The Moonlight Shuffle

  A band sits on barrels atop a wooden stage, picking wildly. A washboard player with metal ribs scratches in time to a man with one foot on top of an upturned silver wash basin, manipulating a string tied to a stick. The twang of a banjo reverberates in between the sound waves of the other instruments, while another man blows his lungs into an empty jug of moonshine. All of the band members wear white button up shirts starched into standing up on their own, and striped suspenders hold up brown pants cuffed at the ankle. The band keeps time while young adults twirl and clasp hands, reaching out in a haze of hoemones and confusion. Most of the metal folding chairs that normally live in storage are out but unused, waiting for the warmth of occupation. The gymnasium floor, waxed and smooth, creaks and bellows under twisting and tapping feet. One boy dances alone, trying in vain to attract a partner. Undeterred by continuous rejection he snaps a finger to the music and rotates, setting his sights on the next girl.

            Some of the kids stand off to side, trading idle words and gossip. The girls talk about the boys and how their mothers won’t get off their backs already and find a nice young man to settle down with, but insist they are not ready. The boy’s trade lewd stories and boast about hot rods and how much they get laid, how Betty and Veronica are easy; mostly lies.

            Scotch taped to the walls and rafters above them, fringed garlands sparkle around sound waves and body heat. Above the stage a hand painted sign reads “The Moonlight Shuffle”, and in the corner a table holds up mystery punch and bland cookies. Some of the boys whisper into female ears, faces redden with embarrassment and the girls giggle and brush long hair off of delicate shoulders. The boys preen with success and wrap their arms around eager waists, ready for the dance floor.

            Outside, a cool rain pats a dimpled parking lot, aged and worn, uneven and riddled with weeds that peek through fissures. Puddles vibrate when tiny rain drops fall in, and the oil left by cars paints poisonous rainbows of gasoline on the surface. It is getting late, and the only stop light in town casts lonesome dots of yellow into the darkness.

            A boy leans against the outside wall of the gymnasium, smoking a cigarette under a dilapidated awning. He draws deeply on his smoke and shudders from the cold when he exhales spent tobacco. The awning does little to keep him dry, but he cups his hand over his Marlboro to save its slim and tender form. A door opens about twelve feet away and a girl emerges. She wraps her red sweater around her torso in self embrace, then turns her attention to the boy.

            “You coming back in? Everybody is having a real good time”, She says.

            “No, screw that”, he says, blowing smoke through his words.

The girl cocks her head, and with great impatience forgets the cold, lets her sweater open as her hands land on her hips. His answer has had the desired effect.

            “What are you gonna do just stand out here getting soaked?” she says, her tone is one of annoyance and hurt feelings.

            “Just go back in Darla, I ain’t much for dancin’ tonight”, he says.

            Dejected, Darla spins around with a huff of frustration. She reaches for the door handle and thinks I am going to dance with somebody tonight and it ain’t gonna be him. She pauses before turning the handle and says, “I was really starting to fall in love with you, you know”. After a tense moment with no reply, she hangs her head, face wet with tears and rain, pulls the door open and steps back into the gymnasium.

            The boy lets his cigarette fall to the pavement and crushes it under a booted foot. He looks into the distance, first right, then left, past the traffic-less highway and then into the night sky. He coughs and takes a step into the cold hands of the falling rain.

End.

The Looking Glass

            He sat huddled on the top bunk of a two tier steel bed made of individual cots welded together at the feet and shoulders. His bed was situated underneath one of the five windows in the dorm, slightly askew to the right. The window did not open.  There was chain-link fencing bolted to the outside, and the fence formed a rigid pattern of slanted diamonds for peering through. At night he could see some stars and if the clouds were kind he could see the moon cast its soft white light into the black abyss of the sky. The mattress he slept on was thin, little more than a green vinyl pouch with a quarter of an inch thick pad inside. Every night he turned like a pig on a spit in search of painless slumber. The nights were long and every time he heard the jangling of keys and clanging of doors he knew it was the top of the hour. He slept and he did no sleep, he existed in between the border of his dreams and the reality of the dark. Five minutes felt like five hours. 

            He was housed in the second floor dorms of building three at Pinewood Juvenile Detention Center, a drab collection of colorless buildings that once served as a textile factory. 20 years prior they were converted into a house of corrections for wayward youth. They called it Pinewood but he searched every inch of the grounds he was allowed to and found no pine trees. No Douglas fir, or Ponderosa Pine, no Blue Spruce or Bristle Cone Pine, no trees at all really. Just fencing and razor wire and gravel surrounding gray stone buildings that looked as if they might swallow a person whole.

            In the daytime his window opened its gaze over a sizeable portion of the employee parking lot on the east side of the building. His bunk was the perfect vantage point for bearing witness to the humdrum activity in the life of a parking lot. While he watched the outside the other boys talked loudly and boasted about the crimes they committed and sometimes ones they hadn’t. They talked about girls and played cards, usually gin rummy or spades. They played for hours. They chewed on pencils pretending they were cigarettes. They gambled with apples and bars of soap and magazine clippings of ladies. They did push-ups and sit-ups and jumping jacks. They hung the bars of soap they won on twine fashioned from the thread that held their mattresses together. They spun them like broken yo-yo’s that don’t come back. They had important meetings on cots inside curtains of wool and peered from behind blankets to make sure the guard wasn’t paying attention. He rarely did. Monday was a day for work detail outside and only those who behaved got to go, Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s were for boredom. On Thursday it was movie night, and Friday and Saturday they got dessert, usually gelatin, bouncing and bright red. On Sunday they attended church if they wanted to, they rarely did.

×××

            He heard Gentry from across the dorm. His voice pin-balled around bouncing off of the stone walls. “Wheeler, where is my milk you little shit-bird?” he said. Gentry got locked up for breaking into his family’s hardware store. He took a hammer from his father’s garage, broke a window in the back, and climbed into the bathroom one foot at a time. He would have gotten away with it too if he had not left the hammer on the toilet below the window with the initials B.G. carved into the handle. He was sitting at an indoor picnic table losing at solitaire when a foam-rubber shower shoe pelted him on the shoulder. In the far corner of the dorm the guard dozed, arms crossed, head sagging. “I said, where the fuck is my milk you piece of shit?” He ground his teeth and kept playing. “Hey, I’m talking to you, you must be hard of hearing or something,” Gentry said.

            “I forgot,” he said. “I mean, I – I forgot to swipe it and now I don’t have it.” Ben exhaled his last hope and it hung in the air like a film of thick smoke. Gentry stomped red-faced towards the game table, his feet heavy on the hardwood floor. He slid off his chair; Gentry stood cursing over him and loosed his fists.

            “TOES ON LINE!” the guard was awake. Almost every boy in the dorm scuttled onto the yellow line that was painted in a rectangle around the entire room. They stopped with their toes on the yellow paint faded by squeaking feet and then stood upright and rigid, their arms at their sides in militaristic fashion. Ben — still on the floor — tasted the iron on his lips and knew he was bleeding. The guard pushed his way between the line-up of green canvas shirts and thin bodies across the dorm and pulled Gentry off of his victim by the shoulder.         

“Get over there, now,” said the guard. He pointed a shaky finger without looking so Gentry just stood there in that moment awash in vapid admiration of his handiwork. “Get up Wheeler,” said the guard. He was curled like a nautilus shell on the floor next to the jack of spades and the dust and the rat shit.

            “I said get up.” 

×××

            He sat in silence and counted cars in the parking lot below. It was always the same. At four a.m. the lot was all asphalt and white lines, speckled with graveyard employee vehicles. By four thirty the day-time security staff started to trickle in, starting with the boss, Warden Nash. He had been to the warden’s office a few times. The warden ate pomegranate seeds and picked his teeth, he wore suits that had too many layers and did not fit properly. Nash stared into you when he spoke and he carried a handkerchief in his breast pocket that he used to wipe the sweat from his brow. By six the rest of the staff would arrive for the day’s bureaucratic drudgery of mug shots, disciplinary recommendations and psychiatric evaluations. Ben watched the light from the sun slowly engulf the parking lot.  Little changed during a typical day. Deliveries were made on the west side of the grounds. What he couldn’t see was tall rectangle trucks filled with clean linens that dropped their loads and took on new soiled ones. New inmates filed off of retired school busses painted in stark black and white and emblazoned with the golden seal of the Briar County Sheriff’s Department. Large semi-trucks dropped off pallets of instant potatoes and evaporated milk and bruised apples and bologna.

            After everyone arrived in the parking lot his count ranged between two and two hundred and thirty, with some wiggle room to account for sickness or vacations. Around noon there was a shift change, leaving a few vacant spots that would be re-occupied within the hour. If he was diligent enough in tallying the activity, he could discern patterns depending on the day of the week. He got to know the employees he never interacted with, gave them names and backstories. He had imaginary conversations and attended imaginary parties with them in another time and place. They told him secrets whispers of affairs and murder. Around 4 the lot began its daily deluge of steel and black rubber. He rarely missed the mass exodus of the afternoon, it was a parade of burnt-out faces and slumped shoulders. As he had done in the morning he counted each car that rolled to the main gate. He compared and recorded his figures with a tiny orange pencil he sharpened between his molars onto a pad of paper he hid inside his mattress.

            Warden Nash was always the first to show up and the last to leave. At 6 pm his Cadillac car rolled through the gate, steel bars and gears shuttered behind it and signaled the end of the day. He reached over and supported himself on one elbow and shoved his piece of paper into the hole he made in his mattress at the seam. From the hole he pulled two plastic saltine cracker packets that were mostly crumbs and opened one carefully enough not to spill the innards. He swiveled on the small of his back, his head aimed at the folded sheet he called a pillow. He ate most of the crumbs and what he did not eat ended up on his chest and the bed next to him. He folded his hands behind his head, elbows pointed out and closed his eyes. I really should clip my fingernails, he thought.

            “Why you always looking out that window?” said a rasping voice from below. It was his bunkmate Miguel, a stout brown skinned boy with compassionate eyes and arms lettered with blue ink in spots. “You’re gonna drive yourself crazy thinkin about the outside world too much man,” he said.

            “I’m playing a game,” he said. Miguel rolled off of his bunk and stood up. He rested his chin on the backs of his hands, his fingers folded into one another on the bunk.

            “What kind of game?” Miguel asked. Ben opened his eyes and sat all the way up and crossed his legs as if he were about to meditate.

            “It’s a counting game,” he said. “I count the cars in the parking lot at various parts of the day, and locate patterns in their movement; it’s totally pointless but I like it. It passes the time more interestingly than what goes on in here. Sometimes I imagine that I can feel the heat of the asphalt or hear something other than Gentry yelling at me.”

            “Shit man, don’t let the guards hear you talkin like that,” said Miguel.

            “They are fucking clueless.”

            “Look, all I am sayin is that you spend too much time out there, you will forget who you are in here. This, this right here is where you are and don’t you forget it, the guards won’t let you and Gentry wont either. If you try to live out there in here you will go crazy, I seen it man,” said Miguel. “Sure enough I seen it.” 

            “Well don’t worry about me Miguel, I will be outta here soon enough” he said.

            “Yeah man two weeks and you’re out. Me, I got 24 months left in this bitch.” The skin over Miguel’s eyebrows bunched into tiny hogbacks, then he turned and rolled back over, his towel over his head like a hood. Outside the dust settled back into the asphalt, the sun started its decent behind the hills on the outskirts of town, and the birds fluttered into the gutters dragging home bits of brightly-colored yarn.   

End.

The Temple

            I climb the stairs of the temple, bound for an unfathomable reality. What I am looking for I cannot grasp. It sits just beyond reach, waiting for me to find it. Not an object graspable in reality, or obtained with time. A feeling. One I have never felt before. More like an energy. One that I can feel emanating from within the temple. The temple speaks to me in low tones from its bowels. The message reverberates through my core. It says hurry up.

            Each step seems as if the ancient stone might crumble under my feet, tumble behind me, and after some time come to rest at the bottom. I can see the door rising and falling before me. With every step it grows larger. Sweat stings my eyes making it difficult to keep focus on the mouth agape above me.

            The forest cradles the temple. Large swaths of green envelop the outside walls. Great vines hang from stone outcroppings, their roots hooked into every crevice. Moss covered statues grimace in growing green coats. Small creatures rustle beneath the brush, foraging and running for their lives. The sun overhead is monstrous. The river binds the countryside in a wet embrace. It roars from deep in the forest, pummeling ancient rocks as it travels down from the mountain. I pause and look out over a sea of green behind me, birds sailing just above the surface.   

            I take the last step up to the summit, raising myself from one final bended knee to stand. The surrounding land is bright and alive. The entrance to the temple is dark and cold. A smell like air from another time flows from within, air that has waited forever just to greet me. I inhale deeply through my nose. I rotate on the balls of my feet and survey the land before me. From this height the horizon stretches on forever. I can almost reach out and touch the setting sun. A soft wind trickles across my arms, raising the hair. I set my pack on the edge of the top step and sit down next to it. I reach into the pack and pull out a bruised apple and eat. Parts of it are still sweet and I am famished. I swallow the apple in just a few bites and toss the already-browning core into the air in front of me, sending it down the stairs and out of sight. I sit and watch the sun disappear behind the land, the horizon squeezing every last drop of light and energy from it before it moves to the other side of the world.

            Night comes over the land like a blanket left in the cold. I have decided not to venture into the temple until first light. For now I will gather my strength in the embrace of sleep and wake in the morning brimming with all of the courage I will need to enter the ancient dark. I unfurl my sleeping bag and wiggle in fully clothed. I use my pack as a pillow and with a strip of wool shield my face against the growing frost. In the forest below, the nocturnal predators have emerged from their slumber to prowl through shadow in search of blood. The nightly chorus of frogs and insects hums its survival song. A nebulous web of life and death rests on the land, keeping order in a place that appears ruthless and chaotic to the human mind.   

            Wisps of clouds move across the brightness of the moon and disappear again into the ink black sky. The moon illuminates the top of the temple so much that at times it looks as if it might be early morning. I lay awake, unable to sleep. I stare into the soft milk moon, and think of what magic might lie inside the temple. I inhale through my nose, attempting to control my breathing and the churning of my mind. At first light I will need all of the strength I have left to finish my journey. I close my eyes and fall into nightmarish sleep.

            Fire rises around me and panic sets in. I turn to run but my feet are melded with the floor. The temple groans a guttural sound from deep underground. Not human, not inhuman. The walls crumble into dust revealing the vast emptiness of space. Earth floats far off in the distance, alone in the cosmic fray. The sound ascends and wraps around me like a shroud. I try to focus in the emptiness. The flames around me dwindle, and a foul stench infects the air. The stench carries heat that singes the hairs in my nostrils and rakes pain over my lungs. From the shadows of what is left of the temple a multitude of hands reach out for me, rotted as corpses. I stand. Frozen with fear. I gaze into the black heart of the temple and know that it will come for me. An untenable madness, monstrous in form and evil in spirit. All at once I know that it lives inside of me. The Temple groans again and I clutch my skull in the pain of madness. There are monsters in here and they yearn for freedom. The freedom to incinerate all that is before them.

 The soft silk moon howls its death song from above and I am awake.  

End.         

Road Trip

            Blues inspired rock’n’roll crackled through the radio while the lights of the city fell under an invisible horizon behind us. It was late, traffic was light, so we stood to make good time. 3 years ago my sister Sheryl married Jim, a tall, square shouldered, self-proclaimed hustler. In reality he was a plain old screw-up, and because of this he always seemed to be down on his luck. Sheryl always gave him a pass. She loved him. For some reason, she just did. He stole and sold cartons of cigarettes to high school kids too young to buy them themselves. He went to jail once for stealing a car and crashing it into the river. He stayed out too late drinking and fighting and cheating, which Linda was convinced he was guilty of. He had also been known to rough Sheryl up on occasion. A year after they were married Sheryl phoned to tell us that she and Jim planned to move south, and then never called back. From the start of their relationship, Linda and I never could come to terms with why she stayed with him. We shook our heads and wondered in private disbelief. We begged her to leave him and move back in with mom and dad. Or at the very least come crash on our couch. But she always refused.

            Out of nowhere Sheryl called one Friday evening to tell us the good news. They were pregnant and it was a girl. Linda answered the phone to Sheryl’s voice on the other end. I looked up questioning silently, who is it? She lowered the receiver from her ear, covered the mouth piece with her left hand and mouthed the name She-ryl. Her ear met the receiver again, and a long-distance conversation. I watched Linda’s facial expressions and body language for a few moments trying to decipher what the conversation might be about. She pursed her lips, raised an eyebrow, then cocked her head to the right and looked at me, putting her left hand on her hip, then dropping a shoulder. She mouthed the word pregnant. I watched her eyes fill simultaneously with joy and concern. Joy for a new life and the happiness it would certainly bring Sheryl; concern for a new mother and child living with a man like Jim. Linda spoke again. A pro at concealing emotion, she maintained an even tone, offering congratulations and asking if they had picked a name yet. Three curls of the 10-foot phone cord wrapped around her index finger, her foot tapped out shave and a haircut on the kitchen floor but withheld the two bits. After a few minutes I stood and motioned to Linda that I would like to take over. She said goodbye to Sheryl and handed me the phone. I exchanged pleasantries with my sister; it was good to hear her voice. Then I asked her the reason she called. She said she was pregnant and the baby was due in about three weeks so she wanted us to be there to meet it. I hesitated a little but agreed to make the trip. I hadn’t seen my little sister since the incident involving Jim, a baseball bat, and a large bottle of whiskey.

            Sheryl told me not to worry, Jim had quit drinking and had started going to meetings. He wants to get better she said. Sure.

            The last time he beat her up Sheryl begged him on her knees swollen lipped; she pleaded with him get help and make their marriage work, to quit drinking for good because she knew what kind of good person he really was. Jim eventually agreed, but for our father it was the last straw. Once he heard about it he went to Sheryl’s house and beat the shit out of him. Dad always threatened him when their arguments got bad, but never committed to an act of violence. This time he did not hold back. Dad tore across town in his weathered old Ford, screeched up to the curb in front of Sheryl and Jim’s apartment building. He almost ran to the door, his steps quick and heavy. Thinking they could reach a diplomatic agreement to avoid an altercation, Jim had been waiting in the lobby of the apartment building. He opened the heavy glass door and he was met with dad’s fist. Jim’s lip swelled, he was left with a hell of a shiner and a mouthful of blood. Sheryl screamed at dad from the window two floors up to stop: “don’t hurt him!” Dad did not hear her.

            For a long time Sheryl tried to keep the abuse hidden. But everyone knew. She wore heavy makeup to conceal black eyes. She preferred turtlenecks and scarves to cover blue-green thumb prints on the sides of her neck. A wrist brace here, bandaged lip there. But all of that was over now, she assured us. He is a whole new person she said, he is working again and comes directly home every night after his shift. He is someone to be proud of. Linda and I were skeptical about the prospect of Jim having changed his life. Surely there is more than one way to terrorize a person.

            We stepped lightly to the front door. I made a loose fist and knocked. We waited a few moments. After no answer I used my palm as a brim over my eyes and peered through the face-sized glass diamond set into the wood of the door. I saw a picture distorted by glass fogged with age. Inside I could see a light on in the kitchen, and a silhouette moving across bright walls. A thud came from inside, as if something very heavy fell. My heart and lungs crept into my throat and my loose fist began to tremble, then tighten. Linda squeezed my other hand and I squeezed back feeling a rush of anger. I pushed a nervous cough from my chest and knocked harder. This time when I brimmed my hand and peered through the window I saw the figure standing in front of the counter drying her hands with a towel. I looked at Linda and gave an affirmative nod. Sheryl walked over, opened the door, and a warmth flowed from inside accompanied by pot-roast.  

            “Hi guys,” she said, her thin arms reaching out for embrace.

            After a few awkward half-hugs Sheryl lead us into the house. Once we were inside she turned to face us. She held a rigid index finger in front of her lips and made a shush sound through her lips and teeth, her other hand resting on her pregnant belly. Jim leaned out from a large chair in the living room. He said: “hello Walt!” and motioned for me to join him in front of the blue-green glow of the television set. The unmistakable sounds of hockey were familiar, and I obliged. He offered me can of RC Cola, his feet crossed on top of an over-sized ottoman. I stepped into the living room and looked over my left shoulder. Linda and Sheryl were already gone, up the stairs on a tour of the house. Let down that I would have to endure the company of Jim alone, I accepted his gift, sat down on the sagging couch, and tacked on a smile.

            We sat in silence a moment, both reading the screen for something to say. A fight broke out in the hockey game, riling Jim. “That’s bullshit, am I right?” When he leaned over to slug me on the shoulder in solidarity, I saw the black cap to a bottle of booze he had tucked into the cushion of his dusty silver recliner next to a pack of Lucky Strikes. After the thrill of the penalty ebbed Jim sat back, tucking the bottle deeper into his chair. Shifting nervously in his seat, he coughed into his fist and said:  

            “How the hell are ya Walt? Still playing with those computers?”  

              “Yea Jim,” I said. “Sure am.”

End.