A Guitar and a Pen

by Robert Hicks

  “Mr. Sanders, are you still there?”

  “Oh yes, I am Mr. Sanders and I am still here.”

  “Thank you so much for holding, Mr. Sanders,” she says, and I’m thinking who’s holding Mr. Sanders, nobody, that’s who, and, “Oh Mr. Sanders, I’m so sorry to disturb you on your trip but something is terribly wrong with Mr. Munch!”

  “Something is so wrong with my little cat,” I say sheepishly, trying to maintain the animal theme, “that you have called me here on the sidewalks of New York?”

  “Oh yes, Mr. Sanders, Dr. Fawcett just now finished Mr. Munch’s checkup, and I have his notes right here in my hand.”

  “And?” And then a pregnant pause.

  “Mr. Munch has a murmur!”

  (Would that the vet were giving my ex a checkup, they could call and say, “Mr. Sanders we fear the bitch has a murmur,” which words would be within the approved vocabulary for these folks, and I could say, “Oh, don’t worry about it, just put her back in the kennel, which rhymes with fennel.” But she’s talking about my cat, the one with the long white hair and the cute name and pretty eyes.)

  And the cop is saying, “Move along,” to the sellers of various counterfeit items and to the homeless and to me, the guy with the cat with the murmur.

  “Elizabeth, are your sure this is my Munch he examined? And since when did cats start having heart murmurs?”

  “Oh yes, I’m afraid it is, Mr. Sanders. And cats are not unlike any other animals with hearts (they don’t know my ex). There can be problems. But let me tell you what our options are here.”

  “Yeah,” I tell the cop, “I’m moving, I’m moving all right.”

  “Yeah,” I tell Elizabeth.“What are the options?” (Knowing I have no pussy health insurance, no deductible, no co-pay, no money.)

  “Well, first off we probably need to do an ultrasound, not unlike the ultrasound they perform on pregnant women.”

  (When my ex was pregnant I wasn’t looking for the baby’s heartbeat— I was looking for my ex’s, wondering was there one in there somewhere.)

  “There’s a fine vet in town who’ll do that for you, and then we can decide on the course of treatment . . .”

  (Yeah, I’m gonna need treatment by the time this is over, when the cat dies and I have a whole bottle of pussy pain pills left and I can’t resist and the doc starts getting suspicious when I call in for a refill for my dead Mr. Munch.)

  “. . . we think will be best for Munchkin. We will need to monitor his blood for blood clots, since that could be a big problem if one were to come loose and circulate to his brain.”

  “Cats can have strokes, huh?”

  “Yes, again not unlike us humans, Mr. Sanders. But we can deal with that when you get back, we don’t want to put a crimp or a cramp or even a crampon in your vacation. Just be sure to tell whoever’s at the front desk that you need to see Dr. Fawcett when you come to pick up Munchkin.”

  I need some time to think, but this sidewalk is like a sea of humanity and the light says Walk and even the people who don’t know English seem to know what to do and we’re all walking together, like friends and buddies and compatriots. But surely I’m the only one with a cat with a murmur. And as that thought sinks in (has it sunk in for you yet, that I have a cat named Mr. Munch who has a murmur in his little cat heart?), I just up and stop walking and start wondering, only I guess my compañeros don’t know that I’m wondering and just figure I’ve got a mind to stand in the middle of the corner of some street and some avenue in the heart of the Big Apple, like some tourist who doesn’t know his butt from his mutt. I’m wondering what if the vet’s wrong, what if Munch doesn’t really have a murmur, or what if he’s right and Munch falls over dead before I get home and how did Elizabeth know I was here on vacation anyway? And why did they invent cell phones? Only I can’t really hear myself think ’cause of the taxis honking at me since I’m the only one standing in the street and it reminds me what that former friend, who just so happens (only in a story does somebody just so happen, huh?) to be from New York, told me always to remember when in New York if I want to live to talk about New York to my kids: “Keep walking,” he said to me.“Whatever you do, keep walking.” And I realize I’m in violation of his rule number one, but then he’s the one who made fun of my cat.

  (My ex doesn’t have the nerve to make fun of my cat because she has the world’s meanest cat and so is operating with limited moral wiggle room when it comes to cats, though that sure as hell doesn’t stop her when it comes to me, and I’m thinking maybe I should introduce my ex-friend to my ex and he can make fun of her pussy and we’ll see what you-know-who has to say about that), and now my cat, Mr. Munch, has a murmur. And the taxis are making their way around me as only New York taxis can, as if they’re all greased with Vaseline and bending amidships like metered bananas with wheels, and the drivers are all cursing at me in their language of choice, which seems to be running about eighty percent not English and the twenty percent that I understand I only understand because I’ve heard my ex say the same things, more than once.

  I’m the first person I ever had sex with. She, like you, oh gentle reader, never thought that was funny, either.

  And now the next group of walkers has overtaken me, the ones who were waiting for the Walk sign while the taxis were honking and winding their way around me, and these walkers want to know where the story is headed from here. They wanna know am I gonna turn around and call the vet back and tell him I’m headed home for the ultrasound ’cause I love that cat like a child, or am I gonna keep walking until I get to some museum or some restaurant or some store that they don’t have back home, ’cause if they had them back home why would I be here in the first place, and when I get to whatever I’m headed to will I try to put the cat and the murmur and the whole concept of cat mortality behind me at least for the moment and will I in fact try to live in the moment for once.

  (That was something my ex was big on, living in the moment, whatever the hell that means, and lord wasn’t she always harping how I worried too much about the future and worried too much about the past and why couldn’t I just take it one day at a time like they do in AA only I know she’d never go to AA so how does she know that’s what they do, though I remember that her dad, rest his soul, was a Mason but not the kind who lays bricks, and I know they have lots of secret shit in the Masons and maybe that’s where she picked it up, like she picked up every self-help book in every bookstore we ever walked into.)

  And I’m wondering, how do these fellow walkers of mine know that Mr. Munch has a murmur. So I ask them, and they say to me they say, “It’s written all over your face,” and I say, “Am I really that transparent?” and they say, “Yeah, we can see right through you,” and I say to them, “A penny for my thoughts,” and they say to me, “They ain’t worth it, buddy.”

  They like to call you buddy in New York.

  The next thing you know, because it’s the next thing I’m gonna tell you, the next thing you know they’re picking me up, these walkers who can read my mind, and putting me on their shoulders like those football players from the University of Alabama used to put Bear Bryant on their shoulders when they won the National Championship. They carry me to the sidewalk and they set me down on the sidewalk and the closest guy with a briefcase full of watches comes over and he hands me a watch and I try to give him twenty bucks but he says, “No, pal, I don’t need your money.”

  Then a guy with a bedspread full of purse knockoffs comes over and hands me a purse and he won’t take my money either.

  And then a cop walks up and he says, “You know we lost a lot of friends on nine eleven and we want you to be a friend.”

  Then it’s a homeless guy pushing his basketful of shopping bags over to me like I need a basketful of shopping bags and then he looks me right in the eye, which is rather unlike most of these homeless guys unless they want some money, but he looks me in the eye and he says, “Hey, buddy, ain’t that your phone ringin’?”
r />   “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  “Mr. Sanders, Dr. Fawcett here. I’m sorry to say we’ve made a wee little mistake, a feline failure to communicate, if you will. After I gave your Mr. Munch a thorough once-over— which he passed like the healthy pussy he is— I picked out a costume for him to wear to our Weekly Wednesday Highwhyin’ Luau and wrote that down on his report. Well, Mr. Sanders, I’m afraid that when Elizabeth glanced at the report while speaking with you earlier she mistook Mr. Munch’s muumuu for a murmur and may have, I fear, caused you to worry needlessly about your little pussy.”

  “Worry needlessly about my little pussy?” I say to the good doctor I say, “Jeez, you don’t expect me to believe that, do you? A murmur becomes a muumuu all of a sudden and instead of my cat dying prematurely he gets fat on roasted pig and spends the afternoon watching hula dancers dance the hula? Muumuu my— ”

  But by this time folks are beginning to get restless, seeing’s how they’re most of them New Yorkers, and New Yorkers aren’t apt to not get restless eventually, murmur or no murmur, and so I throw down the phone and hold up both of my hands like one of those televangelists with the gray hair poofed up who tell you God loves you and then rip your wallet right out of your shorts. The bastards. Yes, verily, I hold up my hands and I say, “Brothers and Sisters, if you were to read all the way though the Bible, all the way to the end of the mighty Book of Revelations, you would by now realize that every story has an ending, and that this story is no exception (rhymes with erection, perhaps posing a bigger problem than a little pussy) and that this one is due to end (with all due respects to my ex) right about . . . now.” Kapow. Purina Cat Chow.

  Mark D. Sanders

  Mark D. Sanders came to Nashville from Southern California in 1980 and decided he’d stay. He and his wife, Cindy, have five children between them, the youngest two having recently started college.

  These are the number-one songs in Mark D. Sanders’s music catalog: “Runnin’ Behind” (Tracy Lawrence), “Money in the Bank” (John Anderson), “Whatcha Gonna Do With a Cowboy” (Chris LeDoux and Garth Brooks), “If You’ve Got Love” (John Michael Montgomery), “They’re Playin’ Our Song” (Neal McCoy), “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” (Reba McEntire), “It Matters to Me” (Faith Hill), “No News” (Lonestar), “Blue Clear Sky” (George Strait), “Daddy’s Money” (Ricochet), “Don’t Get Me Started” (Rhett Akins), “This Ain’t No Thinkin’ Thing” (Trace Adkins), “Come Cryin’ to Me” (Lonestar), and “I Hope You Dance” (Lee Ann Womack), cowritten with Tia Sillers.

  Some of the other hits he’s written: “Bobbie Ann Mason” (Rick Trevino), “Walkin’ to Jerusalem” (Tracy Byrd), “Heads Carolina, Tails California” (Jo Dee Messina), “My Heart Has a History” (Paul Brandt), “I’d Rather Ride Around With You” (Reba McEntire), “Vidalia” (Sammy Kershaw), “The Day That She Left Tulsa” (Wade Hayes), “Mirror, Mirror” (Diamond Rio), “That’d Be All Right” (Alan Jackson).

  Awards include: Writer of the Year–ASCAP, Nashville Songwriters Association (twice), Billboard, Music Row magazine, American Songwriter; four CMA Triple Play Awards (three number-ones in a twelve-month period); 2000 CMA Song of the Year; 2001 Grammy Country Song of the Year; ASCAP Song of the Year (1997, 2001).

  Fork

  John Hadley

  Maybe it happened when my dad lifted me up and held me, leaning forward so I could see my grandfather. Black suit, white shirt buttoned at the neck, eyes closed, his bald head resting on a shiny pillow. So still. So quiet. The room barely breathing. Maybe then . . .

  My grandfather, J. P. Fellers, owned and operated the sawmill down the street and around the corner from the two-story house he built in Napoleon, Ohio. A lumberman in his early seventies, six-foot-two and strong as a log chain, he smelled like sawdust. He’d sit in his rocking chair in the narrow room between the kitchen and the living room, his huge hands and open arms herding my sister and me up into his lap, hugging and tickling us, then making a big show of removing his dentures and chewing on our ears with his toothless gums, growling as we giggled. My sister was seven, I was four. We loved Grampa Fellers, and Gramma Ruby too.

  They met when Ruby Kiff was in her early twenties. J.P. was in his mid-forties, a widower with eight daughters and a stove and heating business in Toledo, Ohio. Five days a week she rode the canal boat into town to work at a spice company that gave away free dishes with each purchase. One day after work, walking back to the canal through rain that had been falling since morning, she saw that the grassy field she had to cross to get to the boat was now a sea of mud. Over her shoulder she heard a man’s voice offering to help. Before she could turn around she was swept up, high off the ground, cradled in the man’s arms, and was moving across the muddy field toward the boat waiting in the water in the rain. A few weeks later they were married. Ruby Kiff was now Ruby Fellers, the wife of a man more than twice her age and stepmother to his eight daughters. All, except for one, were older than she was. The nine of them became best friends and stayed best friends forever.

  Three years after Ruby gave birth to my mother, J.P. got a call from a distant relative who was in the lumber business in South Carolina, saying he should come down and give it a try. He sold his stove and heating business, put Ruby, my mother, and a few possessions in the truck, and headed south. He moved them into a small house near the old sawmill he had bought sight unseen, rolled up his sleeves, and went to work.

  He loved everything about his new trade, especially the time spent in the woods on the end of a two-man crosscut saw, bringing down huge trees and hauling them back to the mill to be cut into lumber. Ruby was up every morning before dawn, cooking breakfast and packing lunches for J.P. and the men before they headed out for the day.

  The work was hard but life was good and the money was coming in nice and steady. Unfortunately it was going out as fast as it was coming in, because J. P. Fellers loved to gamble. Cards, dice, fistfights— he’d lay his money down. But he was going in the hole and the deeper he got the faster he dug, until he had run up some serious debts with some serious people. He packed up Ruby and my mother and left South Carolina late one night by the light of the sawmill burning to the ground. He was headed back north, where deep in the woods near the town of Napoleon, Ohio, the tree that would one day take his life was silently waiting.

  He managed to scrape up enough money to buy the small sawmill on the edge of town and in time build a good strong house a stone’s throw away. Most of his daughters now had husbands and children and were living nearby. Once again he was surrounded by family and friends, and once again he was the owner of a thriving business. My mother grew up and married a trumpet player who quit the band he was in and the road he was on when my sister was born. I was born three years later. We moved all over the state, but spent a lot of time in Napoleon with Grampa and Gramma Fellers.

  My sister and I loved the sawmill. Grampa had built a sort of crow’s nest in the corner of the mill about ten feet off the ground where we could sit and watch and listen to the song of the circular silver blur of a blade, the whine and the clang when it sliced into the length of a log, followed by an explosion of sawdust that shot into the air to the underside of the metal roof and then fell, along with the musical note of the blade, which rose again at the end of the run. One day a traveling artist came by. Grampa gave him a dollar and my sister and I sat on the hillside and watched him do a painting of the mill. It hung in the living room of the house from that day until many years after he had died.

  I was four years old when Grampa Fellers died, and I don’t remember when I heard the story of how it happened, but it started with him having gone out to look at some trees he was to cut down later in the week. That evening he told Ruby that there was one tree in particular he’d rather not have anything to do with. He said he didn’t know why, but as he stood there that afternoon looking at it, sizing it up, he had the feeling the tree was doing the same to him. It wasn’t the only time that week he said something to her about it, and she
noticed he was having trouble sleeping at night. The day before he was to start the job, a man came to the mill and tried to convince him to buy a tool he said would make the life of a lumberman a whole lot easier. He said the day of the two-man crosscut saw was over. It was true that being on the end of one of those old saws was such backbreaking work the lumbermen called them “misery whips.” He showed J.P. a brand-new chain saw and gave him a demonstration. J.P. thanked him but said he wasn’t interested. The man said he could use it for a day for free, to see if he liked it, and handed him the saw.

  Just before dawn as Grampa was leaving for work, Ruby told him good luck, not to worry, and that she would have his favorite meal waiting for him when he got home. Late that afternoon when the sun began to cool on the backside of the house she put the plates, cups, and silverware on the little table by the window at the far end of the kitchen. She walked back to the stove by the doorway, put some bacon grease in the pan, wiped her hands on her apron.

  J.P. and his men had used the old crosscut saws to take down all the trees but one. The one that had been keeping him awake at night was still standing, the chain saw sitting at the base of it. He had good reason to be concerned about that tree and had done everything he could to try to make it fall exactly how, when, and where he wanted it to. He was especially concerned about how much weight there was at the top of it. Widow makers— that’s what they called those limbs high up in the trees. And that damn chain saw— he didn’t like it, didn’t trust it, and didn’t want to use it, but when one of his men stepped forward, eager to try it out, J.P. pushed him aside and grudgingly fired it up. From the start he hated the noise, the blue smoke, and the smell of the saw fouling the forest. The first few inches of the cut were no problem, but as the saw went deeper the tree began to resist and when it neared the heart, the tree refused. There was a fault in that massive wooden tower, and the vibration of the chain saw caused it to rupture and a thousand pounds of tree came down on J. P. Fellers, almost completely burying him in the earth. He was still alive but could not speak. He could not move. The men knew they couldn’t free him and knew it was no use even to try when they saw his life leave his body through his eyes.