The stars are so thick (in rivers and ways) they bend down to trouble your sleep. Coyotes pick off the chickens one by one. Trees but not many: utility poles but not many (and shorter than you know): instead of grass, rusting random bits of Americana no larger than a junkyard poodle
*
Listen carefully or not at all. The streets tell a history as thin as the pavement: Saddle Sore Trail, Last Dollar Trail, Gunslinger Trail
Yes, the S-2, running somewhat north and south, reminds you that the stagecoach went by – and the RV park (Stagecoach Trails) confirms it. Yes again, Ginny, if you want to feel like Mark Twain saw the same desert views you’re viewing. No harm, I suppose, but I’m pretty sure he took the northern route
*
The morning I left for the coast the yellow eye of the sun quickly burned a hole through the silver gelatin of fog.…
“I just need to be by the water,” Sadie says as we sit out on the patio, after dinner and our evening walk, watching the burnt orange sun descend beyond the wavering elm trees that separate our property from our neighbor’s. “That’s all I need—just the water.”
Sadie’s been feeling gravity’s pull, again, I can tell—I can always tell—how she gets, sort of retreats within herself, with a faraway gaze like she’s somewhere else.
“The water,” I say. “What water?” I ask, and I take a sip of my beer, a summer shandy though I’m not a summer shandy person—give me an IPA—but Sadie bought these this afternoon, her “accomplishment for the day,” her words, and so I thought I’d give one a try but it’s not for me.…
She was almost out of my jurisdiction. When you set the distance parameters, it’s best to be realistic considering the weather and person. Una Manzini had the kind of smile that made dandelions blush; a free spirit exceptional in matters both chemical and unnerving. A Harvard alum who studied abroad at Cambridge, except when she told the story on our first date, it was mostly just raves and beans that semester. Una only mentioned Reginald once. He was just some footballer she’d shacked up with in the country that summer when they lived and loved off the land.
I still couldn’t figure why she’d chosen me out of the rest within a forty-mile radius. I was a stagnant fool in a cushy coaching gig with nothing but spare time.…
My last ride of the night stumbled out of the pub, and I slid my passenger seat forward to accommodate his massive frame. Thick black hair spilled out of a paint-stained Boston Red Sox cap. Crammed in the backseat, he rested his elbows on jean-torn knees and planted his face in oven-mitt hands. His knuckles were scarred and the veins bulged. Those weren’t scars from framing houses or laying brick, I thought. I knew a fighter’s hands when I saw them.
My Lyft emblem glowed purple in the dark night, and after riding in silence on the desolate Brockton, Massachusetts streets I asked him what he does for a living. A plastic tarp blew in the wind on a boarded-up house.
“I’m a carpenter,” he said without turning away from the window.…
1986 My sister and her husband called Wednesday and told me Dad had molested their daughter. Over the weekend. At his house. He was babysitting her. Another sister told them the previous week that they should be concerned because Dad had fondled her from seven until she left home at seventeen.
The four-year-old. . . pain, pediatrician, abrasion, evidence. By law, the doctor filed a report. My sister . . . he put his pinkie in her, he had her hold his penis, something thick, like toothpaste, came out. It’s what play therapy revealed. Pedophiliac. I never knew the word before.
1987 Our father pleaded no contest on two counts of child molestation against his granddaughter. There will not be a jury trial. We are relieved.…
“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.” ― Oscar Wilde
Fear. You start at the carousel on the first day of your working summer. She’s a big old girl—more than twenty pounds of metal perpetually rusting since the sixties, a mass of carefully crafted boards screwed to her sides. You’ve lived in the same town since you were five years old, rode the carousel since six and still you find her beautiful. And now the conductor is you, a girl in a headband and ponytail combo with a t-shirt that hugs all your unflattering curves. The conductor is you and the button you press, bright green with potential.
It’s the first day of your working summer and the crowds are non-existent.…
