The Leopard Seal—Prose

The official prose blog of The Leopard Seal

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Issue 1—Winter 2013—Prose

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Table of Contents

RODEO Cynthia Dockrell

RILEY ADRIFT Emily C. Hanlon

WHAT YOU CANNOT GIVE THEM A. M. Thompson

THE RECEIPT TOWER B. C. Villalona

SOCIAL CONTRACTS Yvette Schnoeker-Shorb

WOMAN IN THE GARDEN Chloe N. Clark

INGRAHAM'S HILL Jim Krosschell

THE STORY OF THE SNAKE AND THE BEARS Emily Brewton Schilling

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RODEO

FICTION By:  Cynthia Dockrell

My daughter’s hand was hot and squirmy in mine as we climbed that big hill of stairs. I could have gotten up there in no time, even with the beer I was carrying, but Andie slowed me down. I knew her four-year-old legs couldn’t take the stairs two at a time, but I still had to remind myself to be patient as her cowgirl boots clacked on every one of those concrete steps.

When we got to our seats, the rodeo ring in the middle of Boston Garden was so far away it looked no bigger than a bottle top. It made me wonder why I’d even bothered buying those tickets. If it were up to me, I’d have spent the money on a Bruins game, but this rodeo idea was Maggie’s, not mine. “The child needs to do something special,” she’d said. I couldn’t really argue with that. Andie misses her brother as much as Maggie and I do, so I agreed to bring her here—to have a little father-daughter night out, as Maggie put it—while Maggie stayed home with the baby.

Andie hopped up into her seat and craned her neck to get a view of the ring.

“Daddy,” she said, “it’s so far away.”

“I know,” I told her. “But when the horses come out, you’ll see them just fine.”

By the look she gave me, I could tell she wasn’t so sure. I suppose she had good reason to doubt me. The one time Maggie and I took her to visit Paul at the sanatorium, she couldn’t go inside—no children are allowed in there, only us parents, though Paul and the other sick kids never see much of our faces because of those masks they make us wear—and Andie could only look at Paul through his window, from outside. She could hardly see him up there on the fourth floor, much less talk to him. Maggie was in the room with him—she’d brought him to the window—and I could tell she’d gotten Paul excited about seeing his sister, because he was waving hard, his washed-out face smiling out at hers. Down there on the grass with me, Andie was holding my hand and waving back at Paul with her other hand, jumping up and down and saying, “There he is, Daddy, see him?” When I said yes I could see him, she started pleading with me: “I want to play with him, Daddy. Why can’t I go up there? Please, can I go up there?” It just about broke my heart.     

In the seat now, Andie spread out her Annie Oakley skirt until the fringe made a straight line across her legs. She asked for the peanuts, and I dug the bag out of my pocket and put it in her lap.

“Can you open it by yourself?” I asked her.

She nodded and worked at the brown paper with her delicate fingers.

“Careful now,” I said, “don’t spill any.”

“I won’t.”

She sucked the salt off a shell, cracked it with her teeth, and pried at it until the two peanuts slid out. She ate the nuts, then sucked on more shells and ate their insides until there was a neat mound of peanut trash next to the bag in her lap. She’s the tidiest kid you’d ever want to meet, so I don’t know why I warned her not to spill. Probably because that’s what you say to kids—most kids, anyway. It used to be that the room Andie shared with Paul always looked like a hurricane hit it. Those little books with the shiny sides the kids like so much were scattered all over the floor, and rubber balls, Tinker Toys, and other junk littered the whole house. But then we had to put Paul in the hospital, and everything changed. Now the toys stay stacked in the kids’ room as neatly as those shells in Andie’s lap. I didn’t know Paul was the messy one until he was gone.

“When’s it gonna start?” Andie asked.

“Pretty soon,” I said, and took a swig of beer. It was half gone already and the rodeo hadn’t even begun.

Then the lights dimmed. “Daddy, it’s starting!” Andie said.

She jumped out of her seat, forgetting about the peanuts in her lap and spilling them all over the floor. When I saw them scattered across the concrete, without thinking I muttered something I shouldn’t have, and Andie looked at me all startled, maybe even a little afraid.

“It’s all right,” I said, trying not to sound annoyed as I reached down to gather whatever I could save. “You didn’t lose many.”

I put the bag back in my pocket, and she gave me that look again, the same one that comes over her during thunderstorms. Her cowgirl hat had slid off her head and was hanging by the drawstring around her neck, and her blond hair was full of static. She looked so scared that I reached over and tousled her hair.

The Garden was dark now except for a circle of spotlights below. A booming voice welcomed us to the rodeo, and some country music blared through the loudspeakers. A few men on horseback trotted into the ring and lifted their Stetsons to us spectators. Andie pointed and said, “Daddy, look at the horses.” She’d only ever been on pony rides, so these big animals must have been pretty exotic to her, but all that Wild West stuff left me cold. Watching John Wayne in a Western was as close as I cared to get to a saddle.

The cowboys steered their horses through circles and figure eights, whooping and spinning lassoes over their heads. The air around them turned yellow with kicked-up sawdust; it made me thirsty, and I drained the rest of my beer. From all their hollering and giddy-upping, you’d think those guys were having the time of their lives. Maybe they were. If you grow up out West, with nothing much around you except hay and dirt, riding a horse and roping calves is probably the only way you can entertain yourself.  

The riders trotted out of the ring, but Andie still stood like a little pillar, staring down there and waiting for whatever was going to happen next. Then she asked, “When’s Trigger coming out?”

“Probably a little later,” I told her.

Roy Rogers and Dale Evans were the reasons we’d gone there, the star attractions. Andie watches them on TV every chance she gets. So did Paul, before he got sick. He’d turn on the TV and yell to Andie, and the two of them would sit on the floor about eight inches from the screen, barely blinking till “Happy Trails” was over. Now Andie sits there alone.

On the far side of the ring, a cowboy was settling himself onto a bull. One hand held the fence while the other gripped the strap around the bull’s neck. Even though it was half hidden by the wooden rails, I could see that this was one huge animal. Its horns were just inches away from another guy in a checkered shirt who was holding the gate shut. That bull was a mean son of a bitch—it was banging the fence and snorting, ready to kill somebody. The rider held still for a few seconds, then lifted his hand off the fence and nodded.

The gate opened and the bull charged out, spinning in circles. As it kicked and bucked, the man on its back flopped around like a fish on a hook. He was fighting for balance, his legs sticking out, but he held on even as his head waggled all over. Then his hat flew off, and I saw that the guy was just a kid. He was taking a beating out there—his free hand punched the air as his seat pounded up and down on the bull’s back. He started sliding to one side but wouldn’t let go; the kid had guts, no question. The bull was getting mighty furious by then. It didn’t bother hopping around anymore but just stuck itself in one spot, wagging its head as those back legs whipped out behind him. The rider was almost sideways—his head couldn’t have been more than a foot off the sawdust—but he held tight to that strap.

Then the bull reared back and lunged forward, throwing the kid over its massive head. The boy hit the ground pretty hard; he seemed stunned for a second but then scrambled to his feet. The bull was still kicking, its hoofs almost connecting with the kid’s face, but the kid was fast and got out of the way just in time. He picked up his hat and ran toward the gate, and three other men came out of nowhere to chase the bull out of the ring.

The crowd cheered again and Andie looked at me like she didn’t know why. When the noise died down a bit, she said, “When are we gonna see Rin-Tin-Tin?”

“In a few minutes,” I said, even though I knew it would be longer.

“When’s a few minutes?”

Great, I thought, here come the questions.

“Soon,” I told her, maybe a little too hard, because she pulled away from me. She does this. If you’ve had a bad day and don’t hug her as soon as you come in from work, or if you’ve just come from visiting Paul and his fever is up, or his bottom is bloody from all the shots he’s gotten there, or he’s quarantined again—that harness around his chest strapping him to his bed like a dog—and this makes you wonder for the hundredth time if he’ll even survive the TB, Andie will know something’s wrong and look at you with nervous eyes. It makes me tired.

And thirsty. I looked around for one of those roaming vendors with trays full of beer and cigarettes, but the nearest one was four sections away. In between it was just families everywhere. Even right next to me, there was a mother and father with six kids passing popcorn back and forth. I must have been the only guy in this whole place who came with just one kid.

I turned back toward the ring and saw a girl on a horse trotting into the spotlight, waving her hat at the audience and smiling big and pretty.

“Look,” I said to Andie, “a cowgirl.”

She didn’t seem to care until I pointed out the fringe on the girl’s shirt. “Kind of like yours,” I said. That got a tiny smile, but I could tell she was getting bored with those characters who weren’t famous.

A calf came barreling into the ring, and the cowgirl lifted a rope off her saddle and started twirling it over her head.

“Watch this,” I said to Andie. “Do you think she’ll catch it on the first try?”

Andie shrugged; she was about as interested in this act as I was. It was hard to believe this was the same kid who started asking for a horse the minute she could talk. I suppose it didn’t help that she was stuck there with just me. If Paul had been with us, the two of them could have thrown peanut shells at each other or made faces or found some other way to pass the time until the big acts came out.  

When the cowgirl released the rope, it circled the calf’s neck and the animal tumbled onto its side.

“Look at that,” I said, “she did it. Pretty good, huh?”

Andie nodded without looking at me; in fact, she was almost pouting. Jesus, I thought, would it kill her to smile? I admit we were pretty far from the action up there, if that was even what was bothering her, but those seats were all I could afford. You know you’re scraping bottom when a couple of rodeo tickets are a luxury, but unless things change with Paul and I can get out from behind a desk and back on the road making sales, we’ll have to keep going without.

The cowgirl jumped off her horse and pulled hard on the rope, keeping the calf on its side as she ran over to it. She knelt down and yanked a smaller rope out of her pocket, twisting it around the calf’s feet so fast that the poor animal didn’t know what hit it. It lay there hog-tied and bleating as the girl stood and waved to the audience, and Andie gave me this injured look.

“Daddy,” she said, “why did she do that?” Her lip was quivering.

“Don’t worry,” I told her, “the calf didn’t get hurt.”

From the look in her eyes, I could tell she didn’t believe me. And why should she, when I wasn’t sure I believed it myself—when I hated what was being done to that helpless creature just as much as she did? But luckily the cowgirl untied the calf and it sprang to its feet.

“See?” I said, pointing at the ring. “He’s just fine.”

We watched the calf run off, and then Andie looked at me again as she wiped her nose on her sleeve, the tears halted.

I scanned the stands for the beer man, but he was nowhere in sight, and I was tired of waiting.

“I’m thirsty,” I said to Andie. “Aren’t you? How about a lemonade?”

She stood up and started to follow me, but I told her to stay there and I’d bring the drink back.

“Why can’t I come?” she asked.

“Because it’ll only take a minute.”

She backed away from me and sat down. She looked so small there in the seat that I swore she’d made herself shrink. That felt like a punch in the gut, I have to admit, so I squatted down next to her and said, “I promise I’ll be right back. Okay?”

She made a brave face and said okay.

“Atta girl.”

There was more roping going on as I made my way down the stairs, only this time it was men who were throwing the lassoes, and one by one they were yanking huge steers off their feet. Those guys must have been stronger than they looked. They weren’t as big as some hockey players I’ve known—at least not the defensemen who’ve slammed me into the boards more times than I care to count—but there was no denying you have to be coordinated to rope a steer.    

At the beer stand there was a line so long it looped around the corner near the men’s room. Great, I thought, just what I need. I considered going back to the stands empty-handed, but the bartenders were pouring fast and so I got in line.

While I was standing there, who should step in behind me but the bull rider. He was limping pretty bad. Dirt was smudged all over his shirt and dungarees, and a big purple bruise was spread across one cheek. He was even younger than I’d thought—couldn’t have been more than 17, 18 at most. Seeing such a young kid looking so beat up tugged at me, and I said, “That bull threw you pretty hard out there.” 

He shrugged and said, “That wasn’t bad. Been thrown worse than that.”

“That right?” I asked. “How much worse?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Hit my head on a fence post one time, was unconscious for a while. Bull stepped on me another time, broke my leg.” He shrugged again. “Part of the job.”

Tough way to make a living, I was thinking. I’ve broken a few bones myself on the ice, and once I was out cold for a few minutes after a stick caught my skate and flipped me onto my head. I wasn’t much older than this kid. I still get banged around in pickup games, but the worst injuries are behind me. So are the best games.

“How long you been doing this?” I asked him.

He considered, then said, “Forever, I guess. Started riding horses as soon as I could walk. Sat on my first bull before I got out of grade school.” 

We inched forward, but the bar was still way up ahead, so I kept talking. “You from a rodeo family or something?”

He shook his head. “My folks’ ranch, but they don’t think much of this life. Tried to talk me out of it.”

“Why’s that?”

He cocked his head to one side and thought for a minute, then said, “The usual reasons, I guess.” He lowered his voice and stuck his chest out in imitation of someone else—his father, probably—as he recited, “‘It’s not stable enough.’ ‘You’ll get hurt.’ ‘There’s no future in it.’ ” He pulled his chest in. “Et cetera.” 

“I guess you didn’t listen to them.” I meant this to sound light-hearted, but it didn’t come out that way.

The kid looked at me all serious, his eyes suddenly dark.

“I’ll tell you what, mister,” he said. “This is what I do. It’s what I can do. A bull throws me off his back, so what—at least he has to fight to get rid of me.”

From the way his jaw was set I could see he was daring me to argue with him.

“I meant no offense,” I said.

His face relaxed and he gave me a little nod, then looked away.

We finally reached the front of the line, and I offered to buy him a beer. He took off his hat and ran his hand through his sweaty hair, giving me this sizing-up look, then said, “Sure. Thanks.” 

It occurred to me that he wasn’t old enough to drink, at least not officially, but he grabbed the cup when it was filled and gulped through the foam so fast that I could tell he’d had hundreds of beers already. It made him seem even younger. Between the bruise and the dirt and now the drink in his hand, the kid looked like he was dressed up for Halloween, just pretending to be a cowboy when he was only a schoolboy playing a part.  

He wiped his mouth with his shirtsleeve and then raised his cup to me. “Appreciate it,” he said.

I raised my cup in return. “Good luck.”

He sauntered off, or tried to saunter, but the limp slowed him down. I watched his skinny back disappear behind other men and wondered if he was through for the night or if he had to climb onto another unruly animal and put on a second brave show. If not that night then the next one, probably, when he’d be even stiffer and sorer than he was now. But he wouldn’t let on that anything hurt, I can guarantee that. You never let on.

When I got back to my seat, Andie was curled into a little ball and didn’t see me until I said “Hey, kiddo.”

She startled and looked up at me all scared.

“Daddy,” she cried, “why didn’t you come back?” Her face was wet and snot was bubbling out of her nose. 

“Hey, hey,” I said, “I came back. I’m right here.”

She didn’t speak, just sat there and cried, and I almost wished she’d have a temper tantrum instead. I was starting to ask myself why I’d even brought her here. The people around us were giving me looks.

I sank into my seat and pulled out my handkerchief, then held it over her nose and told her to blow. She tried but mostly just made big gulping noises.

 “Shhhh,” I said, “it’s all right. No need to cry anymore.” She made a few more sputtering sounds until finally she was just sniffling.

Then she looked at my beer. As she did, it hit me that I’d forgotten her lemonade. Her eyes moved from my beer to my face and began to fill up again. Don’t cry, I wanted to tell her, please, don’t cry again, but how could I say that when it was my fault she didn’t have her drink—when I’d spent my scant money on a stranger’s beer instead of my own kid’s lemonade. I braced myself for more sobs, but she just sat there quietly as the tears spilled over and trickled down her cheeks. My chest felt like one of those cowboys had thrown a lasso around it. Andie sniffed once and ran her sleeve over her face, then turned away from me to watch the rodeo again.

All at once I had this powerful urge to walk out of there. I saw myself jogging down the steps, out the door, and into the night, running for as long as I could, through Boston Common and Beacon Hill, over the bridge into Cambridge. I kept going, walking when I couldn’t run anymore, through town after town, until I’d left Massachusetts altogether. I kept heading west, off to someplace where nobody knew me, where there was no sick kid, no fear, no struggle, only the life I was supposed to have before it took such a wrong turn. The running felt so real that my legs twitched.

But seeing Andie’s wet little face brought me right back.

“I’m sorry I forgot your lemonade,” I said. “I’ll go get it now if you still want it.”

She shook her head.

“You sure?”

She nodded. She was so calm it was as if all of this hadn’t happened.

I drank what was left of my beer and left the cup on the floor with the broken peanut shells. The alcohol warmed my hands and feet, and I wished I could go get another beer, or something even stronger, to speed the process along, but I’d have to make do. 

A drum roll sounded, and a voice on the loudspeaker told the kids in the audience that the moment they’d been waiting for had finally arrived. I leaned over to Andie and said, “Ready?” She nodded but didn’t seem the least bit excited.

The spotlights darted around as the drum kept rolling, and then out came Roy Rogers. He trotted in on Trigger’s back and made the horse rear up and dance on his hind legs as Roy waved all around, smiling as if this was the happiest moment of his life. His pants and shirt were bright blue, his spurs shiny. Under the lights, Trigger looked gold. Together they seemed to fill up the whole ring.

Then Dale Evans came out. She took off her hat and waved it at the crowd, smiling as wide as Roy. I wondered how the two of them could do that, smile on and on, not just here but in front of the TV cameras week after week. 

I glanced at Andie, who was standing up and craning her neck.

“Can you see okay?” I asked her.

She started to nod but then shook her head. Her mouth turned pouty and I could see she was brewing a fresh batch of tears.

“Come here,” I said, and pulled her toward me. When I reached under her arms she went stiff, but then I settled her onto my lap and she loosened up a bit. “Is that better?”

She nodded. Her hat was still hanging around her neck, and I took it off and put it on her seat. A moment later she leaned against me, and I realized I hadn’t held her in my lap in a long time. She weighed next to nothing. 

Roy and Dale started singing “Happy Trails,” and the crowd cheered. Then Rin-Tin-Tin came out and the cheering got so loud it drowned out the singing. The dog stood there panting and glancing around like he was looking for somebody.

“How about that?” I said to Andie. “All three of them together, right down there.”

She didn’t say anything, didn’t lean forward for a better view, just stayed there against my chest. I wondered if she could see anything from there, or if she even cared anymore. Her body got heavier and I realized she was falling asleep. She was warm in that little-kid way, giving off a clean unsweaty heat that I wished to Christ she’d never have to lose. Her hair smelled faintly like bread. I thought about waking her, just so she wouldn’t be upset about missing this, but I didn’t have the heart.

All around us kids were out of their seats, some of them jumping up and down as “Happy Trails” went on and on. Andie’s head rolled to one side as she sank even deeper into sleep; I shifted her in my lap and tightened my arms around her. Finally Roy and Dale stopped singing, then tipped their hats and left the ring. A man led Rin-Tin-Tin away.

One by one the other rodeo acts came out for a final bow, but everyone in the audience was too busy packing up to pay much attention. Andie was dead to the world now, and I realized I’d have to carry her to the car. As I stood up and shifted her to my shoulder, I saw the bull rider coming out for his bow. He was trying not to limp, but his leg must have been all swollen by then. He hopped to the center of the ring, lifted his hat, and stood there without smiling. Even though hardly anyone was watching, he didn’t move, just held his hat and looked out at the crowd like he was caught up in a spell. I stared back at him and wondered where he’d be tomorrow, riding more bulls or laid up in a hospital somewhere. I pictured him beat up and broken in a bed like Paul’s, with its iron railings and straps to hold him down, the room all white and nobody else around. 

Then the spell broke and the kid hobbled away, and I carried Andie toward the stairs.

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RILEY ADRIFT

FICTION By:  Emily C. Hanlon

Riley sensed that her life was spiraling downward.

She found that she was talking to herself, and not in the way normal people sometimes talk to themselves.  Not the casual, “Oh, I forgot my keys,” remarks everyone sometimes makes out loud.  She asked herself questions, and then answered them.

“Do we want to go to the movies tonight?”

“Yeah, but can we afford it?”

“We made okay tips last night.”

“Still, rent’s due, and we need groceries.”

“I guess you’re right.  What’s on TV?”

Sometimes it was just in her head, but a lot of times it was right out loud.  Some of the conversations lasted quite a while, and they could get pretty deep.  She argued with herself, and it could get heated, like the time the only channel she could tune in on her thirteen-inch TV, no matter how much tinfoil she twisted onto the rabbit ear antennae, was showing a marathon of romantic favorites.

“This is the most ridiculous piece of sentimental crap I have ever seen.”

“Are you kidding?  ‘Love Story’ is a classic movie.”

“That doesn’t make it a good movie.  It’s a classic, tired cliché.  Rich boy gives it all up for poor girl, poor girl dies tragically young just as they start to make it big.”

“You’re forgetting that it also documents an era.  A time when attitudes about class were changing.  Attitudes towards women were changing.”

“Are you serious?  If you want a movie that documents the changing attitudes of the sixties and seventies, you can do a hell of a lot better than ‘Love Story.”

Sometimes Riley caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and saw her face growing thinner, her skin growing sallow.  She didn't have the energy to address her poor diet or her unhealthy lifestyle.  She floated through her days; all she wanted to do was sleep.  But, then, when she finally crawled into the twin-sized bed that came with her furnished apartment, a million thoughts impeded her rest.

It wasn't working to plan.

Riley had moved to out to a town called Masonville in western Massachusetts from Boston nine months before and had yet to make a single friend.  She didn’t even have a pet, couldn’t afford to feed one.  She herself was living off of what she could steal from the kitchen at the Masonville Family Restaurant, where she worked waiting tables.

Spending was an issue for Riley.  She made minimal tips, and then bought stupid things.

She bought knee-high black leather boots; not the kind that would keep her legs warm or give her traction in the New England snow, but sexy ones, the kind you would wear to a club with a miniskirt. They were still in the back seat of her car, in their original box, with the plastic still stuffed way down into the toes to keep their shape.  Another time, she bought the box set of Star Wars on Blu-Ray because it came with a collector's watch, although she didn’t have a Blu-Ray player.  She had a collection of wineglasses with red stems and flowers painted on the bowls, which got broken, one by one, as she washed them in her bathroom sink.

There was never milk in Riley's small refrigerator cube, or any other staple. Occasionally she bought store brand pasta when it was on sale two for one, or canned soup to cook on her hotplate, counting out the quarters and dimes from her nightly tips while cashiers sighed heavily. 

She was hungry all the time.

“You know we don’t need this,” she muttered to herself aloud in the aisle of a posh kitchen shop in an outlet mall.  “What would we cook on it?  Dog food?  Because that would be all we could afford if we bought it.”

She looked at the price sticker on the bottom of the cast iron skillet:  $79.95.

“It comes with its own cover, and it’s good for stovetop and oven.  And it’s orange!”

Riley caught sight of the woman at the counter trying hard to pretend she wasn’t looking and immediately cupped her hand to her ear as if holding a cell phone.

“Yeah, so, okay,” Riley said, too loudly. “The orange one, not the black one.  Sure, Mom.  See you soon.”

*****

One night, driving the five-mile stretch of Route 26 towards home after work, Riley took the wrong exit, and was unable to U-turn due to a median strip of dead grass.  She was forced down a six mile strip of rundown stores, mini-malls and boarded-up mom and pop restaurants.

“Oh my God, Riley,” She said to herself.  “You are such a moron.  How many times have you driven home from work?  Are you brain damaged?”

“Shut up!”

She finally found a break in the median, and pulled in the parking lot of a garden store to turn around.

There was a vast display just beyond a chain-link fence showcasing gnomes and statues of saints to put on your front lawn, with something like Astroturf covering the area, making it look like a bizarre kind of mini-golf course. A stone fairy, delicate and slight, piqued Riley’s interest, and she parked to take a closer look. But when she peered through the fence running the perimeter of the yard, a different statue called out to her. 

Seated and meditative among the tall Virgin Marys and Saint Christophers was a shiny marble Buddha.  He was not the Buddha Riley was used to, the kind she had always seen in Chinese restaurants with the big belly you rubbed for luck.  He was thin, and wasn’t laughing, but sitting quietly, shining with a blue tinge in the moonlight.  She knew only by instinct that he was Buddha.  She fell in love with him.

Riley returned to her car and, sitting there, had a conversation with herself about the practicality of buying a garden Buddha.

“He’s cool.”

“We can’t afford any luxuries!”

“I know, but I like him.”

“We’re Catholic, Riley!”

“Ex-Catholic.”

“Well, we simply don’t have the money to buy it.”

“What if it were fewer than thirty dollars?”

“Too much.”

“Twenty?”

“Too much.”

“Ten dollars.  If the Buddha is fewer than ten dollars, we’ll buy him, okay?”

“He’s not going to be fewer than ten dollars.”

“Maybe he is. We’ll come back tomorrow.”

*****

The next day, the unheated shop in the center of the display yard was so cold that Riley’s fingers shook as she counted out two hundred and thirty dollars in cash, most of which had been intended for paying back rent, and handed it over in exchange for Buddha.

“Where you gonna want that delivered?” The old clerk asked, speaking around the end of an unfiltered cigarette.  He had a ring of gray hair running around his head at ear level, but none on top.  He bent down to count her bills (mostly ones and fives), and Riley felt like she could almost see her reflection in his skull.

“Oh, I’ll take him with me,” she said, breaking her eyes away.

The man looked up with his eyes but not his head and snorted.  He took the cigarette out of his mouth and held it between thumb and forefinger, pointing with it.

“You gonna carry that marble statue around with you?  You know how much that thing weighs?”

The wispy smoke from the cigarette wafted towards Riley, stealing her attention, and she hummed vaguely, breathed in, then said, “Hey, can you spare a cigarette?”

Smoking was one of those things Riley couldn’t afford, not when she spent her money on stupid things like home paraffin wax hand spas.  The sight of misty tobacco smoke, rising delicately upward, drove her mad.

The salesman eyed her strangely, set down her wad of cash and reached under the desk for his pack.  He shook out one and held the pack for her to take it herself.

“You plan to carry that statue home on your back, missy?” the old man finally asked when she had taken her first three drags.

“Can’t you put him in my car?”

He sighed and pushed himself up with a cane and hobbled to the back door of the shop, leaning his weight on it to heave it open. He hollered out to someone in the yard, then made his way back, limping and hacking into his fist.  He settled into his chair heavily and waved his arm towards the front door of the shop.

“Head out front.  Ty will set y’up,” he said. 

“Thank you,” Riley said, leaning across the desk to stamp out the cigarette in his ashtray.

“You from here?”  He asked.

“I’m from Boston.”

“Yeah,” he said leaning back and nodding as though that explained it all.  “No telling bout city girls.”

Riley stood silent for a second, only slightly wounded.

“Can I get another cigarette?” She asked.

*****

When Riley reached her ancient little hatchback, a muscular man in a quilted flannel jacket had rolled Buddha to the car on a two-wheeler.  He pointed at the hatch.

“Open ‘er up,” he said.

Riley paused.

“Oh, no,” she said, tapping the passenger’s side door.  “Put him in here.”

Ty stared at her a second, as if it might be a joke, then laughed, rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand and tapped the hatch with his knuckles.

“Don’t be cute, come on. Open it up.”

Riley crossed her arms and pulled herself up to her full height.  She hated being called cute.  She tapped the passenger side door with her knuckles, making her tap louder than his.

Ty shook his head and wheeled the Buddha up front. Ty lifted with his legs, grunting with the effort, and settled Buddha in backwards, with his forehead against the headrest, and backed out.

“No, make him face the front, like a person,” Riley demanded.

Ty grumbled but complied.

“So, sweetie,” Ty said, no longer annoyed, just amused.  He leaned against the car and lit a cigarette.  “This thing weighs three hundred pounds, solid marble.  How do you plan on getting it out of the car?”

Riley looked at him.

“Why would I want to get him out of the car?”

She leaned in and pulled the seat belt across Buddha’s body, waited for the satisfying click.  She backed up to see how he looked.  He looked good.

"Weirdo," Ty said under his breath.

Riley turned to him and said, “Can I have a cigarette?”

*****

Riley started driving around with Buddha strapped in beside her, and felt somehow more at peace.  She found herself less apt to fight with herself. Driving had once been a chore, especially after the traumatic trip west from Boston, but now she found herself taking aimless journeys down unfamiliar roads just for the harmony she felt with Buddha.

When she had left home, Riley had followed the Massachusetts Turnpike, which carves a straight shot through the center of the state, and then turned off onto Route 122, then Route 26, which took her right into Masonville. Masonville had not been her original destination.  Masonville is no one's destination; it has nothing to offer anyone, just a few houses and apartment buildings and a bunch of rundown businesses. Her original plan had been to go further west into New York; the idea of a state line between her past and her present was very attractive.  It wasn't gas or money she'd run out of, just ambition.  Tired and overwrought, she had randomly taken the Route 122 exit, just forty miles shy of the New York border, and pulled over to the side of the road, crying with her forehead against the steering wheel.  When a state trooper drove slowly by, eyeing her, she quickly composed herself, then followed the road to the next town that had an apartment and a job.

“Maybe we’re ready to leave Masonville,” she mused aloud to herself and to Buddha on one of their Sunday drives, but she knew they wouldn’t.  She owed her landlady a lot of money, and at least she had a job and a warm bed in this town.  And it wasn’t fair to say she had no friends anymore, she thought.

She pulled into the full-service gas station just at the Masonville town limits.  While the attendant pumped the gas, Riley brushed the front of the Buddha, the way her mother used to brush the front of Riley’s dress before they went into church.  Riley checked Buddha’s face for smudges, fully prepared to spit into a tissue if necessary. Buddha was clean.

*****

Riley made lousy tips because she was not a good waitress.  Her customers were always getting up and complaining to the manager because she would forget to put in their orders with the kitchen.  Smiling did not come naturally to her, as it seemed to the other waitresses, and she was even known to spill drinks on people.  The other wait staff zoomed around the restaurant, balancing four dishes on their arms, grinning and cracking jokes with the customers. Riley was mystified by their ease.  Every day she expected to be fired.

One morning, Riley served breakfast to a group who happened to be from her hometown.  She didn’t know them well, but they were friends of her sister Eileen and they recognized her from Eileen's wedding.  Riley had spoken to them for a few minutes, hungrier for news from home than she thought she'd be, and even laughed with them a couple of times.  Before the dinner shift the manager made a snide remark in front of all of the other staff.

“I saw Riley smiling and talking to the customers at lunch today,” he said with a smirk. “Just like a real person.  I had to read her nametag three times to make sure it was really her.”

Everyone snickered while Riley stood there, incapable of a snappy response.

They hate me, Riley thought.  Why do they hate me?

This was the same manager, Gerald, who had busted Riley for eating a sandwich a few months back.  The customer had ordered it with no mayo; the sandwich had been made incorrectly, and made a second time.  When Gerald saw her eating the first sandwich, he grabbed it out of her hand and screamed at her about restaurant policy, his spittle flecking her face.  She had burst into tears and he’d sighed, told her if she wanted to cry to take her fifteen minute smoke break out back.

Food had been harder to come by for Riley since then.  She’d had to lower herself to eating other people's leftovers.  She pulled ham or roast beef out of half-eaten sandwiches, justifying it by saying the customer's hands had not touched that part of the sandwich.  Other times she wasn't so picky.

*****

“Buddha,” Riley said as soon as she slid into the car next to him after the second shift was over. The bones in her legs felt about ready to protrude from her skin from standing and walking all night.  “I ate someone's leftover hamburger.  There were lipstick marks on the bun.  What have I become?”

Buddha’s smile was distant and compassionate, but he was made of marble.  He was a statue. He could do nothing but listen.

“I am the first one to admit I have problems,” Riley said, rubbing her hands together and blowing on them in the chilly car.  She shivered.  “I have all kinds of problems.  I talk to myself. I talk to a statue.  I think I may be insane.”

Riley sat silently next to Buddha for several minutes, then reached across him to open the glove box.  A cavalcade of single, begged cigarettes poured forth.  After managing to corral them back in, she lit one up and rested back against the seat.  On the first drag, she was surprised to find that it was mentholated, like her dad smoked.  She thought about her first cigarettes, stealing them from his dresser, thought about her father, then shook it off. She smoked next to Buddha, then tossed the butt out the window and sat for few moments more.  As soon as the cooks and the last of the wait staff started to emerge from the back door, Riley jammed the keys into the ignition.  Her wheels spun in the gravel for a moment before the momentum took them away.

Riley didn’t want anyone to see Buddha.  She pulled out of the parking lot and drove the back roads home.

*****

Riley lived in a motel, the kind you could rent by the hour or by the week.  It was a concrete L-shaped structure, with twelve rooms. The manager, a sixty-ish woman named Mrs. Carney who was forever in a housecoat and slippers referred to the rooms as “apartments.”  Each apartment had two doors, one to the outside, and one to the inner hall, where the soda machine and free ice were housed. Riley was fairly sure she didn’t want to know what went on in there, (she'd heard things) so kept that door bolted shut and with a makeshift cardboard shelf pushed against it.  She knew she was fooling herself, thinking cardboard could keep out evil.

The apartment looked exactly like what it was: a motel room.  There was a wall of windows at one end and a bathroom to the left of the hall door.  The windows were decorated with the same thick, flame-retardant drapes that had been hung sometime around 1972.  The room came furnished, but Riley had to provide her own TV, one she’d brought from her room at home.  She put the TV on a cardboard box.  Her impulse purchases piled up under the twin bed, untouched.

Riley never slept, and blamed it on the apartment. Sometimes she felt like she was sleeping with thirty years of motel-wanderers.  People having lunchtime affairs, welfare families, out of town relatives just visiting for a week.  Maybe at one time Masonville was crawling with hookers, and this was their home.  Thousands of ghosts roamed that room, maybe millions. She lay awake at night listening for them.  Sometimes she talked to herself, or watched TV to drown them out, until she realized that she had a better companion now, and went out to sit with Buddha.

She opened the car door, and poked her head in.

“Buddha?” She said, quietly, as though she might be waking him.  “I…I couldn’t sleep.  I thought I’d come out and sit with you for a little while, okay?”

Riley climbed in, surprised at how comfortable she felt.  She settled in and lit a cigarette from her dwindling stash.

“Remember I was saying about my sister’s wedding before?  The customers at the restaurant?  They remembered me because it was a memorable wedding.  It was a memorable wedding because of me.”

Riley blew smoke rings, opened the window a crack.

“They didn’t mention it,” Riley said, sighing, rubbing an eyebrow.  “They talked about my Uncle Danny getting drunk and giving a twenty-minute toast, then forgetting who the couple was.  That was polite of them.”

Riley rolled her head towards the Buddha, whose expression, of course, never changed.

“You accept me, right?  You don’t judge me.  You’re better at that than me, for Christ’s sake.  Or, for Buddha’s sake, I guess.  I fight myself at every turn.

“Well, I told my mother about three weeks before the wedding, I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t be the whatever.  Bridesmaid, maid of honor.  She didn’t want me, Eileen, I mean.  Eileen wanted her best friend; I know for a fact. She told me.  She said, ‘Riley, I am only doing this because Mama is insisting.’  She calls our mother Mama.  She’s very sweet like that.  She said, ‘Riley you are a weird girl, and if you screw up my wedding I will never forgive you.’”

Riley’s eyes moistened at memory and she rubbed at them with the knuckles of her fingers. She didn’t want Eileen to have that effect on her.  She didn’t like Eileen, never had.  Why she should be insulted that the feeling was mutual?

“I am a weird girl,” Riley said.  “So what?  So I didn’t want to be in her stupid Catholic wedding.”

Riley lost control of her lower lip, and tried to bite it.  She bit it harder,

“Fuck it,” she said.  “Just fuck it.”

And she sat in stony silence with Buddha.

*****

After a rough shift with Gerald’s comments in her ear all night, Riley sat up and tried to watch late night syndicated sitcoms, then gave up and admitted to herself that she’d rather be talking with Buddha.

“There’s more that I didn’t tell you,” Riley admitted, climbing into the car in her pajamas.  She'd brought blankets and wrapped herself up.  She leaned her back against Buddha and rested her bare feet against the driver’s side window.

“I was having panic attacks. That was the real reason I didn’t want to be in Eileen's wedding.  All those people, something like three hundred, looking at me.  I didn’t even want to leave my house, my room.  I wanted to stay in bed all the time.  I guess maybe I was depressed.  My mother was on my case to get a job, or go to school.  I just couldn’t.”

Riley stretched her neck around to see the Buddha’s face.

“Do you think I’m crazy?” She turned back.  “Well, my mother didn’t.  She said I was being childish.  ‘Riley’, she said,” Riley slipped into an impression of her mother, nasal, with a Boston accent.  “‘You're nineteen years old. You can’t just laze around the house all the time.’  And then it was that I was trying to get attention.  ‘You’re trying to deflect attention from your sister’s big day, just like a child.  Or a dog.’  She said that.  She called me a dog.”

Riley let that sink in.

“So, anyway, I cried at the wedding, right up there at the front of the church.  Not just tears, but wails.  Big, loud, embarrassing wailing.  No one could hear the vows.  I was out of my mind, out of control.  I just broke down. That’s it; it was a breakdown.  A nervous breakdown, I guess.  In the middle of my perfect sister’s perfect wedding.  I guess I was like a dog.  Howling.  No one said anything; they just pretended it wasn't happening.”

She sat silently for a moment, wondering.

“I should see a shrink, right?  You think I should see a shrink.  I think so, too.  But considering I have to eat second-hand food, I don't see how I can possibly swing it.

“I suppose I could return you,” Riley said to Buddha without looking at him.  “Two hundred and thirty dollars?  I still have back rent to pay, let alone everything else.  I wonder what the return policy is at that garden shop.”

Riley put her feet on the floor and turned so she could face Buddha, and when she looked into his expressionless face, she dissolved into tears.

“Who am I kidding,” she said, rubbing her cheek against his cold, smooth shoulder.  “You’re all I have now.  You’ll stay with me"

*****

At some point, Riley fell asleep with her face pressed up against Buddha's carved sleeve at an awkward angle, and when she woke up she had red marks on her cheek and twisted muscles in her neck.  She dragged herself into the present, placing herself, thinking, I'm in the parking lot, without much emotion.  In the visor mirror, Riley rubbed at the sore spot on her face. 

She wrestled her stiff body out of the car, her hair smelling like it had spent the night lying in a wet ashtray.  But she had slept deeply, away from the motel ghosts.  The chill of the air in the parking lot, the breeze that blew dead leaves around her bare feet, the cold tar under her toes; it felt better than waking up in the stagnant air of her apartment.  But it was cold, and a stench hung around her like an aura. She wrapped herself with her blanket and started towards the door, desperate for a shower.

Mrs. Carney, grasping a sea foam green raincoat over her customary purple housedress, came striding across the parking lot towards Riley.  Riley took three quick steps to stand by Buddha’s window, shielding him from view, then turned to face the accusatory landlady, who stood, arms crossed, too close to Riley.

“Oh, hi, Mrs. Carney,” Riley said, trying to smile.

“What happened to your face?” the woman asked. No pleasantries, no concern, just suspicion.

“Nothing," Riley's hand involuntarily flew to the mark, fingering it.

Mrs. Carney waved her arm at Riley's hatchback.  “You sleep in the parking lot last night?”

Riley kept quiet, kept her eyes on Mrs. Carney's feet in their terry cloth slippers.  They were probably pink once, now pilly and a beige-gray.  Her ankles were pale, blue veins standing out in 3-D.

“You can't sleep in the parking lot,” Mrs. Carney said, chin up, like she was anticipating a fistfight.  “This place is respectable.  You sleep in the car it looks like some kind of homeless shelter."

Riley remained quiet but thought, Is she delusional?  Does she really think this is a respectable place?

"You're a weird girl, missy," Mrs. Carney said, taking a step back from her, and peering around Riley to look into the car window.  "You got that statue in the car.  It’s plain weird. I don’t think I want you here anymore.”

Mrs. Carney stood firm, working hard at not appearing cold in the rough wind.  Riley waited to feel some kind of reaction to being kicked out, but none came.

            “Pack up and get out,” Mrs. Carney said, jerking her head towards the building.  "You got thirty minutes."

“Okay,” Riley said in an even voice, and started towards the door.

“Don't go asking any of the other guests for cigarettes on your way out!” Mrs. Carney hollered at Riley as they went their separate ways across the parking lot, Riley to her room, Mrs. Carney to the community kitchen that Riley had never utilized.

Riley made the long walk of shame past the other occupants of the motel, many of whom had come out to stare at her. With her bag of clothes in her hand and her TV under one arm, Riley slipped into her car feeling that she had escaped with some of her dignity intact.  She'd left all of her impulse purchases behind, under the bed, for the next tenant: the duck figurines, the hats, the hand-blown glass pens, all of it.

"We've been kicked out," she told Buddha.  “I don’t know what comes next.”

They sat in the car in silence, Riley conscious of each breath, until she saw Mrs. Carney watching her from the common entrance.

She drove slowly because she had no idea where they were going. 

*****

At a rest area off the main highway, Riley shook out her hair, oily and rank, wondering what to do with it, knowing she had to be at work in twenty-five minutes.  She'd never gotten that shower she'd ached for, just thirty minutes to pack her things and get out.  Now her clothes stank too, the way clothes do when you sleep in them, of body odor and something like urine.

She grabbed her duffel bag and headed to the public restroom, aware of the truck drivers emerging from their eighteen-wheelers in the truck park behind the rest stop.  After they hopped down from the cabs of their trucks, they all stretched their bodies in the same set pattern: hands over head, up twice, to each side twice; then hands on hips to each side twice.  Riley imitated them.

After having washed her face and armpits with soft antibacterial soap from the dispenser on the wall, and patting herself down with rough paper towels, she felt a little better, fresher. While she was changing into clean underwear and the brown uniform dress she wore to work, another woman came into the restroom and stopped dead upon seeing her.

She was a tough-looking woman, short and wide with a butch haircut like a man’s, wearing a flannel shirt with a second flannel tied around her waist.  Riley assumed she belonged to one of the eighteen-wheelers.

“This ain’t a dressing room,” the trucker said, eyeing her, smirking.

“I know,” Riley said, fumbling with the zipper on the dress.  “But I got kicked out of my apartment and I need to get ready for work.”

It didn’t occur to Riley to be anything but honest now that she was at rock bottom. The trucker nodded, indicating that this was an acceptable answer, then banged open a stall door.

“Why did you get kicked out?” The trucker asked while she peed. Riley hated talking to someone while she peed, but she answered.

“They said I was weird.”

“That’s a reason?”

“I guess so.”

The stall door slammed again as the trucker emerged and faced Riley.  Riley felt like a student squirming under a headmistress’s glare.  Why does she care, she thought.

“Is that little car out front yours?” the woman asked.  “The one with the statue?”

“Yes,” Riley said.  “It’s Buddha.”

“Buddha,” the trucker nodded as if it made sense, as if to say, yes, she was familiar with Buddhism.  This was why she was interested, why she’d approached Riley.  Buddha attracted attention.  “Are you taking it somewhere or do you just drive around with a Buddha statue?”

“Just driving,” Riley admitted.

The trucker started to smile a little smile, then grinned, then laughed a hard laugh, loud, and slapped Riley’s shoulder.

“Damn, I was just joking” she said, chuckling in the low register of a long-time smoker.  “You drive around with a statue?  Hate to tell you, honey, but you are weird.”

Riley smiled a little.  At least this woman wasn’t going to hassle her.

“Still, that’s no reason to put a girl on the streets,” the trucker said.  “I’m Linda.”

“I’m Riley.” She felt the muscles she’d clenched relax a little. “Is one of those big trucks yours?”

“Yep,” Linda said, her eyes showing pride, but sighing a little, her shoulders dropping, just a barely perceptible movement.  “Eighteen-wheeler.  Own it outright.  I contract out.  I’ve been across the country, Jesus, can’t say how many times.”

“That’s pretty amazing,” Riley said, imagining driving through states she’d never been to, sites she’d heard of: Painted Desert, Death Valley, Grand Canyon.

“Yep,” Linda said again.  “Been everywhere.”

She gave Riley ten dollars, directions to two truck stops that had showers, and an entire pack of cigarettes.  She couldn't seem to stop grinning at Riley.

"Damn," Linda said.  "I drive and I drive.  Never see anything interesting." She started laughing again, slapped Riley's back, and said, "Get yourself some help, honey."

*****

Riley went to work the busy lunch shift that day.  She didn't change the way she worked: wore the same uniform she wore every day, kept her hair in the same ponytail, and wrote orders on the same pad.  A couple of sandwiches got mixed up, one with tomatoes, one with pickles when it was supposed to be the other way around, but that counted for a good day for Riley.  But she noticed many of her customers calling over the manager.

"Riley," Gerald called, beckoning her with his hand, then pointing to his office. 

"Riley, what is up with that smell?" Gerald said, sitting at the manager's desk, waving a hand in front of his nose.

Slowly, Riley dropped her head to look into her lap.  He will not make me cry, she thought, focusing on her yellow apron, on the eyelet edge.  He had made her cry before, when he pointed out in front of the kitchen staff that there was a bloodstain on the back of her uniform; she'd gotten her period and hadn't noticed.  Another time he had stood and shouted orders at her while she tried to wrap flatware into napkins, a task she had always had trouble mastering. She wasn’t going to let him do it again.

"Seriously," Gerald laughed a little.  "It's making the customers sick.  It's making me sick, and I'm fairly used to you by now.  Is this a cultural thing?"

Riley raised her head as slowly as she had lowered it, with determination.

"You are a heartless bastard," she said.  "I lost my apartment and had to sleep in my car.  There is no way you would understand something like that because you are just way too good a person to ever fall on bad times.”

She stood, untied her apron and threw it at him.

"Fuck you," she said, and walked out.

Shivering with rage, she climbed into the car and gripped the steering wheel at ten and two with white knuckles.  After a moment, she looked to Buddha for comfort, calmed down, and then realized that she was now jobless as well as homeless.

"Christ almighty," she said under her breath.  "What's going to happen to us?"

*****

Riley's first big decision, after parking the little car in one of those rest stops with the showers, was for them to get the hell out of Masonville.  She decided to go back to the plan A she'd made nearly ten months earlier, to cross the state line into New York, and take it from there.  Feeling fresher after her shower, though she'd had to towel down with harsh brown paper towels, Riley pointed the car west on Route 122. 

They stopped for gas a couple of towns west of Masonville, and when the attendant came to the window, Riley rolled it down just enough to speak through.

“I have money but it’s all in coin, is that OK?”

“It’s all in what?”       

“Coin.  It’s all coins.”

“Coins?”

“Quarters, nickels…”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said.  He was younger than Riley, maybe sixteen.  He took off his baseball cap and spun it between his hands.  “I think we only take bills.”

“Fair enough,” Riley said.  “But can you spare a cigarette?”

*****

They coasted into a truck stop for the night on nothing but fumes, and Riley hung around in the bathroom for a little while pacing along the row of white porcelain sinks, hoping to run into the trucker who’d given her the advice, money and cigarettes before, but Linda didn’t show.  Riley figured she was somewhere far away, the Midwest, maybe, or the West Coast by now.  "I drive and drive," she'd said.  The women who did come in walked by her as if she weren't there, or gripped their purses more tightly and gave her suspicious glares.

She stooped low to wash up in the sink and when she looked up into the mirror she scrutinized her face, turning to the right and then the left. She had surpassed too thin quite a while ago; now she looked like her grandmother just before she died of cancer.  Even in the poor lighting she could see that her coloring had gone from sallow to gray.  Her hair was limp, and stuck to her neck like static cling. Even right after a shower, she managed to smell like bad milk, or rotting cabbage. She closed her eyes against the image in the mirror, sighing, and turned away from it.

“I was never the smart one or the pretty one or the one with the personality, but this?” She held out her hands, fanning out her twig-like fingers.  “No one would have expected this, even of me.”

*****

“We need money,” Riley told the Buddha frankly the next morning.  “There’s a gas station over there, but we have something like three dollars and ten cents, all in dimes and pennies.  Do you have any ideas?”

By then it was eight o’clock in the morning and the rest stop was filling up with cars full of people. It was nearing the end of foliage season, but there were still some people hanging on to grab a peek of the reds and oranges that had taken over the landscape.  Some tourists were still driving in from all of the country.

Riley nodded, as if Buddha had given her an idea, then took a deep breath and got out of the car.  She fumbled around in the back seat until she found an empty soda cup from a drive-thru fast food place, and headed towards the entrance to the restrooms.

“Excuse me,” she said to a young mother carrying a squirming toddler.  “I’m stuck here and can’t get home because I have no gas money.  Can you spare a dollar, or anything?”

“Sorry,” the woman said, and shielded the child’s face as though Riley were a child molester.

Riley approached an elderly couple in button-down shirts and bolero ties.  In a kindly southern accent, the woman said that they were on a tight budget, but could spare a quarter.  Riley thanked them, and moved on.  A man in a business suit gave her a dollar; another man in an identical business suit told her she should get a job.  A young couple on their way home from the Pocanos gave her three dollars and expressed deep sympathy.  Four people told her she was disgusting.  By five o’clock, she had accumulated thirty-eight dollars and forty-six cents, most of it in change.

She rejoined Buddha, whom she imagined was proud of her, and they went to buy gas, donuts and a pack of generic cigarettes.

“Now we’ll get somewhere,” Riley said, pleased as they pulled back onto Route 122, the gas tank full for the first time in a long time. 

Buddha shifted forward a little bit as they rejoined traffic; his seatbelt was bunched up under his chin, and his back was not against the seat.

“Oh, Buddha,” Riley said with compassion.  She pulled into the breakdown lane and reached across to fix it for him.  She placed her hand against his face.

He was solid.  He was marble.

*****

At first, Riley thought they were just a short drive from the New York border, but the roads they took led them closer, then further away, from the state line.  They were trapped within Massachusetts, and driving in loops and circles, and it took two days (occasionally stopping and begging for more gas money) before Riley could confidently say she would not be able to find Masonville again.

On the third day, feeling free from Masonville but terrified of everything else, Riley pulled into a camping ground. They had to pay a small fee, but it was getting to be off-season for overnight campers, and there were only some RVs, some hardcore leaf-peepers, parked here and there around the lake.  Riley managed to camouflage the car fairly well in a bank of trees.

After the sun had set, Riley wrapped herself up in two blankets, and went out to lean against the passenger side of the car, rolling down the window so she could still talk to Buddha. She looked down towards a great expanse of still water.

“This isn’t like the ocean at all,” Riley said.  She was from the coast. Along the beaches, the ocean crashed against rocky jetties and hurricane walls.  The lake was still, black, dead.  She found it creepy.

*****

In the morning, Riley stretched the way she learned from the truckers, listening to the pop of her shoulders, the crack of her knees.  The air was very fresh and quiet.  She had managed to stay clear of the RVs, away from the small pack of noisy tourists.

Riley walked down to the water’s edge.  A city girl, born and bred, she was not used to so much nature, was surprised at the way the earth just ended and the lake began. 

She looked up at her car, and with her eyes traveled the short trip the little hatchback could make to the water. There was nothing in its path.

She hiked the short walk back to the car and climbed in.

“You know, Buddha,” Riley said after a moment. “You make a great weight.  How much did they say you weigh, anyway?  Three hundred pounds?”

She sat, not looking at him.

“Solid marble, you know?  That makes the weight even heavier, I guess, in some way.  Didn’t the guy at the garden shop kind of indicate that?  ‘Solid marble’ he said, like that made you heavier.”

Riley didn’t want to look at Buddha; she knew exactly what look he would give her, the only one he had.  It was a look of eternal comfort-giving.  A look of whatever-you-want-to-do-Riley.  He would support any decision she made, and he would do it with his calm half-smile, his drooping eyelids.

Her stomach grumbled hunger, and she decided for the moment to listen to her body.

*****

After following the winding roads of a small town she’d never been to before, Riley began to notice that the houses appeared a little nicer, with manicured front lawns and well-painted shingles in bright colors. The streets she drove on were smoother, with newer-looking hot top, and the street signs were green with white lettering: Appleton Street, Boardman Avenue. It was nothing like battle-worn Masonville, with its pot-holes and broken streetlamps. She passed a school, a couple of churches, a strip of boutique shops in which, for once, she did not have the urge to stop and spend. The few leaves still on the trees were bright red or orange; the fallen ones were raked into colorful piles.

After driving up and down the streets for half an hour, she came upon a diner, the kind that looks like an airstream trailer, and found it inviting.  Inside, she found a row of windows along one side and a row of griddles on the other, separated by a long Formica bar.  A smiling waitress, making her job look easy, ushered Riley to a booth and slipped a menu on the table, all while balancing a plate of eggs and hash between the elbow and wrist of her other arm.  Riley smiled back at her, wanting to ask the girl what her secret was.  The waitress swished off in her blue uniform skirt and sneakers, doing ten things at once.

After an economical breakfast of an egg and cheese sandwich on an English muffin and endless cup of coffee for three dollars and twenty-five cents, Riley leaned back against the padded seat of the booth (which was not patched or worn like the ones at her old restaurant) and felt oddly comforted.  There was something so small-town-America about this diner and this town. And the winding roads surrounding it were practically protecting it like a moat, like a maze you had to crack to get into this happy place.  She accepted a fill-up on her cup of coffee from the teenaged super-waitress, and glanced out into the parking lot.

Riley spied Buddha, sitting so contently and quietly in the passenger seat, and decided to take a cue from him.

She smiled a half-smile and closed her eyes, wrapping her hands around her coffee cup, and just sat.

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[prose-theleopardseal-blog]

WHAT YOU CANNOT GIVE THEM

NONFICTION By:  A. M. Thompson

The mango slipped as Zoe peeled it, leaving a lush, sweet slime on her palm. She finished slicing the fruit onto a plate, washed her hands, and carried the snack over to her daughter, who was already hunched over her homework. Bethie glanced up and smiled.

“Thanks, ‘Licious,” she said.

It was a sign of affection (having been shortened, some time back, from “Zoe-licious”), so she had come to terms with it. She would still prefer Mama, of course. Or Mommy, or Mother, or Mater, or even Mumsie. Anything that might suggest maternity.

Almost the day after she turned seven, Bethie stopped calling them Mama and Baba (which is Mandarin for Daddy).  And she had stoutly refused to call her parents anything even vaguely filial ever since. At first, it was cute. Then it was annoying. Then it really bothered them. They tried teasing her out of it, training her out of it, scolding her out of it. But the girl was adamant. They eventually stopped trying. Not because it wasn’t worth the fight (it wasn’t), but because they began to suspect she needed it this way.

*****

It still hurt, of course. They went through so damn much to become parents. Well, actually, Dave didn’t go through much more than humiliation (a small price to pay for all that sex). And he handled it characteristic humor. After retreating into the infertility clinic’s Naugahyde den and leafing through a dog-eared copy of Penthouse, he emerged from the Room of Shame and marched his little jar through the waiting room announcing:  “Make way! Hot Stuff!”

For the most part, like the other men they met in their couples support group, Dave stood by stunned and helpless as Zoe grieved over her incapacity to bear life. Her craving for a child became obsessive and insatiable. Dave finally admitted to feeling like Kramer in that “Seinfeld” episode, clinging to the back of a New York City fire truck as it screamed through crowded streets and careened around corners.

The reality didn’t sink in for him until she started conceiving at last – and then miscarrying. He finally got it, then. All those years, it was her body that was probed and scraped and tested. She was the one who felt the small, hard knob inside her abdomen clutch and ache, then let go. But in the end – even though it was Zoe, not Dave, who spent entire days in bed motionless – it was both of them who bled. 

At last, after reams of bureaucratic paperwork and two years of waiting, they found themselves in a drab hallway on the 20th floor of the Holiday Inn in Hefei, China.  It was 9:00 a.m. on a Wednesday.  They nervously tapped on the door of the designated room, and entered softly.  A uniformed woman turned toward them. She held a black-haired child of 16 months, her chubby face blotchy and smeared. The baby studied Zoe for a slow, breathless moment, before extending two incongruously thin arms.  Time dissolved as they melted together: new mother and tear-stained child.  David leaned in close to both of them.  He lightly touched their daughter’s cheek. Grazing her delicate ear with his lips, he whispered so softly only the baby and Zoe could hear him: 

 “Well, there you are. We’ve been looking all over for you.”

*****

 About the time Beth stopped calling her parents by name, she also slipped without warning down some steep, dark chasm of the heart. An affable youngster, she morphed into a child of sudden, violent tantrums. The slightest change in plans could trigger one. It started out as pacing and rapidly devolved into sobbing and thrashing.  The child’s rages could flare up at any time, in any situation—at home, in restaurants, on airplanes… Once the firestorm started, nothing could defuse or stifle it.  For the next 40 minutes, Dave and Zoe took turns hovering, heartsick and helpless, equally unable to comfort or control their flailing child.  All they could do was stay close, murmuring reassurances, and struggle to stay calm until the inferno banked. After one of Beth’s tantrums, she was hollowed out and limp. And so were they. 

Even worse, was the way their buoyant little girl suddenly retreated into a sort of psychic storm cellar. She took to wearing only black or grey, baggy clothes.  She hunkered down into nondescript hoodies, walking slowly with a slouching sort of hunch.  Like a teenager, she shrugged off all affection: only seven years old, Bethie already stalked sullenly to school, her head pitched down like a broken marionette.  Their daughter rarely spoke, and when she did her words came out stilted, self-conscious, and stuttering. 

At night, after Bethie was asleep, Dave and Zoe talked in bed.  During the day, they took turns calling pediatricians, consulting other parents, agonizing.  Finally, a friend gave them the name of a family therapist who specialized in adoptees and children with anxiety. 

So for what become an extended period of time, Zoe would rush home early from work once a week to meet her husband and daughter in a cramped, suburban office.  The three of them spent the next hour in the company of a docile, curly-headed woman who seemed more like an aging hippie than a doctor.  For months, they couldn’t tell what the therapist was trying to accomplish or whether she would ever succeed, but they refused to give up hope.

After nearly a year of what seemed like no more than telling stories and playing games, something gradually began to shift. It was like first light at dawn, so indistinct you couldn’t say exactly when the darkness left.  Then slowly, so slowly, their laughing girl came home.

But she came home altered.  As if her vocal chords were scarred, their beloved daughter seemed incapable of articulating the love she used to sing and shout and scrawl in baby letters onto every crooked drawing in first and second grade.

 “Goodnight, angel baby,” Zoe still crooned into Bethie’s hair each night. “I love you.”

 “Okay,” her daughter would reply—her voice low and flat, even as she folded a secret smile into her pillow.

*****

It was now five years since that harrowing period.  Bethie’s guarded response to her parents’ affection persisted.  Perhaps it always would.  But the child had found her own way to communicate her love—most often with a brisk scuff across her father’s hair or a sudden, full-body collision into her mother’s arms, as if she merely fell off balance while passing by.  Sometimes, on a good day, she’d even tolerate a hug.

Over time, Zoe and David learned that their daughter’s heart-storms were more or less normal for many adoptees, at that age.  By the age of seven, Beth was old enough to grasp the central fact of their close-knit family: that the people whose bodies made her, whose eyes and history were hers, were gone. That somewhere in China there was a mother and a father, and maybe brothers and sisters, who were hers but would never be hers. That it is possible to carry and birth a child—and give her up.

In light of that inestimable loss, refusing to call them Mama and Baba made perfect sense. It was like a secret talisman. Which, come to think of it (not that Zoe was biased) was downright brilliant.  Not to mention that their daughter’s refusal to budge has a certain glittering, adamantine beauty.  You had to admire the kid’s resolve.

What they also learned—and what all adoptive parents must come to terms with, at some point—is that you can give a child your whole heart, withholding nothing.  But in the end, no matter how much you love her, you can never fully replace what she has lost.  It is simply not yours to give.  It was taken from her long before you arrived on the scene.

So now, at last, they more or less understood.  And the three of them had come to a sort of sweet-tempered détente.

But still, Zoe thought as she poured Bethie a glass of milk.  I wish to hell she’d call me Mom.

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[prose-theleopardseal-blog]

THE RECEIPT TOWER

FICTION By: B. C. Villalona

For Alex, Inspiration is written with our tears. Power is summoned in our heartache. Stories are born from our love.

It was an early Sunday morning. Every news channel and every weatherman had promised sunshine today with loving smiles and zipping eyes over teleprompters.

It was an early Sunday morning, with torrents of rain plummeting to the ground from a gray sky. Every life in the town huddled under the rain and rushed on to continue their futures. As distinct as each was in his own life, there was one place where the strings were tied if only for a plate and a drink.

Sunnyside Diner.

Amongst the wincing businessmen with pressed newspapers and knitted brows sat a man like the rest. His suit was fresh, his beard was stale. And as youthful as his face and his restless leg seemed, his hair was greyed and it betrayed him. He waited for the waitress and as heavy as the thought weighed, he refused to look at his Rolex watch.

The waitress in charge of his booth and a few others came out from the kitchen. One of the only three waitresses on schedule today, she was the oldest and most experienced with high volume customers. She quickly put her reddish auburn hair into a messy bun. She carefully picked out her favorite apron, the one with the ironed-on heart just above where her real one pumped. She took her time to pick off any lint leftover from previous use, and picked at a whistle tune as she did.

The gray-haired man watched her with impatience, but after a few seconds, he couldn't keep his hands folded. He reached into his pocket and felt the cold face of his cellphone. Before he could glance at it for the third time in the last ten minutes, he instead grabbed at a bundle of paper smushed beneath his phone. He pulled it out and looked at his findings: a wad of crumpled receipt papers.

The gray-haired man grunted, and began to pull apart the individual pieces. The first one reminded him of that first date, the last of many first dates, but surely the most recent. He remembered the day well, but the details were gone. He only thought of her eyes, how they always found a home away from his. The gray-haired man frowned and began to fold the wrinkled paper into a thick rectangle.

After a few minutes, he had placed a few folded rectangles into a tiny tower on his table. He proceeded to fold up the remaining ripped and forgotten pieces of paper. One made up a beam; another made up the next beam. Yet another lay on top of these two and connected them. For a while, the gray-haired man only folded, placed, and repeated, to keep his doubts and his fingers occupied.

"What've you got there? A tower?" he heard a voice say.

It was the waitress, with the red hair and no room for rushing. She looked at him directly, and he cleared his throat.

"A receipt tower, yes. So much paper and it's only an inch high... I suppose I was just bored."

"I see. Well, you've got a decent start there. But I've seen better."

"Better?"

"It's the material, you see. Why don't you try something that would withstand water and wind, something a little more sturdy."

"Then all that work would've been for nothing," he said with a smile.

She smiled and as she pulled out her notepad, said, "Sometimes it's best to start over. Is there anything I can get you, dear?"

"I'm actually waiting for someone... my lady."

"Oh I see," said the waitress. "She's probably stuck in traffic with all of that rain out there."

The gray-haired man turned to look outside. Buckets of rain.

"Probably," he said.

"Can I get you some coffee while you wait?"

The man nodded and began to fortify his flimsy tower. The waitress slipped away without another word.

The tenth receipt, their first fight. Over something superficial, something that had fluttered away from his mind. She had slammed the door to his Mercedes that night. He had been at her door with a bounty of roses the following morning. All had seemed golden.

He added the ripped receipt to the pile.

Golden plated, perhaps.

Five receipts later, the waitress returned.

She placed the steaming coffee in front of him before moving away to the other waiting customers. He left it as it was. There was a mirror across from where he sat and glancing in it allowed him to see to the booth at the back of the wall behind him. He watched a young couple in the reflection of the mirror.

They watched each other with eyes full of adoration. Anyone would've thought they were the only people left in the entire world. No hands on spoons, just hand on hand. The food on their table was visibly untouched and cold from neglect. But their eyes were hot, melted into one another's. It burned the gray-haired man to look at them.

He returned his attention to the tiny tower at his fingertips. One push, and it would tumble over. One misplaced installment, and it would collapse in on itself. He had known that, but he wanted to finish what he started.

So for more time, he added, folded, built. Repeat.

Rush hour hit the diner on the corner of Serenity Avenue and Boulder Street. Families bustled in, with children pouting over denied desserts and parents smiling through their annoyance. All faces were turned away from him; none were owned by his lady. The gray-haired man grunted. 

Most of the people were unfamiliar to him, but at the same time, he felt as if he knew each and every one of them, either in the way that they laughed or in the way they talked to one another. They were all from the neighborhood. He recognized a coworker of his sitting in a booth with his wife and four daughters. The gray-haired man continued to fold up his receipts. One was from that restaurant he took his lady to last month. It served ambience and pride, not delicious food like this place. He wound it up tightly into a long rectangle fold, and placed it on top. He sat back to take a break from his construction so he could check his phone. Zero missed calls. Just then, the fiery waitress that served him his breakfast came over to his table, a look of concern written in her lips.

"Dear, it's lunchtime. Still no sign of your friend?" the waitress asked, watching the gray-haired man's eyes while pouring him his third cup of coffee. Not a drop was out of place, and the last black drip landed just as the man took the cup to his lips.

After a moment, he placed it down and sighed, heavy like he was worried.

"I've called her about three times, and she hasn't responded. Where could she be?"

"Maybe she got caught up with something important."

Because this isn't important, the gray-haired man thought.

"Maybe."

"Would you like something to eat? Some mac and cheese? Soup?"

"I'll take soup, please."

The gray-haired man never looked at his coworker's family again, but not seeing them couldn't stop the man from hearing their laughter, their happiness.

Receipt ten. Their two-month anniversary. No, three-month.

Receipt seventeen... no, eighteen. When they went to the pier and he brought her to that seafood restaurant. The fancy one. And they left within ten minutes as she screamed "how could you forget that I'm allergic to seafood?"

Receipt number... he didn't know. But he knew it was the most recent. Hell, it was only yesterday.

The waitress brought over that soup. Chicken noodle. He didn't eat a spoonful until it was already cold, and by then, the families he had seen come in and settle down had gotten up and left. The diner seemed a lot emptier without all of them, and his pockets became lighter and his headache weighed down upon him.

At some point, he went to grab more receipts from his pocket, but was surprised to come up empty-handed. He tried his right pocket.

Lint and bits of dust were left in it. Just like the left one. It was strange; the man thought he had tons left to contribute. The tower could be built no further after all.

He leaned back, neither admiring nor criticizing. The tower was as it was, small, fragile, and built with an expiration date.

The waitress was beside him, watching the tower with curiosity.

"Very nice, you did it after all," the waitress said.

"Seems like it," he said.

"Are you going to start a new one? Maybe using the salt and pepper," she joked.

"I'm not sure if I have the patience."

"Ah. Well, any luck with calling the lady?"

The gray-haired man paused for a second, then answered.

"Ten calls and ten dead-tones."

"I see," she said. Her words hung in the air, and then she said, "The rain! It does things, you know? It makes signals die. Maybe she didn't know."

"Right. It's funny, I've heard that rain helps clear the mind. It washes away the conjured nonsense and leaves the thoughts bare."

"It can cleanse doubt, too," the waitress said. The gray-haired man grunted and glanced at his watch.

The waitress went to grab the bowl of cold soup, but then stopped herself. Instead, she walked away and left the gray-haired man alone.

He nursed the soup, as he cradled his phone.

All the while, he never took his eyes off of his creation.

The gray-haired man didn't realize it was evening time until the streets outside his window were covered with darkness. He didn't know where the time had gone that cold day, or how the time was spent by his lady. He just knew that time was gone.

He was the only one left in the diner, except for an old couple that sat in the corner. The waitress made the trip to their table and whipped out her notepad for the thousandth time that day.

"Date night already, Mary," the waitress who'd served the gray-haired man all day said.

"Every Sunday. That's the way it's been for forty years," Mary said cheerfully.

"That's right, dear," the husband said.

"What'll be? Steak and eggs? Breakfast for dinner?" the waitress said.

"You know us too well," Mary said, as her husband grabbed her hand tenderly. "That'll be fine."

The gray-haired man tapped away with his foot and waited. Two minutes, five minutes, ten minutes later. He watched the drops on the window weigh down on themselves and drag down the pane. And then, before he knew it, it was almost closing time. Mary and her husband paid the check and, as if their happiness wasn't enough, kissed tenderly before leaving the restaurant. Left behind were the gray-haired man and a new text.

He looked down and read the message clear on his untouched phone.

Sorry I didn't make it.

The gray-haired man scowled and leaned back in his chair.

Then it happened.

He didn't know if it was the movement of him leaning back that did it. Or maybe the tower was balanced on itself by some stroke of luck and that luck had been used up. Whatever it was that kept the folds of patience and memories was gone now. And the papers were collapsed on the table in a way that made it seem impossible that they had ever stood together at all.

And the gray-haired man did not even flinch. He stared at the disheveled pile and did not share a curse, or a tear, or even an eye roll.

Instead, he turned away and stated clearly, "Check please."

The waitress turned off most of the lights in the quiet diner before coming over with the check. The man gave her his ready credit card.       

He watched his work as it lay while he waited.        

"It's a shame. After all that work you put into it," a voice said behind him. He turned to find the waitress, dressed in her jacket and a purse over her shoulder. She gave him his card. "I'd say give it another go, but the diner's closing. I'm on my way out."

"No, it's fine. I was just about to go," the gray-haired man said. He collected his things and, after a conflicting thought or two, left the pile of ruined receipts where they lay on the table. The waitress was waiting by the door by the time he got his jacket on.

They both walked outside.

The rain had subsided, and left a crisp feeling in the air that they both felt.

They were the only two souls to experience the welcomed change. It was the night those weathermen had sworn by.

The waitress hesitated at the end of the sidewalk.

"I hope she calls you," she said, in a reassuring tone that couldn't have convinced anyone. The man said nothing and nodded.

"Goodnight then," the waitress said and started to walk away in the parking lot.

The man felt his skin tinge with a vibration and realized that it was his phone. Eagerly, he fished it from his pocket and glanced at the caller id. It was her

Three cups of coffee, an entire Sunday and one receipt tower later, she decided to call him. He frowned.

The waitress unlocked her door. It had been a long day and she was tired. She was opening the door to her car when she heard a voice behind her.

"Miss, wait!"

It was the gray-haired man.

"What is it?" she said to him. He hesitated now, shifting on his feet and looking everywhere but at her.

"She never came; I don't think I'm ever going to see her again. I have a two-hour lunch break tomorrow from the office. Maybe I could take you out somewhere nice, away from all of this?" he said.

She smiled sweetly, flattery coloring her cheeks red.

"That's a really nice offer, but I'm gonna have to decline," she said.

Baffled, the business man wanted to ask why but instead kept his tongue to himself. He nodded and said, "I understand."

"Thank you. Goodnight, mister."

She climbed into her car, started it up and began to pull away. Suddenly, before the car was backed up a foot, she rolled her window down and put her hand out the window.

"You forgot this," she said.

She handed him a ripped receipt and he instantly recognized it as one of the forgotten receipts that had made up his tower. The car window was rolled up again before he could say a word. He didn't understand, as she drove away and her car drove down the road

Then, he flipped it over and saw eleven numbers jotted down in a nervous, quick fashion. And with all of the hurt, and the lessons he refused to listen to, he smiled and realized something.

He realized that he understood.

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[prose-theleopardseal-blog]

SOCIAL CONTRACTS

FICTION By:  Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb

I don’t know where they all come from. When the weather turns warmer, unfortunately for those of us who enjoy quietude, the town square is slowly invaded by narcissistic noise-makers.  Decibel levels beyond the acceptability of the law have been rising in public places since the 1960s, and reports about the “mysterious” epidemic of deafness among a high percentage of the American population are starting to appear.  Personally, I think in view of this and the stress caused by these auditory-oriented, attention-seeking criminals, noise should be grounds for arrest or, at least, for a hefty fine. 

My more socially-inclined friends find my aversion to unnecessary noise extreme.  They tell me that by exercising down at the Square, because it is a public place, I am obligated to an unspoken social contract by which I agree to be friendly, to be courteous, and to participate in pleasant chitchat when spoken to.  But these associates all play instruments, have loud dogs, or cannot carry on intelligent conversations for more than five minutes in their own homes because they always have the sound turned on and volume up on either their televisions or computers.

And they are not the walkers like me who go down to the Square for the greenery and thinking space but mostly because it is in close proximity to our neighborhoods.  That being said, social contract or not, the nice thing about always being seen power walking in a public area is that if you stop to chat with someone between rounds, once there is the slightest hint of the conversation disintegrating, you can excuse yourself, saying that you need to get your exercise.

Fortunately, for those of us who have grown up in urban areas, the persistent and expected hum of traffic on all four sides of the Square can serve as white noise.  However, often, it simply does not cover up the shrill and squeaky missed notes of lone saxophone players scattered here and there, the flat guitar chords of wannabe rock stars, the irritating clunking of the college-aged, conga-drum players.  Nor does it shelter ears like mine from the cacophony of a menagerie of excited, barking, yapping, and yelping dogs.

Don’t get me wrong or feel I am too judgmental; I actually like the sound of life—the necessary and interesting sounds, the human voice.  I love to eavesdrop on discussions as I pass by.  Personal philosophies, perspectives, and debates are particularly seductive in that I feel compelled to slightly slow my pace in order to hear snippets of these, especially when the comments are coming from the direction of the numerous transients.  Not bothering anyone, and simply down on their luck, they form mostly quiet, albeit sometimes inebriated, aggregations.      

Then there are the older people who frequent the Square every day.  For some of them, their biggest crime is that they forget I’ve already said hi to them once on a given day.  But in the scheme of things, I look forward to seeing most of these regulars and am saddened when any of these elders suddenly stops showing up.  For this means there will be one less quiet person using the space.

So, one late afternoon when I was engaged in doing laps and thinking about not having seen one of the older gentlemen who had been a regular, I was particularly susceptible to being irritated.  The Square had been relatively quiet during the winter.  The cold breeze of early March brought to the warmer days a respectable wind chill.  Thus, in hindsight, I realize that not expecting fate to start populating the Square with loud people so soon was reasonable.  And this is why I was absolutely startled and repulsed by the initial loud BLLAWWNNG of a strum from a turned up electric guitar from some place that was out of my immediate view on the Square.  It was the epitome of the rape of peacefulness.

The horrible out-of-tune sound repeated again and again.  Then came the brief attempt to “tune” the individual strings and, after that, more solitary, discordant strums.  As I turned the corner, I saw the culprit.  Plugged into one of the emergency outlets on the curb by the sidewalk (financed by my tax dollars) was a small amplifier. Attached to it was an old-looking but gleaming, red guitar. And attached to the guitar, holding it, was Mr. Rock Star—an adolescent boy who looked to be in his late teens.  He was dressed unspectacularly in an open, gray wool sweater, a blue flannel shirt, and worn jeans. His short, blond crew cut offered neither frame nor warmth to his serious, pale face.  He seemed oblivious to the fact that the intensity of volume only supported evidence of his inability to play; the blasted noise reverberated throughout the Square and most likely the neighborhoods beyond, as well. 

Gaining ground, I kept my eyes focused ahead and dramatically put my hands over my ears as I passed on the sidewalk a few feet from the bench where he sat.  It was a passive- aggressive gesture. It was my attempt to discourage and humiliate him.  It didn’t work.  However, upon a slight glance back, I did notice something unusual that had escaped my scrutiny before.  Sitting completely still, a small child of about six or seven years old huddled up against Mr. Rock Star.  The younger boy was dressed in a heavy down coat with an oversized, insulated hood through which his little face peeked out.

The off-chord strumming continued as I completed another round and came back into proximity of the headache-evoking noise.  I covered my ears and braced myself to pass (and make my point), but not before noticing that the child was no longer on the bench.  Hands remaining over my ears, I looked around until I spotted him.  Still bundled with his hood hiding most of his face, the boy was running up the street until he reached a couple who were about to cross at the corner.  I assumed they were his parents.  I couldn’t hear what was being said, but it wasn’t long before the woman pulled out a bill from her purse and gave it to the child.  The boy, money in hand, ran back to the older boy, who, to my relief, stopped strumming long enough to grab the bill and stuff it in the pocket of his shirt.

On my third pass, watching from a half block away, I noticed the hooded figure approach one of the regulars who was walking her dog.  She smiled and, after listening for half a second, reached into her pocket, pulled something out and put it into the boy’s hand.  He immediately ran back to give it to the older boy, who once again stashed the younger boy’s acquisition into his pocket.  This was quite the racket, I thought.  And, apart from the quaint “Oliver Twistian” sense to it all—perhaps because of the coming twilight backdrop, panhandling was against the law down at the Square.  

Not only was it despicable that the almost adult narcissist had the child do his dirty work of begging, but it was downright cowardice to put the younger boy in danger by having him be the one to approach strangers.  On my fourth round, I watched the child scampering here and there as the before and after dinner strollers were beginning to accumulate on the Square.  Mr. Rock Star seemed not to notice but, rather, to be deeply absorbed in his delusion of talent and no doubt his fantasy of an audience.  The strumming was now continual and almost deafening on that side of the Square.

Finally, on the fifth round, I witnessed what I assumed was the child’s first experience of being declined.  The woman’s voice could barely be overheard, “I’m sorry, Honey, but I don’t have any money.”  She was nice, but she wasn’t falling for whatever the kid told her.  Then, directly ahead of me, I saw a well-dressed man wave the child off even before the boy reached him.

Having avoided me after seeing my disapproving manner when I had first passed by them, but not getting the desired results from the last couple of targets that he probably felt he needed  to please the older boy, the child finally but cautiously approached me.  I was glad because I wanted to know what the older boy was using the panhandled money for, particularly if it was, as I suspected, something like cigarettes, drugs, or alcohol—not that the child would tell me.  I noticed that the night security guard had just come on duty.

I slowed down as the kid came up to me. I quickly asked, “Where are your parents?”  Surprising myself, this was not exactly the question I had intended, but it was getting dark.  The strumming had stopped, I noticed, and the older boy was disconnecting his guitar from the little amplifier.

The child looked up at me, unconsciously loosening the string holding up the hood.  It fell away, and I realized with some surprise that I was looking at a little girl with short, blond curls that gave her a somewhat angelic appearance.  “That’s my brother,” she pointed to the older boy who was still near the bench gathering up his guitar and amplifier.  I thought she had misunderstood my question, until she added, “He said we had to get out before my mom hits me again.”  Then, as per any young child, it was show-and-tell. Pulling on the materials near her neck, she stretched down the layers of collars until I could see a dark purple bruise crawling from her neck to her shoulder.

I didn’t know what to say, so I remained quiet, listening.  Precocious and instinctually protective, she was careful to never use her brother’s name. “He said if we can get enough money, we can go to a hotel.  We get more when I do theasking because I’m a kid, and he’s a teenager.” Shame suddenly shadowed her face, “But we didn’t today.” Then, almost as suddenly, her small face shone with resilience, “That’s okay, though.  We got enough to go get something to eat.  My brother said that by the time we get home, Mom should be done drinking and asleep.”

At that moment, the older boy walked up and, giving me a suspicious glance, motioned the girl to follow him. It was obvious that he did not approve of her chatting with me.  Before I could say anything, they were off the Square and crossing the street.  Guitar slung over his back, he had grabbed her hand before they stepped off the curb.

I wanted to run after them and offer to take them to dinner, to take them to the police, to social services, to my home, to safety.  But I stood there mute—and, knowing what I knew but not doing anything, feeling as if I had gravely broken a social contract.

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[prose-theleopardseal-blog]

WOMAN IN THE GARDEN

FICTION By:  Chloe N. Clark

They called her Vervain—though she never knew if this was what her parents had intended her to be named or if it was merely the name that was placed upon her once she had been given to the Gardeners.  The Greenhouses were large and as a child she was allowed to roam freely among them. She could not remember a time before knowing the heat of the greenhouses. It was a specific heat that pressed down into her and made her lungs feel heavy within her chest. Sometimes, she would step outside just to take in gulpfuls of air that wasn’t humid. She liked the way it chilled her throat, raised goose bumps along her arms.  As she grew older, she grew more accustomed to the heat and trips to the outside became less and less frequent.

Vervain found that she dreamed of plants. She would be walking amongst the Greenhouse rows and the plants would speak to her or invite her to dance or, occasionally, they would reach out and wrap their leaves around her in an embrace. She would wake up and run to the plant-beds. She would press her ear to the earth but she could never hear what the plants might have been whispering.

When she was twenty-five, the head Gardeners came to her and told her that she would be given a Greenhouse of her own. There came rules with the guardianship of a Greenhouse. She could not break the rules. There could be no new plants introduced, there could be no unofficial visitors, and the produce had to be given only to those who were on the list. Vervain agreed to the rules without question. Her heart beat faster at the thought of being able to spend even more time caring for the plants.

She woke every morning slightly before the sun cast its rays through the Greenhouse glass. She liked the calm of the darkened Greenhouse. The plants were still asleep and she would tiptoe amongst them. She sometimes would press her fingers into the soil of the beds. She liked the pressure it took to slide her finger in: fingertip and then up to her first joint, then the next, then to her knuckles. She could tell easily when the plants would need watering next. She had to be sparing with the water. The filtering process to avoid cross-contamination was costly and took a long time. Or so she was told repeatedly. She checked the plants for dead leaves and would pluck them off. Her movements became faster, her pinching ability more refined. She didn’t want the plants to feel her nails cutting quick into their skin.

The first inspection came and the Officials took samples of her plants. They had tiny scissors and vials and little strips of measuring tape. Vervain could not watch as they snipped and measured and took away pieces. She felt her hands trembling and curled her fingers inward to her palms, forming fists until her own fingernails pierced her hands.

The Officials asked her questions: have you allowed anyone inside? Do you bring in outside plants? Who watches the Greenhouse when you are not here? No and no and I am never not here, she responded. Do you give away any of the plants? She startled at that one, the thought of handing them away like handing away her own children would feel.

Everyone knew what the food outside that of the Greenhouses did to you. It wasn’t like this was a new thing. It wasn’t like unpredictability had been thrown in. Predictability was the key to the food outside the Greenhouses. It had been created to be predictable. So, of course, what it did to a person’s body must also then be predictable.  Or predictable eventually as everyone was told. Predictable eventually. Vervain had heard the stories; she had seen the children who had never tasted a Greenhouse tomato or could even imagine the perfection of imperfection that a tomato could have.  She knew that they probably never would taste one either. The Government regulated the Greenhouse food; the recommendations were that it was too late for most people and so only the untainted could be allowed to eat of the Greenhouse bounty.  Only unpredictable results could come from feeding the tainted with the Greenhouse food. Unpredictable and costly results. There simply wasn’t enough of the Greenhouse produce for everyone was there?

Vervain had grown up with the rules and the speeches. She had memorized them and could have repeated them verbatim even in her dreams if she was ever called upon to do so. She knew what crops grew outside the safety and the glass and the security of her Greenhouse. Those stalks out there so tall and symmetrical and those plants hung low with the bulging red tomatoes, perfect spheres of red like the sun would look if the sun burned crimson. She knew that is he went outside then she had to scrub her skin, her clothing before she could return to the greenhouses. The outside pollens clung to the flesh, to fabric, as if they had small claws hidden in their particles. She sometimes scrubbed until her own skin flushed red. Cross-contamination was what everyone feared. It had been the purpose once, of course. The trick, the trap, the clanging shut of a locked gate.

Her days become increasingly rhythmical. She woke, she tended, she watered, she slept. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. One morning, she woke up, and the plants were speaking. She knew she was dreaming and so she eavesdropped in on them. They spoke of the sun and how they had never felt it but that they remembered it. That the memory of its beauty and its grace and its heat had germinated inside them. They spoke of how they had never felt rain or the wind. They longed for the songs of cicadas and the feel of tiny tree frog toes, sticky and soft, climbing up their limbs and nestling among their leaves.  The plants sung of these sings and whispered of them and then they wept. They wept and wept and Vervain felt them weeping deep within her.

She woke and tended the plants, but their leaves shrunk from her touch. She pressed her ear to the dirt amongst them and it smelled of salt, of tears dried.

She slept and again she dreamt of them singing and whispering and weeping of all the earth that they would never know.

She woke and went to her favorite plant. The amaranth, Love-Lies-Bleeding, and she carefully dug her fingers into the soil around it. She dug and dug, until she had dug a space next to it. She climbed up onto the plant beds. She laid down into the spot she had dug. She nestled into the earth, both cool and yet warm. She closed her eyes and thought of the Outside. She thought of the sun and of rain and of wind and of how it must have once been. She tried to dream it beautiful for the plants. She tried to make it seem as beautiful as it was in stories, as it used to be back and back and backwards in time. She breathed in. The earth around her smelled sweet and thick and alive. She slept and the plants dreamt with her.

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[prose-theleopardseal-blog]

INGRAHAM’S HILL

NONFICTION By:  Jim Krosschell

The highest point in the town of Owls Head, Maine is Ingraham’s Hill, which, at only 200 feet above sea level, isn't saying much. But it gains most of that elevation somewhat abruptly, between the ocean shore and Route 73, making it a headland and a beacon. I assume Native Americans used it so, for millennia, as they fished the waters of Penobscot Bay. I know the Europeans did, starting with that day in 1605 that brought the adventurer Champlain, the first of the culprits, to Owls Head. He didn’t stay around to exploit anybody or anything, but inevitably, hearing of wood and fur and cod, then limestone in the hills, then granite in the islands, then postcard views for their vacation homes, others did.

By the 18th century immigrants from Europe were building houses and burying bodies in what amounted to a small town, with church and school and store, and for the next 300 years, and especially after the Industrial Revolution, the slopes of the hill added encroachments - what might be called suburbs if so small a town as Owls Head can have a suburb - from the city of Rockland to the north. The latter half of the 20th century contributed three wide, asphalt roads that climb up the rest of the hill, away from the shore and Route 73 and the lower classes, and gash the woods with houses.

Ingraham’s Hill is now the densest part of town, complete with subdivisions. Most of the open spaces and lanes that remain from the old times have been filled in.

I've taken a September morning to walk south from the Rockland line down Route 73 (quaintly called Ingraham Lane by the post office and Google Maps) for a mile, first to explore all of the short, eastward "Lanes" going down to the ocean, and then, coming back north, to attempt the longer, more modern "Drives" taking the gradual incline to the west.

The north side of the hill, that extension of Rockland, seems to be more seasonal, less neighborly, one street ending in a B&B, for example, and another sporting a line of rental cottages packed so closely together as if to mimic the Jersey shore. The road names are literalist, a throwback to prosaic times: Harborside, Ocean, Cottage. But when I get to the top of the hill, the start of the old Ingraham’s, I can no longer call what I see the suburbs. The suburbs I’ve known have been planned, homogenous. This place is not; these neighborhoods are cut haphazardly by lanes that twist down to the sea and remind me more of small Minnesota towns I've lived in and visited (minus the sea, of course, and hills altogether): a range of houses from ranches and Cape Cods to saltboxes and converted sheds, and even a trailer or two; a variety of lot sizes; most gardens and lawns obsessed over, religiously neat and over-trimmed and gnomed to death, some defiantly not, messy and uncut; few people doing anything outside but getting into cars; and those cars all American vehicles with Maine plates. Down by the shore, there are no mansions and no Massholes, in spite of the million-dollar views of Rockland harbor and the Fox Islands and Owls Head Light. These parts were settled when waterfront property was prized more for commerce than for viewscape.

It also reminds me of the poor towns of Washington County way Down East, far from the pressures of post-war population growth, with their small, weather-beaten houses and modest shore frontage - poor in worldly goods, that is. There's nothing fancy in this part of Owls Head either, not even on the shores of what the realtors call “bold” Penobscot Bay. But in these modest dwellings might live riches of tradition, if not outright belief in a slower way of life.

The names of the lanes here are evocative and personal, memorializing English settlers called Everett, Guptil and Knowlton. One imagines tough fishermen, tenacious farmers, mercenaries, revolutionaries. Head of Bay Cemetery, bordering the road at a high point, as if the grave of a sailor deserves a view of the sea, is full of these former Brits; the grave of one Samuel Bartlett, 1748-1813, is the earliest one I find. These first American settlers of Ingraham’s Hill may have been restless like the rest of us, wandering from their homes for food or work or lust, but they didn’t re-locate for “happiness,” or career enhancement, I wager, and they came back to their family places to die in peace.

Reluctantly, I leave the cemetery, and the hill, and the 18th century, and walk down 73 to the south, whereupon the houses become much newer, only a few decades old. I know this because my sentimental guide on these walks, a kind of talisman to link to the places and people of the town, has been the Owls Head Fire Department map from 1978 that I found in the attic of our house after my wife and I had bought it, on which the cartographer inked in not only the roads but all houses of the time as well, and on which many of today’s houses (and a number of roads) do not appear. The changes in 35 years are what you’d expect, a little more of everything. But down here, on the new side of the hill, the names have become more pretentious, more nostalgic - Clamshell and Head of Bay and even exotic Peaquot (sic) - as if the new generation was trying to connect to a more vivid past. I sympathize with the sentiment. My own sense of nostalgia is strong but stops, I’m afraid, at the Industrial Revolution.

Those of us who grew up in suburbia are well familiar with this exodus of moving from the personal to the anodyne, from headland to flatland, from inner suburbs just younger than their parent cities to distant exurbs. Our civilization progresses and spreads, not on the backs of horses or the decks of lobster smacks, but in the terrible comfort of power windows and superhighways, and we lose touch not only with ancestor and neighbor, but with soil and rockweed, red-winged blackbird and loon besides. On the old part of Ingraham’s Hill, at least I see a few names on mailboxes that I also see in the cemetery, and in spite of the obvious difficulty of life, which is visible in the flaking paint and the old trucks, in the plastic on the windows; in spite of the modesty of abodes, and lack of power boats and fancy docks; or perhaps because of all this, I suspect that rootedness and tradition in a place like this count for much more than urban and suburban America may remember, or ever know again.

Self-sufficiency, however modest, has its price. Hypocrisy and gossip, xenophobia and small-mindedness surely exist in this place just as they did in the flatlands of my youth. But in Maine, as in most of New England, I’ve found that life is more often leavened with tolerance than burdened by spite. Maybe the ghosts of all those ancestors keep folks in check. Your great-great grandfather lying in Head of Bay Cemetery might not look kindly on you if you lost your friends to malice, or your soul to money.

I reach the intersection of North Shore Drive and turn around to walk back north on 73. As I came south, I could hardly ignore those three wide roads going west, obviously leading into classic suburban developments. At least they weren’t named by stringing nature nouns together, “Pheasant Hollow Run,” for example, or something to do with vistas. The developers stuck to the facts more or less, and the three drives, south to north, the 50s to the 70s to the 90s, are called Bayside West and Harbour Hill (but do note the "u") and Freedom. Still, the etymologies here strike me as significant, these “drives” vs the “lanes” across the way, the former implying vehicles and the latter implying hedges, and what does that tell us about the way America has developed?

I think about just continuing on 73, ignoring these places of tract housing and instant landscaping. They will bring out the worst in me, I know, prejudices and resentments and judgments. Until settling down as an adult, I lived in small towns and new developments and inner cities and outer cities, constantly on the move thanks to a father’s callings, and all the while craving permanence. I’m on the edge of finding it in Maine, but these drives are reminders of my uncertainties, and our peculiar unsettled American way of life. It’s a struggle some days to appreciate the work of humans, our pollution of land and air and water, our destruction of species including, someday, our own. Some days I rant and hector. And it's a very warm day, excellent for complaining, and I've already spent two hours meandering along the shore and through more interesting pasts, and damn, it’s hot, it shouldn’t be this hot on a September morning in Maine.

Last year I set a mission, however. Perhaps it’s a silly one, but it requires me to walk the length of every road in Owls Head, and I gird up the loins of the mind, prepared for battle.

As I walk into the first development, I wonder if it helps or hurts to imagine the summit of this hill as it used to be. It was completely forested, of course, for millennia. As the Europeans settled in, it was cleared for farming like the rest of New England, but when the riches of the West lured away the restless and the adventurous and the poor, the forest gradually returned. And now, in the space of 50 years, America having won most of its several wars and prospered, the west side of Ingraham’s Hill has become a stark emblem of the new mix of city and country: three long streets regularly laid out and worthy of any urban outskirts, one little reclaimed farm, one large remaining piece of woods.

Okay, I see that the houses on Bayside West are not exactly tract housing. They're nice houses, in fact, mostly Colonials in great variety and set on two- and three-acre lots, much nicer than anything I lived in as a child. Here we have uniform neatness and care. Each house is set chastely back from the road, with lawns and flower gardens; the drive will end, I predict, in a classic cul-de-sac. Some trees have been retained to border the road. Yards seem to back onto woods.

But the development has not been finished. There are many lots un-built (and a look at the town's property tax maps confirms it). In fact, none of these three developments reached its goals. All of them have vacancies. And yet they kept on coming, these wounds in the country. Three separate developments within a half-mile, three separate generations – Bayside West hosting the post-war promise, Harbour Hill the Great Society dream, Freedom Drive the post-Reagan exuberance, each one building bigger houses on bigger lots. The drive for the American dream seems especially wasteful here.

I’d like to think that the original owners of the land, perhaps farmers, or descendants of sea captains, or just nature lovers, held their properties for a long time, and then fell sick, or got old, and the kids didn't want the land or wanted the money more, and therefore they succumbed easily to developers making pitches. For who can resist a vision of a warm and secure retirement in Florida, especially when beautifully rendered prospectuses of big houses on your land persuade you of the gratefulness of the people who would build them and live there happily ever after?

But apparently a bit of farming still lives on here. I stop walking on Bayside (it seems endless) and a little farther up Route 73 I find Headacre Farm Road. There are a few small houses at its beginning and then I stop and go no farther. I’ve walked into what is obviously a farmyard.

To someone raised in cities, a farm is somewhat intimidating: fences (what dangers are trying to get out?), vicious-looking vehicles, mud in the yard and things worse, bad smells, gruff men in overalls, dogs never tied up. I should be able to deal with it; I spent several weeks in successive childhood summers on a farm, my grandparents’ in Minnesota that boasted all such attributes. But yet I’m nervous. Respectfully, I leave, even though I’m pretty sure that a farmer is much more likely than, say, a suburbanite, to welcome further exploration of his vivid world.

Or in this case, hers: a subsequent Google search tells me Headacre Farm is operated by a woman on behalf of its owner, a chef, for whom she grows fruits and vegetables to serve at his Rockland restaurant. It’s only a few acres, this representative of the locavore movement, but I’m pleased to see any victory in the battle against lawns.

Harbour Hill Drive is much like Bayside, only wealthier. I don’t get to the end of this one either. I leave it mid-way in and hurry away. What I had glanced at as I walked south a couple of hours ago - a two-track dirt road disappearing into woods - has suddenly become a compelling necessity. I need a purge, I need to find a hidden gem. And walking – not driving - finds it for me. I must have missed this track a thousand times, speeding in a car to the stores of Rockland.

The track gradually ascends up Ingraham's between Harbour Hill and Freedom, and I walk for almost a mile without seeing house or lawn or loon-shaped mailbox. The owner of these woods (it's one person, I’ve learned, owning two sections of 80 acres each) has kept his sense, apparently, or maybe hasn't had the right offer, or (these days) any offer at all. The woods are cool and my energy flows back and I suspect the track will come out eventually on the mysterious Weskeag marshes that I’ve not yet seen.

But for the third time I don’t make it to the end of the road. My suburban soul feels the faintest frisson (fresh tire tracks in the mud, for example) of trespassing on someone else's wilderness, or perhaps I need to save the illusion of endlessness for another day. Or maybe lunch is conveniently calling. Nevertheless, here has survived a much better vision of life than the temerity of the Drives: a tangle of trees and shrubs, un-exhausted air, wanton weeds, puddles in the track, birds calling and leaves rustling, the quiet sound of land that is not silence, not noise.

There are even two metaphors made flesh. At the side of the track, ten minutes in, a rusty wreck of a car lies in the scrub, very old by the size of the wheels and the Model-T shape of the body, and then, a few steps on, a bald eagle takes flight in a flurry and a crashing - these two greatest symbols of America, one derelict and destructive, one very much alive and free, at least for a while.

There’s one last trial, Freedom Drive, for which my loins have to be severely girded. The houses here are the newest and biggest and the lots are the largest and almost every lot remains unsold. In fact, only three houses grace this half-mile of road. It's a place almost completely barren of trees, whether naturally or by bulldozer, and not only that, but one of the three houses is missing the usual fringe of ornamental shrubs besides, and it stands there stark and naked like a model house hastily tarted up for a show. I feel judgments rising like crows from a field. The place announces, “Protect us from nature and unpleasantness, separate us from those unlike us.” If that is the motivation, I will not hesitate to snipe and screech. Who builds on the tops of hills anyway but the well-to-do and insecure?

Yet what is here displayed may be the deepest American dream - freedom to be all by yourself, in luxury, dependent on others only at the remove of money – and it is one that I myself have strived for, that I suffer and enjoy every day. From an outside standpoint, I’m just as guilty of excess as any resident of Freedom Drive. Just the basics of living in two places make for embarrassment, however much I worry about my gas mileage and my electric meters and my roomfuls of stuff. And things get more confused. I’m well-steeped in the Calvinist talent for hypocritical criticism of others, and I might wish to employ it at the moment but for the annoying fact that if I ever got to know any of the people living here, to understand their problems and hopes and worries, I wouldn’t be able to judge them at all. A person met singly will almost never fit a stereotype.

And so the dilemmas and the divides grow bigger all the time, between individual and group, city and suburb, heaven and hell. Worldwide, some one billion of us are well off to degrees that range from the comfortable to the obscene. For the planet to survive as we know it, our lives must be changed - in degrees that range from simple education to profound regulation - for what if the other six billion people who don’t live like this suddenly did? Who could blame them?

I should say at this point that I use the suburbs as a kind of straw man. I set them up to be destroyed, all the while knowing that many (well, a certain kind anyway) are pleasant, even beautiful. America invented them for a reason – they satisfy any number of personal and family needs. I have lived in one ever since settling down near Boston, 25 years in the same house no less, and continue to do so in my current, sometimes tenuous split between city and country, and my children knew nothing else but one suburban home, in a safe and loving neighborhood, until they went to college.

I can sit on my Massachusetts patio, under the big trees in the backyard, and dream almost as vividly as I can in Maine. There are deer in my suburb, and coyotes. A female wild turkey pecked away under our bird feeder recently, trailed by six little ones. I hardly have to mention the proliferation of rabbit and chipmunk and mouse and opossum and raccoon and of course the ubiquitous squirrel. A black bear wanders through Brookline; a moose is spotted in Concord. Thoreau would be beside himself – Maine has come to Massachusetts.

Of course, this is a matter of wildlife adapting to us and not vice versa. We’re not adapting at all. We’re mostly taking.

We will need time to fix the mess we’ve made, and probably don’t have it. Places like Freedom Drive, not to mention my own good fortune, ought to be levied a carbon tax all their own. I will judge our collective behavior.

This is dispiriting stuff, and for the fourth time I don’t complete the walk to the end of the line. Everything is all mixed up. Personally, one never seems to get to the end of anything, but collectively the end rushes at us like the apocalypse. Prophets are petted like house cats, profits are revered like gods. I walk back down the hill for the last time, and I can see in the short distance, just over the border into Rockland, the Victorian edifice of Primo, one of the best restaurants in the Northeast, where dinner for two costs a week's wages for someone from Everett Lane, and I see the shining waters of Penobscot Bay, and the faint outline of Vinalhaven, and a glimpse of the open sea – all the things you’d put on the Freedom brochure.

But at the same time, equally visible from this compromised Eden, I can see the warehouses and factories of Rockland Industrial Park, the squat, rusty, corrugated sheds of the Mid-Coast School of Technology, the little saltboxes down the hill. I can hear the traffic on Route 1. In too many places the changes have happened, maybe inevitably, and that’s hard to accept. Our children may still have some certainties of forest and marsh and deep, pure, mysterious ocean to hold onto, but their children?

I retreat to the car.  One last task: drive to ends of each Drive and therefore complete the mission, sort of. The car has broiled in the sun and I open all the windows to let in the sea breeze. I was the only walker on these streets today, and as I drive I review myself walking up and down, hot and tired but at least outside. People perhaps wondered who the crazy was. Nobody walks on such streets. Everything is too far away, stores and friends and your kids’ play dates in the next development and maybe even the mailbox at the end of your driveway. Everybody drives. Visitors, authorized and not, reach the end of your street and it is dead, a circular cul de sac made to get seamlessly into and out of. It’s much easier not to think in a car, comfortable and anonymous and air-conditioned, glassed-in like a sun porch from flies and fresh air.

And now the car takes me away to my own house and deck, my own Eden where, away from the traps of the past and the worries of the future, I’ll eat a sandwich and watch the eiders dive and make notes and read a book and for a while think about things industrial hardly at all.

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[prose-theleopardseal-blog]

THE STORY OF THE SNAKE AND THE BEARS

NONFICTION By:  Emily Brewton Schilling

  When she was 57 years old, the writer Barbara Holland moved to a cabin in the woods. Barbara’s friends and family thought the move impulsive and ill-advised, and we told her so.

The cabin, on a mountain above Bluemont, Virginia, had been her mother’s summer place. Marion Holland built the cabin in 1958 with the marvelous proceeds of her children’s book, “A Big Ball of String.”

When Marion died in 1989, she left the cabin to my mother, Barbara, who dropped her perfectly acceptable life in Philadelphia and moved to the mountain. The cabin had flimsy baseboard heat, running water, and electricity most of the time.

To everyone’s surprise, Barbara managed to stay. She even prospered during the first dozen years, publishing ten of her 15 books. To escape the worst of winter, with its week-long power outages and isolating snowstorms, my mother developed and practiced a visiting-around scheme. 

She’d load her cats into her car and drive to my one-bedroom apartment, where I lived with my cat. We would all live together until we were ready to kill each other (three weeks). Then she’d push off, leaving her cats while she visited friends up and down the east coast. Six weeks later she’d return and stay another three weeks. I spent a lot of time in the office every winter, and my career flourished in those years.

Barbara was a tiny woman, a heavy smoker and never what you’d call healthy. She picked up Lyme disease on the mountain, and her body began to fail. For years she muddled on, hiding her trouble. (Never speak of poor health, or wanting or spending specific amounts of money. Feel free to scream blue murder about perceived insults, politics, grammatical errors, religion, fools, the public school system, and pretty much any other fresh hell on your mind.)

By the end of the 2009-10 visiting-around season, she was having trouble walking. I went to see what I could do. 

I flew to Dulles in late May and took a heavily perfumed taxi to the cabin. (The hell was she doing about groceries, if she couldn’t drive?) The cab driver was quite snooty about his GPS; he didn’t need me navigating from the back seat. Five minutes after he shushed me, we rolled to a stop, the GPS a glowing blank. Divergent paths through woods, dense with kudzu, were vaguely outlined by the headlights. Ha. I graciously suggested the path on the right, and presently we’d scrambled up to the cabin.

*****

I caught a chilling glimpse of my mother through her low kitchen window. She was emaciated. Head down, holding on to the furniture. I hadn’t seen Barbara in a long time. We hadn’t been getting along—didn’t speak for five years, my choice.

There were reasons, but I hadn’t tried to explain myself to her.

I had reasons, I did. I couldn’t fix what ailed our mother-daughter mess. I was pulled too far in two directions; I was exhausted. I needed uncomplicated time to get comfortable with my not-drinking life.

My mother referred to alcoholism as “the Family Curse,” if she had to speak of it at all. Whatever you call it, I got it. As for our mother-daughter mess, once upon a time it was us against the world: My father died when I was little. Later, Barbara and I fought dirty—jangled, crazy fights.

How difficult we could make ourselves. And we drank together, of course. When I stopped in 2003, a fresh and weird wall was thrown up between my mother and me. Over the next two years the weirdness only got worse, until I separated us.

This was our reunion. It was late, and we tried to have dinner at the table. My mother dragged herself to a chair, but didn’t last long. On the way to bed, she crumpled. I grabbed her before she hit the floor. My 86-pound mother was suddenly very heavy and boneless, sliding through my grip as we shuffled to the bedroom.

Barbara wasn’t making a lot of sense. I called her doctor’s office and drove to town. Picked up a HEPA form at the doctor’s office, drove back to the mountain, got it signed, called again and made an appointment, and drove back to the doctor’s office.

“I told her to sign up for hospice care months ago,” the doctor said, glaring at me. Inoperable lung cancer. I said that Barbara had hidden her condition from her children. The kindly doctor let me off the hook and arranged for hospice to visit.

That night a terrible nurse arrived at the cabin, but wouldn’t help his patient until the patient signed a lot of paperwork. “By signing this form you acknowledge that you have less than six months to live,” he blatted. (I complained, and we never saw him again.)

From then on, no one spoke of death in Barbara’s hearing. Nor did we talk about the past, or family. None of that.

Nurses, doctors and social workers came regularly to see us. Hospice delivered jugs of heavy-duty liquid meds for pain, for panic, for nausea; I added a few drops of each to Barbara’s morning coffee and evening scotch. (She knew I was dosing her drinks and didn’t tell me to stop. The nurses told me, just give ’em to her.)

My mother had been sick for a long time, and housekeeping was never her thing, so I had lots to do between bouts of nursing, grocery shopping and cooking. One of Barbara’s friends said, “Your mother told me that her mother never wasted her time on housework.” We laughed a lot when I replied that, unlike my mother, my grandmother employed a full-time housekeeper.

HarperCollins was reissuing one of Barbara’s books, and she’d updated it before her eyes failed. I read the proof pages and publisher’s emails to her, and she had happy times dictating curmudgeonly replies. (“No I don’t use Twitter or Tweak or whatever….”)

We had kind of a nice summer. It was hot. My brother Matt drove from Pennsylvania, bringing and installing an air conditioner. We ate pie, and peach ice cream. People visited. Wildlife visited, too: owls and a snake; and bears.

The story of the snake and the bears began one afternoon in June, when a bear broke into the cabin.

I came home from the grocery and liquor stores to find evidence of something not quite right. Trash—a roll of paper towels—scattered on the lawn. The kitchen window was broken. So was the microwave, which was conked on the floor. A bowl I’d left full of apples was also on the floor, and the apples had vanished. My mother was yelling, “Hello? Hello?” from her bedroom.

Mom said, “I kept yelling hello, but was answered only by crashing sounds.” I thought, the baby bear (we’d seen it around) has broken in. Good thing I’d left the door closed between the kitchen and the rest of the house (shooing the air-conditioned air toward the bedroom), or the bear could have explored the rest of the cabin.

Of course it was a Friday afternoon. As a Bluemont bonus, the local telephone exchange was down, so I couldn’t call the nearest neighbors (mile away) and ask for help. I could, and did, call Matt in Pennsylvania with my cellphone.

“You should report a breaking-and-entering bear,” he told me. “Call the Fish & Game guys. There’s nothing they can do, but they should know about it.” I found the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries in the Yellow Pages. Their office was all the way across Virginia, with a different telephone exchange, so I was able to get through with the cellphone. Voicemail. I left an FYI about a B&E bear.

I patched the kitchen back together, closed and locked the rotting kitchen door, and got us fed and tucked in for the night. Our days tended to begin with a crisis bright and early, and I was usually asleep well before midnight. The best thing about my evenings was a hot shower before bed: Terrific water-pressure at the cabin, kneading the knots in my shoulders and neck. On the night of the B&E bear, however, my undershower reverie was crudely interrupted by heavy thuddings on the bathroom door.

Ignoring the thuds didn’t make them go away, so I stepped out of the tub, wrapped a towel around myself and opened the door a peek’s width. Something tried to join me in the bathroom, in quite a hurry. It was a very long, extremely angry Black Racer snake. It was hurling itself at the bathroom door, and getting up there, too—its hurling peak was at eye-level.

I closed the door. A jumping snake. It had been long day already. On the other side of the door, the frenzied whacking continued, which was helpful because I didn’t have to wonder about the whacker’s whereabouts while I tried to think.

I thought I wouldn’t want the snake to tussle with Mom’s cats. (Two Siamese cats, Susan and Joe, both excellent hunters.) Cats are passionate about snakes. Susie wouldn’t be able to resist romping with this one, and it was big enough to really hurt her. If I got back into the nice shower and left it alone out there, standing on its tiptoes and flinging itself at the door like that, it could not escape the cats’ notice for long.

I thought if this were a balmy afternoon, and Susie and Joe and a Black Racer snake—a smaller one—were gathered on the lawn outdoors, my money would be on the cats. Your average Black Racer is a shy type, and asks only to hunt mice in peace and relative seclusion. A large and riled Racer, while also intent upon being where we are not, will bite us on its way out. Not a poisonous bite, but surprising and painful, like two hypos applied with a hammer. I knew this from experience.

When my mother had first moved to Bluemont in 1990, we captured a Black Racer in the house. It had been living in her attic, and slipped inquiringly down through a gap between the stone chimney and the ceiling. I tricked it into a pillowcase, and it bit right through the cotton and into my forearm. It felt like two hypos applied with a hammer. That snake had clearly wished to be elsewhere, and we named it Exit. It lived up to its name, and departed forever. Soon large families of mice moved into the attic. Not an improvement.

A couple of years after she’d moved to Bluemont, my mother wrote me that she’d gotten up in the night and, post-pee, noticed a dead mouse in the toilet. “It was dead before I peed on it,” she wrote. “I don’t see why my life is so plagued by horrid things to do with mice.” In hindsight, if I’d left Exit alone, there might not have been quite so many mice living at Bluemont. I’d cleaned up a quantity of mouse-related evidence that summer….

Several moments had been spent with these delightful musings, and still the snake whacked on. I decided to reason with it.

Using my towel as a shield, I opened the bathroom door again and opened negotiations. Would it like to go outside? We’re promoting outside tonight! I tried to explain that our aims were identical and I would happily open the outside door for it, but the snake was too upset to really listen. Its vexation must have been building for a long time. Either that or it was a snake of an overwrought nature.

By advancing a step each time the snake bounced off the shield-towel, I began to waltz us across the kitchen and toward the outside door.

Before I could check for bear and open the door, Susie skittered into the kitchen from the living room, joining the fray with open-armed gusto. Our pincer action was doomed to backfire, and did. The snake instantly vanished into the baseboard heater-thingy. We waited, but it didn’t emerge again.

Bit of an anticlimax. Susie and I glared at each other—your fault—and I returned to my shower, she to Mom’s bed.

Soon I was happily ensconced on the couch, thankful for the close of another day on the mountain.

An hour or two later, I swam up to semi-consciousness. Mom was yelling. Why? Must up? Surely not snake again, already? No … she was yelling, “There’s a bear outside!”

She thought there was a bear outside. Or, rather, she thought that Susie was telling her there was a bear outside. “Susie says there’s a bear outside!” she yelled.

Well, of course there was a bear outside—probably one of many bears. Whole families of bears were outside and mountain lions too. For thousands of years, the mountain had been lousy with bears. The mountain next door is named Bear Mountain.

I like it when bears are outside. So much more correct, darling, than their being inside. Furthermore, I thought slothfully from my burrow on the couch, if this bear situation is the opinion of an overweight (though charming, with a lopsided, crocodilian smile) Siamese cat, can I put the pillow back over my head? Ignore this alleged bear situation?

Over the yowling of my mother, I heard the rending of the kitchen door, and upon the evidence, I had to agree with Susie: There was a bear outside. How to make it stay out there?

If it was the baby bear, I thought I could bully it. We were about the same size.

Reluctantly, I padded into the kitchen, leaving the lights off, and had a look-see. Not the little bear. It was very, very dark out there, but I could see the bear through the three glass windows at the top of the rotted old door. Taller than me, standing on its hind legs and opening the house like a sardine tin.

I muzzled over to the door and looked up at the bear through the glass. Huh. I snapped on the outdoor light, hoping to startle it, and did not at all like what I saw. A very large specimen, holding a half-mangled screen door.

It looked down at me. I wished it wouldn’t. Bears aren’t my favorite wild animal, but I can be persuaded they’re cute from a distance. Playful cubs gamboling by a stream or something, very far away … on TV, like. Close-up, I don’t care for them. I’m entirely with Werner Herzog when he said, in his movie “Grizzly Man,” that a bear’s eyes contain nothing but “chaos, hostility and murder.”

The screen door was already rubbished and cast aside by the time I realized our defense was going to have to be my offense. If the bear pushed me back from the kitchen, Mom would be trapped. Susie and Joe would be tapas. And who was I kidding, with “bear push me back”? “Bear push me back” was something I should take care to avoid.

I was a foot away from the stupid hostile murderer and had no weapons to hand. There was a small fire extinguisher somewhere in the basement, but I imagined the valve was long since rusted shut, and I didn’t have time to find it and find out. I thought I remembered hearing that bears don’t like noise, so noise it would be. I’d have to open the door, darn it. Couldn’t yell at it through the door, could I?

The kitchen door opened inward, a disadvantage, but here we go. I swung it open and, feeling a bit self-conscious, started yelling. My vocabulary failed me, and I was embarrassed to hear myself screaming in the key of “Fuck!” at the bear’s head and beyond into the black night. I don’t think any humans heard me. The beast unnerved me by not reacting. I wished I could think of something else to do, but in the meantime it seemed best to keep on screaming.

After an unsettling length of time, my uncouth shrieks began to work: The hostile murderer swung its stupid head slowly back and forth, I suppose considering its next move. Finally, it turned and left, disgusted, assuring me over its shoulder, “I’ll be back.” I closed and locked the useless door.

Then I scarpered back to the living room, taking the mop and closing the kitchen door behind me. My mother and I praised the cat. I found Mom’s old radio/cassette player and located the nearest rap station. (They have rap stations in rural Virginia?) Turned the volume up to hideous and switched off the power button. With this weapon and the mop at the ready, I perched on the couch with my back to the wall, prepared to watch till dawn. I thought, I’ll not sleep, possibly ever again. When I woke up, it was morning.

Bear follow-up ensued with Game and Inland Fisheries, which came valiantly to our aid. A biologist and a conservation officer spent a happy afternoon installing a bear trap on the lawn. The trap, intriguingly, was welded out of spare highway parts. The holding-bears part was a slice of metal storm-drainage tunnel. The slamming-guillotine part was half a road sign, words facing inward, all scratched and gouged by previous outraged beastie claws.

I felt bad about the baby bear. The Game and Inland Fisheries guys said it would have to be killed, if caught. Once a bear learns to break into people’s houses, you can’t just catch-and-release it. “He could’ve stayed outside in the woods, but he chose to be a bad bear,” the men assured me. Plus, he went home and told his mother about the apples, and she came back that night for more. Did I want every bear on the mountain dropping by? No; and I didn’t feel at all sorry for the giant adult chaotic murdering bear.

We baited the trap with peaches, and the officials trapped each other a few times until they were pleased with the setup. “I’m content,” said the biologist. I was issued a Kill Permit for up to two bears, which is apparently quite an honor. Matt sounded impressed when I told him. Although unsure how I would kill any bear with a mop, I proudly hung the permit on the fridge next to Mom’s “Do Not Resuscitate” sign.

When the phone company fixed the local exchange, I called around and told the neighbors about breaking-and-entering bears. They happily chatted about bears, lots of bears, and the many giant sows and cubs they’d seen that summer, a bumper crop of bears. Just like going through a bad storm or earthquake—everybody has stories.

The cats had to stay indoors until the bear situation was regulated. We all grew testy in very short order, what with Joe crying to go out from four a.m. onward, and the bear trap looming by the splintered door.

I was soon daydreaming about the fabulous garments I might commission to be fashioned out of a bearskin. Hats for all my friends! And hadn’t I read somewhere that the slow-cooked meat of bear paw is a delicacy? By the third day of suspense and cat captivity—no bears came near our trap—I caught myself coveting a hat featuring the baby bear’s glossy young ears. Cute! So much for feeling bad about the little guy.

A few days later, I was awakened at a quarter to seven by the bear-trap door slamming down. Huzzah! Equally excited and sorry, I ran to the kitchen window. Susie joined me, and we gazed at the trap. The door had definitely closed. The trap wasn’t jostling about, though. You’d think it would be.

Then I spotted the baby bear sitting in the daylilies. He looked aggrieved. I was grudgingly pleased for him. No cute hat for me. No slow-cooked bear paw. Still, his speed had been magical: He must be seriously quick, to get from the peach-and-lever end of the trap and out through the door before it closed on him. He sulked in the flowers, and after a while I got my camera and took his picture. He perked up a little, and seemed to be waiting for me to chuck him a peach. Not happening, little guy.

I called the Game and Inland Fisheries men, who said they were working at least an hour’s drive away. I told them the bear was already gone, but they insisted on zooming over. Arriving in whirls of dust and gravel, they leapt out of their respective trucks, grabbed their artillery, and examined the trap and surrounds. They regretted that the terrain was too hilly to see as far as a bullet’s range, as well as being inhabited by our few neighbors, so they couldn’t hunt down the bear. I was beginning to realize that if they did kill a bear, I might not have exclusive rights to any consequent fur hats. We were all feeling let down. The guys, gazing sadly into the woods, let their various shotguns drop from listless fingers. I took a picture of the lawn littered with weaponry.

I served iced tea, and we baited the trap again. No bears ever returned. A week later, I could tolerate Joe’s whining no longer and let him go out. Both cats came in at night readily, except for the time Joe struck up a friendship with an owl.

Another week went by, and the bear trap—for which I am ever grateful; the Game and Inland Fisheries men were extremely nice and reassuring and helpful—lost its glamour. It took on a dilapidated look, but it had served us well. All the bears on the mountain had apparently heard about the infernal machine parked at Mom’s cabin.

A friend-of-a-handyman came and took away the mangled screened door, presumably for repair. He never returned, and I didn’t care enough to call around trying to locate him. After a month or so, the bear trap disappeared while I was out on errands. I assume the guys came and loaded it back onto their truck. Barbara and Susie and Joe and I went on as before (except for the door). I kept the Kill Permit as a souvenir. The snake-and-bears story was over.

By August I was frayed and urgently needed some help. I looked into home healthcare and looked away again, appalled. Corporate, $4,000 a week and slimy? Or less corporate, $3,000 a week and subcontracted by a fierce pimp-lady to non-English-speaking women who are dropped off on the mountain with no driver’s license, no car? Also, even the least-privileged caretakers required their own room, a non-smoking environment and a working TV. Barbara’s cabin offered no such amenities. And as for mopping the floor and changing the cats’ litter box….

My husband thought we should run an ad somewhere, but where? So we wrote a job description and emailed it to all of our friends and family, hoping someone might know someone, or something. Someone did.

A dear friend, Steven, came to the rescue, moving into Bluemont and learning the ways of the house. The night Steven arrived, the suspense was monstrous. If Barbara hated him, and she hated everyone, I didn’t know what I’d do. All was well, however: During their very first chat, Steven impressed her by knowing the Latin word for “arrow.” I can’t remember why it came up, but it did. I went home for three whole weeks, returning to give Steven a week off at the end of August.

The morning after I arrived back at Bluemont, Barbara rolled out of bed at dawn. I couldn’t get her back in, and her arm was bleeding. A hospice nurse came quickly, even on a Saturday morning, and we moved Barbara to the hospital bed in the living room. The hospital bed had been waiting all summer for Barbara, where the dining table used to be, with the best view. Where my mother wrote and smoked and read and ate and drank for twenty years.

She lived another morphine-cushioned week. Steven came back from his vacation, just when I needed him. Susie wedged herself between Barbara’s chin and shoulder, and my mother aimed a long, blank gaze over her trees, her valley.

My mother was brave; she was always brave. She died with her blind old eyes fixed on the view, down past Round Hill and Purcellville on the left and past Dulles on the right, all the way to Washington’s smudge in the sky.

When I talk about my mother’s last summer on the mountain, I tell the story of the snake and the bears. Nothing else, and certainly not the reason I was there. Just the wildlife break-ins.

Why? Is it a metaphor, having to open the door and face your fears to, um, make them go away?

Oh, I think it’s more likely I trot out the bears because they amuse people enough to listen while I fluff my ego. Pretty remarkable of me to bravely open the door to yell at the giant, hostile murderer, when it could easily have broken my neck. Oh and P.S., I suspended my life and nursed my mother so she could die at home. What a really marvelous, big-hearted person I am!

Oh yeah. Actually, it was selfish and cowardly to hide from my mother for those five years, especially from the family’s point of view. Others had to bear the brunt of the visiting-around scheme.

I had missed her. She was witty and smart. During our estrangement, Barbara published a book called “The Joy of Drinking,” which is very funny. The joke, not the book.

After that, nothing, until the story of the snake and the bears.

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