SPRING 2009 ISSUE

FEATURED IN THIS ISSUE:
Poet Li-Young Lee
Poet Carmen Firan
Translator Mabel Lee

CREATIVE NON-FICTION

EVERY DAY IS TODAY                                    Bonnie Yarry

PLAYS AND EXCERPTS

THE TOBACCO TASTERS                    Barbara Zaragoza

TRANSLATION

ABSENTA/ABSENT                 Poem by Carmen Firan;                       Translated from Romanian              by Adam J. Sorkin and Carmen Firan

INTERVIEWS

LI-YOUNG LEE           Interviewed by Leah Pollack

MABEL LEE              Interviewed by John Reid Currie

Li-Young Lee was born to Chinese parents in Indonesia. His work has received many honors, including three Pushcart Prizes, the Lannan Literary Award, and the American Book Award. His collection Book of My Nights was the winner of the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award. He has lived in Chicago since 1964.

Leah Pollack : You’ve spoken about the relationship between vitality and meaning, how making meaning through speech increases in opposite ratio to our vitality, as the outgoing breath literally weakens the body. In light of that, I’m curious about the CD included with Behind My Eyes. Was that something you wanted to include, and why is it important?

Li-Young Lee : I’m really interested in that exchange of less vitality and more meaning. But at the same time, you get revitalized by reading poetry. So it’s life-giving. I just want my work to be life-giving. I’ve been thinking about whether there’s a way to actually encode love and life in a poem so that just by reading the poem it adjusts your mind, your breathing, so you feel cleansed, you feel empowered, you feel clearer.

LP : How do you see the relationship between poetry on the page and in its oral form?

LYL : The oral form is a complicated thing to me. It’s so dangerous, because you find yourself reading your own performance. In the beginning you think, “Well, that worked, I’ll do that next time.” Then you start thinking, “Next time, I should avoid that…” So you’re not really growing or working on perfecting (your poems or your reading of them). Everything’s serious to me, everything. The world is just vast. I feel like I’m on a mission, and the mission is huge…

LP : How does this connect to your idea of the lover, of trying to discover the lover—love of humanity, life, the whole world—in your poems?

LYL : This sounds corny, but my goal is to bring more love into the world. I’m all about that whole Allen Ginsberg thing. That’s what he was there to do.

LP : You’ve mentioned Ginsburg before, in contrasting the noise and chaos of his poems with the relative calm of yours. The poems in Behind My Eyes seem more spacious than your earlier work, with more white space on the page. I’m also curious about a specific eight-page section in your memoir, The Winged Seed, where the text suddenly opens up—it becomes double-spaced, more expansive and weird and interesting. How conscious are you of blank space on the page, and how does it function in your work?

LYL : Well, with The Winged Seed—I don’t know what I was doing in that book, I just don’t know. I needed the money. It was either work in the warehouse eight hours a day with an hour for lunch, for the rest of my life, or write this book. The money (from the publisher) would give me three years away from the warehouse, or if I worked at the warehouse part-time, six years. So I thought, I’ll take the six years. They gave me the money, and I cut my work down to part-time and wrote this book. But the whole time I felt two things: part of me feels like, wow, you’re actually making a living writing. But the other part of me felt, I’m giving away my riches! The fruit hasn’t ripened yet. It was like putting fruit in a bin and gassing it and getting rid of the nutrients.

LP : And the ripening would have been using that material for poems.

LYL : Yes, it should have been used for poems! Man, that was terrible! Because it isn’t like I’m done with those subjects, but all that material, for me it has to become fodder again. I have to forget about it completely before I can write about it.

LP : Is it true you haven’t read The Winged Seed?

LYL : No, I haven’t read the book yet. I don’t even know what it’s like, and I’m terrified to read it. I open it up, read two sentences, and put it away.

LP : When you read your work, in person and on the CD of Behind My Eyes, you often pace the poem differently than it appears on the page, and sometimes insert line breaks where there aren’t any. You seem to put a lot of thought into the aural life of the poem. How conscious are you of the way a piece appears on the page?

LYL : Where I break a line on the page is aiming for units of synchronicity. But I notice when I read that the units of synchronicity are different to the ear than to the eye. The whole issue of space is tied up for me with the idea of Sabbath. Paradise, Sabbath, the cathartic silence at the ends of poems, the catharsis at the end of Greek tragedies, the catharsis that occurs at the end of haiku—a kind of silence and a sudden clarity, a chatter subdued—the Divine is informing them. The idea of pauses—Sabbath as a pause, the idea of a pause as paradise—all of that is mixed up in my head. Tai chi is another form of it, where you’re moving energy, and it culminates into a big fullness that is empty. And (practitioners of tai chi) believe that paradise is encoded in those moves. You’re moving energy, and although those moves are premeditated, they somehow are eternal.

LP : In “Sweet Peace in Time,” from Behind My Eyes, the speaker says, “we should give up / trying to speak or to be understood. / It’s too late in the world for dialogue.” The poem itself is written in dialogue, and obviously the act of writing is an ongoing dialogue, with meaning as the goal. How do you feel about the ability of language to say what we mean?

LYL : I know that language is limited, but feel that ultimately, language does work. That’s why these doors are so well-made; they close, the hinges work. Somebody said, “three-quarter-inch screw,” and someone understood. I have absolute faith in language. But I do believe there are subjects that are so big, so deep, that language can’t quite encompass them. And then you need a technician, a poet. A poet is like a shaman. When you’re dealing with the great mystery, you get a poet who says, you put those two words together like that, or you put those four words together, and you see a truth you didn’t see before.

 

As an exercise, students in literary translation classes were asked to seek out and interview a working translator on an aspect of the field. I emailed Mabel Lee shortly after reading her translation of Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian’s Soul Mountain, an extraordinary English working of this vast Chinese novel. Ms. Lee responded within five minutes of receiving my anonymous email, the subject of which read “U.S. graduate student seeks your help.” What followed was an enlightening and lively exchange of ideas. Ms. Lee answered my questions fully and succinctly. She displayed a generosity of spirit rarely seen, opening up our discussions to include her new translation project and aspects of my own work, my thesis, and my particular interest in literary translation. It is with great to thanks to Ms. Lee that we are able to publish this interview. – John Reid Currie, Fall 2008 editor-in-chief, Ozone Park

Mabel Lee taught Chinese literature and history at the University of Sydney (1966-2000) as an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She has been acknowledged with numerous awards for her translation of 2000 Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian’s writings, especially his novels Soul Mountain and One Man’s Bible. Her most recent translation is Gao Xingjian’s The Aesthetics of Creation, a book of essays delineating the theoretical foundations of his creative endeavors in fiction, drama, art, and film.

John Reid Currie : What is your position on translators of literature? How fluent should translators be in the language of origin, or is it more important to be fluent and knowledgeable in the language of translation?

Mabel Lee : Translators of literature must have a literary level in the target language that is comparable to the literary level of the author in the original language. Knowledge of the cultural context of the work to be translated is also important for the translator. For example, I would not be able to translate a book on drug runners, crime and violence, etc., because I would not have the vocabulary in either language. A high level of fluency in both the original and target languages is important, but the dictionary is a resource that can make up any shortcomings in the original language for the translator.

JRC : How do you approach a text you are about to translate? Where do you begin, so to speak, with the translation?

ML : I must like the text that I am to translate: the ideas conveyed, and the language in which it is written. I don’t regard myself as a professional translator, and have translated substantial amounts of only two writers: Gao Xingjian and Yang Lian. I translate straight onto the computer, and my practice is to re-read the translation several times.

JRC : Soul Mountain is an extraordinary book in scope, novel, autobiography, and history— the effect is one seamless narrative. How did you negotiate the historical content and the grammatical structure of this text as it switches from an I to a you to a he and a she, and engages recent Chinese history?

ML : Soul Mountain is an extraordinary novel for the reasons you mention, but it is also extraordinary for its innovations in narrative technique and in the Chinese language. The original Chinese language of Soul Mountain reads like poetry, and it was this that had attracted me to it. The poetic language and the intriguing narration made Soul Mountain a beautiful and compelling work to translate. The narration simply carried the translation along, and I was not conscious of needing to “negotiate” problems of transmission between the two languages.

JRC : Describe your process of taking the original Chinese and creating the English text of Soul Mountain. What were some of the difficulties? What were some of the surprises?

ML : As mentioned above, I translate straight onto the computer and the narration simply carried the translation forward. Soul Mountain mentions the names of many plants, and this was probably the biggest problem. I found translating Soul Mountain a rich aesthetic and intellectual experience, and I sensed that it was an important work. I was surprised by the sensuousness of the narration, especially its strong visual impact.

JRC : What brings you the greatest joy as a translator?

ML : I have been translating Gao Xingjian’s work since the early 1990s. At present I am close to completing his book of essays, The Aesthetics of Creation. As mentioned above, I immensely enjoyed the aesthetic and intellectual experience of translating Soul Mountain, but this has also been the case with translating other of his writings. But the greatest joy for this translator is to complete a translation, and then to find a publisher for it. My practice has been to complete a translation and then to find a publisher, although the usual practice is for translators to be commissioned by publishers.

JRC : A million thanks.

l

absence the gleaming wood floor trembles like a tree felled young the heart constricts into a bitter kernel your pearl necklace hangs cockeyed on a closet door inside, my best years are stored their days tangled your whispers rustle at the bottom of a closed drawer among quince flowers with a mothball scent and faded photographs with frayed corners— time stopped for no good reason except to bring sight to its knees

THE TOBACCO TASTERS
by Barbara Zaragoza
 

SETTING:
A tobacco tasting room in the Yelets Cigarette Factory;
Present Day Yelets, Russia.

CHARACTERS:
PETR - 50ish, gaunt, shockingly browned fingernails.
AGATA - 50ish, wears red lacquered fingernails and a brown flowered dress taken out at the waist.
SERGEI - A stout professional in smoke-stained suit.
 

THE TOBACCO TASTERS

PETR sits at a long table that is smattered with balls of tobacco, spice glasses, and rolling paper. He blends bits of the tobacco and spices together, rolls the mixture into a cigarette, and lights it. He takes a long hard drag. Then he exhales, shoves his face into the resulting ball of smoke, and sniffs.

SERGEI enters. Petr stands.

SERGEI
Has she arrived?

PETR
Not yet.

SERGEI
I’ve made the decision. I want you to tell her.

PETR
Me?

SERGEI
Indeed. Comrade, I leave you to your work.

Sergei exits. Petr sits down, picks up a cigarette. He puffs then sniffs, puffs, sniffs. He crushes the cigarette into an ashtray, pops up from his seat, and paces the room.

AGATA enters. She takes off her coat.

AGATA
Twenty minutes I waited. Twenty minutes at the spice shop. One would think Brezhnev was still alive.

She darts a look at the table.

AGATA (CONT’D)
Gustav will be here any minute and this place is a stink.

PETR
Yes, yes. You need not worry about Gustav.

Agata spots the crushed cigarette.

AGATA
A new flavor?

She picks it up. Petr waits, anxious. She lights the cigarette and goes through the same exact spiel as Petr did just a moment ago: inhaling and holding her breath for a long time, then exhaling quickly, and throwing her face into the smoke.

AGATA (CONT’D)
Coriander, lemon rind, and a little peppermint.

PETR
Exactly.

AGATA
It’s no good. Take the lemon rind out and --

PETR
This is my project.

AGATA
What do you mean, your project? Even Putin isn’t so much of a capitalist. What is it with you today?

PETR
Nothing, nothing at all. Well, something.

Agata sighs.

AGATA
The Curing Committee. Late on its shredding quota again.

PETR
The quota. Always concerned about the quota.

AGATA
You certainly are tight today. What’s happened?

Petr motions for Agata to sit. He does the same, then takes a pack of Marlboro’s from his shirt pocket. He offers one to Agata.

AGATA
You know I don’t smoke. What is it?

Petr lights the cigarette.

PETR
Gustav died.

Agata lets this sink in.

AGATA
It can’t be.

PETR
The funeral will be held in the company chapel tomorrow.

AGATA
Gustav... dead?

PETR
Dead.

AGATA
He seemed so... so healthy. Well, other than the cough, but after thirty-seven years --

PETR
Thirty-six years.

AGATA
What was it? A shot through the right temple?

PETR
Gustav would never --

AGATA
Come to think of it, he had mentioned a doctor’s appointment. A brave man like Gustav --

PETR
But it wasn’t --

AGATA
Oh that nasty, horrible, unstoppable enemy. Lodging itself into his lungs. He got the diagnosis, but wouldn’t watch it destroy him. He’d rather die by his own hand.

PETR
He choked on a cabbage roll.

AGATA
A courageous man. He’s our -- cabbage roll?

PETR
He took supper alone last night.

Pause.

AGATA
I could curse perestroika, him dying for lack of air. How will the Degustation Committee survive?

PETR
Sergei has some ideas.

AGATA
We are a body without a head.

PETR
Others are capable of taking his place.

AGATA
Others? What others? Who but Gustav knew how to blend tobacco delicate enough for the palette of a nursing mother, yet robust enough for the hardened soldier?

PETR
Oh for God’s sake, he was no Lenin!

AGATA
You never understood him.

PETR
Sergei is already considering candidates for the Chairmanship.

AGATA
New candidates? He’s not thinking of hiring an American?

PETR
No, no. Nothing like that. He has two candidates in mind.

AGATA
Internal candidates then?

PETR
Yes.

AGATA
Not Pavel! That rat has been waiting for this very moment.

PETR
Not Pavel.

AGATA
Then?

PETR
Me. Sergei chose me.

AGATA
You?

PETR
And why not?

AGATA
Nothing, nothing.

Agata takes Petr’s hand and pats it.

AGATA (CONT’D)
My little Pipka is on his way up.

PETR
You don’t think I’m qualified?

AGATA
Of course you’re qualified, but --

PETR
But what?

AGATA
Seniority will likely play a role.

PETR
Seniority? My scrotum doesn’t hang down to my ankles yet, but I have twenty-nine years in the business.

AGATA
Twenty-eight years. Who is the other candidate?

Petr hesitates.

PETR
You.

Agata smiles to herself.

PETR (CONT’D)
Sergei wants us to come up with a new flavor for Mocno.

AGATA
I see. Something sweet perhaps. Nutmeg and sugar?

PETR
It’s a competition. Whoever presents the best flavor becomes Chairman.

AGATA
On second thought, nutmeg and sugar are not the best choice.

PETR
Agata!

AGATA
What?

PETR
You want to compete against me?

AGATA
Well?

PETR
What will people say?

AGATA
Oh let them talk.

PETR
But it’s not right for a husband to compete against his wife. Especially not for the most prestigious position in the Yelets factory. And what if I lose? None of the tasters will respect me.

AGATA
Don’t exaggerate.

PETR
I think you should tell Sergei you’re backing out of the competition.

AGATA
You’re joking.

PETR
Tell him I will make the best Chairman.

AGATA
It’s out of the question. After all, I am the one who discovered more than two hundred new flavors.

PETR
You never worked your way through curing, paper, grading. I struggled my way to the Degustation Committee.

AGATA
I recommended you. Gustav thought you were a mere greeny. And before you caught my eye at the University, you couldn’t even tell the difference between air and flue cured leaf.

PETR
I spent more time than anyone in this tasting room. Here. Alone. Even when you were out with Gustav.

AGATA
Gustav was a man married to his work.

PETR
Who needed a porcelain doll to adorn his workplace.

AGATA
He recognized my talent.

PETR
Your talent for more than tasting tobacco.

AGATA
Don’t start! We both graduated from Moscow Tobacco University with distinctions and then --

PETR
I finished number one. You fell in love with me for that very reason. Until, of course, they sent me to the Curing Committee. Then you turned your face to Gustav.

AGATA
Your suspicious nature has always been a deficiency.

PETR
I was the one who stood by while Gustav’s chin hung over you.

AGATA
Nonsense.

PETR
If it wasn’t for the company, I would have --

AGATA
You would never. You would be too afraid. Afraid that you would be the one to be purged. We are not the Grading or Curing Committee. If you and I had divorced, the tasters would fear that one of us would sabotage the other. We would be more than just shamed, more than just talked about. Gustav and the others would keep us under their scrutiny. Eventually one of us would vanish.

PETR
I was the one who bore the snickers of our colleagues.

AGATA
Who always knew you couldn’t distinguish between anise and acetone.

PETR
I have born your contempt of me all these years, but now --

AGATA
Yes, you are my imprisoned Avakuum.

PETR
I secretly wished for this day, wished --

AGATA
Wished that Gustav would die so that I would finally turn into a dutiful wife and help you become Chairman?

Petr drops his cigarette to the floor.

AGATA (CONT’D)
Typical male sentiment. But we don’t live in those boyar times.

Petr crushes the cigarette underneath his heel.

PETR
You are right. We live in new times. And without Gustav, you have no allies in the Degustation Committee. And so, Agata, I want a divorce.

AGATA
You can’t do that!

PETR
It’s over. Over and done.

Sergei enters. They both startle to attention.

SERGEI
Good, good. You’re both here.
(to Agata) I trust you’ve heard the tragic news.

Agata nods, pulls a handkerchief out from between her breasts.

SERGEI (CONT’D)
Our competitors have been waiting for this very moment. We can’t show any sign of weakness.

Agata pats her eyes.

AGATA
No. We’d be taken to our knees.

SERGEI
I have given it some thought and realize that having a married couple compete for the Chairmanship is unwise.

AGATA
You have made a decision then?

SERGEI
Yes. Gustav will remain Chairman.

AGATA
Gustav?

PETR
We will keep a dead Chairman?

SERGEI
You both will be in charge of the committee, at least until Mocno is firmly established among the youth. Only then will we announce Gustav’s death to the world.

PETR
Work together?

SERGEI
We need solidarity at this critical time.

PETR
But --

SERGEI
Every man and woman is necessary for the task at hand.

PETR
No. We can’t. We won’t.

Sergei peers at Petr.

SERGEI
Any hint of sabotage would compromise the entire factory.

Silence. Then, Petr bows his head. Agata smiles.

AGATA
We will work together.

SERGEI
Good. I have full confidence you will find a robust flavor for our budding smokers. Comrades, devote your every breath to Mocno. I'll see you at the funeral.

Sergei exits. Petr turns to Agata.

PETR
The Degustation Committee --

AGATA
Will go on.

PETR
With me.

AGATA
And me.

Petr walks over to a chair and lights a cigarette. Agata sits down too, pinches some spices on a stub from the ashtray and lights it. They both inhale their cigarettes; their eyes pinned on each other, their faces turning blue.

THE END
BACK TO TOP




EVERY DAY IS TODAY
by Bonnie Yarry

         Little did I know September 12, 1959 would begin a nightly ritual, sitting upright in bed, my thighs and calves forming an easel, that I’d drag multiplying boxes to every place I lived, and the shelf above my clothes closet would warp like an archer’s bow from the weight of each carton. 
         Most teenage girls start a diary, the usual pastel book with entries for each day securely hidden with lock and key. Ridiculous! Surely a curious brother, a jealous friend, or even a parent wondering what her kid was really thinking (heavens forbid) could open the seal and read the 13-year-old’s secrets. Not in my family. Respect for privacy was understood like fighting for freedom in World War II.
         I chose a scarlet, gold-bordered diary no bigger than an index card and just an inch thick. The cover was painted cardboard made to resemble a leather-bound tome. Its frontispiece bore the caption “Memory Is Elusive – Capture It.”
         I didn’t think of the future in 1959. Mine consisted of tomorrow’s Julius Caesar test in ninth grade English class, dancing the cha-cha to Bobby Rydell’s Sway with Jimmy Fox after school, and waiting for the phone to ring announcing Aunt Rose gave birth to a boy or a girl. My diary was a practical record of each day’s events. “Grandma and Grandpa came to dinner. Lucy got her hair cut in an artichoke. We went to see Blue Denim and I think Carol Lynley is gorgeous.” 
         My entries read like an historical timeline by date without depth or explanation. As I matured each page became more cerebral and chronicled my emotional growth, taught me about myself, and revealed my true feelings. My diary bore witness to flaws I chose to forget. I penned thoughts I lacked courage to vocalize.
         When I entered high school in 1960, I joined Majorettes and after a few months resigned. Friends asked why; I told them it was because I was left-handed and twirling a baton primarily with my right hand was too difficult. That was a lie. I wrote the truth in my diary: “I resigned because I was the only white girl on the team and I didn’t want to be different from my friends. The Negro girls did not make me feel awkward. I imposed that stigma upon myself. Mommy saw through my excuse and said something about following the wildebeest off the cliff. One word led to another and I barricaded myself in the bedroom. I am ashamed I quit and had no guts.”
         Now, almost a half-century later, I read that entry and cringe. Today I wouldn’t write Negro, even though that’s what Martin Luther King Jr. called himself. In 2009, a reader would remark, prejudiced, but the impetus was peer pressure. Still, the end result haunts me. Hindsight colors perspective and adults glorify or vilify their childhoods, exaggerating both ends, but I have no need to enhance events; the proof exists as a young girl wrote.
         My diary captured milestones. What in retrospect warranted a scant paragraph garnered the same space as the life-altering event that occurred later that day. I was 23 and my father drove me to LaGuardia Airport after I visited my family in New York. Without thinking, I lit a Newport, took a drag, and my dad’s eyes caught mine, widened, and his mouth stayed open in surprise. I did a double take of myself, extinguished the cigarette in the ashtray, and reverted to being a kid with my hand caught in the cookie jar. Even though I smoked for years, I never did in front of my father.
         I kissed him goodbye and ascended the stairs of the DC-9. When I reached the top step I turned around, smiled, scrunched my eyes to slits in the sunlight, waved goodbye with my left arm, pressed my abdomen with my right hand, and boarded the Northeast jet to Fort Lauderdale. I wasn’t due until July, but on this May morning my water broke and our family doctor confirmed I was well along to the birth of my first child. My family implored me to stay in New York and deliver the baby, but I was adamant about returning to my new home and husband in Florida. I sat in my window seat and wrote as many paragraphs about the cigarette incident as I did about labor, impending childbirth, and fear our plane would be hijacked to Cuba, a genuine concern in 1969. How priorities change!
         The binding of my first diary is shredded, with yellowing, dried-up cellophane tape fighting to hold its body intact, just as I do mine. The cover hangs lamely and flaps against the breeze from the overhead fan, the red dye of its cardboard worn away to faded pink. Individual bound sections peer through the spine. Should I put new tape on the binding? No, let its age be untouched to reveal secrets.

    
TREADING WATER
by Annie Cardi

     It was called the King’s Motel and it was the best job Claire could find. Just outside of town, it was favored by adulterous couples and truckers desperate enough for any bed. There were twenty rooms in total, all on one level, and the roof sagged while the neon crown above the vacancy sign flashed like a bug zapper. Although the motel advertised a pool, it had been empty for years, filled with dead leaves and the half-eaten carcass of a sparrow. No matter how well the sheets were cleaned, the bedrooms all smelled like burnt sugar and sweat. Claire was continually shaking ashtrays against the side of her plastic trash bin. The hours were long and the uniform horrible, a baggy dress the color of mint ice cream, but at least it was something. She’d been forced to quit waitressing at Casey’s family restaurant after the owner insisted that she switch to the night shift. She learned about the job at the King’s Motel after Gertie, one of the maids, had a heart attack while folding towels. The other two maids regarded Claire coldly, as if she had killed Gertie. Claire’s boss, Marie, liked to think she was friends with the staff. At the moment, Claire wished they were actually friends so that Marie wouldn’t give her a hard time about bringing the twins to work.
    “It’s really not something I approve of.” Marie’s mouth puckered through her smile as though she sucked on a lemon candy. Behind the desk, Marie barely looked pregnant. She wasn’t much older than Claire, twenty-four at most, and had inherited the motel from her father, who had a stroke earlier that year. “I wish I could help and all. But kids can make a lot of noise.”
    “They’ll be really quiet,” Claire said, hoping her children who were sitting in the hall wouldn’t start fighting over the crayons she had given them. “It’s teacher conference day. I can’t put them anywhere else.”
    “Can’t you get a sitter?”
    Even if Claire had known earlier that school had been cancelled, she couldn’t afford a sitter. The car was bound to break down soon and she didn’t want to waste money. She’d hoped Marie’s cheery attitude would help. Now she wasn’t so sure.
    “Seriously, you can’t keep doing stuff like this. You called in sick at the last minute twice last month” (Samantha and Bobby gave each other the flu) “and you took off Thursday and Friday for Thanksgiving.” She even mentioned how Claire had been late the previous Monday, never mind that driving was impossible with all that ice. Marie went on to talk about how the other maids understood the responsibility of maintaining a clean motel. “I’m really sorry, but if you keep this up, I’ll have to let you go.”
    “It won’t happen again.” Claire hoped to sound sincere.
    Marie sighed. “Just keep them quiet.”
    Claire tried to smile as she left. In the hall, Samantha and Bobby were coloring a cartoon fox blue and green. They were small for five and their clothes, a size too large, emphasized that. (Better too big, she thought, so she wouldn’t have to buy them more next year.) It had been a struggle to get them dressed this morning. They both wanted to wear red sweaters, and Claire hadn’t been able to find Samantha’s. Claire was not the kind of mother who dressed her twins in matching outfits, but Bobby and Samantha often demanded it.
    “Let’s go,” she told them and began to push her cart down the hall. They collected their crayons and trailed after her, Samantha asking if she could ride on the cart. Claire said no and explained that they couldn’t mess around today—they had to be so quiet that no one else would hear them. They should pretend to be mice. At first, when she heard Bobby respond, she thought he was squeaking like a mouse. Then when Samantha laughed and spoke in the same way—high-pitched, rapid, almost staccato—Claire stopped the cart and stared.
    “Bobby said there might be mice in here already,” Samantha interpreted. “We could put out some cheese.”
    When they were very young, Claire’s children shared a garbled language of their own invention. Claire would wake to hear them speaking in their crib and seeming to understand each other. For a while Claire feared this twin-speak would continue forever. She wasn’t like other mothers, who chanted simple words in an effort to get her children to learn and repeat. A few times she had nightmares that they ganged up on her, using their secret language and laughing when she didn’t understand. Even though they eventually began to speak normally, they were always each other’s partners. Andy, their father, should have been that for her. Now she felt like a third wheel, out of sync with the secret world of her children. She turned away from them as they giggled to each other. “Come on.”

    The next morning, the kids safely back at school, Claire began in room 19, farthest from the front desk. It had tan carpeting and smelled of permanent marker and moth balls. Once, Claire discovered a set of broken dentures in the bathtub. It looked as if someone had smashed them with a shoe.
    She was dusting around objects left on the nightstand—a plastic lighter, a deck of playing cards, and a library copy of a Tom Clancy novel—when she heard the clink of keys fitting into a lock. The maid service tag had been on the door, hadn’t it? Marie didn’t like the maids interacting with clients at the King’s Motel; she said it wasn’t professional and if they wanted to meet men, they could go down the street to Oliver’s Bar. If someone complained about her presence, Marie would consider this reason enough to fire her.
    Claire froze when a man entered. Broad shouldered and lanky, he would have looked ridiculous in his cowboy hat had it not been for the gap between his front teeth. When he saw Claire he smiled with familiarity.
    “Sorry,” she said.
    He removed his hat and tossed it on the bed, which she had not yet made. The top of his left ear was missing a large triangular chunk, as if an eagle had attacked him as a child.
    “Don’t worry, it’s my fault.” She expected him to speak with a drawl but he didn’t. “You can keep cleaning if you want.” Sitting on the edge of the bed, he removed his sneakers, which must have been white once but were now a yellowish gray. His socks didn’t match. Claire stared at him, wondering how she was going to make the bed if he was on it.
    “Sorry,” she said.
    He moved to the wooden chair nearby. She felt him watch her as she tucked in the corners, and sure enough he said, “You’re good at that. Work here long?” When Claire snapped the bedspread in the air, he told her she could probably get a job at a nice hotel. “That’s how good you did those sheets.”
    She had heard about weirdoes who stayed at motels like the King’s. If he kills me, Claire thought, no one will notice until the end of the day. She turned around, clutching her bucket of cleaning supplies. “I already did the bathroom.”
    “Great.” He got to his feet, eyes flashing to the nightstand. “You like card tricks?”
    She inched around the edge of the bed but he was still between her and the door. “I should get to the other rooms.” But he was already moving around her, fanning the cards and telling her to pick one.
    Claire extracted a card with her fingertips: the two of spades. After she returned the card, the man held the deck behind his back for a second before showing it again. Displaying the queen of diamonds, he asked if it was the same suit as her card. “No,” she said, uncertain of how he’d react to messing up his own card trick. He tried again. This time it was the ten of hearts. Claire rested her hand on a can of air freshener, thinking she could use it as mace. “I should get going.”
    “No, no, just one more try.” He lifted four cards from the deck and placed them among the other items on the nightstand, saying her card was one of those. Flipping them over one by one, he finally revealed the two of spades.
    “That’s great,” Claire said, “but I need to—”
    “It’s the anticipation,” the man said, explaining that the waiting and hoping makes the reveal better. His kid loved that trick, he told Claire, and would ask him to do it over and over. He had more card tricks, so maybe they could get a drink together and he could show her the others.
    “Maybe. I’ve got to do the other rooms now—”
    “Right. Thanks.” His eyes trailed down to her nametag and rested there for longer than it took to read it. “Claire.”
    She nodded and slipped out of the room, her bucket of cleaning supplies clanking as she left. One of the other maids, Donna, a tall woman with skin like a crocodile’s, was at the other end of the hall. Claire forced a smile at Donna, who did not react. Did she see the man enter? If she suspected Claire of chatting up the clientele, she’d run to Marie. Donna disappeared into room 12, and Claire knew she would have to take one of Donna’s night shifts that week to make sure she kept quiet.

    She shouldn’t have taken time off for Thanksgiving. Her mother had called to invite them at the last minute, after a messy public breakup with her current boyfriend. Usually Claire avoided long periods of time with her mother, but she couldn’t afford Thanksgiving dinner for her kids on her own. On Thursday morning she packed the twins into the car and drove the seventy miles to her mother’s, praying the engine wouldn’t fall apart on the way.
    It was not the house Claire had grown up in, but it had the same smell—ashes, cat hair, and hardboiled eggs. Her mother had a pinched face and sharp chin; she held a cigarette in one hand and basted with the other. While Bobby and Samantha watched the parade on TV, Claire’s mother regarded her through a haze of smoke, asking why Claire hadn’t brought someone.
    Claire had been chopping squash into uneven squares. She tried to concentrate on the clicking of the knife as it hit the board underneath. She knew that later her mother would drink too much and pass out by the bathtub. Even if Claire could find a man, she would never bring him here for Thanksgiving. “I don’t have time to find anyone.”
    “You’d better make time,” her mother said. “No one wants an old hag. You already have more lines than I do. Soon Samantha will be old enough to attract men of her own.” Claire’s mother sucked on her cigarette. “She’s already prettier than you.”
    That night, Claire lay awake on a cot in the kitchen—it wouldn’t fit in the living room—the time on the microwave blinking 12:00. She could hear her mother snore. If I’d brought a man, she thought, Mom would have spent most of the night flirting with him. It wasn’t as if Claire didn’t want to bring someone to holidays; it was just that she could barely find time to shower, let alone make herself presentable for the opposite sex. And really, who was there in town? Most of the men in the canning factory married right out of high school. Their wives were barely eighteen and left bright lipstick stains on their cigarettes. Claire was old at twenty-one. She could feel the crow’s feet and grey hair lurking beneath the surface.
    “Mommy.” Samantha stood in the kitchen doorway, tugging at her pajama top. “I had a bad dream.”
    Without replying, Claire inched to the side of the cot so Samantha could slide under the afghan beside her. Samantha kicked in her sleep, but Claire was too tired to argue. Within five seconds her daughter was asleep, arm slung over Claire’s waist.
    Claire could see that her mother had been right; already Samantha was prettier than she had ever been. Claire’s teeth were crooked and she had a tendency to hunch her shoulders. Both children had their father’s dusty blonde hair, green eyes, and doe-like face. It wouldn’t lead her to much good though, Claire imagined. Most likely she’d get pregnant young, never hear from friends who couldn’t sympathize with late night feedings, and lose the father of her children as easily as if he were a sock in the laundry. She tucked an arm around her daughter, who was drooling on the pillow. Although Claire knew she’d have a backache in the morning, she was briefly grateful not to be lying alone in her mother’s house.

    All Claire wanted to do after work was go back to her apartment and collapse, but picking the kids up from school, she realized the only food she had was a molding head of lettuce and a few bottles of Juicy Juice. In the grocery store, the twins grabbed for brands that were too expensive. They ran into other aisles, returning with boxes of cereal with toys inside. Replacing the items on random shelves, Claire remembered when she was their age and demanded the same things. Now the only gifts she allowed herself were the things left behind at the motel.
    She had become a connoisseur of things people forgot. Most often they were small items like toothbrushes and socks that had been kicked under the bed. Once she found a pair of leather boots with stiletto heels in a closet, sadly two sizes too small. Another time there had been a neat stack of postcards placed next to a toilet. On each there was a different 1950s sunbathing beauty in Florida. Her favorite was a brunette in a strapless blue swimsuit, mouth partially open as if she were laughing. Wish you were here! they read in big swirling letters. On the backs were, “Dear Brad,” followed by a variety of cheerful greetings, but each note ended abruptly, sometimes in the middle of a word. She felt like an archeologist, reconstructing the lives of people she had never met. Even though technically she was supposed to turn them in to the lost and found, Claire collected her favorite finds. It started with a book of matches from a fancy restaurant in Dallas. She told herself you could never have too many matches. At the moment, she wore an orphaned cardigan. No one ever called for anything left behind.
    By the produce section, Claire saw the man with the cowboy hat from the day before. This time he wore a suit, which made him stand out among the few men in the store, who were dressed in work clothes as if they came directly from the factory. He whistled as he inspected the Granny Smith apples before plucking the largest from the display. It wasn’t until he brought the apple to his mouth and took a bite that Claire noticed Bobby beside him, leaning against the display and watching the cowboy, who chuckled. “Don’t worry, I’m gonna pay for it.” He tapped Bobby gently on the arm. “What’re you, the manager?”
    Bobby smiled and shook his head. Had Bobby ever seen a real cowboy hat?
    “I think I saw somebody steal a grape. Better watch out for them.” The man gave Bobby a gap-toothed grin and strolled to the cashier.
    Bobby beamed as he walked back to Claire. The man had paid for the apple and left. Claire turned to see him wander through the parking lot, wishing he had teased her instead.

    When was the last time she’d had a conversation with a man? Usually Claire came home reeking of Windex and rubber gloves. Even truckers who hadn’t seen their wives and girlfriends for weeks didn’t look at her for anything other than getting an extra pillow.
    The first thing Andy had asked for was to take her picture. She had been fifteen then and working at a pizza parlor that was now a laundromat. He was eighteen, a senior, and taking photography. She didn’t have to smile, he said. She didn’t even have to look at him. When he showed her the picture two weeks later, Claire thought it was sad and lovely—a black-and-white version of herself looking at her hands, covered in cheap rings, trying not to smile and show her teeth. (She tore up the picture soon after he left; sometimes she wished she still had it.) Andy said she had been the perfect model, and maybe he could take more pictures of her that afternoon? He shot her sitting on the roof of his truck, looking into the mirror, tying her shoes. He liked that she wasn’t conventionally pretty.
    Seven months later, when Claire told him she was pregnant, she immediately added that there was a Planned Parenthood an hour away she could visit. Nothing would have to change between them. Andy said she didn’t need to do that, she could move in with his parents until they could get their own place and they would raise the baby together. As soon as he had enough money, they would get married. He had taken her hand when he said this. At first, Claire was eager to live with Andy’s parents. Unlike her mother, they didn’t drink and spoke softly. Andy’s mother bought Claire a used copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting. Andy seemed excited at the prospect of having children, even after they found out Claire was having twins. “You can name one and I’ll name the other,” he said. “It’s perfect.” He chose Bobby for his uncle, who died in Vietnam, while Claire picked Samantha because of the TV show Bewitched. For three weeks he took pictures of the babies when they cried or laughed or spit up. Andy’s parents put these pictures in frames from the drug store and displayed them on the bookshelves. Everything they did seemed to entertain him. Claire assumed that he would always be the one who woke in the middle of the night to hold a crying baby. Maybe the novelty just wore off. One morning, after Claire fed Samantha, he called her from two towns away, saying he was going to try to make it as a photographer. She could stay at his parents’ if she wanted. He would be back in three months, tops. Claire handed over the phone to Andy’s mother, whose voice got very high and tight, on the verge of screaming. When Andy’s father grabbed the phone and threatened to come after him, Andy hung up. His father kept shouting, “Hello? Hello? Andy?” into the phone. By that time the twins were red-faced and wailing.
    When Andy’s parents sat her down that evening, she expected them to tell her she had to leave. Instead, they said she could stay until either Andy got back or she could take care of the twins on her own. After that, it would be too much for them—she had to understand the position they were in.
    For weeks after Andy left, Claire could barely look at the babies. They resembled him so much, and looked nothing like her. As they grew, Claire longed for glasses, braces, scars, burns, anything to distract her from thoughts of their father.
    At first, she hoped for postcards or photographs from Andy, saying he was such a success and he would come back for her soon, so she could be his model. Maybe they could move south, where it was warm all year round. But after a few months she no longer felt like any kind of model. Customers at Eddie’s Italian Villa, where Andy’s father had gotten her a job, called her ma’am. Friends occasionally invited her to a movie, but most of the time Andy’s parents refused to babysit—“What would you do if we weren’t here?”—or Claire fell asleep during the movie. Boys hadn’t flirted with her much beforehand, but now they avoided her. “Ever heard of condoms?” she overheard one say at the Italian Villa. Once, a new boy in town asked her to a school dance, but when he arrived to pick her up that evening, Andy’s parents stared at him, lips almost disappearing in their tightness, and told Claire she’d have to be back to put the twins to sleep.
    At night, sleeping in Andy’s old room, she would imagine how much better life would be when she was able to leave his parents’ house. She would move somewhere else, as far away as she could get with the money she had. Friends could come visit any time. She wouldn’t have to share a room with her children. She wouldn’t overhear conversations about how Andy used to have such promise. She wouldn’t have to think of Andy at all.

    This was going to be Marie’s first child. She was still not used to the nausea, and that morning Claire found Marie throwing up into a wastebasket behind her desk. When Claire saw this, she almost turned around because she knew she would be the one to wash out the vomit. Then Marie raised her head and saw Claire standing in the doorway, bucket of cleaning supplies in hand.
    “I’m really sorry,” Marie said. She leaned against the desk and held her head in her hands as though it would crack off at the neck. “They told me it would stop after a while, but everything I smell makes me want to puke.”
    “That happens,” Claire said, wondering if Donna had told Marie about her interaction with the man in room 19. Marie seemed chatty, not irritated; maybe she wasn’t going to fire Claire.
    “But I guess once you have the baby you forget about the rest of it.” Marie rested a hand on her stomach. Ever since she’d started showing, Marie drew attention to her pregnancy. “It’s supposed to be the most amazing moment of your life.” Marie was constantly asking for parenting advice. What kinds of diapers were good? Was Kayla a good name? They say you get to know their cries—was that true? Once she showed Claire wedding pictures and asked who Claire thought the baby would resemble more. (Claire secretly hoped the baby got Marie’s husband’s boxy head.) Most of the time, Claire didn’t know the answers to Marie’s questions. She felt lucky to have survived her kids’ infancy at all.
    “I’ll get this cleaned up.” Claire gripped an aerosol can with an image of a beach resort on the front. It was supposed to make the rooms smell like the ocean, which Claire had never seen. She thought about the postcards she’d stolen that one time (now hidden in her glove compartment) and how happy the women were to be at the beach. If she could go anywhere, that’s where she would choose. Sometimes she browsed travel magazines and repeated exotic names to herself—Sarasota, Pensacola, Palm Beach. When she was too tired to sleep, she imagined herself sitting under a red-striped umbrella with manicured nails and huge sunglasses. She could set up a stand and sell jewelry to tourists, a little radio playing salsa or rock music. In Florida, her hair would be thick and curled, not falling out already. Maybe she could learn how to play volleyball or swim. Men would buy her bottles of cold beer and admire her tan.
    Marie wrinkled her nose at the aerosol can. “Is that good for the baby?”
    Claire sprayed in the opposite direction. “I wouldn’t know.”

    That night, the electricity was out in Claire’s apartment. She flipped the light switch eight times to make it come on. It was just her apartment, she knew that; other windows were illuminated on the drive home. Fucking electric company, she thought. Samantha and Bobby clung to her legs, wailing in the dark. They had all watched a vampire movie on television the night before. It wasn’t exactly a kids’ movie, but Claire remembered going to see it with friends in junior high and couldn’t resist. She thought she’d explained that monsters weren’t real, but in the dark the twins were petrified.
    “There’s nothing here,” she said, trying to pry them off. “Same as always.”
    She wished it wasn’t the same as always. It was all she could afford from the money she’d saved at Andy’s parents’. While the twins slept in the bedroom, Claire took the pull-out couch, although most of the time she simply collapsed without making it a proper bed. At first, Claire tacked up band posters she’d saved from her mom’s house, but the tape never stuck for long and once Claire found Bobby attacking Kurt Cobain’s face with an orange marker.
    Samantha and Bobby continued to hang off her while Claire searched for candles. In the back of a drawer, she found some Marie had given her as a birthday present. (They could spruce up any apartment, she claimed.) Within minutes the room smelled like wax and an old woman’s perfume.
    When the phone rang, Claire was certain it would be the electric company. Bobby, having snatched the receiver, asked, “Alice? I don’t know Alice.”
    It was probably a wrong number. Claire grabbed the phone away from her son. A wheezing man was on the other end, trying to explain that he was looking for Alice Tucker who used to work with him at the canning factory. Now the kids were fighting. Claire yelled at them to shut up, and the man apologized, thinking she meant him. He asked for Alice again, and Claire told the man to hold on, she’d check. If he still worked at the canning factory, maybe Claire knew him. Last year, while still a waitress at Casey’s, she’d been invited to a coworker’s wedding. The twins had been included in the invitation after she explained she couldn’t get a sitter. Bobby screamed over the music and Samantha threw a fit when she couldn’t deconstruct the centerpiece. Although she apologized, Claire could feel the wedding guests staring at her, probably wondering how old she was and where was the father, anyway? Watching the bridge and groom smash cake into each other’s faces, Claire wished she’d been able to find a sitter so she could talk to the canning men at the next table.
    “She’ll be back later,” Claire told the man, who thanked her. She continued to hold the phone against her ear until she heard a steady buzz and the voice of an operator telling her there was no one on the other line.
    Samantha and Bobby were flinging crayons at each other and knocked a candle onto the carpet. Claire quickly stomped it out, but now there was a singed circle. The landlord would make her pay for that.
    “Are you crazy?” she said. “Do you want us to die in a goddamn fire?”
    Samantha’s face crumpled and turned pink. “I hate you!”
    It wasn’t the first time Claire’s children told her they hated her. It wasn’t even the first time she wanted to say it back. Claire’s mother had said that to her when Claire was around their age, after her father died. Once, Claire found her mother sitting on the toilet and crying. When Claire stepped into the bathroom, her mother hurled a roll of toilet paper at her, screaming, “Get away from me or I’ll fucking kill you!” After that, she never expected her mother to like her much, but she thought things would be different with her own kids.
    Claire didn’t say anything else to her daughter. She waited by the phone for the man to call back, deciding she would have to invent something else about Alice. Anything would be better than talking to her kids as they sulked. She wished she’d had the idea to leave first, instead of Andy.

    Claire was grateful for one thing—it was a slow night at the motel. Donna had mentioned switching shifts at the supply closet that morning, claiming her feet hurt and she needed a night off. Would Claire be a pal and take over? Claire knew it was coming, but she would never get a sitter at such short notice. When she explained this, Donna casually mentioned that she thought Claire might want to spend more time at the motel if she was going to be such good friends with the guests.
    Ten minutes before her shift began, and after trying eight different sitters, Claire dragged her kids into the car and snuck them by the front desk. Marie would never have put one of the few guests into room 11, with the broken toilet. Without a repairman, the room hadn’t been used in weeks. The thermostat was down so the kids would have to wear their coats.
    “You’ve got to be the quietest you’ve ever been,” Claire said as she ushered them into the room. They immediately began to jump on the bed and Claire had to physically sit them down. “No,” she said and listed rules as they came to her: no jumping on the bed, no running, no throwing things, no screaming, no laughing, no talking, no fighting, nothing.
    In the middle of her list, Bobby said something she couldn’t understand. Samantha replied similarly. They were about to launch into one of their secret conversations. “What the hell are you saying?” Claire said.
    “Bobby said this is boring,” Samantha told her.
    There must have been more than that, but Claire didn’t have time for it. She had brought three coloring books for them and a new box of crayons. (“No coloring on anything but paper,” she added.) If they were good and colored quietly and went to sleep, she would buy them ice cream after school tomorrow. “But if I hear one noise, you don’t even want to know what I’ll do.” Claire was too nervous to think of an appropriate punishment. “Got it?”
    Claire was distracted the entire evening, listening for Marie’s footsteps as she scrubbed toilets and folded sheets. She vacuumed the hallway twice, having forgotten she’d already done it. When she got to room 19, there was no tag on the door.
    The man with the cowboy hat was sprawled on his bed in a t-shirt and jeans, reading the Tom Clancy novel Claire had seen earlier, a flask at his side. Seeing Claire, he sat up as though mechanized.
    “Oh,” Claire said, retreating. “Sorry.”
    “No,” he said, “It’s fine.” He walked towards her. “Claire, right?” He was not looking at her nametag this time, and extended his hand. “Peter Lanford. Seen any good card tricks lately?”
    She grinned at the carpet. “Sorry I keep disturbing you. And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention this to Marie.”
    “The pregnant woman at the front desk? How many months is she?”
    “Forty-five,” Claire said. “Seven. She’s ready to explode.”
    Peter laughed, mouth wide. “I hear that. When my ex was pregnant, it felt like centuries—although I didn’t say that to her. She’d’ve taken a sledgehammer to my skull.” He reached into his back pocket and extracted a thick, battered wallet. Flashing a picture of a smiling eight-year-old with a soccer ball, he said this was his son, Jack. “He’s the reason I’m in town, actually. His mom and I are getting our divorce squared away.” Jack reminded Peter of himself at that age—fearless, happy-go-lucky. “Except he has his mom’s face. You got kids?”
    Claire pressed her lips together in a kind of smile. “No.”
    “I’ve always liked kids. I drive a school bus, and I care about those kids, not like some drivers. But with your own it’s another dimension.” Peter told a story about another driver, who had seen a boy trapped under a car. Before the driver knew what was happening, the boy’s mother lifted the car and pulled her son out from under it. “A tiny lady, too, not some bodybuilder. It’s amazing what you can do.”
    “Right.” Claire stepped towards the door. “Sorry again—”
    Peter touched her wrist. “Hey, you want a drink?” He motioned to the flask. “I was going to go out, but the roads are icy. I bet it’s been a long day for you, too, and I’d love the company.”
    For a second Claire considered, but then shook her head. She was still in the middle of her shift, and she had to be extra careful tonight. “Sorry,” she said and slipped out of the room without looking Peter in the eye. This was the smart thing to do. Even so, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d done anything fun. She hadn’t even had a drink on her twenty-first birthday, since the only people she had to celebrate with were five years old. Just to talk to someone—no, she shouldn’t. She should just forget it.

    At the end of her shift, Claire was still thinking about Peter’s invitation. Her nerves were raw as she worried about Marie finding the twins. Every part of her body ached; she couldn’t remember the last time she’d worked two shifts. Marie kept stopping her to ask baby questions. At one point, she mentioned that Claire could be a potential baby-sitter. After all, she already had two kids. What could one more hurt? It took all of Claire’s self-control not to beat Marie with a toilet scrubber.
    All she had left was to restock the supply closet for the next day and she could go home—to what? Before starting on the supplies, Claire checked on the twins, opening the door just a crack. They were stretched on the bed, coloring and speaking their own language. They were having a good time.
    What could twenty more minutes hurt?
    Peter’s eyebrows rose in surprise when he found Claire at his door. In the hazy light of the bedside lamp, he looked dashing, like an old movie star. He could have been on the beach in Florida.
    “I think I’ll have that drink after all,” Claire said.
    Soon Claire had to hold her hand over her mouth to muffle her laughter. Peter was telling her anecdotes from his childhood in Michigan, most involving a group of young men who, Peter insisted, were infamous in their hometown. “So the cops pull up. And there we are, on top of a cliff in our boxers, Eddie with these giant wings on, and we think we’re gonna get thrown in jail just for stupidity.”
    Claire took another sip of bourbon, feeling the weight of her body melt into the mattress. By her head, the digital clock flared 11:30. How did it get so late? She should have been home by now. Somehow she wasn’t tired. She wasn’t even worried about Marie walking in. Peter asked so many questions—what was her favorite movie, was she more of a dog or cat person, where would she go if she could go anywhere in the world? To that, she immediately said, “Florida.”
    “In the whole world?” He flipped onto his elbow, his face very close to Claire’s now. He smelled vaguely of cinnamon. “Not Fiji or Hawaii or Paris?”
    Maybe it was the alcohol, or how he seemed interested in her answers, but she told him about the postcards. No one else knew. When he nodded solemnly, she listed the various things she’d found. “One time there was this manila envelope full of pictures of women’s ankles. Not even their whole legs, just their ankles.”
    “Let me guess, it was a big guy with a mustache.”
    Claire shook her head, wishing she had better hair to shake. “A little old lady with an alligator handbag. Didn’t leave a tip.”
    “So,” Peter said, “what did you think I’d be like?”
    “I knew you weren’t going to mess up the room.”
    The gap in his teeth—the width of three cards, she guessed—made his grin more enthusiastic. “Coming from the person who’d have to clean up, I’ll take that as a compliment.” He leaned forward and kissed her. He tasted like coffee and sharp cinnamon gum. “You don’t have to clock out or anything, do you?” Before she could finish saying no, Peter grabbed her, kissing her roughly as men did in old movies. His hands were in her hair, gripping her breasts, unbuttoning her uniform.
    “You’re so beautiful,” he said into her shoulder.
    Claire knew it was a lie. He didn’t need to flatter her like that. Still, he now knew more about her than most people, and liked that she mentally catalogued what everyone left behind. She pulled off his shirt as he bit at her neck.
    Claire’s uniform was in a pile on the floor when she heard a small voice outside the door. She stiffened, hoping it was her imagination, when the doorknob turned. “Mommy, I—” Bobby said. It was a reaction, like swatting a mosquito. Claire grabbed a pillow and hurled it at the door, slamming it shut before Bobby could enter. Outside, he whimpered.
    “What was that?” Peter asked.
    “Nothing.” Claire tried to kiss him, but he craned his neck so she hit his chin. Bobby’s cries were louder now.
    “Is he okay?” He pulled on his pants and stepped into the hallway. Claire didn’t join him but slowly dressed as she listened to Peter ask Bobby if he was all right, making silly jokes until the boy began to giggle. He mentioned seeing Bobby at the supermarket, saying he hadn’t stolen any apples since then, and hadn’t Bobby done a good job? When Peter returned, he was holding Bobby’s hand.
    Claire crouched at the edge of the bed. “It was an accident.”
    Peter didn’t seem to hear. “Did he call you Mommy?”
    “Samantha fell asleep,” Bobby said. “I had to use the bathroom.”
    Claire tried to explain—she’d had no choice but to bring her kids to the motel. She’d checked on them, they were fine, she had bought new crayons. It wasn’t like she left them in the car. She hadn’t meant to hit him. She’d told him to stay in the room. But Peter’s face hardened so eventually her excuses drifted off.
    “You can’t just leave kids like that,” he said, still clutching Bobby’s hand. They could have gotten hurt, he claimed, and Claire wouldn’t have known until the end of her shift—or the next morning. If Peter ever found out that something like this happened to his son, he’d go crazy.
    “It was a mistake,” Claire said.
    Bobby mumbled that he wanted to go home. Peter sighed, then told Claire she should probably leave.
    Claire walked stiffly out of the room, smoothing her dress, with Bobby reaching for her arm. She could feel Peter watching them and took her son’s hand, her grasp too tight. When the door closed, Claire winced. She left her cart there; Bobby must have seen it earlier.
    In room 11, Samantha was asleep in her winter coat, her head on one of the coloring books. Blue and yellow lines streaked across the pillows. Bobby freed himself from his mother’s hold and flopped onto the bed beside his sister. Samantha moaned as she woke, face puckering at the light.
    “Come on,” Claire said. She didn’t wait to see if her kids followed her to the car.

    Claire went through two stoplights before she realized she was driving. No other cars were on the road. Claire’s straddled the yellow line. All she could think was how Peter was probably straightening up his room, trying to erase any evidence that she’d been there. He would avoid her the next day and not leave a tip. No one would leave a tip for someone who lied about her kids and then slammed a door on one of them. Maybe he’d even leave that night.
    “Mommy, I’m tired.” Claire didn’t know which of her children said this. I want to go home, too, she wanted to say. She fantasized about taking an unhurried shower. Maybe someone else would find her attractive if she showered.
    “Mommy!”
    “Just shut the fuck up!” Claire screamed, beating her palms against the horn.
    The car slipped. Grabbing the wheel, she tried to control the car as it skidded across the road and into the opposite breakdown lane. A deer darted from the darkness by the lake and to the opposite side of the street, narrowly missing them. The lake, Claire thought. If we went in, I wouldn’t be able to save them.

    She imagined water bleeding through the cracks of the car. The airbag would probably deploy, pressing Claire against her seat. She wouldn’t turn around to see who was whimpering in the back seat. Then she would see the water level creep up the window and feel the slick cold up to her knees. Maybe she would be numb already.
    Get out, she would tell herself.
    In the rearview mirror, her children would be struggling to get their seatbelts off. Claire would push aside the airbag. Maybe she could kick at the window until it shattered. Cold water would rush into the car, almost reaching the steering wheel. Immediately she would be soaked through, bare flesh stinging. In a second she would get used to it. Water would keep coming. She’d have to pull herself through the window.
    Then she’d be in the lake, submerged up to her neck, kicking to stay afloat between pieces of ice. She wasn’t a good swimmer. Gasping, coughing, she would spit up lake water. Samantha and Bobby would still be in the back seat, faces red, banging their fists on the window and wailing. “Mommy! Mommy!” Water would be up to their shoulders by then. Claire would have to break their window. She’d never get enough momentum. She wouldn’t be able to feel her body.
    Peter was wrong. No one could pull a car off a child.
    The lake would be swallowing the car. How could she carry both of them to shore? She’d be pulled down with them. What else could she do?
    “Mommy!” They wouldn’t stop screaming. “Mommy!” Now the water would be at their chins. Their mouths seemed enormous and empty.
    Their cries would be unbearable. Claire couldn’t block them out as she kicked her way to shore. By the time she turned back to the lake, the car would have disappeared beneath the glinting surface. It would be so quiet on the road; even the birds had gone south for winter. That’s what Claire would do, too. She wanted to be warm and nap in the sunshine. She would be a bathing beauty. Someone would want to take pictures of her.

    The car had stopped. Claire had been clutching the steering wheel for minutes, her breathing ragged. Every part of her was chattering but she didn’t try to hold herself steady.
    “Mommy,” Samantha whispered, “you almost hit Bambi.”
    The voice startled Claire, who scrambled from the car. She had to get away. Although she could no longer hear rushing water and shattering glass, she still felt cold. How would she ever get warm?
    Headlights glowed in the distance, disembodied from a car. Claire didn’t move as she stood in the road and felt herself being devoured by the cold light. But then it slowed and passed her, until the car stopped ahead of hers. She could see the silhouettes of two heads, one of which got out of the car—a middle-aged man in a long coat.
    “Need a hand?” he asked.
    Claire tried to make herself nod. The man was talking about the ice when the female passenger joined them. She mentioned how they were just passing through, expected to be miles away by now, but they’d had to be careful because of the roads. Wasn’t this good luck.
    “My kids,” Claire whispered.
    “What was that?”
    “My kids.” That was all she could say.
    In the car, Samantha and Bobby had unbuckled their seat belts and shifted to the front passenger seat. Their small faces were barely visible above the dashboard. The woman asked if everything was all right but Claire was already rushing over to the car, desperately pressing her palms against the glass. Oh God, she thought. The couple, assuming it was the shock, offered them a ride, insisting she get her car in the morning. Claire wasn’t listening to them. She wished she could keep her children as they were in that moment, warm in their winter coats, holding each other, safe behind the fogging glass.



PARKIE, TANKER, TIGER OF TOBRUK
by Tom Sheehan    

    Hardly with a hop, skip, and a jump did Frank Parkinson come home from Tobruk, Egypt, North Africa, madness, World War II in general. A lot of pit stops were made along the way where delicate-handed surgeons and associates did their very best to get him back into working order. From practically every vantage thereafter we never saw, facially or bodily, any scar, bunching of flesh, major or minor skin disturbance. There was no permanent redness, no welts as part of his features, no thin and faintly visible testaments to a doctor’s faulty hand or to the enemy’s angry fragmentation. For sure, it was as if he were the ultimate and perfect patient, the great recovery, the risen Lazarus.
     But he was different, it was easy to see, by a whole long shot.
     Parkie. Tanker. Tiger of Tobruk.
     It was the end of some trying times for my friend. One lazy afternoon we sat looking over the sun looking over Lily Pond, and I noted some things about him for the first time. Redness glared on the pond’s face as bright as an ache. This was the pond face we had skated on for almost twenty years. Here we had whipped the long hand-held whip line of us and our friends screaming and wind-blown toward the frosted shore on countless coffee and cider evenings. That afternoon I realized Parkie had come home to die.
    The September sun was on for a short stay. We had bagged a dozen bottles of beer and laid them easily down in the pond, watching a flotilla of pickerel poking slowly about when the sediment settled. Their shadowy thinness pointed, like inert submarines or torpedoes, at the bags.
     Our differences were obvious, though we did not speak of them. The sands of North Africa had clutched at him and almost taken him. Off a mountain in Korea I had come with my feet nearly frozen. Under skin they often felt like graceless pieces of marble, thinking they might have been blown off the same quarry where unknown sculptors had once farmed torsos.
    I had kept no souvenirs, especially none of Korea and its craggy mountains, and had seen nothing of his memento scenery. But once I saw a pair of tanker goggles hanging like an outsize Rosary on the post of his bed at Dutch Siciliano’s garage. That’s where he roomed on the second floor, in three small rooms, dusty and cluttered and with strong odors. You could smell oil and grease from below. You’d swear along with them you could smell acid-like Cosmoline and spent gunpowder. It was like the residue of a convoy’s passing still hanging in the air, telling of itself at the nostrils with sharp reminders, rising right through the floorboards.
    Most of us left our wars behind us. As much as we could. But with Parkie it was different. Pieces of it hung on as if they were on for the long ride. I don’t mean that he was a flag waver or mufti hero, now that he was out of uniform. But the whole war kept coming back to him in ways he had no control over. There are people to whom such things befall. They don’t choose them, that’s for sure, but it’s as if they somehow get appointed for all the attendant crap life gets filled with.
    And Parkie had no control over the visitations.
    I don’t know how many times we had been sitting in the Angels Club, hanging out, the big booms long down the tubes, when someone from Parkie’s old outfit would show up out of the blue. It was like Lamont Cranston appearing from the shadows. There’d be a guy standing at the door looking in and we’d all notice him, and then his eyes and Parkie’s eyes’d lock. Recognition was instant; reaction was slower, as if neither one believed what he was seeing. There would be a quiet acceptance of the other’s presence. They’d draw their heads together and have a beer in a corner. Parkie, as sort of an announcement, would speak to no one in particular and the whole room in general. “This guy was with me in North Africa.”
    He never gave a name. All of them were odd lots, all of them. They were thin like Parkie, drawn in the face, little shoulders and long arms, nervous, itchy, wearing that same darkness in the eyes. A sum of darkness you’d think was too much for one man to carry. They would hang on for days at a time, holing up some place, sometimes at Parkie’s and sometimes elsewhere. They’d drink up a storm, carouse, and one morning the stranger would be gone and never seen again. Some guys said a ritual had taken place. A solemn ritual. Apparitions almost from the slippery darkness. Dark-eyed. The nameless out of North Africa and whatever other place they had been to and come from. Noble wanderers, it seemed, but nameless, rankless, placeless itinerants.
    Parkie never got a card or a letter from any one of them. Never a phone call. Nothing. He never mentioned them after they were gone. That, to me, was notice he knew they would never be back. It was like a date had been kept, a vow paid off. It wasn’t at all like “We’ll meet at Trafalgar Square after the war, or Times Square, or under the clock at The Ritz.” Not at all. The sadness of it hit me solidly, frontally. I had had some good buddies, guys I’d be tickled to death to see again if they walked in just like his pals did, and I knew that I’d never see them again. Things were like that, cut and dried like adobe, a place and a job in the world and you couldn’t cry about it. Part of the fine-tuned fatalism that grows in your bones, becomes part of you, core deep, gut deep.
    The sun’s redness shivered under the breeze. Pickerel nosed at the bags. The beer cooled. Parkie sipped at a bottle, his eyes dark and locked on the pond, seeing something I hadn’t seen, I guess. The long, hatchet-like face, the full-blown Indian complexion he owed great allegiance to, made his dark visage darker than it might have been. With parted lips his teeth showed long and off-white or slightly yellowed, real incisors in a deep-red gum line. On a smooth gray rock he sat with his heels jammed up under his butt, the redness still locked in his eyes.
    For a long while he was distant, who knows where, in what guise and in what act, out of touch. This really wasn’t that unusual with him before and surely wasn’t now since his return. Actually it was a little eerie, this sudden transport, but a lot of things had become eerie with Parkie around. He didn’t like being indoors for too long a stretch. He craved fresh air and walked a lot, and must have worn his own path around the pond. It went through the alders, then through the clump of birch that some nights looked like ghosts at attention. It coursed down along the edge where all the kids fished for kibby and sunfish, then over the knoll at the end of the pond. There you’d go out of sight for maybe five minutes of a walk, and then it went down along the near shore and came up to the Angels Club where we hung out.
    Most of the guys said when you couldn’t locate Parkie, you knew where to find him.
    He talked to me from his crouch, the bottle in his hand catching the sun, his eyes as dark as ever in their deep contrast.
    “Remember that Kirby kid, Ellen Kirby? When we pulled her out of the channel on Christmas vacation in her snowsuit and she kept skating around for a couple of hours, afraid to go home? We saved her for nothing, it seems, but for another try at it. I heard she drowned in a lake in Maine January of the year I went away. Like she never learned anything at all.”
    Parkie hadn’t taken his eyes off the pond. Stillness still trying to take hold of him. He sipped and sipped and finally drank off the bottle and reached into the water for another. The pickerel force moved away as quickly as minnows.
    Their quickness seemed to make fun of our inertia. If there was a clock handy, I knew its hands would be moving, the ticking going on, but I seriously wouldn’t bet on it. We seemed to be holding our collected breath. The sun froze itself on the water’s face, the slightest breath of wind held itself off. There was no ticking, no bells, no alarms, no sudden disturbances in the air, no more war, and no passage of time. For a moment at least we hung at breathlessness and eternity. We were, as Parkie had said on more than one occasion, “Down-in deep counting the bones in ourselves, trying to get literate.”
    “We just got her ready to die at another time.” The church key opener in his hand pried at the bottle cap as slow as a crowbar and permitted a slight pop. He palmed the cap in his hand and shook it like half a dice set and skipped it across the redness. The deliberate things he did came off as code transmissions. I had spent hours trying to read what kinds of messages were being carried along by them. They did not clamor for attention, but if you were only barely alert you knew something was cooking in him.
    “You might not believe it,” I said, “but I thought of her when I was in Korea and swore my ass was ice. I remember how she skated around after we pulled her out with that gray-green snowsuit on and the old pilot’s cap on her head. She had the flaps down over her ears and the goggles against her eyes and the ice was like a clear, fine lacquer all over her clothes. I thought she was going to freeze standing up right on the pond.”
    Parkie said, “I used to think about the pond a lot when I was in the desert. At Tobruk. At Al Shar-Efan. At The Sod Oasis. At all the dry holes along the way. But it was always summer and fishing and swimming and going bare-ass off the rock at midnight or two or three in the morning on some hot-ass August night. Those nights we couldn’t sleep and sneaked out of the house. Remember how Gracie slipped into the pond that night and slipped out of her bathing suit and hung it up on a spike on the raft? Remember how she told us she was going to teach us everything we’d ever need to know?”
    His head nodded two or three times, accenting its own movement, making a grand pronouncement. The recall was just as tender and just as complete as that long-ago compelling night. He sipped at the bottle again, and tried to look through its amber passage, dark eyes meeting dark obstacles of more than one sort. He looked like a fortuneteller peeking into life.
    All across the pond stillness made itself known, stillness as pure as any I’ve known. I don’t know what he saw in the amber fluid, but it couldn’t have been anything he hadn’t seen before.
    I just got the feeling it was nothing different.
    When I called him Frank he looked at me squarely. His thick black brows lifted like chunks of punctuation, his mouth formed an Oh of more punctuation, both of us suddenly serious. It had always been that way with us, the reliance on the more proper name to pull a halt to what was about us, or explain what was about us. He drank off a heavy draught of beer, his Adam’s apple flopping on his thin neck. The picture of a turkey wattle came uneasily to mind, making me feel slightly ridiculous, and slightly embarrassed. Frank was an announcement of sorts, a declaration that a change, no matter subtle or not, was being introduced into our conversation. It was not as serious as Francis but it was serious enough.
    His comrades from North Africa, as always, had intrigued me. On a number of instances I had searched in imagination’s land for stories that might lie there waiting to get plowed up. Nothing I had turned over had come anywhere close to reality, or the terrors I had known in my own stead. No rubble. No chaff. No field residue.
    Perhaps Parkie had seen something in that last bottle, something swimming about in the amber liquid, or something just on the other side of it. He turned to me and said, “I think you want to know about my friends who visit, my friends from North Africa, from my tank outfit. I never told you their names because their names are not important. Where they come from or where they are going is not important either. That information would mean nothing to you.”
    For the moment the silence was accepted by both of us.
    Across the stretch of water the sun was making its last retreat of the day. A quick grasp of reflection hung for a bare second on the face of the pond. It leaped off somewhere as if shot, past the worm-curled roots, a minute but energized flash darting into the trees. Then it was gone, absolutely gone. None of it yet curled round a branch or root. And no evidence of it lay about except for the life it had given sustenance to, had maintained at all levels. It was like the shutter of a camera had opened and closed at its own speed.
    Parkie acknowledged that disappearance with a slight nod of his head. An additional twist was there. It was obvious he saw the darkness coming on even before it gathered itself to call on us. I thought another kind of clock ticked for him, a clock of a far different dimension. He was still chipping away at what had been his old self. That came home clean as a desert bone; but where he was taking it all was as much mystery as ever.
    The beer, though, was making sly headway, the beer and stillness, and the companionship we had shared over the years. The mystery of the sun’s quick disappearance played with what we knew of the horizon, the thin edge of warmth it left behind. And it played with all those strange comrades of his. They had stood in the doorway of the Angels Club, framed as they were by the nowhere they had come from, almost purposeless in their missions. They too had been of dark visage. They too were lank and thin and narrow in the shoulder. They too were scored by that same pit of infinity locked deeply in their eyes. They were not haggard, but they were deep. I knew twin brothers who were not as close to their own core the same way these men were. These men had obviously leaned their souls entirely on some common element in their lives. I did not find it as intense even with reconnected battle brothers who had lain in the same hole with me while the Chinese used old German 76ers. Not even then when the shells screamed and slammed overhead and all around us, the shrapnel routed in the awful trajectories.
    The flotilla of pickerel nosed against the bags of beer. Parkie’s Adam’s apple bobbed on his thin neck. He began slowly, all that long reserve suddenly beginning to fall away.
    “We were behind German lines, but had no idea how we got there. We ran out of gas in a low crater and threw some canvas against the sides of the three tanks that had been left after our last battle. If we could keep out of sight, sort of camouflaged, we might have a chance. It got cold that night. We had little food, little water, little ammo, and no gas. It was best, we thought, to wait out our chances. If we didn’t know where we were, perhaps the Jerries wouldn’t know either. Sixteen of us were there. We had lost a lot of tanks, had our butts kicked.”
    He wasn’t dramatizing anything, you could tell. It was coming as straight as he could make it. Whatever was coming though, had to be pretty wild, or exorbitant, or eerie, or indeed, inhuman. The last option came home pretty cold to me. The hair on the back of my neck told me so.
    “We woke up in the false dawn and they were all around us. Fish in the bottom of the tank is what we were. No two ways about it. Plain, all-out fish lying there, as flat as those pickerel. They took us without a shot being fired. Took us like babies in the pram. All day they questioned us. One guy was an SS guy. A real mean son of a bitch if you ever met one. Once I spit at him and he jammed me with a rifle barrel I swear six inches deep. Ten times he must have kicked me in the guts. Ten times! I couldn’t get to his throat, I’d’ve taken him with me. They stripped our tanks, what was left in them. That night they pushed us into our tanks. I saw the flash of a torch through one of the gun holes. You could hear a generator working nearby. Something was crackling and blistering on the hull or the turret top. Blue light jumped every which way through the gun holes. It was getting hot. Then I realized the sounds and smells and weird lights were welding rods being burned. The sons of bitches were welding us inside our own tanks. A hell of a lot of arguing and screaming was going on outside us. The light went flashing on and off, like a strobe light, if you know what I mean. Blue and white. Blue and white. Off and on. Off and on. But no real terror yet. Not until we heard the roar of a huge diesel engine. And the sound of it getting louder. And then came scraping and brushing against the sides of our tanks. Sand began to seep through the gun holes and peep sights. The sons of bitches were burying us in our own tanks! All I could see was that rotten SS bastard smiling down at us. I saw his little mustache and his pale green eyes and his red nose and a smile the devil must have created. And his shining crow-black boots.”
    I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t ask him a question. A stunned sensation swept clean through me. First, disbelief, a surging block of disbelief, as if my veins had frozen in place. The dark pit in his eyes could be read; the darkness inside the tank, the utter, inhuman darkness that had become part of Parkie and part of his comrades. The imagined sense of it hit me slowly. It crept within me. I knew a sudden likeness to that feeling. It was peering over the edge of a high place. The ground would rush up to meet me and then fall away. The long descent, the torturous fall, would become part of me…in the veins, in the mind. A shiver ran through every part of my body. And then hate welled in me, stark, naked, unadorned hate, hate of the vilest kind.
    Parkie put his hand on my knee. His grip was hard.
    “I never wanted to tell you, none of you. We all had our thing. You had yours. I had mine. I’m so sorry your feet are screwed up. I wish nothing had happened to you. But a lot of guys’ve had worse.”
    “What happened?” I said, letting his hand carry most of his message, letting my own small miseries fall away as if they did not exist. Not by comparison anyway. My feet had iced up practically in my sleep. I knew the ignoble difference.
    “The sand was almost over the entire tank, and the noise inside the tank started. Screaming and cursing and crying. Cries like you never heard in your life. God-awful cries. I know I never heard anything like them. And coming out of guys I’d known a long time, tough guys, valiant guys, guys with balls who had gone on the line for me. I heard some of them call for their mothers. There was screaming, and then whimpering and then screaming again. And curses! My God, curses that would raise the friggin’ dead. The most unholy of curses. Everything dead and unholy and illegitimate rose from wherever they were being brought against the Germans and that little SS bastard. He was castrated and ripped and damned and denounced to the fires of hell. You have not heard profanity and terror and utter and absolute hatred all in one voice at the same time. The volume was turned way up. It filled the tank. It filled that makeshift and permanent vault. And it filled our useless and agonized banging barehanded against the hull of the tank. Knuckles and fists and back-handers against the steel. And the outside noise drowning all of it out.”
    I was still reeling, kept shaking my head, kept feeling the old glacier-like ice in my veins. And the heat of hatred coexisted with that ice. I was a mass of contradictions. Parkie kept squeezing my knee. The pickerel kept nosing the bags, hung up in their own world of silence. Silence extended itself to the whole of earth. The quiet out there, the final and eventual quiet out there, after the war, was all around us.
    “Suddenly,” he continued, “there was nothing. The sand stopped its brushing and grating against the steel of the tank. Then the diesel noise grew louder, as if it was coming right through us. And powerful thrusts came banging at the tank. I didn’t know what it was. And then we were being shoved and shaken, the whole structure. And I heard curses from outside and a lot of German on the air, and we seemed to be moving away from our hole in the ground. Whatever it was was pushing at us. And then it went away and we heard the same banging and grinding and grunting of the engine nearby. Then the blue and white light again as a torch burned around us and the tank heated up, and lots of screaming but all of it German. And there were more engine noises and more banging and smashing of big bodies of steel. Finally the turret was opened and we were hauled out and canteens shoved in our faces and the other tanks were being opened up and guys scrambling out, some of them still crying and screaming and cursing everything around them.”
    He reached for the last bottle in one of the bags. The bag began to drift slowly away in wavy pieces. The pickerel had gone. The bottle cap snapped off in his hand. I thought of the tank’s turret top being snapped open, the rush of clean air filling his lungs, a new light in his eyes.
     “Then I saw him,” Parkie said. “The minute I saw him I knew who he was. General Rommel. He was looking at us. He looked me right in the eye, straight and true and bone-steady and no shit at all in it. I didn’t think he was breathing, he was so still. But I read him right off the bat. The whole being of that man was right in his eyes. He shook his head and uttered a cry I can’t repeat. Then he took a pistol from another guy, maybe his driver, a skinny itchy little guy, and just shot that miserable SS son of a bitch right between the eyes as he stood in front of him. Shot him like he was the high executioner himself; no deliberation, no second thought, no pause in his movement. Bang! One shot heard round the world if you really think about it. He screamed something in German as if it were at the whole German army itself, each and every man of it. Perhaps it was lifted to whatever God he might have believed in because it was so loud, so unearthly. Then he just walked off toward a personnel carrier, not looking at us anymore or the SS guy on the ground, a nice-sized hole in his forehead.”
    He drained off the last bottle. He mouthed the taste of it for a while and wet his lips a few times. I thought he was remembering the dry sands, the heat, and the embarrassed German general walking away on the desert. Or this parched earth being an ultimate graveyard for so many men, for so many dreams.
    “They gave us water and food, the Germans did. One of them brought up one of our own jeeps. It was beat to hell, but it was working. One German major, keeping his head down, his eyes on the sand, not looking at us, pointed off across the sand. We started out, the sixteen of us, some walking, some riding, some still crying or whimpering. Some still cursing. The next day we met some Brits. They brought us to their headquarters company. We were returned to our outfit. Some guys, of course, didn’t get to go back on line, but were sent home as head cases. Can’t blame them for that. I kept thinking about General Rommel, kept seeing his eyes in my mind. I can see the Germans now, the look on their faces, the shame that was in them. It was absolute, that shame, and he knew we knew. It was something he couldn’t talk about, I bet. If he could have talked to us, we might have been taken to one of their prison camps. But he knew he couldn’t do that to us. Make amends is what he had to do. He had to give us another chance. Just like we gave Ellen Kirby another chance at drowning.”
    In his short flight he had circled all the way back to the Kirby circumstance and all that played with it.
    Frankie Parkinson, tanker, survivor of Tobruk and other places in the northern horrors of Africa, who walked away from death in the sand on more than one occasion. Parkie, who might be called Rommel’s last known foe, who rolled over three cars on U.S. Route 1 and waged six major and distinct bouts with John Barleycorn thereafter in his time. He was a man who got to know the insidious trek of cancer in his slight frame. I loved him more than any comrade that had shared a hole with me. He hurt practically every day of his life after his return from Africa, and hung on for twenty-five more torturous and tumultuous and mind-driven years. They found him one night at the far end of the pond when nobody knew where he was for two days. A handful of damp earth was squeezed into one fist and the metal crypt, perhaps, was long gone, just as the days of Africa were perhaps long gone, as well.

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                              for my mother

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