Hour of the Wolf

I could hear their lovemaking (I watched Ernie walk in front of me, tall and dark, the red rose still in her thick hair. Just a little further to go. I saw her move through the crowd. Something caught her eye and she turned her head with that rehearsed detachment. The street lights echoed off her as she went on, and further ahead Union Station’s glowing columns and brilliant clock burned her shadow into the street, as if she were walking into the light of god) from the car. I could see into the house, its shabby furniture, its modest size. "Don't wake my kid," Maryann said before they pushed through the door leaving it open.

I took off my shoes, my heels freshly cut from the new shoe leather. All around the small houses had bars on their windows and fences separated each property. The road in front of me lobbed into a hill, beyond which I could see downtown's skyline cast softly by the incessant glow of the highway just below.

I sat back in the seat. The night's events, manic and chaotic - Michael and Ernestine, her wedding, the curse she passed to me now fully realized, then later the bar and now Maryann and Michael at her house in North Denver and me in the car - all came to a sudden halt (Ernie's face was pasted on my brain; her wedding dress long and pearl-like, everyone dancing around her. Slowly the colorful beautiful people faded away one by one, the voices and music ceased into silence, lonely and defiant, until all the light and all color and all the silence centered around her standing on the dance floor, stirring her gown with her slender fingers. What to do now what to do now? The belief of god is real when you’re at the bottom of the food chain because survival of the fittest is for the strong. The evolution of enduring chromosomologic traits from generation to generation to increase the chance of coitus and finally reproduction – is for those who prevail. But the weak have the curse of hope and god and Ernie had the curse put on me, blueprinting me even now.

At Michael's behest I accompanied him to Ernie's wedding. My shoes hurt like hell even in the beginning when Pachabel's canon played during the procession.

"I gonna make her wish it was me up there," Michael said. He played the part of the old reconciled ex well. This was the moment he waited for. First to receive his ex-lover, the bride, in an act of unorthodox etiquette – standing tall and intractable in a dark suit, black shirt and sunglasses, a blood red rose stuffed in his breast pocket, obviously late to a wedding and grossly oblivious to that fact.

But I knew Ernie invited him to make peace with herself, to finally bury what she rid herself of. But Michael and his blueprint was now mapped on me since she cried in my arms one night, tears running like faucets and me saying it will be okay when I knew it would not be.

It was the last time I'd see her. Married now, and Michael exacting his last revenge on her, left me with the terror of what I feared most. Ernie in pain. Just before we left her wedding, Michael whispered in Ernie's ear and walked away. I turned and followed Michael out. I glanced back and there Ernie stood, enfeebled, in the middle of her dance floor.

I didn’t ask Michael what he said to her. During the entire car ride Michael didn’t mentioned Ernie and all for the better because she was cursed and that goddamn curse was on me and I carried it and I didn’t have enough booze in me yet to kill what wasn’t even mine (even though she did), to stave it off for just a little while yet. She couldn't tell Michael because she loved him and couldn't corrupt that love. But she spilled his burden from her into me, and so she cursed me like a magi, a spell I can't get rid of because she laughs with a laugh that reveals more than her eyes.

Downtown we met Maryann, a waitress at the PourHouse, and drank with her between orders. I sat there, drunk and lonely thinking of Ernie on that dance floor. Thinking that right here at this table many months ago, I told Michael. He in that chair and I in this one, telling him what Ernie did. Because I looked like a priest and she cursed me by telling me and I was going to curse Michael by telling him but he sat there still, not scornful, not surprised, just still and looked at me and I knew the curse did not catch and I knew for sure Michael vanquished the curse as soon as he heard it because he was looking at Maryann bringing our drinks and then he smiled at her and after a while they left together for the first time many months ago and I was alone that night and from then on with that irrevocable curse and Ernie killed it away but you really can’t killing anything away that you hear and see).

Michael said he'd be five minutes, he was going to walk drunken Maryann to her door. But I knew what that meant so I tossed my shoes in the back seat and settled in the car.

Wisps of Ernie lulled me into a slumber once again when something stirred to my right. I turned. At the foot of Maryann's porch stood a German Sheppard. It's large eyes glowed at me. It made no sounds, no movements whatsoever. He just stood steadfast, watching, and for a moment there, the house seemed to have been built around the majestic animal, forever anchored in that spot. His thick fur hung around his neck like a king's robe, almost venerable. I could see him perfectly. He was absolutely still, only his nose flaps flared with each breath, which was steady and controlled.

Then in one leap he dashed through gate and into the street. He turned and looked at me again. As soon as I stepped outside, he ran.

"Maryann, your dog's out here," I yelled. "Maryann?"

I ran after him. With each stride I lost traction, donating skin to the street, slipping and trying to keep up, running and sliding.

He stopped at the intersection and turned to look a me. I skidded to a stop, panting. I knew I would never catch him. I composed myself and tried to approach him. He backed-up, pranced and sputtered in his tracks, then took off.

I saw him jump over a fence then I lost him in the dark. I heard the sound of a heavy mass crashing against chain-linked fence. The dog squealed. A long cry, then rustling and a thud. Then he moaned. I found him on the other side of the fence. The razor wire on top was wet. Through the fence he didn't move, his eyes watching me, his moan flushing through his limp tongue.

The razor wire made it impossible to climb over. I made my way around the fence until I found a gate and went to the dog. I looked at him, then at Maryann’s house. I was about a hundred feet away; the light shined from the open door. I took my jacket off and tried to cover the dog. He snapped and bit my hand, the fleshly part just below the thumb. I went to touch him again, my bloodied hand pet his fur. He stopped moaning. I looked down. The wire sliced his belly. I scooped up whatever I could.

I wrapped my jacket tightly around his body and picked him up and ran back to the car. I set his limp body in the back seat. His breathing slowed

Inside the house, Michael was behind Maryann. "The keys," I said.

"Oh my God," Maryann said.

"What the hell happened to you?" Michael screamed. I yanked the keys from his pants and went out the door.

I sped towards the highway just below the hill. The 911operator directed me to an emergency vet. I eased my foot off the gas and listened for the dog's breathing. Nothing.

I was crying (My mother always told me I looked like a priest, I said and Ernie laughed for the first time breaking the flow of tears and when I cupped her face softly the tears came back and streamed furiously over my hands and I kissed her on her forehead, cursed now, but still it was a forehead belonging to her and she was Ernie only cursed inside but Ernie on the outside. It’s okay that you told me because I look like a priest and you trust me and I will help you and she kissed me back and then I felt the curse on me transmogrified and heavy and once you know you can’t forget, cannot forget because she told you out of everyone and makes you not only an accomplice but arbitrator, judge, and condemner).

I got to the vet’s and ran inside with the dog hanging in my arms. The technicians took him from me and laid him on a gurney and rolled him in a room.

I walked outside and sat on the curb. I lit a cigarette and my movements triggered the automatic doors. The florescent bulbs buzzed above me, the parking lot was vacant. I didn’t want that dog to die. Not this way (Not this way, Ernie chanted over and over. I hugged her and we swayed together like two monks in prayer. Not this way because she loved Michael and now it was gone and not this way with the women I loved who cursed me because I loved her unconditionally even though she was blueprinted by another man, my friend - because I loved her irrevocably and final and she knew it and cursed me because of it and knew she cursed me when she saw the burden would kill me too me too me too me).

The vet woke me. Outside the sun was just about to rise.

“Are you responsible for this animal?" she said.

I thought hard.

"Yes."

I Should Have Never Come

I walk on streets a thousand miles from home.
The paths are crooked and cobbled, a spate
has now caked the fallen leaves where I roam.

The earth so shallow breathes beneath my gait--
I swear the sidewalk hollows then swells,
like when a woman’s chest heaves in lust late

at night, as the train bays wild and sex smells
of husked corn steaming in a base Chicago loft.
These streets I walk alone, here my mind dwells

on father, who every morning steps soft
and hushed to the room that is mine no more,
standing still to not wake mother, eyes aloft

praying. I’ve seen that look of father’s before
when I was smoking on our porch the night
I left. He was quietly by the screen door,

signing the cross with a gesture so slight
amidst love I owe but have yet to pay.
But I kept on staring at the traffic light

flashing red above a road down a ways,
still pounding red as I walk these streets astray.

Harper's 'Readings' imitation

[Memoir]

From an October 10, 1987 memoir of George Mavroyenis, a retired Chicago Public School janitor who emigrated from Crete, Greece in 1974. In his memoir, “The Light of Suffering,” published this month by BlackPowder Press, Mavroyenis recounts the anguish of pride and honor in a small village on the island of Crete. At age 12, Mavroyenis tells of an execution of a convicted rapist and murderer in 1954. The memoir was co-written by his nephew, Markos Mavroyenis, who taped many conversations between himself and his uncle.

The Wall

A fresh coat of paint on the wall meant an execution occurred. From the dirt road the wall was poised among the jasmine flowers and lemon trees. Bedraggled and weathered for so long, its edges were round and smooth, the white paint faded and flaking – all except for the small section where the short man in overalls worked. He stamped out his cigarette and wiped his forehead then dropped the brush in the pail. There was no more trace and with that no more memory. Far from the wall, on the road, I could see the painter’s dark fuzzy face as he sat against the wall with an arm on his knee eating an apple.

The wall, separating the prison from an ancient lemon orchard, was composed of stones densely packed a little higher than a man, fit and mortared like puzzle pieces long ago and re-mortared many times over. I waited for the painter to leave but he wouldn’t. Finally I hiked up to the wall. The dirt was light and dry and I could not find the shell casings. The wall stood ominously before me as I searched the painted area, any secrets of murders or executions withheld; the wall was solemn and proud and stubborn, as if the only struggle was its defiance against gravity to keep it rooted in the earth.

“What’d you lose,” the painter said picking at his teeth.
“The shell casings,” I said.
“You’ll find hundreds of them. But you got to dig.”
“I’m looking for the ones this morning.”
“Oh,” the painter said. He spit from his tooth whatever he was picking. “The yellow bastard’s hand shook so much he missed twice before he finally put him out of his misery.”
“I just want the brass,” I said.
“Then you keep looking, kid.”

The painter left. I scrounged on hands and knees by the freshly painted section of the wall, looking for the cursed bullets.

Nothing could be found. I walked a few yards along the perimeter of the wall, touching it gently as if feeling for a pulse. The dirt popped under my hard shoe-leather. It was as though every rock and pebble on the island of Crete has been sprinkled with blood, each with a story of terror and triumph and in no particular hurry to be told. Just this morning, twelve rifles pointed at Evangelos, who stood gnarled-teethed against the wall. His beard long and filthy, his face bruised from the officers’ unique interrogation, the saliva and bloody slobber coagulated in the corners of his mouth.

The lieutenant asked for twelve volunteers. If no one stepped forward then twelve men would be ordered to do it. Luckily, men from the village of Sfakia were always game for an execution. These people observed archaic laws unerringly, as if together the ways of ancient Greece and the Bible mutated and spawned the Sfakiani people, who stood like taciturn pillars, proud and broad shouldered, with thick moustaches and guns in their belt – God’s avenging angels. A cantankerous clan who laughed and danced and played with Death, all of them adorned in black shirts because a father or brother or uncle had been killed in a blood-soaked vendetta.

The lieutenant got his volunteers. Six guns were loaded with blanks, all twelve pointed at Evengelos’s chest. By the time of the execution, all of Greece had heard the name Evangelos, but only in Crete, where he was transported from the mainland and incarcerated, was he to be dealt with. The Greek people were relieved to know Evangelos was is in Crete. Crete is the land where impunity dies. All debts are paid to the earth with prejudice and every wrong is righted - that is why Crete’s soil is of the most fertile in the world.

When the prisoner arrived the warden was furious simply by the sight of him. Evangelos was found curing intestines and other body parts that hung from a sapling to dry. His twelve-year-old daughter sat under the tree, her face in a peaceful disposition. Her abdomen was splayed open and festooned the grisly site.

“How could you do that to your own daughter?” The warden asked.
“When you plant a tree and it bears fruit, do you not want to be the first to eat it?” Evangelos said.

The warden ordered his execution immediately; a prison cell was not even assigned to him. Evangelos refused the blindfold. Any prayers from Father Michael where met with curses and spit. At dawn the Sfakiani fired their rifles and Evangelos slammed back into the wall then slid down and slumped to one side.

The lieutenant looked at prisoner. The blood trailed from the wall and soddened the earth beneath Evangelos. The lieutenant then turned to the warden.
“Do I have to?” he asked.
“You must put a pistol round in his head. We can’t leave him half-dead,” the warden said.

The Sfakiani roared with laughter as the lieutenant’s gun trembled in his hand. I can only imagine that as he stood over Evangelos he did not aim at his head, but at the dirt behind it. That’s the only way he could do it. Still, he missed with the first and second shot. Evangelos’s leg jerked three or four times and the lieutenant jumped back. His career in the military was over. The Sfakiani would never let him live down his cowardice.

Dreams of Eating Dirt

I happen through the forest into a fertile steppe
across a murky river frothing against its banks.
Sunken within, a man is seated on a horse,
his hands bound by obsidian strands of her hair.

Beside the river she is knitting hymeneal
crowns of jasmine alongside the rider’s grave.
Her hair-long (less one chunk), blankets his plaque,
her eyes sodden the soil beneath her veiled gravidity.

I see these things and bend to eat the earth,
where the fecund taste brings resolve
to my barren visage, so impotent to her,
and is there - a monolith - when I wake.

The Tragic and Agonizing Lives of People I Once Knew

We each hated him for different reasons. He was odd, spewed from the sporogenous loins of parents whom I only knew of from riding passed their house. It was a small chipped-white house that sagged on the corner of Delaware St. and Chenango Ave., where a large tree canopied the entire property. When it was cut down it revealed the home as if it were just unclothed and violated.

Not a damn thing stirred in that house, and I only knew Elmer Peatry lived there because I saw him booting home one day as I was riding my bike. The site’s dilapidation made sense to me when I discovered it was the Peatry’s, the dried grass and tree stump, the cracked walkway, flat roof top, and vinyl sided structure, were all props that explained Elmer Peatry, and Elmer Peatry explained them.

The boy had no friends. He was content though, parading around with his mouth slightly opened in an inward smile. He’d wander around the playground of Clayton Elementary talking to himself, throwing his hands in the air as if twirling an invisible baton. He did not simply walk as much as stride with deliberation; his back and arms rigid and straight, his neck and head motionless. Only his legs kicked out high in front of him as he patrolled the grounds or hallways.

Bobby Mattheson always yelled at him about his peculiar gait, and like an angry mob, we’d wind Bobby up so tight he’d punch Elmer in the back, his face fanned into rage by our hysteria. Elmer’s simpering sustained all through the teasing and bullying and up until the punch. The smile, now completely its own and detached from Elmer’s face, would hold back the tears for a couple of seconds, then cry. The teachers would stroll up to us and ask what happened, but they hated him too.

One day I told the boys in class to invite Elmer to play touch football during recess.

“Screw that, who wants that pussy on their team?”

“Who cares?” I said, “Just give him the ball. Then cream him.”

The trick was to convince him, to interrupt his hermetic baton twirling and explain that we wanted him to play with us, even with Bobby Mattheson on one of the teams. Because I never initiated Elmer’s ridicule I was the perfect candidate to recruit him. I did, however, participate in the disparagement of Elmer Peatry. He never changed, as if each time we chased after him he’d hole up somewhere in his head, hiding and waiting from us to leave, which incensed us further and further until we looked like slavering imps. At that exact moment I’d feel sick and wish to God he’d fight back, that he’d punch me in my mouth and shut me up. But he’d let me wallow in it and I hated him for that.

It was like trying to get an alley dog to trust you. I finally persuaded him to play when I let him hold the football and he tossed it in the air replacing the imaginary baton. We picked teams and Elmer was on mine. On the first play I threw a pass to him as hard as I could and it zipped right through his hands and dug into his chest. “Keep your eye on the ball!” I said, “Just keep your eyes on it and you’ll catch it.” Elmer took the advice to heart and it cured his tears.

I snapped the next play and lobbed the ball to Elmer. He caught it and looked at it. “Run!” I pointed towards our end zone. He marched up the field swerving to miss the tags. He was in the open when suddenly the entire field converged upon him. Even his own teammates, even me. He ran right, left, then right again but everyone was rushing him. He dropped the ball and braced for impact. We fell on him, kicked him, pulled his hair, punched and kneed him. He absorbed blow after blow without making a sound and I thought we killed him. He laid there flat and bloodied. His eyes opened large and bright and his mouth gaped wide and dark like a graveyard in the middle of his face. But still no sound came from him. We walked away knowing no one would call after him, his parent’s wouldn’t talk to the school about the cuts and bruises, the teachers wouldn’t spend a breath.

I barely remembered him in middle school and I don’t even know if he made it to high school. We turned from chasing Elmer Peatry to chasing girls and making sure we didn’t care about a damn thing.

Incidentally, one day Bobby Mattheson was, what one would call, walking through our high school commons, lips cotton-mouthed, when he collapsed and died in front of the lunch crowd. His freckly arms were bruised and punctured with numerous intravenous attempts to inject, and his head split open where he hit the corner of the metal bench and gushed red all over the linoleum.

I did find out, however, that Elmer Peatry was born with the umbilical chord wrapped around his neck, apparently that way for many months, restricting proper blood flow that weakened then under-developed his legs. In the incubator he was going through methamphetamine withdrawal and constantly cried and jittered. At five-years-old he taught himself to walk again.

Now, late at night in bed, falling asleep with the tv on, I think of him twirling those invisible batons to the sound of the infomercials, and he grinning at me. Grinning, because maybe all along they were grenades.

Downtown Starbuck's sketch

She didn't order anything. That's why she sat by the window near the door hoping not to be noticed. It was as if the act of not buying coffee exposed her rather than her appearance: dirty slippers, dingy pajama bottoms, a frayed wool cap covered her oily hair that once must have been a blaring obsidian mane, now tangled into strands of silver, twisted and knotted like a mop.

She wore a fleece jacket with tags hanging from the sleeve. This new garment was ineffective, the mix-matched fresh fleece only further defined her impecunious disposition. She glanced around the coffee shop, then stared out the window, sitting sideways in the chair, her elbow on the table, waiting and clutching a plastic bag in her fingers that swung like a pendulum clock.

Outside a bus rolled to a stop and she started to stand, then sat back down. Her gaze shifted from the window to the door. A white-haired man walked in. He was neatly trimmed, beard the same length as his hair, thick and scholarly. He joined the woman and also sat sideways in the chair, resting his leather-patched elbow on the table while unbuttoning his Tweed jacket. He also had a plastic bag. He reached in and set a boxed juice drink and an orange on the table. The homeless woman looked at the objects.

"Did you spend all the money?"

"What do you think, man?" she replied suddenly and violently aggravated. He put the the two items back in the sack. "Do you want McDonald's?"

The woman did not answer. She stood up and followed the man out.

City Sketch

The baby's carriage was too heavy for him to push, too hard to steer through the billowing crowd of people massing around the bus stop. The city buildings hulking over the small boy moaned; the steel beams expanded and retracted under so much swelter, the massive structures swaying ever so slightly, like a monk praying during vespers. He kept pushing though, and as his mother held the hand of his little sister, and she the hand of an even younger sister, the boy's faced was mortared into that ancient rage, that old indomitable determination and will of even Achilles himself, to complete the task set before him: to push his baby brother through downtown Chicago.

The boy's mother craned her neck to read the bus route numbers on the sign, tugging at her little girls, scolding them for dragging their feet, not out of etiquette, but from the pure need for speed, to not miss the bus heading towards Uptown. She realized her bus stopped two blocks further north. She yanked on her child's arm as if it were a cord directly attached to some lever deep inside the bowels of the earth, suspending its rotation and pausing time just enough for her to catch her breath, to warrant the pedestrians and traffic cessative, to get to where she so dearly needed to be.

The girls tripped but couldn't fall down as their mother dragged them along, frenzied, chasing after a bus. The boy was trying to keep pace with his mother, unable to push and steer fast enough, his head lollipopping just above the stroller. He pushed on, still with that stern look on his face of that puritanic and stoic diligence to finish what was asked of him. He could no longer hear his sisters crying, he began to confuse his mother with other people, until finally she was lost in the herd. He pushed on, slicing through the rush-hour commuters who were chasing their own buses. After a while he did not know where to go.

Much later, this story will be rattled off to some judge overseeing the boy's prosecution of some petty crime. The small boy, now a man and a criminal, will cheapen that memory of travail into a puny plea (one the judge has already heard from him) to save himself from jail. But at that moment, in the heat of the city, the boy was triumphant, full of courage and terror.