Tree of Knowledge (updated)

The Tree of Knowledge

Genesis 2:9 - And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The tiny bird worried something in the long grass blades. Dew flecked off the brittle strands of grass as its feathered body ducked and dodged among them. It seemed that its little brain couldn't decide whether the thing it was troubling was alive or dead. The tiny beak would pluck at it and it would jump, but in effect all it was attacking was some limp object that had caught its narrow attention. This occupied the bird intensely. High above, on the top two-by-four of a grape stake fence, a cat crouched, silent, still, watching every move the bird made. Wind tousled its hair but it didn't stir.


Time to mow the goddamn lawn.

He adjusted the spark. Then he pulled on the starter cord. The engine juggled into a brief cough and grumbled back into silence. He pulled out the choke. Pulled the cord again. The engine sputtered into life. He throttled the choke and the engine responded, its tinny roar barking up the Sunday afternoon silence with the acerbic interruption of thoughtless lawn mowing. He released the brake and the lawn mower lurched forward. He finagled it out onto the lawn.

He recalled lawn mowing fifty years ago, as a young man. It had seemed easy then. You follow the paths chopped in the lawn. The grass responds to the blades. Watch out for sprinklers. There you have it. Today, so many years later, he found that subtle tightening in his chest distracting in his efforts to remember the old neural pathways to lawn mowing. He wrestled the lawn mower over the dry grass. As it growled along, the startled bird rose and planed right over the head of the cat, which eyed the whole episode with typical feline emotional distance.

The sun settled over the lawn. Beams of light shifted and poked through a storm of dry grass blades and dust stirred by the lawn mower. Round and round the man and machine marched over the lawn. Dogs barked. A child rode by on a bike that had been made to sound like a motorcycle with playing cards clothes-pinned to the spokes. Round and round the man strode behind the lawn mower, letting his arm drag a little on the turns. It was aching.

Disturbed by the lawn mower, the cat padded through the open chain-link fence gate and across the shaggy backyard lawn. He came to the trunk of the large Bluegum Eucalyptus there and put his paws on the raw bark, digging in a little with the claws in a taught, arched stretch. In a breath, he climbed the trunk, lighting on a branch high enough to taunt dogs from; there he sat in a furry crouch, eyes deep slits gazing at some distant place, lids heavy and bordering on a nap. The lawn mower droned on, turning around and around.

Just to the rear of where the old tree stood James opened the gate and strolled though it. The cat didn't notice (it wanted us to think), but as cats will do, it was keeping one eye on the movements of the boy just in case. He stopped and put his schoolbooks down, then took the cards out of his pocket― Mad Magazine Trading Cards― this was the Jack Davis monster series. These were the best things he had ever owned. He shuffled through them, studying each one. The lawn mower had stopped in the middle of the yard and was popping and chugging there.

Grandma had spotted James from the kitchen window. She quickly opened the refrigerator and took out the lemonade. She poured a glass. Then she pulled out an ice tray and broke the ice in it. One by one the cubes plinked into the cold lemonade. She took the glass to the screen door of the backyard slider and hollered over to him.

"James, I have lemonade."

"Be right there Grandma.”

He gathered his things and ran across the lawn to where she was putting the glass on a wrought iron table.

"How was school today?" Grandma asked over a hug.

"It was OK I guess. Where's Grandpa?"

She looked up, turning her ear toward the front yard where the lawn mower still choked and putted.

"He's mowing the lawn it sounds like.”

"Do you think he wants some lemonade yet?"

"I don't know. He hasn't been mowing long. Why don't you ask him?"

James set down his glass and ran past Grandma into the living room with its familiar smell of Cherry Blend pipe tobacco sifting through the dry air. He turned down the hallway, choked with pictures of grandchildren and favorite pets long dead on the walls. He was through the screen door and had avoided the vine trellises when he saw a man who had stopped his car and was bent over Grandpa giving him CPR.

The man's wife had got out of the car and was heading up the driveway to alert whoever was inside to call an ambulance. James watched as the man breathed into Grandpa's mouth, and then massaged Grandpa's heart. His wife yelled at James to call an ambulance; by this time Grandma was in the driveway, her mottled hands fluttering about her mouth.

"Ambulance!" Someone shouted, and Grandma spun around and dashed through the porch screen door and to the kitchen phone. James watched the man trying to revive Grandpa, and then as an afterthought, pulled the throttle on the lawn mower and let the engine die. Silence swelled and flew up and down the street, nestling in the tops of the trees everywhere, and then perched― waiting for someone to say something.

Four days later, James stood in his black suit by the old Bluegum Eucalyptus tree, watching large ants wind a trail over the bark. Behind him, relatives mingled under the awning on the patio, their conversation somber. James watched the ants scour the tree bark for something invisible. He had moved the lawn mower into the garage several days ago. The lawn was still half-mowed; sometime he would finish it for Grandma. He felt a little guilty that he had not offered to do it before; no one had known that Grandpa was so sick, he told himself.

Under the awning Dad was talking to Grandma.

"We have to go upstate in a week, Mom. Carolyn's folks are having a reunion and we need to go. I know it may be too soon, but could James stay with you while we're away? I wouldn't ask but―”

"Of course he can," she said, her glasses reflecting the sunlight from the liquid in a cup of coffee she nestled in her hands.

"We'll get him packed and―”

"It's all right. Grandpa loved James and it would be good to have him here. I really don't mind."

"Thanks, Mom."

"Of course, you're more than welcome," she said.

There was distance in her voice. Her eyes were focused elsewhere. Her mind was on other things. She was hearing the lawn mower over the ambulance siren again. She closed her eyes and traveled to another time. She saw the trailer she and her husband lived in when they were in Arizona. A dapper, fully-coiffed Grandpa was pumping up a bike tire. They rode bicycles together in the evenings, up and down the lit streets. That was a good time.

There were other good times too. She would remember them all. Having distanced herself from the conversation on the patio, her eyes roamed the lawn. They traveled over the neatly trimmed bushes, the weeded yard. They rested on the small, suited figure, tracing paths in the bark of that old tree with a stick.

Grandpa had planted that tree in 1978. She remembered when he brought it home. She made him iced tea as he dug the hole. She watched him from the patio, smiling, content with the fact that he was there, right where he should be. This is all she would ever want. This is all she needed. As she watched, the wind tugged at one of the leafy branches, moving it slightly, blowing tufts of dust in the dry earth. She thought the branch made a gesture to the boy, like it was trying to reassure him. She finally took a sip of the coffee and turned back to her family.

James saw the relatives gather around and reach out to his grandmother to comfort her. He didn't see his dad with his hand over his mouth battling back tears, or his mother, who had just come out from the living room now massaging his shoulders. James was oblivious to all that. He was mostly watching the ants. He watched them form trails like ticking veins across the tree bark. They had their little paths to follow. One by one, over the dry bark, they explored and dabbed at the world with little antennae. He amused himself drawing a twig over the paths and watching their confusion as he wiped away the scent trail. He ran the stick this way and that. The ants were predictable. The wind blew in a gust and he heard a sigh.

He was sure it was a sigh.

The dust swirled about him and got into his eyes. He stepped back and patted it away. When he could see again, he noticed the ants were making trails that all seemed to be pointed towards the roots of the tree. The wind coughed up dry Bluegum Eucalyptus leaves. He heard something again, seeming to come from deep inside the roots. The ants changed course and followed a trail to the grape stake fence now. They were deserting the tree, like tiny rats deserting a ship. Grandma was watching and hollered across the lawn, "Come out of the dust, James; you'll ruin your suit."

In the garage the lawn mower, still sitting there in the blood of chopped grass, still smelling of gas and oil, rumbled on. It sounded like someone was revving it with the throttle. Uncle Nye got up after a few people had reacted to the sound in surprise, muttering under his breath, "Damn kids," and walked over to the garage. In a few seconds, the engine was silent again. He closed the garage door to “keep out the riffraff.” The lawn mower sat alone in the light from the garage door window, surrounded by darkness. All was silent now. There were the "lawn smells", the stink of gas and oil and nothing more.

A gust of wind came up and blew through the mourners, shaking the table covers and causing people to leap toward the food to protect it. James dropped the stick and strolled over to where his dad was sitting with Grandma, his eyes red and swollen, his nose red too.

"Can we go home now?" James said.


The Bluegum Eucalyptus tree had been a part of the house almost as long as Grandma and Grandpa had owned it. The Bluegum always flowered from April to November, bringing hummingbirds into the yard. The tree seemed to "nail down" the property―anchoring the entire lot. The house was a three-bedroom built in the late 60's, nestled in a converted orchard. To the west beyond the grape stake fence there was the football and baseball field of a local grade school, and beyond that, newer townhouses and the main street leading out of the neighborhood.

Angie and Bob (Grandma and Grandpa to family) bought the house in 1968 after selling their trailer. Together they selected the plants and trees that populated their home, pouring over catalogs on warm summer evenings, sharing a pitcher of cold tea. Their biggest yard buy was the Bluegum Eucalyptus tree.

The Bluegum comes from Tasmania and southeastern Australia. Grandpa learned that it was brought to California in 1856 (he liked looking up things like this in the Encyclopedia). He and Angie looked over the catalogs for days finally deciding on this tree over a Willow. Grandpa recalled that Willows got worms.

Not much grew around the Bluegum; it was always bare under the thing, except for the crabgrass. Grandpa said the Bluegum was an important source of fuel in other countries. It was used for windbreaks (which is why Grandpa's Bluegum was at the southwest part of the yard), "shelter belts", and sound barriers along highways. The only problem was that Grandpa insisted on planting the Bluegum next to the grape stake fence, knowing those fences could catch fire easily.

He made the mistake of mentioning that to Grandma and she had fussed about it ever since. It is the stringy outer bark that catches fire. The tree itself has some unique properties after being burned. Release of what is called "crown-stored" seed is triggered when shoots die, and these seeds spread like crazy in the aftereffects of a fire. Grandpa's tree grew over the grape stake fence. The Bluegum Eucalyptus, at least 25 feet at its crown, formed a leafy bridge between their home and the old Meyers home next door.

The house on the other side of Grandma's was one of the older ones on the street. It had been a family place owned by the people who had tended and taken care of the orchard. Now the orchard had become tract homes, and this house stood out like a sore thumb. It was a large, two-story thing with a wasp's nest by the door to the top bedroom where Richard Meyers sat with his shotgun, drinking beer and watching the surrounding neighborhood like a predatory animal.

He kept a black and white TV playing all the time, switching channels between wrestling and Roller Derby; his favorite was wrestling. He slept, ate, drank and sometimes pissed in this room. Richard had done some time in prison for sex crimes and was on parole. His aunt was an elderly woman, easily bamboozled by his jailhouse charm. At first, Richard did odd jobs for her. Later, as she grew more senile and became more of an invalid, he tended to ignore her until she died leaving him the house. Richard Meyers was bad; more than that, he was a hard core sociopath. He was someone the neighbors steered clear of.

After they got to know him, most things steered clear of Richard Meyers.

Richard liked the room high above the bedrooms of the old house. It had been his uncle's study. He loved trashing it. He also liked the view; he could see into the neighboring yards from there. He watched families come and go like a hawk gazes over a dry field, searching for signs of his next meal. The windows ran around on the study almost the entire length, except for the wall where the pictures hung.

Hunting scenes, diplomas, football photographs--all suffered dart wounds inflicted by Richard Meyers. Broken glass and pictures made the wall look like it had been attacked by a sapsucker gone mad. Richard sat in his uncle's favorite chair, its fabric peppered with cigarette burns, watching Sally Handerburgh sun in her yard― with her top off. He sat there watching her for hours imagining what she would say if he climbed to the roof from the porch outside, shinnied down that old Peppertree and ended right there in the yard with her. His fantasies morphed from that scenario to an epic stroke comic.

He loved that room. He looked to his left where the buzzing from the wasp's nest always drew his attention. He liked the wasps. He wasn't afraid of them. He was used to being stuck. Richard Meyers was also a heroin addict.

He had watched the people huddled under the awning at the old coot's place this afternoon. That bastard had lived a good life. He wondered where he got the energy to manage that lawn. Richard sat in a chair on the porch with the wasps busy above his head. He sighted the shotgun on the ass of that cat watching something in the grass below.

Here, kitty, kitty.

The front sights of the shotgun waved back and forth as he aimed at the cat's furry backside. "Boom," he said, then came the crisp "click" of the hammer as it dropped onto an empty cartridge chamber.

He had watched the old man and the old woman come and go, like an owl watches the coming and going of field mice. He was more than interested when the old man sat in the yard one day, a coffee table up, cloth spread over it. What was it glittering in the sunlight, laid out in uniform rows in a kind of book thing? Gold, copper, silver... all shimmering in the sun. He liked watching the old fart brush and polish them. He estimated there was at least several thousand dollars worth of money there. What's an old fart going to do with all that?

He could score some decent heroin with that money; he could put those coins to some use―you bet. He also knew that the old man was dead now, and the only thing between him and those coins was his old lady, that poor old tired bitch, thin and frail like his aunt―one foot in the grave. Richard Meyers leaned over and took the phone off the hook and dialed. He was calling Lenny, his dealer.


"Do I have to stay with Grandma?" James asked.

"You're too young to stay by yourself," his mother answered.

"Mom."

"No argument. Grandma can use the company. She always likes it when you visit after school."

She was packing his clothes, making sure she had him all set for the school week. This was no small task.

"I'm thirteen," he said, but knew better. They were intent on having him be forever "their child.” He turned and walked out into the garage where his Dad was going over the car. He was eyeing a dipstick and fussing with some rags.

"What's it like not to have a dad?" James said.

Dad stopped for a moment and thought about it, then said, "I miss him. It's sort of like this big hole has been dug out of my life. Why do you ask?"

"I don't know. I just wondered. It's really odd knowing I'm going over there this evening and he won't be there."

"I know. Mom is taking it hard too. I feel bad leaving like I am, but your Mother and I need to make this trip. I feel like I'm deserting the both of you. Do you feel like that?"

"I wish I could go."

"You'd just be stuck with a bunch of 'dry-balls', Son. There's no fun in that."

"What am I going to do at Grandma's?"

"The yard needs work. You can help with that after school."

"Can you think of anything else I can do?" He said as he wiped a wrench.

"Grandma is going to need all of us. I guess yard work isn’t fun, like you say, but she needs the help. We're family. It's up to us to give it to her. If it wasn't for this reunion I'd be over there now. Grandpa left some things undone. Right now she has no water in the back bathroom. That's going to be a real hassle getting that fixed."

He wiped the dipstick.

"Damn, I forgot to check it," he said, plunging it once again into its metal scabbard. He drew it out, eyeing it carefully. It was a fraction below the "fill" mark.

"I guess I need to get some oil."



Grandma was washing the dishes. She washed each one. There wasn't much. It was only her dishes that she needed to clean now. She washed a cup, over and over. It said “97 Airborne” on it. This was his favorite mug. The warm water made her hands red. As she washed the mug she watched that damn cat on the two-by-four that topped the grape stake fence. It sat there crouched, eyeing the lawn. She watched it for a moment; then, for some reason, she looked up and saw Richard Meyers beading down on it with a shotgun.

She didn't know much about her neighbor, but from what she knew, she was sure she didn't like him. The barrel of the gun rolled and wove like a coiled snake. How dare him! Did he think he could shoot neighborhood pets like that? The cat was oblivious to it all. Every muscle, every strip of feline sinew was focused on something in that lawn. It was sizing the thing up. This was lunch. Never mind that bland cat food. The wind blew making the periwinkle along the fence nod and bow. Every inch of that cat was ready.

The cat made its move, streaking straight down the grape stake slats, only to be caught up in a flurry of Bluegum Eucalyptus branch. It came out of nowhere, hitting the cat in midstride. It caught him solid, sending him scrabbling and howling into the dry grass, a spitting storm of dust and fur. She could hear Richard Meyers laughing at the poor thing. The cat, visibly shaken, sped off over the fence and tumbled into the baseball field behind it.

Her husband had not liked that damned cat; he always tried to protect things from it. He didn't like the predatory nature of the thing, the greed it he thought it showed when stalking. He would have laughed too, seeing the tree swipe it in mid-flight like that. Neither of the witnesses to this ever questioned once how that branch could swing in an arc out of nowhere, just at the instant the cat was getting ready to nail its dinner. It must have been the wind. That’s it. Grandma returned to the dishes. Richard returned to his beer. The cat returned home, probably never to venture into that yard again.

Show's over.


Some people say the Santana winds were named by an Associated Press correspondent stationed in Santa Ana. He called them "Santa Ana" winds in a 1901 dispatch. They originate in California's eastern deserts, blowing through mountain canyons, exiting the mouths of them at 100 miles per hour at times. The theory is that these winds are fueled by "sinking air", because air will dry and warm as it sinks. Whatever they are, however they occur, they are hot and dry and blow like hell.

A Santana was blowing dust and debris up vacant streets now. Telephone poles wagged like monks at prayer, their lines bouncing. Richard Meyers was sitting in his "office." Roller Derby was on, but he wasn't watching. Instead, he was gazing at the neighbor's lawn as the wind whipped around his "hunting perch.” He knew the old woman and the kid were there. He'd seen him arrive that afternoon.

The wind was blowing about fifty to sixty miles an hour. The power lines that swung by his "perch" waved ominously. He never took his eyes off the light in the bedroom window as night fell, until it flicked off about 9:45. He sat back and popped another beer. He would wait until two or three A.M. He had the gear laid out on the workbench in the garage, all his B&E shit. Wouldn't hurt to get a catnap. It would be time to do his thing soon enough. He put his feet up and closed his eyes.

Outside, the wind pummeled the screens on the windows. Papers and cans meandered down the streets, clinging to culverts and chain link fences like platelets in arteries. A dog howled somewhere, frightened inside his doghouse now being raked and buffeted by sixty mile an hour gusts. It was 2:15. The streets were dark. Only the street lamps witnessed the fierce "devil winds" tearing and pulling at treetops and making roof eves groan.

Richard Meyers labored under the stark garage bulb. He buckled on his converted carpenter's belt, duct tape hanging in a silver ring from it, along with screwdrivers, chisels, lock picks and a glasscutter. He knew already that he was going through the bathroom window. He took out the black ski mask from a tool drawer, brushed wood shavings off it, and pulled it on. He glimpsed himself in a broken mirror loosely attached to a garage stud and grinned.

Pretty scary.

This was going to be easy. He felt cocky. The old bitch won't know what hit her. He stood on the little side porch now, the winds tugging at his mask and jacket. He closed the door behind him and peered through the grape stake slats at the old woman’s bathroom window, its glass obscured. The streetlight in front of both their houses lit the eves under the old woman’s roof.  He put his hands on the tips of the grape stake and muscled himself up to the two-by-four, balanced there with his knees, swung a leg over and dropped down, hanging onto the fence ridge only briefly.

He would go in through the bathroom window because that would put him in the part of the house that neither she nor the kid could see― unless they were taking a leak. This was the bathroom he had heard the old man complaining about to the mail carrier weeks ago. This was the one with no water.

He felt around the sill. The glass was back an inch or so. The old man had kept this window cracked open and no one had bothered to close it. Why should they? Who was going to rob them? He pushed it back further and felt the warm, still air of the bathroom on his hand. He eased the glass open all the way; wide enough for his skinny butt. He wrestled himself up onto the ledge using the stucco wall for traction, twisting and straining until he was through the window up to his armpits. Then he used the back muscles in his upper arms to leverage his torso in.

There was nothing on the wall below him. Upside-down, he hand-walked the rest of his body to the floor. Silently, carefully, he slid his feet and legs along the wall to his right, landing with a soft "thud" on his knees in the bathtub, bruising a shin on the faucets. Slowly he righted himself Thank God for that noisy-ass Santana. He stood, straightening the tools on his belt. Now to business.

The Santana winds raked and clawed over the roof shingles of the house. He moved to the closed door of the bathroom and eased it open slowly, revealing the hallway. He knew the old woman was sleeping in the bedroom to the left, because he had heard her and the old man through the open window one night, arguing. Only a night-light in the working bathroom at the end of the hall lit his way.

First the old lady.

He flushed his back to the wall, taking care not to move any pictures or scrape a screwdriver against it, then snaked his way along it into the doorframe of Grandma’s room, pausing there to look across the hall where he thought the kid might be.

Darkness. Breathing. He slipped into the old lady's bedroom, walked over to the bed and stood there for a minute. She was sleeping with her back to him. He didn't want to grab her and have her scream, waking the kid. He moved over to her side of the bed, facing her.

Jesus, what a sleeper. Look how close he was. A bomb wouldn't wake this old hag. He paused for a few moments. As if to punctuate this moment the wind rattled the shingles along the spine of the house. She stirred; he placed his hand on her mouth and hissed, "Shhh.”  She tried to speak anyway and he clamped his hand tighter, snorting at her.

"Shut up now. Don't say nothin'. I just want those coins―you know. Gimme those coins and I'll leave." He lifted his hand away; as she started to speak, he cautioned her again.

"Quietly."

"I don't know what you mean," she said. This pissed him off. He flipped her over, taking out a screwdriver and pressing it to her neck.

"I want those coins. Don't give me no shit about it or you're dead meat." He prodded her neck arteries to stress his point. She began to blubber. That's all he needed. He dragged her hands behind her back and wound the wrists with duct tape. He rolled her over and bound her ankles. He was in control and this old bitch was going to give him what he wanted.

It was then that he heard what sounded like a drawer opening in the kitchen.

That little bastard. What's he up to? How long has he been awake? Did he call 911 ? Richard Meyers slid into the hallway, wielding the screwdriver like a sword. He was going to skewer the little shit. He rounded the hallway into the dark living room. The wind was even fiercer now. Power lines danced and waved outside. Streetlights flickered. He needed to find that little prick fast.

He got reckless. He strolled into the living room, brandishing the screwdriver, and turned to meet a flurry of fists rushing him from the kitchen. One fist connected with a meaty thud, then there was a pause, scrabbling back in the kitchen through a drawer and suddenly he felt a large bread knife enter the soft flesh below his bottom rib on the right side. It slid in about six inches and stopped.

Awwwwww shit. This was gonna hurt.

Richard Meyers fell to his knees, and then slumped to a seated position on his heels, bracing himself with his right arm. He groped for the knife handle. He felt the part of the knife that was sticking into his lung move as he manipulated it. Gingerly, about six inches of hard metal unsheathed itself from his flesh. He felt blood pour down from the wound to the waistband of his pants, staining the rim of his underwear. This little bastard was going to die tonight. Pain grouped around the wound, the cut muscles dancing. He tasted blood in his mouth. He watched the boy tear through the back door, heading toward the garage. He struggled to his feet, fighting back a faint.

He coughed blood. He was fucked up; he knew that. He felt the lips of the wound ooze blood. He put his hands to his chest and it came away wet and greasy. He almost lost it again. Not yet. Not until I finish my business here. He lumbered into the garage.

He was standing there in the darkness again.

"Come on out, kid. I won't hurt you. We just had a misunderstanding. I'm not hurt bad... really."

The darkness didn't respond.

"Say kid, you didn't call the police, did ya? You didn't dial 911 on old Dick, did ya?"

The darkness answered back with a Brrrt.

Richard listened to it, trying to figure out what it was. Brrrrt! Brrt! Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! It was a power mower. The bitter smell of combusting gas entered his nostrils. Something came at him about floor level, something that made scraping noises. The blades chopped away at his pants-leg, carving out trails of flesh, the lawn mower trying to dry hump him chewing on his shin at the same time. He screamed. Reaching down, he tried to push it away, searing his hands on hot metal for his trouble. He screamed again, bent over in a stage curtsy, frantically trying to remove a mechanical eating-machine from his leg.

He fumbled around the top of the lawn mower, burning himself again on the exhausts before he found the choke. The mechanical chewing-machine stopped humping him. He drew his leg away from the bloody teeth. The sound that came out of his throat was angry, raw and frightening.

A voice chirruped back, "I didn't do it!"

Richard reached along a shelf for something to hurl towards the voice. He found gallon paint can and launched it. The sound it made against the wall was abrupt. The garage door to the backyard opened, framing the shadow of a fleeing thirteen-year-old boy.

Oh no. You're not getting away that easy.

Richard fumbled in the darkness and his hand came to rest on the handle of a croquet mallet. He wrenched it from its rack. He tasted blood. This was really bad. When he finished the kid he was going to do the old lady too. Oh yes. He would punish them both. A wave of dizziness washed over him. Pain snaked up his shin and ignited in his knee. He limped out the door, waving the mallet. The little bastard would not get away with any of this.

The Santana winds nearly lifted him off his feet. Ten or twenty yards in front of him, he could see the kid almost to the Bluegum Eucalyptus and the gate that opened onto the football field. Not this time, kid. He swung the mallet and the wind took it. It flew straight to the boy and thumped him with brute force between his shoulder blades. James fell, the breath knocked out of him. In seconds, Richard had him pinned to the ground, his fingers dug deeply into the soft tissues of James's neck, restricting the airway, choking the life out of him. James began to lose consciousness.

Above them a branch from the Bluegum Eucalyptus lost a portion of itself torn away in the wind. It made a thirty five-inch stake. The branch had separated above and behind Richard making a spear of wood pointed down at him; oblivious, he was focused on methodically choking the life out of the boy who had nearly killed him. Richard was so intent on what he was doing that he never heard the branch moan, never saw its leaves shudder just as it lurched. But he did feel that thirty five-inch stake poke him between the shoulder blades, driving it into his chest cavity, skewering his heart.

Richard's death-grip on James loosened as he felt his heart constrict around the sharp object that had impaled it. He was still on his knees as James caught his breath and scrambled out from under him. James stood back, bracing himself in the fierce winds. He watched Richard's hands flutter up to the growing stain on his T-shirt, watched his windblown face go slack, blood in the teeth that were clenched in a grimace which was fast forming his death mask. Richard crumpled around the stake in a cloud of dust and leaves, and was still; and now there was nothing but James, the wind and the Bluegum Eucalyptus tree.

The police arrived, then an ambulance, and then the coroner. James had carefully unwound as much of the duct tape from Grandma's wrists and ankles as he could. From the bedroom looking out through the glass slider, they both watched as the police struggled in the wind to "maintain the integrity of the crime scene.” Richard remained impaled on the branch for many hours until all questions had been asked, all pictures and notes taken. The coroner, looking like he was in a wind tunnel, cut the branch; then he and an assistant wrestled Richard into one of those bags. They rolled him on a gurney like a mobile concession, and wheeled him to the waiting corner's wagon.

Good-bye Richard Meyers.

It was days before the Santana died down. This one had done considerable damage to the community. There were bits and pieces of debris everywhere, clogging the tract streets. On Appleyard Avenue power lines were down and the power crews worked feverishly to restore electricity. Everywhere, neighbors found residue from other yards plastered up against their fences. It looked like trees and shrubs had exploded all over the place. Chain saws whined as road crews sawed up and then removed fallen timber. The sky was blue and clear.

When James's parents returned home, they were shocked to see the damage to the neighborhood; they were angry and frightened when James and Grandma told them of their ordeal with the deceased Richard Meyers. Not long afterwards, Grandma sold the house. She moved in with the family and lived peacefully there for another three years, dying of a stroke one Sunday afternoon after church.

In the yard where the Bluegum Eucalyptus stood guard, a cat stalked and hunted, unmolested. The tree allowed the feline to roam freely. It left little packages of destroyed and bloody prey in the dry grass.

Some months later, to the dismay of the new owners, lightening struck the Bluegum Eucalyptus tree at sunset, setting it on fire. It burned the bark and thirty feet of grape stake. It burned, sending a column of smoke into the night sky, smoke lit by the searchlight from a police helicopter and the revolving lights of the pump trucks that had to knock down the far gate to get into the yard.

Three days later, the Bluegum Eucalyptus was sawed down and hauled away in the back of a truck; only the stump remained, surrounded by fresh grape stake replacement fencing. Three weeks later, the stump was removed.

After months of initial effort that stretched into a couple of years of tender loving care, a rose garden filled up that corner of the yard, its blossoms thick and fragrant.

This is My City

Let the world know this:
Please pass this to everyone you know if it gives you any solace at all.


This Is My City.

This is my city.
It is in ruins today,
The hot Louisiana sun
Cooks the dirty water
That shimmers around my legs

But this is my city.

This is my home.
It lies wasted
Into the earth
By merciless, windy hands.
All I have is in ruins
Everything is gone.

But this is my home.

This is my family.
We have nothing, everything is lost.
Our memories are slowly dissolving
Into contaminated water
I can't find my father, my uncle, my child

But this is my family.

This is my country.
The roads are choked with people
Taking it upon themselves to reach out
To my desolation and sorrow,
And bringing to this sad banquet
A convoy of shining rainbows
A caravan of hope.

This is my country.

My God is with me
I am with him and although
I am parted from my history
My neighbors, my home,
I am not parted from His love.
He shall not let
One sparrow fall.
Not one.

He says I will return to my city
He says my family will be restored to me somehow
He says my country will be healed
As my city is healed
One brick, one front yard,
One levee at a time.
My God is with me.
This is my city
My family.
My country and
My God.

Together,

We will prevail.

THE LONELIEST ROAD

THE LONELIEST ROAD
by J.M. Lamoreux

She discovered something on the sill of the window she was sitting next to. She was eyeing it and caught herself making up explanations of how it got there, what it was, who put it there. The coffee lingered on her teeth and tongue. She licked her lips and tasted strawberry lip-gloss. Her eyes fixed on the red glow of heat within the ash tower of the Marlboro poised between two fingers like an erotic toy. Outside truckers came and went, the harsh Nevada sun darkening their faces, necks and arms.

But that sun was settling now behind the Sierras and one by one those same truckers became ghosts. Ghosts moved about the gas pumps and the asphalt with red, glowing worms poised on bones between thin lips. One of the ghosts would turn and look at her, eyes hidden by mirrored shades, probing the glass of the window between them, looking for her she thought, but instead seeing his reflection and the reddening sky behind him.

She glimpsed her own cigarette hissing at the bottom of an almost empty water glass. A stain tamped out the red fire and claimed parts of the paper shaft. The thing hissed, coughed up smoke and died. She dug the tab out of the tumble of want ads at her table, scoured the curled writing of the server and locked on the sum. The she dug through her purse for the money, found it, gathered herself and rose to pay for her meal at the cash register. In the distance, the sun was leaving the sky, the fierce redness blending now into inky blue, and out of the flesh of it began the first, tentative flicker of stars. To replace the face of the sun, a leering moon rose to take its turn staring at the world.

The moon shone in the windshields of the rows and rows of trucks glistening under the neon lamps. Across the parking lot a hotel blinked room windows at her, warm with the inviting amber light of occupation. In those rooms people were bedding down for the night. They'd arrived at their destination. Here and there the debris of their traveling lives was draped over chairs, crowned beds, floors. Belly’s full, they flicked on the T.V. and allowed their lives to settle around the jittery blue light. She watched this happening behind those warm windows. Her hand pressed the button and the car beeped, locks popping up to greet her with an absurd erection of plastic and metal.

As she sat in the seat her eyes scanned the lights of the city as they tried to pin back the darkness wherever they could. It was a battle between neon and being able to see. The lights drug you towards all sorts of needs, all sorts of desires. The key turned. The engine sputtered into life and began to vibrate, the reliable engineering of the mechanisms inside doing what they're supposed to, reassuring her hands as she felt the engine through the steering wheel. She navigated her way out of the parking lot, her eyes catching the orange light shaped like a person in a seat belt. She snapped herself in. The light went away. She navigated to a Freeway on-ramp with an arrow pointed north on 395. She made the cusp and blended with the six o'clock traffic flow.


Miles away another scene unraveled in the desert. A man stood among the desert flora. In the distance he sensed coyotes. Now and then their eyes caught the light from his headlamps and floated there in the bushes, hungry and stupid. He was taking a piss, the yellow stream snaking and coiling and dragging a yellow finger through the dust. He was humming a Beatles song "Love Me Do" and grunted when the stream stopped. The red eyes of the coyotes bobbed in disembodied fashion among the sage brush. They were attracted to something in a culvert about twenty feet from the running engine of the truck. Dust and bugs spun and played around in the dissolving beams of the lights. The night was punctuated with the predatory sound of a closing zipper. The coyotes were repelled by something in that sound and danced back into the darkness wary and afraid.

He turned and walked to a culvert. There in the truck lights he knelt in the sand. By his knee the bruised hand of Sally Morris wore a tiny silver ring on her pinky finger. He took the hand in his own, like a bird that he had rescued from a fall. He put it to his lips and hummed into the cold flesh the song "Beautiful Dreamer.” He laid the hand over a small, delicately formed breast. He stood looking down into the dead eyes of this young woman. His head cocked, like a raptor eyeing the scurrying body of a field mouse. She was staring into the night sky, her eyes looking into Eternity, and he found himself trying to see what she was seeing. He looked, probed the black of the frozen iris. After a few minutes he gave up, grunted to himself and returned to the truck. He hoisted himself into the raised driver's seat, flipped the CB back on and paused to take out and light a cigarette. The engine roared and shook under his supplications as he agitated it into a roaring cacophony of power. His eyes never once flew back to look at the pale white thing he had left naked and dead in that culvert. Instead he wiped sweat away from his head with a wad of T-shirt she'd been wearing only hours ago.

As the headlights scanned the sage brush as the truck hissed and maneuvered in the dust trying to make its way back to the asphalted highway the coyotes hunched and sniffed towards the whiteness in the sand, whose lifeless eyes stared at the stars with a look that would last forever. Soon only the faint shapes of settling dust, the desert air, and the sounds of the night exploring something new that had been tossed to it like some lifeless, horrible gift dominated the murder scene.

Nearing that terrible place but unaware of how close she was to it, the young woman pulled into the deserted campground and was relieved to see rest rooms. She stopped her car just as the headlamps played over the "his and her" symbols. She released the locks while simultaneously unfastening her seat belt. She got out remembering to squeeze the remote lock hearing a "beep.” Then she turned towards the darkness of the rest room. Inside were common smells. She dropped her jeans after securing a wad of toilet paper from a sill and sat. With a sigh, she released everything. Sitting there in the darkness she planned the next ten miles to Susanville. She saw it in her mind's eye. She saw the off-ramps. She saw the next Seven-1 l. She saw the long stretch of mobile homes, the arc lamps toying with all manner of insects. She saw her mother's doublewide and she heard her struggling with the door latch and the slider coming open and that familiar voice saying, "What are you doing here so late?" It was about then that she heard the diesel engine, and saw the lights play across the stall and flash briefly in a mirror.

She got up after wiping herself and collected her jeans. She heard the truck come to a loud and hissing stop and then shut down in noisy increments, then silence. The dragon was at rest. Crickets began to protest the intrusion. She gathered her things and headed out to her car. She squeezed the remote lock when a voice exploded to her left.

"Hey there!"

Her body swung around to face those words. All her attention flooded into each syllable to give it meaning, to weigh it for value, to make out if it was uttered by "friend or foe.” And in a second she had resolved and committed to them in a response.

"You scared me!" "Didn't mean to. Sorry."

Her eyes formed the shape of a man, about six feet tall, short black hair, about 190 pounds. All this was happening in a few brief seconds, not enough to grasp the significance of this meeting, or the awkwardness of the hour and the place, or the danger this all might present. He was smiling she could see, as the likeness of a face began to amass in her field of vision.

"It's dark out here isn't it?" He was still smiling.

"Yes. No city lights."

"Well, I've gotta do my business. Nice to meet you.”

Something traveled across his face at that moment. It was something dark and predatory. She shook it off. It must be the shapes from the truck lights. She was relieved that he was there, and simultaneously relieved that she was going.

"Good night" she said. The car beeped at her. She got in and turned over the engine. Still smiling she backed her car out watching him as he slipped into the men's portion of the rest rooms. As she swung by the truck her open window let in a hint of smell that emanated from the port-holed trailer behind the truck cab. It was the stench of dead animals. She had smelled it before when she had been horseback riding as a kid and stumbled onto some dead cows. It was that same, fetid, furry smell. Only this was laced with another scent that reminded her of the biting odor that used to rise out of the slaughter place on her dad's ranch. Pigs, cows and even an old dog had met their end there. The place was dark with something black and greasy and sad about it, and this smell reminded her of it. The headlights of the car brushed along a road sign that said "65 miles to Susanville.” She merged with the dwindling traffic.

She was thinking about what she was going to tell her mother this time. She had been certain Dave was the guy she'd been looking for all her life, Dave with the tight little athletic butt, Dave with the smile that would melt asphalt. Six months into the relationship he began to show his colors. Now "Dave the Hunk" became "Dave the unemployed, worthless piece of shit.” She cringed as on-coming car lights played across her face. She saw her Mother's "I told you so” look looming over the dashboard. Those first three weeks were a moment out of a Henry Miller novel. This guy was a rabbit. He knew where all her buttons were and never tired of tweaking them, and then the bad news. The warehouse job fizzled. Now he was planted on the couch with a remote going and the smell of beer rising up with the cigarette smoke.

She began to notice the steering was becoming unusually stiff. Not now. She just bought this car. She felt the front left side of it leaning. She had to concentrate. The wheel fought her. She was trying to control the car and navigate to a safe spot along the side of the road. There was an off-ramp looming several minutes away and she fought the car onto it, traveled about fifty feet and swung into a "scenic area" where she stopped in an ugly, crunching, dusty sort of way. She sat for a few minutes in disbelief, and then started trying to imagine where the jack and spare tire were. Hadn't the salesperson shown her these things? Who really pays attention to that? In frustration she pounded on the steering wheel until the horn brought her to her senses.

She got out of the car and angrily stabbed the keys at the trunk lock. It inserted and the truck popped open. She fumbled for the spare tire. It was locked down. She fought the spin cap off and jerked the tire from its lodging and felt the jack and lug wrench break loose too. The lug wrench tumbled out of the trunk as she pulled back and it fell into the dirt. "Shit!" The night sky caught that word and held it. She tried to figure out that damn jack. How do they expect you to change a tire with this thing? In the back of her mind, about fifty feet away, she heard the guttural drone of a diesel engine. Minutes later, headlamps played and probed about in her predicament. Thank God. Help was coming.

The truck meandered like a dragon sizing up its kill, then snaked around her cuddling up to her car like a man cuddles up to his prey at the office, blocking her way to her desk, the next thing out of his mouth is some absurdity he will call flirting. The great lungs of the engine rumbled into silence as the dust settled. She saw him looking at her from the cab. There was no emotion on what she could see of his face. The latch on his door opened and he drifted down to the ground and slithered over to her. She was beginning to wonder if she was lucky or unlucky tonight.

"Problems?" he said stating the obvious and not even twitching.

"Flat tire,” she said.

"No problem. I'll give ya a hand.” He moved close to her, sort of "In your face offensive close.” She could smell burned cigarette in his clothes, perspiration, and oddly enough the slight odor of perfume, not aftershave, perfume. Almost in a trance, like a small animal before a snake, her hands automatically handed the jack to him.

"This will only take a minute,” he said. It angered her how he knew exactly how the jack came apart, hinged under the tire well, lifted the car as he twisted it up, and up. He was still talking to her about changing tires on a semi and how he used to change tires in his dad's garage and how it's always a good idea to figure all this out on a new car before you needed to. The lug-nuts cracked and groaned and came off one by one. The spare tire was jostled on and the lug-nuts returned and tightened. All the while he was talking. No effort. No concerns. She found herself annoyed and grateful at the same time, which made her even more upset.

"There,” he said, "That should get you to a gas station.”

"Thanks.” She was trying to think how she could settle this. "Thank you" was going to have to be enough. She was angry that her first instinct was to go to her purse for money.

"You're welcome," he said. There it was again. A shadow of something dark traveled across what she could see of his eyes. She shivered. He dropped the tire wrench and she leaned over to pick it up and when she raised up she was trying to understand what it was she was looking at. It took her a few moments to put it all together. His right hand was holding something. It was long, silver she thought, and was a tube of some sort. The hair stiffened on the back of her neck. This was bad. It was a large gun pointed right at her head.

"You get to ride in a truck tonight," he said. His face betrayed no expression, no emotion. He stepped to one side; the gun still pointed at her belly, and motioned with his head towards the truck, silent now, a shadow waiting to be summoned to life again. "Let's go,” he said to her before she could say anything else. Numb, like a puppet that's just had all its strings cut, she put one foot in front of the other, still holding on to those damn car keys. The door to the cab loomed in front of her. Inside the wires of the CB and GPS dangled from the roof. The light from the dash cast eerie shadows on the seat fabric.

"Why are you doing this?" she managed.

"Why are you asking? Like it matters to you why I'm doing anything?"

He waited as she struggled into the seat and then closed the door and ran around the front of the truck and seated himself beside her, the gun pointing at her face. He slipped the gearshift forward stepping on the clutch and the engine rumbled to life. He flipped the CB switch. She hadn't noticed it until now but that smell was strong in the cab. It was that "dead cow" smell. The cattle trailer behind her looked cold, dark and vacant. Beneath her tennis shoes newspapers and chicken bones rolled awkwardly. The hydraulics of the truck hissed and the thing lurched forward. In the rear view she saw the shadow of her new car drift backwards and away from her, still and dark and empty.

The white line in the middle of the road lapped in fragments along the driver's side of the cab. Now and then the CB would crackle and sputter. Someone had found "Smoky" at some junction somewhere and was sending out a casual alarm. Then someone asked about "that cattle truck.” She was listening and eyeing the barrel of the gun while trying to hear more about this truck. Beneath her feet papers crackled. Someone said the Highway Patrol had been notified about this driver who other truckers had complained about. She couldn't make out the rest. The last thing she heard was another voice asking, "What the hell is wrong with that guy?" A hand shot out and flipped the switch to “off'.”

"What's your name," he said.

"Sarah Winfield."

The road began to unveil flat, sloping plains with the shapes of high mountains in the distance behind them and to her right. Here and there lights from the truck played over barbed wire fences. Signs drifted by, pocked by bullet holes. The moon was wide and full and staring. The lights from a 7-11 danced by, the inside warm and inviting. A single clerk sat watching something by the register. It lit her face a pale blue. In the parking lot a County Sheriff's car was parked by a lit phone booth. The officer inside was dealing as best he could with a large, steamy coffee.

Off in the distance snuggled in a bowl of dust a small town lit the desert like jewels spilled from a box. The truck moved on. The town lights dwindled. Civilization seemed to be swallowed by the night reinserted briefly by the occasional headlights of on-coming traffic now and then. He said nothing.

She let her eyes glance over at him. He was young. Maybe thirty or thirty-five. His hair was short, like a Marine, or a rancher or farmer. His face was chiseled, the lips carved like those of an angel in a graveyard floating dreamily over a mausoleum. His eyes were too dark. When they flashed on her it made her skin crawl. When he had been working the car jack she noticed a tattoo on his right bicep. In the dark, she hadn't been able to make it out. In the dim lights of the cab she saw that it was a large, black spider. The spider seemed to hug the muscle. Where a head should be, she thought she saw a grinning skull.

He wore a black T-shirt with a pocket that was shaped around an open cigarette pack. What looked like "dog tags" hung around his neck and dangled over the place where his heart would be. He was wearing stained and faded jeans with the knees worn through. She saw him finally put the gun in his lap. The brakes on the truck hissed and the cab bucked, his arm worked the gearshift as they turned off the main Highway. Something shapeless, bony and soft at the same time, shifted in the trailer behind them as he made the turn.

They were pointed east now. The road showed no suggestion that anything would ever come out of this place going the other way. Anything that entered was lost forever. To the left, in the moonlight, she saw the ruins of a gas station. Behind it the shells of old cars piled up and stacked like wood. The truck plowed alongside the gas station and then plunged further into the night, dust creating an eerie fog in the headlights. Her stupor began to wear off at this point and she noticed her face was stiff with tension and fright. Her heart was beating in her throat. Something kept whispering under the hum of the engine, "You're going to die.” She noticed that her fingers, interlaced, had dug into places behind her knuckles, which were raw and red now.

A "shack" loomed at the end of a road bracketed with barbed wire fencing. There were several cars to the right and left as they entered a corral. Inside it was littered with an engine, beds and a bicycle with no front wheel. A Coke machine was leaning against what looked like a shed. A satellite dish loomed in the back. The truck bucked and then geared down, the brakes hissing. It moved like a serpent around to the back of the shack and curled there in a cloud of dust drifting like fog in the headlights.

He flashed those dark eyes at her now. If she had ever seen a wolfs’ eyes just as it made that final leap at its prey, hunger in its belly making it crazy, these were those eyes now.

"Don't move" he said and launched himself out of his seat. Before she could collect herself the door to her right barked open and a large hand roughly drug her out. She fell in the dust coughing as large chunks of it filled her mouth and nose. She stood slowly and focused on his large shadow in front of her. It seemed like the next thing that happened came from the sky and focused on her lower lip, jaw and chin. The whole world swirled into that sensation, like dirty water going down a drain. Her feet and legs were sucked up into it too and the dust and dirt rushed up at her, gathered up her thoughts and packed them up into darkness.

In that darkness she saw a swing set. It was rusted and made awful noises as the chains grated on flaking paint and metal. The only sound was that squawking of the swing. She was in the swing, watching the world rock in a lazy arch. The cool chains grasped in her hands she saw the world now, upside down. It rocked with her. She could see a house a few yards from where her reversed world was rocking; a screen door opened and a shadowy figure lurched out, turned awkwardly and saw her, then moved towards her unsteadily.

She reemerged into the real world. Her focus was once again shifted to a dull pain in her lower lip and jaw. She tasted blood. A quick test with a swollen tongue and she knew her lip had been opened. The bastard had hit her. She moved to reclaim the rest of her body only to discover she had been chained to the wall. She sat there in the darkness, the smell of cement and freshly sawed plywood permeating everything. A pounded tin bowl barked on the cement as she disturbed it accidentally with her foot. This was bad. She fought back tears. She began to hyperventilate, building up to a scream. But she cut that short as Heavy Metal music began to pound and drift down to her from some place above like a panting animal. She would discover no friends here.

The chains were shiny and new, secured to leather cuffs reinforced by stainless steel.
The music rose and fell. A door opened and closed somewhere and light and sound burst in on her. All this haloed a dark shape that reached out of nowhere with powerful fingers and grabbed a large hunk of her hair dragging it backwards and lifting her face up to the shadow above her. She smelled that "dead cow" odor again, mixed with the acid odor of stale alcohol, cigarettes and...blood.

"Do you know where you are?" a voice asked. It was not the voice she remembered. It was different, rich with blood, like it was being squeezed from the vocal chords of a dead man. "You're in Hell," it said, not waiting for an answer. Heavy, intrusive fingers began to unbutton her shirt damp with sweat. They fumbled open the first two and then yanked the others apart.

She heard a button tap on the cement as it spun away from the force of his tugs. Her blouse was open and tucked away from her chest now, large fingers curved around where the bra came together just above her heart. She saw and felt the blade of a knife run its cold, dry dorsal along her flesh. The fabric split apart. The bra fell open and was immediately replaced by two large hands. He smothered her. The heat from his skin was like the heat that rippled off glowing cooking coals. Lips that dragged brittle stubble across her smooth cheek left a residual, bitter smell of stale liquor.

After what seemed like forever, he stood. There was a long time before the first boot kick thudded against her exposed chest. The others came fast and furious behind it. The air was squeezed from her lungs with such force she felt she would never be able to breathe again. When she was finally able to get air she felt the broken ribs and caught herself thinking, "So this is what a broken rib feels like.” Then a hand came out of nowhere and silenced the thinking, leaving only the darkness again that was becoming all too familiar.

She was back on the swing again. This time there was a man in her way. His legs were to either side of hers and he was holding the chains of the swing trying to balance. "You know what I want you little bastard" the shadow slurred. Then a belt buckle came undone making a musical sound as it flopped against a thigh.

She caught herself fluttering upwards, past the peak of the swing, higher than the trees that made a windbreak to the west, beyond the gray shape of the transformer. Higher and higher she rose and then suddenly plunged back into the yard but this time she fluttered into the truck cab and hovered there. It was that bastard, seated in the cab looking away from her. He was trying to raise someone on the CB, turning a dial, drawling into a mike and cursing under his breath. Suddenly her heart caught fire with a fury she strangely relished. A thought formed.

"Hurt him. Hurt him now.”

Energy came to her, energy like a claw, energy that had fingers crooked, nails hungry for flesh. She reached and there was so much energy wafting off her something made him turn and look just before her nails connected with the flesh below his eye and sunk in, cutting through the whiskered dermis, blood rising to fill in the steamy valleys she had created with her rage. His whole body shifted now, his back arched towards the open door and retreat. He propelled himself away from her screaming like a wounded coyote. And he landed heavily, sending a cloud of dust upward, to be sucked away by wind.

When she woke someone had put a blanket over her. The room was dark, but she could smell ... French fries. There was a mound of them in a paper plate next to her foot. She ate them savoring the salt, the crisp, greasy skin. A paper cup of water was near the plate. Above her she heard footsteps, like some giant beast pacing on hardwood floors. She heard the animal shouting, broken glass, the sound of furniture being overturned and then silence. Outside she heard the great, metal lungs of the truck power up, the hydraulics hiss, and the steaming and huffing dragon dwindle into the distance going to some unknown location where devils must meet and plot their evil against the world.


She sat in the darkness hearing her chains rattle on the plywood and wondering if anyone had reported her missing. Surely they were looking for her. How could she let them know where she was? How would they find her here? She tugged at the chains screwed into the plywood. A voice inside her head was saying in counterpoint to the chains slapping against the wood, "You're going to die here.” Outside, coyotes barked at each other, signaling the gathering point of a kill. A slight wind began to churn up from the west and she could hear the faint noise of a wind chime somewhere above her. After a while, fear and pain brought her a fitful sleep. She dreamed.

In her dream she was once again standing in the yard outside her prison. She was looking past a clothesline into a "dark place" where a wooden fence made a corral. She sensed something red, and greasy and evil in that place. Her attention was redirected to a large eucalyptus tree in the corner of the lawn. It had deeply woven roots in the dry ground. The trunk was twisted; the wind made branches weave and nod. Newspapers released from barbed wire roamed the lawn with tumbleweeds. Something drew her to this tree.

Suddenly a small boy appeared to her left, hissed at her like a snake and then took off across a hedge of sage brush like a wild animal. The boy was darker than the rest of the scene in that yard, like he was laden with a poison or something black and corrupted. The focus of her point of view in this dream followed the boy moving quickly in supernatural bounds over the dry sage brush, past the carcasses of dead cattle and prairie critters. On and on she traveled with this black shape that moved more like a rabbit than a human being. It came to a hollow behind a wall of large rocks and stopped at a suspicious mound of dry dirt. It began to dig furiously, dust and rocks going everywhere.

Slowly, its efforts began to reveal the shape of rotten cloth, and flesh that began to form a sculpted hand there in the raw earth. The thing turned and hissed at her, snuffing and worrying the dirt like a dog frantically digging for a bone. Slowly, to her horror, a corpse was revealed. It was the remains of a man, in his sixties she guessed. The rotten cloth of a wool shirt had been curled back to reveal a gray chest that seemed to be carved with thick, vicious cuts from something sharp. As she stared at the cuts they began to form something. The gaping wounds snaked around in the dry flesh trying to spell. The words began to form.

"Little bastard did this.”

She woke to the light of a single bulb from a mechanics’ lamp. As her eyes became more used to the light she could see a figure in a chair anxiously rubbing its hands and glancing at her from time to time. Beyond the figure she could see shapes of gas cans, cages for trapped animals and bricks in the next room.

"I want to go home,” she said from swollen lips. "You need to let me go.”

He seemed to switch on at the sound of her voice excited by a dark fury. He floated over to her, his face inches from her own, his breath foul with some unmentionable rot he'd obviously been chewing on for days. That awful knife waved like the hand of a clock between them.

"Don't speak. I'll kill you if you say any more.”

He rose still glaring at her with those dark eyes. All manner of evil traveled across that gaze and reached into her chest trying to still her heart, squeeze it, stop it right there in its cavity. Her eyes dimmed over, sweat formed on her neck and cheeks and upper lip. Her gaze wove in and out of focus and the darkness engulfed her but not before she caught a glimpse of something on his cheek. What was it? It was something white, squared, streaked with dark places. It moved oddly when he spoke. It was a bandage.

The concrete beneath her felt cold, and clammy. She was laying in the dark. She could hear the rush of inhaled and exhaled air. It was like someone listening to themselves breathe in a mask and aqua-lung. The breathing slowed. Underneath it was a beating heart. It was muffled under the dragging intake and extraction of breath. It all had a mechanical rhythm to it, contained in its own space. She felt a body, it was hers, she could experience the homunculus of herself, the top and bottom of where her mind created the sense of "self'. But something was wrong. Like an astronaut exploring places outside the station, his own breath like an ocean inside his head, she moved from minute to minute exploring the darkness behind her eyes.

At least she thought it was behind her eyes. Here and there small, muddy specks of light shifted, like shadows caught in little patches of wall, showing every movement, every twitch of muscle, every hair, every anomaly of muscular adventure. And like an astronaut, she sensed her body behaving like a cork, bobbing and turning in a sort of unsteady darkness. It hovered over what she thought was the cement floor. It turned and then drifted like a balloon held on a string that was releasing in slow, tidy segments.

Slowly, lighter than air, she felt her self raise about a foot above the floor. She caught herself (or tried to) with a toe, but it passed through the cement like water. All the while, the part that would have come to her aid in waking consciousness, the part that would have not let her rise, the part that would have sent a stream of pain signals and the reality of concrete to her toe ...was silent, unavailable. Slowly, like a human dirigible, she rose to four feet, five feet; she was in line with the top of a shelf now. But curiously enough, she wasn't seeing this; she was sensing it in the darkness.

Like a spilled thing, light began to form, showing shapes, shadows, all lit up from within like an X-ray. Light played over objects, shaping them in a luminous glow. She was at a thirty-degree angle now, spinning like a feather on pond water, slowly, elegantly. Only her mind was acting like a guidance stick pitching and rolling her as it reached for and tried to create space.

She recognized things now. She saw the ropes, the dog leash, the chain saw, the wire clippers, and the gas cans. But they were all lit up with a ghostly incandescence. She thought, "Higher" and like she was handling a hot-air balloon, she rose into what looked like rafters. This was difficult; because where she thought she was going to experience contact (bump something) there was no impact. It never came. So she stopped anticipating it. This allowed her to focus on movement. Like learning to drive the car she began to learn the rules of this new extraordinary place.

She followed the roof beam passing under the hanging electric lamps. Then she turned left, the tool rack and pegboard sliding past her until she was looking at the hallway leading up to the first floor.


"Casper, the friendly ghost, the friendliest ghost I know―"

She rose to the door, caught her breath and thought "beyond" and eased through the varnished wood like a knife through butter.

“―Though children might look at him with fright―"

She was looking at the hallway now. To her left it connected to a bedroom. There were boxes and debris there, jackets, socks, shoes and beyond these a window. The wind caused the blinds to move and do startling things with the light. She spun like a drill and pointed her head to the opposite end of the doorway.

“―The children all love him so."

She was humming "Casper the Friendly Ghost." For some reason, it seemed proper. The living room was beyond. It was small, it had several mirrors, it had photos of ranchers, their wives and kids, it had a large piggy bank with flowers painted on it, and it too was littered with clothes and magazines.

"He always says hello―and he's really glad to meet cha'―"

The hissing noise again, came like some low, reptilian warning, or a small child breathing through a trachea tube. She spun around on herself to be confronted by the dark boy.

"You ain't supposed to be out here," it said. "You supposed to be down there with the rat shit.”

She saw no face, only darkness lightly shaded in the highlights. The boy seemed to be eight or ten, she couldn't tell.

"I'll tell Daddy," it said.

What frightened her most was the voice seemed to come from inside her head. In an instant she was on the porch choked with chairs and other garbage and she was watching a man stagger across the lawn towards a small boy in a swing. The boy stayed in the swing and looked like he was upset, turning away with the desperate look of something trapped.

In the distance, clouds rose from the gray sand. An engine grumbled at the sun. The truck began to hiss and rumble into view. It came down the barbed wire laced road and circled the abandoned stack of car shells and curled up in the shadows under a giant tree, the one she had seen the dark boy come out of in another dream. The truck settled in a roaring cloud of dust that threatened to choke the sky. Then it settled and the door barked open and he got out.

He was holding a rifle, and biting off some chaw. He ripped a piece off and chewed it, scanning the yard like a raptor scanning the ground for stray rodents. He walked around to the other side of the cab and there was a struggle of some sort, the familiar thud of fist on meat, and he came around the front to the cab with yet another prize. This one was in her teens she thought. She was wearing a white T-shirt and Levi shorts. He carried her up the stairs of the porch and stopped beside an old rocker. His eyes moved like snakes and locked on the chunk of space where she thought she had positioned herself undetected. She began to feel terror in her heart again, it dawned on her that here she was, escaped, standing on the porch and he could see her. He could see her and she was trapped and now she would die.

She prepared an explanation that would come before she fainted she hoped, and as she tried to speak it, she saw him move through the door with his victim. She was bruised in the face. He had hit her hard. A million thoughts were running through Sarah's mind, thoughts she found difficult to capture and identify and solidify into something useful. She began to be aware of the impossibility of where she was at the moment, how she got there. Her mind formed the sensations of the reality of her plight, the chains, the cold concrete, the cereal dish, the door opening, and the slap of flesh as it was unceremoniously dropped to the floor, the chains, the bracelets of leather, the door closing, the silence.

In that moment she felt for her own consciousness. She scanned the environment for her own awareness, her own peace. But then the crying began. It started as a distant thing, barely audible. Then it rose into the darkness and became sobs.

"Hello? Is somebody there?" finally tumbled out of the sobs.

"Yes," Sarah mumbled from bruised lips. "I'm here.Who are you?"

"Jennifer Who are you?'

"Sarah Winfield.”

"Oh my God! The papers have your picture all over the place. Everyone is looking for you. He was so nice. He offered to change my tire. I feel so stupid. I should have said no. It was in broad daylight, behind a gas station. I should have said no. I'm going to die here. I should have said no.”

"I've been here two days I think. I'm still alive.”

"The papers said you've been missing two weeks."

Sarah stopped and thought about that. Two weeks, how could that be? Had she been unconscious all that time? They talked some more. Jennifer calmed down a little. They talked about their families then, about their pets and their jobs. They talked until the door to the basement opened and footsteps let them know he was back. Before they could regroup he was standing in the door. He radiated something dark from his skin like a cloud of something tangibly evil.

"Do you like your girlfriend Sarah? She was stupid...just like you. What broad today can't change a tire?"

He knelt next to her and that knife showed up again. She hadn't realized how ugly it was before. It was long, serrated on the spine with sharp, evil looking things that made it look rapacious and hungry, like him. He waved it in front of her like a cobra sways before striking. "Don't like my pig sticker?"

Without warning he dragged the sharp blade over the muscle between her neck and shoulder. The knife cut sharp and blood began to pool and spill onto her blouse. She recoiled around the cut crying out. He whirled to look at Jennifer and spat, "See there, that's what nosy girls get. You don't be nosy or you'll get more of the same.” He turned around and planted a meaty kick in Sarah's solar plexus, she woofed and doubled up with pain. He climbed the stairs and slammed the door behind him howling like a wolf or some kind of beast from Hell. The silence rung with his energy.

"Are you all right?" Jennifer bawled.

"I'm cut you dizzy little bitch,” Sarah said through clenched teeth. Once again the blackness came to claim her consciousness. She sprawled into darkness; the floor against her cheek was the last thing she felt before lapsing into what seemed like endless space.

"Told ya so," the shadow of a boy hissed.

She was back in the hallway now. Everything glittered with a fuzzy resilience. She turned to see a naked man coming at her from the hallway emerging from the bathroom. It was an old man, stubble in the face, his eyes white and luminescent like fish guts on a dark rock. She spun backwards and saw the man dissolve like dark smoke over the throw carpet in the hall. She drifted and spun slowly, like a bubble turning in an oily pirouette. Her turn found her looking at the couch where her captor had drunk himself into a stupor, the TV still on. The Terminator was peeking through a door slightly ajar, "Are you Sarah Connors?" he says in a thick German accent.

There were ashes all over the tabletop, a mirror smeared with trails of Cocaine, candles, black and thick protruding from skulls with the dome of the brainpan removed. Arnold was blasting the wrong Sarah Connors now. She barely had time to scream.

On the coffee table there was a Bong, several packs of Marlboros and a lighter. Sarah looked at the lighter. In the chair next to her unconscious tormentor an old man sat in stained striped boxer shorts. He was wearing only these and socks with holes in the toe and heels. As she looked at him the skin on his chest peeled back to reveal bloody flesh and ribs. The old man didn't notice. He bent over and took a Marlboro and lit it with the lighter. He inhaled. Smoke oozed through the open ribs and drifted into the air lit blue by the TV.

"It was the little bastard there what done this," he said, nodding his head in the direction of the sleeping monster. "Caught me napping, caught me fast asleep and did it to me in my own bed. Took me apart with the little knife.” He nodded at a pocketknife that had been used to cut and shape the Cocaine lines.

"The more I screamed the more the little bastard laughed. No respect for his old man. No respect for anything. No respect for anyone. If it was me, I'd set that bastard afire right now, while he slept.” His fingers flipped the lighter sparking it. "Yes Mam, I'd get him ready for Hell.” As the lighter flashed it lit up her tormentors' face. There was something oddly feral about that face, even in sleep. The old man set the lighter down.

"Why don't you do it," she said. "He killed you didn't he?"

The old man smiled and picked the lighter up again. He held it up to a dangling finger on the couch arm. The nails were filthy with dirt. The finger was attached to a hand, a big hand, bigger than a small dog. The forearm rose in muscled hills to greet a bicep crowned with that spider tattoo on it, waiting to pounce at anything that tried to wake the demon it protected. The old man struck the flint, a flame licked up touching the dirty skin. He held it there for a while and then grunted and sat back in the dirty chair.

"I can't do nothing. He's my boy. It's a bitch isn't it? If I could get my hands around his throat right now I'd choke the life right out of him ...I would. But God has a sense of humor. Don't you think?" He put the lighter there on the coffee table. It sat there between the both of them making a statement all its own.

"I was lonely, since Ma died. I got drunk. I did bad things. But that don't mean I deserve to be whittled on like a damn switch right there in my own bed does it?"

Before her eyes the old man's flesh began to separate and peel away. The skeleton seemed to vibrate in the dark tissue, like it was feeling the agony of being tortured with that knife all over again. He opened his mouth into a great, dark "0" of pain and dissolved into the fabric of the couch like cigarette smoke. She reached for the lighter. Her hand passed through it like a fly passes through moonlight.

Now what? She thought for a moment. "I'm trying too hard." Remember. You need to remember the feel of the surface of a lighter. Remember lighting candles at Dad's sixtieth birthday party. Remember that evening of Michael Bolton and that boy you liked? Remember how the top of the Rhonson flipped back so crisply when you flicked that wheel and the wick lit and you touched the flames to those candles you lit by the hot tub for him? You pressed the wheel once, twice; the spark lit the wick ...fire. Remember?

The lighter on the table wobbled. That's it. Try again. It wobbled a second time. This is it; you're doing this right. The monster stirred and lapsed back into sleep like a lion having nightmares. Please God, let him sleep, let him die; let me do this damn thing. She imagined her hand around the shiny, silver case, she imagined her thumb flicking back the top, and there was a decisive "click.”

It was working. It was working. Damn it, it was WORKING! The wheel was tight. But it needed to be tight to strike the flint, to make the spark. It's working, it’s working, please God it must work. Please. The wheel spun crisply; there was a tantalizing hiss, a spark. Not enough. Again. It has to work now on this turn. Concentrate. Concentrate. A crisp swish, a brittle fizz and YES! I will light that Mother's fire!

She looked around for something to feed the fire. She wanted something liquid, easy to soak into rotting blue jeans. Something was in a jar on the coffee table. Not water. This jerk would not be doing Cocaine with water. This has to be Sterno or Moonshine. This has to burn. She moved her thoughts like an invisible had around the glass. It lifted slightly. Feel its weight. Balance it. That's good, that's good. The glass rose an inch, two inches, level to his chest now. She had to time this just right. She had to make this perfect. YES. NOW!

The glass left from its perch and flew into his chest with a meaty thud. He came up off the couch like a cloud of pure evil just in time to meet up with the flame of the Rhonson. He exploded into an ocean of fire. He flailed at the flames as they began to crawl about in the greasy fabric of his clothes. It blew around in the hair of his arms and climbed onto his shoulders like a pet bird. He fell over the couch and landed heavily on the dirty tile of the kitchen. The fire hung onto his greasy boots like a dog hanging onto the cuff of an intruder.

The fire curled about his face stubble breathing in and out scorching his nose hair and making the air he was snorting hot and angry. The hair on his head burst into flames and caught some dirty rags on fire as he rolled into them screaming like some wild thing pinned on barbed wire trying to get away from the approaching lights of a rancher's truck.

Something caught her attention. It was a sound above her that was like the thumping of shoes kicking at rotten tiles and she realized that she had broken the contact and was suddenly in the basement listening to howls in the room above and frantic screams of a man being burned alive.

"Oh my God what is THAT?" Jennifer yelled. At that moment, the door to the basement flew open and a fiery walking corpse plunged into the room waving a knife blindly at the shadows his boiled eyes could barely see.

He stumbled about catching fire to the rags and papers now. Sarah saw the reflection of the flames lick the surface of the gas cans. "You're coming with me,” he hissed as he pulled the chains that held Sarah out of the wall. "I'm taking you to the butcher's block to die with the other pigs," he said, his scorched flesh now black and smoking, the flames crawling about on his face. They were like glowworms that feed around in the logs of a raging hearth fire. It licked at Sarah's blouse and hair.

She remembered something in Karate. It was karate right? Yes she took that stupid karate class after two girls had been accosted in the parking lot at school. She remembered a rule she learned there the day right before she quit. Use the things own force against itself. Make it help you defeat it. That was the rule. She braced her hands against the crumbling fabric on his shirt just above his heart, grabbed it, feeling her own hands burn as she grasped the fire in her clenched fists, and pulled back―hard.

With a shriek that pierced and bled into the wooden frame of the roof of the basement, he came forward and past her and was trapped in hoses and baling wire. She didn't hesitate and grasped the gas can handle ripping it from its peg, screaming when she felt the weight of gas in it. She spun off the cap and without thinking began to spray him with the gas. If only this crap could come out faster! More! More now! Douche that bastard down! The flames, almost done with him before, were more than happy for the gas and to show their gratitude returned to his flesh to finish the job. When the can emptied Sarah angrily tossed it hard at Jennifer who had maintained a high, baleful shriek throughout the whole event.

"Shut up!"

Sarah grabbed bolt cutters and quickly cut Jennifer's chains. Jennifer ran squealing up the stairs and into the living room where she stood by the smoldering couch and began to scream in earnest. She was still screaming when Sarah burst upstairs, slapped her and drug her into the hot desert air.

"Get in the truck!"



Jennifer preferred to scream some more but Sarah was done with that. She brought a left hook up into Jennifer's jaw, which buckled her knees and sent her staggering back towards the passenger side of the cab. With superhuman strength Sarah hoisted her onto the truck seat and slammed the door almost catching Jennifer's leg. Sarah launched herself into the driver's seat and fumbled at the ignition. She depressed the clutch and turned the key, the engine rumbled into life.

"Jesus can you drive this thing?" Jennifer bawled.

It was at that point that Sarah heard the hissing noise. She looked over her left arm and saw the Monster crawling up the side of the truck like some terrible black lizard. Then she turned to the gearshifts. It looked like there were two.

"Can you drive this thing?"

Just at that moment the Monster lunged through the cab window trying to turn the engine off. Jennifer launched into another fusillade of horrible screams that mixed with Sarah's. The Monster had its charred hands over the switch just as Sarah found the right gear and the truck sprung into life. Down went the clutch again and with sufficient RPM's she had second. She turned her head to see the Monster, face inches from her own, burned and charred the eyes like the guts of fish spilled into a cold blue plate, mumble these words through baked lips.

"I told you Daddy wouldn't like this.” It hissed at her. Its hand was now snaking towards her throat.

She swung the wheel to the left bracing the cab off a large tree. The old bark and dry branches swept him from the crumpled door of the cab sending him spinning into the hot desert air and catching his head between the crux of two tiller blades of a rusting farm machine beheading him and then tossing him into the dirt field as she watched it in the rear view. His body tumbled through the sage brush landing heavily on greasy bike parts and his head rolled out from the grip of the tiller dropping in a cloud of dust into the shaded earth. She turned the wheel again and the tree swept out of view and she was now looking at dirt road behind her in the rearview, dirt road framed with barbed wire fences.

"You didn't tell me you could drive one of these things!"

They made it to the highway and the 7-11 all the way in second gear. Sarah called the police. The ambulance came in about thirty minutes and two rookie officers barreled up the old road with sirens and lights to see if what the girls said was true. Sarah sipped coffee that a clerk had given her. Jennifer was tugging on her oxygen mask and crying. The detectives arrived in another hour and were seen scratching their heads as Sarah was trying to explain where she'd been all this time. They did a lot of erasing.

The coroner came just before nightfall and met ten police units at the ranch. The place was marked off as a crime scene. An hour later two of the Coroner's helpers came up out of the basement looking pale. The student intern walked out to the barbed wire fence and heaved in the sage brush.

"We count about seventy five that we can see, he said.

"Seventy-five what?" the captain barked.

"Seventy five corpses. We think there's more in the dirt. It smells like Death down there in that storage cellar below the kinky basement thing.”

"I didn't smell anything when I was looking at the chains and the kinky crap," the captain said.

"It's walled in with concrete, about three or four feet I'd say.” An officer said.

The pulley grew taught on the crane as the meat hooks drew on something in the bed of the trailer. The trailer danced a little as the weight adjusted, and then sunk slightly as it shifted towards the doors. The motor on the crane groaned. The corpses of twenty-seven cattle were drug into the paths of two waiting bulldozers.

As night began to saturate the sky and stars fill the blackness, the County people were still moving out bodies on large palettes. The last count was one hundred and twenty four. This was the worse case of serial killing in the history of that county. Many of the men and women at the site would talk about what they saw there for years.

No one witnessed the shadow, like a rabbit, blowing across that dry earth, traveling over the rocks and bones that litter the desert. It bounded tirelessly. It traveled many miles deep into the desert silence, deep into the sea of sage brush, deep into that barren, primal, blackness that the heart could get lost in, or the soul. It found what it was looking for eventually.

The shadow sniffed and dug in a bowl of dirt and weeds between a wall of rocks and after a while revealed the hand of a corpse. The night gathered around the exposed hand like it was examining another lifeless, horrible gift that had been tossed to it. And then it shrank back into the sounds, shapes and smells of the desert, content to keep another secret.

The Tree of Knowledge

Author's note: This is a story that I wrote several years ago. I'm posting it here unedited. Since then I've had some schooling and published some poetry and a book. Thos of you who have read my current work let me know if I've improved from this later stuff. This has been serialized. More later.

Genesis 2:9 - And out of the ground the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The tiny bird worried something in the cropped grass blades. Dew flecked off the brittle strands of grass as its feathered body ducked and dodged among them. It seemed that its little brain couldn't determine whether the thing it was troubling was alive or dead. The tiny beak would pluck at it and it would jump, but in effect all it was attacking was some inanimate thing that had gotten its narrow attention. This occupied the bird in a very strict way. High above, on the top two-by-four of a grape stake fence, a cat sat crouched, silent, still, watching every tiny move the bird made in the dewy grass. Wind tousled its hair but it didn't stir.


He adjusted the spark. Then he pulled on the starter cord. The engine juggled into a brief chortle and then grumbled back into silence. He pulled out the choke. Pulled the cord again. The engine sputtered into life. He throttled the choke and the engine responded, its acrid roar putting up the Sunday afternoon silence with the acerbic interruption of lawn mowing. He released the brake and the lawnmower lurched forward. He finagled out onto the lawn. He recalled lawn mowing fifty years ago, as a young man. It had seemed so easy then. You follow the paths in the lawn. The grass responds to the blades. Watch out for sprinklers. There you have it. Today, so many years later, he found that tightening in his chest somewhat annoying. He wrestled the lawn mower over the dry grass. As the lawnmower had barked into life, the bird rose and planed right over the head of the startled cat, which eyed the whole thing with feline annoyance.

The sun settled over the lawn. Beams of light shifted and poked through a storm of dry grass blades and dust stirred by the lawnmower. Round and round the man and machine marched over the lawn. Dogs barked. A child rode by on a bike that had been made to sound like a motorcycle with playing cards clothes-pinned onto the spokes. Round and round he strode, letting his arm drag a little on the turns. It was aching.

Disturbed by the lawnmower, the cat padded through the open chain link fence gate and across the still, as of yet, green and shaggy back yard lawn. He came to the trunk of the large Bluegum Eucalyptus in the back yard and put his paws on the raw bark, digging in the claws a little in a sort of stretch. In a breath, he ascended the trunk, alighting on a branch high enough to taunt dogs from; there he sat in a furry crouch, eyes deep slits gazing at some distant place, bordering on a nap. The lawnmower droned on, around and around. Jeremy opened the gate and strolled though, just to the rear of where the towering tree stood. The cat didn't seem to notice, but as cats will do, was slyly keeping one eye on the movements of the boy. He stopped and put his schoolbooks down, then took the cards out of his pocket. .. Mad Magazine trading cards... monsters. These were the best things he had ever possessed. He shuffled through them, studying each one. The lawnmower had stopped in the middle of the yard and was popping and chugging there.

Grandma had spotted him from the kitchen window. She quickly opened up the refrigerator and took out the lemonade. She poured a glass. Then she pulled out an ice tray and broke the ice in it, crackling and popping briskly.


One by one the cubes plinked into the cold lemonade. She took the glass to the screen door of the back yard slider and hollered over to him. "Jeremy, I have lemonade".

"Be right there Grandma".

He gathered up his things again and ran across the lawn to where she was putting the glass on a wrought-iron table.
"How was school today?" Grandma asked over a hug.

"It was OK I guess. Where's Grandpa?"

She looked up, briefly turning her ear toward the front yard where the lawn mower still choked and putted.
"He's mowing the lawn it sounds like".

"Do you think he wants some lemonade yet?"

"I don't know. He hasn't been mowing very long. Why don't you ask
him?"

Jeremy set down his glass and leapt past Grandma into the living room with its familiar smell of Cherry Blend. He turned down the hallway, choked with pictures of grandchildren and favorite pets long dead. He was through the screen door and had circumvented the vine trellises when he saw the man who had stopped his car and was bent over Grandpa, giving him CPR. The man's wife had gotten out of the car and was heading up the driveway to alert whoever was inside to call an ambulance. Jeremy watched as the man breathed into Grandpa's mouth, and then massaged Grandpa's heart. His wife yelled at Jeremy to call an ambulance; by this time Grandma was in the driveway, her mottled hands fluttering about her mouth.

     "Ambulance!" someone shouted, and Grandma spun around and dashed through the porch screen door and to the kitchen phone. Jeremy watched, and then as an afterthought, pulled the throttle on the lawnmower and let the engine die. Silence echoed up and down the street, nestling in the tops of the trees everywhere, and perched. .. waiting.

Four days later, Jeremy stood in his black suit by the old Bluegum Eucalyptus tree, watching large ants wind a trail through the coarse bark. Behind him, relatives mingled under the awning on the patio, their conversation subdued. Jeremy watched the ants scour the tree bark for something invisible to him. He had moved the lawnmower into the garage several days ago. The lawn was still half-done; sometime he would Finish it for Grandma. He felt a little guilty that he had not offered to do it before; no one had known that Grandpa was so sick.

Under the awning Jeremy's Dad was talking to Grandma.


     "We have to go upstate in a week, Mom. Carolyn's folks are having a reunion and we need to go. I know it may be too soon, but could Jeremy stay with you while we're away? I wouldn't ask but... "

     "Of course he can," she said, her glasses reflecting the pool from a cup of coffee she seemed to be nestling in her hands and not drinking.

"We'll get him packed and... "

      "It's all right. Grandpa loved Jeremy and it would be good to have him here. I really don't mind."
"Thanks, Mom."

     "Of course you're more than welcome," she said. There was a kind of distance in her voice. Her eyes were settled elsewhere. Her mind was on other things. She was hearing the lawnmower over the ambulance siren. She closed her eyes and traveled to another time. She saw the trailer they lived in when they were in Arizona. A dapper, fully-coiffed Grandpa was pumping up a bike tire. They rode bicycles together in the evenings, up and down the lighted streets. That was a good time. There were other good times too. She would remember them all. Having distanced herself from the conversation on the patio, her eyes roamed the lawn. They traveled over the neatly trimmed bushes, the weeded yard. They rested on the small, suited figure, tracing paths in the bark of that old tree. Grandpa had planted that tree in 1978. She remembered when he brought it home. She made him iced tea as he dug the hole. She watched him from the patio, smiling, content with the fact that he was there, right where he should be. This is all she would ever want. This is all she needed. As she watched, the wind tugged at one of the leafy branches, moving it slightly, blowing tufts of dust in the dry earth. She thought the branch made a gesture to the boy, like it was trying to reassure him. She finally took a sip of the coffee, and only then did she allow herself to cry.

Jeremy didn't hear her tears or see the relatives reach out to his grandmother to comfort her. He didn't see his dad with his hand over his mouth battling back tears, or his mother, who had just come out from the living room, massaging his shoulders as she watched the cat toy with something on the dry lawn. Jeremy was oblivious to all that. What he was watching was the ants. He watched them form trails like ticking veins across the wild bark. They had their little paths to follow. One by one, over the dry and brittle bark, they explored and dabbed at the world with little antennae. He amused himself drawing a twig over the paths and watching their confusion. He ran the stick this way and that. The ants were reliably redundant in their tenacity. The wind blew a gust once more and he heard a sigh. He was sure


it was a sigh. The dust swirled about him and blew into his eyes. He stepped back and wiped it away. When he could see again, he noticed that the ants were making trails that all seemed to be headed toward the roots of the tree. The wind coughed up dry Bluegum Eucalyptus leaves. He heard something again, seeming to come from deep inside the roots. He stepped back another step. The ants followed a trail to the grape stake fence. They seemed to be deserting the tree, like tiny rats deserting a ship. Grandma was watching and hollered across the lawn, "Come out of the dust, Jeremy; you'll ruin your suit."

In the garage, the lawnmower, still sitting there in the blood of chopped grass, still smelling of gas and oil, sparked and rumbled on. It sounded like someone was revving it with the choke. Uncle James got up after a few people had reacted in startled surprise, muttering under his breath, "Damn kids," and walked over, into the garage. In a few seconds, the engine was silent again. He closed the garage door to keep out the riff raff. The lawnmower sat alone, silhouetted in the light from the garage door window, surrounded by darkness. All was silent now, there in the "lawn smells", the stink of gas and oil. A gust of wind came up and blew through the mourners, shaking the table covers and causing people to leap toward the pick-at food to protect it. Jeremy dropped the stick and strolled over to where his Dad was sitting with Grandma, his eyes red and swollen, his nose red too.
"Can we go home now?" Jeremy said.

The Bluegum Eucalyptus tree had been a part of the house almost as long as they owned it. The Bluegum always flowered from April to November, bringing hummingbirds into the yard. The tree seemed to "nail down" the property... somehow, it anchored the house to the lot. The house was a three-bedroom home built in the late 60's, nestled in a reverted orchard. To the west beyond the grape stake fence there was the football and baseball field of a local grade school, and beyond that, newer townhouses and the main drag. Angie and Bob (Grandma and Grandpa to family) purchased the house in 1968 after selling their trailer. Together they selected the flora and fauna that populated the place, poring over catalogues on warm summer evenings, sharing a pitcher of cold lemonade. Their biggest purchase was the Bluegum Eucalyptus tree. The Bluegum comes from Tasmania and southeastern Australia. Grandpa learned that it was brought to California in 1856 (he liked looking up things like this in the Encyclopedia). He and Angie looked over the catalogues for days deciding on this tree over a


Willow. Grandpa recalled Willows getting worms. Not much grew around the Bluegum; it was always bereft of growth under the thing, except for the crab grass. Grandpa said the Bluegum was an important source of fuel in other countries. It was used for windbreaks (which is why Grandpa's was at the southwest part of the yard), "shelter belts", and slight sound barriers along highways. Folks driving the freeways sometimes would see walls of them planted to keep out traffic noise. The only problem was that Grandpa insisted on planting the Bluegum next to the grape stake fence, knowing they could catch fire very easily. He made the mistake of mentioning that to Grandma and she had fussed about it ever since. It is the stringy outer bark that catches fire, although the tree itself has some magical properties after being burned. Release of what is called "crown-stored" seed is triggered when shoots die, and these seeds spread like crazy in the aftereffects of a fire. Grandpa's tree, after many years, grew over the grape stake fence. The Bluegum Eucalyptus, at least 85 feet at its crown, formed a leafy bridge between their home and the old Meyers home next door.

The house on the other side of Grandma's was one of the older houses on the street. It had been a family home, owned by the people who had tended and taken care of the orchard. Now the orchard had become tract homes, and this house stood out like a sore thumb. It was a large, two-story structure, with a wasp's nest by the door to the top room where Richard Meyers sat with his shotgun, drinking beer and watching the surrounding yards like some bizarre caricature of a lifeguard. He kept a black and white TV playing all the time, switching channels between wrestling and Roller Derby; his favorite was wrestling. He slept, ate, drank and sometimes pissed in this room. Richard had done some time in prison for sex crimes and was tentatively on parole. His aunt was an elderly woman, easily bamboozled by his jailhouse charm. At first, Richard did odd jobs for her. Later, as she grew more senile and became more of an invalid, he tended to ignore her. Richard Meyers was predatory; more than that, he was a sociopath. He was someone the neighbors steered clear of. After they got to know him, most things steered clear of Richard Meyers.

To be continued: