Posted September 17, 2007

Fiction

EIGHT

By Jon Schlosser

I tossed the shovel to the ground lightly and dropped down onto my porch. The sun felt hotter than I remembered, and I wiped the sweat off my forehead. My hands were covered in dirt. I wiped them absentmindedly on my pants and lay back. The rough wood boards threatened to scrape my bare back, but I ignored them.

The clouds floated slowly in the breeze. They were few and far apart, the kind that you can usually find pictures in. A shame I wasn't in the mood for that. A bird dropped out of the sky, a black silhouette to my eye, and disappeared from view.

I propped myself up with my elbows. My driveway ran a winding course for about two hundred yards before it hit Middlebrook Road. Middlebrook was little more than a dirt path itself, leading eventually to the main highway, about three miles out. My gaze drifted back to the driveway, tracing its course to the house.

Until my eyes came to rest on the trees. There were eight of them lining my driveway, each one a little smaller than the one before it. They were all cedar trees. Those had been her favorite, after all. It was only fitting. The last one looked a little out of place, the dirt still fresh around it.

Eight trees. Eight years.

It still felt like yesterday.

- - - - -

"Don't just stare out that window! Look at me!"

The rain came down in sheets, hitting the front windshield of the car and washing up over the top. Out of the corner of my eye I could still see her glaring at me. What right did she have to be angry? It wasn't my fault work had run late. "I have to watch the road."

"You listen to me, Alex Winslow!"

"I am listening." I checked the rear view mirror. Nothing. The yellow lines flashed by, obscured by the rain.

"So how could you do this? We planned this months ago."

I looked over. She was beautiful, even when she was angry. "What do you want me to say, Teresa? I couldn't get out of it."

"Couldn't get out of it? Alex, its overtime! They can't force you to work it." She crossed her arms over her chest and looked out the window. "You know what? Just forget it. I can see how little this meant to you. If that's the choice you made, fine."

"Look, if I ever want to get promoted, I have to take all the hours I can get! I have to prove to Jackson that I deserve it! It's not like I didn't want to go with you, but sometimes we have to make sacrifices to get what we want."

The anger was written across her face as she turned toward me. I looked at her coolly. She had no reason to make such a bit deal out of this. It was just a stupid play...

"And you chose your job over your wife? Am I that unimportant to you, Alex?"

I didn't say anything. It's not that she was unimportant. But she was always there; we could do this anytime. My job only had so many opportunities, so I had to take them. It wasn't like we couldn't just go to another play, on another night. Maybe Sunday. I rarely worked on Sundays. "It's not--"

I never even saw it. There was a sudden flash of lights, harsh even when diluted by the water. I heard the screech of tires on pavement and realized that I had the brake pedal mashed to the floor. Teresa was screaming. The crunch of metal was sickening, the shattering of glass.

And then the world was turning, rolling over in front of me, once, twice. I had managed to get my arms up around my head, and I curled up as much as I could. Why hadn't the airbags gone off? Something was crushing my leg, a vice that held it with superhuman force. I pulled the other leg up, bracing myself in the seat.

The world came to rest upside-down. I couldn't see. Something warm was running down my face and into my eyes. I tried to clear them with my right arm, but it wouldn't move. I used the left one instead, more than a little confused. My leg was still pinned. Why wouldn't the world right itself?

I looked at my left arm. Blood. More blood than I had ever seen before. Whose was it? They had to be pretty messed up. I wiped my face again.

It was my blood.

Teresa! I had gotten twisted around in the crash, and I couldn't see her. I fought with the seatbelt. Finally I got turned around, pain lancing through my leg at the movement. She looked all right from this side. She was just hanging limply in her seat. The window next to her was busted out.

"Teresa?" Nothing. "Teresa, talk to me, babe." She didn't even look at me. Now I was scared. "Talk to me! Please!"

"Hey! Are you okay in there?" Someone was outside the car. What a stupid question.

"Help us!" I could see the lights from their car. "My wife won't say anything!"

Now there were flashing lights. Red and blue. They hurt my eyes. There must have been a police car behind us. Or had I been unconscious while they got here? I had no idea. I could hear more commotion outside. People yelling to each other. Why weren't they doing anything? My vision started to get blurry. I must be losing a lot of blood.

"Hang on, sir. We'll get out of there." The officer looked in through what used to be the front window. I couldn't make out his face. Nothing was clear anymore. I shook my head. Pain shot through me. I blacked out.

- - - - -

My last conversation with her still echoed in my ears. I loved her more than anything; how could I have said those things? I would never have a chance to apologize, to make it right. She was gone forever.

I had been spacing the trees about every ten yards along the driveway, planting one every year on the anniversary of the accident. That gave me about a hundred and twenty more yards, give or take. Twelve more trees. Twelve more years. Maybe that would be enough time for me to get over losing her. Maybe I would be able to let her go. Maybe then I could begin to cherish the memories of the short time that we had been married, the times we'd spent together.

Then again, I still had the other side of the driveway.

 

The Young Man Who Said He'd Never Eat Chocolate Again

by Tom Sheehan

Today it all came back. Once again, on another brilliant dawning, the Western Yetness still calling me, I woke with a toothache. A stupendous one! In half an hour, despite quick brushing, the stimulator poked here and there, gargling, all proving useless, the ache remained in force. It was, without a doubt, the chocolate again, or the mere thought of chocolate. I knew I was weak to most any candy, and to chocolate in particular, right from the beginning.

Believe me, me being Paul Legatione himself, that I am so much more than all of this around me. And I remember, vividly at times, how it all started; my father walking away from us when I was six or seven and my mother, Delores, wanting as much time as she could get with her many subsequent men friends, seeing to it that I was judiciously bought off with candy and books. The Big Swap I could have called it. Those friends arrived in their turns, some staying for long spells, and some for random short visits. She must have spread the good word far and wide, though, for she had lots of friends calling on her. And the candy arrived with them, toted as part of their baggage, and the books.

So frequently did they come that I grew up with them... the friends, the candy, the books. But tastes soon developed along with my character needs. As much as I could I declined the friendship of the men, often drawing back into a feigned facade, learning artistic ways of evasion, but I ate the candy meanwhile and read the books. Both, I swear, avariciously, relishing the sweet taste in my mouth, the sweet turn of a phrase giving me music, experiences moving in the back of my head. Of course, from that onslaught, my teeth went bad, but I read the books cover to cover, every word of every book, not that I was selective in the beginning, being reduced to strangers' tastes. I could read a book while worrying a tooth or rooting at that sore member with my tongue, so that I'd get by the aspect of pain, molars my anathema, my digging spots. Slowly, though, I developed my own taste and preference in reading and made suggestions, dropped hints, left notes about the house boldly marked with book titles, or authors' names that eventually began to crawl out of the narrowing selectivity in my mind. Joining the ranks, I guess you could say. By taking advantage of things, the library grew assiduously, and I learned a whole lot, absorbing all I read or reflected upon, every word, every sentence, every illustration. My mother, on such days, was the happiest mother around. And you can say what you want about that happy phrase.

I suspected one time, like I had probably known all along, that she was sleeping with The Creole, a rather smooth but talkative man later speculation said must have come from James Lee Burke's bayou country down at the end of the Mississippi. He seemed like a nice enough guy, with the subtle dominance an occasional man can master, slow and steady, most always in first gear, moving ahead, no woman’s piece or part deterring him. Even mother's speech changed for that dalliance, evincing a flair for a soft, slow Louisiana drawl she employed for either pleasure or annoyance... I was never sure which. It was always pointed at me, me the subject and object in what I imagined as an admission of guilt, a clearing of the air. An atonement, perhaps, she had intellectually arranged. It made me think of Huckleberry Finn and how the old boy, Mark Twain himself, prefaced the whole vernacular flow of his novel with that perfect aside right up front. He just set the record straight for his readers, his critics, all that history coming down the line right at him and his marvelous creation, Huck and Jim on the river, a spell of time and its particular sounds.

Of course, before The Creole suffered his entertainment, she welcomed The Corsican, and The Hammer-Thrower and The Glutton and The Sword-Swallower. From the earliest I had reduced her many friends to short descriptors, each of them following one another like trail hounds after my father walked away that day. Obversely I'd bet to a man they called me The Candy Kid. Sometimes I thought about that dictate, how the word must have spread, about Delores and her kid with the good sweet tooth, and it made me sour to my stomach.

I grew, though, while she entertained and my teeth went bad so many times I lost count. Visits to the dentist were horror shows I will remember into the pine box. But I had some innate abilities springing to light in spite of my mother and those dalliances, if I may call them that in polite terms. She bloomed with a man around, or men, did Delores. On other days, the slack days, such a difference came, a laundry sack of a woman... she'd become morose, depressed, near lifeless. There'd be no lipstick pressed upon her mouth, no care to dress, supper a poor substitute for the goodly fare; eggs for supper, fried eggs, quick eggs, or a bowl of dry packaged cereal, an old meal resurfaced, a rushed sandwich without pickle or condiment, her fast-food dictates at hand.

Then came, for me, the red letter day if I may say so, when The Corsican, big as he was, massive at the shoulders, gently cupped her buttock one morning with his outsized hand. Early angled sun dropped bars through the narrow windows of the house. Those bars fell in slanting bands of joyous light across two walls of the kitchen and made the silverware glitter like coins in a till. A dark blue oil cloth on the table condoned a swift mirror of brightness. The room was a warm happy room at that exact moment. The Corsican and mother were just inside the kitchen door, caught up in bands of sunlight set about them like matting in a picture. In a memorial pose were the two of them. Then she leaned her head on his shoulder when he had cupped her rear in what appeared to me to be the ultimate signal of giving all one might have, right there or in the immediate future. The ultimate of promises. I saw it framed. I wondered what her eyes looked like then, what they might have said, for I swear I heard the song in her begin; the near mute tra-la-la making appropriate commentary, the notes that move behind a smile.

The Corsican was a big man with a huge smile and marshaled a look in his eye that could dwarf anyone less than noble or courageous. Hair as black as a night skyline showed his eyes and his teeth to great advantage, making him softer, and gentler I'd bet, to mother. Also, there was directness to his actions, which she loved in strong men; they knew their wants, they spoke their piece, they took their booty. Thus, this cupping day, starting at breakfast, was hers in celebration. The bloom was hers, and the candy was mine. I never fully knew what that dalliance really was, until some years later I met the daughter of a Buick Roadmaster owner, and encountered my first dalliance in the front seat of the Roadmaster hardtop before the engine of that magnificent machine was humming again, though her humming, and mine, went complete.

If you want to know about me, how I was made and how I have come along the way, I'll let you in on just about all of it. Where I learned it I don't know, but it was in my mind and in the touch of my hands, primal, from the git-go. A gift clearly bestowed upon me. I understood things, contraptions, working parts, and their reasons for being, their methods of operation, what part did what job in the collected mission. Theory came easy, complex reads were simple tasks. Connections of all sorts found instant access in my thinking… schematics, plans, routines, processes. I saw it all and most immediately, a counterpart ingrained and open.

Talent came, scads of it, like a flood or a bursting. Was all of it a trade-off? Was I driven there? Did I seek it out and dare not refuse it? Was I being recompensed for the role given me in life, and my mother's? I'll never know for sure, but today, in drop-dead certainty, I can hone a car to perfection (from tappet size to exhaust ratios and you can throw in all the kinds of theory you might advance), or a piano, or a guitar, sometimes so keenly at it that drivers or players exult at the zenith of their capacities. And with my ear I can make a harmonica nearly dance by itself, never mind an old piano awash in the universe, its old keys bouncing like a junk car's shock absorbers. I do horns, computers, VCRs, washing machines, dryers, you name it. I am a player and a doer. I am special and I damn well know it and they do too, mother and her friends. Hadn't that Ferrari and that old Strad peaked at my finger touch, humming alongside the universe itself, all that mellow music at the ear, all in tune with each other? I had it! I had it, every belly-pumping inch of it! Oh, what glorious humming I could accomplish! God, I'd often say, all of us should be so endowed.

But, despite all the ready goodness, all the acceptance and praise, all the tumult of ass-kissing accolades, I kept saying I would not, damned if I would, eat chocolate again. I couldn't afford it, so I kept saying it like prayers: Not a bite, bet on it! Not a Sky Bar chunk or a Tootsie Roll or the heavily-wrapped two dollar goodie she always brings home for me and a potential occasion. I’ll not close my teeth again on a Heath Bar or a Hershey or an Almond Joy. Bet on it! Bet on it! Bet on it! Include Snickers and Milky Way and Three Musketeers in the whole toothy arsenal of hits. I'll read the books but I'll swear off the candy stuff.

I said it all the time and I relented all the time. I caved in.

And so I learned about trade-offs.

**

They caught us in Dockery's Greenhouse, the 3 A.M. moon in the first quarter, the alarm ringing, us stupidly afoot and agape. I was eight years old. All of us kids had seen the chocolate bunny in the window; it had ridden its tongs and grips deep inside. I knew what the grace of chocolate was, that cocoa distinction, that dark softness on the palate, the lingering mouthful of richness, and I enticed them with the sweet promises. And, as vowed, I picked the lock on the back door of Dockery's Greenhouse. It was a snap! And we hefted the chocolate bunny the night just before Easter was to come along, and suddenly there was Dockery himself and the cop on the beat standing in the doorway. There was an uproar, of course, but we were kids and got away with it. I could taste that chocolate bunny even as my mother whipped my butt. But she liked men and I liked chocolate. They came together. I never knew if perhaps Dockery or the patrolman had formed a union with her.

I had my own reputation, I guess you could say. Not just precocious, but handy to the Nth degree. It did not take long to make that point, and to exact fair payment. When I was twelve I was doing a motor job on old Essering's convertible engine with poured Babbitt bearings Essering didn't even know existed. I blued them and scraped them and fine-combed those bearings and tuned all those parts and I made that car hum with a music it had not known in ten years. Out on the pike he swore it raced off at 80 miles an hour and he could hear the sacred humming in the seat of the pants. And he made my mother hum in his own turn, the old Dodge their transport. They rode off in that chariot for days on top of days and came back late. For weeks she was singing in the kitchen in the morning, and late at night. I remember the night I told myself I was a mechanic and she was a lover. There was one trade-off for you! Kid stuff that kids are made of.

And before you know it, there' a Buick Roadmaster being pushed into our garage at the side of the house. One of mother's friends, The Carpenter, had squared the garage away for my use, put up shelving, a skylight, a bench fit for Edison himself. The Roadmaster daughter's name was Amie; I think she came with the car. At least she was with it, it seemed, from Day One, sitting in the front seat, primping, exhaling, being smelled and inhaled above grease and oil flavors, and only fifteen years old in her burst of beauty. Once I caught her fondling herself, her eyes smoked with slow, dark combustion. Soon she was fondling me. I was hanging the exhaust system under that old Buick Roadmaster while lying on my back, part of me under the car, part not. She straddled me, as if she could not have altered those actions in this lifetime. She showed me she wore nothing under her skirt. "I never wear underwear," she said. It was an affirmation of destiny, the role in life, making one's own claim on things to be. "Never. Never," she repeated, half the world in her eyes. I was to remember that statement, that vision, every time I saw her again, and lots of others for that matter. That day we advanced upward to the fabric of the front seat, me straddled again, her knees against the back of the front seat. I suddenly knew I was different too. Another trade made.

I guess I essentially began to measure things then. My gravitation to all of this. How important Don Quixote had become and Huckleberry Finn and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and a man named John LeCarre and the hilarious first part of Freaky Deaky by Elmore Leonard and Robideaux"s fisty friend Clete painted up by James Lee Burke. I guess I began to know my mother better too, the way I began to learn more about books and stories and the people that put them all together.

When The Handshaker came in his turn, he brought nothing but himself. He asked for candy once in a while instead of bringing it, smiling at choice sweetness, thanking me cordially, but never overboard with his gratitude. The huge surprise was that he began to borrow books from me, read them quickly, asked my opinion on a number of books or authors, engaged in liquid conversations with me about where ideas might spring from, knew about Huck and Jim on the river, Mr. Timothy, Francie and Johnny Nolan down in old Brooklyn where the tree was growing. Interest walked with him on every corner.

And my most avaricious mother, my one-road, one-grained, one-mind, one-appetite mother must have sat up one day, suddenly like a light switch had been thrown in her darkness, and saw all that was about her. The Handshaker consistently made points. More than once he ushered a newcomer from the front door, his voice authoritative, at times imperial. Nights full of April lilacs and daffodils he kept to his room in the back of the house, and if they had meetings they occurred when I was not about. One day, after a pretty bad toothache had ground itself from existence, he convinced me and her that I should have many of my upper teeth extracted. That it would be best for me, even at sixteen. He kept saying it was not a sin, that new intelligence about teeth and implants and such things were steadily improving, that my health should be protected from the invasion of poisons my poor teeth kept inviting.

The transition among us was not noisy, but it was in motion.

"You'll smell better too," he added one day later when we were sitting on the porch, both of us relaxing from a book, mother in the kitchen preparing a fish meal he had proposed. "That's a gift in itself." I had not entertained the thought of bad breath. The Roadmaster daughter had never said a word about that. Nor another car girl after the Roadmaster was driven away.

That"s the night he told us about losing a son, how life ached for the longest time, and that a certain comfort had come upon him at our house he thought was no longer attainable. We were sitting on the porch again, one light burning above us, the lilacs with long hands touching us, the fireflies dancing at a distance, continuity expressing itself. I saw the affect on her, the way a curtain comes down on stage, makes separation, allows alterations. I remembered The Corsican"s huge hand on mother"s buttock, the sunlight on the walls, her yielding and signal gesture. Now silence was a gesture of its own. I heard her silence. I heard her acceptance. I heard eventual change inserting itself in our lives.

I bid the chocolate adieu.

Big Jim, the Mormon, and Hitler's Grandson

By Quincey Burkhalter

Roswell,NM

Note: This piece is the fourth section of a longer piece, which chapters appear in previous and will appear in later issues of The Lotus Reader (see previous issues of Lotus Reader)

The next day I came into store an hour and thirty minutes late. That was the
day that I found out why they called the street I worked on Canal Street.
There was a canal along the street, a canal that I soon was to become very
intimate with.

I had ridden my bike clear across town to my girlfriend's house. She lived
just off of Canal Street about ten miles down from Big Jim's. I gave myself
plenty of time to get to work. It usually took me about thirty minutes to
get to there this way so I left an hour early. It was unusually hot for
Denver and humid beyond belief. I enjoyed this type of weather. This was
probably the only reason I loved working at Big Jim's. I could show up to
work drenched in sweat with my lucky bandana wrapped around my head and no
one gave a damn.

I had been riding along congested Canal Street weaving in and out of
traffic. I ran lights. Cars honked. I gave them the bird. "Hit me," I
yelled, "I'll sue your ass." I didn't really give a damn what the people in
the cars thought. None of them could do what I was doing. They weren't in
the shape. They sat in their cars eating donuts one after another, putting
on their Goddamn makeup, and singing badly along with their five
thousand-dollar stereo systems. I passed right by them on a beat up old
ten-speed I had bought from some guy who used to run triathlons. I was
stronger than any of them. Smarter than any of them. And on Canal Street, I
was faster than any on them.

Of course it couldn't always be that way. Some asshole always had to prove
me wrong. This time it was a guy in a '79 Bronco. The Bronco was high off
the ground, raised up so the guy in it would feel superior to the rest of
the human race. It was exactly the kind of testosterone machine I could see
Craig driving. The first time I noticed this guy behind me he was trying to
push a red Geo out of the way. He managed to do it with a few revvings of
the engine and a slight push from behind. The car moved over to the
shoulder. I looked back to see the Geo driver, it was a girl, flip him off.
That was exactly what I would have done.

Then he got behind two seventies gas-guzzlers. These guys weren't going to
let him through no matter how much he pushed. So, Mister Ejaculation on
Wheels started swerving wildly back and forth. I could hear his wheels
squealing, smell the rubber burning on the pavement. The Bronco wasn't going
to get past the LTD and the New Yorker, they wouldn't let him. And I wasn't
going to move. I owned the fucking road. Then the old man in the hat that
was driving the LTD made a right turn. I never have trusted old men in hats.
That was just enough opportunity for Mr. My Engine Is Louder Than Yours So
Get The Fuck Outta My Way to get around.

That was when I noticed. I look back to see his face. I can see the fire of
hate burning in him, a vein pulsing wildly on his forehead. It's him. It's
him, I think. His black hair is neatly combed to the right and plastered to
his head. Blue eyes glare madly from underneath savagely distraught
eyebrows. That evil dictator grin flashes brilliantly under a square patch
of hair. His eyes burn with rage.

I dart quickly for the left lane. He is in the right. There isn't much of a
shoulder. That's a big mistake. My feet are going to fly off the pedals. He
is closer. I feel or roar of his engine in chest. My legs are on fire. I
look back. I see the fury in his eyes. A human life is of no consequence to
him. I can tell he knows I'm Jewish. He hates me; I feel it. He hates me. He
hate me just like he hated my grandfather. My tires aren't even touching the
pavement. I look back again. The evil he possesses was strong. His lips are
pursed tightly together. He grinds his teeth in fury. But above all he is
happy. I see a grin forming under that square patch of hair.

The Bronco roars. It pulls up close. I see the grill. I feel the heat of the
engine. The chrome bumper reflects the image of my back tire. My legs are on
Jell-O. His engine screams out, Death, Death to all Jews. I look up at him.
He is mouthing the words. Death, Death to all Jews. I feel the words, like a
knife to my soul. The engine hotter still. I am in an oven. Burning in an
oven. The oven my grandfather narrowly escaped.

I turn to see a curb. Without thinking I managed to pull my front wheel high
enough to get over it. A hard jolt rocks me. My back tire pops. I see the
canal coming towards me. I jump off of the bike and land in a crazy forward
momentum on the gravel of the street. The bike lands in the canal.

Dazed and angry, I look up for the Bronco. The street is empty. There isn't
a person or a car in sight.

 

Poetry

 

Surnames
By G.T.
Brooklyn, NY

I. Ivan Rangilove

Grandfather smote
his Jewish half
in pints --

smudging Auschwitz  
with gin; and speaking
Yiddish to check

if the words
didn't slur
to no words;

chug another
shot, or two.
Try again--
and again.

And a half smirk
would creep toward
his right ear --

when we
could no longer
comprehend. He’d say:

"Good.
Don't."

And none of us would.

My  sisters, and I,
spoke in the Slavic
tongue we were taught --
then English;

the other type
never passed
through voice
or teeth;

it bounced off our
conscience without
a corner to stick to,
or stagnate.

Though Grandfather
was much too busy;
he never paid notice
to the youngster's relents --

forever drowning WWII 
in bottles of bitter gin
and sweet menthol cigarettes



II.  In Continuity

The war ensued,
a perpetual insomnia.
No great clean slate

new Year's Eve
could ever, truly,
erase 1942 ---

when Grandfather
escaped the German clutch
somehow, he'd never say

or sigh batting teal eyes
and the silver mane:

"Lucky then...
.... I didn't have your name!"


III.  The Ceremonial Chant

On the eve of her wedding,
one year after Papa proposed,

Grandfather leaned over
a steaming pot roast
and told Mama she

won't be able to hide
behind a name like that:

"Tsi -rel- man"

Does not rrroll like:

"Ran- gil - ove."

he'd tisk his teeth,
and fick his tongue:

"Now eve'ryone will
know that you are one!"

into her right ear.
Like a conch --
singing broken sea.



IV The laceration

The last time I saw him,
I was seven going on eight.

I turned the corner one day,
and he was there --

tearing the Mezusah  off
the clean white door frame

of his new  abode.

He saw my shadow;
He didn't say  a word.

But  then I dropped
the pot of geraniums

I had bought Grandmother;

it broke with a thud
in two and two and two;

By Danny P. Barbare Greenville SC Rain As the sun is shy. I pull out my umbrella. Dial tones and Disconnections By Lizzie Mayher Cleveland, OH A cigarette tongue telling his age through the ribs of a harmonica and with his eyes closed im sure he imagines the divets to be the curves in his amor de vida's skin and maybe she'd sing just the same when he kissed her so hard. The harmonica sounds like a train that's been traveling on the same tracks, burning the same coal with the wheeze of a tired laugh and one apology *through the teeth. A foot stomping to a rhythm of memories just barely.. gone. Each breath to unravel gauze he wrapped around the only organ strong enough to break. A pulse so red-- revived. From the gray in his hair, I imagine he's spent a lot of days in the rain with a coat that was never warm enough. That he'd use payphones to keep in touch, but after a while there were only dial tones and disconnections.... He came in-in a van with a proper noun of she, her tires worn with dirt from every state he never stayed-- and not an inch of the places he tried. His voice is 47 tomorrow, but says his soul is 82-- and I believe him, right down to his boots that were born the same year I was, and have nearly no more bottom. *At least I know what im standin' in* he sings.

Nonfiction

New World Economics

By Marian Hooper

Native American Histories Before Conquest

 

Twenty thousand years ago, there was an ice age.

PALEO INDIANS: I've got a brilliant idea! Lets walk across a giant snowy land bridge to reach a continent that we don't even know exists!

Eight thousand years and a heck of a lot of frozen Paleo-Indians later...

PALEO INDIANS: Oh no! Global warming is killing off the wooly mammoths. After all, their being dead must have nothing to do with the fact that we’ve been slaughtering and eating them for eight thousand years. We’d better start an agricultural revolution and grow vegetables.

VEGETABLES: Crap.

Native America started making tons of impressive cities, presumably to attract European tourists. Ironically, the Anasazis "mysteriously" disappeared just before the Europeans arrived. Yep. The Europeans just missed them. Totally a coincidence. No potential mass murder here...

According to the textbook, the Aztecs "an aggressive, warlike people," conquered a bunch of cities and "ruled by force". The book goes on to say that "before the arrival of white settlers, Indian wars were seldom very lethal," leading us all to wonder how violent a group has to be for the textbook writers to consider them lethal.

A few years later, Columbus attempted to sail off the edge of the world, but being the incompetent sailor that he was, missed and ended up in the Bahamas. He called the people Indians, paving the way for political correctness complications everywhere.

A World Transformed

"Indians" and Europeans started trading.

FRENCH TRADER: I'll trade you twenty knives for enslavement of some of your people.

INDIAN: ...

FRENCH TRADER: Twenty knives for taking your land and forcing you to live on reservations?

INDIAN: ...

FRENCH TRADER: I'll throw in a few malaria ridden blankets if we can stamp out your religion.

INDIAN: I'll give you a beaver pelt.

FRENCH TRADER: Deal!

INDIAN: And you won't do any of that other stuff, right?

FRENCH TRADER: Right.

West Africa: Ancient and Complex Societies

West Africa had ancient and complex societies.

Trade in Africa

PORTUGUESE TRADER: I"ll trade you twenty knives for the enslavement of some of your people.

AFRICAN LEADER: All right. *they shake hands*. This is a great day for Africans everywhere. No one will ever wish I hadn't made this trade.

PORTUGUESE TRADER: I'm sure glad slave-trade raises absolutely no ethical issues.

Europe of the Eve of Conquest

Europeans really wanted to go to the West because Classical writers said that Atlantis and Greek heavens were supposed to be there. Europeans also believed in using leeches to cure people of a vile, diseasing causing substance known as "blood". The phrase "Don't believe everything you hear," had not been around then, though doubtlessly if it was, they would have believed that too.

Vikings sailed to America, set up settlements, and left. No one noticed.

The Middle Ages happened in Europe. There were a lot of plagues. It, presumably, sucked. Then the Renaissance happened suddenly, leaving people to scratch their heads and wonder what happened to the Middle Ages, which were just called the "Ages" back then. King Henry the eighth reminded everyone of the good old violent days by cutting off his wives' heads. Isabella and Ferdinand married and become monarchs of Spain.

ISABEL: Let's drive the Jews and Muslims out of Spain!

JEWS: Oh, yeah. We can totally afford to be kicked out of another country. That's fair.

MUSLIMS: It is so unfair that we Jews and Muslims are picked on all the time.

JEWS: I agree. Let's be friends forever!

MUSLIMS: Pinky Swear! *they hug*

The printing press was invented in the 1440s by Johann Gutenberg, sparking a communications revolution blah blah blah.

Imagining a New World

ISABEL: Let's drive more Jews and Muslims out of Spain!

FERDINAND: Can we call it the reconquista?

ISABEL: Go back to your room.

FERDINAND: Yes, ma'am.

ISABEL: *addressing crowd* You all have to quit your jobs for Catholicism.

SPANIARDS: No way am I ---

ISABEL: You'll get gold and personal glory.

CONQUISTADORES: Hooray!

One conquistador named Cortes (known as virtually the only historical figure in English history books to get an accent in his name) ended up in Mexico. The non-lethal Aztecs who had just finished viciously conquering the area thought the Spaniards were gods. Cortes encouraged the rumor, presumably after hitting his head on a rock and thus forgetting that he was in Mexico to spread Catholicism and get rid of the Aztec gods.

Mexico was renamed "New Spain" because the Spaniards were really creative, coming right out of the Renaissance. The Spanish crown created the encomienda system which blah blah blah printing press blah blah blah. The Indians got screwed (somehow) and Spain claimed a lot of the New World.

Realizing they hadn't appeared in the text since the fur trader episode,

The French Claim Canada

The French started establishing colonies and spreading Catholicism in Canada. Unlike in the rest of America though, the native Americans and French got along pretty well. This proves the idea that no matter what the circumstances, it is physically impossible for anything violent to happen in Canada.

Figuring that everyone else was doing it,

The English Enter the Competition

King Henry got sick of his wife leading to a set of domino-like cause-and-effects eventually resulting in the Protestant Reformation. After his death, the Catholic Queen Mary ruled England and killed a heck of a lot of Protestants.

Historians came up with a complex the explanation for the slaughter that went something like this:

One night at an all European sleepover...

SPAIN: If you say "Bloody Mary" three times while looking in a mirror, she'll come out and kill you.

CATHOLICS: No way.

SPAIN: Then do it. I dare you.

*Catholics go over to the mirror...*

Eventually, Queen Elizabeth came into power.

FEMANISTS: Yay!

Spain got annoyed at England and took their very hardcore Armada fleet out to destroy the country. The fleet was destroyed by a storm, preventing what would have been one bloody battle. England was sticking its tongue out at Spain and ready to start conquering.

Irish Rehearsal for American Settlement a.k.a. We finally find out how violent a group has to be for the textbook writers to consider them lethal

England took over Ireland. It was very, very brutal. Women and children killed... all around, pretty bad. So bad, in fact, that I can't really make a joke out of it, which leads us to...

An Unpromising Beginning: Mystery at Roanoke

According to the text book, the English went forward and made every mistake possible. Since the book did not go into detail, we can only assume that they bumbled around Siberia, fell for Internet scams and were probably the real cause of Global Warming.

A guy named Sir Walter Ralegh founded a colony in Virginia. Sir Richard Grenville lead the expedition. Long story short, Grenville actually ran back to England, leaving the colonists behind.

GRENVILLE: So, uh... You guys seem pretty adjusted to this enemy ridden wilderness.

COLONISTS: You better not be thinking what I think you're---

GRENVILLE: So long, suckers!

A year later, Francis Drake happened to pass by the colony after a cruise. The colonists quite literally climbed aboard his ship and went back to England. Ralegh started another colony. This one was led by a painter. Ralegh's logic for putting a painter in charge of his colony was, "Hey, it can't go any worse than the first one."

Much to his embarrassment, he lost this colony. His friends begged him to try and remember the last place he saw it, but Ralegh shrugged it off and figured that hey, he got at least a paragraph in the history books. He then pursued a life of obscurity.

NATIVE AMERICANS: Well, that's probably the last we'll see of the English.

 

 

 

Memoirs of the Azores

Alison Elisabeth Tyler
Houston, TX. USA

Isle of Green-Sao Miguel (St. Michael), with a green lake and a blue lake, side by side-the blue, by legend, representing a bonnet, where a princess was in love with a peasant and they lie together in those lakes; close by I was thrilled to eat corn right off the cob and see an Azorean lady cook a cauldron of corn right on top of a geyser; also close-by was a garden of tea leaves close to here, I called it "Teatown" and was enthralled by the sunlight on the enormous hydrangeas & by all the enormous plants that were taller than me, when I was 10 years old and not quite 5 feet high; even two years & two inches later, the Azorean sunflowers, like gigantic sunbeams, stood nearly as high as I-Jesse & I held white rabbits (with Martin, a year younger than Jesse standing between us) at a farm Amanda owned on the north-eastern part of the island-Nordeste (Northeast).

We went to the village dropping off pails of milk that had been loaded into Amanda's jeep. Two years before, Jesse & I ate chocolate oranges together; and my parents took my photograph in front of the volcanic black & white rock church, San Pedro in Ponta Delgada (Thin Point) on the opposite side of the island from Nordeste. I stood on white lined squares of cobblestones there. We drove through Furnas near the two lakes, and the whole village was overarched with flower decorations in the shape of stars, with flower carpets.

Our hotel room in Furnas was called the Hortensia (a flower name) and we swam in brown mineral waters with me resting my arms in plastic bags on an inner tube so as not to wet my casts (as I'd broken my arms in a fall from a tree earlier that summer (July 4, 1984). In Porto Formosa a bit east on a black beach, I befriended a lifeguard and had an adventure with the Ninth Wave (the island's most powerful wave in a sequel of 9; 9 islands in the archipelago too) but I wasn't hurt nor did my casts get wet.

Then, we were in Nordeste, with Amanda & Jesse staying in the big two-story pink house and the three of us (my parents & I) in the little pink cottage at the top of the hill. I liked to watch the chickens (we were next to the henhouse) with the cooing pigeons just below in pigeon houses) while my mom tape-recorded the sound of the cowbells (sheep & horses lived there too).

My father & I played card games about different global cities. I was here that I saw the best sunrise I ever did see in my life-my folks & I watched it together It was like a pink & gold ocean across the entire sky. We had a bar-b-que one night & I saw the body of he hog hanging at the entrance to the blue-linoleum cottage. Both houses had lovely blue-white tile on the walls. Both summers, Jesse & I
& the native Azorean children sucked on so sweet
tasting, fresh honeysuckle.

My parents have revisited in April 2006 & 2007 for about a day each time as part of a cruise. The second time, they visited a pineapple plantation & Cete Cidades (Seven Cities) near Ponta Delgada & Furnas where they learned it takes two years to grow a pineapple and drank pineapple liquor afterwards. Only one pineapple can grow per plant & they have to be grown inside under tin roofs. When I was in the Azores I drank Kima Ananas (a special type of pineapple soda). They also grow these in Costa Rica (which I visited in 2001 with a glimpse of Panama-Costa Rica, to an extent, nostalgically reminded me of the Azores, but with more jungle air & vegetation; steam-bath air like Houston's.

 

 

Azorean air is mild year-round. Panama & Costa Rica seem to have more ginger & the Azores & Houston, but esp. the Azores more bamboo. The Azores also grows a type of fruit that, as far as I know, grows nowhere but Portugal, called the maracuja. In addition to eating one the summer I went back (1986 in my case) I drank the maracuja sodas called Kima Maracujas and Martin (Ilaugh about this) said I was always drinking Kima Maracujas "Therefore we (him & Jesse) will call you Maracuja bottle." (Martin is the son of Rice University Professor Julie Taylor, who has since retired to Buenos Aires, Argentina; Martin's father was an Argentine native).

Also in 1986, Amanda, Julie, Jesse, Martin & myself befriended a young couple named Merrick & Lisa who loved to go boating (Merrick was from the now former Czechoslovakia). The seven of us rode to Villa Franca one day. The tan surface of the island reminded me of the moon and it seemed so far from everything I pretended I was there (on the moon).

Also, Jesse & I would ride the swings & pretend they were planes or spaceships and we once joked & laughed about "visiting a planet where the horses looked like humans." The swing set was in a pink stone enclosure with a vegetable garden next to it and a sharp cliff in the back. There was also a big drop-off from the rock at Amanda's Porto Formosa cottage, where I sometimes slept in the swingbed in the upper room of the cottage. It was so comical the way the whitewash would rub off on our bodies when we leaned or brushed up against the walls.

Once, we were all laughing as I got some on my arm while Princess (one of the dogs), got it in her fur. The other dog was Sebastian. I greeted Amanda at the airport as she & Jesse pulled up in their red jeep & met the other three of us-"Look, no more casts, no more casts!" waving my arms in the air. I was so glad I got to go back without them. As we rode to the Nordeste farm, Martin fell asleep with his head in my lap and we got to hold the cooing pigeons on our arrival.

There was a little ledge on the hill near the cottage that overlooked the larger house. I would face the bigger building and pretend I was conducting/dancing to music, while Merrick & Lisa stayed in the cottage my parents & I stayed in 1984. Behind the houses, to the side of the cliff was a huge green meadow, where we once walked to a reddish sandy village and visited a lady there.

Sometimes, we picked blackberries, sometimes I'd pick off blueberries & raspberries (more frequently raspberries) we'd have in our farm fresh whole milk. (Jesse & I sometimes got bread from the locals too). Celia, an exquisitely cheerful person of just 15 who took a liking to me, would serve us quejadas (a Portuguese pastry, somewhat disc shaped and light tan in color, the best quejadas I've ever had) with Amanda's tea at Nordeste as we overlooked the pasture.

The eye view was so vast from that meadow that the sky, pasture & ocean seemed to meet one another and I used to think I could walk from there to the ocean, but Amanda said "It's much, much further than it looks." We did, however take a carriage ride behind
two white horses to another village and visited a native potter's workshop (he showed us his pots) near Porto Formosa & Villa Franca.

The whitewash buildings were accompanied by bright colors of doors-red in Riberia Grande near Nordeste, royal blue at Amanda's Porto Formosa cottage, green at her Nordeste cottage. It would be quite difficult for me to say what my favorite aspect of the Azores is, but I can probably say that among them are the special afore-mentioned types of cuisine, the lovely, enormous plants, especially the hydrangeas, its pristineness, the unique architecture & the friendly people.