The Sloth and I

The Sloth and I

 

 

A three toed sloth

came wallowing through

The night was dark

and inky too

She wore a hat

and one blue shoe,

And that was all I knew.

Her eyes were huge

And round and red

Two of them

Right in her head

And in her hand

A book she read,

And I was full of dread.

A sloth, you see

I've never seen

Are they good

Or are they mean

And if they're mean

What does that mean,

To learn I was not keen.

She looked at me

And I at her

The night went by

It was a blur

And from her perch

She would not stir,

A bed I would prefer.

 

When morning came

the sun came up

She offered me 

a coffee cup

To work, she said

But one last sup,

I dared not interrupt.

 

She left behind

an apple core

And there upon

the forest floor

the book was open

to page four,

A line was underscored.

 

"To haste makes waste".

I clenched my jaws

It was a clause

That made me pause

I read it twice,

if not because,

I'm late, myself, for work.

A Writer (In Name Only) - Short Story 2

 

2/52

July '23

1315 Words

A Writer (In Name Only)

I told her I write things. I knew immediately it was the wrong thing to say. 

 

Oh, she said, beaming, I read things.

 

I don't know why I said it. It was one of those things that just come out, like saying butter is on sale at the grocery.

 

It was a party and I knew next to no one. It was a birthday party for a friend of a friend and I decided to tag along as I didn't have much else to do and my friend said there was going to be a scrumptious sit down dinner prepared by an actual chef and a birthday cake and ice cream and no presents or cards were expected and I thought well why not.

 

My escort had disappeared, off somewhere chatting with the birthday girl I suppose, and I not knowing what to do hovered around the hors d oeuvres table. There were the usual appetizers, little crackers with smoked salmon and cucumbers and trays of veggies and dips and plates of fruit, grapes, strawberries, cherries.

 

I popped a cherry into my mouth, the flesh sweet and tart. I looked around for what to do with the pit. There were no garbage bins nor bowls for things like seeds. I wondered if the plate of cherries looked untouched for that reason, that the other guests had the wherewithal to realize beforehand that disposal of the pit would be problematic. In other words, to think before acting.

 

I thought about putting the pit back on the plate with the cherries. Impolite if not gross. I thought about puckering my lips and spitting the little tooth breaker onto the gravel driveway and mixing it in amongst the stones with the tip of my shoe, being mid summer it was an outdoor party, but there were a group of people standing next to me, holding drinks, conversing, and decided that that would be crass. 

 

Our birthday host had a rather large flower garden with little pathways curling through the blossoms. I ambled over to the garden pretending to admire the flowers. Actually there was no pretending for there was a delightful array of colours and leaves and plants of all sizes and shapes for the eye and nose to take in. The garden bordered on the professional. I took a quick look at the gathered and bent over in false adoration of a red poppy whose flower resembled a carnation. The pit dropped into the soil and I pressed on it with my foot.

 

There were several canopies spread out across the lawn. Most had small collections of people sitting under the canopies. The day was hot but overcast. The sun wasn't the problem, it was the humidity and people fanned themselves and wiped their brows with napkins. I took occupation beneath a canopy choosing one that had several chairs all unoccupied. A woman sat down in a chair next to me. I had a memory of a book, an image of a character riding the New York Subway, where, at a subway stop a passenger enters the train, empty but for him. The passenger sits directly next to him. He is mortified.

 

The conversation began as many do. 

Do I know you, I've seen you around, you look familiar?

Not sure what to reply I said, you look familiar too. Maybe she did, maybe she didn't.

You're not from town are you?

No, I live just out side town, twenty minutes away.

The library, she blurted. I've seen you in the library.

That was likely, the library almost being a second home.

Chit chat went on from there, aimless talk about people we may both know and places and things.

  

I learned she was nearing retirement but terrified about it. I worry about what to do, she said. How will I fill my time. I read a lot but one can only read so much.

 

I told her I was retired and had not that problem. There is always something to do and besides after a period of adjustment you fall into the making of your own routine. You answer to your own call and there is no rush to do or accomplish. You can just be yourself. You can try new things. It can be quite freeing, quite wonderful. And that's when I said I've started writing stories. And she, like a match made in heaven, said, I read stories.

 

I should have put one and two together her being a patron of the library.

I knew what was coming but still it took me by surprise. Are you any good? Have you published anything?

Yes, no, maybe, I don't know. Christ, I stammered, I'm a dabbler not a real writer. As if that explained the unexplainable.

A whirlwind of questions followed. Do you write fiction? What genre? How long have you been a novelist? Can I read one of your stories?

Well I'm not inclined to carry around any of my stories and anyway I'm not really a writer and I'm certainly not a novelist. Far from it, it's mostly a hobby, something to keep my brain ....

Saved. Hallelujah. Not by the call to dinner but by a handful of people joining us under the canopy. People of all different sizes and shapes and colours, much like the flower garden but with the uniting factor we all were well planted in grade school at the time the first Kennedy was assassinated.

 

The newcomers discuss the horrid weather, diets, their health. I assumed everybody knew one another for no introductions were made.

 

Across the lawn comes a man and he is supported by a walker and there are clear plastic oxygen tubes wrapped around him with an outlet ending at his nose. You think the lawn is rather flat until you see someone trying to navigate it with a walker. It bounced along and became stuck and he freed it and kept going. I considered helping him but that was the extent of my helpfulness. He made it to our circle without mishap and sat down at one of the empty chairs, the first half of the movement slow and controlled and deliberate, the second half a free fall.

 

He wheezed. I'm Gilcrest, the birthday girl's brother. They did not look alike. His hands still had a firm grip on his walker. They seemed stuck there. He huffed and puffed and wheezed again and his head hung forward and his face pale as a mushroom. We all looked at him expectantly.

I'm older by two years, turned eighty-two two weeks ago. His voice was tenor interspersed with high pitched cracks and whistles. It could have been the wayward voice of a thirteen year old. He entertained us with stories of their family pre-war including several none of us knew about the birthday girl. He told us what it was like growing up on a farm in the depression and then later, work and marriage, and the trials of life that haunt people and families, suicides and death, illness and accidents, regrets and taking the wrong turns that one only knows when one looks back in hindsight. He was very generous and sincere and we were attentive and captive and we all nodded and shook our heads at the right moments. I'm sure, he said in conclusion, that every one of you have had your fair share of tragedy, all families do.

There was a lull, perhaps thoughtful, or perhaps embarrassed and sheepish, recalling memories of our own family histories.

 

Gilcrest, came a sultry voice from across the circle, a tall woman, all angles, legs crossed, elegantly dressed, leaning forward with a gleam in her eyes bright and probing, Gilcrest, she said, swirling the ice in her glass, you should write a book.

And beside me, aloud, not nearly as sultry, you're a writer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Callahan At The Gates - Short Story 14

Callahan At The Gates

 

"Ah, Callahan, there you are. Right on schedule. Can't say that about everyone. Some, you know, dilly dally."

He checks off something on a clipboard.

"We've had an incident. Just this morning. A vacancy. Rather sudden, though not completely unexpected. We knew it was coming, sort of, just weren't sure when. I'm told you recently had a career shift." Looks down at the clipboard. "Say's here you made a move to sanitation? Am I right?"

A lengthily pause. Callahan distracted, head swiveling, checking out the surroundings, slightly dumbfounded, misses what was said.

"Am I right?"

Callahan says, "Seems so."

"Did you know Jones? Probably not. Before your time. He's the one you'll be replacing."

"Nope, don't know no Jones."

 

"Not important, really, but between you and I, Jones had an encounter with an, ah, a foreign agent. Defected. Yes, um, yes, went to the other side. These things happen. Happens more often than we'd like to admit, but it's not unexpected. Not unexpected at all. The big guy, you know, the big guy is all knowing, knows every thing from beginning to end, but he gets a bit distracted in my humble opinion. He knew it was coming but forgets to inform the rest of us. He's not getting any younger. Too many eternities I'd gather. One eternity is enough for me."

Callahan says, "Am I in the right place?"

"Ho, ho, ho, you certainly are." Turns the clipboard to Callahan. Waves it in his face. His name across the top.

"Welcome aboard Callahan. We're giving you Jones's old number. Your membership number is 837,491,728, 444. Remember it. It is also your room number."

He makes another check on the clipboard.

"By the way, my name is James. My friends call me Jimmy. Jimmy the Clip." Unfolds wings, sniffs, cracks his neck, wings flap twice, folds them back. "Been working the gates since day one. Know pretty much everybody..."

 

"Karl!...."

 

"KARL!"

"For crying out loud, where is that guy?"

"Karl's our sanitation navigator. Wears the hat for what, two thousand years now. Ex Roman Centurion. Good guy, terrible temper. Don't get on his bad side."

From his dial Jimmy speaks into a PA, "KARL, damn it, you're needed at the gates immediately."

Karl shows up. He has a limp.

 

"Put Callahan in toilets."

 

Callahan takes a step back, stumbles, lands on his ass, dust rising. "What kind of Heaven is this? I can't spend eternity in toilets."

"Sure you can. And Heaven? What makes you think this is Heaven?"

"Next!"

 

Ten Hemming Way - Short Story 11

This is story 11. First draft July '23. It all came about rather quickly. Now it seems prophetic three months later with another war in the Holy Land. And war in the Ukraine ongoing. The idea came about when I read an article Belarus decided to hold war games near the Polish border.

Ten Hemming Way

1700 words

 

ONE

The rain came down hard and we ran for cover under the awning. Across the street a woman in a peasant dress, her hair up in a bandana, came out to take down laundry from a line. She thought better of it and went back inside. It was too late, the laundry was already sopping. The rain would not let up so we stayed in the cafe and later found out from a fellow Canadian there were rooms for rent upstairs. The window in our room was open and we could hear the rain fall on the slate roofs and we fell asleep listening. In the morning we got up late and when we left the laundry was still on the line. This was just outside Paris. Before the war. Before all hell broke loose.

TWO

We were still in Paris when we heard the news. A bomb fell on Warsaw. We wondered if we should catch the next flight out but in the end we decided to stay. Warsaw was far away and the sun was shining and everybody was going about their business. We said lets go back to that little cafe where we spent the night in the rain. We took the underground as far as it would go and then caught a cab and had to tell the cab driver where it was. We found it alright. We looked for the lady in the peasant dress and we could see her through the open door sweeping the floor, sweeping the dust out onto the street. It was a very normal thing to do. It was a Saturday. The streets were very quiet. Too quiet for a Saturday we thought.

THREE

That night we got drunk. The Canadian was still there. She was writing a travel blog and used the cafe as a home base. She got drunk with us. So did an American with an Italian husband and three Japanese travelers and a older woman from Berlin. We were all drunk and laughing. The Italian husband and the woman from Berlin spoke pretty good English. The three Japanese girls could not but they had a smattering of French so we all got along well. We were all staying in the cafe. We were the only ones there. It was a Saturday night and we had nowhere to go. The streets were deserted by the time we crawled up the back stairs to our beds. We had a very good time. The following evening while we were having dinner Paris was hit. Then Tokyo, Toronto and New York. Berlin too. We were in shock and we sat in the cafe and wept.

FOUR

Jets flew overhead. They were flying low towards the east, flying in small groups and the noise was so great we put our hands over our ears. The coffee cups rattled on the table. We sat looking up, out past the awning, looking up at the jets with our hands over our ears and then looking across the tables at one another. The street was jammed solid with cars and the cars were crammed full of people and possessions. We watched them crawl by and they would stop and then move forward a few feet, and we watched the faces of the people in the cars looking back at us, the children eager, excited, wide eyed, the older ones blank and knowing. They were all going in the same direction. The same direction as the jets. It made no sense to us. We did not know. Communication was down. The lights flickered. Traffic stalled and a woman in the passenger seat rolled down her window and beckoned us. We went over and crowded around. She spoke French and told us it was not full out nuclear and she crossed herself. Limited she said. Limited as a war could be. She asked us what village this was and we told her. She said merci beaucoup and her window went up. Her eyes had tears in them and the traffic started moving again. We sat back down in our hard little cafe chairs. We had nowhere to go. This was only Tuesday.

 

FIVE

In the night we could hear thunder. It was Paris, hit again. That made no sense. Why bomb a city? In the morning the Italian man said he and his American wife had decided to leave. They would go to his grandparents farm north of Turin. It was near where the three countries of France, Italy and Switzerland come together. It was mountainous and out of the way, the province of Aosta he said, and sparsely populated. He thought it would be safer there. He said we could join him. There was room for all of us. They were going to leave early the next morning. We had to decide.

SIX

The exodus was still underway and that night the cafe was full and all the rooms were full. The power was off and everybody sat outside in the dark drinking wine and looking up at the sky. This was August, remember, and it was a beautiful night. Warm and the stars were out. It could have been a setting for a Van Gogh painting. Food supplies were already running short and we took what we could get. The cafe owner was very kind. I think he liked us. He took very good care of us. The nine of us sat together. We had become friends, friends thrown together. Thrown together by circumstance. We huddled over two tables brought close and talked in whispers under the stars and the sky was very dark but for a glow over Paris. We decided to leave for Italy, to go to the mountains, everyone except for the German lady. She had a cousin near Copenhagen. She would go there. We now had somewhere to go. We were very excited. Across the street a candle burned in the window of the lady who wore the peasant dress. I could see her silhouette. I wanted to take her with us.

SEVEN

It was hard to leave. Hard to leave the cafe owner and the peasant lady and the German lady. It was hard because we felt close and because there was a good chance we would never see one another again and we would never know how things turned out. We shook hands and hugged and had tears in our eyes and I went over to the house across the street and hugged the lady in the peasant dress. She was standing in her doorway and she smiled and seemed surprised and confused but took it in stride and went back inside and I never saw her again.

EIGHT

We walked most of the way. The trains were down. It was hard to catch a ride. Who had room for eight people? A farmer hauling pigs took us one hundred kilometers. We sat in the back with the pigs. It was better than walking. The pigs were fine company. There were four of them.

 

NINE

The countryside was tranquil enough. This was France you know, farms and villages and picturesque small towns. We slept where we could. It would have been quite wonderful in other circumstances. We did not complain. What would have been the point? There were more and more people on the road. The news was always bad. The war had spread to the four corners. People fighting. People dying. For what? Our Canadian friend wrote in her journal: Humanity has a lot of built up hostility and tension and now it is being released. This will end only when all the tension is gone and there is nothing left. We hoped she was wrong.

TEN

We never did see any military. No soldiers. Just jets streaking across the sky. They always went the same way, in the same direction, east.

 

There were countless numbers of people on the roads. The people were fleeing the cities and going into the country. The cities were hit hard. Everywhere things were in short supply, food, shelter, there was no petrol to be had anywhere. There were too many people.

It happened when we were nearing Macon. Lyon was hit. How bad we did not know. News now came slow by word of mouth. If this was true it was not the first time. To hit cites seemed sadistic, unfathomable. Cruelty with no reason. If I was on my own I would not have known what to do. I would have been lost. I would have sat on the side of the road and stayed there. As like as not, I would have never left the cafe. I would sit on those hard chairs and be drunk until the wine ran out.

We thought it was snow. The sky was azure with only a few clouds. We held our hands palms up, faces towards the heavens. One Japanese woman said, 'mais c'est en aout?' "But this is August?" It was not snow but ash. A fine ash that coated everything. We changed our plans, Lyon was kaput. At Macon we crossed over the Saone. I feared the bridge would collapse from so many people. There were so many bicycles and backpacks and people pulling wagons, children in tow and crying with their dogs and cats in their arms and some wrapped in blankets.The river was flowing yellow as we looked down from the bridge and there were five bodies floating on the surface. They were fully clothed and the two that were face up looked at the falling ash with blank eyes as they disappeared under the bridge and when they came out the other side they still had that blank uncaring look. They were the first bodies we saw. We were all on foot carrying what we had. The Italian husband in his halting English said our new route was shorter but the terrain was more mountainous. It was a trade off, he admitted, but perhaps for the best. At least we had a place to go. It gave us purpose. The world itself had lost its purpose. If it ever had one.

Blue Haze - Short Story 10

10

Blue Haze

 

"God, I need a cigarette.....

 

"Last time I was in one of these rooms..... I couldn't see the people through the blue haze....

 

"That was like... fifty years ago..... fifty....

 

"I'm not sure, perhaps it was forty.... I lost track..... I never gave it much thought.

 

"It doesn't really matter does it, forty is a long time too. A lifetime. Half mine. Okay, not quite, I'm not that old. But it never crossed my mind I'd be back here. Never.

 

"I sure could use a cigarette. (someone laughs)

 

"At one time I used to know everyone in this room. I was never one too, you know, too get up and talk. Some people are good at it. It's like a gift. The great orators. They tell funny stories. Weave the details. Not me. I stood at the side, over there, by the coffee table. I drank lots of coffee. And yeah, we could smoke cigarettes then. The room was full of smoke. Everyone smoked. It was the same thing in the bars and the restaurants in those days. You could smoke anywhere.

 

"Looking out at you, I don't know a single one of you.... I don't know what that means.... I don't know if that is good or bad... I don't know. (someone coughs) 

 

"It tells me times change but some things don't. There are just as many people here tonight as there was back then. Which is sad. It makes me sad. I would have hoped different.

 

"I was in a mall. You know the big one on the east side, the one with the water fountain and the weird modern sculptures at the entries. I can't make heads nor tails of those things. I don't get them. I go there to walk and to be by myself. It seems odd to say that. Be by yourself in a crowded mall. But it's true. I go there to get lost in the crowd. 

 

"No one knows me. Just unknown people filing past. Don't get me wrong, I like people. I take the comfort of having people around, but now, I like that I need not to talk to them. There's no pressure. I was in sales you see, and never really good at it. I'm not natural, more of an introvert. Sales is a hard go. A real hard go and I had a lot of anxiety. That's were the drinking came in.

"Anyway, I was in the mall and when I was about to leave I guess maybe I walked out the wrong door. They all look the same. I couldn't find my car. I guess I got anxious. No, I did get anxious. And when I get anxious I can't think. And then I get more anxious. I thought too, maybe I'm getting Alzheimer's. I'm really scared of that.... my mother....

 

"Yeah, well, so.... I went back into the mall to get my bearings but I was lost more than ever. I couldn't remember which door I went out of, or came in, or whatever. I sat down on a bench and then I saw a restaurant. I went in. I was flustered. I ordered a beer. I just did. First drink in forty something years. It happens I guess. I just never expected it'd happen to me.

 

"I remember my first drink. We probably all do. The first one ever. It was a funny thing, and I say that because both my parents were drunks and I swore I'd never be like them. Swore to God. You know the story, right. Thirteen, fourteen years old, rebellious, ready to prove to the world you are going to be your own person...

 

 "It's raining outside. I hear it through the window. Not hard. Can you hear it? It just started.

 

"My first beer ever, I drank it because my friends were drinking it. You just want to fit in at that age, right. It tasted strange, not what I expected, I thought it'd be sweet, but I drank it anyway. It was one of those fat old stubby bottles. (smiling)

 

"Six beer, five boys. One small bedroom. Pretty soon we were all laughing and joking and wrestling. It was a hoot. No wonder my parents like to drink. I had no idea. It never occurred to me they weren't having fun. They weren't happy.

 

"The beer in the restaurant was the same, it tasted odd, strange, bitter. I had forgotten the taste. But I drank it anyway. And I liked the feeling. Boy I liked the feeling. It hits you pretty quick when you're not used to it. It's the kind of feeling that makes you want to have another. The anxiety vanished. I forgot about my troubles. I was having fun. I talked with the waitress, told her a rude joke. She laughed, touched me on the arm. It felt good, I felt good, better than I've had in awhile. Even the pain of my arthritis disappeared.

 

"Not much else to say. Two weeks later I'm here. Back at the beginning.... life comes full circle.... 

(shakes his head)

 

"I think I'll go outside now. Go stand in the rain. Go have a smoke. 

 

"I'll come back in. Get myself a coffee. You'll find me standing by the wall over there."