The Roundhouse

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The coal powered engine crept along the narrow gauge track past the berm of goldenrod and 6 foot tall ironweed with its deeply burgundy flower clusters attractive to butterflies lined the way through the large bay opening into the roundhouse for routine greasing.

The heavy iron beast slowly rolled to a stop at the wheel block. His thick canvas yet warn glove grabbed hold of the vertical bar outside the engine’s open back caked with oily soot that had polished a black streak along the palm.

Stepping down facing forward toward the glorious curved design of the brick building filled like a railroad stockyard with its beasts getting tended to.

His dungarees stained with the grime of an engineer and boot leather nicked and scuffed from the hard work required each day.

Into the top center pocket went two fingers reaching for the candy bar, which he placed in it every morning at 4:30 as he stepped out the backdoor on his way to the yard.

Peeling away the wrapper, he walked out the open bay to where a patch of pokeberries grew full of their dark purple fruit lining the slender each individually positioned, one next to the other at the point to where they attach to the tiny stems like a ball upon the end of a very short pull chain. The juice stains permanently making an excellent fabric dye.

Bringing the sweet chocolate candy to his mouth, he placed it under his tongue allowing it to slowly dissolve, resisting chewing, letting the flavors mash upon the roof of his palate savoring what began as a solid, and now becoming a creamy gel further disappearing into a liquid.

The sun bright and warm upon his face as he lifted his head to accept the heat delivered from millions of miles away. Stepping back, his body leaned against a wall waiting for the next moment to arrive.

The Journey Home

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She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door. This was the reoccurring dream he had as a young boy living in Pittsburgh that caused him to abruptly wake up from those deep sleeps. It appeared to have been a premonition because several months later, his mother walked out of the house and his life-- forever.

He would stare out his bedroom window across the street at the small row house with its postage sized front yard all enclosed with a green chain link fence encasing two tiny yard beds filled with bowling balls of different colors forming concentric circles, then framed in with more bowling balls with a cement walkway leading from the gate right onto the public walkway. To the right of the front stoop leading to the darkly stained front door was a clamshell with the Virgin Mary standing within it. Could she hear the sound of the ocean? This was a bowling ball grotto. Inside lived an old woman who never walked out through the front door. She would open it all dressed in black, with beads in one hand and a book in the other. She would slowly lift her head as he watched her watch him from his upstairs window. A slant smile would lift toward him before she would gently turn and walk back into the darkness of her home.

Did she have answers? Did she, too, know loneliness? Might she take his hurt away?

As he peered at her house waiting for a sign or omnipresent answer to his questions that surrounded his feeling of abandonment, he wished for the emptiness to go away. Was the book an atlas of the United States? Did she twirl her finger in the air and allow it to fall onto the national map giving her a landing location? Did she have a suitcase in hand with a picture of him framed inside? Did she take a drawing he had made in school that wished her a Happy Mother’s Day signing his name with love? Was there someone waiting for her as she flew away? Was her heart free or weighted with pain, as his was when he discovered she had gone?

Fifty years later, what had been swirling in the hidden spaces of his mind, surfaced into his daily consciousness. For many years, he would wonder what had happened to his mother. What was the book she closed? Where had she gone; and, if she was still living, or, happy, for that matter? These were deep, disturbing, and traumatic wounds that had not healed, but festered and interrupted the flow of his life.

Now, he had traveled a very long distance just to sit on the curb, in front of the bowling ball grotto house across the street from his childhood home where his life took that dramatic turn. On the curb, dressed in jeans and a hooded winter parka, under a bright sunny sky in mid-winter with his former bedroom window shade drawn closed, the last one on the right just above the large pane of glass framing the living room, he stared trying to make sense of a once terrifying and haunting escape as he held a freshly sealed envelope with all his pain stuffed inside it.

Heading North

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He walked up to his mother and said, “I think it is time that we leave.” She turned and looked at her son in a reassuring way. She had wanted to leave for many years but was waiting for the right time to do it. The right time was now. Her husband of 30 years was extremely abusive, angry and mean.

Her older son, Matt, was graduating from university in a few days, and was already accepted into graduate school of his first choice. Her other son, and last child, had just graduated high school the day before he approached her.

Their lives in Panama City, Florida was coming to a close. Her young son, Chris, had loved living in the Gulf of Mexico’s panhandle. For years, he worked down the road at the marina learning to repair marine engines and welding from Mr. Fred Johnston who Chris always called him Mr. Fred. The two were very close and Chris was excellent with the various types of welding equipment. He learned from the father-figure expert. This would be his escape route to a new life, and freedom from the clutches of his deranged parent.

Over the last couple of months, Chris had boxed up what he would take and drove it over to the marina where he had taken an old and rotting box trailer, and made it brand new. His mother was a master seamstress, and had given him her materials to stow in the trailer, too. The last item would be her sewing machine and immediate materials, which would go in when the two would walk out the door of their home for the last time.

Her husband had a small accounting and tax office in downtown Panama City and was busy doing tax reports and filings for his business clients. He would return to a vacated home and a note left on the kitchen table saying, “Chris and I left for good. We have had enough, and today wasn’t soon enough! Good luck to you. We both hope you will be happier by yourself. Please don’t try to contact me. All correspondences will be through an attorney. By the way, I have copies of all our bank accounts, and holdings, and have discussed the situation with the banker and financial consultant.”

The two were gone by noon with the Suburban loaded up and left for the boat yard to hitch up the trailer. They were headed north by the next hour.

She had withdrawn a substantial amount of money from their joint account in order to live for a while as the two got established. Her sister, who lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, had an unmarried sister-in-law living in Buffalo, New York who would be waiting for them to arrive.

Buffalo offered work for Chris as a welder, and mom as a seamstress. They told only two people where they were going. Her husband called repeatedly and neither would answer. They were gone. Free to live in peace and from fear and stress. Buffalo would become a new world for them, since all they have known was Florida. The winters would be challenging to their thin blood, but being close to marinas and water gave them the feeling of serenity.

The drive up and out of the south, on into the north, through Pennsylvania with all the trees blooming pink and blues and reds transitioning from spring toward summer calmed their souls and quieted the anxieties pulsating through their escaping bodies distancing themselves from the harm they had known for too many years and toward safety.

Buffalo, with its grand old center city, showing all its wear and tear was soothing to the two who related to what history can do to the present. They found their way to open arms, and warm embraces giving them an immediate anchor to their new home. The Buffalo sky was familiarly cloudy, but the water flowing in the distance was a connection to place that sealed the frayed edges of their jittery souls. 

Adrift In Their Own Shoes

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They speak in the night from faraway places riding the breezy air currents over hundreds of miles sharing deep feelings rooted in loneliness. He walks each day as he did decades ago wandering through familiar routines not unlike the many who surround him. Suit and tie with polished shoes stepping along those same sidewalks and standing upon the everyday stark subway platforms carrying the typical briefcase full of papers defending the requests of highly billed clients who pay the bills.

He wakes up in a lonely bed pretending that life has meaning and purpose. He ponders on a future time when the age of 80 stands before him, in the illumination of the early morning mirror above its companion sink reflecting upon the perceived image of the man looking back at him.

Upon dressing, does he feel satisfied with the nightly decision that finds him in his own lonely bed, as his wife sleeps in hers across the threshold at the end of the second floor hallway?

His muse far away stays in her big house nestled on a quiet small town street just outside a busy metropolitan city wondering what can bring purpose to her life as the long, painful year, since her husband’s death moves her further away from that life altering experience. Hoping that her all-surround, comforting piles of books would fly her away from the hollow feeling entangled inside her body, she stares out the many windows offering opportunities to think carefully beyond those boldly large bare trees just outside her reach, and their dropped foliage, which have fallen to the ground, as they prepare themselves for the cold winds of winter. She bends down grabbing the handles lifting the glass frames up allowing the smells of the outside air blended with odors from the wet and rotting piles of oak and maple leaves lining the curb, which have yet to be taken away. She leans into entrainment.

She turns to hold her small handheld device that sends words across the divide to another stranger also playing the game. She knows she will die, too, but wonders why it is taking so long. Her dog patiently waits by the door.

Living for others, and not herself, appears to be her passage. Her loneliness drapes around her neck like a tightly wrapped silk scarf, which her girlfriend might see as fashion instead of a crying call for deep connections with like-minded souls.

In his office, he drifts among the clouds floating outside his 15^th floor window. One forms a sculpted face that stares into his eyes as he imagined it was waiting to learn what was holding him back before floating on to the next soul. He is scared of being adrift. Everything had been extremely predictable for decades, but what he thought was certain had begun to seriously unravel. He has been taking responsibility for others who have disappointed him and now standing alone weighting down his tired arms were the over stuffed bags of the others in his life.

He thought he was doing what he was supposed to but then realized he had been hiding his own truth from what he needed.

She thinks of him as a dream when awake. She is not in the moment, but in a pattern of what-ifs. What if the two were naked together in a warm pool of water, all alone, touching and floating and rubbing close. She climbed upon his back holding him tightly across his narrow chest with her legs buoyant behind her like a mermaid’s tail. He walked them around the pool her head nestled in the crease of his neck below the right ear as she transcended into the deep secrets within his brain as they came seeping out in the form of loving feelings and joy, along with deeply suppressed anxieties and fears. They flowed out like steam from a boiling kettle sitting on a stove filling the room with wet mist.

How they would be together stirs all around her mind interfering with her daily plans? She must begin to live in the moment and leave predictions to fortune-teller gypsies with colorful dresses and bountiful necklaces holding Tarot cards, while cradling her hand and following its deeply grooved lifeline embedded in her palm gently tracing it with the tip of her index finger. Would the gypsy tell her that her train had gone off the track? Would she then ask the fortune-teller just how that could be? The gypsy woman would stare deep into her eyes and far into the other side; from that which came from a distant past, the answer would come pouring out of the woman seeking answers like a frothing waterfall during spring thaw flowing rapidly and splashing around all the rocks and boulders that define the curvature of the river at its base.

The gypsy woman might tell her to stop living for others and live for her heart. She could emphasize that the time is now, since taking care of others has ended for her. She might whisper in her ear “Take care of yourself. Make life real. It is not a dream.” She might tell her to remove the fence engulfing her. Step outside of it. Light the fuse and let it burn. Don’t wait. So much is unpredictable. Let life unfold like a Chinese paper fan that when closed shows nothing, but once opened it reveals a genuinely intricate scene that lies inconspicuously hidden away until spread apart.

Suddenly, the gypsy woman with arms undulating in opposite syncopation,

head swaying in circles, while her long red mane of thick wavy waist-long hair floating behind in an intoxicating, trance-like manner, would slowly raise her arms then lower them in front of the other woman’s face and say to her, “The best roads taken are those that are filled with uncertainty.”

She has that prospect buried inside of her self. He has much more work to do before that fan can fully open wide and a new unencumbered navigable road be revealed. He will need to button his own undoing. (1015 words)

The Long Ride

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The headlights faintly shined upon the pitch black roadway as he stared out the large tinted window five rows back from the front door. The tires whirled a steady drone down Interstate 77 toward Charleston, West Virginia. Reflective mirror images flashed black upon the riders as they drifted into impermanent and restless sleep.

Brief stops dotted the long, scenic trip through the quiet downtown streets of Marietta, Ohio with its quaint architecture that led them into desolate Parkersburg as Tuesday turned into Wednesday.

On the opposite side of the four lane, which turned into a two lane, then transitioned into an unknown Main Street, before rolling back onto the next four lane were buses, trucks and cars coming toward him, beginning as miniscule beams that grew into large ghostly headlights. In an instant, the Greyhound was in the same dimensional plane of each oncoming vehicle before exiting, leaving behind two disappearing red tail lights fading into the milky, dreamy, and wet fog coated darkening night.

The smell of the coach was that of a thousand mysterious and unknown lives fused into the vinyl seat covers, the rubber of the aisle mats, and the metal and plastic materials that formed into the old, tarnished interior skin throughout the worn insides of the cavernous vehicle.

He entered into, and then exited billions upon billions of moments in time all occupying specific spots on Earth, where people built towns, villages and cities lined with streets, sidewalks, alleys, lanes, churches, schools, and shops. And, as the bus passed into, and then drove away from the nearby spaces filled by strangers watching it from the outside, they, too, were also doing the same fleeting thing. We were all coming and going simultaneously.

The road ahead was hard to see as the street lamps illuminated the moving fog. He rode into Charleston silently without awakening a soul. Front porch lamps lit unintentional welcomes; then were left behind without anyone knowing. Lighted plastic signs on banks or gas stations guarded closed and locked doors.

The road suddenly turned into the early morning darkness as he moved away from the last place toward the next one. “Freedom Homes” and “84 Lumber” billboards became the new gateway with old blackened steel and vine covered railroad trestles arching above the highway entrance ramp routing him on, then off paving the way to his subsequent destination. This never ending series of “to’s and from’s” led him to his final destination where he would continue to enter and exit from newly experienced places occupying a particular time before moving on toward the next.

Time became noticeably linear passing from a single moment into another single moment like a long string of beads being place upon an endless thread. As one bead was placed upon the thread, a bead was left behind no longer in the present, but now realized as being left in the past just as a new one was dropped onto it.

The old moment enriching and impacting the next formed an endlessly expanding picture layered by lifelong fluid droplets of time. 

A single overhead light shined upon a mother and sleeping child sitting across the aisle within the cavernous body of the motor coach. He, and the others, traveled in single file behind other motorists entering and exiting the same spots before separating from the anonymous line of travelers.

He left Bluefield, West Virginia and the small drop-off station then chased a hazy crested moon back onto Interstate 77 South lighting the opening to a mile long mountain tunnel leaving where he had just been only to be greeted, on the other side, by a sign identifying where he was headed. 

Bowling Ball Grotto

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The postage sized lawn set along the quietly narrow city street with cars parked half cocked upon its aged cement chipped sidewalk, nestled two blocks North of old Main Street lined with art deco designed store facades faced with large shiny opaque colored kitchen table sized glass tiles of forest green or black framed around large plate glass windows, nested a series of 1920 era row houses with sidewalk stoops. In the middle of the two-storied, shotgun built row homes was one with a bowling ball grotto protected by the rickety decades-old painted chain link fenced front yard.

Being a regular passersby, he wondered who created this sidewalk alter of St. Christopher standing before three concentric circles of 33 colored bowling balls. Was it a Polish kapliczki? Or, could it be an Italian yard shrine?

Come winter’s snowfalls, there will be concentric mounds of sparkling crystalliferous snow capping the unique shrine. The religious statue standing above the to-be-expected elderly fabricated grotto layered under the white snow covered blanket will lie frozen hidden in waiting, like a child under his warm bed sheet reluctant to step outside into the room’s cold air, until the spring’s melting thaw that will, once again, reveal itself among the blooming white and yellow crocuses, bluets and purple hyacinths.

But, today it is summer and the thinly rimmed yard of gravel and stone sprout not a single weed or blade of grass, yet not a single soul has ever been seen on bended knee to pluck out the garden invaders. Lining one edge of the narrow yard was a row of more bowling balls, as if they had popped up from beneath the alley’s varnished wooden lanes lined in a chain, one bumped up against the other, waiting for the next hand to reach down with the familiar three finger pronged grip slipping into the corresponding polished holes, lifted, then gently cradled by the other hand, in preparation for another explosive tour de’ force toward the head pin.

His reason for knowing more than he should about this relic of a place was because every working day he passed the row home early in the morning on his way to work and, later in the afternoon, sometimes in the drawing darkness of day, he would pass it again on his way home.

Occasionally, he would stop at the nearest opposite corner, sit on the curb watching the bowling ball grotto’s sacred ground for any stirring of life. He might wait for as along as thirty minutes, talk on his mobile phone to pass the time, and attempt to look harmless, yet never saw a single person come to the window to peer through the lacy curtain sheers, or crack open the heavy wooden front entry to see if she was there gazing back. His mind framed the dweller as an old woman dressed in warn black clothing bought 50 years ago from a local dressmaker.

There were moments when he stopped in front of the fence wondering what the lonesome person inside might say about the kapilczki, and if it was her work of art; or, if its creation was done by a deceased loved one and remains as a living memorial to that life partner.

But, the front door never opened. The stoop never sat upon. The curtain never parted. A window never raised. A light never turned on. The home appearing without the rustling of life. The individual remaining quietly inside sitting reading her bible, and praying the rosary beads.

The yard shrine and home left alone. Honored by neighbors. Respected by strangers. And, watched over by an unassuming bowling ball grotto. (611 words)

Non Petrol Culture

Have you ever done an Amish person? They are so much the best, so healthy, back in the day I met a girl who was in the middle of her rumshpringa, it was a time I'll never forget.  She was all about no time like the present!

I remember we would sit up on the crest of this hill that overlooked her six hundred acre farm, drinking cheap beer and having sex in the back seat of my car. She was seventeen and I had just turned eighteen. 

The strange thing was that normally Amish people dress with humility in mind, but because she was doing the rumshpringa, she would buy the craziest loud clothing from Kmart.  She worked out at a Burger King on the interstate during this time of run around.

I would leave and she would walk down this winding road to the families big white clapboard farm house, it had a great front porch on it, I never even thought about going down there with her or even asking to meet her family.

I stopped by their farm when I was in my late 30's to buy a pie, I walked right up onto that great porch, memories bubbling, the place had not changed a bit, I yelled "anybody home" and the screen door swung open and this young girl runs out, wearing a white bonnet and blue romper, she was barefoot, maybe 15 years old, and she looked just like i remembered her mom looking. She took my breath away, I said to her, "you have a beautiful farm", and she looked at me and smiled and "We do, we like it".

I was tempted to ask to talk with her mom, but figured I had gone back into the time tunnel far enough for that day, took my pie and got the heck out of there.

As I turned to walk away, I could have sworn I saw her mom in the window, but who knows, they never use curtains, so it could have been anyone.

I enjoyed every bite of that pie, strange how reality is ok that way.  Petrol culture won't leave you with any memories at all.

Submitted by Carl Cimini

CLASS PICTURE

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Those were the days my friends when we were called the Gang of Eleven. Eleven street boys from deep in the bowels of Chicago’s north side. City boys, rough-necks, street dogs. We were called all those names. We didn’t care. Lakeview, Wrigleyville, Addison street were our haunts. Infamous Clark street was filled with hippies, flower children, beaded girls with long dresses, bell bottomed jeans, and long, long hair. Stores had 

incense smells, like sandalwood, frankincense and myrrh wafting in the air as my friends and I walked down the street taking it in as if it were a historical event. An East Indian restaurant used strong curry spices filling my nostrils with these powerful, yet delicate odors.

The sidewalks were shared with older, drunken Vietnam Vets living on the street, sometimes mumbling into their grimy shirt collars, sleeping in secluded doorways on newspapers and flattened boxes, wrapped in their green army jackets with their name patches giving them identity when passersby eyes look the other way, covered in a filthy tossed off surplus sleeping bags unable to return to normal after time spent killing during a rainy season’s surprise ambush by Viet Cong underground cave dwelling soldiers, smoking opium, and eventually, passing into a point of no return. 

These older kids sat on street corners passing joints, playing music, drumming, singing and dancing like Native American Indians around a ceremonial campfire waving their arms up in the air, while swaying back and forth as if they were under the spell of a witch doctor or shaman. 

We were in Mr. D’s class all day because the principal didn’t want us moving from class-to-class, since he said we were “too disruptive”, and the teachers “would lose control of the room when we were in there.” School was cool. It was better than being on the street all day. We did learn. We all were good readers, and as a class, would write stream of consciousness collective stories taking turns creating crazy sentences. 

He made us each stand up at the knife scarred and use-warn ancient blackboard with the thick oak tray filled with yellow, pink, red, blue, green and white chalk and write our own sentence using the color of our choice, and then read it aloud facing our classmates with the same pride as delivering the State of the Union address. We did this more than once a week with the same excitement as when we would get an A on our spelling test. 

Mr. D would take us outside as often as he could. A large grassy field with trees lining the boundary was behind the school. We played softball in every type of weather. We all were Cubs fans. In the summer, I would ride my bike over to the ball park and listen to Jack Brickhouse call the games. On May 12, 1970, I cut school, and rode my bike to the ball park, and sat on the North Clark street curb, close to home plate, when I heard the crowd explode with joy after Ernie Banks hit his legendary 500 home run. “Jarvis winds away. That’s a fly ball, deep to left. Back, back, hey, hey, he did it! Ernie Banks got number 500!” 

That moment remains as vivid in my mind as the day Mr. D had us celebrate a few days later, when the sky turned bright blue, and air was summer warm, out behind the school, we partied. Tony put his whole face in the cream pie. We came together as brothers, enjoying our bond, as Mr. D snapped a picture. 

by, J

(Entries must be 600 words or less.)