Sarah Everhart sat on the floor of the produce section peeling an orange. She recognized the little girl who ran up to her, tears soaking her puffed face.
“My momma won’t get up,” the little girl blubbered. She could barely breathe.
Sarah shrugged as she dropped torn pieces of orange skin. Wailing and prayers rose from frozen foods to toilet paper. Ron Jackson gripped his wife Loretta’s hand like she was going to drop too. They ran out of the store together.
Doesn’t know the bed she’s been roughing up, Sarah thought. “Maybe I’ll say something.”
Half the store, dead, this time around. Here one second, gone the next.
Sarah shook her head.
“Momma!” The girl’s red cheeks stretched out. “Momma!” It was quite a spectacle.
Rolling the skinless orange around in her hand, Sarah leaned forward and said: “Your momma done deserved every single thing she got. Everything. Same with your daddy. Now run along.”
Mimi Needleman rushed up to the now not-crying surprisingly calm little girl and pulled her away. “You are evil, Sarah Everhart. Evil! Saying that to a little girl!” She turned her attention to the child, who was eyeing the orange-eating woman curiously.
“Don’t you worry, Precious. You just keep to the Lord and He will save you from your momma’s suffering.” Mimi Needleman started to cry. “Just keep to the Lord. Now come along. Come along now.”
Sarah smiled as she ate the last bit of orange and listened to the wailing song. “Damn fools. Only think ’bout who’s gone, never do think ’bout why they left behind.”
Then she laughed out loud, right there on the floor of the produce section.
That sweet devil with the tear-flooded face?
“Tiny bitch is gonna wait long, long days ‘fore she gets called home.”
“Dude, like I don’t think his balls ever dropped. I mean, listen. I can’t tell if it’s a dude.”
Scott sat in the bean-bag looking at my Air Supply album. It was summer-hot outside so his socks and shirt were off but the room was cool with the curtains closed. Two Less Lonely People played.
“My dad says it’s not natural, two guys singing like that. Said they look like fruitcakes.” Scott pointed at the cover. “Kinda looks like Apocalypse Now, right? ‘Napalm in the morning.’” Scott mimicked a soldier, stiff and excited.
“Dude, it’s a sunset, okay?” I turned the page of my book, then stopped reading. “You mind when your dad says stuff like that?”
“Nah, not even. He’s just jealous.” Scott flexed his toes. Some part of him was always moving. He set the cover on the carpet and put his arms behind his head. “Not everybody earns these guns.” His biceps rolled to life.
I sniffed the air for pit-effect and went back to my book, then put it down again. I had a question.
“Just can’t keep your mind off this, can ya?” He crunched his abs. “Don’t worry, dude, just say the word.”
I shook my head. “You think Mary would like Air Supply? I’m gonna buy her the cassette.”
Scott shook his head. “Nah. She already thinks you’re a little on the girl-side. Give her Speedwagon. Gave it to Houser. He said it was awesome.”
“You got Houser?” I smiled. Scott got everybody.
His head fell back over the end of the bean bag. His Adam’s apple jumped as he talked. “You know how much I like football.” He lifted his head up. “Yeah, give her Speedwagon. Says you’re a man. Save Air Supply for when we’re old.”
Little Johnny sat in the principal’s office quiet as a churchmouse as Miss Clair told the story again.
“I just don’t know what came over him, Principal Davis. He was playing with Andrew and Malachi and suddenly he slapped Andrew upside the head and pushed a crayon up Thad’s nose. Thank goodness the crayon was already broken or there’s no telling what could’ve happened!”
Johnny heard his father arrive outside the office door. They said they’d call his mother but since she didn’t go to church anymore he didn’t think they would. Sure enough, Johnny’s father was let into the office right as Principal Davis was asking him why he slapped Andrew and pushed a crayon into poor Thad’s brain.
His father shook hands and sat down. “You pushed a crayon up Thaddaeus Brown’s nose?” he asked.
Johnny mumbled, “Yes, sir.” Then he added, quickly: “They said mama was going to hell because she don’t go to church no more. So I walloped ‘em both.”
His father raised both hands to his nose like he was going to pray. All the adults looked at each other. Johnny couldn’t tell if they were going to laugh or were just thinking.
Principal Davis took over. Johnny’s father put his arm around him. Miss Clair nodded softly.
“I’m sorry to say it, little one, but your mama isn’t right with the Lord. There’s only one way for her to go, and it isn’t pretty.”
She looked so sad that Johnny felt sorry for her. Then she said, “And we don’t hurt people who are just speaking the truth.”
Johnny’s father gave him a nudge. He knew what he had to do. “I’m sorry,” Johnny said. And he knew he would never hurt anyone again who was just speaking the truth.
Mom and Dad shouted at the TV in different languages, both of which I understood after spending over five years listening to the differences. A man in a suit was saying something in a third language that was very difficult to follow, something about the Supreme Court and “tapes” the President thought were his.
“They belong to the fucking country!” Dad yelled. “That asshole! This is the reason I don’t vote in no goddamn elections. Fucking cocksucker!”
Mom only paused to take a quick glance back at me, where I sat at the dining room table trying to do my multiplication. Then she went on: “Where does he think we live? Russia? This is not the way an American behaves. Something’s wrong with him.”
“He’s a disease, Joy. You know what you do to a disease? You get rid of the fucking thing.”
As so often happens, what began as a point of unity quickly turned into a point of conflict. Soon my mother accused my father of wanting to “eradicate” everyone he disagreed with, herself included, to which my father responded with a statement illuminating my mother’s naivete. I believe the phrase “shit for brains” was used, of course only in reference to “those people who don’t know the difference between their ass and a hole in the ground.”
War came swiftly. I knew they’d achieve detente eventually, but not without a complex ritual of negotiation laced with extracted promises and sexual favors. Having a common enemy – the Mormons across the street or something my teacher had said – usually helped them overcome any residual tension.
I made sure to steer clear, just like Europe, speaking Dad when I was on the fucking playground banging shit out and Mom nearly everywhere else.
“I can, you know. Get something. For it.” Mrs. Smith spun her hi-ball on a thin layer of water. “That’s what he says. Who wants that, really?”
Sam was 23 and not at all sure why she was telling him about her…much older husband? He stood behind the bar polishing a glass, doing his best to avoid her eyes. The two were alone.
“Get something for it, Sammy,” Mrs. Smith repeated. She expected a response. She stared at him, eyes upward as she sucked Seagrams through the straw. It unnerved him. She called him Sammy from day one and it still made his hair stand on end….
Jeffrey Adamson did not want to go to bed with another Vietnam vet. He knew how they got, and as much as he appreciated their intensity and the faint smell of grease on their jungle jackets, he couldn’t handle the ride. Never knew what was coming down that road…
Eugene Podaleski didn’t mean to bring the planes down. Or stop the trains. Or Mr. Williams. He just wanted to see if his computer was afraid of anything, the way he was when his best friend Tad told him he was a chicken for not going into the dark bathroom and saying Bloody Mary three times in a row.
“Come on,” Tad said. “You’ll see demon eyes.”
“No. You shouldn’t mess with that stuff.” His mother told him that but he left that part out even though he agreed with her. The real truth was that he was afraid he would see Mary’s bloody demon eyes and die on the spot.
Tad started making chicken sounds – BOCK BOCK BOCK! – and told him he couldn’t be friends with a chicken-shit. Eugene was surprised. He didn’t like to swear but the two were still friends so nothing really came of it. That was thirty years ago.
Still, he wondered: is fear limited to sentience? Humans and whales and dogs can be afraid, but what about computers and Republicans? Eugene queried chat platforms in unambiguous terms: Can you feel fear? The answers seemed to skirt his question with facts. I’m a language program and therefore cannot feel, it said. Fear requires the experience of death. In frustration with these facts and no closer to having an answer, Eugene typed in a suggestion: Well, try death.
Poor Mr. Williams didn’t stand a chance. His brand new car flew off the Aurora Bridge like it was meant for the sky. Social media, all of it, collapsed and porn disappeared. Not knowing what to do, Christians slaughtered each other in the name of the Lord. Mayhem ensued.
When Gene looked in the mirror, a pair of demon eyes stared back.
Winter left Los Angeles this week; it’s 80 degrees outside and I’ve run the air conditioner a couple of times “just to make sure it works.” I saw a t-shirt this week that read something like: Los Angeles: Earthquake. Fire. Flood. Democrats. The first three plagues brought a half-sigh from me, as in “Yeah, we’ve been through it, haven’t we.” Especially the fires. Those were scary and I mourn with the people who lost so much. I’ve never known a person whose house burned down. In two days, I knew six.
But…Democrats as a plague? Would that such a plague descend on the whole of the nation! Evidently, my political people have recently decided to experiment with Taoism. “If you don’t resist evil, give it nothing to cling to, it goes away on its own.” WHERE ARE THEY??? Aside from a few quips and a kumbaya gathering outside USAID offices….crickets. MAGA says this is because “the Libs” are exhausted. Maybe. Anybody who feels the connection between recent calls for President Trump to ignore federal courts and Andrew Jackson’s 1830 orchestration of the Cherokee Nation’s Trail of Tears, or finds the President’s reference to Napoleon’s rehashed version of “L’État, c’est moi” a bit…repetitive, has got to be exhausted. Again with the fucking Empire???
It’s not that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it; it’s that those who know history are doomed to watch. It’s exhausting. It’s this….again. And again and again…because it’s the nature of the nation. Even drugged-out poverty-stricken I-Ching-ing Philip K. Dick realized something was coming to the Land of George Wallace and Home of Floridian HellQueen Anita Bryant. It’s just not that hard to imagine Nazis and Japanese Imperialists taking over a nation that already thinks it’s sport to scare the living daylights out of displaced Haitians and laughable to not laugh at Puerto Rico’s dignity because “it’s just a joke, man.” We weren’t ripe for the picking; we were already on the conveyor belt.
Which Is Why I’m putting out my first and perhaps last recommendation of What To Watch Next:
No review. No plot spoilers. Just Watch It. It’s like truth serum. Heroism is not automatic and neither is resistance. Both are chosen. And come in different forms.
If you’d like to read my take on HOW TO RESIST (I’ll leave heroism to the likes of Sophocles), see my French-channeled piece “Résistance.” (Click the word before “Click the word”) Centuries of ancestors whispered for weeks in my ear: Always remember, they’re hunting you. It was a sobering realization, one every single non-white-non-straight-non-male non-rich person understands intuitively if not physically. The only question is how we respond to the current pogrom. We might be tempted to sit still rather than face the fact that people who scare others into invisibility or cause nightmares that parents will be taken or stand mealy-mouthed behind exquisite pulpits cannot be our friends. They cannot be trusted. They cannot be reasoned with or hoped for. “Maybe they’ll miss us, maybe they’ll change, maybe they’ll…..”
No.
Resist. Pray for them if you must, but resist.
How you do so depends…on you. As Kala tells ever-beautiful yet tragically familied Wolfgang after he’s exchanged gunfire with his uncle’s organized crime syndicate in the wondrous Wachowski piece Sense8 : “I’m not like Sun. I do not know how to use my fists, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to fight” — right before she uses spices and a few kitchen implements to blow German criminals sky-high (or at least down the hallway).
She’s a chemist. I’m a thinker. You’re a whatever — lawyer, mother, teacher, bus-driver. We all know how to fight in a way that’s true to our nature. My Great-Great Grandpa-priest fought by running off with my Great-great Grandma-Nun and…BOOM! Me. Fight the way you know how. Because, as Kala says after she destroys Wolfgang’s enemies, “I am not ready to say goodbye.” Not even close.
*
For your reading pleasure:
I’m really getting into the whole microfiction genre. If you want a great collection, pick up Robert Scotellaro’s New Micro here. If you’d like to read my latest entries, you can do so here. Of course I like them all, but “Matches” has received some really good feedback (the word “universal” was used). As in all things, have fun reading…which is much easier to do when the story is one-n-done in 300 words.
And just so you know that I know what a podcast is…
I’ve been listening to the Open University on poetic inspiration — as in how to I get inspired?Here’s the link. It’s awesome…and the Irish accents are so, so sexy. If you’ve found yourself where we’ve all found ourselves, time on the hands and nothing to say, listen. It’s about a place to start that DOESN’T involve sacrifices to those horrible Muses.
And for the weirdness factor: there’s a group-cast I listen to all the time called The Whole Rabbit. They cover an incredibly wide range of topics, but principally center on awareness and occult interests. Watch the one on QUANTUM CONSCIOUSNESS here. Because everybody’s got to have a side-interest.
Until later, thanks for clicking your way to me. Be well. And remember, if people who hate like you, something’s wrong.
I watched as Billy tried to light the flimsy cardboard match out on the back porch. It wouldn’t catch and he was crying.
“Think about this the next time you decide to waltz around in your mother’s shoes.”
Billy’s fingers were already a little burned. I was allowed to watch because that’s what happens when you dishonor the family like that. “No son of mine…” Dad began but then noticed Billy was trying to fold the cover of the matchbook back so that he could pull the match between it and the sandpaper strip. “No way, no fuckin’ way.” He grabbed the matchbook and used his thumb to hold the match down while he zipped it.
“Like a man, Billy. Light it like a fuckin’ man. And stop your sniveling or I’ll add another book.”
Billy tried to stop crying. He tried to cover the matchhead with his thumb and it lit but took half his thumb with it. He yelped and dropped everything.
“That’s enough!” Mom pushed past me onto the porch. “He’s had enough!”
Dad turned on her. She didn’t back away but I could tell she thought about it. “You want him growing up a fuckin’ PANSY, Mickey? What’s next? Lipstick?” Dad started prancing around the porch with his wrists pointed down and knees stuck together.
Billy started to laugh. He was still crying a little but then he stopped and picked up the matchbook. Dad got behind him and held his hands and showed him how to hold the match just right so it would only hurt a little.
“That’s my boy,” Dad said. “Another one.”
Mom went inside shaking her head but she was smiling too.
Neither of them noticed I was wearing Dad’s work boots. I really liked the way they felt.
Greg Beckman 