Rafael Garcia Meets the Devil

The Spanish horse patrol was on route to Bodega on the Pacific. Rumors, then reports, had come to the fort beside St. Rafael near San Francisco Bay that other Europeans had been seen in the headlands around the mountain called Tamalpais.

The five leather-coated soldiers, their priest companion and the native servant stopped awhile to stretch their legs and barter food at a poor village.  The missionary, mildly drunk, was still able to talk with the village elder in Bay area pidgin.  The man had apparently seen nothing.

A Hint of Wind

The young priest cut the outboard engine half a mile from Horseshoe Bay off the Marin Headlands. He had no fishing pole, no crab pots.  He spent most Mondays off from his stagnant ministry in this rowboat.

He tipped the engine up and back, put the oars in their locks, let the blades hang in the water.  He waited, bow pointed across open water toward old San Francisco.  Outside the mouth of the Bay, the barren Farallons called and the immense Pacific offered to take him.  The boat drifted dully.

He closed his eyes.  His seminary enthusiasm had met polite tolerance.  He just couldn’t engage these natives with roots as old as the Bible.  Power-Points were useless.

Drum School

The drum gives me Now; and its silence Then.

Keep the beat and my soul will mend.

My father was a smith. We lived in tiny Dodona in a house behind the forge. We lived with the beat of hammer and anvil, and the longer pulse of heating and cooling. Poor, we embraced the rhythms of starving awhile until we were no longer as hungry, of collapsing exhausted until we were merely tired. My mother foraged meals from thin air and I worked at the fire from a tender age.

Father made a living selling pins, hasps and latches for a few lepta each. He taught me how to repair broken tools. Craning past his massive arm, I watched him steadily beat the ripple pattern of circles on a copper sheet until it became a shapely pot, worthy of Hephaestus, whose hammer icon hung in the forge.

His master was a Guild smith, who died before father could be Journeyed. Father’s craft sprang from glimpses of techniques he was never taught, leveraged into what he needed to know.

Myth or Mom?

Mom was perfect from day start till shut eye. I can’t mourn her:  her myth remains, clogging my mind like milfoil. The woman, not my mother, died.

She willed good things to happen, healed wounds with a kiss, never lost her cool.  She exuded control, and I believed it of her, even after I saw her face without her teeth or commanding smile.

At twenty-three, sans my wisdom teeth, I passed a doorway in a huge medical center, a woman’s face spotlighted in the operating chair, visible because the dentist leaned away.

Fresh Start

He dumped you; hard.  You decorated his smell out of the apartment.

Later, as you chased a rag up and down the new heron-leg stools and along the front of the Uba Tooba counter; as you polished the rubber plant; gave the prayer rug a shake; combed the sand on the end table with a tiny rake;  artfully managed not to disturb the bonsai or knock the crystals from advantageous points in the high corners while you dusted;

Hands and Knees

The priest woke up knowing how they should dig the channel to the garden. Under his tireless direction, dream natives from both sides of San Francisco Bay had already appeared to contour the site and bring water to the precious vegetables near their new healing Mission, recently christened San Rafael. He could taste the earth and smell the new onions, peas, garlic, beets, carrots, corn and greens.

Father Corazo threw back the cowhide and pushed himself to calloused knees on the compacted dirt of his room.

He recited the morning prayer of thanks to the Father.  This green, fertile land of fog was so different from the heat and dust of Baja. God’s humor had replaced the harsh sun of treeless Loreto, in Baja California, with these towering redwoods that obscured the sun all day.

Southern Writer Legitimacy Statement for the Dead Mule School

I’m Southern by adventurous inoculation. I left college in Chicago the first week of January as a White Seattleite with Mardi Gras on the brain. My friend and I got a lift from Farrell Haney in a rumbling Camaro convertible with Texas plates, and spent the first night away in a hotel in Kentucky. Pool was closed and covered with a thatch of brown leaves that stuck to us like fish scales: baptized as we swam a celebrating-being-free lap.

School Of Dad

I think my Dad invented Thursday Night School so he could avoid reading the notes my mother left taped to the fridge.

Dad made Thursday nights out to be a big deal, the weekly seminar at our house; he prepared for it all week, looking statistics up on line and checking newspapers, but I’m the one who had to haul the empty brown bottles to the driveway, Fridays, and sweep up all the cigarette butts and left over pizza crusts. Once in a while, I had to wash out a waste can laced with curds of old puke and napkins.

He was teaching the course: Inebriate Verticology. He had a sign, too, on his office door in the boiler room of John Russell Middle School: “Dept. of Inebriate Verticology.” He’s head janitor.

Drake's Cook

Eagle must have made the Golden Hind, with its massive wings stretched across bones of wood, its hold full of strange smells, clothes and implements. The white men, that sailed it in from the sunset, must have come straight from Coyote. Odd, agreed the old Miwok men in the sweathouse of the village nearest the beach, and surprising, that the passengers in Eagle’s basket with wings seemed to have forgotten so much about life, unacquainted with the simplest things, like atole, black eggs and pinole.

The seamen brought gifts, but demanded food and supplies of water in great volume in a rude way. They impatiently sucked their teeth or rattled beads or copper pieces, as if to say: “Right now!” Their speech reminded the People of duck quack and squirrel chatter and many shouted in a loud, coarse way. The strangers that were sick and losing teeth, hair and body fluids were nurtured in the village.

Tempeche, b. 1799 d. 1824

Tempeche willed one of the bullets into his own skull. The fusillade threw his corpse backwards, still tied to the iron ring.

Monterey’s angry court officials were not to be swayed, so he had sung them quiet forgiveness. He chanted thankfulness to the four directions, to the earth, to the sky. While they convicted him of murder, he recalled the lush taste of raw salmon, the heart-pounding scramble ahead of a grizzly, the brief eternity of taking a woman.

Fickle Coyote was elsewhere, though he’d inspired Tempeche’s other escapes. Tempeche knew that even the chance to slash the Corporal’s throat while in custody was just a final trick, not a path of escape. Caught immediately. Execution guaranteed.

Runway

stormcoming c/o petergreenberg.com

We were in starry sky stretching to glimpse the lights of San Francisco past our seat-mates one minute and the next we were surrounded by dark fog bouncing and knocking shoulders, certain we would collide with Mt. Diablo or another plane. My ears were ringing like Christmas at the cathedral. Our jet shook and dipped and maybe dropped through the fog and then, Bam! we felt a huge hand-like slap on our plane. We startled and were screaming and trying to inventory the engines while the Captain’s voice apologized for turbulence. We dropped out of the fog into dark night with bright lights and smashed onto the concrete runway like a carton of eggs.

Married Love, July

Sticky warm, he left work at the crack of the last whip.

She stuck the paintbrush in the freezer in plastic like a lollipop for use tomorrow.

Wide flung doors and windows admitted a bit of cooling air. They stretched their paycheck on the rug for a picnic.

A little chicken, pasta salad, thank you. They talked about the news of job cuts and her long days. They each ate half a watermelon.

Out of the smoke of hills on fire, the full moon climbed the trellis emitting pure catlight.

During the night their stomachs talked like foghorns. In the morning, they met in the middle of the wiggle room before work.

There was still time to walk the dog.

Published here

Hummingbird

I had to make it easier to whip out Wishes and show I was up to the next level. Up to the Miracle Corps light-before-the-end-of-the-tunnel standards. I don’t have to be another Jenny; just good enough to set up a trip to a waterfall with wheelchairs, or some other midsize Wish Fulfillment.

Jenny’s great, no doubt. Except for that one parent that one time. She can set up families of ten coming from eleven states arriving at twelve different times with thirteen different food allergies and all sleeping over with Mickey and Minnie in Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

Maybe A Shift

Are we island tips of cowering seamounts?

On the surface, we contest the submarine facts, decline to plumb the depths.

Our closeness is tourism: umbrella drinks, a lie on the beach, a taste of shrimp.

What if friction means moving toward, like tectons shoving obstacles aside?

Maybe we can archipelago.

Published here

Rare Book

White gloves and no sudden moves. Limited access. Conditions. Steady breathing. Filtered light. Slight buzz of humidity. Careful spine. Paging your butterfly fragility.

Your illuminations are remarkable: crisp and bright as back light. Too clean to laugh; too cool to cry. Your value is vaulted. Innocence preserved.

Jump in my gym bag, dog-ears and all. Pickup-and-gun-racks, girl, lets dance the silverfish, stumble and fall sloppy drunk, write in the margins muddy.

Naked in my garden, contagiously foxing. High as tigers. Cuddly as lambs. Discharged. Worthless. Experience preferred.

The New American

Sid emerged from the tall grass of crisis a new man; empty, content; ashamed to even own a shadow.

Sid’s solitude seemed weightless. To achieve the company of Oneness, he turned down dinner invitations.

Sid bought undeveloped riverfront and spent his free days on the bank alone with the fortunate.

Published here

Through Lisa's Eyes

You’re five now and you can help me with Lisa. Mommy made me take care of her since I was five, so now it’s your turn to help. I’m six so I’m going to have to go to big girl school soon.

They can’t fix Lisa’s eye until she’s older, like nine. Then maybe the doctors can make her see better. I know why. It’s too bulgy. And she already has one gone. They want to save the left one, later. The light hurts her. She screams. You know; she has to. That’s why we keep the shades down.

Don’t open the closet door that blocks the light from her Daytime Nest. Keep the towel scooted up to the bottom of the door and pretend the light might get under it like water, so do it right. If you want to go in there to give her carrot sticks or cheerios in a baggie, knock first so she can stick her head in a corner.

Keeping Time

It was close to 9 A.M. when he hoisted his case and stepped outside. He felt late. The day had started badly. Green Bay was out of Super Bowl contention already. Shake it off. The street was filled with black grit and slush and snow lay like old manna on strips and patches of grass. Up the street, pitch and run. Sell. Tune in. Make it.

“Look, just bear with me a minute,” he told the short, shiny man wiping the snow from a parked car. “How many ways do you know to boil an egg? One. How many ways to chew it? One. You sleep, you wake up, you chew your eggs the same way every time. Do you want to just hang around till you die of old age?”

The little man was listening. He was buying, Diskus knew. 

“Break your wife out of the ordinary. Surprise her. No occasion. It’ll mean a lot to her. The gold in this chain is worth $15.00 by itself.” Diskus proffered a delicate pendant and chain.

High Water

Willy was born delighted in the middle of a rainstorm that threatened to flood the root cellar where they were hiding from the lightning. She had wide-open blue eyes. Her tiny expressive face soundlessly oohed and aahed and grimaced and startled with each feeling from the very beginning and, soon, she had a coo of contentment that nurtured her mother and then a three-tone song of a laugh that always made her siblings smile. Thunderstorms and floods threatened them so often but Willy’s birth let Mama engage with them easier from then on.

By age two, she had become the sixth oldest for the second time when her mama got sick in child birth and by four she was fifth oldest again when she stopped seeing Ezreel, who used to feed the pigs. She knew every inch of the farmyard and garden, had her own names for every chicken, pig, cow and horse on the place and could boil water on the stove, if mama was there.

A Little Help?

Hey, is anyone out there a chiropractor?

I think I’m going to need you to come over.  My shoulder is so bad I can’t even tuck in my shirt, anymore.  Well, I can, but it hurts like bulldozers and that scares me.  Don’t ask me to reach the Wheaties.  In fact, if I don’t get better soon, we’ll have to move everything down a notch:  the coffee cups, the Frosted Flakes, the juice glasses; you know.

And we don’t drive.

I started needing a doctor when the roof leaked.  Mid-morning, Wednesday, my mom was cleaning up the water from the leak in the kitchen, where what looks like a tiny orange freckle in the ceiling feeds the Great Lake, she calls it, right in front of the fridge.

She bent down to wipe it, when her feet started going out and she sat down hard, just missing one of the cats. 

Life Off the Cliff

Lessons that we all have learned from Pete:

Be blunt: rip the Band-Aid off the truth.

Share: it makes your ownership complete.

And laugh: some days refined, some days uncouth.

Bad news? Scream ugly once, then turn the page,

You are the writer at this theater, not the show.

No bragging rights unless you scar with age;

Drive off the cliff, if what you want’s below.

During the blink of light, the gasp of breath, that’s life,

Some brothers lock their doors, seat belts secured.

Back from the edge, to stay unhurt, to just survive,

They never climb the railing, jump the curb.

Bull Headed

If I squinted, the farm looked pretty much the same as it had when I left, 9 years ago, blinking back tears. The pond had shrunk; the bluegrass had grown longer and gone to seed.  The fence lay halfway down.

Frost bleached the roof, yet no smoke rose from the chimney of our farmhouse on the knoll.  The front field that the goats used to clear was now overgrown with larkspur, ragwort and blackberry.  No sign of livestock, chicken or ducks.  The horse barn was leaning at an odd angle, as though reeling from a strong wind.  Between the cow barn and the house, the dust seemed as untracked as the snow-powdered mountainsides of the Rockies I had just seen day before yesterday from the train.

I walked over to the corner of the cow barn.  The tall splints Pa and I had fashioned were still in place, still straight.

I remembered the young black bull, Napoleon, no higher than Pa’s shoulder, in a sudden burst charging at the big Hereford bull that was temporarily sharing his pen.  When the other bull leapt out of the way, Napoleon’s amazing forehead had cracked the eight-inch square post that formed the corner of the barn up to the hayloft; hence the splint.

Dead Battery

He reached the parking lot with just enough time to punch in; to beat the clock.  His veteran ears had been listening to radio news about the Sarajevo trials.  The unpronounceable had committed the unimaginable against the unfamiliar.  “Here we go again,” he said.

“There have been countless genocides,” the newscaster said.  “The Hugenots, Beziers and Albigensians.  Tenochitlan.  Pequots.  Auschwitz and the Sicherheitsdienst.”

He reached for the off switch.  Work time.  “Viet Minh, Ngo Dinh Diem, My Lai.”  The announcer pronounced them perfectly.  These names went with his memories of friends:  ‘Frank,’ ‘Stace,’ ‘Tom,’ ‘Ryan.’

His hand dropped to the car seat.      “Lubyanka and Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky,” she said.  “Chmielnitzki.  Vijayanagara.  Khmer Rouge.  Khmer Noir.  Rwandi-Burundi.  Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith.  Kampuchea.  Quiripi-Unquachog.  Hissane Habre.”  He was pinned down.

Millions rolled into a hundred million.

Butterfly Love

The butterfly lit on the end of my ring finger near the passion vine.  I pulled the little lasso tight.  She fluttered up to the length of her new silk leash like the loveliest of rising kites.

I sensed no panic, no fear of captivity; her buoyancy teased against the weightless tether, somehow knowing I would wine her on nectar and dine her on pollen and bed her tonight in a blanket of thistle down.  I’d thought it through.

We roamed the garden planted for her, reviewing the long sprays, sampling the bright clusters.  She was content to ride with folded wings, princess-like, in black and orange velvet.

Toward dusk we settled on the lawn for the night.  Neither of us could eat.  We went in when dampness reached my bones.

Now I will support her as long as necessary, hand on my heart.  I will let her stitch my fingers together with her sticky thread and wait with her, while she slips into something else.

If only I could see the swelling of her tiny heart and hear it beat.

Binnacle UltraShort H.M.

Source

A Little Context

I am more mechanical than computer literate, so I expect this blog to have a nuts-and-bolts feel, more than say a fluid or organic one.  In it, I will post the stories that I’ve published in whatever form, unless I’ve sold the rights, with links to the publications or e-zines that picked them up, God bless them.   I encourage any kind of supportive comment, which can include the critical.  Thanks for reading.  I mean that.  

Erik