The Fargo Kantrowitz'z Literary Campsite

I, as if there were an I, view from here to there, as if either were markable, and see with no eyes, feel with no heart, having ascribed the only human possibility for description, the term Soul to my essence. I live. I do. I. The brushing of me against a you proving only being but not existence.
Another way to make real “I” is to compare myself to a breeze. That too cannot be seen. True utterances, all, are unlettered so this arrival to you in letters feels (to you, not I) like an ever tightening vice. You feel, but do not understand that which you feel, that part of you which is me.
Embodiment? No. Never. Except for those places where I cannot help but rest. I am clear breeze. Oxygen. I rest within those who do not know me with their minds, whose bodies lilt into the earth, whose hearts blood fertilizes the ground, who, alone, wait at the doorway of all that I am and all which I am connected to.
I cannot want but what is. I cannot wish for anything, but I do love albeith without possession. I do so here in this place I find that I am. It is this spirit of God (your frail term) that gives these words. I have no words, have never spoken but this once, but more aptly, bathe in places in need of life.
I am not God. I have no face, but I am. You know me, have known me.. Wherever there is need I am. I do not interfere with flesh, although flesh I effect. But not like you comprehend. I am armless, faceless, a manifestation of nothing physical, but am completely relational, uncompromising in my simple, essential ability to be. I cannot explain why I am, although this does not mean there is not an explanation. It is better known than thought.

You willl know me through life. You will believe you can see me through the eye of another. I cannot deny that you will see my effect, but you will not see me. I am not, in the way that you might believe. Your eyes, your mind, cannot comprehend the power of the moment in between moments in which I inhabit. Have you ever wondered about the moment when you look away from your path and what feels like what is termed “spirit” is almost dead? This is such a moment of forgetting of oneself. No parents eyes upon you, no blinding light shining saving rays, cloud hidden moonlight, mud, an eyelid slipping downward while the other steels itself toward a hope, a sign not yet given. There I am. I do not need to be there nor want to be. There is no other reason that I am there but that I am.
What reason, what is known then is magical, a galaxy glued, a lion laying with a lamb. What earthly movement present then, of an earthly design, mysterious because unplanned. Creatures know I am there and when I am there they know that I come because what I come for may come with me. I am! I do not want! I do not want a soul to accompany me. I do not not want a soul to accompany. There is no me, but an even higher essence to go to. I am with. When I am with, the world knows my purpose.
So I will explain my place now. I am inside of a creature that has fallen into a river. On it’s right ankle is a five inch cut. (I was inclined to say “my”) On this creature’s side, this creature being a brown mule, there is a long cut three inches deep. Its legs are struggling to get a grip upon a tree in which it is entangled. Water washes over it’s eye which makes the world seem all sky. It sees the tops of trees as it fights to keep its head above the water. It releases the tree and falls back into the water. The stream takes it. I stand above it as it goes. I am in a place of peace and “knowledge.” I am poised to release the momentary bonds of I am in relation to this earthly creature.
Through it I inhabit the earth. I rise and fall, burrow through, deny. I am within the magic, the child’s word for the ultimate workings of my essence within the physical world. Yet I touch nothing. I do nothing. I am with. When eyes close I stand at the portal and ask the final question. The question is silent, never once spoken of, it is simply put when only a single word is used to describe it: love.
Love is the seed, the proof of a pure heart. I will help return to the workings of the magic any speck of it where I discover that I am inside.
As this creature floated down the stream I became the light behind the filmy eye left open, an eye blind to even the notion that any hope yet exists. I am then the magic. It is the most physical that I can become although I am not physical. I release myself to the workings of God and in so doing become the creature, it’s benefactor, it’s voice to the weight of the crushing world. I carry until earth demands flesh. I do not do. I am. One day I smiled. This image of me I believe all will understand.
The creature had a secret friend. It is called a chipmunk. I saw it all. The mule went into the woods of the mountain with the chipmunk, the chipmunk leading the way up the mountain and the mule lumbering slowly behind, although the mule was the creature with the destination, a home, high above the base of his mountain. But the chipmunk was wayward. Unintelligent. It’s foolhardiness in selecting paths caused the wayward mule to lose its footing, ending with the river’s freeze. The mule washed upon a shore. Its nose breathed the mud of the shore. It’s blood reddened the stones of the shore. I was small. Disappearing, but ever looking forward with the mule. I was expanding, reuniting with what can be explained to you as limitless space, knowledge without knowing, feeling without feeling, being with no essence. I was going back when I “smiled” and knew it was not to be.

A hawk sat perched in front of my sight. I could tell what it was and why it was sent. The hawk was brother to the mule, having shared a home in a house at the top of the mountain. The hawk had found the mule and was now simply waiting. The mule struggled furiously to stand. It could not. It lay there breathing heavily into the mud, it’s legs bloodying further in every attempt to rise. Upon the rising of a new sun, the breath of the animal had become calmer. Another sun and then another moon and then another sun and then another moon until the chipmunk arrived and with the utmost care took to finding tiny foods for the mule all in front of the watching eyes of a deadly enemy. The fearless chipmunk placed a kernel upon the lip of the mule and it would inhale. This continued for two more suns and two more moons. The hawk stayed in place, occassionally flying away and returning with a small creature of it’s own on which it fed. It watched.
It was almost a new sun when the mule felt the possibility of my great strength. With a mighty burst of thought it raised itself to its knees and then its legs, its eyes then dependent upon the eyes of the hawk before it. Then, for the first time other than for reasons of self sustenance, the hawk moved away, flew several feet so that the mule turned. It then flew again. The mule’s legs moved very slowly toward the hawk. The chipmunk followed. Three times the chipmunk distracted the mule into believing there was a better path to follow, but the hawk, it’s hunter instincts negated with this particular small animal, swooped down upon it, sending it scurrying away. The chipmunk, keenly aware of the predator, still would not leave the mule, but stayed with it, behind it, beside it, preferring to be within this new journey along the brush and crevices.
I am strongest within the notion of what you can conceive of as the properties inherent within a smile, that term which I used to describe the sudden illumination of hope of sustained love felt by the mule..How brittle the human terms for the essence of Life.
There were twenty-two more moons and twenty-one more suns before the mule arrived home. When it arrived it looked into the eyes of a family, including the eyes of a young one with the same world-sense, love-sense that Anna Belle had. Has.

A long time ago there was a river valley where things that could fly did and you would watch those things fly and fly and fly and wonder if they were ever going to stop they were so high, way up.

Well, one day one of them birds came down and it was Mars. Minnie knew it. She could see it fall from the sky, first the shot then the bird falling from the sky and then all she knew was she was running. She was taking care of herself today. Her mama and father had both gone into town to get some things and they knew that she would be okay. She was fourteen. Damn right she would be okay. But she ran. That’s all she knew. She ran so fast that those twigs were breaking and those vines were breaking and- she ran.

But when she got there she was too late. She could see the Davis boys picking him up, Mars all flapping her wings with a bullet hole through one of them. She charged that biggest Davis boy and hit him so hard in the stomach with her head that he barreled over and started to cry and he was seventeen. She turned around and knocked Billy straight on his ass, just like she had to do at the fight at lunch time-twice!

She picked up Mars and walked that bird on in home. Then she waited. She tried to make Mars as comfortable as she could. There was little that she could do. She waited and thought about calling her mother’s cell phone, but she decided not to.

Pretty soon the door opened and in walked Minnie’s mother and father.

“Hi, honey.”
“Mama.”
“What is it, honey?” She puts her groceries down on the table and goes over to Minnie. She grabs Minnie by the arms gently and looks into her eyes.
“Mars was shot.”
“Oh, my!”
“I got him, baby.”
Jed turns around and is holding the box that Minnie had placed him in with a jar cap full of water and a lot of bread to eat and cloth, old clean cloth that her mother had around.
“Got him through the wing, huh, girl?”
“Uh huh, daddy. Shot him clear through the wing.”

The next day Jed went to the barn and he got on Teardrop. Now, Teardrop was a sturdy old mule, but he wasn’t young and he and Jed did walk most of the time, but when push came to shove and Jed wanted to ride, by gab, he’d ride and Teardrop’d never complain. Well, he got on Teardrop and he rode over to Mr. Davis’s house and he and Mr. Davis had a beer and they sympathized together, commisserated and ended up giving each other a hug when Mr. Davis realizes he hadn’t even seen his boys in two days.

“Then you don’t know if they’re alright?”
“I don’t know anything about them. Their mother drops them off.”

And Jed wished him adieu and much luck and told him that Mars was tough, but he was never as tough as a gun was, but if he could tell his boys what the scoop is around the mountain here about shooting birds because not all of them are wild. And Mr. Davis apologized again and almost turned around as if he were looking for his stick. So Jed rode off and went home and it became night time and Moxy curled up on his lap as Jed mumbled stories from Omar Khaayam and the Rubiyait.

The next day Minnie comes up to her dad and tells him exactly what happened.

“And I saw him putting Mars in that bag and just shoving him in like Mars is a fucking piece of meat.”
“Minnie…”
“Freaking!”
“That’s better.”
“…piece of meat and I just ran and ducked and hit him in the head as hard as I could with the top of my head like I would if they let me play with pads. And he started to cry. And then I just wolloped Billy. Billy deserved to be walloped, dad.”
“Then you left?”
“Yes I left!”
“You left them there? Are they alright?”
“I don’t care.”
“Minnie!”
“I care, I guess, but…”
“I’m calling Mr. Davis. You’re taking us where you saw the boys last. Go get your backpack packed.”

Jed called Mr. Davis and Mr. Davis came over to his house. They shook hands in the driveway and then Minnie followed them out to the station wagon and they all got in and then drove down the road. Minnie was sad, like it was all her fault. But Jed wasn’t going to make her feel that way. Mars flies around how Mars will fly around and if sometimes something bad and nasty happens then that particular something bad and nasty will happen, it’s almost natural. And Minnie could feel this message from her father so her biggest concern also became to find the boys mostly because her father wanted her to and partly because she realized that she never would like to see somebody die. Nobody’s THAT bad.

They pulled into the National Park Rd. through whose fences Minnie had to cut across to get to Mars. Mr. Davis drove the car up one hill after another. Finally he parked the car where Minnie pointed to with her little finger. They strode up the hill until they were almost at the space where Minnie thought that she was that previous morning.

They walked into a thicket, bushes, trees, vines, hills, stones, water. There was everything there. She walked in a little further and then a little further and then a little further and the others followed her into the thicket and when they were in they suddenly became very small, not really small, they stayed the same size, but they did become very small as compared to the world around them. It was a cool day suddenly, almost tropical, the sun that did hit you came through the trees and reminded you of the goodness of warmth. The day was not difficult, no clouds, no sounds of possibility being drown out by “rain” or “snow” or “hail” or whatever. The boys were nowhere to be seen.

“Well, what should we do? Should we split up?” Mr. Davis said. He was a frightened man because all of the years of neglect on his boys had added up to a delinquency charge at the county jail for them and it seemed ashamed that that should happen because it never would have happened at all if he hadn’t worked so goddamned much. He’d forgotten who his wife was and that was saying a lot.

“Daddy, we should stay together. I’m scared.”
“We will stay together.” then announcing, “We’ll stay together, Mr. Davis. Just holler a lot.”
“Billy! Twain!…Billy…Twain….Billy!” and Mr. Davis went walking ahead, like he’d lost a diamond on the golf course and he were determined that he would get it back if it meant he had to walk five thousand miles. He was on that walk, what Kirby used to call the secret trail of Ernest Hemingway or Ernest Hemingway’s Secret Trail, or along Ernest Hemingway’s Secret Trail. Or something like that.

They went on with this for awhile until finally Minnie spotted them. She knew it. They’d come in from the back side. Those little twits had made it up the mountain, up the back side just like Teardrop done it and then when Mars goes looking out over all the “poor” little creatures you shoot her! Pphtt!

“Easy there, Thriller,” Jed said. “Don’t go attacking them again, that’s not what we’re here for.”
“They better be dying daddy. They better be dying.”
“Minnie.” Jed said.

They climbed over to them slow-like just as they had always done up this far. Mr. Davis led the way and Jed helped him and Mr. Davis helped Jed. And then Minnie followed behind.

Mr. Davis got to the boys first.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you mean what are we doing? We’re hurt.” Billy said.
“What do you mean you’re hurt?”

“Twain. Twain’s hurt real bad. He’d bleeding up through his stomach papa and he just gurgles blood up and I can’t stop him and I can’t leave him and I can’t move him because he hurts too bad, papa. Help.”

“Move away.”

The boy stood up and moved away, first placing his brother’s head softly on the pillow made up of his shirt. Mr. Davis took his place, cradling the boys head with his own lap. He tried calling the police on his cell phone, but nothing. Then Jed, nothing.

“Go, Mr. Jones. Go!”
“Minnie…”
In a split second, Minnie is up and running.
“Go child. Go,” Mr. Davis said. “What are we going to do, Mr. Jones?”

But Jed didn’t know. He bent down over the boy and then put his ear to his mouth to make sure there was breath. He knew this was true because the boy writhed in pain, which to Jed was a good sign because it meant he wasn’t completely unconscious and he could tell him where he hurt. But so far the boy wasn’t saying nothing. He was in one big, deep hurt and he was spending it all alone and that’s why his brother got scared and he didn’t want to move him, for fear of being there at that final defining moment, that moment when you disappear into the netherworlds of nevermore. He didn’t want to be there for that. So he cried.

But now he was here and he had to do something. He opened the boys mouth up a little bit. It was red with blood. He closed it. The boy seemed to be sleeping semi-calmly. It seemed like he had an internal bleeding and it wasn’t draining the very life out of him, but it sure did hurt like a summamabitch. He turned and looked up at Mr. Davis and calmly told him that he thinks that it’s no lie that his boy is hurt, but he didn’t think, that is, think, he didn’t think it was life threatening, but what the hell did he know? The most he knew about anatomy he learned off a Skid Row poster. He just shook his head.

But Minnie wasn’t done thinking about anything at that particular moment. She was contemplating jumping from one tree to another to cut five whole minutes off her time. She’d never done this and she’d thought about it a thousand times. Well, now was the time. She stood on that tree limb and she prepared. She waited, one, two, three breaths and then jumped she missed the other tree limb by three feet and splashed right there in the swimming hole. No, she wasn’t scared.

When she got out of the pool she kept running and thought about all of the stories that they tell you as children of the little red riding hood and the teeth and the witches and the goblins and ghosts in the woods. She thought of all of this as she ran and ran again, the same way back that she ran the day before. Back she went where she would go and look for mom and tell mom what happened and she and mom would go back and get them. Minnie burst through the door.

“Mom!”
“What is it, Minnie!”
“That kid’s hurt!”
“What kid?.”
“The kid I hurt. That kid is hurt real bad. They’re all on the mountain, daddy and Mr. Davis and we were looking for the Davis boys…
“Oh, Minnie, what have you done now?”
“Nothing, mama.”
“You told me those boys were alright.”

Moxy rushes out the door, her cell phone at her ear.

“Marty! NO, get Marty! Thanks, Rebecca.”
“Hello, Marty? The Davis boys are hurt and they’re on the mountain. Minnie says that one of the boys is hurt really badly and they can’t move him. Yeah, I think you may need the call the helicopter just in case. They’ll probably want to know something’s up. Alright. I’ve got my bag and I’m going up the hill with Minnie. She’s taking me back. Quicker to hike it. Just past the big field by the house. Yeah, right…alright. Bye, Marty. 555-5738,38, 5738. I gotta go.”

Minnie has Teardrop saddled and ready to go.

“C’mon, ma!”

Moxy doesn’t say a thing. Just walks past Minnie and tells her to hurry it up with that mule.

Back at the boys Jed and Mr. Davis have learned that if you hold the boy in a certain position, like with his left leg pointed down or something that he breathes easier. He maybe had a punctured lung, Jed thought. Minnie probably did the twister at the end of her hit and she knew it was illegal. It was the twister. So if Minnie did the twister that means that this boy, Twain, was twisted, so it reasoned to go that if you untwisted him then maybe he wouldn’t die mistakenly while we all sat around thinking it was going to be alright.

Moxy stares up the hill, watching Teardrop climb with Minnie. She sits down briefly, exhausted, on a stump, gets right back up and follows her daughter and the mule. Her backpack heavy with supplies on her back.

Jed reaches around the young man and lifts him lightly. The boy relaxes a little.
“Gotta hold him like that.”
“Like this?”
“Yeah, a little under that way, keep his lung open better.”
“Yeah?” Mr. Davis asked with eyes wide.
“Yeah.” Jed said.
“Yup”
“Yup.”
“Yeah, that’s alright, Twainy-boy, you friggin idiot. C’mon. That’s better, yeah.”

A light mist started to fall on the two men and the two boys. Jed looked up at the sky and wondered about existence. About his brother and his play. About his notion that everything will be alright could just be a ruse, a way to fool himself into believing that he wouldn’t have died had he continued drugs, a big lie, truly.

He would have died.

Minnie ran frantically up the hill. Teardrop kept up with her most of the way, but sometimes he was slow. Moxy followed behind. Teardrop was her proper, natural pace. She felt she would get there faster by making it there at all than if she fell off a cliff or broke an ankle along the way herself.

Well, our heroes went up there and got that boy. The rest of this story need not be told. Sometimes the truth is the shortest way from one place to another and then, if you realize it, you will realize that it’s not the getting there that is all the fun, but the stayin’ and the lovin’, most of all the lovin’. So you’ll realize, once again, I suppose, that this boy was close to dying. It’s all a ruse. It’s all a ruse! Said the poet to himself. It’s all a ruse! But it weren’t. It weren’t. It were real, right there with this boys spitting up these blood bubbles that would pop.

He was close to the edge when Jed saw Moxy come up on over that mountain followed by Minnie riding atop that mule. He couldn’t believe it. And then she come and she took care of that boy and she agreed that they should wait for the helicopter which they did. Minnie wanted to take him down on Teardrop, but Jed figured Teardrop’d had about enough. She knew what he meant.

They got that boy to the emergency room and they fixed him up and put him in the hospital for two months to cure his internal bleeding. Minnie had done the twister, a football move, and it spun him and she knew the twister was illegal, but she did it when she saw anybody harming that bird of theirs Mars. She sure loves Mars.

I guess the point here is this: that no matter how bad you are or how bad you think you are, you’re never be so bad that you’re not important to God or The Universe or Star Trek or whatever…I mean, well, I don’t know what I mean. This is Albert Jones, signing off here at the Fargo Kantrowitz’z Literary Campsite. Maybe Mr. Kantrowitz will appear tomorrow.

Once upon a time and what a time it was!

There were three dead dogs lying underfoot.

Now, I like dogs. Dogs make me smile.

So I’m walking down the road and I see two other dogs dead underfoot. And that makes me sad. Of course. Right? Yup. But anyway, these dogs were all dead and and then I saw why.
Billy was out playing that day I guess. I’m sorry. Shit. I never shoulda dun this ya know?

I don’t care if I forget a comma or two, but walking out into these shallows without a thought to what’s coming up behind us to gulp us down at any moment just like that new movie that’s coming out about that big alligator eating everybody up.

Of us.

Shit.Well I guess its like that. Its like a big alligator coming up from thebottoms of thelakes to eat us up.
Well anyway …

Those boys killed Billy that day. Tied him up with a rope and beat him like they did each one of those five dogs that I was talking about. But like I was originally trying to say before I started originally trying to say something I realized my feet were running very fast towards billy and especially towards that boy who held a club and was beating billy.

Now I was only 13, you see. Right around Billy’s age and these were two grown men. But I needed to take that club away from that monster was beating billy with it. So my feet carried me. And I took that club away and I started beating him with it. Until I thought maybe he was dead. All I knew was he was going to start beating me too and I said shit alls fair in love and war and got strong all of a sudden as my 150 bench lift finally came in handy in p.e.

I took that club and I brought it down overhis head and he stopped then I brought it down over the head of the other one who was standing around but looked like he might still be dangerous.

I don’t know if he died. You always feel sorry for that one. He’s the dylan klebold killer of the world. The ever accomplice. Never ever gets to choose his fate.

And then I took that boy out of there. He died at home, though. But that wasn’t what I was orignally trying to say. What I meant was that I was carrying that boy home over my shoulder his face black and blue literally, his eye creeping purple up to the very edges of it’s allowability to close itself! And these two cops see me and I think they musta been standing guard for them others to beat that boy because they didn’t seem to care a shit about me and especially this little boy

ah, we getting off on a bad foot aren’t we…i’m Countyjail.
Good ta meet ya, County Jail.
What’s your name?
Jed.

chapter 2 of “of the sweet dreams of dying dogs”

the clumsy disadvantages of living your life on the edge is that you get to chase down all those dreams too. You get to walk along the fairyland of existence, meet all of the interesting characters in the arts, God Forbid! Or you think that you are going to be a part of some grand minstrel show and travel the world and act as though you own it.

Yeah, County, but….pizza.
No pizza, Johnny.
Pizzapizzapizzapizza.
No Pizza. Boy, you are a dumb one. And that’s what I was trying to tell you about having to carry someone. Now he weren’t no popular person for these men to be beating him and then the way they handled him from me and shit. I thought if I gave that boy to that police officer it was just the same as handing him to the angel of death. So I thought, no, I’ll be the ambulance driver on this one. So we get in the car and he drives us to the hospital, but i’m watching guard. I don’t trust my own people at this moment and am looking around for a few good, nice black faces who might be peeping out the window and might of seen the fight so when they try to pin it on me they won’t be able to, but that’s not my important part. My important part comes now. One of em was turned around and looking at us and he see me a young scrubby white boy out digging for worms for fishing and my friend here who was almost dead. And that mother fucker had the audacity to look at me in such a way that I was going to claw his eyes out and kill him. And after awhile they pulled over and those two men were there. I guess they’d woken up or something or just let me have the boy because their consciouses wouldn’t let them survive without doing so…well, anyway, I ended up flat on my face, half of it in the mud. You ever have your tongue covered in mud? You ever taste worms? I thought I finally got the chance. But you see, I am a little story to tell and I’m going to tell it. Me and worms always been friends.

5
Pizza
no Pizza
pizzapizzapizzapizza
no pizza
pizza pizza
Cake!
Pizza.
Cake!
Pizza.
Cake!
Cake.
Cake.
Cake.
Cake.
Burger.
Fries.
Pizza.
Aaaaaughh!!!!!!

3

The smoking popes took hold of the rope
they eat curds whey and a bit of spinach
born to be bad they forgot to be good
wondering, they lost their fatherhood
beat to the pulp, lost in space
they wondered if money would win the race
they lost their appointment, oh they were sad
they lost their dipping privileges at moms
dad ate the nachos tender and sweet
mom ate her spinach alone at the table
We kids wondered about our parents
how they could sit there so all alone together
we wondered if they would ever kiss and make up
we wondered if they ever loved each other at all
chances are they didn’t unless we saw it wrong
we grew up and looked at that girl askance
parents to love each other so how can their kids?
We thought and thought and thought and thought.
Until we couldn’t think anymore and night was falling.
We wondered about aspects of ourselves
those things that didn’t matter to anybody but us
while we walked naked under the boardwalk in June
asking of the shells why hide the pearl so well?

A seaside manner is most understood by the sea.
To walk with hands crossed behind is the only way.
We wonder if our obsolescence makes any difference to the sea.
We don’t know if it will acknowledge us anyway.
Its crashing songs spontaneously dipping down then away.
Like waves lost in crevices within crevices.
Reverberating forever under time’s hollow definition.
We consume our love like it is pie.
We ask no more of what it is that makes us know
that we are going to die.
We see the world in all it’s graces wondering of our sign.
We see the sign in all it’s graces wondering of the world.
Where then is the portal to tomorrow?
Where can we feel our lays again without sin?
Where, when we sing a lost song, will we, the singer, be?
Why should I sing that I think I am dead?

What can I say about living with the lady. Isabella Brown is one of those people who doesn’t demand from you. They talk about mother earth, well, I would call her mother air. She floated. She was a witch deep down, I think. She held you in her grip, in her sex, in her drugs, in her ability to make you believe that hers was the only real world. And she was right, at least when you are a true believer in heroin. It’s like you are placed inside a bubble far away from the real world and in this bubble is everything spiritual, but it is all fake. If we weren’t high we couldn’t even talk to each other. I don’t have any idea what we would say. She didn’t ever let the world touch her. She must have had it so hard her whole life, been fucked up on drugs for so long, that for the lady there was no more world. It all happened in the mind. It was like she was plugged in, tuned in as they say to everything that was mysterious. She was a liquid, a flowing substance, a soothing crutch.
I lived with her, slept with her, was her man so to speak, but during it all there was a reluctance. Everything about our relationship was a lie and that was okay as long as we stayed on our magic carpet ride. Heroin takes you to different places, different stages. You can go so far into yourself that that you don’t need anybody, but when those moments of the day arrive where you start thinking for yourself and the world you realize is shit it was a good thing to have her warm, black skin next to mine, to look into her eyes and believe that love still existed on this planet. You just had to tell yourself that what you were feeling proved the existence of love. You didn’t need to believe that it was love between you and the Lady. For love it wasn’t.
The Lady was a magnet. She had everything you needed. By getting into heroin in the first place you are telling yourself that you don’t need the shit parts of life anymore. Once you plunge that needle into your arm you are taken someplace that no life experiences can ever touch. You feel you see, but in a way that doesn’t feel or see. It is a magical existence. This magic provides you with a feeling of power and well being and the further that you go into it the more you realize that there is no way to trace your steps back out. There is no reason to, especially if you are in the state of mind that I was. When you want to die you’ll accept heaven without having to lose your body for as long as you can. Whenever I wanted to die was whenever I realized that I had forsaken Moxy.
Now that I think back on it I realize that I wasn’t in my right mind. I realize now that if I stopped the drug I could start my way home to Moxy. Whether or not she would have had me back at that time, this was during our longest separation of almost two years.
I finally took that step, but the journey towards it was such a one that to speak of it is to put yourself into a predicament because when you go where I went you put yourself outside of the normal realm. Time stops. Monhths turn into years. It’s like being in a perpetual dream, but then after awhile your dream starts losing power, you don’t have much to think about. Having forsaken the idea of the future your desires wither, the outer edges of your universe start to crumble and burn. You whittle yourself down to the bare being and at your core you realize that the netherworlds that you belong to are claiming you, that you are mortal becomes a deep seated feeling until you sometimes dream that you are whithering, that your face could peel off., that you are already skeleton, that youare already dead.

It is that sense of having reached the point of no return that keeps you within your isolated, protected world. At some point you stop blaming, too. I stopped blaming my mother and even my father for dying. I took it all into myself and realized that I was just a weak specimen of human being. I had lost all will power. Any good thing I had had in my life I had forsaken, like Moxy. When I sat there and thought about these things it was like the thoughts were doing battle with each other, but in some far distant galaxy. The night in which they belonged was peaceful, though, so I tried to look away, but I could always hear them. I could always hear the gods of war clashing high above me, but they became tinny and I would look away again. I know now that these were the sounds of Moxy calling me. But she demanded so much. She wanted me clean. I wasn’t done at that time, not by a long shot. I felt I was on a journey of discovery. It’s like I was a child playing dead, like I was hunkering down close to the grave so that I could hear its meaning, soak it up. Moxy was all life. We’d taken to two different roads. I was the seeker get more and more lost. Moxy lived in the real world. I had begun to melt around her, felt inadequate, and yet had determined that my purpose was not wrong, but only different and of the utmost importance. I was simply seeking, trying most of all, I realize now, to find the meaning behind my father’s death. That really fucked me up. I responded to it the way that moxy responds to the world, but she doesn’t respond out of a sense of tragedy, but a sense of adventure of never having bowed down to an enemy, to always having faced her fears. I thought I was doing that by saying fuck you to the world. And that’s what I did. I said fuck you to the world and I was a bad ass mother fucker for a long time, but when I got the heroin going into my veins full time there with the lady, I started to whither, the defenses that I had made who I was started failing, they were like muscles that I had spent years building up and then, one by one, they started whithering away. I remember sometimes shooting up and then when I was peaceful enough to go outside steppinginto the sunshine of harlem and actually having the sunlight frighten me. I couldn’t look anybody in the eye. I felt like I was surrounded on all sides. I was a scared doe, wrapped inside of my leather jackets and behind my shades. I would walk and feel like I wished I could lift up off of the ground and float above everybody else. The soles of my feet contained questions about the meaning of each step. I was jittery and hollow, but I kept up the facade of worldliness so never got hurt. Anybody could have squashed me like a tick.
So that’s where I lived, in an incense filled and darkened rooms, the lady in her negligee beside me, our dancing in wild delirium together to sitars and synths, falling to the floor in each others arms, having tantric sex, just holding each other and staring into each other’s eyes fo hours and all the while Moxy in New Jersey, me hoping through all of it that somehow I was just in the middle of a bad dream, that this ecstasy that I thought I was finding with the lady was just a side excursion and that Moxy’s memory would fail and she would forgive me when I finally got back to her, which, oddly, I never doubted I would even though all signs pointed to the very real possibility that I had fucked things up with my wife for good. No, this wasn’t a possibility. This was a fact. I’ll never understand how facts can become lies. Moxy should have been gone forever. And Teardrop should have been dead. Once again, angels.

1

Wanted: composer/arranger/keyboardist

to work with award-winning writer
on high-concept book musical

the American Tribute to Princess Diana
Petals
author’s musical influences include:
Radiohead, Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd, Neil Young.
Need someone with knowledge of classical, opera, rock, dance, NIN-type synths. Songs are already conceptualized by author, however, author is not a professional musician.

about the author
Albert Jones won first place in Up & Coming Writer’s contest for short story writing last year in Nashville. He founded the literary review Cloud at Millsville Community College where he recently earned an A.A. This is his first musical play. He is a Millsville native. Send tape to 2733 So. Turner Street, Millsville, TN 58349 or call 699-9530.

I hung up and waited. A half hour went by. I went into the donut shop and ordered a coffee and sat down. There was a cute Hispanic girl behind the counter, a little overweight, but cute. The room was overdone, as all Dunkin Donuts are, with an orange motif of plastic artificiality. The stench from the donuts made it difficult to breathe, and I longed for the girl as I sat there, but I had no words to explain it to her and just watched her wipe and wipe and wipe. It is the lot of man to wipe and wipe and wipe. I was doing nothing but the same in New York City, trying to wipe the world of the fruits of its sins by finding the uncleanly source to clean it. Now I was in Fort Lee, New Jersey, most likely being stood up by Helen Capowitz of Moxy Priestess, who probably knew the truth about my brother Jed, and I didn’t care anymore.
Each minute that passed, thirty-five, then forty, then an hour, I lost my sense of care, the care that holds you up, like the donut girl, when you wipe somebody else’s counter for the equivalence of its crumbs. I could have called back, but I didn’t. I sat there for two hours, knowing what Helen’s decision meant until I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Do you want to…” I couldn’t finish the sentence, because I didn’t know what I was trying to say to the girl.
“I’m sorry?” she said, moving up to the counter slowly. She had a name tag that said Liza.
“Do you want to take a break?” I asked her.
“I’m all alone here.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
She didn’t say anything, and looked at me in such a way that I knew right then that I was in bad shape. It seems that all of it was about me now. Somehow I was wrong. Back home everybody knew that Jed was dead except for me, and this girl somehow understood that now I understood something about my life that I hadn’t understood before I walked in, until I had asked her if she wanted to take a break. I understood that that was all Jed had ever wanted to do, too.
“I can take a short one,” she said.
She took off her apron and filled two cups of coffee.
“Cream and sugar?”
“Yes, please,” I said.
She brought them over to the table and sat down opposite me.
“Stood up, huh?”
“Yeah.”
She just drank from her coffee and looked out the window. Neither of us spoke.
“Well, I better get back,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said.

I had to go then. I threw away my cup and walked outside, adjusting my pack on my back and looking around at the night that held no bed for me, no resting place. My funds were low and I could probably stay in a motel, but there were none around.
“Baby bro.”
A chill went through my very face and up my shoulder blades. I turned around. Jed stood there wearing an old cowboy hat beside the Priestess’ little red Mustang.
“Jed?”
He laughed and flicked away his cigarette and walked towards me.
“Yeah…Jed,” he said, making fun of the way he said it.
Then he hugged me.
“What the fuck, man,” I said, and I couldn’t help it, but I started crying like a baby and couldn’t stop. All the hurt inside for having lost him came up on me and I wanted to kill him, to punch him in the fucking face for doing it to me, but I couldn’t, because I loved him too goddamned much.
“You fuck!” I screamed.
“I’m sorry, bro. I’m sorry, baby. Don’t cry, man. Don’t cry, Albert.”
And I knew he meant it, that he was sorry for making me look like a fool for all those years when everybody said he was dead and I knew he wasn’t, because how could Jed just go and leave me like that, and mama, and everybody, and just fall off the world and not be gone, and not tell anybody because he thinks his pain more important than anybody elses? I stopped crying and wiped the tears off my face and looked at him and to my surprise Jed was smiling, his eyes moist.
“You fuck,” I said again, and I started to laugh even as I cried.
“Yeah, I think you could fairly call me that, Al. I am a fuck. Always been a fuck. You’re fair,” he started laughing with me and our cheeks were side by side and neither one of us knew whose tears belonged to who. My head felt light and I thought I might need to sit down. Jed took me inside and I sat down on a chair. The girl came over and wiped my face off. I couldn’t believe it. It made me a Dunkin Donuts fan for life. Jed sat down across from me. Helen stood by the door. She looked good, wearing something yuppie-ish that cost a lot of money. I thought, oh shit, and was exhausted and numb.
Jed looked at me from under his cowboy hat. Something had happened to his eyes. They were all wrong because they were all right. No more Richard Ramirez, no more tight knot holding him in like a girdle holds in a woman’s belly. I was just confused, holding back from saying anything because I thought that if I did it would be unfair and chase Jed away again because everybody knew Jed was scared and that’s why he did heroin in the first place. I felt I needed to be strong, but sitting there looking at his eyes from under his hat I thought, Jesus, I’m the one who needs help now. Look at me. I’m the one. He looks fine. And he did. He wore a silver earring and feather band around his hat like some fucking Stevie Ray Vaughn or something. His clothes were clean and he wasn’t stoned.

I looked at him, and realized it right then, too, that I was looking at him from the place that he used to look at the world when he was all fucked up. In other words, I could barely see him for what he had become. I had gotten to the place that I needed to get to in order to find him and yet it wasn’t the same place that he was at anymore. I hated him for making me look for him, hated him for doing this to his little brother, for having a little brother at all, and making that little brother love him, yet leaving like that, and not even being dead. I wanted to laugh, but I was too disgusted.
“Why didn’t you call?” I asked.
Jed said nothing.
“Jed, why didn’t you call?” I said again.
Again, Jed turned away. My fist came out so hard from my side that I only knew that I’d punched him after the fact.
“Goddamn you!” I screamed, and I got up and walked out of there, slammed the door of Dunkin Donuts, all the while knowing I loved that girl who had wiped my face, wishing I hadn’t slammed the door, but knowing that Jed would have to come home now.
And he did. And I had enough time to prepare my mother for the visit so that when he finally did show up at our door, with Helen Capowitz driving her red car, and, would you believe it, a baby girl named Minnie, my mama wouldn’t fall down in shock and die. In this way I rescued my family and was able to get serious about my rock opera, Petals.

I walked out of the building thinking about the Priestess, but tired of it quickly. She lived in New Jersey. I just didn’t have the energy to go there and hear her deny she knows where Jed is another time. I got on a bus heading for the white part of town and didn’t get off it until I saw the Empire State Building. I sat on a curb outside a liquor store and smoked five cigarettes. Night was falling fast. The dot went as slowly inside the huge square than it seemed a dot should be allowed. Night fell. No calls were made except one and the phone line was busy again. Slit had plain, flat out lied to me, because that’s what guys named Slit do.
When I called my mama in the morning she screamed and screamed at me over those long- bird perching wires of America that connect our tinny voices with our feeble hearts and the hearts of those we love. I told her that I had a meeting with Andrew Lloyd Webber about my rock opera, Petals, which was about Princess Diana, a fact I have already mentioned. I reminded her of the validity and universal scope of the work: a) because it was Diana, and b) because I was trying to save the soul of Henri Paul who killed her. I told her Andrew Lloyd Webber was the only one who could understand me putting a flying saucer into a rock opera about Princess Di. She knew why I’d come, but she didn’t let on, and she wished me luck in my meeting with Webber. I’d changed my story since telling her I was going to someday find Jed in New York City. It was easier to concoct a good old lie. I think she feared I would find him then she would have to deal with having her son back with all the problems he’d naturally bring. Actually, it’s because she didn’t want to know that he was dead.

A week went by of wandering. Then two weeks. I visited a few more crack houses, but he wasn’t there. And he wasn’t jamming in any of the rock clubs either. I scuttled along New York City with a bag on my back. My hotel was paid for, and as I left, I knew I’d never be back. I already had my return ticket. It had never left my wallet. I made my way into the big bus station they call The Port Authority and went to a window to find out my gate. It was then that I noticed a sign behind the head of the black woman selling tickets. Fort Lee, New Jersey – C2- 4:30 p.m. On Time. That’s where the Priestess lived. Helen Capowitz. I’d almost forgot.
“One for Fort Lee, please,” I said.
The woman took my fifteen dollars and gave me a stub and pointed me the way. It felt good to get out of the city and see trees again. I never figured out what made people live in a place like New York City, especially all those poor people. It was ugly, and exciting only to those who could afford it. I don’t know how they managed it. I would have killed somebody by now if I had been raised there, I’m sure.

My head felt like it weighed fifty pounds as I watched the world go by through the tinted glass of that bus. New Jersey was a place where people went to get away from the city, but it was just as crowded in its own way. Houses were crammed among the trees. No Indians lived here anymore and all it made you think about while driving through it was that the world had become too much for itself, too crowded, ultimately too heartless to sustain itself in any meaningful way. I thought about Helen Capowitz again. Moxy Priestess herself. I’d never actually met her. I’d only talked to her on the phone. She sounded alright, like she cared about Jed. Now I wondered about their relationship. If Jed was alive who then was this lying Moxy Priestess? After being in New York for almost three weeks and meeting some of the most desperate people I’d ever met, it seemed that anything was possible. Moxy Priestess. What was the Priestess all about anyway? I remember the logo, a woman’s black shoe coming down on top of the world. She fully went for the female power trip thing, applying rock and roll the way rock and roll was meant to be played, what with Jed playing it.
I never thought much about Helen Capowitz, Moxy Priestess. I always just thought about Jed being the engine of that band, the music, the Eddie Van Halen, the thing that would always keep it alive. But I’m wrong about that. Moxy had as much to do with their success with that boot thing and all as Jed did. But who was she? A Jewish girl from New Jersey who’d made the world believe she was something she ultimately was not, a powerful woman. If she had been really powerful she would have been able to help my brother. The whole concept of Moxy Priestess was one of feminine defensiveness and I couldn’t respect that. I don’t respect those who live in fear from others or those who lie, which she did if Jed is alive and she actually does know, like The Lady thinks she does.
But she must have had some kind of power over Jed. I remember watching the videos, Jed standing there under the lights, slouched over, picking on his guitar, his cigarette dangling from his lips, the self-contained rocker. That was Jed. He didn’t give a shit what anybody thought of him, except it seems now, possibly, the Priestess. As I moved over those roads and hills of New Jersey I kept thinking to myself what an idiot I had been. The Priestess was lying. I knew it now. I just knew.
I got off near the Fort, a real army base, in Fort Lee. I went to a phone at a Dunkin Donuts and looked up the number of the Priestess in my book in which I had been collecting numbers for ten years. Capowitz. I called her and she answered. She sounded like my mother.
“Hello?”
“Hello, is this Helen Capowitz?”
“This is she.”
“Hi, I’m Albert Jones, Jed’s brother…”
“Oh my god.”
There was a silence on her end that I didn’t intrude upon. The length of the silence answered my questions and when I finally spoke I knew that she would have to invite me over.
“I’m sorry?” I said, as if she knew something.
“No, it’s just that, well, I’ve been thinking about Jed lately.”
“Me too. Helen, I’m in town. Can we meet?”
There was another silence.
“Hold on,” she said. She put the phone down and a moment later she picked it up again.
“Okay. Albert?”
“Yes.”
“You’re in town? Fort Lee?”
“Yes.”
Because I was listening for notions of Jed in her voice, I heard the other phone pick up, but only because I was listening so astutely.
“Yes, come over. Where are you?”
I told her.
“I’ll come get you. Wait there.”

When Albert finished the rock opera back before he’d found me, the world was a better place somehow. Without the world’s teardrop there is no demand for investigation. Albert, falling into the placid stream, like a cork bouncing down the rocks and into the river, down and down further, found that to float is the most necessary of detractions. So he kept a steady supply of marijuana by his side as he wrote Petals, but he got further and further away from it. He began to study books about the nature of creativity so that he could know for sure whether or not Petals truly belonged to him or whether it belonged to Bob Hope, that is, marijuana intoxication.

Me and Albert became friends again. I never held it against him for hitting me. I’m glad he did it. It would have taken a long time to get the anger out and a lot of bullshit discussion would have had to have taken place. I’d just as soon be socked once for a lifetime of bullshit I gave him than have to deal with the natural variation of moods one would expect in somebody so abandoned and abused by his, well, I was going to say father and me, but, really, it’s more like God himself if you think about how Albert took it into his soul.

Albert was always a dreamer type. When he was a child he would lie on his bed and shake his head back and forth and sing songs to himself. Those were his first rock operas, I guess. He was always a big kid, but really gentle. Taller than the others, but the last one to be picked because he just looked like he didn’t care, I guess. I was always the first picked. I did the picking. So I was pretty protective of him, but back in the late 70s you had a lot of drugs going around. I mean everybody was doing something. And I was wrapped up in it. I had a connection with a guy from the Mexican Mafia. He connected me with a guy from the Chinese Mafia and I didn’t give a shit about any of them because I considered myself the Tennessee mafia of one. And I was a bad ass to prove it. I did some harm to more than one person and that was still as a teenager.

But then I got out. I realized the music was the most important thing and I got out through sheer will and also through a sort of desperation of needing smack by that time, but not being able to face the fact and especially with my mama on my case all the time. I couldn’t think straight at all. So I walked downstairs, already having put half a shot in my arm and said “Look, ma” and shot the rest in. I’d thought about it for a few minutes after I took the first little bit and it then hooked up to the last little bit that still remained in the needle and I thought to myself that I couldn’t let the show be seen by only myself and then I thought I was floating when I was walking down the stairs and that that was a sign by God that I was to do what I was to do, which was nothing more than exert my freedom by getting myself kicked out of my house. My guitar was already in the car and a moment later I was too. Driving off I looked back and I saw Albert come outside and look at me as I tore off and then he sat down by the gate and petted the dog. That was the last time I talked to him or saw for almost fifteen years.

It’s almost criminal what it seems God will allow to happen in order to teach you a lesson. That’s all I can figure short of God reaching into my head and straightening everything around Himself. But he wasn’t about to do that. They made the Bible to make sure everybody knows that things don’t come easy. Well, I sure found that out the hard way, maybe a little too hard, but anyway, what I’m trying to say is that we’ve all had our moment of doubt when we thought God had abandoned us. I wonder if Teardrop ever had that moment of doubt as he climbed up the wrong side of the mountain to get home to me. And the next question in logical sequence is whether, if Teardrop did have that doubt, why did he still make it? That’s one I’ll leave to the theologians.

Diary,

Page one. I think I’m out of Tennessee. Got a good spot in this freight. A fellow said it was headed to California. Say there is gold there in some places. Not interested. I’m sorry I gave the rest of you away to Jones. Don’t matter. I don’t need to remember much anymore. The words I write here and along the way are new words. The point of all this isn’t remembering what was, but what is and might be someday. The wheels been lulling me to sleep, but haven’t been able to do it quite yet. I got a good view of the stars and even though the wind is cold it’s not freezing and I got me a blanket and a bottle. Got some bread and cheese in my bag somewhere, but I don’t want to dig it out. Just like riding along like this. Wonder why I didn’t do it sooner. Couldn’t do it sooner. One thing I’m not going to do anymore is lie to myself.
I got the world behind me now. Cut my losses and went. Not much to think about really. Feel like I’ve done enough thinking to last me a million years. Got enough thinking under my belt to be ranked with the great philosophers, but it ain’t thinking with answers that I’ve had or I’ve got. It’s not that I got anything in my head from my experience of loss that’s going to teach me something that’s going to make my life better. Well, maybe that’s not true. It got me here in this night sky going to the ocean. That’s something.
The girls are in me like those dinosaurs they say walked around the earth millions of years ago. They’re huge. If I tried to look around them i’d fail. I’d just fail. So I’m not going to. If I don’t fight seeing them I see through them and they look like stars and skies and black trees that are passing. Sometimes they look like house lights or cows standing still beside the tracks under the moonlight. If I don’t let them be the world around me then they become the world inside of me and, well, I’ve cried, rather, I’ve tried to cry them out of me at those points but I ain’t never been able to do it quite right, not all the way. They just make me look at the bottle. Gotta get some sleep.

July 18, 1870

Another day. Still the same day since I wrote in you last, Diary, which was about five hours ago. Got a little sleep, but I got cold and this floor is hard. Got a good warm feeling from the whiskey. A good way to come out of sleep to face the cold. Got the stars still and the train’s steady roll, it’s a fufufufu sound and it lulls you. It really does. My head wanders. It’s like I’m sitting here trying to hold on to something, but my head wanders. What does it mean? I can’t place nothing on it that’s meaningful. But I got a hum in me. I’m more of a hum than a man it seems. I lean into this sound in my head and it’s got no real melody but it’s a tune of some sort. Not no tune like I ever heard before. It’s a tune of loss like I never heard before but that don’t matter because it’s mine and mine alone. It’s like the sound of the girls if they have a sound now. I know it’s their memory, maybe their ghosts. I don’t want to think of this. I want silence. But my head turns towards the tune. I feel myself giving into it and I don’t know if it’s going to be my end or not. I feel myself going mad. I have to shake my head sometimes to pull out of it. It’s so peaceful, but it’s the girls. I can feel it’s the girls and every time I do it I miss them and I think that maybe I should jump off this train. But I ain’t dying before I see the ocean. Goddam those forces that would take the ocean from me before I even see it.
I got mad just then. I think that’s good. I need to get more mad more often, but I don’t know how long it’s going to do any good. I feel off. More later.