Beaver State (fiction)

As a city engineer I spent the day supervising the dykes and levies that kept the river out of the city. The rain continued to pour, the snow pack continued to melt. Foot by foot the water rose, the smaller creeks and rivers began to flood.

From my office window I could see a beaver working on his doomed dam. The foolish creature could not see the larger picture. Though he was felling trees feverishly he would soon fail. He could abandon his home, swim up the creek to safety, but he worked until his dam, his lodge, all he had went spinning away in dark water. Still he continued to fell the trees until he was crushed and his limp form was swept away in the debris and muddy water.

That night I studied plans, and maps, and elevations of our city, designing ways to save homes and businesses. I could sacrifice Water Front Park and place concrete barriers along the avenue. The docks would be gone, but the courthouse would be safe. As I worked the ghost of the beaver swam through the walls and stood before me, dripping and laughing.

“What do you find so amusing?”

“You.”

“Go away, I have work to do. I have plans to make, crews to direct, a city to save.”

“You thought I was silly, working on my home during the flood.

“You are silly,” I replied. “It was hopeless. And pointless. It was only a lodge. I am working to save a city. Museums and zoo, parks and university, I work to preserve art and industry. This is my legacy, my contribution to the building of a civilization.”

“You think your city grand, your civilization supreme. But it is no more than a lodge of sticks in a muddy creek.

“You create your own disasters. I don't know what will sweep you away, disease, overpopulation, your violent nature, your abuse of what is, but you are doomed.

“My struggle was one nature gave me, a natural wrestling match. You are battling the changes you made to the river, the loss of the forest, the caustic air over your streets, the pavement that throws the water back at you. In a few centuries your kind will be washed away by the flood of your own foolishness. Today you laughed at me while you are working on your own doomed dam. You cannot see the larger picture.”

The beaver continued to chuckle as he swam through the wall into the falling rain.

Mr. Incredible (non-fiction)

------------

Sunday night, July 10, nearly midnight


“Are you crazy? Get off! Get off!”

I think: "Maybe I am." Just 60 seconds ago I was asleep in my bed. Now I’m hanging onto the back of a pickup truck racing down the street.

Two gang members are reaching across a bicycle in the back of the truck trying to make me let go. Fortunately the swerving truck is making it hard for them to keep their balance enough to reach me. It is also giving me every incentive to keep a firm grip. We must be going at least 40 and I don’t want to hit the pavement at this speed. Not in just a T-shirt and my Sponge Bob Square Pants boxer shorts.

We slow down a little to make a squealing right turn and I hang on, bracing my feet on the bumper, gripping the tailgate. We accelerate into the darkness.

“How am I going to get out of this?” I start gathering mental evidence for what is bound to be a very bad ending:

1. white Ford ranger, no plate, dealer decal reads “Atlas”, black vinyl bed liner.
2. bicycle: medium sized, red, with knobby tires.
3. gang member A: shorter than average, close cropped hair, hispanic, studded earring in right ear.
4. gang member B: thinner, about the same height, little younger.
5. gang member C: passenger in cab, looking out rear sliding window and. . .

The truck hits the brakes, I jump off before it completes the stop.

“Go! Go! Go! Go!” gang member A yells. The truck speeds away.

“Great,” I think, now I have to walk home six blocks in my underwear.

The truck stops again, about a half block away. Uh oh.

The bicycle lands in the street. The truck peels away.

“Cool! A ride home!”

It’s a little small for me, but I’m home within two minutes. The police haven’t arrived yet.

Brenda is on the phone.

“My husband is back!” she says into the phone, and looking at me with a mix of “are you nuts?” and maybe a touch of pride (probably just wishful thinking on my part). She gives our address.

“There must be someone hurt pretty bad out there,” she continues to the 911 operator. “. . . Thank you. . . We’ll be outside waiting for you.” Hangs up.

“Are you ok?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I say sheepishly as I put on some pants.

“What did you do that for?”

“I’m not sure. I was just waking up, and when the truck pulled away, instead of letting go, I jumped.”

We went out to the street to wait for the officers, and to see if we could find the pummeled one.

Brenda explained. “I woke up when I heard the pick up come to a stop in front of our house and then the sounds of them hitting somebody. I ran into the yard and started yelling at them to leave him alone when you came running out. I know you were thinking you were trying to protect me, but you ran right past me into the street!”

“Well I wanted to see if someone was getting hurt. I only saw those guys jumping into the back of the pickup, so I went to see if they had dragged somebody into the truck.”

“Well why did you jump onto the truck?”

“I dunno. I was holding onto the tailgate to look inside the bed and when the truck pulled away, I just jumped.”

She looks at me as if I’m nuts. Not the first such look I’ve gotten tonight.

We are in front of Bob’s house. He lives across the street and keeps an immaculate yard. A darkened figure comes around the corner, carrying what looks like a spear. (He looks very little like a Greek athlete.)

“Who is that?” I call out.

“I’m just looking for my friend. He got beat up. Angel?” he calls into the darkness.

“What’s that you’ve got?” Brenda asks, pointing at his “spear”.

She takes it away from him. It’s a metal fence post, the kind used for barb wire.

A couple of patrol cars are gliding down the street toward us, their lights off. I step into the street and wave, headlights come on, they pick up speed and pull in front of the three of us. Brenda and I step away from the gang member.

Soon the cops are searching around Bob’s house.

The drunken javelineer sits despondently by the mailboxes.

“Got any cigarettes? I’m nervous ‘cause I’m on probation.”

“No, we don’t smoke,” I say.

Brenda steps toward him shaking her finger. “Smoking isn’t good for you! And if you’re on probation then you should be home in bed.” Ah, my little mother hen.

He’s concerned about his bicycle and I tell him that it’s leaning against my garage. The policeman had said they would take care of it.

Bob turns on a floodlight in his backyard revealing Angel’s legs beneath a tarp behind the shed. He’s bleeding quite a bit from the back of his head, but refuses medical help or to press charges.

After giving a statement, I thanked them for responding so quickly.

Just as I am about to go I laugh and tell them how I was dressed on my little ride.

They get a pretty good laugh out of it. One of them says that next time I should just be a good witness and not try the super hero gig.

I go back inside and my wife is shaking her head. “You’re my Mr. Incredible,” she says. “Middle aged, over weight, and still acting like you’re 25.”

“Well, all super heroes work in their underwear.”

The Warsaw (experimental writing)

Preface: This story is a little different. I awoke from a strange dream, rushed to my computer, and tried to capture it, mood, images, "plot" and all. I'm not sure it makes sense, a psychologist might be better at answering that question. At any rate, here it is, an experiment in capturing the flotsam and jetsam of the subconscious.

The Warsaw

Strange, fun little restaurant. It was raining, and my old Italian cowboy hat was drooping around the brim, and though I had already eaten, I just had to step inside.

It was crowded. Not just with people, but the space before the cashier’s desk was tight, and the people seemed close in ways that had nothing to do with proximity.

The maitre de' asked me if I wished for a table, mentioning that today’s special was a very special Thai dish made from shell fish.

"That sounds delicious."

He was a large man, without seeming large, and he scooped me up in his arms, lifting me over the rails, and setting me at a table with an elderly couple. He took my hat and set it atop a globe of the constellations.

My glasses had gotten wet, and as I wiped them the couple smiled and nodded toward me. "An Italian cowboy. How perfect. I'm sure you are going to love this place. Everything they serve is wonderful."

The food was delicious, and the overly warm maitre d' was also the owner, a man with a sense of humor that bubbled and spread through his customers.

I was supposed to meet a friend for a movie. Someone I had known for a very long time. We had shared so many things that we were more like two halves of a single person than simply old school friends.

I stepped back into the rain, my overcoat flapping in the wet gusts, looking dramatic, and a little strange.

The Warsaw was an old hotel, a towering presence at the upper end of Broadway. It stood tall and stately, casting a dignified atmosphere over the smaller, newer buildings that surrounded it. I was to meet my friend, and his friend, there. The street was slick, and steep enough to make it too much work for casual walking. I walked with my face bent toward the sidewalk so that the hat brim sheltered my glasses from the light drizzle.

"Ah, there he is!"

I looked up, and there was my friend, looking so much like myself, and his friend, looking so much like a half remembered actor from my childhood. They were both in a very good mood.

"Come on," they cried. "Where have you been?"

They called out in laughing voices sharing some private joke that is too new for an old friend to understand.

"I'm coming."

I felt slow, old, and wanted to join in their carefree mood.

I felt wonderful. Perhaps it was the strange, friendly atmosphere of the restaurant. Perhaps it was the aftertaste of the tangy Thai food still lingering in my mouth. I felt as if the world was new and so was I.

I walked briskly, trying to be sure of my footing on the slick pavement as I followed them toward the old hotel and the movie theater within.

I was lagging behind as we strode up the street. I knew that I was not as tall as I had been moments before. And when I got in line behind them, they noticed as well.

My friend’s friend, with friendly candor, said in an amused voice that he had no idea that I was so short, and what took me so long? I smiled up at them, especially at my friend who had always been my height, but now stood a foot taller. He looked back at me, his beard as shiny black as mine had once been. I reached up to cover my smile and run my fingers through a beard that was now more salt than pepper.

"You can’t shake me as easy as that,” I joked. “Let’s go in."

I hung back a little, so this newest member of our group felt a little social pressure to pay for the tickets. I hung back a little to let the grandeur of The Warsaw sink in.

It is an old hotel. Made when elegance was an important thing, something to be crafted, and appreciated, from a time before money became dear, and was now returning to that time, trying to capitalize on a nostalgia we felt for things we never had.

The lobby was all greys and blues, the carpets and marble on the walls seemed to fit closely to a modern age when chrome and dark colors are sheik. But the decor changed as we moved past the theater. As we I swept up the stairs, the grand style of the old building wrapped itself around us. I sensed in the elegant lines of the staircase, felt rather than saw the large oil landscapes in ornate frames, I basked in the swirling deep oranges of the marble.

The landings held oval tables, offering cut vegetables and dips, furniture and treats that seemed a little out of place. There wasn't room for two to pass.

The mood was grand, as grand as the hotel.

I watched my friend, becoming comfortable with the strange resemblance we shared. I already knew what we were.

My friend and his friend had begun to see the similarity our faces shared.

My face held the lines of age, his was smooth, innocent. We were the same, yet a difference of time and experience lay within us, and it wrought startling changes to our bodies and thoughts. We were twins, clones, a single individual clove by three decades of mortal experience.

We looked the same because we were the same. The differences in height, in the color of our hair, the wrinkles of our face, came not from different backgrounds, different genetics. We were the same.

We fled the Warsaw, my friend and I. Staggering, rushing down the street away from the old hotel, glancing in horror behind us. I was not as fearful as my friend. This was all much newer to him than to myself. He was shorter now, as was I. I had also shrunk another six inches. I knew the process we were undergoing, but he was frightened. I had gotten used to the idea. True, this was a bizarre twist to what had already been happening, what I had come to be comfortable with.

For our new friend gained twice over all that we lost. He stalked behind us, a 12 foot tall figure staggering behind us on grotesquely long stilt-like legs, his long tan trench coat flapping around him, his floppy hat perched so far above, his friendly, innocent smile, as the rain slowly misted over us. We fled down the glistening sidewalks, a surreal trio. We led, he followed. We with the height we had not known since junior high school, and he with twice what we had lost.

The Smell (fiction)

The smell stopped him on the busy downtown sidewalk. A man who’d been following too close bumped into him, and muttering something unclear and unkind, brusquely pushed past. The steady flow of pedestrians parted around him, a sweaty flood around a sudden obstruction.

It was a sweet smell, medicinal, somehow reassuring. Something from long ago, a time when things were simple, when the world was black and white, and everything was clear. Love, hate. Right, wrong.

He turned and sniffed. A few steps back the way he had come was an old hardware store. The battered outer door was open, the smell was stronger. A screen door kept the flies at bay, a tin sign displayed an impish yellow-haired boy, wearing a soda bottle cap and waving customers in:

Switch to Squirt!
Never an Afterthirst!

OPEN
Hours: 7:00 - 6:00

Drink Squirt!

He stepped in. It was cool, dark, and musty. The old wood floor was worn, nail heads crowned tiny wooden peaks, like little rows of volcanoes in an ocean of rippling grey wood, marking the beams that had supported thousands of customers, salesmen, and loiterers for nearly a century.

The walls were covered with tools and farm implements. The smell was stronger. It had something to do with animals, from a time when he was little.

The roof was high and dark, hidden beyond dusty trusses, past the glare of tin-hooded lamps that shone through ancient webs, garden hoses, long pieces of molding, scythes, railroad lanterns, and scores of other half-remembered things.

“Can I help ya son?”

“Oh. Uh, yeah. I mean, I don’t know. I’m just looking.”

Why was he in here? He had a job to get to. He was an important man. An editor for the metro section of the largest newspaper in the region. And here he stood, in some ancient store following his nose when he should be worrying about inept employees, column space to fill, and ever-present deadlines.

Embarrassed, he tried to look like he had a purpose for being here. He strode toward the back of the store so he wouldn’t feel the pressure of the eyes of the old man. He squeezed past a trash can restraining the leaning rakes grasping at his expensive suit, past bins of nails, nuts, bolts, hinges, and found himself staring at shelves in the back of the store.

There was a pail on a lower shelf, a regular tin pail, except it had a nipple like a cow’s udder at its base, and the smell was suddenly strong. On the farm of his early childhood his father had a cow, and when it calved they milked her and the calf was fed from a pail like this one. Dad had put something in the pail, some mixture of dehydrated milk with vitamins and medicines to help the calf survive. This smell drifted from a sack on a shelf above the pail.

“This is silly,” he muttered.

Still, he could not leave yet.

His father had been a good man. At least it seemed he was. He could not really remember. Dad had left when he was just eight. He had never known why. There was a silence around the event. The adults would stop talking when he came into the room, and when his questions had come close to asking where his father was, the talk had quickly drifted somewhere else.

The stack of bags rose to just above his eyes, and he reached to stand the top one up so he could read the label. It was only a twenty-five pound sack, but he found it surprisingly hard to lift with one hand. He put his immaculate leather briefcase carefully down.

His father had handled such things easily. He had held such bags with one hand while the other had torn the corners. At the time it was part of what adults did, giants did.

He now realized his father had been a young man, probably half the age of this portly and greying figure trying to mimic the careless ease of handling such things. Perhaps his age was showing in more than the paunchy belly that was gradually descending toward his belt. He had been too long behind a desk.

With both hands he sat the bag up. An Indian maid seductively offered a box of butter, and a green, blue, and yellow border framed a picture of a calf:

Land O Lakes
Maxicare
Instaflake

Milk and Glymaxene
Calf Milk Replacer

25 Pounds

The cloying aroma filled his nostrils. He set the bag back down and looked at the fine white dust on his hands. He worried for a moment about getting his suit dirty.

There was a time when this stuff seemed pure magic, clean, mysterious. This was the miracle-working concoction his father used to turn a scrawny, moaning calf into a healthy animal frolicing in the field.

He picked up his briefcase and turned to go, but the smell held him, the way his father had held him a long time ago. The gentle pressure of the scent reassured him, told him he belonged. Suddenly it didn’t matter if his suit got dusty.

Impulsively he picked up the sack with his left hand, which was after all just as strong as his father’s had been, and swung the dusty sack atop his shoulder. He grabbed the pail, which banged against his briefcase, scratching the leather, and strode to the old man at the counter.

“Didja find everthin’ ya wanted?” The grey eyes twinkled in the wrinkled face, not at the incongruity of purchase and customer, but in a friendly private way filled with understanding.

“Yeah, this is it.” He had no idea why he was doing this.

“The calf milk is $28.99, and the nursing pail is $9.49. Your total is $38.48.”

He pulled out his wallet and fished out a credit card, not caring how he would justify this on his expense account.

Click, CLACK. The old man ran the card through an old fashioned credit card imprinter, filled out the information, and slid it across the plate glass counter top for his signature, not asking for ID.

The businessman signed it, hefted the sack back up to his shoulder, and gripped the pail and briefcase with the other hand.

He sauntered through the door like a young man. Rejoining the throng on the sidewalk he turned left toward his office.