Night Fog

The fog was particularly thick on the docks that night. Jimmy showed up late, drunk as usual, in his trademark black and white vertical striped shirt, the stains of which would seem fitting of any merchant who had spent a rough afternoon working on the docks, but told more of inebriated bar room scuffles and spilt drinks. He approached me, almost translucent in the mist.

“Are you ready?” Jimmy slurred boisterously, stumbling on a knot in the peer. He quickly shook it off and took a deep swig on the bottle he kept wrapped in its brown paper casing.

“Yeah, but keep it the fuck down – you want every man on harbor patrol out here?” I asked in what was intended to be a whisper, but came out as more of a loud, raspy squeal.

“The god damned Navy couldn’t find us in this shit.” He smiled, whirling up a tuft of fog with his free hand.

I tucked my hands back into my jacket before looking over my shoulder. Approaching Jimmy, I could smell the stink of stale whiskey and even staler whores on his breath. “So do you have it or not?” I jabbed him hard with my elbow.

“Easy. Easy. I’ve got it.” He crinkled his nose, now red from either the cold or the whiskey… or both. Reaching into his back pocket he removed a deposit pouch and tossed it my direction. I caught it with one hand, never taking my eyes off Jimmy.

“Half expected you’d spent it on booze” I said, Jimmy smiling as I balanced the bag in my hand, “Feels light.”

“Half now, half later.” His head tilted back as he wiped a line of drool from the corner of his mouth. I could hear him breathing – watching the mist filter in and out of his nostrils.

“That wasn’t the deal.” I slowly took a step towards Jimmy before I was halted by the removal of his revolver.

“New deal.” He growled, pulling back the hammer.

I stood for what seemed like hours staring down the barrel of Jimmy’s gun attempting to lift my arms in retreat but – too much in shock to lift them – left them limp at my sides, the half empty bag of money still in my hands.

I could feel the lump in my throat shift as he reached for another swig on his bottle. As he brought his whiskey to full tilt, the fog horn sounded. I sprawled to the pier at the shrieking blare as my spine turned to putty. Jimmy stepped back after I disappeared into the thickness of the ocean air, firing several shots into the night. The crack of the bullets rang out through the deadness as Jimmy took one step to far and walked clear off the end of the dock.

I crawled to the edged peeking over. I watched him drown. I watched him for a full five minutes as he struggled, too drunk to swim, clinging to the last few moments of life. I watched him die

I never told Sarah about that. I never told anyone about that.

I looked deep into her eyes, knowing full well how long I had lied to her – how long I was willing to keep lying to her.

I could still hear Jimmy’s final screams muffled in the foggy ocean water as I held her hand in mine. “I do,” I replied.

wedding day
the muffled screams
of my dying friend

the broken limb
of the magnolia tree
my mother cries

the conversation
round the pond
a frozen lily

time slows
in the midnight cold
the first rose bud

Watching Out

Over the summer as a kid, and lately, over Thanksgiving, my family and I would make a trip to visit my grandparents. Without access to a swimming pool, there wasn’t too much to do during the summer in Maubury, Alabama. With the combination of the heat, the insects, and the snakes, my grandparents’ property became a regular cesspool for disease and dehydration. But during the fall, things would cool down outside enough so that it was too cold for the snakes and bugs, but just habitable enough for us Chicagoans to enter these untamed, Alabamian outdoors.

My brothers and I found our way to the pine thicket just beside the house. In the summer months, a bed of needles or an overturned branch could be home to a giant banana spider or an aggravated copperhead, but during the cool weather, we could wander the brush without worry of toxins entering our bloodstreams and, with the closest hospital being a good hour and a half drive away, killing us any time soon. Over the years, Josh, Ben, and I had become adept at spotting which saplings were on the verge of crashing down to the dry, forest floor. We would fly through the woods, knowing the exact point of contact and the perfect amount of force at which to kick the trunks of these lifeless conifers, causing them to fall to the ground as we stood tall, one hand clenched heroically in a fist at our hip, the other, cupped at our mouth, echoing our “Timber!” across the entirety of the eighty-eight acre plot. Often times, a tree would split at the point of impact, the top half toppling down to earth in our direction. We would escape by diving from the path of the careening pine branches, shielding our eyes from the projectile splinters of kindling.

All the while, my grandfather (whom we have always referred to as JB – my dad, my uncle, my grandmother, I’m convinced his own father never called him by anything other than the initials to his birth name) would sit idly by on the patio – his grey slacks hiked up far higher than designed to, exposing a few inches of ankle flesh, permanently tanned to a crisp from the years of farm work he had been subjected to as a child and the Indian blood that runs through his veins – and he would watch the road. The far side of the gravel was completely wooded and had been fenced in long ago to maintain three goats he had purchased at the flee market in a buyer’s frenzy, which my grandmother made him return shortly after. Just shy of the natural-made gutter that ran the length of Yarbough Road (a road that was just recently dubbed worthy of a street sign), was JB’s simple garden – just a small cornucopia of a few beans, squash, and pumpkins that Grandma and he would harvest annually – almost a scaled version of those their parents had built and tended to years ago. He would wake at the crack of dawn, and after breakfast, make himself comfortable as the remainder of the morning dew droplets evaporated into the humid November air. And there he would stay until dusk, until the placid-blue Alabama night had covered his home and made it too difficult for him to make out the yellow clay road any longer. All day long he’d watch that road, turning to have a conversation or start a fire from time to time, but always returning back to his road.

I never knew what exactly JB was looking for. The mailman would drive by on occasion, sticking an open hand out from his van as drove off down the dusty hill. But other than that, nobody came, and JB still watched. Were he a whittler, I’m sure JB would have whittled as he passed the time. A musician: played his harmonica. But since he’s not, he doesn’t. And if you go to Maubury, Alabama today, and take a walk down Yarbough Road, underneath his fig tree, beside his garden, next to his pine thicket where his grandsons play, you’ll find JB. Just sitting. Just waiting.

grandfather waits
for a better yesterday
the fallen sapling

impossibilities
I am just one of the
bumblebees

                    you and I
a ballad of
           the falling
                    autumn leaves

Muddy Knuckles

I remember the feeling I got when I hit somebody in football, it was evil and ruthless, but there were no strings attached. The harder I hit someone, the more praise I received from either coaches or teammates.

In football, at least on the defensive side of the ball anyway, there this thing that my coaches referred to as pursuit. Basically, the course of pursuit was the way in which a defensive player moved from a stationary position to the ball carrier to make a tackle. We had pursuit drills in practice, like angle tackling, for example, in which we were trained to estimate the amount of time it would take the ball carrier to get from point A to point B, and how long it would take us, the tackler, to go from point C to point B; the idea being that if we timed things just right, a tackle could reach point B at top speed and make a brutal tackle, thus causing the offence to gain the least amount of forward progress as possible.

I had an uncanny knack for pursuit. I mauled ball carriers in the open field. When running backs tried to juke or made other attempts at meaningless fancy footwork as a way of eluding me, it just made things worse for them; I always managed to catch them in mid-stride, blowing them yards from the point in which we left the ground and crashing back to earth with a crunch of helmet on helmet.

But regardless of how massive the hit was I laid on a guy, I always, always helped him back up to his feet. I was often times yelled at by referees as the though my genuinely apologetic gestures were a skewed and subtle form of gloating and further disgracing my opponent. And despite my efforts clear up my true persona for my teammates, they failed to realize at the end of the day that, much like the undertaker who naps in the midday, which Swede references in his haiku, it’s just a job.

Though I performed in the high school plays and joined the symphony, I was still referred to as that beast and animal that everyone seemed to see on the football field. I was secretary of the National Honor Society and a peer mediator, but I received more congratulatory pats on the back for the big game against Ridgewood.

My coach said in his speech as he presented me with the Defensive MVP award, that the other teams knew “… to look out for big number 68.” Why? Did they thing big number 68 went home at the end of the day to yoke himself to buses and take an uphill jog? It’s more likely I was vacuuming my room or playing piano. Who was honestly afraid? My girlfriend certainly didn’t fear big number 68. She happened to know that big number 68 was ticklish and had a certain soft spot for pecan pie.

People seem to forget the mortality of those they fear or idolize. The undertaker shouldn’t be seen as “out of context” because he enjoys a few z’s on the hammock. Undertaking is just a job, like being a mailman, or a doctor. At the end of the work day, we’re all pretty much the same: tired.

these fingers
stained with blood and rage
tinkle the ivories

frozen pond
the gash on my chin
painless

Taking Aim

Why do we attempt to make our first kisses perfect? What is perfect? If there is such a thing, can we really expect to bottle it into a single moment? What is a kiss but holding hands in a higher hemisphere of the body? What can you learn about someone from your first kiss with them? I certainly hope that my entire being can’t be summed up in a single, insignificant action.

We tend to get so worked up about aspects of the situation that are completely out of our control. Kisses should never be called on account of rain. Kisses should be given whenever and wherever and however they may come. That’s what kisses are for. If it’s 2am on New Year’s and you’re both piss drunk, so be it. If it directly follows the conversation in which you explain that you have a third nipple, what the hell – it’ll be a story for the grandkids. Embrace the imperfection.

That’s the great thing about kisses. Girls will never admit it, but a kiss forgives more than she’ll give it credit for. You could pick the worst possible moment to kiss her, and while in an ordinary situation you would be completely shit-out-of-luck, the fact that you took the effort and courage to kiss her makes up for your completely shitty timing.

When I first learned how to shoot a 22 caliber, my dad told me aim small, miss small, and, based on the way I shoot a gun, I’ve come to learn that the saying applies more to the first kiss than anything else I’ve done. In other words, don’t worry about the weather, or what you’re wearing, or how you smell – it’s all part of the big picture and it doesn’t really matter. But the little things, the things you can control – the way you look at her, hold her, the way you actually kiss her – if you can get those right, no one’s really going to care whether or not your shoes untied.

Aim small, miss small – simple as that.

cold, damp lips
bitter January wind
the perfect kiss
                       bullseye!

barefoot in the snow
the dog relieves himself
I join him

from the stump
of my favorite maple
a sprout

evergreen
the day after
yesterday

Word Power

When my brother’s and I were young, we had tendencies to pick up, and immediately over use words that were appealing to our moldable, little minds. In our childhood blunders we had stumbled across the word fag and, knowing nothing about the word except that it could be used as an insult, worked it into our everyday vocabulary.

Now, I wouldn’t say my father is the most tolerant person I have ever met, but he does have a very good understanding of human beings, and having such, I believe that he realized a long time ago that all of them truly are people. Every time he heard us so much as mutter the f-word, I could see him cringe and swallow hard, not as if it hurt him, but someone he knew dearly. He had never really said anything to us about it, I assume under the pretense that “boys will be boys”. I don’t know if the word was ever ok with him, but I do know when he put a stop to it.

As my brothers and I cleaned up in the basement, my brother came across a plastic dagger from one of many discarded Halloween costumes. He approached me from behind, pressing his forearm against the spot on my neck which would one day develop an adam’s apple, and pressed the dagger deep into my spine. I struggled for a second, but then decided the best way to resolve the situation was to scream, “Ow! Cut it out, you FAG!”

Immediately, as if he had been waiting for us to slip up, my father growled down the stairs, “Joshua, Brian, Bennett: get up here.” (Now, I knew right then and there that we were in trouble, not because of the tone in his voice, but rather he, as I’m sure most parents do, called us by our full names as well as in age order.) We ran (and I do mean, ran) up the stairs and into the den where we sat on the couch, in number order, as we had been called.

“Do you know what a fag is?” my father asked, pacing the room, his face beat red. The question wasn’t really a question, but rather a dare for one of us to speak, giving him a reason to shut us up again. “Do ya? Well, it’s a man who has sex with another man.” He said at point blank range with a haunting tone in his voice. Then he screamed, brandishing a finger at each one of us while asking, “Are you a fag? Are you a fag? Are you a fag?”

Petrified, my brothers and I neither answered nor shook our heads in disagreement, yet my father knew the intended answer. “Hmm,” he said straitening himself out, his voice sinking and his face returning to its usual hue, “that’s what I thought.”

We don’t say fag anymore.

As I get older, I begin to realize two things: the first being how much of an effect that event had on me, and the second being how homophobic my father really is. I know it was hard for my dad to do that to us – for us. My father’s words may have seemed harsh, but he meant them with the best intentions – as a way to show us that there are hurtful and evil words that people tend to throw around without consideration of even what they may mean or whom they might hurt. While I always knew that my brothers were never really gay, I realize now that there are people who are – people who wouldn’t appreciate being called fags or homos. And while my dad may not agree with it or even understand it, he was willing to help us respect the words, and the people those words effect.

understanding
the words
that start wars