by James Comins
* * *
The beast bit down on a rabbit and let it run away. The rabbit would heal by daybreak. It always did. If too much joy filled the garden, the tree would begin to grow, the beast thought. The beast couldn’t let that happen, for Beauty’s sake. He kept telling himself that she’d never survive.
The garden was small, tangled, and green with red and orange trumpet-shaped flowers wending through ivy and vines. Beyond the garden on all sides was pasture, always empty. The beast thought this chill emptiness was enough reason. No place so chalk-like, so vacant, seen through such haze could be enough for Beauty. Enough for them both.
While it was, after all, true that the beast knew where he was, knew what an ocean or a desert or a moonscape might look like, he had for so long seen the same parsnips growing in the same place, seen the same ivy and rose-hips and bleeding rabbits, that the beast could no longer remember why he lived in the garden of Eden. That was too far in the past. He alone had known, and he had forgotten. All he knew was that Beauty must not change, must not see the tree grow. Her luminosity, her grace. The beast wondered if she was in love with him.
A flicker of memory, but that was all.
Maxwell’s Demon
1965. It was October in St. Louis, the leafy bald October, horses coughing out filmy billows in the cold snap that takes the rolling Mississippi time and again. Old Chet the paint docked his head, trotting before the surrey as me and Momma and Pop got in line with the folk from the riverfront, masses of uptown gentry, wharf scroungers, Negroes, a few bearded Chinamen. Some on foot, some in hacks, women sitting dainty on the backs of ponies. The arch they was building was half-complete, visible down the way from where the rivers met.
The telegraph tower was a rickety thing, about to tumble. We gathered under it, waiting. The man at the top, at the tall meeting of the wires, wore a bowler and a string tie, Boston-style. Even from down here under the linen surrey bonnet, you could see his sweat and twitching fingers as he bent over the key, the country stare and the sense of purpose.
Everyone had heard the talk: they had made a machine in San Francisco that could talk to the demon. The Nazis in their fancy Paris labs could do it. The demon could pump power to ships and motor carriages and sky-machines. Truman had asked Einstein about it years ago, and he had confirmed it. If word came down from Washington, we too might have a way of dividing light from darkness. Just like the good Lord did, once and away.
A noise like a beehive in a storm. Sizzling like I never heard took up across the wire. The operator’s tongue was pink in the corner of his mouth as he furiously translated Morse code onto paper with a stub of a pencil.
A bird landed on the traveling wire and fell to cinders.
The buzz of the line faded, and good talk was struck up. Pop called up from the board, asking for the news, but the whoop stopped him short.
"The engines are turning! The engines are turning! Thank God Almighty, the engines are turning!"
Red Sox Yankees
A man stood in the shadow of the thirty-story brick library. An umbrella was tucked under one arm. He stubbed out his cigarette with the tip of his heel. Rain broke and drenched him. Waiting was the easy part.
She came alone, the only colorful thing in sight. Embracing, becoming one shadow, the girl and the boy began the long walk up to the riot.
A single automobile trekked past along the curve of the center road, beneath caged trees with broad branches. It was not yet winter. A few meandering foreign students were missing the game. Everyone else was inside watching.
They had been talking about the players on the team. She was telling him who was Puerto Rican like her, who was Dominican, who was Cuban. Everyone was one or the other. Lightning hit the old South College, not too far behind them, a sound like a slow whip. He didn’t understand the game. She was explaining. The city needed to win, she said.
"Do you know what it’s like for everyone to think you’re a loser?" she asked.
"Yes," he said.
The tunnel hid them until they reached the southwest quad, where the riots were to take place. Highrises filled with flickering televisions sounded ooh’s and aah’s at every play. They held hands and waited at the tunnel mouth.
People only left the building to smoke cigarettes, one big drag before dashing through wedge-propped doors, desperate to return.
Someone peed out of an upper-story window, matched by enthusiastic voices.
The rain cut away to misty late nothing. Her hand was cold. After a while, their hips touched and he laid a hand at the pocket of her sweatshirt and pulled her beside him. Thin short fingers wrapped his shoulder and they didn’t talk anymore.
The misty five towers lost their mist as the game hit a long rally. Muddy grass waited. The entire city took the last gasp.
Roaring became a collective euthanasia for every anger, every humiliation. Every ball and strike elicited gasps from twentieth-floor windows. She stood on tiptoe and poked her nose in his cheek. They kissed. The game ended and the doors exploded open. Tall young men carried toilet paper rolls toward the little caged trees.
"I hope no one dies," he said.
"Why?" she replied.
The frisbee amphitheater between the towers filled with people. Shouts and hoots were the air. Chants began. Toilet paper streaked the sky. Three girls mud-wrestled, while a group of boys cheered. More girls joined. Angry underdressed men took spray cans and beer cans into the tunnel, elbowing past the girl. Spray hit the brown brick. The boy looked frightened. The girl held him and watched everything.
Encased in mud, the wrestlers began a hugging campaign. Light rain touched everyone with a winterness. The chanting became louder and angrier and dirtier. He clenched his fingers around her and wondered if she would protect him. As the crowd continued to burst forth from the doors, the bowl filled and the seedier people sought refuge in the tunnel. Smoke and light and sickly narcotics billowed out. She led him through narrow gaps to the outer rim of the mud pit. Fists pumped and catharsis roiled.
"I wish I felt this way," he said.
"You will," she said from his arm.
Briefly, he joined the simpler chants, even tried clapping with all the angry men. It was, however, a shirt that was not his size. She smiled sadly at him and led him to the street, toward the downtown cafes. A frat house was strewn with stolen furniture. They watched as men lit a fire on an overturned sofa and tossed unopened beer cans onto the nascent disaster. Women cheered.
They went closer to the hub of the city.
Down a sidestreet was commotion.
"I want to be there when it happens," she said to him.
"Why?" he asked.
Different screams came from a rundown street of rundown houses. Police were there. He kept her away; she delighted in being a witness. A man was on his back, screaming. Sirens sounded. Men rushed out of a house and smashed the police car windows. They flipped the police cars. They took away cordons. They barricaded the doors. An ambulance took away the screaming man, whose leg was a swollen smashed-up thing.
He turned her away. She kept looking as they crossed the street.
The cafes and bars were full. She pushed him through the standing flesh. People brushed against him, elbows and knees and a stray breast. He shuddered at her smiling hand. It was his first bar, but the Sam Adams she brought him was not his first beer. There were no tables. A crash from the upstairs dance floor brought police and ambulances to the bar. She led him out.
"We didn’t pay," he said.
"Don’t tell," she said.
They moved through the departing bar crowd and went back to the riot. It was too dark to walk outside the radius of streetlights. Policemen smashed boomboxes, so boomboxes were moved into dormitory windows. Further in, lights flashed around the bowl. At the crest of a curbed hill under trees, they watched paddywagons take everyone. She let go of his hand and left him there. She entered the circle of police, crouching between unoccupied cars, and got into line for the pad
dy wagons.
He watched. She waved.
The Old Open Door
Flowers bloom, and they bloom bright
I can’t tell the tale again
The starlings catch the deadest night
I’ll tell you each as I can.
They took her when the last mouse sang
This tale is growing colder
They carried a bag and a paring knife
Her tomb will grayly moulder.
I went to the graveyard where they told me she lay
I can’t tell the tale again
She was laid out, but headless, for they cut it away
I’ll tell you each as I can.
The flowers lay where the shears had cut
This tale is growing colder
That old open door had once been shut
Her tomb will grayly moulder.
She walks, she walks, of this I’m sure
I can’t tell the tale again
I hear her knocking on the old open door
I’ll tell you it all as I can.
So now you’ve heard all that I may tell
And I won’t be telling more
Now pour me a pint of the darkest ale
And I’ll up and shut the door.
The Woman on the Other Side
Janice woke up in the hospital, feeling alone. The catheter itched, but she hesitated to pull it out, not knowing if it would wet the sheets. Surveying the dark out the window and the dimmed rheostat lights, she realized that the other bed, shrouded by a tattered cream-colored screen, was occupied.
A ruby-red light blipped on the wall behind her, next to a little chain, like an old-fashioned draw-pull toilet. She pulled it and waited.
Minutes passed. Minutes and minutes and minutes. The nurse’s red-dyed hair swung past the door window without stopping. So invisible.
"Hello?" The voice that rattled from her was not her own. "I need a telephone. Hello?"
That other nurse, the bushy blonde, popped the door open, stuck her head in. "Your cell is right where you left it, Janice."
"How do I use it? Do I press nine?"
"Just hold down one, two or three, Janice. Like they showed you."
She pressed one. "Hello?"
"Jan?" The voice quavered, like she was talking into a mirror. "What are you calling to talk to me about?"
"I was going to ask you the same question!" She laughed. "I’m here, where they put me."
"How they treatin’ you?" the mirror-voice asked her.
"Waaell, they’ve put a tube into me and stole my panties, but they’re all very nice to me here. They’ve got a red nurse and a blonde nurse, and I feel just about like the queen of hearts. Anyways, I guess a warm bed’s more than some folks get. Alls I can hope for is to get better before I die." She laughed again. "Nothing like death to wake you up and get you out of bed."
"What can I do to help, Jan?"
A gentle shaking woke her up. It was the nurse with the dyed-red hair. "Would you like me to hold the phone for you?"
Her mouth sagged open. "I was just talking to . . ." The name left her. " Just now."
"I think you fell asleep, Jan." The nurse pointed to the cell phone dangling from Jan’s hand. "Maybe you ought to go back to sleep." She lifted the little clamshell, folded it shut, set it on the bedside stand. Janice nodded contentedly and laid her head back. The nurse departed.
A sound came from the bed on the opposite side, not quite words. It rasped, helpless and frightened against the faint hum of tube-strung machines. Must be a woman, for her to be in the same room.
"Hello, missy." Janice chuckled to herself. "Stuck in the same boat, huh?" The harsh breath continued. "Janice Harris. Jan. Out here from just under St. Paul. Town called St. Peter. Bad omen, eh?" She tried stretching her arms and caught the IV tower before it fell. "Are you local? I don’t get up to town as much as I used to. Old legs, old truck, old eyes." She arched her back. "It’s all old these days. Family come up to see you much?"
A nasal grunt met her, a pthhht and a moan.
"Got you on oxygen, have they? I had to get a machine after the first operation. Took me a month to get over the sneezing!"
The redheaded nurse came in and turned a knob.
Jan woke up in a different room, feeling alone. The IV needle had been removed. There ought to be a doctor here, telling her how she was doing, or a crowd of family she could scold. With a start, she realized the breathing tube was back; she sneezed involuntarily.
The cell phone rang its dingaling tootle. Unsteadily she picked it up, felt it shake as she pried it apart.
"Hello? Is this one, two or three?"
"It’s me, mom." The voice was unmistakable.
"Dolores! Oh, thank God! Let me tell you, they’ve taken me out of my room and brought me out here. I made a friend and they took her away, too. It’s like they’re taking bits and pieces of me away," Jan cackled.
The voice on the other end sighed. "It’s Maggie, Ma. Button one. Your daughter."
"No, no, button one gets me to the other end of the line. You must be number two!" Jan’s stomach gurgled. "Speakin’ a which. Could you tell the front desk that I need a bedpan, Maggie dear?
"Ma, you’ve called me four times today. This is the first time you’ve answered back. I’ve been worried sick."
"Well, they’ve been moving me here from the other side. My friend’s probably worried sick now, too, so don’t you bite my head off." Crying slipped out of the little telephone. "Oh, don’t start that, dear. Tears eat the soul. That other woman is going through an awful lot, but she keeps it together. Say, you know who never cried? Who I never saw cry, not once? Was Dad. Let me tell you, and this isn’t easy for me, but . . . Dad always liked you best."
"What? Really?" the other voice sniffled.
"That’s right, and don’t forget it. I’m tired, so I’m going to get off the line."
"Okay."
"I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Dolores."
Jan collapsed into the pillow. "I need a bedpan!" she called. Her hand grasped for the pullcord, but it was on the other side of the room, now. "I need a bedpan! Hey!"
An angry red dream followed, something deeply imperfect.
When she awoke, someone was standing beside her.
She woke up, feeling alone. The little phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Mom? It’s Randy. How’ve you been?"
"Well, to tell you the truth, dear, I’ve been lonely. Nobody visits me and nobody calls."
"What? I’ve told Maggie to call you a thousand times! She hasn’t called?"
"I was talking to my sister just a minute ago. How old is she now, Randy?"
"Inez is 92, mom."
"No, no, I mean Maggie. Is she talking?"
"Apparently not enough," Randy barked. "I’m going to call her."
"Give her my love, Randy darling."
Janice pressed the red button on the phone, laid her head back. The cream-colored divider ruffled slightly as the ceiling fan clicked on. A low wheeze rattled from the other bed.
"Have you seen my husband?" Janice croaked to the other side of the room. "Not that I’m expecting to find him, poor soul passed on last spring. But have you . . . seen him?" Another rattle. "Such a man. Strong lines, a good mustache, and his hands! He made furniture. Cabinets, hutches, chairs. Did all his own upholstery, too. His hands were the best leather. I remember him playing baseball with the kids, pitching with one of those big baseballs, whatever they’re called. His hand could grip it like a marble. So gentle, my Howie. I do miss him."
"Where is he?" asked the woman on the other side.
"Oh, you’re awake. Hope it wasn’t me that woke you. What’s your name, anyway?"
"Where’s your husband now?" asked the old voice.
"He’s in the cemetery, dear, like I said."
"Sounds like quite a man."
"That he was. And funny! Always quick with a joke. "
"I'd like to meet him, "
the other woman said.
"Have met, dear, have met. But enough about that. Let the living dwell on the living. We raised two wonderful children." Jan sighed and laid back in the bed. "I wish they knew."
On the other end of the phone, Maggie was yelling at her, asking her about medicine, something upsetting. "Was I a bad mother?" Janice asked the phone. That shut it up, gave her a moment of peace.
"Don’t use the past tense, Ma."
"Am I a bad mother?" Janice repeated.
"No, Ma, no, of course you’re not. I didn’t mean that. I’m just saying that you need to . . . to hold on the best you can. You can’t tell Randy that I never call or visit. You know how he gets about that."
"Oh, I know, I know, dear. He sometimes reminds me of Dad. Getting angry about the littlest things. Where is he?"
"Dad’s dead, Ma."
"Yes, I know that, Maggie. I’m asking you where Randy is."
"Minneapolis."
"Has he come up lately? I don’t remember seeing him."
"Makes excuses. Asks me to visit for him. You and I have had this conversation before."
"If he isn’t coming to see me himself, he shouldn’t be chewing you out. You’re your own person, Maggie. Don’t let him push you around, okay?"
"Okay, Ma." Maggie paused. "Thanks. It helps to hear you say that."
"Life’s hard enough without a man yelling."
"Yeah. We’ll come by tomorrow. You’ll like him."
"Only if it’s convenient for you, dear."
"See you then."
The other nurse, the one with bushy blonde hair, delivered a tray with soup in a mug and half a sandwich.
"Where’s the other lady?" asked Jan. "The one with red hair?"
The nurse gave her a look, tucked her in.
"She’s gone east of Eden, Jan."
Puzzled, Janice sank into the shallow tilt of the bed.
She awoke. Someone took away her tray.
When she woke up, Maggie was getting up to leave. Crying tears covered her. Footsteps paced outside.
"Going now, dear?" she asked.
"Of course! Do you think I could sit here for another second and put up with this? What the hell is wrong with you, Ma? Why would you say that? Do you just, just not care? Or remember? Is it not important to you? Am I not important to you?"
"Of course you’re important. You and Randy are the most important things in the world to me."
Maggie exhaled, hard. "You say that so often. Sometimes I almost think you mean it." She drifted out of the room.
"Dottie? Come and talk with me."
Down the hall, Jan heard her daughter yelling at someone. She closed her eyes, opened them again. The anger in her daughter’s distant voice collapsed her heart. Those nurses, having to listen.
Maggie stormed back in.
"Ma? I’m not coming to visit any more. If you want visitors, call Randy. He can do it himself." She marched away. Janice lost her daughter’s footfalls in the hallway. She heard the weeping for hours after. The ache of ending. The sound kept her awake.
The red-haired nurse changed her sheets, replaced the bed entirely. The woman on the other side complained in her sleep, the rasp peeling away at the world. Light fell away from the window, burrowing into the evening. Light lit up across the screen, threatening to break through. People came and went, none of them naming themselves. Old stories flew past her, replaying themselves in her mind. Memories flew past her, replacing themselves in her mind.