Stories Archive 2

Shopping for Booties at Newtown: An Essay with Photographs, by Charles Hayes

For me the sweet-heart and old maid … mothers

                And the mothers of mothers,
            For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,
                For me children and the begetters of Children

            What…has become of the young and old
                 Men?
            And what do you think has become of the
                Women and children.

It was 10 a.m. on the 19th of December when the 26 dead would not enter that Wednesday or any Wednesday after.

I was entering Exit 9 off of I-84. Inside Exit 9 was the sound of a black hole. I’d been into and through many exits … and funerals. Exit 9 to Newtown was different than any of them. This was a tunnel to what a sociologist friend called the “city of funerals.”

Before I began the 100-mile trek to shop in Newtown on Wednesday December 19, I woke up not to the coffee-muse who buzzes each morning about a low caffeine blood level. But, another muse had taken the mike of my inner ear. This was the muse of shopping, demanding that I drive to Newtown to shop for booties there and no place else. I’d been planning on shopping for booties for my great-great niece who was on her way from my great-niece Jessica’s first belly-bulge.

(Indeed: “Ava” would be born on December 26th.)

Two hours after the unusual muse spoke, I was crossing the line from the world into Newtown on the road Adam Lanza rode after tumbling from his computer to defeat his mom, then to the enemy tots who make plastic ducks giggle in bathtubs.

The slow traffic between Exit 9 and Newtown’s town-line was that same kind of crawl you feel when you go to a Stone’s concert. The difference is that the music of Sandy Hook was already playing in my head soon as I entered Exit 9, and this music was no music of levity.

To cross the line to Newtown was to feel that it was not I that was driving but the gravity was. The Ford felt as if pulled into the macadam that was no macadam but a long strip of magnetic tape recording sirens that were not as loud as the tears in limos and hearses. Add the ceaseless roll of visitors like me, and the whole added up to a film-noir in process, in which I was one of thousands of visiting actors. Lanza was the star and scriptwriter who came in at the beginning and quickly dropped himself into the sad names in the line by Walt Whitman:

                                    the suicide lays in his blood…

Moments into this ”film” and to the right, a news team was interviewing a woman in black. Even the cameraman was in black. Black was not just in the cloth, but the fruit of a city was an apple orchard of dark fruit into which everyone had bitten. To the left, police in black near a driveway of an unremarkable white house. In the driveway of this house, a black limo waited for another family in black. In and out of the funeral parlor, people came and went, many with a green ribbon tied on black elbows.

“Honan Funeral Home” is Newtown’s only funeral home. In front stood a state trooper, hands clasped behind him, gazing where sentries gaze with that unbeatable concentration of statues. This suburban New York town was not acting American. No one was in a hurry to get to the next deadline.

Main Street was the dead line.

Death leads one small box after another along a macadam that was pulling my car down through it, though it was still going forward.

Every inch of town contributed an inch to the movie where real bullets had been used. Eventually, I came to a 3-way intersection where churches face one another, and I knew I had to continue straight on Main or turn left at a sign that made my heart beat as if it been injected with a watermelon sized amphetamine. I was going to Sandy Hook. To where a town was reaching up and touching bottom.

Soon as I could, I pulled into a lot and parked and went into the Dunkin Donuts. On my way to the men’s room, a sign greeted me

Gazing in the bathroom mirror, a “Wow!” popped from my throat like a big, warm burp in a very cold bath. I’d seen a sign proving the existence of angels. Not the clean, cute, alabaster angels of church paintings, which show they had never gotten their hands dirty. But, angels that you can find making ten bucks an hour and giving their “tips to the families.”

This visual proof of these angels led me to metaphysical musings as I ascended the hill I’d just descended. I asked:

“Where did the 26 go?”

and answered:

“They went to heaven,”

Then, a follow-up question:

       “To which of the three heavens did they go?”

The first afterlife is that three-tier place described by Dante. The lowest level is populated by souls who were cold and murderous in life and ended up in timeless ice. This heaven may also be where the neuro surgeon, Eben Alexander, MD went when he died in 2008. In Proof of Heaven, Alexander describes how he went on the wings of gigantic butterflies with a blue woman, wordlessly transmitting wisdom and love not known here. The 2nd heaven, described by the poet Borges, says that the dead go on ... into us. Then, the third afterlife, its in the roots of trees where all the dead are reborn green in May.

“Do we have to choose just one?”

Up-hill, I saw the flag blowing in the mourning breeze at half-mast.

Reaching the top of the hill, I crossed to the sidewalk that linked the wake at Honan’s to simultaneous funerals at the churches of the intersection. In shadows of boughs that were like broken nets in a dark sea, people passed, wake to funeral. I asked one lady with red, moist eyes:

“Could you please tell me whom the wake is for?"

"I'm sorry, I don't think I'm allowed to give that information."

"I understand”, I said.

I continued among the grandmother oaks reaching with long fingers into comers and goers whom the trees recognized perhaps because everyone was in the dress of ravens and crows that live there.

I knew the sidewalks’ slabs were all stone. Yet, I sensed that before December 14th, slates were often turned to air-roads by legs of child-gazelles that know that the sky begins in their feet. December 14th replaced that levity with the gravity of pure stone. Even road signs were not saying what they mean. Green lights were saying GONE not GO, and stop signs were over-producing STOP that was spilling over into the street.

I crossed Main to get to City Hall, and found myself approaching piles of pictures, flowers, stuffed animals that comprise hodgepodge sculptures. I was at the memorial to which people came, looked, wept, and photographed

Again, my useless poetic and metaphysical wonderings reasserted themselves among all the dark facts unfolding in a dark film. I wondered: “Are you teddy bears wide-eyed because you’re still waiting for friends to get off the buses?”

Then, a thought consoled me: “It’s probably good that stuffed animals have only cuddly arms and no brains…”

As my camera closed in, my eye came to white shells upon which are printed the names of the 26 deceased.

This picture resisted becoming two or three words. “Victoria Soto” required more, and I now call it:

                      Victoria,
                        Don’t look back.
                        You did more than a million
                        Of us will have done
                        Even if we live to 110.

Victoria wrapped her life around children that they might get up and breathe again, while she would not. I walked up the stairs of city hall to take more photos. Mourners entered the memorial....

...where they bent to gaze into flowers or pictures or at unopened letters being read by the dead:

I went inside city hall, seeking the men's room for paper towels to dry the raging brooks dropping down my cheeks. A dim-lighted building was like a city hall in Lincoln’s day. It was as though lit by whale oil or wax and string. I entered a hallway and found office doors open, papers on desks, personal belongs exposed. No humans were present, and I realized that this building was at the wake across the street.

As I started for the exit, I saw a young boy and his book silhouetted in the soft winter light climbing through the front windows. Was he an avid reader who habitually parks to the side of things and reads? Was his book an escape hatch from the horror film in which he was a player?

I left city hall to get serious. Enough of this poetic lying about the facts! (After all, I went there on the very real mission … to shop!)

I’d expected to spend the afternoon hunting for that store where those booties were, which were made for Ava and Ava alone.

Adjacent to city hall is a busy eatery called Newtown General Store.

I felt that if I went in, I’d lose time from shopping. Yet, my hand pressed the handle and I was soon among people at tables talking a tad above a whisper. To the left was a cooler of colas and to the rear the fleet of sandwich makers. A minute later, I headed for the door but a feeling struck that I should go back and give it another go. I turned, and on the far-wall were things on shelves, white tags dangling from them. These were alone on those shelves in this busy place. These were un-bought Christmas gifts that were probably not going to many homes for Christmas in this holiday-time in a city of funerals.

...But, I told the things: "I will notice you!” I pulled strings of silver through my finger gaps and delicate silver earrings toyed in fingertips. To the right were two logs. I picked one up and knew I had to bring it home. Some crafts-person had placed three white candles where she or he had drilled three holes. I began to take the log and smaller gifts to the cashier. But, then the “second thoughts” spoke again, and I returned to the shelves. Further to the right was a large bowl. I went to it.

In the bottom I saw two pairs of booties ...

One pair was purple the other gold.

Purple is a favorite color, and the purple booties were the first to be picked up and rubbed in my hands. Something – not in the crafting -- was not quite right. But, when I picked up the golden booties, it was as if the sun broke from the wool fibers of the tiny sockshoes.

My thoughts skipped to “Ode to my Socks” by the Nobel Laureate, Neruda, who says that an old woman with “sheepherder’s hands” made him a "heavenly” pair of socks. Socks he declared to be good, but they would become “doubly good” in the winter.

These gold booties in Newtown General Store were as doubly good as Neruda’s doubly good socks. (After all muses would never bother anyone to shop for things that are unable to go from good to doubly good) Add to this mythic fact that Ava is literally a December baby and, thus, one should have less doubt about the double goodness of her golden booties.

Perhaps … one day, she will come to Newtown with her babies. With the legs of tiny gazelles, they’ll help turn a walkway back to air-roads where the sky again begins where children know it begins.

I left the store and began to descend – again -- to Sandy Hook to get in my car and go.

Half way down, I stared into two buses caught in the Manhattan-like traffic clogging the hill.

The warmth of the booties radiated through the bag and, yet, finding the booties was not going to make this gravity go away. Mourning does not go easily, especially when you look into buses that were 20 little lives less than they were before Friday the 14th of December in Newtown.

I got in my car, went out of the Dunkin Donuts lot, drove up the hill, turned right, passed the memorial and Honan’s, onto the winding roads that lead back to Exit 9 onto I-84 heading to NY. Above were lines of clouds reading left to right. It was as though they were huge words writing something.

Whitman had asked in Leaves of Grass:

             What…has become of the young and old
                 Men?
            And what do you think has become of the
                Women and children.

Those clouds were answering:

                                    They are alive and well somewhere

Ben Yehuda

Me

Me, I mean I, first met Judas Ingot when I was six. We went to a small, cloistered Montessori school together and smattered each other with paints—the teachers gave us primary colors (red, yellow, and blue) only so that we would concoct our own blends of colors, create our own rainbows. Judah, his birth name was Judas, but everyone called him Judah (except: our teachers, his mother, his father, and Mrs. Hamilton, a woman with soured skin that drags against her bones, like dough that has been wet for too long). We were the two mumblers in the back of the room, separating ourselves from the others by making towers of shapes with pink blocks.

Judah was shyer than I was, still is, which made me learn to be a bit tougher against The Bullies. The Bullies have morphed shapes, (social security numbers), over the years, but they are still always of the same demographic: boys who are slightly larger, with muscles that have been toughened a bit—hammered into adolescent definition.

Shapely Things

Judah became completely invested in building the blocks. The shapes grew from simple structures—diamonds, hexagons that you could push over, send them to the floor, into smaller, more intricate carvings. Judah smuggled his homemade carpentry kit (safety pins; silver pen from his grandfather, which he used as a knife sharpener; paper clips that were perfect as nails when rewrapped as coils; and forks galore from an old silverware set from his mother’s single girl apartment, pre-marriage).

The architecture of it all--

We built: (imagine)

A city within a city

(colored with green: made from yellow and blue paint),

blocks

(imag(e)ine)… we told ourselves:

“New York City Is a City No Matter How Hard You Try” (This was our anthem song.)

3. We made a land where they spoke Spefum (our secret language): Sp(anish)e(nglish)f(rench)um(ummmmm…..)
(Hungarian?) (wrong!)

4. Judah is smarter than me: he kept architectural blueprints in his thinking notebook—I kept track of the kids at school. Archie got a new bike + red paint = I want a new bike (bike curfew starts when?)

It began when Judah told me that he had been having nightmares because The Bullies had been finding him during his walk home. (My walk home was much shorter than Judah’s, and it was in the other direction.) (Most normal bestfriends, the kinds in movies, get to walk home together-- tapping a stick against gates, spreading a ball as they walk.)

The Bullies (cast):

Arnold (aka Ninewash): a batch of strangled bones, alabastered. A slight lisp, which makes rs disappear. (pronunciation: disappea)

Stefan: the most blubbered of the group (held back?)

Jack (aka Johnnyboy): the leader, the snarky one—a pointy nose that could be a weapon(ouch!)--

Mikey Tribol: blue-eyed (I heard a rumor that his name was really Donald Alan)

This year, The Bullies had sprouted into lemmings (def.: subarctic rodents; doomed conformists) with their hair died green (a toast to their non-conformity—a color that no one desired, admired). The Bullies like to break. As they walk, they crack tree branches, flick leaves with their fingers—mashing them into sticky strands (a glue?) — just to be flashy.

Judah has always felt a tension between his appearance, his mind, and his interests. He’s told me this over mayonnaise, garlic, and onion sandwiches. (The creation started as a dare in sixth grade (at my house (image on the back cover) at 3 a.m.) (His mom doesn’t keep anything around—she hates to be tempted by food—she’s the kind of anorexic that never orders anything at a restaurant and then eats all of her husband’s meal. He now orders three appetizers (soup, salad (which she doesn’t touch) and the special) + an entrée. She eats the whole entrée, gummies up the soup and special, and the salad is his. (Judah’s dad is a skinny man.) I thought that it would be repulsive and impossible to eat. (We cried our way through carcassing the onions, the garlic) but it was really tasty. It’s become our favored afterschool meal.)

Judah is cute. The girls say so. The Bullies treat him like he’s the picture-perfect nerd (pinned up by pocket protectors, digital gadgets (but Judah’s not like that.) (The glorious halo of nerdiness is contained inside of his skull—firecracking in his synapses.) (I am not cute—I should be the baited one.)

I went to Hebrew School this afternoon. My mom makes me go. Becky Endriken used to have a bright pink nose, but then she had it fixed. I think that our “Pinky” calling got to her. She tried to scrape her nose off herself, and her parents came home from a dinner out to find Becky splashed on the floor—blood cells liquefied everywhere.

Now her nose is pretty: compact, turned upright.

At Hebrew School, I thought of Judah (at Bible Study):

הלכתי אל בית הספר העברי זה אחר הצהריים. אמא שלי עושה לי ללכת. נהגו בורוד בהיר האף -- קראנו לה האסקימואי שם--, אבל עכשיו אז היא היתה קבועה. אני חושב שהבית שלנו "ורדרד" התקשרות קיבל אותה. היא ניסתה מרוח בחמאה האף שלה עצמה off, ולהוריה הגיע הביתה לארוחת ערב כדי למצוא becky התיז על הרצפה -- תאי דם גפ"מ בכל מקום. עכשיו האף שלה הוא די: קומפקטי, הפנתה זקוף.

(What Judah learned at Bible Study:

Judas occidit Jesus. Tradidit eum in tenebras. Hic ultimo Iesus vixit.Valde difficile Jesus comites cognoscere hoc proditione. Sunt misitJudas sarcina. Asinus fuerat, panem et candelam in lumine noctis. )

SASHA SARAH SPECTOR:
There is one girl that I like: her name is Sasha Sarah Spector. {S.S.S. is the monogram on her backpack.} When I look at her, I think of that perfect alignment of genetic material that creates long eyelashes: the hereditary blessing. Long eyelashes run in Sasha’s family: her little sister is in my little brother’s class, and she has long eyelashes, too. Sasha’s mother likes to keep hers lacquered (sometimes she rubs her eyes in the hallway, smearing the black (or purple) on her eyelids.) Sasha was the first girl in the class to wear a training bra. The Bullies made a game of chasing her: trying to smack her bra strap. I stretched my leg out (I was trimming a #2 pencil at the time trying to shape it into little logs for Judah’s Brooklyn Bridge mock-up. The #2 pencil slipped, and stabbed Johnnyboy in his hand (cutting short his life line, if he ever had his palm read.) He needed stitches (which temporarily extended his life line), and he still has the blue ghost of the pencil lead floating around beneath his skin. (I’ve seen him looking for it in class, trying to trace out the poison.)

I thought that my heroics would make Sasha talk to me. They did not.

I was punished with detention and a smackdown by The Bullies (sans Johnnyboy, but on Johnnyboy’s behalf.) Judah shuffled me home while Johnnyboy cried (I hoped!) in the hospital waiting room. I was marked with a puff-pastry purple bruise.

Ben Yehuda, the best athlete at our school, is training for a triathlon. The teachers let him give in his work late so that he can win. Ben Yehuda is smart, too, and he uses the extra time well. He is a beautiful young boy with a beautifully layered mind. He speaks in class, which is an extra plus for the teachers because they are sick of talking all the time and shhhshhhing the ones who talk only to their friends. Ben Yehuda both talks to everyone and refrains from exclusive conversations. The teachers all like Ben Yehuda, and the other students do, too. I have never talked to Ben Yehuda, and neither has Judah, but I want to.

Ben Yehuda can be described like an avocado. (You have to be patient and can only have them once they’re perfect. They have a tantalizing shape, which shows off their perfect structures (peel, fruit, pit). They are more expensive (extra $1s) than the other green produce.)

Rrrring, rinnnnggg:

Me: Hello?
Judah: It’s me. Did you hear about Ben Yehuda?
Me: (silent, because I never know anything that Judah doesn’t
already know in the realm of school news.)
Judah: He’s gone. He’s disappeared.
Me: What does that even mean, disappeared?
Judah: His mom just came to my house looking for him. They haven’t
seen him for days. He’s just vanished. (Judah accentuated the vvva
sound in vanished. This annoyed me.)
Me: That’s weird, hombre. (I’d been trying to think of a nickname for
Judah. One that was recognizable and not dumb like the ones for The Bullies.
Judah: We should go find him.
Me: ?
Judah: Yea. We should find him.
Me: How do you go about finding a person that either a. doesn’t want
to be found, b. is missing, or c. has already vanished (I can sound like
a real dweebish nutbag sometimes.)
Judah: You sound like a real dweebish nutbag right now.
Pause. Deep breaths, exhalations, grumbled throats.
Judah: We just gotta luuure him back.

We wrote to Ben Yehuda on the tree trunks of his triathlon training path. We knew that, although Ben Yehuda needed space, that he would still be practicing. We discovered bike marks that were
skinny enough to be from his night tracker© bike the night that his disappearance spread.

Our collected alphabet spilled into a letter:

Ben Yehuda maintained a symbiosis with The Bullies. He was necessary to prevent their indiscriminating attacks.

We told him about The Bullies’s bullying: their one-sided war, a ravenous juicing of youths. Even my beloved Sasha could not be protected (granted that I had not succeeded the first time); but still, now, The Bullies had gone after everyone, had dared to strike.

We pinned the letter to the last tree in the path at lunchtime. But then, we overheard The Bullies. They were planning to sneak into the school, have a little party. They were going to burn drugs, tests, Bibles.

Judah and I returned to the messenger tree trunk and amended our note.

(By 3:15 p.m., we worried that Ben Yehuda hadn’t found the note, that he had left us.)

Plan: plant ourselves in Principal Clarkson’s closet (The Bullies’s party location.)

Obstacle: the school auction was happening upstairs. A band of the most cheerful of mothers, slathered in crocodile emblems and tightened skin, hoisted baby cribs, ethnic cuisine gift baskets, airplane tickets, autographed novels, restaurant gift certificates, elaborate perfumes into the gymnasium.

The doors to our school were very easy to crack open. Judah and I fashioned a key made from a safety pin with the teeth of a red paperclip (the head of the paperclip restructured as the teeth of the keys.) We figured that The Bullies had molded a more primitive version of the lock pick (made from a decoiled paperclip?).

We stationed ourselves in the closet, practiced holding our breaths to ensure silence.

Gasp ********************
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

(We had our mothers’ pairing knives (protected in potholders), just in case.) We buried ourselves in a nest of Principal Clarkson’s winter jackets, extra lab coats, and fire safety blankets. We held a mosquito net over our heads (for protection and visibility).

A half an hour later (at 6:45 p.m.), we heard The Bullies gurgling in the hallway. We slammed the closet door through the door track (faster! we thought). We heard the metal fighting metal and then the splash of the lock clicking open.

We saw Ninewash first: his fingers branching into the office, looking for the light switch.
“Guys, it’s clea” he tugged the words out.

The Bullies tumbled into the room.

Stefan nuzzled a tower of Bibles in his cushioned arms.

Johnnyboy smoothed Principal Clarkson’s desk—ripping the books, stationary, coffee cup from it.

Mikey Tribol flipped his lighter (a flint spark lighter from Mrs. Petridie’s Chemistry class). The metal caught the zinc and a flame shot out.

Judah: Gasp ********************
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14…
paaaaaashhhhhhawwwwwwww
(release)

Me: Gasp ********************
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12…..
paaaaaashhhhhhawwwwwwww
(release)

Ninewash snagged a Bible from Stefan, while Johnnyboy stretched on Principal Clarkson’s desk. He yawned, tugged in his pocket for a joint (I’d never seen one before! I pinched Judah) and battled with Mikey Tribol’s fingers for the flint spark lighter. “Gimme that thing.” Johnnyboy pinched the joint between his lips, flashed sparks around the room, curling the pages of attendance books, classroom supply catalogues, a newspaper clipping about the school. Miniature flames trickled out. Johnnyboy slammed his fingertips together, stopping the fires.

Luck: Principal Clarkson was stationed upstairs tending to the auction. He would not be able to retreat to his office. The most cheerful of mothers would tug at him all night—pulling him from one to another—requiring assistance with the podium, the microphone, the linens, etc.

We learned that Stefan likes to entertain The Bullies by tapping on his belly and singing (not rapping, rhyming, or any other kind of verbiage) about the situation. He pecked at his belly, a slight echo was produced, and howled operatically about digging through the principal’s desk drawers. Judah and I poked each other with our elbowbones, and the moment seemed nice. I wished that we could join The Bullies, soak up their company. I prepped my knees, moving them from their bent hiatus, getting ready to elongate my legs. Judah slapped my knees and my mouth oooed a bit, preparing for real sounds. Judah slapped my lips, keeping me silent.

Mikey Tribol tried to sing along, but Johnnyboy wouldn’t let him. He went over to Mikey and sparked the edge of his t-shirt. I was beginning to hate the smell of the burning.

Ninewash had made a neat stack of Bible pages, separating them by Book. He lined up five or so of the books and ripped each page, stacking the pages in order. The only difference: they were unbound, and torn. Johnnyboy told Stefan to “quiet up” and get burning. (I wondered if Johnnyboy was afraid of burning the Bible himself!?!? This seemed like an unnatural worry for a faux-criminal like Johnnyboy.)

Judah began slipping the tip of the pairing knife from his mother’s potholder (with the red cardinal embroidered on it. Was it smiling?). Was he preparing to fight The Bullies?

Stefan tumbled over to Johnnyboy—snatched the flint spark lighter from him—got a flame out of it and pressed it onto Johnnyboy’s shirt. Johnnyboy grabbed the burning edge and spread it onto Stefan’s shirt. They both dropped to the ground, rolling and hissing.

I wanted to tell Judah: We’re not saving anyone from this closet? What’re we doing here? Principal Clarkson is going to come downstairs, kick out The Bullies and lock his door. We’re going to be stuck in the school all night or the motion detectors will get to us. Does the school have motion detectors? Isn’t that typical security procedure? Judah, what do you think, Judah? Judah? Judas Ingot! What do you think?

Judah had been blowing on the mosquito net, sending it up in centimeters with his breath.

We had both decided that we were bored.

Ninewash grew bored of watching Johnnyboy and Stefan flailing on the floor. He found the abandoned spark flint lighter and set a crumple of Bible pages orange, red, black, and yellow. They morphed into ash in seconds (my guess: 5 seconds).

Johnnyboy threw his torso forward, hurling his feet onto the ground.

He stamped at the burning Bible pages, but Ninewash grabbed the untouched passages, lit them up, and threw them around the room. (He was the true Pyro, I guessed.)

The pages latched onto the other pages and soon a commune of letters and paragraph spacing bred one word: FIRE.

Mikey Tribol thought that the fire gimmick was funny, so he looted the lighter from Ninewash and found Principal Clarkson’s curtains.

He sent them going, and that was when I was no longer bored.

We were stuck beneath the mosquito net halo, enshrined in the abandoned lab coats, fire safety blankets. The fire safety blankets. Would we have to be brave? Save the day? End the fire?

I pinched Judah. Scratched his arm with a fire safety blanket. Judah poked two of his fingers up (= wait 2 minutes).

The curtains had disappeared now and exchanged themselves for ash and smoke.

The Bullies began throwing handfuls of fire at each other. It was not fun to watch. They coughed.

Thought: Could Principal Clarkson hear the coughing? Smell the smoke?

Judah: Gasp ********************
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9….

Gasp ********************
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14…
paaaaaashhhhhhawwwwwwww
(release)

Gasp ********************
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11…
paaaaaashhhhhhawwwwwwww
(release)

Ben Yehuda pushed through the smoked, curtainless window of Principal Clarkson’s office. Chips of glass flying into the eyes of Johnnyboy, Ninewash’s forearms, and Mikey Tribol pushed a Bible cover (paperless) to his face for protection. Ben Yehuda smushed Ninewash to the floor. (I decided that Stefan was the perfect pillow.)

Ben Yehuda smashed past Johnnyboy (still grabbing for his eyes) and scooped up the undamaged Bibles.

Ninewash went for Ben Yehuda, but Ben Yehuda moved too quickly.

He opened the closet door, sprung us from the mosquito mesh (how he knew we were there, I’ll never know!) and slammed some of the Bibles in the closest.

He pushed us out of Principal Clarkson’s office with a speed I couldn’t comprehend. He snapped the door shut: Johnnyboy clutching Ninewash as they coughed. Mikey Tribol climbing out of the window. Stefan transforming into a supine pillow.

We followed Ben Yehuda as he pushed open the doors of the gymnasium. We brought the smoke with us, but it blossomed into air. Nothing more.

We battle against the stream of parents entering the school.

I find my parents just arriving. (I feel guilty for abandoning my mother’s favorite pairing knife downstairs, below.)

Judah and I cannot keep up with Ben Yehuda.

Ben Yehuda runs, letters spilling from his feet

a x dnakaldqihyuioepqlkm mnbvzfTyupnbvfGHJMSV Mkflb
Dhgainkdml apwthbnmzzxcvbrtyuiopw ldkjhg
Vdbatqyuijhbnmxlpoziytrfcqasxawerfvebndm
Dtyuviaokjhvs ZCjahfjkelwAPOIUYTFVBNM
ftuhnml
Hjkou

The parents jumble out of the gymnasium doorway to watch Ben Yehuda.

Simon Yehuda: Ben, stay! Stay, Ben. Stayyyy
He shuffles to catch his son before he enters the woods.

(Sheila Yehuda did not attend the auction. She wanted to stay home to greet her missing son.)

Ben Yehuda is always an all sta

Copyright 2012 by Barbara Fenig

Go to the Devil to Find the Devil

See: these men, five of them in a row before a large white church. Tattered and frayed overalls, the skin beneath reddened by the sun. The skin is red because each morning the five men leave town together and struggle up the hillside through dying crabgrass and briers and dried reeds and weeds in the morning sunlight, in a raucous clamor toward the boarded-up church at the top of the ridge where they will stand guard all day until the sun has sank and the moon has grown out from behind the town below them in the valley, then another group of men, a younger group of men, will take their places for the night shift. That is why their skin is seared crimson, but it does not hurt. It acts as a sort of identification for them in the town, if anyone should look out the window one morning and see the men making their way slowly through the square. For those who are never awake early enough to see them, the men are a sort of myth.

            It is late summer. The men shoulder rifles, a third arm, an extension of themselves. Three of them are standing, two are squatting on the wooden landing in front of the church doors.

            Sickness. Got sickness here and they are the only real protectors against it. Before them the pointed shadow of the church's spire running down the dirt path, out and away from them. The path crosses a brown, reeded field starched by months of absent rain, then bends and is obscured by a windbreak.

            And these: the doctors and nurses who make their way every afternoon down the dirt path toward the church and the men. They come around the bend fully donned and sexless in their canvas coveralls and insectile gas masks, despite the sweltering heat. So the men cannot see their faces and tell between man or woman.

            The arrivals of the doctors and nurses are always staggered. When the first androgynous figure appears from around the bend and has made its way down the dirt road it takes a seat upon a great stone boulder that sits just off the church's front lot, and when each subsequent figure arrives they join the others at the boulder until all of the team is present and accounted for. One of the canvassed figures arrives with a large black bag slung over its shoulder, full and drooping with the water and foodstuffs that are brought daily to those inside the church. Later, another figure appears and comes down the path also carrying a bag, this one smaller and burlap. It too is brought everyday to the church.

            When all the doctors and nurses have arrived at the boulder and attendance has been taken, they proceed in one slow, low procession toward the church and the five men standing guard at its doors. The figures, in their coveralls and lurid, double-snouted gas masks, all move forward as if toward some toxic and apocalyptic bedlam. See them cross into the shade of the spire and up the steps of the church, where the men are sidling aside and grinding their jaws and picking gnarled balls of material from their overalls with their free hand. The head figure (identified by the white canvas suit, and who is leading the procession) passes the men and unlocks the doors. It is said that this is the only person in the town with a key to the church. It is said that it was this person (in the white) who discovered the disease.

            When he or she has opened the doors and all the proceeding doctors and nurses have carefully and quickly filed through them, the final figure with the small burlap sack reaches into the bag and brings forth a handful of white powder, which the figure tosses into the air behind it.

            Once the door is closed and the men have finished coughing up the substance and swatting it from their faces:

            —Damn, if I don't hate that stuff. What time is it, Lowell?

            —Is about quarter past one.

            —Where'd you get a watch? I thought you said you could read the time by the sun?

            —Well, I can I reckon, but my wife seen this thing in town and . . . well, I started figuring why do I keep making it hard on myself when I can just strap this thing to me?

            —I don't know, Lowell, but I know that when my daddy was alive he could tell time by the sun and he never had no watch. Never needed it. I just hate to see the day when things start getting too easy on a man.

            —You said it was one-fifteen?

            —Yes sir.

            —Goddamn PhD's were late again today. But I reckon it don't matter to them when they show. They'd stroll in here at sundown if they had a right mind to, and they'd still come in like they were some heroes.

            —Tell me 'bout it.

            —I tell you what, if there's anyone protecting this town it's us, that's for sure. Not them doctors. It's us who deserve that key.

            —I bet none of them could even run a plow.

            —Hell no they couldn't. They didn't go to school to learn to till. They went to school to learn about medicine.

            —Medicine? Shit, I stand by what my daddy used to say: all a man needs is his wit and he'll be a man if he wants.

            —And what about a woman? What does a woman need to be a woman if she wants?

            —What woman wants to be a woman?

            The men throw their heads back in good humor. Their cackled laughter rolls like a curse to the wicked and dead, to the dying in the church. A wind comes and it churns up a great dust from the path.

            —Speaking of which I've got a story for you fellows. I've got a sister lives in town and she just had a little boy last year. Cute kid with the thickest black hair you ever seen on a baby.

            —The daddy a Mexican?

            —No, no he ain't. I was about to get to him. The daddy is a sharecropper over in Cammaron. He don't even live here. Well, last month it seems my sister fell on some hard times. She lost her job at the market in town 'cause the owner figured there weren't enough customers to keep in business, meaning all of them had either gotten sick or locked themselves in their houses, and he thought it best if they just call it quits. So she fell on hard times. I offered to help her out a bit but she refused. Too proud, I reckon.

            The man then falls quiet as the doors behind them open and one of the canvassed figures emerges, preceded by a puff of the white powder in the air. The figure closes the door behind it and pushes its way past the men and down the steps and over to the boulder, where it sits down facing away from the men, pulls the gas mask up into the hood of the canvas suit, and retrieves from its pocket a pouch of tobacco, some rolling papers, and a matchbook.

            —Goddamn PhD's. Anyways, my sister fell on some hard times and wouldn't take no help from nobody until one night she comes out of her house and drops her kid off on me and the wife and says she'll be back the next day. I told her not to go anywhere, that she'd get herself sick and killed. But she said she'd be back.

            —I bet she didn't find her way back, huh?

            —No, she did. She found her way back with her eyes all busted up like some kid from the slums. Turns out she got brave and went out to Cammaron to talk to the kid's daddy about him lending them some money. And I guess he didn't take too kindly to that request and gave her his answer in the form of a left- and right-hook, 'cause when she came back that next day to pick up the kid she was real busted up and still penniless. Finally accepted some of the help I had been offering. Found out last week that she's pregnant again.

            —No.

            —Yes sir. Took those punches of his that night and some more, I reckon. Dumb bitch. I told her, You don't go to the devil to find salvation. You go to the devil to find the devil.

            —That's all women are, really. Too proud until they see some handsome chap riding in, then they don't know the meaning of pride and certainly don't hold themselves accountable to it. Sick sisters.

            —Damn, damnheaded whores.

            To this, the figure smoking on the boulder shifts and, with measured slowness, turns to face the men, revealing the pink face of a woman beneath the mask, her brow drawn down over her eyes in a condemning scowl. She flicks the remnants of the cigarette into the church's front lot and pulls the mask back down over her visage and makes her way back up the steps and into the church, this time not bothering to toss the powder in her wake. The men scoff happily like schoolchildren who have angered their teacher as intended.

            For a while the men are silent. Their snorting and coughing up the dirtied air acts as a sort of Morse, though, to speak for themselves and assure one another that they are there, they are not alone. They each watch the land around them. Everything is shimmying in the buzzing heat. In the sky, a bald vulture descends in a linear course and lands upon the topmost branch of a decaying tree, then hops down and down until on the rooted dirt, where it scours the earth for its carrion then moves into the shade and into a position of eternal, determined waiting.

            It waits for the town in the valley below the ridge. The town is desolate and, when the men happen to glance down at it, unmoving. It is a canvas of still houses and no people. They are all locked away in their homes, trying to wait as long as they can until they have to come out again. Whenever they do come out, they move quickly and quietly as if trying not to call attention to themselves, as if the sickness were completely shaped and sat perched, surveying the roads for its next prey.

            But right now the sickness is not in the roads; it is in the church. It has fallen upon men and women who, in consequence, had to be sent here. But once they were here, it was easy to see that they had always been here, they were never without it . . . these five men who bear their guns as if in no world could they ever be without them. These men in tarnished cloth who whisper:

            —You know, I heard it ain't just here. My brother up north in Cheatham says its all over there, too. That people are passing left and right and over and under and any ol' way you look 'cause when they get sick they don't isolate them, like we doing here. Now, can you imagine? Sick folks just walking the streets like there was nothing wrong with them, like they were somehow no different from the rest of us? But that's how it is there, I reckon. My brother told me he don't approve of what we doing here. None of them up there do. Say it's inhumane. Well by God, I says, You look around and tell me who's inhumane.

            —Sure enough.

            —What if my sis has that kid and it comes out already sick? What if we have to take it out of her and bring it straight here to the church?

            —You think that could happen?

            —Who's saying it can't? Who's saying it won't happen just that way?

            And then, like the sum of all the future, she appears on the path, an apparitor. A lank young woman limping stifflegged past the windbreak and down the path through the rising up of dust. Her gown blows in it all, but she keeps it tamed with one hand down on her groin, while the other hand is clutching a rope of blonde hair behind her head. At the sight of her, the men ready their guns in front of them in a chorale of metallic clicks. The two squatters stand.

            —Here we go.

            The woman continues toward the church determinedly. She lowers the one hand from her hair and coughs into her knuckles. Even the vulture in his nest of treeshade is watching her now.

            —Do you reckon she's sick?

            —If she's sick how come she ain't in the church?

            —I mean, you can't always find out too quick that they're sick. Sometimes they don't say nothing for a while before someone reports them, or before they turn themselves in.

            —No one turns themselves in anymore. No, she ain't sick.

            —I'm just saying she don't look like most who come up here a-wandering.

            There is a faint clatter in the church behind the men, but none give any real notice. They are all eyeing the girl that is approaching, her own eyes tracing the ground below and before her, her body slightly hunched and bent into itself like the posture of a much older woman. One man, the tallest of the five, takes two careful steps down off the landing and drops his rifle to his side. He looks down upon her, calls:

            —Howdy.

            To this she stops suddenly and lifts her gaze. She looks at the man and the four behind him like she hadn't noticed them there before. Her bad leg is still suspended, ready for motion, until she lowers it gingerly to the dirt.

            —Hidey.

            —Can I ask you what you're looking for up here?

            —I don't reckon I'm looking for anything, really.

            She looks with thick curiosity and wonder at the rifle laying along the man's leg. He notices this and lifts it back into both hands.

            —You alone out here?

            —You gon' shoot me?

            —I hadn't planned to, long as we don't have no problems. You come looking to stir some up?

            —I don't reckon.

            —You alone out here?

            —Yeah, I'm alone.

            —What you doing out here? Come to see about seeing someone in the church? 'Cause I'm afraid that won't happen. We get lots of people a day walked the same path as you and we've turned them away. Sometimes against their will.

            The vulture under the tree flicks his wings, while the clatter in the church resounds again.

            —I don't reckon I've come to stir up any problems.

            —Well, alright. You best get on then.

            For a moment the girl stands in the middle of the path, idly staring through squinted eyes at the man, the sun on her face and in her eyes, with one hand still on her groin holding down the fluttering gown and the other hand tucked into the opposite armpit and the arm cupping her breasts; then, in one quick motion, she turns in place and begins retracing her steps back up the dirt drive. The four men still lining the church doors lower their guns and fall slack, are released of something. The tallest of the men, the Goliath on the steps, doesn't shift, but watches the girl depart.

            Hear again: the guttural shudder from within the church. It resounds violently as if awakened from a dreamless sleep, but still the men are deaf to it. The sound comes clear and almost rhythmic, kin to the bell tower in the town square under which, each morning, the men cross shoulder upon shoulder, their laughter reaching higher than the ringing of the bell, the bell ringing and coming down clear and pure as water, but it too goes unnoticed and lost, muddled up in their shouts.

            The man on the steps stoops. He continues to watch the girl leave back down the path in doubt, for only a blind man couldn't see from the way she carries herself that she is unfaithful and can't be trusted. But they do not see it. Their voices behind him rising like dust and going over him:

            —Is that it?

            —Strange girl, ain't she? She look a little swolebellied to the rest of y'all?

            —Not to me she didn't.

            —What do you expect that was for, coming up here and all?

            —Looking to meet up with somebody in the church, probably. Just like the rest of them do.

            The man on the steps thinks: Oblivious. Ain't looking to meet up with no one.

            And he can see it now. It's true. She does look a little swollen. He can see that in her walk too, slightly bowlegged and still limping. He stands.

            —How come you're a-limping?

            She answers without looking over her shoulder at him or stopping.

            —'Fraid it's lupus, sir.

            Then, with such universal deliberation, the girl gradually veers off the path toward the edge of the field. The four men in front of the doors stop their stirring and watch. She approaches a single clump of tall, yellow flowers. The men have never before noticed the flowers there among the dry brown weeds, and it seems fate grew them specifically for the girl now bending over them with one hand open across her stomach to support some nameless weight, the other hand wrenching a posy of the wildflowers from the earth. And, to the men's surprise, she turns back to the path and begins to falter along its edge back toward the church, the busted leg nearly dragging behind through the dry grass. Her walk is accompanied by the racket in the church, which has grown louder and louder, and now the men lining the doors turn from the girl to look upon the church.

            —What in God's name is that?

            —What you think's going on in there?

            The tall man on the stairs still watches the girl coming back, his brow drawn down and his face so clenched in concentration that he almost appears to be smiling at her. She doesn't notice. She is watching the landscape slowly pass her as she walks, watches the vulture that has abandoned all hope and has taken flight. She tilts her head back to see it fly over her, her hand in a salute to shade her eyes from the white sun. The bouquet in the other hand held against the pit of her breasts.

            From the steps:

            —What're you looking to do here, ma'am?

            She looks at him.

            —Well, I guess I was coming to ask why I ain't in that church.

            —It ain't lupus them folks in there got. They wishing they just had lupus.

            —What do they got, then?

            By now she is stopped in the shade of the spire and is rubbing her hand along the calf of the dying leg.

            —You mean you ain't heard about it in town? About what happens to these folks when they fall sick? No, it ain't lupus. It's much worse than that. They wish they had lupus.

            —I don't know about that. I don't think no one wishes they had what I have. Sick is sick and there ain't one sickness that's better than another. Would you trade for lupus, or for what those folks in there got?

            —But . . . but ma'am, I ain't sick.

            The four men at the door are paying no attention to the conversation. They are entranced by the contraction of noise in the church, the ever increasing pounding on the doors as if some hellacious riot were trying to break through. The girl begins to draw nearer again and the wind blows her dress up into a wide berth around her waist so even she is kin to the bell in the town square.

            —Well, sir, I reckon we're all sick with something. My sickness . . . my mother had it too, so I guess my child'll probably get it, if I live long enough to bring that child into this world. You got a sickness, too. You just don't got a name for it, but you'll pass it on to your son, and your son to his, and there ain't nothing you can do about it. Is like hair color, or the color of your eyes, or the way you and he talk. His views of the world he got from you. Sickness.

            She is now at the bottom of the stairs in front of the church and he is inching down, step by step, to her. She watches him descend, wide-eyed and gray in the shadow of the spire. The beating of the planked doors rolls like thunder down to him and the other men are slowly backing over the landing away from the doors now rattling on their hinges. They hold their arms out in front of them like trying to delay the attack of a beast, or like the hands of a priest over his congregation.

            The Goliath in descent:

            —You ain't making much sense, ma'am. Now I think you should just get on--

            —And especially those folks, in the church. Those you keeping locked up day and night from the world, letting no one in to ever see them. Treating them . . . treating them like they were any different from you, like they got the curse of Ham or something. Damnable men and all your pride, and your judgments. What if it was you in there? Though it might as well be.

            The man is now at full descent, standing at the bottom step looking down at her, and he pulls up the rifle from alongside his leg, runs the tip of it up her leg and hip and breast and buries it between her shoulder and neck, says:

            —You get out of here, harlot.

            She is supposed to run. That's what he has planned for her to do, the barrel still tucked against her. She is supposed to drop the flowers at her feet and take off back down the path and crawl back into whatever ridiculous cave she has come from. But she doesn't run. She instead crouches to her knees, moving against the barrel, and swipes aside the dirt on the ground in front of her. She then slowly lowers the flowers onto the cleared spot, like a dead man into his grave.

            The men above them are at a near run coming down the steps, calling. They are frantic and their arms are spread out at their sides as they descend. Their red skin makes them look like men on fire. The pounding from behind the church doors is now deafening and unceasing. As the men run past the two at the bottom of the steps, the one standing over the other, his rifle still nuzzled into her pale shoulder, she kneeling penitent with a yellow curtain of hair covering her face, the runners do not speak to them, run almost through them as if they weren't there and wouldn't care if they were. And as they depart down the path, kicking up the barren dust in their wake, she now bending over the flowers and resting her forehead on them, he kneels and leans to her ear and says:

            —You want to hear something funny? My mama used to look a lot like you. She had your hair, and she had your walk too. You wanna know what happened to her? On my thirteenth birthday, me and some boys in town took my daddy's pistol and shot my mama's cat with it. And she near had a conniption over that and proceeded to slap the fire out of me for it. That is until my daddy walked in. I reckon he didn't like the woman laying hands on me, so the whole order of things was switched, and I watched as he beat that old woman to a stain on the floor. And you know what, I cheered him on. I was glad to see her go.

            —Before she went, she ever tell you about that woman who turned to salt?

            —She did. The one looked back at the burning cities when she weren't supposed to? Sounds like a woman.

            —You best leave, and not do what that woman did.

            Then the doors burst forth, dilate, and the shapes are delivered into the air and lightened, carrying above them the white suited doctor unmasked and clawing desperately at the air. He can now see that the figure in white is a man. He watches the shapes and the white figure held above them come quickly down the steps and fall upon him, the riot of the sick; he is surrounded by them, trodden under foot, and then left behind, laid flat in the dirt and touched by many hands. The girl is raptured and gone, leaving him alone choking in the dust of their wake.

Copyright 2011 by Colby Swift

Beau Brummell in Snaketown

An absolute gem of an Arabic proverb declares that “If the frog frolics upon the land, can the serpent be far behind?” Now I can see an obese straddler, a deeper bice green than the felt lining on a billiard table stretching his pneumatically powered legs to the elastic limit, and with the confidence of a star athlete leaping onto a patch of dry land. Only moments before our batrachian challenger had been resting upon a stark white lotus. Arrested by its aroma, he has slipped into a hallucinogenic state, unaware that keener eyes had been following his every move.
Patterned in lateral bars like some overdressed Beau Brummell in Snaketown, a Black Mamba opens his dark blue mouth, while the yellow pupas of the reptile’s dark brown eyes are wholly focused on a noonday snack, ready to lash nine feet of measured fury at a scrumptious noonday nosh.   So life is played out in this manner, as one minute you’re there on solid snake- free ground and, the very next moment, you’re being slowly sucked down Fate’s asphyxiating gullet, subject to a unique cooling system, fanned by the vibrato of this reptile’s forked tongue as you travel down the tube to oblivion.
Let us imagine that a silent witness is standing in awe at a safe distance watching the entire floor show. That observer could be you or I, or even your dog off its leash, realizing it, too, could be suctioned head first, drawn through the small mouth of an expandable head, swallowed by degrees deeper into a flexible tube to be finally turned into a protein reserve of canine jelly. I am respectful how advantaged that predator is in picking up the scent of nearby prey with an oscillating forked tongue, while absorbing the very ground vibrations of its quarry. What other predator is fortunate as to be imbued with an inborn seismic direction finder, a bodily device so vulnerable to increased amplitude, it could go awry with an abrupt seismic shift in the earth’s Tectonic plates. The overwhelming flood of intense conflictive energy would overwhelm and confuse the inner ear of that pursuing reptile, causing the creature to lose track of his prey.
The ongoing dining out experience can be viewed as a circular process, one incorporating a cycle of birth, transitory life, death and rebirth. My favourite circled snake is the Sumerian fertility god Ningizzida, "Lord of the Tree of Truth,” who at times is in possession of a human head. This fructifying deity would be the perfect understudy to that dark harvester attired in a black djellaba-like hooded cloak, a loose fitting garment allowing a pair of skeletal hands to wield a long handled scythe to cull the surplus population. I am inclined to think he uses the finest true grit whetstone to sharpen a scythe that never seems to suffer metal fatigue, and that scythe wielding lunatic couldn’t work fast enough for reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, who believed that the poor were proliferating far too much to sustain them in creature comforts, like food intake. The Reaper had his task in making whoopee with famine, plague, and a long sustaining war offering a goodly harvest, which begs the question: Why is the Reaper’s face as dark as a Black Mamba? Could it be the Reaper is made of antimatter, of shadows devoid of fully formed protoplasm—a visage?
Why does he need a pale horse and when he can ride alone saddled on a white Boa constrictor? Some snakes can make twenty miles per hour but then a horse can do forty and more miles per hour. An overachiever in shape shifting, the Grim Reaper can instantly morph into anything from a squawking black raven staring menacingly on a high branch to a Alabama pit viper hiding in some closet in the guise of a black silk tie, decoratively embossed with a triangle shaped head to match its cat-like pupils; it would be a uniquely patterned neckwear , one longing for a Windsor knot, to go with a single-breasted tuxedo jacket with three or four silver monogrammed buttons –a trendy combo favored by some high society gigolo, or a spiffy bankster.
Snakes depending on their length can serve as zany pet ties even if they are on the scaly side. I see a drawer in a dresser where ties are resting, and the danger that a drawer can turn into a nursery—consider an oviviparous tie laying some eggs and then what? As well, the territorial rivalry is as intense as it is with felines.
Danger lurks: a possible snake riot, with snakes gorging snakes--- no more neckwear, a belt perhaps once the pepsin level settles in the winner’s innards and the elasticity returns to normal longitude, 70 cm, wearable with a triple fisherman’s knot-- maybe, size matters here. So does fun, like flashing one’s tie at a social function, introducing one’s tie: “Hi, this here is Fred, he’s a San Francisco Garter Snake, a brand new baby, go ahead, he likes a cuddle.” Or “Hi, this is Francine, kind of cute, just finished nesting; I think she’s pregnant again. Damn!”
And then there are party games one can play: My snake is bigger and more challenging than yours. I can envision snake fights, a pettifogger, if there ever was one, a wealthy party animal, letting his pharaonic personality disorder take flight,   daring an opponent on a bet to throw down his fighting reptile. The bets are on as to who the winner will be. It is a fight to the death, hissing and venomous bites. No guest at this exclusive party will rat out those “snakers” to the SPCA.
Only the most adventurous smart dresser would bring a patterned Madagascar boa constrictor in lieu of a feather boa to a cocktail party to show off how her pet can sip a dry martini and then turn to lick her cleavage, thereby spilling a few drops.

Copyright 2011 by Joe Rosenblatt

Death as a Snaky Necktie Hanging in the Closet

Hanging from a chrome hanger, I see the snaky tie stir, and fill out as though some spirit is flowing evenly into its digestive tract, and soon I find myself staring into its Stygian mouth and see a vibratory forked tongue oscillating in my direction. It is plainly picking up my scent while all the while its lidless eyes receded like two stars aglow sinking slowly into an inkwell of the night sky.

A masterpiece of cryptozoology is trying its best to articulate its feelings for me. There’s something darkly suspicious with this serpent tie’s song and dance performance, one so experientially uplifting, as to invoke a suspicion that it had a life outside this closet; its telltale movement in sync with a spiraling rhythm suggests the hipless virtuoso served some flutist snake charmer in a crowded Jaipur-like market place whorling skyward out of a thatched basket, twisting and undulating to the vibes of snake jazz, its triangular head in the lead pulling a long black elasticized train while transfixing the snake charmer with the pupils of its sparkling eyes, and soon both their heads weave and bob in time to a synchronized hissing breath meditation in sync with a life force that only snakes and their charmers are in intimate with in a collaborative performance, a fulfilled conjoinment of heart and mind, which in turn poses a question of fetishistic gratification by way of unadulterated voyeurism: Can I be a snake charmer to this tie craving the perfection in a double Windsor tie knot, and in tying that knot with my collar up, will it respond to my whistling a minuetto—one to soothe the saturnine heart, or would the snake in the tie, being a true audiophile, makes an attempt to strangle me?

I was lacking a musical education, recalling I once had the temerity to ask my grade ten high school music teacher what was the easiest instrument to play and his fatally derisive reply: “a radio.” Deprived of a musical education, I can neither whistle a tune, or a play a lute enticing a viper to rock and roll. As an object of affection at rest, my luxuriant tie wanted only to be admired, and adored to pulchritudinous bits by a worshipful voyeur who had a few problems dealing with the very nature of fetishes, how they barnacled via the super glue of faith, and cohered to his restive psyche taking up residency in his noggin: I envision them moving on a cat walk, my tie is in the lead, slithering along like any true side winding caenophidian model, and following it, as though on cue, are other inanimate objects of veneration made fluidly animate by the powers of divination. If I could fancy myself as a snake charmer of different stripe I would then arrange a number of ties in a goatskin basket. The ties would be varied in colours, some deep green black, other orange and still others a bone black with red and purple blemishes on their elasticized scaly skin for contrast’s sake to direct the eye away from the symmetry of basic colours. Maybe I will go for the mottled effect?

After I had stopped whirling first in one direction and then the other, I would plunge my hand into the basket and grip the entwined ties drawing them out of the basket and should the ties suddenly hiss at me I wouldn’t be intimidated, knowing that the ties are essentially benign neckwear existing in the habitat of this writer’s imagination, itself a peripheral zoo inhabited by endangered species, that some might argue should be snuffed. What if the ties summoned me from the snake basket?

Instead, I decide to fold the ties together and place them neatly in the basket allowing each tie a few centimeters of space, as not to create a claustrophobic panic among them, knowing that they have incurred a totemistic attachment to me, inheriting many of my phobias such as fear of abandonment and fear of touching and fear of encroaching asphyxiating intimacy and, of course, a dread of being buried alive in a closet serving as a hibernaculum for hibernating ties posing as vipers.

But first I stroke them calming them down into a lethargic state and then as they become placid and pliable to my fondest petting, I lull them further into serenity by crooning an on- the- spot soporific tune. Soon to my absolute delight, even the decorous pigmentation on the ties vanish, as though they never existed there in the first place-- yet I know they are contentedly asleep. I arrange the ties on special chrome hangers in order of preferred colours, so that as natural light enhances them, the ties stir, become momentarily alive -- to purr aloud as cats often do entranced by moonlight in the early morning hours when insomniacs and vampires go freely about in their dwellings, one sipping a high octane martini and another, a blood enriched potation to suit a dedicated mixologist frantically mixing drinks at a brass home bar before the onslaught of shattering morning light.

Copyright 2011 by Joe Rosenblatt

Tie or Viper

What to make of a two metre creature on average like a Black Mamba (Dendroaspis polylepis) whose neuro toxic venom is so potent that it is said that this viper (who can do nearly twenty miles per hour moving on its belly, its scales gripping the surface like a Caterpillar construction tractor) in its pursuit for prey) has enough paralyzing toxicity to destroy a dozen he –men with biceps that could make a competitive orangutan envious, and to perform the feat within the space of an hour. Somehow I can’t visualize an eight foot dark olive green tie supporting a pitch black mouth as its widest point living in my closet.

Copyright 2011 by Joe Rosenblatt