Squirrel.

There are too many squirrels. 

 

Our backyard is ringed by big gray oaks and the squirrels jump from limb to limb. They scurry up trunks and frantically dart from tree to tree, gathering acorns and stuffing them in hidey-holes around the mossy bases. Yesterday, I watched as two squirrels collided as they met each other midway up an oak. One going up, one going down, too consumed by their tasks to notice the other. The going-up squirrel was knocked off the tree by going-down squirrel and lay stunned, briefly, on a bed of pokeweed. 

 

I imagined he was looking up at going-down squirrel and thinking, what the hell? He was likely thinking nothing but nuts. I stopped keeping birdseed in the feeders after watching the squirrels eat it all. I bought a BB gun with the intent of shooting squirrels who disturbed the feeders but quickly discovered that I do not have the heart to shoot a squirrel, or the desire to remove a dead squirrel from my yard.  

Sometimes, the tree squirrels are so noisy that I think it must be some larger, more formidable animal lurking in the woods. A possum, maybe, or the family of deer that tiptoe through twice a day. One time, I saw a gray fox lope through the woods, on the hunt for a rabbit. I worry about the fox and the hawk that nests in the oak. I worry that they will see my juicy little dog who looks like a fine snack. I worry that they will try to snatch him only to drop him when they realize that he is too fat to carry far. 

 

Our house sits in the middle of a long road that makes a lazy six mile U. Three miles to the right and it hits the bigger road where there's a Chick-Fil-A and a traffic light and a grocery store. Three miles to the left and it connects a quieter stretch of the same road. If I leave our house and turn left, I can get where I need to go without acknowledging the existence of Chick-Fil-A and traffic lights. Either way, the road is littered with squirrel. 

 

One day, I had to swerve into the other lane to avoid what I could only describe as a squirrel massacre. It was if an entire squirrel family, perhaps on their way to my oaks for a picnic, was hit en masse while crossing the road. I imagine a tiny squirrel police officer standing over the scene, his little police hat held under a chubby arm. They never saw it coming, he says. That's the mercy in it. 

 

By some miracle or just good dumb luck, I've never hit a squirrel. I've come close dozens of times - gripping the wheel and holding my breath and occasionally letting out an ah-ah-ah! Sometimes, I think I've surely hit one. I am so certain that I can imagine the thwap-whump of the squirrel under my tire and up against the wheel well. I search the rearview mirror frantically for a body, but it's never there. Twice, I've stopped to look and make sure that there's not a squirrel stuck under my car. Once, I walked back along the road nearly a quarter of a mile, searching. 

 

What would I have done if I'd actually found a dead or half-dead squirrel? Loaded it in my car and rushed it to the vet at the busy end of the U shaped road? Buried it? Cried over and said prayers that squirrels go to heaven (where, no doubt, there are too many squirrels)? Performed tiny squirrel CPR? Or just stood over it and felt awful and gone home and posted about it on Facebook? Probably that.  

 

I have become so obsessed with the idea - the fear - that I am going to hit a squirrel that I almost want it to happen. I scan the road for movement and hold my breath as they dart across. Occasionally, one will make it halfway and freeze. There is the briefest of moments when our eyes lock and I can see him deciding which way which way and in my own head I am thinking which way which way. Am I turning the steering wheel to avoid him, or to hit him and face my squirrel killer destiny? 

 

It is the waiting for the inevitable that I find so difficult. 

It is the seeing it coming and not knowing when. 

It is the knowing and not knowing. 

It is the remembering that there are too many squirrels, anyway.

 

 

Everything Sucked, and Then Somebody Died

 

Everything sucked, and then somebody went and died. As if things weren’t bad enough already, on top of the virus and riots and elections and virtual schooling and working from home, somebody went and died.

I should stop right there and capitalize Virus. Because it is a capital, isn’t it? A capital pain in the ass. You know what you can’t do during The Virus (article added for emphasis)? Have a big funeral for someone amazing and loved and missed. Somebody who went and died.

What you can do, what you do, is sit around feeling empty and incomplete. Like you walked out of the house without pants on or maybe you forgot to turn off the stove. But you are so numb you say fuck it, I’ll walk around without pants on, or let the house burn down.

Everyone wants to ask you if the person died from The Virus and you want to remind them that people die from things other than viruses. People keep on dying from cancer and heart attacks and strokes. People choke on chicken bones and get hit by buses. People die when they’re old and when they’re young, when they don’t deserve it, because of hate and fear and violence and dumb damned luck. It doesn’t matter how, it never matters how, but we want to assign reason so it seems real. Because by naming it we can explain this process and our feelings and see that one day, we won’t feel like there’s an elephant sitting on our chest.

Remember back before The Virus when somebody went and died and you could just be consumed with your own personal grief? When you didn’t have to walk around feeling discounted because you’re just really fucking sad? What about the people who’ve lost their job or business or are essential workers AND somebody they love went and died? What do we give to the winners of the Grief Olympics? Vaccines?

I’m sorry. I’m sorry for your pain and your loss and the fact that you can’t be surrounded by people who loved the person you loved. I’m sorry you can’t have a funeral feast because tater tot casserole is a balm unto the soul. I’m sorry the world keeps turning when we really could stand for it to just stop a minute so we can catch our collective breath. I’m sorry somebody went and died.

June, Three

When she arrived home on this afternoon, all was quiet at the Peterson’s. The dog saw her coming up the sidewalk, and she barely got the door open before he was on her. “Hello, Sampson! Hello, my sweet boy!” Sampson was all of twelve pounds, a silky black pekingese that June had rescued from the shelter five years before. He had been the runt of the litter, clumsy and sweet with a prominent underbite and chronic gas. He was, next to Owen, June’s best friend.

“Can you believe it, Sampson? Can you believe they didn’t have any Miracle Whip?” She was resigned to it now, but had every confidence the situation would be rectified before she had to make her first turkey and dressing sandwich the day after Thanksgiving. She knew the folks in town thought she was terribly ill tempered, but if she didn’t keep them in line, who would? The Mrs. Right Reverend Spurgeon Swicegood, in between quaffing her booze and throwing it back up?

She wanted more than anything to sit in her chair with Sampson on her lap and watch that lovely young woman from near the coast on PBS. The young woman was always visiting farmers and buying fresh food like June had eaten when she was young - turnips and runups and sweet potatoes, pigs just butchered and rabbit just caught - and taking it into her kitchen and making things June could only imagine in her wildest dreams. “Lordy,” she’d say to Sampson as they watched, “Who would have even thought of that?” But Thanksgiving was thirty-nine hours away, and June had to get into her own kitchen today.

She peeled onions and washed the celery, rough thumbs rubbing grit from the stalks. She sliced thin skin ribbons from the carrots, then chopped everything fine and cooked it soft in a mound of butter in her cast iron skillet. June broke apart pans of cornbread and diced cubes of crusty bread and put it all in the giant crockery bowl that had been her grandmother’s. She added bits of good sausage and an apple to the vegetables, and when the smell was just right - sweet and spicy and warm - she added them all to the crock. Fresh chicken stock and liberal amounts of salt and pepper, and then the sage. She rolled the leaves tightly and sliced carefully, and was taken back to her grandmother’s kitchen by the scent. Sage was fall and leaves and fireside and family and Thanksgiving, all rolled into one. She added a handful to the bowl and, after a brief consideration, another one for good measure.  She covered the bowl and put it in the icebox, where it would wait patiently to become dressing.

She had just turned her attention to pies when she heard the knock at the door. It was a grim faced Blue, gripping a measuring cup like it was going to run away from her. “Well,” said June, “Are you delivering a terrible message, or does your Mama just need some sugar?”

“Sugar,” Blue replied.

“Come on in, then. ” June turned sideways and let Blue slip past her. Blue had never been inside the house but it was, mostly, as she imagined it would be. Very neat, very outdated, and very, very full. From the oversized furniture to the countless knick knacks to the family pictures on the walls, there was hardly an inch of the house that had not been decorated. It smelled like cinnamon and apples and something deep and woodsy that Blue couldn’t name. The whole house was like a big, warm blanket that Blue wanted to wrap up in, forever. If only June wasn’t there.

June watched the girl stand in the middle of the living room, staring openly at everything around her. She was suddenly aware of the threadbare carpet and the shabby furniture, of all bits and pieces of her parents she’d kept after they’d died. She felt old and frumpy in the presence of this young person, with her blue hair and black lips and skin you could bounce a quarter off of.

“Sugar,” June echoed, and shooed Blue into the kitchen. “I know I have sugar.” Blue stopped short in the doorway, and pointed to a row of jars on the kitchen table. “Is that...cranberry sauce?” She was nearly breathless, and sounded so comical that June almost laughed, until she realized the girl was completely serious.

“Yes, I make a pile of it every Thanksgiving and Christmas as gifts for my family,” she said.

“Can I...can I just taste it?” Blue said, and June was so taken by the innocence of the request that she moved immediately for a spoon. When Blue put the spoon to her mouth, she made a face like someone remembering a memory they didn’t know they had. “It tastes like Christmas!” she said, and June did laugh this time.

“Honey, have you never had cranberry sauce?” she asked, incredulous.

“My mother doesn’t like it, so she’s never let me try. She thinks it’s gross.” Blue raised and eyebrow and when June laughed again, she decided to push it a little farther. “Can you believe that shit?” With that, June doubled over with a giant guffaw that shook her whole body and turned her face red. Blue started laughing, too, and when they finally stopped, June wiped her eyes with her apron and turned serious.

“Young lady,” she asked, “Has your mama taught you how to cook?”

June, Two

“GOOD GOD, Sarah Jane. Get your nose out of your damned Bible and watch where you’re going!” Sarah Jane had not, in fact, been reading her Bible, but couldn’t decide whether she felt insulted that June had spoken to her so sharply, or guilty for not reading her Bible while walking down the sidewalk.

“Hello, Miss June,” Sarah Jane enunciated “miss” like it was an affront that any woman over 30 should have never married. “I suppose you’re out shopping for your famous Thanksgiving feast.”

“I am,” replied June, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Of course, the Reverend and I will be serving our usual meal to the less fortunates in town on Thanksgiving Day.”

June’s eyes rolled up so far in her head she swore she could see her brains. She knew two things about Sarah Jane and the Right Reverend Spurgeon Swicegood: One, they both had terrible taste as they were married to each other and two, after serving a modest meal of Stove Top Stuffing, dry as ass turkey slices, and stale rolls to the “less fortunate”, those two jokers high tailed it up to the country club dining room where they ate like pigs and drank two bottles of pinot grigio. June’s niece, who was a waitress at the country club, saw Sarah Jane throw up in her wine glass one Thanksgiving and then blame it on ‘suspect cranberry sauce’. In her wine glass!

“Too bad you ain’t invited to my house,” June mumbled and pounded down the sidewalk. Ten paces away, she felt especially evil and called over her shoulder, “Watch out for the cranberry sauce!”

June’s house was situated on a corner lot, where the business end of town met the living end of town. It was a neat house, built with care in the 1937 by her father’s own hand. June kept the lawn mowed and planted pansies in spring, petunias in summer, and mums in the fall. She painted the clapboard siding every seven years and replaced the roof every twelve, whether it needed it or not. She had a solid heating and air man, a reliable plumber, an honest electrician, and a handyman who would fill in when the others couldn’t. She was a firm believer in the importance of regularly scheduled maintenance, and kept marble covered composition books filled with notes on the upkeep of the house. Only once, when faced with a sudden termite infestation, had she panicked. Since then, she employed a man known around town as Leon the Bug Guy. Leon chain smoked Camel cigarettes and carried an arsenal of chemicals in the back of his lime green pick up truck. She hadn’t had a problem with bugs since.

Across the street to the left was the drug store, and June could sit on her porch and watch the teenage boys share a single cigarette like it was gold. On Tuesday afternoons, she’d watch Lucy Harper pick up her birth control pills wearing a ridiculous sunhat and movie star sunglasses, like everyone in town didn’t know it was her. Directly in front of June’s house sat a blessedly empty lot. A few years ago, a group of folks had tried to start a community garden, but no one wanted to tend the plants they’d planted. June did her part to keep it up, but before long it became overgrown and forgotten, squash and tomatoes dripping from vines and rotting on the ground. It made June boiling mad for a solid three months, until the frost hit and leaves fell and covered it all.

Behind her house was a fallow field that stretched almost further than you could see, until it gave way to scrubby pines that leaned into one another in the sandy soil. To the right lived her one true neighbor and source of great consternation, Joanna Peterson. Joanna lived with her six dogs, four cats, the occasional boyfriend, and her 16 year old daughter, a perpetually sullen, raven haired girl called Blue. While Joanna never missed an opportunity to speak to June (“Juney!” she’d call from her ramshackle porch, “Isn’t this just a magnificent morning?”), Blue had only spoken once. It had been late at night the summer before, and June had woken with a start, drenched in sweat. She walked out into the back yard in a futile attempt to escape the furnace inside of her and seen Blue and a group of half a dozen teenagers huddled in a circle, passing a small object around. She watched them put it to their mouths and saw the glowing ember and realized with a shock that they were smoking marijuana.

Blue looked up and saw her standing there. The girl’s face registered surprise, then shame and embarrassment. She half smiled and raised her hand as if to wave, and that’s when the boy standing next to her noticed June. “Hey Blue, should we ask your friend to the party?” The group laughed and Blue’s face turned hard. Her wave turned into fist from which she extended one pale, middle finger. “Screw you, old lady!” she yelled, and they erupted into cheers. For perhaps the first time in her life, June had nothing to say. After she went inside, she laid in bed for a good long while, staring at the ceiling and wondering if she had been that angry when she was a teenager.

She felt certain she had.

June, One

June was stubborn, even she wouldn’t argue that. But more than a bad case of bull headedness, June was just plain mad. She walked around town spoiling for a fight, and made sure everyone knew it. She pushed her way through crowds and groused her way around a shop, laying down complaints as heavy and loud as her thunderous footsteps.

“Why ain’t there any Miracle Whip on the shelves?”, she roared the week before Thanksgiving. “I CAN NOT have a turkey and dressin’ sandwich without Miracle Whip. Do you people not know it is THANKSGIVING AND THE LORD WILL NOT ACCEPT ANYTHING BUT MIRACLE WHIP ON A TURKEY AND DRESSIN’ SANDWICH?”

Poor Amos Whitney, 18 years old and ginger headed, his face so full of pimples you could hardly see his freckles, was June’s victim that day. Amos tried to assure her that Jesus would be equally accepting of Miracle Whip or mayonnaise, but she’d have none of it.

“That is why it is called MIRACLE Whip, Amos!”, she bellowed. “Do you presume to think that the Son of God would settle for mayonnaise on this holy holiday?”

It was a hard point to argue.

June was, to her credit, a most extraordinary cook. Her turkey was perfection - all moist and salty on the inside, and brown and crisp on the outside. Her biscuits would make you weep. More than one unfortunate relative had suffered through June’s tirades for a ladleful of her gravy. This year, June was playing host to nearly two dozen relatives and townspeople, and the preparations were making her even more ornery than usual.

And it was hot.

November can be a bitch like that. Mornings saw children at the bus stop bundled up in parkas and too short jeans, huddled together like a waddle of penguins. By afternoon, they’d be running around town barefooted in shorts. The trees tried their best to show color and drop leaves, and the daylilies beneath them couldn’t quite decide whether to bloom or give up the ghost. June had moved through her childbearing years unhampered by both children and men, and had just recently experienced the relentless heat from within of menopause.

November was pissing her off. “Lord,” she’d prayed every morning since the middle of October, “Give a poor woman a break and send me a high of fifty degrees. Amen.”

The thought of cooking all day (and the day before) for folks who didn’t give a rip about her the other 364 days of the year made June madder than hell. She wouldn’t do it at all, shouldn’t do it at all, except for one, darling, charming, precious, five year old nephew.

June didn’t like children, hadn’t anyway until Owen was born. The first time she’d met him, he was nearly six months old, with a head full of curls and big, milk chocolate eyes. He buried his sweet smelling face into her neck, held her ear with a chubby fist, and fallen fast asleep - and June had fallen in love. He was the only person she could clearly remember loving since her mama died when she was ten.

Once a month ever since, June had made the pilgrimage to Carthage, 30 miles away, just to visit Owen and his dull, dough faced parents. She brought him books and sweets and, once, a rocking horse made with real horse hair. She pushed him in the stroller and later, the tire swing. She taught him to play checkers and blow bubblegum and snap his fingers. She let him steer her old truck down the driveway and rolled her eyes behind his mother’s back when she chastised him. He thought she was perfect, and the feeling was mutual.

June would spend countless hours preparing an elaborate meal for thankless relatives, just so she and Owen could sneak away to the back porch and eat nonpareils and talk about how fat Aunt Eliza had gotten. “I’m not that fat, am I?” she would ask and Owen’s eye’s would get big before he said, in all seriousness, “Noooooooooo?” Then June would laugh and pull him close and smell his sweet head.

But right now, all she could see was Amos Whitney’s dumb, pimply face sputtering on about Jesus loving mayonnaise, too. “MY GOD, AMOS. Just order me some Miracle Whip and have it here by Tuesday.” She stomped out of the shop and onto the sidewalk outside, and right into the minister’s wife.

The Ride

She’d looked forward to seeing him all day and now she spotted him, his little red car parked across the street, chugging steam out the back end. She stepped off the curb, nearly into the path of a giant truck with spinning rims. A goateed man scowled and gave her the finger, she blushed and laughed and ran across to the waiting car.

“Did you see…”, she started as she opened the door, but stopped before she’d fully sat down. The air was different in here, hot and oppressive and thick with malice. “Hello,” she tried, but he stared straight ahead and did not speak. He pulled out into traffic before she’d buckled, driving too fast and following the car ahead too close.

It was miles before he said anything; they’d left the city and were driving past the low ranchers that lined the road. Before long, the spaces between the houses would grow wider until the flat lawns turned to open pastures, and then they’d be home.

Then he spoke and laid the truth in her lap like a stone. She wanted to cry out, but the weight prevented it and she simply sat there, looking straight ahead. If I don’t speak, she thought, then it will be as if I didn’t hear. If I didn’t hear, she thought, he didn’t say it. And though she willed it to be so, he kept talking and his words were like blows.

Names and dates and places and with each one, she barely whispered, “Yes,” until it became a mantra, yes yes yes. With each yes, a memory, guilt and pleasure and disgust, and disbelief that even now, with his words thrashing her, each yes made her breathless. She had regretted everything but could stop nothing, until she believed she was beyond redemption.

His voice was sharp, emotionless. She wanted to cry and scream and kick her legs. She wanted to tear at her clothes and claw at the window and rip at her skin until she was raw and bloody. She wanted to beg and tell him that she was sorry, so sorry, that this would never happen again. But she knew she was lost and could not be found. She could not apologize for who she was, nor make promises for a person she could not be. So she stayed silent except for her brittle yeses, even when he demanded answers. Even when he wept.

When he pulled into their long drive, she could see her father’s car parked sideways in front of the house. Her father held the door open for her, and she registered her suitcase in the back seat. She looked at the house and saw the flowers she’d planted in the window box the month before had withered from lack of care. The paint on the porch was peeling, and the shutter on the kitchen window had slipped from its hinge.

The men stood outside the car and spoke briefly, then shook hands. For a moment, it looked as if her father wanted to embrace, but thought better of it. When he got into the car, he exhaled long and slow, then started the car.

They drove in silence.

Richard

There was always a plate of buttered toast at breakfast. Sometimes she’d fix eggs and bacon, or sausage and pancakes, sliced tomatoes and, when there was enough money in the grocery tin, thin slices of salty country ham, curled up around the edges, fat glistening. But there was always a plate of buttered toast. Half a loaf, perfectly brown, perfectly buttered, towering high in the middle of the table like a yeasty crown.

Breakfast, she’d call, and kids would tromp down stairs, shirts halfway done, hair still wet. They’d shove the feast into their mouths, yelling at each other between bites, complaining of bathroom indignities and trading pinches beneath the table. Then they would disappear in a whirl of dust kicked up by the tires of the school bus, carrying away their noise and mischief and holding it tight until 3 o’clock.

When the children had grown and gone, the plate of toast continued to appear every morning, though most mornings it was accompanied by oatmeal or cold cereal and cream. Richard sat at the head of the table and chewed silently, clutching his hat in one hand so he could rise with the last swallow. HIs wife rattled pots and pans and tried to fill the space left by her children’s voices. She regularly let out heavy sighs, wanting to say something and not having anything to say, breathing out her discontent into the room.

They were alone, but they were not lonely. They learned to talk about things other than report cards and football games, trouble on the bus and teenaged dating. They remembered that they fell in love with each other first and, to their surprise, did it all over again. They held arthritic hands and kissed wrinkled cheeks and read aloud to each other from matching easy chairs.

The morning after his wife died, Richard walked down the stairs of their house and sat at an empty table for the first time in forty-seven years. He realized, in a rush of regret and sadness, that he had no idea where she kept the toaster.

Grief is a funny thing. You can make a racket and push it down and away and hammer away at it until you drown it out. Or you can wrap your arms around it like a lover, and wear it around like a black and terrible robe, losing yourself in the heaviness of the burden. Richard encased himself in grief. He boarded up windows and shunned visitors, left dinners and cards to pile up on the front porch and trip up anyone who dared ring the bell. His Salisbury Steak Sentry, his Hallmark Guard; he fought his neighbors with their own good intentions.

The children had all moved away and did not bear witness to his unraveling. He answered the phone when they called and said all the right things, Yes, yes! I just went out last night! Yes, yes! Of course I’ll come for Christmas! Then hung up the phone and sank down lower in his chair and wept.

And just when Richard starting eyeing his belts in a different way, and questioning the ability of certain light fixtures to bear his weight, the letter came. The script on the front was old woman scrawl, but he recognized in it the young woman he once knew. His hands trembled when he opened it, and the message made him suck in his cheeks and hold his breath until he nearly forgot to breathe again.

So sorry for your loss. Will be there at Christmastime, would love to see you again.

-M

He carefully folded the letter, returned it to the envelope, and put it in his back pocket, where it burned like coal. He felt himself blush, to have something that had touched her hand in such an intimate place. It felt like a secret, like a horrible, wonderful secret.

Richard rushed to the kitchen and began tearing open cabinets. He pushed past mason jars of green beans and the yellowed deep fryer (when had they ever used that?) and finally, in a low cabinet by the stove he found the toaster. He plugged it in, pulled a questionable loaf of bread from the pantry and began feeding the slots. One by one, until the bread bag was empty and toast piled high on a plate. He sat down at the table and slowly, deliberately, began to eat.

Would love to see you again.

He was going to need his strength.

Cole

He hadn’t meant to laugh at her, he’d only been going along with the other men. He’d seen her earlier that morning, stretching before her run. She took her time, unaware that she was being observed. She looked strong; her muscled legs and broad back and long arms that reached over head then arced down to her feet as if in prayer. She finished stretching and opened her face to the sky before she started a slow jog away from him. She was beautiful.

When she appeared later, coming down the street much faster than he might imagine she could run, she took his breath. Then she clumsily crossed the street and he saw her face redden and the laugh stuck in his throat. He looked at his worn boots and his calloused hands and knew the hardness of his face and did not fault her for crossing.

His father named him Cole, and it suited him. His mother had wanted to call him Jeremiah and in denying her the name, Cole’s father cut the tenuous thread that kept their marriage together. His mother packed her belongings and left before dawn six months after he was born. She took the dog and left the child.

Cole and his father lived in a rented house at the edge of a small West Texas town. They were white men in a town of brown men, and Cole learned early on to blend in. His father went to work on the oil rigs before Cole left for school and came home after he’d gone to bed, if he came home at all. Cole fixed himself suppers of beans and cornbread, leaving a bowl loosely covered with a tea towel for his father on the the kitchen table. His father was never a father, and Cole was never a boy. They were simply men who lived with different sized versions of themselves.

His father taught him to work hard and long hours, to build a ridge of callous on the palms of his hands, the hallmark of manual labor. Cole was a decent student, but inconspicuous; boys teased the smart kids mercilessly. Everyone knew they’d never leave town, and to aspire to something greater than drilling foreman on a rig was to invite ridicule. He harbored a secret love of books, smuggled home under his jacket and read by flashlight under the covers of his bed.

When he was 12, Cole started going with his father to the rig in the early morning, before school. He worked all day through the summers and over Christmas break. By the time he was 15, he was a floorhand, picking up slack from the roughnecks and fetching coffee and cigarettes for the derrickman. The men gave him grief and his father cuffed his head at every opportunity, but they liked him. He kept his mouth shut and eyes open and saw his future, crude stained and hard.

It wouldn’t be a bad life, and he resigned himself to it.

One day when he was 17, six months from graduating high school and taking a full time job on the rig, he was met at his front door by the derrickman, hat in hand. His father was dead, crushed by a falling pipe rack. Cole clutched the copy of The Grapes of Wrath he held under his jacket as the derrickman said, “I’m sorry, son.” He never finished the book.

After the funeral, he walked home and packed a small suitcase. He tucked his father’s pocketknife and silver belt buckle and best boots in among his clothes. He cashed the small check from the drilling company, and found another thousand dollars bound by rubber bands in his father’s sock drawer.

Cole walked to the bus station and slid fifty-six dollars through the window to a woman the color of old newspaper. “I guess you know where you’re going,” she said.

He did not hesitate in his answer.

“California.”

                                      

Second Verse

Margie had tried every diet out there. The Scarsborough Diet, Atkins, Flat Belly, Wheat Belly, Hawaiin, Paleo, Gluten-Free, Fat-Free, Low Cal - you name it. She’d started dieting in the early 80s when a friend passed her a handwritten copy of The Cabbage Soup Diet after Jazzercise class.

“Eight banana milkshakes on Day 4? Are you sure?,” she’d asked her friend.

“And all the cabbage soup you can eat!” her friend replied with glee.

It turned out that Margie could only eat a minimal amount of cabbage soup before her farts forced her to isolate herself from friend and foe alike. She did lose seven pounds that week, so it wasn’t a total loss.

The diets always worked; she’d drop twenty pounds, buy a new wardrobe, then promptly gain thirty. She went from self loathing to maniacally enthusiastic with dizzying speed, and soon her friends learned to just smile and nod whenever she began talking about the latest diet fad. Oh, you know that Margie!, they’d say to each other and roll their eyes. They didn’t really mind that little bit of craziness, because everyone loved Margie.

It was hard not to. She walked into a room like a gift, wrapped up in a velour sweatsuit and a dozen bangle bracelets. She wore too much makeup and too much hairspray and laughed too loud. She was a little embarrassing at times. She ordered her food in the accent of whatever country the dish originated in - Mexican for enchiladas, Southern for fried chicken, Chinese for lo mein noodles. Margie was a born and bred midwesterner (“You can take the girl out of the Heartland, but you can’t take the Heartland out of the girl!”, she liked to say), so the accents were always cringeworthy. But she charmed everyone with a smile and a wink, and no one seemed to mind too much.

Margie wasn’t married, and her friends could never quite get the full story of her past. “There was a man,” she’d say, lowering her voice to a whisper and cutting her eyes. But she never said more, and when pressed she’d change the subject. What kind of man could have that effect on Margie?, they wondered, and agreed that regardless, he didn’t deserve her.

Margie belonged to the local Lutheran church, she volunteered at the hospital and was a reading buddy at the elementary school. She hosted a monthly supper club and was at Jazzercise twice a week, without fail. She had a host of friends and a full schedule, but still went home to a cramped apartment she shared with her bichon frise, Malcolm. Malcolm had been her mother’s until her death, and Margie inherited the dog along with the apartment. He was an ancient and grizzled ball of fur, who seemed to wake just long enough to eat and use the bathroom. Too old to handle stairs and too lazy to play, his toileting was contained to a small square of astroturf on the balcony. Every day when Margie woke, she stared at the dog on his pillow, trying to discern if he was breathing. Every day she would think, “Oh, he’s dead!” only to be startled by a sudden, ragged snore. She was always a little disappointed.

Margie was, despite outside appearances, terrifically lonely. At home, she led a painfully mundane existence - eat, take Malcolm to the bathroom, watch TV, try to sleep. She’d complained to a young mother in Jazzercise about her sleeping problems and been shocked when, the very next week, the woman came to class with a small cello bag of Xanax and a pill bottle full of marijuana.

“This will fix you up!,” the woman whispered.

Margie hadn’t known what to say, so she stuffed the drugs in her purse. She sat them on the counter and stared at them for a long time. She didn’t even know how to smoke marijuana! Didn’t you need to make it into cigarettes? She had some post-it notes, but had a feeling that wouldn’t work. After an extensive search on the internet and repeated viewing of a You Tube video from a young man named weedman420, she fashioned a rudimentary pipe out of a soda can and tin foil.

She nearly vomited after inhaling. Weedman420 had suggested a deep, hard, fast draw on the ‘pipe’, and Margie always followed directions. She’d never even smoked cigarettes, so the sharpness of the smoke penetrating her lungs was unexpectedly painful. The second puff was considerably easier, and by the fourth she downright digging it.

She scrambled eggs and made chocolate milk and giggled at Malcolm twitching in his sleep. She had a sudden and overwhelming urge to dress him up like Elvis Presley and spent thirty minutes trying to make a wig out of clothespins and felt before she forgot what it was that she was doing.

There was a noise. It was a not unfamiliar sound; the sound of a person trying not to make a sound. Margie stood perfectly still, the hairs on the back of her neck at attention. She could hear her own ragged breath and willed it to be quieter. Stop beating, heart! Stop breathing nose! Stop rushing, blood! She thought she heard the sound again, but wasn’t sure. She became convinced, standing there in her living room, that someone was in the apartment. Someone other than her and her comatose dog and Weedman420, frozen on the computer screen.

She had to get help.