I rob banks, and I always get away clean, except this one time when my old lady ratted me out to the cops. She wanted part of the money to pay for her smack addiction, and I didn’t give her any, so she went to the cops, told them about the heist, and I did time.
Continue reading “Progress, Not Perfection by Fernando Meisenhalter”
October
Frank always hated rainy days. He hated them when he was working and he hated them when he was ill. Like today. Today was gray and wet. The leaves, falling steadily from the big oak out front, randomly blew against the rain-splattered window beside his bed and stuck there momentarily before gradually sliding down onto the sill where they gathered into a brownish, wet pile and ultimately fell to the ground beneath the rhododendron bush.
It surprised no one when Bruce Feathers once again launched a torpedo into his own life. Ten years ago, the semi-retired auto mechanic earned a ticket to the slammer for diddling the brake lines on Nathan Polk’s pickup truck. Bruce insisted the disconnection was accidental, but everyone knew that Nathan, a semi-retired insurance agent, had been topping off Bruce’s future ex-wife’s fluids, so to speak.
Continue reading “The Knowing of Which Way to Turn by Michael Grant Smith”
The new arrival, Tony, insisted on being the center of attention at all times. He was like an actor on stage playing to a rapt audience. Some of the residents found him to be a breath of fresh air. But I thought the air he brought into the place stunk.
It took me over a year to convince my father to move into Riverview Gardens, and now, four months later, it looked like I’d done the right thing. He was eating well, sleeping well, even playing checkers most days with a man from Montreal. As for his dementia, it was no better, but no worse either. And, now that Riverview was in the process of building a new state-of-the-art facility with more space and more light and wonderful things like a pool and a library and a little movie theatre, I felt even more sure that I’d found a good, safe place for my father to live out his days.
Every morning he takes a Post-It, records exactly what she’s wearing, and sticks it on his desk phone. Today it’s “red blouse, green pants, purple sweater.” This way he can tell the police if he has to.
Calvin Allen and Leo ‘The Lip’ Grady were superstars in the world of boxing during the seventies. Their three fights against one another are legendary. Allen won the first bout with a TKO in the eighth. A year later, Grady would turn the tables with a fourth round knockout. But it was their rubber match that people still talk about today. It was the lanky, reserved, black man from New Jersey against the stocky, white, Irishman from Queens. The crowd was divided in their loyalties. Back and forth the two boxers went, bobbing and weaving, each landing devastating blows on the other. One would be knocked to the canvas and then the other. The sold-out arena was in a frenzy. It was the closest, most brutal, of their three meetings. Round after round it continued, with neither fighter giving an inch.
Back in 1949 or 1950 when I was six or seven, my grandfather took me on my first trip on ‘the Slave Road,’ ‘the Hidden Highway,’ ‘the Nigger Byway,’ ‘the Devil’s Footpath,’ or ‘the River Styx Trail.’ All these names and more for a narrow, dark path, a little over a half-mile long, that saved almost a mile and a half between our farm and Corn Row Road. The “Row” was a dirt road, where our black friends and relatives lived.
Liam paces the floor of his “study” which is a bedroom in the home that he and his wife Eileen are renting. The new addition screams its head off. He wishes the thing would shut up. Not the thing. That’s terrible. The girl. The baby. They cry constantly, babies. They cry because they’re infants, then they cry because they’re teething, then they cry because they’re in the ‘terrible twos.’ It seems different names for the same dreadful screeching. He has no idea why anyone would have a baby. He has no idea how he ended up with one.
My friends thought it was a big deal that I was flying out to Los Angeles for a call back on a film. I had the initial audition when the director was in New York. A month later, he called to see if I was still interested. I was. I didn’t have anything else going on. The trip would also give me a chance to visit my father. I hadn’t seen him in years.
