This Week in Word of the Day – 8/4/2013

coaptation \koh-ap-TEY-shuhn\, noun:

a joining or adjustment of parts to one another: the coaptation of a broken bone.

Blood-soaked talons pierced the hull and ripped steel back like soft flesh. A giant gash opened up along the base of the aircraft, exposing the Earth below.

Anderson clung to the seat back of his bombardier station as the frigid winds roared around him.

Anderson looked behind him toward the gunners. Only Wallace remained, strapped to the hull, his lifeless body hanging in the sky, being beaten against the plane’s steel frame by the wind.

Anderson glanced toward Berlin, 8,000 feet below his dangling feet, and found the monastery tucked between a library and an abandoned apartment block.

That was the source, the mouth of Hell. Where the Earth spat out its most vile offspring.

Anderson struggled against the winds, pulling himself up along the seat and gripping the bombing controls.

“Bomb is away,” he called into the radio as he flicked a switch.

A loud clank and metallic squeal followed. Behind Anderson, in the exposed bowels of the craft, the bomb bay doors groaned as they attempted to open.

“The doors are damaged,” Anderson called, not knowing if anyone was alive to hear him. “They won’t open.”

“I can see them,” a weak voice called back.

“Wallace?” Anderson asked, looking to the body whipping in the wind. Wallace was alive, barely bracing himself against his mangled .50 caliber machine gun perch.

“That bastard got to them,” Wallace grunted. “Someone needs to go down there and fix the doors.”

“We don’t exactly have time for an impromptu coaptation!” Anderson replied. “The target is under our feet, right now! For all we know, the pilots are dead and we are just going to continue flying straight until we run out of fuel.”

“So, what do we do? Bang the hell out of it and hope for the best?”

“Exactly,” Anderson replied, feeling the winds blowing past him and into the belly of the aircraft.

“How are we going to even get to it?”

Anderson closed his eyes and took a moment to think of his wife and kid.

“Wallace?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell everyone I said something clever before I died,” Anderson called, then pushed off the seat, allowing the cyclonic winds push him along the plane. He crashed into the guts of the bomb bay.

The doors clanked and swung wide open. The bomb looked like a fat baby tumbling out of a womb and down into the heart of Berlin.

esse \ES-se; Eng. ES-ee\, noun:

being; existence.

It was easy for Glenn’s neighbors too dismiss the old man as the worst kind of eccentric — the boring kind. Hours spent trimming his grass with scissors, cleaning his siding with a cloth towel and a special surface cleaner he developed himself.

He repainted the house number on the the curb every other week, cleaned out his garden before his first cup of coffee, wiped down his outside windows with a squeegee after every rain, and had his lawn sprinklers on remote control to defend against stray dogs in need of a patch of grass and a moment of privacy.

Glenn’s esse derived from the 1/2 acre of his homestead, and how does one not scorn and ridicule such an empty life?

His family visited a few times a year, two daughters and a son with a herd of grandchildren in tow. They all knew to be on “museum behavior” when visiting Glenn’s home and they never slept over.

An aged police officer arrived late in the night from time to time, letting himself in with a key and visiting the man for a few hours. No one understood why. Some joked of an illicit love affair, others of a criminal empire – perhaps an illegal smuggling ring of banned lawn fertilizers.

The truth came out in Glenn’s obituary, too late to do anyone any good, but answering questions and injecting small doses of shame throughout the neighborhood. Three years in a tiger cage in North Vietnam changes the way a man values his house. “Home” meant something different to Glenn, something bigger.

“A hero,” the aged police officer muttered while gazing at the “For Sale” sign on Glenn’s front lawn. The neighborhood kids had never seen a grown man cry, let alone a cop. It was a startling moment that haunted them for the rest of their lives.

residuum \ri-ZIJ-oo-uhm\, noun:

1. the residue, remainder, or rest of something.

2. Also, residue. Chemistry. a quantity or body of matter remaining after evaporation, combustion, distillation, etc.

3. any residual product.

4. Law. the residue of an estate.

To say Jesse’s memory haunted the town would be an overstatement, rather he remained, after three decades since the killing spree, a vague residiuum, like graffiti faded beyond recognition. Few remembered much of his manifesto, something about state rights and the scourge of immigration.

Jesse believed his shooting spree would make him immortal, and it did, in a way. He was not ageless like a towering oak tree, as he imagined before taking his own life. Instead, he endured in the dark, hidden areas of the town easily forgotten, like a black mold colony. That was how it always was with men like Jesse. Hate destroyed if left unchecked, it crawled through the shadows, it sickened us as it infected our homes, but all it took to kill the infection was to open up the windows and allow in the sunlight.

bemused \bih-MYOOZD\, adjective:

1. bewildered or confused.

2. lost in thought; preoccupied.

The aging general wandered the well-tred field, a distant, bemused smile spread across his face, his medals shimmering in the sunlight, the ache in his knee easing as he stretched it with each step.

He thought of his lone granddaughter as he looked across the flat grasslands, not a single wildflower in sight. The ambitious little girl would have the entire field blooming with whites, yellows, and pinks by the end of the season if she simply had the time and the seeds.

“I want to fill the world with color!” she’d told the general as she led him through her small greenhouse. It was a present from her dad, en lieu of a dollhouse like any other normal little girl.

How long had it been? Four years, the general decided. She must be fourteen by now.

The general’s spell broke briefly as he heard his name called in the wind. He decided not to respond. Whatever it was they needed, it could wait.

The general glanced up at the sun and briefly considered removing his frock coat.

“One must always look the part,” his wife told him when she dressed him during his early days as a young officer.

He used an embroidered handkerchief to wipe his brow. It was from his bachelor son whom the family did not often discuss, but the general hoped his son knew that he was no less loved.

The voice called again, now closer and more urgent.

“Christ, can’t I have one moment!” the general growled as he spun toward a junior officer racing toward him.

“What are you doing!” the brash young man barked. “We have to get out of here!”

“Mind your training, lieutenant,” the general spat back. “I am not to be talked to like a common slave. Who is your superior?”

“He is dead, they are all dead and the enemy is on my heals!”

The young man grabbed the general by the sleeve and pulled, but the general yanked his arm free.

“If they are all dead, then running will do us no good,” the general replied, then turned back to the field.

“Sit with me, lieutenant,” the general said, pushing his sword to the side and easing to the ground, his medals jingling playfully.

“Are you insane?” the lieutenant asked.

“No, my boy,” the general replied. “Those monsters will find and slaughter us. Even if my feet were as nimble as yours, they would still catch us. We are dead men, so let us find a little peace before we are sent up to account for our sins.”

The young lieutenant looked back across the plains and saw the dust cloud of a hundred foul and angry beasts approaching.

The lieutenant turned from the nightmare. He removed the sword from his scabbard and sat near the general and imagined the smell of his mother’s stew wafting across the family farm, his twin sisters singing a lullaby to their baby dolls, his father cursing at the plow and its broken handle.

lam \lam\, verb:

1. to beat; thrash.

2. to beat; strike; thrash (usually followed by out or into).

Selvin climbed from the gulley, a battered mess, patches of his hair ripped clean from his scalp, purple bruises massed about his face and arms, lip busted, but no longer bleeding.

It was the Johnson boys this time. They jumped the young Guatemalan boy before he could make it home to the single wide on the edge of town. If you asked the Johnson boys, they couldn’t tell you why they beat Selvin so badly or why the eldest lammed into him like a linebacker blindsiding a receiver, sending the boy tumbling down the hill. They didn’t laugh or call Selvin names, they weren’t upset at something the boy had done. They mistreated the boy for the same reason every other person in the town mistreated Selvin — guilt.

Selvin’s grim fate had been foreseen one night by every person within twenty miles of his single wide. A vivid dream that showed how the young boy’s death would save theirs.

Rather than embracing the savior, the town hated him and the confusing and tragic role he played in their future.

Selvin simply absorbed the abuse and moved on with his short life. He limped home, collapsed on his small bed and waited for his father to return from the worksite.

The single father always stank of whiskey when he arrived, but he was a kindly drunk and loved the boy deeply. They played video games and talked about Selvin’s mother deep into the night.

The town had the opposite reaction to the father as they did to his son. They treated the father with pity and, when the father visited a bar on the way home, he never paid for a drink. The father just needed a little help to bolster himself, to deaden the dread in his heart when he thought of what his son would soon endure.

He wanted to forget and be as present with the boy as he possibly could while he still had the chance.

In the weeks to come, four more visions would visit the townspeople, adding context to the dark times ahead. There was nothing to prepare for, no actions they could take to prevent the events from unfolding. They could only brace themselves.

The principal asked Selvin’s father to keep the boy home from school because he was becoming a distraction. Selvin rarely talked and never acted out against his bullies, but his presence disturbed everyone. His home room teacher left class at least once a day to cry in the break room.

Selvin’s father refused to take the boy out of school and immediately quit his job. For the last ten days of Selvin’s life, his father never left his side. The large, stout man even squeezed himself into the tiny desks next to his son’s. Selvin always laughed at the sight, even as the dark day arrived.

spigot \SPIG-uht\, noun:

1. a small peg or plug for stopping the vent of a cask.

2. a peg or plug for stopping the passage of liquid in a faucet or cock.

3. a faucet or cock for controlling the flow of liquid from a pipe or the like.

4. the end of a pipe that enters the enlarged end of another pipe to form a joint.

We were listening to Earth, Wind, and Fire and my oldest son had just described itas “lounge funk”, which I thought that was terribly clever.

That is when we heard a scream from the soccer fields behind our house. We ran outside to find blood bubbling out of the house’s outside spigot. It would have leaked out, unnoticed, all day had the young girl not panicked.

My boys and I were confounded as we watched the puddle of blood spread slowly across our yard, under the trampoline and up to the base of the oak tree.

My youngest son snapped into action, calling a plumber from the phone book who arrived quickly enough while we used all the towels in the house to attempt to keep the flood from our back door step.

He was completely dumbfounded on several accounts.

Shutting off the water mane had no affect, no other pipes in the house contained blood, only the backyard spigot — and it seemed endless.

The City of Edmond joined the fray, providing sandbags for my house to shore up the growing pond. A hose was hooked up to funnel the blood into a water tanker.

Scientists, journalists, and looky-loos herded into the soccer fields so they could ogle the spectacle in my backyard until the crowd became disruptive to soccer games and were asked to leave.

Still, at night, I could hear them at my back fence, shuffling around and whispering like polite zombies.

The first water tanker was topped off with blood on the third day. The tests were released to the media and it turned out the blood was mine, or at least shared my exact DNA profile. The hose on the spigot was adjusted so a secondary spigot was added to allow a brief sample of the blood.

Doctors shot me up with some vaccine or something and immediately tested the blood at one hour intervals along with taking samples of my blood. It was discovered that my house was completely in sync with my biological processes.

“It is as if your house is, on some level, connected to your mind, body, and soul,” a doctor explained. “You know, like ‘Avatar.’”

I informed the doctor that I thought ‘Avatar’ was a pretty, but ultimately stupid and lame movie and the doctor was horrified.

I then asked if I should be worried about my house’s severe blood loss. He insisted no and that my blood was currently being used to replenish blood bank supplies worldwide, but he regretted that my blood type was not more useful. I told him that he sounded like my ex-wife and we laughed because divorce humor is just the best.

rarefied \RAIR-uh-fahyd\, adjective:

1. extremely high or elevated; lofty; exalted: the rarefied atmosphere of a scholarly symposium.

2. of, belonging to, or appealing to an exclusive group; select; esoteric: rarefied tastes.

It was about more than huffing paint, sneaking rides in Jeb’s pick up truck, and bribing adults to buy them beer. It was about the community of four kids against the world, each equipped with the specific and rarefied pallets able to withstand ten straight hours of Japanese horror interlaced with role playing games, Gwar, and bootlegged porn.

They talked of drug empires, video game corporations and military dictatorships in some banana republic as an escape from the brutal lives they lived everyday.

They would likely just grow old, get trapped in family units, drift to different parts of the same county and lose contact as every other kid was doomed to do. But during those long nights in the basement with a stack of over-worked VHS imports, towers of Milwaukee’s Best, and a fresh set of repainted dice, they spoke of their destinies with the same certainty as the next day’s sunrise.