Rusty Barnes's Blog: Fried Chicken and Coffee, page 18

Lock No. 10, essay by Megan Lewis

Parker and he went out to the lock.

He drove fast down dark roads. Roads that remember us still. He parked. Next to the historical marker—

I think.

We stumbled through a starless night, right down to the water. Right down to the water’s edge and we sat on the grass—cool, damp.

Took his pipe out of his pocket. A lighter too. Inhaled.

Kissed her, blew the smoke into her mouth. She didn’t cough.

Didn’t cough lying on the grass there. Down by the water. Out at the lock. And we laid back, sightless, the night warm, and passed the pipe back and forth.

Tongues and spit and his hand beneath her shirt. My nipples hard and his fingers harder.

His pants slid down easy, even if her fingers were unsure, and there he was—and we both high—and in her mouth as he murmured all those words sixteen-year-old girls need to hear.

Honey, baby, oh yeah, so good.

And his hand in my hair.

Not the Erie canal, not the one in the song, but a different one along the Shenango—near the dam. Lock No. 10. That’s where we went. It was dead then—the railroad came and killed it. And then the steel mills died and killed the railroads too.

Miles of track they ripped up.

She sucked him hard, moved her head up and down, her hand too, hair wild and messy and falling into her eyes.

The railroads killed the canal and the steel mills they killed everything. Killed my friend’s uncle, cut him right in half.

Beneath my tongue and in and out of space and a time and place we want to forget but which remembers us still and will come for us when we’re old.

The mill jobs are gone, but only a few escape. They go and live in the city, by the three rivers, and pretend they got away but as long as the water is near they remain sightless in the night and it’s all the same as if no one left.

We never left.

Parker and he went out to the lock and we’re there still. He eager in my mouth, pressing toward the future, dying to escape, and her believing if she sucks hard enough he just might—

He just might like me.

Oh honey, baby, maybe next time.

he grass is cool and damp and we can’t see anything. The trains killed everything and I hear the whistles. The trains killed everything except the mills and the mills killed them.

Miles of track ripped up. Came across some railroad ties abandoned in the countryside once. Out there fishing with my dad and the dog he shot. A Sunday afternoon and I stood precarious on the ties they had forgotten.

He put a bullet in her and claimed it was ’cause she was too stupid. Too stupid to live, that’s what he said.

Actually, he said, he said that he took the dog to a farm.

Just forgot to mention that he shot her when he got there.

For being dumb.

When we were eight the union went on strike. A mill job was a good job, the kind you could keep, retire on and live a respectable life.

Even if the smoke made you cough and the asbestos scarred your lungs, like my neighbor. They gave his widow a settlement and she put in a swimming pool and started rescuing dogs, some of them vicious; you’d be too if you had been kicked around like that.

He made good money, the kind your widow can dig a cement hole with, a respectable death.

The union lost and the mills died off, mostly, and the town went on. Mostly too. A service economy now and the jobs pay less—but our hands are clean and no one gets cut in half anymore.

Mostly.

My mom called me up the other day, said so‑and‑so’s nephew shot himself at the big hotel, the big hotel where she used to work.

A service economy and a bullet in your brain, just like the dog. The best you can do when there’s nothing more to be done and the Steelers are on TV.

You know the water’s down there. And you hear the whistles in the distance as he pulls his pants up and the shift ends at the mill and the train goes by and your throat is sticky and maybe your hair a little bit too.

The men stagger from the mill to their cars and from their cars to the bars and drink Yuengling. And you stumble blind and high and stupid back to the car.

And he turns to you, turns on you. Turns as he puts the car into drive and says—

He says, if you tell Maggie about tonight, I’ll lie. And she’ll believe me.

You won’t tell. Won’t say a word about any of it—the trains, the town, the guy who got cut in half, the dead dog. And you’re going to leave here someday soon and you won’t come back.

The dark roads remember us still and he drives fast. Through the town’s only stoplight. Past the bars where the men drink Yuengling and PBR. Past the boarded‑up mills. Down dimly lit streets, stopping in front of her parents’ perfect lawn.

A dog barks and he doesn’t kiss her goodnight, don’t know why you expected him to. He just drives away.

I hear the water still and the ties are somewhere. Somewhere we ripped them up.

Somewhere. And there’s a dog.

And the men drink beer. And talk about the good old days. And watch the Steelers’ game and don’t talk about the guy who got cut in half.

And he’s one of them.

We’re out there, somewhere, down by the water. And you—you got away, got cut in half a few times anyway, but you opened your eyes and you got away.

Sticky hair and all.

Previously published in Prague Revue

Megan Lewis writes a weird mix of erotica and literary fiction and has been known to occasionally masquerade as Parker Marlo, usually when referring to herself in the third person. She is also the narcissist behind Mugwump Press (www.mugwumppress.com), a shamelessly capitalist endeavor. When not pimping writers or writing fiction, Megan works as a freelance editor. Find her at www.parkermarlo.com and @parkermarlo.

A Happy Ending by Murray Dunlap

“How are you doing, Ben?”

The camera man crunches down to take advantage of a better upshot.

“Well, I’d tell you, but there is a stranger in my house who seems to be filming us,” I say with sincere astonishment.

`        “Pretend they’re not there. None of them,” my buddy says.

“And who are they?” I ask.

“They are making a movie of “us,”” he replies.

“They obvious question here, is who are “we?””

“OK pal, you asked…  “We” are you and I. No faking this. And “we” are the focus of a movie that “they” are filming.”

“This is seriously messed up.”

“You asked,” my buddy says.

“And I assume my injuries will be the focus of this ‘movie’?” I ask.

“You betcha, Ben. Just maybe make your limp a bit worse for the sympathy vote.”

“That is not necessary, bud. I limp, plain and simple.”

“Ah, thank you,” my buddy replied (for you guys at home, his name is Michael).  “That sort of detail will make this movie make sense.”

“And what is the point of this ‘movie?’” I ask.

“It’ll have people amazed to see what you have been through. How you managed to press on. To ‘hang in there.’ Pardon the phrase,” Michael says.

“Ah, so you’ve seen this movie,” I say.

“Yep. Watching it right now.”

“My TV is busted,” I say. “Watching it how?”

“We are it.”

“This is a movie?”

“Yep.”

“Terrible movie,” I say. “Who wants to watch a guy named Michael and a guy named Ben sit around talking?”

“Well ‘we’ do, we’re watching it right now!”

“Hmmm. Weird.”

“Hey, why don’t you tell us all about the wreck?”

“Cut,” a distant voice calls out.

“Michael, what the hell IS this?” I ask sincerely.

“OK guys,” a man who I assume is a director of some sort steps into the room. “”Let’s try to be more concise. And knock off on all the metanarrative crap!”

“Um, well, you are the director of some film in my living room about me. How exactly do you think I can possibly have this NOT be metanarrative?” I ask.

“Just keep going,” the director says. “And talk about the wreck.”

“Fine.” As confused as I am right now, I’ll do just that. “The wreck. Not interesting. A man none of us knows ran a red light. The end.”

“And…” Michael continues, “Ben, tell us ALL what your injuries are.”

“ALL?” I stammer. “This is ridiculous.”

“Action!” the director calls out.

“OK, OK, Ok… I have 3 fractures in my pelvis, a broken clavicle, 9 sutures in my head, five stitches in my ear lobe, and a severe traumatic brain injury,” I state.

“Brain injury!” The director calls out. “Perfect! You should riff on this… Brain injury, and traumatic too, and even SEVERE!”

“Riff? Do you want our audience, whoever they are, to think I’m nuts with a brain injury?”

“If that works…” the director stammers. “Then sure, you can be crazy!”

“I’m getting crazy mad,” I reply.

“Action!” our director shouts.

“I’m really becoming angry, brain injury or not!” I shout.

“Just try again,” our director says.  Followed by, “Action!”

And so I made a movie, trying very hard to be ‘me.’ I played along, ended up on Oprah, and everyone went home happy..

“Cut!” our director shouts. “This is getting WAY too metanarrative!   And give this dreadful dreariness a happy ending! Action!”

“Hmph,” I start. “How to end this on a happy note?  Well, the fact that a movie is being made about me is exactly a happy ending.”

“But your audience,” the director shouts. “What will they understand?”

“OK.” I say. “How about a new house?  You know. The cabin that I’ve always wanted…”

“Out of the damn budget…” our director cries. “How on earth do we pay for a house?”

“Well, you could chip in?” I stammer.

“Horseshit! Cut!” Our director looks as if he has given up.

“Hmmm,” I start. “What about Oprah?”

“And why exactly, do we hope for that?” Michael says.

“Because I do care,” Oprah appears from the shadows as if the whole thing was scripted out.

“Oprah… uh, uh, hello there?” I scratch my head in disbelief.

“Darling,” Oprah cuts my question in half. “Anything is possible in a movie… You know that.”

“So what is your part, excuse me, your ROLE.”

“Darling,” Oprah begins, “My role, as you call it, will be to help the public get a glimpse of how it is, in fact, possible to “hang in there.”

“And will this movie be it?” I ask.

“Of course Ben,” Oprah says. “And I’ll give your story a happy ending!”

“How does this end?” I ask in confusion.

“Let’s go see your cabin in the woods,” Oprah states.

“What cabin?” I ask in utter disbelief.

“Follow me…” Oprah waves her hand to the front door and proceeds to exit my house.

“Really?” I ask as I follow Oprah onto the front porch. My question is answered when I see a shiny black limo in the drive. And of course, we then are driven to a picturesque cabin.

“Here we are my good passengers,” the limo driver says.

My goodness! I am utterly bewildered. A porch overhangs a beautiful lake.  My gosh! And once the driver opens the front door, a dog comes bounding out to greet us!

“Now THIS is a happy ending!” I scream with utter amazement.

“Darling, my darling,” Oprah begins, “You know that I love to give people’s stories happy endings!”

“But I had no idea…” I drift into silence.

“Ahhhh, I see you like?” Oprah gives Michael and I a great big wink.

“This is awesome!” Michael interjects.

“I agree, I agree.” I have to admit. “Awesome. Perfect really.”

“Are you happy?” Oprah asks.

“My goodness, Oprah,” I state. “Happy.”

 

The End (credits roll for our viewers at home)

Murray Dunlap's work has appeared in about fifty magazines and journals. His stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times, as well as to Best New American Voices once, and his first book, an early draft of "Bastard Blue" (then called "Alabama") was a finalist for the Maurice Prize in Fiction. His first collection of short stories, "Bastard Blue," was published by Press 53 on June 7th, 2011 (the three year anniversary of a car wreck that very nearly killed him…). His newest book is the collection "Fires." The extraordinary individuals Pam Houston, Laura Dave, Michael Knight, and Fred Ashe taught him the art of writing.

See www.murraydunlap.com for a look at hiswork.

Making Art, poem by Tim Peeler

Making Art

He down shifted the Opal from third to second

As they approached the intersection of Hooker Road

And Arlington Blvd, swiveling his neck in an instant

Assessment as they sped on through the red light.

You crazy son of a bitch, his roommate hollered,

Fighting the hot summer wind to re-light a half-burned joint.

He was late; they had spent too much time arguing,

Then fighting after the intramural softball game,

And now his model would be waiting at the house,

The art class project due in the morning.

Two more run lights and a near crash at Elm and 5th

And he skidded to a stop on Avery Street,

Clattering in his cleats down the sidewalk,

Smiling at her with his busted lip and reaching out

His bloody-knuckled hand; thank you so much

For waiting, he said in his puppy dog voice;

Her hand held the green nightgown she’d picked out

For this portrait he’d promised to copy for her

Boyfriend, and her beautiful face had the dark

Worried look he would draw without the mark

He left there when she first refused to strip.

His roommate listened to them fight for the hour

It took the bong hits to do their work;

He’d heard it all before.

A Wave of the Burger, by Dale Wisely

I'm in my patrol car

and I gesture to let a big guy,

dusted with white paint,

make a left in front of me.

He's driving an old pickup

burdened by ladders.

There is a thick layer

of debris on the dashboard.

Cigarette packs, food wrappers,

maps, receipts, work orders.

He cuts a big, slow,

sloppy arc across my path,

turning the wheel with the heel

of one palm.

He's eating a hamburger

and has it in the other hand.

As he passes,

he salutes me with

a wave of the burger.

Failing to do so would be

ill-mannered.

Dale Wisely grew up in Arkansas and lives in Alabama, where he edits

Right Hand Pointing, White Knuckle Press, and One Sentence Poems.

Two Poems, by Larry Thacker

I swim the vacuum

between your atoms

sing along the dark

mattered strands

between galaxies

beyond imagination

witnessing the base

pattern of all worlds

the mystery scripts

hanging ornamented

about your thoughts

I hum under your feet

within the valleys

of fingerprint ridges

shrinking, expanding

destroying, creating

my laugh and smiles

wrapping your world

in scales of D flat major

be still, and know me

Meaning 

There are days when everything means everything,

polarized against others when all is the frightening

pit of meaninglessness. Who is immune to the inner

script of the empty end or, on better days, a hero’s

mysterious story in a world that screams both

symbolism and blankness as the bitterest of kin.

We must lean in, and we do, and we fail and falter,

sometimes emerging slightly scathed and hardened

against our silly demons, realizing how sky quakes,

earth sounds and flock deaths, fish kills, bee plagues

and rivers of snakes and winter tornados are neither

curses nor blessings, but are just simple questions.

 

Indian ID, fiction by Eric Ramseier

I have this plastic laminated card that says I'm an Indian.  It has my name on it, the tribe I'm from—some kind of Cherokee, and my picture.  It needs my picture because I don't look like an Indian at all.  I could be the cover photo for some neo-Nazi's utopian novel.  My dad made me go up to the reservation north of town to sit for the photo and get the card.  You never know, he said and left it at that.  He meant that I might need it because of the minority status, like if I didn't get into the college I want or I needed to get a scholarship or something, I would just mark down that I'm American Indian and they would bend over backwards to welcome me.  He never had to use it, he made me well aware, but, again, you just never know.  I mostly use the card to buy beer.

The ride up to the reservation is always the same.  When we cross the bridge over the Kansas River and I look down and think what a great place the banks would be for paintball with all the tall reeds and sand bars and cottonwoods.  I feel a bit guilty for dreaming this sort of thing.  It's like when I catch myself staring at the baseball cards in the grocery store—I am too old for that kind of stuff now.  At least I believe I am supposed to think and feel that.   The highway north is always empty except for semi trucks and farm equipment, and the sky is so blue that it appears purple-gray.  Maybe I always think there is a storm.  That is where they always come from, dumping rain, making the air smell stale and dangerous, causing the dogs to howl then cower under furniture.  There is a bizarre mixture of cookie-cutter fake-mall suburbs encroaching on wild prairie.  We'll see all this tall grass and farmer's weed, then all of the sudden there's a Casey's General Store, a strip mall with a Chinese food place and a fireworks stand, and a half completed subdivision of houses.

It's always the two of us.  Dan and me.  We aren't popular, and we aren't nerds.  We are just there.  Connected only because we are neighbors and known each other forever.  Dan wants to be popular.  He asks me, "What's your favorite kind of beer?"  We are in the gas station just inside the reservation borders.  It's not like regular gas stations.  It's not bright and clean with aisle after aisle of candy and chips.  The walls are wood paneling.   There's fishing bait on one aisle.  There's only two refrigerated cases.  There's almost no name-brand food.  The plastic wrapping on the food looks old, like it's brittle and ready to crack.  "I don't have a favorite beer," I say.  And I don't.  It all tastes like I'm sucking wet bread through a straw.  I just like what happens when I drink a lot of it.  The world isn't the same anymore.  Things slow down.  Thoughts come slower.  If I move my head fast, I can still see the outline of what I was just looking at.  "I like the highest percent beer."  I say.  "Jen likes Heineken.  We could see if they have it," Dan says.  But I don't want to buy beer for everyone.  I don't want to be known as the hookup.  I don't want the attention.  I don't want the responsibility.  I shrug at Dan.  We both know there is little chance that there will be Heineken in this store.

The cashier eyes us the whole time.  He knows we aren't eighteen.  He looks like an Indian.  Straight black hair.  Looks like he played football.  I wonder what his life is like.  How is an Indian that different from me?  I am the legal limit of Indian to have the card I have and to get the possible government benefits.  I think it was my grandmother's grandmother who was full-blooded some kind of Cherokee.  I've seen pictures.  She looks severe.  The cashier looks severe, too.  Maybe that's the main difference.  No one has ever described me as severe, and I do not think of myself this way.  I pull the card out of my wallet and place it in front of the cashier.  It's like a pass to underage drinking.  He unfolds his arms and examines the card.  I think I detect a smile forming.  "Okay, man.  Just the beer?" he asks.  Dan has a suitcase of a brand of beer that we have only seen on the reservation—they certainly don't advertise it on TV—in each hand.  He knows the drill.  He lifts the beer up to the counter without letting go—as though this were all a ruse and it might get taken away from him—while the cashier runs a barely-working laser wand over the bar code.  I have a twelve pack in my free hand.  We pay the money we earned from our after-school jobs and walk out like it's any other transaction at any other store.

When we get to the car, though, it's a different story.  War cries.  It's like we got away with something, and I suppose we did.  None of us are even close to eighteen.  We are barely old enough to drive.  It's like liquid gold, what we have.  "Is there some place around here where we could start drinking it?" Dan asks.  He has a shitty life, though no one can quite figure out why.  He likes to drink even more than me.  But Dan always has answers, and he always comes off as being full of shit.  He always wants to take that one step further from the edge.

***

            Dan's house is where we drink, though.  His parents are always off on business trips or vacations, and his siblings have all moved out.  We never start at his house, though.  Most of the kind of kids that hang out at our high school hang out in the parking lot of the furniture store.  It is tucked away in a residential section and isn't well lit.  The only times cops come out are when there is a fight that gets too loud and an elderly neighbor calls in.  I don't like to advertise how much beer we have, so we park and take it one at a time.  Whenever someone popular asks where we got it, we always say my parent's-fridge-and-this-is-all-we-could-score.

"Aw, shit, Jen is here," Dan says.  "Act cool."  We don't do anything different.  Except Dan makes it clear that he is in possession of beer.  He pokes a hole in the bottom of the can with a screwdriver, shotguns it, crushes it with his hand and smashes it against the pavement.  Jen sees this.  On some level, everyone sees this.

Jen has a platoon.   She is not the leader of the platoon, but it's easy to imagine a situation in which she overthrows the current leader and becomes despot.  "Do you have more of that," Jen asks.  Dan reaches in the backseat and produces a can for her.  The rest of her platoon huffs and snorts, so he gets cans for them as well.  I move to the other side of the car, not wanting to participate.  "Fuckin' party," Dan says just below a yell.  The platoon, including Jen, roll their eyes.  The beer by now is warm and cheap, so of course they don't like it.  It offers no relief from the sweating night.  "What is this swill?" Jen asks.  One says, "I'm so trashed right now," after three sips.  They ask for more, and Dan delivers.  "So what are we doing after this?" Dan asks.  "Uh, we have the car wash fundraiser tomorrow for the dance team, so we are out of here after this," Jen replies, all attitude.  "Nice, maybe I'll have to drop by and get my car washed," Dan says.

The god damned dance team.  Dan's blinded by sperm backed up so far in his brain that he doesn't realize he's being played.  But I'm not.  Relationships in my high school are always about give and take and I'm not aware of any commodity I might offer beyond the ability to get beer.  It's not stable enough.   I learned just like everyone else that I am my own unique individual and that something about that is special, but I can't stand the thought of being rejected.  Everyone talks to and about each other.  I don't want people talking about me.  And if there is one thing the dance team does, it's talk.

I sit on the hood of the car, my back against the windshield.  My head rests on a piece of the metal trim bent up from the seam.  It's painful, but a good kind of pain.  The kind of pain that lets me know I am present even as I drink can after can of the foul smelling beer.  Someone says, "I almost vomited in my mouth.  Isn't that so funny?"  And there is the corresponding laughter.  I suddenly realize I am in a hideous town with hideous people and I need to get away from here as soon as possible.  I suppose I have always known that, but staring up at the stars, I recognize this isn't the only place in the world, that there are people living in completely different places and doing completely different things.  I want to be one of them.

***

            The beer runs out.  That happens when a platoon of people share it with you.  They march off, and Dan is left with blue balls.  "It's all about making headway," he says.  "I've laid a foundation for future encounters.  This is the legwork, and you don't always see results with legwork.  The results present themselves later on down the line."  I see how I'm like Dan, too.  I don't let on.  I keep my suffering to myself.

Dan is in the back seat kicking the empty cardboard boxes and empty aluminum cans out of frustration when I hear a dull thud.  "Thank fucking Christ," he says, digging out the twelve pack I had bought.  "They didn't take all our beer."  We end up at Dan's house.

Both of our houses are set up basically the same way.  Above the front door of our split levels are the typical trappings of suburbia.  An entrance way with embarrassing family photos from ten years ago, a living room with down-home charm and the occasional kitschy decorative touch, the parents' conservative master bedroom, the teenagers' rooms with questionable smells emanating from within.  Downstairs, though, is another story.  Tucked away into the little-used second TV room amongst the furniture that didn't match anywhere else and the Christmas decorations stood the family computer which doubled as a depository of the most depraved pornography we could find.  I am no different.  I would like to say that I am, but I am not.

Watching terrible movies is usually how we finish off a night like tonight, but when we go downstairs, there is already a blue-green glow coming from the television.  Dan's brother is sitting on paisley couch, his legs crossed, smoking a cigarette.  If there was one thing you didn't do in any of our houses, it mess with the carefully cultivated sandalwood scent.   There are stories about Dan's brother.  He was this straight-laced guy all through high school.  He was 4.0, clean cut, and going on a free ride to KU.  But something happened to him after he graduated—nobody, not even Dan, knew what—and he simply didn't go to college.  It was sort of unthinkable.  Then he grew out his hair and grew a beard.  He started taking all kinds of weird drugs no one we knew could even imagine getting.  He went on a vision quest in the desert.  He went to Mexico and robbed banks.  He started a folk band in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles.  Dan never talked about him, so who knew what was true.  I could never connect my memory of his brother with those stories, but he looks every bit the part.  He's wearing mismatched plaids and a blazer even though its humid outside.  His eyes are glazed over.  His hair is stringy and greasy.  He looks as worn out as the knees of his trousers.  "Look what the cat dragged in," he says as we file down the stairs.  "One of those beers for me?"  I look at Dan.  "You're not supposed to be here if mom and dad aren't," Dan finally says.

Dan eventually steps forward with a  beer in hand.  "What do you say to a trade?" he says.  "How do you mean?" his brother replies.  "I mean you got anything stronger for our troubles?"  I want to say 'what the fuck are you doing?'  I want to say that I'm fine with beer, that's tame enough, but there are stories, and I don't want things to get out of control.  I say nothing, though.  Maybe he just has marijuana.  Who cares about that?  I look at Dan and he looks deflated, like he's crumbling to pieces on the inside.  And I don't get it.  "Sure, little Danny, I've got something stronger."  I realize just how much I don't know Dan and why he does what he does.  Dan's brother continues, "But we should get out of here.  I need some air."

We pile back into the car because what else could we do, and Dan's brother cracks his beer—something we would never think of doing.  Dan starts driving, as per his brother's instructions, with no destination in mind but mindful of where cops typically have DUI checkpoints.  Neighborhood streets shouldn't be a problem, though.  I look at Dan's brother in the rearview and wonder how that happens.  He has a menace about him that was never there before.  I wanted to pretend it wasn't there, but this was not the same guy I knew.  "How'd you kids even get this beer?" he asks finishing off the can and tossing it out the window.  We explain about my card and how Indians look the other way for other Indians.  "No shit?  You're an Indian?  I did not know that."  I didn't like him taking a personal interest in me.  I kept quiet, only nodding at his questions.  "This will work on pretty damn well, then.  Let's head up to Burnett's Mound."

***

            In elementary school we all learned that when this city was founded, the city father's bought a bunch of pasture land from Chief Burnett.  We didn't learn that he was plied with whiskey and then booted from his property.  Not to be outdone, he did as the affronted often do and cursed the land.  He said that so long as no man-made structure was built on his mound, the city would be safe from  natural disaster.  He knew man-made structures would be built there as soon as possible.  There was a lot of spite both ways back then.  Eventually, he was buried on that mound, though the grave marker was long gone, and tornados tore through city in 1966 and then one time in the 80s and again when I was in fourth grade and cowering in the hallway with my hands folded over my neck.

We drive to the top where a barbed wire fence separated us from the enormous beige water tower that was built into the side of the mound.  Dan's brother wraps his blazer around a section of barbed wire and scales the fence.  Dan tosses the rest of the beer to him and climbs the fence as well.  I feel left behind.  I don't remember many pregnant pauses shared with Dan, but we share one now.  I'm not so drunk that I don't know what's going on, but I am drunk enough not to care, so I follow.  We are not walking through virgin prairie back there, as I had thought we could be.  Crumpled candy wrappers and plastic bags litter the ground.  We see a few used condoms and lost frisbees.  The grass is overgrown and our socks collect cockleburs with every step.

We follow Dan's brother up the iron ladder welded on to the side of the water tower.    It's smooth and slick on top.  The metal is sweating from the heat.  From there, though, we can see the lights of the entire city.  It's so depressing seeing the terminus.  We each open our last beers.    From his pants pocket Dan's brother produces a handful of brown buttons.  "This is straight up Anasazi  peyote.  I got it off an old medicine man.  It's totally legit.  Take one and swallow."  We each swallow a button and wash it down with the beer.  It tastes bitter, and I wonder if I'm going to throw it up before it has a chance to work.  "Why do we have to be up here to take this?" I ask.  I have never taken the stuff before, obviously, and don't know what it does.  I start to have concerns for my safety.  "This is cursed Indian land.  This is Indian drugs.  This is the only place in town worthy of taking this stuff.  I want to see if it messes you up more," he says.  "I want to see if you can summon the spirit of Chief Burnett.  If you can kill a buffalo with your bare hands."  Dan laughs, but his brother seems serious.

My face burns.  I feel like I'm being asked to perform.  The two of them stare at me, so I turn my back on them and step to the edge.  Far off to the west I see heat lightning.  I crouch down hoping the peyote will take possession of me, and I'll no longer be here.  I wonder what the cashier on the reservation is doing.  I wonder if I could get a job at the gas station.  I could take the shift after him and sell beer only to people that have their laminated cards.  I realize that, too, is a nightmare, and I just want to go home.  I want to go to bed.  I won't even mind tomorrow when I'll wake up with that feeling of not knowing whether I'm hungry or sick.

The two of them stand behind me.  "Oh man, you should do a dance and see if you can call the storm this way," Dan's brother says.  "Yeah," Dan adds, "Maybe it's like this innate thing you can do."  I look up and Dan, but he's not helping.  He won't see that I don't want to participate, and I feel betrayed.  "Come on, man."  "Yeah," they urge.

I get up but do so too fast.  I lose my footing and fall off the water tower.  It's probably twenty feet, but I feel like I'm falling forever.  I do finally land.  I know I'm not paralyzed because a dirty newspaper ends up on my face, and I remove it and am once again looking up at the stars.   My body tingles, and I hope it's the peyote.  All is silent, and I think about what I was about to do.  My natural inclination would be to just do a goofy dance to remove the tension and move on to another topic.  But I'm not so sure that's what I was going to do.  I might've been confrontational.  I might have really laid into those insensitive pricks.  Told them to go to hell and they weren't going to be using me anymore.  That it was cruel how they were treating me.  That I wasn't even really an Indian.  I knew nothing about it.  My heart pumps harder as I grow more and more convinced that this is what I was going to do.  I feel sweat beading on my face.  Or maybe it was rain;  perhaps I did conjure a storm.  I close my eyes and hope it is the peyote.  My body quakes.  I hear rustling in the grass around me and open my eyes.  Two figures surround me.  "Jesus, are you dead?" one of them asks.  "If you aren't, get up.  We want to go get more beer."  I wiggle my fingers and toes and reach out to the stars.  They looks so close, yet I know that I won't touch them.  I mouth 'Fuck you,' but I don't think I actually say the words.  I shut my eyes tight, and I feel weird.  I hope it is the peyote.  I want it to be the cool light of day, and I want to be running through the grass with a smile on my face.  I want to grab an orphaned frisbee or my Indian ID card and loft it into the air.  I can't do this.  I just can't do this.

Appalachians, by GC Smith

Mountain folk

I see them everywhere. In the cities now. On the streets. In the pool rooms, bars, fightin' clubs. Inswank hotels. Still back in the Piney woods. I see them drivin' pick up trucks. Driving BMWs.

Enduring people.

Fighting for the Government. Wearing the Nation's uniforms. Teaching school. Growing pot.Preserving the Nation. Turning wrenches. Drivin' tractors. Laying brick. Mending fences. Writinglaws. Healing the halt and lame. Swilling shine. Fighting the Government.

Hardy folks.

Scots-Irish. Blacks. Red Indians. Melungeons. Folks with religion. Folks without. Folks doing thehard work. Folks sticking to it. Folks living in the hardwood forests. Livin' in the long leaf pinestands. Cookin' corn whiskey. Hardscrabble farming. Strip mining. Building cabins. Cuttingfurrows. Building roads.

Good folks.

Folks on mountain roads. On white water rapids. On back trails. On ridge backs. In Hollers. In thehills. In Cypress Shacks. Folks caught in snow drifts. Folks hangin' on.

Music makers.

Dolly. Bill Monroe. Vassar Clements. Chet Atkins. Roy Acuff. Carters (Mother Maybelle. June,Helen and Anita. A.P.). Johnny. Emmylou. Jerry Douglas. Allison. Lester Flatt. Nitty Gritties(Hanna-Ibbotson-Fadden-McEuen-Thompson). Doc Watson. Bela Fleck. Merle Travis. John Prine.Randy Scruggs. Ricky Skaggs. Earl Scruggs.

Footstomping, finger tapping multitudes.

Keepers of the circle. Folks playin' dobro tuned guitars. Mandolins. Autoharps. Washboards.Fiddles. Mouth Organs. Upright bass. Folks voices, solo and harmony. Folks clog dancing. Whiskeysippin'. Singing rounds. Dancin' squares. Early day and modern music makers.

Folks insuring enduring circles.

Singing. Amazin' Grace. Just a Closer walk. Life's Railway. Little Mountain Church House. One Toke Over the Line. Walkin' Shoes Don't Fit Me. You Don't Know My Mind. Wildwood Flower.Honky Tonk Blues. Grandpa Was a Carpenter. Lost River. Diamond In the Rough. Sunny Side.Fishin' Blues. Earl's Breakdown. Will the Circle be Unbroken?

Appalachia-Appalachians. America's backbone. America's people.

The circle endures, unbroken.

Two Poems by Teisha Dawn Twomey

Wanderunlust

I want to believe in truck stop diners

blueberry pancakes, vacation villages

on the way to never ever again land.

By morning, I’d think any place

could be home. I continue to carry

old key chains with me.

They fail to unlock any doors

but open as many cold-ones

as I need. So, I call my older brother.

He is always on vacation and I ruin

his good time. He has predictable advice

on the other line, I should really take

care. Tonight I’m smashed-mouthed

and stormy. Sometimes I’m like that.

grand illusion destroyed. I want that

tonight. To be unlike me, soft-spoken

and sweet. A child un–

willing to take off her boots

backpack off, laces

laced too tight.

A Female Redback

Spider looms her tough untidy web

another male offers up his abdomen

somersaulting towards her mouthparts

in exchange for a moment or two close

to her. This vulnerable posture only elicits

a predatory response. The smaller he is

the more forceful he’ll be cannibalized.

This first and last instinctual barter

beneficial to the species mutually.

He doesn’t consider the pros and cons.

He’s driven towards her snare, the dance

in his loins, a never-ending congo of brothers

to come after and before lined up

at her door. She tidies her untidy trap

never waits too long. Same old song

on the radio and a young woman practices

tying another slipknot behind a locked door.

The female Redback spider has it pretty good.

Not just a girl in this country-bumpkin town.

has powerful limbs, a set of fangs, no step-daddy

too young for the mother but not for the daughter.

The female Redback Spider bears a bright blaze

on its abdomen. It warns: don’t draw too close

you’re sure to lose a hand. That’s just how it is

plain as day, seems fair and square. Sure

as shit, her venom could kill a full-grown man.

Goosy Gus and the Cash Mob, fiction by William Trent Pancoast

(originally appeared in Revolver)

Gus had acquired the name “Goosy” because of his shell shock and battle fatigue from WWII and now he was no longer allowed in his daughter-in-law’s donut shop in downtown Cranston even though eating donuts was his favorite way to start the day.

When he was cornered or confronted with loud noises, he struck or grabbed the people or things in proximity to himself. All who knew him tried not to surprise him, though the guys at the steel mill used to enjoy getting him going for their own entertainment. One day the new mill manager was touring the plant and introducing himself to the employees and when he came to Gus, one of the other millwrights slammed a board down on the floor behind Gus. The result was that Gus grabbed the plant manager by the throat and squeezed. He almost got fired over that one, until his disability was confirmed by the security department and plant hospital to Human Resources.

The reason he was barred from the donut shop was because of the “Buy Local” campaign, a last ditch save-our-jobs-and-city effort spearheaded by the local corporate newspaper. The same paper that had scoffed at Gus’s Buy American letters to the editor twenty years earlier when American workers like him were pleading with the American people to consider buying union products made here in the USA.

Goosy Gus had been there eating a maple-frosted cake donut one morning when two carloads of folks—the newspaper editor included—piled out of a couple of Toyota vans and came into the shop, babbling about the big comeback the downtown area was experiencing.

As they all ordered bags of donuts the daughter-in-law realized she was the benefactor of this week’s Cash Mob, a group of do-gooders who bought shit from a targeted merchant on a certain day.

Gus sat in the corner sizing them up.

There was the editor, whom Gus referred to as a con artist and fraud and said that if journalism was a spitball it wouldn’t stick to his slippery ass. The head of the Chamber of Commerce was there too, a country clubber of the highest order who had sided with the national Chamber and Karl Rove in spending $40 million to try and beat the state’s democratic Senator. Along with those two was a gaggle of hangers-on, the sort that Gus knew from looking had never worked a day in their lives. These folks were all here to shower some welfare on his daughter-in-law’s store.

Gus sank low in his chair at the back table, hoping this too happy group would buy their donuts and get the fuck out. He had just received notice that his health insurance, part of his steel mill retirement from a decade earlier, was being terminated and he was in no fucking mood to hear about the happy horseshit these folks were shoveling.

With no warning the company had dropped his insurance. There was a meeting scheduled for that afternoon at the union hall, but Gus knew there was nothing anyone could do about it. The company always won. They would fake bankruptcy, lie, cheat, steal, buy politicians and newspaper editors, whatever it took. Goosy Gus had only wanted to consume a maple donut in silence—two this morning instead of his usual one—to soothe some of the pain he was feeling. He knew that with his wife’s medical bills his savings would be gone in another four months, and he, along with a bunch of the other retirees would be headed on a shit-greased slippery slope to bankruptcy.

Facing bankruptcy, and this chicken-shit corporate newspaper editor and his thieving business leader buddy were all gallivanting around the decayed remnants of the downtown with a bunch of old women who had never hit a lick in their lives, babbling about how fucking great it all was that donut and basket shops were springing up in the ruins. One of these women got Gus banned from the donut shop. She had gulped her first pain pills of her new prescription that morning and was cackling like a rooster pheasant on opening day.

Gus had heard her jabbering from curbside when the do-gooders first got there. Then when they entered the store she gushed and eyed the pastries, pointing out the various kinds and describing them in detail, dashing around in front of the other Cash Mob People.

Now she was in front of Gus’s table—the lone occupied table in the place— gesturing at the donuts in the glass case and on the shelves behind his daughter-in-law, pointing at him, then to the donuts and people nearby. He heard the words “Buy Local” and “Cash Mob” several times. He watched the cackling woman, her husband was a bank vice president and they went to his church—his church not their church—as they were fresh in from the out-of-town corporate merry-go-round, as were all the people who now owned everything in his town, folks he called Transients. As her face grew red and heated through her speed-freak dance before his table, he stood up and tried to slide along the wall toward the exit but she followed right along with him. He couldn’t help noticing her nipples pressed hard against the front of her rust-colored silk blouse, growing in unison with her dance. He fixated on them as they grew longer and sharper and pointed as if accusing him of some undefined crime.

Gus thought about the expensive silk blouse she was wearing. Sexually abused little girls in South America probably made it. The union had always made sure its members were educated on the issue of global labor.

Gus heard the words “Cash Mob” and “Buy Local” one more time. His right hand shot out in a blur of motion. His calloused and swollen arthritic fingers latched on to her left elongated nipple. He twisted it to the right. She screamed. She screamed several times. The Buy Local mob members turned toward Gus as the lady backed away, pointing at Goosy Gus.

Gus’s daughter-in –law had been the only person to see what had happened, and as she realized that none of the others had seen it, that they were all intent on her delicious donuts, she did not rat out her husband’s father, despicable throwback that he was.

The woman calmed down, but kept Gus in her view. She rejoined the group, and in a couple more minutes the Cash Mob was gone. Gus’s daughter-in-law stood over him at the table. She shook her head in silence as he finished his coffee.

“Fucking Toyota drivers,” Goosy Gus said.

Now every morning Goosy Gus sat at the Dunkin’ Donuts out by the freeway. For a while he said, “I like Dunkin’ Donuts better anyways” until his son told him to shut the fuck up.

William Trent Pancoast's novels include WILDCAT (2010) and CRASHING (1983). His recent fiction has appeared in Revolver, Steel Toe Review, Monkeybicycle, Night Train, Fried chicken and Coffee, As It Ought To Be, and Working Class Heroes. Pancoast retired from the auto industry in 2007 after thirty years as a die maker and union newspaper editor. Born in 1949, the author lives in Ontario, Ohio. He has a BA in English from the Ohio State University.

Squeaky Wheel Gets the Nitrous Oxide, poem by Dennis Mahagin

Carry on, wisdom, as if eye teeth depended,

floss, floss, don't let them fit you for insane.

Lips make a purse, spit out

the Jolly Rancher,

get on your bike again.

Rotten molars,

a hail of bullets. My hygienist is buying

an assault rifle on time.

It’s what you've got

to take, entropy and a flask of fluoride

in the jockey box, you’ve got to talk

to the voice at the Drive Through

like an old uncle who's very, very fond of you

yet worried, with a nervous smile. A Check Up

would ease the mind, as crack

on a sidewalk, numbing the gums

come on hummer: hurry up twelve speed,

live the youth before they yank it now

sit up, sit up and spit

the wind for what it does to fears, rippling

tall grasses in summer, the distant rumble

of helios, hogs and choppers.

I say, hang

a hard left here at the light, you begin

to understand, all right, too much, fruit

smoothie on such a beautiful day,

countenance bright

as any dime, a little bell on

the handlebar, you work it

like a Water Pic: it’s a laugh,

it's a gas,

and it's going away.