oregon short story

Mercy (Part 1)

Fiction, NSP Meditations , , , , , , , ,

Traveling through the dark on the Wilson River Road he saw something bulky, misshapen, moving in a strip of foliage a few feet off the shoulder. It moved slowly, awkwardly, crawling not toward or away from the road, more like crawling in a circle.

He slowed, turned off the music, powered down the passenger side window, looked, but could not verify what he assumed was some nocturnal creature. He sped up, but fifty yards later, seized by curiosity, he stopped his vehicle. Normally he would have never stopped, but earlier that evening, in Portland, he had heard a prominent environmental journalist from New York tell a packed audience sitting in the most environmentally friendly office building in the world, that Americans lacked curiosity about the ongoing and obvious destruction of the natural world and did so at great peril to their continued existence. Her new book documented it all. It was a tour de force according to reviewers, and although he didn’t know anyone to give the extra copy to, he bought two books, which she signed with an impressive signature. Her autograph alone made the four-hour round trip from his home on the Oregon Coast through the Coast Range to Portland, worth it. Certainly this was not a superfluous trip. It had purpose beyond his edification. How excited he would be the next morning in class, showing off the book to his high school government students, and trying to convey the urgency of the journalist’s clarion call by writing some of her harrowing statistics on the white board and quoting from memory some of the sayings the ancient holy men had said about caring for the world. As a result, for a week, his students might drive a little less, buy less crap, redeem their soda cans and bottles for the deposit, disassociate Christianity from capitalism, practice what is known as ‘shallow ecology’ and consider that the meek certainly shall not inherit the Earth. No one would. Rather, everyone and everything would live out an unscripted gritty and groveling aftermath when the Earth finally played itself out. Of course, in this scenario, the meek shall die first. They always did.

He shifted the vehicle into reverse and backed up. He passed whatever form caught his attention in the strip and he angled his vehicle in the shoulder so the headlights cast their brilliance on the mystery. What he saw: illuminated, writhing counter clockwise, ten feet away, a deer, a buck, splayed in the gravel, contorted at horrific angles, oozing, gasping, convulsing, and outlined by the detritus of Fast Food Nation, an unused condom still in its packaging, a smashed CD, cigarette butts, dented cans of tasteless corporate lager, and various non-native plants such as English ivy, Scotch broom and Himalayan blackberry. Collectively, these things served as a shrine of sorts, but not a shrine to the wounded deer.

He knew this scenario was coming. In recent months, precursors had assaulted him: when he picked up a shovel to finish off the mortally wounded gray squirrel in the yard one of the dogs had partially gutted; when he searched for a suitable piece of driftwood to finish off a delirious Western Gull stranded on the beach, its right wing eviscerated by a coyote; when driving to work only two weeks ago and encountering a deer, a fawn, grotesquely prone in the roadway, flattened, but still twitching, a victim of a landscaper’s flatbed pickup, which had overturned and spilled herbicide and pesticide in all directions. The accident occurred a few vehicles in front of him, in broad daylight, on Highway 101 in Lincoln City, and the carnage immediately halted traffic in both directions while calls went into the authorities. He waited in his idling vehicle, watching the deer spasm. A few drivers, all obese, with coffee in hand, exited their vehicles, congregated, pointed at the chemical spill, and talked to the driver of the pickup. One chatted on a cell phone while eating a maple bar. They all seemed utterly indifferent to the suffering animal. He felt a rising urgency inside him as the scene dragged on. Would none of these people do anything? He wanted to pound the horn, prompt someone to some action, any action, but suddenly it dawned upon him that everyone was probably waiting for a police officer with a sidearm to fire a bullet into the head of the deer and succinctly and humanely conclude the drama. Before the police officer arrived, however, traffic started to flow in both directions. He began to accelerate, and just as he passed the deer, at most ten feet from his vehicle, he flinched and turned away from looking at it. Instead, he swung his head to the other side of the highway and locked eyes with a four-foot, red and green gnome standing in the window of a lawn and garden shop.

The Clearcut (Part 1)

Fiction, NSP Meditations , , , , , , ,

There is a special type of urgency that attends to a teacher driving home after the last day of school, and it doesn’t matter if the teacher has just completed the first or thirtieth year of a distinguished or incompetent career in a public or private institution. Nor does it matter on the last day if the sun shines or the rain pounds or if the teaching assignment took place in an elementary, middle, or high school. (College hardly counts.) All that really matters is that the year is over.

Jack, a high school English teacher, felt the urgency, but he wasn’t yet driving home, so he leashed the feeling with a choke chain as he stood in front of his fourth period class, as one might leash a hostile dog before taking a pleasant city stroll.

A few hours later, the clock struck 3:19, the final bell rang, students rushed into the halls tossing paper and textbooks into the air, took goofy photographs with their cell phones, and hugged one another or grabbed ass. Jack walked over to his desk and picked up six periods of unread and ungraded final essays, each one approximately six hundred words in length. Thirty students a period. One hundred and eight thousand words. The paper recycle box rested ten feet away. Jack concentrated, and then in a graceful underhanded motion, set the essays free from his clutch in coordinated flight. They flew, and landed all together, neatly in the box, a feat utterly elegant to behold if someone had actually been around to behold it. Ten minutes later, as Jack left school, he heard a cheery female voice on the PA announce a faculty social in the library at 3:45 where cookies and coffee were to be served. At 3:31 Jack fished his keys from his pocket and a moment later, was cruising out of the parking lot and waving goodbyes to a few of his students who signed yearbooks while sitting on the hoods of their second-hand sedans. They were the same students who never turned in any work and never appeared in any yearbook.

The urgency commanded Jack as he sped home, north on Highway 101, the Pacific Ocean on his left, the Siuslaw National Forest on his right. As he drove with his left hand, he counted silently with his right-hand fingers how many years he had taught secondary English and social studies in public schools since he commenced his career at the age of twenty-five in 1988. Nineteen years, in nine different schools all across Oregon, in rural, suburban, and urban districts. He thought of himself as a seeker although he sought nothing. He liked to transition, live in different places, meet new colleagues, and experience different educational customs, although he had come to discover that there weren’t many different educational customs in Oregon or probably anywhere else in the country. About the only thing that made any difference was whether the families of his students had any money. In this rural gig in Lincoln City on the Oregon Coast, they did not. Indeed, many of Jack’s students didn’t even have families, let alone semi-functioning ones, as was apparent at graduation last week when one of Jack’s seniors, a girl, still wearing her mortarboard, circled the lobby desperately with her diploma in hand, apparently looking for someone. Jack watched her, off and on for fifteen minutes, between congratulations and handshakes with other graduates and their families. He finally went up to her and saw a face he’d never seen before. It looked the color of new snow and appeared as if it might actually collapse. Jack put his hands on her shoulders and she started crying

“What’s wrong?” asked Jack.

“My parents never showed up. They were drinking earlier this morning and never made it. Can you fucking believe that?”

Jack squeezed down on her shoulders. “Listen to me. Make a pact with yourself right here. You will break this cycle and never do this to your own child. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

Jack hugged her hard, she squeezed hard in return, and he whispered then do it into her ears.

Then she left, left high school forever, the last place employing anyone who would ever sincerely care about her or her future.

As the new graduate left the building clutching her diploma, she edged by an old obese man in shorts. Jack had talked briefly to him in the restroom before the ceremony and learned by easy admission that the man had been drinking an Everclear and chocolate milk concoction in a Thermos all morning and was so drunk he couldn’t remember the name of the relative he was supposed to watch graduate. In the restroom Jack made a joke about this and decided against informing the man that he had pissed down his right leg

Jack had now logged four years at this latest stop, or tour as he called it. His itinerant behavior marked him somewhat as an eccentric nomad in the profession, particularly to the school’s veteran teachers, seven of whom had actually graduated from the school and wore its black and orange colors every Friday. But Jack didn’t really care about the label. He stayed as long as it interested him, and then he moved on. He always carried a symbolic letter of resignation in his back pocket. No job would ever trap him. There were always teaching gigs in rural Oregon if you were willing to relocate and smart enough to drink at home.

No, Jack didn’t care that his resume struck some administrators as evidence of instability. He was more concerned that despite all his years in the classroom and teaching twenty-five different subjects, he really didn’t fathom what constituted his ultimate purpose in front of students, much less carrying out that purpose well as would befit a professional educator paid $53,400 a year and $1700 a month in health insurance by taxpayers, most of whom believed he was scandalously overpaid and ineffective to boot.

It was exactly twenty-two miles from school to Jack’s home and he passed a dozen vehicles to get there, including executing a tricky two-car maneuver at the summit of Cascade Head near the intersection of the logging road that led to a trail to Hart’s Cove.

Since teaching in the area, Jack had learned the legend of Hart’s Cove, a rocky and roiling site at the base of the western edge of Cascade Head. So the story went, Hart’s Cove had been named for a hearty hermit of a man who lived long ago in a cabin above the cove and walked twenty miles roundtrip to teach in a one-room schoolhouse. Jack loved the story, even if wasn’t true. He imagined a crusty Hart, whipping his unruly students with a stick of willow while simultaneously declaiming sonnets to the rhythm of the beating, and then, with the show over, telling the students that the previous generation of students was much better behaved and much better at doing anything academic, or for that matter physical, than this current crop of miscreants. For time immemorial old and tired teachers made this exact same bogus historical comparison and Jack swore if he ever followed suit, he would quit, on the spot, or maybe pull a Richard Corey.

City Scenes, Thoughts from the City, A Story

Fiction, NSP Meditations , , , , ,

A man in a gray suit drinks coffee and eats a confection.

Outside, the streets are shrouded in clouds.

A man describes his recent breakup. They’ll split custody of the dogs but he has to move.

I haven’t slept much in 48 hours. I am feeling a lassitude.

The writing is going well, new breakthroughs. Writing for dogs, writing for life.

Madness has descended upon me. But I remain sane. I will never lose my comportment.

The barista looks vaguely Gothic.

Beards and sideburns reign here. I shaved my beard after five months of growth.

Hank Williams plays. His plaintive voice still gets to me. How does one write the way he sings?

Perry Mason with Dad. Perry fights injustice, venality and conventional wisdom. He wins.

Rosemary in bloom catches my eye. Nothing like rosemary branches burned in a burn barrel and that fragrance.

The Bonnie and Clyde book just passed 40k in words. It is off the leash, galloping. It is moving like a dog on an Oregon Coast beach after a long imprisonment in an animal shelter.

All my recent attempts at rapprochement have failed. I think I should probably give up.

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.)

Another Short Story from the City

Fiction, NSP Meditations , , , , , ,

Rain falls. Noise of the city drowns it out. No one is paying attention to rain. Maybe I pay too much attention. Is that possible?

There is talk at a table behind me. Urgent, knowing talk how to reverse the fortunes of American soccer on the World Cup stage, the men’s team that is. This table has the answer and the talk is led by a woman. She is loud. Maybe that’s what it will take.

Believe me, the answer is not at this table. The answer is somewhere on a bumpy field, perhaps even a pasture, where a regular game of pick up soccer is taking place, in rain, in mud, without coaches or adults around, and that regular game produces our Pele.

He won’t be white, I assure you.

Some Gershwin plays through the speakers. It feels wrong for this city.

One wonders if anyone ever meets anyone in cafes anymore.

Wind blows rain off the leaves and onto the pavement. Is that real rain?

A jogger jogs by. Terrible form.

An elderly couple plays loud videos on their phones the size of a waffle iron. I want to overturn their table but it’s bolted to the floor.

A man walks in wearing a blue velour jacket. He’s pulling it off.

I wrote a short story about a culvert. It has no commercial value. It has an audience of one. The story is based on true story that took place inside a culvert, on a salmon bearing stream, not far from a clearcut. It’s a love story.

A homeless man is whittling the end of staff. He’s standing up while doing so. I have never seen anyone whittle standing up, much less in rain. He could impale someone with this staff. We live in strange times when homeless men craft pikes.

I’m thinking about my dead dog. I’m thinking about stealing a husky off a chain. I’m thinking about reading Kafka’s short story about a dog that’s written by a dog. I bet Kafka wrote it in his cubicle, in between breaks from selling insurance. One wonders if Kafka even owned a dog. His writing doesn’t indicate that he did.

Aren’t 400-word short stories refreshing to read? They seem to stay with me longer than longer ones.

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.)

A Short Story About the City

Fiction, NSP Meditations , , , , ,

I await her. We haven’t seen each other in three years.

The coveted window seat is occupied by a woman fiddling on her phone. Men’s soccer and women’s fighting play on television. I hear bacon sizzling and smell bacon.

A woman behind me discusses her health care job. In a normal country, she’d be a decently-paid public employee.

I walked by three zombie RVs on the way here. The City reports over 2,000 dilapidated rigs on various streets. How did it come to this in one of the more progressive cities in the world?

In the distance, I hear someone winning at slots. Or losing. It all sounds the same.

I’ve got a keyhole limpet in my pocket. I’m wearing new old J. Crew brown corduroys with a 12 wale. $7.99 at Goodwill and never worn before. I’ll wear them into disintegration. I’m also wearing a gray V-Neck wool sweater spotted with mustard and wine. It’s disintegrating, too.

The woman vacates the window seat. I commandeer it.

My craft malt liquor tastes good.

The bartender has kilometers of tattoos spread across her chest and neck. A red-haired goddess clutching a triton stands tall in the bartender’s cleavage.

People in the City talk louder than they used to. They are struggling to be heard.

She is late. I’m early to everything. I was early to my own jailing.

I am writing all of this from a driftwood fort that I built and where I encourage unknown poets to write about everything that has nothing to do with the City.

A man just left the bar holding a high school U.S. Government textbook that I didn’t use my first year teaching American government 30 years ago. All I used was the Constitution. A thought occurs to me: the election of Donald Trump is the culmination of 30 years of terrible, irrelevant and rote teaching of American government at the secondary level in public schools. In this case, it is the teacher’s fault.

Everything is wet outside. The rain creamed and dreamed away the dust.

She’s not going to show.

An angry-looking man walked in and was talking angrily to himself.

My ex-wife just texted me. She wants to know how I am doing. In response, I lie.

I’m writing this in long hand in the margins of Keno cards, Oregon’s state stationery. I am writing with a Keno pencil. It is very sharp.

There is stimulation in the City. It doesn’t stimulate me.

I’m reading a book about writing fiction and it has a list of do’s and don’ts. I’m not paying attention.

A critic complained of Proust: “Introspection to the point of insanity.”

Am I going insane?

D.H. Lawrence wrote: “Love is action. Action is consolatory.”

I am gripped with torpor, but dammit I want to run!

Back in the fort, I play heads and tails with a mysterious sand dollar. It’s tails. I win. I found it on my back deck, delivered by a mysterious force I don’t yet understand. But someone out there knows what the sand dollar means. I’m going to wear this sand dollar in the pocket of my shirt or coat until it crumbles.

A woman outside just ran to the mailbox and deposited a letter. I haven’t seen anyone run with that kind of urgency in a long time.

She’s now 22 minutes late. Is that really late in the City? You just text you’re going to be late and you’re not late.

The Rapture is late, very late, at least according to the couple behind me. They talk loud.

People see the signs of the Rapture and rip off their clothing and we see it on the streets and sidewalks. So that’s how those stray clothes got there, in case you were wondering. I own an article of Rapture clothing. It’s not an item of corduroy. No one wearing corduroy believes in the Rapture. We are what we wear.

I see movement on the sidewalk. There she is, outside, gliding her glide. I knock at the window. She sees me and there is a smile. It’s not the same one I’ve known for 30 years. Can a smile ever remain the same for that period of time? It’s probably better that a smile changes. It suggests you’ve lived and learned.

There is so much between us; it’s a novel, except that it’s all true. In the past year, I have found novels more true to life than real life. I will write upon that theme soon and probably on a Keno card or on the back of a sand dollar.

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.)

Bonnie and Clyde Files 22

Bonnie and Clyde Files, Fiction, NSP Meditations , , , , ,

The morning sun looked smudged. It looked like it couldn’t cook. Smoke clung to the clearcut hills and drifted over the pastures and milk cows. The landscape was the filtered color of gray-orange. Even the slack summer river rippled with tinges of orange. Firewater.

We began to drift with the smoke…

Blame the orange on the smoke from forest fires set by the enemy. There was a war on, the Mini Civil War the media were calling it, somewhat derisively.

Clyde took point and Bonnie brought up the rear. We were an aging crack recon team put out to pasture patrolling a valued sector. We were moving through the high grass along the river. We skirted elk scat and beaver sticks. Our orders were to spot drones delivering pizzas to infiltrators, engage the infiltrators at close quarters, exterminate them with extreme prejudice, and eat their pizza.

I carried a war club, a thick green branch of alder wrapped in blackberry stalks, secured with duct tape. It was a formidable hand-to-hand weapon and struck fear in the enemy, or so social media reported.

The mini war had broken out when the President refused to leave the White House after being impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. Federal Marshals had to remove him and he raged, shat himself and tweeted at the same time during his removal. He misspelled the word “democracy.” He misspelled his own last name.

It was a grand spectacle and the President’s die hard supporters refused to abide by the Constitution. Scattered militias in some of the Mountain and Western states took up arms and Instagram and decided to burn up California, Oregon and Washington as retribution. They sent thousands of men, women, children, washed-up Midwestern rock stars and drones into the despised Left Coast to implement their fiery sabotage.

Wineries and pot shops bore the brunt of their anger. Yoga studios, too.

It only got worse when two thirds of the states called for a Constitutional convention, it was hastily convened, and the delegates rewrote the process for electing a President during a crisis. Three fourths of the states ratified the changes and a month later, Michelle Obama was elected President. Dave Grohl was VP. Rock and Roll. Or better yet, Brown Sugar, and they played that song at the Inaugural Ball. Keith shredded on rhythm guitar. Mick wore a KKK hood, Confederate flag boxers, knee high tube socks and that was all. Bill Clinton played the sax solo. No cocaine. Michelle killed it in a macrame gown. Barack chain smoked Winstons the whole show.

Clyde halted and raised his snout to catch a scent. Bonnie turned around to check our exposed flanks.

We heard cracking in the elderberry and Bonnie and Clyde took off. I followed with the war club gripped tight. We were going into battle or pizza or both. I sure hope it wasn’t pepperoni.

A youngish man dressed in camo and a red baseball cap emerged from a makeshift shelter. His pants were down. I heard the squealing of nutria in the distance. He clutched a Bowie knife in his right hand. Clyde lunged for the man’s neck and Bonnie ripped into his groin. I heard the knife splash down in the river. His shit stank.

I delivered a few blows as he struggled on the ground. There were gurgling sounds coming from his chest; then there were none. I rolled his body over. Blackberry thorns leave the most interesting gruesome facial lacerations. The lacerations looked especially interesting lit up by the orange light.

Clyde nosed around the body for foodstuffs and then came over for treats. I fed him a couple, Bonnie, too. We rested a while, looking at the river. Swallows dipped and dived over the channel.

I rolled the body into the river. It kerplunked nicely. It would decompose in short order and start nourishing the watershed. At least the man did that for his planet.

We mounted back up and continued our patrol. I picked and ate blackberries as I walked. The orange was getting more orange. Bonnie raced ahead, scouting for more infiltrators. She’d got an early taste of Red State blood and wanted more.

Me too.

Clyde wanted pizza and not a goddamned vegetarian one.

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.)