Sketch I: The Carpenter Dies for an Idea

I wrote this as part of a much longer work during the early '70s. It's an absurd work, what the carpenter would call a gimmick. None of it is digitalized, and I'm spending some of my writing time typing it into the computer. My plan is to blog it as I go along. It may not be in the same order I originally planned it. I hope you enjoy it.

***

Sketch I: The Carpenter Dies for an Idea

A carpenter and his helper sit under the shade of an old magnolia, occasionally swatting at flies and mosquitoes. They pull their lunches from brown paper sacks and watch as a line of cars follow a hearse onto the oyster shell lane that snakes through Our Lady of the Rock Cemetery. The carpenter is an artist who does construction work to sustain himself and his family. His artwork is good, but he is better known for his woodwork. The helper is a young college student at the university. He wants to be a writer.

The carpenter bites into his tuna fish sandwich and offers half to his helper, who accepts it and offers half a peanut butter sandwich in return. They eat in silence and watch as the hearse pulls off the lane and backs up to an opened gravesite next to a large marble headstone. A green tarpaulin with OUR LADY OF THE ROCK stenciled on it in bright white letters shades the mourners. The dust settles, and a man dressed in a dark suit jumps out of the hearse and swings open the back door. Shortly, six men, also dressed in dark suits, join him, pull a gleaming copper casket out, and lay it next to the burial site.

"Sure is a pretty day to have to be buried. Seems to me they could have picked a nastier day." The carpenter takes a bite from his sandwich and wipes his mouth with his forearm. Several crumbs stay stuck in his grayish whiskers. "Me, when I go, I want to be buried on the nastiest day they can find. I'm going to make it a requirement in my will if I ever write one."

The helper elbows the carpenter and points. Two men push and shove each other for the last remaining spot of shade. A huge woman, as wide as the two men together, steps in front of them and takes it.

"Now, there's a scene you don't see too often. They should be thankful they can feel the sunshine. I would guess that the person in that coffin wouldn't mind at all.

"You think it's a man they're burying."

"Doesn't matter, really. Man, or woman, it's awful shady in that casket." The carpenter grins at his own joke and takes the last bite of his tuna fish sandwich. They watch as a priest separates from the crowd and sprinkles holy water over the casket. Someone cries out, and the two men look at each other as the sound echoes off the walls of the old barn behind them. The barn stands about fifty feet away. They are turning it into a dinner theatre.

"Sounds like someone there is going to miss whoever is dead," the carpenter says.

"Sounded like a woman's cry."

"Hard to tell. Could've been a man."

"Did you ever wonder what it is like to die?"

"I'm an artist. The unknown is always a fascination. You're a writer. Don't you wonder about death?"

"I've read what others have written about dying, but when it comes to mine, it's different somehow."

The carpenter grins and bites into his half of the peanut butter sandwich.

"The way I see it, either it's going to be beautiful like they say heaven is, ugly like they say hell is, or just nothing like nobody says it is. I've tried to paint all three."

"But have you ever thought about your own death? Every time I think about mine, I get confused and frightened." The helper pauses, searching for his words. "I don't know why. I can't talk about it. I can't write about it. It's just too frightening, I guess. Maybe I'm too far away from death."

"You're sitting in the middle of it."

"They're all strangers."

"You're the writer. Get to know them."

"How?"

"I've had two heart attacks. The doctor told me that my third one may be my final one. I come here and read a name off a tombstone and go home and paint what he or she looks like. It helps me to understand a little better."

"Understand what?"

"Them. Myself. Death."

"Aren't you afraid of death?"

"Not afraid. Reluctant."

"Why do you continue to work if it's risky for you?"

"Someone has to pay the doctor. The carpenter grins at his helper and swipes at a mosquito. The two are silent. Sounds of the burial drift to them, but they cannot hear enough to understand anything. "I don't want to die, but I will whether I sit at home or whether I turn old barns into theatres. It's a fact."

"Couldn't you stay home and paint?"

"Yes, I could, but people don't buy my paintings. My family has to eat."

"Why don't they buy your paintings?"

"I paint stories, not gimmicks. Patrons want gimmicks, beautiful landscapes, modernism, impressionism, cubism, for god's sake. I paint faces, dead faces, decomposed faces, deformed faces." The carpenter stands and brushes himself off. He stares over the tombstones toward the burial. "Patrons are good people, but if art gets too close to the truth, they don't like it."

"Why not?"

"They don't understand truth. They only understand gimmicks."

"So, why don't you paint gimmicks?"

"I am an artist. I have two responsibilities: truth and life."

"I don't understand."

"Death is art. Art is truth."

"I still don't understand."

"Study on it, and if you're an artist, you'll understand."

The helper stands next to the carpenter. They watch as the priest signals the man in the dark suit to lower the casket into the ground. They can just hear the hum of a little motor as it strains against its load.

"I like to think that dying is a nice feeling, like floating."

"Death is nothing." They hear the same cry they had heard earlier. The carpenter waits until the echo dies. "Or maybe ugly, like they say hell is."

The priest says a few final words, and the mourners, slump-shouldered and grieving, slowly make their way to their cars. Once everyone has gone, and the dust has settled, two khaki-clad gravediggers exit a battered flatbed truck, and start shoveling dirt over the casket.

"I wonder who it is?" the helper asks.

"Why don't we walk over there and get acquainted."

They walk toward the gravesite. The two gravediggers stop their work, lean on their shovels, as they make their way through the maze of tombs. The carpenter reads the name off the headstone, once they reach the burial site.

"Why that's Judge Abernethy. He owns that building we're renovating. How's that for coincidence?"

The helper nods, picks up a handful of dirt, and drops it over the casket.

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, living is nice, but dying's a must."

"What's that all about?" the carpenter asks.

"I used to sing that as a kid when holding the jump rope for my sister and her girlfriends. I don't remember the rest of it, though."

The short, dark-haired gravedigger says as he joins them, "I've got a better one than that. Let's see. It goes, Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, life is precious, when in life we trust."

"Musta been pretty hard to jump rope to that one," the second gravedigger says. "I got one even better than that. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, can't help but go, when you start to rust."

"Those are good verses," the carpenter says. "I know a complete one, but I don't think I can recite it all without a rope to jump over."

"Got one in the pickup," the first gravedigger says and pulls a rope from the old flatbed. He hands one end to the second gravedigger, and they spin it in long looping arcs. The carpenter hitches his trousers and jumps in

.

"Ashes to ashes,

Dust to dust,

Dead man lives

In starry dust.

Starry, starry,

Jump the rope.

A live man's hope

Is a dead man's dream.

Starry, starry,

Jump the rope

To reach the end,

You must begin.

Starry, starry,

Jump the rope.

Men do dream

Of dead man's scheme.

Starry, starry,

Jump the rope.

To be the master

You must jump faster,

Faster, faster, faster.

Ashes to ashes,

Dust to dust.

Dead man lives

In starry dust."

The two gravediggers work the rope faster and faster until the carpenter can no longer keep up and jumps out. Breathless and clutching his chest, he staggers to a shady spot and sits leaning against Judge Abernethy's headstone. Worried, the helper joins him.

"Are you all right?"

"You want to be a writer?" the carpenter asks in a breathless whisper.

"Yes."

"Study on it."

"What?"

"Here's your story. Study it. Write it."

"Who? Write about who?"

The carpenter does not hear him. He has just suffered his third and final heart attack.

"Is he dead?" the short gravedigger asks.

The helper nods.

"Damn shame, but he could sure jump rope."

The helper looks around, but all he sees are graves and tombstones.

The Miracle

       Octavia Lafleur had a miserable life. Her father died when she was only three years old. Her mother remarried less than a year later. Her stepfather sexually abused her when she was eight. At fourteen, she had her first sexual experience with a boy. Her mother died when she was fifteen. She married an alcoholic oilfield worker when she was seventeen, and from then on, rode a roller coaster of alcohol abuse, prostitution, and homelessness. Then, when her life was at its lowest point, she met Snook, an illiterate helper at a local grocery store, and her life changed.

       She needed a place to stay, and Snook longed to learn how to read and write, so she followed him to his remote shack in the country and moved in. At first, she figured that her arrangement with him would include sex, but to her surprise, he didn't seem to be interested in that. As Snook learned to read and write, Octavia realized that he was not as simple as she first thought. She was enjoying her new life with him.

       Then a miracle happened, and it turned her world upside down again.

       "The Miracle" is a long short story that follows the life of a woman from her earliest memories to the miraculous ending. Here is the beginning:

***

       It was a miserably cold Louisiana day. Low dark clouds surged in from the north, pushing ahead of them a frigid wind that bent trees and rattled tin roofs. A mix of rain and ice coated everything in its path causing trees to rattle like skeletons. The temperature was just at freezing, but the wind and the icy rain made it feel much colder.

       Octavia Lafleur sat on her front porch and rocked back and forth oblivious to the cold. She stared past the frozen fallowed fields, past the serpentine lane that led from Snook's shack to the graveled road, past everything to a point on the horizon where dark clouds met the frozen land, looking altogether like a giant black hole sucking everything it touched, houses, trees, and fields, into its dark interior.

       The cold penetrated the thin shirt she wore, but she felt nothing, her heart as cold as the wintry wind cutting through her.

***

        I hope you appreciate and enjoy "The Miracle." It is a story dear to my heart for it loosely mirrors the journey someone dear to me followed and contains an ending that it might have taken.

The Shepard

I hope you enjoy this short story as much as I did writing it. I overheard a conversation once, where a person said that he was not against someone rescuing animals, but there had to be a limit. "My domicile is filled with miscreant mutts and frenzied felines," he said, and I took the story from there.

The Shepard

      Elizabeth leaned over the stove stirring scrambled eggs and prattling on about something. I sat at the counter and cupped my mug of hot coffee trying to warm my cold hands. I glanced at the atomic clock over the refrigerator: seventy-eight degrees outside, sixty-five degrees inside. If it was hot outside, Elizabeth kept it cold inside. If it was frigid outside, Elizabeth kept it burning inside. She controlled the thermostat, and I was never comfortable in my own domicile. As Mr. Bagnet once said, "Whatever the old girl says do—do it!"

      "Melissa said that it was gentle as a Labrador."

      I looked up.

      "What was gentle as a Lab, Lizzie?" 

      As usual, I had not been listening to her.

      She picked up the pan and scraped scrambled eggs onto a plate.

      "Honestly, Robert. You never listen to me anymore."

      Never Bob, or Bobbie, or Bert, or even Robbie. Always Robert.

      "Of course, I listen to you. Occasionally however, I miss a beat."

      She sighed, slid the plate in front of me, and dropped two slices of wheat bread into the toaster.

       I hated wheat bread, but that made no difference to Elizabeth. Someone told her that all the best people ate wheat bread, so she never bought anything else.

      "And when Melissa told me that, I decided it was the only humane thing to do." She glanced over her shoulder at me.

      I knew that expression. She had done something or said something with which she expected me to disagree. She gave me the same look when she invited her mother to stay with us without discussing it.

      "Robert," she had said, not looking at me. "I've asked my mother to stay with us. She's old and frail and needs my help." Then she glanced over her shoulder at me expecting dissension. I did not disappoint her, but it made no difference. Irene moved in with us and stayed for five years, three months, and four days before succumbing to pneumonia and dying. As horrid as it may sound, I was happy to be rid of her.

      "Humane? What's humane, Lizzie?"

      "Honestly, Robert. To take in the dog, of course."

      So that was it.

***

      Elizabeth took in strays. After her mother died, she became involved with a pet rescue group in town, and before I had a chance to protest, she had taken in two cats and a Chihuahua. I did not mind the cats too much, but the Chihuahua had something wrong with him. He mounted everything in sight: the cats, my shoes, couch pillows, visitors' legs. Elizabeth took him to a pet psychologist, and the incorrigible little mutt mounted the psychologist's leg. No wonder the owners abandoned him.

      Fortunately, the Chihuahua did not last long. When Elizabeth took in a male German Shepard, the Chihuahua immediately tried to mount it. Apparently, the Shepard did not appreciate the attention at all. He snarled, clamped his fangs around the little fornicator's neck, and with one mighty shake, broke it. Elizabeth consigned him to the backyard after that.

      The Shepard and I became fast friends. I enjoyed the manner in which he stretched out next to my feet and never bothered me for anything. I took to giving him a rawhide bone whenever we shared the backyard. I never assigned him a name—he was the only one of Elizabeth's dogs that I took out for an occasional walk, the only one I gave a treat to.

***

      We had three dogs, including the Shepard, now, and two more cats.

      "Not another dog, Lizzie."

      She pulled the bread slices out of the toaster, buttered, and placed them on my plate. I took a nibble and grimaced—as I expected, cardboard.

      "This one will be an outdoor dog, Robert. He won't be a bother. We'll keep him in the backyard."

      "But what about the Shepard?"

      "They'll get along great. You'll see."

***

       I spent four thousand dollars, a fortune on my salary, to fence in the backyard, but she always had a reason for the animals to stay indoors. Finally, I gave up, planted flowers, shrubs, and other plantae, and made the backyard my private sanctuary from Elizabeth's domestic animal shelter. The Shepard and I spent many a pleasant afternoon there, me, reading a literary tome, he, chewing on a rawhide bone, both of us comfortable with each other's company.

       He did not like Elizabeth's cast-offs either.

***

      "When are we getting this victim of human perversity?"

      "Honestly, Robert. You could be a little more sympathetic."

      "My sympathy is not limitless, Lizzie. When do we adopt this mistreated mutt?"

      "Sometime this morning. Melissa will bring him by before she goes to work."

      I concentrated on my scrambled eggs and scowled my response. Elizabeth fed the four cats and took the three dogs out for their daily walk but not the Shepard.

***

      It never occurred to me to ask what kind of dog she had adopted.

***

      I worked as a Data Administrator for the public library. I had a master's degree in literature and a PhD with a focus on Victorian Fiction, especially Dickens, but I had a mild case of anthropophobia, and all you could do with such a degree was stand in front of a classroom filled with students focusing on your every word, staring at your every move. 

      Now, I spent most of my days in front of a computer screen either entering or manipulating data. There was down time; however, and usually, I spent it daydreaming about a home where privacy and quiet were sacrosanct. In fact, I considered my little work space a refuge from Elizabeth and her raucous and obnoxious adopted animals.

***

       I met Elizabeth one cold February day on the campus of the University of Minnesota. I was on my way to a Shakespeare class; she was sitting on her posterior on an icy sidewalk. I offered her a hand up, and she took it. After that, we made our way to a small coffee shop nearby. It did not take long at all before we were living together. Two months later, we married. The marriage was what I wanted, I told myself. I was on the upside of twenty-five headed toward thirty. I needed to settle down, start a family, become an adult.

       Moreover, I was genuinely in love with Elizabeth. She was educated—a Bachelor of Science degree. She was beautiful, tall, and shapely with shoulder-length brown hair that framed a caramel-colored face, two light-brown eyes that could gaze into yours with the promise of innumerable pleasures, and two invitingly plump lips, usually painted red, that invited intimacy.

       Unfortunately, two months had not been enough time to acquaint myself with Elizabeth's idiosyncrasies.

***

       At first, I admired Elizabeth's compassion for animals, but I quickly learned that it was a curse. During our first year of cohabitation, she took in an orphaned parrot, a bitter little bird that only knew one word, shit, except coming out of its beak,  it sounded more like shee-it. I figured I could live with that obscenity. After all, birds were docile, caged, and neat. I was wrong on all counts. He was none of those things. Elizabeth would let it fly loose around the house, and it would wing around saying shee-it, demonstrating what he meant by defecating over everything: floors, tables, clothes—nothing was safe. Still, I tried to befriend the obscene little mimicker, but every time I tried to touch him, he would stab at me with his razor-sharp beak and draw blood.

       I did a little research on parrots, and found out that they could live eighty years. I was more likely to die before him, so there was only one thing to do. I would have to eliminate him. 

      Unfortunately, I did not have it in me to kill.

      However, the gods must have been on my side. One day, on my way out the front door, he shot by me and flew off into the wide blue yonder never to be heard from again.

      "Shee-it," I said to his departing form. "Beware of the indifferent universe," I added and prepared myself to celebrate my newfound peace and quiet.

***

       If only it had been so.

      After a few months of mourning, Elizabeth adopted her mother. a sharped-tongued septuagenarian who habitually napped and snored in front of a blaring television, a pusillanimous puppy she christened Plucky who whined incessantly, and a malevolent cat that used his sharp claws as deadly weapons. Then her mother died and our domicile became a sanctuary for every abandoned animal that appeared on the Humane Society's doorsteps. If nobody wanted the scalawag, fear not, Elizabeth would take it in.

***

       Now, she was adopting another cast-off canine.

***

       "Why don't you divorce her?" Caroline asked, once I told her about Elizabeth's newest adoption. She was a thirty-something who worked with me and with whom. I often shared some of Elizabeth's atrocities. "You have no children, do you?"

       "Would I bring children into that zoo?"

       "So, divorce her."

       "I don't like Elizabeth, but I did not marry her serendipitously. I entered into our relationship voluntarily. I take my marriage vows seriously."

       "Seems to me, you're taking a lot of shit too."

       I acknowledged her point with a nod. What could I do? My life with Elizabeth had become habit. Like the smoker who knows cigarettes will kill him, but cannot stop, I did not have the will to rid myself of her. Perhaps, I realized then, I was just as tenderhearted as she was.

***

       I arrived home after work that afternoon and found no one home to greet me, except for the usual menagerie of miscreants. Apparently, Elizabeth was on some mission to save another animal somewhere, so I grabbed my Dickens, my folding chair and a treat for the Shepard, and prepared to spend a pleasant couple of hours outside reading and enjoying the tranquility.

      However, that was not to be.

***

      The Shepard lay on the back-deck bleeding, and an enormous Rottweiler stood over him, his proboscis covered red with blood. I started to open the patio door, but the animal snarled at me, displaying an impressive set of blood-soaked fangs.

        I dialed 911 and told the individual on the other end that I had an enraged dog on my back deck.

       "What do you mean, sir?"

       "I mean that there is a vicious Rottweiler feasting on my dog on the back deck. When I tried to go out, he growled at me, and exposed his bloody fangs."

      "Don't go out there, sir. I'll send someone over."

      Five minutes after I called 911, Elizabeth arrived.

      "What is it, Robert?" she asked, after noticing my anxious countenance.

      "Your poor miserable mongrel just killed the Shepard and is currently making a meal of him."

      "What?"

      Just then, the doorbell dinged, and I answered it. Two officers stood on the stoop.

      "Someone just called saying that there was a rabid dog on his back deck?"

      "This way, gentlemen," I said and led them to the patio door where Elizabeth stood gawking at the scene outside.

The two officers stared at each other.

       "Only one thing to do," the smaller of the two said. "We'll have to put him down."

       "No," Elizabeth screamed. "You will not kill that poor animal."

       We all gaped at her in disbelief.

       "Ma'am," the officer said. "The animal is eating your other dog."

       "I don't care about the Shepard. He's Robert's dog."

I gave Elizabeth a menacing glare.

       "Shee-it," I said mimicking the parrot. Where was the compassion now? Where was the tender heart?

       "I suggest you officers pop-a-cap in that bloodthirsty beast's head," I told the two constables and disappeared into my bedroom, packed a suitcase, and walked out of my residence just as one of the policemen discharged his weapon.

      At this point, I hoped it was Elizabeth he had dispatched.

Crawfish Redux--1960

This is a piece of a work in progress that appeared in The Pittsburg Quarterly Online in 1998. It is a work of fiction based on a Native American creation story that maintains a crawfish created man. I took some liberties with it, but it stays fairly true to the myth. The main character of the work is nicknamed Crawfish because he came out of his mother's womb backwards, as crawfish tend to do when threatened. I hope you enjoy it.

Crawfish Redux—1960

He appeared one day; an ancient American Indian dressed in tattered khakis, no shoes, and long dark hair, liberally sprinkled with grey, tied loosely behind his head with a leather thong. No one knew where he came from, or where he headed. He walked through Serpentville, his walking stick beating time on the hot, soggy blacktop road. No one would have noticed him if he hadn’t looked so much like an Indian. The children ran after him shooting questions at his back: “Who are you? Where do you come from? Where are you going? Are you really an Indian? Are you a chief?” He didn’t answer. Grownups stepped out of houses, stores, saloons. They asked him questions, the same ones the kids asked. He ignored them too.

He walked down Main Street, turned right on the Ellisonville blacktop and did not stop until he reached the Bayou Serpent bridge about a quarter mile out of town. He crossed the barbed wire fence that separated the road from the bayou and hiked along the waterway until he reached a mound about a mile or two from the road. He used his walking stick to clear away a path for himself through the briar bushes and sat cross-legged on the center of the mound. There he hummed softly to himself and ignored the questions as the kids ran, danced, and hopped around him. “What are you doing? Is that an Indian song you humming? Are you a real Indian? What are you doing?” they chirruped.

Jonel Pipe, the sheriff’s deputy, showed up around sunset and told the old man to move on. The Indian hummed softly, didn’t even look up. Jonel grabbed his left arm and tugged on it. He groaned, and the deputy backed off. After all, he did not want to hurt him. Jonel crossed his arms and stared hard at the Indian. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” When the man didn’t answer, the deputy shook his head and left. It was a free country, and he wasn’t hurting anything. Still there was something disconcerting about the scene.

The sun rose and set three times, and still, the old Indian didn’t move. A hawk circled overhead. Far off, a crop duster flew over a cotton field. He stood, wobbled a bit, and regained his balance. He lifted his arms up to the sky and faced the kids playing nearby—they had grown tired of waiting for him to do something, but they were afraid not to be there in case he did, so they showed up each day. They stopped what they were doing when he stood, scurried up the mound and gathered at his feet.

“The Great Spirit,” the old Indian said in a raspy voice that sounded like the wind through the briar bushes, “had no eyes or ears, but she heard and saw all that went on around her. Water covered Mother Earth. The Great Spirit made fish and shellfish to fill her waters. Then she told Crawfish to go to the bottom and mate with Mother Earth. Crawfish did and pulled up some of Mother Earth to make a home for their offspring. Crawfish named their progeny Chitimacha, and he lived on the home created by Mother Earth and Crawfish. The Great Spirit gave Chitimacha laws to live by, and all was well on the new earth for a while, but Chitimacha has a short memory, and soon, he forgot all the laws, and the new earth fell into chaos. The Great Spirit thought and thought and gave Chitimacha women and tobacco, and these made Chitimacha very happy, but Chitimacha made slaves of his women and became slave to his tobacco and demanded the Great Spirit give him more. The Great Spirit gave him animals and arrows to slay the animals, and these made Chitimacha very happy, but it wasn’t very long before Chitimacha grew tired of those and demanded the Great Spirit give him more. The Great Spirit gave Chitimacha knowledge of Mother Earth and taught him how to grow crops upon her. This made Chitimacha very happy, and he feasted on the fruits of Mother Earth, but soon, Chitimacha wanted more and once again, called on the Great Spirit to give him more. The Great Spirit gave Chitimacha the four directions. To the north, she gave Chitimacha the cold. To the south, she gave Chitimacha warmth and moisture. To the west, she gave Chitimacha great beasts to hunt and eat. To the east, she gave Chitimacha the white man. Chitimacha was very happy. When the cold of the north came down, it cooled and refreshed him. The warmth of the south nurtured his crops. The great beasts of the west fed and clothed his families. The white man from the east introduced him to a new Great Spirit who promised an even better world for Chitimacha. The white man taught Chitimacha to forsake Mother Earth and embrace their Great White Spirit. Chitimacha was very happy. He took from the Mother Earth and gave nothing back. This is not the true world, the white man told him. It is only a stopping place. Chitimacha drank in the white man’s words as eagerly as he drank the white man’s alcohol, but one day, Chitimacha saw that not all was well. Mother Earth was slowly dying. The rivers and bayous were barren. Farms and cities were replacing the woods and forests. Smoke from the white man’s automobiles and factories poisoned the air. Chitimacha demanded the Great Spirit make it right again. The Great Spirit had no ears or eyes, but she saw and heard all that went on, and she wept for Chitimacha.”

The old Indian stared up into the sky at a crop duster circling overhead. Then he watched as a green tractor inched its way across a cotton field. He finally let his gaze rest on the curious children around him.

“Please,” he said and fell back. He died, his wise and aged eyes staring lifelessly at the sky.

In life, the old Indian was a curiosity for the children. In death, he was frightening, and they ran away from his lifeless body. None of them understood the old Indian’s request at the end, except one.

He shook a tiny fist at the sky as he ran with the others to tell the grownups what he had learned.

The 2-Headed Calf

As a young boy, fourteen or fifteen, I had the opportunity to watch a veterinarian deliver a calf. The delivery went along the same line as my story except the calf was normal and alive. It was an extraordinary experience eclipsed only by my daughter's home birth. I took the memory and created this scene from a work in progress that probably will never see the light of day.

The 2-headed Calf—1969

The pregnant Guernsey milk cow belonging to JJ's father was overdue to drop her calf, and he sent for Dr. Veillion, the old veterinarian from Ellisonville. JJ called me to see if I wanted to see the cow deliver her calf. Although I lived in a farm community, I had never seen anything like that before. I was curious, so I jumped on my old Schwinn and peddled over to his father's farm about three miles down the Isaacton graveled road. I found them in Mr. Labbé's enormous and old cypress barn. I left my bike at the fence, climbed over the metal gate, and joined them. The barn was dark and smelled strongly of manure and hay. I stood next to JJ and watched as his father and Dr. Veillion examined the cow. In the next stall, a chicken perched on top of a poison drum and watched us, cocking her head sideways occasionally. The cow lay on her right side and seemed to be struggling to give birth. A yellowish sac hung from her back end. She lifted her head, eyed us with her dark eyes, and cried out.

"What's the matter with her?" I asked Dr. Veillion.

"That's her water sac hanging from her vulva," he answered. "She's having trouble pushing the calf out." He reached into his black medical bag. "Looks like I'll have to give Mother Nature a hand." He slid on a pair of enormous black rubber gloves that covered his hands and arms almost to his shoulders. Then he rubbed a lubricant over both gloves and entered the stall with the cow. She turned her head toward him, and he slowly made his way around until he stood behind her. "That's all right, baby," he soothed. "I'm just going to give you a little helping hand getting that baby out of there." The cow shook her enormous head and shifted a little. Dr. Veillion lifted her tail and slowly slid his right hand inside her vulva up past his elbow.

I glanced at JJ, and he grinned at me.

"You said you wanted to see," he whispered.

"The calf is coming out backwards," Dr. Veillion called out. "That's usually not a problem. I'm just going to reposition it a little until I can get his legs out. Jeb. There's no movement in there, so I suspect the calf might be dead." He glanced at Mr. Labbé. "I'm going to need some help pulling, so come in here and join me." After some tugging, a pair of small hooves and fetlocks appeared. Dr. Veillion grunted and pulled harder using both hands. JJ's father grabbed a hoof and helped."

"It's too slippery," Dr. Veillion said. "Get me a sturdy rope, and we'll pull it out that way."

Mr. Labbé nodded at JJ, who grabbed a rope and handed it to the old veterinarian. He secured it over the calf's fetlocks and again, just above the hooves. The two men pulled. The cow's stomach contracted as she pushed. After a few minutes, the calf's body appeared. The two pulled harder, and the rest of the calf dropped out in a spurt of blood, water, and mucous.

We stared in bewilderment at the little animal lying in the fresh hay.

It had two heads.

"Don't that beat all," Dr. Veillion said. "I've heard about this happening, but I've never seen it before."

"What the hell is it?" JJ's father asked.

"A calf," Dr. Veillion said. "The strangest damn calf I've ever seen."

"Is it alive?" I asked.

"Nope. It never had a chance."

The cow slowly licked her dead calf clean.

"Will my Guernsey be all right?" Mr. Labbé asked.

"She should be fine, Jeb. I'll stick around a bit until she delivers the placenta. It shouldn't take long."

"What am I going to do with a dead two-headed calf?"

The old veterinarian shrugged.

"Well, you could bury it, or you can have it stuffed. Some museum, or something like that, might want it."

Once the cow stood and delivered her placenta, Dr. Veillion left.

JJ's father placed the calf in a freezer and called Sonny Landrieu, a taxidermist he knew in Ellisonville. Three weeks later, he picked up the mount, and JJ called me over to see it. His father had set it into a scene that he created in the corner of his living room, a manger where the two-headed calf stood next to a bale of hay, an empty bucket, and a feed trough with grain in it. One head faced the viewer, it's dark glass eyes blank. The other head leaned over the trough.

"What do you think, boy?" Mr. Labbé asked.

I didn't know how to answer.

"Strange," I said, finally.

"Would you pay to see something like that?"

"I don't know," Mr. Labbé.

"Well, I got me a two-headed calf. Ain't no sense letting it rot in the ground when I can make money off him."

Later, he called the Ellisonville Gazette, and they sent a photographer over. The headline read, "Serpentville Farmer Preserves 2-Headed Calf." He placed a sign on the roadside next to his driveway. "SEE A TWO-HEADED CALF. $1.00 PER PERSON," it read.

He had visitors from as far off as Arkansas and Mississippi.

A Colder than Normal Winter

I never know what will spark my imagination. Many years ago, while driving through Arkansas on a cold icy day, I saw a young boy trudge over a fallow field, heading toward a shack with a single, lighted window cutting through the approaching dusk. He carried a small paper sack in his right hand. The scene reminded me of an Emil Nolde landscape, intense and emotional, or the feeling I experienced when I first saw Andrew Wyath's Christina's World. This is what came out of what I witnessed that day. I tried to capture the fear and guilt I felt when my father died of cancer. I was about that boy's age.

A Colder than Normal Winter

The dying sun dangles like an orange sore, scabrous and purulent. Dark clouds, pregnant with the threat of a winter storm, roil over the northern horizon like a disease, slowly devouring the sun’s feeble light and the icy blue sky.

The dark shadow of a boy, carrying a small sack filled with medicine for his father, crosses a fallow field. His breath pulses from him in small white storm clouds. The cold stabs through him, and his legs, like bellows, stoke the fires in his chest, but he feels none of that. The fear in his mind numbs him, binds him to the shack across the field where he knows his father, the certainty of death slowly working its way through his emaciated body, stares through a frosted window and waits for him.

The boy throws himself upon the barren ground—tries to erase the image of the cancer eating his father’s insides like white-hot flames devouring paper. He knows that death is an awful process that does not discriminate between good and evil, but he cannot imagine life without his father. Even the thought of his expiration creates a chasm of loss and yearning in his chest.

He has seen him cough, bring up blood, red and hot enough to melt ice. He rises and trudges home toward the lighted window that holds his father’s wasted shadow and new responsibilities, the fear of failing him during his last few days, heavy on his shoulders.

How does one change the weather, disperse the clouds building behind him that promise more icy winds and a colder than normal winter?

My First Paid Publication

The letter arrived in the mail just as I was going to take a shower. The mail carrier dropped the mail in the mailbox. I opened the front door a crack, stuck my arm out, and picked up the mixture of junk mail and bills. The business-size envelope stood out. The address was the same one I typed on my old Royal manual. Stamped in black on the upper left-hand corner was The Southern Review return address. The fifteen-cent "Star Spangled Banner" stamp I had licked and placed on the envelope sat proudly on the upper right corner. I threw the junk mail in the trash and sat at my kitchen table, placing the envelope face up. I examined the postmark. I could only make out three digits of the zip code, a huge PM in the center of the postmark, and nothing of the date was legible. I stood, walked to the refrigerator, grabbed a beer, a sharp knife, and returned to the envelope. I placed the knife blade under the flap and slit it opened, but I didn't pull out the single sheet inside. Instead, I took a long pull from the beer and prayed.

"Please, God, let this be an acceptance."

I was a graduate student at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (USL), now known as the University Louisiana, Lafayette (ULL). I had written a collection of short stories set in a small Cajun community to use as my creative thesis, and was trying to get a few stories published to give my work some credibility. Ernest Gaines, my writing teacher, had introduced me to his agent a few months earlier, and she had asked me to send her some of my work, so I sent her six stories and a stamped, self-addressed, envelope in case she needed to send them, or some suggestions, back to me. To my surprise, she sent me a brief note saying that she had submitted three of the stories to The Southern Review.

This letter was the magazine's response.

I finished my beer and opened another. All my dreams, my hopes, lay in that nine and a half by four-inch envelope, and never in my life had I been so afraid to open a letter. I lit up a cigarette, took a few puffs, drank some more beer, and picked up the envelope. I smelled it. I turned it over—turned it over again and pulled out the neatly folded paper.

At the age of fifteen, I sent a story to a pulp magazine—I don't even remember the name. When the reply came, I could barely contain my excitement. I ripped open the envelope, pulled out a slip of paper, and read the mimeographed response: "Thank you for your submission. We're sorry, but your story does not meet our needs at this time." I was heartbroken, angry, and resolved never to send out my work again until I had learned to be a "real" writer. So, here I was, fifteen years older, and steeling myself for the same disappointment I'd felt as a young boy.

I finished my cigarette, crushed it out in the ashtray, and picked up the folded letter. I lifted a corner and a slip of paper fell out. It was a check made out to me for one hundred dollars. I stared at it for a full minute before I realized that The Southern Review had accepted one of my stories and were paying me.

I unfolded the letter and read it. The magazine had accepted three of my works, and they were scheduled to appear in the winter 1984 edition. Editor Lewis P. Simpson's signature appeared at the bottom. I grabbed the letter and the check, ran out to the backyard of my duplex, and yelled as loudly as I could, "I'm a writer. I'm a paid writer." My neighbors must have thought I was drunk or mad, but I didn't care. I was a real writer, a paid writer.

That was many years ago, and I've had many stories published since then, some paid, some not, but none of them came close to the exhilaration I felt that day. The money has long been spent and the letter lost in the passage of time, but the memory is etched in my mind.

_______________________________________

You can read the three stories in my collection, Lighted Windows.