Alice: A writing prompt

Okay, I forgot about this weeks writing prompt, although I did manage to send out the piece, "God's Wife."

The prompt that everybody else chose was this: Alice didn't remember who had given her the key. Well, it's hardly polished, but here's something.




Alice

Alice
400 words

Alice couldn’t remember who had given her the key. She hoped it was the Klingon. Even under all of his scowling makeup she thought she had seen a twinkle in his eye. But then, it could have been the Vulcan. He had sort of twinkled at her too.

The afterglow party had left her rather confused. A couple dozen from TrekCon2290 had moved from the hotel bar to the hospitality suite. Between sniffing more than too much from the tank of Arcturian atmosphere gas, and smoking a bit of Silurian ceremonial herb, Alice couldn’t remember much.

Holding the key-card to her barely covered green breast she tried to concentrate. She had been among a small crowd in the corner, tightly packed together, whispering gossip and catty comments about the lack of fidelity some of the participants had displayed this year. It takes more than a pair of ears to make a Romulan. And then she felt a warm press on her arm and when she brought up her hand to look a moment later, there was the key, and no one near enough to have obviously put it there.

She thought for a minute that any potential friend for the night should have at least introduced himself before the invitation. But then she realized that as Vina, the Orion slave girl, if she was to be faithful to her role, she was only to respond by obeying. It wasn’t an invitation.

The vine-like armbands of her outfit felt tight. She tugged a bit at the very low cut sheath dress that she had created in her basement. She was not Alice and she was not the clerk at an insurance company who hasn’t had a real date in nine months. She was Vina. She was an animal. She was desired.

Making her way to the fourth floor, she steadied herself on the elevator door frame. She rechecked the key number and moved up the hall and did a quick inventory in her tiny, leaf-shaped purse for breath mints and condoms. Some things are universal.

The key purred and clicked at the door, she took a breath and stepped in. The lights were low. Then from the bed she heard a voice, “Krall nacck tranmat niir.” She thanked God that she had practiced her Klingon vocabulary, smiled a wicked smile and began dancing.

The Vermillion Express

This is my first post in nine months and I have my new writer's group to thank. Interesting people and serious about their writing. And there was an assignment: a story of about 500 words containing three elements:
1) A man dressed in black 2) a train 3) a goldfish bowl

This is what I came up with.


The Vermillion Express

Yost Haddeson slumped in his seat, in and out of a doze, exhausted from his escape, exhausted from loss of blood. The train was hot, but right leg was alternately cold and numb, the inside of his thigh a sticky wet. But he had done his job. He had killed the man and gotten away with what he hoped was only a flesh wound. He almost wished that there were more pain as that might be assurance of less than permanent damage.


He had rightly guessed that there would be road blocks so he stole a bicycle and peddled back streets as fast as one and a half legs would go. The airports would be monitored and the bus stations too. He planned to bike past the periphery of the road blocks and steal a car.


But then, as his leg strength ebbed, he saw the train station. He’d never imagined that there, deep within the industrial heart of the city, would be a train station. He stopped, leaned the bike against a trash can went in. The place was nearly empty. He followed a lone yellow glow to a caged counter staffed by a single clerk.


“Passenger trains,” he said. “Are there passenger trains that stop here?”


The clerk didn’t look up but glanced at a schedule card. “There are,” he said.


“Any time soon?”


Another glance, “You’re leaving soon?”


“Yes, I’m leaving very soon.”


“Of course you are. And your destination?”


Yost hadn’t considered that. “Chicago,” he said. “Anywhere, really. I mean anywhere west. I’m meeting my grandfather. He’s been sick.” A stupid, unnecessary lie he thought. His grandfather had died in the seventies.


“West bound train?” asked the clerk. “The Vermillion Express leaves in ten minutes.”


He felt a low thrumming hum building in his chest and then in his ears. He turned and saw through the station’s back window, the towering side of the Vermillion’s locomotive. He limped to the platform. Six cars long, the train was a solid flat black with a slim streak of vermillion red running its length.


Yost boarded, found a seat and dozed.


When he awoke he was not alone. In the seat facing his was an old man, rumpled in all ways; his hair, his Einstein moustache, his black clothes, even the flesh of his sleeping face. The car felt warm and he slept again.


His eyes opened a minute or an hour later. His seatmate was awake and in his lap, a sloshing fish bowl, with fetid green water and small orange koy floating on its side.


“Your leg...it’s wet,” said Yost.


“As is yours.” Yost touched the spreading stain on his thigh. The thick hot air was becoming unbearable.


“And that fish. It’s dead.”


“Of course it is.”


Yost blinked and looked and there, heavy and hot in his lap, a bowl, spherical and full and stinking. His fish floated and twitched and then it didn’t move any more. The hot thick water slapped with the rocking of the train, flowed down the glass and soaked Yost Haddeson. It soaked him to the bone. One last time he opened his eyes. He saw the old man. He said, “Grandfather?”

John Holland's Story

The other night at write's group I read these thousand words. General concensus was that it was less a short story and more a novel outline. I guess I could get a 20,000 word novella out of it, but I don't love it enough to settle in and go for 80,000.

Jon Holland's Story


John Holland was not a gun fighter, but he had a gun, an old Navy Colt and it was lying on the ground beside him. He’d had it stuck in his belt but it jammed into his crotch as he sat and he didn’t want to shoot his balls off before he’d had a chance to kill Bertrand Biel.

He’d chosen a spot on the trail out of Taos. Not the one to Albuquerque or the one north to Colorado, but the less used south east route to Fort Union. That’s where Biel would head, as it was the closest thing he had to a home. John had sniffed him out in Taos, but Taos was not a good place to kill a man. It was pretty calm there now and killing was less common than before. Word was that Biel was running short of cash and would likely ride out within a day or so. Better to do a killing on the trail.

And so John Holland sat, his back against a sudden cliff face that rose sharp from the flat plain. It was cool enough not to need the shade, but later in the day, if he was still there, it would be welcome. Ten yards away his horse stood, tethered to scrub, its eyes closed, its ears flicking flies.

If he had killed Bertrand Biel in Taos there would have been a trial and a lot more likely than not, John Holland would have been found not guilty. More than not guilty, he would have been found innocent. Innocent, as in pure. A man who killed the man who raped his sister was committing a pure act. But the trial would have taken time and there was always the slightest chance that the jury would have gone against him. And then things would have come out; things that John Holland wouldn’t have liked to have had made public.

Ella Holland was a simple girl. More than simple, she was downright slow. She could fetch water and gather fire wood, but you wouldn’t have sent her for eggs or to do any actual chopping. She smiled more often than she cried, both for no apparent reason. Most of the time her expression was plain. She had big eyes and was a little pretty. She didn’t speak much and sometimes would bite your hand or snap a chicken neck, likewise for no apparent reason. She might have been about to do that when Bertrand Biel found her in the coop. He liked her big eyes and especially her big breasts, which he said he had just wanted to handle and then he said they were just so damn nice that he had to keep going.

Ella must have had some sense that what he was doing was wrong because she fought back, grabbing his left ear with her right hand and crushing as hard as she could. She would have torn it off if he hadn’t slapped her. After that she didn’t grab any more and he didn’t slap.

There was some talk of sending Ella off to be with an aunt just in case she turned up pregnant. There was also some mention of her living with the nuns in the convent over in Abiquiu. Neither of these things happened. Three days after Bertrand Biel left town, heading north with his broken ear, they found Ella out behind the horse barn with one of the hands from two ranches over. The next night she went missing and turned up just before the next dawn, wandering on the trail, trying to find her way home from the place where that young fellow, and several other young fellows worked. On Sunday her mother found her in the parlor, trying to make friends with the dog. After that they locked her in her room.

Now, if that had been all there was to it, John Holland probably wouldn’t have been sitting in the cliff face shade. The rape was bad enough but might not have caused him to plan murder. There were still things that could have been done and the family would have saved face. There were always the nuns.
The bigger problem wasn’t that Ella was shamed, it was just the opposite. The thing that had been done to her turned into the biggest and best thing in her life. She simply loved sex. Sex with anybody or anything. She’d break out of her room and stop the next man she saw on the trail and lift up her skirt.
Then there was the slicker who told her that if she loved it so much, why he was just the man she needed to meet. He knew a place in Albuquerque where she could meet all the men she wanted and have a place to stay and even maybe have a few dollars of her own. She didn’t even go home to pack. She rode on the back of his horse and he set her up in that special house.

Everybody thought she’d gone off with some young cowboy and was more or less a wife now. Or maybe she’d been killed by a jealous wife, but they’d never heard of a murder like that anywhere about. Probably the cowboy idea was right.

Then things happened fast. John Holland happened to be in Albuquerque and happened to get stupid drunk and happened into the wrong fancy house and it was all real dark and John happened to wake up next to his sister. Then he screamed and she screamed and the old drunk guard busted into the dark room and took a shot at John but hit Ella who died on the spot. Then the madam ran in with her gun out and John managed to yell, “Hey, this damn guy’s crazy!” Not needing more trouble than there already was, the madam whacked the guard’s head with the barrel of her gun and made him get out. There was then some discussion between the two as to whether John should give her a bunch of money to shut her up or if she should give John a bunch of money for the same reason. In the end John walked away and she let him.

Later in the day when the effects of the hangover and all the shooting had let up, John had to consider the fact that he’d just been carnal with his own sister. This was very bad, and when something bad happens, there has to be punishment. And so John Holland sat, waiting for the old drunk guard, Bertrand Biel, to come along. Way up the trail there was a bit of dust rising. Soon, thought John Holland, soon I’ll be clean of it.

ATTENTION ALL POLITICAL COMMENTATORS

Let me say this very plainly: The word is "pundit." The word is not, "pundint."

Okay, I can't help myself...I'm intollerent of people who mispronounce words (even though I probably do it too.) When someone mentions the raised column upon which a statue rests and they call it a "pedistool," I go nuts.

But the word of this political season is pundit, and fully eight times out of ten I hear it pronounced with an "n." And this by professional media folks. It's crazy.

So cut it out!

It's no doubt a hopeless cause. These are probably the same folk who call their aunt's child their "cousint."

Heels

Geez I write some wierd crap sometimes.


Heels


He is unsteady but moves with a focused determination. He thinks he should have opted for a lower heel. Three inches is quite a reach for his first time in stilettos. He is reasonably certain the rest of his outfit is satisfactory. The decision to wear slacks instead of a skirt had been a hard one, but there was so much else to concentrate on that the ease and familiarity of pants legs just made too much sense.

Through the parking structure of the Tropicana, down the half flight of steps to the casino floor and past the first row of slots. The casino air feels smooth on his newly shaved face. No more beard. No more moustache. After twenty years. He would find some explanation for his wife when he got back to Indianapolis. Past now a small bar on the gaming floor and a look in the mirror. Without breaking stride, all he can see are his full, gel-padded breasts. Forty-two D. He is not a small man and would not, therefore be a small woman. In the next mirror, again, all he sees are breasts. He stops at this bar and orders a whiskey and ginger ale. He considers his hands on the glass and guesses that he has known women with bigger hands than his. He sips his drink and studies the mirror.

The wig is good. Not too long nor too short. A casual style. Feminine without being frilly. His silky blouse is tasteful; jewel garnet in color and high in the neck. The breadth of his shoulders is unavoidable. He smiles at the barman. The barman smiles at him. Charles knows that the barman knows and he doesn’t care. But suddenly he thinks the barman may ask his name. He has no name; no new name. What would he say? Who would he be? How did he miss this detail? It couldn’t be a name that sounded made up. He couldn’t be Fantasia or Desiree. But he wouldn’t be Sylvia, either, nor Francine. Jill. His mother had told Charles that she thought he was going to be a twin and that she would have called his sister Jill. But he decides not to volunteer this name. He’ll keep it for emergencies.

His drink finished, he walks on, thinking that it might not have been the smartest thing to drink while learning to walk on high heels. A few people glance at him. He categorizes their looks. Some know. Maybe most know. A few much older men look him up and down. One winks and stares at his chest. Two women pass and he hears one comment on the color of his blouse. Luscious. That is the word she uses.

He walks up the Strip for maybe a block but it is very hot and he worries about sweat spoiling his make up. He worked hard on his make up. He turns and walks back to the Tropicana and back to the bar. He needs the cool air and he needs to think. He needs to take the next step but it’s not clear what that next step is. He orders a straight ginger ale and sips.

He takes a breath and says to the barman, “I’m looking for a bar. Someplace where…” He hesitates.

“Someplace where you’ll be comfortable?” says the barman.

“Yes. Exactly that. Nothing too…” He hesitates again. He almost says, nothing too queer. Charles is not queer. Charles is very straight. It’s just that today he is a straight man with tits and a garnet jewel colored blouse.

“You want Sandy’s,” says the barman. “It’s not too…much.”

“Right. Not too much. Exactly that.” He pays generously for his ginger ale and leaves with a brief, small stumble. He has forgotten about the heels.

In front of the Trop he has no problem hailing a taxi. He says, “Sandy’s,” the cabby nods and Charles settles back to watch the Strip go by.

Down Las Vegas Boulevard, a left at a wide street the name of which Charles misses, then down to Industrial, a right turn, another left and there, between a strip club and a party store is Sandy’s. Stepping form the cab, Charles feels the heat reflected off the beige cinder block walls. He enters the club, pays a twenty dollar cover charge and waits while his eyes adjust. The dark seems complete at first, with only a few shallow pools of light to his right and sharper neon beer signs by the bar to his left. Within a minute more detail resolves and he sees his way to a bar stool. He stands beside it, not wanting to have to hike himself up.

He orders a whiskey and ginger ale, “Easy on the whiskey,” he says.

Charles looks around the bar and sees that he is in company. Gay men holding hands with gay men. Lesbian women holding hands with lesbian women. A stern woman in leather. A much less stern man in a silk shirt. One other cross-dressed man who looks to Charles to have taken much less care in his appearance. A man in a business suit asks Charles to dance. Charles says, “I’ll try. I’m not much of a dancer.” It is a slow song and he spends most of his time paying attention to his feet and little of his time noticing his feelings. The dance over, Charles thanks the man. The man kisses Charles on the cheek. He is surprised. It is not unpleasant, but it is not pleasant, either, and certainly not erotic.

Charles looks back to the bar and sees that it is full; his place is taken. The bar is filling up. The tables he can see are occupied. He walks to the back of the bar, looking for a place to be; a place to observe; a place to assemble himself.

At one table sits one girl, unaccompanied. Charles’ calves ache. He touches a chair at this table and says to the girl, “Would you mind?” She half smiles and half nods, and he sits.

After a short while he asks, “Are you waiting for someone? I could leave.”

“No,” she says, “I’m just sitting.”

“Have you been here before?” asks Charles.

“No. You?”

“No. I’m from Indianapolis,” he says as though that will explain things.

“Fresno,” says the girl

Charles says, “I’ve never…been here or anything like that. I’m married. I’ve never…”

“Dressed? This is you first time out?”

“Yes,” says Charles.

“You look wonderful.”

Charles wants to say, “Really?” He wants to angle for compliments. He wants to hear how he looks.

She looks him over. “Yes, really,” she says.

“This seems to be a decent place,” she says. “But still, be careful. I don’t know anything about the guys you might meet here.”

“I’m not looking for a guy.”

“Oh,” she says. “Then what?”

“I don’t know. I think I just wanted to do this. To be this, even just this once. But I’m not looking for a guy. I’m married. And,” he says, “I’m straight.”

“Can I ask,” Charles says, “What you’re looking for here?”

“I don’t know either. I thought maybe I’d like to meet another girl. I’ve never been with another girl. I have a boyfriend. I’m not a lesbian.”

They both scan the room. “Why?” asks Charles. She looks at him. “Why did you want to be with a girl?”

The bar is dark enough that honesty is easy. “I like the way they look,” she says. “Women…look nice. I guess somehow I imagined I’d like to be with a girl but then in my mind, if it ever came to…intimacy…I don’t find that idea appealing. I don’t know.”

They, at that moment, look at each other.

“You know what we want?” askes Charles. “We want each other.”

She furrows her brow.

“Yes,” he said. “You want a woman with a penis who likes women.”

She laughed, “Yes, and you want to be a woman with a penis who meets a woman who wants her.”

For an hour they chat. And then there is an awkward silence. She says, “You know the chances of us meeting like this are microscopic.”

“In Vegas?” says Charles. “Chance is everything. But, you know,” he went on, “when we leave here, we will not be leaving together.”

“I know that,” she says. “You’re married.”

“And you have a boyfriend.”

They stand together. “Good bye,” she says.

“Good bye,” says Charles. As she walks away he whispers to the back of her neck, “We’ll always have Vegas.”

The Night Before the Comet

The assignment, several years ago, was to write a story using all of the five sences. This is what I came up with.


The Night Before the Comet


The experts on CNN were about evenly divided. Half said the comet would smash into the Northeastern United States tomorrow at 11:42 PM and end civilization as we know it within three days. The other half said it would skip off the stratosphere like a rock on a pond and the worst result would be really crummy radio reception for a day or two.

I thought I’d see for myself what the world was up to on what was maybe going to be it’s last day. I had heard there were lines at the gas stations and most freeways were pretty congested, so I topped off the tank of my Harley from the lawn mower gas can and took off on back roads heading generally East. For a minute I considered riding up to Wannatuck and spending the night with my ex-wife, but she was always a frantic kind of woman even when things were calm so I passed on that idea. I figured I’d just ride around until I’d burned about half a tank of gas and then head home to watch the world end from my lawn chair in the front yard.

It was June twentieth. The National Weekly Globe had made a big deal about the fact that the comet was arriving at the Summer Solstice. Something about the wrath of God or some ancient Druid prophecy or something and they seemed to be betting on total annihilation. Probably. I noticed they still offered five-year subscriptions.

Cramer Road was empty of traffic. A hundred years ago it was a main route between Lincoln and Huron Bay. Now it’s just a busted, hard packed, dirt covered two-lane country trail. A steady crosswind bent the weeds and kicked a hot, fine clean dust under my visor. Every once in a while I’d get a whiff of fresh cut hay or grass with a cow manure chaser. The bike eased through the bumps and potholes, fifteen pounds of recent fat recoiling over my belt.

Panic was hard to find. I think if you don’t have a bunch of people gathered together, panic just doesn’t know how to show itself. It’s like laughter. A guy can be funny as hell on TV but if your watching alone you might not even chuckle. If somebody’s with you, you’ll laugh. At a comedy club you’ll slap the table and choke on your drink because he’s so damn funny. It’s the crowd. Like we need permission to laugh. Or to panic. I passed a woman hanging sheet of tan canvass over a tree limb beside her house. Was she desperate? Was she torn with inner turmoil? Was she at peace with God? Was she maybe just not paying attention?

I should have packed some food in my saddlebags. I never considered that it might be tough to get a Quarter Pounder on the eve of Armageddon. I took the Bingham Road up toward Huron Bluffs. There is a little road just before the Bluffs that dead-ended at a great overview of Port Commerce and the freeway that might be worth seeing on a day like this. I must have gotten turned around a bit, because I wound up on Norton Mills Road with nothing on either side of me but soybean fields. I pulled over at a wide spot in the road to check a map. I killed the engine.
The only thing near as sweet as the rumble of a Harley motor is the silence when you turn it off. I checked my pack and found I hadn’t brought a map. It was well past noon but the sun was still high and white. I looked east but it was way too early to spot the fuzzy pulsing sky-streak of Yamota-Bernstein. It would rise just after dark and then I guessed it would fall shortly thereafter. Or not. Up the road I heard the high pitched ying, ying, ying of a circular saw. I clipped my helmet to the back of the seat and rode slowly toward the sound, the hot wind feeling good on my scalp.
I rolled into the driveway of the next farmhouse I came to and followed it around to a back shed and the sound of the saw. I shut down the bike and he put down the saw. The sweet, sappy smell of his fresh cut wood mixed with the odor of my hot engine oil. The man with the saw was older than me. He could have been anything from a real tired fifty-five to a well-preserved seventy. His face was the color of an old catcher’s mitt, but it wasn’t nearly that smooth…maybe more the texture of hard leather work gloves left out on the John Deere all winter. He nodded. I nodded.
“I’m kinda lost,” I said, running my hand through my hair. “Huron Bluffs?”
He pointed back the way I’d come, “Back that way five miles, then jog left, then right…another three miles and there’s a service station. That’s at MacMartin’s Speedy-Co. Left there takes you to the Bluffs. Got it? Left, right, left.”
I looked at the lumber he was working on, “Cherry?” I asked.
“Yup.”
“Furniture?”
“It’s gonna be a crib. I got a grand baby gonna get born next week.” He ran his hand over a three-foot length of one by six.
I decided to stretch for a minute and lowered the kickstand. I swung my right leg over the handlebars and leaned against the seat. “You’re not worried about the comet much are you?” I said.
“I don’t think on it. What you don’t think on you don’t worry about. It don’t matter any way. If it comes I’ll be dead whether I do this or not. And if it don’t come and I don’t work on it, then I’ll be a whole day behind getting it built. Either way. Don’t look like you worry too much either, just out for a ride?”
“Yeah. Like you. If it’s going to end, I want one last look. If not, it’s a nice day for a ride. How are you going to finish it?”

He rubbed the wood again. “Haven’t decided. Probably clear polyethylene. I could use cherry colored stain, but that would be kind of stupid. If I was going to do that I could’ve just made it out of pine and used cherry stain. The baby wouldn’t know. Or I might paint it. My daughter in law wants it painted blue.”

“Be a shame to cover that grain with paint, don’t you think?” I walked over and picked up one of the perfectly turned dowels. “You turn these yourself?” I asked.

“I got a lathe and nothing much better to do. Could have bought ‘em pre-made and a whole lot cheaper.”

“But not in cherry?”

“Right.” He rested his hand on the top of a blue plastic cooler, “You want a baloney sandwich?”

I patted my saddlebag, “You want a beer?” I might have forgotten food and a map, but I did have my priorities.

His porch was screened in and overlooked the backyard. We let the screen door slam and settled into a pair of creaking wicker chairs.

“What do you think it’s going to look like?” he asked.

I took a sip of beer and let the bubbles break on the roof of my mouth. “Haven’t you been watching it?”

“I saw it two nights ago. It was pretty big then. Missed it last night. Actually I fell asleep in front of the television.”

I judged which way was west and pointed up, “The tail looked to be about so long,” and I spread my thumb and forefinger as far as I could. “And like there’s two jets coming out of it now so there’s really two tails. One of the TV guys had some explanation for it. Trapped gas or something.”

Last night, just before I went to bed I took a walk in my backyard. Fatboy was barking and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t anything more than a squirrel. I called him and as we turned to go back to the house I saw the comet hanging there about halfway up the sky. It was the first time I’d ever paid it any real, personal attention. I stopped walking and stood for a second. Then I just sat down on the ground. Fatboy sat next to me and I rubbed his head while I stared up. It seemed that it should have been making some kind of sound. In all the Star Wars movies the space ships and missiles and asteroids all made a bunch of noise. Yamota-Bernstien just hung there.

“Can I give you a hand?” I asked.

“If you want.”

We sanded and fitted and glued the crib until it was too dark to work. “I got one beer left. You want to split it?” While he went in the house to get a glass, I waited on the porch. He came out with some glasses and a big square quart bottle of bourbon.

We talked about his wife dying and the price of soybeans and his Ford truck. Then we talked about my wife leaving, drywall versus plaster and my Harley. Then that same steady wind that had been in my face all day puffed a couple of hard gusts and rattled the aspens. Through the quaking leaves we saw a white-silver glint of light. Ten minutes later the comet was above the tree line. It was square overhead in half an hour, covered an arc wider than my two hands spread out and had started pulsing pink around the edges.

“It’ll either be down or gone in about ten minutes, I’d guess.”

“I’ve got it figured out,” the farmer said.

“Better late than never,” I said. “What?”

“The crib. I’m going to seal it with a clear finish. The hell with stain. But on the headboard I’m going to paint it with a picture of the comet.”

As the head of Yamato-Bernstein passed over the far horizon I thought I finally heard it make a sound. But it might have just been the aspens.

One Touch Removed

One Touch Removed

In college I met a girl who had been to a Beatles concert a few years previously. She told me that she had been midway back in the audience, couldn’t hear a thing and could barely see the lads as they performed. But when the show was over, instead of moving with the crowd as it left, she stood behind a pillar in the auditorium and waited until the place emptied out. She made her way to the front and touched the boards of the stage. She told me that she cried to think that she was touching the very place where George Harrison’s boots had scuffed. She didn’t wash her hand for a week and her friends who hadn’t been to the show would often take her wrist and hold her palm to their cheeks. The power of touch, as remote as it may be.

I think about that as I think about the very long life of my great grand mother. She was one hundred when she died...born in 1863. I remember sitting on the porch with her when I was very young and she was very old. I asked her if, when she was a child, she knew anybody as old as she was now. She thought for a minute and then recalled to me a very old man named Messerschmidt who lived up the road from her house in Germany. She guessed that she might have been five or six years old then and that he was in his nineties. She couldn’t recall much but she knew he had a pet crow and that the crow could speak a few actual words.

I don’t know if I’ll explain the next part of this correctly; the Beatles and the stage and the old man and his crow and the touch. You see, my great grandmother, when she sat with me, would pat my hand while she talked. I imagine the old man would have patted hers. She was born in 1863. Lincoln was still in office. The old man must have been born around 1778. Washington was yet to be elected president. I have touched a hand that touched a hand that lived before the Constitution was written. One touch removed.

I’m somewhat saddened that with a health history that is problematic at best, I won’t reach the ages of my great grand mother and Herr Messerschmidt. If by some freak chance I do make it to 2045, I hope someone will bring me a baby so that I might pat its hand and sent it deep into the twenty-second century only two touches removed from the generation of the very birth of our nation.