” Pam, I can’t believe you were able to get me an appointment so quickly”
“Why’s that?”
“This time of year…”
“a personal reference goes a long way.”
“Apparently.”
“It is actually a great time to do it with all the publicity surrounding similar types of surgeries–the price went down significantly.”
“I can’t wait…I’m been wanting to pull the trigger for years.”
“What was the final straw?”
“Oh you know better than anyone…it was just an ever-growing laundry list.”
“Amen sister.”
A gentle knock was barely perceptible on the kitchen door.
“Dear?”
“Yes, Marvin”
“Would you and your guest be more comfortable in the living room while I start preparations for dinner?”
“No! Actually, we’re still finishing our wine…but do come in I wanted to talk to you…I’m very unhappy.”
The middle-aged man timidly inched his way into the kitchen nodding to his wife and her guest.
“Yes, dearest?”
“Don’t sweet talk me–look at these counters…I see cookie crumbs all over. I certainly didn’t put them there.”
“But, but…”
“Don’t you but me..and don’t backtalk me in front of my friend…” Suddenly, Marvin’s wife filled her empty wine glass with cold water from the sink and then threw the cold water violently into her husband’s face.
“There! Maybe that will wake you up to what I expect from now on…. you did not stack the plates in the dishwasher the way I like it. When I tell you to do something a certain way in the kitchen I expect you to follow instructions. Or are you trying to get me angry.”
“Yes dear, I mean NO dear, Marvin replied with water dripping off his emotionless face.”
“And remember…the refrigerator is organized a specific way. Don’t start putting food on the second shelf. That’s only for water. How many times do I have to tell you that.”
“I’m sorry, honey.”
“And don’t think I didn’t see that one of my yogurts was missing. Those are mine. You have your own food. Leave my food alone. You’re fat enough as is. You don’t need to be eating yogurt. You should be working out more anyway.”
“You’re right.”
“I know I’m right…I’m like a broken record player. Why don’t you go clean up my shoe closet for the next hour until we’re done here. That ought to help you break a sweat.”
“Yep, I’m on it.”
“Wait!”
“Yes, dear?”
“This dish rag is all wet….were you planning on leaving it here in the kitchen? Yeah, I’m sure you were. It’s goes in the clothes hamper with the other dirty laundry you should be washing…right NOW….you can get to the closet after”
As Marvin quickly left the kitchen, Pam’s friend was pantomiming an enthusiastic applause with her hands. On her face was a huge smile.
“Pammie, you’ve got that one almost totally housebroken.”
“I can’t take all the credit, they do offer tremendous after-treatment consultations at the clinic if you ever need them.”
“Seems like you have everything well in hand here…can’t wait to get Fred in the operating room.”
“Timing’s great, Nan…I’m here too if you ever have any questions.”
“I’ve got one question actually…It’s kind of personal.”
“Go ahead, shoot.”
“What do they do with them–you know, after the operation I mean?”
“Oh those useless things…I keep Marvin’s in a jar in the cabinet above the fridge.”
“You do NOT!”
“You BET I do… that lazy prick sometimes needs a good reminder of who’s the boss now.”
“Great wine by the way”
“Isn’t it? Sheila recommended it. I really love a good Chardonnay.”
I’ve lived most of my life on the periphery of coalfields. As a child, I could see the twin spoil-heaps of Swadlincote, in the South Derbyshire Coalfield, from my parents bedroom window. When my daughter was a child, she went to nursery school just down the road in Coalburn (there’s a clue in the name) in the Scottish South Lanarkshire Coalfield. When we left Coalburn we moved to just outside Abergavenny, on the edge of the South Wales Coalfield. For the last twenty-odd years, I’ve lived just a few miles from the site of the Polmaise Colliery in Stirlingshire.
The Polmaise miners were famously militant: they struck for ten months in 1938; after Mrs Thatcher broke the 1984-85 national strike, they were the last miners to return to work, a week after every other pit. There’s little sign of the mine today; it closed a year after the strike ended. Stirling Council now has a refuse disposal and recycling centre at Lower Polmaise. Coal had been mined around Coalburn since the 1840s, the last pit closed in 1968. In 1988, a huge opencast mine was opened, alleged to be the largest hole in Europe. It closed in 1997. Europe’s largest battery storage facility is currently being built there, to store excess power from Scotland’s wind farms. At its peak in the early 1920s, The South Wales Coalfield had employed 250,000 men; numbers shrank through the twentieth century and the last deep mine to operate was The Tower Colliery in the Cynon Valley. In 1994, 239 Tower miners pooled their redundancy money to buy the pit and run it as a workers’ co-operative, which they did successfully until their coal reserves were exhausted in 2008. The old Swadlincote spoil-heap in South Derbyshire is now a dry ski slope.
From my comfortable seat on the periphery, I’ve watched a whole industry vanish. But many of the mining villages are still there. Not all of them, some were just timber cabins, but by the mid-1950s miners and their families were living in decent houses, funded out of the public purse, and replacing the shoddy houses previously built by the mine-owners for their workforces. Those mining villages remain special places. Take Coalburn for example: the village’s Miners Welfare Institute remains the centre of village social life and is the only pub in the village; there’s an annual village gala; there are two marching bands – a pipe band, and a silver [brass] band; there’s a thriving horticultural society, with an annual show; an historical society; pigeon-racing is a popular sport. There is a strong sense of community that is almost certainly an inheritance from the workforce solidarity of the village’s industrial past.
I was reminded of the role and importance of workforce solidarity in the mining industry when I saw the news of the deaths of 82 Chinese miners at the Liushenyu coal mine on May 23rd this year. The deaths had been caused by a build-up of carbon monoxide, which can kill by asphyxiation or explosion. The mine had a previously been criticised for its poor safety record.
Of course, that Chinese tragedy is part of a wider story, an auld song. Scotland’s worst coalmining disaster was back in 1877, ‘The Blantyre Calamity’, when 207 miners lost their lives in an explosion and fire caused by a build-up of firedamp (methane). A subsequent inquiry uncovered a list of poor safety management practices: inadequate ventilation, inadequate safety lamps (not the standard locked Davy safety lamps), and shot-firing by untrained workers. The attitude of the mine-owners can be intuited by the eviction of 34 widows from their ‘tied’ cottages just six months after the explosion. Disasters such as these drew a response from the workforce: they were a stimulus to worker solidarity. One of the Blantyre miners who gave evidence to inquiry was Andrew McAnulty who went on to be President of the Lanarkshire Miners Union. In the course of his career as a miner he suffered a scorched right arm with shrivelled sinews, he lost the sight in one eye and had injuries to his feet.
In the UK, the miners’ federated union successfully urged Parliament to pass a law in 1911 to allow miners to choose their own safety inspectors with the right to go anywhere in the mine to ensure that safety regulations were enforced. A similar measure had already had an impact in the French mines, and the introduction of the Workmen Inspectors, as they became known, definitely had a big impact on UK mine safety, especially in guarding against gas build-ups and deaths from roof falls.
Likewise, political pressure by the mining unions and Members of Parliament for mining constituencies led the Government to ask the UK Medical Research Council to conduct chest X-ray screening of miners, research which led in turn to pneumoconiosis, caused by coal dust, to be recognised as an occupational disease, allowing the sufferers to seek compensation. The mine-owners had previously opposed pithead medical examinations.
Workforce inspectors are also found in the shipping industry, another industry with a spotty safety record. The International Transportworkers Federation, an international union, has ITF inspectors who conduct unannounced inspections on berthed ships to detect violations in international shipping regulations on health and safety.
The UK coalfields, that have been a sort of backcloth to my whole life, no longer yield up coal to burn in the living-room grate. There are no more UK coal-mining disasters, though other industrial safety failures continue to cost lives – witness the 167 deaths in the Piper Alpha North Sea oilrig explosion in 1988. But the Coalburn Silver Marching Band is still there as a small reminder that human solidarity is a great resource for the common good.
Jacob Shellstein was a soft-spoken New York Dermatologist who enjoyed collecting stamps, studying birds, reading Revolutionary War books and treating his patients.
When his wife had just about enough of their normal existence without the luxurious perks her other Upper East Side friends seemed to enjoy and flaunt in her face daily, she served Jacob with papers charging him with being “withdrawn, cruel and unusual,” and she took custody of their teenage daughter Annabelle, and moved in with that hedge fund manager Juan Carlo Esposito-Caron whom she had been having an affair with for years now.
Dr. Jacob, not one to get overly emotional, became even more withdrawn. As his practice started to dwindle and his finances suddenly dissipated after a contentious settlement (not that the good Dr. Jacob ever had any intentions to contest a thing), he looked through the mail on the kitchen counter of his new “bachelor” pad and saw a missive from an organization he knew well, “Doctors without Borders.” The telegram was from an old colleague he also knew quite well, Dr. Felicia Winstrom, she was in Guatemala handling a leprosy outbreak and she desperately needed her old mentor’s help.
Dr. Jacob was on a plane to Guatemala the next morning.
Felicia and Jacob had been more than just colleagues. He had wanted to marry her at one time but the timing had never worked out. Their love affair and shared passion for helping others made them perfect potential life partners. Dr. Jacob read about George Washington’s theory of enlightened procrastination on the small prop-plane as it circled over the Green Mountain Range and Jungles of Guatemala.
Felicia was just coming out of a tent when she spotted Jacob–she went to him, put her arms around him, pulled down her surgical mask and kissed him passionately with tears running down her eyes.
“You came, you came…my dearest love…I knew you would …I knew you would”
Felicia collapsed in Jacob’s arms, clearly sleep-deprived and overwrought. Jacob carried her to her small hut, laid her on her bed and let her sleep.
After speaking in Spanish with a couple local doctors and nurses Jacob got a better grasp of the nature of the outbreak –and knew from the description of the symptoms, exactly which type of leprosy it was, the warning signs to look for, and the utmost importance of keeping certain acutely infected patients away from the general population. Upon receiving those instructions, the nurses rounded up the patients with those particular symptoms.
Dr. Jacob explained to Felicia when she awoke that time was not on their side and that it was absolutely essential to try out a new, relatively untested, infectious disease treatment on at least one of the patients to see if it might reverse the awful symptoms.
The local doctors found a willing volunteer, a 10 year old boy whose face was starting to bubble like a gourd. Upon administering a large and painful hypodermic with a strong steroid and drug that had recently been FDA approved, the young patient’s symptoms started to go into remittance within 48 hours. The look of joy and relief on the boy’s face and the local doctors was matched only by the love in Felicia’s eyes for Dr. Jacob.
The rest of the acutely infected patients were quickly administered shots and all seemed to be under control except for one minor incident where an old villager, who did not appreciate the size and pain of the needle, and perhaps the nonchalance of Dr. Jacob, jumped up screaming from the table and bit his arm. Dr. Jacob calmed the old woman down, finished administering the shot, checked his arm and quickly wiped the area on his arm with a alcohol swab, bandaged it and continued on with the hundred or so remaining villagers.
The next morning, Felicia kissed Jacob on the cheek and was quickly off in a helicopter to another village area in the Ticataxa Region after having received a telegram regarding another outbreak. She couldn’t say no. The letter to Jacob included a photograph, a poem and a promise– that when the time was right they would find each other once more–and never be parted again.
Jacob felt relieved and was happy for the first time in what seemed like years.
When Dr. Jacob got back to New York he immediately started to feel funny.
He went into his office and gave himself a full physical. What he saw caused grave concern. He administered the hypodermic with the anti-infectious disease serum and waited 48 hours.
No improvement.
The symptoms were getting worse.
Of course, it must have occurred when that old woman bit me–but why did her leprosy symptoms go away–could I somehow be resistant to the cure?
He looked in the mirror and was shocked by his appearance.
His face looked almost reptilian.
Dr. Jacob was horrified, panicked and confused but knew exactly what he must do.
He needed to quarantine himself immediately. He packed a couple bags full of supplies, put on latex medical gloves sanitized the area, placed a hand-written quarantine sign on his outer door and waited for dark.
He drove upstate at night to his small, broken-down cottage in Millbrook where he kept a small laboratory and research center and often studied birds and nature. The area was beautiful for nature lovers with the nearby Innesfree Gardens and various farms, but of no interest whatsoever to his ex-wife. “Let him have his little nature shack she told her attorney, it’s not worth anything.”
Jacob called a trusted colleague and told him what had occurred and that he couldn’t risk starting a leprosy outbreak by infecting an ill-equipped hospital staff and that the best solution was either to find a cure in his laboratory–quickly– or kill himself by tying himself to a chair and lighting the shack on fire. There was no other way as he saw it.
His good friend could not believe the situation was so dire. Dr. Jacob assured him it was so.
“Paul, remember my old Medical School nickname?
“The Turtle?”
“That’s exactly what I look like now.”
“Jacob, …no…”
“I’ve got to go…no time.”
Jacob Shellstein was awarded the affectionate moniker of “The Turtle” early on by his adoring Columbia Medical School classmates because of his last name, his tortoise shell glasses, his methodical nature in the lab, his withdrawn personality outside the lab and because of his preternatural intelligence– if ever a man was the embodiment of a wise old turtle it was indeed Jacob. He graduated the top of his class and became a leading global specialist on infectious diseases. His charitable, pro bono medical work around the globe over the years had positively impacted thousands of lives.
Jacob carried the two large red plastic containers of gasoline up from the basement and plopped them down on the carpet next to the rocking chair in the study. He took a favorite old book on George Washington and placed it on the chair and then he went back into the lab.
He biopsied his leprous flesh and tested it for hours under the microscope. He poured through old books and scanned the internet looking for any similar cases of patients with similar reptilian-looking skin.
He thought he found one possibility about 20 hours in but it was a false lead–so he kept plugging away.
He listened to Gershin’s Rhapsody in Blue as tears ran down is turtle-like face, He loved the song and it made him think of his beloved daughter Annabelle Blue–who he might never see again.
His good friend Paul called and asked if Jacob wanted or needed anything.
Jacob joked– “a cure would be nice.”
“Absolutely, said Paul, awkwardly–let’s pray for that–what about a Blonde Russian Hooker? he joked in a thick Russian accent –a call-back to an old medical school joke about what would be a good solution to any problem? Jacob laughed and replied, “No Paul, she would probably just say, “I von’t fuck turtles!”
“Hang in there buddy–if anyone can figure this out, you can.”
Jacob smiled and then suddenly a light bulb went off. Joking about hookers suddenly made him think of a whole new group of unapproved FDA rejected HIV drugs (Interferon6QP & Glaxiclaplonase) that had shown great promise in tests on mice in combating certain infectious diseases when used in combination–but the potential side effects were still totally unknown if used on humans. Jacob probably still had the recently mailed samples in his medical kit –never used– he glanced into his study at the two containers of gasoline–and then quickly rifled through the kit. After preparing the hypodermic he said a short prayer. He quickly wrote a last will and testament with instructions to leave everything he owned to Annabelle Blue along with a brief note to her and he emailed it to Paul. Then he phoned Paul and left a message on his voicemail and told him that one bullet, or a torch thrown through the study window from a safe distance of at least 10 feet –would ignite the gas containers and set the house on fire and protect everyone from this new strain of untreatable leprosy and that NYPD/ Hazmat– if they have not already– should simply light his old apartment on fire as well-to be safe.
Jacob Solomon Shellstein, or the grotesque creature he had suddenly become, then took the large hypodermic needle and jammed it in his arm. the image of George Washington flitted quickly through his mind as he gasped in excruciating pain, closed his eyes, and then everything …just…went….black.
Two years later at a solemn dedication ceremony at City Hall, the Mayor of the City was heard saying, “…Today we remember the heroic spirit of a New York doctor whose courageous actions and selfless decisions protected the lives of thousands of our fellow New Yorkers…”
Later that day a family walking by Belvedere Castle in Central Park stopped at a little area before the Delacorte theatre.
“Now, what’s this big surprise?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Annie and I thought you might like this little part here Darling–it’s called…”
“I know exactly what it’s called Felicia, you minx…it’s Turtle Pond–home to red-eared turtles, loons, frogs, ducks and soon one very beautiful, retired and very pregnant wife of mine.
“Oh, Jacob… I’m so indescribably happy.”
The three of them hugged and soon there would be four.
Brickhead wasn’t stupid he was just a little bit slower than the other guys.
I guess it was my job to bring him up to speed on how things at the office ran. Over drinks was the best way to get that shit taken care of.
Anyway, Brickhead wasn’t a bad guy. He was just young and from the Midwest or the country or some place somewhere where they had chickens and roosters and cows and hens and I really didn’t give a fuck about any of that.
It wasn’t my job to care.
It was my job to train the new recruits so they knew how things were supposed to go and to get things taken care of without making any mistakes.
That was the most important thing of all. No mistakes ever.
This bar I took them all to was called Mr. O’s—a favorite little shit hole because it was always empty, the bartender minded his own fucking business and he never charged me for drinks- why? I don’t know– but that was just fine with me.
The juke had a pretty good selection too —The Doors, The Stones, U2, The Who, The Police,Fucking ACDC, Good shit.
They even threw me free chicken wings –a big ol’ greasy bucket.
Yeah, man– Mr. O’s is the shit.
Ok so get this– Brickhead– who is nothing more than a little fucking shit-eating cowboy– he says to me –with this serious look on his face—-“So when do I get to handle some real action, already.”
Can you believe this fuckin guy–the balls on this fuckin retard.
I look at him and I’m about to slap this mutt silly but just then, Charlie the bartender, trots up with a couple free beers and a buckets of wings…and I just laugh to myself–I eat a couple wings and down my beer.
Then I grab this mother-fucking prick by his fucking neck with my right hand and I start to squeeze– and he looks at me–all surprised–but now I got his attention real good–I start squeezing harder and harder –and his face starts to turn redder and redder–like a real brick-head– now I got his full attention, his eyes start tearing up, he looks all confused and then I whisper–“when I say we talk about business–that’s when we talk about business…do you got me?…nod if you understand…” I helped the kid nod.
Then I slowly eased up on the vise.
Same routine for over a dozen new recruits.
What can I say? They gotta learn from the get go ’bout protocols.
Anyways for some reason schoolin’ this young prick made me think about all the other important stuff I had learned over the years about all sorts of shit.
Like, it’s always better to over-tip than under-tip. Just is. Red-heads are all crazy. They just are. Always mute commercials–that’s why there’s a mute button. Never answer a phone call from a phone number if you don’t recognize the number on caller ID. Police lie like a rug–just as much as criminals. Potato chips go great with ketchup. Always double down when you can. Don’t order take out sushi. Never write down shit or text or email important stuff only use payphones. Women never look fat…not if you wanna get laid.
As I scanned the SD card, a theme emerged. First it was birds in flight, then I sort of got taken by the vivid colors of summer. I thought about Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome.”
I don’t have any Kodachrome, but I do have a Nikon camera… It takes a nice photograph. I always get fascinated by foxtail weeds. They are quite photogenic. Morning glories steal the show when the soybeans dry and summer slips into fall, but we’re not there yet. Let’s not rush into anything.
So while we’re not there yet. I took some pictures of flowers. Flower Power, and why not? I can’t claim that era, but I can enjoy the flowers. Get a little dream going in the hammock.
(Ed. Note: We are pleased to welcome back playwright Gary Beck–LA, DWB)
(Mr. Barker leads in two performers to do a clown show.)
Mr. Barker: You can get ready here, but put make up on in the bathroom. No smoking.
Koko: We don’t smoke.
Mr. Barker: No drinking.
Pipi: We don’t drink. We’re clowns! (Barker shrugs.) Like in the circus.
Mr. Barker: There’s no circus anymore.
Koko: Of course there is.
Mr. Barker: It closed over a year ago. (Koko and Pipi look at each other.) Don’t you watch the news on TV?
Pipi: What about the elephants?
Mr. Barker: They got rid of them. Probably sold them for dog food. (Koko and Pipi react. Exit Mr. Barker.)
Pipi: If there’s no circus, where do the parents take their kids?
Koko: To a museum?
Pipi: That’s no fun.
Koko: A movie?
Pipi: They watch Cable TV all the time. They need to see live shows.
Koko: Like us.
Pipi: We’re lucky that they still come to see us.
Koko: Let’s hope they like us.
Pipi: You know we’ll make them like us.
Koko: I worry that they’ll stop wanting to see clowns. What will we do then?
Pipi: There’ll always be people who want to see us.
Koko: Don’t be too sure.
Pipi: Am too.
Koko: Am not.
Pipi: Am too. (They laugh.)
(Enter Mr. Barker.)
Mr. Barker: The parents and kids are coming in now.
Koko: How old are they?
Mr. Barker A lot of younger ones today. Mostly four and five year olds. But there are older ones, eight and nine.
Koko: That’s not good.
Mr. Barker: Why not?
Koko: They’ll try to be cool in front of the younger kids and they’ll sit with their iPhones, texting with their friends.
Mr. Barker: We usually have singers or storytellers here. This is the first time we’ve had clowns, and only because our regular singer, the blue jay lady, got sick. Tell you the truth, I wanted to cancel today. I don’t think much of clowns.
Pipi: You’ll think a lot better of clowns once you see us perform.
Mr. Barker: I hope so. Let me know if you need anything.
(Exit Mr. Barker)
Koko: So here we are again, getting ready to do our show for kids who’d rather be playing video games.
Pipi: They’ll love us.
Koko: You say that every time.
Pipi: It’s our job.
Koko: It would have been easier if I was born a princess.
Pipi: Why?
Koko: Then I’d have a palace and we could invite all the kids and parents and they’d be impressed and love us.
Pipi: That’s sweet.
Koko: I can be sweet.
Pipi: I know… We’ll make them love us.
(Enter Mr. Barker)
Mr. Barker: You two better get a move on. The kids’ll start getting restless if they sit too long.
Koko: We’re preparing our mindsets.
Mr. Barker: (Suspiciously) What’s a mindset?
Pipi: It’s our way of preparing to perform.
Mr. Barker: This is getting weird. It’s bad enough that grown women should make fools of themselves clowning around….
Pipi: There’s a long tradition of women clowns.
Mr. Barker: I don’t know about that. Now get ready to go out there or you won’t get paid.
Koko: We have a contract.
Mr. Barker: Then sue me. Get moving or else.
Koko: That’s not the state to put us in just before a show.
Mr. Barker: Do you believe these girls? If you’re not ready to go in ten minutes you can do your next show in Alaska.
(Exit Mr. Barker)
Koko: (To his back.) That’s not the state I meant.
Pipi: What did you mean?
Koko: That we’re a sovereign state.
Pipi: I don’t understand.
Koko: We’re bounded on five sides by air and on one side by terrestrial matter. (Pipi looks confused.) I’ll explain.
Pipi: I’m all ears.
Koko: We are in front, back, both sides and on top, surrounded by air.
Pipi: Ah.
Koko: And our feet rest on the ground.
Pipi: Ah.
Koko: Thus! We exist before aforementioned points, a principality.
Pipi: Ah. Then we must always fear invasion.
Koko: Why?
Pipi: Well, neighbors being neighbors, we’ll always… How shall I say it? Poach?
Koko: Ah.
Pipi: Seek territorial expansion at the expense of others.
Koko: A perspicuous comment.
Pipi: You’re so clever.
Koko: Besides. We shouldn’t fear our neighbors.
Pipi: Then what?
Koko: Ask who?
Pipi: Well?
Koko: Say it.
Pipi: You’re so stubborn sometimes. (Koko is impatient). All right, all right. Who?
Koko: A president who does bad things.
Pipi: What can we do about the president?
Koko: Another perspicuous comment.
Pipi: What does perspicuous mean?
Koko: That you’re smart.
Pipi: I always knew you recognized my intelligence. (Smart song and dance.)
(Enter Mr. Barker)
Mr. Barker: I thought I told you clowns to stop fooling around and get ready.
Pipi: We are.
Mr. Barker: If you’re not out there in 5 minutes, I’ll cancel the show and give you what’s coming to you. (Starts to exit.)
Koko: We’d like to give you what’s coming to you. (Mr. Barker turns back.)
Mr. Barker: What did you say?
Pipi: Koko said you’ll appreciate the coming show.
Mr. Barker: Yeah. Right. Now get going.
Pipi: We’ll be ready in a minute or two.
Mr. Barker: You better be.
(Exit Mr. Barker)
Koko: Once again we’re being ordered around by a bully who doesn’t understand us.
Pipi: It’s only temporary.
Koko: So’s life… I’m so tired of disguising myself in order to hide from so many horrors.
Pipi: But we still please so many people, especially children.
Koko: Pleasure is fleeting. So is everything else.
Pipi: So what’s left?
Koko: Enduring until the end.
Pipi: That doesn’t sound very promising.
Koko: Promises are always broken.
Pipi: No they’re not! When I was six Mom promised to take me to the movies if I was good.
Koko: And?
Pipi: She did. She did. That proves promises aren’t always broken.
Koko: What’s a promise made to a child? Everything’s collapsing around us, despite the promises of the president to make things better. Yet we still paint our faces and put on costumes to try to stem the tide of despair.
Pipi: It’s not that bad.
Koko: It is. It is. Will our suffering never end? But no matter what, we go out there and entertain.
Pipi: It’s our job.
Koko: We should quit.
Pipi: You don’t mean that?
Koko: Why not?
Pipi: Who would make people laugh?
Koko: They’ll find somebody.
Pipi: What if they don’t?
Koko: They will.
Pipi: What if they don’t?
Koko: They’ll get along without laughter.
Pipi: They can’t!
Koko: Of course they can. Laughter’s not that important.
Pipi: You don’t mean that.
Koko: I do.
Pipi: We can’t get along without people. We need them.
(Enter Mr. Barker)
Mr. Barker: This is your last warning.
Pipi: We’ll just be a moment. (Pipi and Koko stand, put on costumes, hat, while Mr. Barker waits. To Koko:) Remember….
(Today and tomorrow we are pleased to present Shontay Luna. You can call her work a prose poem or a microfiction, any way you think about her writing, it conveys her own POV–the Eds.)
I felt fine, then he called me. He called me every other day.
In my bliss-filled day of not hearing from him, I heard from him.
For every day he didn’t call I knew he’d do it the next day. If I
knew how to set my watch, I could do so by the punctuality of
him trying to invite me to breakfast while I sat peacefully in my
own apartment. Or other offerings of things or excursions as
methods of him trying to win me back. Conveniently bypassing
the elephant sized infidelity in the room. After turning him down
yet again, he switches tactics. Telling me that I shouldn’t be mad
anymore. Which I’m not; I felt fine before the call. But like clockwork,
I cried after talking to him. And I knew he was where I once lived,
near his phone. Smirking. The wound still fresh, the scab not
completely covered. I cried, but I don’t know why. I wasn’t angry
anymore, just tired. My soul compacting itself against me. How does
a soul compact? I don’t know, but mine did. Like an over-torturous
form of shrinking. An unconscious drilling of a matte-colored soul that
once shined. The words and names that tortured me at that residence
no longer having any hold since my exodus. As I consider if now I should
avoid him completely. But he’s their father. Whatever family event they’ll
be – birthdays, holidays, he’ll be there also. At the cost of being able to
see our kids and grands, his presence is a sacrifice I’m willing to tolerate
When he was five years old, his mother got down on his level, as she often did. But this time, she told him something different, something he’d never heard before.
She told him he was going to spend the summer with his Grandmother.
And that she herself, his mother, would come to visit him a lot, with his father; but they also wouldn’t be seeing him for a while.
And she immediately informed him, before he panicked, that this was a good thing – NOT a bad thing, and certainly not a punishment of any kind.
She reassured him about how much both she and his father loved him (and he already knew that very well, since they had showered him with love and attention since day one).
Then she told him that he was going to stay with his grandmother for the summer because his grandmother had things to teach him that only she, his grandmother, could teach him.
He couldn’t wait to get going.
…
He wasn’t scared or nervous at all as his mother drove him north from their very modest Detroit suburb to the thumb area of Michigan, where his grandmother lived in a trailer park on the edge of a small town.
It was a town that was made up mostly of German American and French American people who almost all claimed Indian blood of some kind, usually Chippewa or Iroquois. All the small merchants of the town were former farmers who served all the many farmers who lived spread way out all around the town. It was, and is, some of the most fertile land not just in the USA, but in the world. The town was (and is) fifteen miles away from Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes.
His grandmother was what can only be called a kind of German mystic, although no one called her that.
But they all came to her when they needed something.
Not when they needed money, because she didn’t have any of that.
But when they needed consolation, needed healing, needed advice, needed a friend, needed someone to listen to them without passing judgement, they came to her.
His mother dropped him off in front of his grandmother’s trailer with his little suitcase. She didn’t make sure he was safely inside or anything. She just picked him up, hugged him, kissed him, said goodbye, then gently put him down and shoved him toward the door of the trailer, where his grandmother was waiting inside.
And then she drove away.
…
At first he and his grandmother didn’t do anything special.
And he almost never got bored, because whenever he started getting too bored, he retreated, and entered a world that no one else around him could see. They thought he was in a trance, but he knew he was somewhere special.
It was a world of the imagination, filled with wild characters, wonderful animals, amazing adventures, the ability to literally fly wherever and whenever he wanted, and also to turn invisible and roam around, wherever and whenever he wanted to.
And they watched a lot of TV.
And she sometimes told him stories about the family, in her quiet voice, what it was like on the ship coming over from Germany, accidents or good things that had happened to people on the farm, wild and crazy things the farm animals had done, stories about weather and storms and harvests, stories about sickness and healing.
And sometimes she read to him, especially about Peter Pan and Winnie the Pooh, and even more often than that, from the Bible, stories about Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Ark and the animals and the rainbow, Moses, David and Goliath, Joseph and the coat of many colors, Job and the Whirlwind, Jeremiah and the well, Jonah and the whale, Jesus and his mother, Mary, and the adventures of Paul while he was spreading the Gospel, like Johnny Appleseed in America, who she also told him all about, many times. There was only one picture on the walls of the trailer, and it was a picture of Jesus’ face. He wasn’t being crucified in the picture. In the picture, he was quietly smiling upward with mysterious eyes and a weird kind of halo light falling down behind his head onto his shoulders out of the clear blue sky.
And then one day they started planting things.
Some of the things were flowers, and other things were other, small, green plants.
And she showed him how to plant, how to dig in the soil, how to treat the plants tenderly, how to place them where they now belonged, how to put the dirt back on top, how to pack it all down snugly, but not too snugly, how to water the earth.
And they planted things all in and around the trailer park on the edge of the town.
Then one day when he was sitting on the couch looking at a Bible picture book with all the grown men with their long hair and beards, and the beautiful women in their flowing robes with their flowing, long, beautiful hair, he smelled something wonderful. It was a loaf of bread she was baking.
A little later she showed him the loaf of bread under a kitchen towel. His mouth watered and it looked wonderful.
She told him they needed to go take the bread to a man she wanted him to meet.
…
She drove slowly, cautiously, patiently, calmly, and fearlessly.
She had strong, gnarled hands, a simple bracelet on one wrist, and her long, graying, pretty hair was pulled back with a simple blue ribbon around it.
They drove for a long time.
They didn’t talk, and they were completely comfortable around one another not talking.
They both enjoyed just going, the wheels flying over the road, the farm fields all around them always with trees in the distance.
The man they were going to meet was called Old Joe.
That wasn’t his name, but it was what they called him.
Old Joe was a local legend.
He was such a local legend that stories about him had appeared in the local newspaper a few times, and even on the local TV news station one time.
He lived way out in the middle of nowhere, alone, in a shack, in the middle of a huge, vast field with trees and a river in the distance, and a few huge trees that loomed over and sheltered his shack with their leaf-filled arms.
Except he didn’t live alone.
As the boy’s grandmother pulled the car over to the side of the road by the field where the shack was way over there, she pointed, and he saw that there was a whole, huge pack of gigantic dogs lounging around on the ground around the shack.
She told him that there were at least twelve dogs.
And then he saw the goats.
The little goats were all leaping and jumping and playing and shivering with joy in the tall grass of the field. They were bumping into each other and munching and chomping on grass and little scrub trees in the field. A goat shot away from the rest of them and one of the dogs leapt up and shot after the goat and circled around it, bringing it back, and they looked like they were playing a game on the way back.
His grandmother and himself got out of the car, and started walking across the field toward the shack and the dogs and the goats on a little trail. They held hands as they went and his grandmother held the loaf of bread under her other arm, wrapped in the towel.
The dogs all came over in a pack wagging their huge tails and greeting them. The goats kept to themselves but seemed to start jumping around even more, almost like they were excited by the visitors.
But Old Joe was nowhere around.
They sat down in a couple of old, broken-down chairs that were sitting outside the shack and they waited for him in the warm sunlight as they petted the shaggy dogs and talked to the shaggy, friendly, wagging-tail dogs, and laughed and waved at the goats, some of whom started approaching them and looking at them with curious eyes before bounding away again.
And before very long they saw a man approaching them across the field from the direction of the river.
He walked slowly and steadily and when he was about half way toward where they were he raised his hand and waved at them one simple time.
When the man got to where they were, the boy was shocked, and almost terrified for a few seconds, but then just fascinated.
Old Joe wore a beat-up old black hat that came down very low almost covering his eyes. His eyes beneath the brim of the hat were the darkest, most intense eyes the boy had ever seen. The man’s nose was large and he had a gigantic mustache covering his mouth and a huge, dark, graying, tangled beard that came down to the middle of his chest. He wore a suit of old, black, tattered clothes that was dusty and filled with patches. He had old, battered boots on his feet.
And he never said a word, not even hello.
He just came over to the boy’s grandmother who handed him the loaf of bread. As Old Joe went over to take the bread into the shack, a bird swooped down out of one of the trees over the shack and landed on his shoulder. It rode his shoulder into the shack, and when Old Joe came back out of the shack, the bird flew back up into the tree again and landed in the leafy green branches.
Old Joe pulled over another old, broken-down chair from over behind the shack, and then he sat down right next to the boy. Old Joe leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and just sat there, very close to the boy, while his grandmother continued to pet the dogs and talk to them. Old Joe never said a word. Not one word.
Pretty soon the boy’s grandmother and Old Joe just looked at each other. They both had tiny, small smiles in and around their eyes. No one ever said a word.
Then the boy’s grandmother said it was time to get going. Old Joe just sat there, elbows on knees. The dogs surrounded him, like they were protecting him.
The boy and his grandmother held hands again as they walked back to the car on the little trail through the beautiful, glowing green field that was now popping with harmless grasshoppers hopping all around them.
As they drove away, she told him that Old Joe was her brother; his great-uncle.
…
There was one more thing from that summer that the boy would never forget.
He didn’t remember his grandfather, who’d died right before (right before) he was born.
She told him that his grandfather visited her almost every night (but not every night), just for a few moments.
She would know when he was about to appear because she could suddenly feel it; and then he would sit gently on the other side of her bed, the bed they had shared together, only for a few, dreamlike moments that only seemed half-real.
And he came to tell her that, though it was hard to believe, everything was (even when it wasn’t) okay: now, yesterday, tomorrow, forever, and always.
Saragun Springs 