A Myth With Which to Contend

He was told that in the middle of a glen, secluded by shining birches, gleaming white in the sun so that one's eyes had of necessity to strain, there lie a steel contraption in the shape of a circle.  Laden on the tangent of the circle, this skeletal monstrosity held spikes and blades of many shapes: some in rectangles, some in oblong waves and half-circles.  It was made of the sharpest metal so that the slightest touch pricked the finger with an unstoppable blood-letting resulting in the demise of its investigator, no matter how curious.  One, slight touch meant death.  High mountains lie in the back of it far in the distance with jagged spires covered in shimmering ice that outshined the thin trunks of the birch groves, which stood around the contraption like sentinels, protecting it from anyone who approached with the malice of destructive will.

From the opposite direction of the mountains, a cool, blue stream flowed from an unknown distance.  Directly underneath this ancient, skeletal orb, it flowed.  The chaotic globe rested upon nothing, but floated perfectly still exactly one foot above the ground.  It neither moved, nor quivered, nor undulated from side to side, but lay stationary, with all its purpose of planting ever so tiny seeds of horror, as it dripped a musky concoction into the stream below, carrying tiny droplets that both dissolved in the water and grew into tiny globules, floating down steam into a swift moving river beyond the invisible Cavern many miles, many days travel, and many moons to the Great Damn near the Cavern.  From this, the world beyond did not know, came all the discord and woe that enslaves the land of men.

Upon seeing this globe, made of steel and formed as a sphere of razors, he was told that he must, in his nakedness, destroy it.  Dripped with poison, the razors of the massive metal construction gleamed with a pale-green luster, as a single, droplet dripped every 60 seconds over this malevolent sphere.  The poison dripped from a dropper to which was attached an organic vein made of the stuff of the earth, and yet emitted the perception that it was made of living tissue.  The vein came directly out of the earth.  At the base of the vein was a circular patch of earth, dark, grey, and dotted with pale, lifeless flowers. 

"You must find this contraption," his elder told the boy.  "You have been called to this task, and you must destroy it."
"You are mad," said the boy.  "There is no such contraption.  I'm going to tell my mother and father what you've said.  You've brought trouble on me by saying these things."
"Oh?  Ask your parents, then.  They'll tell you." 
He looked at him.  His face neither grimaced nor frowned.  He lay in limbo between utter disbelief and total despair.

Missed Encounter

Unnoticed by the transient in the cramped, dusty abode, a long, black needle pins itself from under the ledge of the table; an appendage, creeping with a slow, searching method, wills to wait with seething patience.  To what bulbous, disgusting body did this spiny mechanism attach itself?  To what thirsty barbs formed for one aim only: to plunge themselves into pools of blood-drenched flesh?  What venomous eyes lie unseen, hiding behind the long-suffering, feeling leg, wheeled along with malice and an insatiable desire to consume, till that bloated bag burst at the seams, if that were possible, digesting some hapless prey interfering in its corroded path?  This tale tells not, as the visitor, in haste to consummate his journey, starts from the lonely table, grabbing the last crust of dry bread from the day of the great experiment, which left the entire area empty and filled with ghosts, like torn curtains flapping in a whispering, moaning wind.  He marches out the door, confident and expecting, never to return.

The Tyrannosaurus Across the Street

There’s a Tyrannosaurus Rex outside our window across the street.  I know I know.  You’ve heard that a million times.  But I’m serious—he’s there.  I was staring out of the picture window of our house on 178^th St. and I noticed it one day.  There’s a small, woodsy area set down, below the ditch-level of the road on the corner of my street and Merrywood Lane.  It borders the Deitrich’s and the Miller’s and across from the Draeger’s.  (The Draeger’s have a pond!  No one in our neighborhood has those.  There’s toads and frogs and pollywogs…and goldfish.  Sometimes we climb over the fence and sneak to the edge and try to catch them with our tinker toy fishing poles, but that’s another story).  I think there might be a Brontosaurus in the woodsy area, too, but I haven’t made him out yet.  Tyrannosaurus though—he grew up before my eyes, and has lived there a long time, always looking north, though I only just now noticed him, staring out my window on a gray, rainy day.  

I’m ten, and I don’t know too many of the boys in my neighborhood—only the Miller boys and Jake and Luke next door.  There’s the Popma boy and the Dewitt boy, but they’re big kids, so we’re not friends.  My friends live far away, and my mom has to drive me if I am going to hang out with them.  In fact, I only really have one friend: Jeff and he lives a long way away, over the Grand River and in a place called Spring Lake on Cross Lane.  It’s funny that he lives on Cross Lane, because his phone number is in the shape of the cross when you punch the numbers.  Well, it’s almost a cross.  I guess you’d need a 5 and a 0 to make it a real cross, but it’s good enough for me to remember, just by the shape.  I dial that number all the time.  Maybe it’s more of a diamond than a cross.  No matter, because Jeff and I like to imagine what Tyrannosaurus is like as a person.  He’s big.  Real big.  As big as a house!  Even bigger.  I mean he’s taller than a house, but not wider.  That would be a really fat dinosaur.  But Tyrannosaurus isn’t fat.  He lives in this small woodsy area, and yet only Jeff and I can see him, and he’s always looking north, with his great eye and open mouth, ready to eat whatever gets in its way.  

I ventured out one morning after my mother told me to “go play.”  My dad and brother were at the farm, and had left without me because I slept in.  I got so mad that I broke my ceramic puppy on the front porch step.  My mom said, “Hey!” but she sang it really long, like she was disappointed.  I remember looking up at Tyrannosaurus and he was looking at me out of the corner of his eye.  Was he smiling at my bad behavior or was he disappointed too?  I couldn’t tell.  His mouth is always open, you see, and his great eye is always in search for food—or something.  He’s always looking forward.

I wonder where he came from?  Why is he here and not somewhere else?  He never moves.  Or does he?  Every time I look at him, he’s in the same position: always poised with his forward-looking motion, his little claw-arm raised up and his mouth—that big teeth-filled mouth, always agape and facing the same direction: north.  I asked my brother about it once and he said “Nonsense.  That’s just a bunch of bushes, trees and weeds.  There aren’t even any trails in there.  That’s not even a real woodsy area anyways.  No one plays in there.  And there aren’t any dinosaurs.  Dinosaurs are extinct, doughy!”  (He calls me doughy.  I’m not sure what that means, but I think it might mean that I’m dopey, or dupey, or dumb.  When I think of something that is doughy, I think of what you think of: gooey dough.  Maybe it’ll be something tasty). 

“But you do believe in dinosaurs,” I say, sounding desperate.  “You and Russell found those bones in the dunes by the beach that one time, and you said they were dinosaur bones.  I saw ‘em.  I remember.” 

“That doesn’t mean dinosaurs are still alive, doofus.  Besides, Dad told us those were cow bones.  And Dad’s right.” 

I look down and shuffle my feet; my hands are stuffed into the pockets of my “farm pants” (overalls).  How does Dad know?  How does Kurt know?  I’ve seen Tyrannosaurus with my own eyes.  How come nobody else can, except Jeff and I?  

“But can’t you see him?  Look!  I point out his body, his little claw-arm, the great eye, and the huge gaping mouth.  “See, he’s facing north.  That way,” I saying pointing.  The hills in the background beyond the neighborhood houses at the end of Merrywood Lane stand silent as the trees covering them stare into a void.  My own brother looks at me in the same way.   

“That’s just a tree, doofus,” he says.  Do you want to play baseball?  Let’s get the Millers and see what’s going on.”  

 Kurt tramples inside to look for his glove and a baseball.  I stand there in the garage, looking at Tyrannosaurus.  I want to believe in him.  But is he real?  Now it’s not true that only I can see him.  Kurt can see him, but he doesn’t believe.  I just want something to be real.  Beyond real.  Is it real?  With a deep sigh, I walk inside and find my glove on my dresser.  “Baseballs are real,” I think to myself.  But I can’t stop thinking about Tyrannosaurus and his great eye, and his big mouth, and his facing north, as if he’s going somewhere.  We careen down the driveway and head north up the street. They guys are getting together.  Time for some baseball at Mary White.  That’s the school about a mile away.  You know?  There’s a funny tree there with a hole at the base, and all the roots are exposed.  I wonder what’s in the hole?  Wouldn’t it be great if a whole different world were in there?  I wonder.  I look back at Tyrannosaurus as we head up 178^th and he moves up and down.  His big head nods up and down.  He seems to be smiling at me.  And a gust of wind blows straight at us just as he smiles.  Where did that come from?  Today’s not a windy day. 

The Sliver: Memories of My Mother

...I've decided to compile some good memories of my mom, as she is in the hospital due to kidney and heart failure. We don't know what is going to happen, but nurses and doctors expect a slow recovery. I hope so. We'll see...

It's the level of oddness I sensed in how excited she was about the cinnamon & sugar doughnut holes, for there was something in her eyes--they got wide with delight and she smiled so. Her voice raised up high with full jubilation like a bird in spring, but nonetheless, she was in complete control. She was all in control. But the oddity was like a railing, that smooth, comfortable railing, but there's the sliver, you know? That damned sliver that has to ruin the smooth surface of hand-sliding contentedness on the pleasant, yet adventurous hike in the dunes as the lake breeze kisses your face. You're running along and ay! A sliver.

It was when I was walking down 178th St. (my road) on the way home from school, and she pulls up in the car and informs me of a bunch of goodies she'd gotten at the store: cinnamon & sugar covered doughnut holes and apple cider. She was so excited to bring me this good news, peering through the passenger window, stopped in the middle of the road, the car idling, as we were also. Then she proceeded to give a longer list of other things. Mom was fond of lists. What are we having for dinner? "Green beans sauteed in garlic and butter, mashed potatoes with whole milk--you can put pepper on them! roast beef with homemade gravy, crescent rolls and jam...." she would go on and on listing off all the ingredients, even the salt. "Roast beef," would have been sufficient for us so keen on efficiency and impatience. We rolled our eyes and guffawed, "Mom," in exasperating sighs.

After giving me the list of goodies from the store, she sped off somewhere. Where, I don't know. But I stood there, and I remember thinking she seemed to have a slight, just, ever-so-slight over-excitement about it, like that sliver that makes the railing of a fence just less than good--less than appropriate. For you glide your hand along its smooth surface, and chances are you'll be alright, but--there's that little sliver you're actually guaranteed to hit. And it will smart, but not too much. In fact, while it may puncture the skin, it will only break off the rail by the force of the sliding hand, busting only the surface of the skin and falling away into the valley below. It's only a minor disturbance, only a mere fraction of one...a whisper of pain. But it is there, and it happened. You get a rush from the pain, just you get a rush when you're embarrassed, or, you wonder if you are about be. All the same, that tingling sensation comes and it shows in your eyes and on your flushed cheeks. You can't hide it. There's a sliver coming, and chances are, it'll smart when it hits you.

What was the sliver? Maybe my friend was the sliver, that locus or maybe the causal agent of disturbance and embarrassment. Did I tell you my friend was with me? I forgot to mention that. Ha. I usually forget some minor detail. But then is that really a minor detail? No, I'm asking you. Is it? Maybe the sliver is the embarrassment I felt at my mom's slight, over-excitement at the whole thing, her high-pitched voice and all. Maybe if my friend hadn't been there, I wouldn't have felt embarrassed. Maybe I woulda. Then again, the level of embarrassment was congruent with the level of over-excitement I perceived on my mother's part. Her demeanor just had that slight, little, sliver in it, you know?

How many slivers were there? Me? My friend? My mom? Was it perceived or real? Maybe I'm remembering it with a pseudo-memory, an eisegesis--I'm reading some false notion into the whole thing. Bah. This is too psychological isn't it? The point is I have a good memory of my mom. But it's those damned slivers that always get in the way. Nevertheless, thank-you mom, for the goodies, and for thinking of me.

Love,
Chris

A Blemish, or Rotten Through and Through? A Story

I’m telling you, I’m a wretch. Do you know, Jonas? I’m a wraith and a wretch.

“What do you mean,” asked Jonas. His eyes were filled with immediate concern.

I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you that I am a wraith, and that there is nothing good in me. Ah! But I know there is some good in me, isn’t there Jonas, my good friend? My dear, good friend, and brother. There must be, mustn’t there?

“Yes, of course there is, “ smiled Jonas. “But what is this talk of being a wraith? Every man on the earth knows he’s a wretch deep inside, but that there is goodness, too. A good apple is not completely rotten if only a part of it is so.”

Ah, but I’m no blemished fruit, brother. I’m rotten through-and-through. Do you know this? Let me tell you. I’ll tell you all about it, if you will listen! But first, about being a wraith. Do you know when you sit with your eyes closed in the relaxing chair and open your eyes and look about the room? Say, your eye catches a door and its frame. And you see not just the door, but the transparent image of the door as a shadow—no, not a shadow, but it’s very real looking, but it’s ghost-like. Yes, you see the ghost of the door, just off to the side of the actual door. There’s just that split second of seeing the double image, and then? Gone.” He snapped his fingers when he said “Gone,” and his face grew stern. “And then it fades away and your eyes adjust and you are back to the solemnity of your daily morass we call life, and you are back in focus.”

“Yes, I know what you’re talking about, so what’s your point? You’re the ghost image, here and gone in a split second?”

“Ha! You are too clever. You know? You were always more clever than me. I may have gotten the better grades, but you were the dreamer. You walked in the fields and the woods and along the beaches, musing about life. This has made your education complete. Here, have a glass of wine.”

“Ummm….I don’t know,” Jonas said, contemplating the wine. He certainly enjoyed the red tannins and the relaxation to come with it, but he wanted to be in control. Too much vice and you lose control, he thought to himself. This was his usual axiom. But today, he felt like a glass of wine, and besides he had nowhere to go, except for a walk in the woods. His brother was right. “Ok.” He hoped he wouldn’t regret it. “I can never so no,” he said to himself. “Even if I only have one.” He meant this, in reference not only to wine and beer, but to other dainties in life: cakes, pies, candies and treats. He chided himself for not having a more strict way of life, like the other Fathers. “Ah, not every priest is alike,” he would say. He said this to justify himself, and to do away with the “rulebook” in his head that he feared would dominate his life and suck all the fun and enjoyment out of it. “No use being a harbinger for strict regulations,” he would say. Then a voice would come to his mind, “Bah!” but it wasn’t his own. He took a sip. It was pretty good. He set the glass down and pursed his lips.

“It’s cheap, only 5.99 a bottle. But they say the cheap stuff is good. Besides, I’ll never make enough to justify spending even $20 on a bottle. Do you like it? Is it good? Tell me!" he said with enthusiasm and a sudden burst of delight.

“Yes, it’s good. I like it," he said, smiling. He folded his legs, and his long robe swept underneath him, like dark wings.

“But you know, on second thought, you are indeed not so clever at all. The image of the door is not me in the sense of being here today and gone tomorrow, thought of course it most certainly is that. But it’s more. You see, it’s not just the temporal act of disappearance than I’m concerned about with this image, but the very nature of the image itself. You see, I’m only a fraction of what is real. I’m a wraith! Do you know that I purport to all who see me that I am so happy and gay and full of delight to see them? I’m the most gregarious man in town. Everyone knows me and loves me, and yet—ah, the wretch I am!” He paused and clenched his fingers to his forehead, his knuckles pointing out like the legs of spiders. He dug his fingernails into his skin and lacerated the epidermis. He pressed and pulled his fingers against the front of his skull and moaned in anguish. “Wretch, wretch” he whispered. He appeared to be spent now.

“Carl, hey.” Jonas said with soft alarm. “What is this? What’s this about?” He looked at his glass of wine. He wanted to grab it and look into the comforting red liquid. He jutted his right hand out for it, but hesitated, and brought it back. He then sat on both hands, but looked at the glass, then at his brother. He repeated this motion with nervous tension.

“Ach,” said Carl. He moaned some more and let out a deep sigh. “If only you knew the thoughts inside my head,” said the troubled brother. “Just the other day, Mrs. Gruthause was in the department store and said hello to me, and I gave her a warm hug and asked her how she was doing—out of genuine concern, you know? She’s an older woman you know and very sweet. She started telling me about her plans to reconcile with her husband after an argument they’d had. She confided in me, the dear woman.”

“She hasn’t confided in me,” thought Jonas to himself. He wondered if he was frowning. He thought not. Perhaps he could cover up the frown with his pursed brow and look of deep concern for his brother, yes, his brother. That’s what this is about, after all, not the fact that some woman hasn’t confided in you, you prat.

“Well, here she is speaking to me of how old man Gruthause snapped at her the other day for nagging him about—oh, some menial task around the home, I can’t remember. And do you know what came to my mind? The following thought: ‘Serves you right, you nag.’ And I was nodding and smiling the whole time, pretending to be listening with care and love!” Carl gasped and spread out his hands far apart on his desk with a slap of alarm. "Can you believe that? And I do many things like this all the time. All the time, brother! And that’s just the surface. You wouldn’t want to be my brother if I told you everything. I couldn’t begin to tell you! Ah, I’m rotten through and through, he sighed.

“Ha ha! Dear brother, you’re ok. That’s just human—perfectly human to be so. He chuckled some more.

“Oh, is it? Didn’t the Son of God come 2,000 years ago to make us new humans? Where is this “new man” that I am supposed to be? And I haven’t told you the wicked thoughts I’ve had about others. Disgusting things and perverted things in my mind—and they entice me, and I like them. I AM a wretch,” he insisted and he pounded his fist on his desk. “I’m good for nothing except death, I tell you--death!” Carl sat back in his chair and dug his fingernails into his forehead. He began to shake and weep like a child. "Wretch, wretch, wretch," he whispered, over and over and over again.

Jonas tilted his head and looked at him. His immediate thought was the Eucharist or home holy water and the power of the Host, but he wondered within himself whether these things really did, after all, have the power to heal the tortured soul.

"You Can't Do That!"

“No, I didn’t,” he replied. “I just, eh….” He gathered his thought, shifting his chin to one side and glancing up at the dappled, plaster ceiling. “It just wasn’t the right fit for me. Which was really shocking, because at the beginning of it all, I imagined it was exactly what I was looking for: keen, eager minds from solid households who taught respect and obedience in a proactive manner, using the Socratic method of discussion, fostering debates, assigning oral presentations. Preparing scholars!”
“What’s the Socratic method, --er whatever?”
“The Socratic method is a way of teaching, where the teacher gets the students to discuss the material through a series of questions. The questions guide and lead the discussion. It’s an art. It’s supposed to enable the student to be able to express himself in an artful, elegant way. They call that rhetoric.”
“That sounds like something I’d like to do.”
“Well, if I’d had a room full of students like you, it would have been a great pleasure.”
“So, what happened?”
“Oh, gosh,” he sighed and leaned forward. “’What didn’t happen?’ is the better question. Ha!” He slapped his thigh, and eased back into his leather chair. It creaked slowly like an old, tired clock.
“Well?”
“Well…there was the time I got in trouble for saying the Great Tribulation happened in A.D. 70.”
“The what?”
“The Great Tribulation. It’s when Jesus predicted the fall of Jerusalem, and in A.D. 70, Titus and the Romans sacked the city and totally destroyed it. The ancient historian Josephus reports that a million people died there. And the Jewish temple was totally destroyed, too. Not one stone left on another, just like Jesus said.”
“So, what’s wrong with that?”
“Well, these people think the Great Tribulation is still future—that it hasn’t happened yet. So they think there is going to be this awful time on the earth, this incredible suffering like never seen before, and the Antichrist will appear and all hell will break loose.”
“Okay,” he said, looking a little confused. “That’s not a very good outlook, is it?”
“Ha! No. Indeed no,” he replied.

Seth squirmed in his seat and frowned. His brown hair flopped over his downcast face. He shuffled his feet a bit.
“Seth,” he said, trying to peer in at him. “You ok?”
“Yeah,” he sighed quietly.
“How’s your mom, doing?”
“She’s ok, I guess.” He looked up, straight-faced and asked another question, changing the subject. “Tell me more about this—tribulation stuff.”
“Oh—yeah, sure. Um,” he hummed. “Well, these people are so adamant about this view of the future, that if you disagree with them, they look at you like you’re a heretic.”
“What’s a her-e”
“A heretic—sorry—“ He had interrupted him.
“No, it’s ok.”
“A heretic is someone who denies a basic, orthodox teaching. “
“What’s—?”
“Hold on.”
“Okay.”
“Orthodox teaching is like how we believe there are three persons in one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, or that we believe God created the world, and Jesus died for the sins of man. Stuff like that. Just basic Christian doctrine. But other teachings, like ‘how it’s all going to end’ aren’t really considered as essential as the basic teachings. And what I mean by essential is, you have to have it, because if you don’t have that teaching, then your whole religion falls apart.”
“Like Jesus rising from the dead?”
“Yes, exactly. Or justification by grace through faith.”
“I know what that is,” he said patently. “That’s when God declares a sinner as righteous, as if he had never sinned, on account of the death and resurrection of Christ for the forgiveness of sins, when a person believes.”
“Right! You’ve been studying your catechism.”
“Yup,” he said. So, people got upset at you for believing the Great Tribulation happened in A.D. 70?”
“A number of students ran out into the hall, proclaiming loudly to the others that I was some kind of freak, yeah.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. And many of the people on staff looked at me with suspicion, too. I even had a local pastor call me on the phone in my room. His son had gone home and told him about it, all upset because his world had just turned upside down. And boy did I get in trouble. Even after talking with me on the phone, and having smoothed things over, I was still called into a special meeting, and he was there, bringing up the same issues we had smoothed over on the phone!”
“No way.”
“Yes,” and he looked at him from under his steel rimmed glasses and held the glare, not moving a muscle on his face. "He treated me something rotten. Berated me for a whole hour, insulting me and treating me with great disrespect. A pastor no less!" Leaning back again, “But that was nothing compared to the reaction I got when I taught the students about circumcision,” he said with pursed lips, and an almost smile.
“What?” he said, furling his brow. He looked disconcerted.
“Yeah. Circumcision. That’s when—“
He held up his hand, forming a stop sign with it, “I know what circumcision, dude. Uh, I mean, pastor.”
He held up a stop sign of his own, but this one stopped not the person, but the offense. “Just because it says ‘Reverend’ doesn’t mean it has to be so. But, I will tell you that the Dutch call their pastors Domini. It’s related to the Latin, and means like what it says: one who dominates, and is superior. Ah, the Dutch,” he sighed with bright eyes and folded hands. “But anyway, I merely taught them that in the act of circumcision, Abraham would have seen an issuing of blood. And this shedding of blood would have reminded him of atonement for sin. Plus, the removal of the foreskin from his body--note that I didn't say 'penis' in class--would have reminded him of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden when they covered up their nakedness with fig leaves in order to cover their shame, because now Abraham was ‘more naked’ through the act. So, all in this one act of circumcision, you have great themes of the Bible of sin, shame and guilt, shedding of blood and atonement, the death of Christ and the forgiveness of sins. It’s really quite beautiful actually.”
“And you got in trouble for that? Maybe you shouldn’t have said that to the kindergartners.”
“Ha!” He laughed. His laughter shook his chest and belly so that he had to hold himself and get under control. “Oh, that’s good. You’ll do just fine.”
“Just fine?”
“Ah,” he said, wiping the tears away. “Yeah, when God calls you to be a pastor. You’ll do just fine. Eh,” he said trying to catch his breath. “Okay now, where were we? Whew,” and he let out a loud breath. “Oh, that’s just plain good. I haven’t had a good laugh in a while. Thanks, Seth.”
“I’m not going to be a pastor,” Seth said plain as day. “Nuh-uh. No way. Not after what you’ve told me about your horror stories.”
“Oh, well, you get used to it. I’m not going to lie! It’s rough! Anyway…circumcision. “
“Yeah.”
“Okay, well. I had this woman, one of these rich, empowered mothers, the ones who are so proud that their husbands make tons of money and buy fancy cars for their young daughters. Well, she told me that my theological discussion on circumcision was “Icky.”
“Icky?”
“Yes, ‘Icky.’”
“Well, uh, but it’s in the Bible.”
“I know!” his voice boomed. “It’s on almost every page! And then there was the other woman who threw her hands up in the air and said, “Dietrich! You can’t teach that to those girls! Those are virgin girls! They can’t be thinking of that!”
“Ha ha!” Seth laughed. “So how did you reply?”
I threw up my hands, too. I didn’t know. They just said, “’Here’s a Bible, go teach it.’ Well, ok,” he said, still with his shoulders shrugged.
“So, you must really miss that,” Seth quipped.
“Ha! Hardly.”
“Life’s so much easier as a pastor now. No politics,” he smiled.
“Hmmm,” Dietrich smiled, nodding his head. “You see, you’ll catch on, alright,” pointing his finger in the air.
“Yeah, well, I gotta go,” he said rising out of the chair. His long, lanky body leaned forward, and jutted out a thin hand in extension of a mechanical arm. “Take care, Domini. And stop teaching your heresy.”
Dietrich offered a half grin. “Seth,” he said, looking at him. “I’ll stop by and see your mom some time.”
“Okay. See you later.” He walked out of the study, and paused in the doorway, as if he wanted to say something about the visit, or something related to it, but then carried on. But you could tell he was thinking.
Domini Dietrich leaped forward and leaning out the door with only his right arm grasping the frame. He thought of another incident at the school and wanted to plant the seed for the next conversation. "Seth!" he wanted to say. "Next time I'll tell you how I was accused of over-sexualizing a novel by Aldous Huxley!" But, he thought better of it. Seth was near out of the building and walking down the open corridor between the church and the education wing. Besides, Seth needed to think about some important matters at home, and Dietrich didn't want to ruin that moment. But you, dear reader, now know a glimpse of yet another miscue in the life of our young pastor in his early days teaching at a private school.

Walk

Having heard the slight sound of the “ocean” in the small hole near the floor amidst the few rocks at the back end of the tunnel, Seth, a begrudging, defeated, animal, straightens himself for a painful walk forward. The fear starts to come. He stops after his first step with a wince, bracing his head with his left hand; his right hand pillars itself against the wall. “Out, alive, walk.” The words appear like flashes in his mind. But his whole body quivers with nervous tension, and it feels like he is going to collapse from the inside. He is unsure. Discombobulated. He feels like the buzz of a toy train stuck on the tracks: there’s power from the battery flowing into the engine, but it stands there, lifeless, humming, not going anywhere. There aren’t any thoughts in his mind other than “Out, alive, walk.” The disorientation stifles him from cognitive recipes that draw out plans of action for escape and longing. Finally, it breaks: “Where am I?” His mind is working again. He can figure this out. The tunnel stretches forward and stares back at him. It bends to the right and darkens.

He lifts up his shirt investigates his body. The sores look better. He looks askance of himself, staring at the side wall, trying to think. Words and images flash through his mind as he ponders his wounds and there apparent quick healing: bike, Klugschreiber, yellow, mom, fence, tree. Tree. Grunting with a frustrated huff, he gropes forward step by step. There is still the multitude of painful pricks and holes in his body, but as he moves along now, he becomes numb to the pain. He gropes the walls. It’s damp, hard sandy dirt. It smells like earthworms, and decay, but with a mixture of minerals, and life. The walls are made of smooth corners of stuff, with small juts here and there that deceive the eye: these are not for climbing, but crumbling. A hairy mess of roots intertwines overhead and swims with grubs, webs and creepy crawlies with a disturbing number of legs. The walls and floor however, are paved clean and good for walking, groping and resting. He approaches the bend, anticipating the dark, but the light moves with him, just as fog disappears and retreats on the road but remains thick and foreboding up ahead. He notices that light stretches in tubes from the roots overhead as if they were hollow and a conduit from the sun over the world above.

He begins to think of himself as a dweller. The loneliness of the place replaces his fear of entrapment to that of comfort. There is a perfect silence in this place that drowns out the voices and noises of the real world. There are no cars, no hospitals, no schools, no bad people, no accidents. But there are no beds, no toilets, no stores of food. The fear remains in him then, but subsides and recedes behind the apparent solace of the tunnel. Its clean walls and floor and its hairy, odd ceiling guide him forward. He turns to look back. He’s gone more than twenty yards now. He must be fully under the dune above, entering into the heart of Duncan’s Woods. The tunnel takes a slightly upward slope. He’ll get out of here! Ha. This is no magical place, he thinks, it’s just an anomaly. Just a coincidence. It is a sheer, horrific event that he fell into a sink hole. It happens all the time. He’d read stories of that happening in the desert to the World War II soldiers fleeing from the Nazis in the deserts of northern Africa. Sometimes, they would fall into great caverns and find water and shelter and respite. Other times…

Stepping along the upward slope it begins to get lighter. The roots seem like thick vines piping sunlight into the cavernous tube. Along his right hand side on the wall, there is a tangled mess of roots, although they look like two hands forming a cup, as if to hold water. Inside the hands lies a box. The box is made of old, blackish gray metal, with decorative webelos on the corners. It reminds him of the patches from his Boy Scout days. He had quit the scouts, because the leader was an old crabby woman, called a den mother. The other scouts got to build fires, shoot guns and find snakes in the swamps, but his clan raked lawns of people he never even saw. So he quit. But this box made him think of men, like soldiers who had traveled to exotic lands and seen ancients temples and had experienced the horrors of gunfire, and death. The box had no design on the cover. It’s just blackish gray, flat, and waned of a shine long since gone of ages past. It has smooth, rounded edges that retain a partial sheen, and there is a clasp on the front. Just a normal, metal box with webelos on the corners for quaint decoration. He picks it up, out of the cupped hands, and as he does so the roots retreat, spreading out like spider webs along the wall. He opens the box with a flip of the clasp, and peeks inside.

Tunnel

Opening his eyes, he barely squints, as into the sun. He tries to brush the dirt away from them but it only sinks in deeper into his sockets. He groans with the pain, and wriggles and wiggles his way loose from the branches. They no longer invade his body, no longer probe. But they hadn’t probed, had they? No, they gave life into him. He feels more alert, more aware, and mentally…clear.

He lays on his side and struggles against the strangling tangle of thin, long, but strong wooden fingers—live fingers that hold him there. It is almost womb-like, the hold of the tree’s appendages. They release, and recede up and out of the ceiling above him, ascending to the living world of sky, grass, and rain (some of the rain dripped down from the ceiling like they syrup on a Saturday morning bottle). With a grunt, Seth pushes himself up off his side and stands up on both his feet. Bloody holes oozed small, coagulating bubbles of red from his body. There are more than fifty of these, all over his chest and back, in his neck, and reaching to the top of his buttocks. Nothing on the legs though. Odd, he thought.

But there was pain. Sharp, searing pain that stings with every movement. He hisses, but moves forward. There is a tunnel before him. The tunnel is a chopped tube meandering under ground for maybe twenty yards before it disappears behind rocks and a bend. The ceiling is high above him, almost fifteen feet. He can climb up, he thinks, and dig his way back into the…the…the world. The walls are not entirely smooth, but are made of hardened brown, golden and orange dirt that has the appearance of hard rock, but alas, it breaks away when he reaches with his hands and puts weight on his foot. Besides, the pain is unbearable. Behind him is a crumbled wall of loose dirt that narrows down into a small corner. He steps toward it, just to make sure. It’s too dark, and he can barely make out a small hole, but it’s on the floor, against the wall—if indeed it is a wall. Who knows whither the hole leads, if it even is a hole?

Not content in submitting himself to moving forward in the obvious direction, he crouches down and puts his face right into the small hole. The position of his body is so tight, and the myriad of puncture wounds in him so painful, that he holds his breath, trying in deepest earnest to catch a glimpse of immediate escape by some other route. Straining his lungs, body and ears, he looks and listens into the tiny black hole for a smidgen of hope. A void answers back to him. It is a void—probably nothing but more earth, more wall behind this. Probably just an anomaly. Probably just nothing. He breathed into the small hole. Though faint, it sounds like when you listen to a shell’s echo. “It’s the ocean,” Kim used to say. Seth drifts for a moment, thinking of her. She moved away—just as they had become good friends. “There’s nothing down there,” he mutters to himself. He pushes himself up with a leap, determined to go the other way. He looks down the tunnel and remembers that he forgot one thing: to be afraid.

Sink

The sand bellowed out from the hole like a froth. Seth startled with fright, then delight—his eyes and mouth opening wide with glee. The hole opened like a yawning mouth and kept growing. The ground below him started to sink, and he with it. His head was now level with the top of the sandy slope as he sunk into the ever growing, gaping hole. He yelled for help, but it was too late. He was under the ground. The last thing he saw was the hole, staring back at him like an impartial judge about to pronounce a death sentence.

Suffocating, Seth struggled and wrestled amidst the arms of sand gripping him with a wrestler’s stranglehold. “I’m going to die,” he thought. The thought came to him as a matter-of-fact. This is not how he thought it would be. As an old man, he lay dying on his bed, happy and content—a peaceful life lived, now all alone, his wife gone before him, but only by six lonely months of anticipating the reunion. The sand kept boiling over him, forcing its way into his mouth and ears, and lungs. He choked. He imagined the deep, blue water of Lake Michigan, but this—this was painful. A mean hand gripped his ribcage and dragged him below the surface. Up above, the black hole stared out at the expansive field, closed its eyes, and disappeared as the sand and the ground resumed its appearance as before.

Below the surface, his body lay limp. The roots of the tree plunged into his body. Roots suck the life out of the ground in order to sustain the life of the tree. Still alive, Seth could feel the roots prick themselves and stab his body, searching for life. He lay limp and listless. His tomb again began to empty itself. The hard, wet sand underneath him crumbled slowly like the crumbs of stale bread. The roots, embedded into his abdomen, ribs and back, lifted him slowly down like a gentle yet malevolent hand. He felt fluid going into him. He felt alive, and aware.

Tree

Seth saunters slowly out the door and down the short, green hallway and takes a right, but not before a quick pull at the water fountain. He stops in a sudden skid, his left leg kicking out like a mechanical arm, his right leg a thin pillar of support. Grabbing the rusting metal handle with his right hand, he applies all of his weight upon this one fulcrum, balancing himself on the integrity of the sink’s fastened body. The white porcelain fractures slightly away from the wall, revealing a dark, line of empty space between the pale green paint and the dry, cracked caulk at the edge of the pale watering bowl. The five-pointed handle gives way to the forceful twist of Seth’s clenched fist, slamming its way to the full throttle of its point of resistance. Cold, smelly water slowly dollops over the spout, lightly flowing out and down with baneful impotence.

“Suck,” Seth says in disdain, his face crinkled in disgust. He curses in his mind. “Stupid…fountain.” Angry, he nevertheless perforates the water with a cautious slurping, his lips only micrometers away from the tainted, defiled spout, no-doubt caressed by unclean lips of many. Satisfied, but furled, he walks boldly out the door, stiff-arming it open like a ramrod. The expletives echo in his brain, but quiet down with a new idea.

Hopping onto his brown, banana seat, Seth meanders slowly like a drunken sailor, his front wheel swinging this way, then that. Heading west, he races down Taylor Street, with the wind slamming his hair behind—almost off—his head. “I’ll head there,” he thinks to himself, glaring ahead. Taylor Street is the biggest hill ever. It has two, yellow lines in the middle of it, and a red, eight-sided sign with white letters in it at the bottom. It’s the kind of street you don’t see the bottom of, and it slowly unfolds before you as you set off. In nothing flat, he’s at the bottom, heedless of any oil burners freezing with grinding halts in order to spare his life. He flies through, his wheels not touching the ground. Then, a rolling coast, the whine and whip of the wind in his ears cowers away like a satiated banshee retreating to her abysmal den. With a hop over the city curb, he enters into earthen terrain, where a wide field lays open before him, welcoming him like any field would: with a silent, green yawn.

The field backs itself into a corner, surrounded by benevolent sandy slopes covered with pines, elms, tall oaks, and maples. The boney fingers of these deciduous friends bear the stripping of winter’s wear, slumbering awake in the clamor of long, cold, rest, turning toward the glowing Spring orb set higher in the late morning sky, whispering in quiet praise. The apex of this corner houses a naked dune, a stretch of sand inhabited by only one tree.

Seth’s bike slows to a motionless rest. He stares at the ground, his eyelids lowered to half slits. His hands rest on the plastic, grooved, handlebar grips, moving in half circles back, and forth, back and forth with white, tense knuckles. The color of the grooves matches the long seat. He starts to murmur. The sand entrenches the rims of his bike, dragging them down into a soft blanket. Raising his head, he looks at the tree. It stands alone like a beacon, with the perfect roundness of a rainbow, its green buds ahead of the other trees in this vicinity. Below its massive trunk, a thousand tentacles and snakes stretch out as the exposed root system. In the middle of this tangled system sits a black hole at the back of a short tunnel.

Smarty Pants

The young boy sits in his pastor's office, his ears and nose reddened by the chill, morning, April air. A thin, clear membrane of mucus careens out of his right nostril, then retreats with an obnoxious "Sniff! Snort!" as the boy jolts his body upward and stiffens, bracing himself with both hands in the old, wooden chair.


"Need a tissue?" the man asks.

"Nah," he says, wiping his nose with the full length of his long-sleeve T. He says it with an air of "older kid." "Nah," means you say it with a salient muchacho frown, and a crinkled nose with a slight, sideways shake of the head in five or six trifling movements. Cuz that's what snot on your sleeve is: a mere trifle. There are more important things...

"Okay," the man says with a smile. He leans back in his chair and folds his hands, analyzing the boy. "He's more aware than most," he thinks to himself.

After sliming a good portion of his long, blue sleeve, the boy leans forward, his hands clasped in the classic prayer position. The boy's weight shifts. The red leather grapples, smudges and reverberates a sound not unlike certain aspects of bodily noise that amuse boys. Noticing the sound, the boy offers a quick, furtive aside with his eyes. The man looks askance, pretending not to notice. "Eh-hem," the man says, looking at the window to his left. The boy can't help but crack a slight smile, noticeable only to himself.

The window is stained glass. They both look at it. It has the primary colors dispersed throughout encased in diamonds. Through the red, yellow and blue, glowing in the morning sun, a ghost of dust meanders, sways and flits in a million particles as one plume of a wondering, lone lost spirit in a desert. The boy looks at the ghost-dust, the dust-ghost. He figures it is many and one, all together. He tries to pick up a pattern of movement, but to no avail. "It doesn't know where it's going," he says.

"What's that?" The man says.

"The dust. It's just moving around in swirls, but it doesn't go anywhere. Why is that?"

"I don't know," the man says. "It's just dust."

"But God created it," the boy adds.

"Eh...I suppose he did."

"Isn't that what we are? You even say it every Sunday. 'Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.'"

"Yes. I suppose I do." The "Yes" is prolonged with a slight hiss. "What brings you by, Seth?"

Seth stops and stares. He looks at the man. He has on a white, pressed shirt. The buttons at the top near the collar are free, and the collar spreads out like a stiff tent. He doesn't answer the question. He's looking at the books on the shelf: faded, dusty tomes with cracked bindings, and old, English font catered with German names the boy knew how to read, but knew nothing about. Sir names like Hausmann, Von Rad, Keil & Delitzsch, Melancthon, Walther, Lehmann and Luther. First names like Otto, Karl, Max, and Helmut. The whole room is stacked with them from behind the pastor, along the length of the wall, bending the corner and carrying on through the next wall encapsulating the window. Even behind the boy are more books! To his left are open-faced holding cases for magazines, journals, and papers. Surrounding the room is an entire conglomeration of sets of books and volumes, dictionaries and encyclopedias, lexicons, grammar books of ancient languages like Hebrew, Greek, & Latin. There are German and Dutch books as well. Words vaguely familiar but awkward looking were: Theologie, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, & Luther's Werks. This largest set loomed on the top shelf and spanned two bookcases. It has a musky, faded red cloth cover with a thick, bold, black stripe in the middle of the binding. The writing,

"Uberlieferungsgeschichte der Werks" confused Seth--but he stares at the gold letters and moves his mouth silently and slowly makes the big word out:

"Oober...leefer...ungs...geshicht-ta." On "geshicht" he produces a perfect guttural--the kind you make a loogy with, but more with the tongue at the roof of the mouth and more of a cat's hiss than a deep-throated reach for phlegm.

"Nice!" the pastor says with a startle. "Where did you learn that?"

"My dad teaches me German sometimes," Seth says flatly. He looks at the ground. His shoulders are slumped. The carpet is a dark mosaic of blackish-blue squares with yellow borders. In the dark squares are reddish flames that look like small doves.

He looks at him. His eyes are covered with steel-rimmed spectacles, and his hair wanes thin in a fine, backward comb. It looks slightly greasy and wet, which makes the boy uncomfortable. But the pastor's face is ovular and healthy. His eyes are small, but keen. His skin is a near ghostly white but carries a hue that eliminates any sallow complexion. The lips are ruby red, wide, and full, like a plump plumb. Almost too red. His cheeks, upper lip and chin are completely hairless, and his teeth are slightly grayed from years of coffee and late nights swarming over other names like Kant, Augustine, Dante, Marx, Ursinus and Bonhoeffer. To his right, a number of pieces of paper with fancy, cursive writing on them rest like sentinels behind glass panes in cheap frames.

Seth sits even more forward. Nervous tension emanates from his furled brow and pursed lips. His hands are a pit of writhing snakes: agitated and flustered, melancholy and somber. He holds his head in his hands. The pastor moves forward, concerned. His eyebrows raise--then they lower: he knows what's coming....

"Klugschreiber," he states. "What does that mean?"

"You want to know the meaning of my last name?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure? You look like something is more pressing than that?"

"What do you mean, 'pressing'?"

"Something's more important to you right now than the meaning of my last name."

"Then why didn't you just say that?"

"Efficiency. It's a German pastime."

"What?" he breaks what is soon-and-coming sobs. Ducts of salty water well up...

"Efficiency or pastime?" he smiles, leans back and folds his hands. He admires his books. He looks at Philip Schaff's History of the Christian Church. How he'd love to know everything in there. If only...

"Stop toying with me."

"Where'd you learn that phrase?"

"My mom."

Now quiet, now ache, now throes of anguish. Sunken, it spreads out in a pulsating rush of deep, deep void. It lacerates the inner self, the heart. But the heart keeps beating, keeps pumping, keeps rapidly fueling life. It vies for a chance to scream, to wail, but it just keeps pouring on life; it swells and dilates, drawing out a death inside that spreads out like a vast desert dying of thirst. Seth is breathing heavy now. The hands writhe again.

"How is your mom, Seth?" The emphasis was on "is."

Silence. With his left hand, the pastor conceals his mouth, resting in thought. His thumb stretches over his left cheek; the fingers cover the right side of his placid face. His eyes dim, and he sighs through his nose. Sadness. The dust-ghost moves slowly, undulatingly, a dancer in preparation for a dirge, but she smiles gently to ease the despair of looming death.

Breaking the silence, the pastor clears his throat gently. "Well, efficiency means doing something really quick-like. And pastime is something that's your favorite thing to do."

"Like baseball," Seth adds.

"Yes. Like baseball."

"And efficient is how fast it took me to get here," he says.

"I don't know. How did it take?"

"Tell me the meaning of your name."

"Okay. Well," he stopped. "It's embarrassing, but I'll do it."

"Why would it be embarrassing?" Seth asks.

"Well, sit back and I'll tell you."

"Okay."

"Alright. Well, my name is Klugschreiber."

"Like Kugelschreiber? That's a pen."

"Close. But wait," he holds up his finger. He's going to make a point. "It means 'smart writer,' but originally it meant something, er--well, different."

The pastor sits eagerly forward, and excitement rises in his voice. "Back about 170 years ago in Germany, my family lived in a small village in the Rhine valley of what is now called Lahnstein. There's a large castle there today. It rests on a large hill overlooking a beautiful valley through which the river flows. Behind that castle are tall mountains covered with evergreen trees, that go up and up until there is bare rock that juts out and up to the highest point that pierces the very realm of heaven. Ah, the sunsets there..." he sighs. "Anyway, that's where my family is from--Lahnstein....Then came the war."

"What war?"

"A man named Napoleon from France came to make his own kingdom in Europe. He did some good things, like build roads and sewer systems, and banks. Notice I place sewer systems and banks close together in a sentence."

"What?"

"Never mind. So then, Napoleon wanted to keep tabs on all the people living in his conquered areas. So, for example, when he came to Lahnstein, he made people create last names for themselves."

"You mean people didn't have last names?"

"No, not really. You see, if you were from Augsburg, then you were Seth from Augsburg. Or, if you were from Wittenberg, and your dad was a shoemaker, your names was Seth, the son of the shoemaker, and so on."

"Oh," he sounds interested. "So where did last names come from then?"

"Ah," the pastor smiled, and pointed his finger again. This time, he shook it with an air a tad greater than mere casualty. "When Napoleon came to our city, and made us change names, the people were very upset--"

"Because people don't like change?"

"You're too young for this kind of maturity."

"My dad says that a lot."

"Mkay. Well, in order to spite Napoleon, the people would give themselves these crazy last names like "Nachtgeboren,"which means "born naked out in the wild"--

"Ha!" Seth rolls back in his chair and slaps his knee with his right hand. His head rears upward toward the fluorescent lighting on the ceiling. Laughter belches from him like a cannon. "Tell me more! Tell me more!"

"Well," the pastor sits back, relaxing. "There's 'Sohndikmann,' which means 'son of the fat man.' And, let's see..." More laughter. Tears. Red face. O's and haws fill the air like confetti.

"Oh, and there's my name, which is Klugschreiber. Now "Klug" means smart. And, uh...well you have to understand that my family in particular did not like a Frenchman like Napoleon telling us how to name ourselves. Rumor has it that my great, great, great, and so on, grandfather got together with his brothers and decided to take a real wisecrack at Mr. Bonaparte--er, Napoleon. Eh, maybe I should wait to tell this to your parents. Ah, well, they already know." Now, the pastor is merely thinking out loud: Do I tell him, or no?

"Uh," now he looks a little flustered, a little nervous. No matter, just tell him. He's a decent lad. "Originally," he adds, clearing his throat--there's nothing to clear, except nervosa. "The name my forebears decided upon was Klugscheisser."

Now, "Scheisser" is the stuff you shovel out from your grampa's barn after the cows have been in all night."

"What!"

"Yup."

"So your name means, "Smartpoop?" This time, Seth sits in mere shock, his mouth open wider than his eyes, his eyebrows raised high and his hands held out and open on his knees, begging for more etymology.

"Nn-no, not exactly," the pastor says.

"What then?"

"Well, 'scheisse' can mean a lot of things in German, and in this case it's the same as a certain animal used in Biblical times to carry heavy loads and even kings. Jesus himself rode into Jerusalem on one during what we call his triumphal entry.

"Oh, I know that story," Seth sits up. Like a good student, he's memorized a portion of Scripture. "'Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.' So, your name means Smartass?" He sits and stares at Pastor Klugschreiber, his hands held out on his knees, open to receive the answer. His mouth, agape, rests at the bottom of a face worn with stunned amazement. He shakes his head 'no' a few times. He doesn't know whether to laugh or just...he just doesn't know.

"Yes." He quickly takes control. "That's what it meant originally, anyway. We changed it when we came over to America, to 'Klugschreiber,' which means--

"Smartwriter."

"Yes."

"You're not going to be a pastor for very long, are you?"

"We'll see. Do you want to talk about your mom, now?"

Seth breathes a deep sigh, and exhales. He stares calmly at the blueish black squares with the red fire-doves and the yellow borders. "Nah," he says. "I gotta go."

Jutting out his lips and nodding in affirmation, Pastor Klugschreiber nods lightly, bobbling his head up and down, evenly and methodically, lost in time and thought. "Mmkay. Some other time."

Seth grabs his things and walks out. Pastor Klugschreiber grabs his Novum Testamentum Graece and stares at the ancient minuscules, bearing the words of a man who lived long ago.

Tunnel in the Roots 2

Cold, crisp morning air sweeps over the lake in fine, crystal mists, bringing remnants of fog burned away from the rising sun. The air alerts his frontal lobe and nasal passage, burning it with a call to attention, and the hairs on his bare arm stand up frigidly. The faster he moves on his bike, the colder his arms feel. But he'll work up a sweat. And besides, it's late Spring; it's May. The sun will warm the day in the amount of time it takes the boy to gallop his once-a-week treat: sweet cereal in gulps of syncopated horse hoof beats--just as he huffs and "hoofs it" on his red Huffy banana seat bike. (The only break is a backward slam of the feet and a sideways swipe and skid--he can stop on a dime).

Just a pair of jeans and a yellow T-shirt, double cotton thread with prominent vertical lines on the face of it is all he has. Plus the favorite "tennis shoes" and white socks with the colored stripes at the top with his favorite team cast of blue and gold. Standing up and pumping like the steel rails on a locomotive engine, he smiles straight ahead, his shiny blond hair puffing in waves behind him with each thrust of the pedals and crank. "We're going to the tunnel!" one of the other kids shouts. "What's that?" another asks. Sidewalks and parked cars whizz by in a blur, watery tears form around the edge of the boys' eyes as they traverse small hills in the quiet neighborhood that undulates like a series of calm waves on the lake just to the west of their northern trek. "The tree with the tunnel under it," the first boy replies matter-of-factly. "A tunnel?" our boy asks. His voice is high-pitched and curious. He's heard of tunnels before. Tunnels are secret places of which only certain people know.

"I knew a guy who said there was a tunnel from his house all the way to Duncan's Woods," he says. He tails off his comment with a twinge of embarrassment, because he was also told that there were stores and stores of bubble gum in there. It's just like the time when the girls down the street promised him and Kimmie a grocery bag full of candy if they would run in slow motion like movie stars in the soap operas and end with a kiss. "No way," he said. But the colorful cornucopia of candy in that endless, big brown bag beckoned him....

"No one could build a tunnel like that," one boy says. "How do you know?" another retorts. "Because," the original replies. "They just don't do it." As the oldest, his word is bond. In a communal response, the others, five in all, slow down as one man, and coast to an easy glide through the quiet, clean, empty streets. Church bells clang ahead as they approach Taylor Street. The church sits on top of the hill like a citadel, with its school to the west of it sloping its way half way down and resting there like a watcher of would-be fools who dare to speed carelessly in red alarm, fists fastened to the handle bars, teeth clenched and lips moving from the pounding wind screaming its clarion call in their ears.

"Watch for cars!" one shouts as he looks back, giving orders. At the top, the road slowly moves underneath them, revealing more and more open space below and widening into a grand, unknown chasm at the bottom of which lays, no one knows. The road is a rolling ball upon which they circle down, the bottom of which is unseen, unknown. Long, yellow lines approach, disappear, and come again in repeated warnings; whirling wind sirens in their ears, clamoring for screaming alarm, wooing for pain of death! til looking to their left, a moving metal box screeches in a lurch and blares a honk! as they whiz through the intersection, one by one, in a parade of wistful fools.

Coasting now, with exhilaration and freedom, they pass the hospital on their left, that ironic iconoclast of healing enterprise to which they are completely agnostic, save future unsuccessful endeavors in this paved artery. Stopping now, and resting, there is a ball field, an old backstop, and a lousy drinking fountain. But at least it works.

The craggly tree lay ahead, roots exposed like a swarm of snakes arising out of the sand in search of something upon which to latch. In silence, the tree stands, arms aloft, gazing into the distance with annoyance and contemplation, looking askance at the visitors 100 yards away. Heads down, but determined, the boys saddle up and slowly approach the hill wherein lies the tunnel under this serpentine sentinel.

178th part 2

The Summer dew nestles, shines and twinkles like dripping stars and clear diamonds on the morning flora. Plump blackberries hang precariously from their green bonds, dipping down to kiss the tall, golden grasses entrenched in the ground, awaiting to stand like soldiers giving full the commanding, mid-day sun. He peers through the guardian wall of soft pines at the border of his back yard, his hands cusp—one on the right, the other on the left, at ear-level. Peeking his head through and careful to watch for spider webs, he steps beyond the protected borders into the field. There are reptiles there, beyond the field and in the woods. Big reptiles. “There’s Brontosauruses,” he once quipped. “No there’s not,” his older brother had said. He had stopped walking toward the woods and remained silent, pondering the authority of his only sibling, two years his elder.

But there are Brontosauruses here. At least there once was. And maybe they’re still in there, somewhere, buried in the dirt. Didn’t brother say they found dinosaur bones on the shore of the Lake one day? They had brought them back and showed them to little brother; and Dad was there. “Look!” they said. And there they were—bones. Bones with jagged edges, teeth, and strange contours, and shapes that conjured images of jaws, legs, and ribs. “Those are just cow bones,” Dad had said. Upon hearing this, a great weight formed in his chest and sunk down into an oblivion, dissipating and draining down through his bowels, running like molasses, descending his veins, as they carried the disenchantment of non-discovery down and away from him, never to be felt again. And that was that. The world was too real.

But there are Brontosauruses here. And least there once was. And he will find them. The morning sky in the east rises above the small ridge ahead and gleefully glows upon the hills to the west, each tree basking in the glory of summer, waking from night’s slumber to the eager chirping and fluttering of robins, cardinals, and sparrows. There’s the bleat and caw of the black birds and crows, disturbing the bliss of the peaceful dawn with their craggy calls.

178th St.

He stood on the east side of the road across from the normal, average ranch home. It was the type that had the garage on the right, and the house on the left. Three faceless, blank windows stared out at him from the top of the short, but steep driveway. Steep driveways are great because you know what that means? Walk-out basement. The house is on a small, rolling hill that lines the road like a plump snake for about a hundred yards before it disappears into the woods, sloping down and sinking below road level so that in the heavy rains, there are swampy parts to traipse into with splashes that fly and slap the trunks of the trees.

Staring north, the woods on his right buzzed. He turns and walks into it through the fine, grassy trail that leads over the deep ditch. “There’s frogs in there. And pollywogs,” he’d say, matter-of-factly to his friend. She wasn’t there. Not now. He’s all by himself. His shiny, blonde hair, only 60 months old, bears a white sheen and caps his head like a fine, wave of grain in the august of harvest. The buzzing sound in the woods calls him closer. The trail weaves hard and fast straight ahead, with the option of taking a left through some taller, thicker grass, or a bit further up, a short, hard right through some pines. He travels straight ahead…

A small, concrete-laden bunker lay before him. Next to it stands a steel tower made of crisscross metal blades forming a diagonal ladder 100 feet into the endless, grey, Spring sky. A warm, lake breeze kisses his forehead and playfully tosses his hair with a “Good boy!” feel that encourages a squint as he looks up in glad tidings of the slow-moving clouds, moseying overhead like a grazing herd.