Short Stories by Benjamin Fishbein

La-la-loo

2011-04-21T12:17:00.001-05:00

On a popular South Korean TV comedy set during World War II, occupied Korean civilians discover a way to defeat the occupying imperial Japanese army: if four or more Koreans simultaneously shout “La-la-loo,” any Japanese soldier who hears them instantly dies, because his head explodes. Many of my 7th grade students, being 12-year-old boys and therefore genetically programmed to imitate what they witnessed on television, would interrupt the English lesson with choreographed shouts of “La-la-loo.” The boys then broke out in hysterics. The girls frowned and breathed loudly out of their noses. I sided with the boys and laughed. It was funny. Especially because of the choreographed arm movements. On the first “La,” they touched their hearts; then on the second “La,” they touched their shoulders; and on the elongated, falsetto “Loo,” they raised their arms in a “V.” It cracked me up no matter how many times they did it.
The math teacher, however, didn’t find it funny at all. Pak Gwang-Hyop, or as the students called him behind his back, the Dolphin, because he had the IQ of a dolphin, was my age but looked a decade older, his face lined from nightly binges of soju, that cheap Korean vodka that doubles as a sink cleaner. Every day, he stood at the entrance to the school, taking 10-second drags from his cigarette and then blowing the fumes downward so they soaked into his shiny black suit. The one time I went drinking with him, he showed me his well-worn copy of “Rich Dad Poor Dad.” The margins were filled with his scribbled annotations. He told me that in two years he would start an “education business” and become rich. Whenever the students shouted “La-la-loo” in his math class, the Dolphin forced them to bend over; he then whacked their rear ends with a length of hose, half a meter long, wrapped in electrical tape. He called the hose “Bill,” named after Bill Gates. No Korean parents complained about Bill, but this corporal punishment horrified my American sensibilities. One day, when the Dolphin was out front blowing smoke rings at passing students, I snuck into his classroom, snatched the length of hose from under his desk, and then deposited it in the dumpster behind the school.
In the middle of the period when the 7th-graders had math class, the Dolphin burst into the teachers’ lounge. His twitching eyes locked on to the gomdo sword leaning against my desk. (It was a meter long, dull, and made of wood. I had gomdo lessons immediately after work, so I often brought the sword to school with me.) Without asking my permission, the Dolphin picked up the sword and stormed out of the room. After recovering from my shock at his rudeness, I followed him. As I approached the classroom, I heard the thwacking sound of wood striking buttocks—every three seconds, a thwack. And then, when I was expecting another thwack, I heard the sound of wood breaking. Crack!
The Dolphin sauntered out into the hallway and dropped the two pieces of my broken gomdo sword into the waste basket next to the water cooler.
“You broke my sword,” I said.
“They were doing La-la-loo,” the Dolphin said, his hands shaking and eyes twitching. “I am not Japanese. I’m trying to help them.”
“That sword cost 70,000 won,” I said. (About 70 American dollars.)
“It’s not my fault,” the Dolphin said. “It is the students’ fault. They took my Bill. Tell them to pay for your sword.”
Eyes twitching, he returned to the classroom.
The next day, the Dolphin had a new length of hose wrapped in electrical tape. He called it “Gates.” The students were silent throughout the math lesson; no La-la-loo was heard.
“Don’t give up,” I encouraged the students. “I think he’s ready to snap. A few more La-la-loos and he’ll quit.”
But the students were silent the next day. And the day after that as well. I had to do something.
And since they had my English class the period immediately before the Dolphin’s math class, there was something I could do. I gave them chocolate. Lots of chocolate. Choco-pies, chocolate bars, even chocolate ice cream.
“Let’s have a competition,” I said. “Who can eat the most chocolate the fastest?”
When they went to the Dolphin’s math class, I stood in the hall and listened. It wasn’t long before the first chorus of La-la-loo sounded out. It was quickly followed by the Dolphin’s hose thwacking into backsides. But then there was another cry of La-la-loo. Even the girls were joining in. The Dolphin kept thwomping them with the hose, and the students kept gleefully shouting “La-la-loo.”
Suddenly, the classroom door burst open, and the Dolphin ran past me.
“I quit!” he sobbed. “I can’t take it anymore! I quit!”
Inside the classroom, the children continued to shout:
“La-la-loo! La-la-loo! La-la-loo!”
No matter how many times I heard it, it still cracked me up.

The Terrorist

2011-04-17T10:58:00.000-05:00

Gary Moskowitz, a 32-year-old office supplies salesman, was reading the in-flight magazine, when suddenly, for no apparent reason, the plane went into a nosedive. The fasten seatbelts sign lit up with a dinging noise, oxygen masks popped out of the ceiling, the captain’s voice said, “Assume crash positions” over the loudspeaker, and the passengers (including Gary) pressed their heads between their knees and wrapped their legs around their thighs—as if it mattered what position they were in when they hit the ground. Sunlight flickered as the plane tumbled through clouds. Gary braced himself for impact. But suddenly, the plane grew stead, leveled out, and then began to ascend. All around Gary, passengers wept with joy and hugged one another.
“That concludes our crash drill,” the captain's sturdy voice said over the loudspeaker. “Please remain in your seats until we regain our cruising altitude.”
The passengers looked at each other, and smiles broke out on their faces. They laughed aloud
and joked about how frightened they had been.
“What's going on?” Gary asked the woman next to him. “Are we going to die?”
“Didn't you hear what the captain said? It was only a crash drill.”
“What's a crash drill?”
“You live in a cave or something? That's when they pretend we're crashing, to practice what we'd do in case of a real crash.”
“I never heard of such a thing.”
“Hey, everybody!” the woman shouted. “He never heard of a crash drill.”
The passengers laughed at Gary, who flushed red.
The flight attendant was walking down the aisle, returning oxygen masks to their compartments in the ceiling and collecting used motion sickness bags. She was a blonde woman of about 50. Her face had a thick cake of makeup that cracked along her wrinkles, causing little makeup chips to dangle like old paint.
“Excuse me,” Gary said.
“Yes, sir?” the flight attendant said, smiling at Gary and causing makeup chips to break off from the corners of her mouth.
“I have a complaint,” Gary said. “It's about the crash drill.”
“Yes, what about it?”
“Are we going to die?”
“Eventually.”
“How about today?”
“Sir, it was just a drill.”
“Don't you think it's a bit inconsiderate to pretend the plane is going to crash?”
“We have to be prepared, in case there's a real crash.”
“Isn't that what the preflight
safety instructions are for?”
“That's just theory, sir. We have to practice it.”
The flight attendant started to walk away, but before she got two steps, Gary pressed the button that called the flight attendant. There was a dinging sound, and next to the no-smoking light, another light lit up with a picture of a person. The flight attendant walked back to Gary, pressed a button on the ceiling to turn off the person-shaped light, and smiled, causing chips of makeup to break off from the corners of her eyes.
“Yes, sir?”
“Couldn't you at least have warned us that there was going to be a crash drill?”
“Sir, you're being rude,” she said.
“No, I'm not. I'm being assertive.”
“The crash drill has to be a surprise, sir. If passengers knew it was just a drill, they might not take it seriously, and it wouldn't be good practice.”
“That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.”
“You should just be glad it was only a drill and you're not dead.”
She turned to walk away, and Gary again pushed the button to call the flight attendant.
“Sir, have you ever heard of the boy who cried wolf?” the flight attendant asked. “You might someday really need a flight attendant, and no one will believe you.”
“I want to speak to your supervisor,” Gary said.
“He's busy.”
“Doing what?”
“Flying the plane.”
Gary unbuckled his seatbelt and squeezed past the woman in the aisle seat.
“Pardon me,” he said, getting into the aisle.
“Sir, the fasten seatbelts sign is on,” the flight attendant said.
Gary marched toward the front of the plane, intending to give the pilot a piece of his mind.
“You can't go up there,” the flight attendant said. “That's first class!”
Gary tore back the curtain separating coach from first class. He squeezed past a male flight attendant who was pouring fresh glasses of champagne.
When Gary knocked on the cockpit door, he was surprised to see it swing open. He had expected it to be locked, and that he'd have to speak to the pilot through the door.
There were two men in the cockpit—an older man with streaks of gray at his temples and a younger man with shocking bright red hair. Gary supposed that the older was the pilot, the younger the copilot. They looked up and saw Gary.
“You were supposed to lock the door,” the pilot said to the copilot.
“I thought you locked it,” the copilot said.
“You were the last one to open the door. When you went to the bathroom.”
They reminded Gary of a bickering old married couple.
“Excuse me,” Gary said. “What do you think you're doing?”
“I might ask you the same question,” the captain said. “How did you get up here.”
“The door was unlocked.”
“Are you a first class passenger?”
“You don't look first class,” the copilot said.
“What do first class passengers look like?” Gary asked.
“I know 'em when I see 'em,” the copilot said. “Flying a plane, you see a lot of passengers.”
“You want to try explaining this crash drill?” Gary demanded.
“Return to your seat,” the captain said.
“I will as soon as you explain yourself.
The captain picked up a speakerphone and pressed a button. “We have an intruder in the cockpit,” he said. “Could I please have the sky marshal up here?”
“Alright, fine, I'm going,” Gary said. “But I'm complaining once we reach the ground. I'm writing a letter to the newspaper.”
He opened the cockpit door. Dozens of passengers were charging toward him. Apparently they were all sky marshals. No. That wasn't it. Gary slammed the door and pressed his body weight against it.
“Call them off!” he shouted, but the pilot and copilot just stared forward at the puffy clouds. “Call them off!” Gary repeated. “If they all come to the front, the plane'll be too topheavy. We'll go into another nosedive.”
The pilots laughed.
“Why don't you leave the aeronautics to us,” the copilot said.
The door burst open. Hands tore at Gary's face and clothes.
“It’s just a hijacking drill,” Gary screamed. “We have to be prepared in case there’s a real hijacking!”
They kept tearing at him and pounding him. Gary lunged to the pilot’s seat and gripped onto the steering controls.
“Sanctuary!” he screamed.
The passengers tugged at Gary, causing him to pull down on the steering controls, causing the plane to ascend sharply, which sent passengers tumbling backwards, rolling out of the cockpit.

After the passengers subdued Gary, the plane made an emergency landing in Chicago. Hulking men dressed in black handcuffed Gary and dragged him off the plane. Gary tried to speak, but his mouth had a dirty sock in it, stuck there by passengers who grew tired of hearing Gary protest his innocence.
The large men brought Gary into a well-furnished office deep within the airport. One man gripped Gary’s right arm, another his left. A third man, short, with large ears, crooked teeth, and bad skin, pulled the sock from Gary’s mouth.
“I didn't hijack the plane,” Gary said.
“That's not what everyone else says,” the short man said. “Captain says you was
hijacking the plane.”
“Listen to the black box,” Gary said. “The cockpit voice recorder will tell you the truth.”
“We only listen to it if there's a crash. You failed—you didn't bring the plane down. So there's no need to listen to it!”
“It proves I'm innocent. I just went into the cockpit to complain about the crash drill.”
“If you’re not a terrorist, how come you’re against crash drills?”
“It’s unpleasant being in a plane that’s in a nosedive, particularly when you don’t know it’s just a drill.”
“What building were you planning to crash the plane into?”
“I wasn't planning to crash it into anything.”
“The Sears Tower?”
“I'm not a terrorist.”
“You probably think you're a freedom fighter.”
“I am neither a terrorist nor a freedom fighter.”
“You're gonna start telling us the truth.”
The short man knocked the computer off the desk, sending it smashing to the floor. Then the big men held Gary down with his back on the desk, his head hanging off the end. The short man lifted the large plastic jug of water from the water cooler. It rhythmically glugged water onto the carpet as he brought it toward Gary.
“You’re getting water-boarded,” the short man said.
“I want a lawyer,” Gary said. “I want my phone call.”
“You think you got Miranda rights? Haven’t you heard of the Patriot Act?”
The large men laughed and held Gary down tight. The short man held the water jug over Gary. Since it rhythmically splashed on his face, Gary was able to time his breathing and didn’t’ feel as though he was drowning. The water-boarding would have been more effective if they poured the water from a bucket, but Gary wasn’t going to tell them that.
Suddenly, the door burst open.
“My office!” the man at the door moaned in despair. “You got water everywhere. I let you use my office, and this is how you repay me?”

Gary’s interrogator’s decided to take him somewhere else to torture him, somewhere where no one would complain if they made a little mess. They fitted him in an orange jumpsuit, tied a burlap hood over his head, and shackled his wrists and ankles. After a plane ride of several hours, he was brought out into balmy air. He figured he was in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The hood was pulled off, and Gary saw he was in a large compound. Guard towers and barbed wire loomed over him. The colors of the prison were dull and depressing—grays and browns. The sand at his feet looked dull, as though someone had gone through it grain by grain to pick out all the quartz. A thick-necked guard unshackled Gary and pushed him forward.”
“Start walking, terror boy.”
“I'm an innocent man!” Gary screamed.
“Sure you are, Mohammad.”
“My name is Gary.”
“Your name is prisoner two-five-nine-seven.
Memorize that number. It will not be given again.”
“You can't do this to me,” Gary said. “I'm an American.”
The guard inhaled through clenched teeth. “You might want keep quiet about that,” he said. “The other prisoners don't like Americans so much.”
Gary was led down a narrow corridor past concrete cells. Through the bars, he saw swarthy men in orange jumpsuits. They all had long dark beards. They barely looked up as he passed; their dull eyes stared at the concrete floor.
The door to Gary's cell had one of those key card slots used for hotel rooms. The guard slid a card through the card reader, and the door slid open. There was a metal cot, a sink, and a toilet.
“Mecca is thataway,” the guard told him, pointing to an arrow made from duct tape on the concrete floor. He handed Gary a Koran with English on one side of the page and what looked like Arabic on the other.
“I'm not Muslim,” Gary said.
“You got that right,” the guard said. “Islam is a relgion of peace. You fanatics are giving it a bad name. It makes me mad.”
The bars slammed shut.
In the cell facing Gary's was another man in an orange jumpsuit. He was tall and broad with a long dark shaggy beard. He introduced himself, speaking in a thick terrorist accent. His name was Abdullah. He was an Afghani shepherd, but after American warplanes blew up his entire flock of goats, he joined the jihad against the Americans. He told Gary that he would take him under his wing.
“You will be my bitch,” he said. “I'm not gay, but in here the pickings are slim. We're in separate cells, so we'll have to talk dirty to each other.”
Gary tried to ignore him. He was glad there were two sets of bars between them.
“I want to pour oil in your beard and run my fingers through it,” Abdullah said.
“I don't have a beard.”
“Not that beard.”
Gary sat on his cot and tried to ignore Abdullah's obscene tongue motions. Having nothing else with which to occupy himself, he flipped open the Koran and started to read. He had never read it before. It was boring, but he supposed that with nothing else to read, it would soon brainwash him into being a Muslim fundamentalist.
He was too frightened to make sense of the words he, but he kept turning the pages.
A while later, the guard returned to Gary’s cell. He slid a card through the card-reader, and the door slid open.
“Let's go, Muhammad.”
“My name is Gary.”
“Let's go! Now!”
Gary folded in the corner of the page to mark his place, then closed the book. Abdullah let out a furious scream.
“You will regret that,” Abdullah said coldly, a look of abject hatred on his face.
“Regret what?”
“What you did to the Koran.”
“Reading it?”
“You desecrated it.”
“I did not.”
“You folded in the corner.”
“I was marking my place.”
“You should use a bookmark.”
“I don't have a bookmark.”
“There is no excuse for desecrating the Holy Koran.”
“Sorry.”
Gary opened the Koran and tried to smoothe out the corner. A thin line stayed where he had folded it. The crease would be in the paper forever.
“Let's go, Mohammad,” the guard said.
Gary set the Koran down on his cot and followed the guard out of his cell. Abdullah's hairy hand reached through the bars and grabbed Gary's ear.
“As you have done to the Koran, so shall it be done to you!” Abdullah screamed, and bent down the ear as far as it could go.
“Yeoww!!!”
Gary wrenched his ear free and rubbed it.
“It's just paper!” he screamed. “You nearly tore my ear off!”
“Next time you read the Koran, I hope you'll be more respectful.”
The guard marched Gary through the prison, across the dusty yard flanked with guard towers.
“Where are we going?” Gary asked.
“We'll ask the questions,” the guard said.
“Okay, ask me a question.”
“No. We have a professional to do that.”
He brought Gary into a cube-shaped concrete shed smelling of stale sweat. A single bare light bulb hung from the ceiling. A short bald man leaned against a metal folding table in the middle of the room. He smiled at Gary with crooked, yellow teeth. Then he broke a clove from a bulb of garlic, popped it in his mouth, and chewed. He walked up and breathed his garlicky breath in Gary's face.
“I'm innocent,” Gary said.
“Shut up,” the bald man said. “I'm going to ask you some questions and you're going to tell me the answers. Question number one—who do you work for?”
“H and Q office supplies. I'm assistant regional sales manager for the midwest.”
“Yet you’ve been moonlighting as a suicide terrorist.”
“I was trying to complain about the crash drill.”
“Right.” The bald man grinned. “That's fine. I prefer if you make it more difficult for me. Give me a chance to earn my salary. I've got good news and bad news for you. The good news is the United States doesn't use torture, so we won't be yanking out your toenails or attaching electrodes to your genitals. The bad news is that we have other ways of getting information out of you.”
A woman cleared her throat. She was sitting in a metal folding chair against the wall, scribbling on a clipboard.
The bald man sighed. “Our Red Cross observer,” he said, nodding at the woman with the clipboard. He handed Gary a small white plastic card. “That's a stress card. If at any point, you feel the interrogation is too intense or stressful for you, hold up the stress card, and we'll stop.”
Gary was about to point out how stupid the idea of stress cards was, but then he feared that if he did they would take it away, so he kept silent.
“Now we're putting you in what we call a stress position,” the bald man said. “It won't cause any permanent damage, but as you'll see, it's mighty uncomfortable.”
One of the guards knelt down lifted Gary’s foot into the air. Then he let go.
“Keep it up there,” the bald man told Gary. “You're standing on one foot till you tell us everything you know.”
Gary held out his arms to balance himself.
“No arms for balancing!” the bald man screamed, and Gary lowered his arms to his side.
Standing on one foot was difficult, particularly when not allowed to use his arms for balance, but Gary
was determined not to use the stress card. He wouldn't let them break him.
“Look at you,” the guards mocked. “Standing on one leg like a flamingo. We should get you a
pink jumpsuit!”
The woman with the clipboard cleared her throat. “It has to be orange,” she said.
Soon Gary's leg ached terribly. Sweat poured down his forehead. He was about to fall, so he
held up the stress card and set his foot down.
“Dagnabbit!” the bald man said.
The guards looked crestfallen.
The bald man left and then returned with a plastic bucket full of water. The guards lay Gary on his back on the metal table, his head hanging off the side, just as in the airport office.
“Who do you work for?” the bald man asked.
“H and Q Accounting,” Gary said.
The bald man poured cold water over Gary's mouth and up his nose. This guy knew what he was doing, as he should, being a professional interrogator. He used a bucket, not a jug. The cold water came in a steady stream, without gaps for Gary to breathe. Soon, he could no longer hold his breath. His lungs tried to suck in air, but only sucked in water. He felt as if he were drowning, so he lifted the stress card and waved it around.
“Dagnabbit!” the bald man said, throwing the half-full water jug against the wall.
Gary sat up and coughed out water. A cigarette taste burned his sinuses.
The bald man sighed. “All right,” he said. “Were gonna try something new.”
He picked up a steel crowbar and rhythmically tapped its hooked end in the palm of his hand. Guards pushed a large wooden crate into the room. The crate was turned on its side, and was about the size and shape of a refrigerator. A humming noise, like fluorescent lights, came from inside the box.
“I have good news for you,” the bald man said, stroking the curved end of the crowbar like a cat's neck. “This crate just arrived, so you get to be the first to try out our new interrogation method. But I should warn you—this is the first time we're attempting this particular method, so there may be a few bugs.”
The guards chuckled. “A few bugs,” they chortled.
The bald man smacked the crowbar against the crate. Whatever was inside went crazy. It buzzed and screamed like a swarm of locusts. The bald man popped a fresh clove of garlic in his mouth and got up close in Gary's face.
“Half a ton of caterpillars,” he said. “Freshly shipped from the Amazon. And you're taking a bath in them.”
Gary's heart pounded and his legs shuddered. He was terrified of insects. When he saw a spider in his kitchen, he called over the neighbor to kill it. Gary pulled the stress card out of his pocket and held it up. It shook in his trembling hand.
“Your card's been canceled,” the bald man said.
The guards laughed.
The card slipped from Gary's shaking fingers and fell to the floor. He looked toward the Red Cross woman.
“Sorry,” she said, scribbling on her clipboard. “He's right. This one is okay, and you can't use
the card on it.”
“How is this not torture?” Gary asked.
“I don't make the rules,” she said. “I'm just here to observe and make sure the rules are
followed.”
The bald man stuck the flat end of the crowbar in the crack at the top of the crate and pressed. The wood creaked.
“All right! I admit it!” Gary screamed. “I'm Osama bin Laden! Please, I'll tell you whatever you want!”
The guards laughed again. The bald man jumped up and then came down with all his weight on the crowbar. The wood cracked in the corner of the crate. A burst of color shot out—green, blue, purple, red. It kept pouring out, filling the room. The guards screamed and covered their faces to protect themselves from the fluttering wings. Gary had never seen so many butterflies. He had to cover his mouth to stop them from flying in. One of the guards opened the heavy door and stumbled out. The swarm of butterflies flew out after him. The bald man grabbed a guard by the collar and pulled him close to his face.
“Butterflies!? Why are there butterflies in there?! There's supposed to be caterpillars!”
“I don't know, sir.”
“What do you mean you don't know!!??”
“I ordered caterpillars, sir. They must have sent the wrong box.”
Gary looked down into the crate. It was empty except for a layer of dead bugs at the bottom.
“Put him in the box,” the bald man said.
The guards grabbed Gary by the arms and dragged him closer to the box. It had a foul smell—a week's worth of their droppings. The larva shells looked crunchy.
“You can't put him in there,” the Red Cross observer said. “You're not allowed to stick a prisoner in an empty box.”
“It's not completely empty,” the bald man said.
“It has to be at least seventy percent filled with caterpillars,” the Red Cross observer said.
“Dagnabbit!” the bald man screamed, spewing a mouthful of chewed garlic bits.
Suddenly there was a loud roar from outside, like cheering at a soccer match. Then a burst of machine gun fire. But the roar didn't subside. It grew louder. A guard burst into the interrogation shed. He was sweating and out of breath.
“The prisoners are rioting!” he gasped.
“What happened?” the bald man demanded.
“It's the butterflies. They saw the butterflies and they started to freak out. They're shouting that the butterflies have made them remember how beautiful life is. Now they want to be free.”
The bald man kicked the empty crate.
“Dagnabbit! I've spent years breaking down their spirits, and now all my hard work is ruined! I'll have to start from scratch!”
Just then, half a dozen bearded men in orange jumpsuits burst into the interrogation shed. They were weeping openly with joy. They screamed something in their guttural terrorist language.

Gary was swimming in the middle of the ocean, all alone. He had escaped with the other detainees running down to the beach and swimming away. Many of the other prisoners couldn’t swim, so they drowned. Others were eaten by sharks. Now, only Gary remained.
He was exhausted from swimming, so he did a back float. He would let the current carry him to Florida, and then try to pass himself off as a Cuban refugee. He would need Spanish for that, so he began conjugating Spanish verbs aloud. He was surprised he still remembered so much from high school.
The sun beat down on him. His lips cracked and his throat ached from thirst. The salt water was tempting, but Gary knew drinking it would dry him out and kill him. He needed fresh water. However, since there was no fresh water, he had no choice but to drink his own urine.
Still floating on his back, he unbuttoned his orange jumpsuit and peed into the air, trying to make it land in his mouth. Most missed the target, but he did manage to swallow a few refreshing drops. Not enough to slake his thirst, though.
Soon he was greedily quaffing sea water. It was delicious.
Then on the horizon he saw what looked like a boat. The ship of the dead, he thought. It’s coming to take me away.
It kept approaching, and Gary saw that it was enormous. It was at least five stories high and coming straight toward him. It might have been people coming to capture him, but he didn’t care. Gary splashed around to get their attention. He tried to shout, but his throat was parched and no sound came out. His tongue felt larger than his mouth. Everything went fuzzy.
The next thing Gary knew, two me were pulling him into an inflatable life raft.
“Water,” Gary gasped.
“Don’t worry,” one of the men said. “The water can’t hurt you any more.”
They rowed to the enormous ship, attached dangling cables to the raft, and were lifted up out of the water. As Gary ascended, he saw hundreds of faces peering over a ledge and looking down at him. There were men, women, and children—it wasn’t a military vessel out to capture him.
When the raft landed on deck, and Gary stepped out, the passengers crowded close to him. They were fat and pale. Many wore bathing suits and flip flops. This was a cruise ship.
The passengers peered at Gary curiously. The man next to Gary held a glass filled with pink liquid and a tiny toothpick umbrella sticking out of it. Severely dehydrated, Gary snatched the ice-cold drink from the man’s hand and tried to gulp it down, but the umbrella stabbed him in the eye.
“Yeoww!!!?
The glass shattered on the deck.
With his good eye, Gary saw an enormous swimming pool in the middle of the deck. There were children kicking on inner tubes, old women floating on plastic rafts, and, most importantly, water. Lots of it.
Gary dashed for the pool. A lifeguard blew a whistle.
“No running on deck!”
Gary stuck his face in the water and began lapping it up like a dog.
“I peed in the water,” a boy on an inner tube said.
Gary didn't care. The chlorine-flavored water was delicious.
“Running on deck, eh?” a gruff voice said. Gary looked up. It was a big, bristly man dressed all in white with a white sailor cap. “I can see you're a troublemaker. You're not on my ship one minute, and you're already breaking rules.”
“You're the captain?” Gary croaked out.
“That's right.”
Gary vomited at the captain's feet. He had drunk too fast.
“Seasick already?” the captain said scornfully. “Well, we don't put into port for another four days, so you're gonna have to get used to it.”
Gary wiped his mouth and stood up.
“I got pulled away from conducting a wedding because of you,” the captain said.
“Sorry,” Gary said.
“If it were up to me, I'd let you drown,” the captain said, “but there's an international law of the sea. It says I have to carry you to the next port. But this isn't a pleasure cruise. Well, it is a pleasure cruise, but not for you. You're going to work to earn your keep.”
“Hey, don't I know you?” shouted a man in a straw hat.
“No,” Gary said.
“Sure I do. I saw you on television. I just can't remember which show.”
The passengers began to murmur excitedly. Someone from TV was aboard.
“If he’s on TV, he must be able to afford a cruise ticket,” someone pointed out.
“It's not the money,” the captain said. “It's the principle of the thing. We can't allow stowaways.”
“He's not a stowaway. He's a castaway.”
“True, but if we let on castaways, next we'll probably be letting on stowaways.”
Just then, a helicopter roared overhead. It was enormous and painted army green. A cable dropped from it, and a man repelled down the cable, onto the deck next to Gary and the captain.
“I told you,” the captain said. “Let on one castaway, and pretty soon the whole world's trying to board your vessel.” He glared at Gary. “This is your doing.”
The man who had just landed on deck was muscular and wore a black jacket that said DHS on it—Department of Homeland Security.
“And who are you supposed to be?” the captain demanded.
“My name is Agent Jones. I'm the hostage negotiator. Hello, Gary, AKA Mohammad, AKA Prisoner two-four-nine-seven, AKA the Sleek Sheik.”
The passengers gasped and cowered back. The captain fainted, making a loud crash as his face collided with the wooden deck. Only the man in the straw hat didn’t seem frightened.
“I knew it!” he exclaimed happily. “I knew you were famous!”
“He’s not famous, he’s infamous,” Agent Jones said. He took a step toward Gary and held up his hands, fingers splayed apart. “Relax, Gary. I’m not armed.”
“This is ridiculous,” Gary said. “We don’t need a hostage negotiator—there are no hostages.”
“Whatever euphemism you pirates use for them,” Agent Jones said. “Booty, I suppose.”
More military helicopters buzzed over head.
“There aren't any hostages!” Gary screamed. “I'm not holding anyone against any will! I don't have a gun, I don't have a bomb, I don't have anything!”
“I just wanted to tell you that we don't negotiate with terrorists,” Agent Jones said.
“I'm not a terrorist! I'm not a pirate! I didn't do anything wrong!”
“The point is I'm not negotiating with you.”
“Then what kind of hostage negotiator are you? I'm a tax payer. Why am I paying for you to do nothing?”
“It's a new policy. The powers that be haven't got around to firing me yet.”
“I'm not a terrorist. Listen to the black box! Listen to the flight recorder! It proves I was talking to them about the crash drill!”
Suddenly there was a large explosion and the ship keeled to the side, almost falling over. Passengers shrieked and fell to the deck.
“What was that?!” Gary said.
“That would be a torpedo,” Agent Jones said. “It's our new policy for dealing with
terrorists who take hostages. We sink the ship.”
The ship was heavily tilted to one side. Water from the swimming pool cascaded past Gary's legs.
“But everyone’s going to die,,” Gary said.
“Next time terrorists will know hostage taking doesn't work, so they won’t try,” Agent Jones said.
“You'll die too,” Gary pointed out.
“With the new policy, hostage negotiators are unnecessary,” Agent Jones said calmly. “I have no further reason to live.”
There was another jolting explosion, and the ship started to sink fast. Passengers ran for the lifeboats.

Despite Agent Jones’s claim that the new policy was to kill everyone, the military did all it could to rescue people, pulling them into lifeboats. Gary, too, was pulled into a lifeboat. Then he was dressed in an orange jumpsuit, shackled, and had a burlap sack tied over his head. When the sack was removed, he recognized the high guard towers and dingy-colored sand as belonging to Guantanamo Bay Prison. The bald interrogator was in the courtyard. He gave Gary an evil grin and belched his garlicky breath on him.
“I got some new interrogation methods approved by the Red Cross. You're just in time to help me try them out.”
The thick-necked guard led Gary to the detention block.
“We've captured a lot more terrorists, so it's getting a little crowded. You won't have a cell to yourself any more. Now you'll have a cellmate.”
Gary was horrified when he saw the big bearded man who would be his cellmate.
“The bitch is back!” Abdullah shouted as the guards locked Gary in a cell together with him.
“I'm not your bitch,” Gary said.
“We'll see. We'll see if you're my bitch or not.”
Just then an orange and black Monarch butterfly landed on the metal railing of one of the cots. Gary felt a surge of hope.
“It's so beautiful,” Abdullah said. Then he sat down on his cot and began tearing pages out of his Koran.
“What are you doing?!” screamed Gary.
“Origami,” Abdullah said.
“What?!”
“The Japanese art of paper folding!”
“I know what it is! Why are you ripping pages out of the Koran to make origami?”
“I'm making a key. That butterfly made me remember how beautiful life is—too beautiful to sit here in a cell.”
He folded several pages in half, then pushed them through the bars, and slid it through the card reader. It didn't work.
“This is going to be harder than I thought,” he said.
“Shouldn't you rip off your own ears?” Gary suggested.
“Why would I do that?”
“Because. As you did to the Koran and all that.”
Abdullah stared at him as though he thought Gary was crazy.
“Never mind,” Gary said. “I give up.”
He plounced down on the bed, causing the Monarch butterfly to flutter away, but Gary didn’t even notice; he was staring at the concrete floor.

The Classics

2011-03-19T08:24:00.000-05:00

I liked smart girls. When I saw a girl with thick glasses, twirling her hair and staring into a book, it made me drool. The problem was that the smart girls wouldn't want anything to do with me, because I was practically illiterate. So I went to a small bookstore and asked the clerk for something that would impress women. He showed me a twelve-volume leather-bound set of books: The Classics of Western Civilization. The spines bore impressive-sounding names, like Sophocles, Herodotus, and Aristotle.
“Women can't resist a guy who's read the classics,” the clerk told me.
“I'll take 'em,” I said.
I placed the leather-bound books on the bookshelf in my living room. I didn't actually have to read them in order to impress women—just make it look as though I had read them.
I moved my couch directly in front of the bookshelf. The books would draw the girls toward the couch. Then they would swoon from my intelligence and they would need to sit down. I would sit next to them and make my move, leaning in close as if to point out something interesting in the book.
I was finally able to ask out Jessica, a girl I had been ogling at the library. She had thick bottle-cap, horn-rimmed glasses that were smudged with fingerprints. She wore no make-up, and her thick brown hair was tangled in knots. I took her out for coffee, and she talked about her research in nano-bio-engineering-something-or-other. It sounded as if she was creating monsters, but they were only microscopic bacteria, so I figured it was okay. I was silent, pretending I understood what she was talking about, and she seemed to buy my act.
When I brought her up to my apartment, she wasn't drawn to the classics as I had hoped. She didn't seem to notice them at all. She just stared at the lamp on the ceiling.
“Oh, look,” I said. “It's the classics.”
She walked over to the bookshelf.
“Have you read these?” she asked.
“Sure,” I lied. “All of them. I love the classics. That's just the kind of guy I am.”
She pulled out Cicero and sat on the couch. I sat down next to her as she flipped through the pages.
“This book's never been opened before,” she said. “The pages are too crisp.”
“I turn the pages delicately because I have such respect for the classics,” I said.
She closed the book and examined the cover.
“The spine hasn't been cracked at all,” she said, and then looked up at the bookshelf. “You haven't read any of these.”
“I don't open the books all the way,” I said. “I just open them a bit and peer inside. That's why the spines don't look cracked.”
“Pop quiz,” Jessica said. “How did Socrates die?”
I took an educated guess. “The Trojan Horse.”
“Wrong! He drank hemlock, which is what you should do.” She stuffed Cicero back in his place on the shelf and started for the door. “What kind of sicko lies about reading the classics?”
“I meant to say that I read them at the library,” I said. “I liked them so much that I wanted to own my own copies.”
Too late. She was gone.
The books hadn't worked. My idea of pretending I had read the classics failed. At least the books were still in mint condition, so I could return them to the bookstore.
But then I had a brilliant idea.
I took down Cicero, sat on the couch, and turned on the TV. While watching The Simpsons, I turned the pages, one-by-one, roughly, making sure they looked as if someone had read them. I wasn't looking at the book as I turned the pages, though, so I kept getting paper cuts. That was why I hated reading: you had to concentrate on what you were doing; whereas with TV you could let your mind relax.
At the commercial break, I dug out my winter coat from the closet. My wool mittens were in the coat pocket, and I pulled them onto my hands. Now as I turned the pages my hands sweat profusely, but I didn't get any paper cuts.
Over the next few days, sitting in front of the TV and wearing wool mittens, I turned every page of the 12 thick volumes. The spines now had creases in all the right places and the pages looked wrinkled and worn. It was time to give the classics another shot.
At the planetarium, I met Mandy, a beautiful girl with unbrushed hair and thick glasses. She told me that she was studying for a PhD in criminology. This worried me. What if fake-reading the classics was illegal?
“Are you allowed to arrest people?” I asked.
“I'm not a police officer. I'm a student.”
“So can you arrest people?”
She assured me that she couldn't.
After taking her to the symphony (where I fortunately wasn't expected to speak), I brought her up to my apartment. She glanced around as though casing the joint.
“You like the classics?” I asked.
“What?”
“The classics.”
Mandy took a volume from the bookshelf, plopped down on the couch, and opened the book—Aristophanes.
“Have you read this?” she asked.
“Sure did,” I said, smoothly sitting down next to her. “All twelve volumes. There's not a page there that I haven't turned.”
She flipped through the pages, noticing they were worn. Then she closed the book and stared at its spine.
“That's funny,” she said.
“What.”
“Well, the leather doesn't look handled at all. Usually with leather-bound books, sweat from the hands will sort of marinate it.”
“My hands don't sweat.”
“Yes they do. You're wiping your hands on your trousers every five seconds. You have the sweatiest palms of anyone I ever met.”
“I wore mittens when I read it,” I said. “I didn't want to get papercuts.”
“Do you also wear a helmet when you go outside?”
“I speed-read so fast that I often cut my fingers. I don't like to brag about how fast I read, though.”
“You're a liar,” she said, and slammed Aristophanes back in his place on the bookshelf. “Goodbye.”
She stormed out the door.
Alone in my apartment, I realized I would have to break the leather covers in. This would require spending several days stroking the books bare-handed. But then I remembered some advice my father gave me when I was a child. He bought me a new baseball mitt and told me to cover it with shaving cream and let it soak in for a few days. This would soften the leather, making it flexible and looking like I had used it for years. I did as he suggested, and it worked. Maybe it would work for leather-bound books as well.
I laid the books on tables and chairs, open pages facing down, covers facing up. With my can of shaving cream, I lathered white foam onto the leather covers, spreading with my finger, like frosting a cake.
After the first couple books, the shaving cream can sputtered and stopped. Empty. It was late at night and everything was closed except for the 24-hour convenience store on the corner, so I went there.
The clerk's name tag said Patel. He had a thick accent and reminded me of Apu from the Simpsons. I brought a new can of shaving cream up to the counter, paid for it, and almost burst out laughing when Patel said, “Thank you, come again.”
In my apartment, I continued to frost the leather-bound classics. When there were only a couple books left, the shaving cream again sputtered and stopped. I returned to the convenience store.
This time, when I set a fresh can of shaving cream on the counter, the clerk, Patel, squinted at me suspiciously with his thick eyebrows.
“You just bought shaving cream,” he said. “It was not more than twenty minutes ago.”
I considered telling him to mind his own business, but he was new to America and probably didn't realize it was rude to comment on a customer's purchase.
“I didn't finish shaving,” I said. “I need more.”
Patel squinted at my chin, which I realized was covered with stubble.
“Didn't finish?” Patel said. “You didn't even start.”
I considered telling him the truth, that I was trying to fake-read the classics, but that was too humiliating to admit. I racked my brain for an explanation of what I had used the shaving cream for.
“I'm shaving my dog,” I said.
Patel frowned.
“In the middle of the night?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said. “When else would I shave him?”
Patel's eyebrows narrowed and he squinted at my shirt.
“If you are shaving your dog, why is there no dog hair on your clothes?”
“It's a hairless breed. He likes it when I cover him with shaving cream and run the razor over him.”
“Why can't you pet your dog like a normal person?”
“This is America. If I want to shave my hairless dog in the middle of the night, I can, and you have a constitutional obligation to sell me that shaving cream.”
Patel sighed and rang up the shaving cream.
“America,” he muttered.
Back upstairs in my apartment, I finished lathering up the books. Then I left them alone to let the shaving cream do its work.
A couple days later, I wiped the shaving cream off with a rag. The leather looked dark and worn, as if well-marinated by hand sweat. Everything was ready.
I spotted a beautiful girl in the museum lobby, staring up at the T. rex skeleton, her mouth hanging agape. She had the spaced-out look of the super-brilliant. She didn't have glasses, but she probably needed them: her eyes wandered, each in its own direction.
“Hi,” I said. “If you like bones, I've got one in my apartment I can show you.”
“Oh no you don't,” she said. “I'm not going home with you till you buys me dinner.”
Her name was Cathy. I took her to a fancy restaurant with cloth napkins and real silverware that came folded in the cloth napkins.
“You go to the museum often?” I asked.
“I had to use the bathroom,” she said. “So I went inside. Then I was leaving and saw them dragon bones. I never seen dragon bones before.”
“It's not a dragon,” I said. “It's a T. rex.”
“Whatever. Same thing.”
“No. It's not the same thing.”
She wasn't smart. I no longer found her attractive. But after dinner, she followed me to my apartment.
“Well, aren't you going to invite me up to your place?”
At least this one wouldn't discover anything wrong with my books.
“Sure,” I said. “Come on up.”
As soon as we stepped inside, Cathy's eyes spotted my set of classics. Her mouth opened wide and round.
“What are those?” she gasped.
“Oh, those?” I said casually. “Those are the classics of western civilization.”
She approached the bookshelf and pulled down the volume on Euclid.
“You bought them used?” she asked, plopping down on the couch, almost breaking its springs.
“No. I bought them new.”
“They look used.”
“Because I used them,” I said. “By the way, that's real leather.” I sat down next to her.
“I love the smell of leather,” Cathy said.
She lifted the book to her nose, closed her eyes, and sniffed, making a snorting noise. Then she furrowed her brow and frowned.
“It smells like shaving cream,” she said.
My heart pounded and I thought I was caught. But then I had an idea.
“They have to shave the hair off the cow before they make it into leather,” I said. “Otherwise, the book would have a beard.”
Cathy's eyes narrowed, but still wandered in different directions.
“Hunh?” she said.
“They use shaving cream so the cow doesn't get razor burn,” I said. “That's why you smell shaving cream.”
Cathy stared blankly at the book in her hand.
“A cow?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said.
Her jaw dropped and her eyes burned with horror.
“Oh my God!” she said. “You mean this is made from a poor, defenseless animal?”
Her sudden concern for animals confused me.
“I just bought you a steak dinner,” I said.
“I see how it is,” she said. “You think you'll buy me a fancy dinner and show me your fancy books, and I'll be so impressed that I'll just throw myself at you?!”
“No,” I said. “I mean steak comes from cows.”
She scoffed. “Steak from cows? How gullible do you think I am?”
She pulled a lighter from her purse.
“Please don't smoke in here,” I said. “You can use the balcony.”
She lit the book on fire. Euclid's pages went up in a blaze that took Cathy by surprise; she dropped Euclid on my rug.
“Yaagh!” I screamed, and stomped at the fire, sending bits of charred paper all around. My shoelace caught on fire, and I had to kick my shoe off. I ran into the kitchen to get my fire extinguisher. When I returned, Cathy was staring transfixed at the flames. The burning paper hissed. The leather cover smoldered. Thick smoke plumed upward. Cathy sniffed the air, another snort escaping from her nostrils.
“It smells like beef,” she said.
“I told you—steak comes from cows!”
I sprayed the fire extinguisher, putting out the fire. There was a burnt hole in the rug.
“You think you're so smart,” Cathy said as the fire extinguisher sputtered down. “Well, let me tell you something—no one likes someone who's so full of himself and reads the classics.”
She turned and stormed toward the door.
I realized she was right. Why was I trying to be someone else? I should be myself and try to get girls to like me for who I was.
“Wait!” I screamed. “I'm not smart! I'm stupid, just like you!”
She slammed the door behind her.
I stared at the books on my shelf and the charred book on my carpet. Instead of helping me to get girls, the books ruined my chances three consecutive times. I was better off without the books. I should just be myself, find a girl who liked me for who I really was.
So in the morning, I brought the set of classics back to the bookstore.
“I'd like to return these,” I said, placing the heavy books on the counter.
The clerk took off his glasses and squinted his beady eyes at the classics.
“You can't return those,” he said.
“I have the receipt right here.”
“These have been used,” he said, picking up a volume and flipping the pages.
“I haven't read a word of them,” I said.
“The covers are all worn. So are the pages.”
“I'll prove I never read them. Ask me a question. Ask me who killed Socrates.”
He sniffed. “What's that smell?”
“Shaving cream,” I said. “They had to shave the cows.”
He sniffed again.
“It smells like smoke,” he said.
He opened the Euclid volume. Charred bits of paper fluttered onto the counter.
“It was like that when I bought it,” I said.
“Get out,” the clerk said. “And take your classics with you.”
I left the store with my books. I figured that since I was stuck with them, I might as well try to read them. I sat in the gutter and opened up volume one, Homer's Iliad, and started to read.
Halfway through the first chapter, I stopped. I hadn't understood a word. It might as well have been in the original Greek. And now I had a splitting headache. I dropped the books in a garbage can and walked away. I wouldn't be reading the classics in this lifetime.

The Holocaust Survivor

2011-01-17T08:01:00.000-06:00

When I was in eighth grade, a Holocaust Survivor spoke to our social studies class. I didn't want him there. I was one of the only Jewish kids at my school, the only Jew in the social studies class, and I didn't want anything to make me stand out. My friends were at my bar mitzvah, so they knew I was Jewish, but they thought it just meant the big party when I had turned 13. I didn't want them to associate me with the Holocaust, to see me as a victim. One blow like that could knock me from the bottom rungs of the cool to which I desperately clung, mostly by being funny, down to the status of loser.
I worried that the survivor would be dressed all in black, like Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof. Fortunately, Mr. Schwartz was dressed normally, at least for an old man—khaki pants up to his chest, button-down shirt, loafers, and a big shiny gold belt buckle. He was old and fat; his leathery skin hung in folds. Fortunately, his accent was only slight. We were respectfully quiet, mostly because Miss Hanson, our teacher, stood at his side, her arms crossed, her lips a thin line.
“I'm here today to show you what bullying leads to,” Mr. Schwartz said.
My heart skipped a beat, afraid that my classmates were going to find out what some old people at my temple said about Gentiles—that they were all anti-Semites.
Mr. Schwartz stretched out his fingers and dramatically unbuttoned his cuff, then folded it upward like a magician showing us he had nothing up his sleeve. He pulled his sagging skin taught so we could make out the blue numbers on his forearm. It reminded e of what my mother said about tattoos. Her greatest fear was that I would someday get one. To prevent this, she tried to frighten me by saying that the beautiful mermaid tattoo you get when you're young will wrinkle up and look like a sea witch when you're old—Ariel becomes Ursula.
Mr. Schwartz told us about his childhood in Romania.
“When I was your age, we didn't have any television or video games,” he said jocularly. “We had to entertain ourselves by singing songs or playing practical jokes.”
I could tell he was trying to get us to like him, but it wasn't going to work. After his bullying comment, comparing us students to Nazis, he had lost us. We knew this was a lecture; we were presumed to be bad, perhaps evil.
He didn't even tell us what practical jokes were played.
“The Nazis invaded,” he said. “Then they passed anti-Semitic laws.”
Jews weren't allowed in the park; they had to stay home. They couldn't sing loudly, lest the Nazis patrolling the streets hear them. Mr. Schwartz didn't mention what effect the house arrest had on their ability to play practical jokes. Nobody asked.
He told us about how the Nazis shipped his family and him off in a train. In my peripheral vision, I could feel the other kids glancing at my face to get my reaction. I didn't turn my head, afraid I would make eye contact with someone, who would then keep staring. I was certain they were imagining me crammed shoulder-to-shoulder inside a cattle car, unable to move, no food, no water, no bathroom.
When the Jews arrived at Auschwitz, they were all lined up in front of the camp. Mr. Schwartz's parents and siblings were too weak to work, so they were sent to the left. Mr. Schwartz was sent to the right, and there he received his tattoo. I felt the other kids glancing at my bare wrist.
Suddenly, a horrible stench his me. Somebody farted. It was a bad one—a silent-but-deadly. I recognized the swampy, moldy smell as belonging to Shawn, the fat kid who sat next to me in the back row. I covered my mouth and squeezed my nostrils shut. The other kids in the back of the classroom covered their noses too. A small grin spread on Shawn's face.
The window needed to be opened. It was December and freezing outside; opening the window would let the heat out, but it would let the fart out too. But to open the window, I would have to ask for permission. Miss Hanson stood at the side of her desk with her arms crossed, ready to kill anyone who batted an eyelash the wrong way, and now was a bad time to interrupt Mr. Schwartz. His voice low and hushed, he was describing what happened to those sent to the left—to his parents, brother, and sister.
“They died from the gas,” he said.
An image popped into my head of every kid in our class sprawled on the classroom floor, limbs strewn haphazardly, dead from Shawn's fart. I started to laugh. I couldn't help it.
I was horrified at myself for laughing at such a serious moment. I pressed my hands to my face to hold in the laughter, but it spilled through my fingers. Spasms of hilarity shook my whole body. I didn't look, but I was sure the other kids were staring at me. Miss Hanson would kill me. I had never been sent to the principal's office before, but would be now. The principal would call my parents, who would send me to military school.
I tried to think of the least-funny thing possible. I began conjugating Spanish verbs in my head. It managed to settle down the laughter, but then when I peered through my splayed fingers, I made eye contact with another boy, who was also barely able to contain his laughter. I wasn't the only one to connect the fart with the gas chamber. Seeing each other sharing the joke caused us both to break into fresh paroxysms of laughter. Most of the boys were now giggling uncontrollably; we almost fell out of our chairs. The girls shook their heads and frowned. Miss Hanson looked livid with anger, steam almost shooting out of her ears.
Mr. Schwartz slammed his fist on Miss Hanson's desk, rattling her mug of pencils.
“You think it's funny?!” he screamed, his voice shaking the window panes. “How would you like it if I murdered your entire family and stuck you in a prison?!”
Terrified at his yelling, we immediately stopped laughing.
Mr. Schwartz's eyes twitched and a vein throbbed through his wrinkly neck.
“You're the Hitler Youth!” he screamed. “If you were in Germany then instead of America now, you would—“
Suddenly his face contorted.
“Oh God!” he gagged. “What is that smell?!”
This started us laughing uncontrollably again.
“Who did this?!” Mr. Schwartz screamed, with such fury that we became silent in mid-laugh. He pressed his nostrils shut with his fingers, so when he spoke, it was a nasally quack, but we didn't dare laugh. “You think this is funny?!” he quacked furiously. “I'm talking about the Holocaust and you're farting?! Who was it?!” His eyes scanned us to find the guilty party.
I didn't want to be a tattle tale. Neither did the other kids. We all kept our eyes down, no one glancing at the culprit.
“Shawn,” Miss Hanson said. “Remember the talk we had? About not in class?”
Mr. Schwartz released his nose, wiped his fingers on his shirt, and glared at Shawn.
“See a doctor,” he said. “No healthy person can make such a smell.”
Then Mr. Schwartz went to the window and opened it. Cold December air and snowflakes whooshed in.
“You're the Hitler Youth!” he berated us. “You can think of yourselves as good people because you live in affluent America, but if you lived in Germany, you would have been Nazis. You're just like the Polish who laughed as Jews were marched past to the death camps.”
Every kid in the class got quiet and small, the freezing up that is a kid's only defense against an irate grownup; moving a muscle or shifting a gaze might provoke him, and his fury would home in on that unfortunate individual who shifted his eyes. Even Miss Hanson looked afraid to interrupt him. She stayed standing next to her desk, surveying the scene as though it were a traffic accident.
Now I understood why some people hated Jews. If any of my classmates grew up and joined the Ku Klux Klan, I would know why.
“You don't understand the lesson of the Holocaust,” Mr. Schwartz continued. “You're just going to repeat it.”
I wanted to prove to my classmates that I was on their side, not Mr. Schwartz's. I didn't consider them potential Nazis or guilty for the Holocaust. I was one of them, not one of Mr. Schwartz's people.
“I know the lesson of the Holocaust,” I said.
“Raise your hand,” Miss Hanson said.
I raised my hand.
“Well?” Mr. Schwartz said. “What's the lesson of the Holocaust?”
“The lesson of the Holocaust is that we shouldn't get tattoos,” I said. “They might look cool now, but when we get old, they'll wrinkle up and look terrible.”
The boys laughed. So did a few girls. This time, no one bothered to cover his mouth or try to stop laughing. A vein in Mr. Schwartz's forehead seemed about to pop. His face burned red and he narrowed his eyes at me. I thought he was going to hit me, but then his eyes filled with tears and he bit his lip. He rolled down his sleeve, buttoned the cuff, and stormed out of the classroom, slamming the door behind him. My classmates were still laughing.
“Shut up!” Miss Hanson screamed.
The class became quite. We had never heard her tell us to “shut up” before.
She turned to me, her eyes full of fury.
“Principal's office! Now!”
I walked out of the silent classroom, looking penitent on the outside but feeling thrilled inside. I should have felt terrified by my impending meeting with the principal, but I wasn't. I knew I would be a hero to the other boys, at least for the next few days.

The Terrorist

2011-01-03T08:32:00.000-06:00

The morning flight from New York to Los Angeles was having a crash drill.
A crash drill is when the pilot intentionally puts the plane into a nosedive, only pulling up at the last moment. The reason for crash drills is to allow the crew and passengers to practice what to do in case of a real crash. Of course, passengers aren't told ahead of time about it. If they know it's only a drill, it wouldn't be good practice; they might not take it seriously.
One of the passengers on the flight was a 32-year-old office supplies salesman named Gary Moskowitz. When Gary was stressed, he took deep breaths to calm himself. But every breath seemed to swell something inside him. After enough deep breaths, it exploded; he let loose with shouting and sputtering that made him sound like Donald Duck and made everyone around him uncomfortable. This had ruined every romantic attachment he ever had. He tried to avoid situations that caused him to take deep breaths, so when the ticketing staff announced that economy class was now boarding, Gary remained in his seat at the gate terminal, reading a paperback. He didn't want to stand in line, shuffling forward, kicking his carry-on bag, then waiting in the plane aisle for other passengers to stow their carry-on luggage in the overhead compartments. If he waited till everyone else boarded, he could get to his seat with no hassle.
When the line to the ticket counter was finally empty, Gary finished the page he was reading, folded in the corner to mark his place, and leisurely boarded the plane.
He walked through the first class section where the rich people in large seats had already been served champagne. They pretended not to see Gary as he passed. Gary took a deep breath, then stepped back into economy class, where the seats were tiny. He had a middle seat between a fat man at the window and a fat woman with a baby at the aisle. The baby wasn't crying yet, but it looked depressed—it would probably cry soon enough. Gary opened the overhead compartment. It was completely full. He opened other overhead compartments, but none of them had room for his bag.
“Sir, please take your seat,” a flight attendant said. “We're about to start taxiing to the runway.”
She was a blonde woman of about 50. Her face had a thick cake of makeup that cracked along her wrinkles, causing little makeup chips to dangle like old paint.
“I need a place to put my bag,” Gary said.
“All the luggage racks are full,” the flight attendant said. “You'll have to put it under the seat in front of you.”
“I won't be able to move my legs at all. I could get a blood clot in my legs. Then it'll go up to my brain. I'll get a brain aneurysm and die.”
“I'm sorry, sir, but there's no more room.”
Twenty minutes later, when the plane was flying smoothly high above the clouds, Gary's pinned legs tingled painfully, and he was sure that at any moment the blood clot would reach his brain.
Gary tried to concentrate on his paperback, but the person behind him kicked his seat every 20 seconds or so. The baby was crying now—screaming like a banshee actually—but its mother didn't notice. She had headphones on. Her music was loud enough for Gary to hear it but not loud enough for him to make out what the song was—it was fine-tuned to cause the maximum amount of annoyance. Gary tried his own headphones, but they didn't work. Then he stared out the window, straining his neck, hoping the sight of white, puffy clouds would relieve some tension.
“Why are you staring at me?” the man in the window seat asked. He was slightly cross-eyed.
“I'm not staring at you,” Gary said. “I was looking out the window.”
The man slammed down the window panel.
“Now you have no reason to look this way,” he said.
The flight attendant came down the aisle with the drink cart, and Gary asked her for a scotch on the rocks, hoping it would calm his nerves. As soon as she set it down on his tray table, the person in front of Gary violently reclined his seat, splashing the whisky in Gary's lap. Gary took a deep breath, patted his lap dry, and asked the flight attendant for another glass of whisky.
“I'm sorry, sir,” she said. “We're only allowed to serve one alcoholic drink per guest.”
He accepted a glass of cranberry juice instead. He had heard it helped blood circulation, so might lower the chance of an in-flight aneurysm.
He sipped the bitter cranberry juice and tried to relax. At least the baby had stopped screaming. It had fallen asleep, slumped in its mother's arms. But then there was another silence that was disconcerting: the hum of the jet engines faded out and died. The plane jerked down in a series of rapid drops. There was a dinging noise; the fasten seatbelts sign turned on. Then the plane tilted forward and went into a nosedive. Gary's cranberry juice splashed in his lap. Oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling. Everyone was screaming. Gary's heart pounded; terror swelled his fingertips.
“Assume crash positions,” the captain's voice said over the loudspeaker.
Gary realized he didn't know how to do the crash position. Although a frequent flyer, he had never paid attention to the pre-flight safety instructions. Now he looked around to see what the other passengers were doing so he could copy them. They muttered prayers and sobbed. Their heads were pressed between their knees, their arms wrapped around their thighs. The woman next to Gary lay the baby flat across her lap and blanketed it with her body. Gary tried to lean forward to put his head between his knees, but he was too tall and the seat in front of him was too far back—he couldn't fit his head down. Gary punched the back of the chair.
“Stop kicking my seat,” the man in front of Gary said.
“I'm not kicking it!” Gary said. “Move your seat up!”
“I only have to move it to its full upright position for takeoffs and landings!”
“We're landing!”
“A crash is not a land!”
Sunlight flickered into the cabin like a strobe light. They were passing through the clouds and would hit the ground soon. The plane spun and tumbled. The drink cart clanged around on the ceiling. Out a window on the other side of the plane, Gary caught glimpses of green earth interspliced with the sky.
Gary arched his neck and tried to squeeze his head down to his knees. His hair caught on the carpet of the seatback. It felt as if he was being scalped. Gary gave up and sat up straight. It didn't matter what position he was in when they hit the ground. He wasn't going to survive anyway.
Suddenly, the engines roared to life. The plane grew steady. The nose turned upward and began to ascend. The passengers wept with joy and hugged one another.
The captain's sturdy voice came over the loudspeaker. “That concludes our crash drill,” he said. “Please remain in your seats until we regain our cruising altitude.”
The passengers looked at each other, and great smiles broke out on their faces. They laughed aloud and joked about how frightened they had been. Gary was shocked.
“What's going on?” Gary asked the woman next to him, who was making goofy faces at her baby. “Are we going to die?”
“Didn't you hear the captain? It was only a crash drill.”
“What's a crash drill?”
“You live in a cave or something?”
She explained what a crash drill was. Gary's fear turned to fury.
“That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!” he said.
She shielded her baby from him.
The flight attendant was walking down the aisle, returning oxygen masks to their compartments in the ceiling. Gary was shocked at how sheepish the other passengers appeared. It seemed he was the only one who was angry.
“Excuse me,” Gary said.
The flight attendant frowned at Gary. Small chips of makeup broke off from the corners of her mouth.
“Yes, sir?” she said.
“Why did we just have a crash drill?”
“We have to be prepared in case there's a real crash.”
“No, you don't,” Gary said.
“Yes we do. I saw you, sir. You didn't know what to do. You couldn't even get into a proper crash position.”
“That wasn't my fault. He wouldn't raise his seat up.”
“I don't have to raise my seat,” the man in front of Gary said. “It was a crash, not a landing.”
“You don't even know the crash position,” the flight attendant told Gary.
“Yes I do,” Gary lied.
“Sir, I was watching you when I gave the pre-flight safety instructions, and you weren't paying attention.”
“That's because I've heard them so many times before. I'm a frequent flyer.”
“And yet you didn't get into the crash position.”
Gary felt himself about to explode.
“I want to speak to your supervisor,” he said softly to the flight attendant.
“He's busy.”
“Doing what?”
“Flying the plane.”
Gary unbuckled his seatbelt, struggled past the woman in the aisle seat, and marched toward the front of the plane.
“You can't go up there,” the flight attendant said. “That's first class!”
Gary tore back the curtain separating coach from first class. He pushed past a male flight attendant, who was pouring fresh glasses of champagne.
“If we had crashed, you would have hit first,” Gary told the first-class passengers. “I would have sat back there in coach, laughing at you.”
Gary pounded his fist on the cockpit door and was surprised to see it swing open. He had expected it to be locked.
There were two men in the cockpit—an older man with streaks of gray at his temples and a younger man with shocking bright red hair. Gary supposed the older was the pilot, the younger th copilot.
“You were supposed to lock the door,” the pilot said.
“I thought you locked it,” the copilot said.
“Excuse me,” Gary fumed. “What the hell do you think you're doing?”
“I might ask you the same question,” the pilot said. “How did you get up here?”
“The door was unlocked.”
“Are you a first class passenger?” the pilot asked.
“You don't look first class?” the copilot said.
“What do first class passengers look like?” Gary asked.
“I know 'em when I see 'em,” the copilot said. “Flying a plane, you see a lot of passengers.”
“You want to try explaining this crash drill?” Gary demanded.
“Get out of my cockpit,” the pilot said.
Then, Gary exploded; he went apoplectic, spewing a torrent of foul obscenities and saliva. His voice reached the highest notes on a piano, and he waved his hands frantically.
The pilot picked up a speakerphone and pressed a button. “We have an intruder in the cockpit,” he said. “Could I please have the sky marshal up here?” His voice echoed from back in the passenger cabins.
A ray of curiosity peeked through Gary's fury. He would get to see who the sky marshal was. He opened the door a crack and peered back. Apparently everybody on board was a sky marshal: they were all charging the cockpit. Gary worried that everyone rushing to the front would make the plane too top-heavy and send them into another nosedive. Then he realized they weren't sky marshals. They thought he was hijacking the plane; they were coming to stomp him to death. Gary slammed the door shut and pressed his body weight against it.
“Call them off!” he shouted.
The pilot and copilot just stared forward at the puffy clouds.
The door burst open. Hands tore at Gary's face and clothes, trying to tear his limbs apart. Gary pulled away and grabbed onto the pilot's steering controls.
“Sanctuary!” he screamed, as the passengers tried to peel his fingers away.
The plane started to ascend sharply, going almost straight up. The passengers grabbing onto him started to fall backwards, rolling out of the cockpit, through first class, and all the way to the back of the plane, some managing to grab onto seats and stop their fall. Gary realized that the ascension was caused by him pulling down on the steering controls.
His fingers slipped loose, and he tumbled down toward the the back of the plane, where he slammed into a pile of writhing fellow passengers. They didn't stomp him to death. They just stomped him a little.

Gary told his interrogators to listen to the black box, the cockpit voice recorder that could survive anything, even a plane crash. It would prove that he had entered the cockpit not to hijack it, but to lodge a complaint against the crash drill. They refused to listen to the black box recording. They only listened to it if the plane crashed.
“You failed—you didn't bring the plane down,” they told him. “So we don't need to listen to it!”
“Don't I get a phone call?”
“Terrorists don't get phone calls. Not anymore. It's the Patriot Act.”
Gary was fitted in an orange jumpsuit. They tied him up, threw him in the back of a military cargo plane, and brought him to a place that was warm and balmy. When they pulled off the hood, he saw he was in a large compound. Guard towers and barbed wire loomed over him. The colors of the prison were dull and depressing—grays and browns. The place was filled with pink, thick-necked guards. Gary supposed it was Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Throughout it all, Gary proclaimed his innocence.
“I'm an innocent man!” he screamed as they dragged him to the cellblock.
“Sure you are, Mohammad.”
“My name is Gary.”
“Your name is prisoner two-five-nine-seven. Memorize that number. It will not be given again.”
The cells were concrete cubes with walls on three sides and bars on one. The door to Gary's cell had one of those key card slots used for hotel rooms. The guard slid a card through the card reader, and the door slid open. There was a metal cot, a sink, and a toilet.
“Mecca is thataway,” the guard told him, pointing to an arrow made from duct tape on the concrete floor. He handed Gary a Koran with English on one side of the page and what looked like Arabic on the other. The bars slid shut.
Gary noticed that the duct tape arrow in the cell across from his pointed in a different direction than his arrow did. In that opposing cell was another man in an orange jumpsuit. He was tall and broad with a long dark shaggy beard. He introduced himself, speaking in a thick terrorist accent. His name was Abdullah. He was an Afghani shepherd, but after American warplanes blew up his entire flock of goats, he joined the jihad against the Americans. He told Gary that he would take him under his wing.
“You will be my bitch,” he said. “I'm not gay, but in here the pickings are slim. We're in separate cells, so we'll have to talk dirty to each other.”
Gary tried to ignore him. He was glad there were two sets of bars between them.
Abdullah started talking dirty.
“I want to pour oil in your beard and run my fingers through it.”
“I don't have a beard.”
“Not that beard.”
Gary sat on his cot and tried to ignore Abdullah's obscene tongue motions. He wished he had a paperback to distract himself. Having nothing else with which to occupy himself, he flipped open the Koran and started to read. He had never read it before. It was boring, but he supposed that with nothing else to read, it would soon brainwash him into being a Muslim fundamentalist.
A while later, several guards came to Gary's cell. One of them slid a card through the card-reader, and the door slid open.
“Let's go, Muhammad.”
“My name is Gary.”
“Let's go! Now!”
Gary folded in the corner of the page to mark his place, then closed the book. Abdullah let out a furious scream.
“You will regret that,” Abdullah said coldly, a look of abject hatred on his face.
“Regret what?”
“What you did to the Koran.”
“Reading it?”
“You desecrated it.”
“I did not.”
“You folded in the corner.”
“I was marking my place.”
“You should use a bookmark.”
“I don't have a bookmark.”
“There is no excuse for desecrating the Holy Koran.”
“Sorry.”
Gary opened the Koran and tried to smoothe out the corner. A thin line stayed where he had folded it. The crease would be in the paper forever.
“Let's go, Mohammad,” the guard said.
Gary set the Koran down on his cot and followed the guard out of his cell. Abdullah's hairy hand reached through the bars and grabbed Gary's ear.
“As you have done to the Koran, so shall it be done to you!” Abdullah screamed, and bent down the ear as far as it could go.
“Yeoww!!!”
Gary wrenched his ear free and rubbed it. It hurt. It would probably flop down now.
“It's just paper!” he screamed. “You nearly tore my ear off!”
“Next time you read the Koran, I hope you'll be more respectful.”
The guards marched Gary through the prison, across the dusty yard flanked with guard towers.
“Where are we going?” Gary asked.
“We'll ask the questions,” the guard said.
“Okay, ask me a question.”
“No. We have a professional to do that.”
They brought Gary into a cube-shaped concrete shed smelling of stale sweat. A single bare light bulb hung from the ceiling. A short bald man leaned against a metal folding table in the middle of the room. He smiled at Gary with crooked, yellow teeth. Then he broke a clove from a bulb of garlic, popped it in his mouth, and chewed. He walked up and breathed his garlicky breath in Gary's face. Gary started to protest his innocence, but the man told him to shut up.
“I'm going to ask you some questions and you're going to tell me the answers,” the bald man said. “Question number one—where is Osama bin Laden?”
“In a cave?” Gary said.
The short bald man smiled. “That's fine,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I prefer if you make it more difficult for me. I got good news and bad news for you. The good news is the United States doesn't use torture, so we won't be yanking out your toenails or attaching electrodes to your genitals. The bad news is that we have other ways of getting information out of you.”
A woman cleared her throat. She sat in a metal folding chair against the wall, scribbling on a clipboard.
The bald man sighed. “Our Red Cross observer,” he said, nodding at the woman with the clipboard. He handed Gary a small white plastic card. “That's a stress card. If at any point, you feel the interrogation is too intense or stressful for you, hold up the stress card, and we'll stop.”
They made Gary stand on one foot as they questioned him. They wanted Osama bin Laden's location. They wanted the names and addresses of other terrorists. He would stay on one foot until he told them what they wanted to know. Gary wasn't allowed to hold his arms out to balance himself, so staying up was difficult.
“Look at you,” the guards mocked. “Standing on one leg like a flamingo. We should get you a pink jumpsuit!”
The woman with the clipboard cleared her throat. “It has to be orange,” she said.
Soon Gary's leg started to ache, so he held up the stress card.
“Dagnabbit!” the bald man said.
Gary set his leg back down.
One of the guards left and then returned with a plastic jug full of water. They lay Gary on his back on the metal table, his head hanging off the side.
“Where is Osama bin Laden?” the bald man asked.
“I don't know,” Gary said.
The bald man poured water over Gary's mouth and up his nose. The cold water was refreshing at first, but then it choked him. His lungs tried to suck in air, but only sucked in water. Gary lifted the stress card and waved it around.
“Dagnabbit!” the bald man said, throwing the half-full water jug against the wall.
Gary sat up and coughed out water. A cigarette taste burned his sinuses.
A guard rushed into the room. “Sir,” he said to the bald man. “They're here.”
The bald man smiled. “All right,” he said. “Were gonna try something new.”
He picked up a steel crowbar and rhythmically tapped its hooked end in the palm of his hand. Guards pushed a large wooden crate into the the room. It was turned on its side, and was about the size and shape of a refrigerator. A humming noise, like fluorescent lights, came from inside the box.
“I have good news for you,” the bald man said, stroking the curved end of the crowbar like a cat's neck. “This crate just arrived, so you get to be the first to try out our new interrogation method. But I should warn you—this is the first time we're attempting this particular method, so there may be a few bugs.”
The guards chuckled and snorted. “A few bugs,” they said.
The bald man smacked the crowbar against the crate. Whatever was inside went crazy. It buzzed and screamed like a swarm of locusts. The bald man popped a fresh clove of garlic in his mouth and got up close in Gary's face.
“Half a ton of caterpillars,” the bald man said. “Freshly shipped from the Amazon. And you're taking a bath in them.”
Gary's heart pounded and his legs shuddered. He was terrified of insects. When he saw a spider in his kitchen, he called over the neighbor to kill it. Gary pulled the stress card out of his pocket and held it up. It shook in his trembling hand.
“Your card's been canceled,” the bald man said.
The guards laughed.
The card slipped from Gay's shaking fingers and fell to the floor. He looked toward the Red Cross woman.
“Sorry,” she said, scribbling on her clipboard. “He's right. This one is okay, and you can't use the card on it.”
“How is this not torture?” Gary asked.
“I don't make the rules,” she said. “I'm just here to observe and make sure the rules are followed.”
The bald man stuck the flat end of the crowbar in the crack at the top of the crate and pressed. The wood creaked.
“All right! I admit it!” Gary screamed. “I'm Osama bin Laden! Please, I'll tell you whatever you want!”
The guards laughed again. The bald man jumped up and then came down with all his weight on the crowbar. The wood cracked in the corner of the crate. A burst of color shot out—green, blue, purple, red. It kept pouring out, filling the room. The guards screamed and covered their faces to protect themselves from the fluttering wings that filled the room. Gary had never seen so many butterflies; it was a beautiful sight. He covered his mouth to stop anything from flying in. One of the guards opened the heavy door and stumbled out. The swarm of butterflies flew out after him. The bald man grabbed a guard by the collar and pulled him close to his face.
“Butterflies!? Why are there butterflies in there?! There's supposed to be caterpillars!”
“I don't know, sir.”
“What do you mean you don't know!!??”
“I ordered caterpillars, sir. They must have sent the wrong box.”
Gary looked down into the crate. It was empty except for a layer of dead bugs at the bottom.
“Put him in the box,” the bald man said.
The guards grabbed Gary by the arms and dragged him closer to the box. It had a foul smell—a week's worth of their droppings. The larva shells looked crunchy.
“You can't put him in there,” the Red Cross observer said. “You're not allowed to stick a prisoner in an empty box.”
“It's not completely empty,” the bald man said.
“It has to be at least seventy percent filled with caterpillars,” the Red Cross observer said.
“Dagnabbit!” the bald man screamed, spewing a mouthful of chewed garlic bits.
Suddenly there was a loud roar from outside, like cheering at a soccer match. Then a burst of machine gun fire. But the roar didn't subside. It grew louder. A guard burst into the interrogation shed. He was sweating and out of breath.
“The prisoners are rioting!” he gasped.
“What happened?” the bald man demanded.
“It's the butterflies. They saw the butterflies and they started to freak out. They're shouting that the butterflies have made them remember how beautiful life is. Now they want to be free.”
The bald man kicked the empty crate.
“Dagnabbit! I've spent years breaking down their spirits, and now all my hard work is ruined! I'll have to start from scratch!”
Just then, half a dozen bearded men in orange jumpsuits burst into the interrogation shed. They were weeping openly with joy.
“So beautiful!” they screamed.

After locking the interrogator and guards in the crate with dead caterpillar larva, the prisoners took their weapons and fought their way out of there. Down at the beach, they stole a small speedboat and sped away. There were half a dozen men on the boat with Gary. He was glad that Abdullah was not among them.
It was still morning, but the sky darkened. Soon gale force winds and rain hit them. It was a hurricane. Gary wondered what meteorologists would name the hurricane. A hurricane was going to kill him, and he didn't even know its name.
The ship broke apart, and they fell into the water. When the storm finally cleared, Gary was alone—no ship, no shipmates, nothing but water as far as he could see in every direction.
He swam until he was exhausted. Then he just floated. He would let the current carry him to Florida. Then he could try to pass himself off as a Cuban refugee. He would need Spanish in order to pass as a Cuban refugee, so he started conjugating Spanish verbs in his head. He was surprised he still remembered so much from high school.
The sun beat down on him. His lips cracked and his head ached from thirst. He needed water—fresh water. Drinking salt water would dry him out and kill him. Since there was no fresh water, he would have to drink his own urine. But doing this would be difficult while floating in the middle of the ocean. He was up to his neck in water and couldn't exactly pee into a cup.
He did a back float and tried to pee in his mouth. Most missed the target, but some went in and refreshed him.
But the relief was short-lived. He was still extremely thirsty and now what little urine his body produced didn't have the pressure to reach his mouth. It just dribbled onto his belly.
Soon he was greedily quaffing down sea water. It was delicious. He knew this was the end.
Then on the horizon he saw something that looked like a boat. Even if it was people coming to capture him, he didn't care. It kept approaching, and Gary saw that it was enormous. It was at least five storeys high and the length of ten football fields. It looked like a city. And it was coming straight toward him. Gary splashed around in the water and shouted, trying to get its attention. The ship slowed down. Over ledges on the deck, curious faces peered down at him.
An inflatable life raft was lowered down on two cables. There were several men in it. They paddled over to Gary and pulled him out of the sea.
“Water,” Gary gasped. His tongue felt larger than his mouth.
“Don't worry—the water can't hurt you any more.”
The man's voice was American. Hearing it gave Gary a nervous jolt. Gary tried to speak, but his throat was too parched to make a sound.
They rowed back toward the ship, then attached cables to hooks on the boat. They were lifted up toward the deck. Hundreds of curious faces peered over the ledge. It wasn't people looking to capture him—there were men, women, and children. They were fat and pale; many wore bathing suits and straw hats. This was a cruise ship.
When Gary stepped on deck, the passengers crowded close to him, eyeing him like he was a rare fish they had caught. Many held colorful tropical beverages. Gary grabbed a glass out of one man's hand. The drink was red and cold, but he brought it to his mouth too fast. A small umbrella in the drink stabbed him in the eye. He dropped the glass, and it shattered. Gary looked around at the other drinks, but the passengers covered them and held them away.
Gary glanced around the deck. There was an enormous swimming pool in the center of it. Children kicked around on inner tubes. Old women floated on plastic rafts. There was water. Lots of it. Gary dashed for the pool. A lifeguard blew a whistle.
“No running on deck!”
Gary collapsed to his knees and stuck his face in the water. He lapped it up like a dog.
“I peed in the water,” a boy on an inner tube said.
Gary didn't care. The chlorine-flavored water was the most delicious thing he had ever tasted.
“Running on deck, eh?” a gruff voice said. Gary looked up. It was a big, bristly man dressed all in white with a white sailor cap. “I can see you're a trouble-maker. You're not on my ship one minute, and you're already breaking rules.”
“You're the captain?” Gary croaked out.
“That's right.”
Gary vomited at the captain's feet. He had drunk too fast.
“Seasick already?” the captain said scornfully. “Well, we don't put into port for another four days, so you're gonna have to get used to it.”
Gary wiped his mouth and stood up.
“I got pulled away from conduction a wedding because of you,” the captain said, “so better have a pretty good explanation for what you were doing out there.”
“I got caught in the hurricane. It destroyed my ship.”
“If you think that hurricane was bad, you haven't seen me when I get angry.”
“What was the hurricane's name?” Gary asked.
“Hurricane Gary.”
“That's my name!”
“Well, whoop-dee-doo,” the captain said. “If it were up to me, I'd let you drown. But there's an international law of the sea. It says I have to carry you to the next port. But this isn't a pleasure cruise. Well, it is a pleasure cruise, but not for you. You're going to work to earn your keep. I hope you can sing and dance, because one of the performers in our musical theater is sick.”
Gary vomited again.
“The show must go on,” the captain said.
“Hey, don't I know you?” shouted a man in a straw hat.
“No,” Gary said.
“Sure I do. I saw you on television.”
They all started to murmur. It was Gary the Terrorist, AKA Mohammad, AKA the Sleek Sheik.
But none of the crew or passengers seemed inclined to rush Gary and stomp him to death, probably because they didn't think he would crash the cruise ship into a tall building. The worst he would do would be to crash it into a wharf or coral reef.
“You don't have a sea marshal on board, do you?” Gary asked the captain.
“You disgust me,” the captain said. “Before you were just a terrorist, but now you're a pirate.”
“I am not.”
“You may consider yourself a freedom fighter, but to me you're just another lowlife rum-soaked pirate, a seajacker. You're just jealous. You can't build your own cruise ships, so you try to destroy ours. You can't even build a swimming pool or a casino and you don't have any musical theater.”
“Look, I'm not a terrorist! I'm not a pirate! I don't know what you're talking about!”
Just then, a military helicopter buzzed low over the deck. Everyone panicked. All around the ship, naval skiffs were approaching. People got out of the pool and started running.
From one of the helicopters, a small object fell out of it. It looked like a bomb or a grenade. Then a parachute opened and it descended slowly, coming to rest on the deck. It was a cell phone and it was ringing. The captain pulled back the parachute fabric and answered the phone.
“Hello?”
He listened. Then he handed the phone to Gary.
“It's for you.”
Gary lifted the phone to his ear.
“Hello?”
“Gary, this is Agent Jones of the Department of Homeland Security. I'm the hostage negotiator.”
“You're the what?”
“Hostage negotiator.”
“There aren't any hostages.”
“Whatever euphemism you pirates use for the. Booty, I suppose.”
“There aren't any hostages! I'm not holding anyone against any will! I don't have a gun, I don't have a bomb, I don't have anything!”
“I just wanted to tell you that we don't negotiate with terrorists.”
“I'm not a terrorist! I'm not a pirate! I didn't do anything wrong!”
“The point is I'm not negotiating with you.”
“Then what kind of hostage negotiator are you? I'm a tax payer. Why am I paying for you to do nothing?”
“It's a new policy. The powers that be haven't got around to firing me yet.”
“I'm not a terrorist. Listen to the black box! Listen to the flight recorder! It proves I was talking to them about the crash drill!”
Suddenly there was a large explosion and the ship keeled to the side, almost falling over. Gary grabbed onto a handrail.
“What was that?!” he shouted into the phone.
“That would be a torpedo,” the hostage negotiator said. “It's our new policy for dealing with terrorists who take hostages. We sink your ship and kill everyone.”
The ship was heavily tilted to one side. Water from the swimming pool cascaded past Gary's legs.
“That's the stupidest policy I've ever heard,” Gary said.
“Next time terrorists will know hostage-taking doesn't work, so they won't do it.”
“Listen to the black box!”
There was a click. The hostage negotiator had hung up.
The passengers ran to the side of the deck to get into lifeboats that inflated and hung along the side. Gary ran after them.
“Women and children first!” the crew members shouted.
Women and children climbed over onto the lifeboat. Gary wished he had had time to release the women and children, but the hostage negotiator hadn't allowed that.
Suddenly, the captain pushed past everyone and climbed into the first lifeboat. This made Gary furious. The other passengers sheepishly made no protest.
“Hey!” Gary shouted at the captain. “What about women and children first?!”
“I'm an exception—I'm the captain.”
“Aren't you supposed to go down with the ship?”
“I've never heard of that before.”
Gary's fury exploded. He leaped into the lifeboat, snatched the captain's white hat, leaped back on the deck, and ran.
“He's got the captain's hat!” passengers screamed.
“He's running on deck!” others screamed.
They ran after him. Gary didn't get far. They tackled him and tried to peel the hat out of his clenched hands. Gary clutched on tight.
“Sanctuary!”

When Gary was returned to the dingy-colored Guantanamo Bay prison, the bald interrogator gave him an evil grin and breathed his garlicky breath on him.
“I got some new interrogation methods approved by the Red Cross. You're just in time to help me try them out.”
A guard led Gary to the detention block.
“We've captured a lot more terrorists, so it's getting a little crowded. You won't have a cell to yourself any more. Now you'll have a cellmate.”
Gary was horrified when he saw the big bearded man who would be his cellmate.
“The bitch is back!” Abdullah shouted as the guards locked Gary in a cell together with him.
“I'm not your bitch,” Gary said.
“We'll see. We'll see if you're my bitch or not.”
Just then an orange and black Monarch butterfly landed on the metal railing of one of the cots. Gary felt a surge of hope.
“It's so beautiful,” Abdullah said. Then he sat down on his cot and began tearing pages out of his Koran.
“What are you doing?!” screamed Gary.
“Origami,” Abdullah said.
“What?!”
“The Japanese art of paper folding!”
“I now what it is! Why are you ripping pages out of the Koran to make origami?”
“I'm making a key. That butterfly made me remember how beautiful life is—too beautiful to sit here in a cell.”
He folded several pages in half, then pushed them through the bars, and slid it through the card reader. It didn't work.
“This is going to be harder than I thought,” he said.
Gary started to take a deep breath, but then he decided not to let his anger bottle up inside. He calmly reached from behind and grabbed Abdullah's ears.
“As you did to the Koran, so shall be done to you!” Gary said, and pulled Abdullah's ears in opposite directions as hard as he could.

Shabbat Hospitality

2010-12-26T08:28:00.000-06:00

Elation fluttered in Jacob Rosenberg's chest. He knew it was more than just the rollercoaster rush of the plane descending. When they touched the runway, the passengers clapped. Israelis were the only people in the world who applauded when their planes safely landed. Jacob clapped too. He felt he had come home.
After six months in an Ulpan learning Hebrew, he enlisted in the Israel Defense Force. He was surprised to find that he wasn't afraid to die. For the first time in his life, he had a cause worth dying for—Israel. What did scare him, however, was that if he died in battle, he wouldn't get a Jewish burial; the Orthodox Jews, who controlled burial in Israel, didn't consider him Jewish. This thought of not getting a Jewish burial haunted him, reminding him of those killed in the Holocaust without proper burial rites. The army had a 3 month program for soldiers to convert to Orthodox Judaism. Jacob signed up.
If at the end of 3 months the rabbis running the conversion program were satisfied with him, they would take him before a rabbinical court of three high-ranking rabbis. If the court approved him, they would prick his penis with a pin and take a ceremonial drop of blood. Then—the final step—they would dunk him in a mikvah, a Jewish ritual bath, which Orthodox Jews apparently thought magically washed away the Goy.
The conversion process consisted of classes for several hours a day. Rabbis droned on about permissible ways to make a cup of tea on Shabbat, or what blessing to say if you saw an albino. It seemed they were testing if Jacob could sit silently and nod his head at utter nonsense—a necessity for Orthodox Jews. There were also mandatory prayers 3 times a day. The rabbis walked around the synagogue, scrutinizing faces to make sure the prayers were heartfelt.
In addition to classes and prayers, soldiers in the conversion process were required to experience Shabbat hospitality with an observant family. One Friday evening about two months into his conversion process, Jacob was paired with the Levin family, who were also originally from America. After the evening prayer service, Jacob left the synagogue with Mr. Levin, a sweaty, pudgy man in his forties. The Jerusalem sky sparkled with stars. A fresh spring breeze blew. But Jacob didn't have the leisure to dawdle and absorb any of this; Mr. Levin was striding ahead, clutching his stomach and gritting his teeth. Jacob hurried to keep up.
“Another good reason to live near a synagogue,” Jacob said. “A shorter trip home to the bathroom.”
“That's not why,” Levin said. “It's because we're not allowed to drive on Shabbat.”
“I know that,” Jacob said. “I was joking.”
“Shabbat is no joke,” Levin said. “You shouldn't mix the sacred with the profane, especially on Shabbat. Being Jewish is about being separate. You can joke, but not in a way that mixes the sacred and the profane.”
That would rule out pretty much every good joke, Jacob thought, but he didn't say it out loud. He knew that after Shabbat the Levins would be filling out a form for the rabbis, judging Jacob's performance. He had to be on his best behavior.
The Levin apartment was small and cramped. It smelled of chicken and plastic. Two candles flickered from an end table. Every inch of the walls was covered with colorful prints of a heavenly Jerusalem and snapshots of children. The dinner table was covered with a white tablecloth, which was covered with a plastic sheet. Mr. Levin trotted past his wife and children and guests, around a corner and out of sight. Jacob felt to make sure the wind hadn't blown his kippah off. Then he said “Shabbat Shalom” to everyone and shook hands with the men. The Levins had two children, a boy and girl, about 10 and 12 respectively. The upstairs neighbors were there. They were a young frum couple—the wife was noticeably pregnant. Also, there were two women who looked about 37 years old. They were from a local ba'al tshuvah seminary. Mrs. Levin seemed to be the kind of woman the rabbis extolled in class: she was proof of her husband's high spiritual level. He obviously married her for her internal qualities—devotion to the Torah and the commandments. It certainly wasn't for any external reason like beauty. Jacob thanked her for inviting him, and tried to hand her a bottle of red wine he had brought. She just stared at it. He set it down on the table. She picked it up and examined the label, as if checking to see if it was kosher. Jacob realized she was probably checking to see if it was mevushal, boiled to prevent the contamination that occurred when a Gentile touched it.
“Thank you,” she said, and set the wine on the plastic-covered white tablecloth. “Now that we're all here, we can be seated.”
She tried to arrange her children and guests around the table on white plastic lawn chairs, making sure no people of the opposite sex sat next to each other unless they were married to each other or they were close family. It was a simple enough puzzle, but she couldn't figure out how to seat them. Jacob offered to help. Mrs. Levin smiled sympathetically at him.
“I think I know Shabbos tables better than you,” she said.
She solved the problem by unnecessarily bringing in two additional plastic chairs which no one would sit in. They went between unmarried men and women, further cramping the table. Everyone squeezed into the seats. The chair to Jacob's right was empty.
“So, Ya'akov,” Mrs. Levin said, using the Hebrew pronunciation of his name, “what got you interested in Judaism?”
Jacob felt blood pump to his ears. He had hoped to get through dinner without being outed as someone who was converting. He felt the other guests straighten up, on guard, no longer safe among Jews.
“I guess I started getting interested around the time I had my bar mitzvah,” Jacob said through a clenched smile.
“You didn't have a bar mitzvah,” Mrs. Levin said.
“I know,” Jacob said. “No one has a bar mitzvah. He becomes bar mitzvah. It's not about an expensive party.”
“You didn't have one or become one.”
“You can take my word for it. I was there. The Torah portion was va-yetzeh. I still remember some of it.”
“It doesn't matter,” Mrs. Levin said. “You can be the greatest Torah scholar in the world, but if your mother's not Jewish, you're not Jewish.”
Jacob felt anger boiling up his neck.
“You know, when I got to college, I thought maybe I'd join a fraternity,” he said, “and every time I went to visit a frat house during rush week, the first thing they said to me was, 'So, you're a Jew?'”
“Why didn't you just tell them you're not?” Mrs. Levin said.
“I did. I'm still a Jew to them. The Greek system couldn't care less about halacha.”
“Hellenism,” Mrs. Levin muttered without a trace of irony. “Halacha is the same everywhere. If your father is Jewish, it doesn't make you Jewish or half-Jewish. It only makes your father Jewish.”
“Shiksas,” one of the 37-year-old women said. “A silent Holocaust.”
“Jewish seed going to waste,” the pregnant woman said. “It could have brought more holy Jews into the world.”
“As if there's not too much Goyim already,” said Mrs. Levin.
Jacob felt himself about to lose his cool and smash his fist on the table. But before that could happen, Mr. Levin stuck his head out from the side of the hallway.
“Ya'akov,” he said, “could I see you for a minute, please?”
“Sure.”
Jacob squeezed away from the table. Why did he have to assert his Jewishness? He knew what their reaction would be. He should have made some meek pleasantries and changed the subject to this week's Torah portion.
He followed Levin into a back hallway, realizing that Levin probably wanted to use him as a Shabbos Goy, to perform some action that Jews were forbidden to do on Shabbat—probably turning on or off a light bulb. A fresh wave of anger crashed over Jacob, even stronger this time. On the army base, Jacob never kept Shabbat—he would smoke a cigarette or listen to the radio—but being asked to do it was offensive, an attack. And this was worse than at the table. He wasn't passively accepting someone else's opinion of his non-Jewishness, but actively declaring it himself by flipping the light switch. Refusing, though, would mean a bad report to the rabbis, and possibly never making it to the ritual bath.
Mr. Levin waddled into the bathroom, pants around his ankles, white button-down shirt over his buttocks, tzitzit strings dancing on his hairy knees. There was a horrible smell, as if he hadn't flushed. (At least Shabbat allowed Jews to flush.) Maybe he wanted Jacob to spray air freshener or light a candle, activities forbidden by Shabbat.
Levin waved for Jacob to come inside. Jacob stood at the door. Levin sat on the toiled and held up a roll of toilet paper.
“There's never enough time before Shabbat,” he said. “I forgot to tear the toilet paper. That was my job—to tear the toilet paper. This is terrible. I don't know what to do.”
He obviously wanted Jacob to tear the toilet paper into usable lengths, an act forbidden for Jews on Shabbat, but didn't want to ask him directly. A Jew could hint to the Shabbos Goy, but not state the request outright—at least that was the halachic opinion Mr. Levin seemed to go by.
Jacob burned with anger. He didn't want to do it, so he decided to pretend he couldn't take the hint.
“You didn't buy the pre-cut kind?” he asked.
“The pre-cut kind isn't quilted the way I like it,” Levin said.
“Don't you have anything else around that you can use? Kleenex?”
“Kleenex doesn't dissolve when it gets wet. It'll clog up the pipes. This is an old building, and Jerusalem pipes aren't very strong.”
Jacob nodded. “I guess you could tear it in an unusual way,” he said. “Tear it with your feet, or backhanded.”
“I see you've been paying attention in class,” Mr. Levin said. “But it's really better not to do it even in a backhanded way if another way can be found.”
“I think you'd be okay using the leniency,” Jacob said. “Especially since it's for something having to do with your dignity.”
“I see you're quite the Torah scholar, Ya'akov, but there's more to being Jewish than intellect. There's compassion for your fellow Jew. Here I am with an itchy, dirty bottom and there's nothing I can do about it. You can help me, though. How do we know we can trust you when you become a Jew if we can't trust you now?”
Jacob was so angry that he was having trouble breathing. Only one month to go, he told himself. Don't blow it now.
“Oh—you wanted me to tear the paper for you? Why didn't you say so?”
“It's better not to say it directly.”
Jacob took the thick toilet paper roll and began to tear off strips, which he set politely on the sink next to the toilet. Every rip of the toilet paper felt as if he was tearing something inside his chest.
“On weekdays I'm fairly frugal with toilet paper,” Levin said absently, to no one in particular, “but on Shabbat I like a nice thick wad for wiping. Everything should be double on Shabbat.”
Jacob ripped off longer strips of between ten and twelve squares each. Levin picked up a sheet, crumpled it, and wiped, making a purring sound in his throat. Then he looked down at the used toilet paper.
“I'm going to need a lot,” he said, dropping the paper between his legs into the toilet bowl. “In fact, it would be good if the whole roll were to be ripped, and another one as well to get us through the rest of Shabbat. We're having cholent tomorrow for second meal.”
When Jacob finished tearing the toilet paper, he went to the kitchen and turned on the faucet at the sink—he felt an urgent need to wash. The cold water poured over his hands, through his fingers. He wanted to use scalding water, but turning on the hot water tap would be breaking Shabbat.
It wasn't just his hands that felt dirty. It was his whole body. He knew he couldn't wash the feeling away. Even going in the mikvah, the Jewish ritual bath, at the end of his conversion wouldn't wash that dirty feeling away. It was the Jewish part of him that made him feel dirty.

Speeding to the Hospital

2010-11-29T05:32:00.000-06:00

The temperature outside was about ten degrees. With the wind-chill factor, it was below zero. But inside it was warm and snug. Liz was eight months pregnant. She lugged her swollen belly into the living room. Her husband, Tony, was reclining on the couch, swigging straight from a bottle of bottom-shelf whisky and smacking his lips.
“For God's sake, Tony,” Liz said. “It's only eleven in the morning.”
“It's Saturday,” Tony said. “I don't have to teach today. Might as well start drinking early.”
He lit a Marlboro, took a deep drag, and closed his eyes.
“Tony, please, not in the house.”
Tony coughed and spat phlegm into his ashtray. “Fuck we buy a house for if I can't smoke in it?”
“The baby's breathing the second-hand smoke.”
“He doesn't even breathe yet. He's swimming around in you like a fish. He's got gills or something.”
“He gets it through me. We share blood. Whatever I breathe, he breathes.”
Tony lifted a butt cheek and let out a long slow fart, like air released from a tire.
“Breathe that,” he said.
“You're disgusting,” Liz said.
She opened a window and a gust of snow blew in. Tony drew on his cigarette.
“Close the window,” he said. “It's fucking freezing.”
“Really?” she said. “I feel fine. Nice and toasty, like roasting chestnuts.” She tried not to shiver.
“You've got insulation,” Tony said. “I'm not a fatass like you.”
“I'm eight months pregnant.”
“You're pregnant in your ass? You got a pair of twins growing in your thighs?”
Angry blood pulsed to Liz's temples. “At least we know your dick's not pregnant, Mr. Three-Inch.”
“You're letting out the heat,” Tony said. Heat costs money—money I have to work for. I guess you don't care since you don't have to work.”
“I'm on maternity leave!”
“Is that what you call it? I call it being a lazy fatass.” He was slurring his speech now.
“I worked in that god damn mail room till my third trimester! And I made thirty cents more than you.”
Tony took a swig of whisky. “Shut your fucking mouth and shut the fucking window.”
“Fuck you!”
Tony flicked his cigarette. It landed in her hair, stuck in her curly tangles.
“Motherfucker!” she screamed, swatting through her hair.
Tony laughed, coughing fresh phlegm into his throat. He hocked it up to his mouth and spat in the ashtray. Liz knocked the cigarette to the ground, where it scorched a small hole on the white carpet. She stomped it out. Then she sucked on her burned fingers. They tasted like cigarettes.
“You son of a bitch.”
“Easy does it, Liz.”
He pulled out a fresh Marlboro and lit it—he had smoked the other one only halfway before flicking it.
Liz charged at Tony. He jumped back, almost dropping his whisky. Liz swatted the ashtray to the floor. A wet brown sludge with cigarette butts soaked the carpet.
“You better clean that up,” Tony said. “Or are you on maternity leave from cleaning the house too?”
“Fuck you!”
He flicked his new cigarette at her. It flew wide of the target, several inches to the left of her head.
“Fucker!” she screamed.
She grabbed for the whisky bottle. He slapped her across the face. She tried to scratch his eyes, but he grabbed her arms. They fell to the ground, wrestling and cursing at each other.
“I'll kill you!” Liz screamed. “I'll pretend to make up with you. Then when you're asleep, I'll chop off your dick!”
She bit him on the shoulder. He screamed and kneed her in the gut. She gasped. A sharp pain seized her belly. Hot wetness flooded her pants.
Tony smirked. “Did you piss yourself?”
“No.”
“I'd say you pissed yourself.”
“My water broke. That's amniotic fluid, not pee.”
“Oh, fuck!”
Tony jumped up. He tried to help Liz to her feet, but she slapped his hand away.
“Get your shoes,” Tony said. “I gotta get you to the hospital.”
“I'll take a cab!”
“You will not.”
“You're too drunk to drive.”
“It's only a five-minute drive.”
“It's at least fifteen.”
“Not the way I'll be driving.”
“I'm not going anywhere with you, wife beater!”
“You were hysterical. Hitting a hysterical woman doesn't count as wife beating.”
Her belly screamed in pain. She needed to get to the hospital and she didn't care how she got there. A minute later she buckled herself into the passenger seat of Tony's rusty old Ford pickup truck. Tony tried to squeeze his whisky bottle in the cup holder, but it didn't fit.
“A square peg in a round hole” he laughed.
He held the bottle between his legs and started the Ford. They crunched over salt and fresh snow. Tony pressed the accelerator. Liz gripped her seat.
“Slow down,” she said. “The roads are slippery.”
“If you really want to piss me off, keep telling me how to drive.”
She glanced at the speedometer. He was doing 50 in a 35.
“You're gonna get pulled over,” she said.
Tony laughed. “The cop'll just escort us to the hospital, lights flashing, siren blaring. I'm allowed to speed. I'm driving to the hospital with my wife who's in labor.”
“I'm not in labor. This is something else, something unnatural.”
“If you want the cops to escort us to the hospital, you better tell 'em you're in labor.”
As Tony brought the whisky bottle to his mouth, the Ford hit a pothole. A loud crack came from Tony's mouth.
“Motherfucker!!!” He gripped the bottle tightly to stop it from sloshing his legs. “Why don't they fix this god damn road?! Oh for fuck's sake—I swallowed the fucking tooth!!!”
He clenched his teeth in a smile and looked in the rear-view mirror at his reflection. There was a jagged black gap where half a front tooth was missing.
“Stop primping,” Liz said. “Keep you eyes on the road.”
“Don't tell me how to drive!”
Tony looked back at the road and rubbed his throat.
“I can feel it cutting up my esophagus.”
“That's the whisky burning you.”
“It's not the whisky!”
They were about 50 yards from an intersection and the light turned yellow. Tony pressed the accelerator. The tires squealed through the salty slush. The light turned red, and a black car pulled out in front of them from the cross-traffic.
“Shit!”
Tony slammed on the brakes. The tires screeched. The Ford pickup stopped right on the line before the intersection.
“I told you,” Tony said. “No matter how shit-faced I get, I still know how to drive better than anybody.” He took a swig of whisky and smacked his lips.
Liz saw that the black car was a hearse. Behind it, a funeral procession followed, cars as far as Liz could see.
“”That guy must have had a lot of friends,” Tony said. “It didn't help him any, though.”
He lit a cigarette and pounded on the horn.
“Dead motherfuckers think they own the streets,” he said. “I'm going through.”
He pressed his hand down and held it there, blaring the horn. Then he inched the truck into the intersection. A blue Chevy stopped just before Tony hit it. Tony gave the driver a mocking salute.
Liz unbuckled her seatbelt and opened the door. An icy gust blew in.
“Close the door!” Tony screamed. “It's fucking freezing!”
She stepped out of the car. The car was rolling, and she fell hard as her foot slipped on the icy road. She pulled herself up and staggered toward the funeral procession. The amniotic fluid soaking her pants was freezing, clinging icily to her. There was a numb burning on her flesh. She'd get frostbite on her thighs and buttocks, which would then have to be amputated. That ought to make Tony happy—no more fat thighs and butt.
“Get back in the fucking car!” Tony screamed. He was getting out now and slipping after her.
Liz waved her arms at the funeral cars. A gray Acura stopped. A man and woman were in the front seat, a boy and girl in back. The man, who was driving, rolled down his window just a crack. He had a blond, bristly mustache and crows' feet at the corners of his eyes.
“Please—I need a ride to the hospital,” Liz said. “I'm pregnant and my water broke.”
The man glanced over Liz's shoulder. Tony was crunching through the salty snow, approaching her from behind.
“Sorry,” the man said. “I can't pick up hitchhikers.”
His window rolled up.
“Motherfucker!” Liz screamed. She pounded on the back hood as the car drove away. “I'm gonna get frostbite on my twat!”
Tony grabbed her hair and started yanking her back to the Ford. She tried to bolt away. They both fell hard on the ground. Tony slapped her head back and forth. The numb skin on her thighs and buttocks was burning fiercely now. She knew it was the onset of frostbite. The funeral procession continued to pass by. No one in the cars looked directly at Liz. Tony was her only ride.
She got back in the passenger seat and buckled her seatbelt. Tears poured from her eyes, but she tried to stay silent. She didn't want to give him the satisfaction of hearing her cry.
“Bet now you're glad for the heat, aren't you,” Tony said.
He lit a cigarette and they started to drive. Liz stared out the window.
Suddenly, there were flashing lights behind them.
“Fuck,” Tony said.
“Just tell them you're driving a woman in labor to the hospital,” Liz said coldly.
Tony smiled at her, one of his front teeth chipped and jagged. He took a deep swallow of whisky. Then he jammed his foot on the accelerator.
The police siren started to wail. Tony took sharp turns, nearly flipping the car over. He ignored Liz's pleas to pull over. He made a sharp turn. The car skidded off the road and collided headfirst with a concrete barrier. The front hood collapsed like an aluminum can that someone stepped on. Tony, not wearing a seatbelt, crashed through the windshield. Liz was caught by her seatbelt and slammed back in her seat, squeezing her ribs until they snapped. Her head lolled on her neck. Cold wind gusted in the jagged hole her husband had left in the windshield. Her body moaned with pain. She hoped it was only whiplash.
Her door creaked open. A large policeman was there. He cut off her seatbelt with a knife and pulled her out onto the sidewalk. She caught a glimpse of Tony's remains. He had slid across the coarse pavement, leaving a trail of ground flesh. So much meat had been torn off that his bones were exposed. The policeman told Liz to hold on and he felt her pulse. There were more sirens and flashing lights. Before they loaded her into the ambulance, she gave birth right there on the icy sidewalk.

The Korean Physical

2010-11-07T01:36:00.001-05:00

Before being issued a work visa, foreigners must present a criminal background check, because Koreans don't want pedophiles teaching English to their children. When foreigners arrive in Korea, before being issued a certificate of alien registration, they must present themselves at a local hospital for a thorough physical examination, because Koreans don't want sick people getting in on their country's state health coverage.
At Halla Hospital's diagnostic clinic, all the other patients were Korean. I was the only foreigner, which only worsened the shakiness I always get from hospitals. The nurse, a stern-looking woman with box-shaped hair, jabbed a needle in my vein and filled vial after vial with blood. She asked if I had had anything to eat or drink that morning.
“Just coffee,” I said.
She glared at me as if I had slapped her.
“And a pastry,” I added.
“What?”
“A bun.”
“You're not supposed to eat before the test.”
Great. Now I would test positive for Hepatitis B, AIDS, and cocaine. The Korean authorities would deport me from Jeju Island.
After taking about a liter of my blood, the nurse pulled out the needle. She pressed an alcohol-scented swab to the puncture wound and told me to hold it there for five minutes. I expected her to tape on gauze or at least give me a Band-aid, but all I got to stop the bleeding was the wet swab.
“Fill it up,” she said, handing me a small plastic cup decorated with cute Asian cartoon characters.
At the urinal, I held the cup with my right hand. My left bicep flexed the swab in place, and I couldn't lower the left hand low enough to be of any use. I needed a third hand. A minute had passed since the nurse gave me the swab; I figured the blood had enough time to coagulate, so I pulled the swab away. Instantly, a bead of blood formed. I pressed the swab back in place. She wasn't kidding about the five minutes. How would I would pee in the cup using only one hand? It seemed impossible. I would have to wait the whole five minutes. Either that or ask someone to lend a hand.
Suddenly the door swung open and a gruff-looking Korean man swaggered in, one flexed bulging arm pinning a swab in place. The thick fingers at the end of his other arm held a cartoon-character-covered cup. Amazingly, he managed to fill the cup without use of the swab-holding arm at all. With his free hand, he unzipped his fly, rested his member on the lip of the cup, and started to pee, slowly pulling the cup away while keeping his aim true, like an expert busboy pouring a pitcher of water. I was impressed, but told myself not to feel jealous. He was Korean, so he probably had a lifetime of experience.
The door swung open, and a Korean boy, about 8 or 9 years old, came skipping into the bathroom, pressing a swab to his arm and grinning at the cartoon characters on his cup. The man at the urinal shouted brusquely to the boy in rapid Korean. I think he said, “Watch out—there's a foreigner lurking at the urinals!”

The Korean Physical

2010-11-07T01:36:00.000-05:00

The Graveyard Night Watchman

2010-10-24T23:59:00.000-05:00

As the sun rose over Shady Acres Cemetery, elderly women bringing flowers to their deceased husbands' graves found the cemetery lawn strewn with cigarette butts, empty beer cans, and used condoms. Police suspected local teenagers, who, having nowhere else to let off steam, somehow slipped past the barbed-wire fence surrounding the graveyard. But there wasn't much the police could do. They simply didn't have the manpower to guard Shady Acres, which was over 100 acres and over 10,000 grave sites. Senior citizens threatened to find somewhere else to be buried, so the cemetery management took action. They considered a guard dog, but the senior citizens balked. What dogs left on grass could be worse than what teenagers left. So the management decided to hire a night watchman, whose job would be to walk around all night, shining a flashlight and making noise to scare away potential trespassers.
One applicant was Horace Templeton. He was ex-military, which meant he knew how to secure a perimeter, so he was hired.
Horace liked walking through the graveyard in the middle of the night. The beech tree branches looked like black spiders against the dull red sky. The wind seemed to whisper his name. Every time a shadow in the moonlight twitched, his heart pounded. He loved the terror. He'd get heart palpitations and break out in sweats no matter where he was, whether there was something to be scared of or not. At least in the graveyard in the middle of the night he had ghosts and zombies to be terrified of, so he felt sane. Plus, as night watchman at Shady Acres Cemetery he didn't have to deal with people. Not living people anyway. He didn't get along with people. He had commanded a tank platoon in Iraq, but when he returned home to Illinois, he lost every job almost as soon as he got it. When people were dumb-asses, Horace didn't mind telling them so. He sold cars but was fired for yelling at the customers. He worked construction but told off the foreman the first day on the job. Horace refused to let himself be treated like shit.
The night watchman job, too, was far from perfect. They paid him only eleven dollars an hour and no health insurance. And there was zero prestige; he knew it was a job that a dog could do just as well. Horace considered taking a shit on the lawn to teach his employers a lesson about treating people right. He decided against it, though, partly because he had no toilet paper.
After working two weeks at the cemetery, Horace was sick of just walking around in the darkness, feeling useless and letting his racing thoughts eat him alive. Tonight, he was going to be useful, and have some fun as well. He turned off the flashlight. He hoped to lure in a trespasser.
The sky was cloudless but the crescent moon didn't give much light. Horace couldn't see his feet. The curved white marble tombstones lit his way. In the near pitch black, his heart pounded especially hard, and he loved it. Every cracking twig was a zombie, every whispering breeze a ghost.
After about half an hour walking with the flashlight off, Horace heard noises—thumping noises. He walked towards the sound. Along with the thumping, there was grunting and heavy breathing. Probably teenagers fucking in the grass. It was an expensive, soft breed of grass that wouldn't scratch bare-assed kids rolling around. Angry blood rushed to Horace's temples. When he was a teenager he suffered from grotesque pimple breakouts and never got laid, never even got a date. Now, acne scars pitted his face. He only got laid once in his life, and that was a one-armed hooker in Fallujah.
He approached the grunting sounds, stepping lightly in order to surprise the punk kids. Then, Horace realized the thumping sound wasn't fucking. It was a shovel jamming into dirt, then dirt clumping to a pile. In the faint moonlight, Horace made out a single person digging, much smaller than he was. The wheezing and grunting sounded female. Horace would have rather caught her with her clothes off, but catching a grave robber was cool too.
Horace turned on the flashlight and charged at her.
“Caught you!” he shouted.
She screamed and dropped the shovel.
“Don't shoot!” she screamed.
Horace shined the flashlight in her face. She was young, not more than eighteen or nineteen. Her wide blue eyes brimmed with fear. She wiped dark, stringy hair from her face and shielded here eyes from the flashlight beam. Her boots were caked with mud. Her gray sweatpants and sweatshirt were drenched with sweat, revealing round breasts and succulent hips. Horace felt himself getting an erection.
“What the hell are you doing?” Horace said.
“”I'm digging a hole,” the girl said, grabbing her knees and wheezing. She spoke well. She was probably rich.
“And why are you digging a hole?”
“I work here. I'm the gravedigger.”
“And you dig in the middle of the night?”
“It's too hot during the day.”
“Well, I work here too. I'm the night watchman. And I never saw you before.”
“I'm new. I just started.”
She picked up the shovel and shot him a nervous smile. Horace was pretty sure she was lying. Why would the cemetery hire a woman, not a man? And why would she be using that old shovel with the rusty blade and splintery handle?
“Don't they have machines now that can dig graves?” he asked.
“Don't they have machines that can be night watchmen?” she asked him. “Security systems, alarms, something like that?”
Angry blood pulsed to Horace's temples. He knew his job didn't require an actual person, but he hated to have it pointed out. He shined the flashlight down at the hole, a grave-sized rectangle about a foot deep. On one end was a white, round-topped gravestone. Bouquets of blue and yellow flowers rested against it. On the tombstone was carved a small cross. Underneath the cross it said Morris Jackson, born January 30, 1935, died July 12, 2010. He died about a week ago. The blue and yellow petals of the flowers were starting to wilt and fall. Horace was pretty sure the man had already been buried. He shined the flashlight back at the girl's face.
“I never heard of a woman necrophiliac before,” he said.
She wrinkled her nose. “That's disgusting,” she said. “Even if I wanted to, how could I? He's dead.”
“Rigor mortis,” Horace said. “There's a reason they're called stiffs.”
“Look,” the girl said, straightening her back, “the truth is that I work for the police. We need to check this man's DNA, so I'm digging him up. It's for evidence reasons.”
“You look a little young for a policewoman.”
“I'm a genius—I've always been a child prodigy.”
“You're a prodigy and they have you digging ditches?”
“Everyone has to start at the bottom.”
“Okay,” Horace said. “That's easy to check.” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and flipped it open. “Let's just give the police a call and see what they say—see if they corroborate your story.”
“Wait! Stop!”
His thumb hovered over the button.
“I'll tell you the truth,” she said, voice cracking, eyes filling with tears. “I have an eating disorder.”
Horace grit his teeth as bile climbed up his throat.
“I don't believe in eating disorders,” he said. “Don't blame your personal weaknesses on imaginary diseases.”
She stared down at the shovel. Horace squinted at her. She didn't look like she had an eating disorder. She wasn't too skinny or too fat. She was just right.
“What eating disorder do you have anyway?”
“Cannibalism.”
Horace's heart pounded, and not in a pleasant way. He forced himself to hold the flashlight steady, though his hand wanted to shake. He tried to pretend he thought she was joking, though he was pretty sure she wasn't.
“That guy's been in the ground for at least a week,” he said. “Those flowers are wilted. His body's probably half rotten, crawling with maggot.”
“I like my meat a little gamy,” the girl said. Her face was expressionless—stoic.
The flashlight beam shivered. The girl lifted up the shovel. Its rusty tapered head glinted in the faint moonlight. Horace tried to finish dialing 9-1-1, but the phone tumbled from his trembling fingers and landed in the grass. He told himself to run, but his legs didn't obey; they turned to jelly.
“Die!” the girl screamed.
She swung the shovel at his head. He blocked with the flashlight, which stopped the shovel blade from taking off his head but flew from his hands, spinning and flickering light. It crashed into a gravestone and the light extinguished. Before his eyes could adjust to the moonlight, the flat edge of the shovel clanged into his head. His legs gave a rusty tingle and collapsed. He fell on his back, the wind knocked out of him. The stars were blurry and wobbly. The shovel's tapered head pressed down on his abdomen, to the left of his naval. The girl set a mud-encrusted boot onto the shovel blade's shoulder.
“Suck my dick,” she said.
She lifted her other leg off the ground, bringing down her full body weight on the shovel—all 120 pounds or so. It was enough to do serious damage. The shovel blade cut through his shirt. Cold metal pierced his abdomen, tearing open his insides. Wetness spilled onto the grass, soaking his back. Smells of vomit and feces filled the air. Horace screamed in agony.
“Fucking whore!”
He tried to sit up, but was pinned down.
“Cocksucker!” she screamed. “You stink like shit!”
She twisted the shovel. Horace nearly passed out from pain. He punched her ankle and she slipped off the shovel. He grabbed her sweatshirt, pulled her forward, and punched her in the chest. She flew back, emitting a banshee scream and clumping to the ground.
Horace yanked the shovel from his gut and staggered to his feet. The girl tried to crawl away.
“You're gonna die, you slutty little whore!” Horace roared.
He raised the shovel high above his head and charged. He was about to swing it down at her, but he tripped on something and crashed to the grass. The shovel bounced out of his hand. He tried to stand, but his feet were snarled. He looked down at them. His ankles were tangled in ropey cords that slithered from his pierced abdomen. The cords were his intestines. He screamed.
The girl was holding the shovel again.
“I'll give you one thing,” she said, “you got guts.” She laughed at her own joke.
Horace pedaled his feet, trying to kick off his intestines. He kicked off his shoes in the process. The girl lifted the shovel high and approached him. Horace slipped his legs out of the intestines and tried to scurry away. The girl hooked the shovel blade through a loop of Horace's intestines and gave it a twist. Then she held the shovel high above her head and ran, pulling an intestinal cord after her.
“Seeya later!” she cackled.
Horace's intestines spilled out like thread from a spool. He grabbed hold but they were too slippery. They slid like water through his fingers. The tapered shovel head glinted in the moonlight, ten yards away and getting farther. Horace ran after her.
“Stop!” he screamed.
But of course she didn't.
Horace dodged headstones and pursued her, but she was faster than him and kept increasing the distance. Soon he would run out of intestine. In Iraq he saw plenty of men get most of their guts blown out and still live to tell about it, as long as they didn't lose all their intestines. Horace would have to sacrifice some of his intestines to save his life. He gripped the slippery cords in his hands and tried to tear them. They wouldn't tear. The cords slid between his fingers no matter which way he twisted them.
Suddenly Horace's knee smashed into a headstone. He gasped in pain and tumbled to the ground. The glinting shovel head disappeared in the darkness, and Horace's guts kept spooling out. He brought the slippery intestine to his mouth and sank his teeth in. Vile liquid squirted into his mouth. The taste was somewhere between puke and shit, which indeed it was, since it was midway between stomach and bowels. Horace wanted to faint or throw up, but forced himself to keep gnawing.
The intestinal cord snapped loose. It went slack and stopped spinning out of him. He started retching. Around him, the white tombstones were spinning. He collapsed all the way down, his face pressing into the soft cool grass. He wanted to sleep, but the girl was still there with the shovel. Get up, he told himself. His body wouldn't obey.
“I'm impressed,” the girl said, now standing right above him. “You're clever. I'll give you this—you've got brains.”
She pressed the shovel's tip against his right temple. He tried to raise his head, but the shovel pinned his left cheek to the grass. Horace grabbed the splintery handle and pushed, but it did no good. The girl pressed a muddy boot down on the shovel's shoulder. The shovel's cutting edge sliced Horace's flesh. Blood poured into his eye. Excruciating pressure squeezed his skull, which felt about to pop.
“Get off!” he screamed.
“Die!” she screamed.
She stepped on the shovel with her other boot as well, now bringing down her full body weight. The pressure increased on Horace's skull. He couldn't squirm away or lift her off him. He'd have to go the other way, down into the dirt. He pressed his forehead into the grass and lifted his chin, so the shovel pressed down on his skull at an angle.
The shovel slid down his skull, scraping under his scalp from the right temple to the crown of the head. There was a screech like nails on a chalkboard. The shovel jammed into the earth, pinning down his scalp. The girl fell forward off the shovel and gasped. Strands of her sweaty hair slapped Horace's face. He punched her in the jaw, and she crashed back against a tombstone.
He pulled the shovel loose. There was the smell of bone powder, like a dentist's drill. He pressed his hand to his head. The exposed skull plate felt smooth as ivory. Keeping a tight grip on the shovel, he staggered to his feet. His heart was pumping hard—the ecstatic elation of battle when adrenaline suffused every pore. Blood trickled into his eyes. He blinked it away and smiled down at the girl. The moonlight showed her terrified face, blue eyes bulging from their sockets. Horace shook his head like a wet dog, sending blood droplets spattering. Then he lifted the shovel blade up toward the moon.
“Stop!” the girl begged. “Don't do that!”
“You're in the right place to die!” Horace said. “I'll dig you a hole and roll you in!”
He swung down the shovel at her face. She blocked with her hands. The shovel chopped off a few fingers and crushed her face in. She screamed but all that came out was a warbling sound, the sound or gargling blood. Horace chopped with the shovel again and again until nothing remained of her head but a dark soup of blood and brain matter.
He dropped the shovel and staggered toward the street. He needed an ambulance. He pressed one hand on his gut to hold in his intestine, dragging a long cord of it behind him. His other hand held the loose flap of flesh to his skull. No matter how tightly he held it, blood continued to flow.
He staggered past tombstones and crouching shadows. The wind whispered his name. An agonizing terror seized him. He was filled with rage because his heart had to suffer such shocks for only eleven dollars an hour and no health insurance. He decided to quit. Tonight would be his last graveyard shift at the graveyard.
He wanted to lie down and gather his strength, but he knew if he did he would never get up. Keep going, he told himself. His legs gave out under him and he collapsed. The grass felt soft under his face. He would just rest for a minute, he decided. He needed to gather up his strength. Then he would get to the street and find an ambulance. He closed his eyes.
A few hours later, the sun rose and elderly women with bouquets entered the cemetery. They screamed and dropped their flowers. Lying on the lawn were two bloody, mutilated corpses.

Conservation of Momentum

2010-10-18T23:58:00.002-05:00

Why They Hate Us

2010-10-18T00:40:00.001-05:00

In the children's picture alphabet book, A is for Allah, page one has no picture of an alligator eating an apple. It has no picture at all, since A is for Allah and drawing Allah is forbidden. You might think the blank page encourages children to use their imaginations, but it doesn't. Imagining what Allah looks like is forbidden. He is to be obeyed, not thought about.

Page two has no balls bouncing or bees buzzing. B is for Bismillah, the words that begin the Koran. Bismallah means: “In the name of Allah.” There is no picture, only a list of ninety-nine names for Allah, such as “The Magnificent” and “The Irresistable.” None of these names have a picture, and all of them must be memorized before proceeding to C.

Excretion Geometry

2010-09-26T22:47:00.002-05:00

My old friend Rachel and I entered Crate & Barrel not to buy anything but to have a laugh by pretending we were a yuppie philistine couple, the sort who decorated their home with matching furniture and owned different glassware for each type of liquor. In a scarlet-themed sample bedroom set, my eyes darted straight to the bookshelf. One book's spine said Excretion Geometry. I knew nothing of this mathematical topic, not even that it existed. The first chapter probably explained the history of the subject, from Archimedes molding dodecahedrons out of his own feces, all the way to Albert Einstein suggesting that if someone took a massive enough shit it could literally bend space and time. I opened the book and saw it was actually volume two of an encyclopedia, explaining concepts alphabetically from excretion to geometry. Too bad. As usual, reality wasn't as cool as what I'd imagined.

The Classics

2010-08-21T19:51:00.003-05:00

I wanted to be intellectual and sophisticated in order to impress women, so I bought a 12 volume set of the classics of western civilization. The thick, leather-bound books rested on my living room bookshelf and bore weighty names like Sophocles, Herodotus, and Aristotle. I pulled down volume one, Homer, sank into my couch, and started to read the Iliad. Halfway through the first chapter, I stopped. I hasn't understood a word. It might as well have been in the original Greek. And now I had a splitting headache. I picked up the remote control and flipped on the TV to watch a House rerun. I wouldn't be reading the classics this lifetime.
The books were still in mint condition, so the bookstore would probably let me return them. But then I had an idea. I could keep the books on my shelf and tell women that I had read them. They wouldn't know I was lying.
No. That wouldn't work. The leather spines of the books were still gleaming. There wasn't a single crease in them. They had obviously never been opened.
Another idea popped into my head. I could turn the pages without reading the words. Then the books would look as if they'd been read. After making sure my apartment door was locked, I picked up Homer, and, while continuing to watch House, I turned the pages one at a time. I kept getting paper cuts, though, since I wasn't looking at the book. At the commercial break, I dug out my winter coat from the closet. My wool mittens were in the coat pocket, and I pulled them onto my hands. Now as I turned the pages my hands sweat profusely, but I didn't get any paper cuts.
Over the next few days, sitting in front of the TV and wearing wool mittens, I turned every page of the 12 thick volumes. The spines now had creases in all the right places, but something else didn't look right. The color of the leather was wrong. So was the texture. The leather looked too fresh. When someone spent hours reading a leather-bound book, his natural hand oils soaked into the leather, marinating it and giving it a dark, broken-in look. But I had worn wool mittens. My bare hands didn't touch the book, so the leather looked raw.
A wave of frustration hit me as I thought I would have to spend several days stroking the books bare-handed in order to break them in, but then I remembered some advice my father gave me when I was a child. He bought me a new baseball mitt and told me to cover it with shaving cream and let it soak in for a few days. This would soften the leather, making it flexible and looking like I had used it for years. I did this, and it worked just as he said it would. Maybe it would work for leather-bound books as well.
I laid the books on tables and chairs around my apartment, open pages facing down, covers facing up. With my can of shaving cream, I lathered white foam onto the leather covers, spreading with my finger, like frosting a cake.
After the first couple books, the shaving cream can sputtered and stopped. Empty. It was the middle of the night and everything was closed except for the 24-hour convenience store on the corner, so I went there.
The clerk's name tag said Patel. He had a thick accent and reminded me of Apu from the Simpsons. I brought a new can of shaving cream up to the counter, paid for it, and almost burst out laughing when Patel said, “Thank you, come again.”
In my apartment, I continued to frost the leather-bound classics. When there were only a couple books left, the shaving cream again sputtered and stopped. I returned to the convenience store.
This time, when I set a fresh can of shaving cream on the counter, the clerk, Patel, squinted at me suspiciously with his thick eyebrows.
“You just bought shaving cream,” he said. “It was not more than twenty minutes ago.”
I considered telling him to mind his own business, but he was new to America and probably didn't realize it was rude to comment on a customer's purchase.
“I didn't finish shaving,” I said. “I need more.”
Patel squinted at my chin, which I realized was covered with stubble.
“Didn't finish?” Patel said. “You didn't even start.”
I considered telling him the truth, that I was trying to fake-read the classics, but that was too humiliating to admit. I racked my brain for an explanation of what I had used the shaving cream for.
“I'm shaving my dog,” I said.
Patel frowned.
“In the middle of the night?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said. “When else would I shave him?”
Patel's eyebrows narrowed and he squinted at my shirt.
“If you are shaving your dog, why is there no dog hair on your clothes?”
“It's a hairless breed. He likes it when I cover him with shaving cream and run the razor over him.”
“Why can't you pet your dog like a normal person?”
“This is America. If I want to shave my hairless dog in the middle of the night, I can, and you have a constitutional obligation to sell me that shaving cream.”
Patel sighed and rang up the shaving cream.
“America,” he muttered.
Back upstairs in my apartment, I finished lathering up the books. Then I left them alone to let the shaving cream do its work.
A couple days later, I wiped the shaving cream off with a rag. The leather looked dark and worn, as if well-marinated by hand sweat. I felt a grin spread on my face. Everything was set for me to impress women with my set of the classics.
Cathy was an attractive secretary in the marketing department. She always stank of cigarettes, but I could overlook that. If she didn't have the willpower to resist cigarettes, she'd be helpless against my leather-bound classics. Now that the books were broken-in, I was finally able to ask her out.
We went out to dinner. Afterwards, I asked her if she'd like to come up to my apartment for a drink. She said yes.
As soon as we stepped inside, Cathy's eyes spotted my set of classics. Her mouth opened wide and round, as if blowing smoke rings.
“What are those?” she gasped.
“Oh, those?” I said casually. “Those are the classics of western civilization.”
She approached the bookshelf and pulled down the volume on Euclid.
“You bought them used?” she asked.
“No. I bought them new.”
“They look used.”
“Because I used them,” I said. “By the way, that's real leather.”
“I love the smell of leather,” Cathy said.
She lifted the book to her nose and sniffed, as if Euclid was a fine wine. Then she furrowed her brow and frowned.
“It smells like shaving cream,” she said.
My heart pounded and I thought I was caught. But then I had an idea.
“Before they tan the hide for the leather, they have to shave the hair off the cow,” I said. “Otherwise, the book cover would have a beard. And they need to use shaving cream so the cow doesn't get razor burn. That's why you smell shaving cream.”
Cathy stared blankly at the book in her hand.
“A cow?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said.
Her jaw dropped and her eyes burned with horror.
“Oh my God!” she said. “You mean this is made from a poor, defenseless animal?”
Her sudden concern for animals confused me.
“I just bought you a steak dinner,” I said.
“I see how it is,” she said. “You think you'll buy me a fancy dinner and show me your fancy books, and I'll be so impressed that I'll just throw myself at you?!”
“No,” I said. “I mean steak comes from cows.”
She scoffed. “Steak from cows? How gullible do you think I am?”
She pulled a cigarette lighter from her purse.
“Please don't smoke in here,” I said. “You can use the balcony.”
She lit the book on fire. Euclid's pages were surprisingly flammable and went up in a blaze. It looked like an Olympic torch in her hand. Cathy jammed the burning book into its spot on the shelf, and the flames engulfed the other books.
“My books!”
I grabbed at them, but they were too hot to touch. I wished I owned a fire extinguisher. I never thought that a fire could happen to me, so I didn't even own a smoke detector. I stared into the fire and didn't know what to do. The burning paper hissed. The leather covers smoldered. Thick smoke cascaded from the bookshelf. Cathy sniffed the air.
“It smells like beef,” she said.
“I told you—steak comes from cows!”
Cathy turned and stormed to the door.
“You think you're so smart,” she said. “Well, let me tell you something—no one likes someone who's so full of himself and reads the classics.”
She slammed the door as she left.
I grabbed the side of the bookshelf and pushed the whole thing over. The flaming classics crashed to the carpet. I stomped on the fire, kicking up a cloud of ash. Soon, the last embers were extinguished, and all that remained of my desire to be intellectual and sophisticated was gray ash, blackened leather, and charred paper. Now I had no way to impress women.

The Holocaust Survivor

2010-08-11T23:39:00.000-05:00

When I was ten years old, in fifth grade, a Holocaust survivor spoke to our class. Mr. Schwartz was old. His shriveled skin looked dry as a mummy's. His accent sounded like Dracula. He told us he was from Transylvania, and I almost burst out laughing. His face twitched and his fists ground together. In a quivering, angry voice, he told us about his childhood in Romania. They had no television or video games back then, so they had to entertain each other by singing songs or playing practical jokes.
I sat in the back row of the class, just a few feet from the window. I already learned about the Holocaust at temple. So I stared out the window. Our classroom was on the third floor, and I had a good view of the entire playground. Second graders swung from the playground equipment, ran around in the snow, and threw snowballs at each other. I wished I was out there, rather than stuck inside, listening to a boring Holocaust lecture.
The other boys and girls in my class leaned forward with respectful attention. Most of them weren't Jewish, so they never had to learn about the Holocaust before.
Mr. Schwartz rambled on about life in rural Transylvania. Miss Hanson, our teacher, asked him to please get to the part where the Nazis arrived. He did so.
When he was about our age, the Nazis came and passed anti-Semitic laws. Soon, all the Jews, including Mr. Schwartz and his family, were shipped off in cattle cars. When the Jews arrived at Auschwitz, they were all lined up in front of the camp. Mr. Schwartz's parents and siblings were too weak to work, so they were sent to the left. Mr. Schwartz was sent to the right and given a tattoo.
He rolled up his shirt sleeve to show us, and pulled tight the sagging flesh on his forearm. The blue numbers were written in straight lines, like on a calculator.
Suddenly, a horrible stench hit me. Somebody farted. It was a bad one—a silent-but-deadly. I recognized the swampy, moldy smell as belonging to Shawn, the fat kid who sat next to me in the back row. I covered my mouth and squeezed my nostrils shut. The other kids in the back of the classroom covered their noses too. A small grin spread on Shawn's lips.
The window needed to be opened. It was freezing outside and opening the window would let the heat out, but it would let the fart out too. But to open the window, I would have to ask for permission, and now was a bad time to interrupt Mr. Schwartz. The other kids were respectfully silent. Miss Hanson stood at the side of her desk with her arms crossed. Mr. Schwartz spoke in a hushed whisper. He was describing what happened to those sent to the left—to his parents, brother, and sister.
“They died from the gas,” Mr. Schwartz said.
An image popped into my head of every kid in our class sprawled on the classroom floor, limbs strewn haphazardly, dead from Shawn's fart. I started to laugh. I couldn't help myself.
I was horrified at myself for laughing at such a serious moment. I tried to stop, but my body wouldn't cooperate. Spasms of laughter shook my whole body. Mr. Schwartz stopped speaking. The other kids, Miss Hanson, and Mr. Schwartz stared at me, eyes wide and mouths gaping. I had never been sent to the principal's office before, but I probably would be now. They would call my parents. I tried to seal my mouth shut, but laughter sputtered over my hands and spilled through my fingers.
Mr. Schwartz slammed his fist on Miss Hanson's desk, rattling her mug of pencils.
“Laugh at the Holocaust?!” he screamed. “I'll teach you to laugh!”
He snatched up a yardstick from the desk, and, wielding it like a club, hobbled towards me.
“Stop!” Miss Hanson yelled. “We can't hit the pupils!”
“That's the problem with America,” Mr. Schwartz said. “If you don't show you are in charge, they laugh at you!”
Then suddenly he stopped walking. His face contorted and he gagged. He was within range of Shawn's fart. Mr. Schwartz lifted his hand to cover his nose, and the yardstick smacked him on the forehead. This made me laugh even harder. Mr. Schwartz yelped and dropped the yardstick, which clattered to the ground. I was laughing so hard I almost fell out of my chair. Mr. Schwartz glared at me. He pressed his nostrils shut with his fingers to guard against the smell, so when he spoke it was in a nasally quack.
“You think this is funny?” he quacked furiously. “I am speaking of the Holocaust and you are farting?”
“No, no,” I said, choking through laughter. “It wasn't me.”
“Well, who was it?”
I didn't want to be a tattle-tale. Fortunately, I didn't need to be. The other kids recognized Shawn's swampy brand, and their eyes drifted towards him. Mr. Schwartz's glare also shifted to Shawn.
“See a doctor,” Mr. Schwartz quacked. “No healthy person can make such a smell.”
Then he turned back to me. Laughs kept popping out of me like hiccups.
“You are not so innocent of the fart,” he quacked. “Why didn't you open a window?”
“I couldn't interrupt,” I said. “You were talking about the Holocaust. And you're like a teacher, only more so, because you're so old.”
“It doesn't matter. Didn't you learn anything from what I said? Don't you know what is the meaning of the Holocaust?”
I knew the answer to this question. I had heard it often enough at temple. The answer was about not blindly following authority. In this case, the meaning of the Holocaust was that I should open the window even if I didn't have permission.
I forced my giggles to settle. If I answered the question, perhaps it would redeem me for laughing.
“I know the answer,” I said.
“Well, let's have it,” Mr. Schwartz quacked.
Unfortunately, when I tried to answer, an unwanted thought flew into my head. The meaning of the Holocaust was that I shouldn't get a tattoo. Sure, it would look cool now, but when I was an old man like Mr. Schwartz, it would wrinkle up—the mermaid would become a sea witch. This thought started me laughing again. Mr. Schwartz's bushy eyebrows narrowed.
I tried again to stop laughing, but another uninvited thought flew into my head, like fingers tickling my ribcage. The meaning of the Holocaust was that I shouldn't stick my arm out of a moving train. What if another train was coming in the opposite direction on the other tracks? Laughter sputtered out.
Mr. Schwartz lowered his fingers from his nose, although the fart stench was still strong. His nostrils flared like an angry bull's. I tried to speak, but I was choking from laughter. I got the idea into my head that I should show him I understood the meaning of the Holocaust by simply getting up and opening the window without asking for permission. So that was what I did.
I stood up and stepped towards the window. Mr. Schwartz grabbed me by the collar. His grip was strong.
“Where do you think you're going?” he said.
He slapped me hard across the face. My face stung. Several of the girls in class shrieked.
“Mr. Schwartz, stop at once!” Miss Hanson commanded.
Mr. Schwartz shook me and my head bobbled around.
“I'm talking,” Mr. Schwartz said. His breath stank of garlic. “Don't you walk away.”
“I'm just opening the window,” I said, my voice cracking. “Because of the fart. I wanted fresh air.”
“So, it's fresh air you want?!” he shouted. “I'll give you fresh air!”
He dragged me by the collar to the window. I tried to struggle away, but he was too strong. My body felt numb from terror.
He slid the window up. It screeched with rust. Cold air washed over me. I heard the gleeful shouts of the second graders frolicking in the snow. Mr. Schwartz shoved my head outside.
“Smell it!” he screamed. “Nice, clean air—no fart out here!”
He gripped the seat of my pants and lifted. My shoes left the ground. He shoved my whole body out the window. I tumbled out head-first, my legs following. It was a long way down from the third floor to the hard blacktop below. A colorful chalk hopscotch court marked the target where I would splatter.
As I tumbled out, I managed to grab the groove at the bottom of the window frame—the part the window slid into when it was shut. There was nothing else to grab onto on the brick window ledge. My chest slammed against the side of the building. My shoes kicked the brick wall, but there was nowhere to step. My fingers burned in agony from supporting my whole body weight, but I made myself hold on. I dangled there and screamed. The second graders down below started to shout. They had noticed me.
Mr. Schwartz glared down at me and ground his teeth. Then he grabbed the handles of the window and smiled at me.
“You're not laughing now,” he said.
He slammed the window down on my fingers. The window shrieked as it came down. There was a thud, my fingers felt numb for a moment, and then extreme pain filled them. I tried to yank them away, but the closed window pinned them in place. I screamed and pressed my face against the brick wall.
Mr. Schwartz shouted, his heavily-accented voice muffled by the closed window.
“What have I done?! I'm so sorry, boy!”
“Mr. Schwartz, no!” Miss Hanson screamed. “Don't open it. The window is the only thing holding him up!” Then she shouted to me: “Hold on!”
As if I had any choice in the matter.
“I have another idea,” Mr. Schwartz said. “Boy,” he called to me. “I'm going to break the window. Close your eyes so you don't get glass in them.”
“No,” Miss Hanson said. “Don't do that, Mr. Schwartz. I have a better idea. On the count of three, open the window.”
“That was my idea,” Mr. Schwartz said. “You're stealing my idea.”
They started whispering ferociously to each other. In the distance, sirens wailed—probably the fire department coming to rescue me. I was a cat stuck in a tree.
Suddenly Miss Hanson shouted, “One...two...three!”
The window shrieked up. I tried to hold on, but my fingers wouldn't obey my brain. My fingers slid along the brick window ledge, and into the air.
Miss Hanson's arms shot out from the window and grasped my wrists. I bounced against the brick wall and dangled.
“Got him!” she shouted.
The third graders down in the snow cheered. So did the kids in my class. Miss Hanson pulled me up in through the window. I collapsed to the floor next to my desk.
“Can you wiggle your fingers?” Miss Hanson asked.
I wiggled them.
“Can you still feel them?”
I nodded. Unfortunately, I could still feel them. The pain was intense. I forced myself to look at them. The skin was blueish-purple. Several nails were broken, and blood oozed out.
“Does it hurt when I do this?” Miss Hanson asked, and squeezed my fingers.
I screamed. It was profoundly painful.
Mr. Schwartz was making coughing noises, as if he was trying to dislodge something from his throat. Then I realized he was laughing—a dry, forced laugh.
“Ha-ha-ha! Look at your fingers! They're all smashed up! Ha! Ha! How do you like it when someone laughs at your suffering? Not so funny now, is it? Ha!”
The principal came into the classroom. My heart skipped a beat. I thought I would be in trouble. But he gripped Mr. Schwartz's arm and dragged him out of the classroom. As he was dragged away, Mr. Schwartz continued to laugh his fake laugh.
Miss Hanson brought me down to her car to drive me to the emergency room. As we were pulling out of the parking lot, I saw a policeman handcuff Mr. Schwartz's wrists together behind his back, and put him in the back of a police car.

Yes and Yes

2010-08-09T23:50:00.000-05:00

He was on the internet, chatting with the girl he had met online. Although he was an excellent touch-typer (eighty words-per-minute) he was now using the one-finger method. His other hand stroked his hard, crooked penis. Hand lotion dribbled down his bare thigh and onto the leather sofa, but he didn't care.
Do you like to fuck and suck? he typed. I want to hear yes and yes.
He sank back into the couch and waited for her response. Now both hands were free. His typing hand cupped his balls and arolled them like he was getting ready to throw dice. He knew his life was pathetic: forty-three years old, single, the afternoon assistant-manager at Denny's, pubic hair turning gray. His nightly routine consisted of talking dirty on the internet, ejaculating, and going to sleep. But tonight might be different. The girl lived lived in Chicago, close by, only about a twenty minute drive from him. Tonight he might touch real flesh.
Her answer appeared on the screen. It was the double affirmative. Yes and yes.
He smiled, wiped his ball-fondling hand on his shirt, and resumed typing. They should meet right away, he suggested, almost managing 80 words-a-minute with one finger. He offered to come pick her up—she was only 13 years old and didn't have a driver's license. She said her father wouldn't like it if he came to pick her up at her house. They should meet somewhere else. They agreed to meet in half an hour in the parking lot of Moe's Kosher Deli, which was near her house.
He logged off, peeled his bare butt cheeks off the leather sofa, and rushed across the room, stepping in moldy, half-eaten pizzas and knocking over empty Miller Lite bottles.
He showered, scrubbing each body part twice. He had shaved that morning, but looked like he hadn't shaved in several days, so he shaved again and splashed aftershave all over himself. He put on a clean pair of jeans and a red polo shirt.
The floor of his maroon Saturn was littered with fast food wrappers. He snatched them up and dropped them to the oily garage floor.
Once on the road, he tuned the radio to the smooth jazz station. He nodded his head to the music, gazing out at the cloudless evening sky, which was turning purple. Traffic was light. Rush hour had already passed. He sped southward on Lake Shore Drive, weaving between cars, passing them. The speedometer said 80 miles-per-hour. He knew he should have both hands on the steering wheel, but he only had one. The other hand unzipped his fly, removed his erect penis, and massaged it. The windows were rolled down and the roar of the wind drowned out the smooth jazz, but he didn't care. He wanted that windswept look in his hair.
He drove along like this for several minutes, stroking himself, enjoying the wind, trying to pick out notes of smooth jazz, when he felt a sudden tingle in his groin announcing that he had gone too far in his stroking. He was about to ejaculate. He tried to stop it, to push it back in. He reversed the direction of his stroke, but it was too late to diffuse this bomb. He had passed the point of no return. He wasn't going to make it to the Moe's Kosher Deli. The splooge was screaming to come out. He looked around desperately for a cumrag—a tissue, a sock, anything—but he couldn't find one. He shouldn't have thrown out all the fast food wrappers.
He moaned as his groin went off in pleasant spasms. The load shot out his open driver's side window and splattered into the windshield of the Mercedes Benz behind him.
The second and third spurts didn't shoot out the window. They just bubbled, oozed out and slid down his shaft like a mudslide. He grasped tightly on the wheel so as not to crash.
The Mercedes Benz's windshield wipers turned on, but they only spread the white fluid around making the whole windshield opaque. The wipers sped up to rapid speed, but that didn't make any difference. The Mercedes swerved to the side and its tires screeched. Then it squirted blue fluid onto the windshield. That did the trick. The windshield wiper fluid cleaned off the white stuff, although it left streaks.
He felt really dirty, and not just because he was covered in his own semen. His penis was deflating, and the blood returning his other parts, including his conscience, which had been numb from a lack of blood. Just like an arm, numb and bloodless from sleeping on it, feels sharp, painful tingles as circulation returns, his conscience felt sharp pricks and pangs. Waves of self-loathing and guilt flooded him. He wiped his dirty hand on his pant leg and shook his head. He couldn't believe what the poison in his balls almost made him do. Placing both hands on the steering wheel, he slowed down to the posted speed limit. He turned on his turn-signal and veered towards the exit, where he would turn around and go home.
The Mercedes didn't honk or try to drive him off the road. Maybe the driver didn't realized what had happened. Maybe he thought a bird had gone to the bathroom on his windshield. And he would be right. But he had no idea what kind of bird had released its waste: a dark bird of prey that nested in the heart. A ravenous bird that demanded to be fed. A lone bird that hovered above for weeks at a time, then swooped down and devoured the chicks from another bird's nest. That was the bird that dropped its waste on his windshield.
As the Denny's assistant-manager got off at the exit, not followed by the Mercedes, he wondered: how long would the girl wait in the parking lot at Moe's Deli before she gave up and went home. He would send her an email, apologize for standing her up, and then erase every trace of her on his computer so he couldn't contact her when the urge struck.
Did he regret trying to meet a 13 year old for sex? Would he ever do it again? Yes and yes.

How Isaac Newton Discovered Gravity

2010-06-22T10:11:00.000-05:00

In 1666, Isaac Newton, a young man from Trinity College, Cambridge, returned to his mother's countryside estate in Lincolnshire, where he would make an amazing discovery. One afternoon, Isaac strolled across the lawn and wondered why the grass was green and the sky was blue. He approached his mother's apple tree, and a shiny red apple caught his eye. It looked delicious. A powerful force urged Isaac to bite into the apple while it was still alive, its stem still attached to the branch. He knew it was a crazy urge, so he glanced around to make sure no one was watching. His mother's house was silent. So was the neighbors' estate. The road was empty. Isaac clutched the apple and lifted it to his lips. (This was long before germs were discovered, so Isaac didn't bother to wash the apple, or even polish it with his shirt.) He took a big bite, closed his eyes, and chewed the sweet apple pulp. It was as juicy and delicious as he had hoped. But the first bite was always the best—the bites after that weren't as good—so he released the apple, letting it dance and dangle on the branch. Isaac then sat down and leaned back against the apple tree trunk. He felt the sunlight dapple on his face, and he let himself get lost in thought. What was light? Why did it come from the sun? Why didn't clouds fall and crush people?
Isaac was in such a deep state of concentration that he didn't hear his mother approach.
“Isaac!”
“Oh, hello, mother.”
Isaac Newton's mother was a short, squat woman with a shrill voice.
“Isaac, what are you doing?”
“I'm thinking.”
“You mean you're daydreaming.”
“Yes, mother.”
“What's this?” She gripped an apple dangling from the tree. It was the apple that Isaac had taken a bite from. The inner part had turned brown. “Isaac, did you take a bite out of this apple?”
Isaac hung his head.
“Yes,” he admitted.
“Why?”
“I don't know.”
“Isaac, your poor father must be rolling over in his grave. All you do is mope around and daydream and ruin perfectly good apples. What would the neighbors say if they saw this? An apple still on the tree with a bite in it!” She plucked the apple from the branch and stuffed it in her apron pocket. “Do you know how embarrassing it is for me to have a son who mopes around all day and eats apples straight off the tree?”
A wave of depression swept over Isaac.
“Maybe I should just kill myself, mother.”
“Well, at least my apples would be safe.”
Isaac stood up and walked to the shed.
“Where do you think you're going?” his mother demanded.
Isaac didn't reply. Inside the shed, he picked up a coil of rope that was about five yards long. Then he walked back towards the apple tree, tying the rope into a noose.
“Don't you dare,” his mother said. “Not on my apple tree! I don't want you shaking all the fruit off the branches!”
Isaac had made enough of a mess while he was alive. He wanted to make the least amount of mess possible while dying, so he tried to calculate where on the thick branch to hang the rope and how long it should be in order that it would shake off as few apples as possible while still being sturdy enough to break his neck. Unfortunately, mathematics in 1666 wasn't advanced enough to solve this problem, so Isaac quickly invented a new method to solve it—differential calculus. Isaac's mind worked lightning fast, and within a couple seconds, he knew exactly where the rope should go.
“Don't worry, mother,” he said, tossing the noose over the thick branch. “I'll only knock down nine apples. You can bake a pie.”
“There's six apples in a pie, Isaac. I can't make half a pie. What am I supposed to do with the extra apples?”
“You can make apple tarts, mother.”
Isaac looped the rope around the branch, and knotted it tight.
“And who's going to eat them?” his mother asked. “You're the only one who likes apple tarts.”
Isaac climbed up the tree trunk, and crawled out onto the branch. He pulled the noose up, and slid it over his neck.
“Mother, you can put the apple tarts in my coffin. Ill take them to the next world with me.”
“Coffin? You don't deserve a coffin! You're getting a pauper's burial!”
Isaac wondered: When he tumbled off the side of the branch, why would he fall and snap his neck? Why wouldn't he fly up in the air or float like a cloud? What force was pulling him to the ground? The answer was suddenly obvious. The force pulling him down was his mother. She pulled everything down. If it wasn't for her, he could have been happy. She was the reason apples fell from trees. She was probably the reason the moon orbited the earth. There was one force that controlled everything. His mother. It was an amazing discovery.
“Goodbye, mother,” Isaac said.
He slid off the side of the branch, and fell.
“My apples!” his mother shrieked.
Isaac's neck caught on the noose, and cracked loudly. He hung dead from the tree. His mother covered her head, as nine apples rained down on her.

The Bench

2010-05-18T03:15:00.001-05:00

Charlie wanted an elaborate suicide; he didn't want to be just another statistic. So he lathered himself up with shrimp brine and went to the sea-quarium. It was a weekday morning, so there were a lot of groups of schoolchildren around the killer whale tank. There were few adults; they were at their jobs. Charlie would have been at his job as an assistant engineer working quality control on bed mattress springs, but some wiseass genius invented a computer that could do that. A robot did his job now.

In a bathroom stall, Charlie lathered on another layer of shrimp brine and he was ready. He went out to the whale tank. The killer whale was flopping on its back, splashing the delighted children in the front row.

Charlie climbed up on the side of the tank. He glanced around and saw children taking videos with their camera phones. Good. He wanted Mildred to see this on the ten o'clock news. Maybe then she'd feel guilty for leaving him just because he lost his job and got a bad haircut.

“Hey, dipshit!” the whale trainer shouted. “Get down from there!”

“Okay,” Charlie said. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with oxygen, and plunged into the tank.

He saw the killer whale rushing towards him. His heart lurched and his lungs sucked in water. He splashed to the surface, coughed out water, and sucked in air.

The children squealed, “Not fair—why's he get to swim with the whale?”

Then the whale's giant mouth engulfed him. His legs slid down its throat.

“So long, suckers!” Charlie shouted.

The whale's powerful jaws crushed his chest. There was a sharp pain and then darkness.

Life on the Streets

2010-05-10T10:05:00.002-05:00

Abducted

2010-04-28T08:49:00.001-05:00

Carl Baxter was an associate professor of chemistry at Southeastern Nebraska Agricultural College. One morning in early fall, he was teaching his freshman chemistry class. There were about 50 students. The subject was the origin of complex chemical elements—fused together from hydrogen in the nuclear reactions of ancient stars. Carl wrote on the chalk board, and a shower of white chalk particles snowed down. He felt the students' hostility burn the back of his neck. They were studying to be farmers, like their parents before them. That was why they took his classes. They didn't care what science told them about the universe or their place in it. They only cared what science could do for them. They wanted to exploit science to grow their crops, while remaining as ignorant and superstitious as possible. And Carl was helping them do it. He felt like a traitor.
The students stared slack-jawed, baring their crooked teeth at him.
“Any questions?” Carl asked, wiping chalk dust on his pant leg.
A glassy-eyed boy in the front row raised his hand.
“Yes?” Carl said.
The boy stood up and asked, “What if you're wrong?”
“Wrong about what?”
“About where the elements come from.”
“I'm not wrong.”
“But what if you are?”
“This is what all the evidence points to. And even if it's wrong, it's still right. Science has built-in self-correcting mechanisms.”
“But what if you're wrong?” the boy said. “What are you going to say to Lord Jesus when you stand before his wrath? There's no self-correcting mechanism once you're dead?”
The other students nodded and smiled. A few clapped their hands.
“I'll take my chances,” Carl said.
“But shouldn't you believe in Jesus,” the boy said, “just to be on the safe side?”
Angry blood pulsed to Carl's temples. “What are you going to do when you stand before the wrath of the flying spaghetti monster?” he said.
“What?”
“There's a flying spaghetti monster on the dark side of the moon, and he's furious that you don't believe he exists, so he's going to banish you to a lake of burning fire for all eternity. Shouldn't you bring an offering of grated Parmesan cheese to his altar, just to be on the safe side? Make him a big, cheesy Parmesan fondue.”
“What's a fondue?” the boy asked.
“It's a hot pot of cheese that you dip things into,” Carl said.
“That sounds pretty good,” the boy said.
The other students nodded and smiled at each other. They wanted fondue.
“Let's continue,” Carl said, holding his chalk at the ready. “This isn't the time to share your faith, or whatever you call it.”
“It ain't faith, Professor Baxter. It's certainty. I'm as sure of Jesus as I'm sure I had toast and jam for breakfast.”
“Well, I don't know that you had toast and jam for breakfast. Frankly, I'm skeptical that you had breakfast at all. If you had, perhaps you'd be better able to pay attention.”
“I've seen Jesus with my own eyes,” the boy said. “Not just by faith.”
“The human brain is prone to hallucinations,” Carl said.
“”There's a big wooden cross behind the altar at our church,” the boy said. “For the past month, every time I pray in there, Jesus appears on the cross—nails and blood and a crown of thorns and all. Then he looks at me and smiles.”
The boy's classmates nodded in perfect faith.
“One percent of the population has schizophrenia,” Carl said. “It usually first turns up in the late teens or early twenties—about your age—then gets progressively worse. Congratulations. You have a lot to look forward to.”

People were so stupid. It made Carl want to scream and pull his hair out. The only thing that calmed him was walking under the stars late at night when everyone else was asleep. That night, he walked past the last houses of the small college town, and along a dirt road with tall stalks of corn growing on both sides. He walked through the warm, breezy night air until he was out of range of the town street lights. He stared up at the stars and was filled with a great sense of calmness. The constellations shone brightly, thousands of tiny white spots against a black curtain. The moon was full. A few purple-tinted clouds breezed past. That was the one good thing about rural Nebraska: there was little pollution, so he could see the stars clearly.
The stalks of corn rustled in the warm breeze. Carl felt embarrassed for the corn. It had to be grown by such ignorant people. The corn grew because people figured out how to optimally grow it through science, not because of any rain dance performed for Jesus.
All the stars followed their paths. Heavenly bodies were logical. Consistent. They made sense. Unlike people. Astronomers had figured out why the planets behaved as they did. No one would ever figure out why people behaved the way they did. That would remain a mystery forever. But at least the planets and stars were reliable. Carl liked this. They always appeared when and where they were supposed to be.
Then Carl saw an extra light in the sky—there was an extra star in constellation Centaurus. No. It couldn't be a star. New stars didn't appear out of nowhere. It was moving slowly, ever so slightly. Was it an airplane? A satellite? Suddenly, the light started to move much faster, scooting across the sky. It was too fast to be an airplane or a satellite. It could have been a meteor. Maybe a comet. Or maybe a missile—an intercontinental ballistic missile armed with a thermonuclear warhead. The stupid people had finally decided to blow up the world.
Then the light stopped. It held still in the night sky, and started to grow brighter. No. The light wasn't holding still—it was heading straight towards Carl. His heart leaped to his throat. At least if it was a nuclear weapon, it would land close and vaporize him instantly—he wouldn't suffer. Carl wondered what his last thoughts ought to be.
The light flickered through a purple-tinted cloud. It kept coming straight at him. Carl saw that the light was being emitted from the belly of a thin, round object—a saucer. Adrenaline burned Carl's fingertips. He turned towards town and broke into a sprint. The light got brighter. A fierce humming grew. Carl glanced over his shoulder. The metallic saucer was about 50 meters in diameter, and it was almost right on top of him.
Carl cut into a field. Maybe he could lose them in the corn. He shielded his face with his arms and trampled the corn stalks. They crunched under him and whipped his arms with their sharp leaves. The saucer followed him, shining its blinding light through the green stalks. Carl squinted his eyes and kept running. Suddenly, his step didn't make contact with the ground, and he screamed out. His feet pedaled air, kicking the heads of corn stalks. He was levitating upwards towards the light. The corn receded beneath him.
Carl tried to scramble away, but he only tumbled upside-down. He pressed his hands to his pockets to stop his wallet and keys from falling out. A panic sweat broke out all over him. This couldn't be real, he thought. It had to be a dream. A very lucid dream, but a dream nonetheless. He was flying. That was one sign it was a dream and not real life. No. The flying made sense. An advanced species of space travelers would have mastered the gravitational force and be able to engineer tractor beams.
Carl needed another test to see if this was real or a dream. The full moon was shining in the sky. Carl willed it to disappear. It didn't work. The moon stayed where it was and kept shining. He would try something else, though. In dreams, if the dreamer looked away from a landscape and then looked back at it, the scenery changed. This was because the brain didn't record and store specific background details in a dream; it had to fill it in with new details when the dreamer looked back. Carl gazed at the star-filled horizon. A puffy, purple-tinted cloud floated along. Its shape reminded him of a penguin doused in gasoline and set on fire. Carl looked away, forcing his gaze down on the corn fields and dirt road, which were bathed in the light of the tractor beam. Then, he looked back at the cloud on the horizon. The flaming penguin was still there, every detail and cloudy wisp the same. This was really happening. This was no dream. How could this happen to him? He was a professor, for God's sake! A scientist! Only white trash got abducted by aliens. The aliens must have seen him walking along the corn field, and mistaken him for a Nebraskan. He would just explain to them their error, and they would let him go.
Carl was getting closer, almost inside the saucer. He looked into the source of light. A dark silhouetted figure floated there. It was humanoid—head, torso, two arms, two legs—but it definitely wasn't human. The proportions were wrong. The head was an enormous sphere. The neck was a thin tube, like the string on a balloon. The shoulders and torso were scrawny, with spindly arms and legs coming from them. A 98 pound weakling, Carl thought. At least if it turned out to be malevolent, he could take it in a fight. Floating there in zero gravity, it looked like an octopus with only 4 tentacles. In Earth's gravity, the weight of its massive head would snap its scrawny neck and break its spindly legs. It must have evolved on a planet with low gravity.
Or maybe it was human, a homo sapien, and stuck in the saucer too long—long-term space travel caused extensive loss in muscle and bone mass. Perhaps without gravity pulling the blood down to its feet, its brain gorged with blood and swelled to 5 times its normal size.
Carl rose into the saucer. The air was humid as a swamp and stank like rotten eggs. He grimaced. The alien flapped its limbs and floated past him. The rotten egg stench got stronger—it was coming from the alien. Carl forced himself not to vomit. The opening that Carl came in by slid shut, blocking his view of the corn fields. Now he was sealed in here with it. At least he could still breathe—there was oxygen.
The tractor beam light suddenly turned off. Carl expected to fall, but he kept floating. There was a dim ambient light. Once Carl's eyes adjusted, he saw how far the alien floating there was from a human. He also saw that he was in a giant bubble.
He saw the inhuman face of the alien right in front of him. A pair of giant black insect eyes stared at him. Its round mouth was filled with hundreds of tiny sharp teeth. There was no nose, just a flat surface where the nose would have been. Its coarse skin was ash gray and completely hairless. Carl's blood ran cold. The two of them—Carl and the alien—were in a translucent bubble about 10 meters in diameter. On the outside of the bubble were hundreds more ash gray aliens, their giant black eyes pressed against the bubble, staring at Carl.
The alien in front of Carl, like all the other aliens, was naked, unless this ash gray skin was a form of clothing. Its narrow heaving chest had no nipples—clearly this species wasn't mammalian. There was no belly button—did they hatch from eggs? There didn't appear to be any visible genitalia. How did they reproduce? Carl glanced away, embarrassed.
Its long limbs swam like flotsam. At the end of them were pairs of gray, pincer-like digits.
The alien swam past him again, its stench unbearable. It seemed about a foot taller than him, but it was hard to tell when floating in zero gravity.
“I'm not from Nebraska,” Carl said.
The alien swam to the wall of the bubble.
“I'm a chemistry professor,” Carl said.
A small hole opened on the bubble, and the alien squeezed through. The opening closed behind it. Carl was alone in the bubble, hundreds of pairs of black insect eyes pressed to it and observing him closely.
Get over your terror, he told himself. How many people ever got to experience zero gravity? He should ignore the aliens, and try to enjoy the thrill. So he kicked his legs and pulled the air with his arms and went tumbling around. It didn't work; he couldn't enjoy himself.
And he realized that when he told people that aliens abducted him, no one would believe him. Sure, some gullible fools would believe him, but intelligent, rational, skeptical people would say he was weak-minded and delusional. He would be the laughing stock of the scientific community. Plenty of people claimed that aliens abducted them, but unsubstantiated testimonies were weak evidence, acceptable for religion but not for science. No one had ever brought back physical evidence from an alien spacecraft. That was what Carl had to do. Then not only would he be believed; he'd be a hero. The first man to provide credible proof of intelligent life from somewhere other than Earth. So his eyes scanned the bubble for a small alien gadget he could slip in his pocket. He felt a twinge of guilt at planning to steal. He pushed the feeling away. The aliens had no right to expect good manners. Carl was an abductee, not a guest.
But there was nothing in the bubble to steal. No loose objects lying around. No ray guns. Just empty space inside a bubble with hundreds of giant black eyes pressed to it. Maybe if they inserted an anal probe, he would clench his sphincter so tight they wouldn't be able to yank it out. Carl grinned. They'd have to let him take it back to Earth with him. He'd have to clench pretty tight, but that would be excellent physical evidence.
But that was assuming he ever saw Earth again. As far as Carl knew, no one who claimed to have been abducted ever mentioned being in a giant bubble with aliens clinging to the outside of it. Maybe those whom the aliens put in the bubble never lived to tell the tale.
Suddenly, a small circle opened on the side of the bubble. Long alien arms pushed a small, gray creature inside. A child alien, Carl thought. He remembered how mother birds brought live worms to the nest to feed their young. Now, Carl was the worm.
The bubble closed behind the creature. It floated out and Carl saw it was different from the aliens. Like the aliens, it had a giant head and ash gray skin, but it wasn't hairless. A tuft of black hair grew from its scalp. Its eyes were small and shaped like human eyes, but they were solid black—no white part. In the middle of its face was a bump with two pin pricks—a primordial nose. Its lips were gray, but looked human. It had a thick gray neck, broad shoulders, and a wide torso. The arms and legs weren't spindly; they were thick and sturdy. It was the size of a 4 year old human child. It had no nipples, but it had a belly button. At the end of its sturdy limbs were fully formed human hands and feet. And it had gray sexual anatomy. It was a boy. The aliens had genetically engineered an alien-human hybrid. This body would be able to support its massive head in Earth's gravity. The aliens couldn't survive on Earth themselves. Were they cloning alien-human hybrids to colonize Earth?
Black insect eyes pressed against the bubble, watching Carl closely, like scientists peering into a microscope. But what were they looking for? The child didn't seem interested in eating Carl. Then Carl had an idea what they were looking for. When ecologists wanted to introduce a new species into an ecosystem, they often first tested it in isolation, one-on-one trials with individual species already in the ecosystem to make sure they didn't tear each other apart. Was this a scientific experiment? Maybe they were testing Carl's reaction to the hybrid. Why? Probably so they could predict the reaction of humans when hybrids were introduced on Earth. They wanted to know if humans felt affection for the hybrid children like they felt for human children, or if the humans would freak out and kill the hybrids before the hybrids had the chance to become the dominant species and wipe out the humans. The result of the experiment would be, of course, that the hybrid disgusted and horrified Carl. Chills flashed through his body just from looking at this grotesque creature. They wanted to replace human being with these creatures. A lot of people annoyed Carl, but when it came down to it, he was still on the side of humanity. Carl had to warn people. They needed to know that there was an impending alien invasion. But if he told them, they'd just laugh and think he was crazy. He needed proof. And now he saw what physical evidence he could take with him. He would take a sample of the hybrid creature's DNA. All he needed was a few of its cells. Every cell had the entire DNA sequence in its nucleus. This wasn't absolute proof, of course, since scientists couldn't use the DNA to fashion their own hybrids in a petri dish, but it was concrete physical evidence—much better than just Carl's word—and the similarities to human DNA would be apparent.
If Carl scraped off a few dead skin cells from the hybrid with his fingernails, the aliens pressed up against the bubble wouldn't even notice. He wouldn't scratch hard enough to draw blood (if it even had blood.) Just hard enough to scrape off some dead skin cells under his fingernails.
Carl swam towards the hybrid. He felt a twinge of guilt at messing up a scientific experiment by reacting dishonestly, hiding his disgust and pretending to like the hybrid, but he pushed the guilt away. Lab rats had no obligation to scientists.
He floated up close to the creature. It didn't smell as bad as the aliens. It had only a mild rotten egg smell.
“Hi there,” Carl said, forcing himself to smile. “You're a cute one, aren't you?”
The hybrid smiled back, opening its mouth wide. Hundreds of sharp little teeth jutted out. Carl suppressed a shudder. He steeled himself to touch the creature. Its black eyes stared at him. A low-pitched hiss rolled from deep in its throat. Its gray skin was arranged in a series of tiny hexagons, like a bee hive. Carl lifted his right hand, and pressed three fingers—index, middle, and ring—against the flesh of the hybrid's broad shoulder. The flesh was slimy. Carl forced himself not to scream. He could feel all the alien eyes on him, observing him closely. The hybrids sharp teeth glinted at him. Carl held his breath and pressed his fingernails against the skin. The hybrid's black insect eyes stared at him from between gray human eyelids. In a smooth motion, Carl scraped his fingernails across the creature's shoulder. Hybrid skin gunk lodged under his fingernails, and panic seized him. He needed these filthy cells cleaned out from under his nails, and far away from him. Immediately.
The hybrid's mouth opened round and wide. Its black insect eyes looked down at its shoulder, where there were three pale white scratches. Then, the creature emitted a high-pitched shriek, intensified by the echoing walls of the bubble. Carl's hands shot to his ears, but he was afraid the skin gunk under his fingernails would crawl in his ear canal, so he forced himself to pull his right hand away. He winced at the piercing shrieks. The hybrid frantically flapped its gray limbs, swimming away from Carl.
The aliens outside the bubble scurried around frantically.
“Sorry!” Carl shouted to them. “I didn't mean to—“
A sudden flash of blinding light lit up the bubble, and sharp electric pain seared every nerve in Carl's body. It felt as if he stuck his finger in an electric socket. He tried to scream, but his vocal chords didn't obey him. Then, the pain dissolved and things came back into focus. The hybrid was scurrying along the wall of the bubble, apparently trying to get further away from Carl. Carl tried to move, but his muscles wouldn't respond. Paralyzed. His breathing continued and his eyes blinked, but all voluntary muscles ceased. He tried to scream, but his mouth and vocal chords wouldn't cooperate. He floated in the center of the bubble, staring at the scene in front of him, helpless to look away.
A circle opened in the side of the bubble, and an alien slid through. Clenched in its gray pincers was a metallic cylindrical object about a foot long. An anal probe, Carl thought. He tried to shout, to beg, but nothing happened. The alien wiggled towards him, wraith-like. Other aliens swarmed into the bubble behind it. The tip of the alien's rod glinted—it came to a point at the end and looked razor sharp. This would shred his large intestine.
The hybrid cowered against the side of the bubble. Tears popped from its black eyes and hovered in front of its gray face. One alien stroked the hybrid's giant forehead with its long gray pincers.
The alien with the sharp-tipped rod now hovered over Carl. The rotten egg stench was unbearable. With its gray pincer fingers, the alien grasped Carl's right hand, the hand with the DNA under the fingernails. Cold metal pressed the tip of Carl's index finger. The blade pressed up at the end of the fingernail and began to scrape at the gunk caught in there. They just wanted the DNA back, Carl said to himself, relieved. Thank God there wasn't going to be an anal probe.
Then the blade jammed deep under Carl's fingernail, deep into the soft flesh of the nail bed. The finger nerves screamed out. Excruciating pain shot up Carl's arm and seized his whole body. He tried to scream. He tried to jerk his hand away. But his body wouldn't obey.
Carl watched droplets of his own blood quiver weightlessly away from him. Then dizziness overtook him, and everything began to fade.

When Carl returned to consciousness, he was lying on the hard dirt road, next to a corn field, the starry sky above him. The fingers on his right hand throbbed in pain. He glanced at them in the moonlight. The nails of his index, middle, and ring fingers were half broken off. The fingertips were exposed gore oozing blood, like fresh cuts of meat. Carl moaned.
He staggered to his feet and looked up. The constellations were as they should be. No extra stars. No stars missing. The full moon had crossed to the other side of the sky, and the breeze was chilly—Carl had been gone several hours.
He felt his pockets. His wallet and keys were still there. At least the aliens hadn't mugged him.
Clutching his wounded fingers to his chest, and using the stars for navigation, he ran along the side of the corn fields, towards home. Every shadow cast by corn stalks and every twinkle of a star made his heart leap to his throat. He would need to find a new way to relax himself in the future. Something indoors. Maybe a stationary bicycle.
He ran as fast as he could. His lungs sucked in air. His fingertips throbbed in pain with every thump of his heart. He had to warn people that aliens were planning to colonize Earth. They were trying to keep their existence a secret—that was why they used such extreme means to stop Carl from taking a DNA sample. He had no concrete physical evidence now, but there wouldn't be any concrete physical evidence until it was too late. The aliens would make sure of that. Carl had to tell people, anyway, no matter what it made them think of him. He knew he would look stupid—weak minded and delusional. But the stakes were high and the future of humanity was counting on him.

Inglorious Mouse Turds

2010-04-20T09:45:00.002-05:00

Moe

2010-03-09T14:51:00.003-06:00

The Taxidermist

2010-03-03T10:59:00.001-06:00

One morning, I was in the woods, alone, except for my Remington 870 shotgun. I sat on a wooden platform in a tree about 10 feet up. There was a chill in the air. A thin layer of frost covered the blood-red leaves on the ground. Blinding sunlight shone through the bare branches, and birds chirped to each other. I wasn't interested in shooting them, though. My shotgun was loaded with buckshot, not birdshot.
Then, from a nearby thicket, a branch cracked. I held my breath. A white-tailed deer pranced into view. It was a buck with a fine set of antlers. I raised my shotgun and lined up his torso in the crosshairs. The buck suddenly froze. He glanced around, neck rigid, ears alert. His short tail shot up, revealing its white underside. I squeezed the trigger, and a deafening blast rang out. Birds squawked and fluttered from their branches. The buck staggered backwards and collapsed.
I dropped down from the platform, and rushed over to the buck. His torso was filled with bloody holes where the buckshot had entered. His chest heaved. One of his brown eyes was swimming with tears. It looked straight at me. I pumped the shotgun, aimed at his heart, and fired. The birds squawked and fluttered again. The buck's face slumped and his eye dimmed.
He was a beautiful buck. His coat was a rich brown. His snout was long and regal. His antlers were white as ivory, twisted and knotted like ancient trees. The buckshot appeared to have missed his head and neck completely. He would make a nice trophy. It would impress my buddies, but, more importantly, it would impress the ladies. When women saw a buck's head mounted on a wall, they swooned. At a deep biological level, I figured, women wanted a hunter—a meat provider. I decided to bring the buck to a taxidermist.
With a ball of twine, I tied the buck to the luggage rack on top of my beat-up Chevy. I felt like I was tying up a Christmas tree.
Soon I was speeding along the forest-lined two-lane road, listening to the wind whip by. A thick stream of blood oozed down the front windshield—the buck must have been bleeding out. I turned on the windshield wipers, but that just smeared the blood around, making a pink film on the glass. I tried turning the wipers to their fastest setting, but that made no difference. I pressed the button to squirt windshield wiper fluid, but nothing squirted. I was out of fluid. I had to follow the road through the pink haze. Rose-tinted glasses, I thought to myself and smiled. I was seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses. It seemed that nothing could spoil the good mood that came from bagging a buck.
Suddenly I noticed I was passing a small wooden sign at the side of the road. It said: “TAXIDERMIST.”
I slammed on the brakes. A jet of blood from the roof flew forward and splattered on the front hood. I backed up the car and pulled into the narrow gravel driveway. I figured I'd take a look at this taxidermist's work and see how much he charged. I knew how to do it myself—once I had caught a squirrel in a trap, and taxidermized it using a “do-it-yourself” book from the library—but I had a sensitive soul, and performing taxidermy made me sick to my stomach. The whole thing was gruesome. First was skinning. To remove the hide with no nicks or cuts, I had to go into the squirrel's mouth with a scalpel. I sliced the gum tissue above the teeth, then peeled the face from the skull, like skin from a grape. Once I got the hide off, I had to flesh it: scrape the fat off the hide. The smell of decomposition set in fast, and I had to hold my breath through most of the fleshing. After that was tanning. At first it smelled like noxious chemicals, but then it started to smell like beef jerky. Finally, when the tanned hide was ready, I glued it to a polyurethane mold, using glass marbles for the eyes. Unfortunately, when the ladies saw the squirrel, they didn't swoon. They ran from my apartment like it was on fire. I figured I needed a larger mammal, like a deer.
I parked in front of the taxidermy shop. It was a small townhouse, barely bigger than a trailer. Peeling tendrils of white paint hung from the walls. Trees surrounded the house, but the birds' chirping seemed hushed, as if they were whispering to each other. I supposed that if I were a bird living next to a taxidermy shop, I'd be quiet too.
I left my shotgun on the dashboard of my car, and approached the house. I was about to rap my knuckles on the screen door, when a man swung it open. He was tall, several inches taller than me, and had broad shoulders. His face was square, his eyes narrow. He looked about 40 years old—pale skin, receding hairline. He wore overalls and a sweat-stained white T-shirt.
“Hello,” he said. His voice was soft and scratchy, like fine sandpaper.
“Hello,” I said.
We shook hands. His handshake was limp—a dead fish. I suppressed a shudder; I hoped he mounted deer better than he shook hands.
He squinted over my shoulder at the buck on the luggage rack.
“That's a fine-looking buck,” he said. “Bring him on over.”
“Maybe I could see your work first?”
His mouth smiled, but his eyes didn't.
“Come on in,” he said.
I followed him inside. The room smelled of leather and chemical traces. Pale sunlight filtered through the window shades. Narrow tables lined the walls. The tables were covered with small animals: squirrels, possums, raccoons, cardinals, robins, blue jays. They looked alive, about to pounce on me. My heart thumped. If the animals let me get so close to them, they probably had rabies.
No, I told myself. Their lifelike look just meant he was a good taxidermist. It also meant I probably couldn't afford his services.
The taxidermist sat down at a table covered with taxidermy supplies: scalpel, tape measure, tanning chemicals, sandpaper. He picked up the tape measure and moved the measuring tape in and out.
A deer buck's mounted head was on the wall at eye level. Its glass eyes looked so lifelike that I felt anxious when it didn't blink. I worried its eyes would dry out. It was a good-looking buck (though not as nice as the one on my car). The fur was rich brown with a reddish glint. The taxidermy was excellent. The hide fit the mold perfectly, the fur touching the antlers, no white polyurethane poking out. The flesh had no visible nicks or cuts. I didn't even see stitches. I pressed down the fur on the back of the neck, and was just barely able to see the tiny, even stitches.
“Looks like you know a thing or two about this,” the taxidermist said, setting down the tape measure.
“I did a couple squirrels,” I said. “It's not for me. I like the fresh air.”
“You ever skin one that's still breathing?” he asked. The corners of his mouth rose. His eyes twinkled.
“No,” I said, feeling disgusted, imagining a squirrel scream as its face was peeled off. I decided right then and there to find a different taxidermist. This guy was too creepy.
“I got something that'll really interest you,” the taxidermist said. He glanced around, as if to make sure we were alone. “A trophy so amazing—you won't believe it.”
“Is it a stuffed person?” I guessed.
The taxidermist made a sour face. “What's that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It's just a joke.”
“A joke,” he said, rolling the word over his tongue as if he was unfamiliar with it.
“Yeah,” I said. “You know: ha-ha.”
“Well, it's not funny,” he said. “Now I don't know if I should show it to you.”
“That's fine,” I said, stepping towards the screen door.
“Oh, what the hay,” he said. “I'll show it.”
He disappeared into a back room.
I felt dozens of pairs of glass eyes staring at me. I focused on the carpet, not looking at the animals.
The taxidermist returned, lugging a piece of taxidermy that was bigger than him. It was stuffed with polyurethane, though, so it was light enough to carry. The upper half was an American bald eagle—shiny white feathered dome, hooked yellow beak, dark wings outstretched. The eagle, however, stopped at the waist. It had the hindquarters of a lion—golden fur, muscular legs, fluff at the end of the tail. The taxidermy work was excellent, of course. The dark eagle feathers molted seamlessly into the golden lion hide. The taxidermist set the creature down and stepped back. The lion's crouched hind legs looked ready to spring the eagle's yellow talons ready to strike.
“It's a griffin,” the taxidermist said. “When you combine two animals, it doesn't just add their powers together—it multiplies them. That's why you feel so much energy.”
I felt something, but it wasn't energy; it was the urge to leave. What was a roadside taxidermist doing with a griffin? Mutilating an American bald eagle into a hybrid with a lion was unpatriotic, and probably illegal too. Bald eagles were protected animals. African safaris allowed hunting, so lions weren't protected, but they should have been.
“I bet you didn't skin that lion while it was breathing,” I said. “I notice you still got both hands.”
His face soured and hardened.
“It's a joke,” I said.
He scowled. I heard his teeth grating.
“You like jokes?” he said. “I got a joke for you.” He licked his lips and rubbed his hands together. “What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and four legs in the evening?”
I suppressed a groan and felt embarrassed for him. It wasn't even a joke. It was a riddle. And he didn't even tell it right.
“You mean three legs in the evening—not four,” I said. “It's the riddle of the sphinx. What walks on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three in the evening? The answer is man. He crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two legs as an adult, and walks with a cane in old age.”
“Wrong,” the taxidermist said and slapped his palms together. “I told it the way it ought to be told. This is a sphinx all right—a different sphinx. Four in the morning, two in the afternoon, four in the evening. I'll give you a clue: it's something in this room.”
He picked up the measuring tape and started playing with it again.
I sighed. The answer was obvious.
“It's the griffin,” I said. “It had four legs when it was a lion, then two legs when it was an eagle. Now it has four legs as a griffin—two talons and two hind paws.”
“Wrong,” he said. “The lion never had an afternoon of two legs. It was never an eagle. And the eagle never had a four-leg morning. It was never a lion. They both went straight to being a griffin.”
“Then it's the lion,” I said. “It did have an afternoon of two legs. When you cut its hide in half to make the griffin, before you sewed it to the eagle—that was its afternoon of two legs. The answer is the lion.”
The taxidermist's jaw hung slack and his lips quivered. I thought he was about to cry. Then his face hardened and he shook his head.
“It's not the lion,” he said.
“Sure it is,” I said. “Just because it's not the answer you thought of doesn't make it wrong. If it fits, it's the answer to the riddle.”
“It's not a riddle. It's a joke. And the lion isn't funny, so it can't be the answer.”
He was right about that: it wasn't funny.
“Let me think,” I said.
I stroked my whiskers to help myself think, and looked at the animals. The birds had two legs. The varmints had four. The mounted deer once had four legs. Now it had zero. What would the taxidermist think was funny? From what I had seen so far, he didn't appear to have any sense of humor.
The first two parts of this riddle (or joke) were the same as the original sphinx riddle: walks on four legs, walks on two legs. A baby crawled on four. A man walked on two. If the man had four legs after that, the riddle would work. Maybe an old man with two canes?
I pictured the ancient sphinx that asked the riddle: a lion with a human face. A cold tingle shot up my spine. Maybe that was the answer. The answer was the sphinx; the answer was me. The taxidermist was going to cut off my head and put it on a lion's body, just as he had done with the eagle. That would fit with the riddle/joke. When I was an infant, I crawled on all fours. Now I stood on two legs. Soon my severed head would rest on a lion's shoulders, and I would be on four paws. And I was certainly something in the room.
But was it funny? I certainly didn't think so. The taxidermist probably didn't think so either. He would only scowl and get angry again if I suggested that answer, so I stroked my whiskers and continued thinking.
Maybe the answer used some other meaning of leg. What else had legs? Journeys had legs. Tables and chairs had legs. That must be it. Several of the tables in the room had four legs. Had one of them broken in half at some point and needed to be fixed? That seemed to fit with the taxidermist's sense of humor.
“Tell ya what we'll do,” the taxidermist said. “You walk around the room. If you get closer to the thing I'm thinking of, I'll say 'warmer.' If you get farther, I'll say 'colder.' Okay?”
I was embarrassed to be playing these infantile games, but I was curious about the answer, so I did as he suggested, and started walking. I took a few steps, then stopped and looked at him. He pursed his lips, drew in a breath like he was getting ready to speak, but then stayed silent. I took a few more steps, and looked back at him. He was smiling, a broad grin stretched across his face. His fingers tapped on the tape measure.
“Well?” I said. “Am I getting hotter or colder?”
“The same,” he said. “You're staying the same.”
I knew he'd probably get angry, but I couldn't let him think he stumped me.
“I know the answer,” I said. “It's me. I'm the answer. You're planning to cut off my head and sew it to a lion's neck, making a sphinx you can set next to the griffin in your sick little menagerie.”
He started to laugh. Big hoots of laughter burst out of him and tears sprang to his eyes. He slapped the table in front of him, making the taxidermy tools dance.
“Sp-p-p-p-phinx!” he sputtered, sending threads of saliva down the front of his bib overalls. “You're absolutely right!”
He kept laughing, clutching at his sides. Tears of laughter rolled down his pale cheeks.
“It was nice to meet you,” I said, “but I'm going now. When someone gets the sphinx's riddle right, it lets him pass, so I'll be passing on my way now.”
The taxidermist's laughter subsided like a wave crashing into the shore.
“But the sphinx never leaves,” he said, wiping tears from his cheeks. “It lies there in the sand, year after year, decade after decade, century after century.”
He picked up a scalpel from the desk. There was orange rust on the blade. I thought of the shotgun on the dashboard of my card. There was still a cartridge of buckshot in its chamber.
I ran past the taxidermist and burst out the screen door. I sprinted for my car, not looking back over my shoulder. I felt like a coward for running. This was probably just his sick idea of a joke—he did claim it was a joke, after all—but I didn't think it was funny and I wasn't going to take the chance, especially when he held a scalpel.
In one practiced, smooth motion, I opened the car door and slid into the driver's seat. I snatched the shotgun off the dashboard. When I looked back, the taxidermist was just coming out the screen door. He lazily walked towards me, the scalpel clutched in his hand.
I checked the ammo. There was a live cartridge in the chamber. I jumped out of the car and pointed the shotgun at his chest.
“Stop!” I shouted.
He continued his snail's-pace approach.
“Don't worry,” he said. “I'm not gonna kill you. I know where all the blood vessels and arteries are, so if you hold still, I'll avoid them, and you won't bleed to death.”
“One more step and you're gonna die,” I said.
He kept approaching. I stepped back, pressed against the car.
When he was only a few feet in front of me, I dove into the driver's seat, and slammed the door behind me. I had never killed anybody before, and I wasn't going to let this lowlife make me kill him. I pressed the power door locks.
The taxidermist tapped on the window with the scalpel blade.
“Open up,” he said. “I'll let you keep your nose. The sphinx doesn't need a nose.”
I threw the shotgun on the passenger's seat. I had to get out of there before he thought to stab the tires with the scalpel. I pulled my keys out of my pocket, but my hand shook so badly that the keys tumbled to the floor into a swamp of coffee mugs and fast food wrappers.
“Fine,” the taxidermist said. “If you're not coming out, I'll take the buck.”
He reached above the car with the scalpel. I dug around in the fast food wrappers, trying to feel cold metal, keeping one eye on the taxidermist. A cut end of twine fell against the driver's side window pane. Then the taxidermist's body rose as he pulled himself up on the roof.
The metal on the roof popped in and out as he stepped around. Through the pink front windshield, I saw his shadow cast on the blood-speckled front hood as he cut the buck's tethers. More frayed ends of twine fell and dangled against the window panes.
My hand clutched cold metal. The metal jangled: it was my keys. Using both hands, I jammed the key into the ignition and turned it. The engine roared to life. I glanced up and saw the taxidermist's shadow on the front hood. He was holding the deer high above his head, as if offering it to the sun.
He threw it down, slamming it into the pink window pane. The window shattered. Shards of glass rained down. I covered my face, and felt sharp slices on my shoulders and forearms. The buck's head landed on my lap. Its antler dug painfully into my crotch. Its face was sliced up from the glass, and it would no longer make a good trophy. Its brown eye stared up at me, and seemed to be saying, “Now it's your turn.”
The taxidermist jumped down on the front hood, his boots crunching the metal in. He kicked out spears of jagged glass from the window frame.
The shotgun was on the passenger's seat, under the buck's haunches. I yanked at the shotgun, but the buck was heavy. The shotgun didn't budge.
The taxidermist stepped down onto the passenger's seat. He ducked under jagged glass hanging in the window frame, and knelt on the deer's haunches. Sunlight glinted on the scalpel's rusty, orange blade as he brought it towards me. The taxidermist's eyes gleamed and saliva rolled down his chin.
“Don't move,” he said.
I grabbed his wrists and tried to push his hands away, but he was stronger than me. I pressed my lips together, but he easily separated them with the scalpel blade. I felt the blade pass over my upper teeth, and slice into the gums above them. Sharp pain burned my upper gums. Warm, salty blood flooded my mouth. I tried to bite him. He grabbed my hair and pressed my head against the seat. He kept cutting, scratching away at the gums.
I let go of his wrists and gouged his eyes with my thumbs. He didn't seem to feel it. He just hooted laughter and kept cutting away. I punched his face over and over again. He squealed a hysterical laugh. My upper lip was numb, and I hard cartilage crunch; the scalpel had reached my nose tissue. I promised myself that if I got away from him, I would make my life count for something. I wouldn't waste it hunting for foolish deer trophies. I'd find a woman who swooned for the right reasons, not for a buck's head mounted on a wall.
Suddenly I realized the engine was still humming. I switched the gears to drive, and slammed my foot on the accelerator. The tires screeched, gravel crunched, and the car bolted towards the house. The taxidermist stopped cutting, and looked where we were headed.
The front of the car crashed into the wall. Twisting metal screamed. The impact threw me forward, but the buck acted as a seatbelt, stopping me, and slamming my back against the driver's seat. The taxidermist went flying through the empty window frame, and collided with the side of the house.
The crushed-in front hood was coughing out smoke. My back screamed in pain. I thought I had whiplash, but there was no time to think about that. I had to make sure the taxidermist was finished off.
I struggled out from under the buck's head. Then, pressing my boot against the buck's antler for leverage, I pulled out the shotgun from under the haunches.
I opened the drivers door and tumbled out, trying not to think about how badly I was bleeding.
The taxidermist pulled himself out of the smoking, tangled mess of metal that had been the front of my car. He staggered to his feet, bursting out hoots of laughter. Blood poured down his face, and one of his legs bent the wrong way, but he still clutched the scalpel.
I raised the shotgun and pointed the barrel at his face.
“I'm putting you out of your misery,” I said.
He slapped his thigh and laughed harder, a bloody mist spraying from his mouth with every hoot. He staggered towards me, swiping the scalpel in long arcs.
I squeezed the trigger. The taxidermist's head exploded. His brains splattered against the wall of the house. The scalpel fell from his limp hand, and his body collapsed to the ground. The birds squawked and fluttered overhead. It didn't matter if they were loud now—the taxidermist was dead. I spat a mouthful of blood on his corpse.
There was no time to celebrate. I was in bad shape, and would need an ambulance. I staggered to the house to find a telephone. My gums were cut up. My mouth was full of blood. My scalp and arms were sliced from the broken windshield glass. I probably had whiplash.
Inside the house, the griffin glared at me with its fierce yellow eyes. I shuddered. I had barely avoided its fate of becoming a monstrous hybrid. I remembered my promise to change my life if I survived—to make my life count for something. But that promise didn't count. It was made under duress. No one could hold me to it.
The mounted buck head on the wall stared at me, unblinking. My buck was ruined, its face sliced up with broken glass. I figured I ought to be able to take this one instead—it was only fair. It would be the trophy that marked my victory over the taxidermist. When the ladies saw it, they would swoon.

The Gambler

2009-12-31T06:41:00.003-06:00

Amber was a math major at community college. While studying probabilities, she realized that counting cards would give her a slight advantage over the house in blackjack. She could make a lot of money. So she went to Eyeball Eddie's casino to try her luck.
It was Amber's first time in a casino, and she was impressed. Glittering lights shone through thick clouds of cigar smoke. Poker chips clacked together in neat piles on tables covered with green felt. The roulette wheel spun, and card-shuffling machines shuffled. Amber sat at the blackjack table and smiled at the dealer. He gazed back at her with a poker face.
Amber soon discovered that she loved blackjack. When the dealer hit her, sliding a card out of the dealing shoe, Amber's heart leaped off the edge of a cliff. If she won, her heart flew, soaring above the abyss, a thrill charging her body. If she lost, her heart plummeted down like Wile E. Coyote falling into a canyon. But, like the cartoon coyote, Amber always got up, wheezing like an accordion, and played another hand. She needed the flying feeling of winning, or her hands would start to twitch. She came back night after night.
Unfortunately, it turned out that Amber couldn't count cards. If given enough time, she could figure the probabilities with pencil and paper, but her mind worked too slowly to perform on the spot at the blackjack table. Amber realized, however, that there was more to blackjack than skill with numbers. There was luck. And Amber could feel when her luck ran hot: there was a subtle updraft and a calm certainty that her heart would stay airborne. When her luck ran cold, she felt heavy as an anvil, certain to fall. She had to take advantage of a hot streak when it came, or the moment of luck would pass. So she wouldn't have to leave the table when she felt lucky, she wore an adult diaper under her clothes.
Tonight, she felt the subtle drafts lifting her up, but, by some fluke, she kept losing. Her good luck was bottling up, ready to burst free. With every loss, her chance of winning the next hand increased, so she kept doubling her bets. But, before her good luck burst forth, she ran out of chips. Her money was gone.
She walked to the exit, but Eyeball Eddie, the owner of the casino, stopped her. He was a big gorilla of a man, with a lazy eyeball. Despite Eddie's nonchalance about his eye (he named the casino “Eyeball Eddie's”), people were afraid to look him in the eye, lest their gazes follow its wandering.
“You seem like a good kid,” Eddie said. “We can spot you some cash. You're good for it.”
So Amber took chips on credit from the casino, and returned to the blackjack table. The lucky streak burned to burst forth. But against all odds, she kept losing. She continued to raise her bets to recoup her losses, continued to lose, and continued to borrow more and more money from Eyeball Eddie. Soon Eddie said he wouldn't lend her any more money. She owed him over 5,000 dollars.
Eddie brought her back to his seedy office, opened the squeaky drawer of his desk, and pulled out a rusty hammer.
“This is what I break legs with,” he said kindly. “Get me the money.”
Amber had only one place to turn. Early the next morning, Amber's mother, Joan (Amber called her by her first name), returned home from the night shift at the factory where she assembled cellular phones. Amber waited until Joan got a couple drinks in her. Amber wanted Joan to be mellow: loose from the tension of the factory floor, but not slurring her speech. After Joan consumed exactly two and a half cans of Bud Lite, Amber sat at the kitchen table with her and, using a sheet of graph paper, diagrammed the exponential improbability of her losing so many blackjack hands in a row.
“Like being struck by lightning,” she said.
“I thought addicts were supposed to be charming,” Joan said. “Your father certainly was. But not for dice. His drug was women.”
“I'm not an addict. Look at the graph.”
Joan glanced down at the paper. “What's that?” She pointed at a strange-looking number.
Amber had hoped that writing the number in scientific notation would make it look smaller. “Five thousand dollars,” she admitted.
Joan choked on her beer. “Where are you gonna get that kind of money?” she asked, wiping her mouth.
Amber looked at the floor.
Joan sighed. “I was saving up to buy this trash heap. I was gonna be a homeowner.”
“I won't gamble any more,” Amber said. “I promise.”
Joan shook her head and set her jaw rigid. “I'm gonna use tough love,” she said. “You'll have to deal with the consequences.”
“Tough love? Eyeball Eddie the loan shark is going to break my legs! You'll have to push me around in a wheelchair!”
“Why would you borrow money from somebody named Eyeball Eddie?”
Amber pleaded. She even cried. Eventually she wore Joan down.
“Alright, Amber. I'll go pay this eyeball fellow his five-thousand dollars, but you have to go to Gamblers Anonymous meetings. You are an addict.”
Amber knew she wasn't an addict, but she didn't want her legs broken, so she pressed her lips together, nodded her head, and didn't argue.
The Gamblers Anonymous meetings were held on Tuesday evenings in a church. Inveterate gamblers sat around bemoaning their losses. After sitting through a few weeks of boring meetings, Amber went across the street to another church, where it was Bingo night. The Bingo whet her appetite. She needed the main course: blackjack.
An hour later, she was at Eyeball Eddie's Casino. She went straight to Eddie and, avoiding direct eye contact, asked him to give her credit.
He furrowed his wide brow. “I'm not supposed to.”
“You're just saying that because you know I'll win.”
Eddie shrugged and smiled, his tiny teeth glinting at her. He gave her some chips.
After a few hours of blackjack, Amber owed Eyeball Eddie over 10,000 dollars. He didn't say anything. He just fingered the claw of the rusty hammer.
Amber had no choice but to ask Joan for money again. After Joan consumed two and a half beers, Amber sat down at the kitchen table and told her that she owed money to Eyeball Eddie again. It was a fluke, Amber said. The odds that this could happen were impossible—like getting struck by lightning.
“Lightning doesn't strike the same place twice,” Joan said.
“Exactly!” Amber said. “It's impossible that this could happen. The odds are astronomical. Microscopic.”
“You're a lightning rod, Amber. A lightning rod for trouble.” She clutched Amber's head by the sides and kissed her on the forehead. “You're getting tough love this time.”
“Couldn't you just spank me?”
“You have your father's bow legs. Maybe breaking will straighten them.”
Amber begged her to help her and save her legs.
Joan sighed. “I can't believe I have to go see that degenerate eyeball fellow again.”
“I'll do it,” Amber offered.
“No,” Joan said. “I'll do it. You'd probably gamble it away.” She glared at Amber. “This is strike two, young lady. Three strikes and you lose.”
But Joan's help came with a condition: Amber had to get help for her gambling problem. Real help this time; not weekly Gamblers Anonymous meetings.
The next morning, Joan drove Amber to a treatment center for gambling addicts. It was inpatient, so Amber would be living there. It cost 200 dollars per day, Joan reminded her, so she should hurry up and get cured.
The Branchwood Rehabilitation Center wasn't a hospital; it was a series of cabins out in the woods. It was autumn and the leaves were brightly colored. A smoky maple syrup smell filled the air. Amber and Joan went into the cabin used by the director of the rehab center as an office. Dr. Makovi was a short, squat woman with graying, tangled hair.
“This isn't Gamblers Anonymous,” Dr. Makovi said. “They think an addictive personality will always be an addictive personality. Well, I'm going to give you a new personality.” She leaned back in her chair and cracked her knuckles. “Games of chance are not allowed here, but don't worry—if you like games, you still get to play games. In fact, all we do here is play games. But we play cooperative games, not competitive ones. Right now your brain is wired to get a thrill from winning when someone else loses. Doing nothing but non-competitive games will completely rewire your brain. It purges out the neurological pathways that give you a thrill from winning when someone else loses, and creates new, healthy neurological pathways that get a thrill when everyone wins.”
After Joan left, Dr. Makovi brought Amber to a grassy field to meet the others. A dozen gamblers stood around. Aside from Amber, only 2 were female. Most gambling addicts were male, Dr. Makovi explained. All of them introduced themselves.
The men looked as Amber expected: greasy and obese; they looked like they sat in basements, playing Internet poker. They looked out of place in the outdoors. But one of them was different. Dan was a hunk: Native American, tall and lithe, with long black hair that hung down past his broad shoulders. He was about Amber's age—maybe a year or two older. A strong jaw pressed out of his dimpled cheeks. His dark eyes made Amber's heart pound.
Amber realized that her jaw hung slack, so she clenched her molars to prevent drooling. Drooling would make a bad first impression. She wished she had washed her hair. Dan was looking away from her—she probably disgusted him. Or maybe he was just shy.
The first non-competitive game was “the human knot.” Amber remembered it as the ubiquitous icebreaker from camp. Dr. Makovi explained the rules. They would stand shoulder-to-shoulder in a circle. They would reach out and grasp random hands. Then without releasing hands they had to untangle their bodies. This would build neurological pathways that got a thrill from winning together, rather than at someone else's expense.
Amber glanced at Dan's dark hands. They looked strong. She imagined his hands caressing her body. She hoped she'd grab his hand.
But her losing streak continued. When she reached into the confusing shuffle of hands, she grabbed 2 pale hands, neither of which belonged to Dan. One was sweaty as an eel. The other was fat and hairy with green fungus on the fingernails.
Dan took charge. With his strong, smooth voice, he told the others where to move. The men rubbed against Amber more than necessary. She held her breath, so as not to let in the sharp body odors. But when the untangling pressed her against Dan, she breathed deep, savoring his musky scent. While inhaling him through her nostrils, she accidentally snorted, but he didn't seem to notice; he was focused on the task at hand.
After 5 minutes, they untangled the human knot. Amber pulled her hands free and wiped them on her jeans.
“Let's do it again,” she said. She felt lucky. This time she'd grab Dan's hand.
“No,” Dr. Makovi said. “We're going on to something else.”
“That's because you know I'll win,” Amber said.
“Everyone's a winner,” Dr. Makovi said. “You all got out of the knot.”
Amber didn't argue. She was too busy looking at Dan.
They walked down the hill into the woods, crunched through the autumn leaves, and approached the first obstacle: a wooden wall about 3 times Amber's height. Everyone had to get over it. On the other side was a rope ladder they could climb down. They must have done this many times before, Amber decided. They seemed to know what to do. Dan held his hair in a ponytail, so it wouldn't get stepped on. A tall man climbed up on Dan's back and stood on his shoulders. The tall man jumped up, grasped the edge of the wall, and pulled himself up. Then the next man got on Dan's shoulders, lifted his arms, and the man at the top pulled him up.
When it was Amber's turn, she took her time climbing up on Dan's shoulders, brushing her fingertips through his thick black hair. Tingles shot up her arms. She stood on his strong shoulders, reached up, and grabbed onto the man's hands. It was the man with the sweaty hands from the human knot. His hands still poured like faucets. Gripping his wet palms, Amber walked sideways up the wall. When she was almost at the top, her hands slipped out of his, and she fell. She grasped with her arms and legs, but caught only air.
Amber landed on her right foot and heard a loud crack. She slammed onto her back and got the wind knocked out of her. Extreme pain tore at her lower right leg. She grabbed where it hurt, and felt something pointy poking out the side of her jeans. That's when she started screaming. If she had known how much a broken leg hurt, she never would have gambled. It wasn't worth the risk, even if the chance of Eddie breaking her legs was only the chance of getting struck by lightning. This had to hurt more than a lightning strike.
“Don't crowd!” Dan shouted. “Give her room to breathe!”
Through the excruciating pain, Amber enjoyed Dan hovering over her. His long hair tickled her face. Dan gripped Amber's hand and squeezed it. Dan's hand was as strong as Amber had hoped. She was dismayed to feel her own hand start to sweat. She tried to will the sweat glands in her hand to stop, but they didn't.
“I think it's broken,” Amber said.
“I know,” Dan said. “I heard.”
“Dan, can you carry her to my car?” said Dr. Makovi. “We need to get her to the emergency room.”
“Yeah.” Dan picked Amber up, cradling her legs in his arms. Amber clenched her jaw. The pain was excruciating, but she enjoyed him carrying her. Dan started to follow Dr. Makovi, but a fat man with red hair and a pointy face blocked their way.
“What about the wall?” the fat man said. “We still need to get her over the wall.”
“Her leg is broken,” Dan said.
“Big deal,” said the fat man. “They broke my thumbs a dozen times. It never slowed me down.” He gripped his thumb and mashed it flat against the back of his wrist. The thumb seemed to be made of silly putty.
“Get out of the way,” Dan said coldly.
The fat man's face crumbled. He let go of his thumb and stepped out of the way. The thumb hung limply at the side of his hand.
Dan carried Amber to Dr. Makovi's car.
In the emergency room, the attendants cut off Amber's jeans with scissors. They stuck her feet first in a giant X-ray machine, and told her not to move. The orthopedic surgeon spoke in incomprehensible medical jargon, but the X-ray was clear enough: both bones in Amber's lower leg were broken. The surgeon injected Amber with a powerful pain-killer, set the bone, and put her in a cast. She would have to stay overnight in the hospital, her leg in traction. She couldn't get up; they'd bring her a bedpan.
Amber lay in the recovery room, a sling elevating her cast above the bed. The painkillers were wearing off. She heard Dr. Makovi's voice in the hallway, talking with the nurses. Dan came into Amber's room and stood at the foot of her bed. He smiled, his perfect white teeth glittering under the fluorescent lights. Amber felt nervous. Her toes poked out of the end of the white cast, and she didn't want Dan to see them. Her index toes were 2 millimeters longer than her big toes. (That was why she never wore sandals.) She couldn't move her leg to hide it, and throwing the sheet over it would be conspicuous. So she clenched her toes to hide the length difference. A sharp pain shot through her broken leg, but she made herself hold the clench.
“You look like you're in pain,” Dan said.
“I broke my leg,” Amber said through gritted teeth.
It was too painful to clench her toes. She released them and relief flooded her leg under the cast.
Dan clicked open a blue ballpoint pen. “I wanted to be the first to sign your cast.”
Amber closed her eyes and nodded. There was no way to hide her toes now.
The tip of the pen pressed on Amber's big toe and tickled her. Her foot tried to yank away, but the sling held it in place. Pain shot through the broken bones.
“What are you doing?” Amber said.
“It's henna—Indian toe art,” Dan said. “The other Indians, I mean. In India.”
“But why?”
Dan grasped her toe with his free hand and began to draw. “It looks cool. And it's good for your health, I think. Hold still.”
It tickled, and Amber couldn't stop giggling.
Dan held the pen up and narrowed his eyes at it. He shook the pen and tried to draw with it on her toe. Then he sucked on the end of the pen. He tried to write again.
“Sorry,” he said. “It's out of ink. And I didn't get to sign the cast.”
He pocketed the pen, walked around the bed, and sat down at her side. The weight of his body on the bed sent warm tingles through Amber's body. Her heart sped up. She wanted to kiss him, but she was flat on her back and he was sitting upright. There was no way for their mouths to come together naturally.
“So...” Dan said, “first time in rehab?”
“Yeah. I was in Gamblers Anonymous though.”
“It didn't work for you, I guess.”
“Bingo.”
“They do the twelve steps, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Dr. Makovi doesn't believe in the twelve steps.”
“I know.”
“What step did you get to?”
“Step zero,” Amber said. “I never admitted I have a problem, because I don't. And even if I did the first step, I couldn't do the second. I'm an atheist.”
“I thought it just had to be a higher power,” Dan said. “It doesn't have to be God.”
“I told them I believe in luck, but they said that didn't count.”
“What about gravity?”
“What about it?”
“Do you believe gravity is a power greater than yourself? I mean, it put you in this cast. If it wasn't more powerful than you, you'd be able to fly.”
“I guess that's hard to argue with.”
Dan's head started to slump towards Amber. He held his hair back with one hand as his face approached hers.
“What are you doing?” Amber said.
“Gravity,” Dan said.
Their lips met. He stuck his tongue in her mouth and she licked it. She forgot about the pain in her leg as she ran her fingers through his thick hair. His hands slid up her hospital gown. Her stomach burned with pleasure. Her toes clenched involuntarily, and sharp pain seized her broken bones.
“Yeoww!”
Dan sat up. “What's wrong?”
“My toes curled.”
Later, Joan rushed into the hospital room, still in her factory uniform. She examined Amber's cast, then sat on the bed where Dan had been, and clutched her daughter's hand. Amber hoped that Joan didn't notice any love stains on the sheets.
“I don't want you going back to that rehab,” Joan said. “I don't trust that Dr. Makovi—letting you break your leg! You learned your lesson. Now you know what a broken leg feels like, so you won't ever gamble again. Right?”
Amber realized that if she left the rehab, she wouldn't see Dan anymore.
“I'm fine, Joan. It was an accident. It wasn't Dr. Makovi's fault. I want to stay and get better.”
Joan frowned. “You think they're helping you?”
“Sure. I can feel my neurons changing.”
Joan sighed and nodded. “Alright. Just don't take too long. Remember this is costing me two hundred bucks a day.”
Amber winced with guilt. Then she glanced at her leg so Joan would think it was a wince of pain.
“Does it hurt?” Joan asked, looking at Amber's cast.
“The most excruciating,” Amber said.
“I can relate.”
“I doubt it.”
“I know what pain is. I gave birth to you.”
Amber was unexpectedly hurt by this and she started to cry.
“I meant the labor pains,” Joan said, handing Amber a tissue from her purse. “You had such broad shoulders. You got that from your father.”
“I got my toes from you,” Amber sniffled.
The next day, Amber returned to the rehab, walking on crutches. The other gamblers signed her cast, and covered it with doodles. Because of her broken leg, Amber couldn't take part in wall-climbing or other outdoor activities. But that didn't effect her “rewiring.” Many people showed up to the rehab center with broken limbs after missing payments to loan sharks, so this wasn't an extraordinary situation. There was an indoor rewiring method. There were indoor non-competitive games—mostly jigsaw puzzles. While the others were outside climbing walls and other obstacles, Dan stayed inside with Amber, the two of them putting puzzles together. Their fingers touched as they reached for puzzle pieces. They kissed when no one was looking. At night, he would sneak into her room, into her bed. Amber felt lighter—maybe it was Dan, maybe it was the codeine, or maybe gravity removed some of its weight from off her.
As they put together 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles, Amber learned more about Dan. His parents owned a casino on their reservation. Dan worked as a poker dealer, but would sneak away from the table to play roulette. Soon he was hooked. He went on roulette binges, not eating or sleeping for days. He stole from his parents to play. If he won, he'd pay them back. If he lost, the money went to his parents through the casino. The house always won.
“My dad said that if I didn't stop roulette, he'd break my horse's legs.”
“You have a horse?”
“Sure. I drew henna on her hooves.”
Amber figured that if she had a horse, she probably would never go near a blackjack table.
Amber told Dan about losing thousands of dollars at Eyeball Eddie's casino. Dan laughed. He said he knew Eddie well. When Dan's parents forbid him to play roulette in the reservation's casino, he played at Eyeball Eddie's. He started to lose, went on credit, and lost some more. Eddie showed him the rusty hammer. Not wanting to have to get a tetanus shot, Dan asked his parents for the money, and they made him go to Dr. Makovi's rehab.
After a few weeks of Amber and Dan putting together jigsaw puzzles, Dr. Makovi declared that Dan was no longer a gambling addict. He was rewired and ready to go home.
Dan tongue-kissed Amber goodbye. “When you get out, call me,” he said. “You'll come to my reservation. I'll take you horse riding.”
With Dan gone, Amber felt no reason to stay in the rehab. She called Joan and asked her to pick her up. “I'm afraid they'll break my other leg,” Amber said.
Joan picked her up from rehab. Dr. Makovi protested that Amber wasn't ready.
“She still has gambling wired in the brain.”
Joan took her home anyway. She seemed glad to have Amber back and Amber was glad to be home. But there as no time to celebrate Amber's homecoming. Joan had to work the late shift. She rushed off, leaving Amber home alone.
Amber called Dan from the phone in the kitchen.
“Hello,” Dan said. There was wind in the background. Amber supposed he was outside—perhaps on his horse.
“Hi,” Amber said.
“Who is this?” Dan said.
Amber was hurt that he didn't recognize her voice, although all she had said was “hi.”
“It's me. It's Amber.”
“Oh, hi,” he said, his voice sounding upbeat. “Are you out?”
“Yeah.”
“That was fast.”
“I have great news,” Amber said. “Tomorrow I'm getting the cast off. So I'll be able to do anything. You know. Horse riding or whatever. So when can I come out to your reservation?”
There was silence on the line.
“Hello?” Amber said.
“I'm still here,” Dan said. “Listen. About that. I have a few reservations.”
Dan chuckled. Amber thought he meant that his family owned a lot of land. She didn't see the humor.
“I know—you're rich,” she said. “From the casino.”
“No. It's...sorry. Indian joke. I guess it's not funny under the circumstances. Listen...I don't think we should see each other again.”
Now it was Amber's turn to be silent.
“Hello?” Dan said.
“I'm here,” Amber wheezed. There was a heavy weight in her chest. She grabbed onto the kitchen table to steady herself. “What...what do you mean?”
“I think it was great being with you and I had a great time at rehab. But things are different now.”
Amber stared down at the toes peeking out of her cast.
“It's my toes—isn't it?” she said, her voice cracking. Her eyes glazed with tears and her vision blurred.
“It isn't you,” Dan said. “I'm trying to stay away from gambling and I want to succeed this time, so I have to stay away from everyone who has anything to do with gambling.”
“You live in a casino.”
“Okay, fine. It's not because of that. Look...I just don't want to see you anymore. Let's just leave it at that. I don't owe you any explanation.”
“What did I do wrong?”
“I have to go,” Dan said. “I'm sorry you can't be more mature about this.”
There was a click.
“Hello?” Amber said.
No answer. He had hung up.
Amber dropped the phone into the receiver. She sank down into a chair, feeling gravity crush down on her. Dan just used her to pass the time in rehab. He was always planning to dump her as soon as he got out. It was slim pickings in the rehab. He picked her over fat Jane and pimply Rebecca. Not much competition. But out in the real world, Amber didn't have a chance with him.
Amber felt a physical pain in her chest, and understood why it was called a broken heart, even though the heart just pumped blood, and the feelings were chemicals in the brain. This hurt more than when she broke her leg. And there was no cast to put on a broken heart. Sadness crawled up her throat. She tried not to think of Dan. Every thought of him made something clench in her and seized her broken heart with pain. She needed something to take her mind off this, something to make her feel better—she needed to win.
She picked up her crutches, left the house, and got on the bus to Eddie's back-alley casino. Inside the casino, the thick cloud of cigar smoke embraced her like an old friend. With his good eye, Eyeball Eddie squinted at Amber's cast and crutches.
“You been playing somewhere else?” he asked.
“I fell off a wall,” Amber said. “I've come to play.”
“I promised your mom I wouldn't give you credit.”
“So we won't tell her.”
Eddie grinned, his tiny teeth shiny with spittle. “I never listened to my folks either.”
He gave her a stack of chips.
Amber hobbled on her crutches over to the blackjack table. The familiar hard seat greeted her backside. She should have worn a diaper, she thought, in case she was on a hot streak and had to pee. Oh, well, too late now.
She set her chips on the green velvet table top. The grizzled dealer grinned at her. He waited for her to place her bet.
Amber stared down at her toes sticking out of the cast: her too-long index toe dwarfed the big toe. It wasn't Dan's fault, Amber realized. It was hers. She deluded herself into thinking that he liked her, that his kisses were genuine. No one could like her. She was a despicable person. People were right to hate her. She could hear Dan's cackling laughter in her head.
Then she realized it wasn't just in her head. It was inside the casino. She looked around. The laughter was coming from over by the roulette table. Amber balanced her tray of chips on top of a crutch, and hobbled towards the sound.
Next to the roulette table stood Dan. He was laughing, his white teeth gleaming, a strand of long hair hanging over his face. Next to him was a shapely blonde girl about Amber's age. Dan turned to the girl and stuck his tongue in her mouth. The slurping of their tongues pierced the smoky air. Amber felt gravity crush down on her. Her bad luck continued. What were the chances of the man who dumped her being at Eyeball Eddie's, tongue-kissing a beautiful girl? Like getting struck by lightning.
Then Amber noticed that both of the girl's forearms were in thick white casts, covered with signatures and doodles. Her slim fingers had intricate henna designs on them.
Amber realized why Dan dumped her. It wasn't her toes. It wasn't anything wrong with her. As realization set in, a wide grin spread on Amber's face. When she first met Dan he barely paid any attention to her. In the human knot, she rubbed up against him, but he ignored her. When she climbed up on his shoulders, he just shrugged. But as soon as her leg snapped, he was all over her, asking if she was okay, picking her up, defending her from the fat red-headed man. In the hospital, he drew henna on her toes so he could be near the broken leg. He didn't come to her hospital room to visit her; he came to visit her broken leg. He didn't stay inside to put puzzles together with her, but to put them together with her broken leg. When he picked up the phone, his voice sounded excited to hear from her—Amber was sure of it. But as soon as she told him the cast was coming off, that the leg was healed, he lost all interest in her. She wasn't a freak. Dan was. He was a pervert with a thing for cripples: a cripple-o-phile. He probably stood outside emergency rooms to pick up girls.
Amber's heart soared and gravity stopped crushing her. She felt like celebrating. This called for blackjack. She hobbled back to the blackjack table, set down her crutches, and sat down. Dan's laughter faded into the other noises of the casino.
As Amber lay down her bet, a thought fluttered through her mind. It was interesting that she always wanted to play blackjack, no matter what her mood was. When she felt weighed down, she played to pick herself up. When she felt euphoric and weightless, she played to celebrate. Was that what they meant by addiction? Maybe. She decided she'd have to get some help for that. Tomorrow. For now, she had to celebrate.
“Hit me.”

The Pitching Machine

2009-12-23T15:13:00.000-06:00

When I was 10 years old, I was the worst player on our baseball team. I batted last—14th out of 14 players—and struck out every single time for the whole season. On my march back to the dugout, my teammates muttered “good effort,” but only because the coach made them say it. When the coach wasn't around, they told me what they really thought: that I should commit suicide.
When baseball season mercifully came to an end, I resolved that next year I wouldn't be humiliated again. I needed to practice my hitting during the off-season, so I begged my parents to buy me a pitching machine..
“Just have a friend pitch to you,” my father said. Then he realized he had accidentally broken the unspoken rule that we didn't talk about the fact that I had no friends. To escape of the awkward silence, he agreed to buy it for me.
The men from the sporting goods store set it up in our back yard under the palm trees. They set up the metal frame and then hung the nets, making the batting cage. The pitching machine sat on a metal tripod. I set baseballs into the plastic slide that brought them down one-by-one to two spinning wheels, one on top of the other. The wheels spit out the balls. The speed could be adjusted, but I set it to the slowest setting. I would work my way up. By baseball season, I hoped to be hitting Major League speed fastballs.
I spent all my free time out there in the batting cage, swinging at balls from the batting machine. Every 8 seconds, a ball shot out at me. I tried to keep my eye on it, to keep my hips loose, and my elbow straight. I mostly just connecting with air, but did manage to make contact with a couple, tipping them off to the side. When the machine was out of balls, I gathered them up and dropped them back in and repeated the process. For the next few weeks, I spent all my free time in the yard.

One day after school I sat on the bus, alone as usual, when someone sat down next to me. It was Evan Barski, the most popular kid in my grade. He had been on my baseball team, batted cleanup, and led the league in home runs, RBIs, and batting average. Needless to say, he was always picked first in gym class. I wondered why he sat next to me and realized he probably wanted my seat, so I should stand up and give it to him.
“You have a batting cage,” he said. It wasn't a question. “I'm coming over.”
My powers of speech failed me, so I just nodded. I couldn't believe it. The coolest kid in school was coming over to my house. I felt the other kids staring at the two of us, and I brimmed with pride.
He didn't speak to me the whole bus ride. When we arrived at my house, we went straight to the backyard and the pitching machine. Fortunately my parents were still at work and not there to embarrass me.
I loaded the balls into the pitching machine and pressed the button. He swung the aluminum bat at them, cracking out what looked to be home runs. When the machine was empty I ran around, picking up the balls and putting them back in the machine. He didn't offer to help. He also didn't offer to let me have a turn at bat, but that was fine with me. I needed more time to become a good hitter. I preferred to practice alone.
After hitting a few hundred baseballs, Evan dropped the bat and walked out of the batting cage. He pulled an orange off of my mother's orange tree. I realized I should have offered him a snack. He must have been hungry. I was a bad host, probably because I wasn't used to guests. He pulled off one orange after another, dropping them onto the front of his T-shirt, which he used to cradle them. No wonder he was a star athlete: he ate fruit for a snack instead of Doritos and Hostess Twinkies. I worried my mother would notice the absence of fruit on the tree—she donated them to a local food bank—but I didn't say anything, fearing that Evan would think I was uncool.
He came back into the batting cage, dropped the oranges in the pitching machine, and picked up the aluminum bat.
“Push the button,” he said.
I knew I would probably get in big trouble for this, but I pressed the button.
An orange shot out of the machine. Evan swung the bat and made contact. The orange exploded, splashing juice everywhere, all over us. Evan laughed and readied himself to swing at the next orange. I forced myself to smile, wondering what I could tell my mother when she found the pulverized remains of her oranges.
When the machine was empty, we went and gathered more oranges. He gave them the same treatment. When the orange tree was bare, we moved onto the lemon tree. Soon I was covered with sticky juice. Next came the pomegranates. Little red seed splattered everywhere when the bat hit the fruit. Then we picked up fallen coconuts and dropped them in the machine.
When the first coconut slid down the ramp and touched the wheels, the wheels stopped suddenly. The coconut was too big. But the wheels kept trying to turn. There was a hissing sound and smoke rose from the hinges. Suddenly there was a loud bang and the wheels stopped moving. The machine was broken.
Evan laughed. “So long, loser,” he said. He dropped the bat, walked out of the batting cage and out of the backyard. I stayed where I was, staring at the busted pitching machine.
Tears filled my eyes and I felt a heavy anchor in my chest. Covered in sticky citrus juice, I realized I was stupid to think anyone liked me or would ever like me. I was a disgusting, despicable person. I swung the bat at the pitching machine, knocking it down into the grass among bits of pulverized citrus pulp. Then, through a haze of tears, I smashed the aluminum bat down into the broken pitching machine over and over again.

Sacrifice

2009-11-26T12:51:00.000-06:00

There was no rain. The corn kernels couldn't take root in the dry, cracked ground. The stream that flowed through the village became narrower, and the farmers could no longer splash and swim in it, so they sat next to it, dipped their feet in the sluggish, muddy water, and worried. The rain goddess had forgotten to send rain. To remind her, the men put on masks made from green and orange gourds and antelope antlers, the only clothing that was ever worn; everyone usually went naked. Around a large stone where they usually burned the corn offering, about twenty men danced, chanted, and pounded heavy drums made from dried pumpkins until their palms were pink and raw. The little boys joined in, beating hollow gourds with sticks.
The goddess paid no attention. There were no clouds. The floating blue water that was the sky hovered above, taunting the farmers.
Perhaps if the farmers were fruitful, they thought, the goddess would send rain and fertilize their crops. The men and women climbed onto the stone altar and had sex. Their brown, tanned bodies tore at each other, tangles of hair and flesh. Only about ten bodies could fit on the gray slab of stone, so some fell off and grappled with each other on the hard dirt below. The children imitated their elders, rubbing their bodies together and rolling around on the ground. The antelope horns kept poking people in awkward places, so the men removed their masks. Unlike the orgies at their regular festivals, this wasn't enjoyable. They felt tingling and muscle spasms, but there was no ecstasy. Afterwards, they lay in a heap, their genitals feeling raw.
The goddess ignored them. The empty blue sky mocked them. The stream of water was down to a muddy trickle. The farmers wondered why this was happening to them.
The medicine man knew why this was happening to them.
“When you burned corn on the altar, you didn't give her the best ears of corn,” he told the farmers. “You gave ears with missing kernels and sometimes even with bugs. And you didn't set it nicely on the altar or arrange it in an eye-pleasing pattern. You just tossed it up there like a bundle of sticks and set it on fire.”
They had to give the goddess something important to show how sorry they were—the best of what they had—so they went to the hut where they stored the last of the dried corn from the previous year's harvest. They brought the corn to the stone altar and carefully arranged it, making a beautiful mosaic of an antelope dancing among clouds.
The men, wearing their antelope masks, woefully slapped their drums. The boys reluctantly beat their gourds. The medicine man lifted his arms up to the empty blue sky and begged the goddess to send them rain. Then he set a torch to the dried corn, which erupted into a blazing fire. Soon, popping noises came from the fire, and an aromatic smell filled the air. White balls of puff, like clouds, spilled off the stone altar and landed on the hard dirt. The farmer's mouth's watered and their stomachs gurgled. They wanted to rush up to the altar and stuff the popped corn kernels in their mouths, but the medicine man told them not to—the corn belonged to the goddess. The medicine man ducked around the flames, picked up white, fluffy corn, and tossed it back on the blazing altar. The smoke became thick and black. It rose in plumes to the empty blue sky. The farmers stepped away, covering their mouths from the noxious fumes. The goddess liked this smell? The farmers hoped so. And they hoped that she would send them some sweet-smelling rain.
But after the black smoke dissipated, the sky remained blue and cloudless. The stream dried up completely. The farmers dug holes where the stream had been and sucked water out of the mud. There was no more corn, so the farmers dug up roots. The roots were bitter. To eat them, they had to hold their noses and chew quickly. After a few days of eating roots, the farmers bodies were lethargic, their faces numb from bitterness, and they felt the bitter smell wafting from their pores.
They approached the medicine man by the altar. What should they do now?
The medicine man nodded his head and stuck out his chest.
“Sex,” the medicine man said. “We must have sex on the altar. But this time you must do it with your whole heart in it. Before, you were only going through the motions. You weren't giving it all you had. You must keep your masks on this time.”
One of the farmers, a man named Odakota, picked up a large rock about the size of a human skull and heaved it at the medicine man. It hit him in the face and shattered his teeth. Blood splashed on the dry dirt. The medicine man fell down; his arms and legs twitched. Odakota picked up the heavy rock with both hands, his legs straining under its weight, and brought the rock down on the medicine man's head. The old man stopped twitching. Blood pooled around the corpse. The thirsty earth soaked up the blood, leaving a dark stain. The men cheered and let out ululating cries. Odakota sniffed his bloody fingers and smiled.
“The goddess doesn't want burnt corn,” he told the farmers. “She hates the smell as much as we do. And she doesn't want sex, no matter how much we put our hearts into it. She wants blood. If we rain blood on her altar, she'll rain rain on our soil. Blood is the food of the gods. We need a sacrifice.”
The people cheered. Odakota's confidence lifted their spirits. And what he said made sense.
“And who should the sacrifice be?” Odakota asked.
The men became silent and gazed at their toes. Each tried to make himself smaller, hoping Odakota wouldn't pick him.
“The little girl with the blue eye,” Odakota said. “That eye is exactly the same color as the water in the sky. And she's always staring at the sky when she should be looking down.”
The men agreed. Certainly if they gave Ukele, the girl with the sky-colored eye, as a sacrifice, the goddess would send down rain. Everyone else had two dark black eyes. It was unnatural for her eye to look like the sky.
While the men decided to sacrifice Ukele on the goddess's stone altar, Ukele was sitting with the other women by the huts. The other women were cleaning crumbling soil off of little white roots with their fingers. Ukele sat on the ground, scraping a dull stone against a sharp piece of flint that the men used as a harvesting sickle. No corn grew yet, but Ukele figured that if the sickles were sharp, the goddess would have to send rain. Ukele's mother, who was pulling tangles out of Ukele's hair, said the sickle was sharp enough—if Ukele sharpened it any more, the flint would break. Ukele tested the edge with her finger. The sharpness threatened to break the flesh of her fingertip. She set down the smooth stone, trying to resist the urge to scrape at the sickle more.
Ukele felt her face and wondered which of the men had planted the seed that grew her. She often wondered about this. None of the farmers knew who their fathers were. Everyone had sex with everyone, not just on the altar, but in the huts, in the corn field—everywhere.
The distant sound of drumbeats came from up the hill by the stone altar. Soon this was joined by the sound of sticks beating gourds. The men were probably dancing again, trying to persuade the goddess to send rain. Ukele hoped it worked. She knew that they would all die if it didn't rain soon.
The drumbeats got louder. They were getting closer. The men were probably coming to gather up the women for another orgy on the altar. Ukele couldn't wait to grow up. In a few years, her breasts would swell and hair would grow on her body. Then could join in the sex on the altar. But now none of the men were interested in touching her. She had to roll around on the ground, groping the little boys.
The men were wearing their antelope masks as they ran down the hill, banging on their drums. They ran filled with hope. The women jumped up to see what was going on. Ukele set down the sickle and stood up.
Ukele recognized the medicine man's mask—it had 3 antelope horns instead of 2—but it wasn't the medicine man wearing it. It was Odakota, recognizable by the bumps on his inner thighs. He raised his hand and the drumming and shouting ceased.
“The goddess thirsts for blood,” Odakota said. “There's no rain on the soil because there's no rain on the altar.”
He motioned towards Ukele. Several men grabbed her arms and started to drag her away. Ukele screamed and tried to wiggle away, but the men were too strong for her. She bit one of the men in the forearm, but he slapped her, gripped her hair, and held her mouth away from them. Ukele's mother tried to run after her daughter, but the other women tackled her and pinned her to the ground. Soon Ukele was away from the huts and couldn't hear her mother's screams; she only heard the deep boom of pumpkin drums. Ukele's heart pounded along with the drums. She shook uncontrollably and her legs stopped working, so the men pulled her along. Her feet dragged in the dirt behind her. She knew the farmers didn't like her eye, but she didn't expect that they would kill her. The boys she had played with all her life now danced alongside her, sang, and beat their gourds with sticks.
As they approached the stone altar, Ukele saw the medicine man's body laying in the dirt, his skull crushed in, white brains spilling onto a dark patch of earth. Ukele felt like she would throw up.
A thick layer of black soot from the burning corn was still on the altar. The men pushed Ukele up on the altar and she landed on her face in the stale ash. They flipped her on her back on the gritty soot, which was hot from the sunlight. Two men grabbed her wrists; two grabbed her ankles. They stretched her out on the altar. Her shoulders felt ready to pop out of their sockets.
The men in antelope masks pressed in close around the altar. The boys complained that they couldn't see, so the men picked them up and set them on their shoulders. Above the antelope masks, the boys gazed down excitedly, grasping onto the antelope horns to keep their balance.
Odakota, wearing the medicine man's mask, climbed up on the altar. He held a large black curved piece of flint—a reaping sickle. He danced around, kicking up a cloud of black ash with his feet.
Ukele's eyes scanned the sky for clouds. There were none. The sun burned her eyes, but she didn't close them or look away. It didn't matter if she went blind. She didn't need her eyes anymore.
Odakota held his arms up and screamed into the empty sky. They were giving one of their own people, he said, so just as they were removing the blue from themselves, the goddess should remove the blue from the sky and send dark thunderclouds. The farmers screamed their approval and pounded their drums, which sounded like thunder. The boys slapped their gourds against the antelope horns—it sounded like rain pattering down on dry soil.
Odakota knelt down. He took off his mask and set it in the ash. His eyes were bloodshot and didn't point in quite the same direction. Ukele's whole body screamed with adrenaline. She thought of her mother, who would be all alone from now on. Odakota brought the sickle down to Ukele's throat. Its edge was jagged, not smooth like the ones she sharpened—this would really hurt.
Ukele tried to pull away. The men held her wrists and ankles fast. Odakota moved his face close to hers and smiled at her with the few teeth that remained in his mouth. Ukele felt his breath and the cold flint tickle her throat. The back of her skull pressed against the hard stone of the altar. She pulled her face away, pressing her cheek into the thick black ash. Odakota delicately traced a vein on her throat with the sickle, savoring the moment. Ukele sucked in a mouthful of bitter ash, filling her cheeks with it. She turned her face to Odakota and blew the ash in his face. He coughed, sneezed, and rubbed at his eyes. The shouting and drum-beating ceased. The children continued to slap their gourds against the antelope horns for a moment before they realized that they should stop. Ukele burped out ash. It tasted terrible—worse than bitter root. How could the goddess eat this stuff?
Odakota staggered and fell off the side of the altar into one of the men holding one of Ukele's ankles. The man lost his grip. Ukele kicked him hard in the gourd mask, sending him sprawling back. She kicked the other ankle-holding man's face and his hands slipped off her ankle. She rolled her hips back over her shoulders and kicked the masks of the two men holding her wrists. They lost their grip on her. Other men grabbed at her. She slipped out of their clutches, scurrying through the black ash on her belly. Now, completely covered with black ash, she jumped to her feet, ran across the stone, and leaped over the men's heads, landing hard but on her feet. Several of the boys fell to the hard dirt and started to cry.
Ukele ran. She jumped over the medicine man's corpse and sped away. A gourd hit her in the back of the the head, but she kept running.
The men ran after her, but their masks and heavy pumpkin drums slowed them down. They reluctantly dropped their drums and removed their masks. Then they started to gain on her.
Sweat stung Ukele's eyes. She sucked air into her burning lungs. She searched the sky for a cloud, but it was empty and blue.
Ukele realized she was running towards her mother's hut in the middle of the village. She should have run out of the village and wandered in the wasteland, where she would still die, but at least not at the hands of her own people.
As Ukele approached the huts, she saw her mother lying prostrate in the dirt and sobbing. Her scalp was shorn and bloody with tufts of hair here and there. Most of her hair was on the ground. She scraped at the ground with a bloody flint sickle, trying to bury her hair, but the earth was hard as stone. When her head lifted up and her eyes met Ukele's, she screamed, dropped the sickle, and reached her arms out to her daughter.
Fingertips snatched from behind at Ukele's hair. She whipped her hair forward, out of their grip, sending a cloud of ash in the air. Ukele leaped down at her mother's feet and grabbed the sickle. She jumped up and waved it at the farmers. Their yelling stopped and they backed away a few steps. Ukele's mother tried to hug and kiss her daughter, but Ukele held her back. She needed freedom of movement to defend herself.
“Stay back,” Ukele warned the farmers. “First one to get close gets cut.”
The farmers glanced around at each other. They outnumbered her, but the first one to charge could get hurt. None of them wanted to be the first. They glanced back at their discarded masks and drums. If they had their drums to thunder courage into their hearts, then they could charge her. The boys picked up sticks and beat their gourds, but that didn't make the men's hearts pound with courage; it just made them hiss like cowardly snakes.
The women and girls peered out from their huts, but they stayed inside.
Odakota came limping up with his flint sickle, his face and chest streaked with black ash. He smiled at Ukele and casually asked her, “Do you think it will rain?”
The farmers chuckled. Ukele didn't respond to Odakota. She was afraid a faltering voice would give away her faltering nerves. She tightened her grip on the sickle and glared at the farmers.
Odakota pressed his sickle between his teeth and bit down to hold it there. Then he raised his hands and clapped them together over his head. He clapped over and over again. Soon the other farmers joined in. The boys dropped their colorful gourds and clapped their little hands. The clapping didn't fill the men with courage as well as the drums did, but it was effective. Their hearts swelled with courage and their jaws became set. The hand clapping swelled to a crescendo, and the farmers couldn't contain their courage any longer. They set themselves to pounce.
Ukele brought the blade of the sickle to her own throat, pressing it against her flesh. The clapping stopped.
“Stay back!” Ukele screamed. “Stay back or I'll kill myself and you won't be able to sacrifice me!”
“No!” her mother screamed, grabbing at her daughter's arm.
Ukele stepped away from her and gazed furiously at the farmers. Her knees shook, her fingers trembled, and she worried that she would drop the sickle, but she grit her teeth and tried to ignore her mother's frenzied weeping. Ukele focused on what she might have to do—kill herself. It was better than going back to that ash-covered altar and having antelope masks surround her when they killed her.
The farmers glanced around at each other. They weren't sure what to do. If she killed herself, would it still be a valid sacrifice? Would the goddess send rain? They looked to Odakota. Could she cut her own throat or did someone else have to do it? Could it be here by the huts or did it have to be on the stone altar?
Odakota smiled. “The stone altar is just a tradition—it's not a necessity,” he said. He rubbed the sickle against his lips and inhaled through his nostrils. “But she can't cut her own throat. I have to do that.”
He stepped towards Ukele.
“Get back!” she shouted.
But Odakota kept walking closer, a sinister smile on his face.
Ukele steeled herself for driving the sickle into her throat. She looked at her mother's sobbing face. She wanted her mother's face to be the last thing she saw –not the farmers, not the empty sky.
Odakota's powerful arm grabbed Ukele's mother by the remaining tufts of hair on her bloody, shorn head. He forced her down to her knees and pressed his sickle to her throat.
“Drop your sickle,” he told Ukele, “or she dies.”
“Don't do it!” Ukele's mother screamed. Tears poured down her face.
Odakota tightened the sickle on Ukele's mother's neck, so she couldn't speak or even swallow without being cut.
Ukele's grip on the sickle grew slack. She felt it start to slip out of her hand. She prepared to press her eyes shut in case her mother's blood sprayed out.
“Let her go!” Ukele threatened, but her voice wavered.
“It doesn't matter to me if it's you or your mother,” Odakota said. “We're going to have a sacrifice. Now drop that sickle!”
Ukele looked at her mother's tearful face, her mournful eyes. If Ukele killed herself, her mother would still die. She looked up at the sky, scanning from horizon to horizon, hoping to see a puff of a white cloud. But it was only blue. There was nowhere to run—the men surrounded her. Her mother was the only one who loved her, the only one who hadn't betrayed her. Ukele could at least save her.
She let the sickle slip out of her fingers. It crashed to the hard dirt at her feet. Her mother let out a piercing scream. Odakota grinned and shoved Ukele's mother to the ground. He lunged at Ukele and slashed with the sickle. Ukele grabbed his wrist and tried to push the sickle away, but he was too strong. He knocked her on her back on the hard ground and pressed the sharp sickle at her throat. Ukele sank her teeth into the veins of Odakota's wrist. He screamed and tried to pull away, but Ukele clamped her teeth down tightly. His blood tasted horrible, worse than bitter root, worse than the ashes on the altar. Its taste made her think of death, like the blood of a corpse. But she kept her teeth clenched tightly into his wrist. The sickle dropped out of Odakota's fingers.
Odakota lifted his free hand to punch Ukele, but Ukele's mother jumped on his back, wrapped her arms around his neck, and choked him. He swatted at her behind his head with his free arm. She lost her grip on his neck, but held on tight to his hair.
Grasping around beside her shoulder, Ukele grabbed the sickle that Odakota had dropped. She clutched it tightly and jammed it into Odakota's neck. His eyes went wide and he opened his mouth to scream, but only a hoarse whistling came out. Blood spurted out of his neck into Ukele's face. Ukele released her bite. Odakota tried to protect his neck, but Ukele's mother pulled his head back, keeping his Adam's apple exposed. Ukele slashed at his neck with the sickle over and over again. Blood poured down on her. She could see the white insides of his throat. His heavy body collapsed on top of her and she couldn't breathe. She was afraid she would suffocate, but her mother pulled her out from under Odakota's dead body. Ukele and her mother hugged each other and sobbed. The farmers stood around, staring at this sight in silence. The women and girls finally came out of their huts and stared. No one was sure what to do. The girl with the blue eye had just killed Odakota. The sacrifice slit the throat of the one doing the sacrifice.
“He's the reason!” Ukele screamed, pointing the bloody flint sickle at Odakota's mutilated body. “He's the reason there's no rain! Now he's dead and the rain will come!”
The farmers glanced around. Then they broke into smiles and cheers. Men ran to get the drums they had abandoned. Boys beat their gourds with sticks. Everyone felt saved. Certainly rain would fall now. They could happily eat bitter roots for a couple months until the corn crop ripened.
The men put on their antelope masks and pounded their drums. The farmers—men, women, and children—danced and shouted in a circle around Odakota's corpse. Ukele looked at the faces of the people she knew her whole life and now saw them differently. They weren't really farmers. Those were just farmer masks that they wore. When they couldn't farm, the masks came off and they revealed their true faces—the faces of animals.
Gazing over her mother's shoulder at the distant horizon, Ukele saw faint white clouds hovering.

The Guantanamo Bay Redemption

2009-10-21T08:04:00.001-05:00

One evening, Gary lay on his couch, munching potato chips and watching Survivor, when men in black masks broke down his door and crashed through his window. They held machine guns to his neck, pulled a hood over his head, handcuffed him, dragged him down the stairs, and threw him in the back of a truck. Gary didn't know why anyone would want to kidnap him. He didn't have enemies. His family had no money for ransom. Obviously, these men wanted to steal his organs and sell them on the black market. They wanted his kidneys.
“Just take one,” Gary pleaded through the musty wool hood. “Just take one and I won't tell anybody.”
They didn't respond to his pleading and begging.
They brought him on a military cargo plane to a compound surrounded by guard towers and fences strung with barbed wire. They dressed him in a polyester orange jumpsuit that clung to his chest in the balmy air. A salty breeze kissed his face; the ocean was near. In the distance beyond the guard towers, there were palm trees, but within the compound there was only gray dirt and concrete sheds.
A guard pushed him along through the dusty yard. Stitched to the shoulders of the guard's olive green uniform were American flag patches bordered with golden thread. For a moment, Gary thought he was saved. Then he realized it was his fellow Americans who had kidnapped him.
“I'm an American citizen,” Gary said.
“Sure you are, Mohammad.”
“My name isn't Mohammad.”
“Do you prefer to be called Moe?”
“My name is Gary.”
“Your name is prisoner two seven nine four eight one eight. Memorize that number. It will not be repeated.”
“Don't I at least get a phone call?”
“That's only when you're under arrest. You're not under arrest. You're an unlawful combatant. You have no rights.”
The guard brought him into a cube-shaped concrete shed smelling of stale sweat. A single bare light bulb hung from the ceiling. A short bald man leaned against a metal folding table in the middle of the room. He smiled at Gary with crooked, yellow teeth. Seated in a metal folding chair against the wall sat a woman scribbling on a clipboard. The short bald man broke a clove from a bulb of garlic, popped it in his mouth, and chewed. He walked up and breathed his garlicky breath in Gary's face. Gary started to protest his innocence, but the man told him to shut up.
“I'm going to ask you some questions and you're going to tell me the answers,” the bald man said. “Question number one—where is Osama bin Laden?”
“In a cave?” Gary said.
The short bald man smiled. “That's fine,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I prefer if you make it more difficult for me. I got good news and bad news for you. The good news is the United States doesn't use torture, so we won't be yanking out your toenails or attaching electrodes to your genitals. The bad news is that we have other ways of getting information out of you.”
The woman with the clipboard cleared her throat.
The man sighed. “Our Red Cross observer,” he said, nodding at the woman with the clipboard. He handed Gary a small white plastic card. “That's a stress card. If at any point, you feel the interrogation is too intense or stressful for you, hold up the stress card, and we'll stop.”
They made Gary stand on one foot as they questioned him. They wanted Osama bin Laden's location. They wanted the names and addresses of other terrorists. He would stay on one foot until he told them what they wanted to know. Gary wasn't allowed to hold his arms out to balance himself, so staying up was difficult.
“Look at you,” the guards mocked. “Standing on one leg like a flamingo. We should get you a pink jumpsuit!”
The woman with the clipboard cleared her throat. “It has to be orange,” she said.
Soon Gary's leg started to ache, so he held up the stress card.
“Dagnabbit!” the bald man said.
Gary set his leg back down.
One of the guards left and then returned with a plastic jug full of water. They lay Gary on his back on the metal table, his head hanging off the side.
“Where is Osama bin Laden?” the bald man asked.
“I don't know,” Gary said.
The bald man poured water over Gary's mouth and up his nose. The cold water was refreshing at first, but then it choked him. His lungs tried to suck in air, but only sucked in water. Gary lifted the stress card and waved it around.
“Dagnabbit!” the bald man said, throwing the half-full water jug against the wall.
Gary sat up and coughed out water. A cigarette taste burned his sinuses.
The bald man kicked the plastic jug, which bounced off the concrete wall. “Take him back to his cell,” he said.
The Red Cross woman cleared her throat.
The bald man sighed. “And give him a Koran,” he said.
A guard marched Gary to a narrow corridor with barred cells on each side. Each tiny cell held a swarthy, bearded man in an orange jumpsuit, who stared at a concrete wall.
Gary was thrown in a cell with a thin cot, a metal sink, and a metal toilet. The guard handed him a yellowed paperback Koran. When the cell door slammed shut and the key turned in the lock, Gary's heart pounded.
“Welcome to the neighborhood,” said a heavily accented voice from the cell across the hall.
The large, hairy man introduced himself as Abdullah. He held a Koran and fingered its cover as he spoke. He said he was a former Afghani goat herder turned freedom fighter, who was captured by the Americans. He would be happy to take Gary under his wing.
“You will be my bitch,” Abdullah said. “I'm not gay, but there's no women in this prison, so I take what I can get. Unfortunately we're in separate cells, so I can't touch you. We'll have to talk dirty to each other.”
Gary tried to ignore Abdullah. He sat down on his cot and turned toward the wall, avoiding Abdullah's gaze. There was nothing to do but read the Koran, so he flipped it open to the first page. It was in some strange script that Gary couldn't read—Arabic, he supposed. He couldn't read it, but he could enjoy the flowing black letters that danced like ribbons. He looked at page after page and was so enmeshed in the calligraphy that he didn't notice the guard approach until his cell door swung open.
“Let's go, Mohammad,” the guard said, waving a rifle. “The Red Cross went home for the day. Time for the real interrogation.”
Gary folded the upper corner of the page in the Koran to mark his place, closed the book, and set it on the mattress.
Abdullah screamed in fury and charged the bars of his cell. His nostrils flared like a bull. Spittle dripped from his mouth. His eyes shone hate at Gary.
“What did I do?” Gary said.
“You desecrated the Koran,” Abdullah said. “You must use a bookmark to mark your place.”
“But I don't have a bookmark.”
“You could use your stress card.”
“I need it. I can't go to the interrogation without it.”
Gary opened the Koran, and smoothed out the diagonal line with his finger, but the line didn't disappear.
“Let's go!” the guard shouted.
Gary closed the Koran, set it on his cot, and followed the guard out of the cell. When he passed Abdullah's cell, Abdullah reached through the bars and grabbed Gary's ear.
“As you did to the Koran, so shall be done to you,” Abdullah said, and folded down Gary's ear. Cartilage snapped and a burning pain flooded the ear.
Gary screamed as Abdullah laughed. The guard chuckled to himself.
Following the guard back to the interrogation room, Gary rubbed his wounded ear, which wasn't standing up straight anymore—it flopped. Hopefully the cartilage would grow back.
When Gary reentered the interrogation room, the short bald man held a steel crowbar, rhythmically tapping its hooked end in the palm of his hand. Where the metal table had been now stood a wooden crate the size and shape of a refrigerator turned on its side. A humming noise, like fluorescent lights, came from inside the box. The woman with the clipboard was nowhere to be seen.
“The Red Cross is gone,” the short bald man said, stroking the curved end of the crowbar like a cat's neck. “I have good news for you. This crate just arrived, so you get to be the first to try out our new interrogation method. But I should warn you—this is the first time we're attempting this particular method, so there may be a few bugs.”
The guards chuckled and snorted. “A few bugs,” they said.
The bald man smacked the crowbar against the crate. Whatever was inside went crazy. It buzzed and screamed like a swarm of locusts. The bald man popped a fresh clove of garlic in his mouth and got up close in Gary's face.
“Half a ton of caterpillars,” the bald man said. “Freshly shipped from the Amazon. And you're taking a bath in them.”
Gary's heart pounded and his legs shuddered. He was terrified of insects. When he saw a spider in his kitchen, he called over the neighbor to kill it. Gary pulled the stress card out of his pocket and held it up. It shook in his trembling hand. The guards laughed.
“Your card's been canceled,” the bald man said.
The card slipped from Gay's shaking fingers and fell to the floor.
“All right! I admit it!” Gary screamed. “I'm Osama bin Laden! Please, I'll tell you whatever you want!”
The guards laughed. The bald man stuck the flat end of the crowbar in the crack at the top of the crate and pressed. The wood creaked. The bald man jumped up and then came down with all his weight on the crowbar. The wood cracked in the corner of the crate. A burst of color shot out—green, blue, purple, red. It kept pouring out, filling the room. The guards screamed and covered their faces to protect themselves from the fluttering wings that filled the room. Gary had never seen so many butterflies; it was a beautiful sight. He covered his mouth to stop anything from flying in. One of the guards opened the heavy door and stumbled out. The swarm of butterflies flew out after him. The bald man grabbed a guard by the collar and pulled him close to his face.
“Butterflies!? Why are there butterflies in there?! There's supposed to be caterpillars!”
“I don't know, sir.”
“What do you mean you don't know!!??”
“I ordered caterpillars, sir. They must have sent the wrong box.”
Gary looked down into the crate. It was empty except for a few dead green caterpillars.
“Do I still have to get in?” he asked.
“Take him back to his cell,” the bald man said.
The guard marched Gary back to his cell, past a rainbow of butterflies. As Gary passed by the cells, every bearded face was pressed against cell bars, eyes gazing at the butterflies that flew past. A film of hopeful tears was in each pair of eyes.
The guard locked Gary in his cell, and then went off. Gary glanced into Abdullah's cell. Abdullah sat on the cement floor, ripping pages out of his Koran.
“What are you doing?” Gary said.
“The butterflies,” Abdullah said. “They made me remember how beautiful life is.”
“So you're ripping up your Koran?”
“It's Origami.”
“What?”
“It's the Japanese art of paper folding.”
“I know what Origami is.”
Abdullah folded the Koran pages. He fashioned them into a shiv, a jail-house knife. He stuck this in the lock of his cell door and jiggled it around. Metal gears inside the lock clicked, and the door slid open. Abdullah stepped out of his cell and looked down at Gary. He stuck the shiv into the lock of Gary's cell door and jiggled it. Gary jumped onto his bed. There was no way out. Concrete walls surrounded him on three sides. He snatched up his Koran from the bed next to him—the only weapon he had to defend himself. The lock clicked and the door squealed open.
“Come on,” Abdullah said, motioning with the paper shiv for Gary to follow him. “We're getting out of here.”
Gary, realizing that Abdullah was not planning to kill him, let the Koran slip out of his hand and onto the mattress. He ran after Abdullah. About a dozen other prisoners had Origamied themselves out of their cells. Together, they dashed away.
The guard towers were empty. All of the guards were in the yard, trying to capture the hovering butterflies. They swung giant butterfly nets—the kind used to catch crazy people and cart them off to the lunatic asylum.
The prisoners ran up to the fence. On the other side was about twenty meters of a dirt ground and then palm trees, but the fence separating them from this had barbed wire strung through every rung from top to bottom. There didn't seem to be a way to get past it. Gary glanced over his shoulder. The guards still swung butterfly nets at the butterflies.
The bearded men knelt down and started to scoop up dirt with their bare hands. They dug like rabbits. After only a few minutes, they had dug a shallow channel under the fence, coming out the other side. Although it was only a couple of inches between the bottom of the channel and the barbed wire, the bearded men slithered through without slicing open their backs on the low-hanging barbed wire. They probably had a lot of experience sliding under barbed wire at their terrorist training camps. Gary's childhood summer camp fires and archery classes didn't prepare him for this.
After Abdullah slipped under the fence, Gary was the only one left.
“Hurry up,” Abdullah said.
Gary knelt down to go under the barbed wire. In the dirt, centipedes writhed and squiggled. Gary's stomach wobbled, and he was afraid he would throw up. But they were waiting for him. He gritted his teeth, took a deep breath, and closed his mouth tight so no centipedes would crawl in. He pressed his chin in the dirt and pulled himself forward with his elbows. The barbed wire tore through the back of his orange jumpsuit, but it didn't break the skin. Something tickled inside his ear—probably a centipede crawling inside. He ignored it. He forced his rear end down away from the barbs and pulled himself forward.
He was through. Abdullah grabbed his arm and helped him to his feet. Gary felt like he had water in his ear. He tilted his head, tapped his temple, and a centipede fell out.
Just as the men turned to make a dash for the palm trees twenty meters away, a deafening burst of gunfire rang out. Everyone froze. Gary turned his head. On he other side of the fence, the short bald man had a large machine gun trained at them.
“Looky what we got here—a jailbreak.”
Gary raised his shaking hands in the air.
“Get back in here,” the short bald man said, gesturing with the nozzle of the rifle to the burrow underneath the fence.
Gary looked down at the dirt where the centipedes wriggled. A bit of orange fabric hung from a barb at the bottom of the fence. He didn't want to go through there again.
Abdullah whispered to one of the men in their strange guttural language.
“Right now!” the short bald man said. He pointed his rifle at Gary's chest. “You first, Mohammad.”
Abdullah whispered to Gary. “We're going to make a break for it,” he said. “I've been counting his shots. His gun is empty. He fired all six bullets. By the time he reloads, we'll be in those palm trees over there.”
Gary shook his head. That wasn't a six-shooter pointed at them. But before he could say anything, it was too late.
“On the count of three,” Abdullah said. “One, two, three.”
The bearded men ran. Gary ran with them. Gunfire filled the air. Bearded men, riddled with bullets, fell to the ground. Abdullah's ear exploded in a bloody mist. He screamed and collapsed, grabbing where his ear had been a moment ago.
Gary rushed into the palm trees. Bullets hit the trees and chunks of bark and palm fronds rained down on him. The trees soon ended and Gary ran down the beach, tearing off his orange jumpsuit. He jumped naked into the warm water, the salty taste splashing against his lips, and swam away.

The Paperweight

2009-09-24T09:47:00.000-05:00

When her children put her in a nursing home, Haruko went on a hunger strike. She soon realized, however, that no one cared if she starved to death—not the nurses who dumped her untouched plastic food tray in the trash; not her family who never visited—so she started to eat again. The nurses told her she was lucky to be there. They had a long waiting list. Some people signed up when they were still in high school. Haruko's family must have pulled some strings to get her in. But Haruko didn't feel lucky. Her wheelchair's rusted, squeaky wheel veered off without warning and smashed her into the wall. The nurses left her in the same dirty diaper for hours. When they finally changed her, they waved their hands in front of their noses and made sour faces. When the other old folks introduced themselves to her, Haruko pretended she was having one of her bad days. She didn't want to meet new people. The old people weren't any good; why would the new be different?
One afternoon, Miyo, a nurse who looked too young to be a nurse, was pushing Haruko in her wheelchair through the nursing home hallway.
“You have dandruff,” Haruko informed her. It was true. Miyo had flakes in her long, straight hair and on the shoulders of her black sweater.
“That's sawdust,” Miyo laughed and shook her head like a wet dog, causing flakes to snow down on Haruko.
Haruko wiped up a fingertip of the flakes from her lap and tasted them. It was indeed the bitter taste of sawdust.
Miyo was taking her down a dark, unfamiliar hallway.
“Where are we gong?” Haruko demanded.
“I have something that will cheer you up,” Miyo said.
Good, Haruko thought. Euthanasia. It was about time they put her out of her misery. “Thank you,” she said.
A roar that sounded like chainsaws came from behind the door at the end of the hallway. Haruko had hoped they would give her a powerful drug and let her leave this world peacefully, but it seemed her end would come from a more traditional method. Her stomach curled up in fear. She swallowed back the taste of bile, gritted her teeth, and clasped her hands together to stop them from shaking. Her grandfather had disemboweled himself with a sword; she could do this.
Haruko's knees pushed into the door and it swung open. Sawdust mites fluttered through the sharp rays of sunlight. The other old folks were all there, their eyes covered with plastic goggles. They were making things out of wood. Some operated lathes or circular saws or drill presses. Some painted planks of wood. One old man chewed a piece of sandpaper. Or more accurately, he gummed it, since he had no teeth.
Miyo wheeled Haruko around, giving her a tour of the wood shop, and extolled the virtues of woodworking. It was an excellent way to keep the mind sharp and slow the progression of dementia. Also, creating something increased feelings of self worth. Plus Haruko would have something nice to give her grandchildren when they came to visit.
“They don't come to visit,” Haruko said.
“They will if they know grandma has a wind chime for them,” Miyo said.
Aside from wind chimes, the old folks were making many things: cabinets, end tables, bird feeders, bookshelves.
“What do you want to make first?” Miyo asked.
“A coffin,” Haruko said.
“That's a big project,” Miyo said. “Let's start with something smaller.”
Haruko's first project was a paperweight. She didn't need a paperweight, since she had no papers to weigh down—it was a long time since she was asked to sign anything. But making a paperweight was simple. A good first project. Miyo gave Haruko a piece of scrap wood, about the size of a bar of soap. Haruko rubbed the wood with progressively finer grades of sandpaper, from course as gravel to delicate as a cat's tongue. After a week of sanding, half an hour every day, the paperweight was smooth as a stone on the beach, washed by millennium of tides. Haruko rubbed it with a black velvet-like cloth, a sand blanket, to remove sawdust. Then she brushed on a thin coat of glaze, a sticky amber liquid with dizzying fumes, to waterproof the paperweight. Miyo handed her a pair of wooden chopsticks and instructed her to lay the paperweight on them to dry overnight, so that it didn't stick to the table. Haruko smiled and nodded and then, when Miyo wasn't looking, set the paperweight directly on top of the wood table to dry. Chopsticks were for eating, not for drying paperweights.
The next day when Haruko took her spot in the wood shop, the paperweight was stuck tight to the table. She gripped the paperweight and pulled as hard as she could, but it stayed stuck, like it was part of the table. She glanced around. Miyo and the other nurses were chatting with each other or helping other old folks. Good. Haruko wanted to handle this by herself. Making the paperweight was about the only thing she could still do independently.
On the table was a screwdriver that no one seemed to be using. It had a black plastic handle, a tapered silver length flecked with rust, and a flat head. She picked it up and began to scrape away the dried amber glaze that pooled around the base of the paperweight, sticking it to the table.
Too slow. It was like tunneling out of prison with a teaspoon.
She set the flat head of the screwdriver at the crack where the paperweight met the table. She pressed hard, trying to get the head of the screwdriver in a crack so she could pry up the paperweight. It didn't work. For better leverage, she grasped the paperweight with her left hand, while pushing as hard as she could with the screwdriver in her right hand. Sweat beaded on her forehead, then trickled down, stinging her eyes. She blinked it away. Her wrist and forearm muscles strained. But she kept pushing as hard as she could.
Suddenly the resistance ceased. The screwdriver ripped the paperweight off the table and the flat head stabbed into Haruko's left palm. She dropped the screwdriver and grabbed her wounded hand. The wooden paperweight clattered on the floor. So did the screwdriver. Haruko didn't feel any pain. Maybe it was only a scratch. No, probably not. Blood cascaded down her wrist. She forced herself to peel back her wrinkled fingers and look. Blood oozed from gaping flesh and something white peeked from behind the gore. Bone.
Her left ring finger felt numb. She tapped it with her right hand. Half of her left ring finger had no feeling—the side next to the middle finger.
Seemingly out of nowhere, Miyo was at her side. She grabbed Haruko's wrist and stared at the would, her jaw dropping.
“What have you done?”
“I can't feel my finger.”
Haruko explained to Miyo what had happened.
“Why didn't you use the chopsticks I gave you?” Miyo asked.
“Chopsticks are for food,” Haruko said.
Miyo wheeled Haruko out of the wood shop and down the hallway. “Elevate it,” she said. “You have to elevate your hand to stop the bleeding.”
Haruko lifted her heavy arm up above her. Blood rolled down her forearm, dripped off her elbow, and onto her face. A drop landed in her mouth. She grimaced, but didn't spit it out.
They entered the nurses' station where the old folks were weighed and had their blood pressure checked each morning. Miyo searched through a cabinet.
“I can't feel my finger,” Haruko said again.
Miyo said nothing about Haruko's finger. She just poured rubbing alcohol over the wound. It stung and Haruko winced.
Then Miyo filled a syringe with clear liquid from a vial. “Don't worry,” she said. “I've seen doctors do this plenty of times.” She poked the needle into the wound and injected the liquid.
“I can't feel my finger,” Haruko said yet again.
“That's because I'm giving you a local anesthetic,” Miyo said. “Don't worry. The feeling will come back as soon it wears off.”
“I couldn't feel my finger before the anesthetic”
Miyo threaded a black thread into a needle. Then she began to sew the wound shut. The pain was excruciating. Haruko screamed and pulled her hand away.
“I can feel that,” she said. “You did the anesthetic wrong.”
Miyo smiled and sighed. “You're contradicting yourself. A moment ago you said you couldn't feel anything.” She grasped Haruko's wrist tightly and jabbed the threaded needle into the flesh of her palm. Haruko whimpered silently.
When the stitching was finished, Miyo wrapped gauze around the sealed wound.
Haruko supposed she would never feel with her ring finger again; the nerve was severed. But, like a blind person who's other senses become sharper, Haruko was acutely aware of the other nerves in her body. She wiggled her other fingers, feeling the nerves tingle with pleasure. She wiggled her toes. She danced her tongue against the roof of her mouth. She rolled her eyes in their sockets. She stretched her thighs and raised her shoulders. She was still alive, and her eyes teared up at this happy knowledge.
Miyo placed on a piece of tape to hold the gauze in place. “All done,” she said.
“Wonderful,” Haruko said. She smiled and her facial muscles tingled with pleasure, like limbs stretching after a long sleep. “Now I can put a second coat of glaze on my paperweight.”
Miyo raised her thin eyebrows. “You want to go back in there?” she asked. “Right away? After what just happened?”
Haruko nodded and grinned. “I can't leave a paperweight half finished,” she said.

The Gay Haredi

2009-08-27T09:27:00.002-05:00

Reuven pressed his black kippah onto his short hair, which was still damp from the mikvah water. He sat on the wooden bench and laced up his shiny black Shabbos shoes. The revolving metal gate to the locker room groaned and in walked a young soldier with a sky blue knitted kippah over his curly black hair. He strode past out-of-shape men in various stages of undress. Reuven hoped the soldier would sit next to him. His heart raced as the soldier stopped at the empty spot next to him, leaned his black M-16 across the bench, sat down, and unlaced his dusty red boots. He smelled of dirt and sweat; his smooth face had several days of black stubble. He had long black eyelashes. Reuven took his time buttoning his black sport coat. The soldier kicked off his boots and peeled off his gray socks. He had hairy toes. Reuven liked hairy toes.
Now Reuven's sport coat was buttoned and he had no more articles of clothing to put on—he had no further business in the locker room of the mikvah. And just when this muscular young soldier was starting to get undressed! There had to be some reason to stick around for a couple minutes. On the flap above the left chest pocket of the soldier's olive green shirt was a silver pin in the design of a snake coiled around a staff.
“Nice snake.”
The soldier smiled and unbuttoned his green shirt. The other men in the locker room shook their heads and clucked their tongues. In this mikvah, people didn't speak. The only sound was supposed to be the water heater's low, steady hum. Halachically, to speak in front of nudity was permissible as long as it was about secular matters and not Torah, but since many of these men were great Torah scholars with a penchant for turning the conversation that way, they abolished locker room talk altogether.
Reuven decided this vow of silence was silly. It was a Jewish mikvah, not a Buddhist monastery. He would just be careful to stick to worldly matters.
“In this week's parasha,” he told the young soldier, “Moshe Rabenu builds a snake out of copper.”
Several of the men grabbed the nearest piece of clothing to cover their genitals.
“There's a snake just like yours,” Reuven continued. “Coiled around a staff, except Moshe Rabenu's snake was made copper, not silver. ”
The soldier laughed. “This piece of tin? It's only the color silver.” He hung his shirt on the metal hook above the bench. The snake hung from the pocket, staring at Reuven.
The other men shook their fists at Reuven, not wishing to themselves break the vow of silence.
“So what does that pin mean?” Reuven said, steering back into secular territory.
“I'm a medic,” the soldier said, taking off his pants. “It's a medic pin.”
“That makes sense. When Moshe built the copper snake coiled around a staff, it was to heal people. When we looked at the snake, we were healed from our snake bites.”
Again, the men covered their genitals.
The soldier pulled down his beige boxer shorts. Reuven bit his lower lip to stop any drool from escaping.
The soldier picked up his M-16, slung it over his shoulder, and stepped over the wet tiles to the mikvah, his tight buttocks flexing with every step.
Reuven took a closer look at the silver pin on the green shirt hanging above the bench. The snake was in profile, only one of its eyes visible, its tongue stuck out in a taunting hiss. It was crafted in detail; each scale had a different shape and texture from the next. Reuven's fingertips itched to touch the scales. He rotated his head like he was working a knot out of his neck. The soldier was in the shower, rinsing off the grime from the street before getting in the mikvah. His M-16 rested at his feet. The other men in the locker room buttoned their shirts or inspected the knots in their tzitzit. Reuven reached out and touched the snake with his index finger. A sharp tingle shot up his arm. His finger traced the snakes body, moving back and forth down the hypnotizing serpent's spine. The outstretched tongue hissed: “Take me with you.” Reuven wanted the snake pin in his mouth. It probably had a metallic taste, like blood.
He once again worked out the knots in his neck. The soldier finished showering, brought his M-16 to the mikvah, set it down on the tiled floor, and climbed down the stairs. His back was to Reuven as his glistening body plunged again and again into the greasy water, splashing the men around him. The other men in the dressing room buttoned their shirts, combed out their side locks, and blew on their feet to make sure they were dry before putting on socks.
Reuven grasped the silver snake by the head and pressed the clasp with his thumb, releasing it. He slid the pin out of the fabric, leaving two scars, like a vampire bite. The fabric was darker green where the snake blocked out the sun. The pin covered less than half of Reuven's palm, yet it felt like a heavy book of Mishnaic commentaries. Reuven slipped it into the inner pocked of his jacket, picked up the plastic bag that held his towel, soap, and dirty clothes, and left through the groaning revolving gate.

In the darkness, Reuven thrust into his wife, pressing her sweaty body into their freshly laundered Shabbos sheets. Miryam tasted like gefilte fish with lots of horseradish. Reuven's sport coat hung on the chair by the desk. In the inner pocket, the silver snake pin transmitted its virility to Reuven in waves. Reuven felt the snake coil around his erection, making him hard as a nomad's staff. His wife squealed and moaned. The snake constricted and Reuven's fingers tore at the freshly-laundered Shabbos pillow case.
A fist banged their thin wooden door.
“We're trying to sleep!” shouted their son Yitzhak. “Do you have to make so much noise?”
Only a thin door separated the bedroom from the living room, where their five children slept. It was a one bedroom apartment, so at night the kids pulled out mattresses and lay them on the living room floor. Reuven and Miryam learned to make love in silence, in a steady rhythm, without any surprise movements. They knew where all the loose coils in their mattress was, so they could avoid rusty squeaks. But tonight their mattress sounded like the scrape of steel girders as a building was demolished.
“Go back to sleep!” Miriam shouted. “Your father's doing a mitzvah!”
“But you're making too much noise,” Rivkah whined.
“Then you'll sleep tomorrow afternoon! It's a mitzvah to sleep Shabbos afternoon!”
Soon Reuven shuddered and became still. As the passion departed his body, guilt flooded him. Sure, he satisfied his wife, which was a mitzvah, especially on Shabbos night, but he only performed so well that night because the silver snake watched him. And he acquired the snake pin by breaking the commandment not to steal. A mitzvah that comes from an aveirah isn't a mitzvah.
He lay on the tangled sheets, the sweat drying on his body, until his wife began to snore softly. Then he got up, avoiding the loose springs so that they wouldn't squeak and wake his wife. In front of his desk, he pulled on his white Shabbos boxer shorts, reached into the pocket of his jacket, and grasped the metal pin. It was cold to the touch. Reuven opened the door to the living room, careful not to let its hinges squeak. His children slumbered, their sheets tossed aside because of the hot summer night. Reuven stepped over their mattresses—they covered the whole living room—opened the bathroom door only a crack so that the light wouldn't wake them, and slipped inside, closing the door behind him.
He opened his fist. The snake stuck out its tongue like an innocent clown, but Reuven wasn't fooled. He lifted the seat of the white porcelain toilet. Then he froze. He should find the soldier and return the stolen object, put up a sign at the mikvah in case the soldier came there to look for it.
No. Reuven couldn't wait that long. He needed to get rid of this cursed object now. It didn't heal him when he looked at it like Moshe Rabenu's copper snake. This silver snake made his sickness grow.
He dropped the snake into the water and pressed the larger of the two flush buttons, the one for big loads. The snake slid out of sight and fresh, clear water filled the porcelain bowl.
Reuven filled the blue plastic hand-washing vessel and poured water on his hands, feeling as if a heavy weight had been lifted off of him. Then he crept through the darkness, carefully stepping over his children so as not to wake them, and returned to his wife's bed.

The Conversion

2009-08-23T08:56:00.002-05:00

Michael had been studying at Besorat Mesora, a yeshiva in Jerusalem, for two years now and they still hadn't converted him. Others who had arrived after him had already gone in the mikvah, but Michael was still waiting, probably because he vocally disagreed in class when rabbis said the Torah ordered them to cleanse Judea and Samaria of Arabs. So he was still in yeshiva and his tuition kept being raised—he now paid several thousand shekels a month. His savings were almost completely burned up. Most of the other students paid only a few hundred shekels per month, if they paid anything at all, but they were halachically Jewish. When he asked how much longer his conversion would take, the rabbis gave elusive answers, saying they would know when he was ready, that it was different for different people.
On Shabbat, he had to be the Shabbos goy. They would “ask” him to do things, but he understood that if he refused, it would only add more time to his conversion. He wasn't allowed to touch a bottle of wine on the table. Someone else had to pour it for him. They would never count him in a minyan or zimmun. It was as if he didn't even exist. He couldn't concentrate on his studies anymore and would usually pace around the neighborhood, under the leafy green trees, going through different scenarios: if he was killed by a terrorist now, he wouldn't get a Jewish burial.
On his two year anniversary, he was ready to walk down to the bridge that crossed over the highway and jump off.
“I should convert to Islam,” he told his chevruta, Baruch.
They were sitting in the middle of the beit midrash, next to the bimah. It was ten in the morning, so the study hall was filled with shouts, like at a stock exchange. Michael and Baruch had to shout at each other to be heard even though they sat just inches apart. They were studying Orchot Tzaddikim. Everyone else there was studying masechet gittin, but Michael wasn't allowed in the gemara shiur because he wasn't Jewish, and Baruch wasn't interested in gemara, thinking it a waste of time.
“You can have my Jewish status,” Baruch offered. “I don't really want it anymore.”
Baruch, short and fat with bright red hair, often joked that he only wore a kippah so that when he stared at girls, they would think he was a religious fanatic and not a pervert, that his leering stares were looks of disapproval and not desire. A kippah was like a pair of sunglasses: he could look where he wanted and not worry about people seeing where his eyes pointed.
“Why don't you just get a quickie conversion?” Baruch suggested.
According to Jewish law, to become a Jew all Michael needed was three Jewish witnesses, a lake, and a sharp needle. He didn't have to sit through hours of lectures every day of rabbis trying to brainwash him into being a right wing settler. Of course if he wanted a conversion that would be recognized by the state, that would let him make aliyah, he would need to be a right wing settler. But as far as the ministry of the interior in the sky was concerned, any conversion would do. In Me'ah She'arim, the ultra-Haredi neighborhood which was hostile to the state, they would give him a halachic conversion without all the bureaucracy.
“It's totally kosher,” Baruch said. “I mean, it's a back-alley conversion, so they might do the hatafat dam with a coat hanger, but at least they toivel the coat hanger first.”
Michael stood up. “Let's go,” he said.
“Where?”
“Me'ah She'arim. Now.”
“Okay.”
They walked over to Me'ah She'arim, hiding from the August heat by walking from shady spot to shady spot, sometimes scurrying across Yafo Street in order to walk under a long awning. It was a dry heat, so as long as they stayed out of direct sunlight, their sweat glands stayed off.
When they got to Me'ah She'arim, they walked past the small shops of the treeless street, and asked men in black caftans where they could find a no-frills quickie conversion—just something simple, fast, and kosher. They were directed to Rabbi Horovitz.
His house was in a narrow alley. All of the walls were crumbling. Laundry hung out of the windows: shirts, pants, dresses, but no underwear. They probably dried their underwear inside, for reasons of modesty.
They walked up a flight of chipped cement stairs and knocked on the unpainted door.
A hunched over old woman with tufts of white hair popping out from under a brown scarf peeked out of the door. Most likely the rabbi's wife.
“Hi. My name's Baruch. This is Mik'hael. We want to see Rabbi Horovitz about a conversion.”
She opened the door wide for them and waved impatiently for them to come in. They followed her through a narrow hallway and into a room lined with sagging bookshelves. She went off to get her husband and they sat down on the wooden chairs which threatened to break under their weight. Michael began to cough from the mildew smell wafting from the ancient books.
A moment later, an old man shuffled out and shook their hands. He had long white pe'ot and sky blue eyes swimming behind a sea of wrinkles. He wore the trademark black caftan, but with a knitted white kippah on his bald head.
They all sat down and the rabbi asked, “Who wants to convert?”
Michael raised his hand.
“What about you?” the rabbi asked Baruch.
“No thanks,” Baruch said.
“So then why are you here?”
“Moral support.”
“Moral support,” the rabbi muttered like he was gagging on the words. Then he turned to Michael. “Why do you want to be Jewish?”
The question took Michael by surprise. He had been converting for so long that he forgot why he wanted to do it in the first place. He gave the rabbi a generic answer about wanting to be closer to HaShem and how doing something that was required of him had greater value than doing something voluntarily.
“You know,” the ancient rabbi said, lightly slapping at his white beard with his fingers like it was a light vapor he could brush away. “If I convert you, the Zionist state would never recognize it. You won't get citizenship.
Michael nodded. “I think it's better to be a Jew in hootz la'aretz than to be a gentile in eretz Yisrael,” he said.
Horovitz shrugged, gave his beard a final slap, and set his hands in his lap. He gazed intensely at Michael, who felt like he had been challenged to a game of stare eyes.
“I hate Zionism,” the rabbi said.
Michael kept quiet, not sure how to respond, and held the rabbi's gaze.. That was probably the right response. It seemed to be a rhetorical statement.
“What's the bracha on a pineapple?” Horovitz asked.
“Adamah.”
“You know all the holidays? Shabbat?”
“Yes.”
“And you plan to be religious? Until a hundred and twenty?”
“Yes.”
“Wouldn't you rather have all the gashmius and all the meaninglessness?”
“Feh.”
“Okay then. We'll convert you. You're circumcised?”
“When I was a baby. In the hospital.”
The rabbi nodded. “When do you want to do this?”
“As soon as possible. Today. Can we do it right now?”
“I'll need to find two more rabbis. That won't take too long. There's plenty of rabbis around here. I'll just stop into the beis midrash and pick up a couple.” The rabbi cleared his throat and stroked one of his white pe'ot. “Now, halachically I can't take any money from you for converting you, so it's going to be free.”
Michael was glad to hear that. He was so used to getting ripped off. When he started learning at Besorat Mesora, his tuition was a third of what it was now.
“However,” the wizened rabbi said. “It costs money to heat up the water for the mikvah. So I'll ask you to pay for that.”
“Okay.”
“That's a thousand shekels.”
“I actually don't need hot water. Cold water's fine.”
“Eight hundred.”
“What do you heat the water with?” Baruch asked. “Burning hundred dollar bills?”
After bartering for a while, they settled on a price of seven hundred and twenty shekels. The rabbi went to the beis midrash to round up two more rabbis. Michael and Baruch went to the cash machine to withdraw the money from Michael's account. Then they all met up at the women's mikvah, a small brick building next to a tall, ancient synagogue.
The two other rabbis with Rabbi Horovitz were as old as he was, dressed all in black, one with a black satin kippah, the other with a white knitted kippah.
“Just one minute and we'll start,” Rabbi Horovitz said. He went with the other rabbis into the other room, probably for a cup of coffee.
The mikvah room had blue tiles on the floor and walls. Off to one side of the room were several shower stalls with no curtains. On the other side, tiled steps and a metal handrail led down into a rectangular hot tub. The smell of mold and chlorine hovered in the moist air. It was like a locker room, except this place was cleaner. Probably because it was a women's mikvah.
Michael paced around the tiled floors, stroking the crotch of his jeans.
“Stop jerking off,” Baruch said.
“I have to,” Michael said. “I don't want to be like Daniel.”
Another talmid from Besorat Mesora, Daniel, had also converted. He arrived a year after Michael did, but quickly converted in half a year. That is, it would have been half a year, but ended up being seven moths. Daniel was also circumcised in the hospital as an infant, but when the rabbis went to take a drop of blood from his penis, they found that his circumcision wasn't kosher—there was too much skin left. The test for a kosher circumcision was to pull the skin completely over the head of the penis, then release it and see where it ended up. If the glans was completely uncovered, then the circumcision was kosher. But if even a small bit of the skin covered part of the head of the penis, the circumcision was no good and they would have to cut more off. Daniel had too much skin. He had to go to the hospital, get circumcised a second time, and then wait a month for it to heal before going in the mikvah and becoming Jewish. If Michael had to wait another month, or even another day, he would probably jump off the bridge onto the highway. He had tested himself out and when he was completely flaccid it was too close to call. It depended on if the rabbis judging his penis were strict or lenient. But if he was able to be slightly erect—not rock hard, but not completely flaccid either—then the skin would snap back, completely exposing the head of his penis.
“At least stop making that face,” Baruch said.
“Sorry.” Michael said, trying to remove the look of pleasure off his face, but continuing to stroke himself.
“What's your first mitzvah going to be?” Michael's chevruta asked.
“Asher yatzar. I'll say it when I climb out of the mikvah.”
Baruch laughed.
“You know, Besorat Mesora is going to expel you if you go through with this conversion. They'll throw you out on the street—won't even give you time to pack a suitcase.
Michael still wanted to have a conversion that would that would let him make aliyah. But he couldn't wait any longer to become Jewish halachically.
“I just won't tell them.”
“You're going to keep it a secret?”
“Yeah. You can't tell anyone either.”
“So you're going to pretend you're not Jewish. I used to do that. It won't work.”
The rabbis walked into the room. Michael continued to stroke himself, but tried not to make it too obvious. He yawned and feigned that he was scratching his belly while sneaking a couple fingers down to his crotch to do the fiddling. Rabbi Horowitz had removed his black jacket; his white shirt had deep yellow stains around the armpits. He set a small black plastic box on the white plastic table. Michael supposed that was the box with the needle in it.
“You have something for me?” Horovitz asked.
Michael reached into his pants pocket, taking a surreptitious swipe at his erect penis, and brought out seven hundred and twenty shekels. Horovitz counted the money, counted it a second time, and stuck the bills in the breast pocket of his stained shirt.
“Now I have something for you.” Horovitz opened the black box, took out a needle and pulled the plastic cap off of it, exposing the pointy tip.
When Michael saw a needle, the terror worked like a magnifying glass, making the pin look the size of a jousting spear. The blood instantly fled from his penis, leaving it limp and shriveled.
“Down with those pants,” Horovitz said, setting the needle down on the with table.
The two rabbis hovered in close on Michael's sides, boxing him in. He could smell that they had eaten fish for lunch.
As Michael unbuckled his belt, he tried to discretely bring his penis back to life, tickling it with his pinky and ring finger.
“Yalla!” the man on Michael's left said.
Michael tried to think dirty thoughts, but it was difficult with three Orthodox rabbis standing so close to him that he could smell the fish on their breath and the shampoo in their beards. He gave his penis a rub as he pulled down his pants but it didn't do anything. (This had never happened to him before.) His penis couldn't even stand up to save its own life. It didn't realize what the consequences would be for not standing up at this crucial moment—a second circumcision.
Horovitz grabbed the fleshy part and pulled it over the head of the penis. Michael felt like it might pop inside out and stay that way. The rabbi had coarse hands, not like a man who had spent his life in a beit midrash, but like a man who worked outdoors with his hands, like the rabbis in the days of the gemara. When the old man let go of the skin, it rolled back, caught for a moment at the end of the head like a basketball hanging on the edge of the rim, uncertain if it would go in or not. Then it rolled free, completely exposing the head. Two points.
Michael started to sigh in relief, but was stopped mid-sigh when the rabbi splashed a cotton ball with rubbing alcohol and used it to scrape the side of Michael's penis. It was cold. Then the ancient rabbi picked up the needle and brought it towards the alcohol-swabbed flesh in a jabbing motion.
Micheal's hand, without consulting his brain, slapped Rabbi Horovitz in the face. Hard. He knocked the rabbi back, sending him sprawling against the plastic table.
Michael was aghast at what he had done. Baruch had his fists up, ready if the rabbis decided they wanted a fight. The rabbis had the numbers, but Michael and Baruch had youth. All five people in the room had muscles atrophied from beit midrashes so it would be a sad battle if the rabbis wanted to go at it. Horovitz was either rubbing his cheek in shock and pain or he was stroking his beard in contemplation—it was hard to tell which. The other two rabbis looked around calmly, seeming not to register what had just happened. They were probably still thinking about the gemara sugiya they had been pulled away from.
“I'm so sorry,” Michael said. “I didn't mean to do that. It was just a reflex.”
Horovitz smiled, steadying himself on his feet. “It's okay,” he said. “Happens all the time. It's a normal reflex. HaShem, in his infinite understanding of human nature, which he should understand since he made us, made us hit people who come after our private parts with sharp objects. If HaShem hadn't given us the instinct to protect our genitals from sharp metal objects, the human race might not be around.”
The other rabbis murmured their assent.
“That's also one of the reasons—there are many reasons—but that's one of the reasons that there have to be three witnesses for hatafat hadam. One to take the drop of blood and two to hold you down.”
He nodded at the two rabbis standing to Michael's sides and they grabbed Michael's arms, holding them firmly.
Michael looked away, towards the mikvah water, the rectangular hot tub. The fluorescent lights reflected off the soft ripples. He gritted is teeth and waited for the pain.
“All done,” Horovitz said.
The rabbis released Michael's arms. Horovitz was holding a tissue to Michael's penis. He told Michael to hold it. Michael took the paper and looked at it. There was a round drop of blood in the middle of it.
“I didn't feel anything,” Michael said wonderingly.
“That's because I used a really sharp needle.”
Michael started to pull his pants back up.
“Nu. Keep those pants off. Take off your clothes and get ready.”
Michael put the bloody tissue in his wallet. He planned to later put the tissue in between the pages of a book, like a beautiful autumn leaf that he would press and keep.
He stripped naked and got in the shower. There was no shower curtain, so he turned his back to the rabbis and Baruch. After that, the rabbis inspected his fingernails and toenails to be sure they were properly manicured. Apparently he couldn't become Jewish without a proper manicure and pedicure. Once they were satisfied that his nails were short enough, he was told to get into the mikvah.
He stepped onto the stairs leading into the water. As soon as his toe touched the water, he screamed “FUCK!!!” and jumped away.
“What's wrong.”
“It's ice cold. I thought you were going to heat it.”
Horovitz sighed. “The heater doesn't work.”
Michael figured it didn't matter. He just wanted to convert. He could suffer a few minutes of ice cold water. He descended into the icy water, naked except for his blue and yellow striped kippah. When the water level reached his groin, the pain he had feared from the needle struck him—now like a thousand needles—making him gasp and suck in air through his teeth. He got up to his shoulders. Once a body part got under the water, it didn't feel so cold anymore. He wanted to dunk his head, take the plunge and get the coldness over with, but he figured he shouldn't go under until the rabbi told him to. He didn't want to create any halachic problems.
Rabbi Horovitz started to ask questions.
“You gonna keep Shabbat?”
Michael nodded his head.
“You have to say it out loud.”
“Oh. Sorry. Sure. I mean yes, I'll do Shabbat.”
“Kashrut?”
“Yep.”
“Taharat mishpacha?”
“Yes.”
“You believe there's only one god?”
“Yes.”
“You wearing contact lenses?”
“Yes.”
“Get out of the water.”
“Why?”
“You answered one of the questions wrong.”
“Which one?”
“Your contact lenses are a mechitza. You have to take them out.”
“But I didn't bring a case for them. Do you have one?”
“We don't wear contacts.”
Nobody moved or said anything for a few moments.
“Look,” Rabbi Horovitz said. “You're going to have to choose. What's more important? Contacts or becoming Jewish.”
They managed to find some plastic cups in place of a contact lens case. Not having any contact lens solution, they filled the cups with tap water. Baruch held the right lens cup in his right hand and the left lens cup in his left hand.
“Don't mix 'em up now,” Michael cautioned his friend.
When Michael climbed down the steps a second time, the cold water wasn't as much of a shock to his system. Horovitz started with the questions again.
“Shabbos?”
“Yes.”
“Kashrus? Taharat mishpacha?”
“Yes and yes.”
“How many gods?”
“One.”
“Any other contact lenses in your eyes?”
“No.”
“Okay. Go ahead. Take off your kippah and go under.”
He took off his kippah, set it on the tile next to the pool and went under the water. If the mikvah was like a mother's womb and he was being born again, that was one cold mother. He forgot to close his mouth. When he came up he was coughing and spitting out water.
“Put back on your kippah and say the bracha.”
As he was setting the kippah on his wet hair, he suddenly realized that he didn't know the bracha.
“Which bracha?”
Horovitz sighed, shook his head. “Kidshanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu al mitzvat t'vilah.”
Michael said the bracha, took off his kippah, took a deep breath, and plunged into the freezing water.

Michael felt better. He no longer wanted to jump off a bridge. He just wished he could tell people that he was Jewish now, but if he did, the rabbis would surely throw him out of the yeshiva. He wanted to make aliyah, to spend the rest of his life in Israel, and to do that he still needed a conversion recognized by the state.
He kept the tissue with the spot of blood in his pocket and fingered it as he went about his day. He wanted to show it off, to say hey look at this, but he knew he couldn't. He had to keep his Jewishness a secret for now. And he had to be sure that he wasn't eating bread with only two other men or he would be required to make the zimmun.
His first Shabbat as an official Jew was at the yeshiva. It was an “In Shabbat,” so all the talmidim had to stay. Down in the cheder ochel, as they were bringing out the fish, Rabbi Bauer walked over to Michael and tapped him on the shoulder.
“I need you to do a mitzvah,” Bauer said. “A woman forgot to take out the light in her refrigerator. Can you go help her?”
Michael couldn't think of what to say. How could he refuse without setting off any suspicions?
“I'll save you some fish,” Bauer said.
He apparently thought the shocked look on Michael's face was a fear of missing the fish.
“Okay,” Michael said.
“Thanks a bunch.”
The rabbi told him the address. It was right down the street from the yeshiva.
Michael, trying to force a smile on his face, stood and made his way out of the cheder ochel, up the stairs, and out the door into the street. The street was quiet. Everyone was inside at their Shabbat tables. The only sound was the wind rustling through the tree branches and the muted singing of Shabbat melodies wafting from open windows.
Michael walked around the streets, taking a long detour to get to the Abramovitz fourth floor apartment. He tried to think of a way out of this situation. Was there some shinui he could use to get that light bulb out of there so that Mrs. Abramovitz could close her refrigerator and not have her food spoil? No. There was no shinui. But maybe by the time he got there, the problem would have solved itself. There was no reason for him to stress out about something that might work itself out. Maybe the bulb would burn itself out or maybe they found someone else to turn it off for them.
He walked up to the fourth floor, which was the top floor, and found the door marked Abramovitz. The sounds of voices and silverware tinkling came from the other side of the door. He rapped his knuckles on the wood.
“Come in! Door isn't locked!”
He opened the creaky door and saw the young couple seated at a small table with a white tablecloth covered with a sheet of plastic. There was coleslaw, chopped liver, pickles, gefilte fish. Two candles glowed from within a small glass box set next to the open window. The shelves were lined with gemara sets which looked brand new, their spines uncreased and gleaming. The Abramovitzes were Michael's age, maybe a couple years younger, in their mid-twenties. The man wore a white shirt, tan pants, and sandals. He had a pinched face and clips on his kippah despite only having about a millimeter of hair. He smiled at Michael and pulled his glass of red wine closer to himself. His wife wore a flowing black robe, but it was obvious she was quite pregnant. Her hair was carefully tucked into a scarlet and gold bandana. Not a stray hair showed.
“You must be Mik'hael,” she said, standing and walking over to him. “Thank you for coming. I just bought so much food, enough for the entire week and it would all spoil if it wasn't for you.”
She walked into the kitchen and Michael followed. The cramped room was filled with the smell of burnt chicken. Cholent bubbled on the blech. There was a large refrigerator with an ice maker. The refrigerator door was open; Michael saw it was overflowing with food.
“It sure would be nice if that light bulb wasn't there,” the woman said. “Yep, if someone would remove it, that would be grand.”
Michael stared at the light bulb in the refrigerator for a moment and didn't say anything.
“Be careful,” the woman said. “Don't electrocute yourself or anything.”
Michael placed his hand on the refrigerator door and looked closely at the light, trying to will it to turn off. He wondered if using the Force was allowed on Shabbat.
Finally he turned to her and said, “Look, there's been a misunderstanding. I can't turn off your refrigerator light.”
She furrowed her brow at him. Twice.
“Well I can't do it,” she said. “I'm Jewish.”
“Neither can I,” said her husband, who was leaning through the kitchen door, cradling his glass of wine. “I'm also Jewish. And if someone doesn't do it, the food will spoil. Then we'll have nothing to eat tomorrow or all week. My wife only goes shopping once a week, so as you can see, the refrigerator is stuffed with food for the whole week.”
“Well I can't do it either,” Michael said.
“But you're a goy,” the man said. “Goyim don't have to keep Shabbat.”
Michael felt the blood rising into his head.
“I won't do it,” he said. “And it's very offensive for you to ask me to do it. You should go find some Arab to be your Shabbos goy, not someone who's trying to be Jewish.”
“There's no Arabs around here, and even if there were, I would never let an Arab in my house.”
“Well don't ask me to do it.”
Michael stormed out of the kitchen and strode to the door
“There's more than becoming Jewish than just halacha,” the man called after him. “It's about being holy and having middot, and one of those middot is Chesed. If you don't want to help us now, then how we trust that you'll be loyal if you become a real Jew?”
“I hope your food rots and you eat it and get botulism and die,” Michael said and slammed the door behind him.
When he got back down into the cheder ochel, he squeezed into his seat on the bench and started to eat a chicken thigh. No one had saved him a fish.
It wouldn't be long before the everyone found out that he was Jewish now. He might as well tell them.
He took out the tissue and held it up with both hands. The conversation about the parasha stopped and they looked at the tissue.
“What's that?” one of the talmidim asked. “A Japanese flag?”
“It's my blood.”
“You had a nose bleed?”
“No. It's blood from my penis.”
“You cut yourself shaving?”
He shook his head. “I finished my conversion. The other day I went in the mikvah.”
There were cheers of mazel tov, and then the singing started. They stood up, danced around, and carried Michael around on their shoulders. Usually this was reserved for men who had gotten engaged, but now they made an exception.
The next day, the rosh yeshiva called Michael into his office and asked to see the tissue with the drop of blood on it. When Michael pulled it out of his pocket and handed it to him, the rabbi scrutinized it closely, holding it up to the light as if checking for a water mark. Then the rosh yeshiva pressed it to his face and noisily blew his nose into it. If the rabbi wasn't at least eighty years old and frail as a spider web, Michael probably wouldn't have been able to stop himself from leaping across the desk and strangling the man. The tissue was an irreplaceable memento. But when the rabbi tossed the bloody, snotty tissue onto the desk, Michael didn't pick it up. He just stared at it. Blood pulsed in Michael's temples as the rosh yeshiva told him that he was expelled from Besorat Mesora and that he had to get his things and leave the dorm immediately. Michael didn't look at the rabbi's face. He just stood up and walked out of the office. He wasn't sure where he would go, but he knew it would be far from Besorat Mesora.

Plane Crash Drill

2009-04-18T00:36:00.000-05:00

On my flight from New York to Los Angeles, there was a crash drill, which is when they pretend the plane is going to crash, so that if it ever crashes for real, they’ll be prepared. I didn’t know it was just a drill, so when the engines sputtered off and the plane went into a spiraling nose dive, I was terrified. Everyone around me screamed and mumbled Bible verses. I pressed the button that called the stewardess (I wanted to request a parachute), but no stewardess came. There was a dinging noise above—the fasten seat belts light had turned on.
"Assume crash positions,” the captain said over the intercom. His voice was calm and sturdy. I figured they must give the pilots voice lessons at the flight academy.
I tried to lean forward and assume the crash position, but I’m rather tall and the man in front of me had his seat reclined all the way back. I tapped him on the shoulder. “Could you straighten your seat?” I asked.
"I don't have to,” he said. “That's only for landings and takeoffs. This is a crash.”
There was no time to argue. We might crash at any moment. I tried to squeeze my head into the tiny space behind his seat. It was a tight squeeze and I felt like I was being scalped by the carpet on the seatback.
“Stop kicking my seat!” he yelled amidst the screams.
Then I suddenly realized that I didn’t know the crash position. I knew to put my head down, but did it go between my legs or did I rest my forehead on my knees? And what about my hands? Was I supposed to leave them at my sides or cover the back of my head with them? I should have paid attention when the stewardess gave the preflight safety instructions. Now the unlikely event of an emergency had occurred, and I didn’t know what to do.
I glanced at the passenger next to me to see what she was doing. I would just copy her. But she stared back at me, waiting to see what I would do. Apparently she hadn't paid attention to the preflight safety instructions either.
I looked around to see what others were doing. Apparently no one knew the crash position.
I remembered the laminated safety instructions with pictures demonstrating the crash position. That would show me what to do. I reached into the pouch on the back of the seat and searched for the safety instructions.
I rifled through old magazines, a barf bag, a duty-free item catalog, head phones in a plastic bag, but no laminated, illustrated crash position instructions.
Suddenly, the plane started to level out. Soon it was flying straight again. We were no longer diving headfirst for the ground—we might not die. The plane began to ascend gently.
Everyone was breathing heavily. Some were sobbing.
"Yes, sir?”
The stewardess was standing next to me. She had finally answered my call for a parachute.
"What's happening?” I asked. “Are we going to die?”
“Someday,” she said with a sigh.
"How about today?”
"Are you threatening me?”
"No. I just want to know what's happening.”
She explained to me about the crash drill. We hadn’t really been about to crash. The captain just put the plane into a nose dive so they could be prepared if there ever was a real emergency.
I was, of course, furious.
"A drill?” I said.
"Sure. Didn't you ever have a fire drill? It's so you're prepared in case there's a real fire. Well, we have crash drills so you know what to do in case there's a real crash.”
"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life.”
"It's important to do. You didn't know what to do. I saw you. You didn't even know the crash position. If this had been a real crash, you would be dead by now.”
The stewardess was clearly insane, so there was no use talking to her. I'd have to talk with someone else.
“Go get me your supervisor,” I told her.
"He's busy.”
"Doing what?”
“Flying the plane.”
I unbuckled my seatbelt and leaped up on legs that were numb from sitting too long. They tingled from pins and needles.
“Sir, the fasten seat belts sign is on.”
I pushed past her and strode to the front of the plane.
“You can’t go up there!” she yelled after me. “That’s first class!”
I walked through the luxurious first class. The plane was ascending steeply, so I had quite an uphill climb through first class. I'm out of shape, so by the time I reached the cockpit, I was sweating and gasping for breath. The cockpit door was unlocked and hanging open. I climbed through it.
Two men with wings on their lapels sat at a desk of mechanical gadgets: switches, buttons, gauges, and meters. The older of the two men turned towards me. When he spoke, I recognized his sturdy voice as the one that had come through the intercom.
"Young man,” he said. “What are you doing in the cockpit?”
"I might ask you the same question.” That's what I tried to say, but I was hyperventilating from my steep uphill climb, and I couldn't get a word out. So I just stood there, gasping for air. The pilot and copilot stared at me and waited for my answer.
The stewardess, the one who had explained to me about the crash drill, burst into the cockpit.
"I'm sorry, captain,” she said. “I tried to stop him.”
"How did he get up here?” the captain asked. “Is he first class?”
"He doesn't look first class,” the copilot commented with a toothy grin.
The captain looked at me squarely in the eyes. “Get out of my cockpit,” he said.
I still couldn't speak. I was just trying to breathe. Sweat poured down my forehead. I managed to shake my head to let him know I wouldn't leave the cockpit.
”Have it your way,” the captain said. He picked up a small microphone and flicked a switch on the control panel.
“This is your captain speaking,” he said, using his most captain-like voice. “There’s an intruder in the cockpit. Would the sky marshal please come up here?”
He flipped off the switch, and set the microphone back in its slot. Then he set both hands on the steering controls, and calmly gazed out at the horizon. The copilot smirked to himself.
I felt intensely curious: now I would find out who the sky marshal was. I pushed open the cockpit door a crack and peered back to see who was approaching the cockpit. Apparently everyone on board was a sky marshal; they were all charging the cockpit, screaming, getting ready for a fight.
I knew this was bad. If everyone came to the cockpit, it would make the plane too top-heavy. It would pull us down and we'd crash.
Wait a minute. They weren't sky marshals. They were a lynch mob. Sure, they didn't have torches and pitchforks—those were confiscated at security—but they were still a lynch mob.
The first ones burst at the door. I tried to hold it shut.
“Call them off!” I yelled at the captain, finally finding a gasping voice. “Tell them I’m not a terrorist!”
The copilot snickered. The captain just kept his gaze on the horizon, his jaw set.
I managed to get the door shut all the way and bolted the lock. Then I grabbed the captain by the ears, pulled him out of his seat, and threw him on top of the copilot. They fell in a heap on the floor.
I sat in the captain's seat and scanned frantically through the buttons and switches on the control panel.
"Which one's the eject button?” I demanded.
The captain and copilot laughed from their tangled pile on the floor.
“That's only in fighter jets,” the copilot cackled.
There was only one switch that I knew for sure what it did. I flipped it, brought the microphone up to my mouth, and spoke in my sturdiest, most captain-like voice.
“Turns out I won't be needing that sky marshal after all,” I said. “You can take your seats. Sorry for the confusion.”
It didn’t work.
The stewardess unlocked the door and everyone swarmed in like hornets. They beat me and kicked me. Hands scratched and tore at me, trying to drag me out of the cockpit. I grasped onto the steering wheel like it was an altar.
"Sanctuary!” I yelled, but they kept beating me.
My fingers screamed in pain, about to snap like hard taffy, but I held on. My arms and legs were about to dislocate. But I knew if I let go, they would drag me out of the cockpit and possibly stomp me to death. Even if they didn't stomp me to death, I wouldn't get away unscathed. I would be fitted for an orange jumpsuit and sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. I wouldn't even have the solace of being considered a freedom fighter. You needed a cause to be a freedom fighter. You couldn't just hijack an airplane accidentally.
I needed to do something, so I screamed, "Allah Akbar!”
I have a talent for always saying the wrong thing. This only made things worse. They bit my ears and nose.
The plane was ascending more and more sharply. It was almost going straight up. I worried that it would go too high. We would crash into a satellite or leave the atmosphere and get lost in outer space. Why couldn’t this pilot learn how to fly?
Oh. Right. I was the one flying. This steering wheel didn't just go left and right, but up and down as well. By pulling down the steering controls, I caused us to go up steeply. We were almost flying straight up. But I couldn't let go.
The passengers started tumbling out of the cockpit. They slid down the aisle through first class and down to the back of the plane. Soon I found myself alone in the cockpit; everyone had slid out. I pulled myself up into the captain’s seat and pushed the wheel forward as hard as I could. The plane tilted forward. Soon I the plane leveled out.
I was flying.
But I had no time to enjoy it. I heard the roar of the passengers once again charging the cockpit. Their barbaric war cries filled the air.
I picked up the microphone and flipped the switch.
“That concludes our hijacking drill,” I said. “Had that been a real hijacking, you would all be dead by now.”

April 18, 2009
Yueyang, China

Smoking and Jogging

2009-03-16T04:50:00.001-05:00

I was jogging along the park's gravel path and smoking a Marlboro Red. The other joggers faded back when I came near, but they didn't ask me to stop smoking. They didn't even make eye contact with me. They just slunk away and alerted the local law enforcement authorities. Soon a square-faced policeman was approaching me, trotting up on a gray horse.
“Sir,” he said. “You have to extinguish that cigarette.”
“But you let them smoke.”
The park was filled with people smoking: office workers on break methodically inhaling nicotine; old men on benches smoking pipes; children picking up discarded cigarette butts and smoking what was left.
“They're not jogging,” the cop said. “You're smoking and jogging at the same time.”
I kept jogging in place and took a deep drag of my cigarette. I was the Rosa Parks of people who smoked and jogged at the same time.
“Look, sir,” the cop said. “I know what you're going through. I'm a smoker myself. But when I'm on this horse, I can't be seen with a cigarette in my mouth. So you know what I do when I feel a craving?”
“What?”
“I chaw.”
He grinned, revealing a black mush of chewing tobacco swimming between his teeth.
“Know what you look like to me?” he asked.
“No. What?”
“A spittoon.”
He spat a thick jet of black liquid at me. I jumped backwards, but not quick enough. It splattered all over my new white running shoes.
The cop threw his head back and laughed, a thread of black drool hanging from his chin. Blood pulsed through my ears.
“I'm not a spittoon,” I said. “My name ain't Joe Spittoon.”
I took a deep drag on my cigarette, felt the smoke absorb into my lung tissue. “I like nicotine in my bloodstream,” I said. “Not on my shoes.”
I flicked the ash off the cigarette tip and jogged forward. Standing face to face with the horse, I gazed into its cavernous nostrils, which were filled with stalactites and stalagmites of mucus. I touched the flaming tip of the cigarette to the horses neck, pressed and twisted like I was putting it out in an ashtray. There was a sizzling noise. The smell of burnt hair and barbecue.
The horse didn't react the way I had hoped. It didn't throw off it's rider. It didn't even make a sound. It just lightly scraped a hoof on the grass and stared at me, a slight smile in its eyes.
“You think this is an ordinary horse?” the cop laughed, exposing his black, liquid smile. “Bruno's a trained police horse. He's not going to buck me just because you singed a few of his neck hairs.”
The cop slid off the saddle, while removing a pair of handcuffs off his belt.
“You're under arrest for assaulting a police officer.”
“I didn't touch you.”
“The horse. The horse is a police officer.”
He swung the handcuffs, which clanged against the badge pinned to Bruno's saddle. I hadn't noticed the badge before.
The cop tried to put the handcuffs on me, but couldn't get the cuffs around my wrists.”
“Hold still,” he said. “Could you stop jogging, please?”
“I'm not smoking now. I should be able to jog.”
“I can't get the handcuffs on with you moving all around.”
“I need to keep my heart rate up.”
Cold steel pinched my wrists as the cuffs clicked shut, but I kept jogging.
“You have the right to remain silent,” the cop began.
As he read me my Miranda rights, the other joggers cheered. The smokers also cheered. The old men on the benches looked up from their board game and their pipes to smile at the police officer.
“I would put you in the back seat of the squad car,” the cop said apologetically, “but I don't have a squad car. So we're going to have to ride double.”
He boosted me up on the horse to the spot behind the saddle, then climbed up after me.
“Hold on tight,” the cop said.
He kicked Bruno's flanks and we started into a trot. There was nothing for me to hold on to; my hands were handcuffed behind my back. I grasped with my legs around the bare horseflesh, but couldn't get a sturdy grip. I fell backwards and caught a brief glimpse of blue sky and budding trees before smacking painfully on my back into the hard, grassy earth. I lay there, gasping for air.
The cop was making a clucking noise. At first, I thought he was taunting me, but then I realized that he was trying to get the horse to go backwards.
“You okay?” he asked, as he dismounted.
“I think I have internal injuries,” I said. “My dignity.”
“Well, you know what they say about falling off horses.”
I staggered to my feet. The cop removed one of the handcuffs and recuffed it so my arms were in front of me. We both got back up on Bruno.
“Hold on tight this time,” the cop said.
I gripped the back of the cop's belt. As the horse trotted, my fingers ached, but I held on. When Bruno started to gallop, however, my legs slipped and kicked out behind the horse. All that was keeping me on was my grip on the cop's belt. Suddenly, my fingers slipped. I saw the horse's tail, saw the green grass, and then smashed into it, face first.
The cop made his taunting clucking noise.
“Remember what I told you about falling off of horses,” he said as he helped me to my feet.
He uncuffed one of my wrists and boosted me up onto the horse. I thought he was going to let me ride without handcuffs, but when he climbed up into the saddle, he recuffed my hands around his chest.
“Now you won't fall off,” he said. “Hold on tight.”
The horse started to trot. The cop elbowed me in the face and I tasted blood.
“Not that tight—I can't breathe,” he said.
“Sorry.”
The horse sped up. The joggers and smokers glared at me hatefully as I was taken away. I realized that I was going to jail. A strong craving for a cigarette attacked me and my hands shook.
“Stop tickling me,” the cop said.
“Sorry.” I tried to hold my hands still.
Suddenly a woman's piercing scream filled the park:
“Stop! Thief!”
An old woman lay sprawled out on the sidewalk. A red-headed man in a black sweatshirt and blue jeans ran from her, clutching a pink, rhinestone-studded purse.
The cop delivered a powerful kick to Bruno's side. The horse broke into a sprint after the thief.
The purse snatcher looked over his shoulder, saw us pursuing him, and screamed. He couldn't outrun a horse. So he did the only thing he could. He climbed up an oak tree, shimmying up the trunk and pulling himself up into the thick branches above. Horses couldn't climb trees.
I figured we would have to dismount. Maybe we would have to call the fire department for assistance. They got cats out of trees; maybe they also got purse snatchers out of trees. But we didn't dismount.
“Hold on tight,” the cop said.
Bruno sped up as we approached the tree, lowering his head like a rhinoceros.
I tried to jump off before impact, but my hands were stuck around the cop's chest.
When Bruno's head hit the tree, the tree trunk didn't break, but the horse's head did. There were no seat belts on the horse, so the cop and I flew off and hit the tree trunk.
Fortunately for me, the cop hit the tree before I did, cushioning most of the blow. Only my hands, locked in front of the cop, felt the full force of the collision. I heard my wrists shatter. Then I felt it, like someone poured liquid steel on my hands.
As I lay in the grass, moaning and bleeding, a crowd gathered around us, smokers on one side, joggers on the other side, upwind. They stared down at us, slack-jawed, eyes filled with horror.
Behind them, the purse snatcher slid down the tree, still grasping the pink, rhinestone-studded purse. He scurried off unnoticed through the crowd.
“That poor horse,” someone said.
Then I blacked out.
I awoke in a white hospital room that had a no smoking sign on the wall. I would have ignored the sign and lit up, but my hands were in no condition to reach for a cigarette. Both arms were in traction, suspended up in the air at my sides in thick casts.
The nurse took pity on me. She brought me chewing tobacco, dropping a pinch into my lower lip. I used the bedpan as a spittoon.
Soon I recovered and was back to smoking and jogging. I was the lucky one. The cop suffered from serious internal injuries—not only his busted spleen, but also emotional injuries. He would never ride his beloved horse again. Bruno had suffered major brain damage and was useless for park security.
So they gave the horse a desk job.

March 16, 2009
Yueyang, China

The Bagger

2009-02-08T16:20:00.003-06:00

John bagged groceries at RightFresh Foods, where rich women came to shop and complain about poor service.
“You smushed my bread,” a fat woman said.
John had put the sourdough loaf at the bottom of the paper bag, and set several cans of baked beans on top of it.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
“And you put the soap in with the meat. Now the chicken is going to taste all soapy. Why don't you pay attention to what your doing?”
“I'm bagging groceries—that's pretty depressing. If I thought about what I was doing, I'd probably kill myself.”
“The other baggers are happy. They don't have your sour attitude.””
“That's because they're retarded.”
There was a collective gasp that included the fat woman, the other women in line, and the clerk. Only the other baggers, who were mentally retarded (but in a politically correct way), kept going as they were, loping around with happy grins painted across their faces.
“I want to speak to your manager,” the fat lady demanded.
John's manager soon arrived at the check-out aisle. He had a short-sleeve shirt, neck tie, and a name tag that said “Dave.”
“...and he made my meat all soapy,” the fat woman said, concluding her list of complaints against the bagger.
Manager Dave shook his head slowly. “This isn't the first time we've had these complaints,” he said. “But it's going to be the last. John, you're fired. Turn in your uniform.”
John tore off his uniform—a red apron that had faded to pink from repeated washings—and threw it at the manager's chest.
Manager Dave pointed to the door.
“Go,” he said. “Get out.”
But John didn't just meekly walk out the door. Before he left, there was one more thing he had to bag. Himself.
He flapped open a paper bag and dropped it on the counter. He kicked off his shoes (he didn't want his shoes to rip a hole in the paper bag) and climbed up on the counter.
“Get down and put on your shoes and get out of the store!” the Manager screamed.
John ignored him. He held the paper bag by its sides and stepped inside, like he was putting on a pair of pants. Then he stepped in with the other foot. The brown paper bag only came up to his knees; there was no way he could fit his whole body inside. He was simply too big to be bagged.
But many things were too big to be bagged, such as 24 packs of soda and large bags of dog food. These oversize items were set bagless on the undercarriage of the shopping cart, and brought out to the customer's car.
John stepped out of the bag and hopped down from the counter. He slid head-first on his belly into the empty undercarriage of the large woman's shopping cart.
“Get him out of my cart!” the fat woman screamed.
John put his arms out to the side and pushed himself along, out the automatic sliding doors and into the parking lot.
“Stop him!” the fat woman screamed. “That's kidnapping!
“At least it would be if there was a baby in the baby seat,” she added.
John kicked at the ground to propel himself forward. The hard concrete ripped his socks and tore at the soles of his feet. He had forgotten his shoes inside the grocery store, but he couldn't go back and get them now. They might arrest him for attempted kidnapping. How could he prove he knew there was no baby in the shopping cart's child safety seat?
John rolled out of the parking lot and down the road. The cement zoomed by just inches from his face. Now he knew how snakes felt, slithering around on their bellies.
He never came back to the RightFresh Foods. He just rolled around in the undercarriage of the shopping cart, collecting glass bottles and aluminum cans. When the shopping cart was full, he brought the bottles and cans to the recycling center, where he exchanged them for cash. Never again did he have another job or another pair of shoes.

February 7, 2009
Highland Park, Illinois
USA

The Soup Kitchen

2008-11-30T09:44:00.000-06:00

When I walked into the soup kitchen, the stench of bleach and roasted chicken almost knocked me over. Sunlight shone through the latticed windows, drawing cage designs on the blue tiled floor. Blank-faced workers stood drone-like at long metal counters, chopping vegetables, tossing salads, slathering sauce on chickens. They didn't seem thrilled to be helping the less fortunate, nor excited at the character they were building for themselves. I knew exactly how they felt. I didn't want to be there either. My temple youth group made me come. They made us go to charitable organizations and work for free. I'm pretty sure Rabbi Schwartz got kickbacks from the charities.
"You! Young man!” a large red-headed woman called to me. "You can't be back here. This is the food preparation area.”
This always happened to me. Wherever I went, I looked out of place.
“I'm here to help,” I explained. “They sent me to help prepare the food.”
Her eyes narrowed and she looked at me suspiciously.
“What did you do?” she asked, as if I were a criminal.
“What do you mean?”
“Why are you doing community service? What did you do?”
I laughed. “Oh, I’m not doing community service. I mean, I am, but it’s not that kind of community service. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I’m Jewish.”
“That’s not a crime.”
“Not until the economy crashes. Then they have to blame somebody.”
She raised one bushy eyebrow, then lowered it and raised the other, as if her eyebrows were scales, measuring me. Then a look of recognition crossed her face.
"You the boy Rabbi Schwartz sent?”
I nodded.
“Oh, well that's something else.” Now she laughed. She opened a rusty drawer and pulled out a serrated knife.
“You seem like a good kid,” she said. “I guess I can trust you with this.”
She handed me the knife.
"Do you know how to use it?” she asked.
"I guess,” I said.
She pulled a hairnet out of her apron pocket.
"And this?”
"Yeah.”
I pulled the hairnet over my hair.
"And these?” She pulled latex gloves from her pocket.
I took the gloves and put them on.
“And this?” She offered me a stick of gum.
"No thanks.”
She put the Big Red back in her pocket. "You go chop those zucchinis.” She pointed to the far corner of the room, where a table was stacked high with peeled zucchinis waiting to be chopped. “Chop, not dice, not mince, but chop.”
At the table stood a guy peeling zucchinis. He was clearly there for real community service, sent by a judge.
He was black. About my age, maybe a year older. A hairnet covered his shaved head. Dark blue tattoos snaked around his massive neck. Baggy pants bunched around his ankles. What was truly frightening about him was the way he stared hatefully at the zucchini he was skinning. He ground his teeth pleasurably with every stroke of the peeler. I understood why they didn't trust him with a knife, but I was surprised they even trusted him with a vegetable peeler.
"Hi,” I said, offering my hand to shake. “I'm Ben. I'm your chopper.”
He stared at my hand. I realized I was still wearing a latex glove. He probably thought I was racist, that I was afraid of catching a disease.
"Sorry.” I peeled off the glove. “Forgot.”
He shook my hand without removing his own glove. Zucchini juice squirted from between our hands onto the tiled floor.
"Kwan,” he grunted
"What?”
"That's my name,” he said. “Kwan.”
He released my hand.
I wanted to wipe the zucchini slop off, but if I wiped off my hand immediately after shaking his, he would think I was racist, so I pulled the latex glove over my dirty hand.
We worked in silence for a while, he skinning the zucchinis, I chopping them up and dropping them in an orange plastic bucket. Finally, Kwan broke the silence.
“Whatcha in for?” he asked.
Apparently he also thought I was a criminal, that a judge sent me here. But Kwan didn't seem to be looking down on me for it; he was looking at me like I was a fellow lawbreaker. We were members of the same fraternity.
I wanted to be a part of that group, of the people who make their own law, who don't just do what society expects of them. In other words, I wanted to be cool. And I certainly didn't want Kwan to know I was there for the Teen Mitzvah Corps.
Then I realized I could tell him anything about myself and he would believe it. He didn't know me at all. He didn't know I was on the chess club. I could reinvent myself—be anyone I wanted to be.
But what should I tell him I had done to end up at the soup kitchen? I tried to think of a cool crime. Unfortunately, I said the first thing that came to mind.
“Cruelty to animals.”
Kwan stepped back and held his vegetable peeler defensively. I shouldn’t have said cruelty to animals. Torturing animals was a sign of a future serial killer. Now Kwan would think I also started fires and wet the bed.
“It was self-defense,” I said. “There was a rabid dog. I blew pot in its ear to calm it down. They said this was cruelty.”
“What kind of dog?”
“One of those Lassie dogs.”
“You get high?”
“Sure. All the time.”
I had never done anything of the sort in my life, but I wanted him to think I was cool. It wasn’t a complete lie. I had seen movies where characters do drugs and then the camera shows things from their point of view. It was like I did the drugs myself.
“I wouldn’t of thought it,” Kwan said. “You look like a straight arrow to me.”
“No. I’m crooked, pretty bent.”
Kwan's vegetable peeler clanged on the table. He snapped off his green-stained plastic gloves and pulled off his hairnet.
“Time for a chronic break,” he said, dropping the gloves and hairnet on the peeled zucchinis. “Gonna get high.”
He walked to the back door.
I stood in place, keeping my eyes on the zucchini I was chopping, unsure if I was supposed to follow or not.
At the back door, Kwan stopped and called back to me: “You comin’?”
I dropped the knife and rushed after him, almost tripping on stray zucchini peels.
The alley was littered with broken glass and had the sour milk stink of rancid garbage. Kwan bounded up the fire escape, which swayed and threatened to collapse. I hurried up after him, grasping tightly to the inner railing. Bits of rust broke off in my sweaty hands.
The roof of the three story building was covered with gravel. The sun pounded down on me. There were no clouds in the sky, which meant that satellites would know what I was doing.
Kwan flipped open a pack of cigarettes and took out a plastic bag filled with green stuff. He started stuffing the green stuff into a purple glass pipe.
My heart pounded. My arms and legs went numb. What if the drugs made me freak out and jump off the roof? I’d splatter on the sidewalk and everyone would see my insides. I peered over the edge of the roof, hoping to see an awning that could break my fall if I did end up jumping. Nothing. No awning. Just the empty sidewalk, the street, an occasional car.
I moved to the middle of the roof, to be as far away from falling off as possible.
I wouldn't inhale, I decided. I didn't want to jump off the roof, didn't want to hallucinate pink pterodactyls crawling after me. I would fake-inhale. Then I would fake hysterical, uncontrollable laughter.
I tried to make conversation. Maybe it would calm my nerves.
“What did you do?” I asked Kwan. “How come you’re peeling vegetables?”
I immediately realized I shouldn't have asked that. I was implying that he was guilty, that he actually did do it.
“What’d they charge you with?” I corrected myself.
“Drugs,” he said.
“Did you do it?” I asked.
“Did I do drugs?”
“No. I mean…”
“Guilty as charged.”
“So the punishment for drugs is working in a soup kitchen,” I said. “If they catch us, they’ll just send us back downstairs.”
Kwan grinned. He handed me the pipe and a blue plastic lighter. “Start her up.”
I took it from him. It took all my willpower to stop my hands from shaking. I brought the pipe up to my face and pressed its cold glass to my lips.
A low-flying helicopter buzzed over our heads. At that moment, I was absolutely certain it was a police helicopter, that they knew we were doing drugs, and were going to arrest us. I threw Kwan’s pipe off the side of the roof to dispose of the evidence. Kwan’s mouth went slack, his eyes wide. The helicopter departed as quickly as it had arrived. A tinkling broken glass sound came from the sidewalk below.
Kwan opened his mouth wide like he was screaming, but no sound came out. He ran to the edge of the roof, lay on his stomach, and peered over.
I lay next to him and looked down. Little purple shards of glass littered the pavement, glittering up at us.
“What did you do that for?” he asked with a frightening calm.
“There was a helicopter…” I tried to explain.
“Were you trying to hit it?”
“No.”
About then I realized that the helicopter probably hadn't been after us and that throwing the pipe off the roof had been unnecessary.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Kwan clenched his fists. The veins on his neck stood out, pulsing under his tattoos. I could hear his teeth grinding. If we still had the pipe, I could blow smoke in his ear and calm him down.
I inched away from the edge of the roof—I didn’t want him to throw me off. I didn’t want to be shattered into a thousand pieces like the pipe.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated.
He pounded his fist against the roof.
“I’ll buy you a new one,” I said.
“It ain’t that,” Kwan said. “You could've hit somebody.”
He was right. I was lucky that the sidewalk had been empty.
“Sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“You just throw things off of roofs without even looking first?”
I hung my head in shame. I tried to think of an excuse, an explanation for why I threw the pipe off the roof, but my mind had gone slack and couldn’t grasp onto anything. Any chance of him thinking I was cool was gone. I wasn’t cool, never was, probably never would be. There was nothing left but the truth.
“I’m on the chess team” I said.
“That supposed to be a threat?” Kwan hopped up, strode up to me, and bumped his chest into mine, as if to say he wasn’t intimidated by my chess master skills. He bumped me back until I was just inches from the other edge of the roof.
“It’s not a threat,” I said. “I mean I’m not cool. I was just pretending to be. I’ve never smoked pot before.”
He grabbed me by the shirt and tried to lift me up, but only succeeded in ripping my collar.
“This was your first time?” he asked incredulously. “What about the dog?”
“I didn’t blow pot in its ear.”
“What did you do to it?”
“Nothing. There was no dog.”
“So what are you doing community service for?”
“I’m not doing community service. I’m doing a mitzvah.”
“A what?”
“A mitzvah. It’s like a good deed, but for Jews.”
He furrowed his brow, confused.
I sighed. “I’m a volunteer,” I admitted.
He let go of me and took a step back, a betrayed look on his face.
“My parents made me do it,” I said. “I don’t want to be in the Teen Mitzvah Corps, visiting orphanages and old people. They made me. I thought that if you thought the police sent me here, then you’d think that...you know. I just wanted you to think I was cool.”
Kwan's face was expressionless for what seemed a long time. Then, suddenly, a big smile spread across his face. He started to laugh. Hard. He fell down and clutched his side. Tears spilled down his cheeks. He tried to speak, but couldn't get out any words through his laughter. Finally, after a lot of gasping and panting, he managed to gather his breath.
“I lied too,” he said. “I did the same thing. I wanted you to think I was cool. I wanted you to like me. I wasn’t really sent here for doing drugs.”
Now I joined in his laughter. I laughed so hard that my chest hurt and I fell over. Tears of laughter and relief filled my eyes. The two of us lay on our backs on the gravelly roof of the soup kitchen, cackling hysterically. Finally I managed get myself enough under control to speak.
“So why are you here?” I asked.
“Armed robbery,” he said.
I stopped laughing instantly, but Kwan kept going. He slapped me on the shoulder.
He sat up, lifted up his pant leg, and showed me the electronic bracelet strapped to his ankle. “I’m only allowed out of the house for school and community service.”
He stood and walked over to the fire escape, wiping his face and grinning broadly.
“Come on,” he said. “Let's go get some rolling papers and smoke up.”
I followed him to the fire escape.
"No thanks,” I said. “I've got some chopping to do.”

30 November 2008
Jerusalem, Israel

SWEET TOOTH

2008-10-02T15:55:00.000-05:00

I found your dirty fingerprints

on my box of Junior Mints.

I also found your DNA

on my stolen Milky Way.

You picked out all the green gumdrops.

I’ve already called the cops.

They won’t believe your alibi—

they’ll know you stole my Hostess pie.

They’ll pull your sweet tooth out with pliers.

Your screams will sound like screeching tires.

They’ll lock you up without parole

and feed tuna casserole,

brussel sprouts, and lima beans.

That’s how our justice system weans

sugar junkies off of sweets:

with dental work and healthy treats.

From now on, your life is pain and grief,

you dirty candyholic thief.

The Jewish Cemetery

2008-09-23T12:43:00.002-05:00

THE JEWISH CEMETERY

Sarah wasn't rotting fast enough.
The rabbis found this out
when they came to rob her grave.
From dust Sarah came,
but to dust she didn't want to go,
which made the rabbis wonder:
when Sarah converted
and went in the mikveh
did she plan to keep the mitzvah
of to dust you shall return?
The rabbis thought she didn't
so they canceled her conversion.
And to keep their Jewish graveyard pure
they dug up Sarah's meat bones,
took them out to the street,
and fed them to a rabid dog.

Going Out West

2008-08-20T17:38:00.001-05:00

I found this old story that I wrote back in college. I left it as it was and resisted the urge to rewrite it.
--Ben

GOING OUT WEST
by
Ben Fishbein

When I was a Freshman Acting major at the University of Illinois, I had to take a class called Improvisatory Acting Technique. The professor was Paula Dixon. She looked as if she had spent her life consciously avoiding smiles, frowns, worry, incredulity, and anything else that might lead to wrinkles. The result was not pretty, but a complete lack of character. All parts of her face were falling at the same speed. She was superstitious, which wasn’t encouraging since one hundred percent of the grade was at her discretion. She made us take our shoes and socks off so we could “feel the acting space.” The acting space was hard-wood floor that had never been cleaned. I’m amazed I never caught a horrible flesh-eating disease. After every class, the soles of our feet were jet black. One girl cut her foot fairly badly on a splinter of broken glass. There was very little actual acting involved. Most of the semester consisted of the eleven of us standing in a circle and pretending to pass around an imaginary ball of energy. We had to “keep the energy going.” This may sound like an easy way to earn college credit, but for me it wasn’t. Professor Dixon didn’t like my energy balling technique.
“James,” she said. “Every time the ball comes to you, it loses energy.”
“I didn’t realize. Sorry. Are you sure?”
“Parvesh, is the ball losing energy when it comes to him?”
She had called on the one person who she knew would absolutely not take my side. Parvesh was from Saudi Arabia but his accent sounded more British. He was the only non-white there. Perhaps it was because he felt like a guest that he was unwilling to ever side against a figure of authority.
“Yeah,” Parvesh said. “He really dropped the ball.”
The class laughed at this.
Professor Dixon breathed deeply. Perhaps this was all the emotion she was capable of showing. “Just try harder,” she said to me. “That’s all we ask.”
I made a big show out of it. I grunted and gasped when it came to me, and exaggerated everything I did. Afterwards, the professor said, “Well done. I can see you’re improving.”
After that, I was no longer a regular at class. When grades came, mine was as low as it could be. I thought the vein on my father’s head would pop.
“We let you study theatre and this is how you repay us?”
“I told you what they made us do. It’s idiotic. There’s no point to studying acting. It can’t be taught. I’m just going straight to Hollywood. I’m just wasting time at school.”
“What are you going to do when Steven Spielberg asks you to pass an energy ball?”
My mother was more practical.
“It’s a different climate in California. You don’t have enough shorts. I’m buying him some shorts. When are you going? Wait until after Christmas. That’s when the sales are.”
“Don’t buy him shorts! He doesn’t deserve shorts!”
“It’s hot there.”
“Let him sweat!”
*
I didn’t know anybody in Los Angeles, but I had a plan. I would stay in a hotel the first night. The next day, I would find an apartment. The day after that, from my new apartment, I would begin to send out headshots and resumes, while finding a job as a waiter or something.
I made a reservation at the Day’s Inn on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California. Once there I found out there was a difference between the phrase, “Hollywood,” and the actual geographic location of Hollywood. It had been a great place when Chaplin lived there. But since then, the buildings had begun to crumble, the property values decline, and the place turned into Hollywood in name only. It was a ghetto. As I looked out on the dark street, I felt very out of place. Everybody had a shopping cart except me.
It turns out that most apartments won’t let you move in on the same day that you call expressing interest in the apartment. They have to do a credit check. The credit card debt I had accrued during my one semester at college ensured that I would never get an apartment.
I was left with little choice. I would have to stay in Hollywood (the literal Hollywood) and stay at a place that didn’t check credit and charged by the week. Once a person had stayed somewhere thirty days, he technically established residency and couldn’t be locked out without an official eviction. To avoid this, the owners made everyone leave for at least twenty-four hours every twenty-eight days. I wouldn’t worry about that for four weeks, due to my impending homelessness.
I checked out of the Day’s Inn and lugged my bags to the St. Francis Hotel, a twenty-eight day place. A chain-link fence surrounded the reception desk. An old man seated on the floor next to a potted plant called to me and asked me to buy him vodka. I told him no.
“Do you have any rooms?” I asked the woman behind the fence.
“We had one earlier today, but then it was taken.”
Now I was officially homeless. I didn’t know where I would go, but with throbbing muscles, I picked up my bags and began my solemn march.
“Just a moment, hon,” she said. “I just remembered. The cops raided someone’s room last night. He’ll probably be in jail for a while. I don’t think he’ll be needing it.”
I left my bags at the St. Francis Hotel, and went to the bank to cash some traveler’s checks.
Returning, I began to worry that the St. Francis would not be there when I got back. I picked up my pace, and crossed to the north side of Hollywood Boulevard. A police car in the gas station turned on its siren and the lights flashed. It peeled out of the station, but then slowed down like it was chasing O.J.
“You there! Stop moving,” a woman’s deep voice called out through a loudspeaker. “You! The boy in the brown jacket! Stop walking!”
No one in Los Angeles wore brown. They could only mean me. I did a quick inventory to determine if I did anything wrong. I was clean and legal.
A white woman whose hips pushed her gun out at almost a ninety degree angle got out of the driver’s side. A thin Hispanic with neatly trimmed facial hair got out of the passenger seat. Both cops approached me, leaving the siren and flashing lights on.
“Are you supposed to be wearing corrective lenses?”
“I have contacts.”
“You wearing them?”
“Yes.”
“Then you should be able to see the sign that says, “Don’t Walk.’”
“I’m sorry, I’m just…there were no cars coming.”
“Are you on drugs?”
“What?...No.”
“Do you have any drugs on you?”
“No.”
“I.D.”
I gave him my driver’s license.
“Why is there a staple in your driver’s license?”
“I had a speeding ticket once.”
“Illinois.” He shook his head. “They use staples.”
“Why didn’t you take the staple out?” the woman asked.
“I don’t know.”
He pulled it out with his thumbnail and forefinger, letting it fall to the sidewalk.
“Luis, why don’t you go turn the siren off,” she said. He walked back to the car, bent inside, and turned it off. He stayed there, presumably to run me through the computer.
“You here on vacation?”
“No. I’m here for good. Break into Hollywood, you know.”
“What does your mother think about this?”
“I don’t know.”
“You want me to have to tell your mother you were flattened by a car on Hollywood Boulevard?”
“No.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Just a couple days.”
“Have you called your mother?”
“I don’t have a telephone.”
“Get a phone card. You can get one at any gas station. They sell them in there. You got cash?”
“Yes.”
“Good, you can pay the ticket.”
They gave me a ticket for fifty-five dollars, and I was ordered to show up at the courthouse on February eighth. “Get a phone card!” she called as they drove away.
*
The St. Francis Hotel wouldn’t give me a room without a picture I.D. and the only one I had was now with the LAPD. The only thing worse than living in a ghetto is being refused residency in a ghetto. I assumed it would be the same story at every twenty-eight day place. I resigned myself to taking a taxi to LAX.
Fortunately, they didn’t need to see my I.D. at the airport when I bought my ticket or boarded the flight back to Chicago. I had feared they would, because O’Hare had.
I got on the first flight back to Chicago. All together, my trip lasted only three days. It wouldn’t even quantify as a vacation. I was back in time for the spring semester. Everyone was surprised to see me. The concluded I had just been talking big, despite my insistence that I did in fact go to California. I retook the Improvisatory Acting Technique class, and continued towards getting an Acting degree.

Poems: BROOKLYN BOY, PRIVATE JOHNSON, BEARS

2008-08-12T14:45:00.002-05:00

BROOKLYN BOY

for Avraham Arkadiy

Off I go to spend a year
at yeshiva--Machon Meir.
Their propoganda I will resist;
I won't become a Zionist.
I'll stay the way that HASHEM made me:
a Brooklyner and a Haredi.

PRIVATE JOHNSON

Private Johnson wanted to bring back
a souvenir from his service in Iraq,
so he, being a lad of taste and class,
had Bush's face tattooed upon his ass.
And when he dropped his pants to take a shit,
we all could see he was a patriot.

BEARS

When bears are trying to hibernate,
that's when spelunkers infiltrate.
They throw loud parties, wake the bears,
and if the bears complain--who cares?

But if just one spelunker's mauled,
a statewide bear alert is called,
and all the bears are shot on sight.
It isn't fair; it isn't right.