textfiles/magazines/INTERTEXT/itv9n5.etx

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InterText Vol. 9, No. 5 / Fall 1999 
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  Contents

    The Door Behind It................................Michael Sato

    The Law Enforcer of Eagle Town.................Richard Behrens

    I am Retarded....................................Tom Armstrong

    Take Us We Bulls.....................................Will Sand

....................................................................
    Editor                                     Assistant Editor
    Jason Snell                                    Geoff Duncan
    jsnell@intertext.com                    geoff@intertext.com
....................................................................
    Submissions Panelists:
    John Coon, Pat D'Amico, Joe Dudley, Diane Filkorn,
    Morten Lauritsen, Rachel Mathis, Heather Timer, Jason Snell
....................................................................
    Send correspondence to editors@intertext.com or 
    intertext@intertext.com 
.................................................................... 
  InterText Vol. 9, No. 5. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is published 
  electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this 
  magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold 
  (either by itself or as part of a collection) and the entire 
  text of the issue remains unchanged. Copyright 1999 Jason Snell. 
  All stories Copyright 1999 by their respective authors. For more 
  information about InterText, send a message to 
  info@intertext.com. For submission guidelines, send a message to 
  guidelines@intertext.com.
....................................................................



  The Door Behind It   by Michael Sato
======================================
....................................................................
  He deserves the best care possible. But what that means depends
  on your perspective.
....................................................................

  1.
----


                      freedom and equality
                           since 1982

  1/5/96
  
  Mr. Matthew Bottacci:
  
  It's been a while since we've been in contact and I wanted to
  remind you that your brother Galen's first annual funding review
  is coming up soon, at the end of next month. Believe me, I know
  how desks get crowded and things get put aside. If you'll
  recall, I included in my last letter to you -- which I sent in
  November -- a form for you to look over and sign, which
  indicates your support for Galen's present living situation and
  your willingness to see that the funding for Galen's program be
  renewed.
  
  Because you are Galen's conservator, it is very important that
  Harbor Vocational and Residential Services be able to present
  this document to the board on the day of Galen's review. In case
  you have misplaced it, I am enclosing an additional form with
  this letter, along with a prepaid envelope so that all you have
  to do is sign it and drop it in the mail -- preferably by the
  end of the month, as I will be on vacation from February 1 to
  February 15.
  
  I hope this will not be too much trouble.

    Sincerely, 
    Lance Cameron
    Community Support Facilitator
    Harbor Vocational and Residential Services. 



                      freedom and equality
                           since 1982

  1/11/96
  
  Mr. Bottacci:
  
  Thank you for your letter. I appreciate your frankness. Since
  Friends of the Mentally Retarded was formed in 1994 it has been
  surprisingly aggressive in promoting its ideology, but I did not
  know it had taken an interest in Galen's case. I would caution
  you, respectfully, that Friends is a highly politicized entity
  whose agenda opposes any interest that works to remove the
  anachronistic and unnecessary barriers between mentally
  challenged individuals and mainstream society. The claims they
  make -- that our programs are unsafe or mismanaged -- are based
  entirely on rumor and anecdote, and not at all applicable to
  Galen's living environment.
  
  It is true that Galen is very special to us. He is one of our
  most important customers, potentially crucial to the future of
  the program and to the lives of any number of similarly
  challenged individuals. This does not mean that we are using
  him. The Residential Support branch of HVRS was founded on the
  belief that there exists no reason that the natural right to
  learn personal responsibility, to appreciate the value of risk,
  and most of all, to express freedom of choice within the
  framework of a mainstreamed living environment should be denied
  anyone because he or she is mentally or physically challenged.
  That is to say, we believe these rights to be transcendental,
  inclusive, universal. Despite what Friends or any other voice
  may suggest, it is for this reason and no other that we decided
  one year ago to become the first residential support service of
  its kind to review the applications of those who are situated
  outside of the relatively small circle of so-called
  "high-functioning" candidates that are considered by other
  similar agencies. When we accepted Galen's file, Galen became
  the first individual in any residential support service in this
  state on whom no criteria whatever regarding his functionality
  were imposed.
  
  I see no basis for the charge that by this we are invoking mere
  abstractions in order to validate neglect or to allow consumers
  to, as you say, "stagnate." On the contrary, we have from the
  beginning been supplementing the provision of freedom vigorously
  with programs designed to ensure that Galen's progress in the
  mainstreaming process continue. To cite one concrete example,
  just this week our behaviorist Linda Weber observed Galen at his
  home and is this moment working to obtain the loan of a speaking
  device that, through cutting-edge technology, should allow Galen
  to express his desires even more easily than he is presently
  able. Galen's housemate, Andrew, has already agreed to take
  primary responsibility for whatever training is requisite to the
  effective use of this device.
  
  About the matter of the backyard, I must ask once again for your
  understanding and patience, and trust that I am as concerned as
  you about the procuring of lawn maintenance equipment, or
  rather, our failure to do so. Please be assured that this
  unusual situation is an aberration, caused by a budgeting
  oversight that was singular and will not be repeated. I
  sympathize completely with your observation that the very reason
  we chose this house for Galen was that it has a large backyard
  that would serve to allow Galen to go outside at will. It is
  unfortunate that, over the course of the year, we have been
  unable to find the means to landscape the yard to make it a safe
  area for Galen. We are certainly continuing, in earnest, our
  search for the requisite funds.
  
  Matt, please bear in mind that there are interests that would
  prefer that specially challenged people remain separated from
  society, and that the true motives of these interests are not
  altruistic. Galen's home is one of the most promising and
  exciting steps forward in the history of care provision to
  challenged individuals, and posterity will be grateful for our
  good faith and endurance.
  
  If there is any matter which you would like to discuss in more
  depth, please call me at the office until seven or eight, and
  later than that, call me at home. And again, as much as I regret
  the inconvenience, I will not be available between February 1
  and February 15. Had I the choice I would not take the time off
  now, but HVRS's mandatory vacation policy has finally, after
  five years, caught up with me. At this writing my fiancee, Gwen,
  proclaims her interest in going to Hawaii. I have not yet
  decided where I want to spend my two weeks of freedom, but the
  very utterance of the word _Hawaii_ makes me certain that it is
  not there. Hopefully Gwen and I can reach an agreement soon.
  Well, you know how it is.

  Thank you again for your patience and support. 

    Sincerely,
    Lance Cameron
    Community Support Facilitator
    Harbor Vocational and Residential Services



                     compassion, vigilance

  1/13/96
  
  Mr. Matthew Bottacci,
  
  Thank you for contacting friends of the Mentally Retarded.
  Friends of the Mentally Retarded is comprised of volunteers who
  share the common belief that there are issues specific to
  mentally retarded individuals living apart from their families
  which are not adequately addressed by any other extant
  organization. As such, HVRS's rather aggressive mainstreaming
  program falls squarely into our field of interest. As
  chairperson for the Harbor-Easton chapter of Friends of the
  Mentally Retarded, I did know of your brother's "independent
  living" situation, but regrettably did not avail myself of the
  substance and details of his living environment prior to your
  inquiry. I am, frankly, ashamed to admit this since Galen's
  living situation seems to be quite unique, perhaps
  unprecedented, and therefore of considerable implication. After
  spending several hours researching Galen's background and
  observing him in his home, that I believe your concerns
  regarding Galen are extremely warranted and require urgent
  action.
  
  I do not mean to sound hostile. Contrary to what is often
  believed, it is not the aim of Friends of the Mentally Retarded
  to raise opposition categorically to the work of HVRS and other
  new "mainstreaming" residential programs like it. In principle,
  we support HVRS's stated mission of providing its customers with
  opportunities to exercise freedom of choice and personal
  responsibility. Furthermore, I personally would never
  intentionally interfere with any program, whatever its ideology,
  that made a positive contribution to Galen's overall well-being
  and happiness. Neither would I question the basically good
  intentions of any employee of HVRS.
  
  It must be remembered, however, that HVRS is a private interest,
  and therefore operates within, and is subject to many of the
  pressures incumbent to, the private sector. It would be
  irresponsible to deny the possibility that such an awkwardly
  situated agency might be tempted to extend an attractively
  phrased, if sometimes useful, ideology past the breadth of its
  real resources in order to widen its client base.
  
  Friends of the Mentally Retarded holds as primary an
  individual's right to basic health and safety. One of our
  long-standing contentions with HVRS comes from their reluctance
  to staff homes with people who are properly trained in their
  field, that is, the provision of care to people with
  disabilities. As a case in point, Galen's live-in care giver,
  Andrew Lee, is still an undergraduate in college who applied for
  the job because he needed extra income to finish a degree in an
  unrelated field. Not that this in itself is to be held against
  him -- he seems sincere in his concern for Galen -- still, he
  himself admits to having, prior to this job, almost no contact
  with any developmentally disabled or otherwise handicapped
  person, and no working experience at all in the field of care
  provision. HVRS claims it is part of the "mainstreaming" process
  to deliberately hire staff who have had no experience with, and
  thus have "no prejudices" toward those with disabilities. We
  think this is a provocative and precarious position, and it is
  surely unreasonable to argue that there is no connection between
  it and the fact that since Galen moved into his home one year
  ago, he has been taken to the emergency room, by ambulance, no
  less than five times: once, when he stopped breathing during a
  seizure; two times for choking on non-comestible objects (a
  peach pit, a plastic fork); and two times for injuries suffered
  from falling. Both of the latter injuries were to the face and
  head, and probably would not have occurred had Galen been
  wearing his helmet. When I queried Galen's community support
  facilitator, Lance Cameron, as to why Galen did not wear his
  helmet, Mr. Cameron answered to the effect that the helmet had
  been discarded because it is "socially stigmatizing" and
  therefore obstructs the process of "mainstreaming" Galen into
  his community.
  
  In the five years Galen spent at the state facility in Easton,
  Galen required hospitalization only one time.
  
  HVRS responds to this alarming statistic by propounding the
  "value of risk," an idea wherein there is always inherent in
  freedom a certain amount of danger, but that this danger is
  outweighed by the larger benefits derived from personal
  independence. We have very serious doubts about the plausibility
  of this line; for us the right to basic physical safety is
  paramount and ought not be compromised by abstractions which,
  however noble sounding, may amount to something less in fact and
  deed.
  
  When I visited Galen's home I asked Andrew about the nature of
  the choices that Galen was making and how he was using his
  freedom to choose and realize his desires. Andrew's response to
  me was so circuitous and vague I had to suppose he did not
  understand my question. I therefore asked Andrew if he could
  demonstrate for me what he _does_ by way of supporting Galen's
  desires. Andrew proceeded to proffer to Galen a number of verbal
  prompts regarding daily-life choices (Would you like to listen
  to music? Would you like spaghetti for dinner?), to which Galen
  seemed to be completely uninterested, if not uncomprehending.
  When I asked Andrew if I had caught Galen on a bad day, Andrew
  answered flatly that he did not expect Galen to respond to any
  of his prompts, and that in fact Galen has in the past year
  never once responded, verbally or otherwise, to any of the
  prompts that Andrew has on a daily basis given to him. Further
  inquiry was to reveal to me that so far as Andrew knew, Galen
  has not uttered a single intelligible word since moving into the
  home.
  
  I was so surprised to learn this, especially since you told me
  that as a child Galen could produce short sentences, that I
  consulted Galen's former doctor at the state facility. Evidently
  Galen's file does show that when in school he possessed a
  vocabulary of some two hundred words, but that by the time he
  left the state home he had already been growing increasingly
  silent for the previous several years. The doctor believes that
  since finishing school it is likely that Galen has forgotten the
  words he then knew, or the mental effort required to produce
  utterances has increased so much as to be prohibitive. In the
  doctor's view, it is very unlikely that without a regimented and
  sustained program of education Galen would again be able to mark
  gains in this area of his functionality.
  
  I think, Mr. Bottacci, that Galen's silence combined with the
  danger connate to his environment raise a near conclusive
  argument against the efficacy, if not the basic humanity, of
  HVRS's mainstreaming program. That said, I must include a note
  about Galen's backyard, if only because the backyard was to me
  the most disturbing feature of Galen's home. Galen's
  preoccupation with his backyard is very intense, and this
  preoccupation is the only exception I saw to his otherwise
  complete passivity and disinterest in his surroundings.
  
  Ironically enough, it is finally with the backyard that HVRS
  takes up the issue of safety. Not that I would contest; the yard
  is a veritable wilderness by now. According to Andrew, the
  backyard has not been so much as mowed since the day they moved
  into the home. There are numerous large objects, mostly junk,
  strewn amongst the weeds, and in the center of the yard a large
  hole, perhaps four by four feet, half-filled with mud, that the
  previous tenants for some reason dug but failed to fill up
  again.
  
  According to Andrew, Galen's daily activity consists largely of
  spending hours gazing at this backyard through the dining room
  window, and this is in fact what he did through most of my
  visit. He knows where the back door is, and frequently goes
  there to try to open it. Regrettably, the back door remains
  locked, and therefore the one thing that Galen shows an active
  interest in, he is forbade. When I queried Mr. Cameron about
  this situation, he told me that under the conditions of the
  lease HVRS accepted the responsibility to landscape the yard to
  meet its safety standards. There had been an oversight in
  budgeting, and was therefore no means at all either to rent or
  purchase yard maintenance equipment or to hire a professional
  landscaping service. Mr. Cameron was glib, but I'm afraid I
  don't find the oversight as excusable as he.
  
  
  I hope this letter proves to be of use to you. In my view, that
  the safety standards of Galen's independent living arrangement
  are lower than those at the state facility in Easton seems
  likely; however, that Galen has benefited commensurately from
  his "freedom" is, at best, doubtful. Unless matters change by
  February's end, my recommendation to you will have to be that
  you seriously consider allowing Galen to return to his home in
  Easton, where he can be cared for by trained and experienced
  personnel, and the yard is always well kept.
  
  Thank you again, Mr. Bottacci, for contacting Friends of the
  Mentally Retarded.

    Sincerely,
    Ann Pearson
    Chairperson, Friends of the Mentally Retarded 


  2.
----

    Sent: Jan 20 1996 2:10 PM
    From: Andrewl@aol.com
    Re: Galen

  Hey Matt, it's Dre. Sorry it took so long to get back to you. I
  got a bitch of a term paper to write that's already late, and if
  I don't pull a B or better I have to take the whole class over
  again. Not a nice thought for someone whose already been in
  college for **five fucking years**. And it doesn't help when
  your boss is having anxiety conniptions. The backyard, the woman
  from that mentally retarded group -- and he was already cracking
  up over this vacation of his. A couple days ago he came in here
  with a pile of brochures from the travel agency and made me look
  at them because he can't make up his own mind where he wants to
  go. "I know there's somewhere," he says, "but I just can't think
  of the name of the place."

  "How about France?"
  
  "No, no. Not France."
  
  "Why don't you go to Mexico?"
  
  "Where I want to go," he says, getting all heated again, "is the
  one place in the world where no one will say to me, `Why don't
  you go to Mexico?'"
  
  "Then Mexico it is."
  
  "Why don't you go to Mexico? Why don't you go to Spain? Why
  don't you go to **China**, for God's sake? This is my first
  vacation, my first freedom, in five long years, and I want to go
  where **I** want to go. If everyone would just give me a little
  bit of space to figure it out."
  
  All the brochures looked the same to me, too. Beaches, pretty
  buildings, some white people kissing. I wouldn't be going to any
  of those places either, but on the other hand, how do you know a
  place before you see the brochure? It's like the pictures on
  Galen's new speaking machine -- that's what you asked about,
  right? Lance calls it a "want-board." It looks like the latest
  contraption from NASA, but actually it's not that big a deal,
  nothing more than a kind of tape recorder in the shape of a big
  board with some blank squares on it. What you do is put your own
  pictures of things into the squares, and then record a different
  sentence into the machine for each of the different pictures.
  Then, if you put your finger on a picture of a Coke, say, a
  recording inside the board says something like, "I'd like a
  Coke."
  
  Lance said we should keep it simple at first, so for now,
  there's only two pictures on the board, one of a Coke and one of
  a 7-Up. "With this machine," he says, "Galen will be able to
  talk." I'm supposed to try fifteen times a day to get Galen to
  learn how to use the thing. So far, after three days and
  forty-five tries, he doesn't get it. I'll tell you the truth,
  Matt: I dislike the board. Galen's never going to be able to use
  the thing -- not in three more days or three more years. They
  brought in the board because they think the reason Galen doesn't
  say what he wants is because physically he can't speak. They're
  wrong. Galen's got a tongue and a throat and a voice just like
  anyone else. What Galen doesn't have, that a guy needs to speak,
  is words. The board's not going to make any difference for
  Galen, because if you've got no words -- words in your head --
  then how can you have pictures? To Galen a picture of a Coke
  means exactly what the word "Coke" means: nothing. And you can't
  want anything without a picture of it; a want **is** a picture.
  Without pictures you can't want anything at all except, maybe,
  for what's already there.

  I gotta go. 



                      freedom and equality
                           since 1982

  1/24/96
  
  Mr. Bottacci:
  
  Thank you for keeping me apprised.
  
  According to my understanding of the conclusions you reached
  from the recommendations of Ms. Pearson, you will not be
  supporting the renewal of funding at the end February unless the
  following conditions are before that time met:

  1) Galen demonstrate, unambiguously, both the willingness and
     ability to express his will in some matter affecting the
     course of his daily life.
  
  2) The issue of the backyard be resolved.

  I would like to urge you, Matt, _not_ to stand by these
  conditions. It may be _very_difficult_ to meet these conditions
  by the end of February.
  
  Let me remind you that if Galen's funding is not renewed, he
  will in all likelihood be transferred back to the state facility
  in Easton. Please take a moment to remember the quality of life
  at the state facility that compelled you a year ago to seek an
  alternative for Galen. The lives of the residents of such
  facilities, however secure, are so thoroughly regimented in
  every aspect, so inexorably regulated and colorless, the
  residents themselves having virtually no opportunity to realize
  or even express their own individually conceived desires, that
  the lives become nothing more than imposed routines, lives
  without _change_, without _plot_ -- without the things that
  distinguish the lives of humans. Residents in the state-run
  facilities have no choice at all in matters such as when and
  what they will eat, where at the dinner table they will sit,
  when the meal is over, when they will go to bed, when they will
  wake up, when they will shower, when they will watch TV, what
  they will watch, or what they will wear. And it is hardly a
  secret that, in spite of its illegality, residents of these
  facilities are physically forced to comply to this regime.
  Residents therefore have no freedom at all, eventually, even in
  their own minds. The system in which they participate is
  therefore completely dehumanizing, and for a resident of this
  system there is _no way out_.
  
  Remember, Matt, that Galen lived in the state facility for five
  years. That's five years of what amounts to a kind of
  incarceration. It is to be expected that it would take anyone --
  even someone who was not challenged in any other way -- some
  time to adjust to a life in which he or she was free and allowed
  to make choices. I believe that there is inside of everyone a
  desire to make choices, and that it is this desire more than
  anything else that makes life a fulfilling and meaningful
  experience. If you believe this too, then I implore you to relax
  your conditions, and give your brother Galen a little more time
  and one more chance.

    Very sincerely,
    Lance Cameron
    Community Support Facilitator
    Harbor Vocational and Residential Services

  P.S. I checked Galen's file. Ms. Pearson is correct. During
  Galen's stay at the state facility, he was taken to the
  emergency room only once. It seems one of the staff at the
  Easton facility broke two of Galen's fingers with a broomstick
  on a morning that Galen was slow to wake up for breakfast.



  1/24/96
  
  Mr. Matthew Bottacci:
  
  I am writing to you in regard to your brother Galen Bottacci, at
  the request of the Community Support Facilitator at Harbor
  Vocational and Residential Services, Lance Cameron. My name is
  Linda Weber. I am a behavioral psychologist and I specialize in
  communication enhancement strategies for physically and mentally
  challenged individuals. After observing Galen, I was able to
  conclude within an acceptable level of probability that Galen
  does not communicate verbally to any recognizable effect. I
  therefore recommended that Galen's current program be
  supplemented with a Level One Portable Speaking Device. The
  device successfully enhances the communicative competence of
  about eighty-three percent of those to whom the devise is
  prescribed. There appears to be, however, a correlation between
  the length of time required to succeed in operating the device
  and the operator's measured level of intelligence. Mr. Cameron
  asked me to emphasize this point especially.
  
    Sincerely,
    Linda Weber



    Sent: Jan 24 1996 10:46 PM
    From: Andrewl@aol.com
    To: Matthew Bottacci

  I can't do that want-board with Galen anymore. I told Lance
  today. Damn, he was pissed.

    Dre



                      freedom and equality
                           since 1982

  1/29/96
  
  Mr. Bottacci,
  
  I'm sorry that I could not convince you to withdraw the
  conditions you set regarding Galen's home and his upcoming
  funding review. I know that what we all want is what's best for
  Galen, and that sometimes these decisions are difficult to make.
  Lance has been with us for five years and he is one of the most
  dedicated and able community support facilitators at HVRS. He
  will do everything he can in what time remains to see that your
  conditions are met.
  
  In the meanwhile, I am enclosing the documents requisite to
  beginning the smooth and timely transfer of Galen's sponsorship
  from HVRS to the Easton state facility. I'm happy to respond to
  any questions you might have regarding these forms.

    Sincerely,
    Barbara Elfman
    President
    Harbor Vocational and Residential Services



    Sent: Feb 5 1996 3:35 PM
    From: Andrewl@aol.com
    Re: Galen

  Hey Matt, it's Dre again. There are three things that I have to
  tell you. One, I was wrong about Galen and the want-board. Two,
  I got a C on my paper. Three, I've had it with college and this
  job, and I need to move on. The whole situation here gives me
  the jeebs.
  
  Hold on. Someone at the door.



                      freedom and equality
                           since 1982

  2/2/96
  
  Mr. Bottacci,
  
  I'm happy to inform you that the matter of the backyard has been
  resolved, and also that Galen has begun to express his desires
  in a clear and unequivocal manner. As you requested, I have
  already contacted Ms. Pearson, and she will be visiting your
  brother's home this afternoon in order to observe him. She will
  be in touch with you shortly.

    Yours,
    Lance Cameron
    Community Support Facilitator
    Harbor Vocational and Residential Services. 



    Sent: Feb 2 1996 7:13 PM
    From: Andrewl@aol.com
    Re: Galen

  Sorry there. That was the lady from the mentally retarded group
  that came over a while back. She wanted to see Galen do the
  want-board. No problem. He does it, and he does it all by
  himself. Think that's great? Don't thank me. After I told Lance
  I didn't want any part of the want-board we argued like dogs,
  but then instead of firing me he just took up the slack himself.
  Spent a lot of time -- most of the past week -- here with Galen
  and the want-board, trying to get Galen to learn the thing
  before vacation (even though he **still** didn't know where he
  wanted to go) because after vacation, he said, it would be too
  late. Let me tell you, that man has patience. He tried
  everything you can think of. He **begged** Galen to pay
  attention. But Galen never did anything but stare out the back
  window at that old backyard.
  
  At the end of it I didn't know who I felt more sorry for, Galen
  or Lance. I came in that last day to find them sitting together
  in the darkening living room, quiet and gazing out the back
  window, the want-board abandoned on the table. All that time
  wasted, I thought. A real shame.
  
  "Hey man, did your best," I said, because I hated seeing the two
  of them sit there that way.
  
  "Andrew, do you still have the key to the back door?" Lance
  said.
  
  "Yes."
  
  "Go and get it."
  
  I didn't like the sound of it, but I did what he said. It took
  me a few minutes to find it; it's never been used. When I came
  back out into the living room Lance pointed me over to the door.
  He said, "When I count to three, unlock it."
  
  He counted to three. I swear Galen must have been counting
  along, because the instant I put that key in the lock and lock
  went `click' he popped from his chair and sped right across the
  room as fast as I have ever seen him run, grinning and laughing
  and waving his arms all over. But Lance popped up from his chair
  too, and he moved just a little bit faster. He slipped himself
  right between Galen and the little hallway in front of the door,
  and stuck that black board up under Galen's face.
  
  I said, "That's not so cool."
  
  "Just leave the door open until I tell you to close it." Lance
  nudged the board against Galen's chest, and Galen looked down at
  it, surprised, as if after all this time he'd never seen the
  thing before. Lance made a gesture toward the two big pictures
  of the Coke and the 7-Up, then lifted the machine, pretending to
  allow Galen to go through, then right away put the board back in
  front of him again. Galen looked over Lance's shoulder, at the
  open door, and then he looked hard at the machine for a long
  time, maybe two or three minutes. His whole face creased up with
  hard thought, struggling, painful thought, and then -- I
  couldn't believe it -- he lifted his hand to the board, and he
  pressed a button. The machine said, "I'd like a Coke." Lance put
  the can of soda to Galen's lips -- not for long though, just
  long enough for Galen to get a taste -- and then he pulled the
  can away. Then, Lance took one step back toward the door, so
  that Galen could move one step closer to the outside. When Galen
  figured out he couldn't go any farther, he put his hand to the
  board and pressed the button again. The board said, "I'd like a
  Coke," and Lance gave Galen another sip, just enough to get the
  taste, and took one more step back. Galen stepped forward, and
  pressed the button again, "I'd like a Coke," and Lance gave him
  another sip.
  
  Lance said, "Close the door." And so I did.
  
  Galen pressed the button again. "I'd like a Coke." And Lance
  gave him another sip.
  
  We tricked your brother into wanting Coke.



                      vigilance, compassion


  2/3/96
  
  Mr Matthew Bottacci:
  
  Yesterday I visited Galen's home in order to verify claims made
  by Mr. Cameron regarding improvements made to Galen's living
  conditions. I will say at the outset that I was very surprised,
  and impressed, by the appearance of the backyard. The hole was
  filled up, the ground cleared of hazardous objects, the weeds
  and brush mowed down. In the driveway was a pickup truck filled
  with rolls of sod, and Mr. Cameron was himself spreading one of
  them across an edge of the yard. While he did not say so, I was
  to learn from Andrew that the material and equipment had all
  been purchased by Mr. Cameron with his own means, and that Mr.
  Cameron was single-handedly landscaping the yard with donated
  vacation time. The work is not yet finished, but I expect the
  yard will be quite safe for Galen within several days.
  
  At the time of my visit Galen was using his speaking device with
  some enthusiasm. There were six pictures on the board, all
  representations of drink or food items. Evidently Galen uses the
  board so continuously that he has gained weight, and he did seem
  healthy compared to how he looked the last time I visited. He
  has even, it seemed, forgotten about the backyard. It may be
  that with its appearance so changed, the backyard no longer
  holds whatever meaning it held for him previously.
  
  Now, unlike before, Galen is able to acquire some of the things
  he wants. Should Galen continue to use the board, we should hope
  that Galen's staff over time increase the number of pictures so
  that Galen can enjoy an increasingly widening range of choices.
  
  In light of these changes, I am no longer able to advise you to
  remove Galen from his current home. Galen will need a new
  live-in, of course, by the end of the month, since Andrew has
  resigned. I don't suppose HVRS will have a problem finding
  someone.

    Sincerely,
    Ann Pearson
    Chairperson, Friends of the Mentally Retarded



    Sent: Feb 5 1996 6:42 AM
    To: Matthew Bottacci
    From: Andrewl@aol.com
    Re: outahere

  Just wanted to say bye. College was a mistake, cost me five long
  years and a pile of money -- I'll be in debt till I'm forty. But
  now it's behind me, and fit to be forgotten. I guess you heard
  about the backyard. It's finished now, and Lance has been trying
  to get Galen to go outside and enjoy the sun and breeze. Galen
  won't have anything to do with it. His world is that want-board,
  now. There's nothing else.
  
  People ask me what I want to do next, when I leave here. I know
  there's something. But everything, when I say it, sounds wrong.

    Dre 



  Michael Sato (michael661@msn.com)
-----------------------------------
  Michael Sato spent most of his life in the San Francisco Bay
  Area, but now lives in a factory town in Japan, where he teaches
  English, dabbles in translation, and waits for the dollar to
  weaken so that he can change his money and return to the U.S.
  His stories have appeared on the Internet in Eclectica and
  AfterNoon.



  The Law Enforcer of Eagle Town   by Richard Behrens
=====================================================
....................................................................
  Standing up for what's right is never without risks.
....................................................................

  i. burnt angels, soaring home
-------------------------------

  That day the sun was hiding behind the clouds like a wounded
  child, but it took me more than a few seconds to adjust my eyes
  to the dark interior of the store. First the flour sacks came
  into focus, then the glass candy cases, the shelves of baked
  beans in their silvery cans, the saddle bags, the harnesses and
  the flatboards against the far wall. He was sitting with two
  Papal agents, his cane chair creaking against the flatboards
  under all that weight. What I remember was a small card table
  between them, some papers laid out so they could all read
  whatever was printed. Then there was a bird, a small blue-beaked
  thing with thin wings and sad eyes, his stick-like foot chained
  to the table with a tiny lock. The creature would struggle, flap
  madly into the air, turning into a propeller swirl of feathers
  and squawks, then flop back down onto the card table, defeated,
  abandon freedom for a passing moment, then renew its frenzy with
  another mad flapping of wings. It flew up, clopped down, over
  and over.
  
  I was twelve and was coming in from the station wagon with my
  father and sister that first time and he took us by surprise,
  otherwise we wouldn't have gone into the store that afternoon.
  His three hundred pounds fell in bags down the side of his seat,
  the cushion under him obliterated. His thin white shirt was
  folded under him; large pools of sweat were about his arms and
  gut, streamers of it coming down from under the yellow straw hat
  into the folds of his warty neck. His bug eyes turned toward my
  father, scanning his prey before the attack.
  
  My father's hand went limp and cold as he held me about the
  neck, then withdrew and fell to his side, now powerless and
  obsolete. His hand remembered as well as he did that Shingle had
  invisible eyes that crept out into the night, over the onion
  fields and locust groves, probing into the bedroom windows and
  basement workshops. My father, who in his day had been a
  backyard wrestler, was a small mite in the presence of the law
  enforcer.
  
  "Even'n, Yardley." The bug eyes were now locked, hypnotizing,
  suddenly darker around the rims as if a mist of evil had just
  descended over Shingle. His voice was laconic and level,
  emotionless without a hint of intention.
  
  "Officer Shingle," my father said, the crack in his voice
  betraying fear. "I just came to get some paint for the cottage."
  
  "I didn't ask what you were here for, Yardley. I just "Just one
  minute, Yardley." His damned bug eyes cut across the room to my
  father standing by the oak counter. "I got a couple of questions
  for you, you mind this time of afternoon?'
  
  "No, sir."
  
  "Then pull up a handful of those nuts and let's have a
  conversation, you and me." He gestured toward the cane seat next
  to him. Hesitantly, my father took a bag of walnuts from
  Whinstanley's counter and slid over to the cane seat, sitting
  down with the slow measure of a man getting into his final
  electric chair. Shingle grinned and slapped my father's thigh.
  My father shuddered and then slumped, his head bowed more out of
  fright than respect, and his hands cupped before his belly.
  
  Shingle let loose his word horde: "We got some trouble over in
  Harvestville again with a couple of Clays. You know them, no?
  Well, I was checking up in these here county courthouse records
  and it seems you bought some land off one of them. Not one of
  them but a Eustace Gamble who married a Clay a few months before
  you came to him with those bank notes, remember? Good, its good
  to see your memory improving, Yardley. So this Gamble went and
  spilled some of his liquor into the river trying to keep the
  snarks from getting it and by accident he took a tumble and
  cracked his skull on a log, rushed to a hospital, and made some
  weird death bed confession about a railroad in some of the
  basements around here. You know anything you ain't letting on,
  Yard?"
  
  "Mr. Shingle, if I had a story line to tell I'd tell it right
  quick, you know that."
  
  "Yeah, I know. We go back a ways, back to when you boxed in the
  Sand League and I was going to be your manager. But times
  change. I aim to keep to the letter of the law around here, and
  these folks from Cedar Crest Division want me to check out some
  of the basements around here. I suppose I can start with yours,
  now right?"
  
  "Yes, sir."
  
  "You know a man named Brown?"
  
  My father's silence betrayed his fear. It was as if a bullet had
  struck him in the knee and he was damned if he was going to let
  on about it. His eyes closed tight as if the lowering of the
  lids would help avoid detection.
  
  "No need to answer," Shingle sighed. "I know you're scared of
  that man. He beat you in mud wrestling back in the Plains and
  when you whipped him back he swore to cut your throat and feed
  your apple to the hounds. Well, don't worry, we got him up at
  the Point and he's behind five rows of steel wasting away and
  he'll never come out to beat you or anybody. Caught him sneaking
  across the line with a trunk full of clowns from the coast. Oh,
  he talked all right -- talked about what you and him were doing
  in the Plain and how you got that chain saw motor, remember?"
  
  "Yes, sir." My father spoke from behind those trembling eyelids.
  
  "So, let's take a look at that basement and we'll spin out to
  the Point to identify some faces. Sorry to ruin your little
  afternoon painting the cottage, but Yard, we got to get to the
  letter of the law. Stuff ain't right if the letter's tampered
  with, now."
  
  "Yes, sir. I deserve it, sir."
  
  "That's what I'd like to hear. There's strength in that, Yard.
  You know there is."
  
  It took three men -- the two Papal agents and Whinstanley -- to
  move Shingle out of the cane seat he was stuck in. As he puffed
  and heaved, I paid mind to my sister who was terrified, her
  little knees shaking, her eyes tearing like someone had just
  died. I put my arms around her and she backed off, not wanting
  to be touched.
  
  We all piled into Shingle's rambling brown sedan, the man
  stuffing himself behind the wheel with a fluid plop, and were
  soon cutting down the mill roads past the pump stations and the
  irrigation ditches, across the deserted lot behind our
  neighborhood, and the thin dirt path we had taken just an hour
  earlier to get to the store in the first place. Then, we emptied
  out in the front of the wooden screened porch where Mother sat
  in a large wicker chair. When she saw us emerge from the Shingle
  car, along with the fat man himself and two city folk she
  couldn't identify, she got up, her gingham dress falling
  shapeless about her, and withdrew into the house, slamming the
  door tight.
  
  The car almost overturned with getting the Enforcer out and this
  time even my father helped, ironic since he was the one who was
  just about to lose everything to this man. I couldn't watch.
  
  "Your woman got a nice welcome for folks," Shingle growled. "So
  open the hatch and let's have a look see."
  
  The city folk went to the metal door over the stairs down and
  started to fumble with the lock. Mother came out like a raging
  fury and threw herself against the red rusted bar with her solid
  foot. "No," she said. "You open that door, my life is killed
  forever."
  
  Shingle wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his fat
  hand. "Look, Lois, you ain't got a pot to piss in here. You
  think because you tell me to go away, I'm going to go away and
  forget it? It's over already. Just accept that, is all."
  
  "I have children," she said.
  
  "Yeah, and they're going to be just fine. But we got Yardley
  here who broke the letter of the law. We don't tolerate the
  breaking of the letter. It says even in the scriptures to change
  not a letter one jot, or something like that, is all. See, I'm
  the Enforcer and I have to come when a rule's been bent or
  something's been spelled out wrong."
  
  "You're just an evil man!" she hissed. "With rotting meat in
  your belly and a head full of fat lies!"
  
  Shingle lowered his lids for a pause with a sort of lost boy
  sadness, then came up again with an angry fist that hit my
  mother across the mouth. She fell to the side like a collapsing
  house of cards. "Open it," he said to the city folk while Mother
  pounded the ground with the force of impotent rage.
  
  The city folk cracked the bar with some special instrument they
  kept hidden behind their bodies, but it came apart as if it were
  tissue paper, the bar falling to the side and clattering on the
  path. They went down into the hole and there was a tense moment
  while flickering light danced against the sides of the descent.
  
  "What you got?" Shingle said, lifting a large leg onto the
  concrete step leading to the stairs.
  
  "Yep, A.J." came a nasal voice. "We got a stash."
  
  My father heard the voices from down in his workshop and leaned
  against the picket post, faint and pale, beads of sweat dripping
  onto his flannel collar. "Jesus in Heaven," he said. "Lois, this
  is the end."
  
  The snarks removed fourteen clown suits from the basement and
  six boxes of orange pom-poms, all of which were faded and
  obviously well worn. Some of the polka dotted pants were grease
  stained and worn through with many holes, patched together
  sloppy and veined with stitching from various rips and tears.
  Shingle cornered my father against the slats of the house and
  held a pom-pom to his nose like he was trying to stuff it.
  
  "You know where the shit inside these clothes went?"
  
  "I ain't saying," my father said, summoning a bit of courage
  that had been absent for the past hour of his ordeal.
  
  "You got a railroad, Yard boy. You don't have no bargaining
  power is how I see it. Now I want this thing: why you keep the
  threads after the shits were gone? You walking around the house
  in your Bozo nose? You want to be a shit clown chromo just like
  them?"
  
  My father maintained a stoic silence.
  
  "How many you running for? You paint their faces and fix them up
  in dungarees? You can't do that around here, Mister! You know
  that from back in the Point! I just don't believe you'd be so
  stupid to let all this stuff get moldy down there, guy. The real
  slick operators burn the stuff in trash cans and bury the ashes
  deep in Rahoon and the Winneskeag. Tell me, Yardley, how many
  you running for?"
  
  "I didn't have no railroad, Shingle."
  
  "You like to dress up then? You put these buttons on and make
  your little kids laugh?"
  
  My sister who was crying and pulling at her red ponytails, now
  spat out, "Leave daddy alone!"
  
  The fat man turned his predatory eyes toward the freckled girl
  who receded from him as if she were staring into the face of an
  evil spirit that arose from the darkness of her bathroom mirror.
  The muscles of her face, already tense, withdrew into a rictus
  of terror.
  
  To my dying day, I will not forgive that fat shit for doing that
  to her. He didn't have to. He could have ignored her and gone
  about his damned business with my father. But he turned to her
  and forged into her mind some image that will make her not well
  for the rest of her life -- an act that could have been avoided
  so easily. But he did it just to spite, just to spread a bit of
  his evil about, because he was the man with the badge,
  sanctioned by the state, capable of anything including murder, a
  man who has beaten children until they bled, who has broken up
  more families than death itself. He turned to her with red
  furious anger in his demon-haunted face and said with a snarl:
  
  "Your daddy, little girl, is about to get the Point!"
  
  And that's all I have to say about that day. The rest I don't
  care to remember.



  ii. on this parched earth, in flesh
-------------------------------------
  
  The month after my father was taken, we had a locust sweep over
  the fields and most of the farmers were out with their guns
  firing the poison pellets into the air and running in relays
  back to the gas pumps. Old Man Snaggle had a rusty old
  flamethrower he used over the empty lots and got many of them
  single-handedly, but at the last moment his fuel pump backfired
  and he got a face full of fire. His hair was burned right off
  and his eyebrows melted till he looked like a shaven cancerous
  egg. He sat in his bed and stared at the walls until he died
  from fever two weeks later. Old Man Snaggle is considered a bit
  of hero around here because of how he went out and gave his life
  to fight the locusts.
  
  The crops were tainted with residue and the farmers got scared.
  The next winter a fever killed most of the animals and we were
  trying to make do but there was no manure left in reserve.
  Collections were taken up to order the pesticides through a
  mail-order catalog.
  
  And we, the Yardleys, just gave up. Father was gone. Our land
  went to rot, our shed collapsed, we sold our cows in town. There
  was nothing left for us.
  


  iii. in the basements, buried dreams
--------------------------------------

  Like fools rushing madly in paradise, we took in one more clown,
  a dirty little fellow who showed up one night in a rainstorm
  breathing asthmatically and coughing blood from his thick red
  lips. We carried him half-dead and bleeding to the upstairs
  guest room and laid him out on the floor over a large tarp that
  stained quickly with his drippings. In his dirty white glove we
  found a card with our father's code name on it. This was how the
  Chromo found us, a tiny strip of paper thrust into his spastic
  hand by some sympathetic ear with a frightened but kind heart
  who decided to take the mentally deranged creature, so pitiful
  and loveless, and drop into his fingers a tiny bit of hope. The
  Chromo had followed, God knows how, and was now safe in our
  house.
  
  Mom was cautious. "I think he has a fever and something broke up
  in there. Look, the blood has these white flakes in it like his
  throat was coming apart in bits."
  
  The clown gasped and opened his dropping eyes. "You folks don't
  need no Klappo to worry about. Just put him outside in the dog
  pit and let him go to sleep."
  
  "Nonsense," Mom said maternally, wiping more blood from around
  his mouth. "We ain't going to let some living thing die like
  this. And if you have to go it's going to be in a decent folks'
  home, not in a pile of dung in the road."
  
  "But zooks, if you ain't kind to Klappo!"
  
  He stayed with us a few days, shivering on a straw pallet in the
  basement, until the bleeding stopped and his eyesight was
  restored; then we sent him on his way. We stood at the edge of
  the wood and watched his slow haunted form slink into the
  mysterious depths of the trees. In his pantaloons he had a
  series of coded instructions to the next safe house in
  Plainsfield. This time, we were careful to fully burn the
  clothes to ash and then to scatter the ashes in a nearby
  cornfield. I accomplished this by filling my pockets with the
  soot and then strolling through the weeds with streamers pouring
  down my leg from a carefully placed hole in one pocket.
  
  Just as I was heading home, I found Jack Webster, the retarded
  son of an iron worker, rummaging through some garbage by the
  landfill. Under the gray sky he looked sick, his slack mouth was
  thick with drool. His eyes buzzed around a bit but he found me
  walking through the weeds, my hands pushed hard into my pockets.
  
  "Your daddy was a clown lover!" he screamed, spewing tracers of
  spittle. "A clown lover and he liked to put his thing in a jar
  of bugs!"
  
  I caught fire, angry at the misfortune my father's operation had
  suffered: losing his partners, having his home invaded and being
  thrown into a Papal jail, his family humiliated. Years later,
  when I was traveling up north near the Point, working on my
  history books, I worked hard to convince myself that my father
  was good, and although he broke the laws he was justified in the
  eyes of the Lord for what he did. But back in those Eagle Town
  days, I knew only red anger at having suffered. I wanted my
  father home again, sitting by the fire and talking with Judge
  Leaton or the anarchist Frencke, fixing trap doors in the
  basement and painting the wooden shingles on the roof of the
  cottage. Thinking all these scenes and how distant they were, I
  stood on the edge of that mountainous landfill, facing that
  drooling idiot son of Kent Webster and felt blood-red anger.
  
  I pulled my fists out of my pockets, noticing in the chaos of
  the moment that the knuckles were stained deep in the ash, and
  dove for his sweaty white neck. I remember a creepy face,
  pushing its squat nose toward me, mucous dripping onto the upper
  lip, and those cracked teeth yellow stained gnashing up and
  down. What I can't remember is the knife wheeling up in an arc
  and catching me in the left nostril, ripping out a piece of
  nose. I pushed my palms into my spurting wound and held them
  there, listening to my own screams.
  
  "Stop saying those filthy things!" I cried. "I'm a good boy
  raised by a good daddy. Take those things back!"
  
  In my mind, I pummeled Jack Webster several times in the stomach
  with one fist, knocking him flat. He fell unconscious and
  spitting blood from lips. His skin was pale white, the lips
  darkening to a thick red and the nose glowing with that hideous
  malformation of the Chromos in the basement. But, of course, I
  never laid a finger on the retard, it was all a fantasy caused
  by the stinging pain being driven straight into my skull. For a
  moment, before I lost it all, I saw a grinning clown skull with
  a party hat and tasted the grimy texture of leather in my mouth,
  the sides of my face smothered in the cascading folds of fat
  slithering down the edges of a bar stool.
  
  "Ha!" Billy shouted. "Now you got a red nose! Just like them!"
  and his leather boots fled across the crunching landfill and
  rotting dog bones. He danced at a distance, a dark shadow
  against the fading light, then came back laughing. He took out
  these three little bamboo shoots that were tied together and
  started pressing it to his lips, coming out with these strangely
  musical passages that spoke of something beyond reason. It
  actually lulled me, despite my pain.
  
  I lay on the garbage heap, a piece of my nose flapping to the
  side like the door to some forgotten basement that wouldn't
  shut. Billy Webster stood by all that time playing dreamily on
  that crazy wooden flute, piping to the mountains of garbage.
  When I realized the full force of what had happened to me, I
  asked him politely, "Don't your daddy want you home or
  something?"
  
  "No, he's all right alone. Ever since Mom died he just sits
  there, goes to work, comes home, sits there. He ain't no clown
  lover like your daddy!"
  
  He held up the blade, stained a dull red with my blood. "I got
  to cut you one if you touch me. I already cut your nose
  something gruesome. Now you're red, like them."
  
  "All right," I said, lifting my weakened head to the air above.
  "You win this round. What do you know about my daddy?"
  
  The retard smiled and jumped up and down, his knife and flute
  clutched in the same tight fist. "He had those clown women and
  he went to them like Mom and Daddy used to do after taking
  dickweed!"
  
  "Where, when? What are you talking about?"
  
  "That guy who used to pick his head, what was it? The guy, the
  one who, he came down with those trucks and gave your daddy a
  hard rap about -- the guy who used to make those movies with the
  clowns -- what's his name?"
  
  "I'm tired of this. I'm going home to stanch my nose."
  
  I got only a few yards before he called out to me, a thick
  slobbering voice lost in its wetness and knotted tongue. "I seen
  them, those clown bitches sucking on the roots, getting all
  light headed."
  
  He fell to his knees and scrawled ciphers in the dirt, little
  squiggles and worms, trying to explain something, some design
  from out of the recesses of his damaged mind. Spittle fell from
  his lips onto his sketches, obliterating some of the details,
  but his wet dirt encrusted fingers would retrace the lines
  exactly as they had been, obsessive and definite.
  
  "Say Jack," I said loud over the garbage piles. "What you
  doing?"
  
  He giggled, kicked the dirt out with his heels, wiping out all
  traces of his work, and then skipped down the path toward the
  cyclone fencing, wrapping around the landfill mountain and
  disappearing into the brambles and cedar trees of Old Mill Road.
  
  I put a soothing palm to my wounded nose, placing the flap back
  as carefully as pulling up my pants in public. Off in the
  distance, the low moans of the foghorn blasted from the factory
  gates, the evening signal for the workers.
  
  My mind was on fire with thoughts about my father: what exactly
  had he been involved with? Who were the men in blue suits who
  came to take away the sick and dying clowns from the basement?
  Who were those men that Shingle had talked about and why had my
  father been so terrified by the name Brown?
  
  The back of my skull knew the answers, saw faces and smelled
  liquor on the breath of strangers peering through holes in
  wooden planks. When I was just an infant, there were comings and
  goings, men in blue, well-tailored folk with just a hint of red
  lipstick and white puffs around the eyes, straw hair dyed a deep
  purple but carefully combed and tucked under wide-brimmed hats.
  They carried suitcases which were never opened, and smoked a
  thick root that I haven't seen since childhood. Father seemed
  afraid of them, but he never failed to look them in the eyes.
  These men were not friendly, but they were in alliance.
  
  That night there was a meteor shower and my mother nursed my
  nose on the porch so we could watch the tracers of light cutting
  lines through the sky. Sarah was fixing her little tails and she
  poked a finger at the stars over and over saying, "I wanna go
  there... and I wanna go there... and there... and there... and I
  wanna go there."
  
  There was a deep sadness on that porch, three lonely people in
  wicker chairs staring at the dome of the sky. It had been made
  very clear, all too clear, that we would not get to see daddy
  again until his release, a date that was never revealed to us
  but promised ("within a reasonable time for such an offense,"
  was the official wording that came in the mail). But even if
  that reasonable time ever came and my father's body came
  walking, somehow, up that garden path, it really wouldn't be
  father anymore. There would be no more father inside those
  hollow eyes. The Point was known to do that to a man, remove him
  from himself until there was nothing left.
  
  We were now alone with our memories and unanswered questions.



  iv. across the troubled worlds
--------------------------------

  Six years later, I saw A.J. Shingle again. He had just unleashed
  a wave of terror against Eagle Town, the worst since the wars,
  spreading his thick but long fingers throughout the townships,
  along the dirt roads, into the basements, along the cellar pits,
  down the chimneys, into people's private spaces and minds,
  through the hatches, and blowing lids off with the fury of
  tornadoes. The man rolled down Highway 31 in his convertible,
  stuffed behind the wheel with a huge cigar stuck in his flabby
  face. The tip glowed red and announced his coming like a homing
  beacon crying to the night sea. Seventeen special agents drove
  in fifteen shiny government sedans, a bizarre funeral procession
  jumping the gun and arriving before the death of the
  soon-to-be-deceased.
  
  By that time, I was acquainted with Charlie Papp, the kid from
  the other side of the Mill who came down in to the fields to
  play by the railroad yards. Charlie's family was better off than
  most in Eagle Town, well employed by the government for managing
  the import of rare foodstuffs like onions and yams. Old Man Papp
  used a home computer, the only one in the township, and
  communicated with the administration over a long thick cable
  that sprouted from the top of the white slated Papp home and
  snaked along the otherwise empty telephone poles down the
  interstate, off into the dusty distance.
  
  Charlie was white handed and didn't know the first thing about
  digging for roots, but he learned quick in the fields by the
  landfill. He even helped me get revenge on Jack Webster one
  autumn when we stuffed toads down the retard's pants and watched
  him hop off down the path screaming that his thing was being
  eaten. I felt I was giving Charlie an education in self-defense
  he had missed living in his insulated government regulation
  house.
  
  When Shingle blew down the interstate, Charlie and I were
  digging up roots by the underpass, our hands firm in the dirt.
  But we went running when the siren blasted and the cars went
  over the rickety wooden bridge dividing the steel mill from the
  fields. A lazy seagull, in fifty miles from the coast, careened
  and glided over the train of vehicles, the animal familiar guide
  to weird caravans, and came to rest on the bridge's head post, a
  knotted black eye screaming the scene.
  
  "Shingle," I muttered to Charlie.
  
  We ditched the tuber baskets and fled, pounding the dirt by the
  bridge and heading down the road into town. I had tears in my
  eyes and started to feel that tense knot in my throat reserved
  for moments of terror, visions of nightmarish creatures with
  large predatory fangs. I reached down and held Charlie by the
  neck, stopping him and pulling him by the side stone marker, a
  granite block with a single white arrow pointing toward Eagle
  Town.
  
  "We'd better stay here. When I was your age, my father walked
  right into the room with that man and I ain't seen him since
  that day."
  
  He looked up at me with sad drooping eyes. "I hate him," he
  said.
  
  His words cut through me. They were lacking hope, trailing into
  thin whispered left unrecognized. They reminded me of Sarah's
  pathetic attempt to drive fat Shingle off our father.
  
  "Don't worry, Charlie," I said. "It's like a raid, checking the
  basements for clowns. The railroad, like my daddy was doing.
  They'll do it and we'll stay here. When their cars came back
  over that bridge, we'll go help the others, okay? I promise,
  Charlie. I won't let him near you."
  
  Charlie nuzzled his head into my hips and clung to my thighs. He
  cried and then sat down on the granite block.
  
  But Shingle and his men never came back over the bridge. The
  raid went on well into the night and from our embankment we
  could see the lines of white robed citizens being marched off
  down the road.
  
  Charlie was shaking. "I don't like this." Red-veined fear was
  popping in his eyes.
  
  I put my arm around him and held tight while sounds of people
  wailing came drifting over the embankment and highway
  underpasses, echoing the lamentations of my people through the
  tunnels of Eagle Town.
  
  "Let's go in -- they may need some help." I pulled him along and
  felt his shoulder struggling. He didn't want to go, but I forced
  him, pulling his little body by the arms, locking my hands under
  his armpits. We moved down the highway until we got to Old Mill
  Road and then turned into the center of town, which was
  strangely deserted, just a few abandoned cars sweltering in the
  night heat.
  
  "They all gone, Ben," Charlie was running from store to store
  looking in through the windows. "He done something bad to them."
  
  Just then a bright spotlight flashed through the night, came
  down on us squarely as we stood in the clearing. It was burning
  like the landing lights of some air ship coming down from the
  clouds.
  
  "Duck, Charlie!" I pushed him to the ground and buried his head
  beneath my chest and entwined arms. Riddles of bullets coughed
  up the dust about us, little firecrackers in a mad dance about
  our crumpled limbs.
  
  A loud voice announced over a P.A. system, "Just keep still and
  lay there 'til we can come in and get you!"
  
  I lifted up my head, keeping Charlie crushed against my chest
  and saw, through the dust, the huge shape of Aronius Jay
  Shingle, Law Enforcer of Eagle County, moving slowly toward us.
  My heart sank and I felt something lift from my body. It no
  longer mattered whether I fought or died, or dissolved into the
  dust. My only concern was for Charlie's safety, so I hurled
  myself from the ground and dove head on right into the wall of
  flesh, ramming straight into that stretched white suit with the
  vest and watch fob.
  
  "Run Charlie! Run!" And Charlie ran, straight off into the
  night, the crack of insects in the air about him, his screams
  piercing the blackness. Little kid screams, more horrifying than
  anything an adult could make.
  
  Huge arms seized me and I felt a brute strength I would have put
  past Shingle. His grip was viselike and I could barely move,
  Within seconds I was inert, weeping, muttering my father's name.
  
  "God damn you Yardleys!" came his gruff and disgusting voice. "I
  never seen such a determined strain."
  
  And I knew what he meant. He saw most of the human race as a
  virus that proliferated whether they were helpful or harmful to
  the propagation of the race as a whole. His contempt for
  humanity was appalling, and caused him to commit heinous acts,
  atrocities without limits.
  
  He chuckled and turned his angry hold on me into a warm, almost
  paternal comfort. "You go about your business, Benjamin Yardley.
  I already wrecked you, right? That's the way I see it. No use
  belaboring the point, is there?" One hand reached up for his
  still smoking cigar.
  
  So that was it. The spotlight, the spattering of bullets. He was
  playing with us, like he played with my sister eight years back.
  He could have let us go, chuckling at two frightened boys
  scampering across a town square, but he was determined to dig as
  many wounds into our memory as he could, chuckling as he
  spattered bullets and then reached for his megaphone. He was an
  unopposed wall of irrational power who came to crush families
  and land with indiscriminate force. And now he was offering to
  let me go, his mission accomplished.
  
  As I shivered in his arms I allowed myself one moment of imaging
  he was my father. I dug my chin into his belly and tried to feel
  warm love. It was fleeting, barely there, more in my imagination
  than in flesh, and hardly sufficient to satisfy my enormous
  craving. But it was all I had. For one tiny second, I thought I
  could almost see his tender face calling across the lonely
  years, telling that he loved me. Then I let myself go and took
  off into the night, running faster than time could follow.



  Richard Behrens (behrens@pipeline.com)
----------------------------------------
  Richard Behrens is a fiction writer and a native New Yorker
  posing as a computer programmer and Web site developer. Over the
  last ten years his short stories, poems and essays have appeared
  in literary magazines, including Chakra, Blue Light Red Light,
  Bogus Books, Artitude, Cinemaphobia, Forbidden Lines and
  Web-based magazines including Planet Magazine and Dark Planet.
  He lives in New Jersey with his wife Sandrea and son Kristopher.
    
    

  I am Retarded   by Tom Armstrong
==================================
  
  My dog is smarter than me.
  
  Recently, when I arrived home from work -- sweaty and tired, my
  pockets stuffed with currency and gold nuggets, tips from my
  minimum-wage job driving a dynamite truck -- I found Sharik out
  on the back porch grilling a porterhouse on the hibachi and
  reading the cantos of Ezra Pound.
  
  "Bad dog," I yelled. "Put that book back on the shelf and get
  some exercise! Play with your ball!"
  
  He dropped his glasses, came inside, leaped onto his bench and
  typed the following on his keyboard: "All the other dogs are
  reading Ezra Pound! You're a very mean master. No other dogs I
  know have a retarded owner. I want to run away and join a pack!
  I want to howl with the wolves and study James Joyce!" He ran up
  the stairs whimpering, his tail between his legs.
  
  His words hurt me deeply. Yes, I am retarded. And there are
  never fifteen minutes at a time when I can forget.
  
  I feel sorry for my dog. I wish he had a normal person as a
  master, someone who could give him a better life and love him
  more. And I wish he had a swimming pool, a one-acre glen and a
  foul-smells garden in the backyard like his dog friends. But my
  wages are meager and it would all be far more than what I can
  afford.
  
  Sharik's unhappiness with me made me deeply sad, which was
  worrisome for my friends. I called in sick to work for ten days,
  staying at home with the shades drawn. I started drinking little
  dark-brown cans of Hershey's chocolate and stopped keeping the
  currency in my wallet crisply ironed with pleats running down
  from the presidents' noses.
  
  My dog stayed upstairs in his bedroom, updating his Web site,
  rabidwolverines.com, where he sells books written using software
  he's developed. The software combines the minds of dead authors
  for collaborations of new book-length manuscripts. His newest
  was a cookbook written by Jean-Paul Sartre and Julia Child:
  Being, Nothingness and the Perfect Souffle.



  A sonic boom startled me into a standing position out of the
  La-Z-Boy, where I was sleepily getting grilled and shaken. To my
  surprise, I saw that it was nighttime. A Roman candle lit up the
  sky in flickering streaks of red. Within a minute, I heard
  screeching tires from the direction of my driveway.
  
  A normal person could have assimilated these sights and sounds
  without the need of a lot of synaptic activity, but I am not so
  lucky. I have to think about what I have just seen and heard and
  organize its symbolic meaning. The sonic boom, though it was
  heard throughout the neighborhood, was clearly a signal for me.
  I am the only retarded person within a square mile, and no one
  else would need a clue that is so gauche. It means -- since this
  is a Tuesday -- that someone is about to arrive. The red Roman
  candle tells me that it is Cthrwsqwz who is coming over. The red
  sparks are meant (I think) to suggest Cthrwsqwz's feathery
  headdress. The screech on the driveway would provide normal
  listeners with a mother lode of clues. My friends could discern
  the make of the bike and the exact imprint of the skid just from
  the sound. And if they knew the motorcycle, they could tell
  quite a bit about the psychology of the rider and anything he
  brought with him. But I am retarded; and the most that I can
  tell is that it must be Cthrwsqwz who is at my door.
  
  It _is_ Cthrwsqwz, and he's brought Tjrbkspd with him. I'm
  delighted. These are my wonderful friends who are especially
  nice to me. I can see that they intend to stay for a while since
  they are each carrying in a six-pack of Baffin Island Yodelling
  Goat, Canada's finest. And Tjrbkspd has a little package of
  peanut butter-on-cheese crackers for Hairbrush, my parrot. It's
  so thoughtful; those crackers are Hairbrush's favorite. And
  Cthrwsqwz has a jar of dill pickle slices. From a tradition
  started in pick-up bars, one sticks a quartered slice of dill
  pickle into the throat of a Goat bottle while sipping the brew.
  
  We go into the kitchen, where Hairbrush is quick to join us.
  It's so much fun for me and my parrot when the guys come over.
  Hairbrush walks on our heads and does impersonations from the
  movies she's been watching. "Squawk!" she says, and then, in the
  voice of Uma Thurman, "the baby tomato is trailing behind as
  they walk, so the papa tomato goes back and squishes him. And he
  says 'ketchup.' Squawk -- "
  
  We all laugh. The line is from a movie that was broadcast over
  the Bird Channel. People don't watch movies anymore. They're all
  too plodding and predictable. But we still recognize a lot of
  the dialogue.
  
  Hairbrush is lively and animated when the guys are over. It
  makes me so happy to see her this way. But when she runs out of
  impersonations, I worry that the guys will quickly get bored and
  will find excuses to leave. That never quite happens, but I feel
  I'm on the spot to try to think about things to say myself. I
  try sometimes to tell the guys about explosions that have
  happened at work recently, but I talk very slowly and I can
  sense that they are antsy for me to get out of my mouth more
  quickly what it is I have to say.
  
  Happily, Cthrwsqwz and Tjrbkspd never tire of talking, and
  before their spirits have a chance to flag, they are into
  friendly fights over their favorite topics, which range from
  Beetlejuice to Zen Buddhism.
  
  And tonight the guys get to yammering at full throttle.
  Cthrwsqwz begins gesticulating frenetically. His fingers splay
  and twitch. He tugs at his shirt and moves about in choppy
  steps. The words come like a geyser. "Yicmeatlo uplorpco splek.
  Brando as santos de bardo," was a part of what he said.
  
  Tjrbkspd watches in that intensely focussed way he has,
  sometimes gesturing in tandem with Cthrwsqwz. Tjrbkspd jumps in
  with his siren of melded syllables when Cthrwsqwz pauses. I
  could catch only a few disconnected phrases: "optimize breakflow
  ... phojvolky torpe the younger type... remedial messenger,
  zenmar... how were the beefsteak tomatoes... screamers,
  tathagalpagarba!... PHOT!"

  I listened intently to the conversation, participating as best I
  could -- but as we all knew, I understood very little of what
  was going on. When they laughed at something, I laughed, too.
  But inside I felt fear and embarrassment. What we were laughing
  about, I couldn't know.
  
  Cthrwsqwz and Tjrbkspd are very kind to me. And their kindness
  is genuine. But it has to be as frustrating for them as it is
  for me that I understand only a little of what they talk about.
  
  I was caught off-guard when suddenly their yakking stopped and
  they were staring at me. I tried to seem nonchalant, tearing at
  the Goat label and poking at my pickle, but it seemed that
  everyone's attention was directed toward me. Even Hairbrush, who
  stood on the refrigerator, was giving me a stony stare.
  
  At issue was getting me to agree to go with them to a club the
  next evening. Apparently I was needed for some research they
  were conducting. I agreed to go, for fear of the consequences of
  not agreeing to go, and this pleased the guys. Then they told me
  that Sariphina-platt was likely to be there, and this made me
  very nervous.
  
  When our get-togethers end, they always leave together. I 
  can hear them starting up their conversation again as they
  scruff down the walkway, popping a wheelie and throwing
  thunderbolts into the spittoons. I can see that it is easier
  for them to get into the flow and excitement of their
  discussion when they do not have to try to include me.



  Up until a year ago, I was in a spotty, long-term relationship
  with the retarded woman Sariphina-platt. Every few weeks, we
  arranged to meet at her friend's house where we drank fermented
  grape juice and made love in the animal way. This is considered
  primitive and silly by average, smart people, but we enjoyed
  ourselves. Once, for a solid week, we insulated ourselves from
  all the pressures of being retarded. We holed up in an old-style
  hotel, talked simply to each other, loved each other, and tried
  to forget about other people and the culture we live in that is
  so complicated for us. For fun, we played two-dimensional chess
  in bed and finished games even if one of us was ahead by a
  knight or a passed pawn.
  
  Our bodies are not considered beautiful or sexy, primarily
  because we cannot afford all the surgery and tattoos that are de
  rigueur. Sariphina-platt has taken care to keep her hands
  stylish and heavily tattooed and has a modest job as a hand
  model for television commercials.
  
  After our delightful week together, we went back to our jobs and
  pretended not to know each other. Time passed, and I didn't call
  or e- mail Sariphina-platt. While anyone who comes to know
  either of us will quickly be aware that we aren't smart about
  anything, we try not to make people uncomfortable, so we pretend
  as best we can to seem normal. On those times when either of us
  sees another retarded person on the street, we quietly but
  quickly turn away.
  
  I don't pine for Sariphina-platt, but I think of her sometimes.
  I think of what it must be like to live comfortably in the
  world, like real people. And in my dreams, sometimes
  Sariphina-platt and I are married with a large family. In these
  dreams, when people talk to us, we always understand whatever is
  being said. And our infant children are robust and supremely
  normal -- jumping off the bookcases and chasing each other
  around the living room with firelogs and scissors.



  I picked up all the Hershey's cans in the living room, and
  generally cleaned up my house. It seemed to calm my extreme
  nervousness about the club date with Cthrwsqwz and Tjrbkspd with
  its possibility of running into Sariphina-platt. I tried to
  think up excuses to get out of it, but in our society, the worst
  thing a person can do is be unsociable. And my retardation makes
  me very vulnerable.
  
  Last year Cthrwsqwz had a three-dimensional name that was
  impossible for me to pronounce. For my benefit, he wore his name
  as a medallion on a chain around his neck. But one day he came
  over after he had dyed his chest hairs blue and, to be more
  stylish, had one of his arms surgically removed. When I saw him
  I couldn't recognize him. When word got around about my trouble
  identifying him, this bothered a lot of people. For a while
  there was talk about putting me in an institution for retarded
  people (called a university) where I could get care and lodging,
  and with help might get a Master's that would help me to cope
  with the people of this world, 99 percent of whom are much
  smarter than me.
  
  It remains a matter of intense fear that I might one day find
  myself dragged away in a straitjacket to Rutgers or UCLA where
  I'll have to do term papers and go to football games.
  
  Sharik came downstairs from his room while I was cleaning. He
  had sensed my fear and nervousness -- this wonderful dog -- and
  wanted to give me comfort. He had me sit on the couch where he
  placed his head on my lap and let me stroke the brown fur on his
  head.

  That morning, I had bought him the complete works of Proust and
  Balzac, setting the books just outside his bedroom door. And
  earlier still, I sent him an e-mail saying it would be fine with
  me if he read Pound anytime he wanted to.



  That evening, chtrwsqwz and tjrbkspd arrived at my house as
  planned. Tjrbkspd was wearing a shirt in a color I hadn't seen
  before. The new primary colors that the scientists are releasing
  are an overload for my sense of sight, but whenever I first see
  a new one, it fascinates me. The new color is called frobjnicht.
  Tjrbkspd tells me that the color isn't the primary color in its
  pure form; rather, it's a reddish yiktatish frobjnicht with
  perhaps a hint of yellow and scormeare.
  
  Then, Cthrwsqwz said to me in his speedy way "Validium grenidine
  thor _brak!_"
  
  _Validium_ is an old word that will expire in a week. It means
  "hop on the back of my bike." I don't know the words "grenidine"
  or "thor," but if what he really said was "grenitheen door" it
  would mean "the clouds are made of buttermilk." But what _that_
  might mean in the context of anything he would have to say to
  me, I cannot imagine. _Brak!_ can variously mean "remove your
  pants" or "would you like a soft drink with your sprouts
  sandwich?" In any case, I hopped on the back of the motorcycle.
  
  I ride as the third person on the bike, hanging onto Tjrbkspd's
  waist, smiling stupidly as I stare into his shirt.
  
  We arrive at the club which, like many in town, has a name that
  cannot be pronounced. Its name is four dimensional, made from
  light and time.
  
  The gist of what I'm told is that it's a gorpfucking club.
  Learning this scares me. I'm far too stupid to get involved with
  any gorpfucking, but Cthrwsqwz assures me that I needn't be
  anxious. He takes me to an anteroom inside the building and has
  me strip off my clothes. He places a helmet on my head that is
  lined with computer chips and has wires, transistors and metal
  plates on the outside. I am reluctant to wear this thing, partly
  because I think that anything with transistors must be a cruel
  practical joke. But Cthrwsqwz is a genuinely nice person (all
  the smart people are genuinely nice), so, with assurances from
  Tjrbkspd, I do what I am directed to do.
  
  In the center of the building there is a large hall crowded with
  people conversing with each other in small groups. So far as I
  can see, I am the only person who is naked or wearing a helmet.
  The others are all young and are fully and stylishly dressed.
  Many have wonderful tattoos and arms that are attached to their
  bodies in interesting places. While I can tell nothing about
  their behavior that seems odd, I know from my limited knowledge
  of clubs like this one that some are gorpfucking.
  
  I wander about the hall, losing sight of Cthrwsqwz and Tjrbkspd.
  I am pretty much ignored by all the people, but several glance
  over at me, looking first at my helmet, then at my face and then
  quickly at my genitals. This creates in me an odd mixture of
  embarrassment and excitement.
  
  After a while, I see Sariphina-platt several yards away. She,
  too, is naked and wearing a helmet. I approach her, but when I
  am as near as three feet, something magnetic at the front of our
  helmets causes our heads to lock in contact so firmly that we
  cannot pull away.
  
  My brain is then captured, like a rabbit in a snare. But for
  reasons I cannot understand, my sense of fear quickly ends, and
  it is as if the clouds have parted, revealing a sky that is a
  beautiful blue. And then the sky parts and the sun and stars
  come into focus and they are divine. I am in awe of how perfect
  it is. The beauty and my bliss are so intense and so complete
  that it is both unbearable and unbearable to suppose the feeling
  might end and my knowledge of the feeling might fade. I am
  hopelessly in love in a universe that is compassionate and just
  as it has to be. I am together with Sariphina-platt in a
  cavalcade of laughing and weeping. Our thoughts are not coded in
  words, but pass like a river flowing between us. It is ultimate
  beauty. Serene and delightful. Majestic and ineffable.



  It was hard to return to the routine of my life and job after
  that night of gorpfucking, but I was able to, and I was glad my
  depression had ended.
  
  Sariphina-platt began discussing with me the possibility of our
  combining our households. She had in mind the idea of leaving
  her apartment above a bowling alley and moving into my house. Of
  course, I am gleeful at the prospect.
  
  I had her come over to my house where she met Sharik and
  Hairbrush. Sharik played ball with her and, if he wasn't
  actually having a good time, he pretended that he was. He told
  me afterward that he thinks Sariphina-platt is very, very nice.
  Sariphina-platt told me that my dog is wonderful and that my
  parrot is a joy. Things went very well. As Sariphina-platt was
  leaving, Hairbrush sang " 'Til We Meet Again," in the voice of
  Marlene Dietrich, which left all of us in tears.
  
  "There is one last thing," Sariphina-platt told me as she got
  into a taxicab. "We will have to get the approval of my
  Clydesdale. You must meet him on Thursday."
  
  Her horse. It seems that the horse her parents bought her when
  she was small makes most of the decisions for her in life.
  Sariphina-platt is anxious, but insists that there is no getting
  around the need for our getting the approval of Rising Star
  before we can move in together.
  
  "There's something you need to know," she went on to say,
  "Rising Star is also Equus Majorca, the leader of the equine
  separatist movement."
  
  Of course, I am astonished. While for the most part it is
  considered rude for humans to stick their noses into the
  politics of other species, all news-aware humans know Equus
  Majorca, the author of We'll Take Colorado, a manifesto that
  demands that human-run America cede territory to set up an
  all-horse republic in the Rocky Mountains. Already, horses have
  taken over many of the suburbs of Denver and Colorado Springs.
  To further their political agenda, horses have been lying down
  on the runway at the Denver Airport to prevent planes from
  landing.
  
  The horse demands have recently been strengthened by support
  from many other animals. Felines United argues that humans
  should be eager to give up a state that is simplistically
  rectangular. But as a geometry-wise antelope writer pointed out
  in a National Geographic editorial, due to the curvature of the
  earth, Colorado is actually more of a rhombus. Others argue that
  humans should keep the state because it's a parallelogram.
  Congress tried to end the uprising by simply passing legislation
  declaring Colorado to be circular.



  I am wearing a new frobjnicht-colored suit when I arrive at
  Sariphina-platt's apartment. Her living room is large, clean and
  fashionable with photographs on the walls showing her lovely
  hands holding wrought iron perches and seed dispensers.
  
  "Brak!" she says.
  
  "Yes," I reply. "I _would_ like a Dr Pepper with my sprouts
  sandwich."
  
  We have a cordial conversation while seated on her sofa. I can
  hear below us the loud noises of bowling balls striking pins.
  And from a room nearby I hear the stomping sound of a large
  horse walking about.
  
  "I have to tell you," says Sariphina-platt, "that moving in with
  you would be a great convenience for us since the bowling alley
  is having us evicted for making too much noise."
  
  I smile in reply, gobbling down the last bite of the delicious
  sprouts sandwich.
  
  When it is time for the interview my attention turns toward the
  slimy feel of sweat covering my body. I loosen my necktie a tad
  and worry that her horse will be offended by the placement of my
  arms in sockets at each shoulder.



  Sariphina-platt leads me to the end of a short hallway where we
  stop in front of dutch doors. The top door is pushed open by the
  nose of an enormous beige horse who whinnies and then runs
  behind a curtain.
  
  It is quickly evident that behind the curtain is where the horse
  keeps his keypad, because a Times Square-style Linotype at the
  back of the room quickly spells out the word "Welcome."
  
  "Welcome to you, too!" I blurt.
  
  "I hope that we become fast friends," says a line of new words.
  "While I am known for insisting that humans call me Equus
  Majorca, I would like you to call me by the name Sariphina-platt
  gave me at the time of my birth, Rising Star!"
  
  "Thank you, Rising Star," I say. "Please call me Freedjor, which
  is my label this week."
  
  "Thank you, Freedjor" says the Linotype. "Can I know you by the
  name you were given at birth?"
  
  "Well," I say, "when I was born they just called me
  'the baby.'"
  
  "Then I will call you Freedjor this week," says the line of
  type. "Greetings, Freedjor!"
  
  It tickles me to see my new name in all those large letters.
  This horse is a very nice one. "Greetings to you, Rising Star!"
  
  "You should know, Freedjor, that my activities with the equine
  separatists will be ongoing and can only intensify. As much as I
  love Sariphina-platt and respect many humans, I cannot forget
  that humans have been on our back for thousands of years and
  have murdered us to make dog food and glue."
  
  At this point, Sariphina-platt has started to weep. I place my
  arm around her shoulder and say, "I would love for you and
  Sariphina-platt to come and live with me and my wolf, Sharik,
  and my parrot, Hairbrush. Sharik, by the way, is a strict
  vegetarian. We will all be close friends."
  
  "Your offer warms my heart. I know that you and Sariphina-platt
  belong together and that you can have a normal life. As for
  myself, I want to take you up on your offer, but I must go to
  Colorado! When we are evicted from our apartment by the bowling
  alley, I would like for Sariphina-platt to move in with you
  while I go to Colorado to advance the welfare of noble horses.
  We can remain in close contact by e-mail. And, of course, we can
  visit each other frequently!"
  
  Sariphina-platt is inconsolable.
  
  "I will take good care of Sariphina-platt," I say.
  
  "Wonderful!" reads the Linotype. "Things are being arranged. As
  Sariphina-platt may have told you, my hobby is ballooning. What
  with the problems at the airports in Colorado, I will get there
  by balloon. The launch in scheduled for the 25th."



  At the park on the 25th a large crowd gathers. While the
  majority of creatures are horses, there are many other animals
  including hundreds of supportive humans, many wearing T-shirts
  that read "They _deserve_ Colorado! We should throw in Wyoming
  for good measure!"
  
  Rising Star addresses the crowd while standing in the basket of
  his red-and-blue balloon. The Linotype machine is set up in
  front of him. For the occasion, Rising Star is "a horse of a
  different color," having dyed his coat a marvelous shade of
  splendorfus, a brand-new color that makes people think of
  happiness.
  
  Sariphina-platt, Sharik and I are nearby. Hairbrush is fifty
  yards away fighting with some other birds for perch space on the
  branch of a tree. I am proud of Sariphina-platt, who is holding
  up bravely. She dabs at the corners of her eyes with a
  handkerchief.
  
  "Greetings to you all!" reads Rising Star's first burst of
  words. "I leave for Colorado with feelings of love and
  friendship! For me, this is the beginning of a grand adventure.
  Still, I am overwhelmed with sorrow. I will miss many friends
  and, especially, I will miss Sariphina-platt, who is so dear."
  
  As the ropes are loosened to release the balloon,
  Sariphina-platt kicks off her red slippers, breaks from my side
  and leaps into the basket of the balloon with Rising Star. The
  humans in the crowd cheer and the many horses whinny. Rising
  Star bobs his head and Sariphina-platt waves robustly at the
  crowd as the balloon ascends into the blue sky. I watch as the
  balloon, Rising Star and Sariphina-platt grow dim as a tiny gray
  dot. Finally, they disappear behind a solitary white cloud and
  leave my life forever.
  
  
  
  A month later, there is no sonic boom that precedes Cthrwsqwz's
  visit to my home. He carries in several boxes of varying sizes
  and introduces me to a woman he has brought with him, a Dr.
  Brendafsh who is wearing an official-looking white jacket.
  
  I am scared. Sharik barks at our visitors and I tenderly
  restrain him.
  
  The Wednesday before, I was fired from my job after driving
  erratically -- some said suicidally -- on the freeway with a
  full load of explosives. It was a terrible day; the police
  handcuffed me and I didn't earn any tips.
  
  The news that Cthrwsqwz has for me is that he and my friends
  have committed me to a university where I am to take advanced
  courses in comparative lit and animal husbandry. All this is
  meant to help me to cope with the strains of living in a world
  that I experience as very complex. The university that has
  accepted me is just down the street, so I won't have to
  relocate. And thanks to Sharik, there's enough money coming in
  so I won't have to get a new job.
  
  At Sharik's Web site, sales of his books are booming. A series
  on existential cooking tops the Amazon.com best-sellers list.
  One volume released just days ago, co-written by Erika Jong and
  Albert Camus, Fear of Frying for Strangers, has recipes for pork
  chops that make your mouth water no matter what your state of
  angst. The top Religion and Spirituality book is Sharik's The
  Son Also Rises, by Matthew, Mark, John, and Ernest Hemingway.
  
  The boxes contain the final version of the gorpfucking helmets
  that Cthrwsqwz has been working on. They look very much like
  football helmets. Whatever chips and mechanics are involved in
  making the machines operate are hidden inside. By their
  appearance, the helmets seem made of fiberglass. The inside is
  lined with a comfortable-looking padding. A chin strap holds the
  helmet in place on one's head.
  
  Dr. Brendafsh places the largest helmet on me and makes several
  adjustments with her three hands. My fear melts away. I have
  often depended on the kindness of smart strangers.
  
  "_Brak!_" says Dr. Brendafsh.



  My heart pumps like mad. I am high above the ground, flying
  among the clouds. Sharik is there, his tail wagging so hard that
  his hindquarters moves right and left. Hairbrush is flying happy
  and free. And the sky is an azure German river; and the stars
  are rhinestones, glistening. My dreamy thoughts are not coded in
  words, but pass like a river flowing in front of me. It is
  ultimate beauty. Serene and delightful. Majestic and ineffable.
  I feel like I could live forever. And I am lost in swirling
  thoughts that combined my memories and the possibilities in an
  unlimited future.
  
  O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson
  sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in
  the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and
  pink and scormeare and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the
  jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a boy
  where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in
  her hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a
  frobjnicht shirt yes and how she kissed me in that sad hotel and
  I thought well as well her as another and then I asked her with
  my eyes to ask again yes and then she asked me would I yes to
  say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around her
  yes and drew her down to me so she could feel my loins and smell
  the whiff of musk and yes and my heart was going like mad and
  yes I said
  
  yes
  
  I will
  
  Yes.
  


  Tom Armstrong (TomArmstr@aol.com)
-----------------------------------
  Tom Armstrong lives in San Francisco, where he's an unemployed
  low-level accountant who's one month behind in his rent. He
  writes for and edits Zen Unbound. Articles written by him have
  appeared in eDharma and CyberSangha.
 
  <http://members.aol.com/zenunbound/>
 


  Take Us We Bulls   by Will Sand
=================================
....................................................................
  They came in peace. They left in peace. So now what?
....................................................................
  
  Alone in his ornate office, adjunct aide Douglas drew himself a
  brandy. He set the decanter back on the mantle, walked to his
  settee, and let out a self-satisfied sigh.
  
  Was it possible to be pompous while alone? He silently laughed
  at himself.
  
  He picked up the alien book. The crusty sheen on its cover,
  while slightly disgusting, was also a mark of value, of
  distinction. The alien leader, by way of autographing, had
  sprayed on this copy before he personally presented it to the
  human representative who had guided their whirlwind visit.
  Stifling his innate curiosity, Douglas had yet to sniff this
  veneer, but from a hand-held distance the secretion was odorless
  to humans.
  
  It hardly had been the dramatic First Contact envisioned by
  either scientists or science-fiction writers. It was thoroughly
  anticlimactic. A week ago humanity was ignorant of their
  existence; now they were two days gone. And nothing had changed.
  They neither took nor left anything. But in those few days, not
  much more than a hundred hours, they had visited every corner of
  the earth. Douglas had been one of the leaders of the delegation
  that had escorted them.
  
  Yet he still didn't know what properly to call them. In the book
  they had distributed to humanity in fourteen languages, they
  simply referred to themselves as "we the 650 billion." They
  evidently defined themselves by their population, presumably
  up-to-date and cumulative.
  
  _650,000,000,000_.
  
  It was a bit awkward as far as nomenclature goes. However, as
  the only alien species yet encountered, calling them simply and
  generically the "aliens" worked out fine.
  
  Douglas found himself unconsciously caressing the book. He felt
  a glow: from the brandy, from a job well done, from friends
  newly made. The feel of their book, as anointed, aptly mimicked
  their alien skin. Some had looked upon that skin as deeply
  pocked, a body-wide angry acne. But he saw those flowing red
  ridges and brown furrows as a rich leathery meringue. Doctors
  had speculated on the benefits of such a vastly increased
  surface area. Douglas had just marveled at its multicolored,
  textured beauty. It suited the animal health that percolated
  beneath their far-seeing dignity.
  
  He opened the book. Its title alone would invite volumes of
  scholarly interpretation. Given that any translation would be
  imperfect -- even one conducted by such an advanced intelligence
  -- the title and various passages were vexing in their
  imprecision while haunting in their poetry.
  
  He read the title aloud: "Take Us We Bulls." Bold. Enigmatic.

  The book was about them: a primer, perhaps a bible. History,
  philosophy, religion, all in one. They seemed to make no
  distinction.
  
  There was a dichotomy about the title that appealed to Douglas,
  even as he struggled for its meaning. "Take us...." Apparently
  they willingly and eagerly give themselves up to the universe,
  to forces greater than themselves, forces they see as powerful,
  intriguing, and benign. Yet the other half -- "...We Bulls" --
  moves from the passive to the active, from humility to pride,
  from "us" to "we" to "bulls." With both acceptance and
  determination, these aliens engage the universe; they are part
  of its scope. They seek the destiny that awaits them, that is
  their due. As do we, Douglas thought; there is that bond between
  us. _All_iens.
  
  His door intoned: _Visitor_Visitor_. A female voice. "It's me,
  Douglas. Victoria."
  
  She sounded shaken and, upon entering, looked disheveled. She
  waved aside his offer of an after-hours brandy.
  
  She plopped herself onto his couch, slumped deep into it, and
  then, with nervous effort, sat upright on its edge. "You've been
  summoned." By way of explanation, she added, "I've been in the
  First Office."
  
  Douglas nodded. There were rumors of an affair. Co-workers
  everywhere, he thought wryly -- and then, fondly, of Roger.
  
  "Douglas," she said, "Douglas." And began crying.
  
  He started to go to her but she abruptly rose. She paced as she
  fought for control. When she turned back to him, she had
  regained it, though the battle left her white.
  
  Douglas had been transfixed by her anxiety. Now he found his
  voice. "What..."
  
  She cut him off. "We've been getting calls. Reports. It started,
  God, less than an hour ago. Hundreds by now; thousands soon."
  She sighed, trailing off, "Millions...."
  
  "Come on, Victoria! What reports?"
  
  "From all over the world. Births. Newborns with red and brown...
  crusty ridges...." She started weeping again.
  
  "Their skin."
  
  Douglas was frozen in his seat. Finally his head dropped. Take
  Us We Bulls. The book was still open in his lap, on the first
  page. He gaped and then gasped.
  
  The first sentence now read, "We the 660 billion...."
  
  
  
  Will Sand (akawillsand@yahoo.com)
-----------------------------------
  Will Sand has had SF published in Aberrations, NeverWorlds, and
  Horizons, and is archived in Dark Planet and Ibn Qirtaiba. His
  current project is "A New Millennium's Resolution."
  
  <http://www.redshift.com/~wsandtt/>



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