John Wayne

My father’s name was John Wayne. Like the Western star. Except he had no boots, no spurs. Nothing to kick up the dust. I’d like to tell you that he shot men off their horses in the backyard, that he came inside with his gun still smoking, a stoic hero. I’d like to tell you that we lived in a place where there were horses. A man could show his shine on that street, I’d say. A man could have a wilderness in his heart, and it wouldn’t destroy him.

If I were to tell you that my father, John Wayne, killed himself one night under the Midwestern stars, I could tell you it was a downright shoot ‘em up. That he took guns in both his hands and pulled the triggers like life and country depended on it.

The truth is that he killed himself in a garage, the cars running like chained-up horses. And as he wandered past the rakes, drunk on carbon monoxide, he couldn’t even see the leaves caught in their teeth, or how near he was to the doors—the one leading out into the cornfields, the other into the house where pizza was still sitting on the counter but his girls were gone back to their mother. He collapsed on the welcome mat, his neck swelling against everything he’d tracked in.

Baptism

The sisters baptized their hamster in the sink. The smaller one cupped him in her hands, and her sister dotted his forehead with water three times, then crossed him. Sometimes, the younger sister would shake his water bottle over him until three drops came out, just to make sure. She taped Bible verses to his cage, facing inward. She sang him the songs she learned from Sunday school about Noah and Moses. She wondered if there were hamsters on the ark, or in the pockets of the Hebrews as they marched through the parted Red Sea. She planned to save her hamster by floating him in a wicker basket if the river ever flooded their house.

She found him dead, stiff in his bedding. Her mother placed his body in a check box, and they buried him in the backyard beneath the pine tree. The younger sister lay with her ear to the dirt, listening for his soul rising up. Her sister called her in when it started to rain, but she ran to the river instead, watching it rise and rise.

Sailors Without Water

She hears that Midwestern men make the best sailors, because the sea’s horizon that drives their comrades to gnaw at the railing is just another field to them. When she imagines her father captaining a ship, she sees him in blue jeans, the deck piled with dirt, his crew picking at their fingernails the way men do when they’re waiting for the harvest. He’s never seen the ocean, has never been farther than Indiana. The only boots he has are for trekking over the soil. She cleans the mud from their soles with cornhusks, proud of the battered but clean results. She knows nothing of shoeshine.

In the afternoons she walks through the cornfields, looking for the golf balls her father hits far into the stalks. He never goes in after the corn grows shoulder-high, remembering the time he got lost and had to sleep in the dirt, but she loves the feeling of being swept up in the green. She picks ears of corn and brings them back to the house, piling them in the backyard. Her father yells at her when the raccoons come to eat them, tells her those goddamn pirates will bring disease to the house and steal everything that shines. After that, she stops picking up the golf balls, or throws them farther into the endless fields along with the half-eaten corn. She fills her pockets with pennies and scatters them like seeds, until the ground glistens like water.

Her father doesn’t want to buy new golf balls, and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so he starts hurtling his clubs into the field. After the clubs are gone, he throws the patio furniture, parts from the grill, wood from her old playhouse. He runs to the edge of the field, stopping at the first ear like it’s an electric fence. He crumples to the ground, swearing and clinging to the stalks like jail bars. She watches silently, then slips into her littered field. A few rows in, she finds a dead raccoon with its head bashed in. She buries it, along with the clubs and the grill, imagining she’s returning an albacore to the sea and saving the desperate sailor from his own cannons.

Basic Definitions for Living on This Land

Tornado

When a ship is lost on land, it will make its own wind to get home.

Cornfield

In Kindergarten we taught our bodies how to get in lines. I lost count of the sunburns, but those bodies learned how to be dry. We harvested our hearts for their water, so the other would not be so thirsty. Now, we bow low to the earth. Dirt fills the gaps inside us.

River

This is no way to leave, she said. All the sticks inside me already went that way, he said. Here, take my sticks, she said, breaking off a rib and dropping it inside him. She watched it drift toward Louisiana and disappear. She broke off another, and he didn’t have the heart to stop her.

Fence

Because I cannot separate my horses from yours. Because they whinny over the wire.

Flash Fiction!

First, some information: flash fiction is kind of like a hybrid between fiction and poetry (mine definitely leaning more towards the prose poem genre). Basically, it's just a really really short story. And I'm in a flash fiction class now, so that's what I'll be posting. You dig? I sure hope so.

Here's a sample of what's to come, from a series I wrote on Jonah...

Jonah, Swallowed

When I was a prophet, I wanted to be a sailor. When I was a sailor, I was sick on the rails all the time. I planned to marry a tightrope walker so she could keep balance for both of us. But the storm came first, and I tied myself upright against the mast. John tore me off, said you ain’t no sail, said you gonna sink us all. My boots were heavy with rain. I could have emptied them, but the men came so fast and they grabbed me so fast and they threw me over the rails. I thought, find the wire, stick the landing, don’t just fall, don’t just break against the water. My hands hit first, and everything went cold. When I sank under the ship, I could see her giant eye.

She saved me, like a good wife. She made me part of her body. It’s like being inside my mother again, except I don’t remember the last time I was there, so maybe it’s not. I’d like it to be. I’d like to be born again, do the whole thing over. Next time I’ll marry the girl and stay on land. Next time I won’t even learn the word for boat. God will have to flood the earth before I step in his water.

Jonah, Day 17

Decorating is the hard part. There isn’t much you can do with ribs. God can make a woman out of them, but I’m not like him. There will be no woman. There will only be ribs. Maybe a disco ball. Something to put all these scales to use. Something to reflect the scant light. I just need something to do with my hands. Give me a helm, and I’ll steer. Give me a surgical saw, and I’ll cut out the heart. I’ll make this place a home. A woman would say it needs window treatments. She’d say, you aren’t a decorator just because some whale swallowed you whole and you’re lonely and bored. A home needs window treatments. But there is no woman.

Jonah, Day 24

Sometimes the whale opens her mouth and strange objects come inside. Yesterday, a red high-heeled shoe. Jonah pretended it was a telephone. He prank-called God. Is your refrigerator running? Better send the angels to catch it! He felt like a teenager again, and it was exhilarating and sad. He thought that if God really were a Father he’d be playing catch with him in the backyard right now. He tried playing catch with the shoe, but the heel kept coming down in his palm and it hurt and it’s stupid to play catch by yourself anyway. Jonah sat down in a pile of krill and sulked. He thought about the millions of fathers on land playing catch with their sons and about trees and dirt and all the things that don’t smell like fish. He tried calling God again. He dialed 911, because it was an emergency this time, but nobody answered. Nobody answered the first time either.

Jonah, Day 33

Jonah expects to die today. He’s been keeping track of the days and thirty-three sounds awful to him. He doesn’t know about Jesus yet, but he can feel that thirty-three is a dying number. The whale has been acting strange, too. Her calls are lower and longer than usual, like she’s mourning, and he can feel that she’s slowing down. He thinks she’s lost her family. He thinks, Isn’t it just like life? A woman eats a man and loses her family and they both go off to die together at the bottom of the sea. Jonah’s become a bit of cynic about love. He’s had too much time to think about the women he never had. The tightrope walker, the girl who sold oranges near the dock, his childhood sweetheart. He never kissed any of them, and it’s too bad, really, because now he’s dying and they’ll never know how bad he wanted them. Jonah lies down to sleep, because he’d rather dream about the girls than look at the insides of his whale anymore. He wakes up with a piece of whaleflesh in his mouth. He’d being dreaming about eating his way out.