I tried to warn you, Rachel. I thought I made it perfectly clear that Mamaw isn’t fucking around this time.

You should’ve appreciated the gravity of the situation when I told you she was heading out to the garage to get that folding chair. You know she’s serious when she gets that folding chair. Remember that whole episode with the halfway house? How everything was perfectly cool, how we were all in the living room watching the LSU-Ole Miss game until Mamaw read something in the West Memphis Evening Times about an apartment complex on the corner of Poplar and Pine Bluff being converted into a halfway house? How she cussed and threw the paper down and told us she was going out to the garage for a spell? How she emerged an hour later with that tattered lime-green folding chair, only to load it up in her LeBaron and drive the half hour into Arkansas so she could camp out in front of the halfway house in protest? How there wasn’t anything to protest but a leveled apartment complex? How the cops came and. . .

Point is, I called you as soon as Mamaw told us she was heading out to the garage to get that folding chair. That should’ve been your cue to make up whatever excuse you needed to make up for the hospital, so you could get your ass down here. Stat. Sorry, that’s bad. No more doctor jokes.

But now it’s too late. Mamaw set up that folding chair in the middle of the acreage and has been anchored there for about two hours. Did I mention she has her rifle? Yeah. She’s got it, all right. She’s been shooting at the crop dusters flying overhead. She read a USA Today article about the detection of trace amounts of pesticides in drinking water. In California. But of course it set her off. Everything does these days.

The cops are here. Three squad cars full. They’re all useless. Uncle Mike’s been handling the negotiations, if you can call them that. He’s told the cops about a dozen times now that they just need to bum rush her, that she can’t hear shit and with her back turned to all of us Mamaw’ll never hear them coming. The cops keep saying it’s too risky, that they’ll have to take her out if she points the rifle at them. Just following protocol, they say. So, they do nothing. They lean back against the sides of the squad cars and drink the coffee Aunt Debbie made for them. Even the Crisis Negotiator. He’s the worst of the lot. Every fifteen minutes or so he’ll pick up his megaphone and say some sappy shit about how we all love Mamaw, how we all just want all of this to be over so we can talk and be a family again. And every time Mamaw just flips him the bird without turning to look at him.

I know there’s been a bad accident on I-55 and that’s why you’re not here yet. I did listen to your voicemail, Rach. And I’m not trying to lay some kind of guilt trip on you here, but you’re the only one that can talk to her. Me, Uncle Mike, Cousin Nolan? You think she gives a shit about anything we have to say? Uncle Mike and Cousin Nolan still owe her for that tire shop start-up money she floated them years ago, and every time they try to talk some sense into her she responds with some really mean shit about how they can’t even run a tire shop. Everyone needs tires, and they can’t even sell a dollar for fifteen cents. Mean shit like that. You’d think tires was a synonym for water in the desert, the way she says it all condescending-like. And me? She hasn’t listened to a word I’ve said since I told her I’m a registered Democrat. And that was four years ago.

You’re The Doctor. Dr. Rachel McAllister. Dr. Lifesaver. Dr. The Only One of Us That’s Actually Done Something With Her Life. My apologies. I’m starting to sound like Mamaw. Real condescending-like. I’m sorry, but none of us know how this will end. We don’t see a box of shells at her feet but she could’ve stashed some extras in her apron. Her next shot could be her last, just a harmless warning to the pesticide industry, or she could keep going. She could shoot a cop, Rachel. Then you’ll really be able to play doctor.

I’m sorry. That was mean. Could you just get here, please?

__________________________________

Thomas Mundt lives in Chicago.  His new(ish) words can be read now or soon in places like Annalemma, Acreage, Wigleaf, and Thieves Jargon.  The whole megillah’s at www.dontdissthewizard.blogspot.com.

When I was eleven, my mother told me my father was never coming home. It was September, shortly after school had started, a few weeks before my birthday.

“Is he dead?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Now go do your homework.”

I never questioned what I was told by an adult. Not the existence of God, not the claim that the ancient Clovis culture once roamed the very ground on which we lived, not the fact that our tiny house was built on a swamp which might decide to swallow us all while we slept.

My dad was never a huge presence, so I can’t honestly say I missed him. But for the first few nights he was gone, I could hear my mother crying through the common wall between their bedroom and mine. Usually it was drowned out by the radio on her nightstand where some deep-throated bigot would rant about welfare and crime and Affirmative Action. After about a week, though, the radio went silent and so did Mom.

Kenny Pontillo lived directly across the street from us in an identical house painted one shade grayer. He was twenty-years old, mentally retarded, and sat staring out his front window most of the time.

“Where’s your dad?” he’d ask practically every day.

“Not around,” I’d tell him, and Kenny’d be satisfied with that answer, at least for awhile.

One Saturday in early October I came home from playing Tetris at Kenny’s and found an envelope, addressed to me and postmarked from Largo, Florida, on my bed. Inside was a birthday card — one week late — with a five-dollar bill. It was signed, “Dad.” I threw the card into the trash and gave the money to my mother who was in the living room vacuuming.

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Terrible Love

I smoke a hand rolled cigarette and cough. I have to relight it before every hit. Girl #4 doesn’t wear her pink wig at night. She wears nothing at night. She is pale and I am grateful for my small bed, her slim wrists. Tonight my bed is empty. Too many pills left my heart dull. Girl #5 says Pick. She looks at the prescription, her thighs, the dirty bed sheets. There is Vicodin in everything if you look hard enough. Like Girl #6’s tongue, almost as red as her hair.

Poem as Leaving

Girl #7 paints me eating snow. Then there are wings and everything looks like pepper. She says This is the sound I hear while you’re in the shower. She helicopters around the room so fast her hands look like burned out glow sticks. Seven days later I don’t smell her on my pillow. Here I am missing Girl #1 and the fake lumps in her breasts, the laugh track between her thighs. Between her teeth: Big Red. The flavor went out so quickly but I never cared. I think about smiling and what that would mean for the rest of my body, what that might mean for this poem. Listening to Elliott Smith makes me sad. I have dated tall girls and not tall girls. I have dated pretty and prettier. Girl #2 is married but she still sends me e-mails. She writes Remember when you came on my chest? Her fingers were so bent they hurt. Girl #3 is making a documentary about her heart. I make a cameo in the second act, right after she throws up in a garbage can, her hair too short to get in the way. Girl #6 doesn’t call and I don’t care.

Blacksburg, VA

Girl #7 paints me building a sailboat. She is liberal with my muscles, which I am grateful for. I say I can’t take this down 460, there’s no water on concrete. She paints wheels to the bottom of the boat. I’ve been sleeping better alone. Girl #6 wears a green apron when she works. In bed, she smells like roasted coffee. She followed me to Blacksburg from Tallahassee even though I said Really don’t and now my neck hurts because I’ve been sleeping on the couch. She lays in bed all day watching TV shows on Hulu. She used to roll sushi, now she cries when I make too much noise. Girl #3 made a documentary about her heart. It’s playing at the Lyric sometime after the sun falls below the dirt. I sit in the balcony. The soundtrack is someone slapping a rubber band against an empty plastic bottle. A voiceover goes There are days when we only know what we know. In the opening scene Girl #3 wears a polka dot dress I remember touching her in, but here, in this scene, there’s someone else touching her. I have a headache but no Tylenol, only cough syrup. I drink it anyway. The timeline is fucked up, I am agitated I didn’t buy popcorn. 47 minutes into the film Girl #3 and I smoke cigarettes on my patio. I say If I were a TV show I would change my title every year. We only fuck twice. Each time I lick the beads of sweat off her upper lip. I have never left Virginia and missed it.

__________________________

Gregory Sherl is the author of THE OREGON TRAIL IS THE OREGON TRAIL (Mud Luscious Press, 2012) and SWALLOW (Mud Luscious Press, 2013). He has recently dropped out of the MFA program at Virginia Tech. He blogs at http://gregorysherl.com/.

1.

My boyfriend, Tim, is six months older than I am. I admit it: I love being with an older man. Tim knows how to take care of me. He’s an investor. He also owns a consultant company, but he doesn’t like talking about that. That’s fine. He says it’s “classified.” I know this means something military, something involving guns, secrets, missiles, fighter jets. Dark glasses. It’s not my business.

He lives in Meadow Haven, so it’s easy for us to rendezvous. I drive up to the gate, give the guards my information and then they simply let me inside. By now they recognize me.

Tim likes when I cook for him, do his dishes. I don’t mind. I love him. I prepare brunch: omelets, cantaloupe, nuts, yogurt. We eat in the sunroom. He reads the Sunday paper, which is fine with me. I can enjoy the pockets of silence. Tim tells me not to read, that it will strain my eyes and make me squinty. “You’ll notice librarians are not exactly hot.” Tim says squinting causes those unsightly lines in my forehead. He says it will cause eyesight degeneration. Tim is very smart. I enjoy watching him read. Sometimes he will read part of an article aloud to me. If he’s in a decent mood he will show me a photo from the paper, but only if it is large enough so I don’t have to strain my eyes.

I wear glasses. They are small round glasses. John Lennon-style. Tim hates the way I look in glasses. “I hate clutter,” he says. “Let’s streamline your face, why don’t we?”

He offers to pay for my laser eye surgery.

“Then you will never have to wear glasses again,” he says. “Isn’t that great?” He’s a booster.

I imagine the laser cutting through my eyeballs, but I agree. He will protect me. I’ve been with Tim for seven and a half weeks. This is my first test.

The surgery doesn’t hurt nearly as much as I thought it might. I can’t see right for a day or two. Everything seems bright. I can’t let sweat run down my eyes for two weeks. But that’s about it.

Tim drives me home from the eye doctor. He kisses my forehead, pats my shoulder, which makes it all worthwhile. He lets me spend the night for the first time. I feel grateful to be protected.

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One of the activities that was always popular was a noisy spectacle known as The Partner Game. It was run on the first morning after the children had settled in (although “settled” wasn’t a word that anyone involved would’ve used). It got a lot of initial hyperactivity out of their systems — the manic energy levels that pushed some of them over the temper edge or confused their meds, or just made them miss out on essential information. Secondly, it broke down barriers between old and new kids — like the training exercises used with the counselors, everyone was equally disadvantaged. And finally, it served in a subtle way as a metaphor for some of the deeper lessons that Blind Camp was all about.

The gist was simple. After breakfast, before it became too warm, everyone but the Intensives and their kids gathered down on the Sports Field. A huge box full of toy musical instruments and noisemaking items was poured out on the grass and everyone had to choose one. There were cricket snaps, kazoos, harmonicas, hooting horns, duck calls, pennywhistles, town crier bells, tiny cat bells, bamboo sticks, Jew’s harps — two of each item. Then when everyone had a noisemaker, blindfolds went around so that those who were light sensitive or only partially blind were on the same footing as those who were completely blind. Same with the counselors. Everybody participated.

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