Bud Smith's Blog: Bud Smith , page 37

The Bombshell

One of them was an artist. Terry. He painted three of the M43 bombs with ‘knock you dead’ burlesque girls. Two of the 1000 pound bombs—Sadie and Holly, were lost in bridge busting missions over Luzon. The remaining bomb put the other two to shame. Her name was Claudine—and she was all Joe Barre could think about as he let loose a wall of .50 caliber rounds from the heavy guns, swiveling in his rear ball terret.

They took heavy fire. Japan burned. Their B-32 Dominator got all shot up. Terry never made it to the ground alive.

But Claudine did.

And Joe Barre did.

While no one was looking, the war ended and Joe went back to his family’s farm in Nebraska.  Field’s of wheat, swaying in the spring—a pickup truck, sagging very low. A young man returning from conflict. With a girl.

He put Claudine in the barn. This caused him some pain—he’d have preferred for her to be able to stay with him in the house. His mother and father, were very strict Lutherans and insisted on marriage before ‘bunking together’.

Joe also had to find another place for the pigs. It was judged that if Claudine accidentally went off, she would level the barn, surely … and she would take the pigs, the chickens and the tractor with her.

His mother said, to his Father—”I’m just so happy that our boy is home from the war, safe and sound.”

“And that he’s over the cow.”

“Yes, that was a sad thing.”

“Not natural.”

Joe spent a lot of time with Claudine. She was a very sexy woman. There was no denying it. He’d sit in a pile of hay and just work himself up into frenzy gazing at her perfectly painted tits spilling out of her tight lingerie, pink nipples poking out, like prizes. He drooled gazing at her thick thighs and the curve of her ass—how Claudine arched her back and begged for him to climb on top and yank on her long auburn hair.

He just couldn’t deal with it.

He had to be with her.

He took her around, proudly. He liked to show her off. Take her dancing especially. This concerned a lot of the tamer people in town. They cleared the dance floor immediately and went home. They didn’t like the idea of someone cutting the rug with a 1000 pound artillery shell. The dance floor for Joe and Claudine was lonely, but he liked wheeling her around on her cart, spinning her romantically. Sometimes even grabbing a handful as he leaned her low in a dip.

Also, Joe liked to take Claudine to the drive in movie theater to see the black and white pictures underneath the stars. He’d buy them both ice cream cones and corn dogs at the Dairy Queen stand, smear them all over her. They cuddled in the bed of the pickup, making the truck rock—to the dismay of some of the others, who’d generally go and ask the cashbox-girl for their money back.

Back at the farm, Joe took great pride in hosing down Claudine. Soaping her up into a fierce lather. Scrubbing her until she gleamed diabolically in the moonlight.

They were married that Fall. Halloween 1948.

Claudine and Joe moved into a house on a plot behind the family farm. Their new privacy opened up much with their lovelife. Joe strutted around town even prouder now. Feeling like a true stud. He had the most beautiful girl. No one could top him. And she was an absolute vixen. Yes, and his touch made the vixen hum. He could hear it, the humming of her metal casing as he rubbed his body against it. What an utterly satisfying thrill.

For two years the happy couple tried for a child. It was discouraging—though, because nothing seemed to work. To look at her plump curvy body, one would assume that she was as ready as the fertile crescent from which had sprung civilization itself. Joe made grander attempts in his love making. Pulling out all of the stops. All the moves that he knew.

Nothing seemed to work.

He began to feel colder towards Claudine. How would the family farm survive if she couldn’t provide him with children? Who would help with the harvests? His father was too old now to run the tractor and it wouldn’t be much longer …

Joe rode her even more frequently. But eventually, realized that perhaps she couldn’t provide him with what he needed.

He went and saw Becky. She was the pigtailed daughter of the farmer down the road. “My daddy warned me about you,” she cooed.

“I’m harmless.”

“Anybody shacked up with a bomb’s gotta be dangerous.”

“Claudine’s a dud, apparently.”

“Shhhhh … don’t say her name. Just say mine.”

Becky had a welcoming body and a much more warm and responsive element to her screwing. Joe enjoyed stripping off her coveralls and laying her down in the green grass behind the woodshed, making her whole body turn pink. Becky seemed to be even more turned on by Joe’s wedding ring. She liked to feel it run down her smooth body … sometime making it disapear inside of her.

All it took was that one ‘stray’, When Joe came back to his farmhouse, all one thousand pounds of Claudine was gone. She hadn’t even left a note. She’d just gone.

Joe was hurt. He knew that he’d made a mistake, but he couldn’t dwell on it long. Becky was pregnant. She moved into Joe Barre’s little farmhouse and the two of them did the best that they could despite the strange situation. The harvest came in. Joe went down into town and picked some workers to help.

They’d heard of him too.

Were leary.

He said, “Don’t worry, my bomb is gone. She left me.”

The baby came. They named him Charlie. He liked to laugh. He rolled around on the carpet. His joy was contagious. Joe forgot all about Claudine.

Until Halloween of 1952.

When Claudine showed up on the doorstep of the farmhouse, knocking.

Becky answered the door, dressed as a witch.

—there was a sudden white light that pierced through everything, the air ripping, the molecules shredding, as Claudine detonated. Vaporizing the farm and everyone there. Shrapnel and debris flew for miles. Some of it even embedding into the screen at the drive thru movie theater.

Military officials responded, “So that’s what happened to our bomb.”

DON'T WORRY

Reblogged from Misfits' Miscellany:

DON’T WORRY
Bud Smith

I was warned of insects
disturbing wasps and hornets
waking up the fire ants
and people too, at certain moments
could be worse than water moccasins
or king cobras

it’s said
that there are bottomless pits on earth
that contain all the loss
you could handle
I was passed a note in study hall
detailing this
on graph paper
very many exclamation points
“every year it gets worse
are you planning for it?”
“no.

Read more… 135 more words

Here is a poem of mine called "Don't Worry. The first of 3 that will appear at Misfits'

Very happy to have this poem included here. The poem is about human nature ... and how it's easier to look for the 'bad' but we're better served to look at the bright.

Some Jobs I’ve Had

I’ve had a lot of jobs. I’m not very old yet but already I feel like I’ve had way too many. They warned us of that when I was a little boy in grade school. The teacher said, “Most of you will change careers at least twice.” That scared the shit out of me when I was nine years old. Change careers? You mean I won’t get to work at a factory, manning the same drill press for forty years! WTF!

Many jobs … I’m sure you’ve had a lot too. Most of the jobs I’ve had sucked, but occasionally there was a real gem in there. Below is a list of some of them, in no particular order,  followed by a brief description of what went wrong.

1)  Mowed yards–in hopes of being seduced by older, lonely housewives. Accidentally ran over a king snake, lawn sprinklers … nearly, some hidden baby bunnies. Got attacked by a German Shepherd who stole my weed whacker, ran away with it. Quit when I made enough money to buy a Gibson SG guitar.

2)  Farm Market. Drove the forklift. Used to get it stuck every day in soft sugar sand. Cleaned up rotten watermelons that stunk like putrid dead bodies. One time an entire tractor trailer of Yucca trees arrived from Mexico. My boss said to be careful because the trees were full of brown Recluse spiders. So that was the end of that.

3) Built waterfalls into swimming pools. Dropped an entire wheelbarrow of stones into the pool. Had to swim down a million times and pick up all the stones. Worked for myself for a little while doing that also, bid into the job that I needed 2 kegs of beer in addition to $$$. Following day dumped an entire wheelbarrow of cement into the swimming pool.

4) Temporarily employed by a nuclear plant. Had to dress up in a full rubber decon suit. Hood, gloves, rubber booties–go into a radioactive area to tighten up some screws with a phillips head screwdriver. Two minutes worth of work, weeks of paperwork. Somehow passed their psych test. This surprises all my friends.

5) Telemarketer. Sold a septic tank cleaning product over the telephone. I’d call people up and pitch a miracle powder containing special living biological enzymes to be dumped down the toilet to melt away all the excess sludge waste in your sewage tank. Most people said they weren’t interested because, “we’re eating dinner right now.”

6) Delivered discount office furniture out of a strip mall. All formica junk. One morning we loaded the box truck to the gills, set off for the first delivery. We were excited because the people at the first house gave us a big tip. We never got tips. We zoomed out of the driveway, off to the second house. When we got there–found the back of the truck was open and all of the office furniture had crash out onto the side of the highway.

7) Painted houses. Well, one house. Turns out that it was completely the wrong color. Communication is very important. My advice to you is: communicate very clearly, you’ll go very far. Also, take some notes.

8) Scraped the barnacles off of a very large boat on the hottest day of my life. I think I died. I think I’m a ghost now.

9) On the second hottest day of my life, I had a job spreading 20 tons of sharp red rocks in someone’s front yard. The homeowner loved us. He made us sandwiches and asked me if I was Portuguese. Then he said, “TOMORROW I’M GONNA HAVE MY WIFE BAKE YOU A CHOCOLATE CAKE!” It was 103 degrees. 99% humidity. My boss had a heat stroke–we left early. Following day it was hotter. We stayed home. The day after that we showed up and the homeowner was livid. “WHERE WERE YOU! MY WIFE BAKED YOU A CHOCOLATE CAKE AND WE BOUGHT FRESH MILK!”

10) Worked in NYU very briefly. I was installing ductwork from the boiler up into the college. School was still in session. Everyone was attractive, super hot. Even the lunch ladies. Found out that college girls really like construction workers. I lost that job because I like college girls too.

There will be more jobs. They will disappear as they come to me and there will be a need to hunt down new ones. We’ll all deal with this. Reluctantly. We’ll leaf through newspapers, search online, we’ll ask people passing in the street, “Do you know where I can find some work?”

It’s the way these things go. There’s an old saying that goes like this “The best day in a worker’s life is the day that he gets the job and the day that the job ends.”

I believe that.

What’s the best job you’ve ever had? The worst? You ever get fired? No? … I wonder about you … I really do.

Dispatches from 173rd street and Apocalypse Avenue

It’s been a nice week for me … I typically send out around 5 submissions to magazines and online lit websites. For some reason this week, I got back three “Your Work Has been Accepted …” emails. Unfounded. The rejection rate is usually much higher, just how that thing goes.

I thought I’d share the links to the pieces that got accepted. All three places are websites that I absolutely love.

Citizens for Decent Literature (CFDL) if you don’t know, is a place on the internet dial that gathers together many of the beautiful people on the small press scene and networks everything together making it easily accessible, easy to find– through their wiki. I got my start, in submitting, by finding their wiki and reading all the sites that they link together. They are legit art punk goodness. Check them out


Red Fez is a website that I’m enamored with. They always have wild, interesting writing and they update monthly

_
The Weekenders is a magazine that I have loved through a few incarnations. It was a blogspot site with a different name. Then it was a wordpress site. Now it has taken the form or a true digital magazine. Good things will come from there … stay tuned

If I didn’t lose you, here are three pieces that I was lucky enough to find homes for this week.

Love In the Warzones of the Wild- a poem about the wilds.
They Will Tear You Apart- Teen Pregnancy, X-Files on VHS, killing an animal in the road with a 1988 Mercury Cougar. Not in that order…
More Cherries- A young man goes to the NJ Boardwalk with two girls who are down from college and going steady with each other, he’s trying to get in the middle.

Thanks for reading and for being cool as ice. Do me a solid, leave me some comments in the bottom down there so that I know you’re out there. I’m making some handmade zines and I’d like some interested parties who would like to get some in the snail mail.

Love,

Bud

The Books

 

I came up the apartment steps—loaded with groceries. At my door, I was troubled to see it hanging open a crack.

As I entered, I called out. No one responded.

My hope was that Ann was inside. There was a silence. I called her name again. The worst flashed through my mind.

I set the bags down, started to look around—expecting someone to leap out at me from behind every corner. The city will do that to you. Make you crazy.

Right away, I realized that no one had broken into our place. The computer was still in the spare room. The laptop was on the table in the living room in front of the big screen TV. Our stereo was still there. I peeked in our bedroom … the other computer was there too.

So—

I cursed Ann for leaving the fucking door open all day. Then I went and scooped up the plastic bags. Took them in the kitchen, started cutting onions and garlic to make chili.

 

 

Ann came home and I didn’t say anything about the door being left open. She’d been the last one out in the morning, but—I kept quiet. Partly, I didn’t want to terrify her with the idea that someone could still be in the apartment. Instead, we joked around. Fooled around on the living room floor—even though the bed was close enough.

We ate the chili, talking about going to Costa Rica, once the rainy season ended. Hot springs near the volcano. Riding horses in the jungle.

Afterwards, I wanted to go in my office and write. As I sat down at my computer, Ann called from the bedroom—”Where’s my book?”

“Why would I know where your book is?”

“I left it right here on my nightstand.”

“I didn’t touch it.”

Her voice got louder as she approached, “… must have wound up on the bookshelf.”

Ann came into the room—froze. Mouth agape. She was staring behind me in the direction of our large wall-size bookcase. ” … What?” I swiveled around on my chair—

—every single book was gone.

Two cops came. A woman and an old man with a moustache. Lt. Rameriez and Sgt. DiSantis. They looked like they’d been into some heavy shit lately. As a result, we weren’t treated with kidgloves, as Ann requires of the authorities.

“Ok … you come home. You think there’s been an intruder—” starts Rameriez, she has a little pad, folded over—taking notes.

“There’s definitely been an intruder,” Ann says.

“What’s missing? What valuables?”

“My books.”

“Ok, for starter—your books …”

“A whole bookcase of them. Maybe 200.”

“Alright … what else?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” DiSantis say, smirking.

He’s looking right at our big screen TV anyway. He’s a dope.

“Just the books,” I clarify.

I point out the laptop and the computers and the stereo systems. The Dvds, the “… you get the point. All the other stuff has been undisturbed. It was just our books.”

“Ok …” Lt. Rameriez flips the pad closed, puts it away in her pocket.

“What? Take your pad back out!” Ann commands.

The cops are exasperated, “Were these rare books? Were they collectables?”

“No.” Ann admits. “They were mostly …”

“Mostly, what? Spit it out. ” DiSantis says impatiently.

“Used paperbacks from Ebay.”

“Great.” Both the officers tell us to have a lovely evening—they’ve got to be going. They say that they will keep a close eye.

They say—”911 is for emergencies.”

They say—”Making a false police report is a very serious thing.”

Ann, the pitbull she is, chases them down into the foyer of the building and she takes down both of their badge numbers.

She keeps the badge numbers on a little slip of paper beside her alarm clock. For years the slip of paper sits there. Sometimes I see her glance in it’s direction, her lip twitching.

 

 

We moved. Not because of the odd break-in. There was a better apartment across town, our lease was up, I didn’t like the annoying sound of the radiator beside my desk that would startle me while I worked.

For a time, we settled in. Getting comfortable with the new neighborhood, meeting our neighbors. Forgetting all about the disappearance of all our beloved, ratty, torn up paperback books.

That is, until they began to appear—one by one, back on the empty shelf.

As they were being finished and then, rightfully returned by whoever had taken them.

 

Love In the Warzones of the Wild

________________________

when all else fails I will be good

no more flip flopping, dragging along,

eating dust,dying slowly—pretending to like it

unvoided checks, power pills

invincible bubblegum, pink frosting

fake coins, dotted lines,

ripped maps,traffic signs—hope you slept well

no, I don’t sleep at all

ignored a long time at everydoor

on every door, hang a little sign

‘you won’t keep me out forever’

talk to anyone who’ll listen

about; neon fish, strange darting birds,

love in the warzones of the wild,

telephone wounds, vinyl records heaved at the moon

your father—and your mother— and the field

where they’ll be buried, one day

… for now, enjoy

doing donuts in the parking lots of hell,

busted streetlights, lost tickets,

notices in the mail, snail mail

memos from long lost prom dates,

sending yourself a full color fax while crooked

receiving it two days later, sober

saying, sincerely—I’m so thankful

for your love and correspondence,

you in the pouring rain, looking good

falling over— me in the mud, looking at you,

high fives with the wind, kissing blues

kissing stones, kissing anything that moves

tearing through the stations,

looking, listening, constantly revising

I’m not afraid of anything—and I won’t ever die

your friends, your patience, your lips

I feel them on mine—where you touched me,

it’s still pleasently stinging

Nominated For an Award

Well, just got nominated for an award by Gus Sanchez for a One Lovely Blogger Award!

If you haven’t heard of Gus, you ought to check out his blog. Gus is funny/brilliant guy and is writing a novel about corporate America. His website, Out Where The Buses Don’t Run is new on WordPress, but I’ve known him a long time and followed it on various other platforms.

Quickly, the way this thing goes is like this- I’m supposed to give you seven facts about me and then I’m supposed to nominate 15 blogs/websites. So below, you’ll find all the info you’re little heart desires.

Seven Random Things About Me

1) Found a Herman Miller Aeron chair in the garbage in NJ. It’s a $1000 chair. Some maniac threw it away.

2) Grew up in Cedar Creek Campground. We rented a house.

3) Deaf in my left ear and kept it a secret until I was 12. Worried that they’d cut my head apart and put in a robotic mechanism.

4) Usually when I’m writing, I’m listening to “Fucked Up Friends” by Tobacco.

5) I like beer more than soda and soda less than water.

6) Used to crash my car a lot, but not on purpose or anything.

7) I had a dog named Chainsaw for awhile. A very polite animal. Despite what the name would infer.

Now, I’d like to nominate these peeps: no particular order…

check them all out and enjoy. Wild, great reading.

http://roxixmas.com/

http://outwherethebusesdontrun.com

http://www.drunkmonkeys.onimpression.com

http://jessicavealitzek.com/

http://theweekendersmagazine.blogspot.com/

http://www.aarondietz.us/

http://inbetweenalteredstates.wordpress.com/

http://kevinlynnhelmick.blogspot.com/

A Letter From Your Secret Admirer

This is the 2nd story in my book “Or Something Like That”

 also available on Kindle

The story was previously published in The Bicycle Review: Issue 16

I’m fond of this story for it’s absurdity and for the fact that it is about unrequited love. Also love to write “fictional letters” Thanks for reading.

 

Dear ______________,

I was very taken away when I first saw you. It’ll be a strange comparison, but you reminded me of my first car. A 1967 sky blue Ford Fairlane. Something about the ocean, the sound inside of  a seashell between the both of you, though there was no sound of a seashell at all, in either of you. That car shook violently when I drove it, you, I haven’t even heard your voice.

Just a vague feeling. A comfort. The stretched out blue ocean dissolving on the curve of the earth…you both remind me of the stupid Ocean.

You wouldn’t understand. I know that about you now. You are the type of person who doesn’t have feelings that are scattershot like that. You are a person grounded in the ordinary world. I envy that about you. I am a person so full of wild ideas and misunderstood love that I often feel like a balloon instead of a human.

Just floating across rivers illuminated with pure radiating fire.

Well maybe not fire, that would pop a balloon.

Your reaction to my “good deed” the other night was very disheartening. Serves me right for trying to be kind. I figured, we’re both single, attractive…in the market, why not try to be kind. As I have already said, I tend to do things differently, the average guy would have sauntered up to you in the bar and he would have made some clever little comment and then cleverly have attempted to buy you a drink and then cleverly…a lot of cleverness, all of it. I don’t operate that way.I think there is room in this world for soft beautiful light, people are just often too afraid of embarrassing themselves. Closed tight like flowers that bloom momentarily in certain moonlight.

I could see how you would have been a little uneasy, thinking about how someone had been in your apartment while you were sleeping. That would creep anybody out. I am however, completely puzzled as to why you felt the need to involve the police. Obviously my intentions are good. If they weren’t you would have known all about it, much earlier. I wish I could have been listening when the officer took the report, “What? Someone broke into your apartment while you were there and did what?” “The dishes.” “The intruder did the dishes?” “Yes.” “The intruder did the dishes?” A second time, skeptically, “And left a sweet note.” You would clarify.

Later, I could just imagine them, standing in a circle in the station, their cop moustaches bouncing up and down, swaying back and forth, as they laughed about your strange incident.

Sure, it was odd for me to come in like that. Don’t be mad at your Superintendant, it’s not his fault. I could steal just about anybodies keys. If you are going to be mad at anybody, be mad at yourself. You are not all you are cracked up to be. Your exterior might be a marvelous thing, your inner light is not all that pleasant. Plus, you snore. You drool. You really need to water that plant in the kitchen a little less. Wouldn’t the living room be a much better place for it? The sunlight, is all.

The truth is, I have been coming into your apartment periodically, though we are complete strangers, or truthfully, one sided strangers. I know a lot about you. Though we haven’t talked, or even exchanged glances, I am drawn to you. Last Tuesday I organized your CDs alphabetically. A couple nights later I did your taxes. For real. Check your file cabinet. Done. I found your grocery shopping list and figured that I would be romantic and go shopping for you, have the brown paper bags waiting on the counter when you walked in after your yoga class. I was worried that you would come home with your own groceries and then there would be just far too many groceries. It would go to waste. I was concerned that the Butter Pecan ice cream would melt.

The Silly things that keep people confined to their own small lives, apart from one another. In a better world, our desires would be necessary things that kept us alive for each other. Our desires would not be just hobbies.

So, there, our love affair is over. It saddens me, and perhaps, it will bring you relief.

I thought that I would write to you and point out something good that came out of this for me. Once I realized that it wasn’t going to work out between us, I turned my attention to the thing that was really making me unhappy.

My sky blue 1967 Ford Fairlane.

Some years ago, I was forced to sell the car. It was in bad need of repair and I am just not the kind of person that can make heads or tails out of how to repair it. That old song, you know the words, I needed the money. At the time, selling it was just something that I did without all that much thought, later it became something that I regretted. The years peeled away from me and then, the first hot day, to my horror, suddenly here was the car. Cruising around, restored. It had always been in my mind and now, here it was resurrected from my dreams into the daylight, the windows down, the radio on, an arm sticking out, getting the best trucker tan he could after a long brutal winter.

That’s right. The man who bought it from me, was something of a force of nature. He took my decaying vehicle and transformed it. I would have to watch my old car, drifting by on the roads of my small town and try not to let it completely break my heart. It was under so many layers of wax that even the sun had to turn away from the glare. The chrome was something that only your dreams could polish that bright. The glug glug glug, purr of that exhaust was like a small orchestra to me as it coasted through the traffic light. The worst part of all of this was that I was on foot! Yeah, I didn’t even have a car.

So, thanks to you, I came to the conclusion that I didn’t need you, that you were just a stand in for something that I really had to take care of.

I went to the man’s house while he was at work and I did all of his laundry. I used fabric softener. I used spot remover on a shirt stained with wine. I cleaned out the dryer lint trap after every load. I neatly folded everything. Then, I fed his cat and cleaned his bathroom. Scrubbed the hell out of the toilet. Got all of the soap scum off of the sliding glass shower door.Emptied all of the trash cans. Changed the sheets on his bed. Sent his mom a birthday card.

Then, satisfied, I went out into the garage and took my car back.

It really drives like a dream. I’ll tell you this and you probably won’t believe it, but it is impossible for this car to get stuck at a light. Every light it hits is green. Everyone would fall in love with me if they were in this car, on my bench seat, just try not to smile.

The weather has been hot, there is no better time to be cruising down the coast line with the windows down. The wind whirring in your ears so loudly that you couldn’t’ ever hope to hear the radio, but that is the point. The wind in your ears like that, it is like if you listen very closely, you are getting direct orders from the same beautiful noise stuck inside a sea shell.

Soon, I will be at the ocean.

The sun on me, and the car. As it belongs. As I lay on the hood. My hands behind my head. My feet splayed out. The stretched out blue ocean dissolving on the curve of the earth.

Best,

Your Secret Admirer.

Where Poems Come From

 

I’m down here at the beach, desperately trying to drink the last of the beer that exists in this area before the summer snaps to a close. But I wanted to share a link to a short story called “Where Poems Come From”

It’s about a vast conspiracy involving all the poems in the world and one lonely old man. You can read it here at Unlikely Stories, which is a website I like a lot, not only for it’s writing, fiction, poems, non-fiction, but it’s great reviews and interviews.

Swamp Bear Goes to College

The grounds of the college were all grass covered hills. I never would have guessed.

After high school, I drove cross country, came back, started working for myself. Skipping college completely.

I was hired by the college to rebuild the concrete pond in the center of campus. At the time I was building waterfalls. I’d get little jobs, lug quarried stones and boulders into backyards. Construct hand made waterfalls into their swimming pools in New Jersey. Just me, a wheel barrow, some shovels and a case of beer. People talked, recommended me to each other.

Sometimes I’d get a weird job that would send me somewhere unexpected. This job was that, for sure.

I parked my beat up blue pickup next to the pond. It was early. A wet and foggy morning, many hours before classes. Every surface covered in a layer of dew.

I unloaded my submersible pump, threw it in. Started to drain the murky brown water down a steep hill, into the woods next to the empty student parking lot.

As the concrete pond drained, I started to think, soon, the kids were gonna start to appear. Some of them, surely would be people that I didn’t want to see. Kids I had gone through school with. They’d continued with school. I’d bailed.

I didn’t drink at the bars in this town because I didn’t want to see any of them again. But, here I was.

The water disappeared leaving behind a thick soupy brown green sludge that reeked of decay. Putrefied leaves. Some dead fish. Old plastic solo cups, a beach ball, a green frisbee.

I’d have to go down there and get all the sludge out of the pond.

I knew it, too, that’s exactly when they would find me. These people. When I was down there in the filth. They’d find me then and they’d wonder what the fuck had happened to me. I wouldn’t have very good answers, either.

I stated to scoop the leaves into my rusted metal wheelbarrow, took that down the hill almost slipping on the sharp incline. It was slippery as fuck. I caught myself, on one knee, my heart fluttering wildly. My knee cut up and bleeding.

A little while later. I took out the shopvac and stated to suck the remainder sludge.

I decided it was too hard to get all the way to the bottom of the wet hill. I started dumping the sludge down the side of it instead. Nobody would be the wiser, it wasn’t too visible and it wasn’t hurting anything. It was good fertilizer for the grass.

Then, I went to lunch. Some strip mall near by. $5 chicken lo mein lunch special. Egg roll. Dr. Pepper. My fortune cookie said this, “You Will Be Judged For Your Heart”

When I came back to the college, the lots were jammed with their shiny cars. They’d arrived. Bumper stickers for all kinds of stupid things I couldn’t relate to.

I walked back, glancing in some windows. I wondered about the classrooms. What was it like to sit in a college class? I hadn’t minded high school, I’d done fairly well. It was just that I couldn’t think of a single thing that I wanted to study in college. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write short stories and novels I was pretty sure that college would only kill some small part of me that I needed to save and never expose to correct operating procedures, rules of the road, color between the lines.

Sometimes I still think art is better when its stupid.

I thought that as I climbed into the scummy pond. Getting more of the filthy stench and slime all over my bare legs, my neck, my face.

“Hey!”

I looked up.

It was a girl that had been in my home room class, I couldn’t recall her name. Long blonde hair. A white dress. High cheek bones. I think I’d seen her recently working as a hostess in a restaurant by the bowling alley.

“What are you doing?” she said, mocking me.

“Eh, working.”

“You’re filthy! Look at you!”

“Sure”

I was embarrassed. More kids came. I recognized a few more faces. They all stopped, looked at me, just like I was an exhibit that had come to their zoo. They seemed to really be enjoying this animal on display here in the center of campus.

“You in school here?” the nameless blonde hostess asked.

“No.”

“I see how that’s working out for ya.” she said.

I looked around at the kids, I was very interesting to them. Did they think I was a swamp bear? That this was my natural habitat? Down here in this filthy fucking pit?

“Go away.”

“What?”

“I’ve got work to do.” I was short, I was curt. I didn’t like being the butt of her attention. She took my attitude and amplified it back at me.

“Great idea to skip college, huh?” the girl said.

I wondered, had I gotten her drunk and fucked her and forgotten about it. Had I gotten her friends drunk and fucked them and forgotten about it? Her family? Was it her mother?

What had I done to this bitch who was meaningless to me?

I didn’t say anything.

“Have a good day down there.”

I saw her walking towards the hill. It was a short cut to the student lot.

Right where I’d poured all the muck.

I didn’t stop her.

As her feet flew out from under her. I watched her crash down into the green muck that’d come out of the sludge pit where I resided covered her clean white dress.

I said, “Welcome to my world.”

To make matters worse, all the other kids were laughing at her, and I wanted to devour them too. Who would I eat first?

I flashed my eyes on them all- leveled my eyes on a girl in a mini-skirt. She would do just fine.