Breathe

Breathe. 

That’s how you get through anything, Aunt Gertie told me. If you breathe you stop talking to yourself, stop telling yourself that you can’t endure another minute. Focus on breathing and you won’t be thinking. You won’t be worried or afraid. Just stay right where you are. Inhale. Exhale.

Just breathe and you’ll be all right.

I can’t breathe very well just now. The black canvas sack over my head is smothery and the cords around my wrists and ankles are too tight and every time we hit a bump I launch into the air and slam back down onto the seat. The driver smokes a lot of cigarettes and the smell makes me sick. He’s also playing the radio so softly you can only sometimes make out the song, another thing that infuriates me.

But I can’t get mad, not now. All the emotions would rush up together, overwhelm me. I need to stay in the present.

Breathe.

She wasn’t my real aunt, just one of the neighborhood old ladies who volunteered at the Wyckoff, New Jersey Recreation Center.   She worked the entrance booth, checking the passes of everyone who came to use the pool, taking money from day-swimmers, making change, polite and smiling to everyone.

When I was nine I had a pass. My parents both worked full-time, so they took advantage of the city summer program where you could drop your kids off at seven in the morning and pick them up at six in the evening, sunburnt and exhausted.  There were some rudimentary activities like beading baskets and clay art, but for me the real attraction was the pool. I loved to be in the water.

I’d show my pass the old lady, put my clothes and lunch into a locker and jump in the pool, where I would stay as long as I could. My main problem came at 9:30, when a lifeguard named Ty gave an hour-long swim lesson. Ty was a bandy little guy who wore a whistle all the time and used it profusely. He yelled at his students like they were Marines and though his class only required a quarter of the pool he allowed nobody else in the water while he taught, including and especially me.   I would try to hide underwater or down by the deep end, but he invariably would find me and holler until I climbed up onto the concrete and sat in my puddle waiting until at last his class ended.

Midway through the summer, the old lady from the booth came out and politely told Ty that he should let me stay in the water because I wasn’t bothering anyone. Amazingly, Ty backed right down and I was able to quietly swim to my heart’s content. On my way out to the parking lot to wait for my parents that evening, I stopped to thank the old lady. She didn’t hear me at first, but eventually I was able to express my gratitude.

“It was a pleasure,” she said. Then, eyes twinkling, “You want to know why I did that?”

“Why?”

“Because you’re just like me. A water baby.”

I can breathe now that I’ve managed to work my way out from under the black hood. I’m lying in my swimsuit staring up at the grimy roof of some kind of 1970s car. The driver is a guy I recognize from the pool, one of the gang who hang out in the parking lot smoking cigarettes and looking at the girls. Once in a while the cops come through and run them off, but they always come back. They remind me of the actors in the background of Happy Days or Grease, a nameless bunch not part of the action, trying to look cool and failing. We made fun of them.

I think this guy is the one with the greasy ponytail, but I can’t tell because he’s wearing a seaman’s cap that hides his hair. Maybe he planned this, or maybe it was spur of the moment. Whichever it was, he took advantage of opportunity.  Normally we stayed open until eight on weekdays, but a lightning storm made us clear the pool and close up early. I sent Briana and Roy home because the supervisor has been on me to keep hours low, and I don’t mind stacking the beach chairs up and taking down the umbrellas by myself.

I was putting the kick-boards into the locker when he came up behind me and dropped the black sack over my head like he was catching a rabbit. His wiry arms went around and he lifted me up, crushing the air out of me. I started to kick, but he hit me on the side of my head hard enough to make me see white. Next thing I knew I was flat on my back with him whipping nylon cord around my ankles like one of those rodeo calf-ropers. He did the same thing to my hands, cinching them so tight it made them go cold.

He slammed the doors, fired up the engine and took off. It was only then I remembered to scream. He reached back and pounded me a couple of times, not quite as hard as before but still painful.

“You shut up now,” he’d said in a southern drawl that sounded fake. “Won’t do you no good anyhow.”

I liked to hang out in the ticket booth with the old lady. She told me to call her Aunt Gertie. She was stone deaf, but good company, quick with a laugh. She told me that when she was a little older than me she had gone to the Olympics and won one gold and two bronze medals. When I seemed to disbelieve her, she gave a half-smile and produced them from her purse. Three round discs, each saying VIII OLYMPIADE, PARIS 1924. The  red ribbons were faded to brown, but the medals were real enough, and heavier than they looked. The gold was heaviest of all and still shone like new.

She pinched my cheek and leaned over to me. “You let me know when you want to learn to swim for real, Jill. I’ll show you.”

She started coaching me the next day, wearing an old lady swimsuit with a ruffled skirt and puffy sleeves and getting into the water with me. She taught me the the butterfly and the breast stroke but dismissed them as worthless. “Eight-count American freestyle is the stroke for you,” she yelled. “It’s the most efficient. I set records with that stroke.”

I was an eager student with natural ability, willing to put in the long hours required to build the stamina and strength for longer events. My parents seemed relieved that I had found something to do with myself and didn’t mind that I spent so much time with this old lady I barely knew.

Ten years passed. My folks split. My dad was the better parent, but I stayed with my mom because she lived near to Aunt Gertie. Using her pull with the newly formed US Masters’ Swimming organization, Aunt Gertie arranged for me to be able to swim all year round.

She coached me even after she started getting sick, sitting poolside in her wheelchair and giving me the thumbs up. My best event was the 800 meter, and I even managed to beat Aunt Gertie’s 1919 record of 13:19. This didn’t matter, since the current record was held by an East German woman with shoulders like Larry Czonka. 8:40:68.

I was not quite good enough to be an Olympian. When I failed to qualify even for the Juniors, I wanted to quit.

“Keep at it, Jill,” Aunt Gertie barked. “First time I swam the Channel I was at the midway point, floating face-down. I was resting, focusing on breathing in and breathing out. The fools in the follow-boat thought I was dead and grabbed me. Rules say if you touch somebody during a Channel swim, they’re immediately disqualified. I tell you, when they hauled me into that boat I was mad as hell.” She smiled and pinched my cheek. “But you know what? I raised nine thousand dollars in a year, a hell of a lot of money then.  I hired my own crew and went back. I will always be the first woman to swim the English Channel. Sometimes getting mad is the best thing for you.”

I’m mad now, bouncing in the back seat. I need to pee. My hands are blue, and I don’t want to think about what is going on with my feet.  My hair keeps whipping me in the face and I can see it’s going to turn green because I didn’t get a chance to wash it with UltraSwim.

The driver keeps smoking and listening to his shitty music. What the hell is he thinking?

“Excuse me, sir?” I call out. “I really need to go to the bathroom.”

He turns back to look, one hand on the wheel. “How’d you get that sack off?”

“It just came off. I mean it. I need to pee real bad.”

“Just go, then,” he said, turning back to the road. “You’re wearing a swimsuit.”

“It’ll get on your seat. You’ll never get the smell out.”

He seems to consider this. “Goddamn it,” he says, and in a little while we turn off the smooth road and onto a bumpy one. His cigarette smoke rolls back into my face and I cough.

“Don’t like the smoke, girly?” he says, reaching back to crank the window halfway down.

The air is moist and swampy and I can see the trees outside rubbing against the car. We drive for a long time. He keeps glancing back at me, eyes gliding over my stomach and legs in a way that makes me go cold inside.

We pull over and stop. He shuts off the car and the silence seems immense, the engine ticking as it cools. There is a slow rise in the chorus of frogs and bugs. He sits tapping his fingers on the wheel and not looking at me. On his forearm I can see a tattoo. Even in the fading light I can read it. BORN LOSER. 

 

            Even though I couldn’t qualify for the Games, I was offered some swimming scholarships. I chose Clemson over Ohio State because I erroneously believed it was close to the ocean. Aunt Gertie was in hospice by then, seeming to have aged several decades in just a few years.

Still, I knew she was proud of me. I swam more than ever, my plan being to take up ultra-distance open water events. There were a few in the Netherlands I knew about, some as long as ten kilometers, but I wanted to start with a swim from Los Angeles to Catalina Island.

As an athlete I could lodge free in the dorms all year round, so to save money I stayed here in Clemson over the summer instead of going back home.  I got the head lifeguard job at the pool. That’s why I wasn’t there when Aunt Gertie died.  I didn’t feel too bad. I knew she’d understand.

She’d be disappointed now, me captured like a chicken off a fence by some classic-rock joker who smoked and probably had a fucking Confederate flag painted on the roof of his car. No, I think. She wouldn’t be disappointed. She’d be furious.

I close my eyes and call her fury to me, inhale and fill my giant swimmer’s lungs with rage.

“Still have to pee,” I say, smiling.

“All right,” he says, getting out and muttering something like get it over.

He opens the rear driver side door and holds it for  me. “Scooch on out, now.”

His eyes don’t leave my torso as I undulate toward him. Good, I think. I make it to the edge and he reaches to haul me up by my wrists. The sudden pressure hurts so much that I gasp, but I hide it. I can’t have him feeling sorry for me.

I smile into his weedy face. “Such a gentleman.”

He takes a wicked-looking knife from his belt and I feel my guts loosen, but I keep my smile and bat my lashes. “Is that for my feet? I’d appreciate if you could cut them loose. I have to spread my legs to pee.”

He shakes his head, blushing.

“Please,” I say. “I promise I won’t run.”

He smirks. “Wouldn’t do you no good anyways. Nowhere you go I won’t catch you.”

“Well then, no reason not to,” I purr.

He points to a fallen log. I hop over to it, turn around and sit. I stretch my legs, looking down at my muscles beneath tan skin. He holds the knife like a tusk as he advances, then hesitates.

I wiggle my feet. He slides the blade between them. It’s so sharp that the cord seems to disappear altogether, bringing a rush of pain to my feet so sudden and intense that I almost pass out, but I hold his gaze, smiling.

“Oh, that feels good,” I croon. “Thank you, sugar.” I stand up, my feet feeling like they belong to somebody else.  “One more favor. Can you help me with my swimsuit?  I need to take it off.” I roll my shoulders like Betty Boop. “Worth your while.”

He doesn’t need a second invitation. He jabs the knife into the log, then stands in front of me, breathing hard with shaking fingers that reek of cigarettes as he slides the Speedo straps down my arms. My boobs pop out in his face and with all my force I bring my knee up between his legs, my clasped fists smashing his nose as he doubles over with a look of astonishment. He collapses like a dropped towel and I fall on him, pounding and pounding with all my strength, using my swimmer’s shoulders and back as I try to batter him into the soft earth. My hands are so numb they feel like steel hammers.

After a while he stops moving.  I go to the knife and slice the wrist cord, bracing this time for the rush of pain. When it’s over I can feel my fingers.

I wrench the knife from the log and throw it into the dark woods, give him one last kick in the balls for good measure, then walk to the car. It’s a rusted-out El Camino, the type of car we jokingly called a rape-mobile.  The keys are still in it.

I start the motor and throw it into reverse, the headlights rolling across his prostrate form. I consider running him over, but the rage is leaving me and I turn in a tight circle to go back the way we came.

I’m almost to the highway before I remember about breathing.

 

 

This won a round of the 2018 NYC Midnight Short Story contest, though I was later eliminated from the contest.

Patriotism

“Son, do you love your country?”

It’s a hard question to answer. This is not due to my lack of patriotism, but because I’ve just taken a huge bite of blood-rare prime rib that is the Hunters’ Club Friday night special.  

My interlocutor is  Major General Herford Hood, USMC (Retired), my perhaps-soon-to-be stepfather. 

I stare at him across the expanse of damask tablecloth while I chew the golf ball-sized wad of rubbery fat. 

His is the sort of face that inspires statuary adjectives. 

Granite jaw. 

Iron hair. 

Chiseled cheekbones.

The stony eyes bore into me.

“Answer the General, Hobbes,” calls Mother from across the table. 

I chew and chew, working my back teeth against the unyielding blubber while I hold up a placating finger. 

We must make quite the tableau–– the general in his full dress uniform and decorations that completely cover his chest like a particolored breastplate; Mother, unlit cigarette in a long ebony holder that juts from her gloved fingers like Cruella DeVille, the other glove stroking the snowy head of Moo Shoo, her spoiled Pekingese lapdog; and myself, hunched over the three pounds of raw beef like a carnivorous chimp in a tuxedo, all of us staring at one another while I poise my finger as though about to conduct children in a chorus of Happy Birthday. 

The spell is broken by Moo Shoo, who jumps onto the table and lunges toward my plate, scattering silverware and wineglasses in every direction. 

I spring up to avoid the approaching cascade of spilled wine, take a step backwards while finally managing to swallow the chunk of fat.

“Really, Hobbes,” says Mother. “Was that necessary?”

“It’s father’s old jacket,” I reply. “I didn’t want to get wine on it.”

“Good reflexes,” grunts the general. “The boy would make a fine Marine.”

A quadrille of waiters wearing white jackets identical to mine descends on the table and quickly sets all to right as Moo Shoo engulfs my dinner with astonishing speed for such a small dog. 

One of the waiters snatches her up and carries her around to Mother while another holds my chair and dropped napkin for me. 

I sit back down. 

The general has not moved and continues to glare at me.

“Yes, I love my country,” I say, then realizing the bald abruptness of my affirmation, gamely add “Sir.”

“Good,” he says and slaps the table with his flat palm. “That’s settled. And don’t worry, son. I’ll see you’re paid for your work. Well-paid. These political types have deep pockets.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” I say, “but I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

Mother raises an eyebrow, which given the amount of makeup she wears is the equivalent of leaning on a car horn. 

“Really, Hobbes. One would think you haven’t been listening.”

The general shifts in his chair, his stiff chest of decorations creaking a little as he moves. “Perhaps I wasn’t clear. The Republican Family Fundraiser tomorrow night.” 

He speaks in short bursts, as though firing a machine gun. “Caricatures of the guests. Like at an amusement park. Funny, but tasteful. Senator Smalls riding a tiny horse. The Vice President drinking from a jug labeled XXX. You get the idea.”

“You’re so talented,” says Mother, her tone larded with reproof. “You should be glad of a chance to show it.”

I stare down at my empty plate, licked spotless by Moo-Shoo, a feeling of doom enshrouding me.

#

It’s not that I can’t draw. I spent several years at an art school and am, in fact, a passable artist. 

It’s just that I have never been able to draw humans. 

This isn’t for a lack of trying. 

I have taken numerous classes in figure drawing and anatomy, yet somehow whenever I set pencil to paper, everything I draw winds up resembling some kind of animal. 

And these aren’t photo-realistic depictions or even cartoons in the traditional sense.

They’re more like the costumed creatures one sees at sporting events, anthropomorphic amalgams of human and non-human. 

Every creature I draw has large, clown-like feet, three-fingered hands, giant eyes and outsized ears. They are also brightly colored, like cotton candy or circus costumes.

My inability to draw the human figure resulted in my flunking out of school. 

Because of my father’s fortune there was never any question of me having to work, and so long as I was able to sit in my room and draw my creatures I was perfectly content. 

Father was usually away on business, so Mother and I got on well enough, usually taking dinner together at the club and engaging in convivial inane conversation. 

I didn’t bring up my failure, and she didn’t either. 

I’d been home some months when the telephone rang one afternoon. 

As was her habit, Mother answered, her dog tucked beneath her arm. “Yes,” she said. “When? Where? Are you certain?” 

Then she thanked the called and hung up. 

With supernatural calm, she turned to me and lit a cigarette. 

“It appears there has been an accident. The car overturned on a bridge. There were no survivors.”

“I don’t understand. What accident?”

“Your father, Hobbes. He’s dead. I am a widow.”

She didn’t seem at all affected or changed in any way. 

Our lives carried on as before, me in my room making my drawings, Mother spending her days at the club playing cards. 

One afternoon in the early autumn the family lawyer came to our house and sat in the dining room. 

He laid out in no uncertain terms our impending ruin. 

My father, it seemed, had left us no provision whatsoever, and in fact had accrued a mountain of debts in an amount exceeding that of our possessions.

“And the club?” asked Mother.

“The dues are paid for two years,” said the lawyer. “But after that…”

Mother closed her eyes.

“I will stall the creditors as long as possible to keep you in the house,” the lawyer told us. “But you should prepare for the worst.”

#

Thus began the new life. 

Or as I should say, my new life. 

Mother carried on unaffected except for the occasional hint that I might want to make something of myself. 

 

 

This was the start of a draft for a NYC Midnight contest.  I abandoned this story and wrote another instead. It didn’t even place. Should have stuck with this one.

No-Knock

“Ready to rock and roll?” Clivers yelled.

I could see his mustache through his kevlar face shield.

“How confident are you the CI is good? You sure we have the right address this time?”

“Lock and load!” He slammed the magazine into his MK18. He’d tricked the rifle out with so many gadgets and attachments it looked like a toy.

“Seriously. How sure?”

“Hundred percent!”

He banged on the roof with a gloved fist.

The rear hatch dropped and we tumbled out.

The two guys with the battering ram yelled “POLICE!”

They smashed in the door.

We were right behind.

 

Friday Fictioneers

 

 

A no-knock warrant, or no-knock raid, is a warrant signed off by a judge that allows police to enter a residence without prior notice, permission, or express warning. Though the Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches of one’s home, a 1995 Supreme Court decision, Wilson v. Arkansas, provided a loophole for unannounced police entry, making it OK if the officer’s safety was at risk or if there was a chance of evidence being destroyed.

Ostensibly, no-knock warrants are issued in cases where police are concerned about giving suspects time to destroy evidence once they arrive at their residence. They are for unusual cases where an announcement of presence would lead to loss of important evidence or harm to safety.

But is not usually the case. The militarization of police across the US and the disproportionate targeting of African-Americans in the war on drugs has led to massive abuse of no-knocks. The price is damaged property, traumatized citizens, and (as in the case of Breonna Taylor and others), death.

 

Pity’s Sake

I stare at the snow.

“The yard almost looks nice,” I say before realizing there’s nobody to hear the conversation.

Habits of a lifetime are not easily broken.

His shoes stand by the door, right where he stepped out of them.

The fever and coughing kept getting worse, so we decided on the hospital as a precaution.

It started to snow as we were leaving, so he chose to wear his winter boots.

“At least,” he said, then paused to cough. “They’ll be easy to take off.”

“It’s probably nothing,” he insisted.

And then they put him on the ventilator.

 

Friday Fictioneers

The Power of Music


reno’s dad was only a door away
and we couldn’t ever talk
so in the silence we did what
we could, sometimes

whispering

and in the morning when he
knocked his wife across the room

made her fall palms-down
against the hissing griddle of newly-burnt
potatoes

we watched the wall, the
window, anywhere but the door

and once, driven out to a ranch
in the middle of the desert,

smoking smuggled cigarettes
allowed us to  feel superior
and then
he left taking the truck

and starving we joked
over stale cornflakes and powdered milk
softened with pump-water,

grateful

since hunger was then
new to me

while the radio
hissed hits from the city

Serpiente Oculta

The only reason he agreed to meet me, he says. is that his life was over.

Estoy muerto pero no me acuesto, was how he puts it. I am dead but I won’t lie down.

I sit on a  bench in the Bosque de Chapultepec, just outside the castle, the location texted to my phone an hour before. I wonder what he will look like, scan the faces in the crowd over the fold of my newspaper. The hot air is greasy with the smoke of the food trucks parked in a long row by the gate. Volkswagen taxis rattle down the cobbles, engines braying like geese as they tear around the corners.

And then he is sitting on the bench next to me.

He sets down a paper bag between us.

He gets up and is gone.

In the bag is a motel key. The next meeting, face to face.

I arrive early, but he is already waiting for me. He does not look as I remember, though I saw him just yesterday. For a moment I wonder if it is indeed the same man.

My doubts vanish as soon as he speaks, for the voice is the same as on the telephone. It is a soft voice, yet his precise pronunciation gives it an unnatural force, like a steel spike driven into concrete.

“Before I begin,” he says, “I must tell you something.  The stories I will give you are tales of evil, the deepest evil with no redemption in them. Your face tells me that you wonder why I wish to tell them to you. I can give only what is perhaps an unsatisfactory answer: that time will heal everything except lies. The truth is often ugly, often evil. Yet it is the truth. Do you still wish to hear it?”

His pupils so dilated that his eyes are shiny black with a thin corona of brown iris. They seem to be a cave into which I will tumble. My body shakes with an urge to flee, close the door behind me, drive to the airport and forget all of this.

Yet the eyes compel me. “Yes,” I hear myself saying. “I wish to hear it.”

From somewhere he produces a bottle of handblown glass, the bubbles trapped in its sides. He swiftly gets up and takes a pair of the motel glasses, tearing the paper covers from them and pouring them half-full of a murky amber liquid. He hands one to me, holds up his own.

“To truth,” he says with dark solemnity.

We drain the glasses and I feel the fire of the raw mescal spreading through me like ripples in a pond. He refills my glass, then sits back in the motel chair.

“I cannot tell you how I came to this profession,” he says. “It was not a decision I made all at once. My family came from central Mexico, a place so poor as to defy belief. We came north, to the border. My mother and father went to the maquilas to work fifteen, eighteen hours, six days a week. We children were left on our own. In Ciudad Juárez I went to school. I was a good student, learned English and algebra. I dreamed of going to university to become a poet like Lorca or José Martí. When I was sixteen, a man offered us fifty US dollars to drive a car across the bridge into El Paso, leave the car and walk away. I never asked what was in the cars. It was more money than my father made in a week of work.”

He sips from his glass, then drains it. He motions for me to do the same.

“Drink. We must stay even to take this journey together.”  

I drink, the room growing dim at the edges as he refills my glass. The mezcal has a smoky taste, the smell of a fire burning far away across the desert.

“The Juárez police recruited some of us. We were paid two hundred pesos a month, plus bonuses. Weekends were long parties with drugs and liquor and whores. I was eighteen. They sent me to train with the FBI, where I learned how to use weapons, to surveil, to command a squad of men. I was put in charge of the kidnapping task force. Our job was to prevent kidnapping, but what we really did was to kidnap the victims ourselves, hold them for a while, and then give them to the other unit to be killed. This took less time than guarding the victim while waiting for the ransom. Sometimes we would be told where the body was hidden and pretend to discover it. Other times, the victim would simply vanish. “

He lights a cigarette, sips from his glass. “This was back in the days when things made sense.”

He tells me that in 1997 the head of Juárez cartel was assassinated. The payments to the FBI stopped. The units were on their own.

“When I started, we bought all our drugs in El Paso. The cartel had warehouses of cocaine on the Mexico side of the border, but to slit open a kilo meant your life. After the assassination of El Jefé, there were no such rules. Men such as myself were in high demand. As I said earlier, I did not decide to become a sicario. There was never a choice. It was a new world, and I became a new man. Before, it was organized. When the chaos came, it became something else. A game, but a game such a Satan himself would devise.

“There was a man who rose in the organization, a man of bottomless cruelty, of endless evil. I will give you an example. There was a rumor that one of his lieutenants wanted to make a move, to acquire territory for himself. This lieutenant had a large family. Men were sent to this lieutenant’s house. They took his youngest, a baby girl of three months, and put her in a pot on a stove. In front of the entire family they boiled the baby alive. It took two hours for the child to die. As we left, the boss told the lieutenant that he would force the family to eat the next child he killed. Another time he rounded up the entire staff of the Juárez newspaper and hung them by their heels in a public park, slitting their throats and pulling their tongues through. These are but two examples I have seen with my own eyes.”

As he talks I can see the town square drenched with blood, recall the photos of the charred remains of judges and police officers with burned tires around their necks. I can smell the coppery blood and singed flesh, hear the wails of the bereaved.

As I sit in this anonymous motel room, I am afraid. “How many?” I hear myself asking, my voice far away.

“How many have I killed?” His tone is flat, but it seems he is smiling. “It is bad luck to count. Three hundred? Five hundred? Most were taken in the night, bound and gagged and driven to the desert. These were killed cleanly and put into holes. To their families, they simply vanished.”

“Did you ever ask why?”

He stares at me, the black eyes like holes in the night sky. “I knew why. As I know now I am telling you this. It is truth, and must be heard.” 

He fills our glasses again. I drink automatically, finish in one gulp. My stomach tightens into a fist, and the world swims around me.

“I am a dead man now,” he says, lighting another cigarette. “They have given the signal. Anyone can kill me on sight. There is no headquarters, no recourse for clemency or appeal. It is an event that will happen. I am like a coin whose fate was written the moment it was struck. One side heads, the other, tails. This coin is passed from hand to hand and wears thinner with each transaction. One time it is used to purchase medicine for saving a life; another time, for a knife that takes one. Highest of all its callings is when the coin is used to turn fate itself, tossed in the air to make a decision. Whether the decision is important or trivial is beside the point. The coin itself has no agency in the decision. It is a catalyst, causing the reaction without taking part in it.”

We sit in the motel room, the empty bottle between us.  He looks now like an old man, hunched and beaten. It is as though he’s aged several decades during our conversation. When he looks up at me, I can see his eyes are brown and bloodshot, the pupils reduced to tiny black pinpricks.

“I never knew the reason for the killings, just as I do not know the reason for my own death warrant. It has never been mine to know.  Perhaps in the end there is nothing to know.”

When I awake the next morning, he is gone. So is the bottle, the ashtray, and any trace he was ever here. My head throbs as though it was split by a hatchet, my back twisted with cramp from sleeping hours in this uncomfortable chair.

I stagger to the bathroom and kneel at the toilet, retching up the bitter dregs of the mezcal. The memory of what he told me will never leave. I have crossed the bridge into a country I never wanted even to visit, a place where such things as he told me not only exist but are commonplace.

A place where I will dwell forever.

 

With apologies to Charles Bowden, a man who will always have my utmost respect and admiration. You can read his Harper’s article here.

We Wait

She clutches her pearls in what has become a habitual gesture. At least her eyes are dry. Cried out, probably.

“I’m glad you came, anyway,” she says, the last word an accusation.

“It was the least I could do,” I answer lamely, thinking so that’s what I  did. The least I could do.

“Your brother was… well, you know how he was.”

“You always said he took after Dad.”

This makes her smile, but it isn’t happy. “Yes,” she says. “I suppose I did.”

I try on a brusque tone. “Now that I’m here, what do we do?”

“We wait.”

Friday Fictioneers

Dan Psyches Himself Up

Dan pauses in the hallway and closes his eyes to listen.

He made more noise than he wanted when he climbed through the basement window.

Stealth is the most important part of this operation.

He hears footsteps on the stairs, so he slips into the men’s room and locks himself in the stall.

His heart pounds and he is instantly drenched in sweat.

The anger begins to drain from him, and with it the resolve.

He takes out his service revolver, checks the hollowpoint rounds.

As always, this makes him feel better.

He takes a deep breath.

Let’s do this.

 

Friday Fictioneers

On Nov. 27, 1978, Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, a former police officer and former city supervisor who had clashed with Milk over LGBTQ issues. After shooting the mayor, White entered Milk’s office and shot him five times at his desk, having reloaded to do so. Dan White was a bigot elected on a reactionary platform that included promises to “eradicate malignancies that blight our city”, but his actions were also motivated by anger and loyalty to the racist and homophobic factions within the San Francisco police department. It is also theorized that Dan White himself was a closeted homosexual.

Keep It Light

I. OPERATION RESOLUTE SUPPORT
USMC CAMP DWYER, AFGHANISTAN

“War,” the colonel announces, “is hell.”

He sits behind a metal field desk, a MacArthur corncob pipe jutting from his teeth like a gearshift.

Looking at his face, my mind is filled with rugged adjectives. Granite jaw. Iron hair. Steely eyes.

The wind howls up the Hemland River Valley and buffets the walls of the tent with a loud snapping sound.

The colonel is staring at me, seeming to expect me to reply.

“Yes, sir,” I say. “I’ve heard that.”

“But you’re here to draw funny cartoons about it, correct?”

“I draw cartoons, sir. But they’re not always funny.”

“Then what the hell is the point?” he demands.

“If I may, sir.”

The second lieutenant who has been my constant companion since I landed in Kandahar two days ago hands him a folder.

“Here’s the brief from the Senator’s office. In short, it says the purpose of this mission is to help shape the national narrative.”

“The national narrative?” the colonel says, squinting at the paper. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“The national narrative of why we fight, sir,” says the second lieutenant. “We need to remind people back home why we’re here.”

“They don’t know?”

“Recent polls suggest they don’t, sir.”

“How is that possible?”

“9/11 was a long time ago, sir. Americans have short memories.”

The colonel scowls as he plucks a wooden match from a box on his desk. He pops it with his thumb and lights his pipe, puffing jets of smoke from his nostrils like the mad bull from the Bugs Bunny cartoon.

“Very well.”

He closes the folder and hands it back to the second lieutenant. The second lieutenant jerks to attention and snaps a salute, then spins to face the door like a mechanical man.

The colonel points a blunt finger at me. “My boys better think your cartoons are funny.”

“Yes sir,” I say. As a civilian, I do not salute. I don’t really know how anyway.

 


II. OPERATION TALISMAN SABER
USS CARL VINSON, SEA OF JAPAN

“I love your work, man,” says Seaman Janks. “Especially the one about the dude got his legs blown off. That shit was sick.”

He leans on his mop. squirting jets of water across the deck. “We never get to see anything like that.”

“Nothing ever happens here,” says Seaman Ramirez. He’s also on swab duty, but so far hasn’t touched his mop, preferring to sit in the corner with his back against the bulkhead “Serving on the Vinson is more boring than my old job at Walmart.”

“I thought the task force is doing a joint exercise with the Japanese,” I say. “That’s why I came.”

“World War Three practice has been postponed,” says Ramirez. “Rumor has it we’re heading back to San Diego.”

“They never tell us anything,” says Janks.

“I heard the reactor went kablooey,” says Ramirez.  “That’s why we’re on stand-down.”

“Hey, that cartoon about the legs,” asks Janks. “That really happened?”

I nod. “In the Hemland Valley.”

“Where did the bomb come from? I heard that area was supposed to be secure.”

I shrug. “Nobody knows. Maybe an insurgent snuck in.”

“Fucking insurgents,” says Janks. “Every time we invade a place, there they are. Assholes.”

“Did the dude live?” asks Ramirez.

“I don’t think so,” I say.

“That sucks,” says Janks. “Still, that cartoon was fuckin’ hilarious.”

Ramirez lets loose a long sigh, like a tire losing air, then climbs to his feet.

“May as well get to it,” he says, and walks over to his bucket and takes out the mop. “This deck ain’t gonna swab itself.”

“What are you going to do your cartoon about?” asks Janks. “Now that the joint exercise is canceled?”

“Not sure,” I say. “Maybe after you guys are done here we can up top and you can show me the flight deck?”

“No problem, man,” says Janks. “As long as you promise to put us in your next cartoon!”

 

III. OPERATION TWILIGHT COBRA
CIA BLACK OPS SITE, RAS KAMBONI, SOMALIA

“Make sure nobody is recognizable,” says Sergeant ____. “Officially, we’re not here.”

“Understood,” I say, quickly drawing a mustache on my sketch of him.

“I loved that one you did about the aircraft carrier. Did that really happen?”

“More or less.”

“I loved it. All of us did. Only you can’t do that here.”

“Do what?”

“Draw anything that really happens. Like I said, we’re not here.”

“What can I draw then?”

Sergeant ___ shrugs. “You’re the cartoonist.”

“I mean, they sent me here for a reason.”

“What reason?”

“I’m not entirely sure. Usually it has something to do with public opinion.”

“Huh. That’s not really a factor here. Since this doesn’t really exist.”

He scratches his chin. “I have an idea. Stay here for a second.”

He leaves the tent and comes back with two soldiers in gray combat coveralls and black berets. Each man is leading a hooded Somali with hands zip-tied behind his back. The Somalis are so skinny it looks like their bones might bust through their skin. Another Somali ducks in behind them, a kid in an oversized tan uniform with lots of snaps and buttons.

Sergeant ____ stands back with his hands on his hips and inspects the Somalis. “Maybe if they were kneeling?” he says.

He turns to me. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Make them kneel,” he says to the first soldier.

The first soldier snarls at the kid in the uniform. “Tell these faggots to get on their fucking knees.”

“Jilbahaaga waa jilibyo aan fiicnayn oo jinsi ah,” says the kid, and he starts giggling. The hooded men join him, all three of them laughing.

“What the hell did you tell them?” demands Sergeant ___.

The kid goes wide-eyed and stops laughing. He bows his head to Sergeant ___.

“I am sorry, Commander. What he ask me to tell does not translate to Somali, so I say get down on your soft womanly knees. In school we learn a joke–”

“Shut the fuck up,” says the second soldier.

He unsnaps a telescoping baton from his belt and whips it open, then smashes the side of the nearest Somali’s. leg. The man shrieks and falls to his knees. The soldier does the same to the other.

Both Somalis kneel before us, sobbing underneath their hoods.

“What do you think?” says Sergeant ____. “Can you use this?”

“Um. Maybe.”

I flip my pad to a fresh sheet and start sketching. Sergeant ___ looks over my shoulder as I draw.

“On second thought,” he says, “you better not.”

He reaches over and tears the paper out of my hands. “This never happened.”

 

IV. TENTH AMENDMENT PAC MILLION DOLLAR DINNER
LIMELIGHT HOTEL GRAND BALLROOM, KETCHUM IDAHO

“You’re wasting your talent,” says The Honorable Mrs. Astronaut.

She’s tanned and fit, her arms muscular, her jawline firm. It must take a woman her age a lot of work to stay in that condition.

She gives me a smile, her white teeth shining with a light of their own. “Political cartoons are the ickiest kind of journalism.”

I pull a tiger prawn from the Swarovski crystal goblet and dip it into the caviar cocktail sauce. “I did win the Pulitzer for the Somalia series.”

“Yes,” she says. “But you could be doing so much…more.”

“Am I interrupting anything?” the Vice President says, placing his meaty hands on The Honorable Mrs. Astronaut’s bare shoulders.

She cranes her head back, her pearl necklace riding up onto her clearly defined collarbones. “Dick, Darling!” she croons. “I didn’t know you were here!”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world!” he grins.

I’ve never been this close to him before. His head is huge.

I reach for my sketchbook, but he’s glaring at me over his smile.

“Mind if we have a word?” he asks.

Without waiting for an answer, he strolls away.

I feel hands on my arms. Two large men in blue suits with earpieces and black sunglasses appear out of thin air and lift me from my chair.

They half-carry me across the banquet hall to a pair of tall doors made of dark wood. The man on my right loosens his hand and taps three times on the door, pauses, then taps twice more.

The door opens and I am marched into what looks like a mansion library. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, leather armchairs, even a fireplace.

The Vice President sits in one of the armchairs with legs crossed, a cigar in one hand and a cut-glass tumbler of whiskey in the other.

“Leave us,” he tells the men.

They back away as though on rollers, pulling the doors closed after them.

The Vice President gestures to the chair next to him. “Sit. I’d offer you a drink, but I know about your…problem.”

“My problem?”

I sit down.

“When you were in college at Northern Arizona University, you were thrown out of Shaky Drake’s Good Time Bar for being drunk. Twice. Less than a year later, you were photographed at an outdoor café drinking an entire bottle of wine by yourself. At ten in the morning. And that was just the start.”

He reaches down to a briefcase beside him and removes a thick folder. He sets it on the coffee table and flips it open.

A color glossy photo of me at a party drinking a beer. I don’t recognize the photo, but I look very young.

He flips through the photos. There are dozens of them. In every one, I have a drink in my hand. “This is just five years’ worth,” he says.

I shrug. “This proves nothing,” I say.

He gives a little laugh like a B-movie villain.

“We don’t need to prove you have a problem. You have quite a lot of them. I’m just showing you this particular one to demonstrate how much we know about you.” He takes a huge pull on his cigar. “Which is very much indeed.”

“I don’t understand. What do you want?”

“I need your cooperation. We need it.”

“We?”

He looks dumbfounded. “The United States, son. Americans. The real Americans.”

“Republicans?”

“Of course Republicans. Didn’t I make myself clear?”

“What do you want me to do?”

He grins again, but his eyes remain as flat as poker chips. “Exactly what you’ve been doing. Keep it light. Make them laugh. It’s a great distraction in a time of war.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

He leans forward and gives my leg an avuncular pat. “People are starting to take notice of you. People like Fran.”

“Fran?”

“The Honorable Mrs. Astronaut. At the table just now. She represents some powerful people who would like to take you out of the game. Keep you from doing what you’ve been doing.”

“How do you know that?”

He tilts his head as though I was speaking in tongues. “Did I not make myself clear? We know everything.”

“Everything?”

“Every single fucking thing there is.”

He sets down his drink and picks up the folder, then rises from his chair.

“Personally,  I loved the Somalia cartoons. The hoods were a fantastic touch.”

I nod modestly.

“One thing I was wondering,” he asks, leaning in close. “Did any of that really happen?”

I don’t hesitate even a second. “No. None of it happened.”

He smiles again, and this time it seems to involve his eyes.

“Ah. That’s too bad.”

 

President Jimmy

You know me. The name Jimmy B. Jimmy is almost as famous as Mickey Mouse, especially after last November when I was elected President of the United States by the largest margin in American history.

But that’s not why you know me. You know me because for twenty-five years I’ve been the infomercial guy who sells anything and everything.  The orbital car waxer. The Japanese knives. The vibrating mop-broom. The CD player that eliminates the vocal track so you can sing along. You even know my catchphrase

I happened to get lucky. I was in DC applying for an illustration job at the Washington Post-Dispatch  the very day their Pulitzer-winning cartoonist keeled over dead at his drawing board. Sensing an opportunity, I took my portfolio up to the editor. It was a tasteless thing to do, but he liked the drawings and hired me on the spot, albeit without a contract.

I’d been to art school and had a knack for caricature, a necessity for a cartoonist. You study the person you’re drawing and decide what they’re most embarrassed about, what they’re trying to hide. Then you make it the biggest thing about them. That’s why that Herblock cartoon was so successful. Nixon was always trying to prove he wasn’t a lowdown crook, so drawing him as a sewer rat was perfect. Nixon never forgot it.

I even had the killer instinct, that crucial ability to go for the jugular. But even with all that, I wasn’t any good at cartooning. I had no sense of subtlety, or even of common decency.  My cartoons were crude and insulting. My editor told me everything I drew was in bad taste. I couldn’t argue. Hell, I didn’t even know what good taste was.

Thus, I wasn’t terribly surprised when they fired me a few weeks later. All the same, it hit me hard. Failure is tough to swallow at any age, but it’s worst on the young man who’s never had reason to doubt himself. I was crushed.

Those next few years I went on the drift. Did various odd jobs. Construction, roofing, a season as a carnival roustabout. I liked most of what I did, but found my true calling as a door-to-door salesman. I had some kind of knack I could not explain. Time and again, a woman who might slam the front door on her own children would allow me into her living room to try and sell her something. Most of the time I would, too. I’d not been working for the Brush Company two months before I was shattering all their sales records. The territory manager told me I was the best salesman he’d ever seen.

I received a promotion, but my knack didn’t extend to management. I failed miserably and they transferred me back to sales. Immediately the old magic returned and within a few weeks I was again the top salesman. I spent a couple decades traveling around the country, working for different companies. I couldn’t settle down. I felt like something was missing.

Out in Los Angeles I got a call from a young fella fresh out of Stanford, Edgar Bagman. He told me he’d read an article about me in a trade magazine and looked me up. He wanted to talk to me about doing informercials. I had no idea what those were, but I agreed to meet anyway.

We met at a diner on Sunset where Edgar told me about this new thing called cable TV that piped dozens of channels into homes all over the country twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. He believed some of the less-expensive half hour blocks could be used as commercials for various products.

“You’d be a natural, Jimmy,” he said. “Everybody loves you.” Then he reached into his briefcase and produced a contract guaranteeing me 50% of all sales revenue generated from any product I represented.

“Half?” I asked. “I usually get 20%.”

“Half, Jimmy. That’s how bad Our Sponsors want you.”

I was so excited that I signed without reading the rest of it.

The infomercials were wildfire.  My sales knack worked even better on television, especially after I developed what I called my Mr. and Mrs. act. You know the one?  A married couple debates whether or not to buy the product at hand. I play both parts, always being sure to make the naysayer seem ridiculous by exaggerating certain gestures and mannerisms. It’s a lot like cartooning, except I’m good at it.

Our Sponsors had hundreds of different products, and I sold most of them, usually making one or two informercials a week. We always used a live audience, and the shows got so popular we had to run a raffle for tickets. My God, the money just poured in. I had everything I ever dreamed of, and more.

But I was so successful it got damn boring. After all, how many houses can a man own? How many suits? I needed a change.

You recall I mentioned the contract I’d signed without reading?  I must’ve showed it to every lawyer in Los Angeles, looking for a way out. None of them could believe anyone in his right mind would ever sign it, this lifetime contract that could only be terminated by Our Sponsors,  a vast offshore holding company that owned majority shares in most of America’s largest corporations but themselves were cloaked in impenetrable layers of mystery. The lawyers all told me the same thing: I might have more money than I could ever spend, but I’d never have enough to buy my freedom.

That was when I decided to try to get fired. I began to introduce new characters into the infomercials, all the crudest racial stereotypes––an old Jewish lady, a blackface Amos n’ Andy type with a lazy southern drawl, a sleepy Mexican in a sombrero.

But the lower I went, the more popular I became. Sales would immediately increase in locations where a tasteless informercial was aired, sometimes by 20% or more.  I got so famous that I couldn’t go anywhere without hearing my own slogan shouted at me by fans: But just you wait! There’s so much more!

Which leads me to the August day when I found Edgar and a pretty young woman waiting for me in the studio office.  “This is Kim Cabbagehat,” said Edgar. “She directly represents Our Sponsors and has flown out from Washington with a proposition I think you’re going to love.”

Knowing I had no choice but to love it, I gave her my biggest fake smile.

She smiled back, her teeth whiter than my sink. “Mr. Jimmy, I’ll cut to the chase. Our Sponsors want you to run for president.”

“President?” I said. “Of what?”

“The United States,” said Kim, taking a stack of reports out of her briefcase and spreading them on the conference table. “Poll after poll shows you to be the most popular celebrity in the country. Not only does everyone know who you are, everybody loves you.”

“I’m not qualified to be president.”

“Pish posh,” said Edgar. “It’s already been decided. Per your contract.”

Kim then revealed her political doomsday weapon: the political infomercial, half hour blocks starring me that would air all over the country at all times of day and night. The only difference was that I would use my Mr.and Mrs. act to pretend to be my opponents.

It was in the contract. I had no choice, but I decided I’d try to make it as short a campaign as I could. I would max out on my tastelessness, hit my opponents below below-the-belt. The campaign had carefully researched my primary opponents, so I had access to all their scandals and dirt. Gay son? Divorce? Drunk Driving? All were fair game, so I expanded each to be the single most important thing about the candidate. And if they happened to be scandal-free, I made something up. Candidate One beats his dog. Candidate Two shoplifts ladies’ underwear and masturbates into it. Candidate Three had a retarded child out of wedlock and sent it to the state home.

Of course, you know the rest. The lower I went, the more popular I became. One by one, my opponents dropped out, and halfway through primaries I had the nomination locked up. I felt more trapped than ever.

After the Republican National Convention,  I was again asked to the DC office.

“No more dark money,” said Kim. “It’s your new campaign issue.”

“How will we pay for all this, then?” I asked, hoping we wouldn’t.

Kim reached into her bag and pulled out a red jumpsuit completely covered with logo patches like a NASCAR racing outfit. High on the right sleeve was the American flag. “Ta-da!”

“You want me to wear that?” I asked. “In public?”

“We don’t want you to ever take it off,” said Kim. “It’s going to be your signature. See? Each patch represents a company owned by Our Sponsors. The more they contribute, the better placement they’ll get. Over your heart is best. Probably reserve that one for Huwei or Google.”

“And that’s just the start,” said Edgar.  “After the election, Our Sponsors will pay for all the things the government now does. What do you think of Energizer-Yosemite National Park? How about the Target Smithsonian? Sure, at first people might not like the Washington Monument branded to look like a Vick’s cough drop, or the Apple logo on the military aircraft, but wait until they see their low, low taxes!”

“Actually, most of the tax breaks go to Our Sponsors,” said Kim. “But people will love it anyway. They’ll have to.”

I probably don’t need to remind you of the rest; the celebrity-studded fundraising galas that packed stadiums across the country; the debate with my Democratic opponent, distinguished Senator Anne Jefferson Lincoln, where I called her fat and pretended to squeeze into a girdle while the audience roared with laughter. She bolted from the stage so fast I couldn’t tell if her tears were from rage or shame. How about my inaugural address where I kept asking Justice Roberts to repeat himself, mugging to the camera with that exaggerated stage shrug I used so many times in my commercials?

By now you’re probably used to seeing the Tide logo on your social security check and the Facebook flag flying alongside Old Glory on all the public buildings. Maybe you’ve even started to call the Capitol the IKEA Building. My poll numbers are in the high seventies, and whenever they start to sag they make me put out another informercial. I don’t want to, but it’s in the contract.

But I recently discovered my contract only forbids me working for direct competitors. I can still freelance in unrelated industries. That’s why I’m launching a new comic strip about life in the White House called President Jimmy.  I’m going to stick to the facts and not exaggerate anything. Lifelike depictions of myself and the Vice President, the Senators, and, yes, Our Sponsors. I’m even putting in Kim and Edgar.

The whole truth. We’ll see how they like that.