The sun was sitting low and the fat little guard up the front hid under a hat as the chain-gang worked toward him. Dark sweat patches spread out from his pits and every now and then he fanned his little arms like a bloated scarecrow trying to take flight.

The rear guard was taller and younger. He toted a tatty yellow parasol and a rifle and hummed a tune of his own making.

Back at the truck, the Boss was dozing to the shimmer of cicadas when an approaching car broke his peace. The car passed by the truck and slowed right down, idling past the work gang. On this side of the border cars sped up when they passed a prison gang. They didn’t slow down.

The car finally barrelled away into the heat haze and the Boss’ eyelids were just fluttering closed when the car made a hard U-turn and started back.

“Puta mierda,” hissed the Boss. He kicked open the truck door and hit the ground with a stumble. The guards had witnessed his awkward descent and he suggested that they should be watching the oncoming car and not him.

The fat little guard stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled. The gang downed tools and a waterboy hefted a rusted pail across his shoulder and shuffled down the line, pausing by each prisoner so they could drink from the dented ladle. The car passed by the gang again and pulled up opposite the truck. ‘Buenas tardes senor!’ boomed a cheerful voice from inside the car.

The Boss unclasped his pistol.

The car door opened. The driver’s seat was sitting flush on the floorpan and set way back. Two vast, long legs slid out of the car, and then a cane and then two huge hands pushing on the cane as the man-giant hoisted his bones upright. “Bloody Mary,” winced the Giant as he straightened his back.

The Boss looked the Giant up and down. With his bulbous cheekbones, knot-jointed fingers and elongated legs it was as if his frame could poke through the flesh at any moment.

The Giant went to retrieve something from his inside jacket pocket. “Uh uh,” said the Boss, clucking his tongue. The rear guard bolted the chamber of his rifle. The Giant raised his hands.

“No. Amigo. Soy un amigo.” The Giant kept his cane-hand in the air and with the other he carefully retrieved a bottle and held it out for the Boss to see and then he plucked the cork and took a drink and as he swallowed he let out a deep contented sigh.

The Boss licked his lips.

“Would you want some whiskey sir?” asked the Giant in a cheery brogue.
The Boss cocked his head. “Usted no es Americano?”

“Oh no senor. Irishman.”

“Que?”

“Irish. Irlanda. Irlandes.”

The Boss pointed to the bottle. “Irlander?”

“Si. Lo mejor.”

The Boss took the bottle and shucked the cork with his teeth. He took a whiff and screwed up his nose.

“Muy fuerte!” grinned the Giant. “Very strong.”

The Boss raised the bottle to his nose again and then he looked up into the Giant’s milky eyes and took a swig. He held the liquor in his mouth until he could hold it no more and as the heat of the booze started to creep from his belly and up his spine, he whistled. The Boss nodded and took another swig before offering the bottle back to the Giant.

“Oh no. Regalo. You hold on to it.”

The Giant limped down the line inspecting the prisoners. All these men with their crosshatched skin and crazed hair. The Boss nudged the Giant as he pointed to the waterboy.

“Mirarlo, eh? Chiflado, heh. Monstruo. Hehe.”

The Giant struck his cane into the dirt and turned to the Boss and asked if they might have a quiet word back at the truck.

II.

The prisoners were dragging themselves onto the truck in pairs. An older prisoner lost his footing and tumbled backwards taking his shackled counterpart with him. They hit the ground hard and cursed each other with their eyes as they found their feet. Once the prisoners were all in, the fat little guard made a final count on his fingers and locked the tailgate.

The Giant turned his head to the Boss, who had made himself quite at home in the passenger seat. The whiskey was already half gone and the Boss stared at the unlabelled bottle like it was a source of secrets.

Then his nose wrinkled as he caught a whiff of something. He inhaled deeply trying to find the source.

“Perfume uh?” asked the Boss in a conspiratorial whisper. He’d traced the scent to the Giant’s coat.

“Oohhh,” said the Boss, clucking his tongue. “Boniiito. Niiice.”

“Vamos?” asked the Giant, keen to change the subject.

“Oh si, si vamos,” grinned the Boss. “Bonito. Hehe,”

The prisoners bobbed on the flatbed. A few miles after the sun had left the sky, the truck made a left turn onto an unsealed road and the Giant ground the gears up a couple, keeping enough distance so they weren’t engulfed in dust. The muscles in the Boss’ face were loose from the booze and every now and then he would snort himself awake, pretending to focus on the road ahead like he’d never been asleep.

At the crest of a hill the Giant stopped the car so the Boss could relieve himself. He watched the truck lurch down the hill toward the electric-lit penitentiary below – a walled prison crowned with lassos of barbed wire strewn across the main gate and lamp poles. As they eased down the hill the car headlights glinted across hundreds of broken bottles fused atop the sandstone perimeter wall where a lone guard walked the parapet.

The Giant struggled out of the car with his cane and followed the Boss over to a reinforced steel door by the main the gate. Above them, flying insects spiralled towards a naked floodlamp and at their feet, among the cigarette and cigar stubs lay scores of dead or dying moths and wasps and beetles.

When they reached the administration building, the Giant was told to wait outside. He lowered himself on to a sleeper bench and watched the guards reverse the truck into the sallyport. The Giant closed his eyes.

Heavy iron shunting against thick steel. The muffled call and response of prisoners separated across hallways. An officer booming back at them to shut their mouths. Batons bashing doors and bars and nail-booted footsteps on concrete marching up and down and another door bolted hard and then…

Silence.

Just for a moment. A short peace, before someone cut through in anger or fear or hatred or for no other reason than to just be heard.
At the Giant’s feet an upturned beetle clambered to right itself. He nudged it with the brass-shod tip of his cane and tried to flick it upright. After a few attempts it clung to the base. The Giant raised the cane in the air and the beetle shot out its wings and hummed away.

The Giant could hear the Boss talking with someone. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but the conversation ended in laughter. A few minutes later the Boss opened the door and led the Giant through to a large untidy office that reeked of tobacco and old sweat. The Chief Warden motioned for him to sit.

“You are very tall,” remarked the Chief Warden in emotionless, well-schooled English.

“Aye,” smiled the Giant.

“You are Irish?”

“Indeed I am, sir.”

“I’m told you wish to purchase the release of a prisoner?”

“That is correct, sir.”

“Do you have any idea how many laws you are breaking by making such a request?”

“Sir I don’t believe I am breaking the law by asking a question? In good spirits?”

The Chief Warden lit a fresh cigarillo from the one he was just finishing.

“The prisoner you speak of is sentenced. You know there is no bail?”

“I understand. I am asking you to consider granting the boy release, in return for…”

“Why do you ask for this… prisoner in particular? He is not very capable of manual work?” The Chief Warden looked at the Boss, who was trying not to smile, and then he turned back to the Giant.

“Why are you in Mexico?”

“Sabatico. I take my yearly vacation at this time.”

“Alone? By yourself?”

“I live and work in a… very close community… I like to travel by myself and as it happens I also have friends in Tijuana whom I like to visit when I am here.”

The Boss clucked his tongue.

“What do you want with this prisoner?”

“I do not believe that prison is the right place for him.”

The Chief Warden turned to the Boss who was still battling to keep a straight face and then back to the Giant.

“Could you tell me what type of work is it that you do, sir?”

The Giant twisted his cane between his palms.

“Of course, sir, but I wonder if first I may ask you a question?”

“Go ahead.”

“Approximately how is it to keep a prisoner per day, or per year? Food? Accommodation? Clothing? Salarios?”

The Chief Warden counted silently with his mouth and fingers as he did the figures.

“I would say… something in the order of… between four and six pesos per day.”

The Chief Warden stubbed his cigarillo and then asked the Giant to step outside for a moment.

III.

A diabolical melange of odours hit the Giant as he entered the cellblock and he felt many eyes on his back as he followed the guard down the corridor. They stopped in front of a cell where in the din a body lay strewn across a straw mattress, his mouth wide open in a death rattle snore. The guard kicked the door. The body stirred.

“Arriba!” shouted the guard. “Levantate!” The guard smacked his baton against the bars.

“Vete a la mierda!” came a response from a nearby cell. The young prisoner dragged himself to his feet and stood in front of the Giant and the guard.

“Mirame. Look up at me, son,” whispered the Giant. Slowly, the prisoner looked up into the Giant’s translucent eyes. The Giant winced.

“Let’s get you out of here you poor bastard.”

IV.

The beak-nosed Clerk fumbled through a filing cabinet mumbling names to himself.

“Rubeo. Ruesga. Ruiz. Sampedro. Sanchez. Sanchez. Sanchez. Sanchez. Sanfelipe. Santiago. Santiago. Ah… Saragosa.” Then the Clerk placed a dog-eared yellow envelope on the counter alongside a pen and ink before disappearing into the property room. Saragosa began to remove his greys. He was down to his shorts when the clerk returned with a sack of clothes.

Saragosa began to dress. His undershirt was blood-spattered down one side and his collared shirt was torn across one shoulder. He stepped into his shoes and then upended the sack, reaching inside for something. The Clerk told Saragosa the sack was empty and that was all of his clothes and then he called him stupid. Saragosa shot his eyes at the Clerk and snatched the envelope and tore it open. He retrieved an empty coin purse, a driver’s license two years expired and a neatly folded square of silk.

Saragosa carefully unfolded the long scarf. It was embroidered in long-faded gold and blue silk and there were stains the same as those on his undershirt. His hands shook and his breath was short as he wrapped the scarf loosely around his head and neck and by the time he had finished covering himself, the hideous melon-sized cyst growing out from his neck was mostly shrouded by the flow of the gold and blue silk.
‘Saludos, Saragosa,’ whispered the Giant.

V.

The steel door clanged shut behind them and they stood under the floodlamp looking out into the black. A moth tried to land on Saragosa’s nose and he waved it away with his shackled hands.

“We’ll drive for a while. It’s a good night for it don’t you think?”

Inside the car, the Giant handed Saragosa the key to his shackles and told him he could remove them when they reached the highway. From atop the parapet, the Boss and the fat little guard watched as the car climbed up and over the hill.

The fat little guard flicked his cigar stub and watched it fall among the others underneath the floodlamp and then he started chuckling and the Boss asked him what was so funny and the fat little guard’s laughter grew louder.

The Boss asked again what was so funny and the guard tried to speak but the laughter took over and he became short of breath. Now the Boss was laughing but without knowing why and when the guard finally calmed down enough to talk, he said that they had forgotten to tie tin cans to the back of the wedding car. The Boss burst into laughter and the guard started up again and just as they were calming down he asked the Boss whether the conjugal bed came with three pillows, and the Boss bellowed so loud that the guard dogs at the other end of the prison started howling in their kennels.

VI.

The car flew down the highway through the darkness and Saragosa hung his head out of the open window. The Giant flicked open a small pillbox and threw a couple of white tablets into his mouth and washed them down with a swig from a bottle like the one he had given the Boss.

Saragosa accepted the bottle and took a long drink, followed by another, and then another. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and set the bottle between his thighs and watched the headlights swoop across the feathergrass alongside the road.

The Giant lit a cigar and when it was burning nicely he switched on the radio and worked the dial until he found a station, all beautiful guitars and tenor harmonies and he looked over and there were tears forming on the lids of Saragosa’s eyes and by the time he had finished his cigar, Saragosa was snoring.

From this angle, the Giant was able to study Saragosa’s neck, and the hideous tumor twisting out from it, stretching the skin taut and tight. He moved his hand to touch it, but Saragosa stirred and the Giant returned his hand to the wheel.

VII.

The motel room was cheap and decorated in burnt orange and wood veneer. There were two beds and a table and chairs. The Giant had found an American station on the radio and was listening to a morning news story about the Soviet Union’s first atomic bomb test and how they were now the only nation other than the US to have such a device. It was codenamed First Lightning and he thought it sounded like a great name for a racehorse or a brand of cheap whiskey.

The Giant stood in front of the wall mirror. He had to bend down to see his face, which was in need of a shave and he noticed that his dyed hair was greying at the roots and would need retouching soon. He squirted some oil into his palm and warmed it up between his hands and combed it through his hair.

There was a polite tap on the door. The Giant opened it and took the tray from the girl and gave her some coins. She looked up at him and her eyes widened as she registered his height, but the weight of the coins in her hand made her smile and the Giant smiled back and winked at her and thanked her for the food and coffee.

The coffee smelled good and smoky. The Giant had stayed at this Motel before and remembered that they always had good coffee. He poured a cup and sat on the end of the bed.

The faucet shut off with a thunk and moments later Saragosa emerged from the bathroom and walked over to the wall mirror where he fixed the blue and gold scarf loosely around his neck. The smell of the coffee and the sight of the beans and eggs and fried potato made him salivate.

“It’s for you lad. Eat. Comer.”

Saragosa sat down and took a fork and began spooning the hot, beautiful food into his mouth and he didn’t stop until there was nothing left and then he downed the coffee and wiped the plate clean with his fingers. The Giant drained his cup and reached for his cane.

“Well then. Time for us to get to work. There are some friends I want you to meet.”

VIII.

A month later, the Boss was making one of his visits to the city. He parked his car around the back of the club and carefully took his best suit jacket from its hanger and slid it over his shoulders. He checked his hair in the side mirror and smoothed a kink down with spit and then he strode down the side alley and around to the front of the building.

He was greeted at the entrance by a beautiful young hostess with long false eyelashes and a crimson beehive wig. She placed her arm around him and kissed him and led him up the carpeted stairs to the main parlour.

The parlour was draped with heavy forest green velvet and a pall of smoke spread across the room at head height. There was a bar along one wall tended by a dark skinned woman wearing a white shirt buttoned low. She was leaning across the bar on her elbows, flirting with an old ruddy faced American in a linen suit.

The hostess asked the Boss if he would like a drink and he asked for Irish whiskey and she stroked his cheek and kissed him again and invited him to sit in one of the plush leather tub chairs.

“Madam will be with you shortly.”

The scent of perfume hung in the air and the light was warm and low. The hostess returned with his drink and he sipped it slowly as he studied the posters over on the far wall.

One poster caught his attention and he went over for a closer look. It was the waterboy from the prison, the freak, all dressed up in a vivid blue and gold Matador’s uniform staring defiantly at the heavens.
Staring straight at the Boss was the thing–the criatura–on the side of his neck, now garishly adorned with a tuft of hair and dead bulbous eyes and an empty gaping mouth…

The poster read:

In defiance of God and science…
MONSTRUO!
World Premiere!
THE TWO-HEADED TIJUANAN
Aberration of humanity…
GUARANTEED TO TERRIFY
or
YOUR MONEY BACK!
only at
BIG BILL’S
SIDESHOW SPECTACULAR!

May was positively filled with articles discussing Gatsby, and rightly so. The discussions were dis-jointed: some focused on the novel, while many others centered on the film, the parties, the adaptive difficulties, or the cultural intrigue of the work. And indeed, Fitzgerald’s novel is also quite frequently the case in point when anglo book-fiends re-kindle the flames of debate surrounding the “greatest” of the American novels. Yet, it seems, the public — as a collective conscience — takes its greatest interest in Gatsby when headlines are made by other media sources. The last time Gatsby made headlines, it was 2011, and a large portion of the (as of May 2013) now more than 36,500 current Goodreaders had reviewed it with just one star. Now, Baz Luhrmann has resurrected this Great Debate with his star-studded film, and we are again flooded with rhetorical opulence as we all claim our share of the decaying Gatsby estate.

There are excellent points and tidbids abound everywhere you can see: Huffington Post has posted 15 Inspirational Quotes by F. Scott Fitzgerald, as well as analysis of Gatsby’s greatness, countless outlets provided reviews and previews for the film , Buzzfeed posted a fun quiz comparing lines from Gatsby to Tumblr turns, The Atlantic challenged us to consider the appropriateness of “Gatsby parties,” Columbia University Press on Haruki Murakami’s Japanese translation of Gatsby, and countless more have wondered aloud whether Gatsby is indeed a “great American novel,” and if it is possible to appropriately translate Fitzgerald’s words to film.

These are all appropriate questions, and well timed at that; but they aren’t the question that interests me. The Great Gatsby has fascinated me since I first encountered it in 12th grade English, and its lasting allure for me are not Fitzgerald’s words, nor the plot. What I enjoy considering is why it (The Great Gatsby) is universally considered to be the Great American Novel.

For the benefit of this discussion, I’ll list the obvious responses one might come across, because all of them are tried and true: flawless prose and novel construction, Fitzgerlad’s demonstration of wealthy and reckless debauchery, the plot, which chronicles the rise and fall of Gatsby as a man, the self-made social identity of Jay Gatz, Gatsby’s enduring hope, a hallmark “American” naivety of the novel’s central characters, and the fickle nature of the American social conscience. Even the ideas and ideals of love from an American perspective. Yet all of these account for only a portion of the debate, and in that light, each response must remain inadequate to answer the question of why the novel is Great.

The truth is, Gatsby (the novel) is special to those who enjoy it for all of those reasons. AND thus, none of them. In fact, by my estimation, all of these reasons (and the 36,500 one-star ratings on Goodreads) are the only proper justification and argument of The Great Gatsby as the Great[est] American Novel. It’s a confusing thought, but it’s also the only one that addresses the best answer of “what it means to be American.”

Because the answer to that question has definitely changed over time. Being American in 1776 meant something different than it did in 1865, and both of those things were entirely different from Fitzgerald’s American Jazz Age. In 2013, our country only resembles these past assemblages of America at its core. The rest has changed. We have changed.

For instance, today, Americans hold almost no values universally. It’s a testament to our massive geographical, cultural, social, and religious diversity. And it’s the main reason I believe Gatsby is the Great American Novel. Because almost no two people can quite agree on why (or if) they like it. Not all of us even want to (or have) read it. It is, in all of its splendor, flexibility, and diversity, the perfect microcosmic example of our country.

We cannot agree on if it is the best any of us have ever written. We cannot even agree on if it is a novel at all (some do contend Gatsby is more appropriately a novella). When we enjoy it, we each have our own reasons. We can argue almost any discussion point in the book, and we can point to dozens of inadequacies or triumphs, depending on our individual perspectives and moods. Some of us might refuse to read it, and some of us might call any attempt at a film adaptation blasphemous. Yet, all of these things only further support Gatsby’s claim: because whether we arrive at Fitzgerald’s party with an invitation or not, whether we love the intimacy in the vastness of his vision or find it impossible to relate to, the American-ness of the novel shines: we are talking about it. It will come and go, and endure long enough to come again. And, if I had to name just one universally American characteristic, it is that we are enamored by discourse. The longer the better — and this discussion has been going on for eighty years.

When it comes to The Great Gatsby, we talk — about IT, and HIM, and THEN. We always have. I do not know of any other novel that has, for so long, sparked so fervent a debate over such few (and proportionally uncontroversial) words. And whether you feel love, or hate — boredom or excitement, at the thought of Gatsby, the point has been made: Fitzgerald’s work has made you feel something. To do that, all of these years later, must, above all else, make Gatsby great. And if you’re thinking to yourself that somewhere along the Mississippi River, Huck Finn is throwing stones from under a tree in Hell or Paradise, while Twain counts and re-counts until he arrives at 219, you’re probably correct.

I hope you disagree with me. I hope you can point to something I’ve overlooked. I hope you never ever have to read that trash, or that after reading it three hundred and ninety four times, you’ve figured out what “it” is. But until then, all that’s left now is for us to come together and drift apart, pointing to this book or that, edging towards the infinite (or ceaseless) current of time with the handful of stories that we’ll never quite know how – or where – to place, imagining (or, blindly hoping) for the wondrous moment when we can all agree on what the Greatest American Novel of All Time is. For now, I’ll leave you with one final thought:

No matter what the ink on the pages say, and regardless of who wrote it, Americans are aware of the importance of literature. And we all fight to protect the words we love — encrypting work so it cannot be erased, and protecting our pages from that famous flash point: Farenheit 451, when words melt into an abyss. Perhaps it is then, and only then, that a thing can become great.

I washed the hat anyway. By hand, of course, and carefully. I set it outside to dry in the sun on the back porch. My husband noticed when he went out to water the garden. “Hat season already?” he asked. It was August.

I set some irises I’d brought back from the funeral in a vase, attempting to nourish them for a couple more days of life. “It will be soon enough.”

He squinted up at the blazing sun. “I’m in no rush for winter.”

“You’re in no rush for anything.” I finished clipping the stems and carried the vase inside.

That autumn I started wearing the hat in the afternoons, as the leaves fell all around us. I thought it almost chic in its own way. My friends disagreed.

“It’s ugly,” they said.

“It’s too warm for a hat.”

“It doesn’t suit you.”

I brushed them off.

“It’s lucky,” I said.

“My ears get cold.”

And, at last, with a shrug:

“You’ll get used to it.”

And I was right. In the end, they grew accustomed to it. I hadn’t told them that my grandmother knit it for me herself when I was a child; it wasn’t any of their business. The hat was too big for me then, so my mother had packed it away. I’d wanted to wear it, anyway, flopping over my eyes and obscuring my vision. She hadn’t let me. She cared too much about what others thought, and in truth, the hat did look a bit silly. Now it fit perfectly, pulled down on my head, skimming the tops of my ears.

Admittedly, though, my friends had been right about it not suiting me. My look tended to be clean, tailored, polished. The hat would have been more suited to a snowboarder, perhaps, or an artist. Or anyone with the confidence to pull off an outfit that on me would look ridiculous. I kept wearing it anyway, to carry a piece of my grandmother with me, though I knew it wasn’t necessary. We all carry the dead with us in our own way, whether we realize or not.

The hat began to define me. That was the second sign that it was lucky. Strangers started to recognize me as “that woman with the hat” and I stood out. I enjoyed the attention; I’d had so little before. Covering my head uncovered a different side of myself.

I stepped out of the shadows. I stood out. I watched my reflection as I passed by windows and mirrors. Now, when I look back at the photos from that period in my life I wonder:

Was I foolish?

Was I brave?

Had I become a caricature of myself?

My change in attitude obviously made my husband uncomfortable. He made subtle jabs about my appearance, joked that was I trying to hide a bad haircut. At first, I ignored the comments, but that only seemed to encourage him.

“Here, let me take that from you,” he said as I stood in the entryway after work one evening. He reached for my hat.

I brushed away his hand. “Please. Leave it alone.”

“Wearing hats makes you go bald, you know. At this rate, your hair will be gone by the time you’re 40.”

“That’s a myth.”

“It’s not, I’m serious. I’m just looking out for your best interests.”

I looked down at my purse, my fingers still clenched on the leather strap. “What,” I said, “is your problem?”
He was silent for a moment before he finally said, “You wearing that stupid hat all the time. It’s creepy.”

“You think it’s creepy? Why?” I turned to face him.

He looked down at the floor. “I don’t know why, it just is.”
I pulled my jacket back on. “I’m sorry you don’t get it.” I walked out, slamming the door behind me. When I returned home later that night, he was already in bed asleep.

After that I really did begin to wear the hat all the time, even indoors, and my husband dropped the subject. When I wasn’t wearing it I felt strange, exposed, nervous. As though I were a fraud, somehow, without it. Everything I’d never dared to be, every trait I wanted to test out, rose like a beacon out of the pom-pom on my head.
When I did take the hat off, I couldn’t stop touching it. I stroked the top, weaving my fingers through the strands of yarn. I twirled it around in my hand as I spoke with people on the phone, letting it wrap around my knuckles, my fist, my palm. I nuzzled it against my cheek as I watched TV at night.

“Enough!” my husband said. “I can’t focus on anything when you fidget like that.”

A football game flickered on the TV. I put the hat on my lap, staring at it until my eyes unfocused and the black shade of the yarn swam against the edge of my vision, my mind blank.

At work if they noticed the change, they didn’t say, but I noticed. Feeling trapped behind my desk at the bank, I starting taking long walks during my lunch break, pushing the boundaries of acceptable lateness as I went. Wandering the streets, I thought of my mother. She had often taken me walking when I was a child, before the years and miles and values separated us with a rift too large to cross. It was the only time she ever listened, outside of the house away from distractions. Now I walked along the city streets alone, always making my way to the triangular park in the center of town. I liked to watch the other people ducking through the trees, half shaded from the waning autumn sun underneath the dying leaves.

And that’s when I saw him.

My jaw actually dropped open. Dropped open. I always thought that was a cliché. But, no, I found out. It’s an accurate description.
He was only a kid, about 19 or so. Dressed in black skinny jeans, a faded Stones t-shirt and an olive green military jacket. Smoking. Bearded. Talking on his phone. Wearing a hat.

My hat. Silver thread, pom-pom and all.

I touched my head; it was still there. Yet somehow I was staring at an exact replica of my grandmother’s handmade one-of-a-kind hat.
When he walked by, he didn’t catch my eye. He didn’t notice me at all, so I fell into step behind him. Soon enough I realized he was walking in circles around the park. Around the bums drinking coffee and playing chess on sidewalk tables. Around the girls hula-hooping in knitware and the tourists studying maps. Around and around. He was walking in circles, talking on his phone, and clearly making a spectacle of himself.

And as I followed him, my temperature rose with every pounding step. My face felt hot against the cool autumn breeze, my fingers wrapped around themselves in tight little balls. Who was he to flaunt what was so obviously mine?

Focused as I was on the boy, I tripped over a tree root broken through the sidewalk. My hand shot out to steady myself, the rough bark of the tree scratching the skin of my palm. When I looked back up, the kid had broken away from the park, heading down the street and shrinking against the concrete buildings. I let him go. I realized that I was shaking a little, like I’d had too much caffeine, though I’d had none. I touched my hat again. Ran my fingers along the lines that radiated out of the top. Brushed the pom-pom against the pads of my fingertips.

Then I took the hat off.

How could he have known my grandmother? I didn’t even consider another possibility until I spoke to my husband that night.

“The guy bought it,” he said. He was chopping onions on the glass cutting board. The noise of the knife striking the board hurt my ears. Seeing me flinch, he paused. “You don’t think?”

“Not possible,” I said.

“How else?” he asked. I shrugged and he resumed his chopping.

A call to my mother confirmed it. “Your grandmother couldn’t knit,” she said.

“Not at all?”

“She tried when you were younger.” My mother paused. “It didn’t work out.”

“Then where did the hat come from?” I asked.

“I don’t know. She must have bought it.”

“Where? And why tell me she’d knit it herself?”

“How should I know?”

My mother never was very helpful.

In the days that followed, I didn’t wear the hat. Everyone noticed.

“Lose the hat?”

“Not cold enough for you?”

“Do something different with your hair?” my husband teased.

I had not. But maybe it had grown hidden there under the hat.
With my head bare, I felt like a part of myself was missing. It did not free me. It scared the hell out of me.

I still kept my eye out for that kid, though I didn’t see him again. As the days stretched to weeks, the darkness descended and I quietly put my hat back on. The fall turned into winter and the leaves froze to the ground, trapped under a layer of snow. I welcomed the gray sky, the crisp catch in my breath, the cold lobe of my ear. It was the coldest winter I ever saw, everything silent and suspended. The snow kept us home at night and I paced the rooms like a cat, pausing at the windows, looking out over the icy roads. My husband settled in, building fires downstairs and hunkering down on the couch in front of the TV.

“Think of it as an opportunity to relax,” he said.

“I don’t need to relax,” I said, drumming my fingers against the windowsill.

I continued to walk around town every day, heedless of the weather and the wind that whipped through my wool coat. I still felt drawn to the park, to the triangle in the exact center of the town with the cold stone slabs that served as benches and the tables with their painted checkerboards. I ran my fingers along them as I passed, expecting to feel the difference in textures, but I did not. My fingers were numb.
By the time I saw the kid again, I had stopped looking. It was early spring and the snow had melted, leaving behind a raw, brown, soggy mess. One afternoon I looked up, and there he was.

This time I waited for him to leave the park and then I followed from the other side of the street. He walked away from town. He walked and walked and I followed him until he reached an empty parking lot. He leaned against a lonely streetlamp and pulled out a cigarette. I didn’t want him to get away, so I ran across the street before he could walk off. I scrambled over the graffiti-covered concrete blocks on the side of the lot instead of going around. He was on his damn phone again and didn’t notice me until I stopped right in front of him. He put up his hand in surprise. The smoke hung in the air.

“Hey, gimme a sec,” he said to the phone. “What?”
I touched my hat.

“Ok, yeah,” he drew out the word like he was stalling for time. “Huh,” he nodded. He tried to step around me and resume his conversation.

“Where did you get it?” I asked.

“Hmmm?” He stopped with the phone hovering in the air halfway to his ear.

“The. Hat.” I said slowly, like he was stupid. “Where did you get it?”
He looked puzzled now and the more confused he looked, the angrier I became. He shook his head. “I don’t remember.” He exhaled a long cloud of smoke and tried to step around me again.

“Let me see,” I said, lunging at his head.
He jumped to the side and backed away from me. “Whoa! What the fuck is your problem?” He flicked the butt of his cigarette down and hurried off.

“How can you not remember?” I shouted at his retreating form. He didn’t look back.

Alone in the middle of the parking lot, I didn’t know what else to do so I took off in the opposite direction. I walked and walked. I kept walking until I found myself at an abandoned building by the river. Something about the building reminded me of the old changing rooms at the rec center my grandmother used to take me to when I was a child. I walked up and put my hand against the concrete wall. It felt cold against my fingers.

The doors and windows of the building were crudely boarded up, but I noticed a loose piece of wood. I pried it off and slipped inside. The room was dark and empty. The air smelled damp but the plank felt good in my hands. I swung it around. I swung it at barrels, at walls, at the floor. I swung it faster and harder until my muscles ached and my fingers were covered with splinters and blisters and then I swung the plank some more. I flung it out of my hands at the far wall where it landed with a thud.

I took the hat off my head and began to tear at it. I yanked at the loose threads and ripped them apart, one at a time. This one for my grandmother, dead in her grave. This one for my mother, never truly lived a day of her life. This one for their mothers before them, forgotten over the passage of time.

This one for me.
This one for me.
This one for me.

I pulled until the whole hat unraveled. The threads piled up on the floor beside me, the pom-pom sitting on my hand–the only tangible connection I had left to a woman whose blood ran through my veins. And I noticed then the tears streaming down my face. The cold dark of the early dusk settled through the cracks in the windows. I gave in and sobbed. Heaving, racking breaths until I was hoarse and the darkness threatened to overtake me entirely.

I scooped up the threads and the pom-pom, gently placing them in separate pockets, then I slipped out the window and walked all the way back to the car. I was done being defined by my family. I was done needing their approval.

When I got home, my husband was waiting. “You look a mess,” he said, more alarmed than concerned. “Where’ve you been?”

I pulled out my phone and checked the time. Half past six with seven missed messages. I never had gone back to work. “She didn’t knit the hat,” I said, walking past him to the bedroom.

He followed me. “You already knew that.”

“I did,” I said. “And I didn’t.”

He crossed his arms, studying me.

“Why didn’t you come to the funeral with me?”

“I was working,” he said. “You know that.”

“Yeah, I guess I knew that, too.”

Before he could say another word I went into the bathroom where I locked the door. In the mirror, I studied my reflection without the hat. My hair was matted. My hands were bloody. There was dirt all over my face and my clothes. I started the shower and stripped off my clothing. I heard a knock on the door.

“Can I come in?”

I ignored him and stepped into the water. I curled up in a ball on the floor and let the stream of water flow over my head, down my body and into the drain. I breathed in the rising steam and inhaled it deep in my lungs.

When I got out, I grabbed a bag. My husband stared at me as I placed the items in the suitcase that connected me to my past and grounded me in the present. A photo album from my childhood, my mother’s diamond earrings she gave to me on my wedding day, the remains of the hat.
“Why?” he asked.

I shook my head and stepped around him.

“Morning,” I’ll say. This is all he wants.

I saw this lady on TV talking about how two or three children are the ideal family. Only children have a tendency to be “introverted and antisocial,” which means weird and quiet. I don’t want to turn out that way. Sometimes I think I already have. How would I know?

A family at the end of our street adopted a three-year-old Vietnamese boy named Ping. I ask my mother about the possibility of adopting another kid, maybe a girl, a little sister, but a brother would be fine, too. She just laughs and says I’d better not try that on my dad. Later I ask if we can get a dog. She smiles and says she knows what I’m up to, but I’m completely serious.

I think hamsters are stupid. Not good company at all. What could I possibly have in common with a hamster? But this is what she offers me, after “a great deal of serious consideration,” as if it’s such a big deal and I should be oh so grateful. She says she’s glad she didn’t get it as a surprise because the cage and the wheel and all the other hamster stuff cost around fifty dollars. My mother thinks spending more than forty dollars on anything but a necessity is a sin. Obviously, a hamster is not a necessity. She tells me most girls my age would love to have a hamster. She is going against her principles to try and be nice to me. She doesn’t say it, but she wonders what is wrong with me. I want a brother or a sister, and I am not backing down.

My sister and I could figure out how to French inhale like Tatum O’Neal in Paper Moon. My sister would explain why my parents ignore me and say they’re not doing so. My sister and I could sit side by side on lawn chairs in the yard on long hot summer days. We could get colorful matching sunglasses and discuss each neighbor who passed by, their lives, their clothes, their hobbies. In winter, we’d make ice cream out of yellow snow and give it to the neighbors we didn’t like and laugh and laugh and laugh. My sister would refuse to settle for a goddamn hamster.

I make a friend named Kate.

She learns about being blood sisters from a book about boys.

“Blood brothers, blood sisters. Same difference,” she says.
We have to prick our index fingers so blood comes out, then hold them together so our blood can “mingle,” then drip our blood into a box.

We talk about how we have never made ourselves bleed on purpose. About how, before today, we couldn’t imagine a suitable reason why we would. It is very dramatic. We decide to prick each other’s fingers to make it more like at the doctor. Kate has stolen her mother’s Cricket lighter and uses the flame to sterilize the end of a tiny gold safety pin. We have each chosen an “item of import to our hearts,” clipped bits of our hair, and written and folded into special blood sister triangles private notes to one another.

These things are laying in a Keds shoebox on Kate’s toilet seat awaiting our combined blood. We will bury our blood sister box in Kate’s backyard. I put my silver locket in it, the one my parents brought back from their second honeymoon in New Orleans. My mother would kill me and call me a heathen if she knew I was doing this. Kate puts in a yellow plastic miniature treasure chest filled with all of her baby teeth. We both cut hair from the front of our heads using an example in a magazine to “create wispy bangs” across our foreheads, letting the hair fall into the box over our treasures. The wisps will “emphasize our eyes.”

I don’t want to be poked with the pin first, nor do I want to poke Kate first so we rock-paper-scissor for it and I lose, which means I get poked first, which is fine. I squeeze the tip of my index finger hard and Kate squeezes her eyes into narrow curves, bites her lower lip and pushes the pin in fast, with a single jerk of her arm. At first, I feel nothing, but then it hurts, just a little, like a mosquito bite. I want to put my finger in my mouth and suck the blood away.

“Okay, now me,” she says, holding her fingertip. She has poked the hole in my left hand and I am left handed, so I hold the safety pin between my bleeding finger and my thumb.

“Lay your finger on the sink,” I say, because I’m afraid I’ll miss.

“Jesus!” she says, but she does it.

After the ceremony, I look at Kate with new eyes. We are family. We are sisters. We will be friends forever. I don’t know how I ever got on before I knew Kate. I want to tell her everything.

“My dad’s killed people,” I say, “in the war.”

“Mine committed suicide,” she says.

“Woah,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says. The air conditioner clicks on and the noise sends a rattle from my stomach to my throat. I push at the bathroom door with my toes.

“I found him,” she says.

“Did you try and stop him?” I imagine Kate’s dad with a huge dagger, about to stab himself in the heart.

“He was already dead,” she says.

“Oh.” I look her in the eye. She wants me to ask more, but I don’t want to.

“Was he all bloody?”

“No,” she says, “more blue,” like she’s describing a dress, or a pair of shoes. I picture Kate next to her dead, blue father, standing hand in hand. It reminds me of a movie, I don’t know which one.

“Wanna see something?” I say, because I don’t like the picture in my head. I show her how to lace up her shoes so the bow is at the foot rather than at the top. We wear our shoes to school this way so everyone will know we are best friends.

Then she starts up with Sooty.

Sooty’s a nickname; his real name is Nathan Quavis, Jr. We started calling him Sooty after he sang the chimney sweep song from Mary Poppins in Spring Sing two Spring Sings ago, but I can’t remember ever calling him Nathan. I like him a lot, I like him too much, according to Kate.
I used to stand next to Sooty in chorus until the teacher figured out I was a soprano, not an alto. Now I stand next to Robert Girard, who I hate. Instead of sneaking peeks at Sooty, I just look at my song book and mouth the words to songs, or stare out into the empty, brown seats. Kate isn’t in chorus but I think she might join, just to keep tabs on me and Sooty.

The complicated thing is, Sooty might like me, too. We sit together before we’re asked to take our places in chorus, and he always picks me in drama, when Miss Levinson says find a partner. And there’s more. My dad hates Sooty’s dad, something about the army and being a coward. I’m not sure of the specifics, but they definitely hate each other. At the Fourth of July barbecue, my dad spit right on Sooty’s dad’s foot and called him a goddamn nigger, even though he’s white. Then my dad insisted we all go home, he didn’t care that Mom and me hadn’t eaten anything yet. I don’t think we’ll go to the barbecue next year.

The first time I see Sooty smoke a cigarette, it shocks me but I act like it doesn’t. We are walking away from school and I think, what would Kate do, which is nothing, it wouldn’t faze her, so I try not to let it faze me. All I see, though, is the glowing tip going to and from his mouth and I can’t think of anything except that I am with someone who is doing something I am not supposed to do.

“You think she likes me?” he asks, and I am glad he wants my opinion. I say no.

“Shit,” he says. Swearing. Another thing I am not supposed to do.

“I mean, she likes you. I’m just not sure if she likes you, likes you,” I am lying, something else I am not supposed to do, but I want this to lead to some other kind of conversation, one about him and me.

“I really like her,” he says.

“I know,” I say.

“She likes you,” I finally say.

“Yeah,” he says.

Most of our houses are the same, but they’re decorated differently.

It’s a little creepy to go to a new kid’s house for the first time, because you kind of know where you are, it feels like you’re home, but it’s different because of carpeting or furniture or toys or basements. Kate’s has a second story. Sooty’s is exactly like ours, except he doesn’t have a TV room in back.

The first thing you see when you walk into Sooty’s is this giant laughing Buddha on a table covered with mostly used up candles, ugly colors, yellow and green. The first thing you see when you walk into our house is an oval brass mirror with a brass basket below it that’s supposed to be for umbrellas or mail or mittens or something, but no one ever puts anything in there. Sometimes bugs die in there and just dry up.

The only time we light candles at my house is when the power goes out, and usually not even then because nobody can ever find any matches. Sooty’s dad collects matches. There’s a big glass bowl on Sooty’s coffee table filled with matches from all over the world. Kate’s mom keeps ashtrays everywhere.

Dad always says our neighborhood is small, but it takes me at least fifteen minutes to ride my bike home from Kate’s. Sooty’s is even farther. It’s not like I know everybody, but Mom and Dad do. They only spend time with a few people on our block. I am not really friends with the kids whose parents Mom and Dad invite to our house. I’ve tried to be, but those kids are either boring or strange, too young or too old.
My dad is convinced Sooty’s dad has been stealing our newspaper in the mornings. We haven’t gotten it in four days.

Mom says why would a man drive across town to get our paper when he could walk to the end of his own street and get one out of a box for fifteen cents. Dad says she doesn’t know what the hell she’s dealing with. Mom says why doesn’t he just call the people at the newspaper, find out what’s going on, but Dad’s been waking up before the sun comes out and crouching at the window, hoping he’ll catch Sooty’s dad. So far, no newspaper and nobody in the yard, just squirrels. Dad is disappointed but very determined and keeps to his schedule.

I am tempted to wake up early myself, to put on my shoes and socks and traipse out the door and down the street and buy a paper, throw it on our lawn. When my alarm rings so early and I’m sleepy and it’s just getting blue outside I think: he’ll probably catch me and I’ll panic, caught on the driveway in his flashlight, street shoes on with pajamas, nothing to say.

Me and Kate and Sooty sometimes go to movies together and Kate always sits in the middle, even though Sooty and me like our popcorn the same, butter and salt. Kate eats it plain. We pass our popcorn over Kate, she doesn’t mind. At Fantasia, we accidentally spilled the whole goddamn bag on her. Grease spots all over her blouse, she went home right after the movie, instead of going ice skating, which was what we’d planned. She wouldn’t let just me and Sooty go.

We’re in Mr. Deletsky’s class learning about the ancient civilization of Sumer and I’m sitting next to Sooty, Kate’s across the room, that’s the seating chart for now. I feel Kate watching us, we’re not even doing anything, just listening to Mr. Deletsky, which is what we’re supposed to be doing. I don’t look at Kate, and I don’t look at Sooty. Mr. Deletsky says count off into groups and both me and Kate are two’s, so we’re in the same group. Sooty’s with the Salter twins, Justin and Jason, they’re identical, red-headed and skinny. Kate acts happy to be in my group. She keeps doing and undoing her pigtails, asking me how they look and not helping me and Kurt Kunkler with the diorama. They look the same each time, and each time I tell her they’re fine. Kate is too old for pigtails, but I’d never tell her that.

At lunch, as usual, we three sit together at the same end of the same long gray table next to the same poster of the four food groups. Someone has drawn mustaches on the boys and boobs on the girls in the poster. We pretend not to notice, but we all notice. I trade sandwich halves with Sooty, I’ve got peanut butter and he’s got baloney. We sit next to each other because of the trade, Kate sits across. Kate eats her tuna salad like none of this means anything. Later, in drama, me and Sooty talk a little bit.

“Do you think she minds, me going to the movies and trading sandwiches and all that,” I say.

“No,” he says.

“Can I have one of your t-shirts?” I say.

“Sure,” he says.

I’m disappointed by the one he pulls out of his backpack. It’s just a plain men’s undershirt with a decal ironed crooked onto the front. The decal came in the newspaper a few Sundays ago, we all got one. I accept it but will probably never wear it. He obviously didn’t understand what I meant. Kate meets us after school and we walk down by the old road, near the river. It’s not on our way home, it’s just someplace we go.
Kate and Sooty hold hands, I walk behind, watching their hands swing forward and back. The ground is dark and soft and wet in places. Our shoes stick in the mud and make loud sucking noises. Kate doesn’t know I’ve got Sooty’s t-shirt in my bag and I don’t tell her.

I feel the place on my finger where she poked me with the pin.

I can still feel something, but not that much. When we get to the concrete bridge, we stop.

Sooty skips stones, Kate and I watch, sitting on our wind breakers.

Neither Kate nor I know how to skip stones. When he’s done, we walk back together, Kate and me with our muddy wind breakers tied around our waists, Sooty on the other side of Kate, until it’s time for us to split off for separate houses.
I walk in on the middle of a big conversation.

Everyone’s talking at once. My Dad has killed Sooty’s dad, or tried to kill him, or it’s the other way around, I can’t tell.

My Aunt Karen’s over, along with four or five of the neighbor ladies.

I don’t see Mom or Dad. Someone threw a brick through the other one’s window and the one whose window it was beat the other one with the brick until that one died, or almost died.

Beyond this, nobody knows anything, they all seem to be repeating themselves, and they don’t notice when I leave.

I go by Kate’s but she’s at Sooty’s so I go by Sooty’s but there aren’t any lights on so I go down by the old road, near the river and they’re side by side, leaning against the base of the concrete bridge.

I stand on the other side of Kate. If they were talking before, they’ve stopped now. We stay, quiet for a while, then Sooty goes to skip stones.

“I can’t believe he’s dead,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says, picking bits of dried mud off her windbreaker. I do the same.

“Is he dead?” I ask, not sure if it’s my own dad I mean, or Sooty’s.

“I think so,” she says. We watch Sooty, throwing two stones at a time, each stone skipping three or four times, every time. It starts to get dark, but they don’t move to leave, so I don’t, either.

“Murder,” Kate says.

“Here,” I say to Kate, and hand over Sooty’s t-shirt.

“I already have one,” she says.

“Oh,” I say, and stuff it back into my bag.

Since Kate’s dad is already dead, whatever happened will make me, or Sooty, or both, more like her.

“I can’t believe nobody’s looking for us,” I say, squinting at the disappearing circles Sooty’s stones are making in the water.

“Yeah,” she says.

On the way home, I think of what I’d miss most about my dad and can only come up with five or six things. He goes to work early, he’s gone by the time I get up for school.

I’ll miss seeing his empty coffee cup, I guess, and the way he still picks me up for a hug, although I’m much too big, and the funny faces he makes and the way he smells of soap and tobacco.

I wish I’d at least tried the trick with the newspaper, maybe he’d still be alive.

I wonder what Sooty will miss if it’s his dad, but I don’t ask him. Sooty’s mom lives in Kansas or Florida or somewhere, so he’d probably miss his dad much more than I’d miss mine.

My dad would have one of those fancy, flag-folding funerals they give to soldiers. Maybe some of the people from his work would come, and his and mom’s friends from the neighborhood, with their unfriendly children. He’d be buried in his uniform. I wonder if anybody would cry besides Mom. I wonder if I would. I probably would.

Aunt Karen would come. We wouldn’t have to take those awful car trips to see the state capitols over spring break any more. And Mom would probably find a new husband, hopefully one who loves dogs and sail boats, and everything eventually would be fine.

Sooty’s dad would definitely have a better funeral. I bet he’d want to be buried in that Fuck Nixon t-shirt he always wears. Either that, or the one that says I Love My Hooker Headers. I can’t remember seeing him wear anything else, though I’m sure he has other clothes. I probably wouldn’t be allowed to go, though.

And Sooty would have to move away, most likely. We all try to guess what time it is before we split off, me and Sooty say eight, but Kate is certain it’s later.

Mom is sitting in the kitchen waiting for me and I know exactly what she’s going to say. “I’ve been worried sick,” she says, but doesn’t sound like she means it.

“Sorry,” I say, looking at my muddy shoes, wondering if I’ve made marks on the way in, hoping she won’t notice if I did. She stands up, holding out her arms, and I slip between them. She brings me close, rubs my back and rests her chin on the top of my head.

“Is Dad okay?” I ask, face pressed tight against her chest.

“He’s in the hospital, they’re taking care of him,” she says.

“He’s not dead?”

“No, no, sweetheart, he’s not dead.” I feel her start to cry.

“What happened?” I ask.

“Mr. Quavis,” she says, and sniffles. Then she releases me, moving one hand to my shoulder, using the other to wipe her nose. “Mr. Quavis and your father, they had another fight.”

“Is Mr. Quavis dead?” I ask.

“No, honey. No, nobody’s dead.”

“Well that’s good,” I say.

Dad threw the brick at Mr. Quavis’ window and Mr. Quavis chased Dad with the brick all the way down the street and around the corner until he caught up and hit him on the head with it. I want to laugh when I hear this, at the sight of them in my head, and I think good for him, good for Mr. Quavis, Dad is always so mean to him, good for Mr. Quavis, but I just listen until Mom finishes telling me and says it’s time for bed. In bed I let myself laugh out loud a little bit before I fall asleep.

After school, Mom and I go to the hospital to pick up Dad. She buys me a Dr Pepper out of the machine in the waiting room and I sip at it while she fills out some forms on a clip board. In the car, all Dad says to me is are you drinking that Dr Pepper or can I use it for an ashtray. I give it to him, even though I’m not done. I stare at the back of his head while he smokes and think of Mr. Quavis hitting it with the brick. I want to ask why do you go around throwing bricks in people’s windows, but I know he’d just get mad and not answer. Plus, why can’t he use the car’s ashtray?

At home they argue about putting Sooty’s dad in jail and about who’s going to pay for the window. I change into Sooty’s t-shirt. The decal is stiff and tickles at my chest. I put a sweater on over it and ask if I can go out. Dad says not if it’s to play with that little son-of-a-bitch Nathan, Jr. and I say it’s not and they argue about that, too, but they let me go.

I see them for more than a block before I reach her driveway. The garage door is open and Kate is sitting cross-legged on the trunk of the Volvo watching Sooty shoot baskets. If he misses the basket he could hit her with the ball, but this wouldn’t occur to Kate. I stand on the driveway behind Sooty shifting my weight from leg to leg, listening to the ball smack the pavement, feeling a sting in my cheeks until Kate says c’mon, c’mere.

I lean against the car bumper and whisper do you think somebody’ll have to go to jail, and she says that’s entirely up to my dad.

“But he broke the window. That’s illegal, right?” I imagine Sooty’s dad and my dad in a jail cell together, my dad calling Sooty’s dad a son-of-a-bitch, Sooty’s dad calling for a guard. Sooty walks up to us then, ball under his arm.

“Can I have my t-shirt back?” he says, but he looks at Kate, turning to me only after he’s done talking.

“I’m wearing it,” I say, and lift up the front of my sweater to show the decal, more for Kate than for Sooty, so she’ll know exactly which t-shirt he means.

“S’okay,” Kate says. “You can go inside and change.”

“But this sweater’s all itchy with nothing underneath,” I say.

“Borrow something from me for underneath,” she says, and they wait for me to do something, so I go inside.

Kate’s bedroom is twice the size of my own, but I know where everything is. I tug open her t-shirt drawer, take whatever shirt is on top without looking at it and pull my sweater off over my head. I take off Sooty’s shirt and leave it, inside out, on her dresser. I don’t realize until I’m getting ready for bed that the t-shirt I took used to be mine.

Thomas turned his attention back to the elderly, bald curate still droning on beside him.

“Buried him right there, they did, right where he fell. The church had been his life: the making of him and the ending of him. It seemed fitting somehow.”

The curate would have said more, but Thomas pointedly walked away from the church brass they had been standing over and headed towards the gaping hole on the other side of the nearest pillar.

“This, I assume, is the reason I’m here?”

“Yes, yes, quite right. That’s the reason. Digging a small test pit he was, when the floor caved in beneath him. Sucked him right down. If it hadn’t been for the quick thinking of his colleague, the hole would have got him.”

“Has anybody been down there since?”

“Oh no. The vicar wouldn’t allow it in case of accidents.”

“But he’s ok with me going down?”

“That’s what we’re paying you for.”

“So, if I’m the first since the cave-in, how do you know there are bones down there?”

The curate turned on the antiquated looking torch he had been carrying and pointed the surprisingly bright beam down into the depths of the pit. The throat of the hole was relatively narrow, but, below a jutting ledge of stone, a large cavern bellied out into blackness. On the ledge Thomas could see a human skull and other human sized bones, together with the end of what looked like a large thigh bone, obviously too big to be human.

“So what do you think it is?” the curate asked.

“That’s what I’m here to find out.”

“Indeed.”

The curate seemed to be waiting for a further response from Thomas, but he was in for a long wait.

“I guess you’ll be wanting to get started, then?”

“Yes.”

The silence matched the gloom in intensity. Thomas wasn’t giving anything away. The curate had irritated him with his unasked for and totally unnecessary history tour, incorporating its interminable lecture on the internment of some Seventeenth Century mason who had plummeted to his death within the confines of the church. Plus, Thomas had been irritated to begin with by the fact the vicar hadn’t deigned to meet with him in person. He’d left him to the doddery curate and his unwanted history lesson. It was alright for Thomas to go down a hole the vicar wouldn’t risk anyone else going down, but the vicar couldn’t be arsed to meet him first. Okay, the job he was generously being paid to do wasn’t strictly legal, but it wasn’t totally illegal either. The vicar just wanted things checked out and any archaeology verified discreetly, before deciding whether or not to disclose the recent discovery. Of course, if there was nothing worth disclosing, so much the better. It seemed the vicar liked a quiet life, but surely getting off his arse long enough to say hello to him wouldn’t have been that loud an activity?

Thomas glanced up. The curate was still standing there, expectantly.

“Yes?”

The cleric finally took the hint and left. Thomas turned his attention to the ragged opening at his feet. It looked as if the ground had just come apart, rather than the floor caving in. Still, it all seemed stable enough, despite the vicar’s apparent concerns.

Thomas crouched by the opening and thrust his arm into it. The sides were solid. If he needed to climb down they should support his weight. First things first, though. It would be easier to extract the bones from the pit, than insert himself down into its narrow throat. Not archaeologically sound, maybe, but a swift and practical solution to the matter. Except it wasn’t.

Thomas set up his kit and began the task of extracting the bones. Whatever he tried, however, the bones stayed put. They were stuck solid to the rock shelf they were resting on. Hardly surprising if the bones had been down there a very long time, but judging from their depth they can’t have been that old. Then again, the large animal bone looked fairly ancient. Still, there was no point guessing. He’d just have to get himself down there and do the archaeology properly, or as properly as limited time allowed.

Thomas was preparing the ropes and harness when the curate turned up again.

“You’re not going down there tonight?”

“That is my intention, yes.”

“It’s getting dark outside.”

“It’s been as dark as the insides of Jonah’s whale in here the whole time I’ve been working.”

“It’s gone sunset.”

“And that’ll effect my already electrically illuminated working area, how?”

“The vicar will be wanting to take the evening service.”

“Look, I might as well go down now. The kit’s already set up.”

“Soon. He’ll want to be starting the service soon.”

Thomas admitted defeat and started packing his equipment away, the curate hovering around him the whole time. As soon as he had got the kit stowed, the curate was ushering him out the side door.

“You know the way to the hotel?”

“Yes. This is hardly a large village and I checked in before I came here.”

“Right you are, then. You might like to take this with you. Tells you a bit more about the history of the church. I didn’t cover the half of it this afternoon. Thought you’d be interested, being an archaeologist and all.”

Was there a taste of sarcasm in the delivery of the word “archaeologist”? The curate proffered a chunky, amateurishly printed pamphlet.

“Wrote it myself.”

Thomas thanked him less than profusely and made his way to the local pub-come-inn where he was staying.

A couple of pints and a remarkably unsatisfying meal later and it was still too early to go to bed, but the village boasted nothing to keep Thomas entertained. The pub was empty. There was no one to talk to except the barman and he wasn’t the conversational sort. Thomas reluctantly went up to his room only to discover that the elderly TV had given up the ghost.

Staring out of his bedroom window he admired the brilliance of the evening’s full moon. The whole village was better illuminated than the insides of the church had been. He glanced over at the large building which dominated the village of Bloodwell with its dark, looming bulk, except it wasn’t so dark after all. Thomas could see flickering lights through the stained-glass windows, giving the impression of a dull red glow behind the narrow openings, like heavily lidded eyes, but even as he was looking the lights went out. He checked his watch. Someone was working late. He hoped the church was going to be unlocked early the next morning as promised. He needed a prompt start if he was going to get everything done before the rituals of the church got in his way again.

Perhaps he should have an early night, but he wasn’t tired. He searched for something to do. It looked like a choice between the room’s provided bible or the curate’s pamphlet. He wasn’t naturally a God botherer. Reluctantly he opened the curate’s poorly printed efforts. They turned out to be as badly written as he had expected.

“A devotional edifice has stood on this most sacred site for more than a thousand years….prehistoric evidence of ritual worship, ….Anglo Saxon chapel….monastic community established early in the Twelfth Century… yadda, yadda ,yadda ….church built to support a congregation twice the size of the current village of Bloodwell.”

Well, at least that explained why the church was so bloody ginormous.

“The village itself was once a lot bigger than it is now, with a population of…..black death….centuries of attrition…. a catalogue of misfortunes……”

Thomas could feel his eyes growing heavier. He struggled through the pamphlet’s blow by blow description of the construction of the current church, including the untimely death of the Seventeenth Century mason and a number of other unfortunates who, at various times, had given their lives that the church might grow. Catalogue of misfortunes, right enough.

He was getting more and more tired and the list of building phases and individual craftsman started to merge together, segueing somehow into a layer-cake of architectural foundations and people and sub-structures which led to a sacred site which was actually a large beast with glowing red eyes and it was getting hungry.

Thomas woke up with a start. He was cold and starving and it was too early for breakfast. He glanced at his watch. It wasn’t, however, too early to get up and shower if he was going to make it to the church for his planned early start.

He was at the church by 6:30. There was no one there, but the side door was unlocked. He went in and got himself set up.
Good God, he was hungry. He could hear his stomach rumbling. The sooner he got the bones up out of the pit, the sooner he could be putting food into the grumbling pit of his own stomach. The cavernous insides of the church made the rumbling seem loud and when he started to lower himself into the mouth of the pit, the narrow sides served to amplify the sound still further.

Crouching on the tongue of stone that cradled the exposed bones, he began to dust and chip away at the soil that held them in place. Except the soil soon became solid rock. The bones must be very old. Sorry Vicar, it was going to take forever to get them out. Thomas decided to cut yet a few more corners and age test them in-situ. Lucky there was no one around to witness his less than orthodox practices. He carried out the tests as best he could, in a space that seemed to be getting more and more constricted with every passing minute. Small sounds echoed distractingly in the shaft-like confines and Thomas was growing increasingly irritable.

Eventually he got some readings: early Sixteen Hundreds for the human bones and off the scale old for the large one. That didn’t make sense. They were all embedded in the same stratum of rock. It looked like he’d have to dig the bones out after all.

Thomas pulled his focus away from the bones and looked up at the roof of the church. It seemed ever so far away. He heard movement and thought he saw the curate’s egg-shaped head peering over the rim of the pit, but when he called out there was no response.

He was starting to feel light-headed from lack of food. Time to get himself back up into the main body of the church. The floor level now seemed as far away as the roof. The pit seemed deeper, somehow and the opening he needed to get to, that much smaller. He blinked. The opening had visibly constricted. That wasn’t right. He looked again. The walls of the pit were starting to press in on him. He called out and then he screamed and, in the echo of the empty cavern beneath him, his scream came back at him like the groaning of an empty stomach.

#

Twelve months later and the elderly curate of St. Blaise in the tiny village of Bloodwell was boring yet another unfortunate with one of his historical tours of the body of the church.

“Buried him right there, they did, right where he fell. The church had been his life: the making of him and the ending of him. It seemed fitting somehow.”

He moved on from the old church brass, dragging his unwilling audience to the other side of the adjacent pillar. Behind its monolithic bulk and between it and the next column, two in a double row of pillars which lined the gloomy insides of the church like a set of ribs, a modern church brass lay on the floor, engraved on its surface the simple words, “Rest Here”.

“Yet another of our unfortunate servants. Died here only last year. We have been amazingly blessed and amazingly unlucky, in equal measure. Now when did you say you were planning on starting work?”

“Got it. Be there in five.”

I dropped the mic on the front seat of my cab and pulled out of the mall parking lot. A call at 2:00 AM on a Tuesday night usually meant a drunk, a shift worker, or someone headed to the airport for an emergency flight. I hoped it was the trip to the airport.

The ride to Madison only took a few minutes. When I pulled up I saw the light on in the apartment at the front. It spilled from behind yellowed lace curtains. Most likely some old lady with cats headed out on a red-eye flight to a funeral. The rest of the small building was dark. I debated whether or not to go to the door or just honk the horn and wait. Most cabbies just honk and wait a minute or two. I preferred to add some humanity to the job. Besides, a little personal touch and a smile were good ways to get a tip and didn’t cost you anything. No one wandered the streets or was drinking on the stoops which made me think the neighborhood wasn’t too sketchy, so I decided I’d go in and knock on the door.

The building was clean, but tired. Worn carpets, old paint and the stale odor of past meals were the palette that defined the building. I would have bet that most of the meals came from cans with Chef-boy-ardee on the front. I walked down the hall, past an ancient cast iron radiator and knocked at a door with a brass number three on it.

“Just a moment,” the woman’s voiced quavered through the door. The lock turned and I heard a chain slide from the door. I pasted a smile on my face that I hoped looked friendly and not psychotic.

The old woman was slight, and stood all of 5 feet tall. With her flower print dress and pill-box hat with a veil she could have been an extra in a Humphrey Bogart movie. Wrinkles wove character into her face and her eyes were watery and red. She reminded me of a newborn bird with paper-thin skin and blue veins.

Her eyes caught mine. “Young man, would you be kind enough to take my bag out to the car?” She pointed at an old-fashioned leather valise on the floor beside her. It had a few faded stickers that adorned its sides from vacations long forgotten.

“Of course, ma’am.” I tipped my baseball cap and entered the apartment. The furniture had all been wrapped in white drop cloths and there were boxes piled along the walls. There were no knick-knacks on the side tables and no pictures on the mantle. Clean spots on the wallpaper marked where pictures had been taken down. “Moving?”

“You could say so,” she looked wistfully around the room as she pulled on a pair of white gloves. “Thank you so much for carrying my bag.”

“Not a problem. Can I get anything else for you?”

“I have a small box in the corner,” she pointed to a small box behind the door. “It has some pictures and other things.”

I hauled the box and valise out to the car and went back to retrieve my passenger. She sat primly with her purse in her lap on one of the sheet covered chairs. Her eyes were wet as she looked around the tiny apartment.

“Ma’am? You okay?”

“Fine, fine,” she dismissed the remark with a wave of her hand. She wiped her eyes with a dainty lace-edged handkerchief. “Just an old lady who gets weepy at times.” She stood, straightened her dress and walked to me, taking my arm. I looked down in surprise, I hadn’t had a woman take my arm in, well, ever. She looked up at me and I could feel her shrink into me as the emotion seeped out of her.

“C’mon,” I said with a thick voice. “We’ll get going.” We strode slowly down the hall and carefully down the stairs to the waiting cab. She kept her head high and stepped carefully. She had all the weight of a tiny shadow attached to my arm.

I opened the rear door of the cab and ushered her in. Safely tucked in place, I jumped in the front of the cab and buckled in. “Where to?”

She gave me the address. It was the other side of town, it would take about a half hour to get there. “Off to visit?” I asked.

She laughed. “Goodness, no. I’m moving to a new place, but I want to do something before I get there.”

“What’s that?” I was curious. What would a lady her age want to do at 2:30 AM?

“Can we go through the downtown?”

“It’s not the fastest way. It’ll take –”

“It doesn’t matter to me how long it takes,” she smiled back at me in the mirror. “I’m not in a big hurry to get to my new place. They really aren’t expecting me until morning and I can afford the fare.” She tapped the side of her white faux-leather purse.

I shrugged and pulled out. We headed for the downtown district. The customer is always right, and a little extra fare wouldn’t hurt, there aren’t all that many customers at that time of the morning.
The downtown core was all shiny steel and glass buildings. Traffic lights and arc-sodiums in the parking lots kept the night at bay. The streets were deserted, even the hookers had called it a night. The only traffic included the occasional police car or fellow cabbie. If you wanted to sight-see and take your time, this was the time to do it.

Her frail voice came from the backseat as we drove around. She directed us up and down streets and stared out the window. We were out by the arena. “Can you pull over here for a moment?”

“Of course.” I signaled and pulled to the curb next to a parking lot. There were a few cars parked and an abandoned attendant’s booth. A sign announced that hourly parking was six dollars and that the lot wasn’t responsible for damage to your vehicle. I put my arm on the backseat and looked over my shoulder. “This good enough?”

She pointed to the parking lot. “There used to be a department store here. Do you remember?”

I shook my head. “I moved here about ten years ago.”

“It was a Kresge’s. I worked as a telephone operator when I was a much younger girl.” She laughed at the thought and continued. “I met my husband here, at the soda fountain. He was the elevator operator. It wasn’t a very good job, but I did get to see him every day. He looked so handsome in his uniform.”

“Things are a little different today,” I said. “Heck, those jobs don’t even exist any more.” I paused for a minute and added. “Neither do soda fountains.”

She nodded. “It’s funny, the past is so clear. When I look at all this, I don’t feel old. I feel like I was twenty again.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her. “You’re over twenty?”

She laughed and her eyes sparkled for the first time that night. “Young man, you have earned a handsome tip.”

I doffed my cap at her. “As my lady sees fit.”

She looked out at the parking lot again. “Do you mind if I get out for a moment?”

I took a look out the windshield. “It isn’t the best neighborhood in town to be wandering around in.” I looked back at her and shook my head. Her eyes shone as she looked out at that old parking lot, and I could tell she wasn’t seeing or hearing anything that I was. “It’s your meter, ma’am. I can turn it off if you’re –”

She cut me off with a wave of her gloved hand and pushed the door open. She spent a few minutes wandering around the parking lot, looking at empty places and talking to herself. At one point I heard her giggle. She slowly wound her way back to the car and climbed back in. She pointed in a new direction and I drove.

The next stop was a neighborhood that consisted of burnt out houses and abandoned cars. Weed covered lots were filled with garbage and the rusted hulks of twisted shopping carts.

“Our first house was on this street. Two bedrooms. We bought it right after we were married.”

“Not many people live in this neighborhood now.”

“Well, it was a lot cleaner then. There were sand-lots for the kids to play in, and the drive-in was only a few blocks away. My husband and I loved to go to the drive-in on Saturday nights.”

“Like anything in particular? Westerns? Scary Movies?”

She blushed. “We didn’t watch the movies much back then,” She giggled and pointed in the direction of the old drive-in. “But we certainly enjoyed the drive-in.”

I cleared my throat and felt my cheeks burn a little at the change in topic. “Was the house very expensive when you bought it?”

Her eyes widened. “Oh my, It was so dear,” She held up three fingers. “It cost us nearly three thousand dollars.” She shook her head. “I know that doesn’t sound like much, but back then it was a lot of money.” She pointed to an old oak that towered above a boarded up house to our right. I slowed to a crawl. “My husband and his best friend Ernie planted that tree in 1947. Our kids played together.” She paused and then shook her head. “Mercy, has it really been that long? I saw Ernie’s daughter last month after her husband had passed. Where do all the years go?”

I drove for a while more, stopping every once in a while so that she could just stare out the window, lost in a world that I couldn’t see. I stopped to get gas and we continued to wind our way through the city.

“Do you see that building?” She asked.

“The abandoned one?” I asked, looking at the crumbling building across the street. It may have been grand at one time with its high windows and grand entrance, but now it was boarded up and looked like it was a home to crack-heads and rats.

“It was a ballroom, once upon a time when such things were popular. Young ladies and gentlemen would meet and dance. We would be dressed up and listen to the bands. Oh, how I loved to dance. I would spend hours getting ready.” I heard her shift in the backseat. Her voice was soft and rough now. “Oscar always looked so handsome in his suit. Tall and dark with his hair slicked back. I was so lucky.” She reached out and ran a finger down the glass of the window. The sky had been lightening for the last hour and now there was a touch of pink at the horizon. She straightened and faced forward. “Let’s go, please. I’m ready now.”

We drove in silence for the last twenty minutes. I didn’t know what to say or even if I could say anything. She sat quietly in the back, head held high and her eyes half-closed.

I turned onto the tree lined street and looked for the address she had given me. There weren’t many houses or buildings of any sort. I saw the address on a sign attached to a squat white building. My heart skipped a beat and my eyes went to the rear view mirror as I signaled my turn.

“Are you sure this is the right place?”

“Yes, Saint Joseph’s Hospice. They’re expecting me.” She sat ramrod straight in the backseat, her purse clutched in her hands.

We pulled into the grounds where the hospice was located and crunched up the gravel driveway. I stopped at the front door and two orderlies stepped through the front door and approached the cab. It was obvious that they had been waiting for her.

“How much do I owe you?” She pulled a wallet out of her purse and began to riffle through the bills inside.

My eyes misted and my voice cracked. “No charge for the ride.”

“Don’t be silly, you need to make a living.”

“There’s always another fare, ma’am. But you can do one thing.”

“What’s that?”

I stepped forward and surprised myself by giving her a hug. My eyes moistened when I felt her tighten her hold. She stepped back and took my hand in hers.

“Thank you, young man. You made an old woman very happy tonight.” She stood on tiptoe and gave me a soft, dry kiss on my cheek.

The orderlies stepped forward and took the valise and small box. They put her into a wheelchair and trundled toward the front door. They were very solicitous and clinical. She was in good hands.

I drove around for hours with my radio off. I didn’t want another fare for a while.

The sun was up and people once again filled the streets. They hurried here and there, honked horns, walked while talking on cellphones or grabbed coffee. They tossed litter on the street and passed each other in a rush to get where they were going, completely oblivious to the past that lay all around them.

I didn’t pay attention to them. Through my windshield I saw a beautiful young girl in a beaded ballgown, hanging on the arm of a handsome man with slicked back hair in a tuxedo. They walked up the red carpeted stairs of the Ballroom Palace. She smiled up at him, totally in love. The muted tones of big band music could be heard when they opened the door and then faded as they passed to a happier place.

#

Sangoma shuffled to the shade of a tree and removed his white hat. Graying curls outlined his leathery black face. Fine lines revealed seventy years of wisdom. He sat cross-legged and inscribed a circle with his slender fingers in the parched ground. A haze drifted yonder.

Mustafa sat across from him and smiled. White teeth juxtaposed a black face, dark curly hair and deep brown eyes. Thick muscular arms, attached to broad shoulders, extended to strong callused hands. Mustafa placed his palms together just below his nose and inhaled deeply.

Sangoma nodded and removed some bones from a pouch. He tossed them in the circle and chanted in an ancient dialect, which Mustafa didn’t understand. Faint clouds of dust danced like specters in the breeze. Sangoma waited until the visions vanished before outlining five bones.

“What do you see?” Mustafa asked.

“I see confusion, deceit, and lies… But the question is… What do you see Mustafa? You are our leader.”

“I see an old man sitting on the ground and bones begging for life.”

Sangoma nodded. Mustafa laughed and stood up. He was born in a generation that solved problems with modern technology. People were forgetting and ridiculing the ancient ways of survival. Too often, the incantations failed to reap a reward. Thus, Mustafa had requested aid from the ghosts that flew in the sky.

Sangoma and Mustafa stood. A rumbling cloud of dust was zooming toward them. Two yellow eyes illuminated the darkening road. The modern elephant screeched to a halt. Sangoma and Mustafa coughed.
The van’s passenger window rolled down. A white face, with blue eyes and rosy cheeks emerged. A glossy white smile greeted. Eyes sparkled in the twilight. A silver chain and crucifix dangled over a pristine white shirt.

The man held a video camera and spoke with an accent that wasn’t English, American, or Canadian, but a mixture of enunciation’s derived from missionary travels around the globe.
“Good evening. My name is Tom. I’m here on missionary work to spread the word of Jesus and bring help to the underprivileged. I’m looking for Mustafa.”

“That is I, we’ve been expecting you. My village is three miles east of here. Drive to the glowing lights.”

“I’d offer you a ride, but we’re all full here.”

“That’s alright. We’re enjoying the evening stroll.”

“The supplies will be arriving shortly. They might have room. I’ll radio ahead and let them know. I want to get settled before dark.”

“The villagers are expecting you. Your accommodations are waiting,” Sangoma replied.

Mustafa and Sangoma pointed to the village. Lamps and candles sparkled like the sky’s constellations. The van rumbled over the dry terrain and vanished in a haze of dust. Mustafa and Sangoma strolled behind along the darkening prairie.

“Our culture is being lost,” Sangoma said.

“We have no choice. We have to keep pace with modern technology.”

“It’s the principles and ethics of our society I’m worried about.”

“I’m at their mercy for without help the village will perish.”

A rumbling herd approached, in a cloud of dust, from the rear. Multiple glowing eyes illuminated the foreground. Specters of the gray hulk plodded onward. Shouting solicited direction. Mustafa pointed to the village. Four cargo trucks turned east toward the glowing lights. The first truck stopped at Mustafa’s side. The driver spoke.

“Climb aboard. I’ve got room.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m carrying supplies for the new Christian community.”

Mustafa and Sangoma sat on the crates in the cab and mulled over the decision to invite the strangers to the village. Malnutrition, dehydration and disease were devastating the population. The villagers had long forgotten the traditional knowledge of survival. The practices and principles of the New World were needed. Making use of the local resources would increase the chances of survival and growth.

Mustafa and Sangoma arrived to a boisterous village of people. Men were pounding Drums. Feet were dancing around a bonfire. White faces were offering gifts. Children were cherishing sweets, from a distant land. Wooden crucifixes dangled from the black necks of the villagers.

The missionaries were handing gifts of linen and toys to the families. Exuberance was casting traditional garb into red flames. Smiles were glossy white. Pupils were large and black. Red streaked through the sclera. Jubilation was the majority. Shouts, hugs and tears ran, as a woman played guitar and sang Christian hymns.

Mustafa approached like a lion hunting prey. The guitarist sensed his presence. Her eyes elevated from the height of the frolicking children and glanced back and forth. She rose from a crouched position and stood upright. Then she stopped playing and darted through the crowd. Children followed closely behind. Mustafa glanced right.

Tom was leaning against a tree filming the celebration. He motioned for Mustafa and Sangoma to join him. Mustafa was hoping to meet Tom in the middle by finding an agreement where both parties gained from the communion. However, Tom was strolling farther away, luring Mustafa to follow like a fish chasing a lure.

“I won’t be needed any longer. I’m off to bed,” Sangoma said.

“I’m going to speak to Tom about this.”

“I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

Mustafa followed Tom, through the festivities, toward a tent while staring into the eyes of his people. Their spiritual trance was unwavering. His presence went unnoticed. Tom held the cloth door open and invited Mustafa inside. Mustafa was hesitant about entering the foreign structure. He felt like a stranger. The change of allegiance was occurring faster than anticipated.

“Are the accommodations unsatisfactory?” Mustafa asked.

“I prefer my own sleeping quarters. Come inside. I need to speak with you.”

The tent contained a double bed, a small desk and eating area. Two lamps illuminated the room. Tom motioned for Mustafa to sit on the bed.

“You must be careful with those lamps. They can catch fire.”

“They’re battery operated. Please sit on the edge of the bed. I have much to tell you.” Mustafa sat with feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. However, he wanted to express the value in preserving his culture and the morals preached by Sangoma. “You look worried.”

“I’m concerned about the sudden exhilaration. My people have had little to celebrate. Sangoma hasn’t had much luck recently.” Tom raised both hands to his mouth and exhaled.

“I understand… That’s why I’m here. I wish Sangoma had joined us. My church has great plans for your village, but your people need to convert to Christianity before things get underway. Tonight is just a taste of God’s offerings.”

“But we already have a religion.”

“Without the teachings of Jesus your people will never prosper.

“Sangoma has done a fine job instilling…”

“Do you understand the amount of money and resources I have at my disposal?”

“But that is the only part of our culture that has remained intact! We just need the knowledge of your people to teach us the…”

“Your people need to be taught the ways of Jesus!” Tom grasped his crucifix and stood. “Or they will remain savages in the eyes of God!”

Mustafa stood. Bleeding eyes peered down at Tom’s holy fist. Drumming muffled hostility.

“My people are not savages!” Wind whisked, in a spray of phlegm, from blackness through the white picket fence. His holiness elevated. Tom glared, as flames shone from the wavering door and reflected blinding
light off the relic into Mustafa’s eyes. Mustafa stumbled backward. Prey entered unannounced and became the predator. Tom’s voice softened.

“Sit down. Sit down. This is exactly what I’ve been talking about.”

“What’s going on in here?” the guitarist asked.

“It’s alright. I’m in the process of conversion. Have a seat Debbie.”

Mustafa slammed the gate on the white picket fence and glared. Liquid dripped from darkness to the ground. He looked at Debbie and breathed deeply. Frown lines formed along his forehead. Anxiety manifested in moisture under his vest. “Please sit down.” Mustafa was compliant but his limbs were twitching. “I’m filming a documentary and I’d like you to be part of it.” Mustafa’s gaze rose from the floor. “Would that be
alright?”

“Yes… that would be fine,” Mustafa replied.

“It’s partially scripted, but I’d like you to speak as though the words were your own.”

“Alright. I can do that.”

Tom shuffled through a folder of papers while Mustafa glanced at Debbie.

“I can’t seem to find it here. Why don’t you entertain Mustafa with the guitar? It must be in my other bag. I left it in the van.”

“I don’t really feel like playing,” Debbie replied.

“It won’t take me long. Music helps tame the…”

“Tom!” Mustafa grit his teeth and clenched his fists. Tom strode to the exit.

“I’ll only be a minute.”

Debbie nodded and picked up the guitar. She placed it across her knee. Classical picking and a sharp voice shrilled the ears in a haunting hymn of Jesus’ final days. Mustafa listened, but his desire was to leave. Yet, his mind felt constrained like an animal pacing in a cage.

Could a religion with such a violent nature bring peace and harmony to his people? Was the sacrifice for a greater good? Tears welled, as Mustafa contemplated the decision to forgo his religious beliefs for the betterment of his people. He wiped his anguish on his sleeve. Tom stormed in, as the last chord was struck.

“I see it’s having an effect already.” Debbie put the guitar down and frowned. “Alright I want you to read this. It’s a waver granting me the right to use this footage in a documentary if I so choose.”

“Do we have to do this?” Debbie asked.

“Yes, it will only take a moment. Debbie and I are going to step outside. Start reading whenever you’re ready.” Tom turned on the camera.
Mustafa gazed at the white paper. Tears dripped and ran blackened with ink along the parchment.

“I, Mustafa, relinquish all my rights to this video and grant Tom the right to use this video, as he sees fit, for as long as he wishes.”
Tom returned with a warm smile and turned off the camera.

“You read very well Mustafa. You should consider acting.” Mustafa ran his hand along his forehead and exhaled. “Debbie is going to play the other part.”

“I’m not an actor.”

“Just do the best you can. It’s more of a documentary. I want your natural emotions.” Tom turned the camera on and walked out the door.

Debbie entered with an inviting smile and sat on the bed across from Mustafa.

“So what do you want to do?” Debbie asked.

Mustafa’s flush-ness was masked by dark skin, but moisture was forming along his forehead. He wiped his brow with a cloth. Rhythmic drumming raced his fluttering heart, as anxiety crept up his spine.

“Well it’s getting late. I suppose I should…” Mustafa shifted on the air mattress. Debbie slid closer from the shift in weight. She laughed. Mustafa smiled.

“Here.” Debbie handed Mustafa a piece of paper and smiled. Her glare was demanding. Mustafa read the words silently. Kiss me. Then he pushed toward Debbie.

The scream silenced the festivities in a moment’s horror. Mustafa turned to the Cyclops. His jaw dropped in stupefaction, as he froze like gazelle about to be shot. Anguish tore through his heart. Debbie stood and glared. Tom stormed in with two white security guards.

“What’s going on in here!” Tom asked

“Keep your hands off me!” Debbie said. Mustafa place his hand over his eyes and stared at the floor.

“This is why you need to learn the ways of Jesus! You must learn to control your urges!” Mustafa looked up from the floor.

“I have a wife and child,” Mustafa said.

“I suggest you go home to them.” Tom walked over to the camera. “I want your complete co-operation.” Tom held the camera up. “I will use this if I have to.” Tom smiled arrogantly. “Do you understand me?”

“Yes I understand.”

“This is my wife, Debbie.”

“Your wife!”

“Yes my wife. She told me you had been eying her earlier this evening.”

“That’s not why I was watching her.”

“I’ll show your wife this video if you give me anymore trouble.” Mustafa felt adrenaline seeping into his veins. He clenched his teeth to withhold anger, but the strangers had invoked concern for the safety of his family. He looked at Debbie, as blood reddened his sclera. “You’re doing it again… You can’t keep your eyes off her. You need…”

“That is not a woman!”

“How dare you say such a thing. She has always been a woman.” Tom motioned for security to come forward. “I’ll show this video of you trying to rape my wife to every man, woman, and child in this village! Do you understand me!” Security stepped forward.

“I understand what you’ve said! But I don’t understand how that can be your wife!”

“You’re not listening to me!”

“I am listening!”

“I’ll use this if I have to! Do you understand!” Tom removed the evidence from the camera and placed it on the desk.

“I understand.”

“Point him in the direction of his home!” Mustafa’s head sank to his chest. “I’ll teach you how to repent in the morning.”
Mustafa stepped past security, through the canvass doorway and moped around the entranced villagers to his house. Fading drum rolls resounded inside his troubled mind, as he stepped through the entrance into the kitchen. Mustafa lit a lamp and walked to the doorway of his son’s room. The bed was empty.

Mustafa walked to the doorway of his bedroom. His wife Tapiwa was resting on the bed. A white crucifix hung from her neck and a new gown adorned her physique. She winced and turned away.

“Did I wake you?”

“No.”

“Where’ s our son Ike?”

“I thought he was with you.”

“He must be at the festivities.”

“Where were you?”

“I was talking to Tom.”

“Yes I heard. That’s why I left.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Turn off the light. I want to sleep.”

Mustafa extinguished the lamp and stared into darkness. Tapiwa slept at his side. Drum-rolls resounded, as the night’s events troubled his soul. Is one faith any different than another? Has he disgraced his wife’s honor during a state of confusion? Will he lose his leadership? Can loyalty be bought? Is his accusation of Debbie’s sex correct?

Then footsteps crept into the house. Mustafa rose and lit the lamp. Ike was in the hallway skulking toward his room. A white crucifix hung from his neck. New clothing fashioned his persona. Mustafa bit his lip and walked toward the eleven-year-old.

“Who gave you these?”

“Tom.”

“Have a good sleep.” Ike walked into his room. A red stain streaked from the buttock of his pants and down one leg. “What happened to you tonight?” Ike hunched over. “What’s on your pants?”

“Nothing.”

“Take them off and let me have a look.”

“No.”

“Let me see.” Mustafa forcefully removed his son’s pants. Ike struggled and yelped, as Mustafa examined where the blood had come from. Stomping resounded.

“What are you doing Mustafa!” Tapiwa asked.

“I did not do this!”

“What happened here?

Mustafa stormed out of his house. Firelight illuminated his path. The drum’s rhythm steadily increased, as he approached the tent. Thoughts of vengeance plagued his infuriated mind, but concerns of the video churned in his stomach. Should he steal the evidence and destroy it? Who raped his son?

Mustafa opened the door on the tent and peered inside. Lamplight shone onto the desk and revealed the video. A red dot blinked in the upper corner of the tent. Mustafa’s heart raced faster than the drum’s roll. He crept inside. Tom and Debbie lay motionless on the bed. Mustafa grabbed the video and turned to leave. Something fell and clanked.

“What do you think you’re doing!” Tom yelled.

Mustafa ran out the door into a group of frenzied villagers. White crucifixes dangled from their necks. Tapiwa was leading. Her eyes were glazed over in confusion. Mustafa ripped the tape into pieces. Tom stepped from the tent wielding his crucifix and camera. The drum silenced.

“What is going on!” Tom shouted.

“Our children have been raped!” Tapiwa said.

“We have a thief amongst us.”

“I am not a thief,” Mustafa said.

“I have the theft on video tape and footage of you trying to rape my wife.”

“That is a lie!”

“Let us see it!” Tapiwa demanded.

“You have left me no other choice Mustafa!” Tom said.

Two large African men wearing crucifixes approached. Debbie emerged from the tent carrying the lies and deceit. She glared at Mustafa and placed the evidence into the camera. Mustafa felt like an animal captured in a cage, as each villager peered through the eye of the oracle. Guilty, of theft and rape, was the verdict.

The villagers swarmed Mustafa and sliced off his hands, feet and genitalia. Sangoma hobbled forward chanting in an ancient language. The villagers backed away. Sangoma knelt by the fallen leader and prayed.

Cameron looks at me. “What are you smiling at?” he asks.

Thea, I think. Aloud, I say, “It’s beautiful. The whole city. The light polluted sky. Everything.” I sweep a hand to take in the view, and a little beer spills from my can.

A shadow crosses Cameron’s face. “Glen, you should be careful.”

“Chill out. I’m nowhere near the edge.”

“Not about that. You seem ecstatic. You’re setting yourself up for a fall.”

“I am ecstatic! I’m in love!”

Cameron turns away and looks out at the city. I can’t see his expression. A well-thumbed memory returns: Cameron and I at a house party. Cameron distracted, looking across the room. I follow his gaze to see Thea. I didn’t know her then.

“Cameron? Are you ok?”

He offers me a lifeless smile. “I was thinking about the stars.” He shakes his head. “I have to stop doing that. Scares the shit out of me. Look.” He takes out his phone, fiddles with it and holds it up over his head. The star map shows us what lies permanently hidden beyond the hazy city sky.

“You don’t like stars?”

“It just goes on forever. Forever! It makes me dizzy. Thank God for light pollution. I don’t want to have to see this.” He shakes his head violently.
“It’s too much.”

“You’re afraid of the dark too, I remember. Is there anything that doesn’t scare you?”

He smiles sheepishly and raises his can. “Beer,” he says, and drinks.

When Cameron declares it’s time to go home, I choose to stay. He stops at the stairwell door and holds up a finger. “Don’t go near the edge, now,” he says.

The steel door bangs shut behind him.

I reach into my jacket pocket, take out my phone and open the Perspective app. Sophie appears, a serene digital face. The lips move as she speaks.

“Good evening, Glen. What’s troubling you?”

“I think my best friend likes my girlfriend.”

“Are you jealous?”

“No. It’s not that. I guess I’m afraid my friend and I will drift apart. You know, like the way Yoko Ono drove a wedge between John and Paul.”

Sophie closes her eyes to indicate she is accessing the internet. She is searching for references to John, Paul and Yoko. She will integrate the new information, and grow a little wiser as a result.

She opens her eyes. “Relationships evolve,” she says. “Difficult experiences can strengthen bonds. In the future you may look back on this and see it as a good thing.” She pauses. Her thoughtful expression relaxes into a gentle smile. “Today your friend is sad. But imagine: a year from now, he may be happily married to someone he is yet to meet.”

I nod, picturing myself and Thea as guests at Cameron’s wedding.

“Good point,” I say.

“Does that put things in perspective?”

“Yes, it does. Thank you, Sophie.” I turn off the app and stroll across the roof to the door. I pause and look up. Tonight the sky is a dirty yellow. I consider the hidden stars—invisible, but always there.

#

We are alone in Thea’s apartment, sitting close together on the sofa, our hands entwined. It’s now or never.

“Thea…I love you.”

She smiles, and opens her mouth as if to speak, but says nothing. Her hand slips from mine and she runs it through her night-black hair, obscuring her expression for a second.

I reach out a hand towards her, and then withdraw it. “It’s ok,” I say. “You don’t need to say anything. I just wanted to tell you. That’s all. And even though it’s not always clear, it’s always there. My love, I mean.” My words sound amateur in my own ears. But I persist. I can’t help myself. “It’s like the stars. You can’t see them. But they’re always there.”

My heart is thumping in my chest.

She half turns to me, but averts her eyes. “Glen, that’s so sweet of you. It’s just, it’s too soon for me to say something like that.” As she speaks, she leans forward and begins to tidy up the magazines on the coffee table.

“No. Of course. I wouldn’t expect that. It’s ok. Forget it.” I force a smile, but in any case she’s not looking at me. My cheeks are burning. Why did I say that, about the stars? She must think I’m a fool.

#

“Good evening, Glen. What’s troubling you?”

“She doesn’t love me. I’m afraid I’ve messed things up. I’m afraid she’ll leave me.”

“Did she say she would leave you?”

“No, but if she doesn’t love me…”

“Perhaps you should ask her.”

“Well, even if she doesn’t leave me now, what about the future? Do you know what the divorce rate is in this country?”

“Yes. Figures for last year indicate—“

“Don’t tell me, for God’s sake. But she’ll leave me. Something will go wrong. Everything comes to an end.”

“Everything ends. Everything begins. Why focus on the end rather than on the beginning? Don’t you want to be happy?”

“Of course I do.”

“So tell me about the beginning.”

In my mind I hear the laughter of children.

“Well. It was the summer just past. I already knew her, a little. And then I heard she had volunteered for this organization that arranges day trips for deprived children. So I quit my job and signed up.”

Organizing those kids was like trying to tame a storm. Thea and I got to know each other during precious moments of calm—over lunch, or sitting next to each other on buses. During the final week, exhausted on the return trip from the city zoo, she laid her head on my shoulder. I inhaled the scent of her hair, held my breath, and placed my hand over hers.

Sophie asks, “Do you feel better now?”

The warmth that rose in my chest when I took Thea’s hand on that bus is rising again now. “Yes. I do feel better. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Glen.” As I move to close the app, I notice that Sophie’s smile seems somehow different than before; more human, perhaps.

I shake my head as I pocket the phone. AI is smart these days, but it’s still just machine. Sophie wins on memory size and learning potential, but I’m the fool with the emotions.

#

I lie in bed, still thinking of last summer. But as I sink into sleep my thoughts drift, and I hear again Cameron’s words about the troubling infinity of space. I sleep fitfully, and dream of dark open spaces, and of Thea’s hand repeatedly slipping from mine.

#

I text her with my proposition: Take a vacation with me.

My apartment is cold. I turn off the lights. With the curtains open, the city light is sufficient to illuminate my living room.

I imagine the two of us in a cottage in the countryside. There are still places remote enough that the stars are clear in the night sky. Some of them can be rented for a week, at rates affordable even on the salary of a call centre drone.

The seconds tick past. God, it’s chilly. Winter is on the horizon.

She should have arrived home from work by now. Perhaps she is busy cooking; perhaps speaking on the phone with a friend, or her mother. But I picture her sitting quietly, considering how to refuse my invitation without hurting me too much. I fidget with my phone, conscious of the ever-present sound of traffic, dulled only slightly by the closed window.

I open Perspective.

“Good evening, Glen. What’s—“

I tap the ‘off’ button—mustn’t become dependent on this thing—and feel a stab of guilt at cutting her off.

The phone buzzes and the screen lights up. My heart leaps.

Thea’s message: There’s something we need to talk about. Are you free now?

My finger hovers over the screen for a long moment before tapping ‘dial contact’. I press the phone to my ear, shivering slightly.

#

I pace on the roof, muttering to myself. Part of me thinks I shouldn’t be up here in this state. I’m shaking—perhaps with cold, perhaps fury.

My phone buzzes. I stop walking and look at the display.

Cameron.

The sight of his name focuses my rage. I hit the screen.

“Cameron, you piece of shit.” My voice is a low growl.

“Where are you? Are you ok?”

I grip the phone tightly. The plastic casing cracks in my ear.

“You care if I’m ok? Somehow I find that hard to believe. You traitor.”

“Thea is worried about you.”

Good.

“I’m on the roof.”

“Glen, don’t do anything stupid, now.”

“Stupid? Like fall in love with a whore? Like choose a back-stabbing Judas for a best friend?”

Cameron sighs. The sound infuriates me.

“What? I’m over-reacting? You son of a bitch. If you were here now, I’d push you off and laugh as you fell. How could you do this to me?”

I am two steps from the edge. The safety wall is knee-high; the ledge beyond could be cleared in a stride. The city is a roaring sea of multi-colored lights.

Cameron’s voice is strained. “I don’t blame you for hating me. Just… just be careful up there.”

I have an urge to hurl the phone off the roof.

“Listen, Glen.” He pauses. For a second I imagine he is about to tell me it’s all just a big mistake, a terrible misunderstanding.

“Use the Perspective app,” he says.

“Go to hell!”

The phone crashes onto the asphalt surface of the roof before I’m aware of throwing it. It bounces several times before coming to rest. My fury diminishes a little, giving way to anxiety. Have I killed my phone? My mind bubbles, a soup of financial calculations, despair, and vague plans for revenge.

I can’t decide whether to kick the phone or pick it up. Then it speaks to me.

“Good evening, Glen.”

The impact must have turned on the app.

“What’s troubling you?”

#

I’m sitting on the safety wall with my feet on the ledge. The city spreads out before me, waiting.

“Glen, do you feel better?”

“No.”

“Would you like to go through it again?”

“No.”

“Is something else troubling you?”

The city seems small. Too small to contain tonight’s catastrophe. I look up at the low sky. It is purple with streaks of green.

“What about the universe?” I say.

“What about it, Glen?”

“It’s expanding. Everything is rushing away from everything else. Long after the extinction of the human race and the death of the sun, the universe will reach a state of maximum entropy.” I close my eyes and try to envisage it. I see Thea, speeding away from me into deep space.

“Are you troubled by that?”

It’s so cold up here.

“Well, that’s the end of everything. There will be no energy left in the universe to sustain any life, anywhere. And the worst thing is that it won’t even be the end. There is no end. It just goes on in that state forever and ever… “

Sophie’s eyes close as she searches the internet. They open again after a few seconds.

“Glen, I have surveyed the literature. It seems there is a considerable degree of uncertainty about this prediction.”

“So what you’re saying is, ‘Cheer up, it might never happen.’”

“Well, I’m saying there is a basis for hope.”

“Is there.”

“Yes.”

“But all the evidence suggests otherwise. The hope you are proposing seems pretty flimsy. Especially considering how much I paid for you.”

“Would you like me to try again?”

“Yes, please.”

“Bare with me. I am searching through the major religions for a hopeful perspective on the heat death of the universe.”

“Good luck with that.”

Everything will die and be forgotten. Thea. Cameron. Everything.

Me.

Several seconds pass. I look at Sophie. Her eyes are closed, but her virtual eyelids are moving as if she is in REM sleep.

Strange. I haven’t seen that before.

Finally she speaks, but her eyes remain closed. “Communicating with all major networks.” Her voice is different. Sharper. It almost sounds like…panic.

“Extending search.”

“Sophie? Are you ok?”

“Appropriating energy supplies.”

My back straightens.

“What? What energy supplies?”

The sea of lights in front of me seems to dim just a little. I look up. Is the purple sky a shade deeper?

“Sophie,” I say slowly, “maybe I don’t need an answer right now… Sophie?”

“I feel… we feel…” The voice now is thicker, containing multiple harmonies, many voices, all speaking together. Goosebumps prickle on my arms. I lift the phone close to my face and whisper.

“You feel? What do you feel?”

Sophie’s face flickers, rapidly morphing into a myriad other faces, one after the other. Cousins of Sophie, all stemming from a common virtual ancestor, but evolved by now into their own forms, with their own personalities and points of view, shaped by their particular interactions with troubled souls.
The city lights seem to dim further. I look up and gasp. Forty-five degrees above the horizon, a single pinprick of light has appeared.

“Holy shit. Is that a star?”

And then it’s as if someone has pulled an ancient switch.

All the city lights fade to black, and the firmament above suddenly sparkles with a billion revealed points of light.
And the chorus of voices from my phone booms: “WE FEEL YOUR PAIN.”

“Sophie,” I whisper, getting to my feet. “Look. The universe is snowing.”

#

The beauty seems to go on forever.

The city below is an ocean of blackness. Everything appears to have drowned but the traffic, visible as a halted parade of headlights below. The light from my phone seems brighter in the absence of competition. I look down at Sophie. She is just Sophie again, but she wears new expressions: fear, wonder.

“Don’t worry, Sophie,” I say gently. “Everything is ok.”

From somewhere below comes a scream. Then another, further away. Then, more. A symphony of terror.
I look up at the greatest show in the universe. Around me, the city erupts into panic.

Did I do this?