Author Archives: Qu Literary Magazine

21 May, 2018

NEIGHBORLY

No more borrowed sugar—

you want the mixer,

the red costly one

that churns my granules,

your yolks, my flour

into upside-down pineapple envy.

You want the oven that heats

your hunger to a blister,

and an extra Band-aid for your heel

hoofing it up our long driveway.

You want the refrigerator

turning its cold shelf to your requests

for perfectly proportioned leftovers, and—

for your son’s Camp Susque show-and-tell—

you want our daughter’s hamster

scurrying beneath the shade

of the hefty appliance,

which we will gladly U-Haul

to your back door,

the one where good neighbors meet

to discuss shared dandelions, lawnmowers, 

power tools, husbands, 

one of which I refuse—in this 

baked-on summer heat—to lend

even to you.

21 May, 2018

HEMINGWAY’S DAUGHTER

“We got some tragic news. My niece, Raquel, took her own life yesterday morning. She had not been suffering depression that anyone knew of. She did have a headache the past week and said she didn’t feel like herself and just didn’t feel good. My sister, had stayed overnight at their house Sunday night because she was babysitting Lucas Monday. She found Raquel who was a beautiful person inside and out.”

From an email sent Tue 8/1/2010

 

&

 

She’s driven this far from Wisconsin across Minnesota almost to the Dakotas. There’s a smell that gathers here in the dampness of the furrows, the sweat of the Swede, the Flemish, the Norwegian, the broken soil. Dirt here chimes dry, not as rich as the black soil to the south in Iowa. The wind blows fiercer, fewer shade trees, more poplar and cottonwood, hackberry and shagbark hickory. She can drop the car off and walk into the bare trees and falling shadows. Freezing is painless. Peaceful. Seductive. Or she can drive home to Wisconsin, return to her husband and infant.

 

&

 

I know only the bare outlines of the story so I must imagine the young blonde woman at an interstate rest stop. Named for a film star, she was my best friend’s niece. Raquel leaves Friendly’s family restaurant, lingering in the electronic doorway, as if gathering herself, letting the electronic doors almost close on her. Walking into the FOOD, GAS, LODGING parking lot, she can’t remember how long she’d sat in the leathery booth staring at the two packets of Splenda sweetener beside her water glass. The yellow wrapper and the words America’s Favorite Sweetener held a message for her. The blue print seemed to loosen, the letters floating freely and reordering themselves into new words and shapes. Toll-free became tree lol the “f” vanishing. Most of her meal still lies on the Formica table beside the menu. Ice tea sips its dreaming pale lemon. Sweet potato fries drink from a pool of ketchup. Her appetite like the “f” on the Splenda packet has vanished. She’s lost ten pounds since having the baby and Edwin says she needs to gain them back.

 

&

 

Was it just before noon she’d left home in her Honda and headed west? Now almost dusk, she finds herself midway. Her car waits to take her farther west into the prairie, and although she stares at the keys (and Splenda wrapper) in her hand she’s unsure which is hers, the shellacked red or the bruised wormy apple vehicle. Tree-free. Her husband has left message after message on her voice mail. The baby’s missing her. I must not think of the baby as ‘my’ baby.

 

&

 

Walking through the parking lot, her silky hair (the color of winter corn) looped in an unwashed ponytail swings through the back of her baseball cap. Petite, slender. Her fine skin, a sugar snow falling in the night, her oval face that of a high school homecoming queen. She will never mention the champagne-colored chiffon or the crown placed on her head by the captain of the football team. Neither will she speak of the St. Paul Farmers State Bank calendar that featured her as Miss April and Miss December. College dresses  her in a American Studies degree, and she shivers entering the working world wearing nothing. Her first job—party planner, her second, volunteer fireman. She meets Edwin, a farmer and roofer, and learns how to plant and harvest a garden.

 

&

 

In toeless clogs, her feet seem not to mind the February weather. She stumbles, twisting her ankle.

 

&

 

Edwin, Wisconsin-born and bred, thinks he’s been blessed by the Lutheran divinity. Himself a light-haired man of average looks, he’d married Raquel, a Norwegian beauty. How could he know it was the fierce Norse god, Odom, who sanctified their bond—thunderous God of blood and violent death? He and his six-month-old son, Lucas, are waiting supper on her—turkey meatloaf and beet salad from the Red Owl deli. Hadn’t she mentioned driving to her sister’s in Minnesota? “I’ve left the baby’s formula bottles in the refrigerator.” He tries her cell phone again although the ringer must be off.

 

&

 

Outside, the day moves; inside the car, it stops. She turns the ignition, shifts into reverse, doors locking her inside. It’s better today, even if the sky is shapeless and thick. The last of the light drifts like snow birds weary of the same circle. Raquel pictures bathing her infant; setting him into the shallow warm water of the baby bath on a blue towel, his feet crinkly-pink and his toes trying to talk. The dusking sun watches her drive, east, homeward. Another voicemail: the baby crying in the foreground. Her fault, her fault. She’s turned off the interstate—Minneapolis-St. Paul, the twin cities where she grew up, falling behind her. Rustic Wisconsin welcomes her. Welcome to folks who know your face and to places where there are no strangers.

 

&

 

Her tongue feels long, too pink, and rough like a cat’s licking at the cracked corner of her lips. What would her mother say if she had kept driving, if America’s Sweetheart simply disappeared, and left her baby behind? What would Edwin think? She pictures the first night they made love. Edwin puts his arms around her and walks her to the edge of the bed. His nose presses her lavender tank top, and then he unpeels it, lifting her arms light as bird bones. She tells him he is the golden nectar, his sex better than white cake and marmalade. She parts his lips with her tongue, washing his body with her cat’s tongue.

 

“She loved life and was so happy. She leaves behind her wonderful husband, and her adorable 1 year-old son, Lucas. Raquel absolutely loved being a mom. She was loved by everyone who knew her.”

                From an email sent Tue 8/1/2010

 

&

 

It’s the story of an extended religious family, a loyal loving Midwestern one that saw the darkness through doilies, baby showers, and church recipe books. A world where good triumphs over bad, where family means shelter, and God answers prayer. It’s a family that can’t imagine a new mother not trusting herself around her newborn, a mother afraid she might hurt her child. A mother not aglow in her infant love-bubble, but one immersed in blackness. Raquel’s returning home, perhaps having made up her mind. A world where if you keep a stiff upper lip or confess, everything will work out.

 

&

 

The last time I saw Raquel she was standing beside her aunt’s (and my friend’s) hospital bed, not exactly beside, but a few steps back as if hesitant or shy about being fully present. Raquel’s mother Joanne was there, too. My friend, the jokester, teasingly asked personal prying questions. Are you dating someone this time that smells normal, not like lighter fluid? Is that why you dumped that other guy? Do you think you’ll have kids? Raquel answered her aunt in a soft voice, winsome, uncertain. Then, leaning over my friend, and after she’d cut a slice of pizza into many small pieces, she fed each one to her, stopping to lift the cold Coke and bendy straw to her lips. You’ll be a good mother, my friend said. Joanne agreed. I can’t wait to be a grandmother.

 

&

 

Raquel had just met the man who would be her husband.

 

&

 

Raquel bought a white chocolate blueberry cake, her sister Sofia’s favorite dessert, and French macrons, for Jerry, her brother-in-law. Once, she might have picked almond cake with orange-flower water syrup for herself but now it makes her think of white cockroaches, the whiskery albino one that Edwin mentioned stepping on–the one making love to a crumb. Yes, earlier she’d almost stopped at Sofia’s house in Stillwater to deliver the sweets and say goodbye. Her sister and husband would be flying to Florida for an island cruise. But she couldn’t stop. They kept the furnace turned up too high and the heat settling into the living room smelled of rotting minnows. Raquel usually wanted to unzip her skin. The last time she visited a few of Jerry’s buddies had dropped in and he made jokes about last Thanksgiving when the sisters had hosted the dinner feast. The eggnogs we toasted were the best part. You should have seen the Thanksgiving meal Sofia and Raquel cooked. We had to give most of it to the dogs. They forgot to take the gizzards out, but it didn’t matter because the turkey was still frozen when they brought it out to the table! Jerry slapped his knee, regaling his guffawing buddies. How about the time Raquel made the soufflé with a sponge inside it? Those little yellow crumbs she said were egg yolk. Sofia had laughed so hard she choked.

 

&

 

Seeing the familiar signs, Raquel fears something irrevocable is about to happen when she reaches her destination, she’ll commit an act that will sing down through generations. She blocks Edwin’s face, an unpronounceable grief in his eyes. The red car stops at the light near the Eau Claire Holiday Inn where she first met her husband. His friends call him Ed (handsome Ed) but she likes the lost-in-time sound of Edwin. They’re slow dancing to “Red Roses for a Blue Lady.” An oldies tune. He bends to kiss her earlobe, his lips moving to the bottom of her neck. Your voice smells like fresh cut grass, he says. He stands a head taller than Raquel, his fingers are long and she asks if he plays the guitar. Laughingly, he tells her he’s a roofer, that he has his own shake shingle business, with each shingle having to be individually and gently placed, and then nailed twice. He loves fragrant woods—cypress and redwood and cedar—he loves the weight of nails in his pocket. He owns an acreage; he raises a few chickens, too. Like Raquel, his Scandinavian ancestry shows in his hair, even lighter than hers, and his eyes. His incisors protrude slightly, and give his mouth a rabbity look that she finds endearing. Unlike her he’s not Norwegian but Swedish.

 

&

 

She loves Hemingway’s novels and she’s read of his death, how he pulled the trigger with his toe. Later Edwin hates how he had taught her how to use the shotgun. How to handle it, when she asked him to show her, needing, wanting to know in case he were ever not home and she had to defend herself and the baby. Pointing out the acreage’s being off the beaten track. Isolated. Later, he buries the shotgun. Wishing he had buried it in the river in the first place.

 

&

 

She may have gone on the internet and asked the question: “How do you shoot yourself with a shotgun?” Thief River Falls. Black River Falls. They called this New Scandinavia, Minnesota and Wisconsin, they spoke their language for generations, and they churned sweet cream butter. I would think the soft palate roof of the mouth; bullet passes through easily into the brain. They honeymoon in the famous Texas hill country where rivers flow in an emerald current between white tablet rocks. As the road twists down, waterfalls feed secluded pools. Rock slabs float in the middle of the green. She loves how there’s no bridge, only a slab of rock covered with moss. The water is fast-moving but not deep. You can see tire tracks in the algae. Raquel loves Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Here is where Thumbelina could boat across on a tulip leaf and oar with two white horse hairs. They drive east into Louisiana’s swamp country. She writes to tell her older sister Sofia, who looks so unlike Raquel, that few believe they are siblings, that she fought a gar fish out of the water.

 

&

 

They celebrate their anniversary at the same Holiday Inn— Raquel pregnant, the pool shimmering in the sun. She knows it has sprouted, the seedling in the soil of her belly, as she slips off her thong, taking hold of him, his arms, as if he’s the ladder that lowers her into the deep dazzling water. Her belly kicks, almost as if the thrust is meant to push him away. Her hands let go, the rung isn’t there, and she slides into the blue eye of the peacock’s plumage. Edwin lunges into the water. He swims her in. She floats, the water warm, slippery like jelly, melting too.  Edwin, listen, she tells him, breathlessly, after the baby’s born I’ll plant wild blue lupine flowers and milkweed next to the house. The Karner blue butterfly will come. She describes the luminous and silvery dark-blue of the males, and then the females, purple-blue with orange crescent edges. The arrival of the blue butterflies will celebrate their son’s birth. Did you know the author of Lolita wasn’t just a writer but also a butterfly collector, and was the one who first identified them? Nothing under heaven or earth would the Karner blue butterfly eat other than wild blue lupine flowers. He’s listening but drifting as she talks on (in her lulling, almost singsong voice) describing the seven-spotted beetle, the evil predator of larval blue butterfly eggs. Only the blue lupine feeds the larvae, not wild lily of the valley, not starflower or sweet fern. Is that boring? she asks.

 

&

 

Edwin has shown no one the letter Raquel left him, a letter explaining her unworthiness, telling him how she wasn’t herself, how something murky and dim had gotten inside her. She told him when her water broke, something popped in her brain. She’d come uncorked. The amniotic fluid—her champagne had lost its bubble. For months after giving birth, each time she peed something kept dripping out of her, hitting the water softly. Her body kept making her give birth again and again. And now  the thing inside her was directing her.

 

&

 

He would never fly with her toNorway where they’d taste seagull eggs and elk and reindeer roast. Elk they say is dry and wild. The smaller reindeer much sweeter. Cloudberries for dessert—arctic gold, silvery-yellow, apple-tart.

 

&

 

There are gifts everywhere in the living room where family and friends gather. Raquel’s mother and aunt host the shower. Deep powder-blue carpet comforts her feet fat from pregnancy. Sinking into a Queen Anne chair she watches the sheer lavender curtains lifting and billowing in the breeze. A three-tiered white cake with layers of strawberries and real cream invites everyone for a finger swipe. It’s a Boy. Raquel wears a paper hat with all the gift bows and ribbons taped to its brim. Blue stationery Thank You’s for the sail boat, the flannel sleepers, the footsie pajamas, the crystal picture frames, the crib, the stroller, the swing-set, the Three Bears bathtub. Nine months of pregnancy and how happy she’s been. A boy, inside her belly, the motion of his kicking, his swimming, comforts her. She’s safe with him there like the blue butterfly finding the wild blue lupine flower.

 

&

 

A blacktop two-lane takes her to the acreage; the new ranch house with the cedar-shingled roof stands out, and she’s always preferred the two-lane life to the six-lane. Edwin meets her in the driveway with their son in his arms. The baby’s blue eyes appear so bright they could have been painted in. A perfect boy with blond curls. We missed you, honey, he says, not asking where she was. My sister called, Red Owl has a sale on chicken cutlets. Do you want her to pick you up some?

 

&

 

Raspberry mouth on her nipple, the baby’s lips take hold; his tiny hands toss as though rabbit paws. Bending close, she is counting her baby’s eyelashes. Raquel has freshly bathed herself and her baby. The lamp light is shining on five-month-old Lucas, his lungs had been preparing to breathe the world, sensing the touch of her palm, his heart already beating. Now the heartbeat has its own life and no longer needs her. How easy it would be to save him.  Kneeling on the deep-soft comfort blanket to change the baby’s Pamper, (a dessert of a blanket, chocolate mousse and whipped cream) she silently calls (beseeches) God to make her a better mother. The picture window lets in more sun, and then a ladybug drops onto the blanket. She’s always loved these insects, their freckled red shell and feelers. The soft blanket must be a sea of quicksand for the ladybug, now frantic, peddling with all of her legs, and getting nowhere. The ladybug is drowning until she rescues it. The baby’s blue eyes widen, they sparkle. How easy it would be to lift the cuddly blanket and fold it over his face.

 

&

 

She reads Being Ernest: John Walsh unravels the mystery behind Hemingway’s suicide. “I am eating blue food to try to get rid of the blackness,” she tells Ernest. “Blueberries, blue cheese, blue plums. Do you think it will do any good?” Do they really know nothing of the estrogen and progesterone faucet that pregnancy turns on, then off? In the blackness of post-partum depression she’s haunted by gar fish in the warm green water. In fragments of sleep she breathes on her wrist and the gold bracelet with three engraved hearts (Edwin, Raquel, Lucas) breaks.

 

“Edwin finally told Lucas that his mom was in Heaven. Lucas started making up stories because no one was allowed to tell him that his mom died (or that he even had a mom). I don’t know what he knows other than that. Yes, Lucas looks like his mom and fortunately has her personality!”

From an email

 

&

 

On the last night of her life Raquel’s face has the look of calm as she lifts the sheet and slides into the bed, after all the months of sleeplessness, the night with its hinges and bearings, its wrenches tapping on the radiator of her brain. The night before she had not yet made up her mind, and ploughed her scalp with her fingers, pulling out her own hair. This night, the night she’s made up her mind, she thinks of breeze and a picnic table with a checkered red and white tablecloth. Mama, who made the sky? Who made the blue? When it rains, is God weeping? Then she’s running barefoot on a summer night through the dew-drenched long grasses, her skin drinking in the cool, her eyes chasing the moths clouding the yard light. She and Sofia roasting marshmallows playing statue and the fireflies have come out, winking into the dark, brave little bringers of light, preyed upon by mosquitoes. Tomorrow her mother comes to baby-sit, she’s told her that she is helping her friend Bev empty the clutter from her closets, her friend who lives in Madison. The baby will be better off after tomorrow. Not ready, not able, has no words, not yet. He would be miserable, hate her, and if he knew her unworthiness, he would have to bite down on the word mother.

 

&

 

Online, she clicks Girls with Shotguns; clicks 10 Rules for Women Getting the Right Fit and Mount. Doesn’t need to know about finding her dominant eye or stock height, or whether a 12-bore holds more pellets than a 20-bore, or how the gun’s kick will affect her.No one found the letter, her letter, which (or is it that) I imagine just as I picture the letter that Edwin writes on the ceiling of his bedroom, since he’s moved into the spare room where he keeps his tools, the room that smells of cypress shingles. He can’t sleep in the bed that she shared with him, the writing was worse there, over and over the words unspoken to the living, spoken now to the ceiling, his finger scripting the words. Our son is now my son. I erase your name that bleeds across his birth certificate by the word. Mother. I’m making myself forget the meadow of your skin and lips, your gentleness. I forget my hand and how it would sink into your softness, (a hand does not sink). Raquel, you weren’t ligament and muscle but the dough of almonds, the nectarine, and the blushing violets. The pure black of your death makes it hell to think of you. His finger stops. I put those words into his mind. What he writes over and over and over. I loved you. Now you are dead to me.

 

&

 

He’s on the roof of the house nailing shingles when the call comes. Do they tell him on the phone? Raquel’s youngish mother, a pretty woman divorced from Raquel’s father, breathes, almost panting with the news there’s been a terrible accident. Now she’s wheezing, and suddenly stops gulping air. “What’s wrong? Is it the baby?” The mother shaking can hardly hold the flip-phone to her ear. The butterfly spots, silvery dark blue spots, scattered black spots circle in blood. Her head. Her beautiful head. Someone has shot Raquel, the shotgun, next to her, against her. Why? Why? Raquel had been planning on planting wild lupine and milkweed next to the house. The paper wasp and ant strike terrible blows.

 

“My sister, Raquel’s mom, is doing well. She goes to visit her grandson about every 3 weeks. It’s only an hour’s drive for her. She picks him up and takes him to a movie or to parks to play and then out to eat. He’s now in kindergarten. He is the happiest, adorable 5-year old. He always has a big smile. His dad isn’t very nice to my sister. He just wishes she’d go away. I think it’s a reminder of Raquel. He never lets her take him to her house for a weekend.”

                From an email

 

&

 

He finds the letter (the one I’ve pictured) before they do, in the medicine cabinet taped to his shaving cream.

Edwin: I love you and I love our son. It’s me I can’t stomach. Mom just got here and everything is black or turning filthy gray. If I could I’d vomit the bad colors, fling the puke into the toilet, and wash my hands. Minutes ago this happened to the toast and strawberry jam and green banana she insisted I eat. I gag again and throw up until my vomit runs clear. I rest my head on the rim of the toilet. Mom knocks. “Hey, kid, don’t you feel well?” Oh, Edwin, my thoughts have begun to talk in voices. A hard thing I have to do, but I have to for us, for our family.

 

&

 

The family wants everyone to know that Raquel was a loving mother. That she adored her son. That the newborn did not terrify her and being a mother hadn’t crushed her with its weight. Some elemental hormone had been added or subtracted from her body, causing the blackness she didn’t understand, the emptiness she was ashamed of.

 

&

 

Edwin dreams of Raquel pregnant and the Holiday Inn pool shimmering. She rolls onto her back, her hair streaming hyacinth. “A pregnant mermaid,” he says, her eyes that can spot perch in calm green water, beckoning his. They see every quiver. Raquel so beautiful, but now she frightens him. He’s afraid to breathe the air’s heaviness—frangipani, myrrh, the death of lotus blossoms that drift on the water. Come lie in the thorns with me, come with me to eat thistle. He still wakes in the night panting, sweating even as a cobweb of ice crawls over his skin, the cold cobweb creeping into his mouth so his insides shiver. Even a photograph of Raquel smiling causes the gray cobweb to start crawling. His mother hears him call out and softly knocks. In her arms she rocks his son. I make myself not think of you, pictures I’ve taken down and given to your mother, all your clothes, your books, I’ve disposed of. You would not know a wife or a woman ever lived here.

 

&

 

 What about Raquel wearing a velvet stovepipe hat and smiling with her mouth and her aquamarine eyes, the girl clutching and kissing her dog, a lack and white mongrel named Soulman? Who will think  of that girl? Her elegant signature. Who will remember to remember her?

 

&

 

It’s better to leave the story suspended for now, the tragedy of self-slaughter an unfinished work.

 

* * *

 

 

21 May, 2018

Stephanie Dickinson

Stephanie Dickinson, an Iowa native, lives in New York City. Her novel Half Girl and novella Lust Series are published by Spuyten Duyvil, as is her feminist noir Love Highway. Her other books include Port Authority Orchids, Heat: An Interview with Jean Seberg, The Emily Fables, and Flashlight Girls Run. Her work has been reprinted in Best American Nonrequired Reading, New Stories from the South, and 2016 New Stories from the Midwest. Girl Behind the Door: A Memoir of Delirium and Dementia is her most recent offering and on a lonely journey to find readers.

21 May, 2018

KENNEDY’S ACOLYTES

A full-length play with six women – nine without doubling by JACK GILHOOLEY

On the the evening of November 22, 1963 in rural Western Ireland, three mid-teen-age girls grapple with the news that U.S. President John F. Kennedy has just been assassinated. Fifty years later the three reconnoiter at the same – but different – town square. Like the community, they have undergone radical changes some for the good and some otherwise.                                       The three characters should be played by SIX ACTRESSES (three ingénues and three older). After the opening scene, the three young actresses can play the US college radio interviewer, the young Irish waitress and the young tinker mother in Ireland. Or three other actresses can be used.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Deirdre   mid teens, then in her mid- sixties

Oona         “        “       “     “   “       “     “         ALL SPEAK WITH A BROGUE EXCEPT

Eileen        “        “       “     “    “     “     “         OONA IN SCENE III AND ARIEL

Ariel   a US college co-ed, a campus radio personality in 2013

Maggie   an Irish waitress, Eileen’s granddaughter, 19 yrs old in 2013.

Mary   a young Irish gypsy…tinker…traveler in 2013

SCENE ONE: A basically empty town square (A bench? A streetlamp?) in Ireland. There’s a shabby sign at the edge of the stage reading Doyle’s Public House. The bar itself is offstage.

TIME: Evening, Nov. 22, 1963.

SCENE TWO: A US college radio studio. Basically consisting of a table and two chairs with two mics and indications of the venue e.g. ON THE AIR sign. Little else.

TIME: mid-November, 2013

SCENE THREE: Doyle’s Public House in the same rural town square. It is slickened now with neon and tablecloth dining. It’s hardly the shabby (offstage) pub hinted at 50 years ago. It is now a respectable restaurant with the practically mandatory – for Ireland – picture of JFK.

TIME: November 22, 2013

JACK GILHOOLEY 6620 Grand Point Ave., Bradenton, FL 34201  941 351-9688

jackgilhooley@tampabay.rr.com

 

Deirdre and Oona are heavily dressed against the late November elements. Each carries an unlit flashlight (“torch”).

DEIRDRE

How close did you get?

OONA

I could touch him.

DEIRDRE

So did ye?

OONA

Lord, no.

DEIRDRE

Why not?

OONA

I was afraid.

DEIRDRE

Of what?

OONA

The whole situation.

DEIRDRE

Were you afraid of Kennedy?

OONA

Course not. But he had these big bruiser-type guards.

DEIRDRE

He coulda left them home. He didn’t need them here. In the states, yeah. But not in Wexford. We’re civilized over here. Except on the football pitch. Rumor had it that he’d move over here when his presidency was over. And why not? He’d be able to walk into any pub in the land without guards. The gents wouldn’t have let him buy a round. Lift a jar an’ have a bit of craic with the boyos. A game of darts or two. Then home for dinner with Jackie and the wee ones. Little John-John woulda been old enough to join a football club. His da would have been a sponsor. Take alla the lads out after a match. Treat them to sweets and such. Grand it would be, for sure.

OONA

(Beat) Somehow I never saw that happening.

DEIRDRE

Why not? He could afford sweets for the lads. In that case ye should’ve reached out to him. He was shakin’ hands with any bogtrotter who could reach him. You mighta nicked his wallet.

OONA

I was frozen.

DEIRDRE

How could you freeze in June? If you were that close you coulda kissed him. If I was that close I’d’ve kissed him.

OONA

Deirdre!!!

DEIRDRE

That’s what I’d’ve done. I’d’ve snogged John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Right in front of Jackie. He’d have savored it.

OONA

I’m sure Jackie would’ve panicked over that. Imagine, Deirdre Flanagan as JFK’s teen-aged mistress.

DEIRDRE

That’s somethin’ you could brag about to your grandkids… snoggin’ the President of The United States.

OONA

I wasn’t thinkin’ about grandkids as the President of The United States was approachin’. I was thinkin’ I might wet myself. And I’d hardly tell my grandkids that I kissed the American president. They’d think there auld granny was a cheeky slag.

DEIRDRE

Then you could tell them that you wet yourself.

OONA

I wouldn’t tell them that even if I did. And I didn’t.

DEIRDRE

Congratulations, Oona. Discipline is yer middle name. Y’know, you’ll get nowhere in life bein’ fearful. Look at Marilyn Monroe.

OONA

What’s Marilyn Monroe have to do with it?

DEIRDRE

She sang “Happy Birthday” to him.

OONA

You call that singin’?

DEIRDRE

Not like any “Happy Birthday” I ever heard.

OONA

I seen it onna telly. And right there in fronta his family. It’s certainly not the way I sing “Happy Birthday”.

DEIRDRE

You’re hardly Marilyn Monroe. How would you sing to your lover?

OONA

Stop that kinda talk. I’ll never have a lover. I’ll have a husband. When the time comes. Lovers are for low-life scrubbers.

DEIRDRE

I hear that Marilyn was Kennedy’s lover.

OONA

You’re barmy. You’ve been readin’ those supermarket trash sheets. He’s a fine Catholic man with a wife and two lovely children.

DEIRDRE

So’s yer da.

OONA

Three lovely children.

DEIRDRE

Two lovely children an’ you.

OONA

Me da would never cheat on me mum.

DEIRDRE

Who’d have ‘im?

OONA

Yer not funny, Deirdre.

Geez, now it’s too late.

DEIRDRE

Too late at night? Or too late for you to snog Kennedy.

OONA

Geez, it was only last June. I’ll never have another chance to touch him.

DEIRDRE

They’ll probably have an open casket for the viewin’. You could fly over to Washington, get in line and touch him when you pass by. Kiss ‘em even. No need for security, now.

OONA

I wouldn’t touch a dead man.

DEIRDRE

Not even Kennedy? Why? Death is not contagious.

OONA

Well, snoggin’ seems to be contagious with you. You even kissed Gerald O’Malley behind the stables.

DEIRDRE

Where’d ye hear that?

OONA

Everybody saw it.

DEIRDRE

Who’s everybody?

OONA

Mary Catherine Monaghan. And me sister.

DEIRDRE

That’s everybody??? Those two are nobodies.

For your information, he kissed me. It was not mutual. He snuck up on me. And it wasn’t on the lips. If Gerald O’Malley had kissed me on the lips I’d have run home and washed my mouth out.

OONA

So it was a… well… a sneaky snoggin’. Did you confess it?

DEIRDRE

Course not. I was an innocent party.

OONA

Did you enjoy it?

DEIRDRE

(Shrugs) I might’ve enjoyed it if it hadn’t been Gerald. There was nothin’ to confess.

OONA

Gerald’s sweet on ye.

DEIRDRE

Well, I’m sour on Gerald.

OONA

What if it had been Billy Darby kissed ye’?

DEIRDRE

There’s no comparin’ Billy Darby to Gerald O’Malley. Billy wouldna hadda sneak up on me. I’d be there for the takin’.

OONA

Deirdre!

DEIRDRE

If it had been Billy I would certainly be goin’ to confession on Saturday. I probably wouldn’t even be brushing me teeth.

OONA

You’re barmy. I’d never lose my head like that over a boy.

DEIRDRE

Not even me brother?

OONA

Wha…You mean, Danny?

DEIRDRE

Aye,’at’s me brother, eh? An everybody knows you’re sweet on him.

OONA

Everybody, huh? Like Mary Catherine Monahan and me sister? I have no time for boys at this point.

DEIRDRE

Then you’ll not care that Danny’s sweet on you.

Oona does care that Danny’s interested in her and it shows.

OONA

You sure about that, Deirdre?

Before Deirdre answers, Eileen enters. She too, carries a flashlight. It is lit upon her entry but she turns it off immediately.

DEIRDRE

H’lo, Eileen.

EILEEN

H’lo, mates.

OONA

Hey Eileen, did ya hear?

EILEEN

That Kathy Doyle is preggers? Big surprise.

OONA

Old news. She fingered poor Robbie Ryan.

DEIRDRE

Everyone knows it was Billy Darby done the dirty deed.

OONA                                                                        EILEEN

BILLY DARBY??? No, he wouldn’t of.      That’s a bloody lie!!!

DEIRDRE

Did you think he was savin’ it for you, Oona?

EILEEN

Billy Darby didn’t do it.

DEIRDRE

How do you know?

EILEEN

He confides in me.

OONA

He what???

DEIRDRE

Wishful thinkin’, Eileen. Billy Darby has no interest in you. He was an altar boy.

EILEEN

Was an altar boy? Was he kicked out?

OONA

No, he’s seventeen. Last July.

DEIRDRE

July the 14th. Too old for the altar boys.

EILEEN

So, he’s fair game for anythin’, then? Even a Protestant.

DEIRDRE

An’ no doubt you’d offer him anythin’.

EILEEN

I never had to offer him anythin’. We’re goin’ out.

OONA

In yer dreams.

DEIRDRE

Not possible. Yer da won’t allow it. Nor would Billy’s folks.

EILEEN

So Kathy and Robbie Ryan are getting’ married.

DEIRDRE

It’s either that or the Magdalene laundry for Kathy.

EILEEN

Not a bad deal for Kathy. Robbie’s father owns a service station. Cars will always need gas. She couldn’a done better on the up an’ up.

DEIRDRE

With her mug, she couldna got a lad on the up an‘up.

EILEENR

Maybe the baby will look like him an’ not like her.

OONA

Him? Billy Darby or Robbie Ryan?

EILEEN

Robbie, I guess. Not that he’s any great shakes. So what more could a homely girl ask?  Sometimes it’s not such a bad idea to get yerself up the pole—

DEIRDRE

Kennedy’s dead.

EILEEN

Yer kiddin’.

DEIRDRE

Shot to death.

EILEEN

Who done it?

DEIRDRE

They got a guy but he’s only a suspect.

EILEEN

Bridie Keough musta done it. She never forgave Dermot for givin’ her the boot and takin’ up

with Bridget O’Shea. An’ Bridie’s da is a hunter with plenty of rifles in the house. If the garda needs any evidence, I’ll be glad to offer my opinion.

OONA

G’wan, Bridie wouldn’t harm a fly.

EILEEN

You dunno Bridie the way I know—

OONA

Will you get over Bridie and Kevin Keene? Kevin never knew you existed. It’s not like Bridie set out to steal him from someone who never had him.

EILEEN

I never had him cause I was playin’ hard to get.

OONA

Well, you sure succeeded at that game. By the time you decided to warm up to Kevin, Bridie had him.

EILEEN

I could get him if I thought he was worth it.

DEIRDRE

You two stop yer babblin’. We’re not talkin’ of Dermot Kennedy.

OONA

Course not. It’s John Kennedy been murdered.

EILEEN

Lucky Dermot. Who’s John Kennedy? That’s Dermot’s cousin from Cavan?

DEIRDRE

JACK KENNEDY, YOU NIT!

EILEEEN

(Calmly) Oh, Jack Kennedy. Why didn’t ye say so? Well, that’s America for ye.

OONA

“…that’s America for ye”. That’s all you have to say?

EILEEN

Whataya want me to say? Hooray for America? Ye killed yer own president.

OONA

The greatest man in the world is dead.

EILEEN

Don’t gimmee that. I thought you girls figgered the pope is head man.

OONA

One or the other. Depends on who you talk to.

EILEEN

Not if yer talkin’ t’me. Ask me, why don’tcha? I’d vote for Gary Cooper.

Oona, I know you travelled to Wexford  to see him last summer. An’ he looked like a movie star.

OONA

But not Gary Cooper. Is that what yer sayin’?

EILEEN

But “the greatest man in the world…”???

OONA

You weren’t there. You didn’t feel the excitement. You couldn’t have known.

EILEEN

True. I’m no fool. I watched it on telly at me sister’s house. An’ me da says Kennedy took orders from yer very same pope. Says that they’re building a special addition to the White House for The Pope’s personal quarters. Financed by the stupid taxpayers.

DEIRDRE

Did yer da figger that out drivin’ his lorry?

EILEEN

There’s nothin’ shameful about drivin’ a lorry. (To Oona) Least he’s not a greengrocer. (To Deirdre) Or a postman.

OONA

(To Eileen) Spoken like a true atheist. Did yer aul da tell ye that Kennedy was plannin’ to kill alla the Prots?

EILEEN

PROTESTANTS AREN’T ATHEISTS!!! TAKE THAT BACK!!!

OONA

MAKE ME!!!

They skirmish briefly. Deirdre intercedes. 

DEIRDRE

Enough. This is a solemn time.

They desist. Suddenly, Eileen starts to cry.

OONA

There’s her true colors. I hardly hit ya an’ here comes the water works.

EILEEN

I’m not cryin’ from you. I’m cryin for…Kennedy.

Deirdre and Oona look to one another.

DEIRDRE

You changed yer tune.

EILEEN

I knew he’d… been shot. I hadda steal outta the house cause I can’t cry over Jack Kennedy at home. Me da would hit the ceilin’. Give us a fag, Dee.

DEIRDRE

I stopped smokin’.

EILEEN
You just started smokin’. An’ yer stoppin’ already? That’s dumb. You wanna be some kinda weird duck? Everybody smokes.

DEIRDRE

That’s why I stopped. Plus, it stunts yer growth.

EILEEN

Well then, I’m glad I started at 13. I’m just the height I wanna be.

OONA

Christy Brady’s six-foot-five an smokes like a chimney.

DEIDRE

He’d be six-foot-ten if he didn’t smoke.

EILEEN

Who’d wanna be six-foot-ten?

DEIRDRE

Christy Brady might. Then he could go to the states and play basketball at some college.

OONA

That’s the only way Christy could get to college.

DEIDRE

His family could afford it. But he’s a thick, that one.

OONA

Dumb as a rock.

EILEEN

Sorry, Oona. I was way outta line at a time like this.

They shake hands, unenthusiastically.

EILEEN

An’ this guy they caught. His name is Oswald.

DEIRDRE

Oswald? He musta been mad at the world with a name like Oswald. He shoulda killed his parents for naming him Oswald. Why take it out on Kennedy?

EILEEN

Oswald’s his last name.

OONA

Still, it’s no reason to kill the president.

EILEEN

I gotta go home. Listen to me old man gloat. And lift another pint in praise of Oswald, The Assassin. Crikey.

OONA

That’s disgustin’ An’ no need t’leave. You just got here.

EILEEN

I tole ye’. I come out for a good cry. Besides, I hafta go t’the jacks.

OONA

You can go in the bushes. We’ll watch out for ye.

DEIRDRE

Why doesn’t yer da move to the North if he can’t stand most of his neighbors?

EILEEN

He doesn’t move north cause me mum wouldn’t go with him. Nor would I.

OONA

And where else would ye find such lovely friends as us, eh Eileen?

EILEEN

I was just cryin’, Oona and now you’re makin’ me laugh.

She smiles and exits as she lights her flashlight.

DEIRDRE

Prots aren’t atheists.

`           OONA

I know.

DEIRDRE

You still believe what Sister Agatha told us back in 3rd class.

OONA

I never listened to Sister Aggie. If I ever thought about a vocation, she put the kibosh on it.

DEIRDRE

What’s “kibosh”?

OONA

Figger it out.

DEIRDRE

You mean you thought about the convent back in 3rd class?

OONA
Well, Aggie planted that seed in me head. Didn’t you ever think about the convent?

DEIRDRE

For about five seconds. So what happened with you?

OONA

I started noticin’ boys.

DEIRDRE

I should hope so. You’ve got six brothers.

OONA

You know what I mean. I started noticin’ boys like you started noticin’ Timmy Reilly.

DEIRDRE

Nothin’s gonna come of that.

OONA

Yeah, that’s what Timmy told ye.

`           DEIRDRE

You’re a little bitch,  Oona.

OONA

So be it. I’m goin’.

DEIRDRE

You think Eileen an’ Billy—

OONA

I dunno. Could be. She’s awful pretty.

DEIRDRE

For a Prot, yeah. But she’s not as pretty as Billy is cute. He deserves better.

OONA

That’s the trouble with men. It’s always looks that matters most.

DEIRDRE

The assassination will be all over the telly.

OONA

Why can’t they just let him rest in peace?

DEIRDRE

It’s what people want. It’ll be on for days to come.

OONA

Me mum was sayin’ a rosary when I left the house.

DEIRDRE

Lotta good that’ll do Kennedy, now. Does she think prayers will bring him back to life?

OONA

She’s locked into tradition even if it makes no sense. You know our mums. They’re really prayin’ for themselves to heal. To take the pain away.

DEIRDRE

There’s no mention of the rosary in The Bible.

OONA

You’ve never read The Bible.

DEIRDRE

So what. I have it on good authority.

OONA

What good authority?

DEIRDRE

My cousin Brendan is in the sem. Studyin’ for the priesthood. He says that even the mass isn’t in The Bible.

OONA

Some priest he’ll make.

DEIRDRE

I don’t think he’ll stick it out. Father Molloy pushed him in.

OONA

Misery loves company.

DEIRDRE

I think that’s confessable talk.

OONA

Why? It’s not a curse.

DEIRDRE

True. But it sounds like you blasphemed.

OONA

So be it.

I kept me gob shut with mum. Her rosary is a habit. Leave her to her habits. No harm done. I’m goin’ right to bed. Try to kip, though it won’t be easy.

DEIRDRE

We’ll get over this.

OONA

No, Dee. We’ll never get over it. Tomorra I’m gonna write a poem about JFK’s death.

DEIRDRE

That should be fun.

OONA

It’s not meant to be fun. It will be an elegy.

DEIRDRE

What’s an elegy?

OONA

A poem for the dead.

DEIRDRE

I don’t need to hear that, then. You an’ yer poetry. It sounds pretty but none of it makes any sense. It doesn’t even rhyme.

OONA

It’s not meant to rhyme.

DEIRDRE

Then it’s not poetry. It’s just some gibberish that you call poetry. So what’s the point?

OONA

Poetry doesn’t have to rhyme to be poetry.

DEIRDRE

That sounds like an excuse from someone who can’t even rhyme “moon” with” June”.

OONA

The poems I write are exercises.

DEIRDRE

If I wanna exercise, I ride me bike.

OONA

It’s an instinctive thing with me.

DEIRDRE

Emphasis on “stink”.

Eileen reenters. Her flashlight is out.

EILEEN

Me torch went out an’ I have no batteries.

OONA

So? You know the road. You’ve walked it every day of your life. Just follow the sound of yer drunkin’ da’s cheering Kennedy’s death.

DEIRDRE

You don’t need a torch.

EILEEN

I can find my way home. But they’ll call “time” soon at the pub. Those boozers will never see me in the road without a torch. So Dee, you live just beyond me an’—

DEIDRE

I know where I live, Eileen.

(To Oona) At least we got a day off from school on Monday.

OONA

I’d rather we went to school an’ this never happened.

DEIDRE

OK, OK , Eileen. Let’s head off.

Deirdre lights her flashlight and she and Eileen head off.     

DEIRDRE

Slan (pro. Slawn), Oona.

OONA

Slan, Deirdre.

EILEEN

Slan, Oona.

OONA

Slan, Eileen.

                                                            Oona is alone now and she reflects…

OONA

(To herself) I shoulda reached out an’ touched him.

She stares straight ahead with her lighted flashlight under her chin.

OONA

(To herself, grimly comic) I’m the Grim Reaper, here to claim another one.

She exits with her flashlight beam on the road.

END OF SCENE ONE

 

 

 

 

21 May, 2018

Jack Gilhooley

Jack Gilhooley–New Dramatists (NYC) alum., Eugene O’Neill Conference guest playwright, NYFTA grant recipient, Fulbright Guest Artist appointments (Spain and Ireland), four FLorida Arts Council grants, two NEA awards (Individual Playwright and International to Centaur Theatre, Montreal), two Puffin grants, John Ringling Fund Award, etc. GUEST ARTIST: Yaddo, MacDowell, Edward Albee, Millay, Djerassi, Hawthornden Castle (SCOT), Tyrone Guthrie Institute (IRELAND) colonies. PRODUCTIONS: NY Shakespeare Fest., Circle Rep, Phoenix, 59e59, Shubert (Phila), ACT/SF, Asolo, Indiana Rep (twice), The Folger (D.C.) etc. PUBLISHERS: Broadway Play Publishing, Inc., New American Library, Smith & Kraus, Samuel French, etc.

21 May, 2018

I’D THINK OF A PRETTY METAPHOR, BUT INSTEAD I THINK I’LL JUST COME OUT AND SAY

my body is not my body is 

my body seven times removed 

and hungry, I’ve shed 

and absorbed my skeleton 3.7 times 

trying to find the perfect shape 

for myself and they’ve all been wrong—

beauty is Little House on the Prairie 

boasting Father could wrap his hands 

all the way around Mother’s waist and I 

have been preconditioned to starve myself. 

When I’m like this I eat my fingernails 

and the cartilage around them just a little more, 

pretending that since I know I am not food 

this is not eating. My fingers are slim enough 

already I wish I could worry away 

at the soft skin of my belly and the too wide-ness 

of my hips and thighs in the same way, but 

that would be eating and eating is a sin 

I am forced to indulge in; guilty damned 

to gluttonous hell if I do or if I don’t, all I think about 

is what could have been for dinner if only I hadn’t 

known myself too well to fill the fridge. 

I’ve been this way for a while, is this telling? 

Is this confession? It seems a sin to confess this, 

my multi-sin, the sin of eating and the sin 

of not eating and the double sin of both eating and 

not eating and the triple sin of both eating and not 

eating and then having the gall to tell you, 

like I’m seeking intervention or pity or, god forbid, 

attention, the greatest sin of all, but really 

I’m just stating a fact I’m wearing 

on my skin with the excess 

hair you only grow when you’re a starveling 

and the dark bags under my eyes and the way I know  

it’s a sin, but if I can just wait an hour 

or two longer I won’t be hungry anymore. My edges 

will scare the hunger-beast away, he’s a coward 

and knows my edges are already sharp enough 

to cut him, cut me, cut the mattress. In my sleep 

I accidentally consume three geese 

of feathers and dream I am growing 

wings, dream I can fly, dream I am pregnant 

with a host of goslings and that’s why 

I’m so hungry all the damn time—

I’m eating for seven at least.

21 May, 2018

E.B. Schnepp

E.B. Schnepp is a poet hailing from rural Mid-Michigan who currently finds herself stranded in the flatlands of Ohio. Her work can also be found in Glass, Gingerbread House, and The Evansville Review, among others.

21 May, 2018

JAIL-BRED

The 200 best inmates lived on E Block—said the 200 inmates living on E Block. They called it the honor block. The going-home block. The free-to-roam block. And only the jail-good inmates came out to free-roam.

E Block’s counselor left their files behind the desk so I saw what I worked with: third-degree murderers, five-D.U.I. owners, aggravated assaulters, and one guy, an infanticider. He beat his girlfriend’s three-year-old son to death, came to jail, and earned an undisputed spot on the volleyball team. Outside hitter.

How another one of the jail-good inmates made it to the honor block was what he did to a sixty-eight-year-old woman: he bludgeoned her with a baseball bat.

Then came to jail with a life sentence, got a job in the chapel, stayed out of trouble for a few years, and it was official: he was good, inside-those-razor-wire-fences-good. He’s probably still on that block. I hope he’s proud. I hope he likes the marigolds outside the door. He could step on one and it’ll bounce back. They’re tough, like him. When he’s holding a baseball bat.

The jail built E Block only a few years before I walked through the gates. So there it was: a nice, new, red-façaded building full of white walls, bay windows, air conditioning, TV lounges, and inmate-lockable rooms. It sat on what looked like the edge of a bombed-out war zone. The rest of the jail was a century old.

Jail-good meant a guy had been ticket-free for one year and knew how to talk nice with staff. Counselors helped assign custody levels: one to five. Level ones got halfway houses. Level twos got the honor block. Level fives got the bucket (jail speak for solitary). And all the in-betweens, the threes and fours, ninety percent of the jail’s 2,000, needed to be nicer (jail-nicer) if they wanted to move out and smell E Block’s flowers.

The guy who took care of the marigolds came to E Block because of what he did to a nine-year-old girl while babysitting: fingered her through her underwear.

His file was graphic.

And he was the top candidate for E-Block’s head block worker, a coveted job because he got all the guard-brought-in real coffee he could drink.

He asked me, “You know what a mule is?”

I guessed, “Drug smuggler?” That was our context.

He said, “No. The animal I’m talking about. It’s half donkey. Half horse. Its own species. Big enough to carry weight. But small enough to be controlled.”

“Well, that’s interesting.”

He said, “Smart enough to listen to humans. But dumb enough to listen to humans.”

I asked why he was telling me this.

He said, “But they can’t reproduce. They’re all sterile.”

“Um.”

He said, “Nature’s eunuchs. The result of forced crossbreeding. And that’s how I feel in here.”

Then he said, “Any word on that top block-worker job?”

I told him, “Looks like it’s yours. Congrats.”

Outside of jail, that kind of talk would probably get someone committed. But where people were already committed, that was small talk.

Four lifers lived on E Block. Plus another two guys who were doing so much time that they would likely die in jail. And with those six guys who did something so terrible that they needed to be separated from free society for the rest of their lives, the worst of the worst on the outside, I appreciated their personable, friendly, and intelligent ways.

Kill someone with a kitchen knife while on a drug-fueled rampage?

Have a room to yourself. Take two mattresses. Take them because, here it is: jail is a different animal.

There was inside jail.

There was outside jail.

And I became their offspring.

C

I drove to jail, put on a uniform, flexed a little while walking in: right peck, left peck. But only in the costume. Right before shift, I was too shy to raise my hand in history class—my second attempt at higher learning. I blushed when the teacher called me anyway. Then I asked a man down for aggravated assault, “On a scale from one to dumb, how dumb is you?” But avoided eye contact with the professor teaching criminal justice—even though there were 400 students in the lecture room. I learned that looking away meant, yes, that fingersmith-inmate did, in fact, steal the two t-shirts from the laundry-room table. I cold-sweat when a woman in a bar grabbed my arm and said, “I like them strong, tall, and silent.” I mumbled something to her about being married. Then asked a murderer in a loud, clear voice, “What are you going to do? Murder me because I won’t write you a pass to yard?” And I didn’t blink. And grit on him until he broke eye contact. Then had zero clues on what to talk about with my mother-in-law. I sort of smiled at her joke about a dog. Then spent forty-five minutes discussing whether or not the Philadelphia Eagles had a realistic chance for a wild-card berth with a serial child-rapist and agreed with everything he said. I worried how a pimple looked while pumping gas before shift. But spilled coffee on my shirt on purpose just to see how many inmates would comment—and took bets on how many (thirty-eight, I guessed fifty). I laughed when a muscly, angry, habitual staff-assaulter called me an asshole. But raged when a middle-aged woman drove five-miles-per-hour below the speed limit on the way home. Then felt intelligent when an inmate said, “For real? This is the 21st century?” Then felt idiotic when my wife’s friend said, “I made focaccia and fougasse. Which would you like?” And I blinked. Just blinked and blinked. But understood what a five-foot-tall Mexican who spoke no English wanted from a head nod 100 feet away (his door unlocked because he forgot his key). But was lost despite listening to my wife as close as I could for thirty-five minutes and couldn’t decide if she wanted me to get a vasectomy or open a savings account or replace the felt pads on the kitchen chairs because she kept saying, “protection” and “returns” and “I’m not saying this is important, but this is important.” I told one of my wife’s advisors, “Ever notice how killers look like everyone, so everyone looks like a killer?” Then heard him say back, “Ahhh.” But I said the same thing to a guard and he said, “Bro, ain’t that some truth.” And my wife’s friends said, “You’re quiet and sensitive.” And the inmates and guards said, “You have the gift-of-the-gab with a temper.” And when I heard a story about an inmate busted for giving blowjobs back at the rear door of the dining hall, how he squatted down in a trashcan, popping up to blow guys, and ducking down if the guard made a round, that was jail-normal. And when I chased the escaped cows from the jail-farm it was just another day. And if I went home mad about an argument with a skinhead about the amount of shredded cheese on his tray on taco day my wife looked at me like, um. Just um. But maybe she didn’t see the inside-out collision taking place on what felt like a genetic level. But probably she did. Years later, she claimed that she did. But, for me, seeing a man scrubbing his heavy winter jacket while taking a shower made it a normal jail-Monday. And watching a guard punch the wall for being sent home because he wore black pants without the stripe, the pipping, on the side, that was a normal jail-Tuesday. And having a guard show me his crushed middle fingernail—slammed by an eighty-pound cell door—jail-Wednesday. Been there. Done that. Followed by jail-Thursday, jail-Friday, and jail-Saturday when I fantasized about punching six different guys in the back of the head. But on jail-Sunday, I worked a double shift and only fantasized about a jail-job where I could sit down. Which I didn’t get. Of course. Welcome to the Rear Door, fucker, where you stand and stand and stand and turn keys. Then I heard a woman outside jail tell a story about how she grew up in Texas and scorpions lived in the walls of her house. She said that they would fall from the vent above her bed at night. So she didn’t sleep. Like ever. And I responded with absolutely no surprise. Normal jail stuff there. Scorpions everywhere. Sorry to hear it. But when I told her the trashcan blowjob story and she said, “Now, that’s fucked up.” I earned a B in history. And an A in criminal justice—imagine that. My first ever college A. Then an outside-somebody told me, “You remind me of Clint Eastwood. Always angry.” Then an inside-somebody said, “You remind me of my brother.” Then my sister-in-law handed me a walking taco—a little Dorito bag loaded with meat and cheese and salsa and a fork—and I said, “Jail food! Word, homey!” And she said, “It’s a walking taco.” And I said, “No, it’s a handheld chichi. Inmates make casseroles in chip bags. Good ones.” And she said, “What?” And I said, “Yep.” And she said, “What?” And I said, “Yep.” Then I transitioned without a transition to an Army story about a soldier who had heat stroke during a fake war somewhere in Louisiana. The medics stripped him naked and tossed him onto a helicopter. But just as I got into the story, describing the red Louisiana clay matting down his hair, I had to censor the best detail: that the heat casualty, some eighteen-year-old-low-I.Q.-owning nobody from Alabama, sported a huge erection while he lay there on his back unconscious, waving it like a retreat flag. And everyone laughed, the medics, the pilots, the eighteen-year-old me. That story worked on inmates. Hilarity. But I transitioned to something a little more civil, like how a smart phone could fit in a man’s anus. No problem. For real. They are elastic. Anuses. It’s the removing you have to worry about. And while that story, might be, well, worse, or not, it was all I had. The change was sudden. It was the authority inside. It was the lack outside. One day I a professor made fun of me for confusing “who” and “whom.” The next I cuffed a serial rapist for trying to look tough at me. Anymore I was only suitable on the inside. Anymore, sometimes I still am. It altered my genes. One big mass of outside and inside life got mashed together and the dominant strand won.

Y

The drug-fueled-kitchen-knife killer walked up. He was one of the jail-popular guys—good manners, talked about Penn State football. He said, “May I please have an inmate request form?” I handed it to him. He said, “Thank you mightily.”

And the day before, in the bucket on overtime, I fed one of the jail-bad guys. He received weekly visits from the goon squad and daily tickets from the bucket guards, and the schizo inmate next door to him told me, “Man, I don’t mess with that nut.” That jail-bad guy was in there with his water turned off to keep him from flooding the cell while working off his tiny, one-year sentence for an intent-to-sell charge. A victimless crime.

When I got to his window he said, “Don’t think I won’t fuck you up because I don’t know you.”

Maybe because the kitchen-knife killer had a body, he didn’t need to prove himself anymore. He was bad. We understood. So that let him be good (in jail). But I don’t know. Maybe it was just because he was older. Age seems to slow men down. And jail ages men fast. He composed a polite letter to the unit manager wishing to address the shower situation on C Side. The guys on A side kept trashing them at night.

A nineteen-year-old thief from Dorm 1 yelled, “Aye, how ‘bout a request form?!”

I used the P.A. system to say, “Aye, how ‘bout no.”

The man who once held a knife and stuck it into another human being said, “Lieutenant on the walk.” Outside, a neck-bearded lieutenant stomped right through the marigolds. He stopped to give two inmates cigarettes. He patted them on the back and laughed hard about something.

He walked inside and avoided eye contact with me.

“Hey, L.T., what’s good?”

He didn’t respond. Just signed the logbook and left.

I don’t think I was jail-normal enough for him yet.

Next, an older guard with a gut walked in to use the bathroom. I had told him the week before that I didn’t know the first thing about fishing. When he came out he said, “Hey, buddy, tell you what, come out to the house, we’ll drink some beer and I’ll show you how to clean some bass.”

The nineteen-year-old thief walked up and said, “Hey, C.O., my bad for yelling. How ‘bout that request form now?”

The older guard said, “Beat it. We’re out.” Despite a stack of sixty of them sitting right there for the thief to see.

The thief said, “You guys be trippin’.”

A fat sergeant with no criminal history walked in, filled a cup of coffee, and walked right back out. Not even a thank you.

I told him he could keep the cup.

He said, “You’re fucking right I can, dick-lick.”

After the door shut, the older guard said, “He’s not like that on the street. He’s actually a cool guy.”

And I agreed. A real jail-cool guy.

A murderer named Lefty walked up. He had only one arm, his right. He poked me in the ribs with his stump. It felt like a fist. He said, “I’m feeling generous. Today I’m making you honorary inmate.”

He put his hat on my head.

It smelled like cigarettes and sweat.

It fit.

And the thing of it was, that was just fine with me.

All I had to do was be the boss of 200 good, bad men.

And smart enough to show up every day.

And dumb enough to show up every day.

 

21 May, 2018

Ben Langston

Ben Langston, besides being a jailcop, has been a truck-loader, a forklift-driver, a paratrooper, an event-parker, a caterer, a patient-transporter, a capacitor-shaker, a bottle-labeler, and a short-order-cooker. Currently he teaches junior high for high-risk teens (trauma-afflicted kids who only communicate through violence). He’s published in Cactus Heart, New Letters, Storm Cellar, Matter Journal, The Gettysburg Review, Fourth Genre, and is forthcoming in Shards II (another jail essay is being illustrated comic-book style for this graphic literary journal).