God-With-Us was walking through a Birmingham suburb, followed by a large crowd. Many who lived in that neighborhood came out on their front porches, angered that the crowd was trampling their lawns and setting off their car alarms. Assuming it was another peaceful protest, they shouted obscenities and waved their firearms in the air.
But one woman ran out to God-With-Us, saying, “I saw you healing people on the news! Please come inside and help my mother. She is terribly sick with the flu.”
So, God-With-Us went in and healed the woman. She got out of bed and, seeing the crowd, began making iced tea and brownies for everyone. God-With-Us rose to leave, but could not even make it to the front door because the crowd kept shoving another sick or injured or disabled person in front of him.…
It was the dead of winter, 1875. Pitch black as coal it was, and foggy. You couldna see your hand in front of your own face. That’s how we’d gotten off course, you see. We’d just left a small school of cod outside Lewisporte and was bringing TheDeluge ‘round north by St. Anthony’s Tip, hoping for better luck. We was further out than we had any right to be ‘cause we got turned around in that fog. We was all standing on the deck, peering through that thick blanket, trying to see any kind of thing to show us where we was going, or how to get back to where we’d been. Then, I swear to you Tristan, somewhere out there we heard a screeching unlike anything we’d ever heard.…
Once upon a time, there was an artist who hated to paint. In the house to the left of the artist was a writer who hated to write, and next to his house was a musician who hated playing instruments. These three lived on Avenue Street in a city called Grouping of Buildings. Every weekday the three would arise in the morning and do what they hated most. The artist would begin by laboriously cleaning her brushes from yesterday, the writer would sharpen his pencils, and the musician would tune their instruments. By 8:00 o’clock each day they would begin their work. By 12:00 o’clock they would gather for sandwiches and tea, and grumble about what each of them had completed in the morning. They spent their days as such, and by the time the weekend came, they were glad not to do their tasks and instead enjoyed each other’s company and going to the farmer’s market on Sundays.…
I liked her best when she was puking her guts out, more than once, in a mini dress, can’t remember the color, maybe cream, fall 1998, rural New England, by a big tree, then another, after the dance at which I’m pretty sure she didn’t dance but at which I’m absolutely sure she did a great deal of underage drinking, after which I helped a few guys prop her up, walk her back to her room in the little house for upperclassmen where I put her to bed, where she puked again, all over the spread on her twin bed, which I’m pretty sure I later inherited. I do love a hand-me-down. Vulnerability. Rigid self-appointed authority demoted, somewhat disgusting, disarmed. Then back down the gravel road in the dark, across the little causeway into co-ed Kendrick, down the stairs to the room I shared with a round-faced Ritalin addict who sold drugs out of our mini-fridge.…
The old couple have vanished from my view. Hard to believe: they were there for so long. Gone too, the snatches of their rumpus. The tiffs and bouts grew louder as the man’s mobility and faculties diminished – but, even then, they seemed to me perfect companions, he the milder one, she, the more forceful, though half his size.
Their apartment was adjacent to mine and a few floors below, and I’d catch her cleaning windows or pegging dishcloths, a diminutive demon, tackling tasks with vim. She loved leaning over the rail and flapping towels. Every morning she swept the narrow balcony, claiming it with the clatter of her broom. Her husband would often sit out there on his own, absorbed for hours in a hobby, hunched over a jigsaw, or gluing matchsticks together, plump fingers at work.…
