I was a literary snob: low culture, high culture, and Southern Culture on the Skids

I didn't get this here baby just a choppin' on wood. -- "Voodoo Cadillac", SCOTS

But it's writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can't or won't, it's time for you to close the book and do something else. Wash the car, maybe. - Stephen King, On Writing

"The Sisters of Eluria"

Formal education is a mixed bag. When approached with the proper mindfulness and humor, the process can be enlightening. Or at least, it used to be able to be enlightening. The powers that be have been stripping away everything worthwhile about formal education, moving away from educating a future citizenry in favor of training an army of monkeys to bear the tax burden the corporate class feels they should not have to bear at all.

But, one of the drawbacks to a formal education -- even when it was a good -- and especially a college education -- and in particular to a degree in literature -- is that sometimes, you end up getting bit by the green meanies.

If I had a dollar for every time I heard a college lit professor swear an oath against a popular writer -- in this case, Stephen King -- I'd be able to pay back student loan debt tomorrow. Seriously. There's so much jealousy and bitterness masking itself as critical contempt that it hardly seemed worth it to mention that both Dickens and Dostoevsky wrote FOR A LIVING. And while I'm not a fan of every word the guy's written -- I certainly think he needs an editor sometimes -- the fact is he's one of the more popular practitioners of the writing craft still living.

Which, if most of his academic critics were honest, is really the only problem with him. Tommyknockers could be forgiven as a serious lapse in an otherwise good string of books if he were dead and the unabridged version of The Stand were on some canonical list.

One of the things you run into in among the would-be and self-proclaimed American literati is the overwhelming notion in order to be "literary" a work must be all style. I understand this. I'm a word guy. Sometimes I just like how words sound together, and it's important to be able to string words together in an interesting.

Unfortunately, another problem you run into among the would-be an self-proclaimed American literati is that they have, for the most part, swallowed the idea that anyone who is truly engaged in the artistic process should not be able to make a living because:

1.  America is full of tasteless philistines;
2.  American culture doesn't respect the place of the arts.

You hear the second reason in public more than the first one because, well, the literati only talk that way to other accepted literati. But it's utter bullshit. Yes, thanks to the stripping away of literature and art appreciation classes from college general education requirements, it's true that the general population is increasingly less schooled on what is generally thought of as higher culture, and they are less apt to make connections between The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Force Awakens. I think about my old man, though, who was not schooled on the arts -- he was, in fact, a high school drop out who later went back for an education after serving in the military -- but who would proclaim, "I don't know art, but I know what I like."

He liked George Jones, Johnny Cash, Juice Newton, and the Cincinnati Bengals. He also loved going to the beach. He was also something of a storyteller, as his father was before him, and he was a voracious reader of the newspaper and watched the news every night.

When I started writing poetry, he didn't quite understand what would make me do such a thing. But he didn't wrinkle up his nose and tell me I was wasting my time, either -- something that more than one self-anointed member of the literati and my first ex-mother-in-law has suggested over the years.

The other thing I think of is when I published Living Broke: Stories, some of the best reception I got was from people who didn't, as a general habit, read books. They liked my stories because they identified with the people in them. All the stories were honest, un-sanitized, and sometimes brutal.

I get some of the best kinds of responses to my poetry from readers who tend to avoid poetry as well.

It's not that Americans don't have taste. That's not the problem.

The problem is that many of the purveyors* of the arts market them as some kind of exclusive club. It's not.

Sometimes it's about throwing chicken at the audience.**





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*Purveyors, not creators. I'm talking about commodifiers and sellers of art, not artists.
** If you haven't been to a Southern Culture on the Skids live show, you're missing out.

Don't get no respect: back to school, wobbly-style

 I'm heading back to campus today to line up the last bit of what I need to do in order to teach on Thursday. Between the usual decline in course offerings and my separation from the local alternative dining and concert guide*, this winter, like most every, will be a tight one. I'm always on the look for more work, and I'm going to be diving into some projects and working on my poetry and fiction. I'm uncharacteristically prepared for the semester to begin, actually... primarily because I'm simplifying my teaching methods and focusing on what's really important in a writing class.

Practice.

People ask me all the time what I teach. When they're kind, or when they know I write poetry, they immediately ask if I teach creative writing**. I have to, for the sake of conversation, clarify that I teach academic writing***, tossing in some scholarly research methods and some interesting stories and little known history. I've been using Labor History the last few years as the subject matter for my Intermediate classes; I think it's important try and highlight little known facts of history that get overlooked in the narrative of manifest destiny.

This semester, I'm trying something a bit different because what I find in teaching labor history is that many of my students are incredibly disconnected from the events I wanted to talk about and the stories I wanted to tell.  I also found that in my attempts to ensure I was doing my job that I lost some the fundamental elements of my teaching style that made it fun and interesting.

One of the things I'm doing is simply changing research topics, for a while. My classes are going to be examining some events from local history: the 1855 Bloody Monday Election Riots, The 1937 Ohio River Flood, and river stories and myths. We're going to talk about how these narratives -- and the narratives of more current events -- impact ourselves as individuals, as a city, and as a larger culture.

So basically -- I'm going to tell stories, read and talk about essay drafts, and focus the important stuff.

And, you know, take attendance. Can't escape the all the tedium.

But I am grateful to have some kind of work
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*The latest article of important was about how Louisvillians in their 20's move to Germantown, where the rent is cheap. You know... like they have for the past 20 years.
**I have written before about how the term "creative writing" annoys me because it implies that some kinds of writing isn't creative or part of a creative process.
*** Academic writing, apparently, has no creative process. Don't get me started.


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Boone On The Move (Curse of the Ten)

She calls me and it breaks my heart all over again.

Fuck what they say about better to have loved and lost. Fuck what they say life being about the journey and not the destination. Fuck all the cutesy things people say when people divorce, or when loved ones die. Fuck all, because none of it matters. None of it changes anything.

I keep coming back to a number. 10. 10 was the age I learned there was no Santa Claus. 10 was the age my daughter stopped thinking I was Superman. My birthday is on the 10th day of the 10th month.

Myra and I were married for 10 years.

And now, we're not.

Well, hell. I guess we are. Legally. All that binding, blinding, beguiling bullshit. To have and to hold. For better or worse. I guess it got worse than worse while I wasn't paying attention. Been thinking lately. I'm pretty sure (in as much as I'm sure about anything anymore) and that probably how it works. I can't even be all that pissed off at her; not without being pissed off at myself even more. People have a right to find happiness, right? Isn't that the Thing That Matters? Isn't that what we're supposed to do? Isn't that what it all boils down to? Whether you find happiness in a bottle or in a church, or in a needle, or in a marriage, or in random screwing in the back seat on a drunken Friday night? That's the whole American Dream, right?

Isn't that it?

Well, fuck all that, too.

Because when it's all over, when the Curse of the Ten comes down on my head, I somehow end up right back here. One more cheap ass motel room, counting out loose change and living on the stale muffins, half sour milk, and weak lukewarm coffee. Me looking at the dull red LED display of the alarm clock radio and counting down the hours until I either have to check out or pay for another night. One more cheap motel before I end up under a shelter at the park or at some homeless shelter populated by volunteers who want to help me get my life back. They'll tell me I need to man up, get a job, and move forward. There's other fish in the sea, they'll say. I'm too educated a man not to be working, contributing to society. I might mention I used to to teach. They'll tell me I could go back and do that again. After all, the world always needs good teachers. I'll tell them that if the world needed good teachers then the world would pay them as much as lawyers and politicians. The President of the United States, I'll point out, is paid $400,000 a year... and if you throw in the perks... the plane, the clothes, the transportation... it comes to a whole lot more. And lawyers? Well we all know what Shakespeare said about lawyers, right? I'll tell them the world doesn't give a good god damn about good anything. I'll quote the Peter Principle to them, point out that the reason they're some lackey in a homeless shelter is because they've been promoted to the level of their incompetence.

At which point, they will either ask me if I've been drinking or they'll ask me to leave and threaten to call the cops.

Those educational moments never go well.

So I'm sitting here, in this cheap ass motel at the edge of the earth... I'm at the far north end of Chesapeake Bay, in one of those no tell motels that soldiers bring barracks girls to. (Barracks girls, for the uninformed... usually the wives living of other soldiers, often but not always on overseas deployment. They live on base in family housing, but go off base for their affairs.) The room smell of cigarette smoke. The television won't turn off. The bus doesn't run this far down on Ocean View on Sundays, and I think the maid is either hooking on the side or maybe a petty thief.  I'm sitting on the bed, counting out change to see if I have enough for another night. I know better than to think I have enough for food and shelter. But I've got a decade's worth of body fat I can live off of as long as I have drinkable water.

In these moments, I get pretty angry about it. I think about Myra. In our house. In bed with someone else. Someone who, ostensibly, can make her happy. I think about my books. I think about the life I had managed to string together. I think about they way Myra cried when I left, like it was somehow my doing. Like I was the one walking out on her. Maybe I had already, but my body hadn't gotten the memo. Maybe not. But I think about it all in these moments when I'm too broke to get drunk and trying to decide whether I should try and stretch out what little money I have left, whether I should try and scrounge for a bus ticket, or whether I should spend it at a liquor store and sleep at the Union Mission.

And it's in those moments -- when I'm fully embracing my anger and sense of outrage at her and at God and at the universe -- that she calls.

And it all goes back to zero.

Sketch of The 21st Century Underground Man

Chuck woke up in the morning resolved to do something entirely different and new from the entirely new and previous he had attempted to do on the previous day. It was, perhaps, a miscalculated attempt; not to mention a bit rash. The new thing – which consisted of Chuck trying to push his pinky fingers into electric pencil sharpeners – proved disastrous... though not for any of the reasons that he had anticipated.

The possibility that his pinky fingers would not fit proved to be a useless concern; as he was naturally slim and boney, and his fingers were feminine to the point of looking almost skeletal, his pinky fingers fit snugly, but easily. He had mentally prepared himself (as best he could) for the pain and the loss of blood, which the shock of both would most likely push him into unconsciousness – an unconsciousness that would leave him unable to explain himself. He had even prepared himself for the messy splatter by wearing his least favorite work attire – a baby blue button down with pleated khakis and the ugly tie he'd gotten from his the office Secret Santa two years ago. The shirt was baggy and uncomfortable and the pants made him feel like he was walking inside a mostly deflated balloon. The tie was particularly distasteful and nothing like he would buy himself. It was brash, with race car red and brash yellow stripes. In the middle of the tie there was a smiley face with a bullet hole in its forehead and a small caption underneath that read “Have A Splendid Day!”

He hated the tie, but kept it because it HAD been a present and he might be called upon to prove he still had it. His Secret Santa that year had been Chuck Wassermann. He hated that he had a name in common with someone who's sense of humor could be summed up by such an ugly tie. He'd even tried to get people to call him Charles – but that did absolutely no good. He had been a Chuck his entire life and he would remain a Chuck forever.

Having considered all reasonable possibilities, it was the one problem he hadn't counted on – the one that, in retrospect, seemed the most obvious – that led to his failure.

None of the pencil sharpeners worked. Not a single one.

He checked the plugs; some of them were unplugged, but most were. They just didn't work. No one used pencils anymore, but no one thought to get rid of the pencil sharpeners. It was as if they were there, but they didn't exist.

At the end of the day, still wearing the powder blue shirt, khaki pants and Wassermann's ugly tie, Chuck left at his usual time, making sure to take one of the pencil sharpeners with him. He was not usually a thief; but he also knew that the only thing worse than being useless was to be ignored.

He made sure to hide just how disappointed he was that his plan didn't work out and that his pinky fingers were both intact. In the absence of a grand and ironic (as he saw it) act, Chuck saw no alternative but to walk in front of the 43 bus – a bus, which, if he hurried, he would be able to catch one block south from the office building, right in front of that after work bar where Wassermann drank martinis and flirted with women.

He caught the elevator down, sharing with a woman in Wassermann's department. She was new. Her name was Delores. Chuck had only marginally noticed her since she was too attractive to pay him any attention, and women never liked him anyway. He stood next to her in the elevator, breathing in the scent of her perfume – which was an unusually pleasant experience, since he was allergic to most perfumes. He took notice of her without trying to be obvious. Well kept, conservative looking. Light make-up. Shoulder length red hair. But he didn't speak to her. As the elevator hit the Lobby Floor and the doors wooshed open in mechanical silence, she turned, smiled, and spoke.

“That's a funny tie,” she said. Then she walked out of the elevator and into the Lobby and away.

Chuck was shocked out his plan to step in front of the 43 bus by his interaction. He spent the rest of the evening thinking about her and tinkering with the pencil sharpener.

By morning he knew what he was going to do.

A Sketch of Division Street

The trailer court was up on the hill and off to the left at the end of Division Street. You have to drive past the cemetery on Bone Hill and the St. Alice Home for the Aged to find it. When it snows bad, sometimes the plows don't make that far up the hill until well after 10 in the morning, which means the kids who live there either have to trudge down the hill to an available bus stop, or – since the drivers on those routes aren't supposed to let kids on the bus who aren't on their regular route – trudge the extra couple of miles across town and out to the highway bypass, where the new high school is. The smaller kids don't have as far to walk, since the intermediate school is in the center of town.

But none of them walk down the hill to go to school when the snow plows haven't cleared the way for the bus. And the parents don't call to complain. And the school doesn't call to ask if something is wrong. And a truant officer never shows up to question why – except in the spring, of course. They do take special care to make sure the wild kids from Barrett’s Trailer Court aren't out enjoying the day when they could be in school being ignored by the teachers and judged by their fellow students.

And although there has been some talk about “what to do” about the trailer park and the unwanted minions who reside there – the basic premise being that trailers are dirty no-good places, and that poor people have poor habits and that because of those two unrelated axioms … unrelated except for the fact that they are both applied to the people who live at the trailer park – there isn't enough consensus to get anything done. Whenever there's a break in or something is stolen, the first thing that Police Chief Dolarhyde does is roust the trailer park kids, since they're the most obvious suspects. That it rarely ever comes to anything doesn't matter; one of the ways the chief is able to keep his job is by sticking to the obvious. When nothing is found, the general assumption is that those white trash sons and daughters of whores simply sold it to someone from out of town for drug money or threw it away. 

The only time the trailer park kids get a break from Chief Dolarhyde's program of perpetual harassment is when the gypsies come through the area. And since the gypsies never stay in town, but find places to camp outside the town limits, they're considered a county problem, not a town one.

Daguerreotypes:Leon and Delilah's Night Out

Leon wandered the dark narrow bar, telling people who didn't know him he just got out of prison – 5 months – and would they buy him a drink. Underage Delilah hobbled around on crutches, sneaking pity beers from men old enough to be her father but young enough to appreciate her cleavage. One drunk couple, slopping all over the floor, stumbled out to the parking lot, fucked in the back seat of an '95 Oldsmobile, and returned. After two more shots, she started rubbing up on a woman playing darts and before long, they were dancing. Leon managed a few drinks before Underage Delilah ratted him out for a beer and a menthol cigarette.

“I hurt my leg in the river,” she said. “I'd show you my scars, but haven't been able to shave my legs.”

The Transfiguration of Rufus Skeen, Chapter 2, Part 1

His family's farm was part of the most fertile section of Seven Hills Valley. His father often sat around after supper was finished, puffed on his pipe and recited the family history, which, he said, could be traced back to the first arrival of white men to the region – the original trek led by Baptist minister Obadiah Blight and the Protestant faithful who set out from Boston in search of the land spoken of in the Great Book. The Skeen family was one of the original 77 families who set out with little more than faith to carry them across the heathen lands and were, by the grace of heaven one of the 12 surviving families who arrived and cut up the fertile valley into farms and into the central village of Blighton.

Rufus knew this history intimately because, besides the rain, the crops, and the Great Book, his father talked of little else. “It's important,” he'd say... and say... and say. “It's important to know your roots, where you're from. It's the only you have to know if you're acting like a man.”

He was sick of hearing his father talk about it and sick of having to think about it. All of it. Sick of hearing his father talk about it. Sick of having to recite it back at randomly. He could be working in the barn and his father would walk in and make him recite the entire lineage to present, with correct birth and (when applicable) death dates. Sometimes he would make Rufus recite the names of the the original 77 families. Rufus felt as if he were living in the past when the entire world around him was pushing its self into the future. The Village of Blighton was growing, and the people who lived there were growing with it. There was talk of a new dam and hydroelectric plant that would turn Apple Fork River into a lake, and there was talk of turning the area around the lake into a state park. So not only would Blighton benefit from newer and cheaper electricity, but it would create a destination, make it a Place People Go instead of A Place People Escape.

But that was the future and Rufus's father, Aloysius, would have none of it. The Skeen farm was the only farm in the valley not to sell out to the newly formed Seven Hills Energy Cooperative. More people were moving into the valley, trying to escape the city, and new houses had to be built. The other farmers sold out at healthy profit, became partners in the new energy cooperative, and were opening businesses in town to cater to the new arrivals. Restaurants and rooming houses and clothing stores. Old man Fettierre was opening a ladies' shoe store.

Every night Rufus went to bed praying his father would wake up and decide to sell the farm. After all, the phone calls and visits from cooperative representatives were almost a daily occurrence. And even as he prayed every night to leave, he dreamed each night of the places he read about in books and saw on television. All he wanted to do was escape. He wanted to live someplace with public transportation. Someplace that didn't require him to get his hands dirty when he worked. Someplace where people didn't look at you cross-eyed if they didn't see you walking into church on Sunday morning. He dreamed of moving to the city and changing his name to Luke or Robert or Stanley – a name that had nothing to do the Skeens, with the 12 families, with Blighton, or with Apple Valley.

Yet every morning when Rufus woke up to complete his chores, Aloysius was as intractable as ever. “Our family has always been provided for,” he'd say. “And that's more than most people will everbe able to say.”

Whenever Aloysius lit the burned bowl of his briar pipe after clearing his supper plate – the cue that he would once again begin to talk about the family and the Great Book – Rufus and his twin sister Selma would lock their eyes on one another and simultaneously roll them. They knew better than to interrupt or allow their lack of interest to show because their father believed deeply in the idea that sparing the rod spoiled the child; and no child of his would spoil on his watch. No sir.

Though Rufus saw the rod much more often than his sister. And every time he did, for whatever infraction Aloysius chose to punish him for, Rufus saw with increasing clarity that someday he would get out of Apple Fork, away from Blighton, and into the larger world.

And he also saw with increasing clarity – and no small bit of satisfaction – that it would break his father's heart.

The Rose Tattoo (Or, Sketch of One of God's Little Left Overs)

Strictly speaking, Simpson was not a complicated person. He woke up each day ten minutes before his alarm clock sounded. He showered quickly and efficiently and shaved whether he really needed to or not. He liked his coffee black, but not too strong and his white toast lightly buttered with a minuscule dusting of cinnamon and sugar. Simpson left his home every workday at precisely 7:01 a.m. and arrived at Meladon Ficus and Associates, his place of employment for the past 10 years, exactly 45 minutes later. (Sometimes there was an accident or delay on the interstate that caused him to be late by five or ten minutes; but he was so punctual otherwise that everyone assumed he possessed some preternatural sense of traffic patterns and was in his corner cubicle by ten minutes until eight – whether he actually was or not.)

While at work he was focused and professional. His job was not a complicated one and it was not one that provided him with much power, affluence, or notice from his superiors. Fifty or sixty years ago, he would have been called a paper pusher. Now there's very little paper and most of what he does is transfer files from one folder on the server to another folder on the same server so that someone else can look at it after he goes over it. His job is to make sure that the person who saved the document in the file Simpson pulled it from didn't make any mistakes. The person who looked at it after him made sure that Simpson didn't miss anything. Eventually the files made their way to the Executive Board, where they were glanced over as visuals for a presentation that someone else – who had no part in putting the documents together – was giving. And it was that person who would get the credit for the hard work of all the invisible people who touched up document along the way. Simpson didn't mind this; losing out on the credit also meant that he lost out on the blame, too. And this was primarily where he drew satisfaction from his job.

On Wednesdays – which happened to be this particular day – Simpson ate his lunch at half past 12 instead of at noon. No one cared. Not even the the office manager Delores Filtcher. Delores spent most of her days fawning over the young delivery boy who brought FEDEX packages to the 15^thfloor office and talking to the small circle of women she drank with after work. Simpson knew the only reason she sexually harassed the FEDEX delivery man was because she didn't want it to get out that she and her was having an affair with one of the other telephone service specialists, a meek little mouse of a woman named Mildred.

Simpson also thought that maybe Delores was a little scared of him – though he couldn't really understand why.

He sat and ate his lunch – usually a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread (with the crusts cut off, the way his mom used to give them to him when he was bedridden and ill as a child), an apple, and a bottle of lemon flavored iced tea from the vending machine (Simpson didn't like the tarty flavor of real lemon, but he liked the saccharine taste of fake lemon flavoring. ) He said very little to anyone beyond vague pleasantries.

Wednesday was the day he allowed himself to watch Penelope. Penelope had the same job he had, but in another department. On Wednesdays she always wore her back in a pony tail. And while Penelope was a beautiful woman every other day of the week, long auburn hair, hazel eyes, and a well cared for physique. Simpson imaged by the sculpted curvature of her rear and the flatness of her stomach that she worked out at least two to three times a week. (Simpson himself did not.) And while that was an especially pleasant bonus, it wasn't those things about her that attracted his attention.

It was the tattoo.

A small rose tattoo, to be exact, just below her hair line on the back of her neck. It was small, ornate. Against her pale winter skin it looked like etching on fine porcelain. There was no indication that there were tattoos anywhere else on her body; Simpson had seen her in a variety of sleeveless, short, and long-sleeved professional outfits and there was nothing on her arms. She sometimes wore a skirt when the weather was warm and there was no ink marring her perfectly shaped legs. He supposed she could have tattoos other places; but he didn't like to think of her abdomen being marred with ink... or anywhere else, either.

No, it was just a small, single tattoo. He liked to sit and imagine the story of it as he ate his peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the crusts cut off. He liked to imagine it was some brief bout of college indiscretion; in his more imaginative moments, he imagined that it wasn't a tattoo at all, but a rare birthmark. Something that made her precious. Rare. Distinct. But maybe she was unaware of what it really meant, and maybe she had always wanted to know... that thing that only he could tell her because it was knowledge that he was born with, something he had known his entire, dull existence, without even knowing WHY he knew it. But it had been there. Waiting. Waiting for the moment when the two of them would occupy the same space at the same time. Waiting so that he could tell her his secret knowledge... and in the knowing, together they would both be free.

He timed eating his sandwich to coincide with her finishing her egg salad croissant and stood so that he would reach the door before she did. He did this every Wednesday, so it required almost no thought. When they met together at the door, each and every Wednesday, Simpson thought that might be the moment he could tell her the meaning of the rose tattoo and free them both. He imagined the moment over and over again: the expression on her face as he mouthed the words that she had been needing to hear her entire life – words that she was unaware of, except for the great emptiness of their absence. He imagined her smiling, maybe touching the rose lightly, and a slight tear rolling down her otherwise perfect face. “Thank you,” she would say. “I always hoped it would be you.”

As he approached her, reaching for the door in order to open it, he prepared. The words, he knew were on his lips. He had only to speak. Then he opened the door, and she looked up at him and smiled a glorious smile.

Then her cell phone rang.

“Oh!” she said, hurrying through the open door and answering her phone. “Thanks, Simmons,” she hissed quickly over her shoulder.

Simpson stood there for a moment, then walked through himself. He didn't follow her down the hall. Instead he went back to his office and went about the rest of his day, wondering whether Penelope was aware of the company policy regarding cell phone usage during work hours.

The Transfiguration of Rufus Skeen I: Rufus Recalls His First Baptism

Rufus recalled his baptism. He had been 9 years old.

It felt like the right thing to do – to stand up in front of his father, his mother, his sister Selma, and the entire congregation to proclaim that he believed and that he wished to be saved.

He had watched people go through the ceremony before; the petitioner stood during the Call, which usually came after the sermon. Mr. Lancette, the preacher, stood in front of the alter, leading the congregation in the call hymn. Behind him on the alter, the communion service sat, shining gold and glimmering in the sunlight that shone through the stained glass windows. The whole of the sanctuary was washed in this light, and the gold plating of the communion service glowed like a new sun, infinite, ethereal, and eternal.

When Rufus was 9, he believed in God because his father told him that God existed, that Jesus lived, died, and rose again. Rufus could never imagine what God looked like, or sounded like, so he imagined that God looked and sounded like his Dad. Rufus couldn't imagine heaven, either, despite all the talk about houses with many rooms and streets paved in gold with pearl gates and jewel encrusted walls; he had never seen gold, except for the communion service, and the only thing he knew about pearls was that they were found in oysters, deep in the ocean. He learned that in school. Since he couldn't imagine heaven, he imagined that God – the God who looked and talked like his dad – lived in the space above the sanctuary. Heaven was a crawl space. He knew about crawl spaces because his house had a crawl space where his mother kept all the Christmas decorations, boxes full of old pictures that were too fragile to hang on the walls, and miscellaneous junk no one wanted to throw away. To Rufus, Heaven was that place people put things they didn't need very often or didn't know what to do with, and God was the guy on the ladder who brought the decorations down the day after Thanksgiving.

What Rufus did know, and did understand, and didn't need to visualize, was how his father felt about religion. The only thing his father read besides the newspaper was the family bible. When Rufus was small and learning to read, his mother read to him from the Old Testament. Genesis. Joseph and the coat of many colors; David and Goliath. He didn't understand how God could be a burning bush, a column of fire, and a column of smoke, but he understood that his father would be proud of him if he decided to be baptized, to be saved, to take Jesus into his heart.

Rufus did it without warning. He made sure he sat on the end of the pew before church started, so he wouldn't have to ask permission to get by anybody. When the Call came, Rufus closed his hymnal and, while his sister, mother, and father looked on, shocked, he walked with what he thought was determination and maturity up to the front of the sanctuary, where Mr. Lancette was bellowing out the first verse of He Walks with Me. Everyone was surprised to see him up there, people muttered and pointed. Rufus didn't look back to see the look on his dad's face, but he imagined that his father was smiling the smile he generally reserved for when Selma did something cute, or when she acted in the Christmas pageant, or when she got good grades, which she always did.

After the call, the preacher took Rufus's hand and shook it. It was a hearty, adult handshake. Then, like all the people who had come before him, like he had seen countless times, Rufus was asked to confirm what he believed.

"I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God."

The congregation collectively intoned, "Amen!"

Then two women, wives of two of the elders, came up to take Rufus in the back, to show him where to prepare for baptism. One of the women led him by the shoulders, behind the organ, back into the hallway behind the sanctuary. There were stalls there, like the ones in department stores to try on clothes in. The women showed him where the white baptismal gowns were, and picked one out that would fit him fine. They also showed him where to put his church clothes, where the underwear was, (so the petitioner wouldn't get their own underwear wet; Rufus thought this was a particularly well thought out idea) and where to put the wet underwear after it was over. He changed into the gown the women gave him; it was long and white, like the ones angels wore in the pictures he had seen in Sunday School. After he changed, one of the women, smiling, proud, told him where to stand.

The communion service was over. The curtains in front of the baptismal pool were drawn. The familiar organ music began, and he saw the preacher come around the other side wearing on along white coat and wading boots like his father used for fly fishing. He went up the steps on the right side of the pool while Rufus waited on the left side. He wasn't thinking about anything. Time was agonizingly slow.

Finally, it was his turn. One of the church wives helped him up the first step, then disappeared – probably to go back around and watch with the rest of congregation and his family.

The pool was nothing more than an extra large bathtub. The floor and sides were covered with small square tiles – the kind found in locker room showers and public restrooms. The water in the baptismal pool was clear and smelled like chlorine. It was also was warm – warm like spit, or urine.

He took the minister's hand, and waited for him to finish talking. "Rufus Aloysius Skeen, in as much as you have confirmed your belief, and in as much as you seek the forgiveness of Jesus Christ and the redemption of your sins, I now baptize you…"

Rufus was underwater for only an instant, and when Mr. Lancette brought him back up, the water left a weird film all over him. The congregation started singing a hymn of praise, and the preacher led Rufus out of the water. As he started up the stairs, Rufus looked out to where his father sat, expecting to see him smiling, see him proud.

Instead, his father sat stone-faced and silent as everyone else sang.

Oompa: Part, The 3rd

After a considerable amount of groaning and several severely patronizing chastising remarks from Shakir, Stanley led the Westerner off to the left – he could not tell the direction because dark rain clouds were covering the sky and, in spite of what his new employer insisted, Stanley did not have an animal's natural sense of direction. He chose the left because his left testicle itched and turning that direction gave him a chance to scratch without having to endure more of Shakir's attempts at “civilizing” him.

The way next to the river was relatively clear of brush and weeds and there was very little grass to speak of; mostly it was tiny pebbles, all of which he felt through the thin soles of his expensive patent leather shoes. They were shoes made to look good, not be comfortable or to hike soon to be 50 foot deep lakes in the middle of nowhere. His blisters had popped and formed new blisters. He could feel the leather starting to crack from exposure and abuse. As they neared what turned out to be the southern wall of the canyon the clouds let loose a torrential rain that turned every bit of dirt around them to mud and made the pebble-like rocks under Stanley's feet slick like marbles. Halfway to the rock face, he slipped and fell in the mud screaming an obscenity, causing him to swallow a mouthful of mud that smelled like animal shit.

“MOTHER FUCKER!” He screamed and wallowed and could not – or maybe his body simply wouldn't let him – get out of the mud. J. Paddington Shakir, holding his nose with the dainty forefinger and thumb of his left hand, tried to pull Stanley up with his right; and were it not for the fact that Stanley was more afraid of walling in animal shit with Shakir than he was of wallowing alone, Shakir would have pulled himself in and they both would have been covered in whatever the foul stench was. Needless to say, when Stanley stood up, the remnants of his suit were ruined.

“It's a shame Oompa,” Shakir said shaking his head, “that all you know of the King's English are crude obscenities.”

“It's YOUR fault!” he snapped back, giving in momentarily to the shock to his pride. He was typically a very particular about his dress and groom habits. Now he felt as dirty inside as he did outside and as much as he spit and vomited, he could not get the taste of excrement out of his mouth; it lingered like bad mouth wash.

Shakir frowned and shook his head. “This is unacceptable, Oompa.” His tone was sharp and whiny. “We must find shelter, and we must find it soon. We simply don't have time for another one of your primitive culture's superstitions; wallowing in animal feces won't protect you from some non-existent thunder god. Hold yourself together for God's sake, man!”

I don't know if I'll make it out this giant fucking hole in the ground alive, Stanley thought. But one way or another, I'm going to get that son of a bitch.

The rain was steady and picking up pace; at first, Stanley appreciated the rain because it at least washed off some the mud and shit that was caked into his clothes and into every pore of his body. The muddy water was seeping into his shoes, soaking through his silk socks and squishing between his toes. He thought he could feel the rot growing between his toes and imagined what he would look like if he were rescued; his wife would come to the hospital (after she dismounted that fucking sumo-wrestler downstairs) and see him there, with all of his toes amputated from some rare wilderness rot. Of course, by then he would be insane and not notice the absence of his toes, and his wife and father-in-law could institutionalize him somewhere and forget about him. Stanley found the thought somewhat comforting; sure, he'd have no toes. But he'd have no cheating wife, no bastard of a father-in-law who enjoyed making midget jokes at his expense – like the time he paid to have kiddie urinal installed in the Executive bathroom with Stanley's name engraved on it. Or the time he insisted that Stanley dress as an elf for the office Christmas party and made him sit on everyone's lap. Or at their wedding when he locked Stanley in the empty wine refrigerator.

“Look there, Oompa!” Shakir was shrieking like a little girl. “A cave! I see a cave!”

“What good does that do us?” Stanley asked. “Then this giant mud puddle floods, the cave will flood too. We're better off trying to climb out.”

“We'll never make it up in this downpour,” Shakir said like he briefly considered it as an option. “Besides, I bet that the cave we're looking for; and if that's the case, we won't have to worry about anything. Come!”

“I'm not your fucking dog!” Stanley spit between his teeth.

“What's that, Oompa?”

“I said, I'm your willing cog!”

“Your attempts at English are improving yet, my little friend. Let us get out of this torrent and dry off.”

“You bet!” I'll play along, Stanley thought. Just until I eat your goddamn eyeballs.

[Be sure to check out Grindbone, too, for more work by Mick Parsons, as well as work by Kaplowitz and Brent Allard!]

   

Open Letter to the Alumni Association

Dear Sanctimonious Leeches and Intellectual Parasites:

I would very much like to thank you for the glossy quarterly publication in which you highlight the accomplishments of those past, present, and future graduates who you feel distinguish the grand Alma Mater in this age of for-profit degree mills and economic and educational disparity. I have always felt especially grateful to have attended because of the people I met there, student and faculty alike, who encouraged me to grow and to think and have helped me to become the fully realized human being I am in the process of becoming.

Among them, one teacher stands out more than most. And I would mention his name, but since you have never mentioned him in the aforementioned glossy publication you insist on mailing me every three months, I can only conclude that he continues to toil in the shadow of an institution that neither notices nor cares that he has set upon the world more artists and free thinkers than your College of Business has loosed successful entrepreneurs. As a matter of fact, I'm fairly certain that your College of Business – which, allowed by your President and Board of Regents, and in a premeditated and unholy fashion, swallowed whole the English Department from which I managed to graduate … twice … – has done little more for the world than set upon it an army of mediocre middle managers, all of whom were made to retrain their replacements when the companies they worked for sent all the jobs overseas.

Now, this teacher I speak of is a great poet and an amazing human being – and though that statement is a bit repetitive, I feel, nonetheless, obliged to mention both since you may not have yet made the connection. He had done none of the things that merit attention from the College of Business graduates who have risen to offices of institutional power and affluence... the poetry haters who used to pass out ruffies to sorority girls at parties the way priests hand out wafers of bread on Sunday. As a related aside, consider this: people who claim to hate poetry or to not understand it have clearly missed the point. Granted, the Modernists – Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and the like – sort screwed over those of who came after because they removed poetry from the trust of the people and deposited it in the sorry Savings and Loan otherwise known as the modern college and university system. And because of those dead sorry bastards there's a lot of even sorrier living ones who have never known that poetry is a more potent aphrodisiac than chocolate.

But this does not excuse you, leeches and parasites, from the guilt you share in the whole sale theft of the American Dream. Whole generations have come up believing they need you to succeed, and if they can't afford you that they aren't worthy. And if by success they mean living the half life of a cubicle caught middle manager, techie toiler, tax payer, and amasser of debt, then your Ponzi scheme has succeeded. You rotten sons of bitches.

Along with the glossy magazine you send me every three months with the pictures of the unknowing poster children of the apocalypse, you often send me letters asking for money... a tithe, no doubt from the income you feel like you have helped me to earn. And while I would gladly spend that $25 on beer for the teacher to whom I owe so much, or for any one of the people– poets and artists all – who have graced me with their friendship, there is very little you can do, either in your form letters or in your glossy magazine to convince me that I ought to contribute to your war coffers.

If, after receiving this letter, you still feel the need to send me the glossy magazine every three months, it's your postage, not mine; the same goes for the letters you send that have gone unanswered until now and will again after I finish. But if you have any respect – scratch that – you are at all concerned about the time wasted by the poor dumb kids you put on the phone to call and try and talk me out of the little bit of money I manage to gather up, remove my phone number from your rolls; because not only will I try and convince them they need to drop out and go find themselves, I will also try and talk them into setting the the Administration building on fire before they leave under cover of night.

You are weasels of the lowest order, the spoilers of healthy minds and rapists of good solid souls. You will get no more of me.

Regards,

Mick Parsons

Mount Carroll, IL

Excerpt From The Muckraker's Chronicle: It's Hard To Be Humble

Denise. That was her name. It stuck with me. It woke me up at night. Denise Gunnersaun, the woman who hanged herself in the Arliss County Jail rather than stand trial for defending herself. I had a girlfriend once named Denise. She was Denise the amazonian from the wrong side of town. None of the popular boys would admit they liked her, but they all stared at her boobs. We were in 7^th grade. I was too timid to do anything but hold hands. Denise, who liked me because was I gentle and kind and because I wasn't mean to her the way the rest of the kids were. Denise who broke up with me using a note she had her best friend Becky give me in Ms. Algers math class. Denise Riddley. I didn't like her enough to be broken up about it. I was more annoyed that Becky got caught passing me the note; we both ended up getting detention for it. Becky spent the entire hour after school giving me dirty looks. To this day I'm still not sure what it was I did wrong.

That wasn't the only reason Denise Gunnersaun stuck in my mind; the whole story seemed absurd. Drunken asshole of a husband comes home, wants to take his bad mood out on his high school sweet heart and mother of his sons. She has enough, swings at his bloated head with a frying pan. Yet she's the one that gets arrested. She's the one that's left alone, deserted by her few friends and the community of women who have been turning a blind eye to the suffering of their own gender for years... decades, maybe even longer. I sit in on town council and county board committee meetings where they complain about drug traffic and the riff raff and how people are poor because they're not willing to work. Mothers will gossip about the alleged sins of other mother's sons but defend their own children's obvious improprieties with a “boys will be boys” attitude. Better to marry an abusive asshole if you get knocked up rather than take on the stigma of being an unwed mother in a town that prizes the appearance of things over their content. Of course, the church matrons will never forgive you anyway and still think you're a dirty whore... but as long as you seem willing to not ever forgive yourself either, it makes the whole thing go a bit easier.

The article was a short one; took me less than a half hour to write, including interviews. The coroner and the sheriff both made statements, I typed the story up, turned it in. It was one of the easiest articles I'd ever written. Ever.

And then the old men at the Moose Head started talking about it. Don Parton was the most vocal. He was vocal about his support of Daniel, the husband. The poor guy who now had to raise his two sons alone after that psycho bitch of a wife did herself in. It was maybe the best thing for everyone, though; after all, Parton said, the negative effect she was having on those boys might have ruined them. Of course, that Daniel married her at all amazed everyone; when the oldest boy, Jesse, was born, there was no way of knowing whether Daniel was even the father, Parton said. “The way SHE got around,” he said, shaking his head. Judgment. It's so much easier to judge the dead since they're not around to defend themselves. Not that anyone waited that long to judge Denise Gunnersaun.

And of course, no one other than Sheriff Cleary – who was actually pretty broken up about it – and the coroner – who was annoyed that her death interrupted his golf game – would talk to me on the record. I tried talking to her friends … the few that would claim to be, anyway … and while I heard several ear fulls of information, the only way any of them agreed to talk to me was if I left their name out of the paper. Great. “An unidentified friend of the deceased claims...” Right. Or maybe I could go all Woodward and Bernstein and give each of them code names. Flappy Jaws, Trailer Queen, and Stovepipe. The three of them still lived in Denise's Gunnersaun's old stomping ground: the trailer park at the end of Wakarusa Road. For many of the the upstanding citizens of Mount Arliss the trailer park was a symbol of the epidemic of laziness, communism, and liberalism that was spreading like a virus across the nation... leaching out from Chicago like some hideous kudzu like weed, taking over everything. Southern farmers hate kudzu because once it takes up residence in a field, it's almost impossible to kill. And it takes over everything. Entire hill sides in Eastern Kentucky are eaten up with the stuff... it kills everything else by using up every bit of nutrient in the soil and propagating. It grows the way cancer grows.

Which is how people who didn't live in the trailer park saw the trailer park. In one trailer alone, they would say, the (unmarried, of course) woman had seven kids. And she wasn't even 30. Seven kids, seven different fathers. Hers and the bastard children of the other trailer park whores running around town like a plague, destroying things, taking up room the schools that should have been saved for upstanding children from good families. Not that many of the good families were staying, since there were no jobs to had in Arliss County that didn't include underpaid menial labor or seasonal farm work – and the seasonal farm work inevitably went to the migrant workers pouring over the Mexican border like a punishment from Heaven. Naturally people made biblical parallels. How could they not? It was so easy. The entire world was going to shit. Gays wanting to get married, Mexicans taking American jobs, and the whores in the Wakarusa Trailer Court. And Denise Gunnersaun, for the sin of trying to get out the only way she knew how – which was admittedly not the best or smartest of ways – was symbolic of Heaven's judgment against the whole country.

Or so Don Parton thought and said. And when Parton talked people tended to listen... mostly because he never let anyone else talk that didn't agree with him.

Her friends... the ones that wouldn't talk to me on the record... gave their point of view on Daniel Gunnersaun. He'd been the favored son of a well known and respected property owner... which in Mount Arliss meant a farmer. A favored son, a farmer's son, and the star Varsity quarterback... which put him somewhere on the same level as God for most of the adults in town. He always had the prettiest girl on his arm – never the same one for very long and almost always a cheerleader. Always won the crucial football game. Always managed to get by in his classes. A 4-H award winner. President of the Mount Arliss Future Farmers of America, and the youngest member of the county's chapter of the NRA. He was actively recruited by Illinois State University and Michigan State; he was a hometown boy with a bright future.

And then he met Denise Favre.

Her mother had lived in the trailer park for years and before that she had lived above the laundromat on the corner. The only thing certain about Denise Favre's parentage was that Rachel Favre was her mother; who her father was had only been the the topic of idle gossip and conversation. The upright uptight church matrons called her the Whore of Babylon and every man in town, married or single, had at some point walked through her door and laid down in her bed. Who her parents had been, no one knew; she wasn't from Mount Arliss; Rachel had simply appeared in town one day and proceeded, to hear the God-fearing women tell it, to dig her claws into their husbands and sons. The less than God-fearing women didn't especially like her either. And each and all of them passed on their dislike to her only daughter.

How's that song go? Same old story, same old song and dance. Being from the wrong family in a small town is like being the middle child; no matter what you do, you always lose. And when you're from the right family, no matter what you do, your shit doesn't stink.

“Why are you letting this bother you?” Maude asked me when one of my insomnia nights woke her up. “Why do you let any of this bother you?”

I told her I didn't know. “It just doesn't seem fair. Or something.”

“You get too involved,” she said. “And it ends up keeping you up at night; or it gives you another excuse to get drunk and pissy.”

“I don't recall ever needing an excuse,” I said. “And I'm never pissy.”

“If it bothers you,” she said, sitting down in her chair and lighting up a cigarette, “why didn't you write a longer article on it?”

She's right, of course. But there's no point in saying that out loud. I didn't write the longer article... the one I should have written … because I waited until the last minute to write it. Squeezed it in right over deadline.

“I was working on other stuff,” I said. “That was a busy week. I wish I COULD just focus on one story at a time. I'd have been awarded a Pulitzer by now.”

“And yet,” she said, “you're still so humble.”

She loves me. I know she loves me because she picks on me. Most of the time it makes me laugh. It did this time, too. “I know, I know,” I said. “It's a burden being this brilliant still be an everyday normal guy.”

“You've never been normal.”

“Thanks.”

“What about this is bothering you, though? I mean it's not like you knew her.” She looked over at me with that inquisitive look she used to give me a lot more when we first got together and I still had more women friends than she thought was normal. It's probably not fair to say she was jealous; but whenever she saw me with one of them, she would still give me these looks from time to time that said “Are you sure you're not fucking this chick?”

I ignored the look on her face. “It's the situation, maybe,” I said. “Everybody in town is glad she's dead for the sake of the asshole who abused her.”

“And?”

“Isn't that enough?”

“Enough to complain about? Yes. Enough to be indignant about? Yes. But why is it bothering you?”

“Did I tell you that Don Parton tried to get Sam to fire me?”

“Why?”

“Because I've been asking around about Daniel Gunnersaun's background, his history around here.”

“And what's the point in that?”

“I don't know. Not really.”

“And what did Sam say?”

“Sam told him to take a flying leap.”

“Really?”

“Not in so many words. Sam has more tact.”

“Is this story worth losing your job over?”

“I'm not going to lose my job; it's barely a job as it is. I probably would've written a bigger article if I hadn't needed to write five other ones that week just to make a decent check.”

“You could do something else.”

“Like what?”

“You could teach,” she said. “You said you almost became a teacher.”

“I almost became a fire watcher, too,” I said, “except that they don't use fire watchers anymore. Guess I missed out.”

“What's that have to do with teaching?”

“They don't need real teachers anymore, either.”

She sighed. Maude's exhaustion was getting the better of her. My absence from bed woke her up, but she needed more sleep than I did. “Let's go to bed,” she yawned.

“You go ahead. I'll be there in a bit. Save me some room.”

She sighed again, but she was too tired to argue; she stood up and shuffled back to bed. After I heard her settle in and fall back asleep, I thought again about Denise Gunnersaun and her three friends who wouldn't come to the defense of her memory. And it still didn't sit right. 

Brief Introduction to A Biography of Ill-Fate: Gibbleflugen's Gambit, by Halstead Mamby, PhD

Professor Wilhelm Gibbleflugen (1849-1920?) was an obscure German Historian who lived during the later part of the 19^th and early part of the 20^th Century. His influences were next to non-existent, and his theories half-baked. For example, rather than seeing history as a continuum of progress towards inevitable Platonic perfection – which was (and still is in most 1^st world nations around the world) the generally accepted view of world history –Gibbleflugen saw history... best described in his own words (from his one and only book length work, Zivilisierung Kaput or The Fit and Failure of The Civilized World, published in 1919 at his own expense) as: “a series of random and largely forgettable events given meaning without cause, importance without reason, and weight without consideration.” He went to explain in great length what he meant by this cryptic statement; but like all German intellectuals, Gibbleflugen was much enamored by the flow of words rather than the message they were intended to convey.

To condense for the benefit of a contemporary readership, Gibbleflugen's stance on history was this: people only remember what they want to remember anyway, so there's little point in writing any of it down or even discussing it other than during party games or in the process of trying to impress an attractive girl.

This made him no friends among his professional colleagues, who saw his hypothesis as nothing short of professional and cultural abortion. He rarely attended conferences or read the papers of other historians, and was only given tenure at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin because he was immensely popular with students who didn't want to study history anyway. In fact, Gibbleflugen's seminars were legendary for their brevity; the class would meet only once, on the first day of the term. On that day, Professor Gibbleflugen stalked into the seminar room, carrying nothing in his hand but his walking stick made from the shaft of an American Buffalo topped with a large white pearl that he was sometimes fond of using to hit people on the head with, causing horrible concussions. Once at the lectern, he made each student stand up and say his (and later her) own name. When that was complete, he informed his students that they had just demonstrated all the knowledge he could possible give them... and would they please just leave him alone, for Christ's sake? He would be found later at his favorite tavern, drinking and arguing about the size of the barmaid's breasts or sitting in with the band playing his harpsichord.

Gibbleflugen himself had an encyclopedic memory for world historical events, even though no one ever saw him even pick up a book. A student, convinced that the Professor was a fraud, once cornered him in his favorite tavern. Once the professor was good and rotten drunk, the student began to whisper in his ear, attempting to draw the the scholar into a debate about some particulars of medieval European history. After five minutes of the student's incessant talking, Gibbleflugen could stand it no more, took his pearl tipped bull shaft walking stick and lightly. popped the young man on the top of his head. “The problem with your argument,” he said, calmly, returning to his mug of beer, “is that you're forgetting that the King was really a woman in drag.” To what king the professor was referring, no one heard; and the student, upon waking in an alley, promptly left college in disgrace and was never heard from again.

That he only used his powerful knowledge of history to get laid eventually led to his downfall; he was caught in bed with the twin daughters of a member of the German government, Gretchen and Gröten von Haasenhaber. Their father, a powerful diplomat and distant 7^th cousin to Wilhelm II, the last German monarch, had Gibbleflugen arrested for contributing to the delinquency of children. (It was later discovered, through the long, laborious, and detailed testimonies of their many paramours that the von Haasenhaber sisters were as easily gotten as a village bicycle, and ridden just as often.) The Professor, who refused to defend himself or even to testify, spent the entire proceeding laughing to himself – at some times laughing so long that he was crying. The case was eventually dismissed when it was discovered that the high court judge deciding the case had deflowered both girls when they reached breeding age and had, over the years, visited them when their father was away on government business.

That the case was dismissed meant nothing, however. Professor Gibbleflugen was drummed out of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in what everyone thought was relative disgrace. He seemed none of the worse for wear, however; he could be found at his favorite tavern most nights, flirting with women and playing his harpsichord.

It was during this time of decline and increased debauchery that Gibbleflugen wrote what has become his seminal work. Zivilisierung Kaput (or The Fit and Failure of The Civilized World) was published in 1919 by an obscure publisher of exquisite pornography whom the Professor knew from the tavern. He would sometimes give copies of the book to women he wanted to woo, or leave them in public bathrooms. When critics and his former colleagues got wind of the publication, they asked him for copies to review, intending to rip it to pieces; the Professor responded by paying prostitutes to used the book as toilet paper before sending them to his would-be critics. If anyone asked him what his intention was in writing it, he would either ignore them, hit them on the head with his pearl topped bull shaft walking stick, or – if the person asking was a particularly attractive woman – he would ask her to bed. (Though he was not an attractive man by the standards of his day, this ploy worked more often than anyone wanted to admit.)

The (supposed) death of Professor Wilhelm Gibbleflugen was as mysterious and odd as the man. The night prior to his death, he had gone home with an especially pliable barmaid named Mable. The following morning, he was gone from her bed. His clothes and shoes were there; but his walking stick was missing. When interrogated by the authorities, Mable confessed that he had spent the night with her; and while she was a bit sad that he was gone, she was supposed to have said that she had rather he'd left behind his fine and useful walking stick instead of his clothes.

Doc Gimley's Contribution, Part 4

Ardena's nerves were frazzled and Shirley was being himself – which meant he was aloof, spiteful, and when he did speak to her, he was mean. Her talk with Doc Gimley proved successful, though she still wished that she had not been the one to go. But what choice did she have? If she had not gone herself, that awful Sally Forth would have gone and ended up taking credit for everything. She found it difficult to talk to Doc Gimley – especially in the examination room. Naturally, he was the town's doctor, the closest thing to a medical man in the whole county, unless you counted that old witch Hilda Boykin … which Ardena did not. That old woman was crazy... prescribing herbs for cramps and selling abortion elixirs to the whores out at Chapel's Farm. If Ardena could have run Hilda Boykin and those harlots out of the county, she would have. As it was, she got them out of town limits. But what was it about Doc Grimley that made so nervous? For all of his pomp and circumstance, he was as much a man as the others in town – even her own husband Shirley. When that horrible whore house was still in the middle of town, he went there as much as the others. There had been a time, and she thought about it often, when her husband's dalliances hurt her. He had been so helpless and so sweet when she first knew him; so gentle. So quiet and peaceful that more than a gentle breeze would have pushed him over. She had seen something in him then; something that could be brought out, polished and refined. Refined by the right woman. Refined by a strong woman. Refined by someone like her.

It seemed to fall upon him like a sickness after Junior was born – this common manliness. Maybe it was because she had given him a son, or maybe it was because he finally found acceptance among the men in town. Ardena had wanted him to be a community leader; she imagined herself as being the mayor's wife. Well, the mayor's wife... at first. And then wife to the county board member. And then the State Representative's wife. And then Mrs. Governor, or maybe Mrs. Senator.

But Shirley reached a certain point and seemed to just stop. He won the leadership of the RTPSA easily and he just stopped. When Ardena prodded him to run for mayor, he laughed at her and said the mayor was nothing but a rag doll. “Why should I be mayor?” he asked her. “Everybody watching when you go to church or if you drink before 4 in the afternoon. What's the point?”

Two months after that was when she first went to see Doc Gimley. He had seemed so... not like everyone else. Refined. Educated. Traveled. Gentile. He belonged in some grand place like New York City, not San Grila. He was amazing; made her feel amazing. Took all of her anxiety away. In her mind, he was the genius that she was a perfect match for her.

And then she found out he was going to That Place. And it hurt her more than when Shirley went there.

So she started with the women. The wives. The daughters. The mothers. Men didn't move until the women on the pressure. And while the men enjoyed the whores at the Gentleman’s Supper Club, they enjoyed peace and quiet and home even more. When the whores were burned out of town and moved to Chapel Farm, all that happened was that the men drove out there.

Except for Doc Gimley. He didn't go out to Chapel Farm. And while she never quite looked at him the same way again, Ardena felt a small victory that almost replaced the feeling she had felt after seeing him as a patient.

Doc Gimley's Contribution: Part 2

He watched Ardena Guntersaun scurry across the street, being careful not to look back. Stupid woman, he thought. And then, as if he decided to let the empty room in on his thoughts, he said, “Stupid woman.”

Doc Gimley was familiar with Mrs. Guntersaun, in the same way he was familiar with many of San Grila's leading women... if you could call them that. None of them had accomplished much in this world except marry the right men. Men with the right combination of money, ambition, and sheer stupidity who were foolish enough to assume they were the ones running everything. Not the old doctor really cared WHO was running things, since anyone would, in all likelihood run with the same level of ineptitude. San Grila had a municipal government, of course... a town council, aldermen, and the like … but it was the various cadres and cabals of Women's Committees that really got things done. The Women's Temperance League – which was, to a member, the same group as the 75^th Anniversary Committee – had managed, though scraping and scrapping and yelling and drum thumping and brow beating, to clean away the “rude and rustic country elements” in San Grila and had an eye on making it the next New York of the Midwest. They imagined themselves cosmopolitan, though none of them had ever gone to a real city, not even Chicago; the farmers in the unincorporated parts of the county would have none of it, of course. But that didn't matter. Mrs. Guntersaun would have her way. She always got her way.

So they want to rename the town, he thought. “What do you think of that?” he asked the empty room. “They want to rename the town in time for the new century.” He laughed and shook his head. Then he turned and walked out of the examination room and into the small sitting room that also served as his bedroom. The room was narrow and sparsely furnished – a single bed, a wash table with his meticulously clean and sharp shaving blade, soap, and a simple bowl and pitcher; a comfortable red padded high back chair, worn from years of use, sat facing the window that looked down on the same street as the windows in his examination room. There was a small mirror hanging on the wall above the wash table, and a picture of the Thames River in London hanging over his bed. Off to the left, there was a wardrobe where he kept his clothes, and beyond that, the water closet – which he had paid to have installed. (That had caused no small amount of commotion in town and cemented his favor among the local busybodies as a man of culture.) On the second shelf under of the small bedside table that was also within reach of the chair – on which was an oil lamp and an ash tray with a half spent 50 cent cigar – was a photo album. He sat in the red chair, put the cigar in his mouth and carefully lit it. After extinguishing the match, he took in a mouthful of smoke, exhaled, then reached down and pulled the photo album off the small shelf.

If anyone in town – especially a busybody like Ardena Guntersaun – saw the contents of the album, it would create a scandal. The album was full of pictures of nude women. Well, one woman to be precise. Her name was Rachel.

Doc Gimley first met Rachel about month after he had settled in his rooms above the barber shop overlooking Main Street. She was a regular girl at the Mandarin Supper Club for Men, San Grila's brothel and the meeting places for every prominent and not-so-prominent man in town. Rachel had been young, maybe 18, when he met her. At first, the age difference made him nervous. He was nearly 40 when he first went to see her; he had moved to San Grila more than a decade ago to get set up his office because he wanted to get away from the memory of his dead wife in Chicago. She was trampled by the police and a mob during a labor protest in Haymarket Square; Gimley himself, who leaned sympathetically towards the Haymarket 7, could not reconcile his grief, the outcome of the trials, and the listing of his wife – who was perhaps the only perfect person he had ever met – among the trouble makers.

Going to the brothel was only his way of dealing with his occasional need to feel a woman's touch. He had no illusions about falling in love again; for Gimley, there was one person for everyone and his was gone. Rachel made no demands, had no expectations, and was, like the preeminent among her trade, very professional. And she didn't mind if he wanted to talk. She was beautiful – long auburn hair, deep blue eyes, with spatterings of ginger freckles at different places around her body. He was surprised to find that, in addition to her supreme professional talents, she was also an avid reader of Jules Verne. Sometimes when he visited her, he took books for her to borrow: Emerson, Shakespeare, Spenser, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dickens. She liked Doyle, but preferred Mark Twain to Spenser and Thoreau to Emerson. It was all fun and games, and never did Gimley think it was much more than a young prostitute preening the ego of an old man.

Eventually she expressed an interest in another one of Gimley's hobbies – photography. She poured over his picture books full of nudes, nature scenes, men on the street.

“These are dirty pictures,” she teased him, pointing to a particularly stunning nude wearing an Indian head dress and moccasins.

“They are not,” he tried explaining to her. “They are art, my dear. Artists have been drawing and painting nudes for centuries.”

“Then why is she wearing them shoes?”

“I don't know,” he said, getting a little impatient. “I suppose they go with the head dress.”

Rachel laughed. “It's to remind people she ought to have clothes on.”

Gimley offered to take pictures of her to prove that it was art. At first she objected, saying that people wouldn't pay for the real thing if they could get a picture of it for free. He assured her he would share them with no one but her – and he offered pay her usual fee plus a small gratuity.

It wasn't until he saw her on film that he felt himself falling in love with her.

Just a little. And it wasn't the same love he'd felt for his wife; he knew there was no spiritual connection, no exclusivity to his relationship (He wasn't sure when he started to think of it in those terms) with Rachel. She was a beautiful girl in person; but the camera did something to her that, for the doctor, bordered on transubstantiation. Rachel seemed to notice it too, and she started looking forward to the sessions as much as he did. He always gave her copies of the pictures to keep, and put a copy in the photo album for himself. And he never showed the pictures to anybody. Not ever.

Things went on this for months. Gimley had established a routine. He saw patients in the morning and into the late afternoon, and he saw Rachel twice a week before supper. The fog he had been in was starting to lift. He was starting to feel... well... happy again. He never asked for more from Rachel, and she never seemed to want more. There was a balance and symmetry to it. He knew that she had other clients, but it never bothered him. How many of his female patients did he ask to disrobe? It would have been foolish of him to feel jealous and he didn't.

And then the night of the fires happened. The RTPSA – undoubtedly being prodded by their wives – set fire to the Supper Club, burned out the girls, and forced them out of town. The ones that survived, anyway. The ones who did took over a deserted farm 10 miles out of town and set up shop there; but Rachel was not among them. She died in the fire, after the customer she was with that November night had punched her out in order to keep her from telling anyone he was there. The customer in question had been Shirley Guntersaun, Junior – the only and very spoiled son of Shirley and Ardena. Gimley knew it was him because he stopped by offering to selling him a photo album full of “anatomical” pictures. They were the pictures Gimley himself had taken of her.

He bought them so that no one else would see them. It was bad enough that young Guntersaun had had his fingers all over them.

Doc smoked his cigar and looked at the pictures of Rachel, thinking. He sat until nearly 4 in the afternoon.