The Green Rolling Hills

by V. J. Banis

  In case you are wondering, I am going to my Uncle Anthony’s house to be a ring bearer in his wedding (that means I carry his wedding ring). My uncle is very friendly and is really friendly to me and really likes me. But he has eyes like my mother and my mother doesn’t like me.

  Sometimes I get real funny feeling when I am with him. But he does like me and I don’t got too many people who like me. Like my dad says, “beggars can’t be choosers.”

  Long John Silver in Des Moines (on the Rock Island train though)

  PS: Did I tell you my real name is Bobby Rockwell?

  Our Basilica of Saint Fred, Chicago, 1957

  Bobby jumped when the organist pounded the keyboard and The Wedding March blasted through the golden pipes. “Oh, crud!” Both his wedding ring responsibilities rolled off the tiny pillow he held and hit the cathedral’s vestibule floor with a chimey bounce.

  The poofy-perfect little flower girl squatted and plucked up the rings as fast as Binky scarfing up peanuts. She smiled and batted her eyes at Bobby as her female instincts took over and she re-set the nuptial gold bands back on their pillowy home as if she were setting a tea party. She crinkled her nose at him and said, “You look very handsome.”

  Handsome his tiny pirate’s behind! He itched and choked and squirmed beneath the black monkey suit Uncle Anthony had made him wear. She crinkled her nose again and pinched at the pleats of her dress with a mild curtsey, then forced her opinion on him, “Don’t you think I’m pretty?”

  Bobby gave her the once-over and stuck his finger in his shirt collar and tugged, trying to get some air.

  The flower girl’s hands went to her hips; she pouted. “Well, don’t you think I look pretty?”

  “Yeah, pretty ugly, pretty stupid.”

  Snap-snap-snap!

  To Bobby’s horror, it was a nun, a darned black and white cloaked penguin, snapping its fingers at him and scowling. They had nuns in Chicago, too? That’s not fair! The old nun stretched her thin dry lips to a yellowish pointy-toothed grin at the flower girl and patted her shoulder. “You look very, very pretty, dear.” The little girl smiled all sugary warm and then stuck her tongue out at Bobby. The organ played on. “Now, that’s your cue, dear,” the old nun said, “get your flower basket.”

  The little girl disappeared, and the old bag nun whirled on Bobby just like the Wicked Witch of the West. She stuck her finger at his nose and flicked it.

  “Ow!”

  “And don’t you try any funny business here, mister. That’s right, I know all about you. Sister De Lourdes called me from the convent in Des Moines.” She squinted behind her wire-rimmed glasses. Bobby winced. Her breath smelled like she had eaten a dead mouse. “I know all about what you did to those poor little twin girls and their Barbie dolls. Despicable, just despicable. What kind of little boy are you?”

  The best man and bride’s maid had started down the aisle. The nun pushed Bobby toward the door as the organ piped on. “Now shut-up and get going.”

  Bobby had never felt more self-conscious in his life, feeling all churchy eyes upon his every move. He took his short, rigid steps, step by step, looking at the rings, then at the altar, then back at the rings. He heard the loud whispers from the old biddies in the pews: “Oh, look, Hazel, the little ring bearer—isn’t he adorable!”

  If “handsome” annoyed Bobby, then “adorable” about made him want to barf.

  Miraculously, he made it to the altar without dropping the rings. The best man and maid of honor already stood there, waiting. Uncle Anthony pitter-patted his way down the aisle, grinning and waving at everybody as he did once on a Columbus Day float.

  Bobby felt hot and sick. And now he had the urge to move his bowels. He closed his eyes; he sucked in his breath and puckered up his behind. Oh, no, not a BM, not now. He squirmed and puckered and jiggled and danced together.

  Then it happened.

  He blew a big fart.

  From a close pew, he heard his mother gasp. When he braved a look toward the gasp, his mother sat in the front with the Wicked Nun of Chicago. Uncle Anthony chuckled lightly, patted Bobby’s shoulder, and whispered in his ear. “Your mother always said you were a little stinker.”

  The nun’s lips mumbled, making her throat shake its loose, wrinkled turkey skin over the white cardboard throat guard. Bobby could’ve sworn she mouthed, “I’ll get you, my little stinker...and your little raccoon, too.”

  Bobby felt his face flush hot with embarrassment. He glanced again at his mother and knew by the way she scowled at him that she would beat him as soon she got him alone. Probably team up with that darn old-bag nun, too. Oh, it would have had to be one of those big, loud soupy farts. He shook his leg. Amazing, nothing trickled out.

  Well, it could’ve been worse. That was something he was grateful for, he guessed.

  AIDS DIARIES—FRANCEL, by Eve Birch

  When you had the AIDS virus in the ’80s and ’90s, because of a severely compromised immune system; the simplest ailment would fly way out of control.

  My patient/friend/mentor/Jesus had what in you or I would be a generic dermatitis. It made him into a straw man, so much flaking and ash that his race was erased, fingers, toes and nose flayed like Japanese paint brushes, teeth falling out like spit sunflower shells.

  We had gotten him up to soft foods and his ritual included a warm folded cloth by his egg sandwich for before and after hand and face wiping each meal.

  This morning was the same. I placed his plate, cloth, coffee, and juice on a TV tray by his bed, oriented him, and went to record his A.M. vital signs in my journal while he ate.

  “Eve?” Clear soft confusion floating down the hall. I scooted to his room. He sat primly at his table in the dim lamplight, his blindness and my lack of ocular pigment not needing more light until it was time for skin care, body checking or reading.

  He had such an endearing puzzled look on his face, holding his square sandwich in his hands, and he tried once more to take a bite to show me his difficulty.

  He was holding his washcloth. With his feathered fingertips he couldn’t tell them apart. His egg sandwich sat on its plate.

  I took the cloth and replaced it with the food and said, “Try this one, it might taste a little better.”

  No smile. It was only a little funny. We laughed later.

  DAY LIGHTS, NIGHT LIGHTS, by Eve Birch

  The Lights...they were a bird family already in residence on top of the porch light when I got the crappy house in the holler. We became friends, as friendly as one can get with the wild things, once I learned not to burst out the door, or sit close during feeding time. This friendship was cemented when I began to see my long silver strands woven in with the mud, moss and deer fur they added to their home shortly after I arrived and did my morning brushing off the porch steps.

  I saw these tiny wonderful people through their third brood in that nest in that long, hot summer. The babies would point their tiny orange beaks to the sky at the least vibration, then the gray fuzz appeared on their itty pink heads, making them look the littlest circle of elders...then the opening and recognition in those perfect glass-bead eyes. It was nice watching babies grow again.

  I’d drop live bugs in the nest and whatever parent was on duty would give me a ration of shit from a nearby branch. We’d chat back and forth sometimes. They didn’t like me on their porch, so I mostly sat on the steps.

  The second brood had started their cute baby stuff, quickly learning their parents’ disdain for me and my intrusive and non-bug chewing ways. In the definition of mental illness runs the logic: if one disturbs or disrupts the lives around one...but, me and the Lights, we were okay neighbors.

  So, one fairly normal evening before sunset, I’m sitting by my yard dinner fire with a goblet of creek-chilled berry wine a friend had dropped off, waiting for the cheese to melt on my raviolis, when behind me Mr. And Ms. Light starting raising holy hell up on the porch.

  When I turned to look, they were flapping like crazy and
flying from the nest to the side yard, crying frantically. There was a huge black snake draped over the doorframe, reaching into the nest and stuffing babies into his maw.

  I ran up the steps. That black bastard had two in his mouth and what looked to be two more lumps behind his baby-eating head. And, looking at the stupid fork in my hand, I tossed it to the ground and grabbed the big splitting wedge by the door and gave him one good crunch in his middle. He dropped the two lifeless bodies on the floor where he landed over the doorsill, and tried to pull himself into the house.

  The silly kitten I’d brought home a week before kept running at it and leaping over it’s biting head, so I pitched the kitty toward the grass and used the back of the wedge to bust the snake’s head, pulled him from the doorway and tossed him about ten feet past the kitten.

  There’d been five babies, so three must have been eaten, and I was in no mood to check any snake guts. I picked the two up off the floor. They were wet and still, but warm and they sure weren’t moving, so I laid them in the nest with their little heads set on the edge in case the parents wanted to see for themselves. The snake was still alive and thrashing some. I dispatched the hell out of him and measured him by step: eleven feet of what would normally have been an unharmed and useful neighbor until he ate personal friends.

  I apologized to them where they sat on the branch there. I was so damn sorry I hadn’t gotten there in time. Five babies at once...it just sucked so bad. The Lights chucked softly and I left them alone to sit by the fire. I felt so bad. I undid my bedroll, refilled my glass a few more times and let Tawanda-dog eat my dinner while I drifted off to an unhappy sleep.

  I dreamed about being alone in cold dark places, being so scared and lonely, nobody looking for me...woke up with a hunch, wondering if maybe that snake hadn’t eaten all of them. After all, I’d only seen four...I got up and grabbed a candle handle, wedged a new one in and lit it. I walked up the porch, shining it everywhere, looking under the porch chair, behind the wood tools...sigh. No baby. Besides, it was dark hours ago, if anything did live, surely it would be eaten by now by any of the other neighbors in the holler.

  I walked down the drive to take a pee and, stepping carefully where I knew there were tripping rocks in the grass, I saw an out of place rock....

  Yup. Baby bird. Huddled and shaking and eyes big in the dark. I scooped him up, his cold little feet found my fingers, so he wasn’t totally busted. I put him very gently in the nest, cleared the others and tossed them to the woods—hey, no need to waste protein, they were dead. I put my bandana halfway over him and called out to the Lights in the pre-dawn dark, “Come feed this fellah, you still have one here.”

  Falling back into a happier sleep a few minutes later, I didn’t wake till well after sunrise, chucked a few sticks in the fire to start some coffee and walked up to the porch.

  Three birds swooped out of the nest and flew over my head and into the sassafras tree.

  It’s those minutes I love. Now and then a person can feel a little bit restored.

  HOB KNOBBIN’, by Eve Birch

  Mandrake, the ferocious giant kitten chasing the chicory and conquering a very patient lilac bush, then preening serenely five inches past the end of chain holding his sister Tawanda, a sixty-five-pound Jack Russell wannabe (ever see the Hulk dogs?) They like each other.

  The morning is unfurling as it should. She woke at her usual 4:30, scrabbling for matches to find a candle stub, to find her socks and boots so she could walk to the outhouse and then rekindle the coals from last night’s fire out front.

  Heating water and dumping it into two stoneware bowls with oats, butter, a pinch of kosher salt and a glob of strawberry preserves. The last into a metal mug with instant mud, creamer and brown sugar. She capped and carried them with two hand rolled cigarettes out to the now crackling fire...where they sat while she cried for her Dad as the sun came up.

  This time last year she’d made them both coffee and oats, even though he’d quit eating. She thought maybe the smell would entice him, but he’d asked for her blessing to quit and she respectfully gave it. After all, he’d gone with her so he could be the Boss of his body and the Lord of each day—the only gift she could give him after the great honor of friendship and mentor-hood he’d given her for forty-three years.

  His lessons haven’t stopped teaching her; he is now a part of the bigger stream that she is just becoming aware of. But as a blood filled, breathing, farting mortal, she aches to hear his kind voice and soft laugh; to feel that love that he never held back from her, no matter how stupid or thoughtless she was.

  She weeps hard, then wipes her still leaking eyes, knowing he wouldn’t want her to despair so; just live and be, and never let go of her curiosity or her passion for seeking and cherishing life’s little and big treasures, “cause that’s all we have, isn’t it?”

  She hears a crackle and looks up to see Bambi-Mama, waiting for her oatmeal. “You’re a little slow this morning, Lady,” her eyes say. She stamps her pretty feet.

  She backs up the hill as her bowl is set by the spring and matches the woman step for step forward as the bowl is left behind.

  No chores today, she decides, except maybe the dishes before she hauls water back from town. Maybe she’ll find someone who needs lunch and bring them back with her like Hob always did, like she does now.

  PAPPY’S ANGELS, by Leigh Horne

  He knew it wasn’t recommended, but Calvin, a.k.a. Pappy, Dumfries always gave in and let the twins hitch a ride as he drove the John Deere in from the fields. Once or twice charmed passersby had stopped and taken pictures of the ritual that occurred every Saturday morning June through September, right before Pappy’s Angels roadside stand opened for business.

  Calvin knew the three of them were a postcard from rural America: him with his farmer tan and bill cap and the twins with their tousled towheads. He was grateful that every August, when his grandson took his wife on a church-sponsored couples’ getaway, he and Ellie got the pleasure of their company. He enjoyed having Jessie and Brandon on weekends, but this was for two solid weeks.

  He thought up the roadside stand scheme last year. Every penny from Pappy’s Angels was going into a college fund. Now that the kids were getting set to enter Kindergarten, it wouldn’t be long before they went to college—and they would go, if he had anything to say about it. Time was flying by, and by the time the two of them graduated from high school, it would be moving near the speed of light, from where he stood, if he was still standing. Although he was only sixty-five, a life of hard labor had the cumulative effect of making him stoop like a damn ape.

  When the kids decided that helping Pappy harvest his corn and veggies was more interesting than splashing in the pool he and Ellie put in for them, he painted a six-by-eight plywood sign, put in a counter with a hinged window that opened on the road side of the barn and nailed the big sign above it.

  Ellie stitched a banner with two cherubs holding a basket of vegetables. He complained about having to sink a post to hang the dang thing from, but it was eye-catching and contributed not a little to the success of the enterprise. They’d brought in over five hundred dollars so far, and hoped to do better this year, as word made its way from one end of the county to the other, and parts beyond.

  “Hold up now, little tater,” he said as he turned off the engine inside the barn. “I told you to wait for me before you try to unload.” Brandon had already hopped down and was unlatching the trailer gate. Grinning, he started to toss long ears from the pile into the willow baskets they used for the display out front.

  Jessie put her head on the old man’s shoulder. “I’m always good, Pappy, aren’t I?” she said, patting him primly as if to emphasize the difference between herself and her rambunctious brother.

  “I don’t call you my angel for nothing,” he answered, patting her back. “But not all angels are as obedient as you. Now, why don’t you just head over there and crank open the flap so’s we can get started?”

 
; “’Tay, Pap-pap,” she said.

  Presenting her cheek for a peck, the little girl stepped decorously to the floor, careful as always to smooth down the gingham apron her grammy had made for her to wear when she worked behind the counter. Grammy was no fool when it came to making the right impression.

  He heard a car pull up outside. Early bird gets the worm.

  “You just tell the nice people we’ve got some Silver Queen, and we’ll have it out in a minute.” He knew she’d probably have sold two bags of tomatoes and one of cucumbers, plus a couple of green peppers and some squash before they brought the first of the corn up. The girl could charm the rattle off a timber snake. “Brandon, step lively now. We got to get this corn into the baskets so I can help your sister make change.”

  “Yessir!” the boy said, putting four ears into one basket. He was strong, eager and well-mannered. Calvin thought he had the makings of a good farmer. Maybe he’d major in agriculture. Maybe he’d be interested in inheriting the farm, and would come up with some good ideas like they talked about down at the Grange: boutique farming and all that. He smiled.

  Out of the corner of his eye he marked the barn’s side door opening. He hoped Jess wasn’t trying to carry on with anyone’s dog. The child loved animals more than anything: cats, dogs, birds and even the wild things in the woods. Last weekend he’d had to warn her about not leaving the counter to make much over someone’s puppy. When her daddy got back from vacation, Pappy planned to ask him about getting her a dog of her own for her fifth birthday in September.