Pachydermical

If you close your eyes, you won't be able to read this.

But I would like for you to try.

Then you would know how the elephant feels:

Without understanding,

But much happier.

I Am Walt Whitman

There is really no other reason to write, beyond this.

Have you ever felt a pop in the side of your neck that sent you into automatic ecstasy of pain--when you move your head just so, and in the side of your being begins a jolt of sensation so immediate, so complete, so impulsive--that you have no other choice but to accept your incompetence of survival?

Yes, these things happen.

But, of course, they are not all.

Children are born, and mothers laid to rest.

These things happen too.

A Prayer to St. Wallace

I know you old man. And what I wonder is how you wondered without a keyboard at your fingertips.

I live my life in backspaces.

How did you touch that place with the permanent STAMP! of metal machine? The printing press? The die-cast word on ink-ribbon?

In here I've made a dozen edits already. Two dozen. More. I spelled it Mpre twice, three times in three seconds.

More!

More!

More!

I know you old man because you are in my mind (but not in me, though that is what I wrote in the original, which was never the original).

But I have seen your black bird.

And I have considered the slovenly wilderness of Tennessee.

And yet, and still. You must have been a different operator. The heart must have moved in different rhythms. You must have sung in separate songs than those that my heart sings in foggéd haze of too little sleep and too little time and too little love in words for those I love or actions in love for those I love.

With pencil lead. With fountain pen. The mark indelible. The eraser leaves a canyon and crumbles. It makes heat on the paper. Yet in two swift stokes this disappears.

ctrl-a del

And my soul would move only. And not yours.

To do this is felt beneath the sternum. One can feel it. Is it as easy in your sleep, too?

But you are dead but still live and have lived then more than I live now or will.

Or perhaps not will.

Phoenix

I became an online university instructor,
and it killed this art.
But one day I will arise
from the ashes.

Gift of the Magi

One of the keys, I think, of being who I am is having an aversion to aversion.

So often it just comes out:

Can I tell you what I really think?

I guess you want to know, or else you would have clicked the back button already.

You should do it.

Spare me.

Here it is:

I think that there is nothing to think, and that anyone who tells you different (including myself) is a chocolate salesman.

By the way, what is so great about Godiva anyhow? I never could tell the difference among

Ghiradelli, Toblerone, and Hershey's Special Dark.

There you have it:

Here you are thinking about chocolates.

That is my power.

Here, my friend

Here, my friend, is a space of

White light covered in black text.

But to you it is more than just a good

Song on the radio that I am playing for your

Cousin who was from the Bronx--or Brooklyn--what's the

Difference to a white kid who knows

How it feels to jump into a wagon

Push the feet down, down, down

Into the cold and rough and

Sometimes prickly-smooth corn?

I supposed that it made very little difference at all to

The man on death row. Or to me. Or to you.

If you wanna know the truth.

The Very Short Story of a Very Long Life

A boy was born at a very young age,

And he died a very old man.

Not much happened in between.

Candy

I was thinking the other day (you know how the mind WONDERS) and then again sometimes it DOESN'T. And then I remembered about what my dad used to tell me (then again did he really USE it I don't remember.)

So anyways enough about that. But anyway I remember when my dog would eat his food (HUNGRY) and I was supposed to feed him TWICE a day and then sometimes I wouldn't--but he would just get hungry (kind of like that kid in the commercial "He'll eat ANYTHING")!

When my dad got tired about the (DOGS) and then we would have to take them out to the country (PEACEFUL), but then again. Who DOESN'T??? But I said NO! because then again maybe it wasn't the dogs fault and anyways the can was hard to open (for a kid, AKA me).

But we had two cats, and I wasn't sure really about if that was so good (especially with the dogs, AKA "dead"). I asked my dad (AKA "shooter") about the cats too and did he noticed anything (OBVIOUS). And he told me . . . maybe I WONT say but here goes. And I wasn't sure if it was what I wanted to do, but then again (it's not easy to say).

Which brings me to my next point: BURYING THE DOGS. Because when its dead it doesn't move but still it feels warm (NO GLOVES) but I wiped it on my pants. And later MOM asked me (AKA: DID YOU DO IT!) and I said NO!

Silent Nocturne

There was a night

When a gentle breeze stirred the cool, dry air.

A cricket chirped,

And the sirens of the ambulance did not abuse the sky.

Calisthenics

To halve and halve not is to have two halves.

I would do?

Aye, would you?

Eye wood dew.

Forget it.

Forge tit.

Portuguese.

Port two geese.

Randomly.

Ran dumbly.

Ran Dum Li

Left it on the counter.

Left tit on the counter.

Lift it on the counter . . . (this never gets old)

Expectantly waiting, fourth in line.

Expect Aunt Lea, wading for thin line.

Heavens to Betsy

Heave in stew . . . bitsy. (What a Russian says when he wants just a little more soup.)

Heaven 's two bets. See? (Pascal's Wager)

Mystery

Miss Teary (Tammy Faye)

Word.

Were, duh.

That tickles me.

That tick ills me.

Two more?

To more!

To Moore! (Mandy? Demi? . . . no)

To amore!

Too much Moore.

Tumor.

A Trick

There is meaning here.

The Answer Is Probably

What is most probable

Is not always the most likely

. ?

Walnut Walking

Crushed and not crushed--

Green walnuts turn amber, brown, black beneath my bare sole:

The living shell dissolves,

But the center will not break.

It is hard, like stone.

Sexist Gorilla: It May Be Running Away from You Already

"Write a long poem,"

My brain told me.

"Make it long and obfuscated,

"Such that those triflers who would cause you trouble

"Will be bored by the second stanza."

"Aye . . . and reference Melville and

"Faulkner in order

"To make them feel

"Inadequate, inarticulate."

"And then in the middle of the poem, there

"You can place it

"With impunity."

"A long poem?" I replied

In question.

"But what metric? What

"Rule?

"What form

"?" I

Asked

.

"A

"Nyt

"Hi

"N

"G

",

""

I remember at my good friend's bachelor party my brother did a strip tease dressed as Marilyn Monroe. He is a large man. And hairy, with coarse, dark hair covering his body. But he wore a blonde wig, and fake eyelashes, and a pink, satin dress.

Later, we ran away from my other friend Jim (that's not his real name). We made him run naked around the house. Well, we asked him to run naked around the house, and then we challenged his manhood when he did not want to do it.

So he took off his clothes and ran around the house.

And we drove away in our cars very fast.

I rode in a car with my brother,

Who was dressed like a street-walking mother,

And when Jim got undressed,

Monroe stomped on the gas,

And we drove all the way to Nantucket.

Ahem.

"Did we lose them?" I asked.

100 miles per hour

Is very fast to drive

At night

On blue highways

Where deer feed in the ditches.

"Did we lose him?" I asked.

"I think so," he replied.

He slammed the brakes and we slid sideways across the middle of the concrete pavement,

Like they do in the movies when the stuntman needs to stop quickly and drive back in the opposite direction.

But this was no movie, I think,

And no ")"

--yet it felt it would be.

The yellow headlights of his Japanese pickup had grown very dim behind us, and when we passed him at 110 miles per hour, I could still tell, even in the dark, and with the speed, that he had not yet dressed himself above the waist.

Melville. Faulkner. Whitman. Eliot. Pound. Hemingway. Frost. Beckett. Goethe. Dostoevsky. Atkins. William. Carlos. Williams. Steinbeck. Vonnegut. Irving. Dubus. Cummings. Kafka. Miller. King. Twain.

(Close readers will notice that there are no women writers listed above. This may or may not signify anything. "What's wrong with being sexy?" I asked.)

"Everything that Rises Must Converge"

When God molded man from the red clay,

Blowing breath into his brain,

Invigorating guts and sinews

Simultaneously setting soul and flesh

Together, inseparable,

He made man naked.

And when I want to remember that

I, too, am made by God,

I go out on a summer night,

Naked.

It is difficult not to know God

On the pavement,

In the nude.

My heart pounded, riding shotgun in Monroe's sports car. Accelerating through the gearbox at maximum RPMs. Cats meowing beneath the hood.

"Was it long enough?" I asked.

"I do not know."

When we arrived at our destination, he found us:

It is difficult to fool a man who is naked.

"By whose standards is this long?" my brain asked.

"By whose standards is this a poem?" I replied.

"Touché!"

Forced Poem in 45 Seconds, by Freud

Always

Be

Careful

.

Don't

Ever

Forget

Going

Home

Is

Just

Keeping

Loud

Mouths

Noticeably

Open

.

People

Quite

Reservedly

Say

That

Under

Very

Wasteful

Yearnings

.

Z, is very difficult to force.

Unsatisfying

However hard she tried,

The pickle jar lid would not budge.

So she returned it to the plastic tray of the refrigerator door,

And ate a banana instead.

Phonemenon

a

the

uh

(th)-uh

How remarkable the world of differences made by a single phoneme.

Consider:

a tragedy

the tragedy

The former brings to mind a not unlimited, yet still abundant list of tragedies from which to select meaning. It turns the mind into a slot machine, or Wheel of Fortune of possibilities, each whirling through the consciousness randomly to serve as markers of meaning.

The latter stops the wheel in an instant--forcing each of us to select just one of these not unlimited choices to serve as the simulacrum of tragedy. Here, tragedy is contained within a personal schema of experience, and all emotions (grief, anger, melancholy, sorrow, sadness) contained within each individual's reaction to a single, specific encounter with the word is carried into the bloodstream in endocrinal impulses, responding to the singular sound of tip-of-tongue-on-tooth.

The tragedy.

It is a personal experience, the reading of words.

The hearing of sounds.

Conversation

How can I say this nicely? You are a fruitcake out to lunch. I have to tell you, you are not my best friend--you're not even in the top 1,000.

(How nice can a person be?)

I was thinking the other day that a friend is somebody you would tell anything to. It's true. I have people I like spending time with, but not you.

(Yes. You really should listen.)

Thomas Jefferson said that a friend is somebody you would lay your life down for. Will you be my friend?

(Nope. The circle is full.)

My friend George who commits fraud to get his cholesterol checked: He's my friend.

(It's important. I agree.)

But people don't really want to hear what you have to say, what your pain is. Go ahead: Pour your guts out. But he doesn't want to hear anything that you have to say.

(It's true.)

Essay: The Emperor of Ice Cream

I was walking to the groshery store (you know WAL MART but smaller). A man walked in front of me and bought cigarettes (Robert Redford). And that leads to the next point: Cancer, i.e., DEATH. Which most people think is just a fancy way of going to Heaven (which it is). Because I remember when I was a kid (yes Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse) and my DAD died it maid me think about it (cold, dark, underground). And then most people like to think about clouds and harps (but that's not really).

Which brings me to POINT #2 which is my sister. Not everybody (umm maybe I shouldn't say) OK anyway here goes! And then she got pregnant (and I'm not saying who did it). Which is just like the coldness of the baby when it is dead and you are holding it (aka Robert Redford in the ground).

OK, so now you are thinking what about the other thing? And I don't believe (if it exists) then maybe it does. But I don't know about burning on fire (which doesn't burn forever).

In the fall time I would help my dad (leaves) and he told me not to jump over the fire (smoky) and I remember the smell. But still the leaves were gone in the morning and forever is a long time (but then again Walt Disney!)

OK, so point #3: HEAVEN. And if it is gold I think about my mother (whose dead too but not CANCER) but still = cold and stiff which again is like Ice Cream. Let Be BE! And John Lennin too. But thats enough about that. Anyway.

Umm, most people, (going to church) would say to me "READ YOUR BIBLE" and then I did. Lots of people died in it. And then again I think about Enoch and Elijah (and then again there is FIRE). Walt Disney (aka on ice) isn't in the Bible, but then again some people think Mickey Mouse = Noah's Ark.

So here goes Point #5. My mother would take me to school (and my sister). So anyway the teacher gives me a homework essay to write and I say here goes, but OK I'll try. (But in 1958 the rules were harder). And I wrote an Essay (Ralph Waldoo Emerson?) and I wrote about a frog = cold. And I was holding it, and I thought WHAT THE HE** (for the kids) and it jumped (or did I throw it?) into the burning barrel. And then it disappeard.

Dwarf in a Box

Sally Davis walked down the sidewalk along Oak Street wearing a pink pea coat and purple galoshes. The melting ice from the late February snowstorms left a chilly edge on the sixty-degree sunshine of the March afternoon.

She carried a large cardboard box with her small, seven-year-old arms stretched beneath it and a tiny chin resting on the top. A concentrated face was accentuated by silky blond hair that wisped across her bright blue eyes.

George Sandros was a retired school-teacher who lived down the street from Sally. He was busy clearing the last clumps of snow from his wet driveway when he noticed his young neighbor walking in his direction with the oversized box. Mr. Sandros was a friendly neighbor who had taught sixth-grade for 38 years in the same classroom of the small Illinois town where he and Sally lived. He had retired four years earlier, before Sally was old enough to have had him as a teacher, but he had taught both of Sally's parents, and both of them had considered him one of their most beloved teachers.

Mr. Sandros was an indefatigable optimist with a pure love of children, a love bred from his romantic attachment to the magical mysticism of youth--something he had never lost touch with himself. His classroom had been a laboratory for the imagination, a place where words like no or can't were seldom heard. In it dragons were born, the dark side of the moon was explored, Chinese ladies ate pickle sandwiches with Napoleon, and apples grew on grapevines made from jumprope.

It was a final outpost of childhood. In the summers between the sixth- and seventh-grades, students changed. They would leave his classroom in late May, filled with innocence, optimism, and imagination, then they would return to the school in August with boyfriends, basketball jerseys, and pre-algebra books. 

As Sally came closer to Mr. Sandros's house, he called out to her.

"Hey there, little miss! What cha got it the box?"

"A dwarf."

"Oooh," he replied. "What cha gonna do with it?"

"Gonna let him go."

"Can I see him?"

Sally put down the box and opened the flaps. In the corner sat a large, wet, shivering rat.

"Wow! Where'd you catch him?"

"Under my sandbox."

"You didn't touch him did you?"

Sally looked up suddenly at Mr. Sandros with a worried look on her face. George could see that she had touched it.

"Did he bite?" George asked is a playful tone, trying to preserve the mystery of the experience while at the same time looking out for Sally's safety. But he was well-practiced in this art, and he betrayed to her none of his adult sensibilities.

"He's a nice dwarf," Sally replied. "He doesn't bite."

His eyes moved to her fingers, and satisfied, he continued the conversation. "Where you gonna put him?"

Sally pointed down the sidewalk to a clump of bushes at the dead end of the neighborhood lane in Jennifer Collins's front yard. It was no more than a patch of weedy hibiscus and wisteria that Walter Smith had planted for his wife twenty-odd years earlier. But now both of the Smiths were dead, and the house was left in possession of their three children, who rented it to a single woman in her early twenties. Neither Jennifer nor her landlords took much care for the property's upkeep, so the grass was always long, and the landscaping was overgrown from a decade or so of inattention. For most of the adults in the neighborhood, the house was an eyesore and embarrassment, but at least it was conveniently located at the end of the lane where traffic never passed.

The neighborhood children, on the other hand, found the property to be a place of fantasy. All summer long, bikes lay on their sides at the end of the road next to Jennifer's house as kids played hide-and-seek and sundry other hiding games in the bushy habitat of the unkempt yard. Parents allowed this because it kept their children at the quiet end of the neighborhood, away from traffic and other sorts of trouble, and besides, Jennifer was almost never home to be bothered by the commotion. Even when she was home, she was pleasant enough to be completely uninterested in stirring up trouble with the neighborhood families and never made complaints. 

Mr. Sandros looked down the street toward the budding wisteria.

"Yeah," he said. "I think that is going to be the perfect spot for him."

Sally stooped over to fold down the tops of the brown box, enclosing the small rat-dwarf in darkness. Then she picked up the box, stretched her arms beneath it, and secured the top with the bottom of her chin.

"Do you need help?"

"Nope," she said. 

Sally walked away, and George resumed clearing his driveway. As he scooped ice and dripping slush from the concrete, he laughed to himself to think how upset Mr. Smith be if he knew that neighborhood kids were hiding rats in his wife's wisteria.

He was still grinning when Sally returned minutes later with the box.

"Mr. Sandros?" Sallly called. "I think my dwarf is dead."

George put down his shovel and looked inside the box to see the wet rat sitting in the same corner where he had been a few minutes earlier. He shook the box, and the rat didn't move. Wearing his garden gloves, he reached into the box and poked the ball of cold, damp fur with his finger, and he could feel that its body was already stiff.

"Yup," he said with a smile on his face. "I believe you're right."

Sally did not appear to be sad, but she did not seem to know what was to be done with a dead dwarf. George watched her as a sudden breeze blew between them. 

"You know what? I got just the place for him in my garden. Do you wanna bury him back there with me?"

Sally nodded yes.

Picking up the box, she followed Mr. Sandros to his back yard garden. George retrieved a spade from his work shed and dug a small hole in the wet ground beneath a rose bush. Sally opened the box, placed the dwarf in the hole, and covered it with clumps of dirt. When the job was finished, Sally and Mr. Sandros stood looking down at the small mound of black mud.

From the corner of his eye, George saw a sparrow flit across the yard and disappear into the soffit of his work shed.

"I know it's just a rat," Sally said.

"I know," Mr. Sandros replied.

Devastation

The only person who actually saw it was Sam.

He was standing outside when the sound came. The rest of us were in the family room watching the Super Bowl when a noise like a supersonic boom shook the walls. The wall-mounted flat-screen wobbled for several seconds after the concussion.

All of us ran outside to see what the commotion was, and there was Sam with his back to us, surveying the damage, and dragging on a cigarette. 

For an instant we were frozen in time, unable to process the enormity of devastation that lay before us. So we stood there behind Sam, taking it all in.

Until Sam took one last drag on his cigarette, flicked the butt into the driveway, and turned around to go inside. He didn't look at any of us when he passed.

To this day I've never talked to him about it.

The Kentucky

This is an old story, but I've cleaned it up a little. However, it is still very raw. In general, my policy on this site is to post things even if they are imperfect. Maybe one day I will get around to refining things. If I waited till everything was perfect, nothing would ever get posted.  I wrote this in my Creative Writing class when I was attending EIU in 2000. I hope you like it. It's a little long, so give yourself time to read.

------------------

Jenna dreamt of the ranch silhouetted against the setting sun. The barn, quiet with an echo of pawing hooves and heavy sighs, prepared for another night of long stillness. The creek, crimson in the dying light, trickled relentlessly. It washed away the oldness of day and replaced a freshness from somewhere sublime; it flowed always toward the sea.

Heavily, she fell into her only comfort since the separation. As night covered her like a warm blanket, she was at peace.

Day always came too soon, and mornings exaggerated the emptiness of the house. She brushed eight hours of sleep from her mouth and gurgled with antiseptic. Dropping her nightgown into a silken pile, the cool air transformed her smooth nakedness into a battlefield goosebumps, as straight brown hair cascaded down her back. Bathroom tiles like rows of ice cubes stole the remnants of warmth that cozy sleep had wrapped about her. It made her wish she were still in bed. The shower was a refrigerator with a ceramic tub and glass doors; and the chill water, a frontal assault on her cold skin, slowly changed to a comforting warmness that she had not felt for a long time. She stood there too long, breathing long and heavy beneath the pounding flood of hot and steam, trying to remember him. But in time, the water ran cold.

In the mirror she inspected her eyes, wondering how she would ever be able to disguise her weakness under a fresh coat of Mary Kay. But she always did. With an army of brushes and pigments she fought back the advancing enemy that gained so much ground while she slept. One day they would win. She was tired of fighting.

Jenna ran a checklist through her mind. The purse, the bag, the keys, the badge, the labcoat. What else? Did I feed Lucas? Outside the front door her faithful sentinel waited with wagging tail and panting tongue. She scooped some food and checked his water like someone who has wasted too much time.

She rubbed the rich black fur under his belly and thanked him for another night of security. He was the only thing that remained of that other life. He was a stout black lab, and friendly, but he was growing old and grey. She got Lucas when she was 26; last month she turned 38. Jenna stooped to pet him better. She could be a little late.

She used to listen to talk radio on the way to work, but the Rush Limbaugh wannabes were beginning to annoy her. Even if she liked to listen to music, there was nothing but country on FM. She had spent all her life in Kentucky, raised 20 miles from Lexington and 200 miles from Nashville, but she had never developed an appreciation for the heart-breaking, my-lover-left-me songs that played on every station, even if she could write one herself.

She wouldn't sing songs of broken trust and abused love: songs that long for better days and climax in a life-long addiction to Prozac. Life didn't happen to her; she made her own choices, even if they brought pain every once in a while. To take responsibility for her choices was her focus, and she was moving forward with her life. She was not defeated; she still had strength.

This was her liturgy every morning during the 38-mile drive from the ranch to work. It was nice, but not as safe as sleep.

The echoing thud of a car door in a parking garage was her signal that the race was underway. She took brisk steps to the stairwell where she pounced up four flights like a tiger. Down the long corridor and up another flight of stairs she came to the locked doors of 3 West, the psychiatry unit. She had to ring a doorbell to get in.

She'd run the mile in high school track. When the gun sounded you just went and didn't think. She could hear no sound but the beating of feet all around her and a single voice calling from high in the stands. It was always around the turn after the first 100 meters that she began to worry. Am I running too fast? Can I do this? I can't breathe. But the voice pushed her on. She felt this way in the seconds between the time she pressed the doorbell and the on-duty nurse arrived at the door. There was always someone at her heels, threatening her lead. It made her run harder.

"Well hi there, Jenna!" said Carol as she opened the door. "You're just always so smiley and pretty in the morning. I wish I had your pretty face!" Carol was 63 years old and had overly permed hair that had been colored to look yellow. She was overweight and ugly, but her deficiencies in appearance did not overshadow her exuberant personality. Carol was only a nurse when she was at the hospital. When she went home, her life was devoted to her grandchildren. Jenna was glad to see her smiling face.

"Thank you," Jenna said and smiled back. Since the separation, the other nurses and techs on the floor had rallied around Jenna to boost her esteem. They seldom, if ever, mentioned anything specific about what kind of loser could have left someone like Jenna, but they were always telling her how pretty she was, and how they wished their sons had married her.

"Oh you're just gonna love being here today," Carol said to Jenna with a facetious grin. She always spoke positively. The more optimistic Carol was the worse day Jenna could expect. "Sam is mad again today because he still can't find his toothbrush, and Elly says she's having another nervous breakdown; she'll probably be askin' for more Ativan, but I just give her a Tylenol and told her it's a sleepin' pill and she calmed down. Otherwise things are pretty normal. I just gotta finish up these charts, and then I'm goin' to have dinner with my grandbabies."

Carol had a way of keeping her real life separate from her life at work that most good nurses develop over time. Grandbabies were the real matter of her life, and probably the only thing that prevented her own nervous breakdowns. Having the old nurse around made Jenna feel like her job wasn't so intolerable, but she hadn't yet discovered how to slip between her two lives as gracefully as Carol did.

"Oh, Sweetie, I forgot to tell you! We got a new one today. She's just a girl, though, only fifteen-years old. She's real pretty, just like you."

Jenna rolled her eyes. She knew exactly what was coming. She didn't need Carol to tell her that the girl had been brought in shortly after midnight because she had called a suicide hotline; that her wrists were pricked with "cat scratches" that had really been made by the dull point of a safety pin; that she had broken up with her boyfriend last night; that her father had abused her; that she smelled of cigarettes. Carol told her anyway, and added that the girl needed a good daddy more than she needed to be in the hospital.

Carol gave Jenna the keys. It was a sort of changing of the guard that happened every 8 hours on the psych unit. "You've just got six patients, honey, so you'll be the only nurse up here today. I'm off to see my grandbabies." Carol had a big grandma smile. Jenna couldn't help but smile back at her.

Jenna busied herself with the regular duties of nursing: mostly paperwork. They never told you in school that nursing was more about paperwork than caring for patients. In fact, they never told you that most patients didn't really need care. Jenna was a much harder nurse than Carol. She hated the fact that she had to work for a living while all the patients were able to sit around, be depressed all day, and collect disability. Most patients on the floor were, in fact, voluntary admissions for depression. There were 14 beds on the unit. Most of the time, at least eight of them were occupied. Six of those were always filled with people "dealing with chronic depression" or "combating suicidal thoughts." My God, Jenna thought, who isn't depressed or wanting to kill themselves? In her opinion, most patients on that floor just needed a kick in the ass. She blamed the doctor. Instead of teaching them to deal with their stupid lives, he would give them drugs: Ativan, Xanax., Paxil, Prozac, and other various anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications, most of them at least psychologically addictive. The patient would "learn how to cope" with their problem after about 5 days, or as long as their insurance or Medicare would cover their hospital stay, then go out to face the big bad world with a new lease on life. A week later they would readmit themselves after finding that their homes were not as comfortable as the hospital. At home, they didn't have a nurse to bring them food at regular intervals, to wash their laundry, or to bring them a pill every four hours. At least the count was low today.

She looked at the clock and rolled her eyes. It was time to disperse the meds. She unlocked the medicine cabinet and filled six small cups with multi-colored pills

The first to get doped was Sam, the patient with the toothbrush problem. He was a legitimate patient, Jenna thought, not one of the depressed suicidals. He was 82 years old and suffered from both severe Alzheimer's and Schizophrenia. He was also about a month overdue to die. He would have been a good candidate for a nursing home, except he had attacked an LPN with his toothbrush, sending her to the hospital for four stitches and a buttload of antibiotics.

Sam was also DNR: Do Not Resuscitate. His family refused to have anything to do with him, and he lost his apartment when two boys in black ties and white shirts reported him to the Department of Health and Human Services. After spending an afternoon talking with him about Joseph Smith and the golden plates, the Elders were a little freaked out when they saw Sam rubbing Bag Balm into his cat's fur and sticking a toothbrush in its rectum. He had no physical calamities, like cancer or pneumonia, or even a cold; still, he was slowly dying because he wouldn't eat. Sam was a true crazy. He needed to be here.

Elly didn't. Jenna cringed to see the 42-year-old woman huddled in the fetal position by the window.

"I hate myself!" Elly's face was contorted in that pitiful manner that toddler faces are when mom leaves them with the baby-sitter for the evening. "I'm gonna die if I don't get something soon." Jenna thought Elly would have done well to blow her nose; instead, she let it drip down her shirt.

"Get up, Elly. I have your meds."

Elly became very friendly all of a sudden. "I'm sorry. I just can't handle this anymore. I'm so sick of being sick. I know I can get better; I just need some more time to sort things out."

"So, has the doctor given you any idea when you might be able to get back to your kids?" Jenna asked, although she knew the answer already.

"I'm not ready." Elly's eyes were like a jacklit deer. "The doctor said I won't be ready for a while. He said I have too much to deal with right now. Don't you dare tell him I'm better! I'm not better. I need to be here." She began to cry again and ask for more medication.

"This is all the doctor thinks you need right now, Elly. You should talk to him if you think you need something else." As much as Jenna hated it, she couldn't help but be polite to the patients to their faces. It was easier than confrontation, and they were always so pitiful when they were addicted

Jenna went to the other rooms and passed out the same prescriptions over and over again. Most of the patients were getting Ativan or Paxil. Jenna didn't know why they were called "patients." There was nothing patient about them as far as she could tell. All of them knew exactly what doses they needed, and most of them cautioned her that they needed more than the prescriptions indicated. A few of them flat out asked for morphine and/or methamphetamines. It was always a relief for Jenna to finish passing meds. It depressed her.

She had one last patient to see: the new girl. She knocked gently on the door as she entered and said hello. There was a small-framed, very attractive blonde-haired girl sitting in a chair staring out the window.

"What are you going to do to me?" The girl was rude, and Jenna was in no mood for games.

"Listen, you are going to be in here for a while, so I suggest you don't start it off with an attitude. You're not the only person in here with problems, and I'm not here to listen to you complain. So take your pills and lose the attitude."

Jenna always felt proud of herself when she was able to tell a patient where to shove it. She especially loved giving melodramatic first-time offenders the unofficial welcome to a lifetime of "overcoming clinical depression." If the doctor was too afraid to deal with the real issues, then she would, from time to time.

The new girl turned her face from the window and studied Jenna with cold blue eyes that were darkened with tear-washed mascara. "What do you want?" she said.

Jenna's expression changed from contempt to surprise. The girl's eyes were filled with a heaviness that Jenna had only seen in very old men and very good actresses. The nurse wasn't sure, at first, how to read the girl. But slowly she began to understand.

"My name is Jenna. I'm going to be the nurse up here during the daytime. At ten o' clock, every day, I'm going to bring you these two pills the doctor wants you to take. I'm not here to give you a hard time, but you're not here to give me a hard time either, ok?"

The girl turned her head again and looked out the window. Jenna walked toward her with the pills. As she came nearer to the girl, she noticed the girl's knuckles whiten as her fingers grasped the arms of the chair. Jenna stopped. "What's your name?" She knew already.

"You won't stop me!" The girl ferociously turned her head to Jenna and glared like a panting devil.

Jenna regained her stunted confidence. For a moment, she thought the girl might have been serious about killing herself, but the outburst revealed the charade, as far as Jenna was concerned.

"I'm not here to stop you from anything," Jenna sassed. "If you want to kill yourself, Megan, then I suggest you get on with it. But for now we're going to take these two pills so you can get some rest, and I can go back and chart the progress you've made today."

Megan took the pills reluctantly. She swallowed them without water, one at a time, gave Jenna the finger and resumed her window gazing. Jenna left the room to do the charts.

The drive home was hectic, as usual, until Jenna had made it to the exit that took her down 17 miles of blacktop road to the ranch. She called it a ranch. It used to be a tobacco farm, but the previous owner had kept several horses. Jenna wasn't a rider, but Greg was; that was why they'd bought the place. Greg wanted a somewhere to keep his horses, if he ever got them. He was that kind of guy-the kind that plans to do everything but never does anything. He planned to love Jenna. They both planned to be happy. Jenna tried to do what she planned, but her plans never worked.

Lucas scampered down the long driveway when he saw the car turn in. This was his custom, despite his age. Jenna felt empty to be loved so unconditionally.

She went inside and changed into a tee-shirt and sweatpants. After eating a bowl of leftover macaroni and cheese, she put on her jogging shoes and put a leash on Lucas. Their evening tradition had become to walk down the wooded path behind the barn. A stream flowed along the path. A few miles down it joined the Kentucky River, , then the Ohio, the Mississippi, and down toward the sea. They would walk together through the darkening woods, and Jenna would try to remember in her waking hours a peace she had once felt there. The darkness grew around her, but she would walk deeper into the woods. Sometimes she would walk so far and for so long that she was afraid she would not be able to find her way back before sunset. Something always turned her around; though day by day her journeys tarried longer and farther into the woods to where the creek broadened, running deeper and more swiftly.

At last, she returned. She thanked Lucas copiously for his companionship and wondered how much longer it would last, but she didn't dwell on the question. She wouldn't worry about anything until she had to; there was no sense in getting worked up about things that haven't happened. Imaginary anxieties can be dangerous, and she drowned this one in a bubble bath.

That night she slept soundly, as she always did, slipping into that peaceful bliss of sleep. She thought of her mother, and how they had spent so many nights sleeping together while her father was keeping Louisville's escort services in business. He was a wealthy man, a racetrack shareholder, but he had no interest in the families he created. Jenna remembered little of him but his cigars and rough hands. He was sent to prison when Jenna was five. That is when Jenna's mother moved herself and her daughter from Louisville to Wilmore. It wasn't until the days before mother died that Jenna discovered why her father was in prison. He'd solicited a 15-year-old prostitute. He would never see his family again, and Jenna didn't care.

Jenna's mother, Constance, was an inspiration. Though she didn't have a lot of money, Constance always made sure that she and her daughter were well-dressed because, as she told Jenna, "A woman is as beautiful and strong as she looks." Constance supported her daughter in every endeavor she undertook. She woke Jenna for her six o'clock runs and waited for her to return with toast and a big glass of orange juice. She took off work from to drive to Jenna's track meets, sitting rain or shine on the highest row of bleachers yelling encouragement to her miler in making. Jenna had not realized at the time how deeply her mother had loved her.

Every good grace that Jenna had she owed to her mother, who used to work nights as a waitress at a small dingy restaurant called The Chicken Coop. The establishment drew many customers because of its legendary fried chicken. Later, it was rumored to be the place where Colonel Sanders found his famous original recipe. Business was good, particularly from outsiders, and outsiders gave good tips, especially to beautiful and strong waitresses. She worked there for six years while she studied to become a nurse. Eventually, she became an RN and worked in the obstetrics unit of the Wilmore hospital for 25 years. She was present, if not involved, in most every birth in Wilmore between 1973 and 1998. In April 1998 she was diagnosed with lymphoma, and she died the following December. She was 63.

Jenna's mother had been dead for a year and a half. Greg had left six months later. He told Jenna she'd changed and he met someone younger and more full of life. He was a pervert, just like Jenna's father. She wondered if she had ever loved him.

Jenna and Greg married later in life than most people do: there were in their thirties. They had been single too long for either of them to expect it to work. After five years of waiting for Greg to want a child, she finally realized he was a liar. She was glad to get rid of him. She didn't need all the problems he created; but as the anniversary of the separation approached, she found herself thinking about being alone.

In the morning the same routine. The alarm. The tiles. The shower. Mary Kay. The liturgy. It was another day to survive, and morale was low. At least it was Friday.

Thud!

In the parking garage the race began again. She took brisk steps to the stairwell where she pounced up four flights like a tiger. Down the long corridor and up another flight of stairs she came to the locked doors of 3 West. She had to ring a doorbell to get in. Don't slow down, Jenna. You gotta run!

"Oh, Jenna, you precious thing! You are so smiley in the morning. I wish my Jacob had met you a long time ago."

Jenna smiled.

"You missed a busy night last night, phew," Carol said as she giggled. "Oh I shouldn't laugh, but you just won't believe it!"

Jenna smiled with her nose wrinkled up. "What happened?"

Carol led Jenna into the nurse's station and lowered her voice so the patients couldn't hear. "Well, you know old Sam with the toothbrush?"

"Oh no, where did he put it this time?"

"Well, Sam died. I found him in his room at three in the morning." Carol's face reddened as her grin grew wider.

"Oh, that's too bad." Jenna was genuine, but Carol couldn't hold back her giggling. "What is it?" Jenna asked.

"Well, I had to get him ready for the mortician; you know, all washed up and everything. Anyways, I was pulling his sheets off and wiping his legs down when I saw something sticking out of his bottom."

"Oh no!" Jenna was disgusted, but Carol, always jolly, couldn't contain herself.

"He's been missin' that toothbrush for two whole days, and right there it was in his anus the whole time!"

The two nurses reveled for a short time in one of the crudest perks of nursing: gross stories. Soon, though, Carol's attention turned again to her grandbabies and she made her way out the door.

"You have a good weekend now, Sweetheart, and don't lose your toothbrush."

Carol always made the beginning of Jenna's day pleasant, but it only lasted 15 minutes. When the grandmotherly nurse left, Jenna settled down into the hard mode again, looking over paperwork and despising the patients. She read in the charts that Carol had given Elly two Tylenol last night. She could just imagine Elly complaining: Give me my sleeping pills! I need a Valium. She could see Carol go to the medicine cabinet and get out a Tylenol, telling Elly it was experimental and not to tell the doctor she gave it to her. She could imagine Carol telling her it would be too dangerous to take two of those pills because it might make her OD. She could see Elly marveling at the attention she would get if she OD'd on something.

She imagined Carol finding Sam and his toothbrush. She saw her running the wet cloth over his pale, clammy, old-man skin. It was a disgusting job, but Carol was the type of nurse who you would expect to do it without flinching; and now she has a good story to tell.

She imagined Megan and her attitude. She wondered how long it would be until Megan got tired of not being with her friends and decided to "overcome her suicidal thoughts."

Jenna looked at the clock. It was ten. Jenna went to the medicine cabinet that was always locked to keep patients out of it. She reached into her pocket to get the keys and realized that she didn't have them. She began to get nervous trying to remember where she put them. Suddenly she realized she forgot to get the keys from Carol.

The nurses had forgotten their ritual in all the commotion surrounding Sam and his toothbrush. She flipped the rolodex to "G." There it was, "Gwaltney, Carol." Quickly she dialed the number. Fortunately, Carol lived in town.

"Hello?" a voice answered.

"Hi, this is Jenna Chambers from the Psychiatry Unit at Chandler Medical Center. Is Carol available?"

The voice informed Jenna that Carol went out to lunch with her grandbabies and he didn't expect her back for an hour.

Jenna returned the phone to the receiver and thought. The nurse manager has a spare set of keys, but it would take a long time to fill out a missing-keys report and Jenna certainly didn't want to do all that on a Friday. Besides, Carol could be reprimanded for such a mistake. Jenna liked Carol too much to get her in trouble, and it was as much Jenna's fault as it was Carol's. She thought quickly about what to do. She thought about breaking the cabinet, or not passing meds at all. Then, an idea came to her.

She rummaged through her purse, pulled out a large bottle of aspirin, and began placing two or three pills in each medicine cup. No one was allergic to aspirin on the charts, and she would get the keys back for the next dispersal. This way she would save herself a lot of grief and teach the patients a lesson in the meantime.

As she walked down the halls of the unit, she was nervous of getting caught. The stakes were high. She would lose her job if anyone found out, but she wasn't sure if she cared. The plan went smoothly, though, with the exception of Elly. Elly insisted on the new drug Carol had given her last night. Jenna told her that the doctor wasn't pleased with the results of that drug and wanted to try a new one instead. Elly was adamant. Jenna wanted to keep things quiet, so she offered Elly an extra pill, as she called it, "Viathol." People like Elly love new names of prescription drugs, and Jenna assured her it was the newest and strongest stuff on the market. Finally, Elly conceded and took the pills.

Megan was not in her room. She was in the common shower, the only place patients could go for privacy, and the only room patients could lock themselves into. Sometimes patients smoked in there, despite hospital policy against smoking indoors. Most nurses turned a blind eye. Still, patients were not allowed to be in the bathroom for more than fifteen minutes at a time, no matter what they were doing: smoking, masturbating, or-God forbid-taking a shower. Jenna was uneasy knowing that a patient was in the shower when she didn't have the keys. Every workshop on patient safety she had ever endured stressed the importance of having access to patients all the time. Never let yourself get into a situation where the patient has the upper hand. Always know where your patients are. Don't leave suicidal patients alone. She rehearsed all the important rules she had just broken.

Still, she was the only person who knew the keys were gone. Megan didn't know. The patients knew that the nurses could get into the bathroom any time they wanted. The bathroom only provided privacy from other patients--not from nurses. Jenna decided to play it cool.

"Don't take too long in there. There are others out here who want showers." Jenna was talking to a closed door, feeling very vulnerable.

For two agonizing hours Jenna waited for Megan to come out the shower. Only once, thirty minutes after she dispersed the meds, did she check on Megan. Megan told her where to go. At least she isn't dead, Jenna thought. She didn't want to press the issue because she didn't have any leverage, so she thought it was a good idea to leave the girl alone. If she asked Megan to unlock the door, she would reveal her mistake. It would be best to let Megan believe the door could be opened at anytime. But Jenna was beginning to get desperate. The shower had run for two hours, and Jenna had no key.

The other patients began to notice as well.

"I need to smoke, but that new freak has been in the shower for two hours," Elly complained. "Nobody else around here gets to take no two-hour showers!"

Jenna scrambled for an explanation. "The other patients aren't really your business, Elly."

"They are too my business when I don't get to smoke my cigarette." She stomped back to her room, stopping by the bathroom door to cuss at the new girl.

Jenna wondered when Carol was going to call. She considered giving up and calling the nurse manager. It was too late for that, though. If she admitted that she didn't have the keys, she would have to explain how she unlocked the cabinet at ten. She was also not sure what she was going to find in the bathroom once it was unlocked, and she didn't want to find out.

She thought of her father. She remembered his rough hands and the smell of cigars on his tongue. She thought of her mother and the security of sleep. She thought of Greg, the barn, and the empty stalls. She thought of Lucas and their long walks. She thought of the river; and she wondered how far it was to the sea.

The phone rang. Jenna didn't tell Carol that Megan had locked herself in the shower for two hours.

Carol arrived with the keys in less than 15 minutes. She looked embarrassed: "Oh, Sugar, I'm so sorry. I just plain forgot about those keys when I left. I just put them in my purse like they was my own. I feel so terrible." Carol was sincere. Relieved, but anxious, Jenna took the keys from Carol.

"Don't worry about it, Carol; everything has been fine. I'm just glad I finally got in touch with you before I had to call someone else."

Carol looked at Jenna and breathed a sigh of relief. Jenna wasn't ready to sigh. She watched as Carol turned and left through the front door of the unit. She waited ten seconds just in case Carol forgot something. Then, she hurried to bathroom door.

She stopped at the door for an eternity. She remembered track, the starting line, the smell of gunpowder, the long-legged harriers in multi-colored singlets. Don't let her beat you, she told herself. You're stronger than she is. She waited for a signal.

The key slid into the lock like a bullet in a chamber. The shower fell like the hush of spectators before the gun. She prayed for a false start, but the gun sounded loudly. Steam from the shower enveloped her like blue smoke from the signaler, and Megan lay bled and pale on the cold tile floor.

Jenna lied to everybody. She lied to the police, to the doctor, to the nurse manager. She would have lied to Carol if she had to. She explained that she didn't know there was a patient in the shower until another patient complained. She unlocked the door and found the patient face-down in the shower. The patient had deeply slit her wrists with the broken pieces of the bathroom mirror, and the patient had lost a lot of blood before the nurse found her. The nurse called for help and immediately began first-aid and CPR, but the patient was already dead. The doctor pronounced the patient dead at 1:23 p.m. The mortician was notified. She said nothing about aspirin, keys, or locked doors. She also avoided saying Megan's name.

Jenna's shift was almost over by the time the commotion had passed. She was exhausted from all the questions and paperwork, and had not taken a break all day. She went outside the hospital and sat at a bench in a small park across the street. An evening fog was setting-on, and the moist air cooled her hot face. She put her face in her hands and sobbed quietly.

When she had cried for a few minutes, she wiped her face and pulled her hair behind her ears. Through the fog she noticed a mother in a long wool coat and heels standing at a cross-walk. She was holding the hand of a young girl who wore pink ribbons in her curly blonde hair. Jenna watched as the mother monitored the heavy traffic, looking up and down the street, waiting for an opportunity to lead her daughter safely across. The girl only looked at her mother.

Jenna went back to the unit. The nurses on the new shift had already arrived. Jenna told them she would stay to prepare Megan's bloodstained body for the mortician. She was tired, but she couldn't bring herself to leave--not yet.

Jenna had prepared bodies several times, but this was her first suicide, and her youngest corpse. She smoothed back wet hair from the dead girl's face. For the first time she saw a trace of peace on a face that had always looked so full of pain and contempt. She dipped a washcloth in cold water and touched it to Megan's ashen cheek. Blood and mascara were washed from the girl's eyes with a flood of tears. Like a mother, Jenna wiped down the child's neck and small breasts, baptizing her unceremoniously for a new world. She drew a wet cloth across her lifeless legs and knew that she would never run again.

"You were beautiful, Megan. You were beautiful and strong." A tear rolled down Jenna's cheek.

Jenna remembered standing in the receiving line at her mother's funeral. She remembered all the ladies dressed in black that told her how strong her mother was and how she reminded them of her mother. Jenna didn't cry at the funeral. She didn't cry when they closed the lid of the casket, and she didn't cry when they lowered it into the ground. Jenna had learned to be strong from her mother, but she had never learned how to love.

Jenna poured her heart onto the gurney of the dead. She put her cheek down on Megan's breast and sobbed as tears began to flow.

Fifteen years of promise lay lifeless on the gurney, awaiting the mortician. He was supposed to pick he up at five o' clock. Jenna wanted to stay until he arrived; she felt a motherly obligation to stay with Megan until the end. A man in a suit arrived shortly after five and asked where he could find the body. She thought he smelled of cigars as she led him to the room where Megan lay. The mortician pulled back the sheet and studied the corpse. "Sure is a young one, isn't she?" He asked with a smile on his face. "What a waste."

Jenna followed Megan's body out the unit, down the elevator, through the lobby, and to the hearse. There was nothing to be done. She did not want to leave Megan alone, and she did not want to be alone herself.

The drive home may have been hectic, as usual, if Jenna could have thought of anything besides Megan. Time suddenly didn't matter, or didn't exist, and she was pulling into the long driveway before she realized she was home, and that Lucas was gone. She called for him, but he didn't come. She sat down on the porch and began to cry.

Jenna needed not to be alone. She found her running shoes and grabbed Lucas' leash. She ran past the empty barn into the woods.

The path narrowed as brush and briars bit at her ankles. She felt like crying. Instead she bit her lip and ran harder. The canopy overhead closed as she flew deeper into the woods. She found the stream trickling from its everlasting source and followed it downstream. She went deeper and deeper into the darkness, running away from the ranch and away from light. She ran to where the stream deepens and broadens as it joins the Kentucky, and she looked at the sun. It was going to fall on her.

Jenna wanted more than anything to run to the sea where waters as deep as eternity would bury her, to be swallowed in the river and swept away by tides that forget the past and press ever toward the stillness of the deep. She climbed a rock that overhung the river and stretched out her hands. She closed her eyes as she inhaled breath after breath of clean and fresh air. She drank air like a runner at the end of a marathon and wanted more than anything to collapse into the flood, but a still, deep voice inside her rose above din of the deluge.

Don't give up Jenna. You have to keep moving, Jenna. Use your legs now. One step at a time.

"Mom! Don't leave me alone!"

Keep running, Jenna. It's just a little further.