thunders its approach
in the wrapping paper
of grey clouds,
deposits
a calling card
of silver beads
on a chute of grass,
lumbers away
as everything green
becomes more green,
and cricket frogs speak
It’s been a year since I arrived in the northeastern portion of Louisiana, a wilderness and a wonderland to a northerner who has never lived south before. I’ve been introduced to crawfish or “mudbugs” and the proper way to eat them. This involves grasping the outside shell of the tail joint firmly with a thumb on one side and an index finger on the other, and then deftly cracking the bug open. The rest is a matter of slurping and sucking and repeating the same action with a dozen or so brilliantly-colored mudbugs. Basically, you pinch the tail and suck the head. Somewhere, I’m sure, there must be a color named after them, crawfish red. Since each bug is about four inches long, it did take awhile before I felt like I had eaten anything, but participating in the crawfish ritual was well worth the mess and it was good exercise, to boot. Plus I enjoyed some corn on the cob and red potatoes that were thrown in for good measure, the two companions of any bona fide crawfish boil.
I’ve learned that the mosquito is Louisiana’s state bird, a pest that I remember from my girlhood in New York City, scratching red welts throughout the summer until they bled down my leg and only healed at the start of the school year, which was its own insult. The Louisiana mosquito is no different than its northern cousin except there seems to be more of them and they frequently don’t introduce themselves with their characteristic annoying whine, which makes them even harder to detect. They are stealth bombers.
Mosquitoes are fond of breeding in standing water. As there are about 400 bayous throughout Louisiana,; even if the bayous themselves aren’t standing but are low-flowing, mosquitoes have more than an ample opportunity to do the dirty and proliferate in overwhelming numbers. Everywhere in the circle of homes where I live are signs on people’s lawns offering mosquito abatement, help in defending the family from the nasty vampirish habits of mosquitoes. As far as I can tell this involves lots of spraying. But I suppose that if the mosquito is helping to create jobs, it may be a good thing.
We are God’s Infidels driving
to Pecanland Mall
on Sunday morning (everyone’s in church)
to see the new blockbuster,
Star Trek into Darkness, purchase tickets,
wait inside an abandoned food court,
eerie.
Only a small group
in brown plastic chairs, a couple
whose two sons
have anointed their crew-cuts,
turquoise and orange
on Sunday in Pecanland
waiting in front of the Gourmet
Chinese Express and Yummy Japan
fast-food stalls, take the arcade tour,
play games to win a cell phone,
MP3 player, or PDA,
don’t redeem points here.
We want the full conversion
experience inside a movie theater–
Kirk and Spock restoring
the U.S.S. Enterprise, a new starship
to its first directive–
to only go where they are wanted.
.
“…she was short on sleep and in no mood for bad news.”
There was no other way to tell her except for straight out.
“Was the whole crew laid off?”
“They said they needed a more experienced operator.”
“Who said?” Since the baby had arrived, Judy was short on sleep and in no mood for bad news.
“I just got a piece of paper, hon. That’s all they would tell me.”
“Well, godammit. Did they say for how long?”
“Don’t worry.” But he was worried. If they didn’t need him at the ponds, why hadn’t they reassigned him back to finishing where guys were always calling in sick? The place was either too hot in the summer or too cold in the winter. Then his mind waded into swampier territory. He didn’t want to believe that he was being singled out. After all, he had made an effort to show up a half hour early every day, and he knew that despite his wise-ass remarks, Jay liked him.
“It’s gotta be my father,” she said. “That fucker.”
“Please, Judy.”
“He’s screwing us.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Don’t you get it?”
“I’m going to call him up.”
“No, don’t do that.” She had already used up their good graces with Vernon by asking him to foot the bill for his drug recovery program. Maybe his father-in-law didn’t think he was a good investment. Either way, he was planning to pay every penny back.
“This isn’t about you,” she said, lifting a bra strap from her shoulder. “We need the money. How are we going to live, especially right now?” She cupped a breast in her hand and rubbed her nipple.
“I can collect unemployment.”
“Like that’s going to do us a lot of good.” Their son cried out from a foam rubber bed on the floor. Judy ran and picked him up, lifted her blouse and fed the baby her breast— milk flowed with the steady pressure of a mouth clamped on her nipple.
“Don’t worry. I’ll figure out something.”
Judy settled into a rocking chair. She offered Mark a nod of recognition and closed her eyes. The retriever settled between Mark’s knees. For the next half hour, they were a happy family.
“There you are. I thought maybe you went home to plant watermelons.”
Mark climbed out of a truck. “What’s bugging you? You told me to check the readings. I did.”
“Great. So what does it look like at the ponds today?”
“Slime and black pockets of water. It stinks to high heaven.”
Rotten eggs. The smell was an immediate give-away to the presence of hydrogen sulfide gas. “You have the readings?”
Mark handed them over. He had sampled the air quality where the runoff from the plant fed into the Mud River. He didn’t know why Bryan was making such a big fuss. He was counting the hours until he could get away from all this stupid smelly shit and head south for a duck-hunting trip in the Atachafalaya Swamp. Last time Mark went out, he had bagged his limit of ducks, and was hoping to do the same this weekend. He liked sitting as still as a cypress tree watching for the movement of a mallard. There was nothing like hunting with his retriever. The dog understood every wave of his hand, and knew him better than most people.
But his father-in-law complained every time Mark went duck hunting. Vernon said all Mark knew how to do was to get high and sit in a duck blind. Mark had done his share of getting fucked up, but that was over. He had come close to losing everything he loved and didn’t like the way it felt, not one bit. Maybe he’d have to put off that hunting trip— he forgot his wife was talking about introducing her grandfather to his new great-grandson, Raymond.
Bryan frowned. “You sure they’re right?”
“Sure, I’m sure.” He covered his annoyance by digging in his pockets for truck keys. Bryan wasn’t a bad guy. He was learning skills, better than being stuck in the finishing plant where his weekends on recreational drugs had extended throughout the week and everyone talked about it.
Bryan thought he should know. “Some people are saying stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“How you’re fucked up on meth.”
“That’s a bunch of crap.”
Bryan also was concerned about Mark’s wife who had just given birth. “I thought you’d want to know.”
“Thanks. I’ve got it covered. What about the rest of the day?”
“Get a mid-day and afternoon reading. Put them in my box before you clock out tonight. And Mark, don’t forget to wear your respirator.”
Mark drove off. He hated that respirator. It made him feel like Darth Vadar on another planet with cakes of ash covering the hillside, stuff that clogged your nostrils and stuck beneath your fingernails.
As Bryan watched his car leave a trail of dust, he thought that there was no question about the hydrogen sulfide levels. They were out of the park, over two hundred parts per million. Safe levels were at five parts. Men exposed to high doses were lucky not to keel over from convulsions. He’d seen pictures like that in his courses. They were posed pictures, not for real. But this was getting real. He ticked off the symptoms. First, exposed men would get headaches. Soon they’d lose their sense of smell, unable to detect the presence of the gas, which could lead to heart and respiratory problems. He reminded himself that when he took the job, his predecessor had told him good luck. He needed that now.
He went to the safety office on the third level of the plant and saw his supervisor, Vernon Wolfe, look at the readings. His heavily lined forehead folded into furrows. “Who took these?”
“Mark. Gave them to me less than ten minutes ago.”
“Mark G?”
“Right.”
He laughed.
“But, sir.”
“Thurmond. I don’t want you to worry about this. Do you understand?”
“I can take the readings myself. Then we can be…”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Sir?”
The supervisor took a deep breath. “Rand Atlantic has a permit to exceed target hydrogen sulfide levels. The permit has been issued by the EPA.”
“I don’t care who it’s been issued by,” said Bryan. “If anyone dies out there, it won’t be on my watch.” He couldn’t understand why Vernon, who was the big environmental cheese at the company, didn’t get it. “It’ll be on the company’s head. Lawsuits.”
“You don’t get it, do you?”
“I guess not.”
“By the way, how’s your daughter doing? Keeping up her grades?”
“She’s doing great.” Jenny was so close to the finish line. They couldn’t fuck up now.
He drove to the ponds where Rand Atlantic discharged its millions of gallons of paper-mill waste. Fish had stopped spawning here, especially bottom feeders, catfish that fed on sludge flavored with chemical compounds, a salad bar filled with ammonia and chloride metals like zinc and mercury. Bryan turned on his meter. The readings were higher than Mark’s. He brought them back upstairs.
“I’ve already faxed your first group of readings to Atlanta.”
“But I thought…”
“Never mind what you thought. I have to make sure that the men who are working for me are doing a job. You’re a good man, Bryan. If you keep doing a solid job, you never know what might happen.”
He went home and was glad to find out that his daughter had passed her English exam. He watched American Idol before he fell out on the couch. When he came to work the next day, he saw Jay in the break room.
“Did you hear? Mark’s been laid off.”
“Laid off?”
“I won’t say I told you so.”
“He’s not a bad kid.” He wondered why Vernon hadn’t said anything.
“And since when have you become his number one fan?”
“I’m short-handed. And as far as I’m concerned, the kid does a decent job.”
Bryan went back to his office on the third floor of the plant. Stuffed inside his box were readings that Mark had taken yesterday. He faxed in an order for new respirators, went outside to the ponds carrying his gas meter, past the turnips that were soaking up sun.
Jay hurried to the finishing area, glad it was getting warmer and that he didn’t need to freeze his buns off working outside. Over these last six months, he’d watched Bryan change from a cheery guy who was always excited about his daughter, to a man who looked like his mother had died in a car wreck. He hated to see him so twisted up. Bryan was the kind of guy who found a lizard running across his lunch sac funny, plus he’d been through enough divorces to teach him how to walk away from something that was broken.
Jay missed the old Bryan.
He liked to tell the story of how his friend had mooned the Shreveport Junior League. It wasn’t the kind of thing they expected to happen at the annual fundraiser for the Children’s Hospital.
For the last several weeks, Bryan had been subbing for a bass player who had broken his wrist, but was returning to work soon. Bryan had to line up more gigs. He got up early, glad to leave the stifling confines of a studio apartment that had a scenic view of garbage cans from one window, and a parking lot from another. It was too warm to remain inside practicing, and it was too early to meet his musician friends. Fundraisers were good places to meet people, he told himself as he picked up a flyer he had left on the kitchen table, dressed in a cowboy shirt with a blue yoke and yellow cuffs and made his way into the building whose hallway was festooned with American flags and photos of past VFW presidents.
Inside the building were women in white broad brimmed hats, a garden of paisley and flowered dresses, silver sandals on manicured feet with painted toenails and men in seer sucker suits. There were others wearing khaki pants with woven leather belts, boots, and cowboy hats, lots of drinking and milling around and the smell of grilled hotdogs and the whining of children who were tugging on their parents’ hands to lead them outside to the lawn where there were balloons and face-painting.
Bryan had brought his guitar.
A woman took the microphone. She smiled, cool as a cup of frozen yogurt, and oblivious to the fact that it was 95 degrees outside. She introduced herself as the chair of the Sustainer Advisory Board who was there to make an award to Sandra Morgan as the 1986-87 Sustainer of the Year. The League chairwoman said, “Sandra is an enthusiastic supporter of education, presiding as President of the PTA four times and volunteers as an adult literacy tutor and Sunday school teacher.” The woman retrieved her award and sat down as several people hugged her thin shoulders.
In the meantime, Bryan drank beer on an empty stomach and waited for the musicians to take the stage.
A radio announcer from KDIK introduced a woman who wore a large rhinestone “M” around her neck. Lady M sang and played guitar.
After the set, the announcer straightened his tie and encouraged people to bid on any of the fine Silent Auction items, including a hosted birthday party at a miniature golf park, which caused several families to run up to the table where they eyed each other suspiciously. Others liked the spa packages or the rental of a hunting cabin for a weekend in the Ozarks. All the money would go toward helping the Children’s Hospital.
Bryan was getting dizzy from the heat. He slumped against his guitar case. The announcer again straightened his tie and asked the crowd, “Ladies and Gents, are you ready to hear more music?” Recognizing his cue, Bryan ran up to microphone and started to sing “I’ve Got Friends in Low Places,” a good song for the bar crowd, but not exactly right for Shreveport’s Junior League. Someone from the Silent Auction tables walked to the front and whispered into the radio announcer’s ear and he in turn, walked up to Bryan and reminded him that he hadn’t been invited.
Bryan continued to sing until two security guards, one of them Jay, approached from the back of the room. Now he moved fast, turned around and dropped his pants, shaking his bootie in front of the assembled crowd. A loud cry arose from League members who were standing closest to Bryan with a full view of his exposed buttocks that caused considerable spilling, slipping and subsequent ankle twisting.
He was escorted outside to the parking lot. Jay’s partner said he liked the way Bryan sang and suggested that he contact his cousin who ran a honky-tonk on the Bossier strip. The next day, Bryan and his buttocks made the front page. Everyone wanted to hear him play “I’ve Got Friends in Low Places.”
At the end of July, the turnips were lush. They grew alongside the entrance to the plant, bright green fronds waving in the afternoon heat like feathers of a peacock’s tail. Bryan Thurmond had seen dozens of peacocks in the parking lot of the zoo where he drove Jenny, his daughter, to volunteer—peacocks strutting like they were collecting fees. Nothing scared them except for the sound of a car’s ignition. The turnips survived in the dirt like that. They didn’t care if the groundwater or the soil were polluted. Turnips hugged entrances and exits and tempted employees to pick them for the dinner table—plants that grew in spite of everything. And who knows, maybe he should’ve joined the crowd. Why not? He’d never seen such tall, beautiful plants. They thrived in muck. He pulled his Monte Carlo into the parking lot. A lot of guys laughed at him, didn’t understand why he chose to ignore nature’s free bounty. They were like teenage boys who believed nothing could ever happen. They didn’t see the green fronds as a warning.
Management got it. They knew he was a single dad and couldn’t afford to step away from a full-time job with benefits. Six months ago Rand Atlantic had promoted Bryan to Lead Environmental Officer. But he was getting pressured to overlook certain safety readings. Not directly pressured, of course. The company wouldn’t be that stupid. Encouragements to step over the line came in the form of free passes to the Rodeo Club, and murmurs of a scholarship for his daughter to attend junior college. They had him by the balls.
He had spent evenings qualifying for a bunch of online certificates in hazardous waste management. Of course, he had an undergraduate degree from Arkansas State in political science, but none of that had prepared him for the paper mill in southern Arkansas at the head of Route 82 where truckers delivered loblolly pines, trees up to 100 feet tall, to meet their death by chemical process. The resulting product, beside tissue and toilet paper, was wastewater dumped into a nearby stream. After years of abuse people had stopped calling it Silver River. Hardly anyone remembered when it flowed clean. Now everyone referred to it as “Mud” River depositing brown slime around the pigweed that grew along its shore. The local newspaper had started to report concerns of the aquifer being “compromised.”
It was mid morning and Bryan was in the break room getting a cup of coffee. “Hey, Big Guy,” said Jay. Ever since his promotion, Jay called him that, reminding his buddy not to take his authority too seriously, especially when it came to their friendship.
Jay was the real big man standing at 6’2” and proud of a gut that he had cultivated from drinking beer and eating barbecue. He worked in the finishing plant where paper was cut and stacked into 500 ream packages making their way to a palletizer where paper was wrapped in plastic and fork-lifted to a staging area for shipment throughout the country.
He had a collection of t-shirts from crawfish festivals and wore a different one every day. Today’s shirt read, “Whose Your Crawdaddy?”
“Big storm coming in.”
“No telling when it will get here,” said Bryan. “How was your weekend?”
“Drunk and fucked until I was blind and helpless.”
Bryan laughed. “More like cutting back your lawn and sleeping through the game on Sunday.”
“Got me there. What’s happening today, Big Guy?”
“Waiting for Mark. He’s still learning the equipment.”
“Good luck. I hear he’s back on drugs.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“From the same guy you work for.” Mark’s father-in-law was Bryan’s boss. Jay emptied two packets of sugar into his Styrofoam cup. “So have you decided?”
“I have to do something. People are getting sick.”
“That’s nothing. I’m sick of this place all the time.”
“You know what I mean. They hired me to do a job. To watch the safety levels.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Big Guy.”
…won Flash Fiction Friday at The Portland Review.
After Adam and Eve got expelled from the garden, there was no more low-hanging fruit to pick from the Tree. Anyhow, there was no need to pick because they’d already figured out that they weren’t going to live in a perfect world.
In this imperfect world as soon as they touched a branch, berries no longer grew from a bush, and when they picked an orange and placed it on the ground inside a leaf, they could no longer count upon the naranjo to spontaneously peel and dissolve into juice with pulp like from the finest Maui resort. The fact is they were hungry and unless they could figure out a way to fill their stomachs, hunger would come knocking. Work had suddenly become real. Fast forward past Cain and Abel, which for Adam and Eve meant more work.
Did they have a great role model here? It’s not that I’m trying to be critical. Just look at the facts. You might disagree with me, but the Bible isn’t exactly a handbook for new parents. God got ticked off about the whole Tree thing and told A & E where to go. There was nothing pretty about it. Abel keeps sheep, Cain tills the soil until he goes East of Eden, and A & E earn their daily bread with a lot of ritual sacrifice to fill up the down time.
So finally one day Eve sits down on a rock near their three-bedroom, no bath house and looks at her reflection in a pool of water. “Uggh!” She traces her finger across the wrinkles of her brow, cups her breasts with her hands and lets them drop down again. She looks a mess, plus there’s that pain in her right finger joint that might be arthritis and there’s no Tylenol in the medicine cabinet. “Adam,” she says. “We need to talk.”
Adam comes hobbling out of the house. He was snoozing on the bedroom mat and isn’t pleased that Eve has awakened him. Adam has reached the ripe age where he understands that not everything needs to be done immediately. He wishes it hadn’t taken him so long to come to that realization, but nonetheless, he’s glad that he finally gets it. Maybe he wouldn’t have been so quick to eat the apple, at least told Eve that he needed to sleep on it before making a decision. But after 30 years, that’s all water under the big rock, which is where Eve is standing motioning to him. Does he love her? Of course he does.
”What took you so long?”
He bends down and splashes water in his face from the pool. “I was sleeping. What did you want?”
She motions for him to sit down on the rock. “Look at me. Once my face was smooth like polished marble. Now it’s filled with wrinkles.”
“You will always be beautiful to me, Eve.”
“Don’t be a fool,” she says, brushing away his hand from her shoulder. “What I’m trying to say is that I’m tired and I can’t keep going like this. And look at you.” She motions to the body that could once hold its own on Muscle Beach without steroids. “You cough more during the night than you sleep. And you’re always falling asleep during the day.”
“So what are you saying?”
“We should stop working.”
He looks at her dumbfounded. He lowers his voice. “Don’t you remember the Apple hullabaloo?”
“My fingers hurt all the time from weaving and baking. We need to stop.”
Adam is suddenly warming up to Eve’s idea, but is trying not to let it show.
“I can’t keep living like this.” Eve is excited now, splashing her foot in the water. “After Cain and Abel and then Seth, I need a break.” And then she says something truly amazing. “Adam, we both deserve it.”
What a novel idea. Adam pulls himself up from his seat and once again hitches up his pants. “Let’s talk about this in the morning.” Adam is pleased that he’s figured out a way to finish his nap. He lies back down on the mat and falls asleep. Then he dreams of Eve offering him the Apple and thinking, “Why the heck not?” But everything caves in and God starts to hurl thunderbolts and chase them away saying a bunch of mean things just because they had covered themselves with that year’s designer banana leaves. Sure, it was a long time ago, but Adam was having a flashback. God had never actually put a ban on broadening horizons, just the messy stuff about sweat and toil and pain. He woke up refreshed from his nap, threw water on his face, said a few ritual prayers, and sought out Eve’s whereabouts.
She was sitting outside the kitchen running her fingers through her hair. It used to be long and black, but now was white like his. “I need a comb,” she said. “Since I lost my fish bone, it’s always getting knotty.”
He sits down on the ground next to her and takes her hand. “You’re right.”
“After 40 years, you’re agreeing with me?”
“Not about your hair,” he says. “Maybe we can’t stop working because it’s been decreed by you-know-who, but he didn’t say anything about continuing education. Now that’s also a kind kind of work.”
So they went back to school and studied.
The city
etched her face
into a pie chart
wedges of a nose,
mouth, eyes
in shadow,
each an escapee
from the big
picture,
a radioactive half-life
counting
piano bars
beneath subways,
black keys
minoring in months.
The final caesura,
six feet drawn out
at water fountains,
her mouth
for a single sip
on a hot day.
