The Green Orbs

JPhoto

(This story was part of a contest, which had a theme. The theme was to write a 3-minute
story whereby the voice in the story was to leave a message on someone's answering machine.)

“Hello John. You won’t believe what I am about to tell you. The desert sun is setting out here as the sky burns with broad swaths of red and orange, yet there appears to be a green orb flashing in the foreground. I am standing before my picture window facing the vast open ranch land filled with grazing cattle. The green orb is coming closer becoming distinct. The shape is oblong with flashing lights.

It has now stopped about a half-mile away but remains as high in the sky as a flyover jet airliner. The vehicle remains still for the moment. Wait. Whoa! It has now shifted directions. It moved to the north at a very fast clip. You could say, the blink of an eye. But now it soared in the opposite direction at just as fast a rate.

It now is still. Hovering in the sky. Two other green flashing orbs have joined it. The color is of a deep forest green, although, very glossy. Sparkly. The sun is setting and the horizon is ablaze with wide swooping strokes of red, orange and yellow.

I am alone in the house. My dog Jones is also standing at the window. He sees the orbs, too. The hair on his neck is standing straight up in the air, and he is beginning to whine.

I don’t know what to make of this. I am feeling really anxious. What if it lands right out here? What do I do?

This message is to tell you that if I am no longer here this is why.

Hold on here! The green orbs are now joined by 6 more. These are white in color. There are now 9 orbs hovering in the sky to the south of me. They are now orbiting one another. Wait! They are coming closer now. They are spreading out to what looks like several hundred yards from down here. In the center are the three green orbs in a triangular formation, but all around them in a circular design are the other 6 equal distant from one another.

They continue to come closer!! Holy shit!! They are heading for the desert!! The cows

are all coming together congregating into a large herd and bellowing loudly. They are all calling out in unison!! What is happening? I am really beginning to sweat. My shirt is soaked. Jones runs in circles and then stops to look out the window.

I can see the orbs in detail now. They are oblong saucers. Just like in that old black and white 1960s movie, “The Day The Earth Stood Still!” They have windows all around but are darkly tinted, yet can see there is an amber glow inside the vehicle.

They appear to be a quarter mile up and about a tenth of a mile out. The orbs have all lined up horizontally. The three green ones are now descending, while the white ones are lifting. There is no sound as they move. The white orbs are very bright and have what looks like portals all around them. They are hovering around 500 yards above the green ones.

I am now holding binoculars and can see that on the underside are four smaller portals the size of car tires. In the center is a larger one the diameter of a tractor rim.

One green orb has separated from the others, and is now slowly moving toward the house.

It has landed 100 yards in front of me! Oh my God! It is opening up, John! It is opening!

...Beep.”

(596 words)

The Journey Home

JPhoto

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.

Running From Rural Illinois

She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door. This image ran through his mind as he stepped through the open door of the sharecropper’s one room shack situated in the overgrown farm field alongside the rail fence lining the very secondary rural two-lane. This was a side road with no center line. Farm fields lined both sides of the blacktop.

The two young men parked the old flat black 1958 Plymouth four-door along the drainage ditch, climbed over the fence and walked into the dilapidated wood structure back in 1968, while living in west-central rural Illinois.

The two would cruise the back roads checking our their newly settled haunt after moving in from Chicago to attend a small college set in a town of 150 people. One day they found an abandoned vintage Morgan automobile buried within a stand of tall weeds. It had rear directional arrows that were signaled a turn, as well as an all wood chassis. The car would have sought more attention in the hands of a collector, than in the destructive throws of nature; but there it sat hidden from most eyes.

On this particular day, the two walked through the door of what would have been the home of a person, or two, who suddenly left quickly without hesitation. Old print dresses, and worn shirts hung in an open shallow closet. Cans of food left unopened on shelves.

This home for a transient worker had a twin bed in the corner. A soiled crazy quilt with torn squares of cotton, wool, and corduroy patched together lay on the bed. An outhouse attached to the side of the old plywood wall provided those inside from running out into the bitter Illinois winter’s cold.

A water well pump adjoined the iron-stained porcelain kitchen sink alongside the knife scored grey speckled-on white linoleum countertop. At the end of what constituted a kitchen was a very used two-burner bottled gas stove.

  

Pots of what might have been dinner were abandoned on the gas stove, were dried and rotten. A closed Bible and newspaper lay open amongst forks, knives, and plates set on the table.

The two stood before the scene in haunting amazement drawing from deep impressions of what might have forced one to flee for their lives in the heat of this frightening nightmare.

Could this snapshot of lost time have happened in 1964, as was printed at the top of the newspaper? Was there darkness pending in that month of July as men in white hoods and burning torches walked the lonely blacktopped back road rousing sounds of anger and violence arousing mountains of fear as a mob approached the insolated shack?

Did the farm worker look out the kitchen sink window in horror as a stirring glow of flaming evil lit the night? Did she, and maybe another, grab their valuables, jackets and hats, before they ran, while never looking back as they escaped into the crop rows fleeing into the moonlight?

Where did they go? Who sheltered them? It was clear that whatever happened that night left that moment in time fully intact like a time capsule allowing someone to stumble upon this place to see it untouched and preserved as it once had been.

Tethered

JPhoto

She was short in stature but tall in the trees. What was carried in her pocket were a whole lot of daydreams.  Resting high in a 100 year old grand majestic oak, she suspended upon the ropes and boot clamps holding on with her back against a strong limb. Dressed in Carhart, her pole saw extended dislodging dead limbs from perches, while the 18 inch Stihl hung from a cord tied to her belt.

Below stood her assistant ready to untie freshly cut branches she lowers down. The view atop the canopy glowed with bright sun from her post upon the tallest tree majestically towering above the hill overlooking the vast rolling valley below blanketed with thick woodland growth surrounding a handful of ten acre and larger estates encasing these properties with split rail fencing. Gazing out over the land, she dreams of a small hand built home nestled among the oaks and maples which is the world she finds most comforting.

In this place where few people go, she escapes tethered to trees perched among the hawks and crows and other winged creatures. Insects crawl. Beetles burrow. Worms inch. Bees gather. Squirrels roost.

She loves this upper world where life thrives endlessly, but one must watch with keenness, otherwise its life will go unnoticed. The green strands of tiny blossoms upon the oak dangle around her as bees, like small delivery vehicles, collect pollen grains for their ride home all the while she stares at their plump yellow and black fuzzy bodies gracefully moving from blossom to blossom occasionally bumping into one another revving their body’s motor as a warning to stay clear. They are indifferent to their silent admirer.

Riding the warm air currents 20 feet above basking in the joy of the moment a hawk draws spirals above her head. Its clean white underbelly with its fanned red tail glistens in the glaring sun. Its keen visual sense kept on high alert for any scampering small sized mammal rustling through the layers of debris blanketing the loamy ground below.

There’s peace high above the hustling and rushing maze that lives below. Time slows to where one listens to the wind vibrating the newly emerged buds, blossoms and foliage. Branches brush up against each other. Limbs creek and sway. Her own breath is the chorus to nature’s rhythmical sounds.

Her assistant below waits patiently for her mind to return to her work. A cloud pattern acting out the appearance of a person’s head with a smiling mouth tumbling over began to drift past, while morphing into a hand with the image of an index finger points north.

She looks out in the direction to see what might be there on that distant hilltop. Could it be a small herd of deer nursing newly birthed fawns covered in a coat of circular pale spots?

She sees circular patterns as the nature of her ever-changing cycle along with the passing seasons, which, too, alters life. Deer herds roam; yet, return to their familiar places day after day.

Lofting high in the trees presents her with a fully dynamic panoramic view of the world that stretches far beyond the small one when one stands upon the earth’s surface.

Her heart begins to race and her breath shallower as she gazes out at the splendor that expands the landscape, which was created out of its own doing as a result of the never ending cycles that nature places upon itself.

She glances below watching her assistant holding the rope upon which is a newly cut limb as he guides it to the ground. She waves down to him. He smiles up in return knowing how content she feels up there. (618 word count.)

Heading North

JPhoto

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. 

Wait and See

JPhoto

There was this man who walked to work the same way everyday. He walked upon the same particular cracks with the same part of his shoes. He did not stray from his familiar path when either going to the office or returning home. He wore gray or blue suits with a white shirt and solid black ties. The shoes were black full oxford brogues with “W” tooled toe box designs. A black jazz styled pork pie hat sat upon his head. He spoke to no one and sat quietly on the subway car seat preferring the aisle, if at all possible.

His mind thought of running from the ordinary world in which he lived. He was a man stuck in the mundane, yet wishing to escape it. He cycled back from the present moment to the future. He always answered questions about the time and place that lied ahead with, “wait and see”. He had a wait and see life.  The job that filled his day was one that kept him isolated and in his head.

Drifting thoughts of walks on woodland trails stopping to sit on a log listening to a stream flow below. Crows speaking together in packs deciding if the man sitting below is a friend of the wild world. Shedding the suit for jeans and flannel with a ball cap to shade his eyes, with soft shoes for his feet, all made him close his eyes in his office chair. Wait and see.

He was a man, yet acted like a mother who wouldn’t let go. He was an emotional caregiver carrying the weight of an empty wife, and damaged children. He thought he was the protector, but instead, wounded himself. Instead of being a pillar, he was a pile of rubble. The dream of a time that would be all his own was faraway in that place of wait and see.

On this day, he entered the elevator to travel to the 16^th floor, where he would enter it on the ground floor, alone; but, standing before him, under the brightly lit domed fixture was a woman in a red skirt wearing a red jacket over her gray blouse, standing there in the shiny metal box looking back at him. He entered and stood next to this stranger, then pushed the button that would lift him up to his destination.

She touched his hand and said her name was Eleanor and she had been waiting for him. He turned only his head in her direction with the look of curious fear across his face. “You were waiting for me? I don’t know you. Who are you? Should I know you?”

She smiled and answered back, “Yes, and no to the final three.” The elevator stopped. The door opened on the 15^th floor. He looked up at the round, lighted number selections noticing that he was not at his destination. His index finger touched the number 16 but the doors did not shut. Nothing moved. There he was with Eleanor, and no one else was around. The floor was empty. The space was cleared of all things. She got off. Then turned, smiled and said, “ Bye for now, James”, which was his name. The doors closed and up to the next floor he went.

The doors opened as they usually did to what was his familiar office space. As he walked off, a co-worker walked past, then, looked strangely at him, as if it was not him, Mr. Pork Pie Hat.

Compelled, James walked to the stairwell, opened the heavy metal door, then down the steel steps surrounded by concrete walls to the 15^th floor. He had never been there before, and opened up that door. He found a large space filled with office cubicles, and people rushing about. There he stood frozen watching activity that for most, would be commonplace. But, of course, for James, it gave him a spinal rush of coldness.

He turned, walked back up the single flight of stairs, opened the door to where he worked, and then down the hall to his office, where he sat down in his familiar padded high back chair, then, with deliberate calmness, took hold of a tack pin and pricked himself to see if he was really awake. He was, without a doubt, very much in the present. Sitting straight up, starring at the calming Monet poster framed 10 feet from him on an off-white wall, he gazed at the water lilies floating in shades of blue and green reflections wondering what just happened to him. He drew a blank. His imagination stood still. Nowhere to go.  At that moment, without hesitation, he picked up the yellow file folder lying before him and opened it. (793 words.) 

Adrift In Their Own Shoes

JPhoto

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

JPhoto

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. 

Stories of Lost Days

by jphoto

 In the far dark corners of the room lie deep, old, private stories. The place with its sterile feeling had pictures of grandchildren displayed upon the on windowsill, and, in the center was one framed with braided metal threads, standing vertical, shot in black and white tones of his deceased wife of 42 years taken dozens of years ago arms around each other young and beginning life.

Today he is dying slowly at 86 left in a nursing home by his daughter who rarely visits. Sharing the other bed in the room is a 92 year old also dying slowly sitting in a wheelchair facing a lit wall with nothing to see as oxygen flows into his nose through tiny tubes, sustaining his life, wrapped around his ears to keep it all in place.

Their lives filled with past worlds quietly held inside unless asked. Like a juke box loaded with single song records, their voices can tell stories of a lost time forgotten by many, while never shared by some held deep within the soul boxed and compressed pushed under piles of lost thoughts. A press of a button spins the tale.

Both men get dialysis twice a week, eat in their room because the dining hall is too discomforting. One lies in bed watching television, the other sits staring into nowhere. On his bedside tray is a partially filled snack bag, along with cups of water with lids, his urinal, and candy bars.

The conversation contained a hoping desire to return home, which appeared to be a losing dream. A return home would require more than what the one living there now could provide. The older man’s elderly wife doesn’t have the strength to lift her frail life partner who is unable to stand alone. The other man’s daughter appears to not want to be the sole caregiver to her own father who might find himself lost in the apartment hallway after stepping outside his cocooned space drifting further away from what would be most familiar.

Stories flowed from both as the three of us sat closely talking of the old days that formed their lives. The Second War had one in the Pacific as a fighter pilot’s tail gunner, and the other rode a Liberty ship as a Merchant Marine sailing from the Pacific to the Atlantic harboring in Australia, along side Chinese cargo vessels, roaming Sydney’s streets dancing the evening in the nightclubs far from the vast battlefield theaters. While docked in Italy, a German bomber attacked his ship exploding chards of metal breaking his legs, ultimately sending him home after 4 years at sea and war.

The older man returning from his tour unharmed went back to his hometown to design, and build valves for the rest of his working life. The younger man moved about the upper Midwest in search of a place to settle. Detroit lured him to a Dodge Motor Company auto plant close to his hometown in Ohio. Later, he found himself in Pittsburgh building electric heating elements for 40 years. At a big band dance, unable to artfully move his legs due to his injuries, he met his lifelong dream partner. As the dance ended, he drove her home knowing that he would never be without her.

Today both men alone in their rooms, after decades of setting suns, and as the sky changes from daylight to darkness, listen to the carts of food, bedding, medications being pushed up and down the halls. A smiling face enters their tiny space with a package of cookies for each and a word of encouragement.

We sit together talking as if huddled around a kitchen table sharing stories of our lives. Throughout the short 90 minute visit, both men smiling, joyful, and happy to be briefly cared for by a visitor.

Paper Airplanes In Flight

JPhoto

Outside winter’s display window, a lamppost lit steady falling snow all through the setting nightfall and on toward dawn. A single street lamp casted shadows into his third floor apartment office room, as he sat staring out the double-paned glass hypnotized by the accumulating snow narrowly stacking upon the ledges and roofs, which were at eye level. The gently dancing crystalized flakes lit up like luminescent schools of miniature tropical fish swimming in a giant deep ocean fishbowl. 

His room was dark except for a single curved antique lamp with its fluted glass shaped shade pointing down toward his wicker wastebasket. The deflected light brought a mood to the room that he desired, since he wanted to curl up inside his pile of woolen blankets, then burrow deep in his well-worn brown corduroy stuffed easy chair, which was a hand-me-down from his grandmother after the estate was settled, to watch the night pass silently by.

Evening snows invite silence, and the body’s need to be securely wrapped up in warmth while mesmerized by nature’s frosty rain. If it were summer, he might have the windows open listening to the droplets tap upon the window glass, but the silent snow fell as quietly as clouds drifting across the night’s sky. The absence of its sound was mystifying. 

As a child, he spent time in his room folding paper airplanes into various designs sending them through the air toward hanging targets and wastebaskets. He would lay on his bed, pillows propped up against the corner wall tossing handmade paper airplanes at his simple hanging targets that hung from kite string taped upon the ceiling. Now an adult, this historical pastime continued. He folded them without looking, and often in the dark, feeling his way along the edges of the paper with delicate precision and skill. His fingers took their time caressing the corners of the specially chosen sheets, which were picked from the stacked trays storing the various grades offered to him.

His mind often needed distraction when it could not drop anxious and repetitive thoughts into the available mental depository in order to shrink each one into rubble suitable for discard knowing that this place inside his mind would gently disarm what were actually of minimal importance.

Tonight he folded airplanes using his lightest weighted paper and tossing them at each of his two hanging Alexander Calder mobiles purchased while at the Smithsonian museum last summer when visiting a friend in Washington, DC. He enjoyed spinning the mobiles in this way, which made him feel like he had stretched beyond the mundane and into the realm of skill, like arranging the colors on a Rubik’s Cube into desired patterns.

He had lingering and nagging thoughts. Ones that would wake him at 3 A.M. wanting immediate resolution, which stressed him because it was more than likely there was not one available that would drift him back into soothing sleep.  His dreams had him on long bus rides missing stops, whereby he would have to then ride another one back to where he should have gotten off. Other dreams had him in apartments or rooms he did not recognize uncertain of what to do next.

In order to return to calm, he would sit up in his dark bedroom, pick up one of his airplanes creasing it back into a single dimension, and then fan it open tossing it toward the illuminating hallway night light. On the floor by his nightstand were several paper airplanes idly waiting for flight parked in a small box.

This activity was meditative; no mantra, no teacher, no method, only the flight of paper airplanes. Watching them move silently through the bedroom air quieted his mind drawing him away from noisy thoughts as each one soared below blue ceiling tiles toward the dim light of the hallway, tapping into memories of his youth, in silence, once more.

After several minutes he lied back down and fell back into sleep, while outside the snow quickly piled high deadening all of the evening sounds. (591 words)

The Gift

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Chris and Mirriam moved onto her grandmother’s farm in New Hampshire not far from the White Mountains where her great-grandfather hid out as the First World War broke out. He was a pacifist resisting conscription into the American army. As an immigrant from Austria, he resisted a forced return to spill blood on the soil he remembered as home (so dearly). He bought a large farm with family money he inherited prior to landing on the shores of Newfoundland, Canada. He and others made their way down to New Hampshire to work as a tree climbers and fellers for hire as lumber went for the war effort.

As a young child, he fearlessly climbed every tree he saw in the small village outside of Graz scaling to cloud entangling tree limbs. In New Hampshire, he steadily scaled and trimmed trees on the estates of the wealthy industrialists.

An elderly shipping magnate moved onto his summer estate escaping the Boston high society culture he found repellent. The interest in trees and arbor studies linked these two men together as spring is to summer. The elderly man told Merriam’s great-grandfather that he had an overgrown farm nearby that he no longer wanted and suggested he take it off his hands if he would care for it properly. “Of course,” was the answer; as it had been said.

The gift was 300 acres of old growth timber, scrub trees that over powered the farm fields, a largely solid two-storied 1880s fieldstone barn filled with rusting farm implements of the time, and a semi-burned down farmhouse.

Merriam’s mother, who inherited the land after her mother’s death, had not returned, nor anyone else, for10 years. The old fieldstone barn had been converted into a giant home by her great-grandfather, who became a skilled stonemason during his lifetime.

The old man cultivated and planted hundreds of seedlings, formed into orchestrated woodlands of pines, spruces, larches, oaks, maples, and trees from seeds gathered from other forests visited now nearing 100 years old. Inside some of the treed landscapes were stone benches, planters, organic sculptures, and walls as tall as 10 feet high laid in circular, curved, or just straight formations not seen unless one were to hike into that living wooded montage.

The young couple mesmerized by the wildness of the land with its densely canopied tree topped home filled with generational animal life roaming and flying felt the stronger heartbeat to the land. They unwrapped and uncovered great-grandfather’s handmade stone treasures, nestled within overgrown shrubs and tall trunks of trees; and, while doing so the stonemason’s medieval hideaway tower with its arched open windows, and iron railings, along with a wide flowing creek running around it and a stone moss covered bridge crossing it was revealed.

All paths were undetectable and overgrown mystifying their explorations. The two crossed the bridge, and found the entrance opening with a log staircase leading to the open circular room surrounded by its guardian woodland offering a view of the landscape from almost 20 feet above the loamy earth. The distant rolling landscape was visible from one arched lookout, or the dense forest from another. Each framed window offering views of a vibrant and pulsating natural world as its moist breath evolved and changed this enchanting place over decades.

More steps led to the rooftop parapet not unlike a castle’s turret. Carved into the wall surrounding the entire circumference read, “To my flesh and blood, finally arriving, to live, pray, and gaze in awe, I give you this place of peace-1926.”  It was here that their life found new love. (599 words)

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)

A Wilderness Haunted

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 “Some people swore the house was haunted; but just maybe, it was the landscape that surrounded it.” whispered the old timer living just outside this West Virginia wilderness area silently crouching beside the campfire alongside my tent site.

“I’m not sure what you mean?” was my uneasy response to this eerie figure. “This landscape is haunted, as well as haunting to those of us who know the story. We feel it; smell it; see it. Stories get passed down, but to you visitors, ya weekenders, you don’t know ‘em.”

“Know what?” I asked as the winds blew up across this high tundra plateau with its grassland open meadows, and low growing spruce, pine, and hemlock along with massive moraine debris spewed throughout the thousands of acres of dry landscape, like a bowling ball boulder graveyard formed into cliffs, and riverbeds. We sat upon stool sized logs watching the dusk turn to complete darkness as the campfire flames bent east then south following directional winds arching like the organically fluid body of a modern dancer.

A planetarium of stars and constellations exploded upon the all-connecting giant sky from every direction flickering and pulsating the heartbeats of heaven. Green valleys and forested mountaintops lay just beyond the veil of darkness.

“Near this spot a frontiersman handcrafted a stone and timbered cabin which to hunt from and tan hides that he sold to villagers below. Bear, deer, bobcat, and panther roamed this wilderness. It been a frightening landscape to most livin’ in the hollers and hills aneath. But he came here alone lookin’ for somethin’ he didn’t share with no one.”

“You say it’s haunted. What was haunted?”

The old timer answered, “The cabin was haunted. And because the cabin got haunted, the whole place turned haunted. This entire wilderness became a haunted land.”

“What haunts the earth here are the spirits of dead bear. The restless soul of a single dead bear, it is said, callin’ the souls of other dead bear to bellow from aneath the trees when the whistlin’ winds blow down from the North.”

“The stories tell a time when bear roamed this landscape. These were huge and powerful bear with the blackest fur polished shiny by the starry Gods forming Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. They ruled this landscape feedin’ off of the deer and foolhardy men who thought they were a match for these divinely hallowed creatures.”

“The legend has it that a lightnin’ fire struck a stand of dried out pine and spruce spookin’ the wildlife to run for safety. The frontiersman smellin’ the smoke from inside his cabin saw a furl of flyin’ flames in the distance. A storm began to blow in from the North with high winds pushin’ the burnin’ South away from his cabin.”

“What he didn’t expect to see was a scorched giant black bear coming out of the forest leapin’ over boulder piles as if they didn’t exist. Seein’ the frontiersman, the massive creature reared upon its hind legs, bellowed a deadly roar and rushed toward ‘em.”

“Upon fearin’ for his life, he ran into the cabin closin’ then latchin’ shut the thick solid wooden door. Armin’ himself with his single shot rifle and attached bayonet, the bear lunged through the door as the man unloaded into the bear’s skull with both the blade and the bullet.”

“The giant bear then fell upon the woodsman, buryin’ its teeth into his skull. The two died together. Their restless souls intertwined occupyin’ the space and the land forever. And nothin’ was the same again after that.”  (596 words.)

[This was written for the “3-Minute Fiction’s 5^th round contest sponsored by NPR radio. The parameters were the story had to be under 600 words and use this sentence as your first sentence, “Some people swore the house was haunted.” And, for your last sentence you were instructed to use “And nothing was the same again after that.”]

As It Was Remembered

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The days passed one-by-one bundled into memories then rolled into decades. The experience was a haunting visual. We were just kids. Dares innocently escalating. Feats grew bigger than the last. We were only 15 when Joe began planning his “surprise”. He told Mo and me he would show us his “big adventure” when he was ready. He “had to prepare”. We did not know what he meant but it sounded risky.

Joe liked it dangerous. He would taunt rattlers. He found it thrilling to squat quietly down to the ground, steady still hands reaching, finger tips delicately propped on the dirt, near the entrance to a rattlesnake’s den, keenly watching one sliver over with it triangular spoon shaped head to his barefoot frog-like toes; and then, with the vaulting precision of a predator’s pounce, his hand firing a piercing surgical grasp upon the back of it’s head momentarily stunning it before finally reacting in fear, eyes glaring through its vertical pupil slits, tongue gyrating feverishly, as he grabbed the furiously loud rattling tail with his other hand. Its black striped back with that red ridgeline flashing in our own eyes like a neon sign at midnight on a hauntingly dark empty street.

With the attention and caution of a wild animal trainer, he moved, but his spirit was full of laughter and joy. “Mo. Brent. Come check out my Canebraker!” He approached everything he did in this way. His fears were so controlled and measured. We deeply respected his dare-devilishness believing his gifts were divinely endowed.

With care, caution and tenderness, he would find a rock, which would act as a barrier between himself and the snake. He would kneel down before the rock, then lean over it, belly flat upon the surface still holding his prisoner, reach out at arm’s length, lay the now quieted and numb rattler on the ground letting it go. Without any defensive response, it would just move along as if nothing had happened. A hypnotic trance had been placed upon the creature through the hands of this young snake charmer.

At the abandoned rock quarry, he would not only dive off the five storied jagged limestone cliffs overlooking the oval walled ten acre spring fed pool below, but perform backward twists and flips into the cold 40 foot deep turquoise colored water. He was a master of the mind and body like no other we who knew him had ever seen before.

We lived close to the Shenandoah Mountains in Virginia. Our hamlet was 15 miles away nestled in the fertile farmland below. We could see the rooftops of each other’s homes across the plowed fields of wheat and corn with two mountain ranges in the background from my front yard porch. The summer sunset sky would go ablaze with burning hues of orange and yellow and red streaks.

Often we would take overnight pack hikes into the mountains along the trails in very late spring when the Mountain Laurel was in bloom lining our way with their fragrant small delicate white or pink blossoms adorned with nine red spots encircling those same many star pointed clusters of delicate flowers. The mountain-bred deer gentle enough to walk close if one sat and talked to them in a quiet, soothing tonal voice. Spotted faun would prance in full view entertaining anyone willing to watch.

The three of us, and occasionally others, would hike one to two nights sleeping on the ground with our thinly warn down bags along the trail listening to the sound of fast running water just a few feet away, while the sky filled with dancing meteors, as we stared upon the gloriousness of the endless array of constellations.

Our bond as friends went very deep. We called ourselves Amigos, and could read the minds and thoughts of each other.

We loved Overall Run Falls and hiked all around the trails surrounding the series of cascading cliffs where the rushing waters fell to the bottom a swift seven miles from the top.

It was on this warm summer Saturday in July with its rare dry breeze blowing threw the trees and across the wide expanse of rock and cascading river falls. At the top, Joe said, “I am ready for “my adventure”. I am going to do it today. I feel ready.” Ready for what, I said? “I am going over the falls, and I need you to be my witness.” “And don’t try to tell me different. I have my mind made up. I’m doin’it guys. So let it be. Just help me. OK?”

He pulled out from the bottom pack roll tied to his old Kelty backpack a helmet, goggles, a full wet suit with gloves and booties, and three inner tube tires and a pump. Riveted to the back and bottom of the football helmet, that dangled from the pack’s aluminum frame, was a plastic plate that was 14 inches long going down his spine which strapped under his arms across his chest. Two motorcycle inner tubes were tied together around his waist after being pumped up. The third was from a kid’s dirt bike, tied to the other two and loosely secured around his ankles. His homemade flotation device was crazy.

We helped him assemble his contraption as he lay on the ground. We carried him to the edge of the flat water as it tumbled toward the falls. We told him he had to scoot in on his own as we said, “Joe, you can say no to this and no one will ever know. We promise!” “I’m doin’it guys. See ya at the bottom.” “Now, get your butts down the trail to the big, long, flat drop into the gorge and watch me go down. Run. I’ll give ya 10.”

We got to the lookout and saw this tiny black bullet taken down toward the falls. When he got to the vertical sheet of icy rumbling water, his body stiffened riding along the surface attempting to navigate the natural water slide, hugging the right side of the falls plunging into the first horizontal ledge pool surrounded by the gorge, bouncing up and down like a fishing bobber as he soared atop the wide and long roaring second vertical making sure he took the right fork of the fall’s forward-projecting turbulent water, instead of the left-side’s sheer drop both converging into a pool piled with log jamming debris. It was there that we lost sight. The silent fear of death and a horribly mangled body terrorized the entire run down to the bottom four more miles to the final pool where unaware sunbathers waded playfully. Joe yelled on the way down for people to get away. “Get out down there; get out; danger; get out; get out of the way. I’m comin’ down on ya! And, I comin’ down fast!”

Floating in the pool when we reached him, three waders were pulling Joe out. He was laughing and hollerin’ in joy. He made it. A miracle. Intact! We ran to our daredevil friend and he hugged us both as we danced up and down in a ceremonial-like circle holding our strange looking frogman in this impromptu embrace of the fantastic.

Here I stand now at that same lookout starring over the falls remembering that monumental day where my life changed and I knew that challenges could be won if you really wanted them badly enough.

I stand alone watching the water cascade the falls. Joe and Mo coming tomorrow to celebrate what had happened four decades ago, to the day, since we were last here together on that crazy afternoon in July. And, what a great celebration of life tomorrow it will be. (1291 word count)