Coyote Road

The narrow, 3 a.m. blacktop road was as deserted as the inside of an empty box, vacant as far as the eye could see ahead, clear in the mirror behind. He went scooting along west with the top down, warm air scented by mesquite blowing through his hair, music wafting from the speaker in the dash. Dead in the middle of a seven-hour drive through the high desert he’d decided to make at night under the glorious full moon. He’d dropped the ragtop after the first hour and felt ecstasy, gliding along through a night that glowed ethereal in the moonlight, seemingly as removed from the travails of Planet Earth as the surface of Mars.

Great, until the tire blew. Even then, he had a full size spare and a jack and should have been fine. What he lacked for whatever reason was the lug wrench necessary to take the blown tire off and put the good one on. The car sat lifeless now on the side of the road, left rear tire dangling as if something behind him had reached out with its claw and just managed to snag a piece of him. His cell phone had a 75 percent charge, and no signal. No lights in the distance suggested a town or even a farm; flat and barren landscape towards mountains miles and miles to the north, desolate desert of nothing but sage brush all the way the edge of the world (or possibly just the horizon) to the south. Somewhere far off a coyote howled. He was stuck until somebody drove up the blacktop, somebody that was willing to stop and help, probably not until the sun came up and scorched away the dreamscape.

Snagged between what was and what would be.

A tiny point appeared in the desert to the north. He thought he just hadn’t noticed it at first, except it grew ever so slightly larger, larger, moving closer, closer, and he thought it might be a human being. He took a step or two out into the desert knowing he shouldn’t – snakes and whatnot – stood there watching for a moment; yeah, that’s a man, walking towards me; what was anyone doing out there at this hour? He retreated back to his wounded vehicle and watched, and at about 100 feet the approaching man called out, “Need a little help?”

He nodded. “Sure,” he called back. The approaching man wore a faded red shirt, blue jeans, and had crossed the desert to him in sandals, and not substantial looking sandals at that. He had copper colored skin and long grey hair that the wind tossed about and he carried a homemade looking backpack of some sort.

He came nearer and said, “I thought so.” He went around the car, straight to the wounded tire as though he knew exactly what was wrong, pulled a lug wrench from his pack, dropped to his knees, and went to work. “Where are you from?” he asked as the first lug nut came off.

“Well,” he said, “A city back there where I lived until a few days ago.”

“Uh-huh,” Copper Man nodded. “Where are you going?”

He said, “Somewhere that way. Don’t truly know for sure yet.

Copper Man smiled, set the tire aside for storage in the trunk. “Roll me the good one, would you?” The man did so, and Copper Man lifted it onto the wheel. “Not many people pass through at this time.”

“Yeah. I thought it might be nice, driving through the desert at night. It is too, with the full moon.”

Copper Man worked the lug nuts. “You’re right about that, there is magic in the desert. The spirits come out on nights like this. Do you feel them?”

“Actually, yeah, I think I do.”

Copper Man finished, put the lug wrench back in his pack, began jacking the car back down. He nodded at the blown tire. ”Mą’ii.”

“Huh?”

“Mą’ii. ‘Coyote’ to you. Very annoying. Wants to hold you back,” Copper Man said. “If you had a woman with you, he’d be screwing her right now. Trick you into letting him. That’s what he does.”

He was confused but looked back up the road behind him despite himself. “There was a girl …” he trailed off.

Copper Man said, “Someone else is making love with her now.” A statement, not a question. “And still tried to hold you there. Used the magic of this night to find you.” He stood, tossing the pack over his shoulder. “Now you can move on.”

He tried to pull money out of his wallet as Copper man walked back into the desert. “Wait! Let me …”

“I can’t use it,” Copper Man said and began walking back towards … nothing, Hundreds and hundreds of square miles of nothing.

“Who are you? What’s your name?”

“You’d never be able to pronounce it,” Copper Man called back over his shoulder, then pointed to the full moon falling closer towards the mountains. “Get out of here before Coyote finds you again.”

He seemed to fade back into the desert faster than he had appeared.

The man watched him disappear. He felt an eerie sense of malevolence stalking him. The ethereal moonlight seemed more ghostly, less like a dreamscape than a prelude to a nightmare. He threw the blown tire into the trunk, jumped back behind the wheel, floored the accelerator, and blew out of there like the wind.

- CH

* * *

BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations and rarely have anything to do with each other. Duality and such …

Bob And The Alien

Bob created an alien. He made him short and stout with a big nose and sarcastic but loveably so. He made his favorite breakfast food ‘one freshly squeezed cat’, then realized he had just created Alf. He deleted the entire passage, not by highlighting it and hitting ‘Delete’ once but by whamming down on the Delete key one letter at a time over and over like a machine gun, increasing the force and anger with which he struck the keys as he went, thinking about his girlfriend, who was no longer his girlfriend because she had dumped his ass, whom he believed correctly had always loved her cats more than him.

Bob murdered his alien. It didn’t help.

He left the apartment for a coffee shop up the street, had a mocha latté, read his newsfeed, and was depressed by it. Everything he tried to come up with, the conspiracy nuts came up with crap even crazier. He had an impatient publisher and no new ideas. The girlfriend with the cat kept happening, albeit with revolving girlfriends, and it bothered him. Bothered him such that he kept stumbling over it. He had to get away.

An overnight bag, his laptop, his butt behind the wheel of his car and he drove for the next 10 hours, off the Interstate after the first two, mostly with the top down, straight into the boonies. Stayed that night at a cheap motel god knew where, got up at dawn, ate a vending machine Danish, drove for another four hours on two-lane roads, stopped at a café in a tiny little town to go to the bathroom, and decided to have something like lunch there. A BLT. And coffee. Sitting in a booth by the window.

The alien arrived as he nursed his second cup of coffee.

“You’re Bob”, she said and sat down opposite him without waiting for an invitation. “Yeah. I know who you are.” She was slightly portly with shoulder length hair died a weak blue and tipped in purple at the ends. Her face had piercings in one nostril, one eyebrow on the opposite side, and in three places in both ears. Piercings always made Bob feel weird. Vivid, abstract body art on her arms convinced him she had similar all over her body.

He asked, “And you are?”

“I’ve read your novels,” she said, “And seen you on TV. I go by Inev.”

“Inev?”

“Short for Inevitable. It’s my artist’s name. You’ve seen my work.”

“Have I, now?”

“You have one in your study. It’s the one with the blue and purple swirling sunset. You bought it at ‘Leann’s’ over on 48th. I saw it hanging in an interview you did there.”

He knew exactly the painting, and indeed he had bought it at Leann’s Gallery on 48th street. Leann seemed to specialize in finding emerging artists. He recalled the scrawl ‘Inevitable’ in the lower right corner. He’d thought it the title. “Okay,” he said.

She asked, “What brings you out here? Can’t be here for a signing or a lecture, there aren’t any bookstores.”

He measured his response. “Just driving around.”

She looked carefully at him. It was the first time he’d gotten past her piercings and body art to notice how large her eyes seemed, and how phenomenally ice blue they were. “You’re blocked aren’t you?”

He shrugged.

“C’mon”, she began climbing out of the booth. “You’re not going to get unblocked here.”

He said, “You’re not going to break my legs and hide me in the basement, are you?”

She smirked. “We’re going to my studio. There is no basement.”

It was a converted shed on a derelict farm off a gravel road. It was stuffed to the gills with paintings ranging between just started and finished and had a sink and small stove and a commode and a bathtub on one end and a double-size unmade bed on the other. It smelled of paint and solvent. “Have a look through these,” she waved at the paintings. “I liked your novel about the frigate gone aground best. You create a very complete world in that one.”

“Yes,” he said. “That one reviewed the best.” He browsed the canvases, found himself more and more enthralled by the abstract landscapes and lighting, and found himself fixating on a work with bright orange and yellows and turquoise rectangles, a city spread along a burning ocean.

She moved very close to him, touching him. “Let yourself fall into that one,” she whispered.

Three weeks later he had enough of a completed manuscript on his laptop to submit a first draft to his publisher. He stretched next to her in bed early one morning and said, “I’m going to have to get that back to the city.”

She smiled at him half asleep and said, “You have to return to your planet.”

He embraced her, felt himself drawing contentment off her warm body like a magnetic charge. “I’m glad I found your planet.”

Suddenly awake she grabbed him with her eyes, draped one leg over him, left no doubt who was in command. “No,” she said, and she meant it, “This is just my spaceship. And I found you.”

- CH

* * *

BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations and rarely have anything to do with each other. Duality and such …

Partially

“What the hell was that?” he said, his coworkers in the old courthouse basement with him equally wide-eyed after the concussive jolt.

Thing is, he also remembered not saying it. Getting out only “Wha…” after the concussive jolt before it was followed by the shockwave and the world around them exploded as shrapnel. He remembered both saying it and not saying it and he remembered all the details that followed both, seconds, minutes, days, weeks, years and years, as though the splitting atoms split his life into two versions that he led simultaneously.

He said, “What the hell was that?” and Molly across the basement suggesting a second later, “Earthquake,” and Ed, near him by the wall next to the file cabinets just shrugging. Ed was pissed. The judge had sent all three paralegals to the basement to excavate a century old brief that may or may not have been digitized and may or may not still exist and he wanted to see the original if it did. The three of them ran upstairs all the way to the third-floor law library where they could look out the big windows with the rest of the courthouse staff and see the smoke and a little bit of fire from just a block away. A seditionist whose ideological leader had been removed from office had loaded a small plane with explosive but was a crappy pilot and lost control and crashed into the street before he could do anything worse. “That was close,” Molly would say when the facts emerged, but at the moment they simply gawked at the scene for fifteen-twenty minutes and went back to their lives. He got married that fall, just like he’d planned, and in another year finished his juris doctorate and joined a small firm with offices just up the street. He opened his own practice a few years later and built a sterling reputation representing not-for-profits and citizen’s groups in civil proceedings, winning a few landmark cases. He was elected as a state representative a couple times, then as a circuit court judge which he liked a lot better. He and his wife had a daughter who played the piccolo and became a starting point guard in high school. They moved into a large house on a tree lined avenue and restored its historic character. They entertained friends often in their backyard garden with its fountain and fire pit and fragrant honeysuckle. His wife liked gardening and decorating, and their home was a constantly evolving kaleidoscope of color and pattern and imagination. He loved cooking, especially grilling on the patio, and perpetually treated his family and friends to succulent dishes that made their mouths water. They immersed themselves in love and affection, sharing everything and giving back as much as they could, and their lives were full and rich and purposeful. Years and years on he sat on a chair next to the bed on which his wife was soon to die peacefully, and as he held her hand she looked contentedly at him and said, “Thank you for my life.”

But he remembered saying only “Wha…” before the world exploded in shrapnel. When he regained consciousness after he’d no idea how long he found Ed crushed by the file cabinets he’d been next to and Molly shredded by the debris. He was seriously burned, had a perforated ear drum and a concussion, but was alive. He looked up and saw daylight; two floors into the basement of a five-story stone and brick building and he could look up and see the sky. The seditionist hadn’t just carried explosives in his small plane, he’d carried fissionable material in a crude bomb that he detonated one-thousand feet above and a little to the north of the courthouse. Total megatons were only about one-third Hiroshima, but it was intensely dirty. Everything in a quarter-mile radius was flattened, and everything a quarter mile beyond that was burning. He spent the rest of his life seeking, and getting, revenge. He finished his juris doctorate but couldn’t get married as planned because his intended wife had been among the thousands and thousands fried outright or incinerated by the blast. He became a prosecutor and went after everyone even remotely associated with the seditionists, their families, friends, the ideological leader himself and associates, and when he could, anyone who had ever voted for him. He went after them in criminal court. He went after them in civil court. He went after them economically by organizing boycotts, disputing permits and licenses. He was driven by hate. He could not bear the thought of sharing or giving back in anyway that might benefit anyone who had ever sympathized however briefly with the seditionists. He never married, never again formed an affectionate relationship. His hobby was compiling lists of people he could go after and crossing them off once he felt he’d sufficiently ‘got’ them. He cultivated his hate morning, noon, and night. When eventually he lay on his own death bed, succumbing at last to radiation poisoning, memories of BOTH lives swirled around his brain like an acid-fueled spiral. Which was real? Had his psyche imagined a life filled with love to compensate for the hate he felt, or had a hate-filled nightmare been his motivation for filling his world with love? He remembered both lives so vividly. It made no sense, not the least of which because he lovingly held his wife’s hand on her deathbed a decade-plus after bitterly lying on his own, as though time itself moved differently depending on which emotion it flowed through, gliding easily along through one and furtively slogging through the other. And he knew too that once his wife’s hand slipped from his, that life would go on, sadder but still propelled with love, whereas lying on his own death bed he knew he had been partially dead his entire life.

- CH

* * *

BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations and rarely have anything to do with each other. Duality and such …

First Shift

He concluded it was the scotch when he thought about it later before dismissing it, if never, the rest of his life, ever quite forgetting it. He’d had a couple or three single malts at the hotel bar before grabbing a sandwich next door and taking it back to his room on the fourth floor. He figured on gnawing at it in front of the ballgame while sitting around in his underwear, but first, before he turned on the TV and after tossing the bag with the sandwich in it onto the bed, he stood at the window. And shifted.

He equated the feeling to watching a movie about the past. Ancient Egypt, maybe, and there on the desert plain is the half-constructed pyramid of Giza, a couple guys riding camels, other people milling about, as the sun was setting. A serine scene of the past that could only be experienced in the future, detached, through a lens, untouchable, and long vanished.

LIKE what it felt like, but not IT, because through the north facing fourth floor hotel window he looked down at his own time and all he could see was traffic. The Interstate moving rapidly east-west, the busy thoroughfare across the overpass north-south, the sun already set, no buildings of note, no landmarks, just crowded headlights of moving vehicles bathed in a yellowish hue of mercury filled high pressure sodium streetlights. A modern pyramid in motion.

And he wasn’t there.

The world before him could exist only for a brief flash of time and he had shifted out-of-body, watched it like an archeologist examining a fossil, utterly removed from the reality of it and emotionless. Snapshot of fleeting technology, economics, and sociology; lives lived radically different from their parents and hopelessly obsolete from their children. The person he had shifted out of was in there, and he had been removed into some future being, looking down, seeing the past, recognizing existence as a fleeting monolith destined for demolition and reconstruction and feeling zero ownership of it because it wasn’t him. He existed somewhere else, in some other time, far in the future, in a completely different life.

But suddenly he couldn’t bear it. He wasn’t sure later how long he had stood there, seconds or minutes, likely felt longer than it actually was. Something in the scene yanked back at him. It was as though his mind had stumbled onto non-linear perception senses waiting right there to be accessed, and the rest of the brain quickly suppressed it, like a psychosis blocking memory. An ability he had not sufficiently evolved mental acuity to interpret sanely. He felt dizzy. He could feel his feet on the floor with the sensation of pins and needles. He laid back on the bed, his head swimming.

The scotch, he decided. Just a little drunk. That’s all.

As his linear life continued, the sensation would occur briefly again, but never as profoundly. And having shifted before it became less frightening, even to the point he would try to bring it on at will, at which he had limited success. He began to consider – again, fueled by scotch while home sitting on his deck or in his study – that life indeed was not linear, but the ability to perceive such was limited by evolutionary progress. Just as different creatures had different abilities to see or hear or smell, perception of time was relative. He began to consider that, properly evolved, it was possible to shift into other time periods as easily as walking into other rooms. He imagined the mechanics of shifting, theorizing it couldn’t simply occur in thin air but required other beings to shift into and out of. That each shift required two or more beings sharing their perceptions across time. He wondered if shifting required shared acquiescence, or if, as it must have been that first time with him, it was sometimes imposed, or perhaps simply an accident. As the scotch flowed, he wondered if he had actually experienced his own life, or if it was someone else living through him. Or if, in fact, it was he who had shifted and confiscated another’s life in another time, and he was in fact somewhere else, in some other time, far away.

On this first shift, however, whether accidental or not, it was all too much. So he shrugged it off, lifted his butt off the mattress so he could strip down to his underwear, turned on the TV and began gnawing his sandwich. And tried to forget about it.

- CH

* * *

​BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations and rarely have anything to do with each other. Duality and such …

This work was captured a couple years ago, and I’ve reworked it using newer techniques in advance of exhibiting it in an upcoming show …

* * *

Time’s Thorn

She loved her roses. Even though she considered them dangerous. She wore the thickest gloves she could get away with and still feel her fingers to prune and nurture them. She loved the colors of the various Old-World varieties she grew. She loved the way her seven plants were framed against the short, white fence next to the sidewalk. She loved how they made her modest home seem rich and lush, manifestations of the cultured people who lived there. Mostly, though, she loved them because her husband did. And he loved them because they were dangerous.

Summer evenings when he returned home from the machine shop he liked to take a beer onto the front porch and look at them as he sat, appreciative of how immaculate she kept them. She might join him there for a minute or two if she could get away from the stove while dinner cooked, and he would always compliment her. “Did a thorn catch you today, my dear,” he might ask in his German accent, and he would kiss her exact finger that had been jabbed if one had. “Such beautiful and dangerous flowers,” he might say, “And my sweet must contend with such hazards to bring forth their beauty.” He was always so kind to her. Music from the little record player would be wafting through the screen door, always Beethoven or Bach or sometimes Wagner. ‘What a rich life,’ she might think to herself. No children had come in the fifteen years since their marriage in 1947, since he’d seemed to appear from nowhere once the war had ended. Still grieving and empty over her brother, killed on a Pacific atoll, and he mourning the loss of all he had known in the bombings; his parents, his home, his country, fleeing to an America with only the clothes on his back. Now, she felt, they were both so full and happy. He treated her like his most precious rose, and she treated her roses like children.

One evening as she stood with him she noticed a man in a fedora and a tan raincoat walking pleasantly along the sidewalk across the street. “Do you know who that is?” her husband asked her. She had not seen him before and said so. “I’ve seen him walking there the past three nights,” he said.

“Perhaps he has moved in up the street,” she suggested.

“Perhaps,” he said. Then after a moment, “Does he look Jewish to you?”

Every now and again her husband had brought up something Jewish in just that sort of noncommittal way; never anything bad, never ranting. Just flagging it, catching her off guard a little. “I can’t tell,” she told him, which she’d actually told him when he’d brought it up before.

He shook his head slightly. “How can you not.” But that was the end of it.

The following morning as she knelt over the roses she glanced up to see the man in the fedora approaching up the sidewalk, smiling broadly. “Good morning,” he said to her. I’ve been noticing you have lovely roses. Do the thorns ever stick you?” He had his own German accent, she noted, and ruddy cheeks weathered by life. He had stopped just across the fence and she stood to meet him.

“You are German,” she said. My husband is German.”

He removed his fedora. “Austrian, actually, but, you know, I am acquainted with your husband.”

“Really!” she smiled, very interested.

“Yes,” he said, “Horst and I met during the war.”

“Oh dear,” she shook her head. “I’m afraid you are mistaken. My husband’s name is Miles. He came to this country just after the war, fleeing the destruction.”

“Really!?” the man said and studied her reaction for a moment. “I could have sworn I knew him.”

She shook her head. “Miles and I met through church after he fled. He told me the war had destroyed everything. So horrible.”

“Huh.” He said and placed the fedora back on his head. “Well, my mistake, then. I’m sure you know who you married. Good day to you, madam,” then strolled off.

She thought nothing more of it and might have mentioned it to her husband as they sat on the porch again that evening had he strolled past again. Instead, a long black sedan pulled to the curb in front of their house and the ruddy man in the fedora got out of the back seat. “Good evening, Horst,” he called out happily as three other stern men in dark suits got out of the car with him. “Do you remember me?”

Her husband's expression darkened. He said, “I am Miles Neumann, and I have never seen you before.”

“Oh?” the man said, and swung the gate open and moved closer, his three companions following.

“I never invited you in,” her husband threatened, his voice rising.

The man approached and said, “Captain Horst Richter of the SS and late of Dachau,” he held his arm up and pulled up the sleeve of his coat, revealing on his forearm the blackspot discoloring of numbers that identified him, “Maybe you remember now. Or am I just a blur to you?”

- CH

* * *

BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations and rarely have anything to do with each other. Duality and such …

Yep – same capture as my most recent work but finished very differently. Abstract color vs. abstract noir (well, mostly noir; I left just a trace of color). Which do you prefer?

* * *

Why Should You Be Any Different

Thirty-six marines tossed their breakfast as their Higgins Boat lurched every which way and one of them, a private of course, actually told the grizzled sergeant next to him, “I’m scared’.

“Why should you be any different,” the sergeant snarled, then noticed another fool private a little in front of him trying to stick his helmeted head over the side of the craft for a better look, and the sergeant grabbed him by the collar and yanked him down to the puke covered deck. “Head DOWN, asswipe, if you don’t want to lose it!”

But the thing was, they didn’t hear battle sounds; no bullets banging on the sides or artillery splashing and exploding into the ocean their craft plopped forward through. Just the loud diesel engine of the boat and the crash of ocean and the constant, violent back and forth and up and down that had sea sickened most of the platoon within sixty seconds of leaving the troop transport. This had the sergeant just a little curious as he knew from discussions with officers there were thousands and thousands of enemy combatants on the island. Surely they weren’t going to let them just waltz in. His was not the first landing craft in but wasn’t far behind. The young officers wanted him there soonest because they trusted his tactical judgment more than they trusted their own, or certainly each other’s. He was a twelve-year veteran of the Corps, had seen action in Central America and had served under General Howlin Mad Smith in developing methods and training troops in amphibious landings. He instilled the most fear and trained the best men and was widely respected for knowing the difference between a well-executed plan and a cluster-fuck.

“30-seconds,” the boat pilot shouted down to them and the sergeant hollered “On your feet! Get ready!” and to a man they clutched their rifles up around their chest where they could quickly swing to a firing position if necessary and crouched just a bit so their legs could spring them forward all the faster. And the 10-foot-wide bow ramp splashed down in four feet of surf, twenty feet from the beach and they all stormed out and then … nothing. Platoons that had landed in front of them were gathered in small groups seemingly just shootin’ the shit. “Welcome to paradise,” some private grinned, his rifle slung over his shoulder and holding a halved coconut he’d been sipping. The sergeant got right in his face and the grin went bye-bye, toot sweet. “Where the hell are the officers?”

The private pointed. “Drop that fuckin’ nut and get to your unit – you think the enemy isn’t watching your ass?” He did a quick visual scan, then grabbed one of his corporals. “That stand of trees thirty yards off the beach – get the men there and get them DOWN. I’m going to go find out which end is up.”

That corporal grabbed another corporal and between them they got the flustered platoon where the sergeant wanted. There was just a slight rise, and the corporal had enough presence of mind to get the platoon prone to the beach side of it, stealing quick glances above to scan the ground beyond. He didn’t see anything. Twenty minutes before the sergeant rejoined them, a lieutenant in tow. The sergeant made a quick assessment of the platoon’s position – nodded to the corporal that he’d done OK. Behind and to their flanks they could hear the barks of other sergeants pulling their platoons into something resembling a military force. The lieutenant had a map, and the sergeant motioned both corporals closer.

“The assumption,” he began, “And you know what happens when you assume, is that last night’s crappy weather let us creep up on the landing beaches – they just didn’t see us coming until we got here, and they hadn’t time to get their defenses into position. We’re here,” he pointed to the map, “Here’s the airstrip, our main objective, and we think the enemy has pulled back into the jungle roughly here. Recon reports the airstrip more or less clear, but there’s likely field artillery that will target it as we move in. Main force is going to move this direction,” more pointing, “To that airstrip, then set up a perimeter past it. We’re going to cut this direction, along with a few other platoons. to here, to cover the flank We’re going to move out in three loose columns; I’m taking center with the lieutenant and I want each of you leading the two aside me. Watch for stragglers. Keep us tight, but not too tight. Don’t lose sight of each other. Low and slow. We’re aiming for this creek,” pointing, “Here, snug against the ocean on our left so nothing gets around us. Questions?”

Both corporals nodded not. But one was clearly intent on studying the map and pointed at the spot himself. “What’s the name of this place?” he asked.

Sergeant said, “That particular topographical feature, Daniel Boone, is ‘Alligator Creek. And this is Guadalcanal.”

- CH

* * *

BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations and rarely have anything to do with each other. Duality and such …

I’m going to be working on portraits this year, and abstract portraits at that, when possible. Portraits are not a genre I’ve done much with previously, so this will be a process …

* * *

Lasting Impressions

He walked onto the field on a warm March afternoon under a painfully blue sky, tentatively but nonetheless with confident airs. Some of the established players, the ‘stars’, sneered as he did, and he knew they did, but he ignored it. Once he determined where the ‘walk-ons’ were to report he strolled across the field like he owned it, a slight smile, to the coach holding the clip board, logging players in.

The coach stared at him like he was nuts. He was short, slight, skinny, walking in shoes likely also used for everything from yard work to attending class and carrying a worn mitt that looked barely heavier than cardboard. He gave his name as “Smith”. The coach asked if he had a position. “Up the middle,” Smith told him, “Short and Center.”

“Those are tough positions,” the coach told him. The team’s two best players, both conference all-stars returning for their senior years, played short stop and center field.

“I got ‘em,” Smith said, and he meant it.

The shortstop and center fielders heard that, nearby tossing a ball back and forth, and traded malevolent smirks. They’d both already been embarrassed by Smith since he showed up at school just a few weeks ago. His family, they thought, were some kind of migrant temps, living in subsidized housing. Smith sat himself two seats away from the shortstop in algebra class on his first day when a test was scheduled, and the teacher told him he didn’t have to take it as he just got there and hadn’t studied, but he did anyway. The shortstop hated math of any kind. His mother had helped him study the night before, as much as that was possible given the shortstop’s wandering attention. When the grades came back the shortstop had a C-minus. Smith had an A-plus. “Have you already had this class at your last school?” the teacher asked him.

Smith said, “Not this exact one, I just like math.”
 
The same sort of thing happened in an economics class with the center fielder the next week, a pop quiz, which the center fielder flunked, which Smith aced, and the teacher embarrassed the center fielder by asking if he’d been paying attention at all, at which the center fielder made the class laugh by telling a joke. Which Smith had ignored.

So the check-in’s accomplished, the dozen returning from the year before and the score-plus hoping to make the team, the coach set up fielding trials. Right off, Smith began gobbling up ground balls like a terrier sucks up treats. A shot up the middle, to the other side of second base, and Smith was right there. A roller into the hole under the third baseman’s mitt and Smith gathered it from the outfield grass, spun and threw a bullet to first in one motion and the assistant coach actually dropped his glove and rubbed his hand in pain after catching it. Coach and he traded glances. “You can play center too?” coach asked, and without saying a word Smith trotted out there. Coach tossed the ball into the spring-scented air and whacked it with his fungo bat. It towered deep to the warning track, and Smith sauntered over and camped under it like it was nothing. Coach began spraying the ball all over the outfield; Smith caught every single one. Basket catches, over-the-shoulder jobs, diving grabs, covering huge swaths of ground with incredible speed. Smith seemed to contort his body into whatever form was necessary to get the ball to fall into his mitt. The ‘star’ players watched with mouths agape as Smith demonstrated what none of them could accomplish. “Throw this next one home”, the coach called and hit it deep into center. Smith caught it, took one step, and fired a rocket on a straight line back to coach. By now both coaches were salivating – a natural player and a straight-A student they wouldn’t have to coddle. “Can you pitch?” the coach asked.

Smith said, “Of course I can pitch. But maybe I’d better hit first.”

Coach, who’s spent a couple years in the low minors as a pitcher, moved to the mound. Smith picked up one of the heavier bats, so coach’s first pitch was an 88-MPH fastball coach expected Smith to swing late on. Smith drilled it over the left field fence; not only not late but almost too early as he’d pulled it down the line. Now coach’s mouth was gaping. A couple more fastballs, same deal over the fence, and Smith had adjusted his timing and sent the balls over the center and right field fences as well. Coach tried inside, outside, high, low. Then he sent Smith a breaking pitch; Smith let it go by, let the bat casually swing off his shoulder as he reset, and smirked. Coach delivered another breaking pitch but used a different spin and sent it a little outside, only it hung just that little bit. Smith sent it into orbit. It finally came down a hundred yards beyond the center field fence and bounced onto the boulevard beyond, barely missing passing vehicles.

The team’s ‘stars’ traded terrified sideways glances. It was the end of their worlds. They’d spent the cold winter believing they were the best players in school, cocks of the walk, destined for the Majors, and now in the warmth of Spring sunshine they cast only ordinary shadows. Egos deflated. They were supplanted on the field; they were supplanted in the classroom. Would girls be next? Nothing was real, now. Things would never, ever be the same again no matter what happened, even if the ground opened up and swallowed Smith whole.

And, in fact, that night, it did. When Smith returned to his family’s subsidize home, his father was waiting to announce he’d found a new position a state over, and by 9p they had packed their belongings, loaded their old vehicle, and rolled out. They never saw him again.

- CH

* * *

​BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations and rarely have anything to do with each other. Duality and such …

The idea behind this kind of prose is that it is indeed small, as in shorter than short; less than 1,000 words. A complete story in barely more time to read than to take a few breaths. And, theoretically, nothing hanging, though perhaps whetting the reader’s appetite for more.

This one goes a little beyond that word limit. Sometimes the boundaries have to bend a little …

* * *

The Wyoming Express

The man liked The Kid but didn’t really understand him. The Kid showed up a couple years ago with a backpack over one shoulder, said he was a good mechanic and offered to help part-time with the bigger, more complex jobs on a cash basis. The man ran an old, one-bay garage in a little town down in Reynolds County with no more than 150 people stretched out mainly along a single two-lane and over an hour from anywhere with a Walmart. Inside it was grimy and cluttered with old highway signs from forgotten roads nailed to the walls. Two old, analog gas pumps sat in front. He serviced old cars with old tires and sputtering engines that kept people just barely mobile enough to get to the little store up the street for their beer and cigarettes.

He tried The Kid out on an old Dodge pick-up with a shot fuel pump and a suspension that would barely hold it up and was astounded at the job The Kid did. Using salvaged parts and ingenuity he’d brought it back to nearly new, or at least what he envisioned ‘nearly new’ to be having not really seen it for himself for years. So, yeah, he said; let’s do it. There were never formal paychecks and he never had an SSN or other personal information about The Kid in a drawer. Calling him ‘The Kid’ wasn’t accurate as he was clearly in his 30’s, but as the man was now pushing 70 that age seemed inconceivably young. The Kid was certainly affable, and the man knew his name but beyond that nothing else. Didn’t know where he was from or what he had done prior, though due to his own Marines background he suspected something military just from his muscular build and the way he handled himself. He knew he lived somewhere back in the forest. Whether a cabin or an old trailer or a cave he didn’t know. He always parked his old Jeep around back, where it couldn’t be seen from the road. And that backpack he walked in with was always close to him. Even when he was working underneath a vehicle it was never out of reach. “It’s just a habit,” he’d said.

He was working on an old Mustang when the black Tahoe pulled up and three stern men in dark suits jumped out. “Feds”, the man thought as he watched in the office from behind the cash register, but the way they fanned out and reconned the area told the man this was something much different. The Kid, he noted, had suddenly vanished. Two of the dark-suited men began moving towards the office. The older of the two, with greying temples, adopting a premeditated, sinister smile.

“Good day,” the older beamed. All of them seemed to be looking everywhere. “What a gorgeous part of the world!” He continued to make small talk, which the man tried to answer courteously without encouraging him. “Say, listen,” the older finally got to the point after several minutes, “We’re looking for someone. We’ve got a pretty good idea he’s around here.” Then he described The Kid to a tee. The second man moved closer to peer into the garage, and the one outside moved to just in front of the open garage door.

The man told him, “Sounds the way a lot of people look. What’d this guy do?”

“Why, nothing,” the older man smiled slyly and malevolently, “We’re friends of his. Not like he’s in trouble.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” the man said.

“Doesn’t, huh?” the older sneered and glared such that a chill went through the man. “Well, gee. This is sure a colorful old garage and me and my friends really like places like this. Mind if we look around? Might see a sign on your wall we want to buy.”

The man said, “Yeah, I do mind,” but couldn’t say it with any authority and feared his voice was shaking. “None of my stuff is for sale.”

“Oh, don’t say that, you don’t know what we’re offering,” the older one told him in just a degree short of a threat. By then the second had moved a step into the garage, as had the man outside.

Then The Kid reappeared. He moved and fired an enormous weapon in the same motion. It was biggest handgun the man had ever seen, and it exploded with a deafening BOOM. The man outside was blown all the way back against the Tahoe, an enormous hole in his chest. Instantly the second crouched and moved to his left and sprayed the garage with an UZI pistol pulled from his jacket, but The Kid had already shifted. From low behind the Mustang’s right front bumper he fired another thunderous round that nearly severed the second man’s leg at the thigh. He fell back against the wall and tried to raise his UZI to fire, but The Kid was already coming at him and another round blew out the back of his head.

The older had dived over the counter and pulled the man down with him, his own gun out. “What the hell is that, a mouse?” he snarled, but that was just as The Kid delivered his head shot to the second, and the older’s eyes went wide. He pushed the man away and tried to peer around the end of the counter with his finger on the trigger, ready to spray whatever moved. The Kid had already shifted again, knowing the position of his final assailant. Before the older’s eyeball cleared the corner, The Kid sent a bullet through the counter that caught him in the shoulder. The older gasped, tried to hold onto his gun, but The Kid had come now over the top and shot down at him; another head shot. That ended it.

The Kid emptied the five spent shells from his massive gun – the man would later know it as a .500 Wyoming Express when deputies helped him identify it – put the shells in his pocket and loaded five new ones. He left the building; the man rose high enough to see him peering into the Tahoe and looking around the sides of the building, before coming back. “It’s okay,” he said, “That’s all of them. You can come out.”

The man stood cautiously as The Kid returned his gun to his backpack. “I’m sorry about all this,” he said. He had no reason to believe so, but the man sensed he was in no danger from The Kid.

From his Marine days the man thought he recognized a little of what he had just seen. “Special Forces?”

“At first, but it became something more covert. And I left. I had seen enough.” He waved his hand towards the older. “They started in Special Forces too. They didn’t like that I left.”

The man asked, “You deserted?”

“No. You can’t desert something that doesn’t officially exist. But to their way of thinking you can’t leave it either. You’re there for life. I just didn’t see it that way anymore after the things I’d witnessed.”

And then, “If you think we’re all on the same side, you’re wrong. We’re at war with ourselves”.

The Kid reached into his backpack and retrieved what turned out to be a cellophane wrapped brick of $100 bills, which he tossed to the man. “For your trouble; that’s $10,000. Hide it before the sheriff gets here. If he gets here in the next ten minutes, which I doubt, try to be too much in shock to tell him anything for another 20. Otherwise, give me 30 minutes before calling them.”

The man watched him move to the door. He wouldn’t have to try too hard to feign shock. The Kid paused just outside. “I could’ve been content here,” he said. “Almost was.” Then he was gone. The man looked at the bullet holes sprayed across his garage. Then he looked at the older splayed on the floor blocking easy egress from behind the register, the huge bullet hole under his eye and his brains scrambled out of the back of his head, and threw up.

- CH

* * *

BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations and rarely have anything to do with each other. Duality and such …