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Welcome to Works

Here I do not brag, praise, promote, complain, zero in on any literary form of verse or prose. Here I save only previously published prose, poetry and photography of my own and my daughter, Joan (Prusky) Glass. Below each piece credit is given to the publications our work first appeared in along with their web page. Additional work from my daughter Joan (Prusky) Glass can be found on http://atthedeli.blog.com/

GHOST RIDER

2012 April 20
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Appeared in Assisi Online Journal 4/20/2012  http://www.sfc.edu/Media/Website%20Resources/images/pdfs/pdf2010/AssisiJournalIssuev2i23.pdf

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Pop’s Apology

2012 April 6
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Pop’s Apology

by Steve Prusky

 

“We’ll bag a deer this time,” Günter blurted with his guttural base drum Prussian accent. Pop peered at Günter, snake-eyed at so blatantly foolish a remark. “Kill a deer?” You‘d shoot?” Pop chided. Günter hesitated before he chuckled at the slight likely hood a life might perish by his hand. Languidly wandering about the forest does not guarantee a kill. Hunting White Tail deer is not as certain a venture as careening full speed down the Davison Freeway in Detroit until you panic stop at a bend hiding a four-mile long five MPH traffic jam. Just to stumble up on a buck, not spook it, admire its majesty before you pull the trigger, if you shoot at all, is luck enough. This was my first hunting trip. I was a city kid–sixteen–I knew a little about the art of maneuvering Detroit freeways, nothing of hunting, guns.

Opening morning, before dawn, we drove up a lumpy Central Michigan back-woods trail ‘till it narrowed to a frozen dirt track. “Good enough here, huh?” Pop asked. “Good,” Günter grunted. Pop, in layered thermals and bright orange insulated hunting outfit, stiffly struggled out the driver door nearly as dexterous as the Tin Man. Günter came round to the trunk equally stiffened by over-stuffed goose down winter wear, took a hit of Schnapps and handed the pint bottle to pop. I slithered, straight legged, across the back seat of the car, teetered forward as if I were a rigid over clothed statue hoisted upright by a crane, stabbed my too tight rubber boots in calf deep snow. Pop and Günter slid their high-powered, well-oiled semi-automatic rifles from their fur-lined sleeves. I unfurled grandfather’s ancient lever action 30-30 Winchester carbine, a weapon I never learned to use, from its grease stained beach towel. We locked and loaded, waited for the first ray of light.

All morning we wandered about the woods like three orphaned lambs lost in a blizzard. We had no compass. Pop and Günter navigated by the sun’s position when it popped out in an opening between low flying snow clouds at a rare break in the trees. Distant gunfire sounded off from all directions like raindrops tapping a pie pan. The two men took frequent nips from Günter’s Schnapps to warm them in the early winter cold. Pop told me, “No Schnapps son, too young.” Günter mumbled in agreement, “No Schnapps for kinder.” A fleeing white tail doe gracefully leapt over a fallen tree to our left as if she were a thoroughbred leading the pack in a steeplechase. Her swift flight surprised us. Her speed negated any chance we ready our rifles and take aim.

Pop and Günter emptied a second pint of Schnapps by noon. Hunger and a thirst for more alcohol prompted Pop and Günter to head back to the car with me in tow. “I’m lost Pop,” I said before the two soused men fully agreed we retreat. “Follow your tracks in the snow son,” Pop drunkenly advised. Yup. I was a city kid. We sleeved our weapons then fish tailed down the black ice coated roads to the noisy bar and grill across from our rented two bedroom log cabin.

The rustic clear varnished white pine log bar and grill was already crowded with discouraged hunters seeking solace from whiskey and beer boilermakers for their poor luck as mighty hunters. The 1966 Michigan State/Notre Dame “…game of the century” loudly played live on the color TV behind the bar. Lunch, five pitchers of beer and a number of shots past noon, the conversation between Pop and Günter shifted aimlessly from work to women, sports, sports to women…. then the War.

“Vas ist los mitt der Werhmacht?” Pop teased his German friend. To this day all I know about Pop’s part in WWII he once took two seconds out of his day to say, “I stayed drunk as much as I could. No rosary in existence holds enough beads any living ex-Nazi can count penance on.” At the tender age of sixteen, I was not intuitive enough to fathom why Pop assumed he still had a right to stay drunk as often as he could. An infantryman in the Army, Pop picked up enough German from Whermacht POW’s to anticipate Gunter’s response.

“Keine benzene,” Gunter stoically replied with granite-faced Prussian determination. Pop laughed, then said, “Gunter, you will breath your last breathe certain a few more miserable gallons of gas would have convinced the entire world to quit the War and learn every dialect of the German language,”

“No,” Gunter seriously corrected, “We… ran out of gas.” Pop shook his head in consent. “We all did,” he replied.

After a reflective pause, Pop picked up his verbal spear and kept badgering Gunter with it, jabbing at him with piercing thrusts of inquisition, “Come on man, what did you do in the War Gunter? You know I was there, France, Czechoslovakia, Southern Germany. It’s been over fifteen years now. Been coming up here to Houghton the last ten together and you’ve never said… What did you do?”

Günter realized it was time to sit in the witness chair. He shrugged, looked about the bar for any turned ear tuning in to what he was about to admit. He chose his words slowly, carefully, deliberately weighing each vowel’s implication before he drunkenly slurred in forced English.

“I was nineteen. Was with… Department Three, Gestapo in Dortmund. National police like your FBI.” Günter droned softly. “We arrest suspects, German citizens who were enemies of the Reich. We arrest our neighbors, friends too. We take German people that were, you know aah…. Jaa! … Liberals. Reactionary. Enemies of Germany… Das Reich.” He meekly pled his iniquities in a low private tone, head bowed, his recollections lingering temporal greetings of disgrace wildly hurling half-forgotten indignities he committed in a distant life to the surface of the present. He humbly professed to my pop contritely, as if he were appealing for absolution in a confessional to a silent, compassionate yet stern priest.

“We would interrogate them for days and send suspicious ones to B-Vier Abteilung–Department Four–third floor–to process.” Günter looked up at Jake, his eyes widening in terror, fearful he had admitted something too incriminating. He stared back into his half-empty beer glass, anxious his hedged explanation was enough to mollify his friend.

Pop, first generation U.S. born; his given Yiddish name Yaakov–Jake–pressed on: “What about the death camps? The Jewish headstone pavers at Auschwitz, Ravensbrueck? Smell of the dead burning all day, all night. Did you people truly believe that ‘Gott Mit Uns,’… that God damned ‘God is With Us’ bullshit on your belt buckles?” Jake hissed a sober whisper, “‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ Gunter…” Pop’s anger reddened face lurched across the table ‘till he practically came nose to nose with Günter.

“We send all Jews to Department Four of our Gestapo on third floor. I had no part with the Endlösung, Juden problem, exterminations. That was B-Vier Abteilung, third floor. Nicht mich… Nicht mich! …. Not me! …. Not me!” Günter boomed. Heads turned. Silence saturated the barroom air; the drunken throng stared in our direction like stunned survivors in the aftermath of a cataclysmic explosion. Even the TV seemed mute. Günter locked eyes with Pop. They were both angry, belligerent… their fury bordered on the edge of mutual hate. The crowd quickly turned noisy, raucous, celebratory again, new rounds circled the bar; Michigan State scored. Pop and Günter slowly regained their composure. Their narrowed, glassy eyes tacitly agreed to an unspoken peace. Both had said enough.

Stunned, embarrassed by the exchange, Günter and Pop continued drinking, saying little else, equally uncomfortable with the pregnant pause the confrontation caused. They guzzled a few more shells of tap, hoisted a couple more shots of Wild Turkey, eyes fogged by alcohol and mental snap shots of their irreversible past. “I apologize,” Pop said. Günter reached out to shake Pop’s hand, “It was a different time,” Günter feebly rationalized. They floundered back to their log cabin rooms, arm locked in arm, tripped, fell down in a deep snow bank, got up, brushed off, vomited lunch, laughed at the fate they had no say in. The “…game of the century,” ended in a disappointing ten-ten tie.

In our room, I watched my father stagger past the door; steady himself against the cabin wall. He gazed down at a swelling puddle of snowmelt on the floor. Rivulets flowed from his rubber boots nourishing that growing pond below his feet as if it were a flooding spring fed lake of Günter’s essence. The shallow pool spread like a wave of blood spewing from the soul of Günter’s gushing wound. Pop spoke to it as if he were planted knee deep in the stark darkness of Günter’s soul, “Forgive you Günter …? OK. I suppose. Your guilt? Regret? Shame? You be jury at that trial?” Clothes on, fighting the spins, pop fell face down on his belly landing diagonally on the bed, his dripping boots suspended off the edge shedding the last drop of Günter’s remorse. He immediately passed out and began snoring.

Pop kicked my bed and hollered “Reveille. Drop your cocks, grab your socks,” mercilessly waking me at three A.M… He fetched Günter the same way he woke me. We had breakfast and invested the woods again like battle hardened warriors advancing in line of skirmish at daybreak.

The odds are bad one will even see a deer the second day of the season. Terrified, those left of the herd make for the center of the forest, the thickets, swamps. Unlike Günter’s meek captors, they run, escape, hide ‘till the slaughter ends; they are not deluded an interrogation will occur before a bullet lands.

Their hang-over’s cured a pint of Schnapps earlier, pop, myself and Günter trudged through the woods as the weak winter Sun began slightly thawing a chalky dusting of new snow. Günter was between pop and I. We softly tread forward ten yards apart. We came up on fresh droppings between new cloven hoof prints, tracked the prey ‘till we stopped a good distance up wind from a ten point buck. We three stared at it as if a pair of on coming Mack Truck headlights had hypnotized us, fascinated by the animal’s innocent dignity. The creature nuzzled through the snow to graze the frozen foliage beneath. We stood dormant as the sleeping pines around us. I witnessed Pop and Günter humbled, breathless, silent, content, rifles cradled in their arms, unable to overcome what was left of their humanity to place a bead at the heart of this sinless prize. Pop waved me still. I left my rifle resting in the crook of my arm. The buck alertly jerked its head up in fright. Within that instant, he noiselessly sprinted into the swamp thickets where no wise hunter strays.

Appeared in MEDIA VIRUS on 4/2/2012  http://mediavirusmagazine.wordpress.com/

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THE CLUB VEGAS BUS

2012 March 27
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Monday, March 26, 2012

Interlude Stories: Steve Prusky

 
THE CLUB VEGAS BUS – STEVE PRUSKY
 
 
“Chauncey.”
 
“Sam.” The cellmates do not shake hands.

 

“Rules: I drive this bus. You ride. Stay quiet. Snore, I’ll slap you. No beating off. Don’t fuck with my shit. Top bunk is mine.”

“Whatever’s clever.”

“What’s your crime?”

“Probation violation; Bigamy.”

Chauncey–amused–coughs, spits up phlegm. “Bigamy! Your first conviction?”

“Possession with Intent to Sell.”

“You don’t divorce wife one before you marry wife two. You’re already on paper. Two snoops some and voilà; home is jail–‘Club Vegas’ we call it. Yup, you’re a crass criminal all right; foot in the gutter, foot in the grave… Scared a you.”

“Wife one lives in Wyoming. State needs her testimony or the judge will dismiss. She won’t. She’s mother to my kids. I’m violated anyway; dishonorable discharge from probation–Two years in Carson City all over a farce comedy for a case.”

“Been to Carson City; Indian Springs, Ely, too. They took my previous cellmate to Ely. Trafficking. Twenty-five to life. Twenty-three hour lock-down. They’ll let us out for dinner soon. You take his seat across from me at chow. At the table we got each other’s back.”

“Eyes in our backs, huh.”

“Smart man!”

An oriental trustee trots cell-to-cell, chimes “CHOW-TINE… CHOW TINE… CHOW TINE.” Chow Tine nods to the bull he is done. Fifty cell door locks simultaneously click open. The detainees form a line on the central floor for their plastic trays heaped with 600 calories of quality soup kitchen nutrition.

“They let us out on the floor eight hours a day. Sometimes fights start for the phone. Gang bangers mostly. They won’t fuck with we unaffiliated ones, though. We’re locked down sixteen hours daily; longer if there‘s trouble.”

“Why’er you here?”

“Forgery. Cashed a bad check. DA’s going for the ‘Big Bitch’. My public defender’s lost in the sauce; hasn’t done shit but help keep me locked up here with asinine motions to discover. Hired a real lawyer. I appear tomorrow; case dismissed–easy. Been shuffling through the system four months. Soon you’ll drive this bus… Oh shit, lamb. I can’t eat lamb. Eating lamb’s as close to eating human flesh as you can get.”

“There’s a little bitch?”

“Habitual Criminal Act. Two parts. Get convicted on the ‘Little Bitch’ it’s seven years minimum, fifteen max. The ‘Big Bitch’? Twenty-five to life. You gotta do the ‘Little Bitch’ to qualify for the ‘Big Bitch’. I’m eligible for the ‘Big Bitch’. Combined, that’s thirty-two years. Here, take my lamb and bread. Makes two sandwiches. Gimme your dessert.”

Sam wishes for mustard to liven the taste of the over processed ash grey fleshy slabs of meat.

“Nevada got the death penalty, too, in case you’re thinking of offing number two over this.”

They convict Chauncey–more so for wasting his life than kiting paper.

*

Sam offers his hand in friendship. “Sam,” he says to his new cellmate.

The stranger ignores Sam’s gesture. “Look, I been to ‘Club Vegas’ before, so listen good; I own this bus…”

Appeared 3/26/2012 in A TWIST OF NOIR  http://a-twist-of-noir.blogspot.com/

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Vignette

2012 March 20
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March 19th, 2012

By Steve Prusky

From the two-lane desert highway it at first appeared a child’s cast-off tattered doll, an abused stuffed animal poorly sheathed in a frayed rag shroud and carelessly tossed aside. Swarming flies convinced him otherwise. He gazed in disbelief at the pup’s blank stare, wished dead eyes could speak, mourned a life denied, grieved for loyalty refused, failed to comprehend its former master’s mental state. He placed a flat stone marker above the shallow roadside grave he scratched out in the barren earth. What epitaph could he scribe? What prayer was apropos? He checked his voicemail, returned missed calls, drove home late, lamented Nature’s cold certainty, brief life, cruel fate.

Appeared in Orion headless March 19,2012  http://orionheadless.com/

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A NEW START

2012 March 17
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A New Start by Steve Prusky

Posted on March 17, 2012 by

Editor’s Note: Support our “Storm the Bookstores: Save the Short Story” Campaign. Click on http://igg.me/p/74309?a=473765 and show your support.

Synopsis: Are you fed up of your dreary existence? Welcome yourself to an alternate lifestyle. Let’s see where it goes. Enjoy the ride.

About the Author: Steve is a native of Detroit. He has spent the last twenty-five years writing, living and working in Las Vegas. His prose and poetry have appeared in various publications including Apocrypha and Abstractions, Foundling Review, Flash Fiction Offensive, Orion headless and The Legendary. He posts all of his previously published work on http://sprusky.blog.com/ .

In this dark episode of gloom, a man takes a chance and lives to tell the tale. Kiss your past goodbye.

Special Guest Artist, Fabio Sassi, a new generation of Beatnik Artwork.

* * * * * * * * * *
A New Start
by Steve Prusky

Suburban life sucked Sam emotionally dry, taunted him sleepless, over-anxious, irrational. For ten years, Sam had been self-employed ten hours a day, six days a week in an effort to save his failing business. He struggled to pay an overwhelming balloon mortgage on a home that had dropped to half its original value after he bought it. A distressing family life haunted him; the too dramatic, trendy, spendy wife, three daughters, one just past the hormonal terror and confusion of puberty, two more about to dive head first into it; the banal suburban backwash of Plasma TV’s, X-Box mania, cybercafés, five dollar lattes, the crushing loan against the Cadillac Biarritz… . Sam was no longer living ’The Dream.’ He ran at dawn–no note, no divorce, no goodbyes. By sunset, he was two states west of Detroit. He woke up two-thousand miles later in Vegas mid-May his third morning free.

The transient nature of Vegas suited him as the likeliest atmosphere to hide in, meld with, become someone else in. Beyond that, he had no immediate plan. Sam was a naïve suburbanite, an urban bumpkin self-deceived Vegas floated ankle deep in twenty-dollar bills begging to be scooped up. He rented a pay by the week room in one of a cluster of decrepit motels on Fremont and Eastern, the premier skid row of skid rows failure in Vegas spawns. The nucleus of this crossroad was the Vegas Lounge; a black hole for the lost, the precipice of darkness Sam was about to unknowingly lend his soul to. The ‘Lounge’ strategically stood on the south-west corner of this junction like a cockeyed dry-rotted wood marker in a ghost town graveyard.

When Sam arrived, the blossoms of this urban landscape had long ago wilted dead as week old cut flowers. The forest of worn tattered 1950’s motels, Christmassy neon lit smut stores, a narrow street nicknamed ‘Crack Alley,’ lingered stunted, dormant, neglected, abandoned to the criminal demography headquartered out of the Vegas Lounge. This crossroad was the pedigree of despair; a malignant black spot of melanoma on a brightly lit desert city’s sun baked skin with the ‘Lounge’ as its cancerous host. Sam, innocent, gullible, foolish Sam, freely enlisted in this illicit, well-stocked drug store of stepped on rock cocaine, tar heroin, degraded meth, murderers, smack-back addicts, thieves, felons, soulless crack whores. The ‘Lounge’ wasn’t the glitzy adult amusement park Strip tourists see. It was Sam’s ‘fix’. It was all the Vegas he’d need.

Sam took the graveyard shift at the Vegas Lounge. The absentee owner paid him forty dollars a night plus tips, made him bar manager for an extra fifty dollars a week cash, no questions asked. Sam used a fictitious Social Security number to get the job, was issued the required state gaming card by mistake from an overworked Gaming Commission clerk down town with no time to trace Sam‘s past. His out-of-state driver license expired. The bank caught up with the Biarritz. All traces leading to his previous life disappeared inside two months. The illusion of a new life for Sam was about to begin. He was a freshman initiate to the dregs of Las Vegas life.

Few bartenders at the Vegas Lounge survived long on the graveyard shift. Sam fed drinks to criminals, on the take cops, whores, drug fiends and the living dead from midnight until dawn. No upstanding, decent bartenders last long with this crowd. At first, Sam enforced the peace from his side of the bar with 911 calls each night the predictable brawl occurred. He kept a baseball bat near for the drug-crazed miscreant courageous enough to hop over the bar. His over bearing size and quick temper kept him out of a fight–mostly. When a situation occurred where he couldn’t back down, he’d raise his voice the ear piercing depth of a sonic boom, intimidating those less certain of their bravado. That routine usually browbeat the majority of his antagonists to back down. Sam hovered taller than most; he was a mammoth six foot four intimidating bulldozer of a man. When he scowled in anger his cherubic face glowed red, his two-hundred thirty pound frame puffed up when he had no choice but to square off with a drunkenly brave patron, a crazed addict, a brooding biker in a bad mood. That routine normally settled the less valiant ones down. Sam fought when he had to. When he did, he usually grabbed something to tip the odds in his favor. He was mostly just tough talk though–the right talk apparently. He kept to his side of the bar almost always. He acted fearless at all times. At the Vegas Lounge, how you acted was how you were judged. Tough, quiet, submissive, wise, street smart, violent; each behavioral pattern rated where you stood in the social order of the Vegas Lounge. Sam was near the top. Deep inside though, Sam’s stomach churned life sucking evil lightning bolts stabbing him with fear each graveyard shift at the potentially violent atmosphere on the other side of the bar. When Chauncey showed up, Sam was to set the record for longevity as a graveyard bartender in the ‘Lounge.’

Chauncey, a rock dealer, thug, thief, whoremonger, began patronizing the Vegas Lounge on Sam’s shift. At first, Chauncey sat at the bar most nights, played the video slots, drank Tangueray and tonic in a tall glass with a twist of lime. He appeared to Sam, at first sight, as another lost soul with a pocket full of money and nothing else to do but gamble. Chauncey was big, not as tall as Sam, but stockier, barrel-chested, arms muscular and thick as Sam’s legs. His face was a permanently molded mug of constant hatred, anger, meanness. Chauncey’s mere presence radiated swift violence. Sam chanced to cultivate Chauncey as a friend, an ally, someone he’d want on his side in a fight.

“I’m Sam,” he extended his hand. Chauncey looked up from his bar top video machine as if Sam was a rude intrusion. He lightly clasped Sam‘s hand like a limp noodle, brusquely growled, “Chauncey,” after he fell a card short of a full house. “Get me another Tangueray and tonic,” he gruffly demanded. Sam comped this drink. In Vegas gamblers drink free.

“I’m from Detroit,” Sam continued.

“Milwaukee,” Chauncey replied.

“How long’ve you lived here?”

“Ten years,” Chauncey contained his irritation, “How ‘bout you?”

“Three months,” Sam didn’t yet know how to cloak his over-eager bright-eyed naïveté.

“Oh yah! What do you think of this town so far?”

“Jury’s still out. This town sure is different. Seems like everything normal here would be considered abnormal every place else in this world, and vis-à-vis.”

“What the fuck does vis-à-vis mean?” Chauncey’s vocabulary was limited to street jargon.

Almost embarrassed by Chauncey’s gruff indifference, Sam replied, “Vegas is like no other place in the world.”

“Welcome to Vegas,” Chauncey laughed. Sam feared him. Chauncey was perceptive; he knew right off he could manipulate Sam’s fear to his advantage.

After a few weeks Chauncey began discreetly dealing rocks on Sam‘s shift.

“I know what you’re doing Chauncey,” Sam complained. “You’ll bring Metro down on this place like angry hornets.”

“Just look the other way,” Chauncey advised in a threatening tone. “I’m taking all the chances here. You’re immune.”

Sam silently blessed Chauncey’s activities. Sam acted nerveless, brave, distant, as if he were privy to a monumental secret others only hoped to know. “There’ll be no need for 911 calls any more. I’ll keep security here an in house affair.” Chauncey survived twenty years in Waupun State Prison (a ‘silent’ prison; inmates weren’t allowed to talk), for Murder 2, kept a slim handled snub nose 38 in his hip pocket. He wasn’t averse to grabbing a pool stick to crack a skull, wrapping his fist around a cue ball to crush a cheekbone, busting a long neck Bud bottle jagged to slash a chest open from shoulder to shoulder. To Chauncey the only fair fight was the fight he won. Word hit the corner of Fremont and Eastern, Chauncey enforced the peace at the ‘Lounge’ with ruthless brutality. From then on no more fights, no more cops. Chauncey securely promoted his trade, although he always remained alert, suspicious, untrusting. Sam fed Chauncey drinks free whether he gambled or not. Sam ran the bar–Chauncey ran the floor. The Vegas Lounge was their malevolent empire.

Sam knew all the local rock-hoes intimately. He let them ply their trade in the bar when he was on; in return, he had the privilege of fucking any one of them free. Sam set his new female friends up with ‘dates.’ It was a whore that got Sam sprung on rocks his first time. Sam easily fit in as pimp, whoremaster, connect, rock fiend. One foot on the curb, the other in the gutter, Sam had his new life. Chauncey watched Sam’s character deteriorate to the same level as the felonious crowd on the floor. Sam matriculated for his street degree. Chauncey gladly volunteered as his tutor.

Ultimately, Chauncey slyly convinced Sam to keep the bag in the stock room behind the bar with promises Sam would get a cut of the profits and rocks at cost. Only he and Chauncey knew its location amongst the beer and liquor stocked shelves. Sam cautiously doled out the speedy, yellowish chunks to Chauncey when prompted. Chauncey slowly coaxed Sam to serve his customers across the bar when Chauncey discreetly signaled Sam with a twitching hand, a tapping foot, a tweak on his ear. Chauncey stayed almost completely out of the criminal loop. All Chauncey did was collect payment first before he cued Sam to deliver. While Chauncey worked the floor, Sam persuaded non-slot players into drinking doubles. He rang up the price of the cocktails as comps to imaginary bar top video game gamblers, stuffed the money in his pocket to buy rocks at a cut-rate price from Chauncey after work. Chauncey never shared the money he pledged. So, secretly Sam shaved from Chauncey‘s bag whatever he could each night, hit the pipe in the stock room, chancing Chauncey wouldn’t become suspicious he worked the bar sprung all night.

Like any other perishable product picked off the grocery shelf, Sam’s time on this corner had an expiration date.

Sam mingled with the hoes, ran with them on his days off. Chauncey went on hiatus when Sam didn’t work. Sam chased the elusive high of that first hit on two-day runners with his whores as if he were a Jekyll turned fiendishly Hyde. He’d return to work his first shift of the week face drooping past his chin, sleep deprived, crashing hard as a boulder rolled off a hundred foot high cliff, jonesing for the wispy smooth white cloud that passed through the transparent glass pipe.

Sam began hitting the pipe every day. The first half of each shift his craving muscles twitched in withdrawal with each drink he served until Chauncey arrived with the daily bag. Sam automatically begged Chauncey for a rock to get a grip until he made enough tips to pay Chauncey back. Chauncey knowingly obliged.

Sam began hitting off Chauncey’s rocks in the back room of the bar. Chauncey knew Sam was shaving, he let it go in trade; ultimately, Chauncey had Sam do all the hands on work across the bar and pass the cash from each transaction unobtrusively to him. Sam began keeping a five shot 25 automatic in his front pocket. He wasn’t sure he could ever use it. It seemed an appropriate tool for his new avocation.

Often, fake bearded undercover cops swarmed the lounge draped in phony, easy to spot longhaired wigs, tattered, soiled tee shirts and jeans. They’d watch the action behind them in the mirrored bar back wall. Sam and Chauncey spotted them… mostly. They’d lay off dealing a while. Sam warned the whores to beware. They’d do their business in one of a number of less active skid rows doting Vegas like rampant spreading acne until Chauncey was certain Metro lost interest and left for the action further west up Fremont Street. When Chauncey was convinced it was safe, the routine crept back to normal until the next potential sting.

By late autumn, it ultimately happened….it was bound to. Sam grew sloppy, too obvious, overconfident. Chauncey spotted it, so did Metro. Chauncey gave Sam the nightly bag as quick as he could, never carried, made the deal, signaled to Sam how many rocks should be passed over the bar and to whom. Sam held the money until end of shift. Chauncey kept count of the money in his head. Chauncey stayed clean at Sam‘s too trusting expense.

Often Metro waltzed in, took Chauncey outside, jacked him up and searched him with no results.

The validity of Sam’s illegitimate front crumbled when Chauncey told Sam not to serve a hoe on credit Sam often fucked free. As revenge, she snitched on Sam to trim her charges down on a pending case. The arrest hit like a meteor strike. Cops dressed like armored robots bashed in the door of his hotel room without warning, guns drawn, screaming intimidating threats, cuffed him and the hoe he slept with. Before they finished reading him his Miranda and the writ, his legs began cramping, twisting, gnarling in withdrawal. His body wept for that hypnotic stream of white mist he sucked into his lungs. Buckled down snug in the back seat of the black and white, hands tightly cuffed behind his back, craving welled up in his gut. Where was Chauncey with that first rock of the day now? He needed just one more hit to take the edge off. The symptoms of his addiction were too strong. It was a long ride to processing and the holding tank. Chauncey heard about the bust and slithered off to cultivate another new bartender further up Boulder Highway in Pittman, just outside of downtown.

“Where’d you get the rocks from?” a plain-clothes detective asked.

“Fuck you! D Street and Lake Mead, how‘s that?” Sam wailed. He was more afraid of Chauncey’s wrath than he was of the belligerent detective. The cop grabbed Sam’s balls and squeezed, “Don’t bullshit me, that’s darkest Africa, those savages down there’ll kill a fucking stupid white boy like you for a double up.”

“Kiss my ass,” Sam howled.

“That’s it fool, don’t snitch on Chauncey. Be loyal asshole. I don’t see him here bailing you out. He’s not your friend. Give him up. We’ll forget about this and let you go. We know this bag in my hand is his rocks; there’ll be no deals with you if you don’t snitch.” Sam stayed silent. “That’s okay,” the cop calmly said, “you’re ours now. He’s ours too, just a matter of time.”

Pandering, possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell; drug trafficking, possession of an illegal firearm. At arraignment, Sam’s first winter in Vegas, the public defender recommended he plea out; take the Big Bitch; the Habitual Criminal, twenty years–fifteen minimum–as opposed to the life sentence the DA wanted. Sam took the deal. He never saw Chauncey again.

Prison! Lock down alone twenty-three hours a day. The narrow wire reinforced glass slit in his cell wall faced east. He often peered past it toward the suburban world he knew before Vegas. The thick glass magnified the sane life he left behind for Vegas as if it were a telephoto lens repeating vivid, non-stop streams of his past. Memories of his former life compounded the new Vegas demons that tagged his soul black.

He’d do three nickels in Carson City. Upon release, Sam left without shaving his head bald, gangbanging up, pumping weights, marring his skin with a white supremacist thunderbolt tat under his arm. Sam found his way back to Vegas.

Years later Sam heard Chauncey got shot and could occasionally be seen navigating Vegas in a wheel chair panhandling at the corners of Charleston and Nellis, Main Street and Gasse, Sahara and Las Vegas Boulevard.

Sam worked menial construction jobs in Vegas for twenty-five years after he got out, stayed straight, behaved, read books, died. It was almost as if he could have stayed put at the Detroit suburbs and lived the same drone existence.

**** THE END ****

Copyright Steve Prusky 2012

 

Appeared in Freedom Fiction Journal 3/ 17, 2012 http://freedomfiction.com/2012/03/a-new-start-by-steve-prusky/

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The Joke

2012 March 13
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Posted by sprusky

 Author’s note.  This story appeared in The Rusty Nail highly edited.  I was not consulted concerning the changes.  I do not take umbrage to the revisions, although I believe they are unnecessarily arbitrary and affect the entire complection of the story.  After all, those operating The Rusty Nail are editors duly appointed by the all seeing, all knowing omniscient literary gods.  Consequently I include the original version of The Joke as I submitted it for their consideration directly below.  Under the original manuscript I include the story as  published by The Rusty Nail on 3/12/2012.

Steve Prusky

　

　

THE JOKE

By

Steve Prusky

 

　

Down town Vegas: a bright lit ship cruising off course in a desert sea; home to the scam, rub and tug massage parlors, overly tattoo’d women, pawn shops, musical video machines, pan handlers, the rich, the lost, Sam, Marcy. Fremont Street, from Eastern west to 6th Street, known locally as Crack Alley, is the island Sam and Marcy plant their flag on; the cold flashing reddish-orange neon lit bars are piers doting their islet shore, transient infested rent by the week motels their home, barely crawling under the scrutiny of the law their lives.

Sam, a thug, thief, unscrupulous con. He cooks and deals rocks, shoots any drug he can liquefy, mugs moneyed tourists, keeps a .25 pearl-handled pistol in his Wellington boot next to his six inch clip on knife. He possesses every quality required for a position as lead pimp in a sleazy bed bug infested New Orleans whorehouse.

Grown snake eyed with a plot, Sam tells Marcy, “Been watchin’ this guy at the El Cortez last two weeks.” “He’s hittin’ big off and on at the Texas Hold’m table. Keeps a lump a cash in his front pants pocket; idiot gotta be from out a town to be so obvious about it. He plays until he gets too drunk to think straight. It’s usually around one in the morning. Casino security stuffs him in a cab headed to a shit hole motel on Las Vegas Boulevard just north a Russell Road.”

Marcy, a rock-ho, absentee mother of two, two time felon, has no conscience. She steals a schmoozed gambler’s coins from a bar-top video game when the player is distracted by a delivery of fresh cocktails from a Mediterranean tanned Rockette clad waitress, her silver dollar sized hand palm up for a tip. Marcy gives a quick sleeve job in the front seat of a Metro cop’s cruiser as information from his dash mounted Tuff Book computer flashes on the crystal screen. She fondles him in exchange for chips off confiscated narcotic evidence the cop holds back for just this kind of affair. She is young, twenty-two, not yet half used up. Average breasted, adorned with clear light olive skin, thick raven hair blanketing her slim hips. Her mouth is shaped a constant kiss, her musky scent is a library filled with volumes of lust. She exudes wanton sex… always. She never wants for a trick.

“How much ya think he’s got?” Marcy asks. She perches cross-legged on the bed of their stark, musty room in an out of style Vegas motel once briefly owned by a too prudent movie star forty years ago. The wall mount air conditioner hums a steady base drone, laboriously fending off the one-hundred ten degree Mojave Desert mid-summer heat. A brave black inch long water bug scoots along the floor. Prepared for that euphoric first hit, Marcy waves a flaming wand slowly back and forth across the freshly cleaned glass bowl of her blown glass pipe, expectantly sucks, anxiously watches the opaque white cocaine stream flow like a swift river through the clear stem with the promise of a blissful two-minute high.

“Maybe ten, twelve thousand. Some nights he wins–others he loses. But, I never guess less than ten thousand on him in the end–win or loose.”

Sam and Marcy are locals, Vegas born; a rare breed in this cosmopolitan town saturated with greed motivated transplants hiding from a vengeful ex-wife, sour luck, warrants, debt. Sam and Marcy have their street degrees, earned young in the desert dirt back alley classrooms of the neighborhoods they grew up in on the fringe of down town.

“Which motel?” He tells her. She knowingly grins, excitedly shooting the creamy white smoke through her flared nostrils like a dragon spewing ivory fire.

“When?” She takes a swig from a pint bottle of Everclear, dips her burned out torch in the bottle, re-lights it for the next hit.

“Tonight.”

“Tonight…Good,” she grins. “Let the games begin,” she declares, mentally piecing together how profitable the sequence of her part in this plan may be.

They have been together two years now, a near record in the Vegas low-end social strata. On the streets of downtown Vegas there is no trust, no honor, loyalty. Nothing lasts here.

　* * * *

The Strip: Las Vegas Boulevard from Circus-Circus to the Belagio; a five-minute bus ride south of Fremont Street, the richest four miles of asphalt-padded transformed desert in the world, a mega resort casino studded gaudily lit patch of wealth lost money built. It drips of indulgence, hundred dollar bills and poker chips like fat endlessly squeezed from a sponge. Sam and Marcy chase the sops.

The gambler’s motel lies on the seedy southern fringe of the Strip close to the intersection of Russell Road and the Boulevard.

Early evening. Dusk settles dully dim. Shadows feed off Vegas lights as if every night is an artificial full moon. Sam is cautious. He arrives early–9:30. This is too big for him to risk the gambler getting in early if his loses grow heavy quick. A conspiracy like this requires unlimited patience, time, the thousand-yard stare of a hunter stalking his kill. Presently these are luxuries in which, this evening especially, Sam is amply supplied. Sam sits on an orphaned half demolished concrete barrier rail behind an overfilled, stinking dumpster. He shoots up. Smack back, he serenely nods, waits, reconnoiters the twenty-room motel between blinks. Sam judges he is a safe distance from any curious cop wandering from his route on the Boulevard. Sam checks and rechecks his .25, pulls the clip out, slides the action back, slips a round in the chamber, stabs the clip back in the pearl handled grip, clicks the safety on.

One-hundred dollars persuades the Pakistani desk clerk to ignore their scheme. The motel is adjacent to McCarran Airport. Sam looks up at a 747 blasting off the runway behind him like a belligerent tsunami rumbling past the beach. Good, the jets will muffle any screams or yelling in the room, Sam says. No surveillance cameras. Six cars are staggered in front of their respective rooms. A single low sodium 100-Watt roof mounted lamp lights the area out side the desk clerk’s office. Half the wall sconce lights outside each room door burn faded amber. They barely tint the immediate area Sam plans to work a pale grey shadow. The gambler’s room is #19. Lucky this time. A quick escape, less exposure. There is a hole in the Cyclone fence the other side of #20, the end room of the motel. The opening in the fence is large enough for Sam and Marcy to crawl through one body at a time. Behind the long building, an alley stretching perpendicular to the motel runs a quarter mile to a waiting stolen car. Eight-foot high cinder block walls cordon off both sides of the trash-filled lane, perfect defilade from the scrutiny of any brave neighbors. If Marcy can only come through. She has always been reliable before. He weighs the chance this night may be different.

Two A.M… The cab pulls up. Marcy helps her drunken gambler stumble from the cab, steadies her trick, his arm clutching her shoulder while she slyly casts an eye Sam’s way. Both stagger to his room. Marcy closes the door, fakes locking it on the outside chance the nearly sick with the spins drunk is even slightly observant.

Good. It’s late, he must a won big. He waits ten minutes for Marcy to set up. Ordinarily Marcy needs twenty, but Sam guesses a fool this drunk will stay limp until he wakes next morning broke, gripping a whiskey hard-on. Marcy’s task is to get him completely naked and blow him until Sam gets in. She has the gambler stripped and on the bed in two minutes, fondling the wad in his right front pants pocket in the process as she slips them past his ankles.

Sam scoots from shadow to shadow, gun drawn; long thick zip ties flap half out his hip pocket each step he trots. He opens the door, neatly slides in as if he were slipping through a subway turn-style without a token. His victim lays naked, hog-tied, fat belly spread flat to the floor, a tennis ball shoved in his mouth. He is gagging, wheezing for breath as if struck asthmatic. His face is nearly blue. Sam looks in the bathroom at the cranked open frosted glass window Marcy fled through to the back alley. Sam knows she is already in the hot car and gone. He feels the man’s pants for the money. Nothing. He takes the tennis ball out of the choking man’s mouth. Suddenly sobered by fright, the gambler gratefully sucks in air like a scared child going down hill in a speeding roller coaster. He excitedly asks, “Are you the cops? Vice? Undercover? Goddamn. Gave the bitch two Franklins, two-hundred bucks to fuck me. We get here, she gets me bare ass naked, pulls a butterfly knife on me, hog ties me, takes all my money. Are you the cops? Cut me loose.”

“How much did she get?”

“Dunno, maybe fifteen, sixteen thousand. I had a good night with the cards. Are you the cops? Help me here.”

Sam stuffs the tennis ball back in his prey’s mouth, forcing it in past half its circumference. He places the pistol in his boot. The gambler immediately struggles for breath. Sam watches him writhe, thrash in panic as if the mark is caught too near land’s edge, left behind by ebb tide to flop about the beach, gills just feet from a single breath of water. Sam sneers at the penniless drunk, “Gambler’s luck, huh!” he says. Sam leaves for Las Vegas Boulevard to join the swift moving sleepless mobs swimming with the Strip’s current like directionless, darting schools of fish soon to be abandoned on shore when the shadowy lit Vegas night, like the ocean’s retiring tide, retreats to glaring day. Each receding wave of remaining darkness is a hiss of laughter, ridicule, a joke night in Vegas plays.

THE JOKE

by Steve Prusky

Vegas: a bright lit ship cruising off course in a desert sea; home to the scam, rub and tug massage parlors, overly tattooed women, pawn shops, musical video machines, pan handlers, the rich, the lost, Sam and Marcy.

Sam, a thug, thief, unscrupulous con. He cooks and deals rocks, shoots any drug he can liquefy, mugs moneyed tourists, keeps a .25 pearl-handled pistol in his Wellington boot next to his six inch clip on knife. He possesses every quality required for a position as lead pimp in a sleazy bed bug infested New Orleans whorehouse.

Grown snake eyed with a plot, Sam tells Marcy, “Been watchin’ this guy at the El Cortez last two weeks. He’s hittin’ big off and on at the Texas Hold’em table. Keeps a lump a cash in his front pants pocket; idiot gotta be from out a town to be so obvious about it. He plays until he gets too drunk to think straight. It’s usually around one in the morning. Casino security stuffs him in a cab headed to a shit hole motel on Las Vegas Boulevard just north a Russell Road.”

Marcy, a rock-ho, absentee mother of two has no conscience. She steals a schmoozed gambler’s coins from a bar-top video game when the player is distracted by a delivery of fresh cocktails from a Mediterranean tanned Rockette clad waitress, her silver dollar sized hand palm up for a tip. Marcy gives a quick sleeve job in the front seat of a Metro cop’s cruiser as information from his dash mounted Tuff Book computer flashes on the crystal screen. She fondles him in exchange for chips off confiscated narcotic evidence the cop holds back for just this affair. She is young, twenty-two, not yet half used up. Average breasted, adorned with clear light olive skin, thick raven hair blanketing her slim hips. Her mouth is shaped a constant kiss, her musky scent a library filled with volumes of lust. She exudes wanton sex… always.

“How much ya think he’s got?” Marcy asks. She perches cross-legged on the bed of their stark, musky room in an out of style Vegas motel once briefly owned by a too prudent movie star forty years ago. The wall mount air conditioner hums a steady base drone, laboriously fending off the one-hundred ten degree Mojave Desert mid-summer heat. A brave black inch long water bug scoots along the floor.

Prepared for that euphoric first hit, Marcy waves a flaming wand slowly back and forth across the freshly cleaned glass bowl of her blown glass pipe, expectantly sucks, anxiously watches the opaque white cocaine stream flow like a swift river through the clear stem with the promise of a blissful two-minute high.

Sam and Marcy are locals, Vegas born; a rare breed in this cosmopolitan town over-saturated with greed motivated transplants hiding from a vengeful ex-wife, sour luck, warrants, debt. Sam and Marcy have their street degrees, earned young in the desert dirt back alley classrooms of the neighborhoods they grew up in on the fringe of down town. Fremont Street, from Eastern west to 6th Street, known locally as Crack Alley, is the island they plant their flag on; the cold flashing reddish-orange neon lit bars are piers doting their islet shore, transient infested rent by the week motels their home, barely crawling under the scrutiny of the law their lives.

The town drips of money like fat endlessly squeezed from a sponge; Sam and Marcy chase the sops. They have been together two years now, a near record in the Vegas low-end social strata. On these streets, there is no trust, no honor, loyalty. Nothing lasts here.

“Maybe ten, twelve thousand. Some nights he wins–others he loses. But, I never guess less than ten thousand on him in the end–win or lose.”

“Which motel?”

He tells her. She knowingly grins, excitedly shooting the creamy white smoke through her flared nostrils like a dragon spewing ivory fire.

“When?” She takes a swig from a pint bottle of Everclear, dips her burned out torch in the bottle, re-lights it for the next hit.

“Tonight.”

“Tonight…good,” she grins. “Let the games begin,” she declares, mentally piecing together how profitable the sequence of her part in this plan may be.

• • •

The Strip, Las Vegas Boulevard: The richest four miles of asphalt-padded transformed desert in the world, a mega resort casino studded gaudily lit patch of wealth lost money built. The motel lies on the seedy southern fringe of the Strip close to the intersection of Russell Road and the Boulevard.Early evening.

Dusk settles dully dim. Shadows feed off artificial Vegas lights as if every night is a full moon. Sam is cautious. He arrives early–9:30. This is too big for him to risk the gambler getting in early if his loses grow heavy quick. A conspiracy like this requires unlimited patience, time, the thousand-yard stare of a hunter stalking his kill. Presently these are luxuries in which, this evening especially, Sam is amply supplied. Sam sits on an orphaned half demolished concrete barrier rail behind an overfilled, stinking dumpster. He shoots up. Smack back, he serenely nods, waits, reconnoiters the twenty-room motel between blinks. Sam judges he is a safe distance from any curious cop wandering from his route on the Boulevard. Sam checks and rechecks his .25, pulls the clip out, slides the action back, slips a round in the chamber, stabs the clip back in the pearl handled grip, clicks the safety on.

One-hundred dollars persuades the Pakistani desk clerk to ignore their scheme.

The motel is adjacent to McCarran Airport. Sam looks up at a 747 blasting off the runway behind him like a belligerent tsunami rumbling past the beach. Good, the jets will muffle any screams or yelling in the room, Sam mumbles. No surveillance cameras. Six cars are staggered in front of their respective rooms. A single low sodium 100-Watt roof mounted lamp lights the area out side the desk clerk’s office. Half the wall mount lights outside each room door burn. They barely tint the immediate area Sam plans to work a rotting banana peel pale yellow. The gambler’s room is #19. Lucky this time. A quick escape, less exposure, Sam slurs. There is a hole in the Cyclone fence the other side of #20, the end room of the motel. The opening in the fence is large enough for Sam and Marcy to crawl through one body at a time. Behind the long building, an alley stretching perpendicular to the motel runs a quarter mile to a waiting stolen car. Eight-foot high cinder block walls cordon off both sides of the trash-filled lane, perfect defilade from the scrutiny of any brave neighbors. If Marcy can only come through, he whispers. She has always been reliable before. He weighs the chance this night may be different.

Two A.M… The cab pulls up. Marcy helps her drunken gambler stumble from the cab, steadies her trick, his arm clutching her shoulder while she slyly casts an eye Sam’s way. Both stagger to his room. Marcy closes the door, fakes locking it on the outside chance the nearly sick with the spins drunk is even slightly observant.

Good. It’s late, he must a won big, Sam believes. He waits ten minutes for Marcy to set up. Ordinarily Marcy needs twenty, but Sam guesses a fool this drunk will stay limp until he wakes next morning broke, gripping a whiskey hard-on. Marcy’s task is to get him completely naked and blow him until Sam gets in. She has the gambler stripped and on the bed in two minutes, fondling the wad in his right front pants pocket in the process as she slips them past his ankles.

Sam scoots from shadow to shadow, gun drawn; long thick zip ties flap half out his hip pocket each step he trots. He opens the door, neatly slides in as if he were slipping through a subway turn-style without a token. His victim lays naked, hog-tied, fat belly spread flat to the floor, a tennis ball shoved in his mouth. He is gagging, wheezing for breath as if breathlessly struck asthmatic. His face is nearly blue. Sam looks in the bathroom at the cranked open frosted glass window Marcy fled through to the back alley. Sam knows she is already in the hot car and gone. He feels the man’s pants for the money. Nothing. He takes the tennis ball out of the choking man’s mouth. Suddenly sobered by fright, the man gratefully sucks in air like a frightened child going down hill in a roller coaster. He excitedly asks, “Are you the cops? Vice? Undercover? Goddamn. Gave the bitch two Franklins, two-hundred bucks to fuck me. We get here, she gets me bare ass naked, pulls a butterfly knife on me, hog ties me, takes all my money. Are you the cops? Cut me loose.”

“How much did she get?”

“Dunno, maybe fifteen, sixteen thousand. I had a good night with the cards. Are you the cops? Help me here.”

Sam stuffs the tennis ball back in his prey’s mouth, forcing it in past half its circumference. He places the pistol in his boot. The gambler immediately struggles for breath. Sam watches him writhe, thrash in panic as if the mark is caught too near land’s edge, left behind by ebb tide to flop about the beach, gills just feet from a single breath of water. Sam sneers at the penniless drunk, “Gambler’s luck, huh!” he says.

Sam leaves for Las Vegas Boulevard to join the swift current of sleepless mobs swimming with the Strip’s current like directionless, darting schools of fish soon to be abandoned on shore when the shadowy lit Vegas night, like the ocean’s retiring tide, retreats to glaring day. Each receding wave of remaining darkness is a hiss of laughter, ridicule, a joke night in Vegas plays.

Appeared in The Rusty Nail http://www.rustynailmag.com/index.html  on March 12,2012

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Three Vignettes

2012 February 2
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Posted by sprusky
 

BLUE LAKE REVIEW

Three Vignettes
Steve Prusky

 

The Dock at Old Mission Bay

 

The dock sways too loose, inescapably coiled in the liquid womb of its life long lover’s arms. Its algae sated piers, like aged bandy legs, waltz poorly with Old Mission Bay. The dock struggles with each undulate surge, confused by the tempo of its partner’s relentless waves. Its shriveled deck is no longer a destination, an angler’s hope, a twin mast schooner’s moor. Hobbled frail by winter ice, sodden by June rains, wrinkled old by summer sun, it still thrives–yes…less graceful than before. It makes no apologies for its age or extended presence in the shallows off the Bay shore. It sloughs off its waning health each moment a sun dried plank creaks, as if that slivered board is chuckling at the harmless peak of a larger swell. Why mope ‘till death it no longer serves an end? Morning is a genesis of blessings the Bay will gladly lend. From under the lifting dawn mist, Grand Traverse sound will emerge an en plein air canvas daubed royal blues and earthy shoreline greens, as if Monet had spent a season here. The dock wakes daily to the clear azure Bay as if the waters are kissing the saffron sun. The dock stretches, yawns, limbers up, eager to resume the wobbly ballet, ready to mate again well past mating age. The Bay obliges its weathered, randy partner with dizzying pirouettes and twirls, ignoring the certainty their affair grows shorter with each spring rain, blue dawn, clear day, winter freeze the dock endures.

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

Her Cyan Eyes

Once, a fluttering nymphet on parade, flaxen hair, long, thin, cascaded in gold rivulets past her shoulder blades. She would have been Debusy’s La Fille Aux Cheveux De Lin, had he known her at the time. Glassy smooth tropical seas brightly glistened in her glacial blue eyes. Thin, fair skinned, she was a pubescent blossom bursting vital, driven, bound to thrive with each quake of laughter that shook her body alive.Humor faded long before her lover left. What little vigor left ebbed further at her fatherless child’s birth. Grown old young, no longer lean, hair worried dull dirty blond; all that what went wrong for her pales to the calm stream of solace still flowing in her cyan eyes.

 

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Lovers 

A bullet shattered their window interrupting the spooning lovers’ sleep. The riot woke many lovers early that humid July night.The blazing market four floors under their flat lit the bedroom dim amber, tinting their nakedness beer bottle amber. Thickened grayish smoke gracefully undulated through the roof vents of the gutted liquor store north. The pilfered gun shop to the south wheezed air starved asthmatic flames. Maddened human herds wandered the street below like directionless globules of meandering contagion bred in a petri dish of anger, scrambling to meld, mate, parent a more infectious strain of the temporarily insane. Erratic pistol shots spit choking puffs of Cordite incense at the night air. Klaxon sirens bellowed nearby in every key on the scale chasing elusive howling chaos. Pandemic fire spread from block to block. The lovers resolutely embraced, shivering snug within the mutual sanctity of fear. Cowering, the lovers pled fright, fate, slim chance save them. A plague of roiling smoke prowled up to their floor, hunting, sniffing, clawing every crevice for its next victim’s scent. With the obsessive urgency of zealous converts, the lovers chanted redemptive prayers learned rote as children that until that last moment were never meant.

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SAVING THORSON

2012 January 7
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Posted by sprusky

STEVE PRUSKY: SAVING THORSON

 
Real life does occur in Vegas. Normal people live here. Sam is one. He truly is a well adjusted, thriving resident religiously on time with the rent, current with his credit cards–mostly. He keeps a regular non-gaming job, grills steaks and dogs on weekends, saves for his kids college funds, stays on level terms with his ex-wife, watches football on TV ignorant of the spread, listens to classical music on internet radio. To locals like Sam, the novelty of the Las Vegas Strip is not an attraction, destination or detour; it is an obstacle to avoid along the serious highway of life toward the prosperous normal parts of town. That is not to say the touristy, subtly sinful Strip is not wondrous, tempting, unequaled entertainment. The casinos and mega-resorts on Las Vegas Boulevard are surreal adult playpens…for visitors. There is a darker side to Vegas vacationers never visit. City-wide skid rows; transient, transparent, as dysfunctional in their fluid cosmopolitan makeup than definably unstable, flourish nightly on countless dim lit Vegas streets. Thorson moved in next door to Sam. Thank a flaw somewhere in his ancestral gene pool as Thorson’s contribution to the dysfunctional side of Vegas.
Sam was cordial to his new neighbor that first week in August. He approached Thorson and his friends as they perched on the diamond plate Tommy Gate of the rented U-Haul. They were on break from lugging Thorson‘s stuff in the apartment next door. A full cooler of iced beer sat on the ground below them.
Before Sam could form up a greeting Thorson chirped, “How you doin’?” Sam’s new neighbor reached out to shake his hand, “Thor, short for Thorson. I prefer Thor. Wanna a beer?” Thorson’s voice was a garish shriek, as if a wood tongue depressor had been deliberately broken off in his throat.
Sam paused a moment, holding back a chuckle before he spoke, “Yes… Well… I’m Sam. I‘ll pass on the beer,” Sam smirked. The name ‘Thor’ just did not fit. That handle had too many masculine connotations Thorson lacked. Numerous chrome-plated metal decorations stabbed his face. Sam hesitated to guess what other covered parts of Thorson might be pierced. He was Baby Huey fat. He kept his Cleveland Cavaliers sleeveless basketball jersey tucked in, revealing flabby upper arms. The olive drab military belt looped round his wrinkled desert camouflage cargo pants cinched his mid-section a notch too narrow, revealing a bull nose cliff of flab all ‘round. His pant waist fit well above his hip. The crotch appeared to sport too high a rise, perhaps affecting that part of the anatomy that can change a man’s voice from normal to a high-pitched, pig-like squeal similar to the deformed tones gurgling from Thorson’s larynx. His puffy, cherubic cheeks betrayed a drinking problem with a wild guess at what else he consumed. His eyes appeared as bloodshot as rotting egg yokes. Sparse, fine blond stubble sprouted in splotchy patches across his face; not enough to sport a beard, but rather an indication he was too lazy to shave the islands of thin soft fuzz blooming between his metallic facial adornments. Thorson’s manner, appearance, limited vocabulary, hissing voice struck Sam as that of a grown man still suffering prepubescent metabolic chaos.
“Well, we gotta get goin’” Thorson rasped. “Only half way moved in and it’s gettin hotter by the minute.”
“It’s 110 degrees out now. Just looked,” Sam said.
“I didn’t know the heat gets this bad here,” Thorson whined.
“You could have picked a better time of year to move,” Sam advised. “Doesn’t start cooling down in Vegas ’till mid-October, beginning of November. Good luck.”
“Hey! Later me and these guys are goin’ to a tit bar off the Strip. Why don’cha come with us? We’ll hoot at the dancers’n stick dollar bills in their g-strings.”
“Can’t do it,” Sam said. “Want to finish up a book, see the news, get to bed early.” Thorson’s face expressed blank-eyed shock Sam would skip a good time in Vegas.
“Alright dude, but your goin’ to miss some fun,” Thorson said, disappointed Sam refused.
“Thanks though,” Sam said. Sam quit the high-end tit bars years ago when he realized paying for a peek excluded touching the product too.
All his stuff moved in, the first priority, Thorson’s new X-Box, quickly wired in and set up, came to life. Thunder, explosions, passionate yelps of victory, and grunts of defeat rang out through Sam’s wall. Thorson and his helpers lounged on his pristine soon to be violated Cool Deck coated porch. They drank beer mixed with Red Bull to stay drunk longer without passing out. They loudly flattened empty beer cans on the porch floor and tossed them like Frisbees at passing traffic on the street beyond the parking lot wall. One broke out pot, another produced a bag of yellowish, speedy rocks and glass pipe. They butted their cigarettes on the quickly blackened surface of his porch floor; hurled empty beer cans across the parking lot competing to be the first to land one on top the corrugated steel roof of the covered parking structure. They waxed drunker, higher, noisier; sprung well past the ionosphere from the jumping board of ‘go fast’ rock cocaine. They left for the strip tease circuit near midnight, defective mufflers roaring, tires spinning, hurling mocking insults at each other as they thumped over speed bumps that failed to slow them. Then silence.
Sam caught Thorson in the parking lot next evening, “Kinda loud late last night. Won’t be a habit will it?”
“Naa. Just wanted to show my buddies that helped me move a good time. Sorry. Were we too loud?”
Sam let it go.
Toward the end of August, Sam up late past midnight on a Saturday lit a cigarette on his porch. Just off swing shift, Thorson waddled along the curb edge of the complex parking lot toward his front door. He wore a starchy, well pressed police blue permanently creased uniform shirt with “Thor” stitched in flaring gold Mistral Script above his left breast pocket. A shield shaped shoulder patch advertised a local armored truck outfit that saw fit to employ him. His verdant jungle camo pants looked soiled wrinkled, unwashed in the dim night-lights. He slung his pistol belt over his shoulder, as if fatigued from a rough day sitting on top all those bags of cash at fifteen dollars an hour. He walked hunched over in a slow, heal dragging shuffle as if he were an overworked Egyptian slave struggling to haul another chiseled granite block to the top of the ruling Pharaoh’s tomb.
“What caliber pistol is that?” Sam asked.
Thorson stopped, stood up straight, his hollow eyes turned bright, enthusiastic. He proudly blurted, “A Beretta nine. Fourteen rounds. Fifteen with one in the chamber.” Thorson slickly slipped a hollow point bullet from his belt as if it were a precious nugget of gold plucked from a miner’s sluice, handed it to Sam and lectured, “With this, you aim at the asshole’s head, you take his fuckin’ shoulder with it. It’s like a mini-bomb; explodes on impact.” Sam shook his head up and down as if enlightened.
“Yeah. I never had ta use my piece. Ya never know though, the day might come,” Thorson eagerly implied.
“Damned impressive,” Sam sarcastically exclaimed. Thorson oozed of instability. Add a gun to that affliction and a formula for disaster brewed.
Thorson had toured enough tit clubs, bars, ‘Rub and Tug’ massage parlors to blaze a nightly round trip trail from and to his apartment each night after work. By October, he became an honored regular at the pricier spots along his route. The multi-colored neon glitz of Vegas nightlife gripped Thorson past mere short time tourist fascination. It gnawed at him, chewed, swallowed, digested bits of him as if he were the favorite tray on a local’s only buffet. This sleepless twenty-four hour adult Disneyland had Thorson hypnotized. As if it were the first euphoric high off a rock that eludes you each hit after, Vegas became an instant addiction, a high Thorson ineptly chased ceaselessly, carelessly.
Some get tricked quick, hooked, burned up, fried crisp on the Vegas grill of thrills. Thorson was about to be served up charbroiled.
Through November, Thorson cultivated a coterie of loud, pinch faced, hollow minded, imitation Thorson clones. Three weekends that month a steady stream of tattoo coated characters draped in stainless steel lip, ear and nose rings, clumpy black boots, jangling silver chains strung from belt loops and hip pockets steadily slinked in and out of Thorson’s apartment from Friday night to early Sunday morning. All were welcome, stranger or not. Excessive body piercing was not a requirement as long as they brought alcohol or pot, or rocks. Thorson kept the volume of his CD player well up above normal. ‘Kill the dog, shoot the kids, beat the wife’ music rattled pictures on Sam’s side of their shared communal wall. The gang smoked, drank, pissed on the bushes outside Thorson’s apartment past dawn. Some settled on Thorson’s porch, flicked still lit cigarette butts near Sam’s front door betting on who would light up his outdoor wicker chair first. A few roamed the parking lot spotting hot selling rims they conspired to steal later, sat on hoods of cars they didn’t own drinking and smoking. Thorson was the noisiest of them all, his laughter blasted loud as a yodel heard three buildings down. He and his buds invaded, terrorized the complex. Monday mornings, when Sam left for work, Thorson’s porch landing lay littered with beer cans, paraphernalia and an occasional overnight visitor sprawled out on a cheap vinyl beach chair.
After a month of Thorson’s weekend parties, Sam caught his neighbor leaving for his shift, wrinkled camo cargo pants cinched too tight around his mid-drift, stiff work shirt on this back, the Beretta strapped to his hip.
“Your weekend sprees are gettin’ out-a-hand Thorson. “
“Call me Thor,” he said, as if the conversation would not continue until Sam got his name right.
“No…. you go to Hell Thorson. Quit this shit. Give me peace.”
“No! Fuck you Sam. I’ll do what I want,” Thorson grasped his pistol grip.
Sam knew better than to argue with a man who wears a gun. He abruptly turned his back to Thorson, left for his apartment. Sam retrieved his .45 revolver from a tattered shoebox, cleaned and loaded it, placed it in the drawer of his bed stand.
A light snow coated the desert floor Thanksgiving Day. Sam watched football and read three Bukowski novels in three days. Quiet, solemn, alone on Christmas Day. Sam read Plath, Stallings, Justice, emailed his folks back east the usual platitudinous holiday greetings, called his ex in Reno; spoke briefly with the kids. They thanked him for the toys he sent then they ran off to unwrap more. Later Sam had dinner alone at the Fiesta Casino buffet on Lone Mountain and Rancho.
New Years Eve in Vegas tops New Orleans Mardi Gras, Rio Carnival for unruliness, debauchery, mob rule. It’s commonly regarded by local Vegas residents as ’Amateur Night;” an annual reason for tourists from around the world to inundate the Strip, drink too much, coke up, shoot up, smoke up, pretend the law does not apply to them while the locals stay inside. Sam stayed in. The party at Thorson’s apartment peaked near midnight. Thorson drunkenly waded through the crowd, his Beretta cocked in hand. He stepped out on his porch and popped three caps off in the air the last three seconds of the old year. After midnight, Thorson and his band headed for the Strip. Peace ensued. Sam slept.
Near noon, New Years Day, an under-age girl, probably dressed slutty at first, now in ragged slept in clothes, just awake, bra-less, her ratty, tangled blond hair a nest, stained mini skirt smelling of alcohol and too much sex knocked on Sam’s door.
“Can I use your phone?” the still drunk bimbo asked. “I woke up alone. There’s no one at your neighbor’s apartment.”
“Do you even know my neighbor’s name?
“No. Some one else I don’t know brought me here. I don‘t remember much else.” Sam let her in and handed her his cell.
Five calls later, after every recipient of her calls refused to rescue her, she asked Sam to drive her home. He wiped his phone with Lysol and led her to his car. Her house was only a few blocks away, near Cheyenne and Craig. The drive was much longer than Sam’s frazzled patience.
Sam got the collect call later that afternoon, “I accept the charges,” Sam agreed. He wondered why Thorson didn‘t have a quarter for a local call.
“Sam? …. Thor here,” Thorson slurred.
“Yeah, I know. What is it Thorson?”
“They stole my car, my cell phone, my wallet. They kyped my gun. Can you come get me?”
“Who are they Thorson?”
“My buddies at the party at my house last night. Come get me,” Thorson empirically demanded.
“Where are you?
“I don’t know.”
“You’re at a pay phone?
“Yeah.”
“Damn Thorson. Shoot me a flare. Describe some land marks idiot!”
“I’m a block from a titty bar called Loose Babes.”
Sam was familiar with that part of town. It was near Valley View and Desert Inn; a ghetto the locals dub ‘Naked City.’ Topless bars, hookers, criminals, cops, panhandlers, homeless reign in this part of town. It sets the standard for the bottom end of life Vegas breeds.
“Alright asshole. This shit stops now,” Sam growled.
Thorson teetered, wavered, bounced against the glass in the urine stained phone booth, red faced, pants and shirt soiled and torn, nodding, sick, on the verge of alcohol poisoning. “I’m fucked,” Thorson wailed. “My mom and dad’l sling me from my balls for this.”
“Do they live here, in town?” Sam was surprised.
“Yeah. Two blocks away.”
“Call them!”
“They’ll be pissed, hold back my allowance, ground me.”
“Your allowance! Goddamn Thorson. I don’t care. You’re a grown man with a twelve-year old mentality. Call your parents Thorson. I’m not daddy.” Sam hung up and continued watching the Rose Bowl game.
Thorson’s parents brought him home a few hours later. They stayed with Thorson two days straight to clean him up. Thorson’s father knocked on Sam’s door before he and his wife went back home.
“I’m Thorson’s father. Thorson thinks very highly of you. He respects you. He believes you are peaceful, honorable, straightforward.”
“I’ve tried to deceive him otherwise,” Sam angrily retorted. “I’d rather he fear me than think of me in any other capacity than peaceful, honorable, straightforward.” Sam grew angrier, “Thorson is a drunk, a drug fiend. He’s obtuse, inconsiderate. I’m not fond of him as a neighbor. He belongs in rehab for a month… longer. Why don‘t you see to it. He has the mentality of a Wall Mart greeter. He’ll be harmless to himself and others near him in that environment if given simpler tasks assigned to him like gathering shopping carts from the parking lot or greeting customers at the door. Oh yah, and don‘t let the asshole get another gun either; he couldn’t keep track of the one he had.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way. It’s the truth, every word. When we retired here from Cleveland, he came with us. We rented this apartment for him. His job sends his paychecks directly to us. We control his finances because he‘s incapable of such a task. We give him a weekly allowance from it and pay all his bills. Sometimes we supplement his pocket money if he wants a new video game or other necessity. Truth is we aren’t able to manage him when he lives with us. This is his first experience living alone.”
“Christ! The separation isn’t working well…Is it? He’s thirty-years old. What’s his phobia?” Sam blurted.
“Immaturity mostly. He just never grew up.” Guilt ridden, Thorson’s father stared down at his spotless wing tip shoes.
“Lucky you,” Sam’s sarcasm again. “You control his money but can’t control your son. Classic enablers; that’s you and ‘ma.’ Thorson isn’t intellectually capable of progressing past childhood. He’s emotionally crippled, shallow in ways a shrink would diagnose as too psychologically damaged to repair. Even you realize that. Don’t you! Most of all he’s a nuisance to me.”
“We’re aware of his condition, but there‘s no helping it. He’s aware of his condition. We just can’t take him living with us anymore. We keep him close instead. I apologize for his behavior.”
“No need to apologize,” Sam growled, “I hear that crap from Thorson every day he screws up. His behavior doesn’t change–apology or no.”
Thorson’s father backed away, sensing Sam’s impatience was struggling at the tethered end of anger. “Please help us?”
“So, essentially you want him to be any one else’s problem but yours. I am the fortunate surrogate you want to take your place. Does that sum it up?”
“Not in so many words. But, we could use your help.”
“I’m not pop or mom. If Thorson does not calm down, I won’t call the cops, although I should. I’ll just take matters into my own hands. You won’t like it. He’ll like it less.”
“Maybe that reaction is exactly what he needs,” Thorson’s father meekly encouraged with regret, “We don’t know what else to do.”
“Man, you must be desperate if you want me to discipline your little boy. Commit the fuck!” Sam threw the door shut.
For a week, Sam brooded. “I’m too blessed with decency, compassion,” Sam moaned aloud. “Why me?” he grieved. “God damn… I’ll regret this. I know I will.”
Sam caught Thorson on his porch hunched over, head covered in a black hooded sweater, dripping beads of perspiration, chain smoking, cowering, hiding from the stark emptiness of another alcohol free day. Sam approached him, gently laid a hand on Thorson’s shoulder and asked sympathetically “How’s it going Thorson?”
“I got fired last week,” he almost whimpered. “Missed too much work, they said. Cops are still looking for my car. They took my gun permit too. Couldn’t find my keys so Mom and dad paid to have the locks changed. They aren’t giving me any money. I’ve been sober seven days though. Dad told me he’d get me new video games if I stay clean a month.” Thorson moped, stared at the stained porch floor cow eyed, shaking uncontrollably with the DT’s as if struck with malaria. Thorson resembled a tail tucked, gun-shy pup running rear end first from a rifle blast.
“Real hard task masters–your parents,” Sam mocked. “If there’s anything you need just let me know, I’ll help you get through this if I can.” Thorson was mute. Instead, he lit another cigarette from the cherry of the last, continued staring at the floor as if it held an antidote for his condition.
Sam took the pistol from his bed stand drawer unloaded it and placed the piece back in its shoe box, broke out his checkbook, paid bills, replayed Schubert‘s “Unfinished“ Symphony.
Thorson managed to stay sober, a month and one day. He got his new video games.
 
Appeared inTHE BACTRIAN ROOM ON 1/7/2012   http://bactrianroom.blogspot.com/

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Lea’s Camper

2011 December 6
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Posted by sprusky

Lea’s Camper

by Steve Prusky

Sheriff Cook and Lea hated each other equally. The belligerent lawman’s crude methods cowed most citizens in Leelanau County. He didn’t scare Lea. Cook reminded her of an arrogant Teddy Roosevelt victoriously waving his saber atop San Juan Hill comically chanting “Bully! Bully! Bully!” Cook failed at badgering Lea with petty threats: “Lea, pick up yer road apples when ya ride that damn nag mare of yers in town…” “Keep yer chickens cooped or I’ll have the next one I catch for dinner…” “Get off my lawn or I’ll run you in…” Lea returned Cook’s threats with malicious pranks; loosening his steed’s saddle straps so the seat slid round to the horses belly when he tried to mount, forcing him to fall flat back into a fresh puddle of horse piss; screaming in falsetto terror when Cook trotted by, panicking his gelding to bolt in an uncontrollable frenzied gallop. Lea was an under-aged youth granted immunity by law from Cook’s revenge. Silent loathing was the worst punishment he’d ever mete to the red haired pony tailed pre-pubescent pest.

Cook tracked offenders with the ruthless efficiency of Sherman’s march through Georgia. Many never made it past the county morgue to plead their case. A few years before the first Model “A” Ford bounced down the pot holed wagon rutted roads along Leelanau Penninsula, word spread Cook was on the hunt for someone hiding near Old Mission Point where Lakes Michigan and Huron mate to parent the waters a Monet-like pastel blue. The Point was the least populated part of Leelanau, Lea’s turf, the farthest tip of the shriveled ring finger meekly protruding from left handed Lower Michigan. The virgin pines there were thick, close together, erect, two-hundred years tall. They were scaly barked cone laden sentries any smart felon was bound to hide in. Like pickets guarding an army’s perimeter, the pines were the first line of defense broadcasting most noise approaching from half a mile in any direction to anyone concealed inside the wooded cocoon. No better place existed to hide than here.

To Lea, the dense curtains of pine trees were grayish throws of mystery embellished by tales she’d read of Irving’s skittish Ichabod Crane, The Brothers Grimm, Peer Gynt’s “Buckride.” In spring and summer Lea kept the window open to anesthetize the stale infectious winter air that had lingered too long in her room. The window faced five feet off the bramble border of the sunless pine stand. Clamor from the restless trees shedding dormant winter; a snapping branch, a dying tree felled by age, a raccoon’s night trill, a squirrel scooting up a tree, rang out well past the briar boundaries of this grayish wooded hole as if echoing off tall steep canyon walls. The high pine needles shrieked shrill music as the last late chilled Chinook winds exhaled winter’s final breath. Each spring Lea intently listened to the aroused soul of that dark wooded void breath the first quintessential gasp of rebirth shooing cyclic winter to recede further north once more.

In late spring, barely audible human activity from the White Pine stand bordering Lea’s cottage whispered through her opened bedroom window. These sounds weren’t the usual creaking, stretching, groaning pines moan when waking from winter’s prolonged hibernal sleep. This din was muffled, methodical camper’s noise; a well honed hatchet splitting kindling, an early morning cough before a smoker’s first rolled Buglers cigarette of the day, the thump of gathered wood dumped on the cushioned pine needle floor, an occasional pop and crackle snapped from a fresh set cooking fire. Lea suspected her camper was Cook’s latest prey. An in arrears debtor? A fugitive fleeing minor warrants? A thieving migrant farm hand fleeing an angry fruit grower’s wrath? Lea wasn’t told his crime while he was alive, but with the instincts of a pup that can quickly sense an approaching stranger is either affectionate or cold, Lea instantly perceived this camper posed no threat to her.

Lea’s camper stayed through summer. The rabbits that normally raided her mother’s vegetable garden dwindled to near extinction as summer passed on to early fall. Her camper’s snares were well placed, productive; the hares he caught roasted nightly on his hickory stick spit. In September Lea and her mother harvested and canned a bumper crop; tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, onions, squash, strawberries; cherries and apples from their small orchard. The camper would remain a secret to everyone but Lea during the long winter freeze.

After the first snow Lea’s concern evolved into compassion for this camper struggling to survive a typical arctic Michigan winter among the pines. She began sneaking out a few of her mother’s preserves from the cellar once or twice a week. She crept up to the thickets to place the Mason jars just out of site from the road bordering her trees. Each morning she woke to look the jars were gone.

When the snowmelt ended the sheriff and his deputies swept Lea’s pines in line of skirmish with the slow, silent certainty of hunters tracing the trail of a sure kill. Even Lea didn’t hear them. The camper had no chance. The sheriff and his men didn’t offer or give quarter. Lea heard shot gun and pistol blasts echo through the woods. The aromatic cooking fires stopped. The hatchet ceased its chopping. The rabbits returned enforce. The woods reverted back to their normal spring yawns as they woke from winter.

A week later the sheriff visited Lea’s. He asked her mother, “Grace, are these your Mason jars?” staring accusingly at Lea.

“Why, yes, I believe so. Those are my fruits and vegetables inside,” her mother quizzically replied.

“Last week we shot’n killed a suspected murderer from Kalkaska in yer woods.” Cook never took chances. He often shot suspects without proof, cause or warning as if the offender’s sentence had been decided long before it got to the judge and jury. “Were you feed’n this scoundrel?”

“No. Of course not.” Grace looked down at her daughter, a bit suspicious.

“Don’t look at me,” Lea blurted, glaring at the sheriff, shooting bolts of hatred at him from her narrowed eyes. “Them woods scare me. I’m ‘fraid ta go in ‘em.”

Frustrated, the sheriff cast a last vindictive glance at Lea. He couldn’t prove her complicity. “Damn fool must’a stole em from yer cellar in the night,” he half heartedly speculated. He knew that wasn’t true. “I suggest ya hasp and pad lock them cellar doors. Keep’n these as evidence,” he lied. Grace’s preserves won ribbons annually at the Leelanau County Fair. This year they were his pallet’s prize. “I’ll be watchin’ ya Lea,” the sheriff warned. He mounted up and trotted off with the stuffed Mason jars in hand. The remaining afternoon Lea retreated to her room and listened to the waking White Pines stretch and sigh to life rejecting winter’s grip. She hummed what few notes she knew of “Tales from the Vienna Woods,” as another aged pine close by fell, too tired to resist its end.

Appeared in The Legendary on 12/5/2011   http://www.downdirtyword.com/

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Royal Feast

2011 November 11
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Posted by sprusky

Royal Feast by Steve Prusky

 

 

At this oasis desert park, just inside the far edge of man‘s domain, the Mountain Big Horns trust implicitly.

The rams, their curled horns rippled crowns of sovereignty, nobly descend the rock strewn wash to file up on the black asphalt cul-de-sac below. The procession parades resplendent in their molted summer coats stained desert beige. Their padded hooves tap our house lined pavement like battle weary, yet still alert cavalry. Just past the rise off Patti Lane, early morning sprinklers dust off chaste July heat, greening the festal meadow prior to their regal feast . They’ll graze ‘till noon, aloof as royalty on foreign soil; honored guests immune from threat or harm.

These monarchs pasture on the north lawn no man’s land, a cautious distance from the park accoutrements we claim. From our barrack tennis courts we ever present sentries of the swings and slides are kin to ‘at the ready’ palace guards at attention when they arrive. On our watch no coyot’ packs creep up in surprise, no famished mountain lion lurks too close, no hunter’s bullet strikes its mark, no thirst or famine occurs. The tree-lined boundary of this verdant desert realm sanctifies these kings, we lowly commoners and surfs.

By noon, high mountain Sirens wail enticing songs in company with symphonies of blustery Mojave Desert winds. Lyrics from the charming nymphs beguile our lords to familiar, cooler craggy heights; their nocturnal empire sleepless vigilance, cunning predators, moonless night.

Appeared in Apocrypha and Abstrations  Oct. 17,2011   http://apocryphaandabstractions.wordpress.com/2011/10/

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