Turk's Head Review

Insomnia

She stormed into the dimly-lit study in her sleep shorts and baggy grey sweatshirt drenched in sweat, brandishing the intricately woven web of string, feather, and beads. She shook it violently above her head as if it had a neck that could be strangled. “You said this would work, Jay!” A single feather fell from the ornate piece as she glared at her husband’s tired face, careless of what she may have interrupted in the delicate thoughts of the under-paid scholar. There was nothing beyond the horrifying images that constantly streamed through her head, like a filmstrip she could not stop running. She did not notice his equally tired eyes and the worried look that was beginning to permanently crease the space between his eyebrows.

“Annie…Sweetheart, you have to believe in it for it to work for you. The man in the store said that if you do not trust the dream-catcher, it won’t be able to help. You have to force them away; visualize the release of those thoughts and let it carry that burden for you.”

Her arm fell. She was so incredibly exhausted. Her downcast eyes brimmed with tears and she slumped to the floor in a delirious sob of defeat. “I can’t do it. I cannot imagine him away. It’s like trying to force these scars to jump off my skin and sear into someone else’s! It’s been a month and they still hurt me! All I think about when I try to fall asleep is his face staring at me from each bead—twenty of his faces—all waiting to come alive and tear me apart.  I’ll just sit there, counting each bead and wondering when they will attack me.” 

Annie sat, whimpering like child whose parents had forgotten her at an amusement park and drove twenty miles away, clutching her head with both hands as if doing so was the only way of keeping sanity inside. She rocked back and forth, shaking.

“Honey…Dammit.” Getting up from his seat, Jay knocked over the mug of lukewarm black coffee that had been standing post next to his keyboard all through the night. The noise of shattering ceramic caused Annie to jump. Eyes red, she looked over at the source of the noise. Wiping off his desk and floor with the paper towel he had used to clean his monitor earlier, Jay rose back up with as many shards as he could grab at once and walked over to the wastepaper basket near a window behind his wife. It was a small study, with more scattered papers than books. The dark green wallpaper was torn in many places from age and a lack of funds to replace them. 

As he neared the window, he saw his own reflection against the black night. His pale face and dark baggy circles made him look skeletal. He felt the pain that had been growing in his chest over the past few weeks; a piercing discomfort he had yet to see a doctor for. There was something he did not want to face when questions were asked about where the tension could be coming from. He turned and kneeled next to his sobbing wife. 

“This man, he won’t ever be able to hurt you again. They have him locked away and he will never see you or anyone else outside those bars again.” 

He paused, and taking one hand away from her head, held it in his own. He wondered if it was his imagination or if it actually felt like holding his grandmother’s hand when he was a child—frail, and colder than was comfortable. He looked at the hand for a moment and a different look began to shadow the creases between his eyebrows. The tiniest muscle movement changed the worry lines to anger. 

“Even if he could walk free, he would die before he even looked in your direction. I would kill him.” 

He looked back into her swollen eyes and felt the pain in his chest intensify. Her eyes had not changed and no comfort had been drawn from his words. He knew the thought before she had even opened her mouth. It was that tension he did not want to face, that he had buried deep within his own guilty heart and tried to imagine away as he busied himself in his work. 

“But Jay, you were here when he came. You didn’t even know it was happening.” 

All he could do was hold her, trembling on the floor. He knew he did not need to go to a doctor to find out that guilt was the greatest cause of the searing in his chest. Her inability to be touched anymore, the scars all over her stomach and thighs would haunt their marriage forever because he could have stopped it and was oblivious. He cradled his sobbing, petrified wife and all he could see now was the beads of the dream catcher, scowling at him from the floor.

Lunch With Louie

The demon that regularly assaults Steven Mayer returns in full force this night at 2:32.  Shame, as Steven names it, rouses him before he can mobilize his defense strategy.

Knowing that the Army advocates attempting to escape as soon as possible after enemy capture, he has directed himself to fight off the invading thoughts immediately, so as not to be taken prisoner. Think only good things.  

He makes his nightly trip to the toilet, stumbles back to bed and tries to return to his dream.  There he is a powerful young man full of hope and confidence and living the ultimate boy/man fantasy: two men on base, down two runs in the bottom of the ninth, and he’s just driven a three-two pitch so far out of Yankee Stadium that it’s instantly historic, like one of Mantle’s rifle shots that defined glory.

He pushes his mind to return to that dream, focusing on visual slivers: the pitcher’s wind-up, the release, the fastball coming straight to his sweet spot, the assured movement of his legs, mid torso, forearms, and wrists, and then getting right behind that spinning red-stitched white leather ball with the meat of his bat.  He grabs at images from the dream for traction like a mountain climber frantically feeling for a life-saving foothold.  But nothing sticks. Steven can’t get back to that golden ballpark with its white-lined symmetry, its green grass and brown clay, can’t get back to round the bases and savor the cheers. Shame hits him harder than he could ever hit that fastball. 

Familiar with the terrain, the invader now works its way through his consciousness with the usual weapons: Kicked out. Fired. Let go. Terminated. The more accurate, less hurtful version of what had happened is never used: Your position, Steven, has been eliminated for economic reasons having nothing to do with performance.  At this stage in the torment, though, that detail has become academic. It no longer matters to Steven that he was laid off and not fired. 

 Worthless. Failure. Useless. Loser. The words rip into him, guaranteeing sleeplessness.  Still, if being laid off was his only battle, by now, twenty months into it, he would be awake for only an hour. Two, at the most.  But the complete career analysis takes over:  all the mistakes made, things said, not said, roads taken and not taken.  Conclusion: He’s sixty years old and done.   

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The Soldier

December

The first snow of the year never lasts.  It usually starts with a few flakes dancing on the air like campfire ash,  then graduates to a heavier pattern.  I like when it slants.  I like when it straightens, when it thickens, makes the world into a snow globe.  I take the quilt from the bed and wrap it around myself, the pathetic old king with his robes trailing him across the floor boards.  My breath makes mist on the window.  When the display outside peters off,  it will be bleak again, hard wind running through branches that bow in dumb servitude, the sky a defensive grayish blue, the clouds just bruises.

If only it would keep.

If only it would have intensified, swirled, buried the sidewalks, iced up the phone lines, blanketed all the side streets, cut visibility to the point that the mayor shut down all the major bridges and Penn Dot closed off sections of Route 95.  If only that first December snow of 1978 could have been a storm instead of a tease.

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The Ear

We knew the family was in trouble, when our sister, Helen, starting putting bologna on the walls. Helen told us that Winston Churchill was living in her left ear. We believed she was joking. Winston Churchill living in her ear was by far better than bologna on the walls. An ear infection no doubt had spread to her brain. That’s what we thought. We were convinced the medicine produced her hallucinations, because prior to that, she was at the very least, lucid. She told us that Churchill told her enormous lies. Eventually, Helen began believing Churchill’s lies.

But it was the lunch meat she placed on decaying plaster walls that cinched the severity of her mental state for us. Winston Churchill could have been viewed as an imaginary friend, albeit, but she was fifteen at the time. What right did we have to say at what age one is supposed to give up a friendship fantasy? But putting food on the walls when we ten were so poor—we knew then, she was sick-in-the-head. Her mind was ka- put. The noodle was cooked. And our mother, who wasn’t quite right in the head either, would say, “Well, you know, Helen’s mental.” To this, our only response was, “And who wouldn’t be, living here with you and Tattie?

This all happened a very long time ago when our country didn’t use terms such as economic down turn or recession. We called a spade a spade. It wasn’t a melancholy economy. It was a depression. We knew Helen’s ultimate fate—the looney bin.

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Bewitched Water

Catharine watched the murky brown river from the window of her new home, a three-storey brick on New Castle’s historic register.  She had dreamed of owning one of these storybook houses along the Delaware River.  On the weekends, she’d come to read on a public bench, and when student papers accumulated or the weather was cold or wet, like this gray late September day, she’d go into one of the cafés and drink pots of hot tea. 

She eyed her well-worn copy of Wuthering Heights lying at the top of a box.  Later, I’ll shelve the books and alphabetize them, she thought, bringing the cup of steaming brown tea to her lips.  “Tea,” she said to the windowpane, “or as the Brit Thomas de Quincey called it, ‘bewitched water.’”  She’d never been to England, the home of many of her beloved authors.  “That will have to change, too.”  She set her cup onto its saucer on the kitchen counter as a slim blond woman in jeans and a fuchsia pullover walked into the muddy backyard.  Her backyard.  But it wasn’t much of a yard, really.  The small patch of muddy ground soon turned to tufts of drowned grass and tall weeds, and down the slight slope, the river.  What would someone want in the marsh? 

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The Sad Migration

Gérard felt like he could just lie down under a tree and sleep forever. His body was numb and heavy, his eyelids felt like wet sand and his head like a stone. He had no reason to go home, he had nothing to do today or tomorrow. His thoughts had repeated themselves so many times, like a bad play to which he knew every line, and in which he played every role. He thought of the aqueduct, he thought of her eyes. If it wasn’t for his dog, Absolon, by his side, he would just lie down right there in Alamo Square Park, under a bench, and not think for one second about what was to be, or what had happened.  He closed his heavy eyelids, listened to the slow burning trumpet in his headphones, and imagined lying down on the grass. He wanted to gently lose consciousness into an endless plain of zero responsibility and flat dreams, but he couldn’t leave Absolon to fend for himself, so he opened his eyes and walked on. He circled the cypress trees at the top of the park with his best friend following closely on his leash. He told himself to regain presence and vigor, to stop feeling sorry for himself. He wondered where the others were now.  He heard that Jean-Pierre had moved to London to paint or sculpt; it didn’t matter, he knew he would never see him again. 

His knees ached and the acid built in his legs as he climbed the steps to the war memorial. The words under the tall stone statue probably used to read -They shall never be forgotten, but the etched granite had been rendered illegible through fifty years of wind and Pacific rain. The city of San Francisco hadn’t remembered to look after it. Absolon cocked his leg on to the statue before taking a big slurp from a muddy puddle nearby. Gérard pulled the dog away from the unhealthy looking sludge, and looked up to see the city’s orange skyline sparkling between the cypress trees. The day was fading, drawing his attention to the electric lights, glowing from the houses and apartments that surrounded the park. 

The evening she jumped was still and silent. She had been talking endlessly of something she had read in the news that had stuck with her. Ten thousand wildebeest had drowned together in a river somewhere in Kenya.  She talked right through the other philosophers, as if all of her focus was gone, beyond retrieval. “The wildebeest simply follow the smell of the rain and each other,” she had said, “They chose a crossing that was too steep that day. Ten thousand animals…” Gérard and the others liked to think that they didn’t know where she was going when she stood up and walked away from the group, towards the aqueduct. Maybe they knew, maybe they didn’t. It changed nothing now. Nothing ever changed now.

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Here He Comes, Run, Hide!

I’m boring.  Everything, including inanimate objects, will do whatever is necessary to escape me.

A little history: Miss Wyman, why did you divorce President Reagan?
I divorced him because he was boring.

Remember Jane in Magnificent Obsession?  Blind and definitely not boring. 

I’ve been divorced twenty-three times.

Mostly I’ve married women, but since Massachusetts got gay marriage I’ve married a couple of guys.  Whatever.  Ask any of my husbands or wives and they’ll tell you I divorced him because he was boring.  I’m boring in bed.  Out of bed.  When I wake up in the morning I bore immediately.  By nightfall I’ve made an entire day boring.  Willows really do weep for me.

I wasn’t always boring.  My mother says in the womb I kicked and romped—even when I got pulled into post-womb reality, I was still pretty interesting.

Dad: “He’ll be a quarterback and cure hemorrhoids!”

Mom: “He’ll design cars and build drug stores!”

By the time that I was two they saw that I would be a boring kid.  I ate boring.  I pooped boring.  I slept boring.  I watched boring TV shows.  By the time I got to high school, even the few friends I had in grade school dropped me.

“Jason is just so… well… it’s mean to say it but…”

“He’s fuckin’ boring!”

I overheard.  I felt happy that they didn’t have to pretend anymore.  If Jane Wyman could quit pretending, I guess they could too.  High school was lonely.  College, even worse.  Friends came and left quickly. 

“Jason is so nice, really, but….” 

All of my marriages happened lightning fast.  I excelled at zippy proposals and zippier elopements.  I knew each marriage was on borrowed time even before the I Do’s.   I’ve had the same job for three decades now, but I can’t tell you what I do.  Numbers.  They do stuff.  In nervous files.

At work Pete, another boring guy but with moments of pzazz, says he’s jealous.

“All marriages should end in under six months.  Look at me, with Diane for thirty-one years—man, it is endless, like flat Coke on a warm picnic table.”

When I die, nobody, not even Pete, will attend my funeral.  No minister or priest will say “Brother Jason is now in his heavenly father’s arms.”  They know God finds me as boring as the devil does.  For eternity I’m destined to be nowhere.  It’s okay.  I’ve always been nowhere.  And everywhere.  Wherever in the universe I get stashed, I know stars will back off—even black holes, grabby and hungry, will spit me out and lock down their event horizons.  

- Kenneth Pobo

Up for a Cup of Coffee

Before I’m slated to pinch hit, gray old Skipper nods for me to sit next to him while he flashes bewildering signals to his coaches.

“Now I know you’re a college guy, but I want to ask a simple question. How deeply do you know Tozzi?”

“Mostly from TV. Future Hall of Famer. I’m afraid to approach him.” 

He turns a whiskery face so open it almost seems to be flat.
                   
“We don’t want you if you’re afraid, first!  Second, Brother’s Keeper!
What I believe. What makes a team. Okay, a hypothetical. We’re checking into the Sheraton, bags all over the lobby. He falls over a few. Vodka.       Bleeding. Just you there with him. Do you say, ‘Listen! Got a date. Hey over there at the desk! Come over here and help! I can’t stay.’” He whips into a frenzy of signals.

His mocking my voice hurts. Evidently I’m a hothouse flower.

“I wouldn’t do that in a thousand years!” I inform this gray dervish.
He stops his hands to grunt approval.

I finally get to bat after Skip’s lesson in fellowship or whatever, and soon the umpire is calling strikes on any pitch that doesn’t sail into the seats behind us.  I’m used to the wild firethrowers in the minor leagues, but Suds Dooley, old magician, tosses me slow junk.

I vow to swing at anything I can reach, and manage to knock one off the very end of the bat, stinging my hands ferociously. The ball lands on the bag at first base and shoots off right. I leg it out, a hit!

“That’s some cue shot, Rookie,” sneers the first baseman, returning with the ball. “You’re vibrating all over, even down to your pecker!”

Tub, my coach there snaps, “We can do without the cheesy sarcasm.
Hand the ball over for his trophy case: A hit in his debut!”

“Does that make him a debutante?”

“Ignore him.” Tub massages my shoulders. “They were hiring the handicapped when he staggered in.”

Thinking it’s my turn to throw an insult, but no use, I’m too nervous.
Coach whispers, “Stay close to the base. You’re no threat to anybody.”
He adds, “Categorical imperative. What you do from here on forms a universal moral matrix for everyone!”
           
“Excuse me!”

“You’re on your own.” That usually meant to steal second if I see
a good chance. And catch holy hell if I fail.  “And I don’t give situational logic,” Tub hisses. “that old to get to Y you must do X bullshit.”

“That’s nice, Coach Tub. I can see the way.”

Mugger was up to bat. Coach couldn’t have spoken to him this
intellectual way. You know how vulgar people will prescribe how to cure a really high-strung woman? “She needs a week in the woods with a Polack with a seven word vocabulary.” He’s the Polack.

I know him as a string of grunts playing video games. Well he speaks with his bat, ripping one past me and the snotty first baseman.

I run like hell, with Slice, the third base coach, windmilling for me to come there, pointing down for me to slide, which I do, mostly on my ass. Bumping. “Not pretty,” I apologize.

He shrugs in his bony, razor-like way. “No matter, just a deficiency in a learned pattern. Essence precedes existence. You are man first and
then ballplayer. Certainly not process like your slide. Even if you had accomplished it with some art. Still just a process.”

I’m getting up to here with thought, and need some baseball info
from him!
 
“But you’ll have to tell me when you think a fly ball is deep enough for me to tag up and try to score!” I plead.

The other team is putting in another pitcher, a  fat boy seesawing through the center field gate.

“You don’t listen, Rookie! Rely on your instincts as a creative agent
If you’re authentic, you’ll stay up here in the show.”

“But Skip stresses teamwork! Brother’s Keeper!”

“Not necessarily mutually exclusive. But, you’ve also touched upon higher echelon differences we shouldn’t get into. All the coaches argue philosophy and it can get heated!

“A dynamic tension keeps us in first place. As does  a mix of players
and coaches .  Neanderthal Mugger drooling over there at first base,”
he points a long finger, ”contrasted to bullpen catcher who’s liberation theory theologian. Actually finds small churches to preach in when we’re on the road.

“But not for long. People attend church for reassurance, to be told they put in a good week and another’s coming. Not that the institution itself, in consonance with Business, holds the people down. That’s Marx, no?

“At any rate, he jabbers to the pitchers he’s warming up and they’re all practically Communists by now!”

I wander two steps towards home plate when when our shortstop,  probably a Zoroastrian raw vegetable mystic of the breakaway Saturn- Worshiping Sect, rockets a line drive to the third baseman, who steps on the bag to double me off and then pipes “Daydreaming lacks the solidity of real vision!” He continues scolding my back as I trot to our bench.
“But many know no other way.”

So, not just our team full of it.

My head about exploding, I try to snatch my glove and run out to the field, but Skipper lifts me for defensive purposes, substituting Hector, wily child protected by bizarre dialectical Spanish the Puerto Rican batting coach can’t fathom. From some Caribbean mountainous interior.

Untouched by academics, he’s always laughing.

- Frank Ford

A LONELY CREAK

“This shed is an eyesore.  Let’s tear it down and buy a readymade one at Home Depot,” Jeff says.

“Are you kidding?  This shed might be 75 years old.  Its wood wears weather scars beautifully.  Why do you always prefer modern?” asks Jerry.

August is butterfly month.  Black butterflies with a blue hem pop in on zinnias.  Yellow butterflies teeter on white culver’s root.  Monarchs tip stained glass wings on butterfly weeds, orange on orange. 

Jeff hated growing up in Keokuk, Iowa.  Dumpy farm houses, at least he remembers them as dumpy, cluttered sun-baked summer streets.  When the other boys were growing Beatles haircuts, dime store moptops, Jeff’s dad insisted he get a crew cut. He wanted to be in but it never worked out. 

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The Fetishist

Rusted iron bars covered the glass pane in the butcher shop door, and little green curtains inside flanked a sign in red letters on white.  A bell jingled as his mother entered pulling him after, and he heard the hum of a refrigeration unit.  It was cool inside.  In the bay to the left of the door, two dressed steer carcasses hung by chains from ceiling hooks.  A chalkboard sign was stuck in one of them with prongs like a fork.  Sunset from the bay’s three windows shone upon the dark red trunks in their suits of fat.  Their legs and heads had been cut off.  Heavy shoulders and thighs ended without limbs.  The necks had been folded over and sewn shut with string.  When the butcher took off his paper cap and stepped forward, a beam lit up the bald spot in his black hair.  He locked the door and turned the sign over.

“My last customers,” he said.  Muscles rolled beneath his white shirt as he removed a pipe and a leather zip pouch from the pocket of his blue apron.  He dipped the pipe into the pouch, and his thumb pressed golden shreds of tobacco into the bowl.  “Hello,” he said to the boy.  The unlit pipe clenched in his teeth, he laid his heavy hand upon the boy’s shoulder.  “Come on, then,” he said to the mother.  “I’ll show you the lamb.”  He lifted his hand from the boy’s shoulder and ushered her behind the counter.

“Wait here,” she told the boy, as though otherwise he might run outside.  She and the butcher went into the meat locker and the heavy wood and steel door latched shut behind them.  Above it, the refrigeration unit rattled and fell silent.

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