Bill Cheng's Blog, page 10

we’d been out too long: lips blue, snow in our boots and soaked through the layers of wool and...

we’d been out too long: lips blue, snow in our boots and soaked through the layers of wool and cotton like we were carrying twice our weight.  We moved in a line, Harris up front, then Wizard, then me.  Amler behind all of us, skittering through the deep high steps we’d left behind us.  What we wanted was food, warmth, some four walls with a roof and a dry spot of ground to keep us for the night.  What we got was slush and ice, and our own sweat sopped through our base layers; the panic of our bodies trying to churn warm blood.  We were tired, and hungry, and blistered, and the valley was lush white.  Something was happening in our brains.  We lost contact with our bodies— couldn’t feel it working.  Like our muscles were pushing into negative space, penetrating through something solid and without give.  There was no horizon, no vertical.  I could hear Harris ahead of us trying to keep his spirits up.  He was singing something— the poor devil— but his voice kept getting wicked up in all that snow.  We saw things out there.  Tricks of the light.  Something broke.

I ate a fajita at the airport and sat at the counter, trying to put my head together. Eight...

I ate a fajita at the airport and sat at the counter, trying to put my head together.  Eight straight hours and the muscles in my back couldn’t unclench.  Everything hurt— my shoulders, my jaw.  Behind my eyes.  People were going back and forth, trying to get to their gates or their baggage or wherever.  In the men’s room I splashed my face, then took off my shirt.  I wiped down my neck and my pits with paper towels then changed into something clean.  On my phone were a string of texts, most of them from Jane, asking if I’d got in.  If I was allright.  On one of the texts she’d attached a picture of herself, naked from the waist up, cradling her midriff.  She had this look on her face like she was trying to be sexy but it looked wrong somehow.  Like something had happened between getting the idea and making her face.  Later that night, I was showing the picture to some guys I’d met at the bar.  They were older.  Post men or something.  They were asking me where I was from, what I was doing here so far from home, and somehow, I don’t know how, I started showing them this picture.  She’s a pretty girl, one of the guys said.  Tell me where you’re from again?  His buddies were laughing pretty good, looking at each other then looking at me.  They were saying all these things, about what they’d do if they were me, how’d they fix it with her so she’d be okay with all of them.  My face was burning, and they must’ve seen me getting heated.  I got up and real quick, one of them knocked me back onto my chair.  Easy, junior, he said.  You just got here.  

“Come look at this,” David said. He was at the window, looking out over our yard. It...

“Come look at this,” David said.  He was at the window, looking out over our yard.  It was summer, and there were fireflies floating up and down over the grass.  ”What?  What is it?”  He pointed over the fence to the house on the other side.  ”Do you see her?”  It was our neighbor.  She was naked and her blinds were up in her bedroom window.  ”Oh my God,” I said.  ”Should we be looking at this?”  David shrugged.  ”Probably not.”  We brought in chairs from the living room and David headed into the basement to dig up his old binoculars.  I went into the kitchen and cut an apple into slices for us to eat.  We moved quickly, thinking she’d be gone by the time we were set up, but she was still sitting on the edge of her bed, watching TV when we got back to the window.  David looked through the binoculars then passed it to me.  I twisted the knobs until the image came into focus.  She wasn’t what I expected.  Older— maybe in her 50’s.  There were these tattoos all on her chest and arms, and some kind of pattern on the curve of her buttocks.  All along her ribs were a patina of faint green lines.  ”I mean, she’s not bad looking,” I said, handing the binoculars back to David.  ”She keeps in pretty good shape.”  David shrugged and said nothing.  We kept watching and after a while she turned off the TV and the bedroom light, then left the room.  Over the course of the evening we’d stop at the window to see if she’d come back but she never did.  That night I lay in bed, unable to sleep.  I kept looking out the window into the yard, expecting to see something.  I looked over at David, and he was fast alseep, breathing heavily.  After about twenty minutes, I put on my robe and went downstairs to make something to eat.  I opened the fridge, and for some reason I was thinking about when I was eight years old and someone threw a baseball in through our window.  There was glass everywhere and I cut the inside of my hand, between the thumb and my first finger.  There’s still a scar from where I had to get it stitched.  It’s only about half an inch across but it felt like it was huge.  Then I thought about when I was thirteen and I was in school.  There was an older girl, Janet.  During our lunch period, she’d take her pen and draw flowers on my hand so they looked like they were growing out of the seam.  I remember coming home and trying to wash it off before my parents found me.  It took forever and it hurt like hell.  

Sometimes he sees her at the Red Rocket where he writes and does his crosswords. She’ll come...

Sometimes he sees her at the Red Rocket where he writes and does his crosswords.  She’ll come in, wipe her boots.  Then she’ll go to the counter and bullshit with the waitress a little.  Most of the time, they’ll have her order waiting for her.  A large styrofoam shell with the name SUZE written in marker across the top.  She’s older— sunburnt at the neck and cheeks with long black hair.  On her right hand one of her fingers is missing, cut off below the knuckle.  It isn’t much:  five, ten minutes of his day— but in that time, he cannot stop thinking about how badly he wants to sleep with her.  Once he bumped into her as he was coming in and she was leaving.  She held the door open and he mumbled thanks, and as he passed he could smell the leather on her jacket.  One evening after finals, he and some of his friends from night school drove out to the canyons with a case of skunky beer.  One of them had brought along this girl— a high schooler whose brother he knew.  In the backseat, they drank the beer and laughed and told jokes to each other.  Then they pulled off the road.  They rolled spliffs and drank some more of the beer and did things to each other.  When it was his turn he got on trunk and braced his feet against the bumper.  He put his head back and it made him feel sick.  There were stars and planets, all of them spinning crazily.  Inside the car, he could hear his friends cheering him on.  The girl, however was silent.  He sat up a little and tried to make out the expression on her face, but it was too dark.  He could see her hair moving.  He lay back down, his stomach roiling.  I am not a good person, he said.  The girl stopped.  What?, she asked.  He lay there, not speaking.  The cold was seeping into him.  Did you say something?  He shut his eyes.  No, he said.  Not a fucking word.

in my dreams i see blue fire; see great range lands flash to char. It is dusk and large birds flood...

in my dreams i see blue fire; see great range lands flash to char. It is dusk and large birds flood like smoke into the sky, and from the wilderness comes a noise I cannot bring with me to the waking world. A warm wind— bitter with ash— washes in from the East. I smell it Take it into my lungs and my dream-mouth fills with honey. And I hold this gift soft in my jaw and the world burns and flakes and becomes nothing. It is in these dreams that I know that i am Chosen. When I wake I go to my window, and below is the street and the city stretching toward the horizon. I see them: at my job, on the subway. They drink their coffee, read their papers, live through the patterns of their lives. They do not understand. They cannot see what I am. Cannot see my purpose. And when last light falls away from the horizon, I will cleanse my body and ready my mind. And in my dreams, my heart will open to the heavens, and I will wait here for my signal.

in some ways, Ronnie turning out how he did was my fault. Mommy left us with our aunt Gwen but I...

in some ways, Ronnie turning out how he did was my fault.  Mommy left us with our aunt Gwen but I was the one making sure he ate right, that he did his homework, put on clean clothes.  Once he came back from school bruised and sniffling and his shirtsleeves all gunked with tears and snot.  I made him take me back to the playground and had him point out who it was that’d beat him.  It was this scrawny little motherfucker on the monkey bars.  I was almost ashamed of him.  I left Ronnie standing on the sidewalk and beat that kid’s face in.  He started howling and screaming, trying to cover up.  He didn’t know what was happening to him.  I must’ve been at it, eight, nine minutes.  Me, swinging so hard that my arms got tired.  That evening, I told Ronnie he was a pussy having his big sister fight his battles for him.  Are you going to be a pussy all your life?  Who’s going to take care of you when you’re grown up?  Me?  Don’t fucking count on it.  He just nodded and sniffed, and looking at him, it  was just disgusting.  I pinned him down and sat on him and made him smell my farts.  I put my butt right in his face and let loose on him.  Then I started hitting him, not as bad as that other kid— not on the face, not bad enough to show— but bad enough.  And I said, Ronnie.  Sweet baby.  I want you to remember this.  This is going to save your life one day.  And I made damn sure he felt it.  

Casino Dream

lizmooremusic:

One of the best parts of living in Rome this year has been meeting the wonderful and talented Francesca Patrizi, who recently shared her story with me for the “Lives” section of the NYTimes Magazine. It should be published this weekend. It’s the story of her father, and how Francesca’s discovery of his gambling addiction has affected her. Here it is online: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/…/22/magazine/casino-dream.html…

we woke early, had breakfast on the road and it was afternoon by the time we got to my dad’s...

we woke early, had breakfast on the road and it was afternoon by the time we got to my dad’s house. Sis had called and said he’d had a fall, that someone should go up there to check on him. Bring oranges, she said. He likes oranges. We pulled up, and he was out front with a pair of hedgeclippers, snapping away at a shrub. My dad is a solid man, squat, thick, built like a fighter. The car pulled up to the driveway and he stopped what he was doing to watch us. He was sweating, breathing hard. There was a big bruise on the side of his head. The kids hugged him hello, and he went ahead and gave Harriet a kiss, and everyone went inside. It’s embarrassing, he said. He was on a step and the stone was loose and that was all there was to it. He could’ve been 22 or 108. Anyone putting their weight on that stone was going for a tumble. Harriet sat at the table with a towel and a knife and started skinning an orange. I looked hard at him. I’m fine, he said. There’s nothing to worry about here. He told us to make ourselves comfortable, that he was going down for a nap. The kids watched TV and played with the radio while Dad rested in the backroom. I went outside and I started sweeping up the bits of leaves and snapped branches. I bagged them then took the sheers into the garden shed. When I went back inside, Harriet was on the couch, reading one of dad’s books from the library. I sat down next to her and finished the orange slices. That’s when we heard the noise from the bedroom. A big cry and then that sick sound of a thud. The kids looked up and I took off into the hall. Dad was on the floor, tangled up in his sheets. Dad, I said. I stood over him, trying to help him up, but his arms were swinging, and he was shouting and crying for me to get off of him. I caught his fist on the jaw and the shock of it knocked me backwards. Harriet had to help me untangle him and get him back into bed. It took him a little while to calm down. Harriet made tea and we turned on the bedroom television. After a while, he said he was sorry for knocking me one. I asked him what the hell was that? I’d never seen anything like that before. He said it almost never happens. What never happens? I lose track sometimes. Where I am, what I’m doing. Like not waking up fully from a dream. We looked at him. What do you remember. What did you think you were doing? Dad shook his head. I’m not… there was… it’s hard to hold on to it. But I was climbing something. Like a ladder or a tree. I was trying to get to this height. And I was doing it because there was something under me. Something I needed to get away from. And then I realized I was at the top and that thing was still coming. And that’s it. That was it for me. There was nowhere left to go.

Wizard folded his arms and loosed the belt from around his robe. He said: maybe we’d been...

Wizard folded his arms and loosed the belt from around his robe.  He said: maybe we’d been wrong this whole time— that we came on this Earth, not wild and savage and full of murder, but creatures with souls and a gentle nature; and the land was bountiful, and there was no want, or fear, or hunger.  Maybe you could spend days out by the shore, toes half-buried in the sand, hair flecked sea foam.  And the first noise we learned was how to laugh— and every birth was attended with wonder, every death without fear.  Yes, this was how we were, I’m sure of it now.  We were neither happy nor unhappy.  Life was a very new thing and we were learning to tell ourselves apart from everything else around us— the rocks, the birds, the trees.  A lizard taking the sun into its scales.  We didn’t know anything, and we were okay with that.  That’s how it was.  Yes, it must be that.  Wizard stopped talking because the rain had stopped.  The sun came out and there was the sound of last drops skidding off trees and rocks.  Birds coming back to life.  Cool air passed through the leaves.  We stood up, stretched our legs then gathered our things.  Amler dipped her hand in the ash and wrote our names on the cave wall then we headed back into the wilderness.

We stopped somewhere to rest and smoke and re-fill our skins. Wizard sang a song about bygone days,...

We stopped somewhere to rest and smoke and re-fill our skins.  Wizard sang a song about bygone days, and Amler drew pictures of movie stars she remembered from whatever country it was she was from.  They were glamorous and beautiful, and she spit into her fingers and rubbed it on parchment to make them blush.  We got drunk on our own exhaustion— the narco-high of our body’s tissue turning toxic inside us.  And each of us, on our own terms, found our thoughts turning to the Kingdom of Dreams.  A place where no one is jailed or exiled, and everyone gets to live.   Harris said he’d seen it once.  He was only a kid then.  His parents were driving past on their way to Vegas.  It was a dark time in his life, he said.  His aunt lived in Vegas and she was very sick and he remembered his mom being on the phone all the time, fighting and arguing, and surrounded by sheets of paper.  They were driving through, he couldn’t remember where, and somewhere along the way he’d seen a door.  It was twenty feet high with gold filigree.  And he knew one day he would come back, place his hand on the slab and push through.   We asked him how he knew this was the door to the Kingdom and Harris started to get angry.  He kicked dirt over the fire and went into the corner to sulk.  Amler tried to keep thepeace, but he ignored her.  That night I took first watch while the others slept.  I was thinking about how far we’d gotten, how much we’d lost getting here.  I didn’t tell them but I’d seen the door too.  It appeared once in my house in the back of a pantry.  Under the slab you could see the light moving, feel the lace of cold air on your toes.  And I knew, being in its presence, what was behind that door.  You could feel the weight of your life pressing against you.  The thing is I wasn’t like Harris, I wasn’t going to tell anyone.  It was mine and I was going to keep it that way.