember will describe it this way: like something breaking or a tear. I will be dreaming and then I will fall from a great height or miss a step one step from the ground. I will fall and fall but before I hit I will wake up, pulling in air, gasping, a waterless drowning.

Temperature

Or like just before his mother hit him. The air around him heating, seeming to change density. The same way her face changed with her drinking, both clenching and loosening, tightening into focus yet sinking farther away from him. How, from her place in the corner, she would home in on something in the room she seemed to wish was no longer there.

And today, just as he is waking. Never knowing what time it is anymore, never quite sure what it is that has woken him. But then the familiar scratch of her voice on his phone, muffled yet alive, as though she were calling from some bright, foreign country: I’ve stopped drinking.

Really.

Really. My therapist wants you to come in for a joint session.

Your therapist wants me to. 

Yes, that’s what I said.

The air conditioner is churning in the window; behind it, a halo of summer light. It could be ten-thirty in the morning, it could be four in the afternoon. An oppressive heat, either way. He feels it soak into his blood like a drug even before he enters it. He’ll eat cold cereal again for breakfast, put ice in his coffee.

I sleep during the day, Holly. As he says it, he recognizes the lie of it. His insomnia, tiredness, worse than his patients’. Had he really been sleeping when the phone rang? His mattress on his bedroom floor, his phone on the floor next to it. His glass of water has bled its moisture in a ring into the wood. Even over the air conditioner’s motor he can hear his cats outside his room, pawing, trying to get in. He throws a shoe at the door. He says “Maybe” and then jots down the address and time. 

When he started calling his mother Holly, he cannot say. When he left home after high school. When he started selling pot to pay for college. It was the same to him, she was Holly. He knows no one else with her name, just as some will only ever call one woman mother. It has been years since he’s seen her face to face, despite their proximity to the other. All the same, he says only maybe.

Dreaming

That same feeling of a fall. It would bring him to the pizza parlor where he worked in high school. To one afternoon. Sitting on the concrete step outside the kitchen doors, smoking a cigarette, throwing the butt in the white-gravel alley. Hands on his knees, about to stand up and the girl who would be his girl coming up behind him, placing her hands on his shoulders, he jumping, turning, she saying with that warm smile, Hey, why so skittish?

Or the falling would bring him to a dream. Or a dream he wished he was having. Her hair as fair as his was dark. As his mother’s was dark.

Those two teenage years they were together. Making out like crazy in her car, staying out as late as, later than, they could get away with. He felt himself getting lost in her, felt like he was going insane with joy.

She was a listener. She watched him. Her eyes so steady, he looked away when he spoke to her. His head drifting down, he’d stare at a hamburger wrapper on her car floor, imagine folding it out flat, then crumpling it up again, flat then round, open then tight. In this way, he told her everything.

Breathing

The airway is a release during sleep. A muscle, a balled hand, opening. Because there is too much tissue and not enough muscle. Flesh like a blanket puffed out then falling, settling on a bed, finding and filling in empty spaces. The airway is a collapse during sleep. The most natural of chokings. Someone putting a hand over their mouths, saying, Stop, do not tell this secret. Wake and do not remember.

Treatment

Because she was quiet. A shy, though sarcastic girl around others. Keeping herself apart, crossing her arms over her small chest. Walking the halls of their massive high school, looking down in front of her, as though the tiled floor were not flat, as though something might rise from it and trip her.

Because he was quieter still, her eyes were only bold with him. When they were alone: laughing and brighter, her face so open it looked pulled apart, nearly unrecognizable. Teasing him, tickling and pinching. She would nudge his hand out of his pocket, spread his palm out flat to read what was there.

Bedtime

The men and women develop arrhythmia without treatment, an irregular heartbeat, the muscled fists of their hearts mimicking their syncopated breathing. Their bodies become hiccups, interruptions. 

He knows before they’re diagnosed. He knows hooking them up—when he leads them into sleep, when he leaves them to watch from his separate room. Like members of the same gang recognizing the other from across a street. From his dark distance he sees their chests rising like floodwater to a levee.

One treatment: A clear plastic mask worn over their noses and mouths. A cool stream of air—a mouth over their mouths. A flow of air, a breath whispering, Shh, go back to sleep. It’s all right. I am here. 

The Technician

From his place standing on the sidewalk, he looks down a set of shady concrete steps: a garden office. Wrought iron railings and window boxes filled with red and white geraniums. He looks up and down the street. A bright day, the sunlight he’s missed this past year.

The small window gives nothing away from this distance, but he can imagine the light on the other side of it—muted and gentle. Yellow light perfect to read or nap by. They’ve been through this—joint, group, individual sessions. He has forgiven her before. Many times over, but always took it back later, alone with his thoughts. Kept his anger like a tightly knotted piece of rope in his pocket.

Trees shade the sidewalk—a nicer neighborhood than his own. He’s up; it is beautiful. He should go to a park and enjoy the day. Talk to a person. Have a different kind of conversation. He thinks of the girl from high school, wonders whether or not she is happy. There are people who have no trouble sleeping, he thinks.

Placing his hands in his pockets, he steps down onto the shaded steps. He imagines his mother’s hands, her short, chubby fingers clasped over her round middle. He imagines his mother’s face as happy, fat with the pinkness of sobriety. Or tight and curled into itself, stiffening into a defense. He’s seen both, but cannot decide which is worse. This time can be like every other time, he thinks. He can be polite and distant, or loosen the ball of his fists into something flat and open. Because she is on the other side of the door—her same loose, round face and dark hair, the same hands she had when he was a kid, a teenager even—he misses the last step down. His hands caught in his pockets, nowhere to go, he falls, catches his breath, sucking in air, like he is being ripped from this world.

Deena Linett

I called him Lark although his given name is Laurie. I made it up, a love-name, so I reckon when they asked him for a name he said what came to mind, quick-like, and told them Lark.

The lark is singing, the lark’s aloft, the lark’s in his nest, like that.

I’d got involved after my brother was shot on the way home on a winter afternoon. There’d been an American movie and they fancied they were like the lads over there, did some of that fooling around they do—singing rock music and strumming the air before their stomachs with the make-believe guitars. It might’ve been they’d found a few tins and some metal lids. They were on their way home when the Gardai got there. The clang of metal as it hit the paving stones probably began it. There were shots and Colum died, he was fifteen, and apart from smoking a few fags now and again he never did one thing wrong.

I joined the women’s group after that, the mother’s group. Mum couldn’t, so I did.

I didn’t like to tell our story, and as time went on it became a matter of pride not to, at the meetings, but I marched and served tea. I stood out to be counted. Of course all the neighbours knew, but the women from the other side, and even some of our own, they didn’t know why I was there, and I was young then, only seventeen, and one of the few unmarried. Then Lark came into my life, like the very bird he was, wiry and quick. A bit flighty and nervous, he didn’t like to look at you direct, but I made him.

I settled him some. Didn’t ask what he was about and he didn’t ask me either.

He’d come for me at the end of the day, to the office where I did the typing. We had it in common that we stayed away from the pubs. He worked in a shop that caters for visitors across the road from Belfast Central. He liked to talk about us getting on the train one day, going to Derry or Portrush, which is on the sea, and—I’ve seen pictures—very pretty, with boats and little houses right along the water.

He did stock and that at first and later sold like a regular haberdasher. His shop had a long alley along the back, and there was commerce back there. I know that now but I didn’t know it then, and when the day’s work was done and we’d helped our mothers (in his case it was his granny) with the washing up, we’d meet for a walk, or if it was soft, out in the park. We’d go to the films, or down by the river. On a Saturday we’d have a pint or two, but not other times, and I was glad of that.

In those days I believed all the trouble must begin in the pubs.

That’s not true, and I know it now, but I was a girl then, and stupid. I thought a person could be safe if he just worked hard and stayed about with family and didn’t go for the drink.

He knew what I did. He knew I went to those meetings. There was even a night I was on the news—pure mistake!—right at the edge of a march, behind the banners and the signs, PEACE NOW, and STOP THE KILLING, and RUC OUT! and the camera saw me.

On film I could see what I couldn’t see in a mirror. Doesn’t she look just the spit of her Mum, Aunt Lou used to say. And Lark once. We were walking in the moonlight and he said the way the light caught the side of my face, I looked just like my mum.

My mum was beaming at the television, and Lark nodded and gave me a hug about the shoulders, in front of my mum he did, and I thought he was right proud. Nobody knew I called him Lark. My mum did not, nor Aunt nor Uncle Simon. Nobody ever heard me call him that.

It seemed like that was almost as much a betrayal as the other. It was a package he said came to the shop after he had locked it up. He’d leave it in my room and take it back on the Monday. I didn’t ask him anything. Afterward you think How could I not have asked? but at the time life’s busy, there are smells coming up from the kitchen and telephones going and the telly from the neighbours blasting away, and Aunt Lou shouting up the stairs where’s the buttermilk for the biscuits she’s after making, and I’m thinking about my friend Gabrielle and when will I see her, she’s got a new red striped jumper she wants to show me, and too, I’m thinking about when I’ll be alone with Lark, to touch him, when his hands will be on me.

I didn’t ask.

We ate the supper Aunt Lou fixed for us, herself and Lark and me and Uncle Simon. Mum had gone to see her sister over the water, which would leave the house empty for us when Aunt and Uncle’d gone up the road home. I was looking forward to that, with Lark. There was a word or two when Aunt said I should come to them, for the place was big for one alone, and empty, but Uncle’s face solemn as church, he said, Lou. He said, Lou, she was nineteen in December. I looked into my soup.

While Aunt helped me with the washing up, Lark and Uncle did something to the furnace and then they went home, all bye! bye! waves and calls goodnight, and I felt like the cat who’d got the pet canary. Then we went to the pub, it being Saturday night. At some point I remember I thought to call Da, who’d moved out years before, but didn’t, with one thing and another. It was misty and cool. We went down to the bus but then decided to walk the mile up toward the museum, and so we did, and had a few pints. Charley was there with his mouth organ, and Jim with his guitar, and we told each other the news and sang some of the old songs, “The Holy Ground” and “Four Green Fields,” and as we were about to leave—it was light still, because it was the summer—Jim got all red, said Look, look!

What’s to look at in your local pub? thought I, and glanced around. Same old crowd. There’s a small window on the narrow end of the bar, and that’s where Jim was looking so of course we looked, Lark and Margaret and some others who had joined us. And there, out the window, framed in it almost like he was in a picture, talking to someone, was that poet who had won the prizes, the one looks an elf, with white hair like a cloud and that funny-looking face.

That’s him, Jim said, his voice gone all quiet. Margaret and I laughed, but I could tell he was right serious. That’s him, he said. I mean to buy his other books, I’ve one here, and pulled a worn paper book from his jacket pocket. A slight thing it was, with a pretty cover, black, and had a wee gold ship on it. Seeing Things. Well now I’ll have to buy one of his books, said I, and meant it too, but with everything that happened after, I forgot.

Lark came back with me and we slept together in my girlhood bed. I was glad, but it wasn’t easy, and he said it wouldn’t always be like this. My eyes burned when I saw the sheet.

Can’t help it. I wonder sometimes—this really is daft—if then what happened was my punishment. He must’ve pushed the package, it was wrapped in brown paper and tied with ordinary string, under the bed. I forgot it. I supposed he must have too. More likely they didn’t want it yet. Was it a phone ringing at a certain frequency or a siren so? Perhaps a freak of chemistry, a wire frayed, some physical decay? It was the Wednesday, clear and cool, and Uncle Simon was fixing some glass in a basement window, so he was able to get her out, for Mum was the one at home when it went. She had come back Monday night and was polishing the Waterford in the front room just beneath mine. The glass cut the side of her face. She lost most of the movement on that side and the sight in one eye. We’re in a pretty muddle now: Mum’s grieving that I was so taken and I have to force myself to look at her straight on.

Jill Caputo

2011 Honorable Mention, BLR’s Goldenberg Prize for Fiction

***

Winston sold candy at the bus station on Wednesdays because that was the only day Georgia could give him a ride there. He kept the goods in the pack on the back of his chair: Snickers, Milky Ways, Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, M&Ms, both peanut and plain. The sign mounted on the back of his chair told his customers what Winston could not: ALL CANDY IN KING SIZE PACKS FOR $1. He was an entrepreneur.

Winston loved the bus plaza. The chipped blue benches, the mock-sparkle concrete floor, the bird-screeching sound of the buses. Even the unrefrigerated water fountain by the stairs. This Wednesday Georgia parked Winston by the center bench, the circular one, where he could watch the people go by. Impatient mothers holding the hands of their children, fat ladies walking with canes, old people carrying groceries, even bums. Winston knew he would stand out to all of them. 

Georgia popped open the top of Winston’s A&W Root Beer can, and set it in the cup holder on the right side of his chair. She retrieved a straw from her purse and stuck it in the top of the can. Later in the day when it got hot he could lean over and take a sip when he felt like it. She took his body in her hands, pulling him up in his chair by his armpits. He was wearing his red button-up shirt today, and the red-and-white hat he knew she’d always hated, Budweiser plastered across the front of it. She took his head in her hands, slightly ruffling the unshaven whiskers, lifted his hat and pushed his hair back. Her calloused knuckles, the too-small dollar store thumb ring, the nails bitten back so far you could see the skin—Georgia’s hands were the part of her Winston knew best. 

“I’ll be back to get you at five,” Georgia said. “I’m sorry it’s such a short visit today, but I’ve just got so much to do.” 

Winston nodded with his eyes. He watched the full round rump of her ass jiggle away and he wondered what she looked like naked. He couldn’t believe he’d never seen her body, even after all this time.

Winston knew Georgia so well by now it was hard to imagine that the first time she had ever given him a bed bath he was actually embarrassed. Newly divorced and fresh out of Certified Nursing Assistant school, Georgia was the sixth nursing assistant Winston had had in a year, but he was her first real patient. He was sick of them coming and going: the pretty ones, the ugly ones, the fat grandmothers who pretended to be nice when they were hired. When they left they all said the same thing, “It’s just too depressing. He can’t even talk. I don’t get paid enough for this kind of job.”

Georgia was thirty-four, and while she fell somewhere in the middle of the pretty scale that Winston used to rank his nurse’s aides, she talked to him, treated him like he was real. And she explained everything. “I’m going to give you a bed bath, is that okay? I don’t want you having to lie here dirty all day.” 

Winston smiled at her, showing his eye teeth, trying to let her know it was okay. 

“The first time I gave someone one of these baths was in CNA training. But then I didn’t even have a real person to practice with. I worked on a dummy. I was still married then, to my husband, Tom. He was in the Air Force and never home. Always at the base, always flying planes, always fighting his own personal wars. I was always alone. I think he was having an affair, you know, with another woman. Am I hurting you?” 

Georgia had folded the bed sheets to cover most of Winston’s nude body while she worked on one limb at a time, dipping the washcloth into a bowl of soapy lukewarm water on the nightstand. She was stroking him up and down, up and down, starting with the corners of his eyes all the way to between his toes. Winston realized how long it had been since he was really clean. 

“Tom never wanted me to get my certification. I think he just wanted me to stay at home while he went gallivanting all over the country. Even to other countries. It’s what drove us apart. I was too independent. I have to be around people in order to survive.”

Her hands were younger then, less calloused, large, but almost delicate. She had shiny pink polish on her nails and her wedding ring was still on her left hand. Winston wondered when she had gotten divorced. It couldn’t have been that long ago. He began to see her hands as beautiful, and the lower and lower her hands moved on his body, the more excited he became until he was having a straight-up erection. Part of him hoped Georgia didn’t notice, part of him hoped that she did. He wanted her to know that he was a real man. 

“Oh!” Georgia said. She looked away from Winston’s eyes. “I guess you were even happier to have a bath than I thought you would be.” She draped the sheet over Winston’s genitals. “I’ll just leave you alone for a while.” Georgia left the room. Winston breathed in and out to calm himself down. At forty-three, handicapped his entire life, Winston had had thousands of bed baths in his life, but none of them had affected him in this way. That was two years ago.

Max was coming to talk to him now. Winston could see him without turning his head—the small beaky nose, the sharp wrinkled jaw and overbite like the teeth of a rodent. No hair was left on the top of his head, only gray fuzz. Max was Winston’s only real friend at the bus station. He was always there on Wednesdays, always with his briefcase, always trying to sell his papers. He never remembered anything he had said to Winston the week before. Winston was surprised he even remembered his name.

“How are you doing there, Old Winston?” Max patted Winston on the shoulder, his body swaying with the movement of his arm. He was old, probably about eighty; so skinny it looked like he was starving. “What bus are you waiting for?” Max should have known by now that Winston never got on any buses. “Me, I’m not going on any bus today. I’m just going to stay here and try to sell my papers. Five dollars each. Wanna buy one?” 

Winston shook his head, but Max opened his briefcase anyway. “Did I ever tell you that I got a masters degree in mathematics from the University of Minnesota? That I was going to get my PhD, but my wife got pregnant?” He got out one of his papers and showed it to Winston. The title read, “Proof That God Did Not Create the Universe.” Max had shown it to Winston every Wednesday for the past four months. “It can be mathematically proven, you know, even with the help of the Bible. God didn’t create shit.” 

Max sat down on the bench beside Winston. “I’ve got something for you, Old Winston. I’ve got something for the both of us.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out two fancy Cuban cigars. “What do you say? Let’s smoke it up.” Winston watched as Max licked the end of one cigar, then the other one too. His sharp teeth moved in a swift motion as he bit off the end of the first cigar and spat it out on the ground. He stuck what was left in Winston’s mouth. “Ever smoked a cigar before?” Winston had not. “When I was younger and had a job I used to smoke these things all the time. Used to drive Phyllis crazy.” Phyllis was Max’s wife; she had left him  years ago to pursue her country-western dream in Nashville. Max lit his own cigar with a rusted silver lighter, then leaned over to Winston and did the same for him. “Just hold it in your mouth, boy. Let the ash build up and it will smell and taste real good. Like nothing you’ve ever done before.” 

Winston coughed. He let the ash of his cigar build up and up until the sweet and sticky smell overpowered the air all around him, and he’d never felt like such a man before.

The normalcy of Winston’s relationship with Georgia was what pleased him so much that first year she worked at his house. Every day it was the same routine. Georgia would get up and get dressed, then she would get Winston ready and up in his chair. Sometimes Georgia would have to leave Winston alone while she went to the supermarket or ran some other errand, but mostly they were together all day, every day. Georgia would talk to him; Georgia would read to him. Winston could read, but he couldn’t hold the book. His hands were too shaky. That was part of the problem. Winston couldn’t even write because he lacked the fine motor skills. Georgia would cook for them. They would even watch The Young and the Restless together every day at noon. Winston couldn’t believe how engrossed he became in the soap.

One day, they were watching “their show”—as Georgia called it—when she said something odd. She had her knitting in her lap, a hobby she’d taken up only since Winston had known her. Her fingers worked meticulously on a green and brown thing she had been knitting for over a month. Winston knew it was a scarf for him, meant to protect him from the cold. Her hands looked tired now, the knuckles hard and chafed, the pink polish gone. The wedding ring was gone too. Winston hadn’t seen it for months.

When the soap segments were on, they would watch in silence, but during the commercial breaks Georgia would put the TV on mute so she could talk. “Winston,” Georgia said, putting her knitting down, “have you ever been in love?” 

Winston closed his eyes. He had not been in love, at least not in love with anyone who had been in love with him back.

Georgia kept talking. “I mean, really in love, so in love that you felt like there was no one else left in the world? That you’d found your soul mate? That’s how I felt when I first met Tom. Every moment I was with him I was giggling and happy and I didn’t want to be anywhere else. But then everything just went wrong. Things just got too quiet. No communication. I think true love is constant even in silence. ”

Winston shifted his weight in his chair. Suddenly every part of Georgia seemed to be speaking to him, from her peroxide blond hair to the laugh wrinkles around her mouth and eyes, to the constant movement of her hands. They were both lonely people, but they needed each other. Why else would she say such things to him?

Five months into the first year that had Georgia moved in with Winston to take care of him, it snowed. The house Winston lived in was small, just one level, and two bedrooms, with doorways he could barely get his chair through. Winston’s house was paid for by his disability check, but it was falling apart. The toilet leaked when somebody flushed it too hard, the stove wouldn’t turn off once it was turned on, and the heater was temperamental. Georgia’s room was on the other side of the house, but when Winston heard a knock on his door at 2:45 a.m., he wasn’t that surprised. He hadn’t been sleeping. Just thinking.

“Can I come in?” Georgia said. She was wearing her Snoopy nightgown with the bows that tied at the shoulders; her bare feet scuffled on the hard floor. She walked over to Winston, and even by the soft light of the nightlight he could see the circles under her eyes. “I can’t get the heater to turn on in my room. It’s freezing in there—you know how it gets, with all the windows exposed to the wind from the street. Do you mind if I sleep with you, just for tonight?”

Winston wouldn’t have said no if he could have. His bed was too large for just him; there was plenty of room for the both of them. They could sleep without touching. Georgia got in, always polite, on the opposite side, and slept. But there was no sleep for Winston. He could feel his whole body, tight and contracted, almost pulsing with the presence of her. Winston was a virgin, but he was almost positive everything worked right because he’d had wet dreams before. What if Georgia thought he wasn’t capable? She knew him better than anybody else, but what if she thought he wasn’t able to perform? Or worse, what if he ejaculated in his sleep?

By morning nothing had happened, except she was much closer to him, her arms flailed out around his shoulders and the round of her breasts next to the curve in his back. Winston blinked his eyes. He was tired and sleepless, but happy, happier than he’d felt in a long time.

Georgia got up. “Are you awake, Winston? I’m going to make us something warm to eat. This is the kind of day you want to stay inside.” She walked to the window and opened the shades, pulled back the curtains. The bright white of the snow outside was almost painful; the sun glinting off it created a fire in Winston’s eyes. “It’s white, like Christmas,” she said. But it was still only October, not even Halloween. Georgia slept in Winston’s bed for the rest of the winter.

Although he loved the bus station, Winston was scared of the buses. On the platform of the bus station, with the power on his wheelchair off, he was safe, but he always had some fear of falling off, of hitting his joystick with the edge of his elbow and speeding out into the street where the buses would smash him. He’d thought about getting on a bus; he knew they were all handicapped accessible, some with lifts, some with ramps. But the problem was there was nowhere to go—if he got on, where would he get off? What if he got lost? Occasionally one of the friendlier drivers would offer Winston a ride, but Winston always shook his head. Today when Winston’s favorite driver, Bess, came round, she opened the doors of Bus Number Three as if to invite Winston in. “How you doing today, Winston? How about a ride?”

Max answered for him. “He can’t get on your bus. At least not today, woman. Old Winston has too much business to take care of right here. Too much candy to sell.” Max patted the pack on the back of Winston’s chair. “Isn’t that right, Winston?” 

Winston nodded, relieved. 

The spring of their first year together had been the happiest time for Winston. It was warm outside, but not too hot, and on most days Georgia would take Winston outside. They would sit together on the small cracked patch of cement that served as Winston’s backyard patio, Georgia reading to him or sometimes even singing—her alto voice squeaked on the high-pitched notes, but Winston didn’t mind. She would feed him slices of oranges and pieces of watermelon with the seeds already carefully taken out—she didn’t want Winston to choke. And she would talk about her life, what it had been like before she’d met Winston—how much taking care of him had helped her grow as a person.

Summer had been much the same, only hotter, which meant more time spent indoors, but when the fall came around again and the weather got cooler, Winston noticed a change in Georgia, as if she had gotten cooler too, more distant. In her eyes, Winston often saw she was thinking about something far away. When she spoke, it was almost deliberate; she chose her words carefully. 

She was getting Winston dressed for the day when she first brought up the idea. Pulling the T-shirt over his head, working his arms through the armholes. “Winston,” she said, “have you ever thought about getting another aide?”

Winston instinctively jerked back, his eyes growing big; Georgia recognized the panic in them. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’m not abandoning you. I just thought it might be nice to have someone else who could help out too. A second aide who could maybe help you do some little things, get you showered and in bed at night. I’d still be here too. And with someone else to help with the bothersome things, you and I could spend more quality time together during the day. Plus, I’d like to go back to school and get my LPN license. And most of those classes are at night.” 

It wasn’t long after that conversation that Winston fell. He had been trying to pour himself a glass of grape juice. He didn’t try to do things like this very often, but Georgia was gone so long that day that he’d gotten impatient, and thirsty. Georgia had left Winston in his power chair so that could go anywhere in the house that he wanted. Winston knew that the grape juice was on the bottom shelf of the fridge and that he could reach it if he could get the refrigerator door open. Opening the door was easy, but the shelf was lower than he had expected. When he leaned forward there was nothing to keep him in his chair except for his hands, which instead of reacting quickly, decided to tremor.

Initially Winston tried to get up, using his hands like tiny claws and trying to bend his knees so that he could raise up on them, but the more he twisted and turned the more uncomfortable he became, and the more he thought about it, the more pointless his situation seemed. He could never get up by himself.

The linoleum floor of the kitchen was harder than Winston had thought it would be. From his chair, and under his wheels, the linoleum had seemed soft, almost malleable. But lying on the floor, the top of his body curled in a tight ball and his legs bent back under him, wedged between the kitchen table and the refrigerator, Winston felt there was nothing in the world more solid than the floor. Or more cold. His legs began to grow numb from lack of blood flow; his shirt was twisted up around his armpits.

When he could no longer feel his legs, he closed his eyes and thought of Georgia. Soon she would be home—any time now for sure, and when she saw Winston lying on the floor she would scoop him up in her arms and hug him. She would rub his arms and legs and maybe even kiss him on the forehead. Winston could almost feel her warmth. 

When Georgia did come home, she almost stepped on Winston. She was carrying paper bags from the store, and wearing a mini skirt, which Winston thought was strange. She didn’t even notice Winston until she went to put something away in the fridge, and then, there he was.

“Winston!” she said, just missing him with her left foot, but her voice wasn’t kind and soothing like he expected it to be. She seemed annoyed. “What the in the hell are you doing down there?” Georgia had hardly ever cussed around Winston; she seemed to have endless patience with him. “You know you really shouldn’t try to do things by yourself. You might really get hurt and I won’t be responsible for it. What if something had happened to me, and I didn’t make it home? I could have gotten held up; I could have gotten in a car wreck. There are millions of things that could have happened to me, and then what would have happened to you?”

Her eyes were big and watery as she lifted Winston roughly up by the armpits and sat him down his chair. She took a dishtowel that was hanging over the edge of the sink and wiped her eyes with it.  “I have too much stress in my life for this, Winston.”

Winston didn’t know the name of the old homeless woman who lived in the bus plaza, and he didn’t think Max did either. She sat in the corner, by the restrooms, and yelled things at people walking by. Her hair was tied back with a ratty yellow bandana; her cheekbones—harsh and sharp from malnutrition—had black smudges on them. She was always sipping on something, from a thermos. Max said it was whiskey to keep her warm, and that he hated her.

Today Max was bothering the homeless lady because, it seemed to Winston, there was nothing else to do. Winston watched as Max walked over and sat down on the ground beside her, trying to talk to her. Max opened his briefcase and pulled out his paper. He showed it to the lady, talking about God and the universe again. Winston watched as the woman snatched the paper out of Max’s hands, ripping it in half. “Fucking moron!” she yelled at Max. “Fucking waste of God’s time!” She leapt back, taking the pieces of paper with her. 

“Give me that back, bitch! That’s valuable property!” Max began chasing the woman, hobbling around on his stumpy old legs and dragging his briefcase behind him; they circled the bus plaza until they came right up next to Winston and stopped. The homeless woman was much younger than Winston had thought from a distance, probably in her early forties.

“You and your papers,” she said to Max. “You and your papers nobody wants to buy! You’re just an old man who has nothing better to do than talk to a cripple!” She looked at Winston. “Fucking cripple riding around in your goddamn chariot! If I had my way, I’d throw you out into the street!”

Winston watched as Max pulled back from the homeless woman, raised his hand, and with as much force as his bony frame could muster, slapped her across the cheek. The homeless lady, gasping, knelt down on the ground. 

“Don’t you ever talk like that about my friend Winston! He has a name, you know, and he’s a lot more capable than you.” Max walked over to Winston, abandoning the homeless lady and even the pieces of paper that were now scattered all over the ground.

Eventually Georgia apologized for the way she had acted when she found Winston on the floor. She said that she had gotten in an argument with her sister, Lorna, earlier in the day and that traffic had been terrible on her way home from the store. But even after the apology, Winston still saw Georgia differently. She never called him a cripple to his face, but he began to think she thought of him as one. And she stopped talking so much. Sometimes she barely talked to him at all. They spent whole dinners in silence. Winston couldn’t figure it out. For some reason Georgia was mad at him. Now Georgia used words for business matters only.

“Winston, I’m making you macaroni and cheese for dinner.”

“Winston, your dinner is done.” Georgia shoveled the macaroni and cheese into a bowl in front of Winston. On days when Winston felt good, he liked to try and feed himself. He had gotten better at it since Georgia had been with him, but only because she had constantly encouraged him.

Now as he reached for the spoon to put into the bowl, Georgia gave him a hasty look. The journey from the bowl to Winston’s mouth was a laborious one, and Winston  missed.  Georgia let out a big sigh. “Just let me do it for you, Winston. You’re going to make a huge mess.” 

“Don’t let that crazy old broad get to you,” Max told Winston. “She wouldn’t know a real cripple if she saw one. Crazy homeless bitch. Listen, don’t ever let anyone call you crippled, Winston, or even handicapped. You’re physically challenged, that’s all. You just have limitations.” He slapped Winston on the back. “Did I ever tell you about the day I had to put my little Peggy in a home? She was mentally handicapped. Retarded, you know. Had the mind of a four-year-old. We took care of her ourselves for as long as we could, but when she got older it was just too much for Phyllis to handle by herself. We had to put her in a home. Sunflower Lane, it was called. Real nice joint. I visited her every day for years.” Max put his hands on his knees, leaning over, real close to Winston’s face. “Anyway, my point is, no matter what someone calls you, crippled or whatever, at least you’re doing something for yourself. At least you’re out here in the world.”

Things between Winston and Georgia never got better. He began to look at her as someone who was scared, overwhelmed; someone who saw him as helpless and handicapped. But this only made him want her more. Now he spent most of his time thinking about Georgia, even when she wasn’t at home. He thought of all the good times they’d had together; the fact that Georgia was the closest thing to a real woman or relationship that he’d ever had. The beginning with Georgia was the happiest Winston had ever been in his life, and he wanted that back. He was scared of her leaving. She was on the phone all the time now, talking to her sister, who lived in Florida. Winston thought she had a boyfriend. He wondered what the boyfriend looked like, where Georgia met him, and if she went to see the boyfriend when she left sometimes at night. Other nights Winston overheard Georgia’s conversations when he was supposed to be sleeping. 

“Honestly, Lorna, there’s got to be some other way.” Georgia was crying. “He’s just so sweet, and little, but I don’t get paid enough, and even the heater doesn’t work.”

Winston began to see that for Georgia, living with him was just another job.

“Yes. But he’s always trying to do things for himself, and if something happens to him, I don’t want to be the one to blame. Budd says I should move in with him; he says he has enough money to support the both of us for a while.”

The next day Georgia was gone all day, and she didn’t tell Winston where she was going. She just left him in the bed. No matter. It wasn’t like Winston had never done anything for himself before he’d had an aide like Georgia who he depended on so totally. And with Georgia becoming so distant, Winston had become wily, figuring things out for himself. He had discovered a way to get out of situations such as this. His chair was parked parallel to his bed. He flipped himself over onto his side, with his arms, which were stronger than the rest of his body. He lay there, paused in slow motion, and in movements he considered as lovely as ballet, he flipped himself into his chair.

In the kitchen, where he was getting something to eat, Winston saw papers. Newspapers, and ads. Job ads circled in red: pediatric nurse’s aide, nursing home attendant, even an ad for a receptionist at a beauty salon. Georgia really was leaving him. Winston squeaked in panic, and his whole body stiffened, his legs shooting out from their place on the footrests. His fingers extended to graze the edges of the newspaper. Paper cuts, bleeding.

That was yesterday, Tuesday. Now it was 4:45 on Wednesday. Soon Georgia would be coming to pick him up from the bus station to take him home, maybe for the very last time. Winston breathed, took a swig of this root beer, thirst and saliva coming out of his mouth. Max was asleep on the bench beside him, snoring. Winston thought Max might die any day, probably where he was right now, in the bus plaza. Awake or asleep, it didn’t matter; Max had lived a long life. 

It was amazing, Winston thought. He was only forty-five, but he felt as old as Max. He was forty-five, but he had the experience of an adolescent boy. He pondered these contradictions, and he mulled over the past two years he’d spent with Georgia. How quickly the time had passed, but how much their relationship had changed, until it was less than a relationship at all, he decided. The Georgia of now was just an acquaintance.

Winston heard a screech, a clicking sound, and he knew at once the sound of Bus Number Three, and Bess, coming back to the station for the fourth time today. He saw the girl on the side of the bus eating the Subway sandwich, and her whole face seemed to smile directly at him. He wasn’t scared anymore. He thought of Georgia and the red circled job ads, the late-night phone conversations. Georgia in the bed with him, Georgia feeding him macaroni and cheese, Georgia leaving him, Georgia fucking another man. 

The doors of the bus swung open, and somehow Winston found himself right in front of them.  He looked at Bess and her great heaving body, her gray hair hanging down in her eyes, the coffee cup in her hand. She smiled at him. “Hey, Winston,” she said. “Do you want to get on my bus or what?”

And this time, Winston got on.

Kelly Flanigan

I walk into Scott’s kitchen, sweaty from basketball and needing something cold to drink, and there’s his mom in just her underwear. Mrs. Labor’s back has shallow rolls like fish gills and my eyes zero in on a raised diamond of flesh right above the elastic band. She turns and I end up looking at the top part of her crotch where dark hair pokes out.

“Joey, shit.” She grabs a dishtowel from the sink and covers her chest.

I hold up my glass, words echoing in my brain: I wanted some lemonade. “Lemonade,” I say.  

“It’s gone.” Then she’s gone. A door slams and I stand with my empty glass, my mouth open.

Scott opens the screen door and walks past me to the fridge. “Hey, did ya have to squeeze the lemons? What the fuck, man?”

“Your mom,” I say.

“What about her?”

I saw her freakin’ cans. “She said it was gone.”

Scott rolls his eyes. “She doesn’t know shit.  Here.” He reaches into the refrigerator and shoves a purple glass pitcher at me. “Smell it first.”

We guzzle the lemonade then we’re back outside and on our way to the river. Normally Scott would be the first person I’d tell if I saw some hot piece completely naked, but moms are touchy. I’d probably hit Scott if he told me he saw my mom without her clothes on. Besides, today is different.  We haven’t seen each other in six months, since his dad shot himself and Scott got sent away to the state hospital.

We sit on a ledge overlooking the river, throwing rocks and watching carp scatter. Everything’s business as usual, like he was never gone.

“We should buy fireworks for the Fourth of July. That’s, like, next week,” he says. “Big ones.  Set them off here. That’d be sweet.”

“Are you even gonna be allowed to hang out?”  

“I think so. Just with you probably. Mom’s being really weird since I got back.”

“But you’re cool, right?”

He leans over the side of the ledge and spits into the water. “Check it out, man, they think it’s food.” The carp dab and nip at the white glob of Scott’s spit.  

“Did they really shock you?” I had heard kids talking at school about terrible things they do to people at those places. I’d seen shock treatments in movies and it looked like that could really mess a person up.

“I had to talk to this one lady a lot, my therapist,” he says.” She was all right. Then I had to be in group, where a bunch of us sat around and talked about shit.”

Everyone at school said Scott’s mom came home from the store with the rolls she had forgotten for Christmas dinner and almost ran Scott over. He was standing in the middle of the street with blood all over himself. He had been woken up by a noise, they said, and had gone looking for his dad. He said he checked his parents’ bedroom, then his dad’s office. He walked by the bathroom and saw blood-spattered walls. Then, he said, he didn’t remember anything.

“Some kids said that you tried to…” 

Scott looks at me and I feel my face get hot. 

“I mean, you know.” It’s my duty to tell Scott what people are saying about him. I throw a large stone, watch dark shadows in the water slide away.  

“What, that I tried to cut my cock off?” He laughs and rockets a stone into the river like a football. “Jesus Christ. Do you believe everything you hear?”

“Did you?” I don’t mean to ask this out loud, and he turns to me, another rock in his hand, and for a second I think he might throw it at me.  

“Why the fuck”—he curves his hand and flings the rock backward toward the water—“would I do that to such a majestic monument?” He snickers and thrusts his hips. 

“People said there was blood.” I pause, look down at my own jeans. “There.”

Scott stares straight ahead. I see the line of his jaw tighten and relax.  

“Piss,” he says. “I pissed my fucking pants, okay?”

I know my face changes even though I don’t speak. Such weakness is outside of anything I can imagine from him. I think back to that day and imagine him standing in the street, his father’s blood mixing with the urine on his jeans, and I wonder if that’s when his head separated. If that’s when, as my mom says, he went crazy.

“You really don’t remember seeing him?”

He shrugs. “Would you?”

I don’t have an answer. I don’t really know what he saw. I wasn’t allowed to go to the funeral; Mom said she didn’t want me exposed to death. I tried to explain I was old enough—a teenager, finally—but she wouldn’t listen.  

“I don’t know,” I say.  

I think about this while we walk home, our feet shuffling on the gravel, the dust turning our shoes a light brown.

In front of his driveway Scott stops and turns towards me.

“Don’t tell anyone, okay?”  He pushes his hands deep into his pockets and turns away from me.

By the time I get home the sky is more dark than light and I know I’m going to be in trouble. Mom didn’t like Scott before he left. She didn’t like Mr. or Mrs. Labor, his parents, either, even though Mr. Labor and Dad used to be friends. Mr. Labor was a photographer, and Dad repairs cameras. They worked together sometimes in our garage where Dad has an area set up so the mess stays in the garage and not in the house.  

I walk up the driveway, and as I reach the screen door I hear my parents arguing from the kitchen, their voices amplified in the night air.

“I won’t have him in my house!”  Mom sounds like she’s had too much coffee, her voice explosive and high.  I hear dishes clattering against each other.

“How do you plan to explain that to Joe?”

“I don’t need to explain anything.  When did you decide that our child runs this household?”

“When did you turn into such a bitch?”

Silence carries out to the porch like fog and I hold my breath. I’ve never heard Dad swear at Mom before. When she responds, what feels like five minutes later, her voice is so low I can barely understand her. I imagine her standing inches away from Dad, her arms crossed over her chest.  “You call me whatever you want, that child is insane.”

Scott. And she’s wrong about him.  

“He’s having a hard time, Susan. He lost his dad, who was our friend. And a good man.” Dad’s voice rises and each word is punctuated with grief. “And he raised a good son. Scott needs Joey right now.”

“Mom,” I say, walking through the entryway into the kitchen, “he’s not crazy. He’s totally fine.”

“You,” she turns to me, a dish towel in one hand, “will not bring him into this house, understand?” Her eyes are animal, frightening but wide like if I moved at her she’d turn and run.  

“He’s my best friend!”

“Not anymore.”  

“Dad?” I look at his face and know how the conversation will end. He looks from me to my mother, then shakes his head.

“Listen to your mother, Joe.” Exhaustion has replaced emotion. He turns and walks out to the garage. Mom and I stand in the kitchen, enemies, staring at each other.

“Bitch.” I say this word all the time at school, and Mom has said it to me when I complain about chores, bitch, bitch, bitch, but here it’s a weight, a foreign group of sounds that trips my tongue. Her lips press together and whiten, nearly disappearing. Her back straightens, ready for challenge. I take a step backward. She hurls the towel into the sink and leaves the kitchen. The screen door slams and she is gone.

It was the only thing I could think of to say. I’ll pay for it for weeks, maybe months. I know the next time we fight she’ll say, well it’s too bad I’m such a bitch, isn’t it?, emphasizing it. There will be comments to Dad, to friends that come over. I’m a bitch, did you know that? Just ask Joey. The word will become ugly and I’ll probably never use it again. But I’ll think it, and when I do, she’ll be the first thing that comes into my mind.

I walk out to the garage and Dad hands me a Nikon SLR. When I help him work, which I don’t do as often as I should, it’s my job to break the cameras—bend something in one spot, pull a part out of another—without him seeing. That way he can continue repairing the same set of cameras and Mom won’t bug him about money.

“Sorry you had to hear that, Joey.”

I turn and bend the film catch on the Nikon. “It doesn’t matter,” I say.  

“Does Scott talk about his dad?”

“Not really. We just talked about…stuff.” I remember Scott’s plea that I not tell anyone about him pissing himself.

“What did you do?” He is hunched over a pile of miscellaneous camera parts, picking through them with his index finger.

“We went to the river, same old thing.”

“You do need to be careful with Scott.” He glances up at me. “Your mother is right about that.”

“I think he’s fine.” 

“People thought his dad was fine too, Son. Sometimes people don’t feel how they look.”

I sit on a stool by the workbench. “Yeah, I guess.”

“It’s hard to lose someone. I can’t tell you how much I think about him and how many times I’ve thought of all the times he sat right where you’re sitting now,” he nods at the stool, “and I tell you, I miss him here more than anywhere else.”

“Was he your best friend?”

Dad nods and clears his throat, blinking a shimmer from his eyes. “Yeah. He was.”

I go over to Scott’s house the next day, leaving quietly through the kitchen so I can avoid Mom. Mrs. Labor answers the door. She looks like she’s been crying, all red and puffed up. She’s barefoot and has on jeans and a flannel shirt that’s way too big for her. Mr. Labor’s. It’s open at the top and I see her bra. I move my eyes to hers, but I feel my face turning red.

“Scott’s at an appointment,” she says, rubbing her arms as if she’s cold. “Do you want to come in?” She holds the door open, and I look past her into the living room. “I just made a sandwich. I’ll make you one too and you can keep me company.”  

I stay because I want to, and because I know it’ll piss my mom off. We carry our lunch outside and sit on the porch swing, and I watch her feet as I chew.  They don’t have any of the weird bumps my mom’s feet have. And her toenails are painted bright orange.  

“I’m glad you came over.  I want to apologize for yesterday.” She pauses. “In the kitchen.”  She looks at me like she’s hoping I forgot walking in on her, seeing her.

I don’t know what to say, so I just say that it’s okay.

She tilts her head and smiles, but it’s the saddest smile I’ve ever seen. I didn’t know her very well before Mr. Labor died. She would appear with snacks for Scott and me, but she wasn’t around a lot.  I wish now that I could have talked to her more, before.

“It must have been a shock.” She makes a sound in her throat that comes out her nose. “Appreciate your body now, how young and muscular you are. It won’t last forever.”  

I want to tell her that it has lasted forever with her, that she’s the most beautiful woman in the world, and I imagine her again—her underwear, the flabby parts of her back, her breasts—and I think about what it would be like to kiss her, there on the porch swing. What she would do.  

“Has Scott talked to you about his dad?”

“He doesn’t say much.”  

She takes a bite of her sandwich. I watch the bread compress under the pressure of her lips. “I thought that he might have. Since you’re such good friends.”

I shrug. “Do you know any other boys your age that have lost their dads?”

I shake my head. Scott is the only one.  

Mrs. Labor doesn’t say anything else and the silence becomes true silence, not just a pause. I search for something to say. “We want fireworks for the Fourth of July.”

“Oh, that’s coming up, isn’t it? I lose track.” The flush that lit up her chest when I saw her naked appears again, slowly bleeding up her neck and into her cheeks. “Are you finished?” She stands, reaching for my plate, and, when I hold it out, her index finger, the nail painted with the same orange polish but chipped, brushes mine. I let go. She balances both plates and her glass; I reach out to help her, but as I stand the bottom plate slides like a door swinging open and slips from between her fingers. It hits the porch and shatters, covering my feet with small chunks of ceramic.  

“Shit!” She hands me the other plate and the glass, drops to her knees and begins picking up the broken pieces, setting them on my plate. “I’m such a fucking klutz sometimes.” She looks up at me, her light brown hair falling over one shoulder, and she looks for a second like she’s my age, or close. “Sorry.”  

“It’s okay,” I say. “It’s just a plate.” 

She sits down and leans against the porch swing.  Her head in her hands, her shoulders start shaking and I can hear her gasping through her fingers.

I’ve never seen a grown-up cry like this. My first thought is to go home, to leave her there on the porch to comfort herself, but instead I reach out and touch her shoulder. Her long hair sticks to my sweaty fingertips, and I try to pat her and tell her it’s okay, but the more my fingers move, the more tangled they get in her hair, so I kneel and put my arms around her.

She tilts her head and leans against me.  I squeeze as hard as I dare.  She smells fresh, like soap and light, and I close my eyes. Her arms are tight around my waist. I wonder what Scott would think if he came home and saw us like this.  

“Joey.” She pulls away, and turns towards me. “Thank you.  I—” She pauses and her eyes get this real far away look in them, like she’s left the porch in her head. “I needed that.”

Mom is ironing when I get home. I sit on the couch and flip channels.

“Where have you been?” she asks.

“I had lunch with Mrs. Labor.”  I look right at her. “It was fun.”

Mom opens her mouth then closes it again. She’s as pissed as I knew she would be; her eyes flash. She retaliates. “The Morgans are coming here for the Fourth. We’re watching fireworks at the river.”

“I’m doing that with Scott.”

“You’ll have to tell him you have other plans.” Steam hisses from the iron.

“What?” 

“Joey, we’ve had this conversation. Your father and I think you need other friends. Not just Scott.”

I turn the volume up on the TV.  

“Turn that off. Go make a sandwich or something,” she says, “then clean your room.”

“A sandwich. Right.” 

I head to the kitchen. I don’t want anything, but I take a plate from the cupboard. I stare at the plate, Mom’s white china, and in my head I break it in two, right there in my hands.

“Joe! Come here.” Her voice carries into the kitchen.

“Shit!” I yell and throw the plate onto the floor. It breaks into rounded triangular chunks, smaller chips crack off and scatter.

“What happened?” Mom runs into the kitchen and looks from me to the plate then back to me.

“It fell.”

She stands with her hands on her hips and for the first time I see my mom has hips and a waist, although they’re nothing like Mrs. Labor’s. Mom is flat and straight up-and-down, like a boy.  

Her face seems to close in on itself, her eyes squinting together and her mouth flattening out in a tight line. “Plates aren’t free, you know. You can’t just throw them because you’re mad.” She walks to the closet and gets a broom and dust pan. “Clean it up. Don’t cut yourself.”

“I didn’t throw it.” While I sweep up bits of the plate I remember Mrs. Labor, her arms around me, her smell. If I could do it again, I would kiss her. Not on the mouth, of course, but her ear. The lower part that meets her neck, the part that smells like light.  

When I sit down to dinner that night my food is divided onto three paper towels: a slice of meatloaf on one, green beans on another, and a baked potato on the third. The juice from the green beans is soaking through and turning the white a pale green.

“What’s this?” I ask.

Dad lowers the corner of his newspaper to look at me. “We don’t break plates in this house.  Not by accident, not on purpose.” He flips the paper back up. “Eat your dinner.”

I sit down and spread the meatloaf to the four corners of the paper towel, load the potato with butter and sour cream and then squash it to pieces. I save the green beans for last and by the time I’m done, rivulets of liquid bean are spreading across the table.   

“What’s the matter with you?” Mom puts her fork down and stares at me.  

I give her the meanest stare I can. I feel like crying but I won’t give her that. I want to say “you are!” and throw my food at her and tell her that if she’s going to try to keep me from being friends with Scott then she’s a bigger bitch than I thought.

“May I be excused, Dad?” 

“Clean up the table, Joe. Then you can go to your room.”

“Craig,” Mom starts, looking at my father.

“Let him go. It’s enough.”

Two days later, Scott and I walk to the river. This time we’re quiet. He stands over a cement drain with a look on his face I’ve never seen before. He leans into the drain and pulls out a paper bag. He holds it weird, like it’s something that might break.

“Did you get fireworks?” I reach for the bag but he pulls it away. Before he left, Scott always had ways of getting us the coolest stuff, like pepper gum that would burn our tongues and rocks with crystals on the inside.

He keeps one hand under the bag, slides his other hand into it, and pulls out a small gun.  He holds it up for me to see.  

“Whoa,” I breathe. “Where’d you get this?” I am stunned. I lick my dry lips; my tongue feels too big for my mouth. “Mom would kill me if she saw this!” 

He sets it in my hand and I’m surprised by how heavy it is but light at the same time. I put my finger on the trigger, the pad of my fingertip spongy against the thin sliver of metal. I turn away from Scott and aim the gun at a tree, squinting my eye shut and sticking my tongue out of the corner of my mouth like I see on TV. I feel the gun from the tips of my fingers to my shoulder. I’m hyper all of a sudden, imagining us taking out birds, squirrels, even the carp in the water.

Scott steps closer and I lower the gun. He runs his finger up and down the barrel and looks at me.

“It’s just like his. Just like the one he used.”

And like invisible fingers are pressing on it, the gun gets heavier in my hand. My excitement is gone and I look at Scott. I hear the scratching of claws on bark as two squirrels chase each other up a tree behind me.  

“Put it in your mouth,” he says. Scott’s face is pale and the black parts of his eyes are too big.

“What? Are you fucking nuts?”  

“It’s not loaded.” His voice is mechanical. He’s acting as if he’s not even here.  

“What are you talking about?” My throat feels like it has a baseball in it and I blink to keep my eyes clear. Scenes from horror movies flash through my head, people running away from killers. The thought that Scott has come to kill me stops everything and I get wobbly all over.  

“Don’t be a pussy. I need to see what it looks like.”

He grabs my hand and raises the gun, turning the barrel towards my face. I want to resist but he moves too fast, and in a few seconds it’s in my mouth and I can’t move. My body is rigid now, frozen. The metal clicks against my teeth like cracking knuckles. I try to swallow but my teeth hit the top of the barrel and a thick gagging sound comes out instead. The sun seems to be brighter than I’ve ever seen it and sweat pours down the sides of my face. My heart pounds and every time it thumps I’m sure I’m going to puke.  

“Scott,” I start, but when I talk the barrel moves. I imagine the trigger moving a millimeter too far. I look toward the road, for cars, for a bicycle, anything.

“I bet he cried too.”  He’s watching the ground, swaying a little like he’s going to fall over.  “Tell me what you’re thinking about.”  

I don’t know what he wants me to say.  

He pulls the gun from my mouth, takes it from my hand. Our eyes connect and in that second I see that my mom is right: there’s something wrong with my best friend. I feel sick. He puts the gun back under the drain and begins walking back home.  

We are quiet walking. No words seem like the right ones. When we get to his house, he sits on the front steps. “You can go home. I’m just going to sit out here for a while.”

“Do you want me to get your mom?” 

He laughs. “Yeah, right.”

“What are you going to do with…you know.”

“I don’t know.” He looks at me. “Christ, Joey, I’m not going to do anything bad. You’re worse than my fucking mom.” He turns and gives the finger to the front door. “Bitch.”

I get angry. “Dude, she’s your mom!”

“Whatever, man.” He leans back, resting his elbows on the top step, and closes his eyes.

I walk away, looking back over my shoulder until I can’t see Scott anymore. His words don’t match up with the look in his eyes at the river and my stomach feels like it’s going to explode. I’m still sweating and as soon as I’m out of sight of Scott’s house I sit down on the side of the road, afraid I’m going to throw up.

I feel the vibration of an approaching car and stand up quickly. It’s a pickup, no one I know, but I wave anyway. I want to go back to the river, sit and think and watch the fish swim and throw rocks and pretend that today didn’t happen. But the sun is getting lower and I don’t want Mom more mad at me.

I smell dinner as soon as I walk in the door and realize that I’m starving. The melted cheese from the casserole begins to fill me before I can see it.  

“Just in time,” Dad says and hands me a cardboard picnic plate. I look at the dividers, slide my fingertips into the grooves and wonder briefly if the gun left any residue on my hands.  

Mom talks about the Morgans, arriving tomorrow morning, and how they’re going to the Black Hills after they leave our house. She’s decided that we should take a family trip, the three of us.  I drink my milk and listen to the remains of my summer time with Scott fade away.  

After dinner Dad goes out to the garage to work on cameras. I follow him. “Can I try to fix one tonight?” I ask.

Dad seems pleased to see me. “Have a seat,” he says, and slides his equipment over so I can watch him as he works. “You didn’t say much at dinner.”

“Do you miss Mr. Labor?” 

Dad uses a tiny silver screwdriver to open the back of a Nikon. “I do, very much. Probably as much as you missed Scott when he left.”

“Mom doesn’t.”

“She tries, Joe.” He hands me a pencil flashlight. I turn it on and point it at the underside of the camera.

“I hate her sometimes.” I whisper this, and not because I’m afraid she’ll walk into the garage and hear. I look at Dad’s face. The flashlight shadows his face, but I hear him sigh.

“I know you do.” He turns the camera over and begins working on the lens.

I don’t tell him that I wish Mrs. Labor was my mom. That I would never hate her no matter what she did.  

“I’ll be right back,” I say, and stand up. Dad nods and hunches over the lens.  

I open the door and stand halfway between the kitchen and the garage, watching Dad work alone, without his friend, and I see myself years from now without Scott, and wonder if Dad could have done anything to stop Mr. Labor from doing what he did. I wonder if it’s possible to stop the past.

Dad and I work into the night, and by the time we go to bed I have fixed my first camera. I read Shutterbug and think about Mrs. Labor and how even though she isn’t like the girls in the magazines Scott looks at, she’s the prettiest woman I’ve ever seen. And when I fall asleep I see her face, her hair, in small shapes against the inside of my eyelids.  

A noise wakes me and my first thought is that it’s Scott, that he snuck into my room. My stomach starts to roll when I remember the gun and I open my eyes, trying to focus on the furniture in my room glowing in blue moonlight. I am cold and I realize that something is wrong.  I am lying on my side, and my hip is wet and itchy. I squeeze my pajama bottoms and when I smell piss on my fingers I am wide awake.   

Fuck. I push the blankets back and quickly take them and the sheets off of my bed. I sneak clean sheets from the hall closet. I press my ear against my parents’ door and hear Dad snoring. I finish making the bed.

The sky is beginning to change from purple to blue; it’s dawn. 

I walk to the river.

I reach into the dark cement drain; the paper bag is still there. I lie down on the ledge. The stone is freezing on my damp pajamas and I shiver. I press my cheek into the grit of the ledge and know that it will leave marks that I won’t be able to explain to Mom. There is so much that I will never be able to explain to her.

A carp splashes in the middle of the water and I begin to cry and because I’m alone there I let everything go and scream and shake until I’m sure I’ll never stop. I pick up the bag, take out the gun and look at it and imagine where it’s been, and I know that nothing with Scott will ever be the same.  

Keeping my trembling fingers away from the trigger, I remove the clip. As I pull it out and see the bullet inside, a static sound rushes in my ears and I dig my fingertips into the soft ground. I take the bullet out and look at it—small, sharp. I put it in my pocket. I can’t feel it, it’s so light, and I look down to see if it shows through my pajamas. I press around it until a dark mark appears, but when I move my hand again the bullet disappears into the fabric.  

I walk to the edge of the river and lean forward. Lean until I almost can’t see the edge anymore, and I look down into the water. It’s like the ocean, wide and big, the current swirling through. 

I get dizzy. Black spots poke at my vision. One more centimeter, I think, and I’d be gone. I’d be in the river, floating, not struggling against the current but letting it pull me south. I throw the gun as hard as I can. I step back. 

Jerry M. Burger

I say I’ll keep taking the lithium, but the doubt I see on Dr. Pederson’s face as he hands me the pills tells me I probably won’t. And then it’s time to go. Only the real nutcases stay at the VA more than a couple of days anymore. Better for you on the outside, they say. Institutionalization can be worse than the disease. But we all know it’s the budget cuts. They don’t have half the staff they did the first time I was here. I’m released after breakfast. Pederson insists that all psychiatric patients wear their own clothes, so there’s not even anything to change into before I find myself standing at the bus stop in front of the hospital. I’ve got a brown paper bag in my right hand that contains some toiletries. In my left, a 30-day supply of the miracle drug that lowers the highs and raises the lows. Good old lithium. Safest medication we hand out, Pederson says. Consider yourself lucky to be bipolar. Look at the facial tics and memory loss the schizos have to put up with.

I hope to sneak into Mom’s house unnoticed, but she’s got the doors locked and has once again moved the hidden key. I knock, and when she sees me through the opening in the chained doorway she can’t hold back the forlorn “Oh” that escapes her lips.

“They released you,” she says.

“I’ve got medication.”

“Lithium again?”

I pull the plastic bottle from my jacket pocket and let her read the label. A scowl crosses her face as she releases the chain. “The clothes you left are in the guest room.”

On the bed I find a pair of running shoes covered with mud, and the five pairs of plaid pants I bought in one doozy of a manic episode. The pants still bear the store tags. Fifty percent off. No wonder I couldn’t resist. Mom makes no mention of me staying a few days, and the way she has laid out the pants and shoes suggests they’re to be picked up and taken with me. I wore out my welcome years ago.

“You still got the apartment?” Mom is standing in the bedroom doorway. Hints of maternal concern creep into her voice.

“At least until the end of the month.” I roll the pants up and tuck them under my arm. “But I could use some money.”

She nods. “Lose your job at the frame store?”

“Probably. I haven’t been there in a week.”

She steps to another room and returns with five twenty-dollar bills. The usual amount. Neither of us could begin to guess how much money she’s given me since my discharge from the Marines two days after my 22nd birthday. I turn 27 next month.

She presses the money into my palm. “No gambling, OK?”

“No gambling.”

Nine days later I’m on the Greyhound from San Francisco to Reno. I haven’t slept in thirty-six hours—one of Pederson’s seven warning signs. At the VA, the bipolars keep notebooks next to their beds. We mark off hours of sleep with red X’s. Fewer than five X’s in a 24-hour period and they up your meds. It’s their answer to all of life’s problems. Take a pill. Take a pill. Take a pill. So I take their pill. And then I stop.

It’s 6:26 in the morning, and there are only twelve people on the whole damned bus, counting me but not the driver. No one’s talking, not even the people sitting together. All I can hear are the shivers of road noise that run through the bus. I change seats, searching for company. No one will look me in the eye.

What’s the matter with you? It’s Pederson’s voice. Why did you stop taking your medicine?  It’s a stupid question. Because something is better than nothing. Because you can burn up in the flame, but you can also die in the dark. One way or the other, I’ve got to find out where this magic carpet is taking me and, in the end, whether the ride is worth the price of the ticket.

I move to the seat behind the driver. He is a large black man. Rolls of fat tucked into his tight-fitting shirt hang over his leather belt. A sign clipped to the sun visor says his name is Monroe.

“I’m Winston,” I say. “I’m planning to win a fortune at Harrah’s. What do you think?”

Monroe grunts. “Heard that before.”

“Not a gambling man?” I ask. “Hell, life’s a gamble. Win or lose. You got to choose.” I tap out a rhythm on the metal bar that separates us.

“You know about Huntington’s disease?” I ask. “They used to call it Huntington’s chorea. Terrible disease. Waits until you’re forty, then turns your brain into jello. And here’s the hell of it. If one of your parents has Huntington’s, you got a fifty-fifty chance of getting it yourself. Imagine that? Your old man has the disease, only he doesn’t find out until you’re like twenty years old yourself. That’s when they break the news to you—it’s even odds that you’ll end up with a mush brain yourself someday. Fifty-fifty. Even Steven. You think Harrah’s gives even odds on anything?”

Monroe tilts his head to look at me in the rear-view mirror but doesn’t say anything.

“But save your tears, Monroe,” I say. “This story has a happy ending. Because now they can tell if you got the genetic marker. And not just for Huntington’s. They can do a test on you to see if you got tagged for Alzheimer’s or diabetes or schizophrenia. You name it. Now how’s that for fair? Your parents get to roll the dice for you. They squeak the springs one night, and out of all the millions of little sperm cells the one with the Huntington’s marker or the hearing-things marker or maybe the want-to-kill-yourself marker hits the jackpot. And before you ever see the light of day, your hand’s already been dealt. And all you can do is play what they gave you or fold. Now what kind of goddamned choice is that?”

Monroe grunts again and adjusts his cap. “The company discourages us from talking with passengers.”

I get the message. I bounce from seat to seat, desperately searching for one that fits my spine. Half the people on the bus are sleeping. The hum of the engine falls into a pattern. Da Da Bump. Da Da Bump. It’s like someone’s thumping the top of the roof. I put my fingers in my ears, but the vibration travels through me. Da Da Bump. It’s impossible to concentrate on anything else. But somehow these mannequins all around me manage to sleep through it.

I count the trees. I count red cars. I count the miles to Reno, but somebody has been messing with the road signs. It takes hours to travel between the 76- and the 72-mile marker. Just when I think I’m going to scream, I see the Greyhound sign up ahead. I race to the front of the bus. Monroe tells me to return to my seat. I walk halfway to the rear, pivot, then race back to the front just as we pull into the station.

The door opens, and suddenly I’m on the outside. Free of the bus and free of those goddamned lifeless zombies. Monroe yells at me. Did I bring any luggage?

“No,” I yell back. At least I don’t think so.

I’m almost running by the time I get to Harrah’s. I push through the glass door and suddenly I’m caught in a storm of flashing lights and noise. Jackpot bells are singing, coins are clanging, lights are beckoning. Red, gold, white, green, red, gold, red. I absorb the energy in the room through my skin. People are moving.  Sliding and weaving like a cavern full of serpents. The smell of money and hope and cigarette smoke burns my nostrils. This is where I belong. The smile on my face is so wide my cheeks hurt.

How do you feel? Pederson again. How do you feel? How do you feel? It’s his mantra. Every time you see him on the ward. Every group meeting. We go around the circle and everyone answers the question. How do you feel? But Pederson’s never been where I’m at right now, so he’ll never get it. When you’re way up or way down, you don’t feel. You just are. That’s the problem with their precious lithium. They fill you up with chemicals, and then you’re someone’s creation. The end product of the ingredients they put inside you. A character in someone else’s play. Who would you like me to be, Dr. Pederson? A productive member of society? A decorated member of the United States Marines? A problem-free son a mother can be proud of? Mix up the recipe and let me have it. How do I feel? However you want me to.

I head for the blackjack tables, but I don’t know if I can sit still long enough to play. If I’m not mistaken, that’s another warning sign. There’s an intensity coming from the cards and the chips that draws me in. I see a table with five people. There’s an empty chair, but I don’t like to play with crowds. Too many people to wait on while they make up their goddamned minds and play their goddamned hands. I find another table that has only two players, but the dealer is wearing blue earrings, and I know that’ll be unlucky.

Third try is the charm. The dealer has bright red fingernails and earrings to match. Red, like diamonds and hearts. Red, like the heart of a fire. There’s only two people at the table and one of them is a redhead. I take a seat. This is where I was meant to be.

I buy fifty dollars worth of chips, then stack and restack them into piles of fives, then tens, then fives, then tens while I wait for the cards to come. The redhead sitting next to me is just about the skinniest woman I’ve ever seen. She’s got like eight copper bracelets on her bony right arm that sound like a slinky going up and down every time she lifts her glass of booze to her face.

My first card is a red queen. Of course it is. I want to thank the redhead for what she’s done for me. I want to kiss her on her skinny lips and buy her another drink. The dealer hits on a thirteen and busts. I win three hands in a row, lose one when I stay on fifteen, then run off four more winners. I look around, hoping to see Monroe the bus driver. Luck, I want to scream at him. When you see it, catch it. Then ride it for as long and as far as it will take you. It’s the ride you live for, Monroe. Without the promise of exhilaration, the moments in between would be intolerable.

A blond waitress in a black velvet outfit asks if I want something to drink. Her push-up bra is smashing her little boobs together in a desperate attempt to create some cleavage. I drop a five dollar tip on her tray and tell her my name.

“Nothing for me just yet, hon,” I say. “But maybe if you come back a little later.”

The redhead next to me orders a drink. It’s not yet two in the afternoon and she wants another straight shot of Johnny Walker Red. Johnny Walker Red. Need a better omen than that? I double my bet on the next hand and win again. I’m sitting behind a castle of chips, more than a dozen stacks all exactly the same height. An oasis of red, white, and blue in a sea of green felt.

“Keep ’em coming,” I say to the red-earringed dealer. I slide another stack of chips next to my bet.

“Not going to save any of that for a rainy day?” she asks. “Maybe quit while you’re ahead?”

“The moment you quit,” I tell her, “you’re no longer ahead.”

Then the skinny redhead downs the last of her Johnny Walker Red and leaves the table. The dealer tosses me a seven, then an eight. Both black. She gives herself two tens. Shit. I double my usual bet and go bust. Sitting on twelve and she throws me a king. Next hand starts with a five and a jack. Things are starting to spiral. Why isn’t that on Pederson’s list? Warning sign number eight—the ground beneath you gives way and you find yourself sucked into a vacuum beneath your feet.

I wipe my upper lip and leave a line of perspiration on my sleeve. It’s hotter than hell in here and someone has turned up the noise on the slot machines. Coins crash violently into metal trays. Alarms roar overhead. I can’t buy a face card. The whole damned deck is made up of clubs and spades, and not one of them is higher than an eight. My mouth is dry and I can’t find the blond waitress in the push-up bra.

I reach for another stack of chips and find that my fortress is gone. I turn to the dealer for an explanation, but the woman with the red fingernails and earrings to match is also gone. In her place I find a dark-skinned girl with high cheekbones and no jewelry. The other players at the table also have changed since I last took inventory of the situation. A row of quarter slots that were not operating when I first sat down are now chirping and chiming to my left.

“Would you like to buy some chips?” the new dealer asks.

“No, I would not like to buy some chips,” I tell her. “I would like the chips I’ve already won returned to me immediately.”

There’s a man looking over my right shoulder. As I sense his presence, I’m aware that he has been standing in this same location for some time. He has large pockets on his coat, a perfect place to hide the stacks of chips he has somehow managed to slip away from me while I was concentrating on my cards. I spin in his direction.

“I’ll take my chips back now, if you don’t mind.”

He looks at me with guilt written all over his face, then tries to slip away with my winnings still in his pocket. I have only a split second to act. I dive toward him, my right hand reaching into his coat pocket, my left arm wrapping around his legs. We tumble into a crowd of people. There’s screaming and people falling, and my face is pressed into the carpet. I manage to throw off the bodies and rise to my feet. But the thief is gone.

I see a large security guard in a black coat striding in my direction. He’s got protruding lips and waddles when he steps, which makes me think of Daffy Duck. Daffy stops several feet in front of me, his feet spread shoulder width. He tells me it’s time to leave.

“I’ll leave when I get my money back.”

“You’ll leave now, or I’ll escort you out.”

I size him up. Daffy is big, but vulnerable. No flexibility. No agility. By the time he lifts his arms, I could land a dozen punches. I glance around. He might have friends in the crowd. He takes another step my way. I have to land the first punch.

But someone tips him off. Daffy moves before I’m ready. My arm is behind my back and it feels like he’s pulling it out of the socket. He pushes me through the gathered crowd, which parts like the Red Sea. We’re moving much too fast. We sail through the open doorway like two speed-skaters. I can’t tell when Daffy lets go, but as I trip over some blue-haired geezer, he’s no longer there to support me. I topple forward, my forehead bouncing off the concrete. I press my face against the cold pavement. My body temperature seems to be dangerously high.

The next thing I know, I’m walking the streets of Reno, Nevada, watching each step instead of the people who keep running into me as I try to move forward. I’m aware of very little except that the situation has darkened. Peering up through the artificial light, I see the sky also is dark. A great deal of time has passed.

Somewhere between sitting down at the blackjack table and being escorted out of the casino, I’ve lost my jacket. If that’s not one of Pederson’s warning signs, it ought to be.

I lean against a light post. I don’t have enough energy to keep moving. I recognize the symptoms, but this is not the way it works. I’ve never come down from a high so fast. Maybe I hit my head too hard. Maybe I’m bleeding inside my skull. I think I can feel the blood oozing over my brain cells, coating my defective genes.

I look around and see the gray shapes of people passing by. I don’t recognize the place, but strangely it has the feel of a memory. Mostly I want to sleep. A police car drives by slowly, the officer on the passenger side looks at me through the open window. An instinct tells me to move on.

I push my way through the first casino door I find. The flashing lights hurt my eyes. I have a headache that runs above my eyebrows and down to the back of my neck. I’m certain my brain is bleeding.

There’s a bar in the corner that is darker than the rest of the room. I take my place on an empty stool. A mirror behind the bartender spans the entire length of the bar, reminding drinkers that there’s a casino full of gambling options just behind them. When I stare straight ahead, I see myself. My eyes are red, and my cheeks are round and puffy. One side of my face is larger than the other. I think I just might be the least attractive person I have ever seen.

I dig into my pockets and lay everything in my possession on the counter. Twelve dollars and fifty-five cents, plus the key to my apartment and a thin, empty wallet.

The woman sitting next to me reaches for her drink and clangs her metal bracelets against the edge of the bar. It’s the redhead from the blackjack table.

“Johnny Walker Red,” I say.

We meet eyes by looking at each other in the mirror. She lifts her glass in salute. “Pretty good guess.”

She finishes her drink while I scan the bottles along the back of the bar, trying to remember what I drink to complement a black mood. I feel an obligation to do this thing right.

The redhead catches the bartender’s eye and points to her empty glass. “Another.”

I point to the space in front of me. “I’ll have the same.”

I don’t recall if I’ve ever had straight shots of whiskey before, and the sensation as the liquor hits my lips and tongue is startling. It feels like I’ve placed a burning match in my mouth. But I let the liquid scorch a trail all the way down my throat. Somehow the pain belongs in the scene.

No words pass between us for several minutes, but the redhead and I are aware of each other. We respond to the other person’s movements with our own twitches and leans, and are careful to lower the liquor in our glasses at the same pace. We are drinking alone together.

“I’m Winston,” I say, staring into the top of my glass.

“Ronnie.” She sips her drink. “Short for Veronica.”

She turns toward me, and it seems to me we recognize something in each other. It happens all the time on the ward. You lock eyes with a depressed patient and see a reflection of what you feel inside. Ronnie’s eyes are amber and surprisingly clear for a woman who has been drinking as much as I think she has. If not for the bags under her eyes, I’d wonder if she were old enough to sit at a bar.

She nods toward the crumpled bills and loose change in front of me. “That all you got in the world?”

“Just about.”

“Then I’d say you’re just about at the end of your rope.”

The truth in her statement is so obvious that there is no need to respond.

“You believe in luck?” Ronnie asks.

“I don’t appear to have any, if that’s what you mean.”

“I can see that,” she says. “But do you think there’s some people who are born lucky?”

I look at my reflection in the mirror. “I know for a fact some people are born unlucky.”

“I think some people shit and it turns to gold,” she says. “And the rest of us—if we ever get our hands on a lump of gold, it turns to shit.”

“So what can you do about it?”

“Something,” she says.  “Maybe.”

We finish our drinks and Ronnie asks if she can buy me another. The second shot burns less than the first. I’m still spiraling, but the booze or some other change in my neurological chemistry has put my descent in a holding pattern. Time is passing, but I experience it only as a series of jumps from one moment to the next. At some point Ronnie waves yet again to the bartender, but when he takes away our empty glasses he says, “Maybe you two should take it easy for a while. I can order some food if you want.”

A meal seems like a good idea. I can’t recall the last time I ate. But Ronnie pushes herself away from the bar so violently she knocks her stool to the ground.

“Fuck that,” she yells. “You think I came here for the fine cuisine?”

She grabs her purse off the counter, gives the bartender the finger and leaves. I stare into the mirror. There’s a desperate sense of emptiness in the room now that slowly overtakes me. I turn to follow Ronnie.

I find her just outside the door, where she’s lighting a cigarette and swearing to no one about the bartender. She nods in my direction, and we start walking.

“You taking meds?” she asks.

“Not at the moment.”

“I’ve done them all. Prozac, Zoloft.” She sounds as if she’s barking out a cadence. “Paxil, Elavil, Amitril. They’ve inhibited my MAOs and tinkered with my seratonin uptake. And now they’re talking about electroshock. Fucking zap your brain cells with electricity. Knock that depression right out of your skull. You ever try that?”

“I’m bipolar,” I say. “They only do that electricity stuff with the straight depressives.”

We are in an alleyway between two large buildings. Even in the dim light I see the tears have reappeared on Ronnie’s face. I’ve been there before. Too depressed to recognize when the tears are on or off. No noticeable difference between crying and not crying.

“You ever going back?” Ronnie asks. “Back to the doctors and the pills and the crazies?”

“I always do.”

“What for?” Ronnie tosses her half-smoked cigarette to the ground and crushes it with the heel of her boot. “Tell me why you keep going back.”

I have no immediate answer. Because that’s what I do, I say to myself.

“We don’t have to put up with it, you know,” Ronnie says. “Just because we got a shitty deal out of life, there’s nothing that says we have to be miserable for eighty years.”

Ronnie stops walking. She looks around to make sure we are alone in the alley. Then she sticks her hand into her purse and pulls out a gun.

“We can put an end to it any time we decide.” Ronnie holds the gun at eye level for my inspection. It’s a short-barrel revolver with a dull gray finish.

“I tried once before, you know.” She pulls her bracelets up to her elbow and holds her right wrist a few inches from my face. I see the scars. Three white lines overlapping the blue veins protruding from her skinny arm. “My mistake was using the wrong method.”

“Is that what you came here to do?” I ask.

“You be my witness,” she says. “You’re better than a note. You know what it’s like. They’ll ask you why, and you’ll ask them to give a reason why not.”

I hear Pederson’s voice screaming from somewhere behind my ears. She’s not thinking clearly. Things are never as bad as they seem. There’s always hope. But I refuse to listen. Ronnie doesn’t need that bullshit right now. She needs a reason why not. Just one damned reason. But I don’t know exactly what that is, because I’ve almost—almost—been there myself. At that moment when not being makes as much sense as being. When relief is so close you can start to feel it. Maybe it’s a false moment, a false promise. But who the hell am I to tell Ronnie or anyone else what’s real and what’s not?

Ronnie wraps both hands around the gun as if embracing a treasure. She lifts the revolver to eye level. I wonder if she was at least allowed a happy childhood, maybe even a high school boyfriend and a senior prom.  Maybe she was given at least that much. Our eyes meet and I can see the decision has been made. Maybe it was made a long time ago, when her chromosomes locked in place and wrote the script. Maybe she’s just been waiting for the ending all this time.

I’m so afraid, my hands are shaking.

Ronnie holds the gun in front of her eyes for a moment, as if considering one last time the specifics of how she wants to do it. Then she lowers the gun to her lips and points it upward toward the roof of her mouth. I can imagine the bullet, released from its chamber and sent flying through the barrel, up through the middle of her brain. I can see it in slow motion, ripping through vital centers until it explodes out the other end of her skull. And I wonder if, during that split second when the bullet is on its way, if she’ll have the slightest doubt, a too-late change of heart.

Then a hand comes from somewhere and slaps the revolver away. The gun spins through the air and lands with a crack, then skids along the asphalt. We are both silent for a moment, breathing rapidly and trying to understand what just happened. I stare into her face and then at my outstretched arm. The hand belongs to me.

We grab one another and slowly drop to the cold asphalt. We are both exhausted. Her eyes ask, why? I have nothing to tell her. It was as much an act of survival as a rescue.

An unknowable amount of time passes, and I feel Ronnie shaking in my arms.

“Where’s home?” I ask. My voice is barely audible.

“Riverside.”

“Got money for a bus ride?”

She buries her face in my shoulder and nods.

I stand and help Ronnie to her feet. We move toward the glow of the lights, but she stops to look in the direction of the gun. Its outline is barely visible against the dark asphalt. A moment passes, then she takes my arm and we turn together in the opposite direction.

The bus station is but four blocks away. It seems to me like it should be farther.

Don Zancanella

I grew up in a working-class suburb of Denver with a mother who was a functioning alcoholic and a father who sold office supplies and was frequently on the road. I dropped out of school at sixteen and started supporting myself. Most of the time I worked as a day laborer at construction sites. I dug holes and carried lumber. I pushed wheelbarrows. I loaded and unloaded trucks. 

At age twenty-four, in May of 1976, I was hired to work in the health department of a small town in the mountains. My job would be to help exterminate the mosquitoes that appeared every summer and caused tourists to complain. I’d never heard of such a trade and wondered what I’d be expected to do.

My boss was a civil servant named Albert Rudd and my only co-worker a college girl named Audrey. Some years later I, too, would attend college, but at the time it seemed unlikely. I had little money, no ambition, and would scarcely have known how to apply.

The work turned out to be both more interesting and more routine than I anticipated. Every morning Audrey and I drove a pickup truck to the irrigated hayfields on the ranches west of town. Once we were well into them, we pulled over and used a tin cup fastened to a length of broomstick to collect a sample of water from one of the many stagnant pools. Then we counted the mosquito larvae swimming in the cup. Using those numbers, Rudd could estimate the severity of the coming outbreak—how many mosquitoes this season would produce and how soon they would migrate toward town. The larvae were peculiar creatures, tiny Y-shaped worms with what appeared to be an eye on one end. 

The best part of the job was the setting. The hayfields were an intense emerald green, the mountains rose up grandly on all sides, and the birdsong, from red-winged blackbirds, yellow-headed blackbirds, longspurs, and even the occasional bobolink, was always a delight. I especially liked hearing meadowlarks, their flutelike warble distinguishing them from the other birds.  

Some days we finished our mosquito work early. Then we were assigned additional tasks. Since it was a small town, the concept of “health department” was loosely defined. We tested the chlorine levels of motel swimming pools. We inspected restaurants for cleanliness (but rarely issued citations). And if three or four sheep happened to wander down Main Street, we chased them back into the foothills so they could rejoin their flock. 

Despite coming from different backgrounds, Audrey and I got on well. She was studying biology at the university in Boulder and had what I considered hippie characteristics—an airy way of talking, peasant blouses, Joni Mitchell hair. I assumed, without any supporting evidence, that she was merely going through a phase and would end up a suburban housewife. For her part, she seemed intrigued by the fact that I had no plans. No dreams about the future or expectations of a career. A typical exchange touching on these matters went something like this:  

“What are you going to do when summer’s over?”

“Maybe Rudd will keep me on. If not, I’ll find something else.”

“So you’ll just drift from job to job?”

“Drift? I guess so. If that’s what you want to call it.”

“Cool. I wish I was that free. People should do what turns them on.”

I ought to explain some of the social dynamics at play in small towns in the American West at that time. The ’60s had come and gone, leaving behind a certain disarray. Young people like Audrey tended to adopt the attitudes of the counterculture. Everything was groovy, even high school dropouts who unloaded trucks. As for me, I viewed the clothes, the music, the politics, and the changing sexual mores of the time as little more than rich kids showing off. Of course, there was also Vietnam, which meant guys like me were fodder for the war machine, but I’d been lucky enough to score a high number in the draft lottery. Therefore, I was not a veteran, not a hippie, not a protestor, but simply a working stiff.

I once turned the tables and asked Audrey about her aspirations—what did she hope to do and be? 

“It’s kind of silly. My major is biology, but what I’d really like to do is illustrate children’s books.” 

Like mosquito extermination, this was a profession I hadn’t heard of. “You can make a living doing that?” 

“Oh yes,” she said, “but I need to figure out how to break in. I like drawing pictures. Animals dressed in clothes, especially mice and bears.”

When we’d been on the job for about a month, Audrey and I walked into our daily meeting with Rudd and were surprised to find that another employee had been hired. His name was Eric, his father was an attorney, and he too was home from college—in his case, a prestigious school back East. It seemed obvious he’d gotten the job not because we truly needed help but because his father had arranged it. I didn’t care. That was how things worked. So the next morning all three of us were in the pickup, shoulder-to-shoulder, driving out to the fields. 

Eric, even more than Audrey, seemed like the very model of a post-’60s college student. He smoked pot often, had a Frank Zappa mustache and long black hair, and quoted from books like Charles Reich’s The Greening of America and Carlos Castaneda’s guides to peyote knowledge. Although the books sounded intriguing, back then I wasn’t much of a reader and didn’t seek them out.  

In late June, the mosquitoes began evolving from larvae into adults. We were in one of the hayfields on a sunlit morning when Audrey said, “Hey, I just got bit.” This new information was reported back to Rudd, and from that moment on, our job changed. After encircling the town with “canister traps”—one at the high school, two at the golf course, four along the highway south of town—we started collecting data on the presence of airborne mosquitoes, blood-sucking creatures whose primary objective was to find a tourist to bite. 

Although I missed going out to the hayfields, I continued to enjoy the work. It was never physically demanding, certainly not in the way my job as a common laborer had been, and Eric and Audrey weren’t unpleasant to be around. Eric was studying history with the intention of going to law school. He liked showing off his knowledge of politics and current events. One day it was the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, and the next, Jimmy Carter’s chances of beating Gerald Ford. Audrey liked music and was always going on about some group I’d never heard of, some album she’d recently bought.

Rudd seemed pleased that he’d managed to hire two well-educated young people to be part of his summer crew. It was as if he believed Audrey and Eric’s youthful sophistication reflected well on him. In his late forties and recently divorced, Rudd had never done anything other than administer a government department of limited significance in a small tourist town. Yet now two of his three employees were bringing him dispatches from a new and exhilarating world.

To me, it seemed odd that a man Rudd’s age would be so impressed by college students. They certainly didn’t admire him in return. Eric, especially, seemed dismissive of everything Rudd said. But one day Eric made a surprising admission: He’d been spending evenings at Rudd’s house. He explained that he and “Al” sat in the garage and drank beer, watched TV on an old black-and-white set, and worked on small projects such as rewiring a lamp or painting a bench. “He’s starved for conversation,” Eric said. “He hates it when I leave.” 

“Freaky,” Audrey said. “You’re actually hanging out with him?”

“I’m curious how his mind works. I’ve been introducing him to stoner humor. George Carlin, Cheech and Chong, that sort of thing. I have to explain some of the jokes, but he’s starting to dig it.”

“Freaky,” Audrey said again.

I knew almost nothing about stoner humor and wasn’t sure why anyone would be interested in how Rudd’s mind worked. But I was intrigued by Eric’s need to insert himself into situations that shouldn’t have been any of his business. One of his favorite sayings was “I like to fuck with things.” My instinct was the opposite—to keep to myself. 

Then one day Rudd told us the time had come for pesticides. We would, he said, “deploy them on two fronts.” In town, we were going to drive up and down the alleys at dusk, spraying malathion from an atomizer bolted to the bed of the truck. Out in the hayfields, where a second hatch was likely, stronger chemicals would be applied from the air by crop dusters brought in from Kansas, the kind used to spray fields of corn.   

Around that time Eric said we should take a canoe trip. A weekend float, just the three of us. Canoeing wasn’t something I’d have done with co-workers on previous jobs. Those hard men would have laughed at such a pointless pursuit. But I felt flattered to be included and readily agreed. 

Eric and Audrey picked me up on Saturday morning, an aluminum canoe attached to the roof of the car. As we drove toward the river, Eric started talking about Rudd again, reporting that the two of them had not only been studying stoner humor, but also been getting stoned. 

“I’ll bet he’s hilarious when he’s high,” Audrey said.

“Not as much as you’d think.”

“What does he talk about?” 

“Mosquitoes,” Eric said with a comic shrug.

Audrey groaned, and I laughed.

“And then he falls asleep.”

A note here on mind-altering substances: Back then, the young and better educated used marijuana as well as peyote and LSD, while older people and those with less education stuck to alcohol or, if that wasn’t adequate, speed (the word “meth” was never used). At least that’s how it was in small towns out west. I myself did a bit of everything, but in moderation, because I’d seen what could happen when someone lacked restraint. I was surprised to learn that Rudd was using any substance other than alcohol, but in those years just about anyone, under the right circumstances, could be convinced to try something new—especially when in the company of a person they wanted to impress.

I’d never been in a canoe, but Eric had the sort of knowledge of outdoor activities only money can buy. He’d skied the more exclusive Colorado resorts, gone on mountaineering treks with his older brothers, and been taught to canoe by a professional guide.   

“So we won’t drown?” Audrey said.

“Just paddle when I say paddle. You know how to swim, right?”

The plan was to float all day, spend the night in a canyon Eric was familiar with, and finish on Sunday afternoon. Once we were on the water, I could see why people enjoyed it. We passed sandstone cliffs and groves of willows and gnarled cottonwoods, then navigated some modest rapids, the kind that made us laugh rather than gasp in fear. A bird Eric identified as a kingfisher pierced the surface of the water and came up with a minnow, while from somewhere up in the trees, a meadowlark trilled. A muskrat swam beside us and a pair of mule deer stood on the bank, looking for a moment as though they might bolt before deciding we weren’t a threat and watching us glide past.

I motioned toward the deer and said, “Audrey, you should draw them.”

She looked embarrassed. “Maybe I will.”

At dusk we pulled into a small beach at the foot of a soaring rock face. There, we rolled out our sleeping bags, roasted hot dogs over an open fire, and smoked a couple of joints.  

I sensed that Eric and Audrey wished they were alone. At times they lowered their voices, sharing things they didn’t want me to hear. Late that night, while I was staring up at the great swath of stars overhead, I heard them having vigorous sex. I wasn’t surprised. I’d known from the beginning Audrey would find Eric difficult to resist. I remember thinking Eric must have had plenty of sex, because of who he was and simply because of the times. How often had I heard the term “free love” during the last few years? I worried about Audrey—in my experience, those with charisma tended to be opportunists—but I wasn’t about to interfere. When they finally stopped, it got quiet, and I fell asleep to the sound of the river rushing by.

After we returned from our trip, the extermination campaign commenced. I was the first one to spend an evening spraying the town. Rudd met me at the city motor pool and taught me what to do. First came the water, fifty gallons into a stainless-steel tank. Then the poison, eight ounces of what looked like maple syrup, carefully drizzled in. Finally, he fired up the little engine that powered the sprayer attached to the back of the truck. “Time to kill some mosquitoes,” he said. 

Beginning in a neighborhood on the north end of town, I drove slowly down the alleys, a white plume of insecticide unfurling behind me to hang in the summer air. What I hadn’t anticipated were the throngs of children galloping after the truck, laughing and shouting as they immersed themselves in the fog. Although Rudd never said the chemicals we were using posed a danger to humans, spraying seven-year-olds seemed unwise. But my understanding of work at that point in my life was that you did as you were told for as long as you were being paid. To put it another way, I assumed it was Rudd’s job to read the fine print on the malathion can, not mine. 

When I mentioned the children to Audrey and Eric, Audrey said, “Yuck. That’s terrible. The least we could do is block off the alleys. Eric, you should talk to Al.” He nodded but I didn’t think he’d follow through. At that time, there wasn’t as much concern about toxic chemicals as there is today. I’d heard of Silent Spring but hadn’t read it. The EPA had only recently been created. The horrors of Agent Orange had yet to come to light, and Bhopal was ten years off.

Early in July a second hatch began. We discovered it when Rudd sent us out to the hayfields to do a routine check. Only seconds after we exited the truck, great clouds of mosquitoes appeared and began their assault. Glancing at one another in horror, we retreated into the cab and spent the next five minutes slapping at the ones that had followed us inside. I pitied the animals, the cattle and coyotes, the badgers and sheep, none of them with a truck to hide in. On our way back, we saw a pair of horses running and tossing their heads, tails flicking wildly, being driven mad. A little further on, a single cow stood dejectedly while dozens of mosquitoes feasted where the blood was closest to the surface: inside each ear and around the rim of each eye. The poor beast was being tormented and there was nothing she could do.

Back at Rudd’s office we told him what we’d found. He leapt to his feet and began to pace. “Goddamn it. The crop dusters aren’t coming until the fifteenth. I didn’t think we’d need them so soon.”

“Can’t you reschedule?” Eric asked.

“Yes, but maybe it’s too early. We need to spray at the peak. Is this the peak? Oh Jesus. What if there’s a third hatch?”

When he was gone, Eric mocked him: “Is this the peak? Is this the peak? Oh Jesus! What if there’s a third hatch?” Although Audrey and I laughed, it seemed unfair to make fun of him, a man of no special talents trapped in a thankless job. But Rudd would probably have considered such ridicule a small price to pay for Eric’s attention. No doubt he had made similar trade-offs in the past.

 A few days later it became obvious that spraying from the truck was no longer sufficient. Although the weather was beautiful, people stopped taking walks in the evening, restaurant patios were deserted, and if you did go outside, you inhaled a mosquito with every other breath. Eric reported that Rudd had stopped getting stoned: “He sits in an old green chair and drinks himself into a stupor.” 

“Then what do you do?” Audrey asked.

“Sometimes I look around his house. Do you know what I found?”

“Tell me.”

“Not one interesting thing. No books, no music, no secrets. It’s like a museum exhibit built to show how a man with no imagination lives.”

Once again, I thought Eric was being harsh. Maybe I sympathized with Rudd because, except for my age, I resembled him more than I resembled Eric and Audrey. I wondered what Eric said about me when I wasn’t around. Probably things I wouldn’t want to hear.

After a week of anguish, Rudd decided he could wait no longer and called for the planes. Because of the severity of the outbreak, he canceled the small crop dusters from Kansas and ordered two DC-3s—large aircraft originally built to transport military cargo. They would fly in from Montana where they were used to drop slurry on forest fires.

When the planes arrived, we drove to the small airstrip west of town to inspect them. I’d never seen Rudd so delighted. He said, “Look at those fat bastards. The harder they are, the bigger they fall.” Apparently this was a line from some comedy routine Eric had shared with him because Rudd glanced in Eric’s direction as if making sure he’d said it right. Audrey shook her head like a parent embarrassed by a child.

Soon one of the pilots appeared. He slapped at a mosquito and said, “Looks like we’re just in time.”

Rudd nodded and adopted a professional tone. “These are impressive machines.”

“Yes indeed. They were used in Korea. Also ’Nam. Real workhorses. We can treat an area the size of five hundred football fields between sunrise and noon.”

As we left the airstrip, Rudd explained that the poison we would be using was called cliocitricide—sold under the brand name Vyntroxal—a much more potent product than the one we’d been spraying in town. Four ounces of concentrate to every hundred gallons of water. Once the planes were in flight, our job would be to help them navigate by driving our truck to predetermined locations beside the hayfields so the pilots would have something to aim toward. “You should probably stay in the cab,” Rudd told us. “This stuff is approved for human contact but it’s best to play it safe.” Having watched the children run after the truck, I was surprised to hear him mention safety. Maybe Eric had spoken to him after all. 

We returned to the airstrip at six the next morning. As Audrey and I watched, Rudd and Eric pulled on black rubber gloves and began filling the planes’ enormous tanks with water and poison. This time it was Eric who called the planes fat bastards, and Rudd was soon laughing so hard he had to stop to catch his breath. I wondered for a moment if they were stoned or drunk, but decided it was only Eric being Eric and Rudd being Rudd. 

At one point Audrey said, “Do you think we should help?” 

I almost said yes. Instead I said, “I’m staying out of it.”

At last, the lids were screwed on the tanks and the planes started their engines. Rudd remained at the airport while we drove to the hayfields and positioned the truck at the far western edge. 

The planes had flown off to the east and now came directly at us, straight out of the morning sun. When they released the insecticide, it was genuinely beautiful—millions of brilliant golden particles, a sparkling mist, drifting slowly down. The particles fell on our truck and on the cattle and the horses and the hay and the standing water in the irrigated fields. And on the mosquitoes, larvae as well as airborne adults, exactly according to plan. 

Each time the planes flew over, we moved the truck a tenth of a mile to provide a target for the next pass. Although we did as Rudd suggested and remained in the cab, the smell of the poison was everywhere. I could feel it entering my lungs.

By noon it was over, just as the pilot promised. If the Vyntroxal was as effective as advertised, maybe there’d be no more mosquitoes and we’d spend the remainder of the summer checking the chlorine in swimming pools and telling restaurants they were clean. It even occurred to me that I might be out of a job. Audrey was having different thoughts: “I can’t wait to take a shower and wash my clothes.”

The next morning, Rudd sent us out to check our work. “You shouldn’t see any live ones. The larvae will be motionless, floating on top of the water. And the adults should be completely gone.”

As we drove toward the fields, Audrey said, “He seems pretty relaxed. Did you go over to his house last night?”

Eric shook his head. “No. He said he wanted to be alone.”

“I thought he’d be celebrating,” she said. 

“He told me he was exhausted. He planned to go straight to bed.”

We reached the hayfields and got out. It was another fine summer morning. The absence of mosquitoes was immediately apparent. In recent days we’d been engulfed as soon as we exited the truck. Even when we’d covered ourselves in repellent, we’d had to fight them off. But it was as Rudd promised. We didn’t see a single one.

Audrey laughed in astonishment while I got the dipper and walked toward an irrigated field. I’d taken only a few steps when I began to feel uneasy. “Something’s different,” I said.

Audrey was standing still, eyes shut, hands at her sides. “The birds,” she said. “I can’t hear the birds.” No red-winged blackbirds, no barn swallows, no sparrows. No meadowlarks. Off in the distance, I could see a few cows. They looked normal, grazing as always. The air was cool and clear. But no birdsong. What had we done?

Eric looked stricken. When they’d been putting the poison in the tank, it had crossed my mind that he and Rudd weren’t paying attention. Yet I told myself they were measuring accurately, even while laughing and acting like clowns. They were just being foolish. Cheech and Chong. Stoner humor. No worse than any other humor. The truth was that excusing them was easier than getting involved. Even when Audrey asked me if we should help, I chose not to get involved. 

Audrey pointed downward. A yellow-headed blackbird, the most brilliantly colored of all the hayfield species, lay dead in a shallow pool. She shook her head and began to cry.

We drove back to town in silence. Eric stared out the window and Audrey simply looked sad. When we got to the office, Rudd said, “See, what did I tell you? Not a mosquito in sight.” He was grinning, rocking in his office chair, looking pleased with himself. 

But Audrey, her voice quaking, said, “Mr. Rudd, the insecticide got the birds too.” 

He looked puzzled, then annoyed, and tried to fix it with a joke: “Well, as long as the ranchers are still standing…” When we didn’t laugh, he said, “The ranchers—the ranchers—I’m sure the cattle will be fine. There will be more birds before you know it. Was I right about the mosquitoes? They’re gone, aren’t they?” He stood then and began to pace, visibly agitated. “If you’re going to mourn a few birds, you might as well mourn the mosquitoes. They’re all animals, you know. Mosquitoes and birds and cows and horses too. Do you think only the beautiful ones matter? They all matter. I know you laugh at me. I know you mock me. You think you’re so fucking smart that you can decide which ones matter. Maybe you even think you matter and I don’t. Well, the joke is on you because sooner or later we all die. Everything dies.”

The next morning Eric told us he would be returning to school early. In the days before he left, the three of us talked about the event in a bewildered, defensive way: What the hell happened? How did it happen? It was an accident. Rudd should know better. Not my fault. They shouldn’t sell anything that strong. By the end of the week, Eric was gone.  

On Monday, Audrey and I drove out to the hayfields again. The cattle were still grazing. A hawk rode the air currents, as if attempting to carve arcs into the definitive blue of the western sky. One lone meadowlark sat on a fencepost, singing its morning song. There should have been many more birds. There were always dozens. Some days hundreds. But that was all. The damage done was clear.    

We also saw a couple of mosquitoes. “Of course,” Audrey said.

A few weeks later, the tourist season ended, the mosquito season ended, and Audrey went back to school. I didn’t stay much longer. The job had changed so that nearly all my time was spent inspecting restaurants, which meant ignoring minor violations or issuing citations and then wondering if the owner would punch me in the nose. 

I thought I should learn a lesson from what happened. Don’t trust someone who likes to fuck with people. Don’t use industrial-strength poison when you’re stoned. I could hear Albert Rudd’s words—Well, the joke is on you because sooner or later we all die—and picture that yellow-headed bird. I tried telling myself it was only carelessness, only mosquitoes and birds. It wasn’t until years later that I read that to use the word “only” before the name of a living creature was to make a moral error of an especially grievous kind. And so, feeling as though I had been an accomplice to a crime I had no name for, I went looking for another job.