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)

Paris, St Patrick's Day

            Before or after an alarm clock beeps (especially in a foreign city), birds tend to wake me up. I take a dawn run in Paris, wondering how the rain refracts their banter. For me it refreshes a spent city: yellow vested riots still in my nose, glass of smashed boutiques in the grooves of my shoes, feigned photojournalism stored on my phone. Perhaps a throwback to the Bastille, liberté, égalité, fraternité. Perhaps a soupçon of banalité...

            But the birds this morning lure me away from the cobbled streets, into the relative peace of the Parc de Bagatelle. Sparrows, probably, and wrens; crows and canada geese; a woodpecker far too early; a heron lofting near a path along a lake, and that’s when I take note of other creatures in the park—rats and rabbits and a caveman, cooking something on a fire obscured by the gate he had probably pried open. I want to espy—imagining a morning pot of coffee or crack cocaine—but Prufrock that I am, I dare not disturb his entombed universe.

            I stride away from the lake, onto a service road. From behind I hear a van approach and a bellow of “police!” I’d seen a hundred vans the night before—swat teams waiting for the yellow vests to take their cause too far—and my instinct is to show myself as totally unyellow, a tourist on a morning jog. From the passenger window a nonpoliceman laughs at me as the van lumbers by, drive-by shooting speed. I veer off into a forest path.

            The map at the hotel had indicated a Shakespearean theatre in these woods, a thing I’d love to find just now. In the city the other night I had seen a staging of The Picture of Dorian Gray, relishing some references to Hamlet; at 7am, mid-March, there wouldn’t be a play, but drama happens other ways.

            Back on the service road, parked cars have busted windows. Yellow vests? Robin Hoods? That mocking nonpoliceman? Other cars remain intact, their engines running, drivers smoking against the oxygen this park affords. In a cul-de-sac I stumble into a klatch of vans, one with gaudy christmas lights to disco up the dawn. A woman in a bright red negligee lounges at the wheel of an almost-as-red van; her tired eyes barely rise in my direction, uninterested in why I’d wonder why she’s idling there.

            St Patrick’s Day, and Sunday all the more. Guys in skulking cars seem none too lucky—less ashamed than voluntarily desperate, playing the odds that spirits in the drizzly air would keep their down-low on the up and up. And lose themselves a little while in a windowless fuck truck.

            I stop in my tracks. Nothing on the south side of this park, on yestermorning’s run, had been out of place. Birds would say as much—or that’s the way I heard them then. Now their chirping sounds subdued. I aim toward the corner of the park that will usher me to the Arc de Triomphe. The north side of the lake stands somewhat in the way, and I imagine prostitutes or cavemen jumping in, the only way to bathe away the grime their circumstances make.

            Across the water, a gathering in gray. My misty glasses veil their personhoods, and so I guess they must be troopers on the lookout for more gilets jaunes, those yellow-vested warblers. I squint to ascertain: their bodies just too small, collectively, devoid of helmets, gasmasks, billyclubs, shin and shoulder pads. Lo and behold! they are nuns, assembling as if this pond were the Sea of Galilee. I decide, with second thoughts, to curve along the path to eavesdrop on their prayers. It’s St Patrick’s Day, and Sunday all the more.

            My head swivels for two sisters running late. They join without apology, it seems, and the gray group waddles silently along the shore. Some have rosaries as thick as rope, most are empty-handed. I pass them and then a swan as large as Zeus, oblivious to such association. A dozen stories come to mind about this species—I don’t need a baker’s dozen, per se, yet the nuns behind me may provide for yet another.

            That said, I feel guilty for pretending to run south, away from my goal of the Arc de Triomphe; I swing away from the lake to double back, passing the nuns with due space, so as not to gawk. They are talking silently to Zeus, gesturing toward the water, as if he’d lost his way. I want to witness whether their influence will work, and because some of those gestures come with bread crumbs, the creature complies, lifts his heavy webs and glides into his kingdom.

            By coincidence, I’m sure, pictures of less-blessed swans litter the Champs-Élysées. My strides slow as I come to the mess that made for yesternight. Swarovski, with its diamond-encrusted logo, is all but dead, a thousand blue boxes from its innards—all with single swans, feigning ignorance. Perhaps the nuns had meant to scoot them where they’re meant to be.

            I warm down the mile or so to where the hotel shower promises some difference, if not substantially. The conference that I came for has me working on St Patrick’s Day, and Sunday all the more. The hours click by the way they always do, and then I fly into the evening, remembering the times I’ve heard, for real, a swan’s song. Once, exactly over Charles Bridge—missing human heads by inches.

            And as the plane descends, fighting turbulence along the way, the pilot tests the runway with one wheel and the next, then thrusts the aircraft up again, causing hearts to flutter. The lady next to me speaks French, a mumble for the question of mortality. Eventually the pilot assures us on the intercom: the maneuver is alright, all for safety’s sake. Another loop around Prague can’t be so terrible.

            I twirl my wedding band and pray. Not for nothing on St Patrick’s Day.

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2019)

 

When We Have Shuffled Off

            My wife called me from upstairs—modern ways that we communicate: “Kneifel’s house burned down.” She didn’t have to add, “at Krkenoše.” I checked sources online, as she did also on her own device, and eventually we came together in an embrace of generations and eclectic anecdotes: the handsome woodsman, widowed son-in-law to old Kneifel, provider of occasional eggs and fresh milk, infinite blueberries we’d pick along the way on countless walks along the mountain ridge, had perished in this fire. Gawkers’ block and grief would coil within the questions, way too early to pose as such.

            “What might become of this quintessential place?” A relic of Sudetenland, where we acquired our neighboring chalupa in 1947. Kneifels never had to abdicate, their name a guarantor for times on one side and the other of the war; Czech being their second mother tongue, they fit right into cultural quixoticies—(Kafka’s metamorphosis)—a nightmare not quite dreamed of on such shared bucolic space. Our decades grew together, through and beyond conventions communistic, into modern inquiry that keeps community alive: voting democratically and trading eggs and milk, stories and well being, timeless in our Krkenoše cul-de-sac.

            My mind meanders back to 1977, when brothers Jon and Josh and I were seated at our father’s house in Bejou, Minnesota. The phone rang just as Dad had served up hot SpeghettiOs, the sauce the same color of the fiberglass chairs in his kitchen, cool and lean-back-able in the wonderful summer that had sparked our imaginations.

            Two nights earlier we were in Grand Forks to visit relatives—including my father’s clandestine cousin Doug, who traveled the country racing sprint cars. We met him at the county fairgrounds track, showing off his newly sponsored thoroughbred: shimmer brown with well-placed decals from Union 76 and Camel cigarettes. His number was 1 or 7 (or something in between). His cab exuded confidence, with state-of-the-art handles trimmed in scented leather, haloed by a roll cage that reminded me of monkey bars and backyard memories.

            Then to the business of racing: two qualifiers and a final, all top finishes for Doug, sudden celebrity of our family. My cousins and brothers went crazy over the way he whizzed past everyone, lapping several cars, raising dirt around the oval like a shark fin. And at the evening’s final checkered flag, we rushed down to the pit area with awe for his machine, and him. He pat his car and then our heads—love retains a following—and gave his voice to several interviewers, sprinkled with toothy grins to us. “This means, of course, you’ll have pole position in Omaha,” some reporter claimed, keeping track of circuit points. Doug lifted his eyebrows and the corners of his mouth, clearly believing his unbelievable run: “the engine’s running perfectly, my crew is just the best, want to thank all our sponsors, and fans, and” autographs and au revoir… The evening shuffled off into the starry infinite.

            Diving into our SpeghettiOs, we could tell the phone call wasn’t light. Dad, a Lutheran pastor prone to talking with whatever set of circumstances, held his cheek to muffle his replies—some questions, surely, but mostly ‘mhmms’ of acquiescence, prima facie, as things go. “Boys,” he offered, a quarter minute after hanging up the phone, “that was about my cousin Doug. Do you remember that he—”

            “—earned pole position in Omaha,” my older brother blurted. I had only known the name of that city through a television program: Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.

            “Yes, he did,” Dad said, and gathered ways of gathering, “…. That he did.”

            “How did he do?” I asked to fill a gap. I think I already knew, having heard Dad need to pace this same routine a couple years before. It was with the Zilligans, then: a murder-suicide of a family going through divorce; we’d eaten at their home the week previous—just Mrs Zilligan and her kids (our age) and…

            “Well,” Dad searched for words, “he started off ok… Just like in Grand Forks, he finished his qualifier in first place. Kept him pole position for the next race.” He paused, expecting Jon or Josh or me to ask something, add a dram of understanding… I stared into my bowl of SpeghettiOs, spelling less than I loved to do with alphabet soup. “And so, he started off that second race.”

            “How did he do?” one of my brothers—or maybe me—echoed.

            Dad nodded at the need to know. How would any of us do? “He crashed. You remember those corners in Grand Forks, where the cars have to slide sideways to keep straight?” We nodded. “Well, at one point he couldn’t quite keep it straight. He rolled, they said on the phone, off the track and into an empty lot, so nobody else got hurt. Seventeen times he rolled, and somewhere in between his seatbelt broke. The roll cage might have helped a little bit, but in the end, boys,… he died.”  

            Silence, and more inspection of SpeghettiOs. At some length, Josh asked an everlasting question: “but… how is his car?”

            Jon practically rose to thwack that materialistic banality into oblivion, myself in full support. But Dad put his arm into the middle of the table, as gently as any Abe Lincoln, whom he resembled. “Now, Joshua,” he leveled, looking more at Jon and me, “that is a very good question.” No sarcasm. No condescension. No judgment about how an 8- or 10- or 14- or 40-year old takes in harsh news. Both Josh and Dad would die early, 46- and 51-years old, respectively. That leaves Jon and me to linger with such questions (not entirely alone, of course).

           

            And so there goes a collective sense of isolated fate in Krkenoše. A couple dozen hours ago, this woodsman turned his bedding to the alpine air and faced a February blessed with normal snowfall, hinting at some relief of drought. He must have smiled at that, like Doug, in pole position….  
 

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2019)

Road Test

                  “First thing: a driver and a car should make love.”

                  “Should love each other?”

                  “Have sex. Consensual.”

                  “Who’s male, female, or—”

                  “Doesn’t matter. The pedals, for instance, may be like a clitoris.”

                  “Which I’m supposed to feel with my feet?”

                  “Just imagine.”

                  “Okay. What’s next?”

                  “Stickshift.”

                  “Is a penis?”

                  “Erect.”

                  “That makes more sense. But then the strokes would go in an H-pattern…”

                  “Just imagine.”

                  “Steering wheel?”

                  “You tell me.”
                  “Um, turning positions once in a while?”

                  “Yep. And various more subtle adjustments.”

                  “What about the buttons and gauges: defrost, fog lights, hazards, Dolby…”

                  “Atmospherics. As needed. Mirrors are more essential.”

                  “Because I’m checking out… others?”

                  “You’re keeping your situation—driver and car—safe.”

                  “This is all too mechanical. The car, then, is like some bot programmed to—”

                  “Well, then, you’re missing the point.”

                  “Being?”

                  “Making love. Considering the best interest of the other.”

                  “The car thinks of me?”

                  “Just imagine.”

                  They walked from the Driver’s Ed facility to the parking lot, where a blue Prius waited.  The cauliflower ‘L’ atop the roof somewhat clashed and reminded Dana of a taxi. Something temporary—merely to get from A to B. The instructor noticed Dana’s chagrin and reminded: “you’ll go out and find your own car, for real, after training.” And maybe even a blue Prius, with a sunroof instead of an ‘L’.

                  Getting in, adjusting the seat and mirrors, felt at the same time smooth and self-conscious. Dana was glad to have the instructor there, if stifling a thought that the session would be a threesome—newness on another level. The instructor noticed this, too, and clammed up to Dana’s questions. “Pretend I’m not here. Everything is like the simulator upstairs, which you passed with flying colors.”

                  “Pretend you’re not here,” Dana repeated, pushing the clutch and brake with tender timid feet and the starter button with a flittering index finger. The Prius responded with a purr. The stickshift lured Dana’s hand in a way the simulator never had, and a magical realization then occurred: the clutch and gears from foot to hand are symbiotic, traveling from the brain’s behest to and through the middle of each body. The Prius agreed, inviting Dana to slide from the brake pedal and brush the gas—not yet an ‘accelerator’, as would become when they were moving. The purr merged as theirs, together, and the instructor smiled at this epiphany—then  quickly looked out the passenger window to allow for privacy: let the driver and car get to know themselves.

                  The jerks of reverse, sputters of engine and patience required to restart: all this the Prius was used to, if Dana fretted, I’m killing the moment, the trust, the assumption, the

                  “Sweet spot is different per clutch,” the instructor said. “Take time to find it—better now in this lot, than out on the road.”

                  Dana did so, again in reverse, again in 1^st gear, then 2^nd and (just for fun) back to 1^st. The lot had its own complications: shopping carts passing or in need to be passed, with little kids dangling and racing and ambling around as if drunk. Cars zipping out and into spots, errands that don’t want to wait for an ‘L’ to putt by. “Just ignore them,” Dana said to the Prius, looking up to see if the instructor would chide.

                  “Well, you can’t just ignore aggressive drivers. But you also can’t be bothered by them, or let their behavior dictate yours. You see, they aren’t making love with their cars.”

                  “They’re fucking them up?”

                  The instructor considered this take, “One could say that.”

                  “One did!” Dana smiled. “No—two, if I’m speaking for Prius.”

                  Now on the road, heading west into a 5pm sun, Dana reluctantly lifted a hand from the steering wheel to feel for the visor and flip it down. “Not easy to multi-task—”

                  “Oh, but you’re not,” the instructor contended, “not if the motion is part of the drive. You need to know when and how to respond to the road with the car. It’d be dangerous to screech to a stop to pull down a visor, or adjust a mirror, or…”

                  “check my phone? Just kidding!”

                  “Better be. I don’t even like the handless phone trend—drivers without any passengers speaking with gestures to someone not there. Can’t stand it.”

                  “’Cuz the car is left out?”

                  “They’re not making love.”

                  Dana shifted from 3^th gear to 4^th, now that the driveways into this road were fewer and farther between. Hands curved around the contours of leather to soften the polycarbonate underneath. “How am I doing, in that regard?”

                  “Making love? You’d have to ask the car.”

                  Dana looked into the rearview mirror to assure that town was largely behind. The sweet spot from 4^th gear to 5^th was easiest of all, and the road most agreeable. “Prius,” Dana whispered, “will you marry me?”

                  The instructor blushed, not sure whether to laugh. “Um, let’s concentrate on this test.”

                  “Shucks, I forgot it’s a test.”

                  “Always is, to some degree. Driver and car, mutually.”

                  “That’s a poem.”

                  “More a jingle, I guess, but yes: love’s a test.”

                  The Prius continued to purr, as did Dana. The instructor looked out at the woods going by, safe in the success of this training and able, as such, to recall other such tests. Most of them happy, for having somewhere with someone fulfilling to go.

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2019)

Letters' End

            Mineral Point is an artisan haven in what is known as the ‘Driftless Region’ of  Wisconsin, where the Ice Age neither flattened the land nor left ten thousand lakes. Rather, the rolling hills and gulleys make for winding ways into and out of town. Jackie and Ray went to high school here in the late ’90s, both satisfied and a little surprised to graduate. She got a job at Lands’ End in nearby Dodgeville (labels dept) and he joined the army, eventually to do several tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. He died in the summer 2006, years after anyone in Mineral Point had heard from him, including his parents. Jackie asked them about him, roundabout Christmas 2003, wondering if perhaps his military postal connection had changed. She’d received just a few letters for the dozens she sent, and only one email that essentially said, ‘I don’t do computers.’

            While they hadn’t exchanged promise rings, Ray gave Jackie his pet rabbit Fuzz to hold onto—for her sake, maybe, more than his. It was hard to know with Ray, lovely loner and veteran in the War on Terror. If his rare letters always signed off with ‘love you, lots’, the content above that was all about duty—a soldier’s raison d’être if no full coming-to-terms could be had, especially in the limitations of lined paper, and stamps, and…

            An envelop arrived at Jackie’s door, delivered personally by Mineral Point’s postmaster general (Dorine, who liked sorting things but never wanted to be in charge). “Awfully sorry, Jackie, to give you this so late. You see, we found it behind a file cabinet—which, like the legacy of ‘snail mail’, is going by the wayside. It’s a letter addressed to you, and… we’re awfully sorry.”

            From Ray. Postmarked February 14, 2006, Rose Barracks, Vilseck. Before opening, and without thanking Dorine, Jackie ran to her computer to Google ‘Vilseck’, confirming her guess that he’d gotten as far as Germany—maybe en route to Wisconsin. She recalled hearing that he died—someone had said it at the Pointer Café, roundabout that year’s Columbus Day—when fighting was fierce in Ramadi. His folks wouldn’t say, despite Jackie’s pounding on their door after leaving the Pointer Café. Germany. Valentine’s Day. Before facing the anti-Cupid arrows of Ramadi.

            And before tearing open the letter, Jackie went to the hutch to fetch Fuzz, hanger-on to her life and his. Plopping this geriatric onto her lap, she read from the hand of a ghost:

Dear Jackie,

Deployments near, like always. Miss you, like always. Haven’t been good at writing you much, maybe cuz saying stuff is never much fun. Hows Fuzz? Been not such a pain? You can set him free in the woods if you want—I think he’ll agree thats ok, and I don’t want to put you out feeding him, cleaning his crap, stuff like that.

Happy Valentines. Getting it late—you know I’m a shmuk. But you are definally the love of my life. I mean that, Jackie. And if you can be happy even with some other guy, I‘d be happy to die here, line of duty, thinking that you (and Fuzz, and who ever else) might be happy too—well, that would kick royal ass. Sorry to sware—army drags down, you know. That would be cool. I’m just always thinking of you. Your letters keep me alive. I know its unfair to say that, when I’ve been so lousy at writing you back. Like school—I never got into the groove. Shits real now, like dyingly real. This may be the last letter I write, unless...

You remember the Lorax and his goddam UNLESS?—library lady read it to us and ran to her backroom to cry, like we were disappointing her or sumthing. 3rd grade she’s leavin us as wrecks, like Lorax needs me or you to fix that comic book mess, and now I’m heading back to Iraq waiting for some unless to, I dont know—stop me? Won’t happen, of cuorse.

Write me, Jackie, if you want me to come back. Then I will. Done with this shit, if you say so. And if no—I understand. Thats why I gave you Fuzz. To have or let go. Your leters lift me, even if you decide not to send. I’ll live longer with them, tho. Just sayin.

                                                                        love you lots,

                                                                                    Ray

            No post-script. Typical of Ray, if the other way (PPPS) with Jackie, who would have answered this in the fire of five minutes or five hours, depending on the semi-complicated routes of Mineral Point distribution, sometimes toward Madison, sometimes toward Twin Cities. Not that Jackie read the schedules so close. Thirteen years too late—damn, Dorine!—what parsing of minutes or hours could matter? Implied, if Jackie could take such liberties, was a sort of lifeline Ray was throwing, post-haste. As their favorite artist sang: ‘I would die 4 U, Darling if U want me 2’. Ultimatum not as playful as Seuss. And now Prince had also died, of some sinister sly.

            Which begged her research. Gently tossing Fuzz from her lap, Jackie spent the next two hours beseeching the web where the hell her shoulda been husband would be, then and now. “Let’s see—cast of casualties, Ramadi, and…” she had to be kidding. Deployments could be anywhere. Letter coming thirteen years after fucking fact, why not start there? Vilseck, via Wikipedia, depicts an army base that balances Pizza Hut amenities with Code Red readiness for WWIII. Ray’s letter gave no sense of such balance, and Jackie reread the Lorax angst of ramped-up ramifications: unless Ray didn’t make it out of Ramadi, he died somewhere in the in-between.

            Jackie, frustrated with online limitations, contacted the V.A. by phone, then by letter, coupled with more useless knocks on Ray’s parents’ door. In the end, the V.A. sent this letter: “PFC Raymond Smith died at Rose Barracks, Vilseck. Details classified.”

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2019)

The Base of Mount Říp

            Jiří worked as an undertaker for pets. He had grown into the job after his father convinced some communist official that there’d be business in burying beloved animals; that official happened to have an ailing pug as well as a nose for capitalism where it could be had in 1980s Czechoslovakia. They couldn’t do this too close to Prague and its manner of cremating the dead. Instead, they laid claim to a northern patch at the base of Mount Říp, where hikers would come with their dogs, eyeball this stumble-on cemetery, and muse.

            Some thirty years later, Jiří was digging grave #13578. While plots ranged from salamander-sized to circus horse, this one was for a Persian cat. Its hearse and little coffin would arrive in an hour, and Jiří still hadn’t finished the headstone inscription. Everything came to a halt, however, when a fetching woman with a three-legged golden retriever approached from the parking area. She introduced herself as Elizabeth, her dog as Ernie, apologized for her shaky Czech, then burst into tears.

            “No, no—is okay,” Jiří read the situation, knowing it was not okay. “My English just so-so, but...”

            She recovered herself and spoke between the languages. She’d just been at the vet, where Ernie was declared untreatable at this stage of cancer, which had already cost him a leg. She couldn’t bear the thought of a lethal injection— would rather have Ernie die in her arms, a pietà of sorts. And then, if possible, buried here.

            “Of course. And then?”

            Elizabeth was taken aback by the question. “And..then, well—I’ll probably go back to Bristol. Sedm let tady stačilo.”

            “Seven years? Not so long.”

            “Not with Ernie here. But forever when he’s gone.”

            She came back a few days later, alone. Ernie was too weak to venture out, she told Jiří, and so his time was nigh. But she still wasn’t sure what to do. They walked reflectively around the grounds, pointing out passing details, including the shapes of the clouds that day. None looked like Ernie, but a cluster floating away from Říp vaguely resembled the British Isles. Serendipitously, they found themselves in the far, upper corner of the cemetery, barren yet of graves. Elizabeth leaned into Jiří. “Can it be here?”

            “Samozřejmě,” he nodded.

            “Maybe he should be nearer to the rest.”

            “As you like.” Jiří blushed at his use of the familiar ’you’, then added, “Ernie makes thirteen thousand, five hundred seventy-nine. Special number for Czechs. Maybe make you stay.”

            Elizabeth lightly punched his arm. “Why is that number so special?”

            “Karel made his bridge then. The year, then ninth July, starting five thirty-one in the morning.”

            “Well, we’re past that peak of summer.”

            “Nevadí. Kind of timeless here.”

            They walked without talking for a while. Elizabeth picked up a stick the size of a shovel handle and poked the ground. Jiří gave her space, but she called him back to ask if this would be suitable. He knelt and brushed the scrub, pulled up a stone jutting out. He looked up to Elizabeth and nodded: the place was ideal. She used the stick, then, to start digging, despite not having a spade. She bid Jiří with her eyes to help her out, not relinquishing the stick but opening up her topmost arm so he could weave his left to grasp below. The depth they made was symbolic, but enough to cultivate a heavenly bed for Ernie, likely in the coming days.

            There were phone calls, each to each, generally updating Ernie. Jiří drove down to Prague to purchase planks of pine for an old-fashioned coffin. Elizabeth understood the selections at site were more ecologically consonant for modern burials, but wanted something that hooked her to heritage. As a girl, she remembered her father constructing a pine box for their old clumber spaniel, and Jiří took note of details, even the carve of a cross that no one had ever asked for in 13,578 burials at Říp. Elizabeth invited Jiří over for dinner, apologizing for the open boxes in various stages of her packing to leave. “It would be fallout from Brexit, anyway. So don’t blame Ernie for this.”

            On the contrary, Jiří showed no blame at all as he sat next to Ernie, stroking the back of his neck. The dog was beyond begging for morsels as they ate ravioli. He didn’t mind the drop of red wine Jiří offered in his palm. “Oslava,” he whispered, “for life well-lived.”

            It was dusk, two days later, when Elizabeth drove into the parking area and opened the trunk. Jiří came running out of the glorified shed he called home. “I would have come down,” he reproached, then gave her a hug she extended a half-minute more. He carried the blanket that covered the corpse and laid it tenderly into the finished coffin. The two of them picked up the ends and trekked to the grave, precisely dug the day before. Jiří brought rope to sling under the box in two places, so that he on one side and Elizabeth on the other could lower it down. They said sacred words, then shoveled the soil over.

            Elizabeth, at the car, pulled out her wallet, which Jiří pushed back into her purse. Instead, he announced he had something for her. He ran back to the shed and returned with a puppy he thrust into her protesting arms. She cried at the fresh smell of the creature, licking her face. Clutching it closer with her left hand, she swept her right to slap Jiří square in the cheek. “How could you!?” She trembled an attempt to redress the injury, trading her hand for the puppy’s paw, dabbing it to soothe the hurt man. Their heart rates were racing for different reasons; after a minute, all became calm. “What kind is it, anyway? His fur is kinda…”

            “Rhodesian ridgeback.”

            “Proč tohle?... Why this?”

            Jiří looked up the slope of Říp. “Soft bristles.” He fingertipped the pup’s spine. “Like Bristol.”

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2018)