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)

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)