From ‘Good Writ­ing, a Gaz­etteer & Guide’:

Pg. 14: “Write what you know” — Anonym­ous (though often attrib­uted to Ern­est Hem­ing­way).
Pg. 82: “First drafts are shit” — Ern­est Hem­ing­way.
Pg. 7: “It’s not wise to viol­ate the rules until you’ve learned to observe them” — Lil­lian Hell­man? (No, T.S. Eliot, a Brit­ish poet born in St. Louis, Mis­souri.)
Pg. 69: “If I had to give young writers advice, I’d say
don’t listen to writers” — Lil­lian Hellman.

An awful lot of telling. We need a scene.

A hazy Alabama July and Markus Ruud stood in the empty work­shop room. A wasp flit­ted in a corner, thud­ding the beige wall. On the chalk­board, Freytag’s Tri­angle drawn in a shaky scrawl. Markus Ruud once taught writ­ing in this room — taught writ­ing — and had to pain­fully smile. A room. A dusty square tucked into the corner of an under-funded Eng­lish depart­ment. Dimpled ceil­ing tiles and cracks like river maps. Scuffed floors and mis­matched chairs. Stu­dents come and go, and the room remains.

Okay, fair enough — who is Markus? Maybe me. Or maybe I find myself feel­ing Markus-y, alone. Often. Ques­tion­ing. (I mean I’m the guy with a gaz­etteer & guide to writ­ing.) Like some small thing left on the shoulder of a serving plat­ter. What I do then is pre­pare nachos — pre­pare for the sud­den appear­ance of nachos. And maybe Markus is Every­Markus (maybe), and the Eng­lish depart­ment I atten­ded was hardly under-funded, and this is Freytag’s Triangle:

But listen: teach­ing writ­ing often makes you feel like sand on sand, or, no, cumin, a Cumin Man — I mean con­struc­ted of cumin (if you can ima­gine) — and on a cumin bar: shift­ing tides, grain on grain, eddies and slip­page and silty clouds of dinge.

Let’s try it this way — a canto, by my friend Alex N’Goran, a poet (and plumber) who quit the writ­ing pro­gram in dra­matic fashion:

Not twenty feet out this win­dow, a man smoothes
cement with a trowel, circles upon circles, skill­fully. And bey­ond him
two men smile and nod, one holds a brick like he was born
to cradle bricks, cer­tain he’s cre­ated some­thing
       and will build again tomor­row.
Yes, there exists a red wheel­bar­row
       but its got a dark child behind it, guid­ing it
       to the mor­tar pit.

Not bad, eh? Or very bad. I can’t tell. Poetry makes me feel like a stunned sea bass. Dizzy. Head pound­ing. My arms and legs coated in goat cheese. Like short­ness of breath. Like alti­tude sick­ness, an incline. A triangle.

Tri­angles have func­tions, as trowels.

As tor­tilla templates.

Tem­plates for cumin.

Observe the declarations:

— E. Smith, a man with a taste for Smirnoff vodka, lit­er­ary the­ory, European foot­ball, older women, and snort­ing Oxy­con­tin, proudly declared, “I believe writ­ing is man­kind yelling, ‘Lookie here!’”

— Leander Skoff, a man with a taste for Kool cigar­ettes, Kool cigar­ettes (Leander Skoff made smoke with cigar­ettes. Like a lover), and noc­turnal birds of prey, sadly declared, “Art is an old, deaf, blank, musty, wad­ded up piece of paper.”

— Dou­gie, a man with a taste for world travel, Beat­nik dis­ser­ta­tions and peach cob­bler, vaguely declared, “A hip cat’s text is shaped by all the dogs.”

Leander and E. wrote fic­tion (still do?). Dou­gie is a poet. I prefer poets as friends. Poets read more, and they always hold the­or­ies. I once asked a poet (her name was Cindy) for some tips on grow­ing pota­toes and she told me to always plant them along­side onions, so as to avoid the need for watering.

Her the­ory: the onions will make the pota­toes’ eyes water.

See why I like poets? But the­or­ies aren’t simply decrees, passed down by poets, or by Vend­ler, Graff, Eagleton, Giroux, Men­and, Smith, Smith, Barthes, Fish, and Booth (and Smith).

I revised the fol­low­ing sen­tence three times. There is no solid foot­ing, nor any denouement.

Meet Dou­gie.

The bar is dark and low and maybe not wet but it feels wet. People return­ing from the bath­room pause to the poet’s stac­cato yelps, a group of drunken frat boys and a thou­sand year old jan­itor lean­ing into the words. I look at the young man, a fel­low writ­ing stu­dent, in his thin mus­tard T-shirt and baggy gray cargo pants. Under a light bulb, he’s stand­ing and tap­ping his leg and twitch­ing his head, like some type of seizure.

He says, “Cats find the mice they expect …”

There’s some­thing broken about him, his head shaved and den­ted and some­how blocky. He hops in place; foot tap­ping like it wants to escape the leg.

He says, “Cats seek the feline of the mind … ”

I sip my beer and look at the entire audi­ence, seven people. A young girl in a brown sweater nods her head, and two guys huddle close, appar­ently hold­ing a sep­ar­ate conversation.

He says, “If cats could talk / They wouldn’t.”

And you must know E.

Morn­ing. E. Smith is skulk­ing home across the quad. From a mis­take with his Rus­sian Lit­er­at­ure pro­fessor (a Mrs. Raatkov). Those birds are out that greet the morn­ing with nervous tweet­ing. E. is shiv­er­ing since he’s mis­placed his jacket.

He feels slushy inside.

A jog­ger rushes by then squeaks to a halt. “Hey there.”

A pretty girl, glow­ing with health. She is toned and sweaty. High cheekbones, man­i­cured nails, match­ing aer­obic out­fit. Sor­or­ity girl, E. is thinking.

“Hey,” she repeats.

“Didn’t you run Three Ridges?”

“Three Ridges?”

“The half-marathon. I talked to you there, right?”

While bal­an­cing on her left leg, she grabs her right foot and stretches it behind her back.

“No,” E. says.

Embar­rassed, he shuffles away, bump­ing against a garbage can and nearly send­ing it tum­bling, but the girl cuts him off and leans into his face. She recoils. He’s think­ing she got a whiff of curdled vodka.

“Is your nose bleed­ing?” She squints.

He mumbles, “I don’t think …”

She points her fin­ger below his nose. She shrieks, “It is bleeding!”

An old woman walk­ing three dachshunds stops and looks at him.

He wipes his fin­ger below his nose. Blood. He looks up and the girl is gone. Every­one is gone, except the nervous, tweet­ing birds.

He’s across the quad when there she is: run­ning up and down the lib­rary steps. E. thinks, Maybe I should go over there. She doesn’t know me. Maybe I’ll show her run­ning steps. I played a year of soc­cer in high school. No — it’s fool­ish. I’m cold. I’m miles from home.

God, I wish I had my jacket.

Tonal and atmo­spheric drivel? A cook­ing down, a reduc­tion, a sad pro­cliv­ity to con­jec­ture? Per­haps, but people do enter writ­ing pro­grams in anti­cip­a­tion of sleep­ing around. Sure, it hap­pens. To friends, enemies, to me — but do I need to write about it (really?)? No. I’ll write about some­thing else.

The denoue­ment may be: God, I wish I had my jacket.

(yes)

I atten­ded a writ­ing pro­gram, at uni­ver­sity A. My girl­friend was hours away, at uni­ver­sity B. A was a fine time, though I was almost killed twice (knifed in the elbow; pinned beneath a whirl­pool while canoe­ing). Come on over to B, my girl­friend encour­aged. I was 25 years old. What was A or B to me?

At B my girl­friend was very happy. I mean at first. I had no friends so spent every week­end with her, read­ing, drink­ing, talk­ing, fucking.

But then I got friends.

Over 6000 pounds of friends.

I once had 35 people crammed into my gradu­ate dorm, room 518, which I (lamely) re-titled Club 518. We had a black light and Pion­eer speak­ers and Krab (with a K) and cheese nachos and a plastic liter of Jim Beam whis­key. It was like a low budget music video, only it was really hap­pen­ing.

That night I met a poet, Cindy.

My girlfriend’s name was Jennifer.

Jen­nifer and Cindy, I swear.

Two weeks later, I was in bed with Jen­nifer and a loud knock soun­ded at the door. It was three a.m. I leapt up, startled from sleep. I checked the pee­p­h­ole. It was Cindy. Cindy was sup­posed to be at a party, but appar­ently the-party-was-over.

I looked to Jen­nifer, asleep.

I looked to the pee­p­h­ole. Cindy. Mag­ni­fied. Her hair done up like a ball of shred­ded cheddar.

I thought: if I’m very quiet she’ll go away.

The phone rang.

A phone ringing in a dorm room might as well be ringing inside a mail­box. Or a salsa boat. Which is nois­ier? Let’s say mailbox.

Cindy knocked more loudly — rap, rap, rap.

The phone rang — brii­ing, brii­ing, briiing.

Jen­nifer turned in the bed, groaning.

I snatched the phone.

“What?”

“It’s Al. I’m in the lobby. Cindy’s coming!”

It was my poetic friend, Alex N’Goran.

“No shit,” I hissed. “She’s at my door. Get her out of here.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Come on, do something.”

As quietly as pos­sible, I hung up the phone. The knock­ing ceased. Then a loud kick — boom! — and Cindy screamed, “I-know-you’re-in-there! I can hear you!”

Jen­nifer coughed and shif­ted, the bed­springs creak­ing, and —

There’s no need to fin­ish. I’m only estab­lish­ing my need to nar­rate, to link and swerve, to see life as story, some order, an arch of dupli­city. I’m a writer, I’m a chef. I’m a reg­u­lar E. Smith. No, really. I am a writer and a chef, one of them Mexican.

Don’t tell me what’s the prob­lem Eliot was a banker.

Don’t tell me the uni­verse sup­plies no meaning.

Don’t tell me Hem­ing­way and his shotgun.

Tell me you under­stand. Tell me you struggle. Tell me you’ll dice a tomato. Tell me the smell of sautéed gar­lic is sexual (okay, nearly). Tell me you want to wit­ness the last time I saw Alex N’Goran.

Five of us, crammed in a ren­ted Chev­ro­let Cava­lier, head­ing to Tunica, Mis­sis­sippi, to the casi­nos. We’re talk­at­ive and eager to gamble. One of us, Alex N’Goran, dropped out of our writ­ing pro­gram a month ago, got a job work­ing the counter at a hard­ware store, and is now liv­ing above a Chinese restaurant.

“More time for writ­ing,” he explained. “My writing.”

He left the pro­gram on a Fri­day after­noon in April, dur­ing his own read­ing, mid-story. He stammered, shuffled papers, seemed to mis­place a page, then strolled right out of the room. Hell of an exit.

The truth is we are jeal­ous of his drama.

The casino is bright, loud, smoky. A cul­tiv­ated disequilibrium.

We split up, into groups, into games — black­jack, craps, video poker. We drink free Heineken, then later bottles of water, and even later Styro­foam cups of oily cof­fee. We don’t sleep.

Five-thirty a.m.. The four of us meet and search for Alex N’Goran. He’s bur­ied in mus­tard colored roul­ette chips. He’s flushed with alco­hol, with win­ning. Proudly, we join the table. Pre­dict­ably, he loses everything.

Pre­dict­ably, the sun rises. I stumble into the casino’s bath­room. I open a stall.

Alex N’Goran sits on the toi­let, his left shirtsleeve rolled up, his left arm inser­ted into the tank. On the floor is a vinyl case the size of a Dick­ens hard­back, a screw­driver, a pair of vice grips, and a pack of Marlboros.

I hear a mur­mur­ing. “The flush valve, warped. I can fix it.”

I look at his exposed arm. His veins as wiry eels.

“You have to … now?” I ask.

“That’s right. It’s neces­sary.” He smiles. “And I’m happy.”

Alex N’Goran flushes the toi­let, listens to its gurg­ling, nods, then deftly col­lects his paraphernalia and slides it into his jacket. He ducks past me, pauses at the sink to wet his hands.

“It’s what hands are for,” he says, flip­ping water drops across the mir­ror. “You’ve forgotten.”

He walks out the door.

My heart fleshy with for­get­ting, I stare into the mir­ror. Alex N’Goran’s droplets cover the mir­ror. They are on my face, and they are not.

I see it this way: Alex N’Goran lost his way, but that’s a poet for you, their nature — they lose things. Keys, sunglasses, lunches, self-esteem, the four­teenth line of a son­net. Their minds.

It was snow­ing. It was Dou­gie. It was too much Mer­lot and sev­eral Ritalin (snorted) and a bad work­shop that after­noon. He tore his kit­chen cab­in­ets from the wall and sawed his plastic table in half with a butcher knife and hurled all of this and every piece of glass­ware off the bal­cony and into the street. Then he tossed his vin­tage Macin­tosh com­puter, fol­lowed by a pound of frozen ham­burger and a por­cel­ain cat. He found his revolver and attemp­ted to fire it into the night. We’d already removed the bul­lets, wrapped them in duct tape, and tossed them into the toi­let. He ran­ted and raved — “Where’s my ammuni­tion!” We tackled him, held him down for fif­teen minutes, until he passed out. The next after­noon he phoned, his voice thick as cough syrup.

“Where’d my life go?” he said.

“In the street.”

“Oh.” A moment of silence. “Will you help me find it?”

Poets lose things, I tell you.

Then spend their lives writ­ing the search.

Take my one-time aca­demic advisor, poet, and Vic­torian lit­er­at­ure pro­fessor (though his poetry was decidedly not of the era), Harvy Ams­ter­dam, who wrote:

The desk a frac­ture.
Art, the fright­ful brute, hides
And coughs,
And tears nails, and grim­aces
A warning.

This is the first stanza of a 4,000-line poem: “Before the Day After.” Dr. Ams­ter­dam reques­ted I read it, and I did (mostly), though I under­stood little.

“What did you think?” Dr. Ams­ter­dam asked one after­noon over his glass desk, in his glass cubicle of an office.

I hes­it­ated, try­ing for some­thing intel­li­gent. “I thought …”

“Very good!” he yelped, and seemed genu­inely pleased.

He then told me that, in the world of poetry, length was import­ant, very import­ant, and that all poets should strive for some­thing truly Homeric — order, pro­gres­sion, a lean­ing to dis­tilled beauty, like a qual­ity cup of cof­fee, and so on. He … well, I can’t fully dis­cuss Harvy Ams­ter­dam. It’s too sad. It makes my heart a black bean, shriveled.

The man is no longer with us.

Was he ever?

Though Harvy Ams­ter­dam had a pot­belly and a weak chin and fin­gers like chi­potle pep­pers and was tall — like duck-your-head-when-descending-the-stairs tall — I’d like you to real­ize him through his poetry. Do you real­ize Harvy Ams­ter­dam? Have I broadened and deepened his quint­essence, and yours as well?

Or have I failed.

Again.

Some­thing is required; some­thing pulled away and prop­erly pre­pared — Harvy Amsterdam’s essence as an olive (prefer­ably Man­zanilla, pit­ted, and stuffed with jalapeno). I don’t have any­thing, only a scat­ter­ing … but as Lil­lian Hell­man declared at a cold and blustery book sign­ing in Lin­coln Park, Chicago, “God for­gives those who invent what they need.”

Some­thing is required.

A scene.

A pro­fessor named Harvy Ams­ter­dam bought a revolver. Its beauty scared him, so he bur­ied it in his freezer. Beneath a month’s sup­ply of fish sticks. That night he took 214 Extra Strength Tylenol.

His note said: “I’m sick of low attendance.”

Markus had Dr. Amsterdam’s class once, Vic­torian Poetry. Tedi­ous. Bland. Note tak­ing and regur­git­a­tion. He made a B plus.

In recog­ni­tion of his ten­ured ser­vice, the fac­ulty and stu­dents held a formal observ­ance in the Wil­liam Wordsworth aud­it­or­ium. Before the event Markus and some friends went to Jenny’s Tav­ern and drank five pitch­ers of Killian’s Red. Sev­eral were tipsy, oth­ers drunk.

The chan­cel­lor read a sec­tion from Dr. Amsterdam’s text­book. The Assist­ant Dean of Aca­demic Affairs read a Mat­thew Arnold poem. Dr. Amsterdam’s gradu­ate assist­ant said the pro­fessor was old-fashioned in a good, gentle way. She told a story about the time she spent an entire week­end typ­ing in by hand over two hun­dred pages of research, since Dr. Ams­ter­dam refused to use a scanner.

A wave of giggles broke across the room.

Warm­ing to the audi­ence, the gradu­ate stu­dent smiled and said, “He wouldn’t use e-mail. He said he thought it might just fly into the air, and disappear.”

The room exploded in guf­faws. A skinny lady in front of Markus cackled.

Then the gradu­ate stu­dent leaned into the micro­phone and yelled, “One day” — sev­eral people chuckled — “he wore his glasses and con­tacts at the same time.”

That one killed. A man star­ted cough­ing in fits. The room rocked with laughter, like every­one was huff­ing gas­ol­ine. Finally, the chan­cel­lor led the gradu­ate stu­dent from the podium. An organ played a requiem.

They all returned to Jenny’s, and someone had the idea of each per­son telling a favor­ite Dr. Ams­ter­dam story. Markus couldn’t recall a one.

Markus again. Markus scru­tin­izes; Markus scribbles. Markus applies his pre­con­ceived ideas to everything — Markus ‘writes’ the text of his reality.

Case in point:

Markus sees Pro­fessor A win a Gug­gen­heim and leave the uni­ver­sity. Pro­fessor L has his latest book nom­in­ated for the National Book Award and leaves the uni­ver­sity. Instructor C pub­lishes a book of Bukowski cri­ti­cism and gets mar­ried to a man who con­ducts focus groups in Wash­ing­ton D.C. and leaves the uni­ver­sity. This is what Markus sees (again).

Markus and me … what is the meaning?

“What does it mat­ter?” Men­and (Louis) would shriek across the pages of Harper’s magazine. “Lit­er­at­ure is the last place people are likely to be get­ting their values.”

And Vend­ler (Helen) would stand below those harsh Hyatt Regency con­fer­ence room lights (1980, MLA, her pres­id­en­tial address) and state, “There is a love for the lit­er­at­ure of puzzle.”

But would she really?

Yes, she would — and did — and as I write about Harvy Ams­ter­dam I find my abdo­men throb­bing, a dull ache; someone shov­ing a cut­ting board into my gut. My teeth feel oniony. Have you ever eaten onions and later noted a dis­agree­able film across your incisors?

That’s oniony.

Layer of skin. Inducer of tears. Use­ful metaphor.

But it isn’t just Harvy Amsterdam.

E. Smith lay in his Professor’s arms, in Smolensk. It wasn’t a mis­take after all.

Cindy … What of Cindy and her ver­tical hair?

Dou­gie runs a diner in Guam … I think.

Leander Skoff doesn’t answer my phone calls. He loathes me, I know. It’s about the damn mag­pie. He can’t get past it, so how can I? He sends hate mail. I phone to explain, and he never answers. Only hate mail.

It smoth­ers me.

Jennifer’s the same way. Won’t talk to me. We used to carry Styro­foam cool­ers down to the Black War­rior River and sip beers and toss around the bocce balls and talk about what the trees would say to one another, and now Jen­nifer ignores me.

She used to carry a tattered bio­graphy of Colette in her jeans pocket (she really, really did, and I’m afraid I teased her about it).

She used to go bra-less.

And now she’s over there. In the tall glass build­ing with the 8/10 scale courtrooms for prac­tice and the per­fectly man­i­cured lawns. She drives a cil­antro green Ford Explorer. She’s gone. And it all happened one day. Not at the dorm room — another day.

Jen­nifer is sit­ting in her Honda Civic, twenty yards from the stu­dent park­ing lot. Mist streaks the wind­shield. A ruby SUV cruises by. A bicycle comes off a hill. They meet with a thump.

Jen­nifer hears an odd yell, like a bird-moan. A pale boy is walk­ing in circles. He’s hold­ing a cell phone two feet from his face and scream­ing into it, “Some­body call an ambulance!”

For one minute Jen­nifer thinks about exit­ing, or rather not exit­ing. One crit­ical minute. Truly, what does she stand for?

It mat­ters.

She approaches the SUV. It is aban­doned, doors open, a pop song drift­ing from the radio. A large hole in the rear win­dow. On the ground dazzling shards of glass. A yel­low bicycle. A severed handle­bar. Red, wet circles.

Through the visual haze she hears a girl cry­ing in the periphery.

Then an imme­di­ate sound: a gurg­ling, a chok­ing. There’s a tall, regal, dread-locked black man lean­ing over a white car. Jen­nifer recog­nizes him, a Neo-Aristotelian lec­turer from the Eng­lish depart­ment. He is bleed­ing on the car. Smears and spat­ters and bubbles. His hands cover his face, hold­ing it together.

Jen­nifer steps closer. The man’s right cheek peels away. Jen­nifer can see his jawbone, a row of teeth. His left eye dangles from a blu­ish stalk. She folds her jacket and presses it firmly to his face. She leads him to a curb.

Sit­ting, he hums and sways to some inner rhythm. Sweat beads on his fore­head. Blood speckles the asphalt. For some reason a kid walks up from the gath­er­ing crowd and offers him a cigar­ette. Jen­nifer waves him away. She presses the jacket tight. A siren wails, clos­ing in.

A fire engine. A police cruiser. Jen­nifer makes a wit­ness statement.

“Was the bicyc­list wear­ing a helmet?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Was the driver speeding?”

“I’m not sure.”

The officer clenches his jaw and snaps his tiny pen­cil in half. He points a fin­ger in Jennifer’s face. He bel­lows, “Does any­one on this cam­pus really know what the human­it­ies ought to be; what they are, how they exist, their com­pos­i­tion, why you — all of you! — should be doing any of this?”

“I, I’m not sure,” Jen­nifer mumbles.

There’s no reason to remain, so Jen­nifer returns to her Civic for her books. Everything seems brighter, louder. The car is pain­fully yel­low. Jen­nifer flinches and squints. The lot is filled with squeals, honks, blur­ring hues of metal.

Halfway to her classroom, Jen­nifer feels a chill across her hand. Her fin­gers are dark and wet. She turns into a build­ing, an old gym­nas­ium, a bath­room. Twice she misses the door handle, then grabs it. Hands washed, she notices a scar­let con­stel­la­tion on her jeans. A half-dollar size spot on her shirt. Jen­nifer scrubs, but the fab­ric is stained. Deeply.

How would you react? How did Jen­nifer react with Cindy stand­ing at the door? How did Cindy react to Jen­nifer in the bed? How should I know? How should I know about anyone’s internal

actions

or

reac­tions?

Or, as Booth (Wayne C.) put it: “To dis­pose of one ‘how’ ques­tion is only to raise another.”

Hon­estly, I know Cindy’s reac­tion. I’ll quote a sec­tion from her let­ter. This is where I quote sec­tions from their letters.

“… and after that after­noon I re-read every single book from Raatkov’s class and now I hate the Rus­si­ans, espe­cially Turgenev, who makes me phys­ic­ally ill and I don’t want to effort­lessly be there any­more and when I read ‘Three Novel­las About Love’ — and I read it six times — it made me tired of writ­ing and read­ing and sleep­ing around and my own flail­ing life and espe­cially you, and you know some­times things are felt too well, like the wind ruff­ling tun­dra, like a water­fall in the winter, water over ice over water, like love. Tell me one thing before I leave this col­lege and col­lege town forever. Amphi­bi­ans, how do they know when to drink, or not to drink, the air?”

My latest from Leander Skoff. (They all read basic­ally the same.)

“You I hate. I hope you rup­ture a spleen. I hope ret­inas detach. I hope hem­or­rhage, arter­ial. You I des­pise. Please die …”

And the only let­ter I received from E. Smith. Oddly, he focused on alco­hol, not Mrs. Raatkov. For example:

“All the artists drink here, thank gods. You remem­ber the Poet Laur­eate of the United States drink­ing lem­on­ade from a crys­tal cup? I do, after his read­ing. There was no alco­hol served, remem­ber? We brought flasks. The poet didn’t drink, politely declin­ing all offers. It’s over. Now the Amer­ican poets have fel­low­ship travel and under­stand­ing fam­il­ies and tell stor­ies about their adoles­cent neph­ews. It’s depress­ing. But at least the poet was always polite. After his read­ing, he fielded audi­ence ques­tions. Remem­ber? A kid from the col­lege news­pa­per stood and asked the Poet Laur­eate of the United States if he ever wrote poems that didn’t rhyme, and the poet just looked at him, gazed politely. It made me thirsty.”

Finally, from a note my grand­mother sent. The sta­tion­ary had a blue­bird on its cover and a $25 dol­lar check fol­ded inside.

“Go buy a steak. Pray to some­thing. Go out­side and hug the weather. Jobs are plen­ti­ful at res­taur­ants. People have to eat. Most of our friends are dead now. I beg you not to waste. You say you receive this sti­pend. You spend your life drink­ing cof­fee and the beer. Do the work­ing people know? You divorced your­self from the world. You giggle into your sleeves, like a child. You’ve found an old pine chest full of time, and this sti­pend. For years, the pine chest opens, and you fill it with cups and cans, the cof­fee and the beer. You are a small, small boy.”

Not included here: what my fam­ily thinks.

Included here: once, things were fine with Leander Skoff. We were sim­patico, but then the magpie:

Markus and his friends are stand­ing in a tiny kit­chen. The elec­tri­city has been cut; the room is lit with four candles. All around are empty Pop Tart boxes, crushed beer cans, balls of paper. On the table lies a dead mag­pie. He’s been there for over 24 hours. Near his head are an open can of gen­eric dog food, an empty bird­cage, and a full bowl of water.

His owner, Leander Skoff, stands at the head of the table. His shadow fills the wall. He has an unlit Kool cigar­ette in his mouth.

“Ain’t got money for the vet,” he says.

“Don’t worry about it,” Markus answers.

“Ain’t got it. I’m short, man.”

Markus’ friends look at one another. Markus steps forward.

“He’s dead, Leander.”

The mag­pie is lying with his head wrapped in toi­let paper. An entire roll. His legs stick out side­ways, stiff. Con­gealed blood stains the paper, but the mag­pie was dead when Leander found him in the street last night.

Lean­ing toward Leander, Markus says softly, “Take it easy, okay? We’ll bury him. He shouldn’t be left here, in your kitchen.”

Leander glares. “Move him and die.”

One of his friends, Mike, looks wor­riedly at Markus. Markus shrugs. Mike joins the other friend in tak­ing a warm beer from the refri­ger­ator and then leav­ing. Markus gets two beers and hands Leander one. He just holds it, so Markus takes it back and opens it. Leander sips the beer, star­ing at the magpie.

Markus watches Leander fin­ish his cigar­ette, and tells him he needs to rest. He’s been up all night, in the kit­chen. Markus leads him to the liv­ing room couch.

“He used to talk to me,” Leander whispers.

“It’s all right. Wasn’t your fault.”

“He’d listen too.” Leander groans and turns to his side. Markus picks a faded sleep­ing bag from the floor and throws it over Leander’s body.

“He’d talk and he’d listen.”

“Take it easy, Leander.”

Leander pulls the cover over his face.

“Can’t pay,” he says through the cloth. Then he passes out.

Markus sighs and look around the room. A dusty com­puter mon­itor in the corner. A sprawl­ing pile of stu­dent papers. A flick­er­ing candle melted to the hard­wood floor.

He hears his friends on the porch mur­mur­ing. He gets them and they take the mag­pie. They bury it behind an aban­doned Dairy Queen, beneath a water meter. Before filling in the hole, they add the dog food, bird­cage and water dish.

Then they return to Leander’s house. On the liv­ing room floor, they sit in a close circle, silently play­ing hearts.

Asleep, Leander fid­gets beneath the sleep­ing bag, legs kinetic.

“Man, he’s going to kill us,” Mike says.

“Shut up,” Markus says.

“Kill us,” he repeats. He glances at Leander.

They fin­ish the beer. Leander finally kicks the bag off his body, and lets out a long, eerie howl. Every­one freezes. And then he wakes.

Big Words #1: “Never fin­ish a story with ‘And then he wakes’” — Unknown.

Big Words #2: “The writ­ten word provides excel­lent social cement” – Eagleton.

Big Words #3: “What are the reader’s respons­ib­il­it­ies to the author?” – Barthes.

What about my respons­ib­il­it­ies? Leander had to even­tu­ally awake, right? But it isn’t just close friends. Or lov­ers. Or pro­fess­ors. Or just hyper-intelligent birds of prey. It’s every­one … canines included.

I want to tell you what I wit­nessed yesterday.

Why I feel sad today.

I want to show you.

The Black War­rior River. An eld­erly couple, a man and woman in match­ing crim­son wind­break­ers, play­ing fetch with their Dal­ma­tian. The woman tosses a stick into the water; and the man, unaware the woman has already thrown, lobs a paper­back, a col­lec­tion of short fic­tion. The dog is left per­plexed. He swims to the stick, to the book, to the stick, all the while the cur­rent pulling him down­stream and his own­ers yelling bloody murder. The dog, mid­stream and tir­ing fast in his des­per­ate orbit, dis­ap­pears around a curve. The own­ers run along behind, frantic dots of crim­son, fur­ther and fur­ther down the cluttered riverb­ank. They van­ish into the dis­tance. All is quiet.

Where are they, are they all?

Hel­looo …

Did they all write some­thing? Or read some­thing? Or swim their lives in circles, into the vor­tex of memory, into meta­phor? I don’t know, but they shouldn’t have. They really shouldn’t have …

A clutch­ing inside like a san­gria hangover.

A hol­low aftertaste.

Cold, and rather lonely, I write what we all write: the end.

Sean Lovelace is stand­ing in a river right now. He has a spin­ning rod and a beer. Other times he teaches at Ball State Uni­ver­sity. His flash fic­tion chap­book arrives sum­mer 2009, by Rose Metal Press, and his works have appeared in Crazy­horse, Dia­gram, Black War­rior Review, Wil­low Springs, and so on. He blogs at seanlovelace.com.