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        An electronic literary magazine striving for the very best in
                  contemporary fiction, poetry, and essays.
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                   Editor: Sung J. Woo ([email protected])
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VOLUME I     NUMBER 1                                            MARCH 1,
1994
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Table of Contents

Welcome...............................................................xx

_Fiction_

"Barking Dogs and Flying Saucers," by Keith Dawson....................xx
"Eat Lunch with the Homeless," by E. Jay O'Connell....................xx
"SaveWay," by Jim Esch................................................xx
Excerpt from _Kissing the Dead_ by Stewart O'Nan......................xx

_Poetry_

"The Side Show," by Daniel Sendecki...................................xx
"While Walking," by Andrea Krackow....................................xx
"The High Cost of Living," by Nancy Bent..............................xx
"If I Were a Lover," by Jim Chaffee...................................xx
"Cinderella Rewritten," by Rachel L. Miller...........................xx

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Whirlwind cannot continue without submissions from established and amateur
writers on the net. If you or anyone you know is looking to publish
contemporary fiction, poetry, or essays, please don't hesistate to get a
copy of the work to us.  Mail submissions to: [email protected].
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Whirlwind Vol. 1, No. 1.  Whirlwind is published electronically on a
bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this magazine is permitted as long as
the magazine is not sold and the entire text of the issue remains intact.
Copyright (c) 1994, authors. All further rights to stories belong to the
authors. Whirlwind is produced using Aldus Pagemaker 5.0 and T/Maker
WriteNow 2.2 software on Apple Macintosh computers and is converted into
PostScript format for distribution. PostScript is a registered trademark
of Adobe Systems, Inc. For back issue and other information, see our back
page.  Please send any questions/comments to [email protected].
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                                                       March 1, 1994


       Welcome to the first issue of Whirlwind.  Why I suddenly decided
       to start this magazine is a mystery to me.  I'm currently a senior
       at Cornell University studying English -- this is my last
       semester, when I should be attending bars instead of classes,
       concentrating on doing nothing of substance.

       But instead of just loafing around, I thought that the net needed
       a magazine like mine, one that specializes in contemporary
       fiction, poetry, and essays.  I believe every single work that
       went into this first issue is a good read.  That is the single
       most important rule that I believe all works of fiction or poetry
       must abide by -- that first and foremost, they must be fun and
       entertaining.

       Putting this magazine together has taken far more time than I
       thought, but I think it has been worth it.  I would like to thank
       Jason Snell of InterText,  who gave me sage advice and a ton of
       useful information.  I would also like to thank Amy Moskovitz for
       her photographs -- if you have access to a PostScript printer, I
       highly recommend you download and print out that version.  I wish
       I could include her work in this ASCII format, but of course that
       is not possible.  It goes without saying that her pictures look
       far better on paper, but they have nonetheless managed to make
       this magazine visually beautiful.



                                                       Sung J. Woo
                                                       Editor

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FICTION
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BARKING DOGS AND FLYING SAUCERS
BY KEITH DAWSON


    It is 1979. Jeremy is fifteen, and he rides the subway home from
    school every day. He rides from his school at 86th Street and
    Lexington back to Brooklyn. It is an icy day that winter. He wears a
    blue snorkel parka. While waiting for the train, he leans against the
    wall. In the process, he ruins a drawing someone has made in chalk in
    an empty ad space.
    He makes a mess of the back of his jacket. This will cause his mother
    to complain. Worse, he's just obliterated a delicate white outlined
    picture of a barking dog. Above the dog was a flying saucer. The dog
    was barking at the flying saucer, Jeremy thinks. It is hard to tell.
    A strange blocky stick figure stood by the dog, listening to the
    saucer. Now it is a tangled mishmash of chalk on a black background.
    The barking dog is more of a lopsided polygon.
    He thinks nothing more about the ravaged chalk drawing until the next
    day, when he and his cleaned jacket get off the train at that same
    stop. He looks across the tracks at the downtown side, and sees a man
    standing in front of the former chalk drawing.
    The young man is dressed in a bomber jacket and dirty ripped
jeans. He has short cropped hair, not quite a buzz cut but close
to it. There is an earring in his left ear. His jacket, years
old, is black leather, covered with stains from markers and spray
paints. It bulges slightly under his arms and in the small of his
back. The man looks almost twenty.
    He runs his fingers through his hair as he surveys the damaged
    piece.
    Jeremy watches as the young man looks around quickly, then pulls a
    large piece of white chalk out of his sleeve pocket and tries to
    reconstruct the drawing. He reconnects some of the lines, bringing
    the dog back to life. There is nothing he can do for the saucer. He
    shakes his head and walks away slowly. The artist turns to look down
    the platform for the next train, and as he does he catches Jeremy
    watching him. The artist smiles back brightly. Jeremy feels ashamed.

    Autumn, 1986. Jeremy is grown and the artist is famous. Those simple
    drawings of vocal dogs and radiant saucers are pop icons. The
    artist's graffiti is coveted modern art, prized for its urban chic. A
    review called it "the rebirth of the urban primitive." One day in
    Barnes and Noble, Jeremy leafs through a book on graffiti art. He
    sees a picture of the artist's subway work from the late seventies, a
    black and white chalk drawing like the one he rubbed out by mistake.
    The photo's caption says the drawing has been destroyed, like those
    Old Master paintings blown to bits by bombings during World War Two.
    Jeremy remembers seeing slides of demolished frescoes and paintings
    in his college classes. They were in black and white. Soon, no one
    will be left alive who remembers the colors. He feels a brush with
    history, a touch of greatness.

    The artist tries to hide his illness, but it is impossible. Whispers
    start as soon as he begins missing appearances, losing weight,
    coughing in public. The rumors create a speculative frenzy in his
    work, because the works of a dead artist command more than those of a
    live one. Word of the artist's illness percolates through the art
    world for months before it ever reaches Jeremy.
    At twenty-two, he is an aspiring writer working for a publishing
    company. During the day, he reads manuscripts and throws them back
    into the refuse pile. At night he writes madly, dozens of stories and
    fragments of novels. He is still just learning.
    He goes to a party thrown by his company for one of their books.
    Jeremy hasn't worked on the book, but it is policy that all editorial
    assistants go to the parties. The company wants rooms to be filled
    with lots of young people and their friends. It makes parties more
    attractive to the important people the company wants to court. The
    young people, including Jeremy, fawn on the hordes of famous old
    writers, the occasional rock star and government official. It is part
    of their job. Jeremy enjoys these parties.
     This one is for a collaboration between a writer and an illustrator.
     It is a book of cartoon drawings with a running text called Pete's
     Bar. Jeremy thinks it is a good looking book. He gave it to some of
     his friends as Christmas gifts. They like it, too.

    He is introduced to the illustrator by his boss, Paul, a fortyish man
    with a beard and a long ponytail. Jeremy doesn't like Paul much, but
    they get along on the job. Paul doesn't publish a lot of books, which
    makes Jeremy's life a lot easier. Jeremy and the illustrator, who is
    in his late thirties, strike up a conversation and Jeremy tells him
    the story of his encounter with the artist.
    "He has AIDS, you know," the illustrator says.
    Jeremy winces and says that he didn't know that. The illustrator
    tells him that it is well-known among artists, that he heard from a
    friend-of-a-friend who knows him well. Jeremy feels like he has just
    stepped in dogshit. Like a beautiful woman has slapped him in the
    face for making an indecent proposal. Like he did when he was nine
    years old and he wet his pants on the roller coaster at Great
    Adventure.

    Thanksgiving weekend, 1988. Jeremy and his girlfriend have spent the
    weekend visiting her relatives in eastern Pennsylvania. He's dropped
    her off at her apartment on the West side and is driving alone down a
    deserted Broadway toward the Budget rental car place under the
    Brooklyn Bridge. It is about four in the afternoon on Saturday.
    He stops at a traffic light a few blocks south of Canal Street. There
    is no one else around. No other cars, no shoppers or pedestrians. He
    lets his attention wander and looks up at the spires of the Woolworth
    Building coming up on his right. It has always been one of his
    favorite buildings. He admires the work on the cornices, the
    elaborate stonework set beneath and between each window.
    He looks back at the traffic light, and it is flashing DONT WALK for
    the opposite traffic. Someone is walking past his car, carrying a
    large canvas covered in a plastic tarp. Jeremy knows the face. It is
    a little more pinched, perhaps, but he recognizes the person he saw
    that day in the train station nine years before. The face has been
    featured in magazines countless times since then. The light is now
    green for Jeremy, but the artist hasn't made it across the street. As
    he passes Jeremy's car, he looks right at Jeremy behind the wheel.
    Jeremy starts and waves at him. The artist, perhaps realizing he has
    been recognized, nods his head and smiles without breaking stride.
    Then he turns his head away.
    Jeremy follows the artist with his eyes and drives away very
slowly.

    Two days later Jeremy finds himself in a gallery in SoHo, inquiring
    about the artist's work. He is the only customer. The woman working
    there is dressed in a smart green dress and black stockings. She is
    about thirty. Jeremy finds her attractive. She is cold to him. She
    quotes him a price range and he blanches. Of course he does not have
    several thousand dollars to spend on a painting, he works in
    publishing. He gets paid fifteen thousand dollars a year. She watches
    for his reaction and when he says thank you and walks away, she
    follows him.
    "We do have a few items that you might be interested in," she says.
    She shows him a room where several tiny framed objects hang on the
    walls. It is the room of the small things, he thinks.
    "Everything you see here is under a thousand," she says. That is
    still much more than he wanted to spend. But he looks anyway.
    The items that hang in this room are not what he expected. The
    artist's work is more varied than he thought. Jeremy knows nothing
    about art. He knows the artist because of what he saw with his own
    eyes, the famous barking dog drawings of the 1970s.  And from the
    magazine articles he's read over the years. He never would have read
    them, of course, if he hadn't felt some connection with the man who
    was growing steadily in stature. Barking dogs were everywhere.
    But here there were few dogs or flying saucers. There were a few
    pencil drawings, some of them strikingly realistic. Faces of people
    drawn in a careful detail, rendered delicate and lifelike, not
    abstract at all. As he moves around the room, he is at turns shocked
    and delighted by what he sees. Here is a cityscape in watercolor. It
    is as fuzzy and warm as the stick figure graffiti is stark. On
    another wall is a pastel sketch of several men sitting at a table.
    There is a crystal vase on the table. Jeremy is impressed with the
    way the artist has drawn clear glass using colored chalk.
    One piece catches his eye. It is a tiny collage of drawings, shapes
    and colors without form to the untrained eye. It is centered around
    orange, red and yellow plastic cut-outs. Behind and around them are
    what look like fragments of newsprint. The background has been filled
    in with tiny detailed drawings in colored pencil. Jeremy can't tell.
    He looks at it for a good long minute, unable to make sense of it,
    unable to turn away.
    He buys it for eight hundred dollars. It just fits under the limit on
    his Visa card.

    It also fits on the wall above his kitchen table. Jeremy moves the
    television across the room to clear a space for the piece. Now,
    whenever he eats, he stares into the orange and yellow shapes.
    He does his writing at the kitchen table. Most nights he drags out
    the laptop he bought second hand and types for about an hour after
    dinner. For the first weeks since buying the art, his writing is
    uneffected. Then he begins to run dry. There are no more stories. New
    ideas vanish from his head quicker than he can think of them. His
    eyes tend to wander from the keyboard to the collage above his
    table.
    Jeremy writes in his journal when he has no stories. It is better to
    keep in practice by writing something, anything, than to write
    nothing at all. Now is a good time for that, he thinks. He starts by
    writing about the art work above his kitchen table. He describes it,
    and some of the others that he saw in the gallery. He writes about
    the Pete's Bar party and the illustrator. And finally, he writes a
    long entry about his encounters -- both of them -- with the artist.
    It takes him several hours and when he is finished he is very tired.
    The next night is not a writing night. Instead, he spends it with his
    girlfriend at her apartment. When he returns the night after to the
    Idea Factory (what he calls his kitchen table) he is still blank. He
    stares up at the artwork and thinks about the artist. He owns a piece
    of him now. He, Jeremy, possesses a piece of the artist's work.  But
    only the artist knows what the work means. Jeremy certainly doesn't.
    He doesn't even know what the colors and shapes represent. He can't
    decipher the code. That satisfies him, somehow. I can rip it to
    pieces, or set fire to it, he thinks. It's mine to do with as I
    wish.
    He wonders if the artist meant to create a thing of mystery by
    draping it in obscure images and hazy shapes. The artist will
    probably die soon, Jeremy thinks.

    December. Jeremy still can't concentrate on his writing. When he
    reads over some of his journal, an idea strikes him. He prints out
    what he wrote about the artist. It works just as well as a story. He
    makes a single paper copy, puts it in an envelope, and seals it. He
    stops for a moment, unsure, because he thinks that what he wrote was
    very good. Then he screws up his courage and deletes the entire file
    from his computer. All that is left is what he holds in hand.

    It takes Jeremy another week to get up the nerve to go see the
    artist. He is listed in a two-year-old Manhattan phone book Jeremy
    keeps in the bedroom. Jeremy goes to his apartment without calling
    first. The artist lives in a very sedate brownstone downtown. It is a
    quiet block, lined with trees. Pleasant noise drifts down the street
    from the elementary school on the corner. It is a clear, bright
    winter day.
    Jeremy finds the artist's name on the buzzer and hesitates for just a
    second before pressing. The artist lives on the second floor. There
    is no intercom. He is buzzed in. He hurries up the stairs, carrying
    the packet under his arm. He rings the bell at the artist's door and
    hears a voice from inside the apartment. "Come on in," it says.
    Jeremy opens the door and steps inside.
    Brilliant southern sunlight fills the studio's large front room. Each
    wall is covered with art, large and small. A large purple painting
    hangs across from the door, the first thing any visitor sees when
    they enter the home. It is easily eight feet high and ten feet long.
    Jeremy has never seen anything so big outside of a museum. It is a
    red and purple variation of the tiny work that hangs in his own
    kitchen. Like his own, it is part painting, part sketch and part
    collage. This is twenty times larger than his own. From across the
    room, he notices an old motif: unlike his piece, this one features
    barking dogs and flying saucers and dancing stick figures. Jeremy is
    impressed with its size. And with its warmth.
    He steps further into the studio and notices the artist spread out on
    the floor with his materials. He is squatting on his haunches over a
    large white canvas. Most of it is empty. Jeremy can't see what he is
    doing to it. The artist is wearing jeans and a gray sweatshirt with
    the sleeves rolled up. He wears white canvas sneakers. All of his
    clothes are stained with color. The canvas is spread out in a room
    right off the main foyer. That room's walls are empty except for two
    or three sheets of drawing paper tacked up where the artist can see
    them.
    He looks up at Jeremy. The artist has very little hair. Jeremy can
    see the boniness of his arms and hands, the thinness of his face. His
    frame carries the sweatshirt like a coat hanger. The man must weigh
    120 pounds, Jeremy thinks.
    The artist was expecting someone else.
    "Who are you?" he asks. "If you're here to sell me something, don't
    waste your breath."
    Jeremy doesn't know what to say. He hasn't rehearsed this part, and
    of course the artist doesn't know who he is. Instead he proffers the
    packet. "I've brought you something. This is for you," he says. The
    artist sits up, cross-legged on the floor.
    "Do you want me to sign for it?"
    Jeremy is embarrassed, he doesn't know what to say or how to act. So
    he apologizes. He's sorry for interrupting, he says. He's sorry for
    what happened in 1979, he's sorry that he ruined the drawing in the
    86th Street station. Uncontrollable apologies fall out of his mouth.
    He's sorry for something else too, something much worse, but he knows
    enough not to say it to the artist.
    He tells the artist about their two previous encounters. Jeremy opens
    the manila envelope he carried and hands the artist a folder. Inside,
    Jeremy tells him, is a story he wrote.
    "Creativity straight out of my head," Jeremy says. The artist looks
    at it without seeing it.
    "It's yours," Jeremy says. "You can do anything you want with it,
    it's the only copy." He pauses for a moment. "If you destroy it, then
    we'd be even."

    Jeremy leaves the artist's apartment feeling drained and stupid. He
    drags himself home, but he feels worse than when he started out. The
    thought of the encounter, what he had done, makes him wince. The
    reaction reminds him of the summer he spent putting pink insulation
    into a house.  It was weeks before he stopped pulling invisible
    slivers of fiberglass from his forearms. It is almost that long
    before he sits down to write again.

    The letter from the lawyer arrives a year later with a package too
    large for a single deliveryman. After he signs for the letter two men
    carry a sealed and insured box up to his apartment.
    The letter tells him what is in the box, and his stomach flutters.
    The artist remembered him in his will. Inside the box is the purple
    painting. Jeremy opens it and slides the heavy canvas and its frame
    out of the wooden box. It is not the same.
    He draws a heavy breath. The artist has cut up strips of paper and
    added them to the center of the purple collage. He's cut them into
    shapes. Dogs and saucers. Jeremy's story, given up for gone, is part
    of the collage.

____________________
Keith Dawson <[email protected]> is a writer and father of a sparkling
daughter.

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EAT LUNCH WITH THE HOMELESS
BY E. JAY O'CONNELL


    Chinatown.
    I emerge from the subway skirting pools of greenish fluid, slipping
    past boarded peep show arcades with names like The Pussycat, and The
    Over 21. Ranks of ducks sweating fiery orange grease hang upside down
    in shop windows, glaring at me through death-filmed eyes. A cat washs
    itself sitting on a counter inside, beside a fan of faded Penthouse
    Magazines crawling with Ideograms. An Asian beauty sucking her
    forefinger, her nipples round and brown like pennies.
    In front of me, a business suited drone skips over the splinted leg
    of a darkhaired girl sitting on the sidewalk. She's practically
    blocking the way. She has a cardboard sign that reads 'HUNGRY, please
    help.'
    "Can you help me out mister?"
    My rule is, if I don't have change, I keep moving. I hand her 50
    cents, change from my breakfast coffee, and turn to leave.
    "What are you reading?"
    I look back at her, puzzled. There's a paperback in my hand, the
    latest Doug Adams.
    "I mean, I like to know what people are reading," She speaks quickly.
    "When you're on the streets, you got a lot of time on your hands. It
    helps to have something to read, get your mind off yourself." She
    takes the book from my hand.
    "It's fantasy."
    She furrows her brow and reads the back cover blurb. She is of
    indeterminate age, neither young nor old. Her eyes are distrubing,
    one of them pointing slightly askew. She's wearing a dirty white
    tee-shirt and jeans, and her long brown hair is pulled back in a
    single ponytail.
    "It's escapism, really," I say. "We all need to escape."
    "Yeah, what do you need to escape from?"
    "I'm not crazy about my job."
    "Better than this boy." She gestures about herself, as if this were
    her office. "It's not listed on your everyday list of hard jobs, but
    let me tell you, its rough. I try to make, ten, twenty bucks a day,
    so I can get something to eat.
    "Where do you sleep?"
    "Oh, with friends, the shelter..." She trails off. I turn to leave.
    "Could you buy me a soda?"
    I squint at her. "You mean, buy you one, and bring it back here?"
    "No, I mean, we go get one."
    I've got a lunch hour by myself to kill. "Okay."
    We walk upstairs to the restaurant. Her splinted leg doesn't seem to
    give her any trouble at all.
* * *
    The restaurant is actually six restaurants sharing a common dining
    area, rows of battered tables and plastic chairs sandwiched between
    the stalls. Above each stall cardboard placards crawl with ideograms,
    with the occasional scrawled English afterthrough. I contemplate
    purchasing the ominous sounding "Five delights," but I'm sure the
    term delight doesn't translate across cultures. A single six foot
    tower air conditioner struggles valiantly against the burning heat of
    dozens of woks, deep fryers, and the press of bodies. The clientele
    is about half Asian, half Caucasian. I stand looking up at a menu
    board, realizing that I can't eat with her watching me. Even if I do
    buy her a soda.
    "Let me buy you a rice plate."
    "Okay."
    We order and sit to wait for our food.
    "So you stay with friends?" I'm trying to figure just how homeless
    she is.
    "Yeah, I live with my boyfriend. I used to have a problem with
    needles a while back, but I'm clean now. No AIDS, either, I know, I
    had the test."
    "Lucky."
    "Yeah, real lucky. Now, if I could only get a job."
    "What about Burger King, that kind of stuff?"
    "I can't deal with the people at Burger King. I used to work there.
    Buncha niggers, think they're, they're, I don't know, gods gift or
    something."
     I flinch at the word nigger. "I've worked at Burger King. I hated
     it."
    "Me and my last boyfriend worked there. Now there was a piece of
    work. Cut his fucking arm off." She draws a line across her left
    forearm. "Right there."
    "He cut his arm off?"
    "Yeah, Like I found this out after I broke up with him. I thought he
    lost it in Nam. But no, he did it to himself, trying to commit
    suicide."
    "How did he manage it? An ax?"      "No I think it was kitchen
    knife."
    "Did he just mess it up, and have it amputated?" My mind can't summon
    up the picture of someone actually completely severing as substantial
    a body part as an arm.
    "No, no, he cut it right off, with a kitchen knife, I think. I know,
    because he talked about the paramedics, looking for it so they could,
    you know, graft it back on."
    "Uh-huh." I remain unconvinced. Where did he put the arm after he cut
    it off?
    "Why are we talking about this?" She mock shudders, grins and holds
    her face in her hands. "We're going to eat."
    "Yeah, sorry."
    "That's okay."
    Our food arrives, and we're quiet for awhile as we begin to eat.
    "How is it?" I ask. "Too hot?"
    "No, its fine. I hate the stuff when its too hot. What's the point?
    When you can't taste the cumin and coriander and saffron and stuff,
    just the burn. I like a little burn, when its appropriate, but not
    the super hot stuff."
    "I think its the culture. You know, if you grow up with it--"
    "--I fuckin did!" She interrupts.
    "What?"
    "My dad was Indian. We ate the stuff when I was kid."
    I'm trying to figure it out. She's sort of dark skinned, but not
    really Indian looking."Your mother was--"
    "--From Connecticut. They met in church. Ain't that a bitch? He was a
    Moslem."
    "Your mother was a Moslem? In Connecticut?"
    "No she was a , what do you call it, a congregationalist. My dad met
    her in church--"
    "--A mosque?--"
    "--No, a church, a Christian church. He was there because he liked to
    sing. He sung in the choir."
    "I see."
    "So my parents, they were real hung up on ideas about class and
    economics. My mother, oh boy, she was fucking case, that one. Didn't
    like it if I hung out with truck drivers. She'd say, no wonder I'm in
    such trouble, sexually. What the fuck! Like a trucker is any more
    horny than a businessman in a suit."
    "Uh-huh."
    She is bent over her food, shoveling it in. "I'm going to have to
    have them wrap some of this up. I can't eat it all."
    I nod and eat my curried chicken.  "So you worked at Burger king,
    where else?"
    "At school, I used to do volunteer work at a radio station, BCN, but
    after awhile I realized, whoa, I gotta get a real job, I can't just
    be some stupid volunteer for my whole life. I gotta put a roof over
    my head."
    "You went to school?"
    "Yeah, studied TV and Radio, but couldn't get anything going with
    it." She sets down her fork and grabs at her crotch in an exaggerated
    gesture. "Bullshit walks, this talks. I told myself, I'd rather
    spread my legs as a job, then spread my legs for a job. Does that
    make any sense?"
    "More honest, I guess."
    "Let me tell you, I did it too. You don't think I could afford heroin
    on this do you? But I was lucky. Most of the guys were nice. Just a
    business proposition, just a job."
    I nod sagely as if this is the kind of thing I hear all the time.
    Begging is a step up the ladder for her.
* * *
    We talk about jobs, work. She can't temp, she says, because she's a
    little dyslexic. Can't type fast enough. I can't get up the nerve to
    ask her about the wandering eye. We talk about drugs. When I mention
    my psychotic episode, she shows her first genuine interest in me,
    asking focused, penetrating questions. Such as: "Did you think up
    this stuff on the acid, and then believe it when you came down?" and,
    "So you believed, you were like, the risen Christ, and the devil--"
    I nod and smile "and the holy ghost and the Antichrist, all rolled
    into one."
    "Whenever I did it, I was careful to not believe in it too much." She
    pushes her plate away, half eaten. "Like, I'd write the stuff down,
    and look at it later--"
    "--to see if it made any sense."
    She's smiling too, now. "It usually didn't. Like the one time, I'm
    driving over the golden gate bridge in San Francisco, and I think
    this isn't real, this an hallucination, but I know it is real,
    because I can feel it, I can feel the steering wheel in my hands."
    "You were in San Francisco?"
    "Yeah, I moved out there."
    "Why did you come back?"
    She smiles. "Stupidity. Stupidity."
    "One thing I always wonder about is, if you are going to be homeless,
    why not do it somewhere where the weather is nicer? I mean, if you
    can manage it."
    "Not so nice, in the summer, and fall."
    "Too hot?"
    "No, cold. That wet, down in your bones kind of cold, you know, when
    you're kind of hungry, and its about fifty, and its misty. God, the
    mist. I hated it. Mist all the time, everywhere, not rain, but mist.
    Soaked you all the way through. You couldn't get dry."
    "You work out there?"
    "No. Nobody wanted to pay for the call to the east coast to check my
    fucking references. Anyway, it was too easy to just be a hippy. I
    crashed in Peoples' Park. Let me tell you, three generations of
    hippys out there. Three generations out lying on the grass. I said,
    what did I step into a fucking time machine? Is this 1968 or 1988?"
    She paused. "Then the fucking niggers came and ruined it all."
    I frown. I realize that I've been frowning every time she says the
    word nigger, like some kind of Skinnerian exercise.
    "So what's it like, in the shelter?"
    "Welllllll..." She says, smiling sheepishly. "You want to know the
    truth..." She flags down a busboy, and asks him to bring her a box
    for her food. "My parents rent me a room in Shrewsbury. Its a hole,
    though. I take the T into the city, so I can hang out with people."
    She walks me back to work. She knows the names of a lot of the
    beggers I pass everyday. Trite, but somehow, you don't think of them
    as having names. She even throws some change in another beggar's
    cup.
    "The karmic wheel, you know?"
    We say goodbye like old friends. "See you later." I get on the
    elevator, to go back to the job I hate. I'd be fired at the end of
    the week myself, but I didn't know that.

____________________
     E. Jay O'Connell <[email protected]>is a 30 year old writer and
     artist living in the Boston Area.

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SAVEWAY
BY JIM ESCH


   The rain woke me, lying in a bed that was soft but now was hard. The
   window was half open and the rain sound filtered through the screen
   and dogged my late night thoughts. I can't quite describe how it felt
   to be lying there, still and wet, with planes of light dancing on the
   black wall, and the slow drip of the light rain spilling from the
   leaves and scuttling through the spouting. I was caught between the
   heat being cooled and dry being wet. I stared at the wall and the
   reflected light show of street lamps and passing cars for I don't know
   how long, and I was kind of hypnotized by the stillness that
   accompanies late night when most are hidden in dreams locked in
   rooms.
    But this numbness of thought was so clear that I might not call it
    numb, except that I wasn't really thinking of any subject as a thing
    to be thought about. I rolled over and tried to shift my hips so that
    my back would find comfort on the hard mattress and I thought about
    concrete action. Pumping gas wasn't good enough. Eight months of
    pumping gas was too long. Every morning and some weekends even,
    standing in the heat or the cold or the rain was too much anymore;
    too much in the sense that it was too much the same and there was no
    movement in this job and no satisfaction. Curling my body with the
    sheets, I came upon the answer. That was it -- no satisfaction, no
    movement. I was not who I wanted to be. My friends were not who I
    wanted them to be. I wasn't living on a farm and I wasn't in a flat
    and I wasn't in a clapboard house and I wasn't in a mansion
    overlooking a valley. My world was one of aluminum-sided apartments
    and brick facing and commercials for discount appliances, and it was
    not what I tho
    After graduation I chose Drexel because it was close to home and I
    could stay in touch with my friends and then later move on and blaze
    my own trail somewhere else. But Drexel didn't last and that waiter
    job at Seafood Shanty didn't last and then the stock boy job at Super
    Saver lasted too long because I made good money and didn't want to
    move and made these friends out of acquaintances that were too easy
    to forget to want to leave them. So I rented my own apartment and
    bought records and had people over for drinks. Then, being laid off
    in January and pushed into the street, I found this job jerking gas
    and stuffing thick wads of money into my workman's pants. Summer
    would end soon. What would be new at the station? Would anything
    move? There's no fulfillment in a gas station.     I remembered the
    woman yesterday who spent the night here. I always thought that a
    woman would be fulfilling, that the closeness of one body with
    another was enough to keep one satisfied. She was older than me and
    said I was g
    But I remembered Mandy and how she might have been the one who'd
    fulfill me like I thought I should be. She was the ideal woman, the
    one that every man sees and knows for the first time: "This is the
    one that I was meant to be with, who, when she is with me, will
    complete me." Kind of like Brigham Young coming through the mountains
    and saying that this was the place where the Mormons would stay and
    build a big temple that no one was allowed to enter. And for a short
    time in high school she focused my life. Every action arose from an
    impulse stirred by her presence. And this was a happy time -- to live
    in reflection of someone else, to be a shadow and want to be that
    way.
    Amanda. She became a friend and almost something else. But we had
    reached a point where, after that point, the plot of our lives
    diminished and drifted apart so that now I had lost the thread that
    had connected me with her. I remember once in the hallway when we
    shared a Pepsi and I was going to ask her; I almost asked her and I
    was building up and she talked to me of Florida and the sun and it
    was so right because her hair was gold and she was cuter than ever at
    that moment in her light track shorts and rolled down socks and the
    curve of her body within the loose cotton shirt. And it came to a
    point where my blood was racing and my heart pumping so as to release
    this emotion for her. Then I looked outside the window of the metal
    door and her mother was waiting in a Scirocco out front and Amanda
    walked over and saw her mother and said an affectionate good-bye and
    waved. The Scirocco pulled away and from then on I was lost.
    The rain had now stopped, but the trickle of the spout remained and
    beside this brook I slept a comfortable sleep because I was thinking
    how it used to be when I thought I could make it with her.

   The next morning was sun-filled and pretty, so I got up early and made
   my breakfast. The instant coffee was bitter and it burned my tongue. I
   thought about leaving then, leaving and finding her. If I could find
   her again, find out where she was, and what she had done with her life
   and make one last pitch, then I could move on. Someone around had to
   know what had happened to her. I searched my drawers for old phone
   numbers, of friends I hadn't talked to in years, since a homecoming or
   a chance meeting in a shopping center parking lot. I came up with some
   numbers and later that afternoon made my calls. Some weren't home,
   others had moved away, and some never answered or their lines had been
   disconnected. But I did reach Phil, one of her best friends in high
   school. Phil told me about his accounting job downtown and that he had
   just married a Jewess from Jenkintown. He'd just bought a home in Bryn
   Mawr along the road to the hospital, in a development of sandalwood
   and solar panels. Phil was proud of himself
    Then I asked about Mandy. He said she went to school at Georgetown
    and he'd heard that she'd been engaged to a guy from Alexandria.
    Well, engaged could mean anything I thought. But there wasn't much
    time to spare.
    I grappled with the options. Either stay here and pump gas in the
    August humidity and then the fall and winter, or steal away to
    Virginia and buy into a dream. Maybe she was waiting for me; even in
    school there was a part of me that said she really cared and she
    would come around. And I still believed that without us together
    she'd be incomplete too. I wondered whether she ever repressed a
    desire for me or whether she knew I loved her down to her bones.
    Life continued at the station and nothing changed except the air got
    colder. The night came on faster and it became chilly after dark, as
    September rolled into October. But I'd been planning. The second
    weekend in October was reserved for me and the Alexandria Holiday
    Inn, for a room with a king-sized bed. I took that Friday off from
    work and drove down for the weekend. All along the highway, in the
    hills on both sides, the trees were burning and I felt vigorous
    again, as if I was back in the hunt and even acts like turning on the
    radio assumed importance.
   The motel looked just right, its flashing arrow standing as a beacon
   for the tired motorist. Everything went smoothly. The room was neat
   and the sanitized smell of the bathroom made me pure. I leafed thought
   the ragged phone book for her number. It was still there under her own
   name. Tomorrow I would call on her. I'd make my stand.
    I was hungry for some Doritos and wine. There was a SaveWay
    supermarket across the boulevard from the motel, so I figured I'd
    walk over, get some air. The evening had turned cool and the sun was
    setting behind overcast, cracked gray winter clouds. The supermarket
    was warm. The fruits and vegetables were ripe and fresh and colorful.
    Hard, shiny apples and juicy oranges and magical pears. I almost
    bought some.
    At home I could never get out of a supermarket without seeing someone
    I knew or recognized. Usually it was someone I didn't want to see.
    But I never thought that in Virginia, in this wealthy neighborhood,
    with my guard down, that I'd see her in a supermarket. She was back
    at the meat counter. She chucked a pound of ground beef into her cart
    and rolled up another aisle. I was sure it was her; that face
    wouldn't lie. I was afraid, but I gathered myself together and snuck
    up to the other end of the aisle to watch her. She was choosing a box
    of cereal, which took a while because there were so many brands. I
    ducked into the next aisle, paper towels and tissues. She passed by
    to the next aisle. I couldn't stand the tension much longer. I
    followed. The junk food aisle. She grabbed a bag of tortilla chips,
    the same brand I liked.
    Even when she bent over to price the soda pop, she looked innocent.
    She hadn't grown fat or anything. She was almost the same, maybe even
    better, because there were some slight wrinkles around her eyes,
    adding some character that wasn't there before. In a sense,
    experience had changed her in ways I'd never know, but it was still
    her in the living flesh and nothing could change that. Just looking
    at her filled me with warm energy. It was so much better than trying
    to remember her in the empty places of the present, where she was
    only a ghost of past moments. She rolled to the freezer section. We
    were the only ones in the aisle. My heart dropped like lead, like
    when you're dreaming that you're falling. The adrenaline was pumping
    hard and it would not let me back down.
    I hesitated.
    She picked out some frozen corn.
    I wobbled closer. Still she did not notice. Then she glanced.
    Nothing. I closed in the final few feet, hands in pockets and head
    sunk down. I stood before her.
    She looked at me. I was scared and my eyes probably showed it, but I
    smiled and said hello. She was confused. Her eyes rolled back trying
    to recall my image; then she twitched and there was a moment when she
    recognized me. I know it.
    Then she squinted and her mouth dropped and her eyes turned gray.
    "Excuse me, do I know you?"
    I told her who I was.
    She stood there, faking at being puzzled.
    "Sorry, you must have mistaken me for someone else."
    But I hadn't. It was her. Her hair was still gold as an October leaf
    and her face and voice were the same. I tried to break though again.
    "Remember high school, spring track team? C'mon, you remember those
    times down at the track? Remember we shared a Pepsi and you're mom
    drove up --"
    "No, sorry."
    It was the way she said it, like crushing an ant in the snow.
    Then she looked one last time before rushing off, and in that deep
    drop of her eyes I could tell that she kind of pitied me, for I
    believe she recognized every secret hope that was never meant to be.
    I followed her to the checkout lines then gave up and only my eyes
    followed her as she carried her groceries back though the rain to her
    BMW. I didn't want to move further. The hard rain beating against the
    window held me back.
    I stayed in my room all night. Didn't even swim in the indoor pool.
    When I was younger, I could turn on the radio and feel along with the
    songs, but that was behind now. The magic fingers didn't soothe me
    much either. I lay in bed and listened to the cars splash through the
    night. And I wondered why things don't work out and how all that was
    left was to remember the way it was under a May sun in a green field
    with her for a couple of minutes. That's all I had. There wasn't
    anything left to expect.

____________________
Jim Esch <[email protected]> is a freelance writer and part time
college instructor living in St. Louis, MO.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Excerpt from _KISSING THE DEAD_
by STEWART O'NAN

       Larry Markhams wife left him while he was asleep.  Between four
       and six, he figured as he made himself an egg that Monday morning,
       because at three hed gotten upas was his habit, especially during
       the rainy seasongotten out of bed and, before looking in on Scott,
       turned the overhead light on and stood naked in the middle of the
       rope rug, amazed at the safeness, the pleasing security of their
       bedroom.  The pictures on the dresser, the wicker hamper, Vickis
       breathingthe whole instant struck him as overly familiar, as if
       lifted from a dream.  Before hed flicked the switch (though he
       knew it was foolish) hed been prepared to see the musty inside of
       his poncho liner, his rucksack smashed against his cheek.
       Skull, Carl Metcalf was saying, prodding him with the tip of his
       jungle boot, time to motate, bro.
       No.  This was Ithaca, not Vietnam, clean sheets instead of red
       dirt.  The sudden jump pleased him.  He looked down at his new
       foot to confirm it, and there was the prosthesis, perfect, not a
       single nick in its ridiculous, skin-toned rubber coating.  He was
       alive.  It seemed, he could admit, standing there soft and a
       little paunchy, an overwhelming piece of luck.
       He had stood looking at Vicki curled and warm under the covers.
       Now, at the stove, he wondered if she had actually been asleep.
       The gas hissed, rushed and flowered into a blue flame.  Outside,
       the rain made a sound he had not quite learned to ignore.  He
       thought he should feel worse about her leaving, about Scott, but
       he only felt incredibly tired, leaden.  It was unfair; October was
       his favorite month.  He could not think of what to do.  The house
       was quiet, his coffee steaming.  There was one crust of bread
       left.  It was enough today, now.  He had work to go to, and after,
       his group at the hospital.
       It was not the first time Larry Markham had woken alone to the
       radio and gone to Scotts room and found his bed mussed and his
       drawers empty.  It wasnt a mystery.  Theyd had trouble early that
       summer, after a long good stretch.  Since shed come back theyd
       been trying, but lately every effort seemed to take all their
       patience.  There were nights after Scott was in bed that they
       didnt talk.
       Hed called down the stairs, not expecting anything.  She had
       leaving him down to a routine even he knew by now.    The fight
       Friday night over who always drove Scott to his Rehab, who picked
       Scott up from the Special Childrens Center, who did the food
       shopping, who did the laundry, had not been merely to set the mood
       for the weekend but a formal way of saying goodbye.  How many
       times had she done it, and yet it still surprised him.  Shed
       risenhe knewa few hours before he was supposed to get up to run,
       and guided by the weak beam of a penlight theyd received for
       subscribing to Time  (which he still refused to read), made her
       way through the house.  She had skipped work the day before to
       pack a bag each for herself and Scott and then hidden them
       somewhere, Scotts closet or among her summer things in the attic.
       Shed gone to the bank just before it closed and arrived home at
       the same time as if shed finished her shift at the Photo USA.
       There were variations of this, but it came to the same thing.  He
       i
       Great, he said.
       The egg butted the side of the pot, dinging, and Larry spooned it
       out.  He ran cold water over it and knocked it against a wall of
       the sink, picked bits of shell away from the dent.  He set it
       gingerly in a dish, sat down by himself at the kitchen table and
       chopped it into bits with the side of the spoon, the yolk too
       runny, disgusting.  He sat there, spoon in hand, and looked at the
       egg as if it were a sign, a reminder.
       He wondered who it had been in the dream this time.  He wondered
       if hed called out the mans name in his sleepif, creeping down the
       stairs holding Scotts hand, Vicki had heard him, and if because of
       that (not in spite of it), she had felt even more sure, more at
       peace with what she was doing.
       Hed dreamed, he knew, because he was exhausted, but which one?
       Doesnt matter, he said, and took a gluey spoonful and a bite of
       heel and sat there chewing, trying not to think, to focus on the
       positive, as he counseled his group, on the immediate, the real.
       It didnt work for them either.
           There was no real.  There were the dreams and there was what
           Larry Markham remembered.  They did not change.  In both, his
           squad all died.  Pony, Bogut, Lieutenant Wiseall twelve, night
           by night, died, and Larry was grateful to wake to the
           ceaseless Upstate rains, the day laid out ahead of him like
           the puzzles his mother pieced together those long, drizzly
           fall afternoons, familiar and somehow comforting, a way to
           hold off the cold and the gathering evening.
       Some nights it was oneLeonard Dawson or Fred the Head.  Bates.
       Jesus, he thought, Go-Go Bates.  Larry had fixed him twice, and
       still he died.  He cut their fatigues off in dripping swatches,
       guided the syrette into their jumped-up veins.  After he popped
       them with morphine he drew an M in blood on their foreheads so the
       doctors would know back at the aid station.  Dumb Andy, Smart
       Andy, Soup.  Carl Metcalf.
       Whats it look like? Lieutenant Wise asked when theyd thrown a
       perimeter around the downed man, and before Larry could answer,
       the face strapped into the helmet or cinched into the boonie hat
       changed, became all of them, none of them.  They never looked down
       to see what had happened; they gripped his arm and looked him in
       the eye and waited for him to tell them.  Nate looked up, the
       Martian looked up, clutching his elbow so it hurt.
       Youre gonna be all right, Larry Markham said then.
       Truth, Skull.  And still they wouldnt look.  He did because it was
       his job, just as he ran to them when all he really wanted was to
       hug mud.  Corpsman up! someone not hit called, and Larry saw his
       man and flung himself forward, his own skin burning in
       anticipation of the bullet.  Sometimes there was nothing but a
       rag, a red flap, the unreal white of bone.  With body shots, if
       there were more than four holes most likely the guy wouldnt make
       it much past dust-off, but you couldnt just let the guy go, not in
       front of everyone.  Blood bubbled up between his fingers, ran over
       his hands.  The dust could only soak up so much; then it flooded
       like a Coke knocked overa gush and little rivers.
       Man, Larry said, sticking another pressure dressing on, it dont
       mean a thing, and he could not tell from the change that came over
       their faces then whether they were grateful or hated him.
       Other nights they came in bunches, the gloom of monsoon season
       filling the chill bedroom as he screamed into his pillowor moaned,
       for their blood and stunted breathing no longer shocked him (as it
       had not shocked him originally, after the first few), but rather
       struck him with dread and, unable to stop or even slow the
       approach of the next one, he could only protest feebly, leaching
       out a No, no, that drove Vicki to the living room sofa at least
       twice a week.
       She knew not to wake him with an elbow or by nudging his shoulder;
       once, coming out of it, he punched her in the throat and had to
       drive her to the emergency room at Tompkins County, where he knew
       his father would hear of it at shift change.  That she had
       intentionally broken Larrys nose during an earlier, less desperate
       period (with an ashtray stolen from the club where she waitressed,
       drunkenly and furiously hurled with absurd, almost comic
       precision) was held not to his credit but as further evidence that
       the entire marriage had been, as his father had maintained from
       the beginning, a mistake in the first place.
       He let the spoon drop and sink into the yellow mess.  She never
       left him for more than a few days.  That was what this was.  It
       was Monday, and he was sure to have a full truck, big deliveries
       at Tops and Wegmans and the three P&Cs.  Some machines up at
       Cornell, then the loop of gas marts south of town.  Group.  It
       would be a full day, a good day.
       He left his dish in the drainer, assembled a bologna-and-cheese
       sandwich, bagged an apple and got ready to go.  He liked having
       the house to himself, the silence.  He thought of not going in,
       but brushing his teeth he walked by Scotts door and noticed his
       ham radio, the happily-colored map of the world stippled with
       pinsall the places Larry had called and given the mike to Scott so
       he could mumble his name.  He was eight but would always be three,
       four, the doctors werent sure.  Larry went back into the bathroom
       and spat.  At the last second he remembered to put the answering
       machine on.
       On the porch he fumbled with his keys, dropping his lunch with a
       thud.  He was going to be late, which he hated.  The trees had
       just begun to turn and a first layer of wet leaves filled the
       ditches.  Rain hung from black branches across the road; the cows
       were out, standing and breathing steam.  Farther up the hill a
       grey barn leaned as if gently stepped on.  The rain made him
       listen harder; it pricked his face but from habit he didnt blink.
       The chill of Ithaca had not lost its ability to surprise him.  He
       could never get warm enough, even in the height of July.  There
       was no reason; hed lived here his entire life except for his
       tour.  He knew that that one year shouldnt have such pull, yet
       often it seemed equal to the other thirty-one, a balanced half,
       and sometimes, the worst times, he was convinced it meant
       everything, summed him up and finished him before hed had a chance
       to understand.  In its lostness, its distance, it was something
       like childhood, vivid yet irretrievable, precious.  Occasiona
       Next door, Donna Burnss old Impala sat with its nose against the
       rotting lattice of the porch, its bumper jutting over the
       sidewalk.  Save the Earth, begged an exhaust-filmed sticker.
       Taking up the back half of the drive, Wade Burnss nearly restored
       Camaro permanently wintered under a cloth tarp dotted with pockets
       of black water, and Larry thought that if Vicki couldnt stay for
       him, at least she shouldnt have run out on Donna.
       They hadnt seen her this weekend, but the car had stayed where
       shed parked it early Friday morning, crookedly, getting out loudly
       by herself and hooting at something utterly private.  Hed
       complained to Vicki that she was getting worse.
       What else is she supposed to do? shed said, and rolled over, away
       from him.  That he and Wade had been closehad talked about his
       leaving over cold Schaefers in their garage months before Wade had
       gotten up the courage to actually do itwas a fact Vicki could not
       forgive him, and which he, seeing how quickly Donna had fallen
       apart, now helplessly defended to himself.  Shes nice, shes the
       sweetest woman in the world, Wade admitted, then shook his head.
       But shes not right.  Theres something very basically wrong with
       her.  Ive tried but I cant fix it.  Larry promised that he and
       Vicki would keep an eye on her for him, which consisted of making
       sure she refilled her prescriptions, and occasionally, when she
       forgot, bailing her out.  She had the habit, in the grip of her
       mood swings, of getting wildly drunk and smashing windows.  One
       Easter morning theyd seen her in the backyard wearing nothing but
       a pair of tennis shoes and menacing Wade with a rake.
       I dont care who Jesus is! she shouted.  I want my own radio show!
       She was better by the time Wade left, but they worried about her.
       Friday when shed gotten in, Larry had seen her lights come on and
       lain in bed looking for her shadow, waiting for the crash and
       tinkle of glass.  She crossed the windows and pitched forward,
       fell without a sound.  At three, when he rose up in the thick of
       the jungle to find himself saved, her lights were still on.
       Now it almost seemed funny that they were both alone, a weird
       coincidence.  Hed had a crush on her once, a vision of her in a
       swimsuit at some summer barbecue, her dark hair halfway down her
       back.  The children were little then.  The judge had given them to
       Wade, and there was nothing to argue about, even she knew.  So
       strange.  After all their plans, it had come down to two houses,
       two people.
       Fucked up, he said.
       He detoured around the Impala, wetting one leg of his jeans on the
       bumpers rubber strip in keeping to the asphalt walk.  He could
       walk on grass now, but only when the weather was dry, and he would
       not step on dirtit always appeared freshly turned and tamped.  He
       could not explain why he still distrusted the ground; his foot was
       only the most obvious excuse.  Early mornings, running the road,
       he had to pick his way through long puddles and ruts, herringbone
       patterns of mud laid by tractor tires, and when he accidentally
       touched one and his Nikes slipped an instant before regaining
       traction, his heart would spike and hed swear out a cloud.  Hed
       seen Dumb Andy fly backwards over Pony and then himself into a
       banana tree where pieces of him hung like drying laundry.  Weeks
       ago, cruising by the bus stop, hed caught the toe of his new foot
       on the lip of a pothole and was sent stumbling, and two girls
       smoking cigarettes had laughed.  Dizzy with fear, hed nearly had
       to stop to vomit.
       The walk began to disintegrate, then ended ineptly in chunks of
       asphalt.  He followed the roads tarred, irregular edge, listening
       for cars behind him.  Far off, the pitch of their tires on the
       concrete mimicked the shifting rush of a Phantom levelling out for
       a run.  It was a pleasing sound, but one which made him flinchjust
       slightly, for an instant hunching one shoulder to protect his
       face, like a sleepy duck tucking its head beneath a wing.  From a
       klick off, the heat of a ville going up warmed his face like the
       fire in his fathers den.  When hed first caught himself in the
       gesture, running with his old foot, he had been ashamed.  There
       was so much of the world he didnt trust anymore.  For months he
       taught himself not to look over his shoulder, to let the noise
       grow behind him and not see the napalm canisters tumble from the
       rack, leave a smear of fire a block long.  A stage passed where he
       could laugh at it; now it was a rare day that he gave it a
       thought, usually the sign of a bad one.
       Carl with his hands out, the skin of his fingers seared together
       into mitts.
       Just get me through today, he thought.
       There was no one at the stop, for which he was grateful, only the
       Journal machine chained to the telephone pole.  Something about
       the town trying to cut a last-minute deal.  Typical
       Ithacanickel-and-dime politics.  Cars came by with their lights on
       and their wipers arcing, each bringing its own small squall as it
       passed.  One of them honked for some reason.  Too late, Larry
       waved.  Wind slipped under his collar, reached down his back.  He
       fitted his lunch into the crook of his elbow and jammed his hands
       into his jacket pockets.  He could feel the warm lint in there.
       The cows seemed to be looking at him.
       Got a problem? he called, but they didnt look away.
       He checked his watchthere was still time, another ten minutes
       maybe.  His luck.  One must have just come.
       Another car honked.
       He waved.
       Why dont you stop and give me a ride, he muttered, watching it
       go.
       A Duster passed, the wrong color and younger, hardly rusted.
       Vicki would have dropped Scott off already.  Shed be at her
       mothers over by Trumansburg, getting ready for work, rolling her
       stockings on, clipping her name to her uniform.  He imagined what
       his father would say when he found outand he would, Ithaca was
       that kind of town.  Vicki would probably call his father to
       explain.  Larry imagined him in the den after dinner, listening
       with that polite, untiring patience he used with the dying,
       thanking her for calling and then hanging up, continuing with his
       New England Journal of Medicine and half-finger of scotch.  He
       would not be surprised; he would wait a day or two to call Larry
       to see if he was all right.
       Im okay, Larry would say.
       If theres anything, his father would say.
       No.
       All right then.
       Okay.
       By Friday his sister Susan in Michigan would know the whole story
       and give him a consoling lecture of a call.  She had divorced,
       remarried, divorced again and remarried her first husband, and she
       had advice.
       From the barn came the bright clinking of a bell, and the cows
       sauntered away in a group, their tails flicking.  He turned from
       the road and kicked at the base of the telephone pole, his boot
       leaving a smudgy ghost of its waffle design in the creosote.  He
       made another print directly above it and practiced hitting the
       two, as if warming up for a more difficult exercise.  With his
       hands in his pockets, he imagined it was good for his balance.  He
       could feel the rain sitting in his hair but didnt mind.  He
       thought with a bitter kind of pride that hed seen worse.
       A Cougar came by flashing its lights.
       What the hell, he asked, but waved.  The drivera fat, bearded man
       he didnt recognizewaved back furiously.
       Everybodys friend, Larry said, thats me.
       He gave the shaft of the bus stop sign a spin kick, and the metal
       head shivered tinnily.  Jesus, he hated being late.  He hadnt been
       late for work in three years, and that was a snow day.  He showed
       up to find the store locked, the parking lot trackless.  Vicki had
       teased him for his loyalty, then speculated bitterly on the
       chances of him ever becoming a manager.  For years theyd waged the
       same two or three fights, resting only for a special dinner, a
       present, an inspired night of lovemaking.
       A pair of headlights the right height flared in the distance, but
       it was a rental truck, college kids.  Discover America! the panel
       urged, above a lumpy Mount Rushmore.  At least the little snots
       didnt honk.
       Come on, he said, and looked at the sky, the wind cold on his
       throat.  Above him, clouds tore themselves to bits, shredded like
       sopping handfuls of gauze.  It was an all day rain, the kind that
       seemed to follow him around the globe.  Hed liked them as a kid,
       liked sitting inside the dark house while his mother knitted to
       the radio.  Susan was at school.  His mother had a stack of heavy
       78sThe Budapest String Quartet, Glenn Gould, Charles Munch and the
       Boston Symphony Orchestra.  On the covers were palaces and women
       in skimpy, exotic costumes.  Her cane rested in the gap made by
       the couch cushions, its curved handle worn thin from her touch,
       the varnish hard and smooth as glass.  Sometimes she had to try
       several times to get up.  Come give me a lift, shed ask him, and
       hed carefully place one sneaker on the empty tip of her shoe and
       take her hand and lean back with all his weight.  Other times she
       would call for Mrs. Railsbeck, their housekeeper, and he would
       have to go outside or upstairs.  Im all rig
        It was official, he was going to be late.  It angered him like a
        defeat.  He thought of what he could say to the bus driver,
        something about being paid by the hour.  A bead of water hung
        icicle-like from his nose; he blew it off and rubbed the spot
        with the back of a sleeve.  An orange Volvo shot by, flashing its
        lights, hauling behind it a wall of spray that settled upon him
        like a net.
       For Chrissake, Larry Markham said.
       He was wiping water from his eyebrows with a knuckle when a large
       white car with its lights on slowed and stopped beside him.  It
       was the Impala.
       Donna Burns leaned across the big bench seat and opened the door
       for him with what he thought was too much of a smile.  For a
       second he imagined she had just stopped laughing.  She was
       brightly made-up and had on sunglasses, a purple scarf, tan
       trenchcoat and black kneeboots, and Larry thought he didnt have
       the energy to deal with her.
       Thats all right, he said.  Ones due any minute.
       I dont think so.  Dont you know?  She grinned at him as if he knew
       the answer but was playing dumb.  She had an aggressive calm he
       associatedfrom his groupwith lunatics.  He wondered if she could
       tell from his face that Vicki had left him again.
       No, he said blankly, I dont know.
       Theyre on strike.
       Jesus Christ, he said, thinking, it figures.
       Come on, she said.
        He got in and they started off.  Shed just gotten out of the
        shower and was wearing too much perfume.  On the dash a red
        plastic coffee mug with a Cornell logo sat wedged into a matching
        base; in the trough of the defrost vent rested a bottle of
        Tylenol.  She worked as a secretary for an obscure department,
        something to do with plants and psychology.  He could not imagine
        how she dealt with people on an everyday basis, yet she did, and
        had even during her weird years.  She turned down the radionew
        wave, all synthesizers and chilly English accents.
       They just started today.
       Thats what I get for not reading the paper, he said.
       She turned up the heater for him, offered him the coffee.  Its got
       a kick, she warned.
       It had some sort of liqueur in it, creamy and intensely sweet.
       She laughed at the face he made.
       Too early for you?
       Nope, he said, embarrassed for her, and then thought of riding
       around all day drinking the way he had when he first came back.  A
       line of cars passed them in the other direction, people intent on
       getting to work.  It pleased him to see life going on, even
       without him.  It made his problems seem smaller, insignificant.
       Crummy day, huh?  She looked from the road to him.  Her lipstick
       was smudged from the mug.
       Yeah, he admitted, and looked at the ranches and split-levels
       drifting by.  Some had pumpkins on the porch steps, headless
       scarecrows made of old jeans and flannel shirts stuffed with hay.
       They slumped in lawnchairs or against coachlights, lay sprawled
       and fallen like dead VC.  Hed have time to buy candyor Vicki
       would.  Scott was going to be Superman, shed already made the
       cape.
       So how are you doing? she asked.
       It was a hard question.  He wondered if she knew, if shed figured
       it out or if Vicki talked to her the way Wade did to him.
       I dont know, he said,  okay.  How about you?
       Great.  Never better.  She took her hands off the steering wheel
       and put them over her eyes, leaned her head back as if rinsing her
       hair.
       Hey!  He took the wheel with one hand and brought the car back
       into the right lane.  It was power steering, and hard to make it
       go straight.
       I suppose you didnt hear me come in Friday night either.
       We did.  You sounded like you were doing all right.
       Im not.  Wades moving to Oklahoma.  Isnt that nice?  She took the
       wheel again, chased him away with a hand.  Tulsa.  Im not going to
       see Brian and Chris except for Christmas and two weeks in the
       summer.  I think thats fair, dont you?
       Im sorry.  Whats he doing in Tulsa?
       Fucking some redneck bitch.  And hes got a new job.  Oh,
       everythings going great for Wade.  He says hello.
       Say hello back.
       You do it, she said.  She took a long shot of the coffee and
       pushed it into its holder again, frantically lit a cigarette and
       stabbed it at the windshield, the wipers slapping the rain away.
       You dont know how fucking glad Ill be when this year is over.
       Tell me about it, Larry said, and for a moment hoped she knew.
       They were coming into Ithaca, passing the long prefab barns of
       Cornells Vet school before the hill dropped into town proper.  The
       dash clock gave him an even chance of getting there on time.  All
       the roads east of town funneled into Route 79, and he was glad she
       had to concentrate on traffic.  Behind the wheel, she bobbed and
       weaved as if slipping punches from the other cars.  He thought of
       spending the day riding high in Number 1, the simple deliveries,
       stopping to off-load a tray of Donettes and Hohos and Ring Dings
       to people he didnt know beyond a polite greeting.
       Well, Donna said, what are you gonna do, yknow?  She seemed to
       wait for an answer to this, then asked, What time you need to be
       there?
       Doesnt matter, he said, but at Seneca and Aurora she gunned it
       through a long yellow.  He would punch in before he put his
       uniform on, get a coffee at his first stop.  Over the years he had
       not lost a taste for the crumb cakes, and one of his great
       pleasures was driving with an open box on the dash, washing the
       bite-sized treats down at stoplights and feeling the caffeine and
       sugar kick in.  He always paid himself for them, and the next
       morning ran them off, fifteen calories a minute, but everytime he
       tore the perforated strip from a new box, he accused himself of a
       sinful decadence, an intemperance indicating far greater
       weaknesswhich only made him eat more.  Like everything, they
       tasted better in the rain.  He knew he would polish off a whole
       box today, and it didnt bother him, in fact made him grateful for
       the very existence of crumb cakes and to Hostess for making them
       bite-sized.
       They didnt say anything for a while, and he liked her for it.
       Coming down Seneca they got caught behind a school bus picking up
       some kids.  One had a camouflaged backpack which made Larry look
       away.
       Hey, Donna said, I know its none of my business, but are you gonna
       be okay?
       He looked back to the school bus, willing it to move.  In the
       emergency door a crush of little girls not even Scotts age were
       giving him the finger.  They smeared their faces against the
       glass, blew their cheeks up monstrously.  Donna looked at him
       pityingly, as if she understood.  The dash clocks red second hand
       swept along.
       Ive done it before, he said, Christ, I dont know how many times
       now.
       I know, she said.  She stubbed her cigarette out and frowned.  The
       conversation seemed to have taken all the life out of her.
       Why, he asked, is this time going to be different?
       She looked at him as if what she had to say would hurt him, but
       said nothing.
       The bus pulled its stop sign in, its lights went from red to
       yellow, and it pulled out with a burst of diesel smoke.  Donna
       passed it, and after, paid too much attention to the other
       traffic.  They turned left at Meadow Street and headed south down
       13.  The Wonder Bread outlet was less than a mile from them,
       wedged into the sooty gauntlet of used car lots and fast food
       franchises, muffler shops and budget motels.  If they hit every
       light they might still make it.
       I dont know, she said, ducking a blue Buick.  I just dont think
       its the same this time.
       What did she say?
       Nothing new, really.  She grimaced apologetically.  She told me to
       keep an eye on you.
       Oh, great.  When was this?
       Thursday.
       Thanks for warning me, he said.
       She said youd understand.
       I dont understand anything, he said, though even she could see it
       was not true.  Just to piss him off, the lights ahead of them
       dropped sequentially to green, and silent, the radio playing some
       maudlin song about the difficulties of loveTheres one thing you
       gotta do /to make me still want you/ Gottta stop sobbin oh-hothey
       ate up the mile to the outlet.
       It was a white cinderblock building infected with the products
       red, yellow and blue dots.  Today they made him feel especially
       clownish; he hoped she wouldnt notice.
       Hey, she said, dropping him off.  The chorus was going on and on.
       Maybe Ill come by later, okay?  Or vice-versa, whatever.
        Sure, he said, and thanked her and closed the door, and for a few
        seconds walking to the rear of the building he was completely,
        blissfully alone.
       He punched in precisely on time.  The locker room was empty.
       Murrays gold Eldorado was in the lot, which meant he was in his
       office.  Derek was upfront, cheerfully taking care of the
       earlybirds; Julian wasnt in yet, his card still on the OUT side.
       Larry was surprised the kid hadnt been fired.  He was nice if a
       little spacya Deadheadand unlike Derek, seemed impressed that
       Larry was a vet.  Julian was always after him for storiesand not
       obnoxiously, not kidding, he really wanted to hear them.  Larry
       put him offso much that it was a joke between thembut still it was
       good to have someone acknowledge what hed done.  Last week, Murray
       had asked Larry to talk to Julian about being late.  Larry thought
       hed gotten through.
       Now he was late himself.  This second he was supposed to be
       loading up the truck, ticking off his customers orders against his
       invoices.  Wonder White, Wonder Lite, Wonder Wheat.  With a finger
       he flipped his locker open and began changing into the
       blue-and-white uniform.  A picture of Vicki helping Scott onto a
       pony was stuck to the door.  She had on red short-shorts and a
       peppermint tube top; you could see the white lines from her
       bikini.  He began to remember the day at the lake, the trip to the
       gift shop, how Scott had been excited by the windmill and the
       water hazard at the miniature golfand stopped himself by humming
       the song from the car:  Gotta stop sobbin oh-ho, yeah, stop stop
       stop stop, gotta stop sobbin,oh ho, and on and on until he had
       clipped on his bowtie and zipped his Hostess jacket to the neck.
       Beside the picture hung a piece of Scotts art, a collage of
       fabric, macaroni and cotton balls signifying earth, sea and sky.
       Larry closed the door and pulled his cap snug on his head, took
       He gave Murray a wave as he passed his window, upfront said, Hey
       now, to Derek.
       Hey hey, Derek said, fastidiously bagging a couple boxes of Suzy
       Qs for a stout woman Larry had seen before.  Probably a teacher
       putting on a Halloween party.  Scott had tomorrow off, though he
       still had Rehab.  Larry tried to think if shed ever left on a
       Monday before.
       He filled the orders on his clipboard, counting out cupcakes and
       mini-muffins, arranging the plastic trays in the dolly.  Wegmans
       alone took fifteen minutes, and as his hands played over the soft
       bags and cellophane-windowed boxes, he remembered Leonard Dawson
       and Go-Go Bates eating pound cake at some night position in the
       hills.  Nothing had happened, it was just a picture his mind
       coughed up, the thin, sickly black man with his thick, issue
       glasses, beside him the dangerously energetic Bates, spooning
       contentedly from their cans.  They played hearts together with a
       deck Leonards sister had given him; he sent a card home every
       Wednesday, one for each week of his tour.  Hed started with the
       hearts, so by the time they left Firebase Marge, the only card
       they had to watch out for was the queen of spades.  Leonard said
       he was saving the deadly ace for last, that, defying all odds, hed
       take it with him on the plane, pin the sucker to the peephole in
       his skivvies and play peekaboo with the stewardesses.
       Larry finished the last rack of fruit pies, added an extra box of
       crumb cakes, then took it off again.  He remembered hed left his
       lunch in his locker, and retrieved it before rolling the dollies
       onto the truck.  Behind his window, Murray lowered his newspaper
       and pointed to his watch; Larry nodded.
       Eat me, he said when he was past, then did an immediate
       about-face, thinking of the crumb cakes, but saw instead Leonard
       Dawsons small hands, the high school ring he was so proud of, and
       stopped himself.  On the way out he gave a lariat-twirling
       cardboard cutout of Twinkie the Kid the finger.
       It was still raining; it was Ithaca.  From the side of Number 1
       the same boggle-eyed cartoon smiled down upon him, in full chaps
       and spurs yet horseless.
       Yahoo, Larry Markham said.
       He checked the rear doors, got in and settled himself, letting the
       engine warm.  He tugged on the knuckleless driving gloves Scott
       had given him for his birthday, snapped the snaps.  He would call
       her at the mall, and then her mother if he didnt get her.  The way
       he was going hed barely have time to eat.  He threw Number 1 into
       first and headed across the lot and clicked his turn signal on.
       As he was waiting to take the left, Julians rusty Subaru turned in
       beside him and beeped.  Larry honked back, shaking his head, and
       goosed Number 1 across Route 13.
        Sometimes he thought he was happiest driving, with his mind only
        half-connected to the rhythm of bumpers in front of him, the flow
        of lights and signs.  His eyes flitted over the road as if on
        ambush, picking out movement, gauging and dismissing it.  The
        truck heated up.  He got the defroster going, put the wipers on
        low and tuned the radio to WSKG, which had the last movement of
        Schumanns Rhenish Symphony blasting.  He liked Schumann, unlike
        his mother, who called him that nut, and when told by the
        announcer that hed composed a piece shed been interested in,
        responded to the room at large, Oh, him.  As a child Larry liked
        how the music forced him out of himself, took him somewhere else
        completely.  Now he let the rain and heavy strings sweep him
        along to his first stop at Wegmans, insulated from the day.
       The first thing Ron the assistant manager asked was, Hows it
       going?
       Good, Larry said aggressively.  You?
       It was all he had to say.  Everyone else in the half-lit back of
       the store was busy tossing boxes or hosing down produce.  They all
       wore the blue Wegmans uniform, and responded to his with the edgy,
       mutual tolerance natural between different branches of the
       service.  He rolled his dolly along, following the
       yellow-and-black caution tape on the floor through a tangle of
       hanging plastic strips which swallowed him like a carwash.  It was
       cold on the other side, and he heard the ring, clash and clatter,
       the high, grinding whine of a saw from the meat department, but
       passed the gleaming steel doors without looking in either
       porthole.  Above the last doors before the actual store hung a
       sign that said:  COURTESY FIRST.  Beneath, behind violet-tinted
       windows, shoppers and their carts glided silently as fish.  Larry
       paused an instant and straightened his cap.  He liked the whole
       pageantry of entering from within, as if hustled from his dressing
       room through the chaos backstage to emerge perfectly from the wi
       The lights were blinding, the air warm, the Muzak immediately
       lulling.  It took him an instant to recover, as if hed bumped a
       piece of scenery.  No one noticed.  He guided the dolly up the
       cookie aisle, set up shop and redid his shelves.
       No one approached or interrupted him.  Shoppers pushed past,
       oblivious, as if he were invisible.  The company was featuring a
       seasonal orange-and-black jack-o-lantern cupcake, and to make room
       he had to tighten everything on that shelf.  Someone had left a
       half-eaten Sno Ball on top of its wrapper; he put its pink remains
       on a tray to toss in the garbage on his way out.  And the new
       Brownie Bites werent moving, there was a form to report that.  He
       checked everything against his clipboard and rolled on toward the
       bread corner.
       His donuts and Donettes were fine, his mini-muffins and iced honey
       buns.  He could have easily shorted them a box of crumb cakes, but
       didnt, instead buying a huge styrofoam cup of black coffee at
       their fake European bistro.  When he switched the hazards off and
       headed Number 1 for Tops, he was on time.
       Larry, the manager there said, how are you, buddy?
       Great, Larry said.
       At the first P&C, the woman at the bakery counter asked, Hows the
       family?
       Fine, he said, but this time questioned his enthusiasm, wondered
       if it gave him away.
       And your wife, inquired the woman in the second P&Cs courtesy
       booth, she still working up to the mall?
       Sure is.
       And your boy, hows he now?
       Goddammit, he said in Number 1, throwing his clipboard against the
       dash so hard his pen flew.  He went into the back and grabbed a
       box of crumb cakes from someones tray.  No one would notice.  Hed
       make it up next week.
       At lunch he stopped by the IGA in Dryden and tried Vicki at work.
       He stood in the rain-beaded telephone booth, a chill sneaking
       through the accordioned doors.
       Photo USA, another woman answeredCheryl maybe, or Katie, he could
       never tell them apart.
       Is Vicki there? he asked.  A hand clamped over the mouthpiece.  He
       heard someone muffled in the background.
       Is this Larry?
       Yes, he said.
       She didnt come in today.  She waited, as if challenging him.
       Not at all?
       Nope.
       Okay, he said, thank you, and hung up.
       He let her mothers phone ring nine times before he retreated to
       the oily warmth of Number 1.  He sat there in the parking lot of
       the IGA and looked at the puddles and the phone booth while he ate
       his sandwich and his apple and three more crumb cakes, and thought
       again of Leonard Dawson, how he had disappeared from his foxhole
       one night to pee and they had to go find him.  He was just a
       little guy, Bates kept saying afterward, showing how the ring
       wouldnt fit his own pinky, but nobody really wanted to hear it.
       He wasnt the first and wouldnt be the last, and maybe if hed
       showed around that picture of his fine sister, more guys would
       have liked him.
       Larry wrapped the core of his apple in a napkin and stuffed it
       into the bag, balled it up, got out and threw it in a barrel by
       the electric doors.  He tried Vickis mother again but came up with
       nothing.  At her work he got the same answer from what he assumed
       was the same person, which meant nothing.  She could still be
       either place, and with the car she was mobile.  He decided to zip
       through his afternoon stops and catch her picking up Scott at
       schoolnot to argue with her but just to show he missed them.  It
       was a plan, and enough to keep him moving.
       It was a slow time at the gasmarts, and everyone wanted to know
       how he was, whether hed had a good weekend, who he liked between
       the Cards and Milwaukee.
       Fine, he said, yep, oh, the Brew Crew, but kept his eyes on his
       merchandise, and hiding his rudeness behind work, hurried the
       clerks into signing his clipboard, refused their offers of coffee
       and swung Number 1 across the empty lots.  It rained all day, as
       he knew it would.  He finished early in Danby and rocketed back to
       town with his lights on, accompanied by a murky, Scandanavian tone
       poem.  Below, to the north, an appropriate mist hung gloomily over
       the lake.
       Pulling into the lot of the Special Childrens Center, he was
       pleased to see the numbered buses waiting nose-to-tail with just
       their running lights on, chuffing out exhaust as their drivers
       caught a smoke under the overhang.  Evening had begun to come
       down; a warm light filled the windows, made the emptying
       classrooms seem rich and busy as a hive.  Only a few parents had
       shown up so farno Ruster.
       When they first sent him there, Scott had wanted to take the bus;
       theyd even tried it for a week, but Vicki found herself going to
       get him anyway, haltingly following the bus home.  Larry joked
       with her about it, but nowand whenever he drove past the Center
       during the dayhe felt just as helpless.  It was his fault the
       doctors had to reroute Scotts intestines as an infant, his fault
       his son hadthey told them when he was threeno sense of smell.
       Often when Scott looked at him with his mismatched eyes, his brow
       so large it appeared ripe, almost soft, Larry wanted to take the
       boys face in his hands and with a power drawn not from God but
       simple justice miraculously heal him.  Instead he had taught him
       how to turn the sound down on the TV so the cartoons he loved but
       would never understand wouldnt wake them up Saturdays.  Two years
       ago, when he was picking up his first words, Vicki got him to say,
       Smells good, whenever she creaked open the oven door.  It was a
       highlight of holiday get-togethers at her mot
       Larry took the last crumb cake from the box, then put it back as a
       brace of cars pulled up and doubleparked beside the loading zone.
       One man in a Toyota took out a book and began to read.
       A few students pushed through the doors and scattered, then stood
       dazed in the rain, trying to identify their rides.  He recognized
       some from their coats and canes, and one from the steel halo
       bolted into his head.  He was so used to seeing the contraptions
       in his group that he had to remind himself it wasnt normal.
       A rush of students spilled onto the walk, and the bus drivers
       ground out their cigarettes.  A mother flung open a car door and
       knocked a lunchbox from her sons pincer of a hand, waited
       patiently while he retrieved it.  Larry didnt see anyone from
       Scotts class yet.  Still no Ruster.
       The children sprinted and skipped and wandered, some holding their
       coats despite the cold.  One stood forlornly by the doors, resting
       his hooded head against the brick wall.  A mother struggled with a
       science project made from aluminum foil and a large cardboard
       box.  The first bus pulled out and the other two moved up.  He
       thought he spotted a girl named Natalie that Scott had invited
       over to play once, and there was Jeffrey (Death-ray, Scott called
       him), and Matthew with his Smurf backpack, and Luke.  The second
       bus was loading, heads filling the windows.  A cheddar Chevy van
       swung alongside the curb, picked up one kid and zoomed off again.
       The headlights of the second bus came on, showing how hard it was
       raining now.  They swept across the lot as the bus wheeled around,
       followed identically by the third.
       No one else was coming out; most of the cars were gone.  Two
       teachers stood by the doors, a man and a woman hugging themselves
       against the cold, occasionally waving.  He strained toward the
       windshield to see if Scott was among the stragglers on the walk,
       and when he didnt spot him, undid his seat belt, got out and
       picked his way through the puddles.
       Im looking for my sonScott Markham? he asked the man and woman
       simultaneously.
       Wait here, the woman said, and went inside.
       The man was young and wore a thin leather tie and pointy shoes.
       Larry could feel him looking at his uniform.
       Hows it going? Larry asked.
       Good, the man said defensively, and asked him back.
       They stood side by side watching the last cars go off, the clouds
       slide dramatically across the hilltops.  Now the children were all
       gone, the lot empty except for Number 1.  The lights inside went
       out.
       He wasnt in today, the woman explained when she returned.  The
       office has it as an excused absence.
       Larry tried to come up with somethinga mix-up, crossed wiresbut
       could only thank them.  He knew they would watch him back to the
       truck and talk about him as he pulled out.  What the hell, at
       least he had tried.
       He started Number 1 and pulled his gloves on, and looking at his
       fingers saw Go-Go Bates with Leonard Dawsons class ring on a
       bootstring around his neck.  When they came to medevac him out the
       second time, the doc on the chopper automatically went for his
       tags.  He squatted there with the ring in his hand as the skids
       rose and tilted.  B plus! Larry hollered up into the rotor wash,
       Hes B pos! though his heart had already stopped, and when the
       other medic held a hand to his ear, gave up and pointed to his
       boots, where Bates had stashed his tagsone in eachso they wouldnt
       clink and give him away on ambush.
       Jesus, Larry said in wonder, and gently thumped a fist against the
       steering wheel.  Go-Go, man.  B plus.  He opened the last crumb
       cake and sat there eating it while the rain trickled down the
       windshield.   When he was done, the man and woman were gone, the
       doors shut.
       The lights of Ithaca were on now.  Rush hour had begun, and Larry
       had to jockey across several lanes to make the turn into the
       Wonder outlet.  The front was busy with people picking up cheap
       loaves on the way home.  Through the windows he could see Julian
       and Derek at the counter, and he thought he would have to ask
       Julian for a ride to his group at the hospital and then fend him
       off in the car.  There were these two guys in our squad, he might
       say.  A little guy and a big guy.  A black guy and a white guy.  A
       smart guy and a dumb guy.  Then group, where it was his job to
       hear their stories, and later hed have to catch a ride back with
       his father, when all he wanted was to be alone with Leonard Dawson
       and Go-Go Bates for the evening.  Vicki would show up at her
       mothers eventually with some loopy rationale for Scott missing
       school.  Christ, it was tiring.
           Murrays Eldorado was gone.  Larry fit Number 1 into its space
           and locked up.  Inside, the picture of Vicki in her tubetop
           ambushed him, and he banged the door shut so hard that it
           opened again.
       He called her mothers from the front; while he was listening to it
       ring, the lights flickered twice, signalling last call.  When
       Derek had rung up the last customer, he chopped the lights off,
       neatly vaulted the counter and locked the front doors.  He had his
       apron and uniform shirt off before they made the locker room.
       Julian said he could give him a ride but first he had to lock up.
       And hes going to open up tomorrow, Derek said, hauling on his
       leather jacket, and all week.  Word came down.
       All talk, Julian said, but glumly.
       I dont know, Larry warned.
       I will see you gentlemen tomorrow, Derek said.  He punched out,
       and a minute later crossed the front window holding an umbrella
       and leaning into the wind.
       Larry helped Julian wipe down the counters and stayed out of the
       way while he swabbed the floor.  A car turned into the lot,
       realized they were closed and swung back onto the road.  Larry
       peered out at the traffic, the lights going both ways.
       Wanna get stoned? Julian offered, pinching a roach between
       fingernails.
       Cant.
       Julian took a last hit and tossed it into the mop water, rolled
       the bucket to the sink and muscled it up and in.  While he cleaned
       the sink, Larry picked their cards out of the rack and looked at
       Julians time IN.
       He looked at the phone with its twisted cord hanging beside the
       time clock and thought he would have to call his father
       eventually.  He picked it up and dialed the number, waited for the
       operator and then the receptionist to switch him to the office.
       This is Doctor Markham, his father answered, as if prepared for
       the next, more difficult question.
       Dad, Larry.  I was wondering if I could get a ride with you
       tonight.
       Again.
       Again, Larry admitted, though the last time had been a month ago
       when the Ruster dropped its muffler.
       Car trouble?
       Basically, Larry said.
       Eight-fifteen?
       Yeah, that would be great.
       Meet you in the lobby.
       Okay, Larry said, thanks, and they hung up without saying
       goodbye.  Larry stood there looking at the phone for a second, the
       swinging cord.  It hadnt been bad, and yet he knew his father had
       already counted thishowever smallas another failure.
       Dont punch me out yet, Julian called from the front.
       Right, Larry shouted.
       So what did Murray say? Larry asked in the Subaru.  Julian had the
       Dead blastingRed Rocks 73, he said.  He darted aggressively
       between lanes, making Larry press an imaginary brake pedal.
       Nothing.  I just cant be late for a while.  I can do that.  Dont
       get me wrong, but its not like my dream job, you know?
       Yeah, Larry admitted.
       You know, I dont know, dream and job dont really go together for
       me.
       They turned onto Fulton and then State, headed for the Octopus,
       where the roads from the west side of the lake came together at
       the bottom of the hill.
       So whats up with your group? Julian asked.
        The usual, he said, deadpan, to keep him from going further.  The
        usual.  And what was that?
       A dead guy and a dead guy.
       No one would touch Leonard Dawson until Larry cut him down and fit
       him back together.
       Fuck, Lieutenant Wise said when he saw him.
       Fuck is right, Bogut said, holding his own jaw as if it might fall
       off.
       Bates came stumbling through the bush, half-awake.  Larry saw Pony
       look away, saw the Martian turn to give the big man space.  Carl
       Metcalf went to stop him, but Smart Andy held him back with a
       hand. Bates stood there.
       Aw, Leonard, he said, and knelt down.  Aw, Leonard.  He put his
       sixteen aside and reached for his boonie hat to put over Leonard
       Dawsons face, but he wasnt wearing it.  He used his hands to cover
       his friend, as if the torn skin were a blinding light, something
       not to be looked upon, and after a minute Soup came back with
       Leonard Dawsons hat with its jaunty Australian curl and handed it
       to Bates.  Everyone stood around in the dark while Nate read from
       his miniature bible.  They could not get a dust-off until morning,
       and all night Bates sat beside Leonard Dawson as if he were only
       sick, feverish, and when the chopper came and they bagged him up,
       Bates laid him on the floor of the Huey himself, and while the
       rest of the squad watched, unzipped the bag for a last look,
       closed it again and patted Leonard Dawson on the shoulder as if
       hed done a good job, and clambered out.  The chopper lifted,
       dipped its nose and powered away, leaving a cloud of red dust that
       made them claw at their eyes and spit.
       He couldnt fucking hold it, Bates said a few weeks later.  Fuckers
       probably got him in mid-squirt.  Fucking Leonard.  I told him,
       save that water for the middle of the day, drink your Cokes early
       on to get your motor going, but hed have em with dinner.  He liked
       his Cokes, that was one thing he liked all right.  Weinies and
       beans and a Coke on a shitty day.
       A day like today, Larry thought, watching the blurry taillights
       through the wipers.  They were going up the long hill of 96 to the
       hospitals, the route the ambulances took, past Vinegar Hill.
       Below on their right lay the dark blot of the lake, the far shore
       defined by a few tiny lights.  On the way down with his father
       they would see the lights of Ithaca.  And what would Larry say to
       him?  So often his life seemed without explanation, utterly
       defenseless, though he knewdeeplythat he was trying.
       Carl staggered, reaching out to him stiffly, the skin on his face
       still bubbling, sloughing off in sheets.
       Fucking rain.  If she was gone for good, maybe hed leave, go
       somewhere dry.
       Emergency entrance? Julian asked, turning into the highly-lit
       grounds.  The VA and regular hospitals were connected and shared
       parking.
       Right next to it.
       They pulled up ahead of a darkened Bangs ambulance.  It was a
       local joke; downtown the Bangs family ran an EMT service and right
       beside it a funeral home.
       Thanks, Larry said, getting out.  Ill see you early tomorrow.
       Okay, boss, Julian said.  As the Subaru looped back to the
       entrance, Larry could hear the Dead thumping through the doors,
       and thought that it was inevitable and best not to get involved.
       One way or another, he would lose him too.


* * *


       It was always the goddamn Wall.  All summer the ward had seen it
       being built on TV, on the Armed Forces Network.  A big black V
       engraved with the names of the dead.  It was being built not by
       the government but with private money raised by a vet, which they
       liked.  They wanted Larry to go for them when it opened, to make
       sure their buddies were there.  They joked about getting up money
       to send him, like the Fresh Air kids from the city.  They wanted
       him to take pictures of names, whole panels, and though he said
       flatlylaughingthat he would not go, each of them was drawing up a
       list of dead friends.
       It was what discussion drifted to in rap group.  Theyd lose what
       they were trying to say about the war and go off into stories
       about people hed have to find.
       Man, Mel White would say, or Cartwright, this dude you got to
       get.  He was one bad-ass Sergeant Rock motherfucker.
       Sponge was the worst, because of the old hematoma.  His memory
       wasnt good but it was full, and since hed started talking again,
       no one could shut him up.  On top of that he was a juicer, and an
       old RTO, and something about stories got him going.  The rest of
       the time he played Othello and penny poker with Rinehart and
       Meredith and, like everyone on the ward, watched the game shows
       with a mixture of disbelief and scorn for not only the host and
       contestants and studio audience but any country that would permit
       such abominations.  He had a dent in the side of his head like a
       little shelf, and sometimes hed rest a pen there and forget it.
       Hed been in the Ia Drang Valley early on, a place Larry Markham
       even now considered himself lucky not to have seen.
       I wish I could remember his fucking name, this A-gunner.  Everyone
       called him Dog cause he had this german shepherd he slept with.
       Couldnt sleep without him cause he was afraid of rats.  Frank
       Something.  I remember the dogs name was Toad.  He was supposed to
       be able to sniff out trip wires and shit from the fish oil on the
       gooks fingertips.
       And this Toad stepped on a package and waxed Frank Something,
       Trayner guessed.
       Emulsified his master, is that right? Cartwright baited him.
       Around the circle the rest of them waited for Sponge to come up
       with his usual sparkling bullshit.  It was a game, and okay
       because Sponge knew it too and was good at it.  It wasnt like
       trying to listen to Rinehart, who they all knew was telling the
       truth but couldnt make it interesting.  They all wanted to see
       what Sponge would come up with, all except the new guy Creeley,
       who picked his nails with mock concentration.  His face was subtly
       two-toned, the skin grafts from his thighs lighter, with bristly
       hairs.  Across his forehead the contrast between shades made his
       hairline look crooked, as if hed had the top of his head cut off
       and all but a small strip put back on, which in fact he had.  Hed
       been on the neuro ward less than a week, and it was his first time
       in group.  He could talk, but slowly and with a slur.  His file
       was frightening in its poverty of detail; all it said was that hed
       been a SEAL working in the Phoenix program and that hed been
       wounded in action, though it seemed obvious to Lind
       VC haul him off at night and boobytrap his ass, Meredith offered.
       A beat behind, Johnny Johnson laughed, for no apparent reason.  He
       had a teflon plate and no ears and was subject to long, exhausting
       fits.  On his bedstand his mother had propped a picture of himself
       before the war wearing a floppy velvet cap and giant sunglasses
       edged with rhinestones and playing the bass.  Is it hot? he would
       ask at anytime, referring, Larry supposed, to the landing zone or
       village he was continually approaching.  He had been walking
       behind a man who stepped on a 250 pound antitank mine.  The man
       was instantly vaporized.  Johnny Johnson lost his right arm, right
       leg, right kidney, most of his spleen, half his pelvis, his
       testicles and his penis.  The others considered him the worst off,
       and gave in to him on small matters such as extra desserts and
       what to watch on TV.
       Its a rat story, Mel White tried.  The rats chew his nose off and
       old Frank loses it.
       Unh-unh, said Sponge, wait, and tipped his head forward as if to
       call for quiet or gather breath.  As he did, he discovered a
       mechanical pencil sitting on his dent.  He pinched it off and
       admired its intricacy a second, with such smugness that they knew
       he was done stalling.
       So were out on night ambush
       The circle as a whole ridiculed this pat opening with snorts and
       puffs of breath just short of a mass raspberrysave Creeley, who
       seemed annoyed by the entire process.  His chart said he was
       heavily medicated for pain.  Dilaudid, 3X.  He looked off down the
       ward as if any minute a car would turn the corner of the nurses
       station and pull up for him.  Sponge acknowledged their derision
       with a nod, but kept on.
       Were patrolling around for a while and havent found a juicy
       position, no contact, nothing.  You know, ghost time, everybodys
       spooked
       And the dog barks, Trayner said earnestly.  He was the baby of the
       group, a month short of thirty.  Hed caught a rocket in the face,
       thoughas Meredith saidyou couldnt be sure he wasnt like this
       before.
       Sponge stopped as if pondering Trayners suggestion, honestly
       trying to remember.  No, I dont think he did.  He might have, I
       dont know.  Cause all of a sudden we get some fast fire from the
       right and everybody hits it.  Another mad minute, man.  Like a
       year later its over and you can hear Toad crying, and you know hes
       got one in him.  Sounded just like somebody real, swear.  Franks
       trying to shut him up and calling for the doc.
       Fucks the doc gonna do? Cartwright said, partly to rib Larry.
       They knew hed been a platoon medic.  Hed never told them, just as
       hed never told them his nickname.  He never told his own stories
       in group.  It was not that his own were either special or dull or
       that he thought he would not do a good job of telling them, but
       that they were not all his to tell, though (and this they did not
       know, Vicki didnt know, even his father did not know) he was the
       only one left to tell them.  And this was their time, not his.  It
       was enough, Larry thought, that they knew hed been in-country and
       seen some shit, but like Julian they were interested in him.  They
       always wanted more.
       So the doc goes over and slaps a dressing on him and shoots him up
       and has me call for a dust-off, and by the time they come in there
       are tracers zipping all over the placered, green, stop-go, all
       that shit.  We get Toad in a poncho and up and in, and the door
       gunner is all bullshit that his WIA is a dog, and the pilot wants
       to toss him until Frank makes him understand, know what Im
       saying?  So Toad goes to some evac hospital and we bust caps at
       them for a while and thats that.  Back at base they call in and
       tell me Toads okay, but Frank cant sleep.  Do a bone, I tell him,
       have a nice warm brew, but he cant fucking sleep.  This goes on.
       Ive seen it, Rinehart seconded.
       Three days, four days, and Franks a fucking zombie.  The
       lieutenant asks the doc to give him something, and it works, but
       its not the same kind of sleep, its like fake sleep, and Frank is
       just as messed up as before.  Make a long story short, he steps on
       an unfriendly device and goes home in a jar.
       But the dog lives, Trayner said.
       Course the dog lives, Jughead, Mel White said.  Thats what the
       storys going to be.
       Right.  Cause when Toad comes back from the evac, his pal Franks
       gone.
       So now the dog cant sleep, Meredith said.
       Or he barks all night, Cartwright said.
       Bingo, Sponge said, pointing.  We couldnt take him out anymore.
       Wed leave him back at base and hed howl like a coyoteaahhoooooo
       and shit all night long.  It was obnoxious.  Finally someone in
       Bravo greased him while we were out.  Tore half his fucking head
       off and burned him in a shit barrel.  End of story.
       Damn, Cartwright said, and nodded.
       Johnny Johnson giggled.  Rinehart tapped his shoulder and held a
       finger up to stop him.
       There was a silence, as if in honor of the dog or, more
       importantly, the moral truth of the story.
       A boy and his dog, Mel White said, thats what well call that one.
       Bull . . . shit, Creeley squeezed out.  It was an effort, as if he
       were dredging the words from his lungs, muscling them up and
       pushing them out.  Sponge shrugged as if Creeley were nuts and it
       was impossible to take offense.
       They waited for Creeley to go on.
       No . . . dog.
       What the fuck are you talking about? Rinehart said.
       No dog.  Bullshit.
       Were you there, mister? Cartwright said.  With his legs on he was
       half a head taller than Larry Markham; he squeezed a handball
       constantly, even while eating.  His only problem was that from
       time to time he held hands with a friend hed left behind, a guy
       from his hometown named Mobley.  Mobleys tired of five-card, hed
       say after conferring with him, or Mobleys got a case of the
       fuck-yous today.
       I was, Creeley said, everywhere.  He turned to Larry, pointed and
       said, I know you.
       Listen to this shit, Mel White said.  Hey, Captain Motherfucking
       America, you got a story for us or you just wanna piss on our
       party?
       Yeah, Meredith said.  Doc, make the newby tell us a story.
       His story, Cartwright said.  Thats what I want to hear.
       Fair enough, Larry said.  Mr. Creeley, would you like to introduce
       yourself?
       Fuck that, Creeley said.  He stood and gave them the finger,
       turning so they all got it.  Then he hobbled down the ward to his
       bed and drew the curtain violently about it, the rollers
       protesting.
       Yeah, Sponge said reminiscently, and looked at the pencil, Frank
       Something.  Wish I could remember.
       Fuck Frank and fuck his dog too, Cartwright said, pointing to
       Creeleys bed, Im putting his name on my list.
       Fucking brain-damage two-tone Frankenstein piece of shit! Mel
       White hollered at the curtain, and all but Johnny Johnson
       laughed.
       All right, gentlemen, Larry said, back to business.  Whose turn?
       Before he could check his clipboard, Meredith said, Okay, I got
       one, and the group settled in to hear it.  Meredith had been a
       lurp, and his stories always began a few weeks into the deep
       bush.  The jungles triple canopy and birdless silence gave his
       tales a mystery the others couldnt resist.  Looking for lost
       choppers, his squad would stumble over an NVA base camp with the
       rice fires burning, or come across an underground hospital full of
       VC hooked to empty bottles of blood, their throats cut.  He was
       also wholeheartedly born-again, and at some point in the story, by
       way of explanation, the Lord would be called in to set things
       right.  It was an annoyance someone like Rinehart wouldnt get away
       with.  Tonight they were in the Arizona Territory, and Larry
       kicked back and listened.  He remembered the jungle, the heavy air
       and smell of fungus, the dusk in the middle of the day.  Meredith
       lead them in.
       It was here, among the other men, that Larry most felt himself.
       He felt welcome, he felt understood without having to explain.  He
       could rest, stand down, as he did now, barely marking Merediths
       progress into the foothills of the Que Son Mountains.  The thought
       of Vicki and Scott, of riding home with his father, no longer
       bothered him, and though he knew that would change when he left
       the ward, that the world would come flooding back with all its
       problems, he would not let it intrude and ruin this quiet time.
       It reminded him of his mothers radio, how those afternoons alone
       he didnt want the music to end.  Now he wanted the stories to go
       on and on.
       But like every Monday, they ended when Shaun the orderly came in
       to give night meds.  It was past eight but he waited a minute by
       the swinging doors for Meredith to finish.  It was a tiger story,
       how both sides stopped in the middle of a firefight to watch it
       lope through, how no one dared shoot.
       Cause, dig, the animal was majestic, Meredith preached.  It was
       better than us and we knew it.  It was purer.  We knew we didnt
       have no right so we just let it walk on by.  See, I didnt know it
       at the time, but I see now that that was a holy experience.
       Fuck, Mel White said.  You should of lit his stringy ass up.
       A tiger, Johnny Johnson said, awed like a child.
       Musta been something, Trayner said.
       It was okay, Sponge complained.  Not a lot of action.
       No . . . tiger, Cartwright stuttered, mocking Creeley.  Bull . . .
       shit.
       Larry looked to Shaun and nodded.
       Okay, guys, Shaun said, tapping his watch, and they muttered and
       swore.
       Mel White started to roll away.
       Larry checked his clipboard.  Next week weve got Cartwright and an
       open spot.  Who wants it?
       Anybody but Rinehart, Mel White tossed over his shoulder.
       Eat shit, Rinehart said, but didnt volunteer.
       Come on, Larry prompted, standing now.  They were scattering to
       their beds.  The World Series was on in twenty minutes.  Train,
       you havent been up in a while.
       You tell one, Trayner said.
       Yeah, Meredith seconded.
       Yeah, cmon, Larry, Shaun pitched in.
       You owe us, Doc, Sponge said.
       They all looked at him hopefully, and he wondered which one he
       would tell first if he were going to.  His own, or just the
       beginning of his.  Getting there.  And then who?  Fred the Head
       and the little girl?  The day Nate tried to fly.  The first and
       then the second.  Hed have to put them in order.  It was hard to
       remember exactly but hed have to do it.  Because once started he
       would have to tell them all.
       When Larry didnt answer, Cartwright said, Okay, then the new guy.
       Jesus, Mel White said, itll take all fucking night.
       They looked to the curtains around Creeleys bed as if he might
       answer.
       Ill just leave it open, Larry said.
       He always had trouble leaving.  Often he wished he could stay,
       bring a case of beer and watch TV with them till lights out.  He
       stowed his clipboard and papers in the one drawer the hospital
       gave him and locked up.  Later in the week Dr. Jefferies would
       open it and look at his notes; once a month they had a meeting in
       her office.  She was interested in the men, but she was Chinese,
       and they distrusted her.
       Shaun rolled the meds cart between beds, handing out pleated paper
       cups and, for a few, shooting prepared syringes into their IV
       drips.  The drips hung from wheeled stands so they could roll them
       down to the lounge to watch the game.  Trayner was helping
       Cartwright with his legs.
       Larry put his jacket on.  Ill see you in a week, he announced, and
       waved to both sides of the aisle.  He was always tempted at this
       point to salute, but as usual fought it off.  He made for the
       doors, not looking at anyone.  Good men.  It was not bullshit.
       He thought of stopping to look in on Creeley, then decided against
       it.  Give him time, room to move.  It wasnt like they were going
       anywhere.


* * *


       His father was not waiting for him in the lobby, as hed promised.
       Larry checked the clock behind emergency admitting, then went
       outside to see if his Imperial was in the lot.  His father was the
       first person in in the mornings, and parked nearest the doors.
       And there the big Chrysler sat in the rain, waxed and sleek as a
       speedboat, its windows dark.  Last week Larry had seen a similarly
       big Oldsmobile south of town with former prisoner of war plates,
       and thought maliciously that his father would never advertise,
       never admit that fact to the world.  Why did Larry want him to?
       He retreated inside, and as he watched the Brewers bat, the day
       returned, as he knew it would.  He thought of calling Vickis
       mother again, and only pride and not wanting his father to know
       yet kept him from doing it.
       Across from him, leaning forward and staring at the floor as if
       shed been benched, sat a teenaged girl in a basketball uniform,
       glumly holding a plastic bag of ice to her wrist.  Beside her a
       friend was filling out her paperwork, and though the girl did not
       seem to be in any real pain, Larry turned away.  There were no
       outs and the Brewers had already scored four runs.  Someone had
       liked baseball a lot.  Nate, maybe.  Stars and Stripes had the box
       scores a week late.
       Are you allergic to anything? the friend asked, and Larry had to
       get up and move to the other side of the room.
       It was one of those days nothing was safe.  The first magazine he
       picked up had a picture of British soldiers patrolling the streets
       of Belfast, the second a model with an elaborate version of Vickis
       perm.  He moved to the back part of the hallway, where there was
       nothing but aerial photos of the new wing being built, and at the
       far end, a rain-lashed window looking out on the night and the
       cold lake, the shivering lights of Ithaca.  He paced and thought
       of the Wall, how they would make him go.  He supposed he owed it
       to them.  He would have to make his own list.  Look up their
       names, take pictures.  He almost wanted to.  It would be simple.
       The hard part would be the bus.
       Behind him, farther up the hall, the elevator rolled open.  His
       father got out first, already wearing his hat, and turned for the
       lobby without noticing Larry.  Behind him came a pair of families
       exhausted with visiting; the children spread across the hallway,
       and Larry had to tag along behind.  His father walked
       purposefully, as if in a hurry, outstripping them.  He had his
       keys out, jingling, and carried nothing but a pair of gloves.  The
       tasseled end of his white scarf flopped rhythmically against his
       back.  He had no reason to look behind him and see Larry, but when
       they got to the lobby, he didnt stop or even hesitate, only waved
       to the uniformed guard, drove straight for the automatic doors,
       hit the mat which made them fly open and marched off into the
       dripping night, still in stride.
       Larry caught him before he opened the drivers side door.
       Hey, he called across the roof.
       His father looked at him quizzically, surprised to see him but
       pleased.
       We were supposed to meet in the lobby? Larry said.  I needed a
       ride.
       Right, his father said, still catching up to it.  He pointed to
       show he did remember.  Sorry.
       He opened the door and reached across the seat to lift the knob,
       and Larry got in.
       Sorry, his father said, Ive been dealing with Margaret Cushing all
       dayMrs. Cushing who used to live on Linn Street?  She went around
       dinnertime and its been crazy.  So where do you need to go?
       Just home.
       Can do, his father said.
       As they exited the lot, an ambulance pulled in.  Its lights werent
       strobing, but the back compartment was lit, and Larry could see a
       blue-shirted EMT moving within.  She wore rubber gloves and had a
       ponytail.  He concentrated on the ridged knobs of the radio,
       making the orange line slide across the dial, but couldnt stop the
       vision of Nate from cominghis own hands pushed into Nates chest,
       the lung wound bubbling with every breath, hissing and sighing,
       almost squeaking like a leaky tire.
       Truth, Skull.
       Dont mean nothing, man.
       Shit, the Martian said, staring at the hole where Larrys hands
       disappeared, shaking his head.  There it is, man.
       Get him the fuck away from me, Larry told Bogut, and he did.
       Dont mean a thing, Nate babe, Larry whispered.
       Truth.
       Truth, bro.  All right?
       All right, man.
       All right, man, youre gonna fly them friendly skies, all right?
       This is gonna pinch a little.
       Sall right, I cant feel shit anyway.
       Youre all right, man.
       Mall right.
       Larry rubbed his eyes as if he were tired, and it disappeared,
       replaced by the glare of oncoming traffic.  His father leaned back
       in the seat, steering with his gloved hands resting near the
       bottom of the wheel, a mannerism he and Larry shared.  His chin
       was lined with a white stubble, his neck a soft, wrinkled wattle
       disappearing into the debonair scarf.  The news was onanother
       flood in the Midwestand Larry wondered if the prison camp came
       back to him every time the Japanese were mentioned.  The wire, the
       mealy rice, the friends who didnt survivewhere did all of that
       go?
       Theyd never talked about it; his mother wasnt allowed.
       He will tell you, shed say when pressed, when he thinks you need
       to know those things.
       It was too late now, Larry thought, though he couldnt pinpoint
       when he could have used his fathers wisdom.  Before he signed up
       for the fucking medical corps and Fort Sam Houston.  But that
       wouldnt have stopped him, only made him want to go more.  He sat
       back in the seat and watched the dark farms slide by, the lights
       of oncoming cars mimicking the firefly wobble of an RPG round.
       Car trouble? his father asked nonchalantly.
       Oh yeah.
       Bad?
       Dont know yet.
       How old is that thing anyway?
       Ten years, same as this, Larry said, and then regretted comparing
       the two.
       Just tuned her up, his father boasted.
       She sounds good.
       It was a lesson, like everything between them.  He thought if they
       made it to the Octopus without his father asking after Scott that
       hed be all right.  They coasted down the hill toward town; below,
       a string of lights described the jetty running out into the black
       lake.  Probably rain again tomorrow.
       So how is everyone? his father tried.
       Okay, Larry said.  Hows Mrs. R.?
       As usual.  She keeps trying to get me to retire.  Hates the
       weather, you know.
       Larry half-ignored his answer.  He had asked after her only to
       change the subject.  He did not need to imagine their life
       together in the old house; besides a few new appliances,
       everything was the samethe paintings in their heavy gilt frames,
       his mothers furniture, the color of the walls.  And for his father
       the days were the same.  Mrs. Railsbeck laid out his clothes and
       made his breakfastas his mother once hadand while he was at the
       hospital, did the laundry and the cleaning and the food shopping.
       His father had bought her a Volkswagen Rabbit, and occasionally
       Larry would see her around town, squinting at the traffic, her
       chin almost touching the steering wheel.  Back home she watched
       the little TV while preparing dinner, and when his father came
       home, ate with him, cleaned up and sat reading magazines before
       the console in the living room while he retired to the den.  They
       slept in separate rooms, just as his mother and father had, though
       everyone in town presumed to know.
       She says we ought to have you folks over soon.  Its been a while.
       Tell her to give us a call, Larry bluffed, knowing he was just
       being polite.  It was one reason Vicki hated him, the endless
       courtesy.  Why doesnt he just say it to my face? shed complain.  I
       dont understand all this pussyfooting around.  He doesnt like me.
       Thats okay, I dont mind, I just wish hed be upfront about it.
       They breezed through the green of the Octopus, and Larry tried to
       imagine riding with him every Monday.
       Hed call Vickis mother when he got home.  Maybe they could work
       something out with the car.
       Downtown, his father missed the turn to take him up the hill.
       Do you mind taking me home? Larry asked.  Or you can just drop me
       at the stop up here.
       Sorry, his father said, woolgathering, and tapped the brim of his
       hat.  He changed lanes and made a quick left to get back to where
       theyd been.  Still, he did not seem to be all there, staring over
       the wheel like a trucker too long on the road.  Hed had a patient
       die today.  Larry thought it was foolish to worry about him; it
       was the last thing his father would want.  He was tempted to think
       that after so many years you got used to losing people, but Larry
       knew that each oneand especially the ones hed had for
       yearsbothered his father, even if he would never admit it.
       Who was it today? Larry asked gently.
       Mrs. CushingAnne Cushings mother.  Anne was there.
       She was in Susans class.
       Nice girl.  Shes with Pfizer now.
       How was it?
       Oh, his father said, perking up, it went well.
       Good, Larry said, equally cheerful, but his father was done
       talking.
       They cruised up the hill, past the students ramshackle houses with
       overstuffed chairs and hibachis perched on their porch roofs, the
       gutters stuffed with beer cans.  The Imperial climbed easily,
       shifting into low for more torque.  They hit the long level and
       the streetlights gave way to fields and woods, night.  The road
       was shiny and pasted with leaves.  They sped through the black,
       wipers lashing.
       His father slowed to read the mailbox numbers.  It was a guess.
       Another mile or so, Larry corrected him.
       The house was dark.  His father pulled into the empty drive.
       So, his father asked, drawing it out, making Larry tense up, more
       car trouble, huh?
       The way he said it, it was not an accusation.  Larry looked to him
       to see if he was yanking his chain.  He didnt seem to be.
       Its in the shop, Larry said.
       How olds that thing again?
       Ten years.  Same as this.
       Just tuned her up, his father said, and patted the dash.
       She sounds good, Larry said, as if following a script.  He opened
       the door, but paused.  He wanted to ask his father if he was all
       right, then decided he was just tired, and got out.
       Let me know if you need a ride tomorrow, his father offered.
       Thats okay, Larry said, thanks, and clunked the door shut.  He got
       the mail, watching his father reverse out of the drive and tool
       away, then walked toward the porch, digging for his keys.  Next
       door Donna Burnss windows were lit.
       Inside, before he even turned the lights on, he saw the red
       flicker of the answering machine.  Once, twice, three times.  At
       least one of them would be her.  Hed call her, and then they could
       start working to fix it.  He hung his jacket up, went into the
       kitchen and sat down at the table to go through the mail.
       First he tore the pre-approved credit card applications and
       childrens book club offers in half and tossed them in the garbage;
       then he opened the bills and wrote the date they were due on the
       return envelopes.  He piled her catalogs to one side, and the
       Pennysaver, which she liked to look through.  All hed gotten was a
       postcard from Wade.  It showed a green trout dwarfing a railroad
       flatcar.  They grow em big out here! it said.  Wade said hi.  The
       kids were healthy, he was doing well, and hed send an address as
       soon as he had one.  He was thinking of Ithaca.  Larry stuck it to
       the fridge with a magnet.
       He looked in the refrigerator and then in the cupboard.  He ate a
       few of the chocolate chip cookies he packed as part of Scotts
       lunch, washing them down with a beer.  He got another handful and
       went into the living room and stood above the answering machine,
       eating.
       He punched the play button and the machine whirred, reversing the
       tape.  The cookies and beer made a thin, sweet gruel going down
       his throat.
       The beep beeped.
       Vicki, a woman said.  This is Cheryl.  Ronnie wants to know if
       youre coming in or not, so call, okay?  Bye.
       It gave the time and beeped again.
       Vic, Vickis mother said, and he leaned closer to the machine and
       turned the volume up, stopped chewing.  This is Mom.  I thought
       you might be trying to call me.  Nothing new, just wanted to
       talk.
       That had been five-thirty, late enough for her to pick up Scott
       and make it to Trumansburg.  The machine clicked complicatedly.
       He took a slug of beer to brace himself; it gave him a chill, the
       fine hairline beginning of a headache.
       Larry, a woman said, I was wondering how youre doing.  It took him
       a minute to figure out it was Donna.  She went on talking,
       concerned; he turned the volume down and went into the kitchen.
       He sat and rested his arms and hands flat on the table, palms
       down, and looked at the space between them.
       Goddammit, he said, and tilted his head up and eyed the tile
       ceiling as if it were a sky full of answers.  He sighed and picked
       up the beer can and took it to the sink and rinsed it out.
       He called her mother and stood there listening to it ring,
       wondering what he would say to her.  The truth, it occurred to
       him.  If theyd really taken off, shed want to know.
       Larry, she said, surprised.
       Are Vicki and Scott there?
       No.  She made the question sound absurd.  Theyre not there?
       No, he admitted.  He told her about finding them gone, about Vicki
       missing work, Scott not showing up for school.
       Im sorry, Larry, but I honestly havent seen them.  I wish I had.
       Now youve got me worried.
       Im sure theyre okay.  I thought shed call is all.
       You let me know if she does, her mother said.
       Same here.
       After hed hung up, he wanted her to have been more concerned, and
       not only her but himself.  The way they talked about it was too
       routine, as if Vickis leaving had been expected, or worse, that it
       had lost the power to hurt him.  He hoped it hadnt.
       He didnt feel like eating, which he thought was a good sign.  The
       World Series was on, and though the score was 10-0, he watched for
       another beer, from time to time glancing over at the phone.
       As he was cleaning up and turning everything off, it rang.  He
       flew across the room and picked it up before the second ring.
       There you are, Donna said, and he hated himself for hoping.  I was
       wondering if youd pick up.  How are you doing?
       Okay.
       She waited for him to say more.  He waited.
       Have you heard anything?
       No, he said, nothing.
       She said shed call you.
       She didnt, Larry said, and wondered why he was so angry with her.
       Again, they waited.
       Hey, she said, do you want me to come over, just to talk?
       No, he said, Im going to bed, and then felt guilty for being short
       with her.  Thanks.
       Thats all right, Donna said.
       He had almost put the phone down when he remembered he needed a
       ride.
       Sure, she said, relieved, and they agreed on a time.
       When he hung up he stood there a second as if it would ring again,
       and when it didnt, went upstairs.  In the dark of Scotts room the
       power indicator of the radio threw a weak red sheen over the
       world.  He thought of how far they could have gotten.  Sixteen,
       seventeen hours.  He missed them, but not enough, he thought.  He
       could see himself living like this, eating alone at the kitchen
       table, seeing no one.  In the bathroom mirror he was surprised he
       didnt look any different, and shrugged.
       He turned on the bedroom light before clicking off the one in the
       hall and undressed in the yellow glow.  The hamper was empty; shed
       done the laundry.  Small favors, he thought, and got into bed, the
       covers snagging his new foot.  On the dresser stood their
       pictures; he rolled over so he wouldnt have to look at them.
       Tomorrow was Tuesday.  He had no idea what hed do.  Call her work,
       drive by Scotts school, talk to Donna.  He lay there looking at
       the bright leaves and flowers of the wallpaper, tracing the vines
       false progress toward the ceiling as if reading a map.
       She was the one who turned out the light every night, and now,
       without her, he thought it fitting that he leave it on.  When they
       came to him laterwhen Pony came, or Bogut, or Carl Metcalf, and he
       woke up with his hands miraculously cleansed of blood, when he
       missed his dead so much that he wanted to be alone with them, if
       only in sleephe would need the light.  To remind him that there
       was another world.  To remind him that he was alive.  And deep in
       the night, he did.

____________________
Stewart O'Nan is a writer living in Ithaca, New York.  His first
collection of short stories, In the Walled City, is currently available
from University of Pittsburgh Press.  His first novel, Snow Angels, will
be published by  Doubleday in November.  He is the recipient of the
thirteenth Drue Heinz Literature Prize.

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POETRY
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THE SIDE SHOW
BY DANIEL SENDECKI

Errant knight - reverent killer
       Don't you know?
       The Holy Grail, Sir Galahad
       is not deep in the tenements
       nor high in the battlements
It sits beside a cupie doll, dusty and spent
it travels with the circus
       Those who admire it
       The Bearded Lady, The Strong Man
       realize - not everlasting life
but their own tarnished reflection.

____________________
Daniel Sendecki <[email protected]> is a young, emerging Canadian author,
who is currently pursuing his writing at home, but who intends to further
study English Literature at MCGill University in Montreal, Quebec.  His
story "A Serpent's Embrace" will appear in an upcoming issue of SUNLIGHT
THROUGH THE SHADOWS magazine.

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WHILE WALKING
BY ANDREA KRACKOW

These sidewalk shoes grin
and pretend our life.
Do you live?  In tenement shacks of
Chunky Chicken, I dream of becoming
your wife.

Thumb walking,
limp talking,
my words are week-
day normal,

      (I speak like gravel).

Will you walk on me?
Or take a sideway street?
Or leave roses by my corner?

Leave roses by my corner.

____________________
Andrea Krackow <[email protected]> is a first year student at Allegheny
college.  She is studying Ceramics and poetry.

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THE HIGH COST OF LIVING
BY NANCY BENT

(In 1988, a young man arrived at a hospital emergency room, where the
staff thought he would make a good organ donor because he was only
twenty-three.  Involved in drugs, he had been shot above the fourth
certical vertebra.)

When he was still alive on the
Third Day, they told him he would always be
Unable to move his body below his jaw.
Privately their words were "A head in bed."
It would be like this:
They would beat on his chest and
Maybe have to break his ribs if his heart
Stopped.  They wanted him to understand that.
One doctor said to himself in such a situation
He  wouldn't want to live.

He would have to imagine the feel of water
When they bathed him.
He would never touch a woman with long black
Hair or flirt with her,
Never beat another guy in a fight.
He could only breathe through a machine.

By blinking the young man could speak.
Twice for yes and once for no.
Amazed that he wanted to live,
They asked him again.
He blinked twice, each time.

After four years he went home to constant family care.
His mother in the day and the rest taking turns at night.
The family stuck together.  They had fled from Mexico,
Crossing the Rio Grande where it slowed to a trickle.
But they had not left hard times.

Now he was reborn, passive, pure,
A dedicated mother by his side,
His hands helpless on the tray before him,
Nothing expected, nothing possible,
Only belief in life.

He explained, using a voice box,
"If I hadn't been shot,
I would have died.
My sister brings me food,
I go outside, I see my family.
This is the way it is."

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IF I WERE A LOVER
BY JIM CHAFFEE

If I were a lover

would I love all or some
or none, save me.

____________________
Jim Chaffee <[email protected]> is a computer specialist who enjoys
writing poetry in his spare time.

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CINDERELLA REWRITTEN
BY RACHEL L. MILLER

As a small child
I loved a lie
Read to me by
A teary-eyed mother

You see--
My mother was once
Cinderella--woman of ash
The blessings of society
Hidden behind closed doors
By selfish brothers and fathers

Ella dared to challenge
The order, leaving
Her ghostly mother and
Alcoholic father's
Run-down rusty trailer
For the big city

Disappointment--
You can only buy success
Discovered my penniless heroine
She prostituted herself
To the lucky sons
In their shiny cars
Helped out of the gutter
By a fairy godmother
Wearing crushed purple velvet
Minus magic wand

When the lights went out
She finally learned
Her lesson--

Ella can only depend
On one person--
Herself
There is no better savior

Woman of ash
Rises from the ashes--
Like a phoenix

Now she buys her own shoes--
They fit better that way

She lets me choose
My own shoes, too

____________________
Rachel L. Miller <[email protected]> is a second-year undergraduate
at the University of Southern California--School of Cinema Television.

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MAY 1, 1994

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