Brief EulogiesAt Roadside Shrines

StoriesMark Lyons

Reviews of BRIEF EULOGIES AT ROADSIDE SHRINES

[Roadside shrines] ”strike us as sad and tragic, but usually only in an abstract way. Always in a hurry to get somewhere, we fly past them without a second glance or a second thought. Mark Lyons asks us to slow down, pull over, and turn off the engine. While the image of the descanso may tie the stories together thematically, what truly unifies the collection is Lyons' impressive ability to capture the voices of a wide range of characters. The voice of each emerges so naturally that it's easy to forget that only one person, Mark Lyons, lies behind all of them. Lyons manages to create a world rich enough to make many novelists envious. [This collection] deserves to be read and relished. [They are] stories worth savoring. -- The Philadelphia Inquirer

The collection pulses with a tragic calmness akin to the writings of Carver or Cheever. Beneath every scene and absurd occurrence lurks a temperate sadness. While the explored themes of isolation, loneliness and death are heavy, the electric tone of the prose persistently enthralls…Mr. Lyons is one of Philadelphia’s most exciting fictionwriters... his empathy for the downtrodden and curious appreciation for the untold story of isolated America is profound and beautifully rendered. -- Cleaver Magazine

People do strange things in times of grief, and no one knows how to convey this better than Lyons. Letting the voices and dialects of his characters do the storytelling, he weaves a breathtaking account of loss, coping, and redemption. Brief Eulogies  is a roadmap to the soul. Each story is a resting place, or descanso, for the characters and their hardships. Hope is not always easy to find. Only a few make it back to dry, open highway, leaving behind the rest to settle in by the wayside—mourned by some, forgotten by others, but above all seen by strangers in the rear-view mirror as a reason to keep on trucking. -- Philadelphia Review of Books

After reading Brief Eulogies at Roadside Shrines, my psyche is stuck in the emotional world of Anthony from “Holy Roller.” Isn't this the best a reader can hope for? Characters that -- well, what kind of kick-ass, high-imagination writer can even dream up characters like these? Offbeat, odd, filled with sadness and rage and yet eventually, so entirely lovable and human. Just like each of us. I love this collection. -- Miriam Peskowitz, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Daring Book for Girls

Brief Eulogies at Roadside Shrines by Mark Lyons is an important landmark in the literature of multiculturalism. He does for literature what Mark Twain did in Huckleberry Finn - stayed true to the natural dialect of the region the characters are from. From immigrants south of the border to the Inuits in the far north, Lyons captures their speech and their hopes. You can't help but care about these people, and root for them to overcome their obstacles. He's a master of various voices. God created Adam out of clay and Eve out of a rib, but Lyons creates characters out of speech patterns. In the beginning was the word. In the beginning and end stands Mark Lyons, looking out for his characters… A master storyteller who lets the human voice dominate. -- Hal Sirowitz, former Poet Laureate of Queens, New York

Holy RollerSouth Philadelphia

On first look, Anthony don’t look special, your basic white bird. But I assure you he wasn’t no dumb street pigeon grubbing for handouts. I climb up here every once and awhile to check up on him, make sure he’s secure and all. Feel that breeze. Helps me breathe, like things are all right. Look close there, see that breast, how big it is? Like a goddamn weightlifter. That’s because he was part homer. I’m talking English homer, the kind they race a thousand miles in three days, breed ‘em for speed and endurance. Did you know the Army used these little mothers in World War II? On account of the radios and walkie-talkies weren’t too reliable in those days. Paratroopers in the Signal Corps—pigeoneers— carried them in a special vest made by the Maidenform Bra Company. I dreamed I was offing Hitler in my Maidenform. Took ‘em to the front and tied messages to their legs in tiny tin cans, then sent them over enemy lines through smoke and gunfire. The Krauts trained falcons to snatch them before they completed their mission. Jerry-Falcon at one o’clock high! A feathered battle for the skies. Those babies were at the D-Day invasion, flew back home across the English Channel. Send reinforcements to east flank, many casualties. Bearings lost, need coordinates. Real heroes. One even got a Purple Heart; I think he’s in some museum in Washington. I’m going to visit him someday.

But that ain’t all. I know Anthony’s dead, but if you look at how his neck’s cocked to one side you can still see it: that dizzy spinning look that rollers get. He’s half-roller, I bought him from a guy in Jersey. Over there they got these contests to see whose bird can tumble the longest. Use binoculars and stopwatches, serious shit. Big money. Of course, if the bird hits the ground, they’re disqualified. By and by they all die—get careless, or maybe their balance apparatus gets screwed up from all that spinning. They get this crazy glazed look, like they can’t quite focus, their head tilted to one side. Like that look that Johnny Bonecrusher Stompinato had when he hung up his gloves. When they get that look, you know it’s just a matter of time, you should retire them to the coop. But it’s in their blood: they ain’t happy if they ain’t rolling, like Johnny when he wasn’t boxing. You’d have a miserable lousy bird on your hands, pacing, fighting, plucking out its feathers, finally just withering away. So you got to let them roll until they crash and burn.

Before I lost my way in the desert, I had this girl, Mady: Madeline Elena Torrisi. Mady was my girl on accounta Anthony, I’m sure of that. She wasn’t exactly hot, but she was fine. If you watched, if you really watched her, you’d notice how she walked, how she had class. Not a strut, not shaking her stuff; more like a silky glide. She didn’t notice that guys were noticing, because there wasn’t no whistling or leering; somehow her walk made them respectful. Not that she acted like she was too big for South Philly, but we knew South Philly was too small for her. This girl was going somewhere, only she hadn’t figured that part out yet.

Me and Mady and my buddy Dante grew up around Ninth and Shunk. We all got baptized and went to grade school at Stella Maris—the ugliest parish church you ever seen. Gray stone blocks, like a giant warehouse for souls. The damn Jennings & Armbuster ball bearing factory over on Third is more inspiring. Ain’t even got a steeple or a belfry. They play recorded bells blasted from giant loudspeakers hanging under the eaves, for Christ sake. Every hour a concert for Our Man.

♫ Abide with me; fast falls the eventide; The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide. ♫

Rock on.

But here’s what saves that old hag of a church: the most beautiful Virgin in all Philly—Stella Maris—the Star of the Sea. She’s more than twenty feet tall, perched on top of the church—where the belfry would be if there was one— looking out over the Walt Whitman Bridge, the Navy Yard and Veterans Stadium, down the Delaware, all the way past Cape May to the Atlantic. She’s silver from head to toe, her long gown covered with stars, even stars in her hair. Even stars on her sandals. A beacon, Father Adolphus calls her. But she ain’t your run-of-the mill Our Lady of Sorrows with tears dripping down her cheeks. And she don’t look all virginal with the Baby Jesus in her arms. Get this: in her arms she cradles this two-foot-long silver clipper ship, a giant mast with sails flying, the wind at its back. That ship’s tucked right up there in her cleavage. Like her Holy Mother breasts are a shelter from the storm for all lost sailors and voyagers. Beautiful.

Anyways, Mady: so then in high school, junior year—we both went to South Philly High over on Broad—I noticed how she’d developed that walk. So I got this thing for her, big time; but she wasn’t paying me no mind, I wasn’t even in the ball game. She was taking algebra and trigonometry and physics and shit, on the road to college. For me, metal shop and business. She worked at the library on weekends while I was pumpin’ gas. In the hallway at school when she walked by, the best I could do was stare at my feet.

“Forget it, man,” Dante’d say when he caught me checking her out.“ ‘Sides, her father would rip off your balls, he seen you even gazing at her. That bald fucker is older than old school, you’d think he’d just walked off the boat. Other than school and church and her library gig, he don’t let her out of the house. The hotter she looks, the tighter the leash. The old man ain’t no fool, he knows we ain’t nothing but a buncha dago dogs prowling for pussy. College, marriage, then maybe he’ll let her husband touch his daughter. Fuckin’ waste, you ask me.”

One day after school I’m taking Anthony over to the Navy Yard to let him do his tumbling thing, then fly around for an hour or so before heading home. Keeping him in shape. Anthony’s in the basket I got strapped to the back of my bike and Mady’s out in front of Argento’s Deli. “Hey, Nunzio,” and I’m like, “Hey.”

"What’s in the basket?” she says, and I say, “You wouldn’t be interested.” “Try me,” she says.

So I do: I start up on my man Anthony, about his tumbling and homing. Now I’m in a groove and do my rap about livin’ life: how rollers are meteors, street pigeons are moons. “So are you a meteor or a moon?” I ask, and I know right there the way she looks at me I’m on first base. This guy's a poet. Then I tell her I tried to take out a life insurance policy on Anthony, but there wasn’t no takers. She laughs, and I’m thinkin’ she’s thinkin’, he's funny too.

“Wanna watch?” I say. I can tell she’s contemplating, like a fish checking out the bait.

“No thanks, I have to work on my English paper, I should be at home.” I pull Anthony out of his basket and hold him in front of my face, like he’s a feathered mask. Please, Miss Mady, come watch me fly. She looks down the street, like she’s checking out to see if the old man’s watching. Chomp. Hook, line, and sinker. “All right. Thirty minutes.”

So Mady comes over to the Navy Yard and watches me and Anthony do our thing. I add a little drama and whatnot, talking to Anthony quiet and kind of affectionate (he’s sensitive with animals, too), then throwing him into the air, not just opening the basket and leaving him to take off like usual. Well, Anthony puts on quite a show, me and him are a team working on Mady. He does four or five warm-up laps to stretch his muscles and get his bearings, then he starts climbing, circling higher and tighter, at least five hundred feet. Mady’s lost him, “Where’s he at?” she says, and I point him out, a speck against the sky.

Suddenly Anthony stops flying, like somebody shot him: Bam! His head dips and he tucks his wings and feet. Mady breathes in real hard as Anthony goes into his roll, tight somersaults over and over, straight down. There’s this whistle as he picks up speed, the air rushing through his tail feathers, and every time he rolls you can see the flash of sun reflected in his orange eyes. He hits at least seventy before he pulls up forty feet above us. Mady does this hand clap thing that drives me crazy, and Anthony goes into a climb for an encore. “So you want to go to a movie tonight?” I ask.

That’s all she wrote. The rest is history. Big time.

And her old man never had a clue. Never blinked when Mady told him she joined the Stella Stars over at the church, had rehearsals on Monday and Wednesday nights, or that she had to spend afternoons in the library working on her big paper.

Come senior year, her family thought she’d just apply to Community and Temple, go to college here in Philly and live at home. But Mady’d secretly applied to Penn State, got accepted. Scholarship, too. Shit hit the fan at home when she

announced that she was heading to Happy Valley in the fall. When he hears, Dante tells me, “Damn, my man, your girlfriend just grew some serious balls. Before she met you she was Daddy’s angel. Now lookit her: sneaking off to do the nasty with her secret lover in the backseat of his best buddy’s ’95 Z28 Camaro. Heading out of town like there’s no looking back. Hmm hmm! You are definitely Daddy’s nightmare!”

After graduation I got to thinking about meteors and moons, how besides Anthony and Mady I was dying in South Philly. Nineteen, still living with my mom, selling programs at the Vet and pumping gas on the graveyard at Angelo’s Texaco. Get off work at eight in the morning, crash ‘til three, tip a couple beers with Dante or my Viet buddy Minh at Parnelli’s Tap Room, shower, hang with Mady, then back to the gas station. My only wheels was a ten-year-old three-speed Schwinn Dante gave me when he got his Chevy. That was it: that was my life. Definitely dead end.

And Mady was starting to give me grief. “Nunzio, are you going to pump gas all your life?” “Nunzio, here’s a program that pays you to go to college if you promise to teach for two years—you like kids.” Or, “Here’s an ad for becoming an electrician. Takes eighteen months. Pays good, and you never run out of work.” One day she says, “Where are we going, Nunzio? Where we going?”

So, hey, the message of the Marine recruiter on Broad Street sounded good to me: get dressed up and look sharp, join the Signal Corps and learn serious shit about communications technology—the wave of the future—free trips to places I’d never heard of, out in four with a guaranteed college education. Yessir. A goddamn dream. So a month later I clinked beers with my buddies at Parnelli’s, gave Dante the keys to the coop so’s he’d look after Anthony, and made love with Mady—candles and all. I was off to see the world and she was off to Penn State. “I’m proud of you, Nunzio,” she says. And, damn, I knew she was.

Early the next morning I jumped a bus, headed for boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina. Mady came down to say goodbye. When the driver started the engine, I handed her something I’d been hangin’ on to: one of Anthony’s tail feathers. She brushed the back of my hand with the feather, then brushed her cheek. I’ll never forget that.

Then she gave me a Saint Anthony medal to wear when they shipped me out. “Patron saint of travelers,” she says. “Oh, yeah, the lost, too. You ever get lost, Nunz, he’ll bring you home.”

Ten weeks later I was amassed with 100,000 troops on the border of Iraq, preparing for the assault that would save the world from weapons of mass destruction.

I shit you not, this is a true story. You know about the siege of Baghdad, right? How we had all this amazing equipment, pinpoint laser-directed rockets and bombs, could drop ‘em down a chimney, guaranteed no collateral damage. American ingenuity at its finest. In Basic they prepared us for the deadly agents that they were sure Uncle Saddam was going to dump on us. We had high-tech gas masks with two-hundred-dollar canisters, drilled over and over until we could get them on in twelve secs. We had Humvees equipped with super sensors that could detect nerve gas, one part per million. Before heading over the border to Iraq we spent a week in the Kuwait desert, one final run-through to make sure all systems were go. Come to find out, the gas sensors weren’t too reliable when tested in battlefield conditions—they got all clogged up with sand dust kicked up by the tanks. A-rab sand was a whole different ball game.

So they needed a backup. One of the corporals, this beanpole from West Virginia, told how his daddy used to carry canaries down in the mine to detect the gas—when the birds stopped singing it was time to head north. Canaries is too frail for the dessert, the brass figured. The first sergeant, a banty rooster Puerto Rican who used to fight cocks, said they were the toughest cabrones around. So they came up with this plan to use Rhode Island Red roosters as sentinels. They needed Sentinel Poultry Specialists to take care of the birds and march with them into combat, give the word to the CO the minute one of them croaked. Given my experience with pigeons, which are officially “poultry,” I was considered an expert. In no time I was in command of ten Reds in cages strapped on top of five Humvees, and on March 20 our unit headed out over the desert towards Baghdad in 110 degree heat. Every half hour I’d check the cages and, sure enough, another damn rooster had croaked. I’d inform the CO, he’d shout out, “Everyone strap your masks, on the double!” and all hell and panic would break loose. I had serious doubts about there being any gas, so one time I kept my mask off. Sure enough, the pathetic birds were dying from the heat.

“You know, pigeons are much tougher than those pussy chickens,” I says to the First Sergeant in charge of gas warfare. “Street pigeons are the baddest. They’re uglier than hell and they ain’t got no class, but growing up scratching out a living on the asphalt of big cities toughens them up.” So on day two of the March to Baghdad we used a pigeon as our gas sentry, and sure enough when the sun went down that little mother was still standing. I was sent to Kuwait City with a special unit to snatch two hundred heat-hardened pigeons off the streets, bring them back to the front. So hot my boots stuck to the asphalt, while those little fuckers went around barefoot pecking crumbs like they was walking on grass. Women all covered in black, beady eyes staring at me through those slits while I stuffed the birds into cages, like they was thinking I’m going to cook them up for dinner.

In sixteen days we drove Saddam Hussein and his buddies out of town, faster than Sherman’s March to the Sea. No doubt who the mightiest motherfuckers in the world were. April 5, 2003: after the Abrams tanks, the first vehicle to enter Baghdad with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was a Humvee

with two gray pigeons up top and me riding shotgun. I have to admit, I was flying high. The greatest day of my life.

A month after we rolled into Baghdad I turned the pigeons loose, given as the war was pretty much over, ‘cept for a few skirmishes and hot spots. At least that’s what the brass was telling us. That night I wrote Mady, telling her mission accomplished, I’d be home soon.

It took more than eleven months before I knocked on Mady’s door. Now I’m back in Philly working the pumps at Angelo’s. I came back from ‘Dad wearing a Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal and a Combat Action Ribbon. No scars or shrapnel, nothing you could see. But it was like my navigation system was out of whack, like I’d lost my sense of direction. There are things they don’t prepare you for in basic training. Things you see. Things you smell. You hear. Things you do in your march to victory. Things you bring home and never get rid of. Like the desert sand that sticks inside your nose and ears and under your nails. You think you can live with it, but it’s always there, reminding you. You dream of coming home a hero, but you just come home different. People notice. My commanding officer noticed—he’d seen eyes like mine before. Like you can’t stand to look anymore, at anything. So you turn your eyes away and act like you’re listening; but you’re not really listening, neither. One day I couldn’t stand to look anymore, so I locked myself in the latrine. I could hear them calling my name for five hours, they thought I’d gone AWOL. Finally when it got dark I came out. “Son, I think we should send you home,” said my CO. “You mean a little R and R?” “No, I mean an honorable discharge. Some soldiers get cooked faster than others in this desert. You did your duty, Private, it’s time to move on with your life.”

Semper Fucked.

Mady and me got back together. She noticed. How I kept glancing away, like there was something behind her. “Nunzio, are you listening to me?" No tears, no drama or whatnot, no nothing. The desert had sucked it all out of me, like when you pour salt on a slug. “You got to stop brooding so much,” she’d say. “Talk to me.” But no way. She tried to get me to see someone over at the VA, but I said I got nothin’ to say.

I’ll give her credit, she hung in there, taking me to movies and Geno’s for steaks, buying tickets for the Phillies. She reminded me how we fell in love, “Say, Nunz, you want to go over to Jersey and get another roller, you know, like maybe a Mrs. Anthony? Like maybe an Antoinette?” That made me smile.

But I looked at pigeons different. “Gimme time,” I says to her, “I’ll come around.” And she did. But then time ran out. Can’t blame her for moving on—like she’s got to live her life.

The end of the summer she went back to school. I don’t remember even saying goodbye.

Anthony didn’t last too long after I got back. Dante didn’t work him much when I was gone—mostly just fed him. I could see the sign: my bird had plucked most of the feathers from his chest, his breastbone sticking out under the skin like the keel of a boat. He was dying to roll, being cooped up so long. So I started taking him over to the Navy Yard. But he wasn’t himself; he rolled like he wasn’t sure what way was up, like he’d lost the horizon. Instead of coming to me he’d set on top of a telephone pole, trying to figure it out. Then he’d take off and try another dive, but after a couple of rolls he’d pull out of it. I knew it was just a matter of time. One day his gyroscope conked and he caught a telephone wire. Pretty bad. I recuperated him in his coop for five days then tossed him into the air to see what he could do. His right wing flapped like a banshee and his left wing just hung there at a crooked angle, him spinning around, crashing to the ground. Like a helicopter that’s been shot down. Then I saw the bone stickin’ out at his elbow.

I did what I had to do. Late at night down the gas station I kissed the back of Anthony’s head and put him in a plastic trash bag. I tied the bag around the exhaust of a ’98 Ford pickup waiting for a tune-up and turned on the ignition. I held the bag until it stopped jumping. Then I climbed into the cab, switched off the key and fell asleep with the bag in my lap.

About five months after we broke up, I seen Mady in front of Argento’s Deli, bitin’ on a hoagie. I wasn’t ready for that. She looks at me like she means it and says, “How you doing, Nunzio?”

“You know… coming along. Still working at the Texaco, figurin’ out my next move. N’you?”

“OK. College is good. Home for Christmas. Think I’m going to be a teacher or maybe a counselor, something like that.”

“Cool. We all figured you were going to make something of yourself.”

“How’s my man Anthony?”

“You ain’t heard?”

So I made up a story about Anthony, about how he’d crashed at the Vet, at a Phillies game while they played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Twenty thousand people cheering as the announcer directed their attention to the sky, watching Anthony shoot up to a thousand feet and then go into his dive, rollin’ over and over, the crowd going wild! Then twenty thousand moans as he crashes at second base, people crying and holding each other.

“You’re lying like a sinner at confession,” she says. This guy’s still so romantic, I’m thinkin’ she’s thinkin’. Then she looks at me, head cocked a little, like Anthony used to do.

“You OK, Nunz?”

“Yeah, I’m OK. Maybe. I don’t know.”

She don’t say nothing, just looks at me.

“Hey, Mady, I gotta go, get to work and such.” I’m staring at the ground like way back when.

“Yeah, sure.”

I head up Oregon, trying to walk casual. Five more houses and I can disappear around the corner at 7th.

“Take care of yourself, Nunzio.”

I nod, enough to let her know I hear, and keep on walking. Finally I turn the corner. Out of sight.

How you doing, Nunzio? Jesus!

I gotta find a stoop, sit.

There was this once I did talk about it. One night I’m closing down the pumps, Dante pulls up in his Camaro, says, “Hey, let’s tip a few over Parnelli's.” About three beers later sitting at the bar Dante taps me on the knee, “Hey man, you know we’re proud of you, how you did that; we should’ve all signed up to go over there and put that fucker down. Anthony would’ve been proud of you, too, helping pigeons make their contribution.” He chuckles at that.

I can’t say anything for a while, then tell him. “You know what we did with those pigeons, the Humvee flock?”

“No, man,” he says, “what’d you do?”

“About six weeks into my tour we let ‘em go, one by one.”

Dante nods, like he’s got the picture in his mind.

“There was this Iraqi kid, maybe ten, maybe fifteen, you can’t tell with Arabs. He’s hanging around asking for cookies and pretzels and shit. We called

him Ahab. ‘Hey, Ahab,’ we says, ‘toss these birds into the air, one at a time.’”

“That’s cool,” says Dante. “Like, Let freedom ring.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Then six or seven of us blasted away with our M-16s on automatic. Poof! Nothing left, not even any feathers. Obliterated like they never even existed.”

“Damn,” says Dante, then don’t say nothing.

I’m working on maybe my fifth beer now. “That ain’t all.”

“What ain’t all?” says Dante.

“That ain’t all we obliterated.”

“You don’t have to tell me no more, man.” Like he’s trying to go easy on me.

“A couple days before we let the pigeons go, we’re sitting in this square. It’s noon and you could fry a damn steak on the sidewalk, so we’re all hanging under this awning. The speakers in the minaret of the mosque across the square start blaring out the call to prayers.

“Allah u Akbar, Allah u Akbar Allah is Great, Allah is Great”

Dante’s impressed. “You know how to talk Arab?”

“That’s it,” I tell him. “Heard it five times a day, no matter where I was.”

“People head for the mosque, the traffic stops. The square is totally silent, like the volume’s turned off. Not a fucking sound. Even the dogs stop barking, like they’re praying, too. Muslim dogs. I’m sipping on a Coke, enjoying the peace and quiet, when all hell breaks loose, we’re taking fire from the fourth floor of this apartment building. Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat from an AK-47, then a pause for the shooter to take aim then tat-tat-tat-tat-tat, over and over, then tat-tat-tat-tat seems to be coming from the mosque too. Shit, we’re surrounded! Then we notice that the second sound is lower, just the echo bouncing off the minaret. Two of our Abrams swivel their turrets around and let loose a shitload of 120 millimeter shells into the apartments. Instant rubble. Then smoke. And flames. Then this huge explosion, a butane gas tank, we figured.”

“That’s war, man,” Dante says.

“Twenty people fried, trapped in there. Maybe one sniper. Ain’t no way to describe the sound people make when they’re burning to death. Screaming.

Howling. Wailing. All at the same time. Like a goddamn choir in hell.”

We both stare into our mugs, like you do when you got nothing to say. Or when you said too much. Dante holds up two fingers, the bar guy uncaps two Buds. Me and Dante take a long sip at the same time, both of us staring into the mirror.

“There’s this kid, maybe five, runs out of the building and collapses, cooked like a French fry, his eyes burnt out, face gone. How the fuck can you scream when you got no face? Now he’s sprawled there on the street, clothes burnt off, raw meat. That smell… Silence. Thank god, the poor bastard’s dead. May he find his forty virgins in heaven. ‘Give me a hand, soldier,’ says a medic, ‘let’s get this little guy off the street and over to the morgue.’ We load him in a body bag, zip it up, start to drag it over to a Humvee transport. Suddenly the bag’s writhing and screeching, like there’s a goddamn alligator in there. It won’t stop. I look around for a mother. Thank god, no mother to hear this, she’s probably already smoked. Writhing and screeching. No way this kid can live. No way. We pull the bag over to the Humvee, the medic unzips it three, four inches, signals to me. We slip the exhaust pipe into the opening.”

Dante stares up at the TV; Flyers are up two to one. He drops a couple of bucks for the bartender.

“There’s more,” I say.

“Let me take you home, pal,” he says.

Something I didn’t tell Mady, Dante neither… nobody: what I done with Anthony after I gassed him. Like nobody asked, neither, like, “Hey Nunz, what’d you do with Anthony anyways?”

So here’s what I done:

First thing, I went to DeLeo’s Drugs and bought one of those plastic capsules that holds screws and pads and whatnot for fixing your glasses. Then I wrote two numbers on a piece of paper:

546744253—the ID number on my Marine dog tag.7648—the number on the body bag we put the kid in.

I rolled it up real tight and slid it into the capsule, screwed the lid on good.

Then, late on a Tuesday night, after choir practice and the catechism class had all gone home from Stella Maris, I snuck into the sanctuary. I carried Anthony in this canister pack from my days in the desert. He was pretty stiff. The christening bowl was up by the altar, still had some water in it. I dripped some

water on Anthony’s head. Then I stretched out each of his wings and dipped them. I preened his long white wing feathers between my fingers, knitting them back together, like they was Velcro. Last thing I done was wash his feet. I could feel him relax. I laid the message capsule up against Anthony’s leg and wrapped a rubber band around it. Then I put him back in the pack.

I slid around the altar with my flashlight and a ladder I found in the basement, and pulled the ladder up with me as I climbed up the stairs to the trapdoor to the roof. Out on the roof the moon was out and the stars on Stella Maris’s gown shined like they was real. I propped the ladder up against her, careful not to hurt her breast. I climbed up to the clipper ship and took hold of Anthony. Over my shoulder the lights were on at the Vet, Phillies got a game on. Cars streaming across the Walt Whitman. I kissed the back of Anthony’s head and laid him there on the deck, in front of the main mast.

Like he was that ship’s figurehead, him and our Virgin working together to bring us all home.

Security RiskOdyssey Diner, Connecticut

He straddles the round stool, green Naugahyde with a stainless steel rim, ninety degrees to the right, then back to the left, listens. A metal-on-metal low-pitched screech, like a trolley car braking, not a way to promote digestion. He spins the stool seat next to him. That's better, metal-on-grease. He slides over one, has the mauve Formica counter to himself. The place is empty, save for a couple of kids in the booth behind him. Above the pie cooler, the round chrome clock, circled with red neon, says three-twelve. The waitress comes through the door from the kitchen. Face slightly overdone with makeup, a bit on the far side of size 14, black apron over white uniform, light red hair held up with a Mickey Mouse barrette. Walks with a bounce, like she just started her shift.

“Thought I heard that seat. Coffee for starters? Menu?”

“Black, thanks.” Marlene, her name tag above the left pocket of her blouse, starts a fresh pot in the Bunn coffee maker.

He scans the menu. Breakfast. For the Kiddies. Appetizers. Savory Salads. Backyard Grill. Sea Harvest. Vegetarian Selections. Sandwiches. Heart Savers. Sides. Beverages. Desserts. We proudly serve Colombian Harvest Coffee. He’s taken to looking in mirrors, preoccupied with how others see him. Vanity? At sixty-two? Nothing more than curiosity, he assures himself. How does he appear to others as he moves through the world? So here he is, sitting at the counter of the Odyssey Diner in the middle of the Connecticut hinterland, two hours before dawn, an hour’s drive outside his hotel in Hartford, looking in the mirror behind the counter next to the kitchen door.

Marlene is back. “What’ll it be, hon?” His brows furrow as he peruses the menu. “Need a little more time? Got nothing here but time.”

Hon? Such an intimate word from a total stranger. A habit of diner waitresses, he’s noticed. Hon. Like they've been a couple for years. His wife had never called him that. Want to read the front page, hon? Trade you for the local news. When his daughter was six, he had called her sugar, and she came running. Once, when she was twelve, he had called her hon—she looked at him like he was a fifties father, a historical artifact. He’d gotten the message, kept trying different endearments with her: hey you, sweetie, mi’jita (he knew a little Spanish). She’d voiced her disapproval with her silence—you’ve got to be kidding—so he had given up. He had never asked her what she wanted to be called.

He goes for it. “I’ll have the crab cakes.”

He has not thought about his daughter for the last month or so. He’s learned to do that, keep the switch off. This he knows: his daughter is not dead; she might be in Idaho. A couple of years back he’d run into one of her coworkers from the zoo, who said she’d heard his daughter had gotten a job on a ranch out there; or maybe was just thinking about it. He had a phone number from her last place in Atlanta, dialed it on her birthday (twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth?) maybe three years ago, but nobody answered. He did not leave a message on the machine.

“Crab cakes, before the crack of dawn.” No sarcasm, just an observation. “I was taking you for maybe a waffle man. Any sides with that?”

“How about the collards. And applesauce.”

“Collards?” He sees that she’s trying to put this together, proud that she can judge people by what they order. “As you wish. Here? To go?”

He’s surprised that she asks, him with his coat and hat off. “Here.”

“You got it.” She hollers back through the window to the kitchen: “Jake! Claws with sauce and soul on the side!” A plate rattles in the back to signal that the order came through. She pours a glass of water, slides it next to the salt shaker, places a napkin, then the fork and knife.

He watches his head tilt slightly in the mirror, beside the sea green Hamilton Beach milkshake maker. Checking himself out, as if he were looking at someone else. Does he look interesting? Eligible? On the way up or on the way down? Sensitive? Boring? Anything remotely attractive, sexually speaking? Would a woman want to—you know—get acquainted? See anything missing? Would a new wardrobe make a difference? He definitely recognizes the person in the mirror, but feels he should have more of a sense of recognition, like when you meet someone from the past at a party but can’t remember his name.

There was a time, a long time, when he could not bear to look in the

mirror.

He realizes he sees his back in the mirror, a view usually reserved for those walking behind him or sitting behind him in a movie house. Is that bald spot getting bigger? This view confuses him; he spins on his stool one hundred and eighty degrees. That explains it: over each booth along the wall behind him is a mirror from table to ceiling, a gold border to add a sense of class. The Greeks do this in their diners these days, especially in the counter and booth areas with narrow spaces; makes them look larger, lighter.

He feels suspended between the two mirrors, which reflect each other and him—front view and back—sitting on the counter stool. Like in the fun house over

in Lehighton where he went with his wife and five-year-old daughter way back when, twenty-five years ago now, their front and back reflected again and again, an infinite amount of times. They—all three of them—dizzy and lopsided by the multiple views, stumbled out of the fun house laughing and holding hands to keep upright. Then one of them fell—his wife, yes, his wife—and tugged him and his daughter on top of her. He lay there in the pile squinting at the colored lights in the midway, his wife laughing so hard, shouting, “I just peed my pants,” his daughter begging to go back to the magic mirrors. Thinking it doesn’t get better than this.

He tries to count how many reflections of reflections he can see, each image smaller like the perspective in a painting, disappearing towards the point of infinity. He gets to seven, squinting now; then realizes he’s squinting at Marlene’s breasts, suddenly standing there in front of him coffee pot in hand.

She doesn’t seem to notice. Or mind.

“Here’s your coffee, fresh as it gets.” He nods, she pours. “Your cakes‘ll be up in a minute.”

“Fine.”

He watches his right hand stir the sugar. Hands are the first to go, he thinks to himself. Crisscrossing blue veins looking like state highways on a road map, wrinkles over pudgy knuckles, those ridges in the nails. Liver spots. Are they called that because they’re the color of liver, or are they the offspring of Johnny Walker? His advice to anyone over sixty: keep your hands in your pockets. Or wear gloves. At meetings he realized he had become self-conscious about shaking hands.

The Odyssey is a twenty-four/seven diner, in a small town thirty miles off the interstate. No truckers here, just locals and strays. Early Tuesday morning, just him and the booth kids. He does this occasionally -- takes his rented car and heads off into the sticks, trying to unwind, taking in the local color-- when his job sends him on the road to quietly, discreetly, investigate someone’s life to determine what level of security clearance they should be granted. He avoids bars, has for five years now.

In the mirror he watches the boy in the booth behind him. The boy is sixteen, seventeen, blond wavy almost curly hair, lanky, either trying to grow a mustache or hasn’t begun to shave. Eager-looking, just this side of cocky—he isn’t good enough looking to be cocky, but is good enough looking to seem comfortable in his skin. This boy he will call Allen—he likes making up names for strangers, names he thinks fit what they look like, how they move, their voices. Then, after listening and watching, he tries to construct a life for them: Family? Work? Ever committed a crime? Sports? Education? Income? He has often wanted to say, “Excuse me, but what’s your name, what’s your job, are you

married with family, are you in a softball league, is your income between sixty-to-ninety thousand?” to see if he was right. No doubt people would consider him a real nutcase, so he has refrained.

What names would strangers give to him?

In the mirror he sees Allen lean forward, both elbows on the table, and laugh. A nervous laugh, not jocular or irritating, trying to sound genuine and casual. Seated across the table from Allen he sees her, laughing too. She’s about the same age—a friend? A girlfriend? Their hands aren’t touching, but seem to be reaching for each other; maybe they’re in-between. She’s somewhat squat, not overweight or big-boned, just short. A couple of pimples on her forehead, none on her cheeks, wearing an over-size green tee-tee shirt, sitting on folded knees, an easy wry smile, voice with a little grit in it. Julie or Julia? If she were blond, spoke with a tad more honey in her voice, she’d be Julia. With that short brunette hair, that voice, she’s Julie. Allen and Julie lean into each other, lean away. A dance of eagerness, of shyness? Of possibility?

He inhales the fresh bean aroma of his coffee, closes his eyes, and sips. Not too hot. The warm brew relaxes his throat as he swallows, he opens his eyes. In the mirror, Julie shouts in a challenging playful way, “No way! No way, man! You expect me to believe that?”

Allen nods his head seriously, feigns being hurt. “True story. Very true. All true.”

Julie now: “Uh huh. Right. You take me for some naïve twelve-year-old or something?”

Allen: “I hope not.”

Julie: “Hope what? That I’m not naïve or not twelve?”

Allen: “All of the above.”

He wants to rotate on his stool and say to the kids this is the best part, enjoy every second of it. After this it gets complicated. Then messy. Be careful.

Thinking that, he feels pathetic, old.

Jake taps the bell in the kitchen: order’s up.

Did his daughter, when a teen, ever sit big-eyed across from some boy in this suspended moment of anticipation, then come home unable to sleep from the possibilities? Has she ever done that since? He wouldn’t know.

Marlene brings out the crab cakes and sides. “Lemon with that?” He nods.

He squeezes the lemon on the crab cakes, stirs the tartar sauce, salts the greens. The crab tastes salty-sea fresh, not frozen. He got lucky, Tuesday must be delivery day out of the Sound.

Raymond, he thinks to himself. Anyone seeing me sitting at this counter, three a.m., four hundred miles from home, slightly wrinkled light blue shirt, bald patch, out-of-shape, staring in the mirror, they’d call me Raymond. Shoulders hunched toward his ears, looks like he might have a headache. It’s hard to imagine Raymond belly laughing. Or dancing. I have not always been Raymond, he would say to them.

Now Allen and Julie are singing to some song on the jukebox, a pulsating drum BOOM dad a BOOM dad a BOOM, shrill rappers (is that what they call them?) over the beat Gotta get-get, gotta g-g-g-get-get-get, get-get (Whatever happened to lyrics? Melody?) BOOM BOOM! POW! BOOM BOOM!

Julie: “Yes!”

Allen: “Oh, yeah!”

Silence, finally. In the mirror he sees their hands reach across the table, first a high five, then a knuckle bump, a palm slide, fingers hooking each other. They don’t let go, they’ve been inching toward this. Now, finally. The first real touch? He averts his eyes from the mirror, as if he had walked in on an intimacy he had no right to observe.

Will they let go? Try to hang on? Will those hands become weapons?

Hand-in-hand. His daughter’s hands at six months, wrapped around his fingers tightly as she did pull-ups. Thumb wrestling on the corner of the dinner table. Teaching her how to use her hands in soccer (she played goalie, he taught her how to guard the corners, cut off the angles, when to catch the ball, when to punch it), practicing into dusk ignoring his wife’s calls for dinner. Then, when? Raising his hand as if to strike her, his palms just lingering there cocked behind his ear, enough of your impudence. The terrible power of that. Then that once, finally, his right hand slapped her when she shouted her shame of him, this father of hers whose drunken stupors humiliated her in front of her friends. He remembers only the sound of his hand against her cheek, how it snapped her head over, that side of her face filled with red rage as she defiantly said nothing. He’d put his trembling hand in his pocket, as if to hide the weapon.

The next evening, returning from work, the house was empty. His wife and daughter had moved out, moved on. It had been a long time coming.

He had let his daughter go so easily. Hanging on, what does that mean?

He considers why the kids are at the diner, three a.m. Getting off work at the local McDonald’s or Burger King? They’re not dressed in uniforms or work clothes; look like the kind of clothes kids just hang out in. Runaways on the road? Too relaxed, not disheveled or furtive enough. Had they been talking on the phone and Allen said to Julie, “Hey I’m hungry, wanna get something to eat?” Do their parents know where they are?

Are they wondering what the old guy’s doing at the counter? Unlikely.

Security clearance. That’s what he does, investigate small-timers to see if they are safe bets to work in banks or certain university research settings, or start-up companies with their proprietary secrets—places where honesty and discretion are required. Not big-time government access investigations for the military or such agencies that pride themselves on their secrecy. Access denied, security risk. Limited access. Confidential. Secret. Top-secret. In his reports (also confidential), he types these final judgments on the top of the first page in sixteen-point bold red type, so they don’t get lost in the text of the details of his investigation. The power of those words. Like everything, he chooses them carefully. Little do they know, these applicants, hungry for jobs, a chance to move up in the world, that this person—this Raymond—is lurking around in the shadows of their life, asking questions, taking notes, putting it all together. Following the trail. Thumbs up? Thumbs down? Such power over the life of someone he will never meet.

What would his report say if he investigated himself, this Raymond in the mirror? Once had confidential access to his daughter. Access downgraded to limited when daughter turned twelve and his scotch-on-the-rocks grew to three before dinner; however, still welcomed at her traveling team soccer games, being sober during the day. By her sixteenth birthday he had become a security risk; upon understanding that all access had been denied, he had slapped her. Once. Her whereabouts? Unknown. Wife? Found a new husband who kept his hands to himself, did not shout and teetotaled. Subject goes home to an empty bed, which he would like to share; terror of rejected invitations has prevented him from issuing any. Managed to be a working drunk for twenty years in an organization that investigates such faults—an advantage of working on the road. Five years ago had his last scotch; staying dry a well of hope and occasionally of pride. When on the road for work and the cravings haunt him out of his sleep, he frequents diners that have no liquor license. Has gained twenty pounds secondary to this habit. Has only casual friends, none of whom ask whatever happened to his family. Likes his work, which gives him an opportunity to know people, connect to them, without them knowing he knows. Prides himself on his judgment of strangers, which his employer values as well.

He looks in the mirror and massages his right cheek—in the mirror it is the left, his daughter’s left—and remembers the sound of flattened furious palm on cheek, her silence. Slap: such a small weak-sounding word. There should be a word for this terrible act that the hand is capable of, a word that conjures up

images of destruction, of things never again being the same. Slam: He slammed her face.

He flips over the Oldies But Goodies tab on the Select-O-Matic counter top jukebox, scans the titles. “American Pie.” “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” “A Horse with No Name.” “I Saw Her Standing There.” “Lean on Me.” “Louie Louie.” “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

“Louie Louie”: D7. In his right pants pocket a quarter; slip it into the slot, push the D button. Then 7.

His body sways slightly, self-consciously, to the Jamaican rhythm.

Lou-ee, Lou-eye, oh no babyI said me gotta go.

Fall, ‘65 The Kingsmen dressed in their white coats, black pants, Kennedy haircuts strutting on “Shindig!”, channel 14, he and his buddy Richie pull back the rug, got their moves down, socks sliding on hardwood floor, pretend guitars strumming, got the rhythm.

Fine little girl waits for me Catch a ship across the sea

Parents up in arms! The lyrics are laden with hidden filth! Bobby Kennedy orders an FBI investigation, J. Edgar Hoover and his minions play the song backward, check for encryption, play it super-slow, super-fast, interview the Kingsmen, their friends, thousands of kids spinning their forty-fives. The Official Report: “The song cannot be interpreted, it is unintelligible at any speed." Just a drunken sailor telling the bartender Louie about missing his girl, he’s going home. Ya ya ya ya.

In the mirror Allen and Julie already have the chorus down now, singing to each other like they’re on stage, doing that rubberneck head-side-to-side thing that kids do these days.

Lou-ee, Lou-eye, oh babyI said me gotta goYa ya ya ya

The lead Kingsman shouts, “OK, let’s give it to ‘em RIGHT NOW!” That incredible guitar solo, thirty seconds of pure rhythmic rip-pounding stick this up your ass, FBI, we are your worst nightmare!

Allen’s right hand wails on his air guitar, left hand shoots up and down the invisible neck, Julie shouts, “Give it to ‘em RIGHT NOW!”

In the mirror Allen and Julie glance over to the only other customer in the place, sitting at the counter, who must have put on “Louie Louie,” They both nod, almost imperceptibly. All right. That song’s all right.

Once, on a car trip to Oregon, somewhere in Kansas trying to stay awake, his wife flipping through the radio dial to find some music, on came “Louie Louie.” They taught their ten-year-old daughter the chorus, which they sang all the way to the next truck stop.

“Dessert?” says Marlene. He feels uncertain; sometimes the easiest decisions are the hardest. “May I make a recommendation? Homemade blueberry pie; it’s a short season, berries just came down from Maine. Get ‘em while you can, nothing better, take my word for it.”

“Sure, why not?”

“You won’t regret it.”

Regrets. Everyone has regrets, he thinks. Most of them small time, venial. Usually dormant, they awake as reminders, brief sad twinges: missing his daughter’s championship game when she was fourteen (as he glances at women’s soccer news in the sports section); not asking that woman out for coffee—the one he met at the bookstore (as he unlocks the door to his empty apartment). Then there are the mortal regrets, haunting, lurking, judging. Unspeakable. They enter without knocking, demanding penance: Look me in the eye.

Interesting, he does not include Regrets in his reports. That may be the essential question, no? How to investigate someone’s regrets? Would he recommend hiring someone who has no regrets? Just venial? One mortal? Two? With or without penance? When is penance paid in full? He realizes he has never asked himself that question.

“Vanilla ice cream on that?”

“Sure. Can you warm up the coffee?”

In the mirror Allen and Julie look relaxed, leaning back in their booth, arms stretched out across the table, meeting each other halfway. The chatter of kids trying this boy-girl thing on for size. Julie: “Oh puh-leeze! Cut me a break!”

Allen, acting over-genuinely generous: “OK… Just this once, but you owe me big time.”

Cut me a break. Forgive. Absolve? He imagines knocking on his daughter’s door, wherever that is. What could he begin to say before saying I’m asking—begging—can you find a way to cut me a break? If she knew he hadn’t

touched a drink in five years, could she stay around long enough to consider it, to hear him out? Could she find a way? Could he bear to hear her out? What if the pardon is denied?

In his line of work, once a security risk, always a security risk.

Always?

Marlene is right about the pie: a ripe mix of sweet and sour, the berries not overcooked, they still pop when he bites down, crust crisp on the bottom. Ice cream a perfect counterbalance to tart. He wipes his mouth with his napkin, burnishing his teeth to remove the blue stain.

She hands him the check. Meal, coffee, dessert, taxes: $12.85. Diners: the world’s best-kept culinary secret. He leans toward Marlene, a conspiratorial lean that she seems to recognize. She leans slightly into him.

“Do me a favor?” He’s whispering.

“Anything to please our customers.”

His chin gives a subtle nod behind him, the kind of nod a practiced auctioneer would notice. “I’d like to pay for the kids’ feast. Can you add it to my bill?”

Marlene gives off an equally subtle nod; he guesses she had some teen kids once. Probably don’t live in the same town anymore. “Fine.” She manages not to smile, but her eyes betray her joy in participating in this minor conspiracy. She adds up the two checks, lays the bill on the counter.

He drops a twenty and a ten on the mauve Formica.

“I’ll tell them a benefactor has picked up their tab after you’re on your way.”

Definitely has kids, he thinks. “I’d appreciate that. Keep the change.”

The air in the parking lot is pond-fresh and clear, a hint of pink on the eastern edge. As he pulls away in his rental car, he sees the silhouettes of Allen and Julie framed in the window of the Odyssey, leaning into each other.

Arnold's Roadside CaféRoute 80, Outside of North Platte

This here's a sculpture, you could call it that. I tied it to the telephone pole so it don’t blow away. Took some doin' to get it up that high, looks like fifteen feet. Keeps the vandalism down, and you can see it from a mile up the highway. The cross's made of bones, coyote most likely. The skull atop the cross—that's a jackrabbit, the biggest I ever seen—and those’re turkey vulture feathers sticking out of the eye holes of the skull. That jack skin and red bandanna hanging from the ends of the cross, Arnold would've liked that touch. I burnt the sign with a railroad spike: Arnolds Café.

Arnold worked this stretch along Route 80, from North Platte to Cheyenne, no more’n a couple hundred miles. The first time I met him, I was heading West after hot-footin' it out of Dodge—Dodge, Michigan, that is—after a lumberjack pulled out his ax and threatened to slice and dice me for dancing too close to his girlfriend. I figured sooner or later he’d find out that his dearest and me was doing more than the two-step; I’d best disappear. Chances were that Paul Bunyon had never heard of New Mexico, so I decided to head there and pick some peppers before the frost hit, get some cash flowing. I’d picked apples on the Upper Peninsula, paid by the bushel; so it seemed logical I could do all right with jalapeños.

So, back to Arnold. I'd just jumped down from a red Peterbilt that had picked me up in Iowa and was hauling corn to Spokane; time for me to head South. Here's this guy along the highway, all hair, ratty as hell, in a greasy black suit with a raggedy towel covering his ass, a gunny sack over his shoulder. He bends down and picks up this dead rabbit by the hind legs and pokes it, then sniffs it and nods his head in this approving kind of way, like some government meat inspector.

“Hungry?” he says to me. “This jack’s a good'un, ain't been squished a bit, must've bounced off the wheel.” Then he shakes it. “Ain't stiff, neither, been dead but a half hour. Plenty for two.” Then he stuffs the rabbit into his sack and heaves it over his shoulder. “Arnold,” he says, and sticks out his hand. “Arnold Timmons.”

So I traipse behind Arnold, over a dune, down a little gully. There’s his camp, hiding in the sagebrush. He has a tent, you could call it that. More like a burrow dug in the sand, sticks stacked up to make the roof, covered with plastic.

Inside the tent I see a blanket, rabbit skins sewed together with twine. Looks like he's been there a while.

Arnold starts a fire, then skins and guts the jack and pokes a stick through it, stem to stern. There’s a spit sort of contraption and he asks me to turn the meat over the fire, says he'll be back in a minute. The rabbit's starting to brown when he comes back, pockets bulging. He grubs in his tent and finds a coffee can, then peels back the plastic top and pulls out some wrapped butter pats. “Thanks to the Land O’ Plenty truck Stop outside of Kimball,” he says. He proceeds to grease up the jack, then reaches in his pockets and pulls out all this stuff: tiny needled leaves, fat leaves with pointy edges, grasses, and bark. “Fine herbs,” he says, which he rubs on the rabbit, rubbin' and greasin' while I turn the spit.

The fire’s real low now, and he's in no hurry. Me being on the road straight through since Iowa, the smells sizzling out of that jack are driving me crazy with hunger. We chat while waiting for the meat to cook. He don't tell me much about himself, little pieces though: about trying a year at some community college, something about a kid in Ohio (he turned away from that one pretty fast), working the chicken factories in Maryland. I don't ask why'd you hit the road, we both know the road's mostly about leaving.

After a half hour or so he pulls the carcass off the stick, halves it, and gives me my share on a plastic plate. “Sorry for the lack of utensils,” he says, “besides I think finger food has more character."

Character. Finger food. I work hard not to laugh—he might be one of those sensitive chefs. As hungry as I am, I make myself slow down to just savor it, licking my fingers, picking the ribs, sucking the bones. After we’ve ate we stoke up the fire and lay back. I tell him, “That's the finest meat I've ever tasted, no doubt about it; it’s got character. What's those spices you put on there, anywise?”

“A gift of the plains,” he says, “a secret of the house. If I tell, you'd set up your own restaurant and drive me out of business.”

I supped with Arnold maybe five times in all over the last couple years. It

wasn't hard to find him. He'd hang a dead jack on a telephone pole, his signpost to let fellow travelers know he was in the vicinity: open for business. When I'd see the rabbit sign I'd tell the trucker, “Just let me off here, that’s enough for one day.” Then I'd stand on the shoulder and look over the dunes 'til I saw some smoke. Or I'd wait for him to wander up the highway with his catch of the day.

'Round my third visit, after a fine meal of prairie dog with a side of pit-baked yucca root, Arnold’s picking his teeth and says, “You wanta hear my theory about roadkills?”

“You got a theory about roadkills?” I say.

And he says, “You bet, this is too important, you gotta have a theory. First, there's only so much energy in the world; it don’t change, it just travels around, lodged here for awhile, then there.”

I nod, “I'm with you so far.”

Now he's all revved up. “It’s like this: roadkills is a part of the great cosmic exchange of energy; them dying gives us food to live on, the energy moves on.”

Cosmic exchange of energy, I’m thinking to myself, this guy’s going places I ain’t never been.

“When I die,” Arnold says, “I hope some vulture finds me and nibbles away, picks me clean. Then I’ll give the energy back, fill that vulture’s tank so he can have a few more hours of flying time. We’re all glorified roadkills, in one way or other.”

Oh yeah, I found that spooky.

He did this weird thing, too, before you could eat his grub. First, he’d slip a long scraggly black tail feather aside this old red bandanna he wore to keep the hair out of his eyes. Then he’d hold his plastic plate up and thank the Great God of Roadkill for providing us this sacred manna. The Great God of Roadkill. No shit.

Awhile back, Arnold asked if I wanted turkey, the special of the day.

“Where’n hell you find a turkey out here?” I asked.

“This is a very special turkey,” he said, greasing up that bird, greasing and turning. Then he dished me up a serving.

“Damn fine,” I nodded, “though a tad chewy.”

“Actually it’s a turkey vulture,” he said. “Got smashed by a Kenilworth while feasting on squashed jacks in the passing lane.”

“So who’s to complain?” I said. “Thanksgiving in July.”

When I found Arnold last, it looked like he'd been passed a day or so, layin' outside his tent. Maybe his heart gave out, maybe the heat got him, it don't really matter. No smoke, just a circle of vultures. The elements and animals had started to work on his face and hands. I thought about burying him, or maybe flagging down the State Police. Then I thought better. I tidied up his campsite a bit, stacking the wood, straightening out the blankets in his tent. I dug a hole and buried some old clothes and empty tin cans. Then I gathered up some leaves,

sage, and other stuff, and sprinkled it over him.

The turkey vultures above dipped their wings. Yessir: Arnold Timmons, cosmic easy pickin’s.