Evening of Earth
by Douglas Cole
37
(publishing December 27th)
Evening of Earth
(publishing December 28th)
Attractive Nuisance
(publishing December 29th)
Delivery Job
(publishing December 30th)
The Fight
(publishing December 31st)
The Silver Cloud
(publishing January 1st)
37
Cazadores tequila is a warm stranger, all palm trees and heat. No sound from the screen above, but he heard the little gunshots of each hit anyway, watching the two players mid-way through a tiebreak. He had beaten them both before. Kander was about to pull the trigger, the shadow of his racket flaring like a cobra, then strike. He was on to the semifinals.
You’re Turner!
I am. He didn’t have to look, but did think, no one ever recognizes me.
Why aren’t you playing up there? She was pointing at the screen.
I was out of that tournament three days ago. He picked up his drink and got up from the bar. Bye, now.
The double doors opened. He went out and stood on the smooth wet cobbles of the terrace. A little snow floated down, needle-fine sparkles in the silent night. A few house lights up the hill and a ferry boat in the dock below. Nothing moving.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to be insensitive.
Oh, you weren’t. He drank his tequila and the palm trees and sea waves returned. It doesn’t bother me. You win, you lose, you win… He scanned the empty street below. You can want it, but you can’t need it.
Wisdom of the court?
Wisdom.
He looked at her—all lines and mystery, the way some people present themselves as confident yet offer a fill-in-the-blank expression. It wasn’t the first time he was willing to be a stand-in. He once had a ranking that put him on more people’s menus of interest, but that was a few tournaments ago when his racket was still full of magic.
Her room looked just like his room only in reverse. Her balcony window looked into the big open shell of the church across the street, collapsed on one side, bare rafters like bones covered with snow. These sheets had probably once been on the bed in his room. The ceiling fan was the tornado on an aerial view weather map. The waters rolling over his eyes, the colossal effort to keep them open—
You talk in your sleep.
What did I say?
I couldn’t tell. It was like you were telling someone a story.
He put on his clothes. She watched him with one eyebrow raised and a slight smile.
You want to get some coffee? he said.
They crossed the street. Their footprints were the first to impress the snow. Not another soul out there. The doors to the church were blasted clean off. He drank some coffee, feeling its heat. She stood close, her shoulder pressed to him while they were struck by little gusts of wind, a cold bite each time against the skin. They wandered into the church. Snow sloped down like banks of sand. A pulpit rose like the prow of a ship. He looked up into the hard grey sky, the snowflakes falling like thousands of paratroopers. He turned to say something to her, but she was gone.
Evening of Earth
More and more the world feels off limits.
Antonin already in T shirt, of course—he works hard tearing up these abandoned homes to strings of wood piled and laced, as he says, a work of art. You have to admire his discipline. He says, you know how many cars I’ve driven with bad transmissions?
How are the panels? I asked.
I picked a few very clean ones out. I’ve got more energy than I need.. So…
I’m good. What’s your next project?
Still finishing the add-on to that one up on Seaview. Have you seen it?
No, but I’ll come check it out.
Do.
Hard to describe his work. I mean, you might look at one house and think it was spotless, but he’d be able to tell you where the fatal flaws were, which was why they’re empty and why he renders them down faster than a school of piranhas. And the others… spiders of brokenness and collapse, barely the shape they were, and he riddles the sticks of that pile and pulls out survivors most of us would miss. He’s an artist. Rubble is his medium.
I kept on walking. The first thing… scent. The apple blossom, the earth coming through four waves of freeze and thaw and other elements in the mixture. I could give you my own private name for this late winter, first spring maybe second after a few bloomers, but here, now, this scent I know my whole life back to first becoming aware of color.
She’s in front of the screen watching the chaos as though there might be a test coming along the way: place names (always changing), people—the principal players, representatives, officers, brigadier chiefs… the old play. Why watch that more closely than the king tide out there coming in like invasions? A line of sand higher than it’s ever been.
Who’s winning?
What do you mean?
Who’s winning?
Nobody. It’s a mess.
Somebody’s got to be winning—that’s always what it’s about.
That moment, awakening. Who am I now? Existential questions crop up in every mind, but this was diagnosed. A doctor says, sometimes you’ll be here, sometimes you won’t. So, I start with concrete things. The architecture of survival and responsibilities was hard-embedded here so I could pretty quickly get up to to some semblance of local speed and make believe my way through the day. These concrete elements were favors I did for myself, a way to stay in the moment, otherwise…That grandfather clock. When did it last ring? A drip in the kitchen sink waiting to fall. A bird looking at me through the window.
Attractive Nuisance
When the picture by an artist we’ve never heard of looks exactly like a photograph we took off the end of the Berkeley pier. We both see the tall man coming down Alaska Way and think of dead Sylvester in the Curiosity shop. Because all cities should have a wall of water fountain like this one and chairs you can sit in under the shade of a tamarind tree and the cool sky. And we both stop ten steps into Macy’s and say, “I don’t want to be in here.” The fantasy of condo living, all these parallel lives and the things we imagine we’ll do. I’m saying something to the osprey above, I just don’t know what it is. And I’m playing my best game of pool in the bar above the lake.
Let me put it this way: David Bacon who played the Masked Marvel was murdered. The murderer got away with it. I read about it in a magazine. And in the corner of one page was a picture of the comic book version of the Masked Marvel, and inside that picture was a list of illustrators and writers and panel artists, one of whom is Rod Bacon. No relation to the Murdered David Bacon. The next actor to play the Masked Marvel would die from suspicious causes.
You were a healer, and so you receive your reward.
A healer? I thought I was a clown.
That, too.
So, what’s my reward?
He follows me into the woods. He’s nearly blind and would never find his way out alone. And yet, he trusts me. Divide and subdivide ad infinitum to nothing. Even that’s an equation. And the scenes are all there after the war, the things that happened in the fields, without law, without order. I am cruising through the Sound past Blake Island and Manchester, north, which is the only way out.
The dog chews on the bones at the edge of the fire. Where does the light go in its travels? Where does it stop? The great black hole at the center of the universe is the great black wall up ahead where night falls and we lean in. And I rise from the green swamp, cross the land, a humming in my head as I climb to the house on the hill.
Owl and Frog Woman, and the gossiping clam people. The dancing man among the deer. The Fire brothers, the Changer. Sky world, earth mother, star father, stolen by the dog salmon people, moon, the transformer, downriver transforming. Here come the rum runners. We’ll meet at Doc Hamilton’s speakeasy. Or maybe the ranch. And every light must be out by 11 o’clock. Stock up on blackout bulbs, deluxe scintillators and survival crackers. Plant your Victory Garden. He’s a donkey in lion’s skin. And driving up I came upon the lone logger, both of us startled to see the other.
Frank Capra said, “I knew I wasn’t going to make a war picture—I’d had a belly full of war.”
Tiendas, industrial parks, sawmills, gun shop, Mattress World, old school massage parlors, bare stretches, used trucks, used campers, boarded up stores, graffiti-tagged tobacco shop, country farm market, apothecary, I-Hop, police blockade, blue lights, bottleneck, reroute, Home Depot, KFC, Bikini Espresso, girl making dawn in the middle of the highway. And what should appear but a boy in black shorts, vest and tie, and a girl in a black velvet dress, both of them looking like they just stepped out of nesting dolls, followed by the father, I assume, with square face and flattop head and Baltic music coming from a transistor radio in his suit pocket.
You slip away. I can’t find a magazine. First and Pike is disappearing. So long, Lusty Lady, I hardly knew you. Christmas lights, big star, that season again. Cold wind, cold street, a welcome bar that opens in. Wood table, copper machine, candles burning, a good place to hide. Traffic and bodies, Leonard Cohen whisper-talking from the dark, and occasionally in the mirror the face of a ghost.
Light gage, heavy gage, goof. Opening the door with cool paranoia, justifiable under the circumstances. Dim-lit room, a fish tank with gouramis, a string of blue lights that flicker like water traveling down the wall, check-in counter and a little couch with old woman smoking. She’s the one in charge. Back going back, dying in a wave sound and simple one-string instrument and the slow vibrational disintegration through filthy carpet and cement floor, the dirt of the earth and the hot core, and up through the ceiling fan and piles of insulation, the rooftop and cloud smoke blue sun bear up there, all to arrive at once in one spot blank, grateful and free—out of nothing, I tell you, but a code, the heavy drapery of clothing, wandering, wandering, and that feeling when you’re the only person in the restaurant or the movie theater. Who’s running the show?
We have been fighting chaos forever and losing.
I could have sworn we saw that movie together.
Nope
Really?
Nope.
Man.
Word.
We went for breakfast somewhere in Oakland. Ten thousand things as gray as morning, nothing to do, then a bright decision. The woman loads the gun. A crane drops a hook. Wheeling kite above the rooftops. Magic crickets, rattle of castanets. Ghost, smoke, clouds we emerge from wandering through enlightenment like an ophthalmic migraine because only when you’re sick of sickness will you be well. Show the edge of the garden. Road of a thousand cuts. A story you keep telling. The town ahead where I wake up. The dogs rip up the rest.
Delivery Job
I liked delivering flowers. This was when we were first in San Diego, around ’86 or ’87. There was no GPS at the time. I didn’t know the city at all. But I learned fast, and I liked looking up the addresses in the Thomas Guide map book. I liked driving around, on my own, checking out the neighborhoods—Normal Heights, Pacific Beach, Ocean Beach, downtown, National City Chula Vista, San Ysidro on the Mexican border, dust yards, yucca, wide streets going into the desert east or the big ocean west. I loved swimming in the ocean off Sunset Cliffs, the red sandstone trails down to the beach and pelicans cruising in armadas over the waves.
The owners of the shop were two men: Olaf, short and large-bellied, red receding hair and red beard. He was mostly the numbers. Then Walter, very tall maybe 6’6’ or 6’8’, with big square head and black hair dyed; he looked like Lurch from the Adam’s Family. Sweet energy, artsy, the arranger—something was wrong with his neck, so his head leaned to the side past looking like he was thinking about something and into oh that looks uncomfortable. I’d rate the angle of neck to shoulder at maybe 35 degrees, acute it’s called.
What a job, I thought. It was perfect: one of those throw-away ones you know isn’t forever. But it’s a fun adventure. Something strange. And what fun to bring flowers to people. I felt like a magic elf bringing pixie-dust happiness to the world. I felt like that. Most deliveries were to offices, weddings and of course funerals. The first time I ever went into a funeral home was to deliver flowers. There was no one there, literally, except a dead body. In an open casket. I rang the bell and no one appeared, so I arranged the flowers at the head of the casket. That was the first dead body I ever saw. I wasn’t afraid. I was curious. The difference between a body with a life in it and a body without a life in it is obvious. The spirit of this old guy was pretty much long gone. Maybe he had a few feelers still tethered in there. He mostly looked like gray modeling clay.
I was learning the city well. I knew my way around better than most natives within a couple of weeks. And I really liked that city. The main highway east and west was the 8, and it ended at the ocean. North and south were the 5 and 805 and, well, I don’t remember them all now, but then, you could tell me an address, and I could picture the path to it in my mind, gauge the best route by the time of day and the flow of traffic. I acquired my best spider sense city driving skills doing that job, which is saying something because I had become pretty skilled at driving San Francisco before I went to England and then LA fairly well when I moved there. I liked having that ability to read the city traffically.
But one day I was in a hurry. I had a lot of deliveries to get out before the evening rush hour, and I was heading out of the flower shop parking lot, made a right turn into the street, and caught the corner of a flatbed truck, gouging a deep groove into the passenger side of that delivery van from stem to stern. It made an excruciating sound, that steel ripping other steel. I backed into the parking lot, and Walter came running out, his head bouncing sideways, his hands pressed against his face. He shrieked. Oh, the horror of that expression as I climbed out and came around to see the ugly cut-open, bent-in metal on the side of the van. The flatbed truck was fine, not a scratch. The van was half-totaled. You couldn’t open the passenger door or the sliding door.
I finished my deliveries, getting the flowers out through the back of the van. The owners were pretty cool about it. They didn’t dock my pay or anything. No report to the police, which was a big deal for me, then. I quit soon after for a better paying job at the high school as a TA. There, I spent the majority of my time at a little study cubicle in the library, bent over a stack of essays, under a bunker-style window about a foot high and two feet wide through which I saw nothing but the solid blue sky.
The Fight
My father drove through the dark. The headlights lit up a tunnel down the black road. One way was forest, and my mind saw me lost in there, slow slogging through fallen trees and the uneven wicker of branches. The other way was the lake, a deeper darkness. I couldn’t actually see the lake, but I knew it was there.
I was just a kid about to hit double digits. Bewildered. My father was a stranger who had left and was now back haunting me. He reappeared once in a while, saying, hey buddy let’s go to the driving range or see a movie, and it was like he had never left. Then he would disappear again for months, a year. This time, when he appeared, he said, “You want to go with me out to Jerry’s?”
“Sure,” I said.
And off we went down the road to the lake.
The cabin rose up in the headlights. A grass field sloped down to the water behind it. Summertime, ending of summer. Jerry’s son, Sam, stood on the back porch looking at us. The retinas in his eyes flashed red as we pulled up.
We went in, and Jerry cuffed me on the side of the head with his bear paw. Then he and my father went to the den to start some drinking. I went with Sam out to the back yard and took up opposing stations at the ping pong table. Fireflies flew along the ground, little green tracers. The ping pong ball came at me. I hit it back. The table tilted on the lawn. Light from the screened-in porch came down, illuminating our space. Out there, the black lake. I heard an owl.
“Your parents are getting divorced?” Sam said.
“No.” I said. It wasn’t a lie. Not like telling people that my father was dead, killed in a plane crash.
“My dad said they were,” he said.
We went back and forth a few more rounds. He won the point. Smug, fat kid with his face lit up in the light. I wanted to annihilate him. He won three points in a row.
We went up the lawn to the house. The grass felt like a saturated mattress. Black screen-meshed windows surrounded the back porch. Moths and mosquitos were looking for a way in.
My father was smiling. Smoking and smiling, a beer in his hand, a whiskey bottle on the table, two shot glasses next to that. He and Jerry were throwing down cards in a friendly, shit-talking rummy match.
“Take that, ya cock sucker!” Jerry said.
A grin, a pluck of a card, and…“There! Up yer ass, mother fucker!” My father said.
“Hey, boys,” Jerry said, “and you—kid—how’s your summer going?”
“Good,” I said.
“Well, good, good…good to have you here. You stay as long as you like.” And he exhaled a blue stream of smoke that plumed in the blue cloud of smoke already hanging in the room. Then he laughed a big gusty laugh with a cough at the end of it. Jerry was a fraternity buddy, the hazing one with a bit of the sadist in him who says afterwards, all in good fun, eh? I knew you could handle it! And this was his kingdom: wood paneling, dartboard, wet bar, big screen, sports jerseys and photographs of him with big fish. No woman around.
“Here—there—” sloshing another shot of whiskey for my father and himself. “And here—” yanking two beers out and tossing one each to Sam and me.
I looked at my father.
He nodded his head.
It wasn’t the first beer I’d been given.
“Hey, now! Why don’t you two boys put on the gloves?” Jerry said.
Two pairs of red boxing gloves hung by a nail next to the back door. It’s true. Sam went and got the gloves and tossed a pair at me. His father’s son, you didn’t have to ask him twice.
Vulture-hunched, sitting on a stool by the bar, I pulled the gloves on and glanced at my father. His eyes were narrow, impenetrable. He seemed like he wanted to say something, like his mouth was about to open and some saving words come out of it, but no. Nothing. “A friendly little match,” Jerry said.
I stepped into the space between the bar and the back door. Sam was waiting for me. I put my hands up like I’d seen on TV. Sam stood back. He was bigger than me. He was smiling. I got the feeling that he wanted me to throw the first punch, so I did. I hit him in the shoulder. He threw a few jabs. His weight came through, jarring. He caught me in the gut and I lost my breath for a moment. Fear swinging, I threw a few more hits out there and by pure luck caught the side of his face. He shifted a bit, anger flaring, and came at me, hitting harder. I protected my face, his blows hitting my shoulders, my head, my sides.
I was breathing hard. So was he. I went into a fury of fast blows, throwing them out there. He curled and took them. Didn’t seem to faze him. He came back, hitting harder. At this point, it was pretty clear I was getting beat up. I staggered a bit. I felt dizzy and out of breath. But I didn’t fall down.
“Okay, there…hold up!” Jerry said, hitting his beer bottle with a spoon, and Sam stepped back like he was yanked by a rope.
I lowered my arms. I was hot and sweating. The room was full of smoke like a real boxing ring.
“Take a break, there, killers!”
I hunched back on the stool.
“Nice job,” my father said. I couldn’t tell what he was looking at. His eyes looked crossed. Jerry poured them another drink.
“You kids got heart,” Jerry said. “I give you that!”
He and my father drank their shots.
Then Jerry rang the beer bottle, and I was back in, swinging, landing a few shots but taking more hits to the stomach, more hits to the head. The outlines were fuzzy. But the buzz of the mosquitoes was loud. The screens in the windows were full of their tiny, hungry faces. I felt sick.
Jerry rang the bottle again. “Ah!” he said, slapping the shot glass down and looking at me. “That’s good for one night, don’t ya think?”
I sat down on the stool and peeled off the boxing gloves.
“Isn’t this fun?” Jerry said, waving his cigar at the world.
Sam went out the back door. I grabbed my beer and got up to follow and pushed open the screen door and stood there a moment. I couldn’t see anything. I knew the lake was straight ahead. I turned back.
“Don’t let the bugs in,” Jerry said.
I looked at my father. He smiled nodding his head and winked.
The Silver Cloud
I think someone dosed me. My processing is way off. Memory is a vague fog of things. I have no idea how long I’ve been in this hotel. I’m supposed to be doing something. I have the clothes for it. But what is it?
Wind is shooting through the buildings, old red brick hotels with black burned out windows and freight barns with wide wooden hangar doors across the street from titanium structures with long cement stairs and a colosseum—a big empty colosseum. Hardly anyone is around. People I see look old but aren’t. They bear the signs of aging—wrinkled skin, bad teeth, thin hair, but they’re eyes are young. They look sick. They walk with limps and hitches like their bones don’t link up right. And even though they’re walking around, they’re all at a distance, and it feels like the street should be crowded.
On Occidental Avenue I stop under the big yellow globe lights. Wind is whipping the trees. And I can see the silver tower with heavy security where the big boss has his offices, a building looking down into the heart of the stadium one way and right into Pioneer Square the other. A trolley comes by bell ringing and rolling down King Street. It’s good to see the trolleys back up and running. I can’t remember how long they were gone.
A woman approaches me, and she seems healthy walking fast dressed in a black coat and black hat and looking ahead and then directly at me as if she knows me. She smiles like she’s in on a joke. I’m supposed to—I’ve forgotten the code. We’re in an age of code words, here, but I don’t know them or don’t remember them.
And glass intact, the in-lit art gallery though closed has placed one painting in the entrance behind the doors locked as they are with a light shining on the circle in the painting with its murky interior, and along the outer surface a human form is swimming and looking for a way in.
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