Anything Goes

My grandfather used to have a building where he would do weird shit.
The sign above the storefront claimed that they made and sold shoes; this was back when shoes were made with leather and thread and skilled hands. There were generations of knowledge flowing through each decisive movement of those worn and callused fingers. I spent my early years watching them move, a rough ballet that smelled of grease and men and cigarettes. 
Later, as a young man, I tried to capture those hands in drawings and photographs, never quite able to capture the dimly lit afternoons where the light would filter in lazily off the sidewalk surfaces, or the silence that pervaded the space, the reverence they had for what they created.
Those dusty old men working behind the counter were my family, the worktables littered with scraps of pungent leather and metal tools became the fodder of my dreams. The shoe polish-stained fingertips and aprons, rough wrinkled faces that kept their eyes on their work, their tongues relaxed and silent.
My grandfather would give us new boots or dress shoes as birthday presents and he would teach us how to care for them with polish and bristles and tender attention so that they could shine like new.
So I know that sign outside the building was not a lie. They did make shoes in that old place with the brick façade and black wooden door.
But I know they were doing other weird shit in there too. Someone was.

There was a basement in the building.  I was not supposed to go down there, that was always clear. No one ever warned me, not grandfather or any of the other men there, nothing was ever said. It was more of an open understanding. I was not to venture beyond that door.
Although I knew this, I was a curious child, and the forbidden lair had a pull I could not deny. I had learned to blend into the dark shadows of the building, to step in time with the thumping needle of the sewing machine and the sporadic coughs of the men at their benches. I could open the door to the basement silently, and descend down the narrow dark steps into the dark chamber.
There was one tiny window at the top of the wall which faced the street at sidewalk level. Whenever someone would walk by the light inside would dance erratically on the brick walls. I listened intently for the sound of my grandfather’s footsteps.
I went down there only a handful of times in my whole childhood. The memories and sensations from those explorations have sunk to the deepest part of me and colored my vision.
In this forbidden space I once found a tooth.  Another time a red cloth napkin with gold jagged symbols, another time I discovered a small shell and a ball of hair in a little crevasse in the wall where the cement had broken apart between the bricks.

Whatever was happening there, it was not safe. In a dream one time just a few years ago I saw him emerge from the door at the top of the stairs with a bloody mouth. He looked at me. I was sitting in a chair just beside the door. He said, 'anything goes,' as he walked past me, holding up one single finger.
I woke with my hands fluttering, I gazed out the window, remembering the lingering smell of candles and matches on the brick walls. His silence, his deference to a room he never referred to, to a past never revealed but for one word, 'Nantucket.'

Tonight I will go back into the dream and tell him, 'you don't have to hide from me. I cannot be rattled.'

The Ghost Of Fasler Cove

There is something rather extraordinary about my hometown of Fasler Cove. It is a phenomena that flows from the gift given to one ordinary man.
Walter Pedington was not the sort of fellow to rock the boat. How many people, if you gave them the gift to travel forward and backwards through time, would stay in the same small town doing the same small things that could have been done anyway?
Some people will tell you that they would go back to stop Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth, or Adolf Hitler. Others would want to go back and see a dinosaur. Most would be bent on increasing their own wealth; perhaps collecting antiquities to sell in a future where they are valuable or bringing a handy gadget from the future into a past where it can be passed off as their own invention for profit, or even playing the stock market or betting on ponies. Some would try to rule the world, others save it, which might amount to the same thing.
But when Walter Pedington received his gift, none of these things apparently interested him or crossed his mind. This perhaps, was the very reason he was trusted with the gift, for that we know of, he never abused it for profit or to change the course of history.
It was common to see Walter at age 54 sitting on the porch swing of his parents' house on Behemoth Lane conversing with Walter at age 7.  He very much enjoyed talking to himself. Indeed, you might run into him at Morey Point watching himself painting a picture of the sea, or catch him at the Fallout Cafe playing a game of chess with himself while a younger Walter shared a cigarette with a pretty girl outside and a fourth sat brooding by the window, remembering that same girl's death. Walking your dog along the path from Pelican Landing to  Frost's Wood you might  be passed by Walter at the age of 10 zipping by on his bike only to then pass Walter at age 64 sitting on the bench before finding Walter at 18 laying on a blanket in the grass with a sweetheart.
There is a possibility that Walter is guilty of that sin for which I acquitted him, for if he had already altered the course of history and ruled the world before I was born, I would have no way of knowing it. I have often compared the face of 19 year old Walter to a photograph of a bust of Alexander the Great. It is possible that after 12 years of conquest he was prepared to live a quiet life again in a world shaped by his own youthful ambitions. But how would I ever know? And further, Walter has always seemed more interested in introspection than in governing others.
His funeral was a mind bending affair. Walters of various ages were in attendance and out numbered other funeral goers. He outlived his friends and lovers and left no survivors. Once he was married to a young poetess but she left with a younger version of himself before filing for a divorce later that year. Likewise he never had children, for he had himself all those years and always kept a ball and mitts, bicycle, and snacks on hand for when he visited and even drove himself to his own sixth grade piano recital. There were days when his yard was filled with a chorus of his own youthful laughter while six or seven young Walters played capture the flag or kickball.
Even after his death we continue to see Walter, in line buying tickets at the new Cineplex, hiking the trails in Frost's Wood, eating a banana split at the ice cream parlor. It is impossible to imagine Fasler Cove without him, though as time passes, we see less of him and he is more often alone. I imagine that in another 20 years, there will be no one left here who remembers who he is, no more grandmothers who can point him out and say that their mother went to school with that boy, or kissed that young man at a barbeque 100 years ago.
He is like a ghost from a time that has slipped into the realm of fantasy, but soon he will be such a ghost that his presence will go unnoticed and seem utterly ordinary.

Wandering In The Shadows

“The goal is simple but difficult to comprehend.”
Older Brother said it in carefully measured tones and his eyes widened to emphasize the weight of his words.
I had begun to suspect that the goal transcended any words that he or I could utter, that it was hiding right in the corner that we refused to look at, that it scampered in the shadows that our conversations left behind them with every verbal turn.
But I wanted to hear what he had to say. Right then, it was my goal to listen to him and to take in his words even if their effect within me was not what he had intended. The timbre of his voice was as crucial as the rhythm of the syllables that rubbed against each other like tiny silver stones.
“We must find a way to rise above the circumstances that surround us, to banish the forces that seek to cage us in. We must disrupt years of mechanized conditioning and find a way out, a way out of the prison, a way out of the cage.”
I nodded and sincerely agreed. It was never what we said but what we didn’t say that left me with a gap in the pit of my stomach. There was something that we had been avoiding, and we had been avoiding it for years, together. We had shared years of looking elsewhere, years of carefully tracing our steps around a gap in our understanding that pulsed and breathed like an angry stingray.
I couldn’t point to it because I was avoiding it as much as he was. And even if I did point, it would only shift quickly into a different corner and our conversation would continue and soon I would once again feel it pulsing at my back. I could only sometimes call attention to it but even the call itself would soon be swallowed in the vortex of our endless stream of words.
I remembered all of this in the darkness, even if it seemed to mean little if anything to me now, even if it was all incomprehensible to the one that now walked alone in the Old House, trying to ascertain where things were and what meaning they now implied with their existence.
At first, I could only see the outline of everything, like thin lines drawn on black paper to suggest a wall or a desk or a painting. I didn’t reach out to touch anything because I didn’t want to find out that there was nothing there for me to touch.
I was standing over the second stairway, looking all around me and wondering how I came to be here. Was I remembering Older Brother while I walked through the Old House in the darkness or was I thinking of the Old House while Older Brother talked to me about leaving the past behind?
Here was the past itself, in clear and distinct shapes and heavy massive volumes. Here was the long white wall that ended in gray river rocks, spread out in random patterns over an ocean of sand, subtly vibrant with implied whispers of endless suffering, of a place where old soldiers went to die, where they vanished forever after a long life of battle and hardship. Here was the oval shaped dinner table which was also an ancient city full of criminals, here were the dark wooden stairs which were also an old port full of ships and soldiers.
I turned around and I could see the long open windows that surrounded the corner of the upper living room, and I could see the dim lights of a city that pulsed with an angry desperation that reached through the glass like a giant invisible hand covered in rough hair.
I looked up towards the long and final corridor. There was a light in Father’s bedroom. I couldn’t stop myself from believing that it was him, that he was up there and awake and that he was bound to notice that something or someone was wandering out here in the darkness. But it was only a light, a dim yellow light in the middle of black emptiness.
I moved slowly through the open space that surrounded me. I looked up towards the slanted wooden ceiling and the Old House overwhelmed me like an ancient temple. For me there was nothing, there could never be anything, more ancient than the Old House.
The Old House was the place where everything began and it would have to be the place where everything ended. As I looked up, I could sense the walls and the roof rise up above me, or maybe I was just shrinking as I fixed my attention on the apex of the wooden pyramid. The more I looked, the larger the Old House became, the more it spread out in all directions.
I pulled away from that vision and stepped into Grandmother’s room. It was a small white barren room just to the left of the last set of stairs. There was no one there. Nothing but shiny white bricks and open windows. I looked towards the house next door and I thought I saw a light there, but it could have been nothing, a firefly, a match, maybe even just the reflection of the light that was still shining in Father’s room, calling to me without spoken words.
I was by then convinced that Father was there, behind the closed door at the end of the final hallway. I had to make certain that he didn’t see me. I had to make sure that he never became aware that I had come here in the darkest hours after midnight and that I had wandered through his house like an intruder without any apparent purpose, moving little things that should have remained still. I had to be careful to leave him undisturbed and to eventually find a way back and out that didn’t leave any trace of my presence.
“We must find a way to break the chains that have held us. We have to work on this. It won’t be easy. Nothing that truly matters can be easy. “
Older Brother said it and his eyes were as wide as before. As always, I listened and agreed, for there was nothing that I could disagree with in what he had spoken, there was no impulse within me to disagree at all. The words flowed out of him and into me like water and water easily changed shape to fit a new container, leaving behind any previous form it might have held.
I spoke for the first and only time to him that day and I said:
“It is only because of the memory of what you once were that it is still good to see you. You once were something truly great, so great that some of it still slips through what you have now become.”
I thought that maybe that was why we would recurrently return to our past, to reexamine our childhood. Maybe it still held on tightly to that which we valued above all things. Maybe that was why I found myself in the Old House now, wandering through the darkness, hiding from the light.
I lifted my eyes towards the slanted roof again and I allowed myself to float upwards. I rose up slowly, feeling the sensation of freedom rise within me as I released my hold on the floor. There, at the very apex of the wooden pyramid, that is where I would find my escape route.
I saw the empty garden in the distance and the long wooden doors with their rattling little glass windows. I heard a lonely car roaming the empty streets outside, moving slowly from corner to corner, maybe looking for something or someone they had lost. I rose towards the apex, feeling sure that I would soon leave this place behind.
Maybe then there would be no Father. Maybe then there would be no Older Brother. I didn’t know what waited for me on the other side of that wooden barrier but I was eager to face it. I had been avoiding it for far too long. The darkness grew deeper around me, heavier and more oppressive. But it couldn’t bother me. It was now a thing of the past.

The Boys And The Path

The sound of twenty small plastic wheels on pavement shook the narrow park path. Like a deep, elongated rumble, the sound traveled like a steady thunder that hid in the cloudless sky. They traveled in a herd this early Sunday afternoon, these five young men, all thin and lean and wearing baggy pants. They moved as they did almost every other day, together, in a pack that shook the earth with their sound. Five skateboards moved in near-unison along a tight curve in the cement path, a bend in the meandering walkway that cut through the city park for miles in each direction, going past small lakes and barely-blooming cherry blossoms and a circular equestrian field. Though the path was mostly dotted with pedestrians, the boys rode it with ferocity, unyielding in their speed. It was their highway, a lane between the bright fields of green grass and low shrubs.
On either side of the path and all around them were couples on picnic blankets and young kids chasing after plastic balls and groups of people in their early twenties lounging beneath the open sky. It was a warm sunny day, an unusual day for a city famous for its fog. And though the people they passed basked in the sunshine, the boys paid no attention to weather. It was jeans, a T-shirt, a hooded sweatshirt and a baseball cap off to the side in the sun or fog. Their lives were not ruled by the sun like the girls in their neighborhood, the girls that lay out in small bikinis when the sun made an appearance and hid when it didn’t. And they would look at the girls as they rode by, but they had no patience to sit and talk.
Like soldiers they combed the city. Skating alleyways and metal rails and stairs they came across. The people out strolling were merely obstacles. If someone could not hear the roar of their cumulative wheels, then they would shout, and soon the person would feel the impending doom of five skateboards at their back and jump off the path at the last second. Sometimes they would hear a yell fade into the distance as they skated on, someone who had not been quite fast enough, someone had not understood their urgent need for speed.
On this stretch of path, there were no obstacles, no couples holding hands or young teenage girls laughing in a tight cluster. As far as they could see, a long stretch of concrete lay before them, open and inviting. A warm wind rattled the tree tops in the distance, long, tall pines that had grown for years. Twenty wheels rolled on, carrying with them the eagerness of escape, the ecstatic impulses of five young men to explode outwards, moving ever-forward. There was no time for the girls in bikinis and the little daisies they offered. No time to admire the colors of the rainbow they had vaguely heard about. No time to be still.

Challenges and Rewards

I flew through clear fresh air and the landscape fell before me like a great bed sheet full of lumps and dunes, light brown touched here and there by green and blue. I could see flocks of birds in the distance and the tops of all the little trees that were so far below me as to seem unreal. The land went on like this for as far as I could see. There were no cities or towns or even roads, so sign of any kind of civilization. It was all clear and empty and raw, and the freshness was so strong that it was nearly overwhelming.
Somewhere back there, back where I had come from, was Mother. She waited patiently, knowing that I would not travel beyond the rivers which were my boundary. These were twisting thick currents of watery force that cut the land into sections. I would never know their origin and I would never know their end. I only knew that I couldn’t go past them.
I flew for a time, enjoying the pure pleasure of travelling freely on the soft winds of this endless afternoon. The breeze touched me like the most sensitive of lovers and my cape stretched out behind me like a comet’s tail. I moved freely in all directions, doing summersaults in the air, diving recklessly towards the hard ground, rising slowly so my heart would open like a bleeding flower, but I never crossed the river borders and I never saw another living being. Nobody came out to greet me, nobody waved from the distance with eyes of friendship or distrust, nobody called out to me from behind trees or rocks. There was simply the broad waves of brown grass, and the green trees and the rivers and nothing else, no one else. And the sheer purity of it could never be exhausted.
I returned to Mother and I said:
“If I am by myself, there’s not much beauty in being what I am…if I am to have power, I must have a reason, I must have a purpose, I must have a challenge.”
She nodded with her kind of understanding that scattered through my fingers like sand and was soon lost in the same winds through which I had just been travelling. She said nothing but her eyes spoke to me in ways that words couldn’t define. I nodded and my eyes also spoke with silent sadness.
I left through paths that I couldn’t trace back in my memory, knowing that I would never walk this way again. After a time that was impossible to measure, I found myself with Father.
We were hunting in a dark and dense jungle. We moved slowly in between the tall bamboo shoots, under the thick and heavy leaves of old forgotten trees. Our feet would sink in mud and the mosquitoes would fly in and out of our ears like fighter airplanes.
“I will give you many rewards, if you only learn how to do a few things, single thing in fact.” He said it in a kind but serious voice, a voice that evoked both hope and fear within me. I couldn’t fly anymore because my body was heavier and my eyes were not as open as they once had been.
“I will give you a book…” he said, and when he said the word, I saw the book he meant with secret eyes I couldn’t place within my body. It was the book of the jungle itself, the jungle on which we stood, the book that told the stories of its creatures, its crowning entities, its rebellious angels, its growing heroes, its hidden chambers. I knew that book well and I wanted to have it.
“I will give you the yellow powder…” he said, and when he said these words, I could see the yellow powder with my secret eyes, and it blew in circles around my head like a tornado of yellowness and it drew complex interlocking spiral lines that were bright like gold under the sun. As long as this swirling mass of yellow was there, nobody could touch me. I knew the yellow powder well and I wanted to have it.
“I will give you the silver weapon…” he said, and I could see the silver weapon with my secret eyes, and it was heavy and solid and final in its menace. It was shaped like perfection and it contained the dreams of a lost people within it. It glowed in the misty darkness of its secret alcove and it was shining in the heart of my own private night. I knew the silver weapon and I wanted to have it.
“All you need to do, in order to get all these things, is to learn how to swim, it is as simple as that, learn to swim and you will have everything…”
We immediately traveled to where two pools were waiting, one much smaller than the other. Both were surrounded by palm trees, both were caressed by the ocean breeze, both were touched by the warmth of the bright yellow sun that was shining high above us, both were gentle and lonely and full of blue peace.
I jumped into the largest of the two and quickly found that if I flowed gently with the water, the resistance was greatly diminished and I was able to rise above the surface. As I rose, my smile was pure and simple, beyond my desire for the things that waited for me, this was a gift in itself, to be here in the pool and to feel my body change its shape under pressure. I dived deep under the surface to feel the entire weight of the pool on my shoulders. The feeling of the water over my head and of the sun over the water, was enough to last me forever, and it was only deep in a time beyond forever that I would ask again for the things that Father had promised.
I stepped out of the large pool and ran to where Father was swimming in the smaller one. Without having to say it, Father knew that I had succeeded.
“Jump in, in one single movement…” he said, and before he was finished saying it, I had jumped into the water and I was tracing circles on the blue surface that rolled its little waves against my face. I looked at Father, who was leaning against the hard edge of the little pool and I saw that his face was marked by transparent happiness. Seeing him like this, seeing him glowing like the sun itself and unashamed of his own simplicity, I was happy as well.
After a time of circling in the little pool, I pulled myself up and ran back to the larger one. The shadows of the palm trees fell over the little puddles of water that my feet left behind me. I jumped into the larger pool as I had done before, in one single swift movement that left no room for doubt. As I did this, I heard Father asking:
“Why don’t you stay over here, in the little pool with me?”
“Over here there is much more space. I want to roam and discover things I haven’t seen. I want to reach beyond the edges of my knowledge.”
Just then, I noticed that the water in the larger pool was covered in dead leaves and dead branches. It was a place forgotten by time itself, and that made it a realm to explore, a landscape to conquer. I roamed among the dead things, and I saw the traces of lost lives in the bark of the branches, and the faded markings of past legends in the leaves, and the hopeful poems lightly painted on the sides of light blue concrete.
“You should get out. You are staying too long in there. You may get used to it. Then you won’t ever be able to leave.” My Father said and I felt that what he said was true, and yet I wanted to stay a little longer.
I took one more journey through the water that by now seemed like home. It was a home that seemed to grow larger and larger each time I traveled through it. Soon the pool would be the world itself and by then Father would become a distant memory, much like Mother now was.
I looked up at the sun that was still shining over the gentle surface and little drops of blue water were sliding down my forehead, some of them reaching all the way to my mouth. Maybe soon I would be flying, maybe soon my questions would once again begin to grow out of the nothingness that came with forgetting.

Questions of Blame

I traveled with my second family, all of us crowded into a small white car, on our way an unknown destination. Older Brother was there and Younger Brother as well, and Wise Father and Kind Mother, all of us together in the twilight of the small compartment. I sat between the two brothers in the back seat, alternating my attention between them, trying to make them look at each other, trying to make it so we would all truly talk together, but it was rare for their eyes to ever meet, even rarer for them talk directly to each other. The road outside was surrounded by long lines of thin trees that swayed lightly in the wind, and the night had a kind of gray quality that seemed somehow familiar.
I turned to Older Brother and addressed him, and since I could only think of serious subjects when I was near him, I spoke to him of destiny and of choice. He immediately responded and we mulled over the abstract qualities of these concepts while the road kept on going straight as an imaginary line and Wise Father listened carefully as he drove. I hoped he would say something but he only chuckled once in a while and leaned back his head to acknowledge a particular point. Older Brother looked under the covering of our mutual assumptions and I pushed when I felt that I had to, and I relented when I felt it was best.
When it seemed that I had talked to Older Brother for too long and I felt Younger Brother growing restless on my left, I turned to him and asked him about his own terrible experiences. He talked to me in measured words, and he had no concepts to summarize what he was saying, no abstract figurations to examine, so he simply told me what had happened, and how it happened, and, to some degree, how he felt as it was happening. He spoke of violent encounters and threats of death and painful marks that would never be erased and sudden moments of conversion when the world turned upside down and the heavy bars of the prison didn’t seem so heavy any more. I listened and asked questions when it seemed that he had skipped over an important moment, and when I asked a question, he would answer in as much detail as he could muster and then he would go on, and he would smile sideways, blowing air out of his nose in a kind of soundless laughter.
Suddenly, Kind Mother turned around from her post at the passenger’s seat and looked at me in the twilight. Her eyes were as sweet and gentle as ever, but there seemed to be a kind of heaviness in demeanor her as well, a heaviness that had never been there or, at the very least, I had never noticed it.
“I feel that you blame me for all that has happened. I feel, in the final accounting, you think that I was the one that caused it all. I hear it in your words. I hear it in the way you speak of thing.”
My own eyes opened wide in surprise since I had never thought these things, I had never blamed her for anything at all. But as soon as she had spoken, my mind started to form shapes around the words that were still hanging in the air between us, and the shapes reorganized my memories at breakneck speeds that I couldn’t follow, and suddenly my memories were no longer the same as they had been and Older Brother had changed form and Younger Brother had also changed form and Wise Father nodded as he usually did and the road kept on going straight through the gray darkness.
“I have never blamed you, not at all. I simply want to look at all the causes, at all the events, everything fits together and to place the cause in only one spot would be to make a great mistake. Causes are like roots, they extend from one event in all directions. Only fanatics grab on to one of the many roots and decide that that is the only one that matters.”
Her eyes closed and opened, and I might have seen a tiny tear rolling down her cheek but it was too dark inside the car for me to be sure. Younger Brother shifted around by my side. He wanted the ride to be over soon. Wise Father chuckled in that way that implied hidden knowledge and Older Brother shook his head. There was something that I had said that he was not pleased with, he might have even heard an insult in my words. It was through him that I had come to understand that insults are unavoidable once distrust has set in like a slowly growing cancer.
I tried to retrace my words, I tried to think of where it was that Kind Mother had found the evidence of blame, the implication that I was specifically blaming her. I couldn’t find the right spot, as much as I looked, as much as I examined. And then I remembered that our language was different, and that more than once someone had said that they couldn’t understand what Older Brother was saying to me, that they couldn’t understand what I was saying to Older Brother, that the words escaped them as if they were all being spoken in a strange unknown language. So maybe she just heard what she was afraid of hearing, and maybe because she was afraid of it, there was a kernel of truth in it. Not the entire truth, for the entire truth was too large to be held in any one thought, in any one sentence. But maybe a sliver of truth, enough of it to make her cry, enough of it to make my past into a different story from the one I had always framed as my experience. Maybe she had maintained a certain structure too long, maybe she had allowed certain imbalances to fester, to grow past the point when anything could be done about it.
Their faces were different now, but the road remained the same. Kind Mother had turned towards the windshield and was staring at the place where the road disappeared in the horizon. There always seemed to be a white cloud there, a bright white cloud that we never quite reached, and yet it always seemed so close.
Older Brother, with his new face and his new clothes, turned towards me once again and he said: “Each of us has to respond for our own actions. We can’t blame others for what we do.”
I nodded and agreed. There was no use asking who we would be responding to or why we were all so concerned with the placement of blame, why when I spoke of causes everyone thought I spoke of judgements and faults. Maybe we didn’t care so much where the blame rested as long as it wasn’t on us.
Younger Brother, with his new face and his new clothes, turned towards me and said: “You used to be my friend. You were my friend first before anything else.”
I nodded and agreed. There was no use asking how he had faded away from me or how I had faded away from him, how he had turned into a living memory that only danced in the distance. He was no longer the Younger Brother I knew and so I couldn’t touch on such delicate subjects. I could only listen and take in what he wanted to give me.
Kind Mother inhaled deeply and then released a deep sob. It was only then that I was certain she was crying. Wise Father turned to her and said: “Don’t worry, mama, we’ll be there very soon. Very soon this will all be a memory. “
I leaned back on the backseat and exhaled softly. It would certainly all be a memory and I now knew what ultimately happened with memories. In the horizon, the white cloud was shining bright, as distant as it ever was. Inside the car, there was only the very faint sound of crying and of soft, careful breathing. Soon this would all be a memory. And then everything would change. Just like it always did. Just like it always had.

Letting A Butterfly Go

It was a trailer that sat alone in a big dirt lot off of Grand Avenue, not too far from where it intersected with Riverside drive near the corner of the Lake where the old Machado house still stood hidden in a thicket of eucalyptus and pepper trees. From there to the ALANO building it was a short walk, and due to the lack of many other buildings, one could easily have supposed that the trailer was somehow officially connected with the ALANO club house, but this was not the case. The only other structure within close reach was a small shabby liqueur store to tempt the alcoholics on their way to and from meetings. A gravel road adorned with no trespassing signs ran from Grand Ave. along the side of the trailer and continued down as far as the lake where a loftier private residence was tucked behind a gate to protect it from the riff raff that congregated a half mile in front of its door step.

Jesse had once lived in a house further down Grand Ave. under the shade of the Ortega mountain range in Lake Land Village. There, for the majority of his life, he had dwelt with his mother and stepfather and two half sisters as a ghostly remnant of his mother’s past, haunting their wholesome attempt to build a family. He had been partially allowed to be a part of the new family life but at the same time he had been isolated from them by his origin and was permitted to drift in his own private life, mostly unsupervised, and occasionally reprimanded for his boyish exploits. His stepsisters brought their friends to the house in those days and he had been warned not to tease the little girls who were only two or four years younger than himself. At that age, however, two years younger may as well have been a decade, and four years a century, for while he was already stealing nudie magazines from the liquor stores and smoking cigarettes and throwing rocks at passing cars, they were running around barelegged in the front yard chasing bubbles and skipping rope.

Back in those days, the oldest of his two sisters, Morgan, had two companions that accompanied her most often, June, who was knitted to Morgan at the waist, and Lane who drifted about the other two like a lost butterfly. While Morgan was short and thick with mouse brown hair that made her seem as if she had been forged of clay, and June was about as short but less thick than Morgan, Lane was tall and skinny and fair haired. Jesse interacted with them minimally, either to quarrel with his sister or to trade them pogs for their lunch money. When Lane switched schools and vanished, he hardly noticed. That was in the time when they still lived in the house with its yard behind a brick fence. Then over the course of five years his mother’s drinking grew out of control and her husband threw her out and eventually Jesse and Morgan, now in high school, followed her to the trailer that sat under the blazing sun beside the ALANO club.

It was there in the trailer that Lane re-emerged one hot September evening alongside Morgan. It was a Friday night and both Morgan and Jesse had been permitted to invite a friend to spend the night. The girls would take the bedroom usually split between brother and sister, and the boys would stay in the living room. As in days of old, his mother had warned him to stay away from the younger girls, but it was no longer because she feared that he would tease them. She had a whole new set of concerns that, whether she knew it or not, were well founded. (Over the summer, Morgan and June had tagged along with Jesse to parties where they lost their virginity in a drunken revelry that left them stained with guilt. The two girls were avid Born Again Christians and Straight Edge punks by the time school started in the fall.)
Morgan led Lane to the room and played a Violent Femmes CD. Lane asked if they could listen to a Rage Against the Machine album that caught her eye. Morgan told her that it belonged to her brother and added,
“Besides, Rage Against The Machine sucks, Lane!”
Then she went to start her laundry in the old Kenmore on the back porch and left Lane alone in the room.

Jesse was waiting for his friend Brian to arrive so they could take a long walk down the dark wasteland of Grand Ave. and smoke marijuana and come back after his mother was asleep and try their hand with the girls. He came into the bedroom where Lane stood in her short cut off shorts, vintage polyester blouse and tattered flip flops. Her legs were long and pale, her hair long and blonde. While he dug around in the pocket of his leather jacket to retrieve his Zippo, she asked him about the Rage Against The Machine CD that lay by the stereo. She picked up the case and told Jesse that she loved Rage Against the Machine, even if every one else was into punk rock now. She asked if he still liked them. He said he did. There was something in the way that she spoke to him, without guile, without hope of looking cool. She still talked as though she were a little girl with no ulterior motives. She looked at him as if he were equally innocent. He was sure that she knew he was something else, but she looked at him and spoke to him with trust, like a little bird walking into the mouth of an alligator.

She started talking about good and evil, offering theories and observations, asking him his opinion. She used big words constructed in proper sentences void of slang. The way she spoke was more alien to him than the off color topic she wanted to explore. Drinking her in with his eyes he felt a stirring in his chest, a sort of painful ache.
“You’re pretty, but weird, you know that?” he said to her. Her look told him that by now she did know, and that knowing made her uncomfortable and proud. Then she asked him if they could play the CD so he put it on for her.

Later, after their walk Jesse and Brian lay sprawled on sleeping bags in the murk of the living room They snickered at the snores that drifted down the hall from his mother’s room. Brain, who had hooked up with Morgan once during the summer, said,
“Dude, I think your Mom’s asleep. Let’s go see what the girls are doing.”
Jesse imagined creeping into the bedroom and finding Lane in his bed. She would lie there and accept whatever he whispered to her and do whatever he wanted. He knew it with certainty and felt the aching in his chest again, remembering her wide blue eyes trained on him, the CD clutched in her hand, the instant warmth she had offered.
“No man, I promised my Mom.” He said.
“What?” Brian laughed, “So what?”
“So if she finds out, I’m out of here.” He answered truthfully, although he wasn’t worried about that at all. It hurt him a little to say it, because no one could tell him what he could do or couldn’t, and that was part of his cool.
“What?” Brian asked and his voice revealed his disappointment not only in the way the evening was panning out but also in his companion’s possible act of obedience.
“Just forget about it.” Jesse told him. “I’m tired anyway.”
And he rolled over and pretended to be falling asleep even though the room was full of an agonizing tension. He thought that Brian would say something else, but he didn’t, and, after a while, the tension began to fade and Brian’s breathing slowed down and he too rolled over and adjusted his pillow and soon he was making the deep snorting noises of a sleeper.

Jesse lay still and awake, awash in a bath of conflicted emotions. It would have been nice to touch her, and now he looked bad in Brian’s eyes. But for better or worse, she was unlike himself and his sister and the rest. He felt that she should be allowed to remain that way. He knew that a butterfly’s wings should never be touched. If they were, it would be unable to fly ever again and it would be a butterfly no more. It was a little sacrifice that he made, lying there in the dark of the trailer that stood by the ALANO club, a sacrifice that would keep her from joining them all down in the heavy muck that was confusion and regret and sorrow. Lying on the sleeping bag thrown over the worn carpet, by the couch with broken springs, in the trailer on Grand Avenue, not far from the old Machado house, he let a butterfly go.

Train Ride

The screech of train wheels signaled to her ears that they were moving; a fraction of a moment later, her body felt the change. The bright light of a clear day found its way through plastic windows that had been scratched with gang symbols and cryptic messages. She kept her sunglasses on as the train passed hillsides packed with rectangular shaped houses all colors of the rainbow.
There was a young couple twenty feet ahead of her. The guy had on a new tie-dyed shirt and had shaggy brown hair. He sat next to a stylish young woman. She had pale skin and straight brown hair with bangs that reached to the tips of her eyebrows. She looked at her boyfriend occasionally, but mostly she looked out the window, down in her lap, at the seat ahead of her, at the ceiling…anywhere but at his face. When she did look at him, she did not smile. The girl in sunglasses wondered if something had just happened between them. If she had just found out he had cheated…something that would explain her disdain. His head was tilted in her direction, but her head was tilted slightly away from his, as though she just couldn’t stand being too close.
Next to the couple, across the aisle, was a young boy, two or three years old. He stood on the cushioned seat next to his large Samoan mother. The little boy was wearing gray sweatpants and wore something that looked like a backpack, only where the backpack would be, there was a small teddy bear. The device went around the boy’s shoulders and chest and fastened with a clip. There was a long cord attached to the teddy bear that the mother used as a leash for the boy. The child stood, he was just a little taller than the seats. His voice was shrill. He pointed to the hills and the houses, he pointed out the window excitedly. His little voice was so high and so excited that the girl in sunglasses could not understand what he was shouting. But she understood what he saw. He looked at the world with new eyes.
Every cloud was a shape that had not completely been solidified and understood and compartmentalized. Some clouds were dragons, but some where soozebuckels. There were spots of green houses and airplanes. But there were also hossplertas. He pointed at them all. His grandparents, in the seats behind his, smiled at him affectionately. Their bronze skin and slanted eyes glowed in their love for him.
The train screeched to a stop. The doors opened and a couple in their early thirties sat in the seats perpendicular from the girl in the sunglasses. The man was nearly bald, but he had shaved his entire head, revealing a pink scalp. He looked like an alien. He sat with his legs pressed tightly together. He clutched the backpack that rested on his lap. The woman next to him had long wavy brown hair and a floral printed cotton skirt. Neither of them looked at each other. They did not talk, but they both chewed on pieces of gum at an accelerated pace. Standing by the door was a young Latin woman who held the handles of a stroller. There was a little girl, just a little over a year, in the stroller. She had two black pig-tails on either side of her head. She looked around the train car with wide open eyes.
The doors closed and, again, the screeching sound of metal on metal signaled that they were on their way.

Going For A Walk

It was quiet in the way that it can be quiet even as cars drive by you, because there’s not that many cars, and the cars that there are, they’re not that noisy, and you’ve heard them so much, that their sound just sounds like silence and in the distance there may be a bus crossing an intersection and further away there may be more cars and maybe even some music in the distance but it all adds up to a kind of silence that is full and empty at once, and it slides through the edges of the afternoon like a breeze that has no direction and comes from everywhere at once. In this pool of quietness, his boys were the ones making waves, as they ran after each other, up and down the sidewalk, as far away as they could get, and then a little further, testing the limits, checking to see when he would call to them and say “Boys! Come back! That’s too far!” and they knew that their mother would say it sooner, the mother who was now in his arms, who walked up the sidewalk next to him, pressing up against the side of his chest, but when she said they could run a little more, they would turn to look at him, because they knew that then he would say yes or no, and if he said no, then and only then, would they have to turn back. And so they ran laughing and screaming, and they ran hard and intensely, both small and blonde and thin, both full of raw energy that had to be expended one way or another, and he looked at them with a relish that swam on top of the waves of warmth that he felt coming from her, warmth that trickled up through his chest, up through his throat, to his head and his eyes and his nose, and even to the tip of his short brown hair and he could tell that she could feel it too, and when a particularly strong wave would hit her, she would press closer to him and right then the boys were running all the way to the corner and he had to call to them again, “Boys! That’s too far! Come back!” and one of the little blond boys said to the other, “I won! I won! You lost! I won!” and the other boy didn’t bother to acknowledge what his brother was saying but simply ran back to the edge of their racing field, which started wherever their father stood at the moment and ended when he called to them to turn back, and the boy that had won called to his father and said: “Dad! I won that one! I won! Did you see it?” and he nodded and smiled at him “I did see it. Good! Now come back!” and the boy did and they both lined up again ready to run some more. Her body was thick and full and warm and it vibrated against his arm and his chest with a constant rhythm and his left hand trailed down her back and all the way to the edge of her blue jeans and pushed past the boundary of her waistline and came to rest at the place where her buttocks met each other, and when she felt his hand there, in the little crease of her ass, she let out a small sigh and turned to look at him and he turned to look at her, and her eyes were soft and seemed to be ready to spill their content all over her cheeks and his eyes were soft and warm and content and his fingers dug a bit deeper under her pants, under the tight jeans, feeling the slightly sweaty flesh of her big buttocks and then the boys had run all the way to the corner once again and she smiled as he called out to them, “Boys! That’s far enough! Come back!” and the two boys were even at that point so they simply turned around, knowing that neither of them had won, and they walked back to the two people that stood together at the edge of their racing field who were their parents who were really not people at all but pillars that moved slowly up and down the sidewalk, and both boys knew they would be there forever and whenever they ran too far they could always just run back and find them standing there, waiting for them, but he knew that her warmth would vanish someday and she knew that his gentle hand some day would not caress her under her waistline, and they both felt that knowledge like a little wave of cold air on a gentle warm afternoon and it just made them walk a bit more slowly, and it made them smile a little more because the day was so quiet and still and it would soon come to an end.

Snow Food

They cried out like little doves, their mouths open and pink and bare.
“Please don’t leave us!”
Their wails started to tear at the edges of her heart, but she had no choice. It was either wait and starve and appease their surface level fears, or put her soft white cheek to the bitter cold and look for something to fill their stomachs. There had to be something out there, because here, they had already boiled all the spare leather shoes and they had already consumed their small house plants and eaten the cinnamon dust that had settled on in their cabinets. There was nothing else. Nothing else they could close their eyes and pretend was food, there just wasn’t anything else to hold on to, and no one was coming to save them. It was them and the relentless snow. Three little bodies in the vastness of a small forest clearing that was just big enough for a small wood cabin and a vegetable garden that had long ago been buried in white. It was so beautiful outside, clean as a cold cloud, silent as death. Each bough was covered in a line of white, but it was a cold beauty, an unforgiving beauty that had no remorse for their hunger, it would not cry for their frozen bodies. It wouldn’t even notice, and then, more snow would come, covering them up like a gravedigger. So she had to go. She had to forage while she still had a little bit of strength in her muscles, while she could still walk into the snow and have a chance of coming back. Another couple of days and it might be too late. She looked at them, tears streaking down their pale cheeks.
“I have to go, you need to eat. We can’t wait for the snow to melt, I have to go now.”
She looked out the window into the nearly solid white landscape. Her body was motionless as she imagined herself out there, snow prickling at her soft thighs as she stepped through mound after powdery mound. And then, in a sudden burst of energy that assaulted her stillness, she went to the musty closet to grab her boots and her thick socks and her mittens. In the drawer by the closet was her scarf and woolen hat and she put them on with a stoic face and a thin lipped half-smile.
“Please don’t go, who will tend the fire when you are out?”
“You’ll just have to do it, you’ll have to learn as you go. Remember, we went over this, just put small pieces of wood on when the fire is small and when it’s blazing hot, you can put in the larger logs. If the fire turns to small coals, do not smother it with a large piece of wood. It’s very important to match the pace of the fire. Understand?”
She gestured to the stacked wood by the front door.
“There’s an ax over there, next to the pile, if you need to cut some smaller pieces, just make sure not to cut a finger off if you try it.”
She smiled at her little boys. They looked at each other, both wondering if they would manage to keep the house warm while she was gone. They were desperately hungry, and they were aware of their urgent need for food, but they didn’t want her to leave. They walked arm in arm to the hearth and sat on the warm stones by its base.
“Okay now,” she said pulling on her coat, “I’m going to go, I don’t think I’ll see many animals out today, but I’m going to look, even if I have to stay out there til dark, we can’t go on like this.”
The boys looked at her, again, they cried like little doves.
One spoke up, “Can’t we wait a little longer? Maybe the snow will stop falling soon.”
“No, we’ll be skeletons by the time the sun comes out and turns this all to water. It’s the worst storm I’ve ever seen. Maybe there’ll be a deer out…they need to eat too. Everyone needs to eat. Or maybe I can find some Douglas fir and take some of their tips, at least we could make a nice tea from them.”
The boys looked at each other, they didn’t really like the sour tea their mother made. She opened the door and a terrible wind filled with echoes and chills entered the room, it danced with the flames of their hearth and threatened to smother it with its cold whip. One boy immediately turned his attention to the flames, adding a couple of small pieces of wood to the relentless red mouth.
“Here you go,” he said, “you can eat this.”
“Okay, I’m going.”
They watched her take her first step into the snow.

The Rock Beyond The Fountain

In the middle of a large open plaza stood a dry circular fountain. The sun was shining intensely that day, making the surface of the fountain shine like a giant mirror. People walked through the plaza, in little groups of two and three, talking without pause and only sporadically looking at the trees that surrounded the fountain or at the fountain itself. A couple of older women sat on a green bench a few feet away from the edge. They talked in whispers and looked around every so often, as if to confirm through direct observation their soft little statements. In the middle of the fountain, there was a smaller fountain that held a bird bath. The bird bath was dry and there were only a few black birds that came to play in its concave surface out of habit and inertia. The air seemed to be touched by the brown color of the dirt and the little dry trees and the surface of the fountain; the brown made the air a little thicker, a little more opaque, as if a very faint cloud sat on top of the plaza, surrounding all the people that moved through it. The sound of cars could be heard in the distance, only partially covered up by the music of an old man playing a strange violin.
Inside the fountain, there were three children playing. One was a thin little girl with long blonde hair tied in a pony tail. She was wearing a long pink dress, tied around her waist with a soft belt of the same color. She also wore little white shoes that clicked and clacked on the hard surface of the fountain as she ran back and forth. Another was a little boy with blonde hair and lost eyes. He wore a pair of blue jeans and a checkered blue flannel shirt, which was mostly unbuttoned. The third was a little girl, smaller than the first, with long black hair, also tied in a thick pony tail behind her back. She wore a blue and white button up shirt with long vertical stripes and blue jeans. Her eyes were bubbly and bright as she scanned the many fun possibilities that opened up around her.
At this moment, they were holding hands near the bird bath. The little blond girl would say "jump!" and all three would jump together, or mostly together. One of them might stumble and then they would all laugh and get back into formation. Then the little blond girl would say "jump!" again and it would all repeat and the laughter would be just as fresh and free as it ever was and, after the sound of their voices had faded off into a faint echo that bounced off the distant corners of the plaza, all three of them would return to their original places and the game would start all over again. Without any warning, after one of the rounds of jumping, the little blond boy walked off and started to wander around the fountain, flapping his arms around like a marionette cut loose from its guiding strings. His head would also shift back and forth, as if the muscles of his neck had been released from their normal functions and were now moving in all directions without cause or reason. When the girls saw him move like this, they laughed harder than ever and the little girl with black hair said: "Look at him! He’s crazy!" The little boy did not respond but just kept on shifting around aimlessly around the perimeter of the circle, wandering close to the short little curved wall that formed the edges of the fountain.
As he moved around and around, his head sometime shifted so drastically forward that he would look momentarily over the edge and his eyes would focus on a leaf or a pebble or a piece of wrapper that was lying on the ground. The little girls kept on laughing and the blond girl said, as if she had just thought of it: "He’s gone crazy! Look at him!" The little boy kept on circling and his body was swinging so wildly that he came to rest his full stomach on the curved edge of the fountain. Then he stopped and the little girls looked at each other, wondering what had happened.
The little boy extended his whole body over the edge and reached out with his hand toward the ground outside the fountain. There was a little rock there that was shining in the sun. He reached as hard as he could but his arm wasn’t quite long enough and he couldn’t quite reach it. He pulled back and looked around himself to see if there was any other solution. Coming to the conclusion that he couldn't leave the fountain, and also realizing that he had to get the rock, he extended his body over the edge once again, trying harder this time, grunting with the effort.
The girls looked at each other once again. The little girl with black hair said: "I wonder what he’s doing." The little girl with blonde hair said: "I don’t know what he’s doing. I want to sing." The little girl with black hair responded: "Yes, if you sing, then I can dance. I will get him so we can dance together while you sing!" The little girl with blonde hair nodded happily and watched while her friend ran towards the grunting little boy.
"Come over here! Leave that alone! We want to sing and dance and I want you to dance with me!" she said and, as she said it, she tugged the little boy by his left hand.
The little boy did not respond but he did not give in. Instead, grunting harder, he extended his little body even farther and he moaned softly with the pain of stretching his right arm so far. The rock was still a few inches away from his fingers.
"I’m telling you! Come with me! I want to dance with you! Leave that alone! You can’t reach it! Come and dance!" and she tugged on his left arm a little harder.
But the boy would not budge and he leaned over so far that it looked like he was about to slide over the edge and land on his head on the ground outside the fountain. The two older women looked over with a slight look of alarm on their faces. The little girl with black hair turned to look at her blonde friend who shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. Then the black haired girl released the little boy and walked away, shaking her own head in disbelief. As the little boy felt the release on his left hand, he reached even farther and his finger closed around the shiny surface of the rock. He immediately pulled back with one swift motion and he landed on his feet inside the shining circle. He dropped the little rock inside his shirt pocket and smiled with satisfaction. His shirt was covered in light brown dust and his face was covered in thick sweat which made his eyes water.
He turned around towards the bird bath but the girls were gone. He could see them walking down the path towards the big buildings beyond the plaza. He burrowed his forehead, wondering why they had left. Then he heard the sound of his mother’s voice, coming from the opposite direction and he started to run. He skipped over the edge of the fountain easily and he ran past the two older women and the man with the strange violin. He was smiling as he ran and the little rock was rubbing against his sweaty chest through the thick fabric of the flannel shirt. The fountain was lonely once again, except for the few birds that still came, out of habit and inertia.

The Pagoda

The boy walked down the dirt path with his eyes tilted down towards the dark brown soil. His older male cousin walked beside him on the left side and his older female cousin walked beside him on his right. They walked on a path that surrounded a small mountain which sat in the middle of a small lake. It was a sunny afternoon caressed by the gentle loving touch of a soft breeze and the sound of pigeons flying in great flocks of sudden enthusiasm. The water of the lake was calm and shiny like a giant green mirror that softly vibrated and subtly shifted with the sound of footsteps and lost words and sighs.
The boy was ten years old. He was very skinny and somewhat frail. His skin was white and soft and his eyes seemed bigger than they really were behind a pair of thick eyeglasses. He wore a short sleeved yellow shirt and blue jeans and dirty white sneakers. The older male cousin was fourteen. His skin was much darker and he was more than a foot taller. His arms were thicker and stronger than the boy’s and his black eyes were steady and somehow dismissive. He wore a white T-shirt and blue jeans. The older female cousin was thirteen. She had light brown hair and very white skin. Her body was as skinny as the boy’s but it seemed somewhat stronger. Her light brown eyes flew in all directions, never resting on any one place for too long. She wore a flowery long sleeved shirt and soft cotton white pants.
As they walked, they pointed out the sights to each other and commented on their significance like explorers on a long trip into undiscovered continents. The boy talked most of all, with a voice that grew louder and surer with each step, as if his knowledge grew stronger as they made their way around the mountain.
The trio came to where a pagoda stood on the edge of the water. It was an open circular structure with a dirty white floor, about fifteen feet in diameter. The railing was white and showed the marks of many visitors in scratches and symbols and promises of love. The pillars were thick and dark red and the roof was light green and pointed in its pyramidal way towards the sky. At the very peak there was a green ball, and, even from where the boy was standing, he could see that the paint on the ball was very faded and showed the gray that was underneath. The three of them stood at the edge of the white railing looking in, a few steps away from the entrance.
"It’s a pagoda… a place of ancient Chinese kings…a place of martial arts and great loyalty and… and wonderful achievements!" the boy said it loudly and proudly, hoping to impress both his cousins, specially the female cousin who had shiny little golden hairs on the side of her neck.
"Why would they have that here?" the girl asked and the boy felt a pang of fear, realizing that he had no answer.
"Probably… somebody… someone came here a long time ago… maybe they wanted a place to look over their kingdom… maybe they needed a place to practice their ancient arts…"
The girl looked at the older cousin with a slight smile on her face and the older boy responded with a similar gesture. Then he turned to the boy and said: "You should go inside… maybe then it will become clearer what it’s for."
The boy hesitated for a brief moment. It was only a little pagoda on the side of a lake. Little boats passed by, just beyond the railing, slowly sliding along the surface of the water. Another flock of pigeons rose from the opposite edge of the lake and flew up directly towards the peak of the mountain. A car honked in the distance. The boy stepped inside. The floor was dusty and marked and cracked and dirty. Leaves were strewn all over it and there was a faint smell of urine in the air. He walked all the way to the edge of the railing and looked out onto the water. A little boy cried out in the distance, as yet another flock of pigeons rose up towards the sky.
From the path, the older cousin called out to him: "Do you want to know what this place is really for?"
The boy turned around to look at his cousin with a sense of apprehension. Both cousins were looking at him now and smiling knowingly, as if they were in on a secret that the boy couldn’t even begin to unravel.
"I told you about the Chinese Kings and…"
"Sure," the older cousin said," but do you want to know what it’s really for?"
The boy hesitated, feeling the breeze against his cheeks and his naked arms.
"Sure, tell me what you think it’s for…"
"It’s not what I think… it’s what I know. And I know because I’ve seen it!", the older cousin said and the girl giggled with his words.
"Then tell me… what is it? What is it for?"
"Men and women come here… they hug tight against the railing… leaning over the water… and they kiss, very hard and for a very long time. And as they kiss they keep on hugging, tighter and tighter… and they stay like that for a long time!" the older cousin said it without shame and laughed loudly after he was finished, but the girl blushed a little even as she also laughed.
The young boy, who was leaning back against the rail, the same rail where maybe men and women kissed, was then filled with a sense of shame and longing. He heard the words and was embarrassed by the laughter that followed so he had to look away from his two cousins. He looked up towards the slanted roof and then around towards the railing as it extended away from him and he imagined a couple kissing there, their lips pressed tightly against each other, their arms pulling the other’s body onto themselves. He imagined himself as a man, pushing a woman against the railing, doing it so hard that she almost fell over into the water. Then he imagined himself kissing her deeply, and he could only faintly imagine what the lips would feel like against his own and what she would do as he pressed himself against her and what they would both do once they were so close that they couldn’t get any closer and how would they know when it was time to stop. His eyes almost closed when he tried to imagine his hand against her shoulder, running down her arm, feeling her skin and her warmth and her aliveness.
"What is he doing?" the girl asked the older cousin.
"I think he’s dreaming… he wants to be kissing in there… he wants to have a girl to kiss!"
And they both laughed once again. Then the boy opened his eyes and he was blushing so hard that it almost hurt and he almost ran out of the little pagoda. But as he stepped across the entrance his right foot stumbled on a crack between the wood and the dirt and he almost fell over. He managed to balance himself without falling all the way to the ground, but his knees buckled and the two cousins laughed harder than ever.
"He wants a girl to kiss! He wants a girl to kiss!"
He looked up at them and specially at his girl cousin whose hair was shining with the sunlight streaming through the trees and he was left without an answer, helpless, embarrassed, blushing and alone.
Then the girl said: "It looked like the pagoda didn’t want to let you go!"
He nodded and nodded at her, desperately trying to reclaim a sense of honor. "Yes, it did feel that way. Maybe it’s haunted…"
The male cousin let out a sigh of disgust. Then he picked up a very small stone and threw it ahead of them down the path. "Sure… haunted…"
"Well, you never know… it really didn’t want to let me go."
The girl looked back at the pagoda as they walked away and then looked towards the lake and the boats that were slowly passing by, only a few feet away. The boy looked back as well, and he thought that maybe it was him. Maybe he didn’t want to leave the pagoda. Maybe someday he would come back and then the haunted pagoda would be waiting for him, fresh and clean and empty, as if he had never left. Maybe then there would be no laughter. Maybe then he would not be in the pagoda alone. Maybe then he would be haunted too, as haunted as this strange little place on the side of a mountain. He turned back towards the path and his cousins were already a few feet ahead of him. He then rushed a little to catch up. A car honked in the distance. A man laughed in a rough hoarse voice. A few dead brown leaves slowly danced in midair as they fell onto the gentle surface of the water.

In The News Today

"Can you believe it?"
The newspaper crackled as the man stretched it out between his hands and the light breeze made it swing lightly back and forth. The man was seated on one of the many green wooden benches that stood on the edge of the lake, right by the concrete path that went all around its perimeter. His skin was reddish white and his hair was black with wide patches of white. The man was wearing long light brown shorts and a white shirt. He was also wearing large reading glasses and his blue and gray backpack was resting on the concrete floor, a few inches away from the bench. His legs were bent back so that his feet were pulled back under him. His arms extended outwards and the thin wiry muscles in his forearms were tight and tense.
"I can’t believe they think they can get away with this!"
The breeze blew softly over the calm lake which surrounded a small man-made mountain, a large island in the midst of gentle placid water. The mountain itself was crisscrossed by dirt paths and covered in trees, plants and thick bushes. There were tall water plants growing right by the bench, obscuring half the view of the water. The same tall bright green water plants grew here and there all around the lake. There was a large dead tree trunk that acted as a clear barrier between the bench and the water.
Next to the sitting man, there was a small, slightly thick woman. She was sitting on the bench as well and her body was just a few inches away from his. Where the man’s eyes were pointed down to the thin newspaper, the woman’s eyes were looking out towards the mountain in the middle of the lake. Her eyes were soft and round and they spoke of a hope that still clings to life against recurrent obstacles. Her small hands were pressed together on top of her lap. She was wearing long beige pants, a flowery shirt and a small jacket. Her skin was white, like the man’s, but her hair was blonde and it fell down to the edge of her shoulders. Her forehead was pressed tight, in an attempt to protect her eyes from the sun.
"It’s terrible… after all that has happened… that they would be saying this…"
The man shook his head in disgust and shifted the paper up to continue reading below. The woman nodded and simply said: "Yes, it’s terrible."
"It’s not just that… you know… it goes way beyond… after all…" The man was shaking his head more intensely now, his face becoming a bit more red, tiny droplets of sweat sliding over his temples and under his chin.
"Yes, I know what you mean."
A pink flamingo rested its longs legs on a dead trunk that extended into the water. Every once in a while it would dip its head into the water itself, catching some small insect in its beak. There were a few boats roaming back and forth on the lake surface, wooden row boats and hard plastic pedal boats for couples, slowly making their way around the mountain. Echoing whispers traveled from the boats to the edge of the lake, snatches of conversation, a word here and there, a sudden loud laugh.
"It’s just unbelievable… the things these people would do… you know, it’s just like I’ve always said…"
"Yes, I know."
The woman’s eyes turned up higher towards the edge of the mountain, where there was a colorful pagoda that poked out into the water. The pagoda was round and open, its pillars were deep red and the round stylish fence that surrounded it was white. The round roof was a deep green and it pointed up towards the sky like an old lost antenna. At the very peak of the roof, there was a small green sphere, the green paint only a little faded. Long tree branches extended over the pagoda, half covering it in dark green and brown. A single thin dead trunk was standing up straight out of the water, just a few feet away from the fence. The pagoda was empty now and as her eyes wandered over it, some kids walked by it, on the dirt path that surrounded the mountain. Their thin voices were so loud that their words almost made it all the way across the surface of the lake, only to become isolated syllables and broken bits of song.
"Nothing really changes… it’s just that… you know?… I can see that… but after all this? C’mon! Right? How can they do this? They just have no shame!"
"Yes, I know. It’s very true."
The woman turned to the path momentarily. A woman in a white shirt and long blue shorts was jogging in their direction. She had earplugs on and a hint of music was seeping out from around her ears. Her face was covered in subtle wrinkles and the tanned white skin of her shoulders and neck was covered in shiny sweat. Her eyes were focused on the path and on the effort of running. She passed behind the bench and the sitting woman followed her with her eyes. Then she looked at the lake once again.
"After all, what if it was the other way around? Huh? Would they say that? Would they even dare?"
"No, they wouldn’t," she said, with a slight hesitation.
"You don’t think so? I bet they would! They have no shame!"
"Yes, I think you are right."
A flock of pigeons rose up from behind the tall water plants, spreading outwards to the sky like living pockets of gray and black life released from the breath of a sleeping underwater god. The woman looked up at the birds as they disbanded and she saw how they almost darkened the clear sky for a moment and how the sky reappeared from behind them, outlining their flapping wings, their upturned little heads, their soft feathered bodies. A boy called out to the fleeing pigeons and a man laughed, his voice deep and hoarse. Then the boy laughed too, in light explosions of air and tiny squeaks.
"What can we do? These people can get away with anything!"
"Yes, they can."
The man nodded and turned the page. The man with the deep hoarse voice laughed once again and there was the sound of light feet running on concrete. A man on a bicycle rolled down the concrete path, accompanied by the sound of a little bell. Then there was only the sound of gentle waves caressing the muddy edge of the lake. The woman looked down at the moist leaves of grass that stuck out from the mud, bending back away from the sun.
"See what I mean… now they… can you believe it?"

Two Women On A Small Boat

It was a fall afternoon that tasted like soft wind and gentle sun. The water of the lake was calm and soft and green, a green that spoke of life and sounded like gentle fingers that dissolve into droplets as they run across your cheek. The trees moved slowly in the wind, creaking slightly as the branches adjusted to their slightly new positions. A mother duck was rounding up her ducklings by the side of the flat, gentle waves of the lake and the dark gray pigeons coalesced into great masses of squawking and then dissolved again, each in its own direction, all with the same hungry purpose. There was an old man sitting on a bench, wearing long white shorts and a red and white shirt. He had a red cap on and his head was turned down towards the sidewalk, his eyes closed. There was a world of curious life around him but he wasn’t interested, not today.
Two women pedaled the small boat they had rented. They were both thick and strong and they both gave off an air of masculinity that contrasted with their full breasts and soft skin. They were both wearing dark glasses and they both looked ahead as they pedaled, as if unable to look at each other, as if unwilling to even try. One of the women was wearing gray shorts and a blue sleeveless T-shirt. Her hair was blonde and her bare shoulders were very white and rounded. Her mouth was half open even when she was quiet, as if she was trying to swallow the world with every breath. As she looked straight ahead, her head was tilted slightly upwards, in a subtle acknowledgement of the sun and the wind. The second woman was wearing long light green pants and a black T-shirt, also sleeveless. She had a checkered hat that covered her short black hair. Her mouth was severely closed and it barely opened, even when she spoke. Her head was also tilted, but instead of facing up towards the sky, she looked down, towards the lake, towards her own legs, towards her pedaling feet.
As they turned the boat slightly, the blonde woman said: "I’m glad you decided to come with me."
"It’s ok. We had to talk anyway," said the woman with the hat, still looking ahead and slightly downward.
"But you could have stayed home… I’m just saying I’m glad… I’m glad that you came with me today."
"Good… like I said, we had to talk anyway."
The words rang like loud whispers over the gentle repeated splashing of the water, the repeated impacts of the boat’s mechanical paddles on the surface of the lake.
"You know that I will forgive you… I always have…" the blonde woman said it with a hint of a shiver in her voice, as if making a clear effort to not let it break, an effort she wished to keep secret but that she couldn’t hide.
"I know that… but it’s not good… it’s not fair." The woman with the hat talked in the lowest voice possible, as if digging inside her chest for a place to bury her words and cover them in great mounds of white flesh.
"I can decide what is fair… you know… what is fair for myself…you…", the blonde woman’s voice was still shaking and the effort was just a bit tougher.
"We’ll see what happens… I don’t want to take advantage of you…"
"I know you don’t… but…"
"We’ll just see…"
A little boy screamed in the distance, happy to see the pigeons erupt into a new round of intense squawking. He ran to them, trying to catch the fast birds in his tiny hands.
"All I’m saying…" the blonde woman tried again.
"Like I said…"
"I’m only saying I’m glad… I’m glad you came with me today… that’s all."
The boat turned slightly again and the two women were very quiet, still looking straight ahead. The blonde woman’s head was still tilted up towards the sky. The woman with the hat was still looking down towards her feet. They would keep on seeing, but as their eyes looked in different directions, they would never be able to see the same thing, their eyes would always be lost in distant parallel lines that never quite meet in the horizon.
The pigeons separated once again in all directions. The little boy wondered if he would ever be able to have one in his little hand. Maybe when he grew older and stronger, maybe one pigeon would come down and rest on his thick older hands and maybe the pigeon would then want to stay forever. For now, the pigeons would keep on flying and the boy would stand by the side of the lake, looking up, with wide eyes and open mouth, as they flew far away from his little hands.
The blonde woman was completely quiet.
The woman with the hat said: "We will see."
The blonde woman barely nodded her head and pedaled a little harder. She kept on being quiet and she kept on looking at the sky. The wind caressed their naked arms and shoulders and the pigeons kept on squawking in the distance. But the women didn’t notice any of it. The wind was just too soft. The pigeons were just too far.