My book, "The Story of My Universe and Other Stories," was published by Amika Press in July of 2020. It is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other online sellers. Kirkus Review said: "This volume of short stories teeters on the edge of plausibility, exploring everything from sinister cults to the coteries of academia. Elegant, impactful writing in a deliciously unnerving collection." Here are two stories from the book:
SHOOT ME
W hen I was eighteen years old I almost killed a man. It would have been a “hunting accident,” but looking back I can say it would have been less an accident than man- slaughter. Though I’m as pro-gun-control as you can be, I happen to have a Sharpshooters badge from the NRA. When I was twelve, my Dad, who was a sergeant in the U.S. Army, used to take me to the rifle range. There, over the space of a few months, I worked myself up from a Marksman’s badge in small-bore target rifle to Sharp- shooter. God, I loved shooting. And when I was seventeen and could legally go out hunting on my own, I shot up everything in sight.
If you’ve read Flaubert’s Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, you’ll know that in the first part, Julian is a maniacal hunter. He runs through the forest killing everything in sight. I was like that. My license might allow me to shoot only squirrels, pheasants, doves, or geese, but that didn’t stop me from shooting muskrats, ground- hogs, and even robins, bluejays, and every other bird in range. I seldom missed.
One day I was roaming through dense woods and saw a cardinal. I’d shot more than a few that year. I loved to see all those blood red feathers exploding. Only this time, no explosion. From behind a tree came a tall man in a red cap and military fatigues, carrying a hunter’s bow. As he came straight for me, dropping his bow and lifting his quiver over his head and dropping it, his face was almost as red as his cap. He punched me right in the nose, breaking it and decking me, then grabbed my .22/410 gauge over-under, broke it open and dumped out the shells, then flung it by the barrel against a big tree, shattering the stock. Then he leaned over me and took off his cap. He stuffed it in my face, his finger poking through the top. There was no button. Then he drew his finger across his scalp, showed it to me, then wiped the blood on my forehead. He reared back his right leg as if to kick me, then he stopped, said, “You stupid little fucker.” I thought he was done; instead he got on his knees and straddled my chest, pinning my arms. As he pounded my face, I begged him to stop. I was totally helpless, but suddenly, after I said, “Please, mister, it was an accident,” he stopped and asked my name. I told him, and he got off me and stood up, looking down at me and shaking his head. It was as if he’d worn himself out beating me. Then he charged off, picking up his weapons, as though looking for some- one else to pummel. His bloodlust had been even worse than mine.
He had busted my right cheek, knocked out one of my front teeth, and fractured my collar bone. I passed out.
Of course, the guy knew my Dad, and as soon as he could reach a phone called the police, then Dad to warn him that the police would be there soon. He described exactly where I was probably still lying in the woods. Dad and the police found me still unconscious and took me to the hospital. I was released three hours later with a neck brace and my arm in a sling.
“You could have destroyed your entire family, you foolish bastard!” Dad yelled at me.
Instead of taking me home, Dad took me to the police station where I was arrested and charged with reckless endangerment. I spent the night in jail. The guy in the next cell had stabbed his girlfriend with a screwdriver. He kept humming the tune to Neil Young’s “Down By the River”. He scared the hell out of me.
The next day, while I was still in bed, an officer came in, yanked my blanket off and yelled, “Get the fuck up!” Then he took me into a room with a table, three chairs, and no windows. Expecting an officer or detective to come in, I was shocked when my Dad came in with my victim.
Dad sat down and said, “This is Fire Chief James Wiley. He’s the man you shot yesterday.”
“I’m sorry,” I said in a whisper, as he sat down. “It was incredibly stupid and careless of me.”
“Your father promises to have me arrested for assault and battery if I continue to press charges, so I’m letting it drop.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, wondering why I was still there.
“I want you to say, ‘With a razor in my hand,’ ” said the fire chief. “What? Why?”
“We’ll see. Go on.”
I hesitated, looking at my Dad. He said, “Say it, damnit.”
“With a razor in my hand.”
“Again.”
“With a razor in my hand.”
“I think it was him,” the fire chief said to my father. “When he was asking me to stop hitting him, I was pretty sure then.”
“Go on,” said my Dad, pointing at me.
“Did you call me this spring?”
“What?”
“Did you dial seven sevens in the middle of the night back in the spring?”
“Yes,” I answered and put my head down on the table. He’d obviously told my Dad the whole story.
CLOSE CALL
I sit in my Dad’s den, sneakered feet up on an ancient cobbler’s table with shortened legs, sipping my fourteenth beer of the day. An hour earlier, I had been tackled in a driveway by a senior class man and kicked in the head by his young brother after I’d cursed at their father in his own home after having crashed the party to celebrate the man’s retirement from the Army Reserves. I had started a shouting match because both boys thought themselves better than me because my Dad was only an electrician and theirs was a lawyer.
It’s one AM. I settle the bruise on the back of my head gently into the corduroy sofa, pick up the phone and dial 777-7777. Someone picks up after the first ring.
“Hello?” A man’s voice. I don’t answer.
“Hello, who’s there?”
I wait for the man to hang up.
“I know someone’s there. I can hear your breathing. Is it you, Clare? If it’s you, Clare, I’m okay. You can talk to me now. Clare?”
I can tell he is getting increasingly emotional.
I still say nothing.
“Oh,” he says, realizing it isn’t Clare. “Whoever this is, it’s okay.”
I can’t believe the guy won’t hang up. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”
Finally, I say, “Why don’t you just hang up?”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Most people would have hung up.”
“Probably.” Now there is some exasperation. “Who is this?”
“Me. Sitting here with a razor in my hand.”
“Yes?"
“I’m wondering whether I should use it on my wrists.”
With my thumb, I work the softened label off the glass of the beer bottle.
“Why would you even think of doing that?”
“Does that make any difference?” I say with a short laugh.
“I don’t understand."
“Everybody’s got reasons to do it, don’t they? Doesn’t everyone have at least one damned good reason?”
“Reasons, maybe, but not one good enough. Tell me what’s the problem.”
“I’ve got this razor.”
“You said that.”
“I could draw a bath. They say it makes it easier. A nice hot bath and you don’t feel much. And with the lights off.”
“Messier, too.”
I laugh again, briefly.
“Give me one reason, even a bad one, for not doing it.
“Let me ask you a couple questions, okay?"
“Sure.”
“Are you sick?”
“No, but that’s not...”
“Say just yes or no. Are you poor?”
“No, but we’re not rich, if...”
“Please. Do you have parents?"
“A father.”
“Do you like him?”
“Most of the time.”
“Does he treat you badly?"
“I suppose not. What do you mean ‘badly’?”
“Do you have friends?”
“Some.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“No!” I say, angrily.
“I see.” His voice now gentle, thoughtful. “Now let me tell you something. Do you know what leukemia is?”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“Some kind of cancer, right?”
“It’s my blood. It’s rotten. It’s turning bad like spilt milk.” Neither of us speaks for a minute.
“Who is Clare?”
“Clare is my wife. She doesn’t want to be with me right now. She’s at her mother’s.”
“Isn’t there anybody there with you?”
“Just me. I’m still here. I say that to the mirror every morning. ‘I’m still here.’ ”
Another pause.
I whisper, “I think I should go to bed. I’m really drunk.”
“I could tell. I think sleep is a good plan.”
“Were you asleep?” I have to ask.
“I don’t sleep much anymore. I don’t want to miss anything.”
“Like this call.”
“You got it.”
“What’s your name?”
“I’m Fire...no. On second thought, I don’t think I should say.”
“Do you want me to call again?”
“If you need to.”
“You hang in there.”
“You too.”
“I hope your wife comes back soon.”
“Me, too.”
“I don’t really have a razor,” I add softly.
“I know. Maybe I don’t really have leukemia.”
I listen—his breathing is soft and measured, not a trace of excitement. I decide I don’t want to know the truth that just one more question is likely to uncover. Then he hangs up.
I lifted my head up from the table and said, “So that was you.”
“And that was you,” he replied.
“What is wrong with you!” shouted my Dad.
The fire chief held up his hand.
“It’s okay.”
“Are you still sick?” I asked.
“I’m in remission, for now.”
“Did your wife come back?”
“The next day, actually, after I told her some crazy teenager had called me. I was very upset.”
My Dad got up and said, “Let’s go home.”
The fire chief looked at him and said, “I would have dropped the charges anyway. It was an accident.”
“A damned stupid accident,” said my Dad, raising his voice.
“Can’t argue with that,” said the fire chief as both of us stood up.
I put out my hand and we shook, as I said, “Really, I am sorry. About everything.”
“You’re a strange one, I’ll give you that,” he said, turning toward the door.
“Not the word I’d use,” said my Dad.
“Understood,” he said, grinning at him.
I couldn’t hold my tongue. “Can I ask you one question?”
He turned back and we looked at each other.
“Did it make it better or worse that night?”
He turned to my Dad and said, “Believe it or not, it was a blessing.”
RED
Though newly-married, Eliot often stopped off after work at the Isle of White bar to play pool and bitch about work with his colleagues. Usually, he was home by seven, but on this June night in 1985 it was after nine and dark, but for a gibbous moon over Lake Michigan. He’d run the table and was thoroughly drunk on Guinness and Harp Lager black and tans.
Not long ago, he and his wife, Barbara Ann (a name she hated and everyone used except Eliot, who called her Annie), had moved into an apartment on the corner of Touhy and Sheridan. While he applied his bachelor’s degree in English Literature toward a career in public relations and marketing, she taught middle school history. Since she was always home much earlier, she usually cooked, but when Eliot had begun his winning streak, he’d called her and said not to bother. He would eat there at the bar.
Their apartment was right across the street from the beach, and parking was always tough. He tried the lot across Sheridan and, as he and Annie often joked, being born with great parking karma, he found the last remaining spot. It was such a lovely, warm evening, he headed first to the beach. He stood on the water’s edge and watched the moon slide across the calm water like the oldest idea in the uni- verse. As he turned, he staggered and realized how drunk he really was. He sat down and lay back, trying to find a star or two through the city-lights-drenched sky. In seconds he was asleep.
He would later calculate he couldn’t have been asleep for more than fifteen minutes when he awoke to the sound of a loud vehicle with a rough engine pulling into the parking lot. He got up on his left elbow and saw a black or dark green minivan pull up over a curb and onto the sand at the end of the lot closest to the water. Its front and sliding doors opened and from inside came an improbable number of young men and women dressed in a variety of casual cloth- ing. It was, he thought, like the old movie joke when an impossibly large number of people come out of a phone booth or small car.
The driver left the headlights on.
The last person to exit the van was dressed in a brilliant white jumpsuit. He was very thin, almost frail, and tall, but he moved with a studied swinging of his arms as though he was on the verge of dancing. In the headlights, he had the brightest red hair Eliot had ever seen, like a big afro, though the young man was extremely pale.
Eliot tried to count how many there were, but they formed a circle around the redhead and began to move first clockwise then counter, confusing his count.
“Red! We are ready, Red!” they shouted as if on cue.
Red held up his arms and swayed as though conducting an orchestra. Then he clapped his hands, once, and they began to chant. Eliot knew, of course, about cults and charismatic leaders—the Jonestown massacre had occurred only seven years before—and he had no doubt that this was what he was witnessing, though on a tiny scale. Expecting either a babble of prayers or praise to god, he was, even though drunk, profoundly shocked when he understood what they were actually saying:
“Lord, I’m worthless scum. I am shit, I am a stinking bowl of shit. I am disgusting because I disgust myself. How can you allow me to even exist —don’t I make you puke, Lord? No one loves me and they’d be stupid motherfuckers to love me. Lord, hate me too! Lord, I am fuck. I deserve to be fucked by a baseball bat and burned in a car crash! Lord, kill me now and fling my filthy corpse in the lake. It’s the only way!”
And on and on. It all became louder and more profane, with Red continuing to raise his arms up and up, demanding more and louder chanting. At least three times, he shouted, “LORD, PLEASE FUCK US!”
Eliot stood up. He couldn’t be more than twenty feet away and since he’d been lying down, no one had noticed him. He couldn’t help what happened next. He wasn’t particularly religious. If he believed in anything it was in seeking rather than finding. He found Zen sympathetic, but had left the Catholic Church almost a decade ago. Still, this was too much.
“Hey!” he shouted, waving his arms. “Hey!”
Red must have heard him, since they stopped moving and chanting as though he’d flicked the off switch.
Then Eliot heard himself shouting as loudly as he could, “How dare you degrade yourself before your God?!”
Red came out of the circle, looked at Eliot, and with two fingers made a single high whistle sound, then turned away. Everyone turned as one and filed quickly into the minivan. Red climbed into the front passenger seat and closed the door. Not one word had been uttered since Eliot’s interruption.
The minivan backed out over the curb and, gaining speed, rolled through the lot, and, seemingly without looking, the driver backed into the street, braked, then spun the van around and sped off down Touhy.
Whether from shame or disbelief, Eliot didn’t tell Annie anything when he let himself in and found her reading in bed. He quickly got undressed and slipped under the covers. He could tell she was miffed and decided the best thing was to go right to sleep. His last thought that night was, What an idiot. They might have torn me to pieces.
Driving to work the next morning after a cold peck on the cheek and Annie’s, “Please come straight home tonight, okay? You could barely walk last night,” Eliot wondered if it had actually happened. He was only a few blocks away when he stopped and returned to the park- ing lot. He parked next to the beach and got out. The van’s tracks over the curb and onto the sand were there. He could hardly believe it. As he got back into his car, he noticed that a young woman was sitting in a rather beat-up Mustang not far from where he’d parked overnight. He thought about that, as he drove away, and decided he wouldn’t park in that lot again.
For some reason he couldn’t quite explain to himself, he decided not to mention any of it to Annie, at all, except to tell her not to use the parking lot. He said he thought it was poorly lit and unsafe.
For the next few weeks, he’d scanned both Chicago papers, looking in vain for news of Red and his followers. He went to the library and found books that recounted the medieval (and in some countries modern) history of the flagellants, but they tended to focus on the “mortification of the flesh,” through self-whipping, hair shirts and other perversions. Nothing about the mortification of the soul.
To expect that the experience would have no lasting meaning for Eliot other than a very strange and inexplicable memory, a great story to tell over drinks, is to misunderstand Eliot’s opinion of his own behavior. The experience stuck with Eliot less as a strange and inexplicable memory than as an event that revealed something new about himself. He was not only proud of what he’d done, and quickly over his shock at how he might have endangered himself, but he began to think that he was a far braver and even, though marginally, more spiritual man than he’d ever considered himself before. And, most significantly, he soon convinced himself that his mysterious appearance in the dark and his addressing the cult members must have had a profound effect on them.
I might have seemed, I might have been a vision, he exulted one morning. Maybe I’ve become part of their theology? Was I their avenging angel? Their devil incarnate? Did what I say change them? Did I destroy Red’s power over them, or strengthen it?
Countless times he went over the memory, what he’d heard, what he’d said, and, most of all, their reaction. That was the real mystery. Wouldn’t the normal response have been to yell at him to go away, or to threaten him, or to ask him who the hell he thought he was interrupting their ceremony? Shouldn’t Red have said or done something to neutralize the impact of Eliot’s outburst as quickly as possible, either by saying something to Eliot or to his followers? Instead, not a word, just that single whistle, and they had filed, silent as spirits, into the van and sped away. And they had sped away, as if to escape as quickly as possible.
Though part of him knew it was laughable, the one consequence he couldn’t accept was that nothing had come of his intervention in a blasphemous Walpurgisnacht.
That October, on a Monday, as he was driving to work, the morning radio news segment reported that a man with bright red hair in a white jumpsuit had been found washed up on the Morse Street beach, largely decomposed. No identification was expected any time soon.
Eliot spent the rest of the day in an unbelieving haze. It reminded him of the time his Dad, a doctor, had asked him to pee in a jar. Only four years old, he simply couldn’t believe, in his innocence, that such a thing could be asked of him. Then, two days later his Dad yelled at him, and he realized he hadn’t imagined it.
The next morning Eliot heard the same report, only to realize at the end that they were talking about a second death, again, white jumpsuit and red hair, near Lincoln Park. They repeated, “No identification is expected any time soon.”
Knowing he should have done this yesterday, he turned around and headed home to look up the nearest precinct police station. He soon came upon a police car idling near a school bus stop. He parked and walked up to the officer behind the wheel.
“Excuse me, officer,” he said, trembling a bit, “Can you tell me where the nearest precinct station is?”
“What’s the matter, son? You look nervous.”
“I need to tell someone in charge about a thing I saw a couple of months ago.”
“What thing?” The officer smiled wider.
“You know about the two bodies washed up on the beach?”
“Hell, don’t I?” he said, almost laughing, “I was the first guy there yesterday.”
“I saw a young man with red hair and white overalls with some kind of cult...”
“Cult? What cult?”
“I’m not sure. That’s what I need to talk to someone about.”
“Come around,” said the officer, pointing his thumb at the passenger’s side. “Get in.”
Once Eliot had slid beside the officer, he thought, What the hell have I done?
“Am I in trouble, officer?”
The officer ignored this.
Eliot told him everything he could remember, leaving out the fact that he was drunk.
“What were you doing on the beach in the dark?” Eliot noticed a hint of suspicion behind the question.
“I got home late from work and it was beautiful night,” he answered, as briefly as possible.
The officer paused for some time, thinking it through. Then he turned to Eliot and said, “We hear about cults all the time. Every little nut with a Bible and a big mouth and the hots for young girls, or boys, or both, tries to start one up. Some get lucky.”
“You’re not telling me everything.”
“Of course not. Now get back in your car and forget all about it.”
“Am I in danger?”
“I’d stay away from that beach if I were you. You’re lucky they didn’t beat the shit out of you, or worse.
“Now write down your name, address and phone number.”
He took out a pad and pen, shaking his head and handed it to Eliot.
“I just wish to hell you’d kept your mouth shut that night. You might have seen something that would really help.”
“I’m sorry.” He handed back the pad and pen.
“Go on, Eliot.”
“Goodbye,” said Eliot as he got out of the car. He began to walk back to his car, then he turned and went back.
“There’s one more thing.”
Silence.
“It’s probably nothing, but the next morning I left for work and then I just couldn’t quite believe what had happened, so I turned around and went back.”
“Back where?”
“To the parking lot. I drove right to where they’d driven over a curb and onto the sand. I got out just to see if there were tire tracks, which there were.”
“So?”
“There was a young woman in an old Mustang sitting in the lot watching me.”
“Watching you? How do you know that?”
“Maybe that’s too strong a word. She was just sitting there, but she was backed into the parking space.”
“So, big deal!”
“So I shouldn’t worry about it?”
“Either they sent her there to find out who spoiled their party and she would have no other explanation for some dope getting out of his car to look at their tire tracks other than that you were the guy, or, more likely, it doesn’t mean a damned thing.”
Eliot turned and walked away. He had never felt so scared in his life.
That night Eliot told Annie all about it. She was just as frightened as he was. Later that night, they went out on the fire escape stairs, which looked out on the lake. They held hands, the apartment lights off, and watched the parking lot. She had him repeat the whole story, including everything the officer had said, and when he was done, she said, “We need to move.”
But as the weeks went by and there were no more stories about red-haired men washed up on the beach, Eliot and Annie spoke less and less of what had occurred. The whole incident, even the deaths, seemed to take on the quality of a distant rumor that didn’t concern them. Eliot soon rationalized his fear as totally unfounded, and
Annie simply refused to talk about it, not that Eliot was eager to go over it again.
On a Saturday two weeks later, Annie was visiting her mother when he got home at two PM from playing tennis. When he unlocked the front door, it was chained. Somehow, he knew immediately that they had been robbed. He ran down the three floors of stairs to the lobby, outside and around to the fire escape stairs. When he reached the back door to his apartment, it was wide open, window broken. Enraged, he charged in without thinking. There was no one there. The robbery had taken place maybe hours before. Their small color TV was gone and his component stereo system as well. Eggshell clung to the corner of the frame of a large wedding photo, with a pool of yolk and white on the floor. In the bathroom, the toilet bowl was full, which he quickly flushed, thinking to himself it was necessary and maybe unwise. Could shit be evidence?
But as he reached for the phone to call the police, he saw that he wasn’t alone after all. Though it was a spacious two-bedroom apartment, they didn’t use the second bedroom except as storage. The door was always kept closed. It was now open. From where he stood in the living room, he could see a seated woman’s crossed legs. His first impulse was to run from the apartment and find a phone, then the woman called to him sweetly, “Come here, Eliot.”
“Who are you?” he demanded, thoroughly frightened, but taking several steps toward the bedroom door.
“Come here, honey. I’ll tell you. No need to be afraid of a young lady, especially not me, Eliot.”
“Are you alone?”
“What do you think? You’re afraid, aren’t you?”
Disliking the challenge, he stepped forward and through the doorway saw an attractive brunette dressed in a short denim skirt and a white t-shirt, shoeless, sitting in an old black beanbag chair they never used. Frowning, she raised a handgun and, before he could move or shout out, sent a stream of water at his feet.
“Sorry, I guess I lied.” She giggled. “But that little squirt was all I have to make you afraid, as you can see,” she said, shooting some water into her mouth and swallowing.
“You stole my stuff,” he said, turning away, still afraid. “I’m calling the police.”
He picked up the phone but saw the cord was cut.
“Come here, silly. Let’s talk, Eliot.”
He returned to the doorway. She re-crossed her legs suggestively.
“How do you know my name?”
“How else, the mail on your coffee table.”
“You stole my stuff, damnit.”
“You said that. Actually I didn’t steal anything. I told the others to leave it, but as usual they said they don’t take orders from a slut. The egg, though, that was me.”
Now he was angry.
“Get the hell out of here!” he shouted, “I can’t believe you’re sitting there like you’re a guest or something. You fucking robbed us.”
“No, I didn’t. I told you. But I am here to rob your wife.”
“What?”
Within seconds she was standing in front of him stark naked. She’d pulled off her t-shirt and dropped her skirt, which must have already been unzipped. She wore nothing else.
“Now be a man, and Red will let you alone.”
Then she had her arms around him and thrust her entire body at him. Her lips tasted like lip balm. Her body smelled slightly sour in a way Eliot didn’t want to consider. He was human, after all, and aroused, but he felt far more fear than attraction for this little beauty. He struggled but she clung even harder, thrusting her hips into his. There was nothing else he could do; he punched her in the chest as hard as he could. She fell back, landing on the side of the chair, then slumped gracelessly to the floor. It took her only moments to recover.
“I’m sorry, but you wouldn’t stop,” he said, and extended his hand to help her up, which she took. “Did you say ‘Red’?”
Standing, she rubbed her left breast where he’d struck her, then dressed quickly, stuck the squirt gun in her jeans pocket, and ran from the room.
“Don’t call the police,” she yelled from the kitchen, “They can’t help. Only I can save you from becoming white!”
“Wait! What do you mean?”
She came back into the living room, stepping slowly.
“You must be consecrated. You saw us at prayer. That was you that night, laughing at us, wasn’t it?”
Eliot almost denied it, but thought, What is the point?
“I wasn’t laughing. I was shouting. I said, ‘How dare...’ ”
“Stop!” she cried, “It was blasphemy!”
She calmed herself for a moment.
“You saw us at prayer, and you must be consecrated or you will become white.”
“White? Unless I have you?”
Finally, Eliot understood.
“Yes. Fuck me and you’ll never hear from us again.”
Eliot looked at her more closely. She seemed tired, bruised, and weak. But she was all the more beautiful being so vulnerable. I just want it to be over, he thought.
“I just want it to be over,” he said.
“This will end it.”
“Come here,” Eliot heard himself say. “Take those off.”
Ten minutes later, he rolled off the couch, stood up, and said, “Please go now.”
“Don’t you want to know my name?” she said as she put on her clothes.
She handed him the squirt gun. He took it without taking his eyes off of her.
“Okay.”
“I don’t have a name. None of us have names anymore.”
“Fine.”
“You don’t either. You have only his gift. Red’s gift.”
“The consecration,” Eliot mumbled, stunned. It had all been so extreme and sexy in a way he’d never experienced.
“Yes. What we all have. His gift.”
She stroked his cheek and pecked him on the lips.
“His gift,” he repeated.
As she left the room, she looked at him for the last time. “Yes, his sickness. His AIDS.”
No comments:
Post a Comment