The Statue of Liberty

Shoha wasn't doing well. They called him "Shawn" now, but his new name was an affliction, not a medicine. They could call him by an American name and dress him in American clothes, but he wasn't an American. Gau (father), Eza (mother), and Tedzi (older sister)—they wore their differentness like honor, but Shawn was embarrassed. His name and his face and his mother meeting him at the bus stop and chattering in Gozasu, these were keeping him out.

He, more than the rest of his family, felt trapped in a cage suspended above both worlds. Neither American nor Gozash. What was he? He was a hybrid, a specimen, a case study. And study him they did, his classmates. A distant study, a wary study. They wouldn’t risk getting too close. His teachers didn't help. Always accentuating the difference. Saying, "your people," and "where you’re from,” and “could you tell us, please.”

He had wanted to come ever since he heard the word. Amberega. America. He had seen some pictures. Statue of Liberty. A city at night. America was a place of height. And expanse. Spreading out in every direction, unstoppable. He liked this. As soon as they landed, and he saw the highways, endless cement, he wondered if this was really a good thing and a good place. They rode in a bus for three hours to reach their new home.

He knew now America wasn't built on magic. But he wanted to be a part of it, because what choice did he have? Clinging to Goza was impossible. It was becoming further away every day. And every day when he woke up under sheets printed with football players, it receded another day into mists. He'd get up and get dressed and try to be like everyone else now.

Flip

It was only seven ten, but Flip would be by in ten minutes. Dom hadn't slept. He hardly slept these days. He slept maybe three or four hours, drifted off around two, somewhere around there, and he was up by six. He was afraid to look at the clock. He thought about running. As in leaving. But he knew that would only make it ten times worse when Flip caught up with him, which he would. He caught up with everybody. That's what Flip did. He used to say he was in Funds Apprehension. Whatever that meant.

Dom looked at his toast. He had nibbled off the points, and they almost made him throw up. He hadn't been able to eat lately either. He had lunch yesterday. A small lunch. Flip was going to be angry. That's also what he did.

He'd offer Flip whatever he had. He didn't have anything. The television. Worth, he didn't know, maybe fifty dollars. Didn't even make a dent in the five thousand he owed. It was nothing. Flip wouldn't even laugh. Dom didn't think Flip laughed. He had never seen him laugh. Not that they hung around a lot together. Ever. At one time, Flip was friends—actual friends—with Gilbert. But that was a long time ago. Before Gilbert went delinquent on Flip.

Dom looked at his hands, still holding the piece of toast. The toast trembled. The toast couldn't take this, and neither could he. Flip was going to be here any minute, and Dom's only hope was that his cooperation, his just sitting and waiting, and not even trying to run, would have some effect on Flip's demeanor. Might as well hope for a helicopter to land on the roof and whisk him away. A helicopter with a stocked fridge for when his appetite returned. And a beautiful little female with red hair who had a soft spot for balding types on the large side. Flip knocked on the window. Dom saw him standing outside, looking in, past the sink. Dom's heart leapt into the garbage disposal.

Wild Horses

The shoes were the shoes of invisible soldiers. His father had been a Navy man, eighteen years. After that, a retired Navy man for twenty-two. Wherever he went after that, whatever the universe's plan for him, he was some kind of Navy man still. And, like a good Navy man, he knew the importance of order. And discipline. And he taught their importance to his son. And his son learned the lessons.

And that's why the son's shoes, eight pair, were lined up like he'd used a ruler. He did, sometimes. It wasn't just the shoes, either. His clothes. The dishes in the cupboards. Didn't matter if company was coming. Didn't matter if company wasn't. Company usually wasn't, as a matter of fact. Dorothy wouldn't be coming by anymore. She was a first-grade teacher. A messy occupation. She'd come over for dinner with bright dabs of tempera on the hem of her skirt. Other stains. Children make stains. Leave children alone: they'll break things, dirty them up. They're wild. No, you don't punish wildness, but you do train it into straight rows. Nature is curved. It's man's job to straighten it. Right angles inspire orderly thoughts and an orderly attitude and an orderly respect and outlook.

When he called her first-graders "feral," she got angry. "Not feral," she said, eyes jumping. "Free. Full of life. Life hasn't been squeezed out of them yet, or forced into line." And that was the problem, he knew. That was why she could come to his apartment with paint on her skirt.

He broke the cookie jar once. Pieces of ceramic and cookie crumbs, all over the kitchen. It hit the floor and exploded, fragments everywhere. Months later, he was still finding pieces. His father would occasionally step on one and flash over into readiness. He learned. No, it's not easy. Children are strong-willed. Like wild horses. Dorothy was right. Wild horses are free. And they're beautiful. But they have to learn to accept the bit.

Birch Trees

The birch trees crowded around her like well-wishers. The birch trees of her mother's Russia. She had never seen the birch trees, except through her mother's words, and her mother had spoken of them often. Of their fair complexion and stately processional through the woods. Their dolorous eyes. The way they comforted and surrounded her and held her together during whole years she thought her heart had withered. And now, she could see them so clearly. Now that the end was near for her, there was nothing to do but wander the woods, while her own daughter talked in muffled urgency with a voice she could only assume was the doctor's.

She thought they talked away, in the hall, to prevent bad news from filtering through to her. But this time, she heard the doctor say, as plain as sunlight, "... not out of the woods yet." He was right. There she was, amid the birch trees of her mother's Russia. She was hidden away there, not out of the woods yet. No hint of the world beyond. She was enfolded in a world of trees. Songbirds sang almost out of earshot, like her daughter and the doctor.

A kindly old Grandmother leaned down, her silver trunk gray-haired and creaky, and said to her, "You're not out of the woods yet, my dear. Everything is fine. Rest a while." So she rested. Rested in the arms of the birch trees of her mother's Russia. From somewhere—she thought it was the west, but the forest confounded all her senses (was there a west anymore?)—her daughter's voice came to her in the form of a songbird.

"Is there anything I can get you, Mama?" Her daughter's voice here, in the forest. No, nothing. A blanket maybe. And with that, she slipped deeper into the birch forest, borne on the wind, a glossy birch leaf. Her daughter stood with the doctor and put her hand on her mother's cheek. The doctor said, "Would you like a few minutes alone with her?"

What If Everything Stopped Working?

He used to worry about stuff like that. About what would happen if this stuff stopped working? The medicine. Insulin. It couldn't stop working, but what if it did? Gravity can't stop working either, but what if it did? What if you injected the insulin and nothing happened? And what if your blood sugar was really low, the tide was just out, you were a desert, and you drank all the sugar you could get your hands on, and it just didn't work? A car can stop working. Turn the key and it just grinds and wheezes. Computers stop working. They freeze, they crash. They go insane.

So what if he entered a time and place where it made sense for insulin and sugar to stop working? And when he'd be reading on the bus, his stomach and his head reminding him that this wasn't the best idea, the thought would come to him. It would start with some imagined blurriness, and then he'd be thinking What if my eyes stopped working? What if light passed through the lenses, but the retinas stopped tingling. Or firing. Or whatever they do.

What if everything stopped working? Not just the fragile miracles of his body, held together one pulse to the next, but everything everywhere. Nature. What if trees stopped working? Or the ocean? Or all water everywhere? What if it didn't flow anymore or seek its own level? It rose. Flowed upstream. Froze solid right before it boiled. Life couldn't happen if everything stopped working, because life grew that way. With the assumption inbred, the assumption that things work.

But what about the seconds before it all ended? We'd all feel betrayed. We'd be furious. But revenge wouldn't work either. It would all melt into a solid, a plastic lump molded to the shape of everything that wasn't there anymore.

Shingles

Past the apple trees, where the gravel path ran out, they came to the little markers. The first time, they thought they’d make simple crosses. But then crosses didn’t seem right. So they just used big, smooth, wide shingles. They rose from the dirt, pale and soft. First blooms. Crocuses.

Ella had painted the names on with a stencil and Wynn had driven the shingles in with a mallet. Working together. In death as in life. A joke. They came out here often. It was a part of their weekend walk, most weeks. Past the apple trees, the house hidden by the low hill, here they were. It wasn’t painful anymore, but it wasn’t unpainful either. “Firefly,” “April" (short for April Fool), “Onion.”

Cats. Cats who sure didn’t deserve to be forgotten. So they didn’t forget them. They came out here and remembered. They had been blessed with so many companions over the years. And they never thought of them as property, or even workers. When people would ask Ella if So-and-so was a good mouser, she’d wrinkle her nose like the air suddenly went bad. “She likes to catch mice, yes,” she’d say, unless it was Gent or Playo she was talking about. With the dogs it was a little different. Dogs liked to work. Even after they turned gray, like leaves turning on the tree, they liked to work. Still, they only had their dogs do the work they chose for themselves, if they were of the working inclination.

Bullmoose, whose marker they set beneath the giant oak, loved pulling roots of all things. When Wynn cleared the land east of the house, Bullmoose helped. Real help, not a child’s impeding help that makes a parent proud and exasperated all at once, but real help. He had a passion for pulling. Milady put herself on guard duty after Ella had Beth Anne. She’d patrol the house and watch out the front windows for hours on end. Beth Anne lived a thousand miles from here now. And Milady died a good five years ago.

Charlie Brown

It was nothing. When he grabbed the glass Billy set down in front of him, his elbow poked the guy next to him. No, not poked, even. Touched. Barely. He barely even touched this guy, with his thousand dollar suit and his salon haircut, and he thought he even had cufflinks. Here, at Mike's. Cufflinks.

So anyway, Cufflinks is up like lunch, talking about how Now you've done it, and You don’t wanna start something. No, I don't wanna start something, he said, and got back to his beer. I wanna start this beer, that's what I wanna start, he said. Someone had Charlie Brown on the jukebox. Had to be one of those new guys, the guys with brand-new ball caps on. Trying to create the picture-perfect barroom scene. Why didn't Cufflinks go fight them? Or buy them a round or something? Anyway, so the guy's in his face now. The guy puts his hand up, like he's supposed to inspect it or something and tremble at how mighty it is. Yeah, nice hand.

This hand, he goes, is gonna take your head off, you don't get the hell out of this bar. Get out of the bar? Yeah, right. He's gonna get out of his regular Friday night bar he's been coming to every Friday night for maybe, what? A year and a half. No matter what. Snow, he'll walk. Rain, who cares? Donna talking about If you go out that door, don't expect to see me when you come back. Who cares, and Hello, Billy, how about a big beer for Yours Drunkly?

So Cufflinks wasn't chasing him off. Not with that big, soft hand held out like a flabby napkin. Would take a hell of a lot more than that. I just started my beer, okay? I'm real sorry I bruised your delicate arm and all. Cufflinks whispered something to the whore on his right and turned back to him. You and me, he goes, we're having a talk. Outside. So he hopped off his stool and went around back, Charlie Brown still going strong.

Lost

He didn't dare tell the men. Not yet. What could he tell them? The weather had been beastly, but he had failed to obtain adequate readings while the skies were clear. So the fault was his and his alone. And telling the men now, no matter whose fault it was, would only weigh them down, and he needed them light and strong and supple, in mind as well as body.

Holland was still upright, as it were. Still squeezing a laugh out of tight places, as they say. The worse the spot, the louder Holland's laugh. He wasn't the strongest of the bunch, or the smartest. He was fair on ski and passing good with the dogs, but it was his iron spirit that had secured his spot on the team. The rain, the wind, the sleet. Where they ground some men down, flecking them into unusability, they polished Holland to a shine. And Holland could prop up two or three others, as sure as walking sticks. Manly was holding, as were Dell and James. The others, he wasn't confident of.

If he couldn't find their course or at least find a suitable place for camp in the next few hours, the festering mood would spread like gangrene. He had seen it happen before. The more important provision wasn't the food, he knew, or the ski or the fuel or the dogs. It was mood. The right mood could power men over the worst terrain and pick them up again and again when they fell. The mood of this party was acceptable, but falling with the mercury.

It's not honesty that powers men on, it's the right lies. And the lie he told, with Holland's booming laugh, was that everything was rolling on the tracks he's laid six months ago. When asked about direction or course, he didn't hesitate one second. The sure readiness of his answer meant more than the words. He knew he might be taking them all farther and farther from where they should be. Better to freeze later than burn now.