Share this Twitter Myspace Digg Del.icio.us Reddit StumbleUpon Furl Yahoo Blogmarks Technorati Spurl Googlize this Blinklist Facebook Print Tags anodyne david wright fiction literary wild poets wildpoets.com

Over the years porch planks broke from old age, square Mason’s nails were sticking out bent and crooked, and Gallow-grass annuals grew tall through the cracks of the floorboards. It was lucky the house hadn’t burned down years and years ago. A nice Lord knows, if any where some awkward fire could start, it’d be on the front porch where grandma shot grandpa twice with buckshot. Then tried stabbing him with the pick axe by the dusty old woodened planks once she’d realized her shells were gone. Sent him flying, then flying again, fast through mid-air and off Louise’s new front steps. He lived. Landed hard onto the bushes that little Louise had called flowers. Weeds were plants misplaced into an environment where their worth was deemed unwanted, Louise had later learned. “Mi-o, My-O, Mi-o,” she’d always sing. Mio, Michigan was a wonderful place to be born, Louise had always thought.

      Looking down through the kitchen window, drying the dishes, Louise watched how the cats came up the steps and scratched their backs against the posts that kept roof beams from caving. Once in awhile, a cat might tip over a flower pot or shed its fur over her rocking chair pillows she had just made, but Louise never minded how nature worked wonder as animals made themselves at home. Families and families and families had drank whiskey on the front porch of this house. Fighting and singing through the nights, killing dawn with inebriation, scrambled eggs and coffee.

     At Herald’s new house, he said the plumbing had burst open and that the pipes were cracked apart, flooding the whole bottom half of the root cellar. He hadn’t drank when he was young, but God knows what could happen when men were left to their own devices. For weeks Herald had sent messages to his son, Andy, in Sacramento: send money for repairs. Little lizards and water snakes slipped in and out ― in and out, always one or the other, out and in ― the wall sockets; mold was forming behind the walls and pushing the drywall further away from the centering joints and closing in on Herald’s Flint, Michigan home.

     That son of his owed eight-fifty large for two years back rent on time shares in Houston. Houseboats housed and floating in southern Tennessee. Upstate strawberry farm stock gone bust. Houses up-north left unattended. Bermuda triangle bound CVN-68 U.S. Nimitz class ships counted on Herald’s go ahead phone calls. His yes. His no. His ask me later, I’m busy fixing wife breakfast before medication. The chain of command dwindling and Andy sticking his nose on business that kept him from being capably responsible of attending to matter in proper, corn and stalk linear order. “It’s disease of youth,” Herald thought aloud. Here in Motor City, Michigan everything was falling apart. General Motors had saved the day, during the war, and then left just as fast for greener pastures of newly conquered globalized societies. All nuts and bolts scattered, loose and stoned by the sun. This behavior would not stand. Children, obviously, and as part of nature’s natural causes, didn’t know where they came from, or how they got where they were. They were tough damned kids, but flawed. Flawed brains mashed and divided and dead wrong like on their mother’s crazy side.

     “Where’d you go after I sent word you’re sitting in Tucumcari,” Herald barked to his son over the phone. “You know I'm all wound down about that money, Andy. Where’s my fuckin’ meds, boy?”

      Herald’s son adjusted his seat, quietly shifted gear, and made a left off 21st Street, listening to his father on speaker phone. “God damn, And’, I gotta fucking flood down in your mother’s preserves here.”

      Anytime on the phone Herald loved to pace. Loved it. He developed the habit in 1962, stationed at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico. He’d met a man, a civilian man with eyes big as coke bottle bottoms and always smiling like his damned smart mouth kid. Gave him cacti fungus buttons to help calm his nerves after learning Marilyn Monroe committed suicide. Obviously someone helped her do it. Who’d want to leave all that glamour was a mystery. He’d bounce his head back and forth through the barracks, like ping pong balls filled with helium in too closed a space, and kick holes in the walls, fisting it out with any new MP’s he hadn’t beat shit out already. That was it, though; when Monroe was pronounced dead Herald knew it was a lie. Her killing herself on purpose. It had to be. His brain Type II error spit data from the computer. He did as told, but answers were all wrong. Even if questions any kid could identify as valid.

      “Can’t you wire last weekend’s receipts from that belt you flopped in Vegas?”

      “Never been to Vegas, Pop.”

      Herald felt the cold wall with his hand, the narrow hallway contracting with his breath.

      “You’re getting the long end of carrot sticks here, And’. And I can’t find your mother anywhere, she’s been gone for weeks. She’s thin air, son. She’s ghost meat.”

       Andy’s business calls were taken in Sacramento. Currently all calls were wired through there and forwarded to a cell phone in Portland, Oregon. Working, there was no sense explaining whereabouts to father. Classified kill orders made by the department, telling Herald how things worked now he had stopped saying years and years ago.

      "Your sister ran off to New York when I told her she couldn’t have the house up north,” Herald said. “She calls me every, single day and won’t say where she is." He thought his son naïve, a condescending bad seed out for himself and those damned, greasy palmed politicians he voted for. When Andy was small his sister kept him hid from the family to avoid the alcohol and gambling. Wouldn’t even play cards with grandfather ‘til he was ten, always down in the goddamn basement watching out the storm windows what the weather was like, reading his books his mother had given him, playing puzzles by fitting each little piece together so it’d be memorized. When it was time to eat there’d always be talk. Who knows what that kid could come up with, affronting cockeyed adults.

      “How’s your gout foot doing, Herald,” Andy asked, “you keeping enough red meat on your plate?”

      Pioneer Square was near empty passing through earlier that morning and the rain had lifted since then. Gentle winds had sent the dark precipitation east. Driving through northwest Portland now, Adam thought how there'd be a downtown square full of people. He measured footsteps carefully through the square months prior, and to be sure his path would be clear he’d stationed three operatives one shadow through the café above the amphitheater; another man eating lunch on the plaza steps; and, of course, the inside man to pull the mark’s tie for final go.

      “You listening to me,” Herald said, “And’, And’…these pipes are busting up through the floor,” Herald walked lifting his knees to his chest, the creature from the Black Lagoon wading through the house muck.

      “Pop,” Andy spoke precisely: “work right now. Governor’s got meet with Surgeon General noon sharp. I’ll have package to you…soon…can.”

      “Huh?” Herald looked into the phone’s receiver and could see bacteria growing in each little hole made for his hearing Washington better.

       Andy pushed the button that killed his father’s connection and pulled the car into a taxicab station called “Slab Town” on Lovejoy Street for gas.

      “Fill ’er up, Supreme,” he told the attendant.

      Plant classifications are largely organized according to flower structure. For a flower to be considered complete it must contain a sepal, a petal, a stamen and a pistil. Any flower missing one of these four parts is considered incomplete. Such was the nature of things when scientists were left to themselves and expected to classify, Louise thought. How anything could be thought of as unfinished just because it lacked a single common component was beyond her.

      She climbed carefully down the steps of the subway train, and walked along the platform looking up and down the tracks for her bearings. Setting her purse on a bench, she reached inside to retrieve her book of flowers and weeds. A strange sensation waved over Louise. She peered both ways along the train tracks, breathing deeply, and pulled a little book on trains from her bag. Her father must have put it there in her purse without her knowing. Flames floated like life boats over the top lip of her mind. She became elated to see a photograph of a great locomotive shining in front of the sun. Strawberries were sliced thrice, not far from home in Mio, their hairs left running 'round and 'round with the milk of beans, 'round and 'round the deep plates left over from her childhood full of daiquiris and fresh herbs.

      Louise held the purse tight to her side guarding the other books inside. These city people seemed agitated and unfed. Not a good sign at all, she told herself. Louise was reminded how any plant, or flower, could be called a weed if considered unsightly, poisonous, mechanically infectious, or merely competitive to the growth of a more valued crop. Weeds had long been listed and categorized as nuisances. Some people thought weeds a waste of water, becoming upset when they find out how certain varieties change the taste of foods they grown. Louise thought this a terrible thing, that a person wouldn’t take the time to groom the nature that God had given them. Walking briskly through Penn station, she identified an information booth and locked eyes with a docent.

      “Excuse me. Is this where the tour begins,” she asked. The guide smiled and adjusted his seeing eyeglasses, his old nose barely holding the weight of the ancient frames. He lowered his head slowly.

      “Yes, indeed it is,” he said behind the counter, shuffling through papers on his clipboard, and clicking his pen that checked items. She noticed the embroidered insignia of a small, bright red apple sewed over his breast pocket, a golden thread circling the symbol with the words “Welcome to the Big Apple” above two exposed holes missing a name tag.
 
      “And you are to journey on, after the tour, Miss.”

      “Ah, yes, just Louise,” she replied, awed by two indolent security guards passing, their Billy clubs and firearms strapped to sagging belts, chuckling to one another making rude gestures as they strolled through the station. Neither man, Louise noted, cared for civic duty or the responsibilities owned to their public.

      “I’m going to home to Michigan,” she blurted to the docent, setting a suitcase down and looking up to him. Louise expected the man to be interested but he only peered at the lighted clock under the dome and checked it against his pocket watch.

       “Almost three O’clock,” the man muttered, “and we’re off,” he said smiling again, a newly painted face an animated Bob Barker from The Price is Right. Coming around from behind the counter the man waved his arm, motioning Louise on her way.

      “Yes, my train leaves in an hour,” she gathered herself. “Could you please show me where that would be?” He did not answer. The old man walked away expecting her to follow. The station became quite noisy, Louise felt, and the clouds already covering the sun grew darker and blocked the light coming down though the dome overhead.

      In downtown Portland there’d have to be at least a thousand people by this time of day. It was almost noon, on a Wednesday, and each ticking brick of this city would have to serve as distraction. Now the square was almost full. There was a circus of culturally sensitive events in progress; groups of uniformed little children playing at the bottom of the square, black ashes smudged to their foreheads. Nothing’s worth doing too fast, but beauty was beauty in art and in death. An easy ride for a quick pinch, Andy thought. Driving slowly, he circled the city block of the plaza square. At the stoplight, flashing red for pedestrians, he noticed two businessmen shaking hands goodbye, and patting each other briskly like old friends. Tapping his wristwatch, one of the men loosened the knot of his necktie, waving for a yellow cab already waiting.

       Andy circled the square again, watching. Fire engine sirens suddenly wailed, screaming up against the skyscrapers, bouncing hard across the square and covering with hands the ears of the devote and bystander. Leaving the stolen car at idle in front of the flower girl’s painted green cart on Morrison Avenue, Andy walked straight through the lobby of the Starbucks and shot a man dead crossing the bottom of Pioneer Square. The only sounds were that of the fire engines squealing outside. Centering his stance, squinting, he used the hole left in the shattered glass to peek through and confirm a head shot. The body was motionless, bleeding onto the masonry bricks. Children screamed and ran up the steps of the plaza, unaware. At the top of the square, in the café, Andy turned and holstered his weapon, taking a new cell phone from the hands of a painted black and hyperventilating Gothic girl, a teary eyed and dazed witness, and even a free coffee because one had just come up. “You will never forget your face, today,” Andy told the woman. Confused, she watched a crowd gather around the dead man as Andy slapped hard on her spine with an opened palm. A coughing fit bent her eyes to the floor, hands on her knees. Andy calmly walked out and to the car sipping latte.

      Lefting quietly on 5th behind a second and unplanned fire engine, and again on Yamhill Street, he drove for the Morrison Bridge and over to the freeway on ramp. It was another workday in America’s intertwined paradise. President Roosevelt's Highway system in need of gilding again. Easy come, easy go, Adam considered, smiling as he passed a flashing tow truck hoisting an unscathed Hummer.

       When Louise had woke up on the train she was relieved to discover fresh new insights concerning the difficult processes life required. In order to understand the complexities entailed in all this life, under such a beautiful sky, it was best to just go ahead and take charge. The old man at the station had been on odd revelation, and welcomed, and for the first time she felt like life was as it was, not the maze it had always been. Father will come around after he has passed, she thought. An observer might have noticed her for her wonderfully florid cheeks waking from sleep, or her messy but vibrantly flowing hair crackling against the fabric of her dress ―communicable by static electricity. Any elder keen in acknowledging Louise would relish, however brief, in the delicately vibrating olfactic signals transmitting from her body, a woman's self alteration beset by nature. She had decided not to press her father too much about the house in Mio, and instead spend the trip home thinking of ways to help him to feel better. Louise didn't believe in grudges.

      Louise had decided immediately that the importance of her seeing the house again were far outweighed by her father’s wishes. Surely father was lonely, and a surprise might help his legs to feel better. She thought perhaps he’d understand if only he was able, but now was not the time so soon after. Louis said aloud to herself, “My-O,” and brushed sleep from her hair.

      Back in his Sacramento office the next morning, Andy shut the door behind him and closed the blinds. Leftover business had piled up in the interoffice mailbox, great piles of papers with thick, red ink splotches that he had never touched, and somehow, he smiled, the work was done before having the chance to care. After the flood the city re-bricked the entire downtown area, creating infrastructure modeled after Washington D.C. The flood had not actually damaged the downtown area. Appearances, however, were the sure first signs for potential investment, which didn't take some sociologist on the payroll to understand. The fat of the land had been allotted long ago, and the fake facades lining the storefronts were enough to keep most of the common citizenry happy. As happy as Californians could be trying to get along with so many millions of people en masse at the supermarket together. Yeah, the beaches are great. Dress warm for the north.

       The office phone rang, “And’,” his father said, “And’, And’…. Are you there?” Herald’s son rolled his eyes and reclined in his chair.

       “Did you get my goddamned medicine from Tucumcari, yet? Boy, your sister’s in New York. She’s wants to see the old house, God knows why,” Herald coughed into the receiver, “You there?” he repeated.

       “She’s looking for childhood, Dad,” Andy replied, knowing that his father was pacing his floor. “Haven’t you figured it right? We’re both waiting for you to take the house off the market. Louise deserves that space.” There was no answer, only the sound of Herald’s T.V. talk show, live from California.

       Herald licked his lips, “Just find her, And’. You do what father says," he growled, "she’s on her imaginary spell again. We got in a fight over the phone. God only knows that house should be condemned,” Herald began coughing again. “The pipes here are leaking through the walls. Your mother’s rugs are getting soaked and all the cats have run off.”

       Sunlight from behind the blinds brightened the office. Andy considered his antique rolodex and listened to his father squeak open the faucets on the kitchen sink full blast, coughing and spitting into the drain.

      Herald said, “Andy, when you find Louise tell her that her mother’s cats are gone.”

      Andy pulled a card from the rolodex that read:


      “I’ll be there tomorrow morning, Herald. To check on the cats and to help you clean out your pipes.” 
Andy hung up the phone.