by Paul Griner
DECEMBER 2018
In the video, Dexter Fenchwood peacocks behind the altar in a powder blue suit. Gaudy fits; he wants to be noticed. I’d realized that when I’d first picked him out in the waiting room. I’ve watched this two dozen times—a bad workday like today sends me back to it every time; sometimes it feels so good to smolder.
It seems like innocent blood, Fenchwood says, gesturing theatrically. It’s natural for us to become incensed. Forty-three children killed! Forty-three!
Some of their faces flash on a screen behind him.
And twenty-seven wounded! he says, with Liam’s face behind him now.
He stops, squats, pauses, says it again, his voice lower this time, barely a whisper, his palm moving over the floor like over a field of grain, the heads of children. Forty, three, children, killed, and, twenty, seven, wounded, he says, the dramatic pauses filled with silence. When he bows his head, his thin blond hair covers his face like a curtain and parishioners lean forward to take in his words.
But what about the adults? he says, bounding up to pace again, vibrating with emotion. Nine selfless brave men and women who stood in the path of bullets so that the young might live! Yet God has given us a brain. He has asked us to think! He stops, and here his voice trembles. Think about those children! Think about how two of their teachers were fags, inculcating them with their evil, possibly molesting them. And as you think, he says, his red face distorted with disgust, remember the Psalms. The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity.
At the edge of the stage, he reaches toward the crowd. And remember Leviticus when you give thought to our nation, our nation that argues we need to respect sodomy. He stares out at the crowd. And what did God say about that, generations before? And ye shall not walk in the manners of the nation, which I cast out before you: for they committed all these things, and therefore I abhorred them.
That’s what God said about it. God abhorred them. Think on that word, take it to heart. God abhorred them! And recall Malachi. I have laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.
Now he’s really rolling, his thin blond hair flying as he darts in front of the altar. In 1898 BC, he says, God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins, yet now we have funerals for impenitent sodomites like the teachers of those children. In response to which I say, Our gospel message is the world’s last best hope.
To which I say, Do not believe the hell-bound prophets with their Arminian lies that Jesus died for everyone. They are messengers of Satan, and accursed of God.
To which I say, If you care about your never-dying soul, if you care about total depravity: God killed those forty-three children and nine adults because FAGS BURN IN HELL, because GOD IS NOT MOCKED, because FAGS DOOM NATIONS.
He pauses, breathing heavily, and says, And remember that because of that, we say—he raises his arm—Can I have a chorus?
And as he brings his arm down again and again, the parishioners erupt, their voices drowning out his.
THANK GOD FOR AIDS! THANK GOD FOR DEAD SOLDIERS! THANK GOD FOR DEAD AND WOUNDED CHILDREN!
Wild One
DECEMBER 2015
A neurosurgeon who was also a neurologist sat looking through Liam’s file, Victoria Wild; she went by Vic. It sounded like a porn name, which I didn’t say, though I couldn’t help notice her head of beautiful brunette hair and short skirt and her long, smooth shapely legs. Such calves! I wanted to draw them, to cup them in my palms. What a perv, noticing that while machines beeped, with damaged brains and ruined bodies and death death death all around. Then I wondered if it wasn’t simply human, the urge toward life when enveloped by destruction, and took surreptitious glances until I made myself stop.
Her hands surprised me, though. Big as skillets with fingers. When she came to one X-ray, she told me she worried about shearing. I looked at her blankly.
She said, The brain is actually a series of very thin planes, connected by nerve fibers. Often in car accidents and sometimes in shootings and in falls down stairs, the brain is subjected to such force that the planes slide back and forth violently, shearing those neural connections. Brains can look relatively fine on X-rays or MRIs, she said, holding Liam’s up to the light for me, as if I might know what I was looking at, but the damage is there.
How long does it take for those connections to regenerate? I asked.
Oh, she said. They never regenerate. The result is usually death. Occasionally the patient doesn’t die, but remains in a vegetative state. For years, even.
She tucked the X-ray back in like bedding a tulip bulb and closed the file and stood up and smoothed her skirt, ready to move on to her next case. I was appalled by the casual nature of her comment, even as I understood she was simply doing her job. My stomach felt hollow, my chest. I had the odd sensation that I was levitating, that I no longer had lungs. Then she said, I wish you’d had a chance to talk to him, after the shooting. Then we’d know. She gathered her long hair in her hand and turned the bunched ends up like an umbrella handle and sniffed it.
I did, Dr. Wild, I said, and told her about how when Liam woke up in recovery after his first surgery he said, Happy Birthday, Otto! and we’d talked about what he wanted to get me as a present. I didn’t say anything about the whole benbow thing, because I didn’t think it mattered, and because it might.
Oh, good, she said, and slipped the file back in its place at the nurses’ station and flipped her hair back over shoulder. I thought it must be quite a procedure to get it all under a cap when she operated.
She said, If he can talk like that, he doesn’t have shearing, and walked off. The gold chains wrapped around her low tan boots winked as she walked.
I called May right away, wanting to share this victory, but it didn’t seem to impress her as much as it had me. I sat beside Liam and fiddled with my phone and wondered if she’d detected my undercurrent of desire.
Kate
In her most-viewed video, she sits behind a desk in a crisp blue-and-white-striped blouse and dark jacket, with diplomas visible behind her on the wall, though what schools they’re from seems impossible to make out. Remember that seems.
A pen and pencil set on the leather blotter atop the massive mahogany desk, bookshelves filled with legal books, all the trappings of an accomplished lawyer. She leans toward the camera to speak. We are almost certainly dealing with government-funded, legal propaganda to achieve a supposed national-security objective, she says, which is a Deep-State priority, the disarming of the citizenry.
Images of East Germany and the Soviet Union in the ’50s and Afghanistan in the ’80s flash on the screen. She says, The United States Department of Defense has conducted information operations for years in foreign countries during wartime, and now it’s doing so at home. Civilian participants are almost certainly convinced these operations involve a good and necessary objective.
Pictures of me and Lamont pop up. Furthermore, she says, they are likely paid large sums and have signed nondisclosure forms, which include serious penalties, possibly imprisonment for a very long time, if the terms are violated.
Lamont again, in handcuffs, after a DUI, though there’s no way for anyone to know that. Kate sits back in her chair and says: Unless you understand those elements, it’s hard to grasp how these things can be pulled off. I know, because I used to be a US attorney.
Slick and convincing, the visuals, her obviously educated diction, the US attorney claim. That it’s all lies doesn’t matter; the gullible are willing. She repeats her allegation that the school shooting was staged, that “Liam” is an actor, a boy from California, and adds, Further proof that “Liam” wasn’t real is that his picture showed up in images from a massacre in Pakistan years later, from an attack on a hospital that supposedly killed 147 people.
After which the screen shows Liam’s picture, one I released, held up with pictures of boys killed in Pakistan by an apparently distraught father. Why a Pakistani parent held it up
is something I’ve never been able to figure out, but it’s the one piece of evidence that doubters always come back to.
Then she shows pictures of a child actor next to pictures of Liam, and the boys look alike. If you saw it once or twice or weren’t paying attention, you could believe it; she’s very convincing. But I’m paying attention, especially to her final words.
A lovely face, she says. But don’t worry. Before long, he’ll appear in the next government-staged crisis event, presented by complicit media to a gullible public. Call Otto Barnes. Tell him to stop lying. Tell him America deserves the truth.
Her face fades and my phone number appears, one I’ve changed often. Each time, I put $500 away. If it comes to it, I’ll pay a private detective to track her down.
Sometimes I want to find her so I can convince her she’s mistaken, so she can convince others, and sometimes I want to find her so I can shake her, scream at her to stop making these outlandish statements, stop making me hurt, stop inspiring other hoaxers, who harry and harass us, who hurt May. And sometimes I just wish that, for a few hours, I could exchange with her my tired heart.
LBTS So It’s Not for Sale, I Swear to You
DECEMBER 2015
How did you get this number? I asked, wheedling, when I’d aimed for menace.
Craigslist, she said, and hung up.
Awake now, I checked the computer and my car was for sale, at a ridiculously low price, followed by my phone number. Late night calls acceptable. After two hours, I got them to pull the ad. Can’t guarantee it won’t show up again, though.
I went back to bed. The room smelled of apple and cinnamon, May’s new perfume, changed in hopes of changing our luck. You did this, she said. Pissed someone off somehow. That’s why they’re after you.
May, I didn’t do anything. That’s foolish.
Foolish? Then why are they after you? You. You and nobody else?
I knew she was scared and tired; I was too. We’d been told this would happen by a hospital counselor, that we’d grow angry over time and perhaps take it out on each other, that we should watch for it. I’d watched and I knew and I didn’t care.
I wanted to grab her chin so hard I’d leave marks. Listen, May, I said, keeping my voice level and low, bunching the sheets in one hand. You better get something straight. This happened to both of us. Liam being shot. It didn’t just happen to you.
She refused to answer. I was about to say something more when her lips trembled. Hold her, I thought, but she was still giving off a prickly pear vibe, so instead I made her a pot of her favorite mint tea to help her sleep, and when I brought her the steaming mug she thanked me and apologized and smiled.
Christmas for Beginners
DECEMBER 2015
After sunset, heavy marbled clouds filled the sky and the rain exploded and the wind picked up and blew in a cold front, behind which the slashing rain changed to sleet that ticked against the windows and snow that muffled sound. I watched it all through the Neuro-ICU window. Liam slept in the narrow, railed bed, his eyes darting under his eyelids and his body still, a good sign, Dr. Wild said, touching her Christmas tree pin as if for luck. Restorative sleep. I wanted to believe her.
The snow picked up. After she left, a great yellow reef of light flashed through the black clouds and a long crack of thunder peeled across the sky, rattling the window; thunder snow. Miraculous, but I had no one to share it with, May still at work and none of the nurses aware of it and no one in the waiting room I recognized.
That I was the only one who’d seen it depressed me, so I left the Neuro-ICU and walked down the long quiet hallway to the elevators past the multicolored Christmas lights blinking below the ceiling and rode one down to the first floor to go outside, hoping to see it again, or at least to see something different than the ward with its curtained bays and beeping machines and still bodies under the thin sheets and thin blankets and people waiting—desperate and hopeful—in the nearby waiting room. The hours we’d spent there, days of them, weeks.
Outside, cars came and went or idled against the curb, smokers with their windows open despite the cold, and I counted a dozen sodden or shredded umbrellas stuffed into trashcans or flapping in the gutters. Snow gusted past in the cold wind, white and then yellow when it slanted across the streetlights and then white again on the far side. A bell rang for the Salvation Army drive and I dropped all my change in the big red kettle and all the bills in my wallet without counting them. Snow piled up on the parked cars and street signs banged in the wind and a blue light blinked on a cell tower.
A handcuffed prisoner in an orange jumpsuit accompanied by a beefy cop wearing a bulletproof vest went by, the two of them chuckling at the skunky smell of weed hanging in the wet air; I wanted some. A bald man sat in his car parked against the curb facing the wrong way, vaping, his fingertips green where they rested against the car radio. He asked to borrow my cell phone and I almost said I didn’t have one, but I let him; we were in front of a hospital, for chrissake. Then I thought I should tell him about Liam so he wouldn’t drive off and felt bad about thinking that after he made his call and gave my phone back and handed me his pen.
Not a noob, he said, as I ripped it, and I nodded. An open sky-blue umbrella cartwheeled down the street in the wind and we watched it tumble past us and past the hospital and past three glowing food trucks until it snagged on a bush. We smiled at that and I handed him his pen. The salt crunched under my boots as I walked back into the hospital, its powdery trail tapering off over the big rectangular gray mat and down the black terrazzo hallway, which grew shinier the farther I got from the sliding doors and the cold blowing in behind me.
In the Neuro-ICU, nothing had changed. Liam didn’t seem to have moved at all, one thin arm still angled over the gray blanket, his closed eyelids glossy and still, and still so dark they looked bruised. I sat with him and held his hand, my thumb finding his strong pulse at his wrist; he smiled. Snowflakes melted as they struck the warm window and the strings of beads stretching down the glass looked like tinsel. Then it was May’s turn to sit beside Liam and I realized I was humming carols on the way to my car and wished I’d hummed to him instead, or to her. To both of them.
I should go back in, I thought, but noticed that my right rear tire was flat, a nail. It seemed too much, finally, and I stood bereft looking at it, my chest a canyon, until three strangers came and changed the tire and would take no money, though I offered. My skin prickled with sweat and I grew hot under all my layered clothes when I realized I’d given it all away, but it didn’t matter.
No, the youngest said, the fringe on her vintage leather jacket swaying as she stood, no money, and put her green wool gloves back on and touched my face and said, Merry Christmas, and left.
Letters
Why is there no record of any environmental company that cleaned up the bloody mess? Blood and bones and brain matter?
You say your son’s blood spread all down the hallway, and the blood of all those other so-called victims, the dead ones. Small children but still filled with blood. And the adults—“teachers” and “Parents”. 1.5 gallons per person. Exsanguination is the technical term, but it adds up to a lot of blood. As long as their hearts are beating, it just pumps out of them, every bullet hole a gusher.
If 75 gallons of blood was spread out over all those classrooms and hallways, along with bone and brain matter, why did no one ever clean it up?
Saffron and Saltpeter
DECEMBER 2015
Katrina’s parents, blond and bland, lived in a gated community with a meetinghouse. A big stone fireplace and leather couches, vanilla-scented candles and leather-backed books. About sixty of us came to the meeting.
Allocating donated money was tricky. Parents whose children had died should get a larger share, but wounded kids needed medical care—some for life—so how much did the pain of death trump the needs of the living? Nothing in our lives had prepared us for it, and no one wanted to appear hard-hearted or greedy.
/> Shen’s father proposed the best solution. Split it sixty-forty, he said, standing in front of the fire, his thin face tight and pale. Sixty to those whose children died, forty to the wounded. Shen’s leg had been amputated, and Henry’s proposal seemed fair; we left the meeting room for coffee and cookies and to let it stew.
I’d made chocolate chip cookies; Lamont brought a bottle of bourbon.
Good choice, I said, ribbing him to lighten the mood. A mistake, I saw, and switched my attention to the news on the muted large-screen TV. Afghanistan.
What a fucking disaster, I said. Our longest war, and for what?
What would you do? Lamont said. Pull our soldiers out, so all those others would have died in vain? The cords on his neck stood out.
Come on, Lamont, I said, surprised into getting louder. Sooner or later we have to leave. Why keep sacrificing kids when it plainly isn’t working?
Oh, right. He put down his coffee. You want to leave so the Taliban can bomb us in another three years and we have to go back in and kill them all again.
Jesus, Lamont! They’re still killing us now, only it’s over there instead of here. I don’t see how that’s better.
That’s because you’ve got your head up your ass. Why don’t you get your money and get up through?
I turned away from him, eyes stinging, shoulders and neck tight, hands trembling with adrenaline. All the other parents stood in a semicircle, watching. I pushed by Henry and stepped outside to calm down, and when the door opened behind me and noise spilled out into the darkness, I turned to tell Lamont to fuck off or to take it offline, but it was Shen’s petite mother, Jia, a stalwart at the hospital.
Intense, she said, and understandable. She hugged herself against the cold night air. Our anger comes out at the slightest provocation. Just yesterday I snapped at a saleswoman who showed me a sale rack of dresses. Do you think I can’t afford full price? I said. I felt crazy even as I said it, but I kept hectoring her.