Where Would We Be

            “Where would we be without beef?” the TV voice posed. It was 1989 and everyone in this town of a thousand had tuned in to this prime time commercial. “Out of luck, I’d say.” A handsome father had just been fork-fed a morsel of low calorie, round tip steak by his five-year-old daughter, who beamed at the camera. “Beef. Real food in Luck,” pregnant pause, “Wisconsin.”

            To a degree, most of us did feel lucky to live in such a town: its proud golf course, its well-stocked lakes called Big and Small Butternut, its eclectic industry—from Duncan yo-yos to wire manufacturing to butterfly farming, wherever any of these could end up.

            On a run-down farm a few miles west, a high school dropout named Kyle decided to be a farrier.

            “A what the fff?—” most people queried.

            Urbanely, Kyle doled out a calling card: his full name + Esq., his county road address, ‘farrier’ in Champignon font, as well as a pair of interlinked horseshoes, to suggest what he’d do for a living.

            “Is this something like ‘close only counts in horseshoes’?” his former math teacher challenged, sardonically.

            Kyle would remain a cool cucumber. “This is my business. Shoeing horses—what a farrier does.” Beyond his salesman visage was an unmissable, mini-mustache twirl: fuck you.

            One would imagine, in what’s called the ‘Indian Head’ of Wisconsin, plenty of horses—some needing cast-iron shoes to handle demands of this erstwhile frontier. Kyle, age sixteen, had shrugged off the doldrums of high school to corner this market—what visionary wouldn’t do likewise, seizing the horse by the hooves?

            Truth told, the sporadic horses here weren’t worked so hard. Days of cowboys and rustlers, non-tractor plowing, rodeo shows or derby races had no remote foothold in or around Luck. Kyle was fitting to fight an uphill battle, and those quaint calling cards only set him back further—a couple hundred dollars or more, when a drop-in customer might land him twenty, thirty on a lucky day. The tautology ‘one needs experience to get experience’ had a new poster child in Kyle, who hadn’t been known to handle horses, let alone pound nails into them.

            From what little was known about his parents—indigence, alcoholism, chapter 12 bankruptcy—Kyle had basically reared himself. Third grade through tenth, the kid had packed his own garden-variety lunches, moved himself around by bike and ATV (never on horseback, to anyone’s recollection), and occasioned the odd youth group gathering at church, not that he or his parents had anything to do with Sunday services.

            Yeah, if you telescoped the place, you could see a few skinny horses behind a culvert-style barn, smoke rising out of perhaps some kind of smelter—he’d have to forge those horseshoes before hoofing them, one would think. More likely, he got his hands on enough wholesale crates of drop-forged stock to even conceive of this loopy idea. They’d constitute a nest egg of sorts: all a startup needed was such a cache, a few customers, and… a little

             Luck. What could be better for entrepreneurs or acne-aged fellows? One imagined a partner, a Dulcinea for this Quixote, a Wozniak for what Jobs could front, a Linda for Paul, composing so ingenuously: “with a little luck, we can help it out, we can make this whole damn thing work out.” One imagined… nothing, if Kyle would not do likewise.

            His skills were suspect. Take it from a horse’s mouth how a given shoe fits or doesn’t—there wasn’t anything Cinderella in Kyle’s process. There weren’t enough curious cats or prospective clients on that county road, traveling deliberately or otherwise. The calling cards might as well have indicated ‘far-fetched’ or the ‘derriere’ of a maverick dream.

            Go back to school, Kyle, as more calculations await.

            Of course he didn’t. But those interlocking horseshoes—go figure—gave him an idea: if meaningless to the beast that bears them, they inspire untold blasts of fortune and bonhomie. The picnic throw, spurring nothing-at-stake rivalry between uncle and niece, grandpa and tipsy neighbor, mom demurring the nonsense of time wasted and—wouldja look at that!—the niece plugged a late ringer to send the tipsy neighbor packing—‘for the meantime, Missy. I’ll be back’ in some Schwarzenegger shtick—Mom approving, after all.

            And then there were the barn doors and everything emblematic of Irish blessings on decidedly not-so-mapped-out roads and roils of weather. Kyle felt he could own this niche, having had his share of put-it-out and let-it-happen, as any amulet would promise, if sheepishly (perhaps the reason they’re disguised through horses’ or rabbits’ feet). A horseshoe above a doorway could mean anything, regardless of some story or its random provider. The hyperbola itself held untold power.

            Now to unleash it—Kyle might have had a plan for that, too.

            Fact is, I left Luck, Wisconsin, before the big could burst, if that is how capitalism should flourish. Not quite a regret, I wish I had stopped by Kyle’s operation on that county road to chat, purchase something, belie a bastard sense of business and pronounce ‘the sky’s the limit’. I’ve certainly thrown my own thousand rounds of horseshoes at family picnics in my day, sometimes beating the tipsy neighbor, losing to my niece, usually agreeing with Mom on better ways to wile away an afternoon.

            But where would we be without an occasional throw-caution-to-the-wind, as Kyle so aptly represented? A game of horseshoes often meant that tosses tumbled out of bounds, even inches away from ringing. We’d sometimes thresh moist prairie grass for hours, yet rarely feel frustrated. The visiting was better with such a thing to do.

            A simple Google search might seek out ‘Kyle—farrier—Luck—Wisconsin’, and results would be:

            Anyone’s guess. Should I venture further? Flesh out the inquiry? Confirm the common sense of a high school diploma and snarkiness withal?

            Wish I’d kept the calling card to honor where the chips may fall.

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2019)

Making D

                  It may have begun with the hailst  nes, getting cl  cked   n the head a few times. I was taking my bel  ved mutt Br  nk   (my wife calls him Br  nx, I call him ‘the M  nx’)   n an aftern    n walk, first   f July, and—  ut   f the blue, as the sky had been that regular hue until grayness slid in—a halcy  n drizzle turned int   hail, marble and g  lfball in size.

                  Well, they say it’s unwise t   run thr  ugh a st  rm, and maybe my strides met the m  nstr  us ice twice as hard, while the M  nx (less f    lish than me) s  ught refuge under a tree. I circled r  und and we waited it   ut, a little c  ncerned what was happening. Strange blips   f th  ught escaping my mind, but then, trying t   speak, phrases weren’t right—they were s  mewhat unr  unded—and the M  nx l    ked at me questi  ningly, as if the st  rm had suddenly entered my being.

                  Czechs call them krup bití, these hailst  nes, and man! d   they beat d  wn a day—a matter   f minutes, then melt away. In Guadalajara, I heard, the iceballs stacked up and turned int   slush, 1.5 meters deep. I w  ndered h  w they were making d  , thinking and speaking en españ  l… I wish I c  uld be there right n  w, feel less disj  inted, receiving less ‘c  me again?’ stares.

                  Faithful, as ever, the M  nx let me practice my utterance   n him. I’d need ways t   c  mpensate, speaking (and writing, as I’m n  ticing n  w:( with  ut such a crutch as that letter we use all the time, even in teleph  ne numbers and sp  rts sc  res. A fruitless night in basketball, say, might be called an ‘  -f  r’, a ‘g    se egg’, an ‘  MG why d   I even try?!’ While the M  nx might n  t empathize, he fully relates, h  wling s  metimes at the m    n, as if s  mething up there can meet his needs s    n.

                  Human needs are… hmmm. Hard t   say m  re, as we’ve crafted   ur w  rld in the manner   f carnel desires—seeking fulfillment, when bellies are easy t   fill. I d   s   with belles lettres (thank G  d I still read all the ink in F  r Wh  m the Bell T  lls), h  ping t   Hemingway things my   wn s  rt   f way. But since this lacuna—this absence   f ‘  ’—I really d  n’t kn  w h  w I’ll c  pe.

                  The st  ry I’m writing, f  r instance, is set in Minnes  ta, the year 2  8  (damn—even the ways t   write ‘twenty’ and ‘eighty’ are ruined), and it’s c  mplex en  ugh with  ut having t   think ab  ut lacking a fracti  n of alphabet, which naturally limits a lexic  n. I’ve struggled t   craft the c  nditi  ns   f what I first dubbed the ‘iz  ne’: a technical cl  ud that renders Siri small and unneeded—Siri is any streamed citizen n  w, as g    d   r as bad as that n  ti  n might be. Then came the hard news: ‘iz  ne’ had already been claimed by a different writer, I’m sure in its fullness   f clarity, middle v  wel and all.

                  Last ditch attempt, I l    ked t   the Danes (as I   ften d  —Hamlet my general g  -t  ) and dialed up an answer: alas, the izøne may live, and my life has new meaning again. Just change the accent, and løøk—I can get døwn the page! Øh, sure, the Mønx is a little surprised, as well as the wife, kids and knøwn inner circle; the rest øf the gløbe has møre pressing needs (like climate cøntrøl, ør høw tø be gøød in a ‘less is møre’ møde).

                  And s  metimes that means I’ll decide when tø paste that new find,   r let the gaps be. Whø was it—Wittgenstein?—wh   said “the limits   f my language are the limits   f my wørld.” But   pen up the pøssibilities—really   pen them up—and talk them thrøugh and walk the d  g with eyes attuned, that in this jøurney we’re all a bit here for m  re than just making due [sic, but hey:].

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2019)

Natural Fireworks

            In the Agassiz Basin of western Minnesota, the little town of Bejou derives its identity from an Ojibwe word for ‘hello’. My father liked to remind folks of this fact, smiling perhaps with the simultude in his own name, Joe.

            He was living there with my older brother Jon in the late 70s when a massive tornado blew in, roundabout the 4^th of July. Farmers lost full barns and livestock, doomed within or scampering the range. Pickup trucks turned into tiddlywinks and ransacked rooftops: mindless mercenaries to a ruthless wind. Dad was a Lutheran pastor and spent the rest of the month holding a lot of hands; Jon was a shaggy teenager and a handyman in his own right at several farms. They described the actual storm in conventional terms—a freight train on rocket fuel—and the fallout more personally. The uninsured lost everything; the insured thought hard about tractor-ramming a downed tree into an unharmed side of a house—in order to lose everything instead of collecting on the mere incidentals.

            I came later that summer and don’t remember much, at least what we did. But relationships must have deepened in this remote county that I loved more than my suburban Chicago home. They must have, because…

            The following summer had me and my younger brother, Josh, arrive earlier. Jon had his own stuff going, Josh had quiet dreams I should have honored, and Dad had ongoing pastoral calls. I was completely in love with a girl whose father called ‘George’ on account of his deadpan desire to have more sons on the farm: following his eponymous ‘Jimmy’, he turned daughter #1 into ‘Ralph’, daughter #2 ‘Fred’, daughter #3 ‘George’. A belated angel child ‘Danny’ became the clown prince in the mix, providing George and me a hellion to tease, even as the kid lavished the attention. He tried to retaliate—making me carry a slimy newborn Holstein his dad ordered into the calfbarn, ridiculing my urban clumsiness and desire to show off my muscles in front of his sister, who also laughed before lending a hand. A feisty calf is no light matter.

            George didn’t make the 4-mile trip to Bejou more often than for church services or the odd softball game; that summer, though, she rode in by horse to show me killdeer eggs in grass nests, make sure I’d protect them from the town’s lawnmowers. Bejou was prepping for a 4^th of July stomp, with carnival booths, a platform for local bands—the whole shebang. George would need to ride that horse home before dark, but then would want to come back for the dance. My optimism and pessimism darted simultaneously off-scale as she galloped east to the farm that would likely give her hell for missing out on afternoon chores.

            Nonetheless, her brother Jimmy drove her back, when the skies were darkening a touch earlier than usual. TV forecasted a thunderstorm, but hey— Independence Day! Apparently he was destined to Mahnomen, the county seat, where bigger things were happening. Maybe Ralph and Fred had driven there separately, maybe saddled with Danny. All I knew was that gorgeous George was here with me, and Bejou was happy beyond its inherent salutations.

           

            For 2, 3, 4 hours… I lost track of how things ticked by, where my brothers were, what act was on stage, when the fireworks were set to go. Though there were rumors of hailstorms around Ada, 30 miles west, weather tonight appeared to have given Mahnomen County a pass, balancing out for a rough one last year. So the dancing went on. Bliss. Oblivion—until the sound of a distant freight train, evidently not from the nearby stretch of railroad.

            The man at the mic hollered something to the effect of don’t panic! as the rest of his crew grabbed what they could and bolted to the VFW, the only public building with a basement. Few houses, for that matter, had anything other than a ground floor. Yet the parsonage had a cellar that Jon had been trying to make habitable—a den for smoking with his friends and playing pool on the pub’s toss-away table. Jon was probably in Mahnomen this very night, but I was glad that Eddie, who typically tagged with him, huddled us into the northwest corner where a there was a moldy couch and a BAD COMPANY blanket covering up a section of wall that was more dirt than concrete.

            Dad descended to see that we were alright—questioned the corner, but Eddie waved it off as safe enough—freeing Dad to rush upstairs and outside to gather any stray sheep. The winds were howling over the drumbeats and dollops of water and ice. The naked lightbulb was on, so we could see each other: Josh, whom I had all but forgotten during this myopic day, some other kids his age, Eddie and what could have been his girlfriend (hard to say), George and me. The members of the band on the blanket—their ‘Burning Sky’ album cover—made it look like they rounded out our motley congregation.

            I laughed at that, or something else, and George punched my ribs. “Shush,” she spitfired. “Nothing’s funny.”

            Ashamed, but really not, for how she clutched my skinny arm, I ventured a smaller whisper, “why? just a thunderstorm.”

            “It’s a tornado, dummy. Can’t you hear the freight train?”

            The light went out and everyone coiled further in. I can’t remember saying anything more, nor wanting to. George, then Eddie, then the other girl, then George again recalled in gasped fragments what last year’s twisters had done, reviling their sick joke for coming back exactly now.

           

            In fact, they didn’t. Helluva storm, was all, knocking down electric lines, mainly, yet rather calm through the night. A case of natural fireworks that, to some extent, took us away from the holiday, one way or another.

            George and I checked the killdeer eggs at morning’s light.

            ‘Hello’, they seemed to say, ‘all’s well.’
 

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2019)

Lunchbox

            April 18, 1999, McNichols Arena. Colorado Avalanche hosting the Dallas Stars on the last game of the regular season, though both would skate deep into the playoffs. Stadium eerily unraucous—perhaps saving the storm for the San Jose Sharks, whom they’d soon eat up in a best-of-seven series.

            Ken and his daughters Mikki and Faye, age 9 and 12, followed their tickets’ fate to row 13 D, E and F, a good enough view—but for the curve of the Plexiglas, scuffed from the rough and tumble of these get-em-over-with games. Below them and a section closer to the penalty box was another dad with his offspring—two boys, teenaged and pre-K. In the hands of the latter was a pint-sized, plastic AK-47. The gamin delighted in letting it rip, the trigger attached to a whirly gear that agitated some uvula inside, like a baseball card against the spokes of some future dirt bike.

            “Dad,” queried Faye, “what’s up with that kid?”

            Ken had noticed—had been targeted a couple times, as had everyone in his site, not excluding Avalanche captain Joe Sakic. “Dunno. Dumb parenting, I’d guess.”

            That parent was a hulking mass of flesh wrapped tightly in a Patrick Roy jersey. Perhaps this Hulk played goalie himself when he’d been his older son’s age, as the two of them grunted their opinions about what was happening on the ice. Holding a beer within two other drained cups, fisting the sleeve of popcorn his older son held, he paid no attention to the little boy in his own world, needing nothing but this gun to nourish him.

            “Maybe he needs a spanking,” Mikki giggled.

            “So go do it, Lara Croft—dare you.”

            “Dare you to say hi to his brother. I saw him looking at you.”

            “Was not.”

            “Was! And you’ve been looking too when he turns away.”

            “Shut up! He’s… just… shut up.”

            “Girls,” Ken refereed, “we’re here to watch a game.” Fat chance. The little Scarface had consumed his concentration on anything Sakic and Roy were doing to win this game, which they would, if they’d survive the onslaught of the Stars and others out to snipe them.

            Between the first and second period, while the Zamboni resurfaced the ice, a promo band began to play behind the home net. Had to be ‘Thunderstruck’ to frenzy the beer-and-bathroom exodus, followed by ‘Enter Sandman’ upon the gradual return. “Hush little baby, don’t say a word, And never mind that noise you heard” caused the machine gun to indeed hush, sheer terror of the song. The band was a poor man’s AC/DC or Metallica, of course, but vitally in tune and suitably energetic.

            Time allowed for one more, a strange and fitting cap: Marilyn Manson’s ‘Lunchbox’, uncensored. The bassist seem to goad the naysayers who tolerated the “I wanna grow up, I wanna be a big rock and roll star” but not “so no one fucks with me!” And at the cadence of “pow pow pow,” the stadium technicians turned down the sound to the chagrin, at least, of the little gunslinger. But he kept the song going through his whirly gear and uvula, past the second period face-off.

            “Oh my God,” Faye complained, “that brat never stops. Ruined the last song for me.”

            “Wasn’t so good anyway. Too… sweary.”

            Stadium P.A. read Mikki’s mind at the first stop of action. “The Colorado Avalanche organization would like to apologize for the unauthorized vulgarity in one of the songs played during intermission. We regret this choice by the guest performers and want to ensure a family atmosphere. Go-ooh-ooh Avalanche!”

            Ken smirked. Weekend custody with the girls had them at the ski slopes earlier in the month, now at this indoor frozen pond. He wondered if the hulking guy with his sons had a similar divorcee arrangement. Then, as if the Hulk’s youngest knew he were telepathically spying on them, Ken received a hail of machine gun whirl. “That’s it,” he announced. “If the Avalanche are a family organization, well, then…” He was expecting Faye to stop him from getting up, but she didn’t. Instead, she feigned interest in the game, while Mikki simulated the imminent spanking with a satisfied air.

           

            The request was clumsy at best. “Would, um,” Ken blushed, “um, would….” The Hulk had no idea he was even being addressed, drowned out by a rain of bullets from his younger flesh-of-my-flesh. The older boy looked over at Ken’s abandoned daughters, Faye in particular. “Would, um—”

            “You talkin’ to me?” the Hulk pointed to his chest with his stack of five beers.

            “Um, well—”

            “Spit it out, buddy.”

            “Yeah, if you want to be buddies, I’ll ask that, um—”

            “Wha?”

            “That your son here, um, cool it down with the machine gun.”

            “You lookin’ for a fist sandwich?”

            “No, no—just that… Like the announcement said, about ‘family atmosphere’ and all.”

            His son answered with a “pow pow pow”, directly at Ken’s heart.

            Which skipped a beat and fluttered. Ken grabbed the toy and shouted, “what kind of sick Christmas gift—”

            The Hulk stood up like a forklift. “Easter,” he evilled with a smile. “In the bunny basket. You got three seconds to give that back to Junior and apologize. One. Two. Thr—”

            Stars aligned. Ken snapped the barrel on his rising knee and the Hulk, rearing his arm to catapult him back to row 13, froze like Goliath. A ricocheted slapshot from Dallas had found the back of his head. His swaying lack of consciousness would crush his kid, defenseless and petrified. Ken moved to prop his body against the timber, screaming for the older son to do likewise. Stadium at a standstill—the game of course had stopped. Thoughts and prayers might have ensued, by instant awe and instinct; mostly, silence in the stun of things.

           

            Didn’t die, released from Denver Health a few days later. Around lunchtime, April 20^th. Shooting stars aligned or not, the hospital was making room for Columbine.

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2019)

For the rain it raineth every day

            “God’s tears, glad or sad.”

            “Huh?”

            Carmen repeated, “God’s tears. Abuelita always said so. Didn’t rain so much where she lived, though.” Carmen stuck her hand out the passenger window.

            Leo, at the wheel, flicked the windshield wipers. “Where would that be?”

            “Extremadura. Little village outside Mérida.”

            “Spain?”

            They hadn’t known each other long—this roadtrip surprising both of them in a yeah, why not? moment of quenching the need to get out of dodge, or Middlebury, in their case. “Of course Spain. Where else?” Carmen instantly regretted the sarcastic tag. Leo wasn’t dumb (no one was at Middlebury) and didn’t seem desperate to date someone like her. Hard to know if they were really dating. They both worked late shifts at Mister Up’s sports bar, walked home to different dorms, lingered here and there. They hadn’t made a plan where to stay in Springfield for The Big E music festival, or even which acts they’d want to see.

            “The rain in Spain,” Leo decided to sing, “stays mainly in the plain.”

            Carmen tittered, having heard this once or twice, if not from him. “Not true. Extremadura is the plain. Dry as…”

            “As God’s tears?”

            “What?”

            “Nothing. I don’t believe in God. Famine or flood—just a ton of physics and an ounce of industrial fallout.” Leo adjusted the lever to speed up the wipers.

            After a minute she pulled her hand in and raised the window almost closed. “Do you believe in Gypsy tears?”

            “Huh?”

            “In little vials. Hung around men’s necks to shield them from AIDS.”

            “According to who?”

            Carmen corrected him. “To whom. To Borat.”

            “Borat? That dweeb?”

            “Taught me about America. Maybe more than Middlebury’s doing.”

            “Ha! And what film will teach me about Spain?”

            “You’ve already seen it: My Fair Lady.”

           

            Highway 7 clung as well as it could to Otter Creek, winding through the western side of Vermont. On a less bleary day, the drive would be breathtaking, especially in this early turn of autumn. The steady downpour grayed those colors, however, and made for difficult driving. A speeding truck from the other lane caught an unlucky puddle, plunging the Ford Fiesta toward the road’s shoulder and causing Leo to curse. Carmen, who didn’t have a driver’s license, offered to tag-team. “I learned how, anyway.”

            “From Abuelita?”

            Actually, yes. But she chose not to say. The Green Mountain forest was darkening around them despite the hour, not yet time to pull over for dinner. But Leo was clearly tired; Carmen searched her phone for options in Bennington, maybe twenty minutes away. They hadn’t planned to stop—Springfield wasn’t so far—and Leo remembered he packed a thermos of coffee for this very purpose, to keep chugging on. Warily, Carmen reached for it in the back seat, belted in against a backpack, where a child would sit wondering ‘how much further?’ Carmen would pat that kid’s knee and say, ‘farther, Chiquita. Further is depth of degree. Farther is length of a journey.’ Maybe all that in Spanish, quién sabe? She pulled the thermos to the front and unscrewed the top, pouring a little too much for Leo to take without spilling. “May I sip the brim?”

            “Of course.” Leo was doing his damnedest to keep the Fiesta from hydroplaning. He concentrated past Bennington and toward the Massachusetts state line. Besides the coffee, Carmen turned the dial of the radio to pick up something listenable that could get through the mountains. She considered crooning something herself, seeing how Leo was game for that an hour ago, rain in Spain stuff and nonsense.

            She abandoned the radio for a story instead. “So, Abuelita, you know, prays for me every day. That may not matter to an atheist…” Leo shrugged a doesn’t matter. “My sister and I were at her farm, just the three of us, all tucked in for the night. Thunderstorms happened but we didn’t hear them, sound asleep. Early in the morning Abuelita went out to gather eggs but slipped in the mud and knocked herself out. We had no idea, waking up hours later. Then it started to rain again—real hard, like now—and where was our abuela? So we’re nervous, Jimena and I, and go out looking for her, getting soaked. We were just 5 and 7 years old, crying like babies. We thought she might be at the tiny chapel half-way toward the village. But no, not there, so we ran to a neighbor, who took us in…. You listening?”

            “Huh?” Leo wasn’t sure. He was glad to hear a voice to mitigate the deluge. “Yeah. You ran to a neighbor. She contacted Abuelita?”

            “Couldn’t. Phone line went down with the storm. Just had to wait it out.”

            Carmen was silent for a while, maybe waiting for Leo to tell his own tale. Instead, he guessed, “she must have regained consciousness… unless—”

            “Oh, she’s alive alright. The mid-morning rain woke her up; only by then our searching had gone down different paths.”

            “How come you didn’t pray?”

            Carmen reflected on that. “Abuelita said the prayers were in the search.”

           

            They were near the state line when Leo nodded off. Carmen grabbed the wheel to keep them straight and screamed for him to wake. He shook and stomped the brake with both feet, putting the Fiesta into a spin. The Hoosic River on the right was yawning for them—a pillow or a grave. If Carmen could only steer beyond the strength of panic, maybe they’d avoid that gamble. Yet they were little more than socks inside a washing machine, pawns to physics and the whims of industry.

            The Hoosic River had swelled with the day’s rain and wouldn’t notice more to carry. It wouldn’t honor prayers, or dishonor them, for that matter.

            Well past midnight in Extremadura, a grown-up Jimena prodded Abuelita awake. She gave the disoriented old woman her glowing mobile phone. “¡Es Carmen, para ti!”

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2019)

In the Room

            Jasper, it just wasn’t the right way to deal. I come see you maybe twice, three times a year, usually to have some laughs, clink some drinks, be on your side against the advice of Mom and Dad. Now you’ve pushed me over to theirs. I mean, not really—we’re all on your side, hoping to get you back. Praying, if that’s what this is. Talking to you. Trying to get you to talk, explain yourself. Forgive yourself—just fucking deal.

            Let’s go through this again—no filters, no doctor stepping in. Maybe the nurse will come by, check this or that, talk loudly in some effort to get through to you, wake you up, whatever. It’s just been three days and I’ve heard of these kinda comas lasting for years. Your heart’s still good, they say. Survived the crush of everything else. God damn it, Jasper, it just wasn’t the right way to…

           

            So, I remember when you first fell in love—that’s not too much to say about elephants, is it? I mean, I liked that day in Baraboo, climbing a ladder to sit in that festooned box atop the old bull. But you positively loved it. Wouldn’t get out. The trainer let you ride two more circles by yourself for no extra charge—must’ve seen an apprentice in you, lure you into his world, eventually. And he succeeded, what—eight years later? when you turned sixteen and could legally drop out of school, run to the circus, throw your life away? Oops, that’s Mom and Dad’s side again, aint it. I probably encouraged you: kid sister looking up to learn how dreams might burst out of the box. I didn’t have any dreams myself—maybe still don’t—so I envied your panache. Wondered why it had to be elephants, but… why the hell not?

            You said they had big hearts. No, duh: they’re giants in every dimension. By ratio, though, dogs’ hearts are bigger, you know. And there are a lot more options working with dogs… But then you vouched for an elephant’s memory, like somehow that’s equivalent to virtue. Most folks who cling on to memories become curmudgeons or narcissists. Or broken-hearted sisters.

            Sure, it was interesting telling friends what you did for a living. Some pulled a face, like you were monstrous—animal cruelty, all that. One guy said that while snarfing down a McChicken sandwich, I remember. Others romanticized the idea—nice to know someone out there still cares about the earth and its creatures, cuz I always attested to your care of them. Never saw otherwise. Then again, I didn’t witness your dumbass act three days ago. Nobody did, except Jumbo. Jasper and Jumbo sharing a private moment. Jasper and Jumbo and maybe God.

            Wha’dja expect, anyway? No change to the program, like ever? Circus kicks you out, sends their animals to various zoos. You follow, trunk to tail, and beg for a job cleaning up their manure. The elephants, you contend, need exercise, so you keep up their routine, tossing them beachballs and stuff, making them balance on this boulder or that—no more circus apparatus, so you make do with what’s lying around. You sneak rides on their necks when they’re out on the glorified safari grounds, the zoo’s petty sense of being ‘woke’. They fire you for overstepping your bounds. Not gonna recommend you to another zoo or anything to do with pachyderms. Skills down the toilet. May as well fly to Delhi or someplace that supplies your demand.

            Can’t do that now, Jasp. You decided to go down with the ship—the Hindenburg blimp, as it were, minus the media circus. You curled into a cardboard box—LG, with their “Life’s Good” logo of an ugly face—as if you bought a new air conditioner just for the box. Then you called out to Jumbo, “c’mere, boy, do your best pirouette! Don’t worry where I am, just play for the invisible crowd.” And I bet you he swung his trunk to show his distrust for this stunt, following orders in the dark, manacled to the memory of your voice…. And you must’ve arched your back in the box so Jumbo wouldn’t instantly feel its impending collapse. Still, his leg must’ve hovered—like Damocles’ sword—brainy, big-hearted galoot. At a final command, he pressed into the LG logo and broke all your bones before tumbling forward himself.

            Did I get that all right? Spirit of the story, at least? Care to add, edit, repeal or redo? If you’re wondering what the elephant thought of your suicide note, well.., he’s being held without bail for manslaughter at the county clink, probably on suicide watch, as these things go. Seems like his trainer, the only man he’d come to understand, as such, stomped on his heart. J&J 4evr tattooed the old-fashioned way.

            What? Was that a groan from underneath your mummy wrap? Shall I call the nurse or...; no hurry, I guess. Huh? How am I doing? Funny you should ask. You know, being a kid sister I’m gonna damsel through this like… like a fuckin’ Dumbo. I got Mom and Dad to fall back on. Maybe develop my own, out-of-the-box kinda dream. I dunno, something like… hedge funds. I hear that’s got some edge, some rootedness to the good ol’ earth. Follow in your footsteps, bro.

            Okay, so I’ll shut up now, let you sleep. You know, Jasper, all kidding aside: I don’t know if these past three days have been much different than the past three thousand. You were always a pretty good listener; me, a jabberwocky. I really liked that you took care of your friends, and they the same to you. I never imagined there was—or is—necessarily anything you’ve suppressed. No skeletons in your closet, no elephant in the room. I think that’s a hard trick to pull off, and you can expect me back soon to big brother me a little more.

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2019)

Caudal Fin

            Isabelle had dreamed of being an Olympic gymnast before a terrible dismount from the uneven bars. Her nascent fame became notorious through viral videos that warned of the “graphic, gruesome” content and feigned well wishes for some kind of recovery. Sixteen years old, however, is forever away from such truisms like ‘baby bones bend, not break’. She rehabbed until her team funds dissolved,  floated around dance clubs awhile, using her upper body strength on the stripper pole. Finally, she took a job with a travelling circus.

            Matt would show her the ropes, literally. She’d start as a solo act, tethering her ability to do amazing splits and contortions, twirl as the rope would descend and rise up on a pulley, synched with canned music that milked the audience’s oohs and aahs. From there she’d train with Matt on the trapeze. While he wouldn’t call himself an ‘artist’, he put special care in catching her as aesthetically as possible.

            Jerry, the ringmaster, told her his door was always open if she needed anything. Sort of an asshole, he was one of the few who never shared a trailer, stout on his unwritten rule that sex and sleeping with someone were different deals. Nightly arrangements were fluid, anyway, especially in summer’s swelter. Sharon, the animal trainer, often bedded down with her poodles and pekingese, leaving her new roommate Isabelle to sleep by herself or have sex to her heart’s content.

            Sometimes their trailer stayed empty all night, the ghouls of the try-your-luck booths having their way. Gavin, the most organized (managing hundreds of betta in softball-sized fishbowls), knew how to pace the coffees and cannabis and brandy and brownies—magically fresh from his backroom kitchenette. Matt called him ‘Gavin the Gateway’ and warned of horizonal strife, but Isabelle patted away that worry, wrapping herself into his doffed jean jacket before passing out.

            Weekends meant two shows a day: afternoons full of families, evenings wafting a more perfumed sweat. After such shows, the ghoul booths were busy, so Matt and Isabelle would stroll to the city, take in a movie, eyeball the balconies of lives more worth living, a little tongue in cheek. And then they’d talk shop: “What stuck out, today, for you?”

            “I don’t know. Just the routine. Jerry ordering me to smile more—be a crowd-pleaser.”

            “Crowds love you,” Matt assured.

            “Nine-year-olds do. And their dads.”

            “C’mon. And I’m there for the moms?”

            “Maybe. Their eyes eat us up.”

            “No. We’re more than just cotton candy. We’re more like…”

            “Hash brownies?” Isabelle wanted a laugh out of that.

            Instead, Matt brought her hand to his lips and pleaded, “keep Gavin at arm’s length.”

            “The Gateway! You’re jealous.” Maybe so, silent minutes ensuing.

            Autumn took the operation south, glomming onto the coastal kitsch of places like Myrtle Beach. Jerry, counting costs, fired Sharon for the increased hassles of animal regulations. To cover that gap in the show, he made Igor, the aging strongman, dope around an extra set with the clowns, who had to jump through hoops of fire without a regulatory sense. Then Jerry sold the trailer where Desirée and Tammy resided, throwing them in with Isabelle. They all got along, fortune teller/juggler/acrobat, but it was cramped. Isabelle wound up wandering to the ghouls more often.

            Gavin was feeding the betta when she gravitated toward his empty booth. “Business slow?”

            “Depends. Sometimes I’ve sold one of these guppies for a hundred bucks when the ping-pong doesn’t bounce right.”

            “Like today?”

            “Why, you need a hundred bucks?”

            Isabelle laughed. “No. What for? Like I’d go out and buy something nice...”

            Gavin lifted one of the water globes. The flaring caudal fin was iridescent fuchsia striped with indigo, a king bound in a nutshell. “Want this one, for free?”

            “Desirée and Tammy are company enough. Thanks, anyway.”

            She hung around to watch a gradual flow of suckers—gigolos preening to impress their gals. Gavin, with now a fistful of bills and a few less fish, flashed a grin at Isabelle. Somebody recognized her as the woman on the rope, and that brought more chatter, more customers.

            “Don’t show that cash to Jerry,” Isabelle thought to say. “He’ll pimp me here every night.”

            “Fuck Jerry. And I wouldn’t want you here against your will.” He poured her a brandy and put in a Blue Öyster Cult disc. “Agents of Fortune,” he answered her nod of vague recognition. “I usually skip the third track for all the confusion—Romeo and Juliet, together in eternity kinda crap I can do without.”

            “Oh, but I like that song.”

            “So then we won’t skip it.” They leaned back and talked through most the music before he pulled a latched box from under his cot. He had, a week ago, introduced her to a tame way of taking heroin, rubbing the inner wrist with tiny grains of glass inside the mix. Messier, less potent, but also less bruising. “You ready for a better trip?”

            There was no show scheduled tomorrow. Before he even opened the box, Isabelle stammered, “I hate needles, you know.”

            “I know. Me too.” They listened to the disc change songs. Gavin slid the cover to her when she asked about the current track. “‘Morning Final’—another tune kinda over-the-top—”

            “Catchy.” She leaned back. “I can hardly feel my heart,” she mouthed the second time that phrase played. She was blindly conscious of Gavin stroking the middle of her arm and released a hiccup of fear in her throat. She made herself agree with the whisper that this would be heaven, because something must be. Something in this shit—“skip this new song, please,”—and Gavin interrupted the tourniquetting to appease. “Ok, it’s better.” Breathe. “What’s it called, please?”

            “‘Debbie Denise’.”

            “The last track?”

            “There’s always replay.”

            No. No! Matt would not burst in to be hero, she now knew. She sprang up and ran to his trailer to punch him awake and hold him and weep. And sleep. 

 

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2019)