Day 43

I'm thinking of two thirds of nothing and putting less together than that.  The sum of my total parts is more than it used to be if you ask a scale or the things I've removed from a resume, but it's less than the projections so if I were a betting woman, I'd say this is not a stock likely to skyrocket.  The flitting of my mind alights on your lashes, doesn't stay.  Blood and guts and sinew and gas and nerves float bump into each other, don't stay.  Nothing is as solid as it seems.  Seams hold patchwork thoughts till night.  Nightbright insomnia waves it's hand byebye.  I spy with my little eye, aye yai yai, sweet spaghetti slurp.  Missing teeth, missing piece, peace-loving space.  Sticks and stones do indeed break bones and rubber baby buggy bullets bounce on my knee.  Pulpits and poets standing and swaying in breezes and hazes.  Wheels pedal over stacks of petals, piled neatly in a row.  Kneeling at the railing, a ballerina goes gazing, a cup of tea and honeypot bellied pig on rye.  Order me a list of tasks, hut two, four, ten.  Integers and negatives of photos fake friendly in a sigh.  And before a sister makes her maker, just so bye and by.

Day 33

Mike's been working at Sherpa and Yeti's for about 5 months as a bouncer.  He's got big furry forearms.  When he sits he feels just as big as when you stand.  He seems as broad as he is tall.  He's   blonde but he shaves his head.  His goatee is long and brown.  His tongue is pierced but you'll never see it.  He doesn't talk much.

He mans the door, nodding occasionally at someone but mostly blankly checking IDs and waiting for someone to be an idiot.  Tonight Naked with Milk is playing which could mean anything.  The band, the crowd.  No way to know.  He waits.  Puts his hand on his forearm and shrugs, somehow succeeds in making his chest broader and checks more IDs.

He sips a soda with lime.  An underage girl offers to buy him a drink.  He declines both her entry and her offer.  He's a by-the-book kind of guy.  If the owner tells him to let someone in, he does.  But no boobs or drinks get anyone anywhere with him.

Time ticks by.  The band starts and he waits.  It's a warm evening so it's likely he'll be throwing at least one or two guys out tonight.  He does this literally.  Doesn't enjoy it.  Just does it.  He doesn't work up a sweat or huff and puff.  He just grabs a guy by his pants, carries him out, and chucks him out the door with a genuine threat of a police call if he comes back.  Then he returns to his seat and waits again, as though nothing has changed.  Usually, after someone is thrown out, things calm down.  The crowd has released it's tension and recognizes there is authority and order and goes back to crowd-business.

He turns his back to the door for a moment when he sees something fall from a girl's purse.  He reaches down to grab it.  It's a bottle of pills of some sort.  Which for some reason makes his knees buckle.  She's one of the people the boss told him to let in.  She's maybe sixteen.  He reaches down to pick them up, but then just stays down.  Holds his chest.  Feels it tighten.

He goes down, stays down.  The room gets even darker.  Grows completely silent.  A familiar to him tells him to get his ass up.  He does.  The crowd's gone.  The music's gone.  The lights are dim but on.  He hears the voice tell him to come here and he does.  He walks toward the back to the office.  His familiar gives him a talk.  He doesn't hear words, but it stirs meaning in him.  It is nostalgic and wise and significant and he is committing it to memory without hearing a single bit.

"Come with me."  the familiar says.  He is past middle age but does not move like an old man.  Mike follows him, knowing that this man will change his life.

The familiar sits him down in a small, empty room.  Twenty by fifty feet maybe.  He gets out a film reel and tape recorder.  Syncs them and begins.  The light flickers through the first blank film strip squares and then the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 appear in their target's eyes.  And the music begins.  It is slow and sweet at first and sounds like a record a couple from the 1920s might listen to.  He wades in the moment and the couple who are now on the screen dancing.  The room is filling with people in black and white.  He knows they are ghosts but is not afraid.  They stand, solemnly watching the film.  Dark shadowed eyelids on beautiful, sad women.  Pin curls and saddle shoes.  Fedoras and spats.  He swoons internally while still holding the image of himself sitting still on a stool looking broad and foreboding.  He feels them all looking at him.  The ghosts are waiting for him to feel what they've been brought to teach him. 

He feels better.  Like the world may be right with itself again.

When he wakes in the morning, he does not know what to think.  The girl, the drugs, the job, the ghosts.  The feeling of it all hangs heady in the air.  And that is enough.

Day 32

She considers it part of her job to like the students in her class.  So it's difficult for her when the occasional student comes along that she doesn't like.  Billy is just such a kid.  She has a certain special place in her heart for kids who do well academically, or who are socially awkward, or naughty, or average, or sporty, or bookish, or like digging in the dirt, or like it quiet.  She likes a huge variety of kids.  The one thing she has trouble with is when a kid is mean.  Even bullies, she can usually find good in since they're usually themselves bullied and generally have their kind moments.  Bullies tend to be passionate. 

She believes her husband may have had bully-moments, before he met her.  When she met him, she'd sensed a cloud of past unspokeness about him.  And it wasn't just because he wasn't from Belfry. 

Folks who live in a town as small as Belfry, Montana are naturally, shall we say, curious about newcomers.  So when Jack showed up in town, looking for work as a ranch hand or in a kitchen, there was naturally talk.  He got work at the ranch where she lived.  It was her uncle's ranch and she'd always enjoyed ranch life.  Her father had sold his ranch and moved across the border to Wyoming which had hurt her soul.  She understood, but it was hard.  When you grow up on a ranch, you have a relationship with the land.  It was hard to see her father part with that relationship.  Harder still for her to part with it herself.  But she'd become a school teacher and couldn't persuade anyone that she should be something different so she moved to her uncle's ranch to be close to some land.  Family land of some kind was better than any alternative she could think of.

Jack wandered into town quietly asking for whatever work he could get.  Since her cousins had all moved to Billings, her uncle decided to give Jack a shot and taught him to labor.  Taught him how to oil sadles, and drive cattle.  And Jack baked bread for them and snuck into the fabric of their lives.

She would leave each day, teach in her one room school house (it wasn't literally but there were only about 80 students total K-12 so it was close.)  Then she'd return home in the evenings to her uncle Tom and Jack drinking beers on the porch.  They'd greet her with a tip of their hats as she walked up and it became routine.

Billy's another story.  She can't find a good routine with him.  One day he's on track and doing what he's supposed to and she can tolerate him.  While the next, he's tormenting poor Austin (a visually impaired boy who can't read or write at age 12.)  Billy doesn't care that he's mean.  He doesn't care about anything but Billy and what makes Billy laugh.  And so she has trouble liking him.  She's never had trouble being kind to students before Billy because she's always genuinely cared about them and had things that she loved about them to tide her over any challenging stint.  But she doesn't like Billy.

Jack helps.  He distracts her.  He doesn't say much but listens well to her daily school stories.  Today, Dustin has shaved his eyebrows off and tells her that he "had an accident" with his mom's razor.  When she asks him if the accident was shaving his eyebrow, he nods meekly and she narrowly holds her laugh in. 

She must talk more about Billy than she realizes because when she finally admits to disliking him one day, Jack offers a suggestion.  He says to have Billy come out to the ranch and work.  Give him some assignments if she needs to but just have him spend a week or two working with the men and see if that doesn't help.  She disregards this idea's impossibility at first.  But several weeks later, when she still hasn't come up with anything and feels like she may do worse than simply verbally berate this child, she decides to go for the long shot.  She calls his parents and admits she's struggling with Billy in her classroom and offers the suggestion that they do something out of the ordinary and see if it helps. 

His parents are so used to teachers out and out hating their child (they sometimes do themselves,) that they'll sign any form she wants, take any solution she proffers and run with it. 

This is how she fell in love with Jack.

He doesn't think that she knows about the dancing, but she does.  She genuinely doesn't know every time, but she's woken in the night to pee and found him missing enough times that she knows.  He's too loyal to cheat; that never enters her imagination.  She adores the part of him that lets loose his movement.  She's only caught a glimpse once and felt like she'd interrupted divine lovers or spoiled some intimacy between them such that she never dares peek again.  Instead, she feigns ignorance and allows him extra rest if it seems like he's been gone more nights than usual.

But tonight she is afraid.  They are on vacation.  The territory's unfamiliar.  But that's not it.  Not really.  She just feels unsettled in his absence.  She sits up, turns on the light, and tries to read.  But it's no use.  She's too distracted to do anything but run her eyes over line after line without digesting any story.  She shuts the book and paces, wondering what to do.

And when the sun comes up, he's still not home.

Day 31

Mobsters don't dance.  Not freely.  They might powerfully lead a woman in a display of manly control.  But they don't sway.  They stand, firm.

He loves the feel of surfaces beneath his feet as he dances.  He puts his headphones on and sneaks out of the hotel room.  Tonight he will feel the sand give beneath his feet as he sambas up and down a deserted beach.  Middle-aged, and overweight, he doesn't look the type to move this gracefully.

He's never been formally taught but he can mimic any move he's just seen and invent the right rhythm and movement to go with a song.  He just feels music.  Mostly with his feet.  That's where it feels best.  Once, he got to feel the crunch of shells beneath his feet while inventing a new version of tap dancing.  It was the most gratifying feedback the universe ever fed his feet.  It was like they'd grown teeth and could eat chips all night long without drying out or getting full or sick.

He waits until his wife's breathing slows.  Her mouth flops open and she turns away from him, nuzzles into her pillow.  Her breathing regular now, he moves slowly, listens for any changes.  She does not stir, so he creeps quietly out the door, being sure to remember his key.

He steps into full moonlight and can't believe his fortune.  He scoped out places earlier in the day while "shopping."  He relocates the spot he'd chosen earlier.  It is the private but unfenced and unmonitored beach of a slightly expensive hotel down the road from the cheap hotel where they are staying.  He and his wife walked past several times and he checked the number of people in the lounge and restaurant each time: nearly empty.  The clientele that had been present had been the quiet variety.  Folks who traveled frequently but gently.  They read books and came to relax.  They were even tempered, cool headed accountants and government workers.  They were "up late" at 11:00 but by now, certainly in bed.  The sand on this beach was unlikely to be littered with trash or glass and would be soft and consistent.  His body tingles in excitement at his fortune.  This, is a vacation, he thinks.

He sits in an Adirondack chair, bends and unties his shoes, then pulls his socks off.  He grips the sand with his toes, then tosses some.  He practices a few throws.  He can throw quite far with his feet.  He searches through musical options until he comes to the perfect song.  It is a high quality live recording so he can pretend he's really there.

He stands and begins his evening.  He lets his emotions go, just moves.  It is meditation for him.  He is in the moment, in the movement.  He doesn't give a damn about his belly or his mediocre job or his past.  He sweats, forgets.  He exhausts himself.

He sits back down in the chair and the tears come.  He now wishes the moon were not quite so big.  That clouds or some other cover would come to veil his regret.  He thinks of his past and what he has seen and therefore been complicit in.  Another person would tell the tale with him as the ex-gangster, but the truth is less glamorous.

He worked in a mafia front for a small outfit.  It was a bakery and he was young.  He was wide eyed but could keep his mouth shut.  He was unassuming.  So, it wasn't long before the guys talked openly in front of him.  They stopped asking him to run an errand or take the trash out when the phone rang and just talked.  It wasn't long either before he understood their lingo.  He never much helped, but he got paid more than a 19 year old earns baking bread.  He saw guys roughed up.  Girls doped up.  And more.  So much more.

He wanted to leave, but fear paralyzed him and so he stayed.  Years, he stayed, listening, seeing, damaging his soul.  The low level bosses loved him.  He made them feel manly.  He was dopy and awkward and quiet.  They got to be big and bad and powerful.  He didn't challenge anything.

He was once in the back when they brought in one of the mid level bosses girls.  She was pregnant but resisting the abortion her daddy was requiring of her.  They strapped her down and a doctor came in and forcibly performed the procedure.  She screamed and cried through all manner of drugs and gagging and he quietly said nothing.  Did nothing.

He'd finally read a story about gang bangers and realized he was a socio economic step away from one himself and had to get out.  He then began tuning out what was going on around him and planning his escape.  He knew too much to simply be allowed to move on.  He would have to leave.  And carefully.

He began making mental lists of all the locations anyone mentioned.  He wrote each one down when he got home in order to eliminate them as options.  Chicago was obviously out.  Trinidad, Colorado was also out (too many bosses retired there.)  The list of podunk towns was surprisingly long.

Then he watched a movie about a cowboy and it made him yearn for mountains and rivers and horses.  He saved every dime he could get a hold of.  For a brief moment, he considered embezzling or out and out stealing but then thought that would be too big a risk.  Instead, he saved for two years.  He planned to save for three, but with what he saw, he just couldn't.

After his shift, he drove his car to the edge of town, traded it in, and drove through 2 tanks of gas before abandoning the car and taking the bus to Montana.  He hitched the rest of the way to Belfry, MT.  Population 223.

People think the mafia have someone everywhere.  And sometimes it feels that way.  But if you can blend well enough, there are places anyone can disappear.  He had perfected the art of being quietly unassuming, so just like that, he was gone.

He looked at his music, selected something calming, quiet, peaceful.  Then immediately turned it off.  He threw his headphones on the ground and stood.  He listened to the ocean instead.  He swayed and let his arms float where they would and just let the waves carry his body away in motion.  Let it take his regrets.

A voice interrupted his moment.  "Nahman? I toud dat was yous.  I nevah fuhget a face, Nahm."  He didn't move now.