6-29-2005

I haven't written on this for a little while. Partly because it takes away from my own writing, and partly because I just got married. Anyhow, I'm on the first phase of my honeymoon, just chilling out hardcore in a little bed and breakfast. Thanks to everyone who helped/ came to the wedding- it was a gas.

Jesse

Part Seven

by Jesse Gloyd

Cody let the hot steam run over his back in the shower. He looked towards the door in shock as his father knocked. "We're burning Ozone, Cody." he said. "What in the hell is taking so long?"

"I'll be out in a sec," he said. A cool wave of embarrasment fell over his body.

"CODY," said a voice from afar.

Cody cowered in fear. "ANSWER ME!!"

"Y-y-yes it's me," he quivered. "DO NOT BE ASHAMED! IT IS THAT WHICH YOU DO NOT WANT TO DO THAT WILL BE THE KEY TO PEACE AND UNDERSTANDING AND FOR HEALING OF THE OZONE!!"

"Is this my special power?"

"IT IS, MY LAD, IT IS."

Part Six

Rick, Emmy, and Cody wore cloaks of camel hair to disguise themselves when they traveled by foot. When wearing the cloak, they would become their normal human selves. The cloaks were brought to them as they were flying and delivered by a winged lion named Casius. He told them that they only need utter the phrase "beasts of the earth bring power to my breast" to regain their animalistic strengths.

On the second day of their journey, they floated through the clouds and pine trees and gracefully landed in the parking lot of a Target in Lake Tahoe. "My wings are sore from the flight," said Emmy. "Maybe that's because you were soaring," said Cody. "Don't talk to me in that tone, son."

"Let us drape the cloaks around us and become normal," said Rick with authority. They walked through the parking lot. It was pitchblack, save for the stars in the sky. "We must be careful, for the agents of Maldrigon could be anywhere," said Emmy.

"Damn," said Emmy.

"What?" said Rick.

"Do you have any cigarettes?"

"No," he said. "But there's an AM/PM up the road." They walked in silence down the side of the street. The lights from the casinos glowed in the distance, the shine reflecting off the lake.

"I sense badness," said Emmy.

"I don't," said Cody.

"Just as your father was given the power to interpret the spirit of The One, I was given the power to sense danger."

"Do you feel any danger?"

She stopped. "CLOAKS OFF!"

They threw off their cloaks in a hurry and turned around to see a white cloud of smoke form behind them. The sound of an engine and the smell of exhaust blew out from the forming vortex. They shielded themselves from the hot white light that blew out at them like a supernatural tidal wave of energy. When the blast subsided, a non-descriptor grey van stood in the middle of the road. Opening the driverside door, a Hispanic man in a white v-neck undershirt and Dickies, stepped out and unsheathed a sword. The side door of the van then slid open and four other men, two of African descent, and two of Latin came out wearing red bandanas and brandishing guns, chains, and brass knuckles.

"Hey, Vato," said Cody. "Prepare to eat fire!"

"Cody, don't say that, I sense that they may be part of a gang," said Emmy.

"Damn right hooch!" said one of the black ones. "We're part of the Crips, acting as mercenaries hired by Madrligon, LORD OF THE STREETS!"

"Well, get read to meet your maker, crips, cuz this Dragon is gonna kick your butt!!!" said Cody. "BEASTS UNITE!"

--

Later that night, after they had killed the four crips, they walked to a Motel 6. The bed was stiff and the stale smell of cigarettes gave Emmy a headache. She left the room about fifteen minutes into the movie "Entrapment." She'd seen it a couple years earlier with a friend from work in the one screen theater in Ennis. Rick flipped between it and basketball hightlights as Cody fell asleep on his side on top of the covers.

Part Five

by Jesse Gloyd

Just as the rattler was about to elongate it's slender pulsating body into death strike pose, Emmy took off her shirt. The snake was mezmerised. It's head bobbed back and forth and Emmy began to sing and shake. "Everybody knows in a second life we all come back sooner or later, as anything, from a pussy cat, to a man eating alligator."

The snake began to harmonize with an evil slither,"now you all might think my story is more fiction than its fact." Rick was taking his clothes off as well. Cody, in fear, began to scream. His leg was turning leathery and his feet were morphing into claws. "But believe it or not my mother, dear, decided she'd come back," they sang. Cody's hair fell out and his eyes sucked into his skull. "As a car, she's her very own shining star..."

A voice from another dimension called to them as they stood naked in the middle of the floor. Cody had taken the form of a small dragon. Smoke filtered from his nostrils and sulfur bubbled up from his insides. "THE DUBOIS FAMILY," the voice said. Rick had taken on the lower body of a goat and Emmy now had prehistoric wings of what seemed like fish scales. "Yes," they answered in unison. "YOU HAVE BEEN GIVEN POWER OF THE BEASTS, YOU MUST USE YOUR POWER TO DESTROY THE FORCES OF MALDRIGON!" And with the blessing from The One, the three forced united and flew through the roof and into the air.

Arms stretched, they made their way across the rolling golden hills. Below them, they watched a herd of elk gallop in formation. Emmy let the cool breeze run under her wings. "What is our mission?" she asked Rick. "Were you not listening?" he answered. "Listening to what, Dad?" asked Cody. "Don't use that tone with me son," he said. "I have been given power by The One to hear the longings of his heart, what he speaks with his spirit." "What has he told you?" asked Emmy. "That we need to do everything withing our damn power to STOP THE DESTRUCTION OF THE OZONE LAYER!!!" The boom of his voice could be heard as far off as Fargo, the power of his baritone killed the heard of elk below him, turning them into ash.

Sun in your Eye

by Jesse Gloyd

I really like the song "Scotch and Soda." I've got the Kingston Trio doing it in their soothing "folk-lite" sort of way. I got to play guitar with John Stewart (not the funnyman), one of the founding members a few years back. He wrote "Daydream Believer," which, if I had the balls, I would've asked him to play. There were three of us in the room playing guitars and singing. I had a version of him doing "Mamma You've Been On My Mind" I always loved his version and had heard it before Dylan's (which wasn't released until vol. 1-3 of his Bootleg deal). He played it for me and I sang along.

I'm getting married soon. This excites me. If I had my way, I'd decorate my house with dinosaur fossils and taxedermy. I hope someday to own a boat and would like to claim that I have sailed the seven seas. Anyhow, first period is about to end and I need to get to work on a script I'm working on. I would like to post here more, but you know how that goes.

Three and Four

Cody washed his hands with dish soap in the kitchen sink. Flakes of scale from the fish clung to his hand and had to be picked off. Outside on the porch his dad had built the summer before, Cody heard the rustle of a small animal dragging away a string of fish insides he had set in a cleaned out paint bucket fifteen minutes earlier. He turned off the water, wiped his hands on the back of his jeans, and kneeled on the back of their couch to look out the window. A large raccoon was hanging on the side of the bucket trying to pull it down to get at its contents. Cody’s father walked into the room.

“Raccoons?” he said.

“Just one.”

His dad’s hair was wet and his shirt was off. The warm steam from the shower filtered into the small living room and quickly cooled off. He had a brown button-up shirt in his hand that he put on and started buttoning up while looking over Cody’s shoulder at the raccoon.

“There’s another just down the steps,” he said.

“Where,” said Cody.

“Just coming up the steps. You can see the glow from its eyes,” his dad said as he tucked in his shirt.

“Yeah.”

His dad walked to the small kitchen table and picked up his keys. “There’s some fried chicken in the fridge,” he said.

“Okay,” he said.

He backed the car down the gravel drive and set off through the canyon. Cody stood on the porch and watched him drive off. When the bright red dots of the brake lights had disappeared past the bend, Cody walked outside and down to the bunkhouse where the wranglers would sit and smoke.

Several guests sat outside a fire pit drinking wine and beer. Most had fallen asleep early, tired from a ten mile horseback ride through the hills that afternoon. “Hey, Cody,” said one of them through the red and orange glow of the fire. Cody waved back, he’d gone on the ride that day and had gotten to know a few of the guests that were sitting around. “How long have you been ridin'?” asked another in his East Coast use of cowboy speak. Cody shrugged. “A few years, I guess,” he said.

He made his way to the bunkhouse. Clark, a young man in his early twenties was sitting and talking with Mitch. Cody stood a few yards away and threw rocks into a field. Clark took a cigarette out of a pack that was sitting on top of his case of Bud Light. Mitch followed suit.

“Are you getting up tomorrow with us,” said Mitch. Cody shrugged his shoulders. “You’d better get up,” said Clark. Cody grinned, picked up a rock, and threw it into the field.

Cody’s father, Will, held a plastic cup while he drove. He used it to spit out the murky brown tobacco juice he held between his gum and lower lip. He had moved to Montana when he was four. His mother had died during his first and only year of college, but his father was still alive and living in Butte. He’d take his family there every few months. They’d meet up with his dad at the minor league ballpark in the heart of the old mining town. They’d usually go to a diner that served potato cakes that had been a staple for over a hundred years.

The night was pitch black and the road quiet. It usually took about a half hour to get in to town. The road through the canyon hadn’t been paved over. The headlights bounced up and down with the car as it cruised over the ridges cut by the weather. He drove in silence, turning on a country music station only after leaving the canyon. A George Strait song came on and he hummed accordingly. He had seen George Strait three years earlier at the college in Bozeman. He played an afternoon show at the football stadium. It was crowded and warm, they sat on sheets taken off Cody’s bed, ate sandwiches, potato chips, and got drunk on whiskey his friend Barton brought in a water bottle.

Emmy stood behind the bar and smoked a cigarette. Two men played pool under the green glow of a Rolling Rock sign. They leaned on their cues and watched each other lazy, occasionally filling their glasses with a pitcher of Coors that sat on an Asteroids video game table.

“What've you have on tap?” said a man standing behind one of the stools at the bar. He was wearing a blue Levis' jacket, jeans, and boots. The leather strap of a holster peaked out of the right side of his jacket.

“Bud and Coors,” said Emmy.

“I’ll take a pitcher of Coors,” said the man.

She leaned her cigarette on the edge of a black plastic ashtray and turned to fill the pitcher. The man pulled out a money clip and tugged at a bill in anticipation.

“Five dollars,” said Emmy. He pulled out a ten and a five. “Thanks,” said Emmy taking the money. She opened the register and slid in the ten, putting the five in the red pouch around her waist.

The man sat on a stool with his back to the bar. He filled his glass, tipping it at an angle to keep the head from spilling over the side. Leaned back, he used the bar as a rest and took a long slow drink. Emmy sat on a stool behind the counter and picked up her cigarette, letting the ash that’d accumulated fall from the tip.

“Can I get a pack of Camel Lights?” said Cody’s father to the woman behind the counter. She turned to look in the rack. “Soft or hard pack?” “Soft,” he said. He walked outside the store, it’s fluorescent lights out shining the warm, soft glow of the street lamps that lined the street. He packed them as he walked towards the Sportsman, one of two bars that were still open.

“I’ve lived here for a while,” said Emmy, resting her arm on the counter, her cigarette hanging limp between her fingers.

“Yeah,” he said.

William stood outside a steak house that’d closed a couple hours earlier and talked with a young Mexican girl with shoulder length hair. She was wearing an apron and leaning against the back door of the restaurant, knotting up a leaking black trash bag. “How’s your dad,” he said.

“Good,” she said shy. He pulled out his cigarettes and took one out. “Do you want one?” he said holding the pack out to her. She looked back inside at the cook cleaning up. “Yeah.” He shook the pack and three cigarettes jumped to the top. She wiped her hands on a red rag and took one. He held the lighter up to her face and lit the end. For a moment her face was bright orange from the flame.

“Are you heading over to the Sportsman,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said.

“What time does Emmy get off?”

“Two.”

“You’re early.”

“I’ve got some time to kill.”

“I bet,” she said. She was the daughter of a guy he worked with some in the winter. They ran a part-time fix-it business. They didn’t get much work over the winter, but it was enough to pay for rent and groceries. The town shut down when the hunters left, usually around late October, early November.

“How’s school?” he said.

“Fine.”

“Are you applying to schools and stuff.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Are you going to stick around here?”

“I might,” she said.

They sat down on the bottom step of the concrete stairway that led to the back of the restaurant. Bill flicked his cigarette into the air. “Do you need a ride home?”

“I was going to walk,” she said.

“I can give you a ride.”

“Let me close up, then,” she said, rising to her feet.

Emmy brought the plate of Buffalo wings, dripping with red sauce, to the table with the group that had just come in. They were drinking and smoking. She watched from behind the counter as a girl named Carrie who she’d seen around town sat on the lap of Don, a guy in his early thirties who led backpacking trips with the Madison. The Madison was a fly-fishing store that was run by a cousin of Emmy’s. Don held his hand firm on the inside of Carrie’s thigh, her Wrangler jeans creasing tight where her leg met her waist.

“Thanks, Emmy,” said Don.

“What’ve you guys been up to tonight?” said Emmy.

“We’ve just been bullshitting around some,” said Don. “Have you met Carrie?” said Don.

“Not formally, no,” she said reaching her hand out to Carrie.

“Nice to meet you,” said Carrie. The crack of the cue ball on the six cut through the air as the
juke box went silent, mechanically extending it’s arm on the other side of the bar and latching on to a Willie Nelson album. “Are you visiting?”

“No,” said Carrie. “I live up in Virginia City.”

“Yeah?”

“She got a job working for her Uncle.”

“Who’s your Uncle?”

“Doug Shepard.”

“Oh, I know Doug,” she said. “Have you been to one of his shows?”

“That’s why I came out here actually,” she said.

“She’s going to be in his next show.”

“That’s great,” she said. “So you’re an actress.”

“I want to be,” she said.

“When does the play start?”

“Opening night’s this weekend,” he said. Emmy felt the slight rush of cool air as Will came inside the place. He pulled a cigarette out of his top front pocket and lit it while walking towards his wife. “Hey babe,” said Emmy, leaning with her right hand on the edge of Doug and Carrie’s table. “Hey,” he said kissing her. “Hey, Will.”

“Hey, Doug.”

--

Cody woke up the next morning when the sky was a soft blue and pink. He went downstairs and poured dry cereal into a Styrofoam bowl that was leftover from the last time they’d all gone camping. They’d gone the week before the fourth of July. His father had the time off seeing as the city would put him to work the weekend of the fourth getting the horses ready for the parade and the fair. They went to Yellowstone, but it was all booked up, so they stayed in a motel in town.

Cody, still in his pajamas, took the cereal back to his room and sat on a bean bag chair in front of a small black television/ VCR combo and put in a taped episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. His father came in wearing boxers with bags under his eyes to tell him to turn it down.

Will walked down the short hallway towards the kitchen. Emmy was lying in bed with the sheets half covering her white pajama bottoms. The sun from the outside was draping itself pale across her body, warming up slowly with each passing minute. He looked at her for a passing second and felt a hunger pang deepen in his stomach that led him to the refrigerator.
He took out an egg crate and set it on the counter. He was tired and hung over. The dull feeling of liquor and tobacco held like cotton molasses in the back of his throat. He usually would shower and at least brush his teeth before starting his day, but he’d drank shots the night before on a stomach of only two trout and he didn’t take the liquor well. He was hungry with a headache and he was supposed to lead a few hunters on a back trail to a spot where they could kill elk later that afternoon. It was the early morning and all he could think about was his bed that would greet him later that night. He ached behind his eyes, the smell of coffee his only sanctification as he cracked two eggs on the side of a black skillet.

“Dad!” Cody screamed, breaking the silence and dull reflection of the morning. Will let the eggs drop on the mustard yellow stove and ran through the hall. He bumped into Emmy and held her back in instinct with his right arm as she wrapped the tie of her soft purple robe around her waist.

The sun had risen higher and was shining hot into Cody’s room, illuminating his small body balled in a frightened lump in the corner of his unmade bed. He was holding a stiff arm, with three small puncture holes, and starring with a hypnotic glaze at the lightning quick twitching of the rattle.

“Stay on the bed, Cody,” said Will. “You’ll be okay.” Cody nodded his head. He was shaking. Emmy held her arm and stayed quiet. The room stayed quiet and still for several moments. Smoke, from the burning eggs had begun to filter through the hall, catching ominously in the morning sun. It created a dreamlike haze that was broken and tossed away when Will walked hurriedly through the hallway.

“What are you doing?” said Emmy in a hushed tone. Will ignored her, opened the hall closet, and pulled down a black box. He would sometimes shoot skeet on the back side of the ranch, but this meant something more.

“Go into the living room,” he said.

“What are you doing?”

“Go into the living room,” he said. “Now.”

“Christ,” she said in a hushed whisper as she walked into the kitchen. He held it in his right hand. “Be still, Cody.” None of it made much sense. The fog of his head, the click of the stove being turned off by Emmy in the kitchen, the still light haze of the black smoke curling around the room cloaked him in courage as he loaded the barrel with six bullets that shone dull with the light of the hallway.

Two

by Jesse Gloyd

“Dad,” said Cody. His father looked up stream; Cody was standing ankle deep in rubber waders, legs wobbling with the arched tug of the split bamboo shaft twitching with life. He made his way slowly towards his son, reeling in the line while walking over the river rock.
“Don’t jerk,” he said. “You’ll rip it out of his mouth.”

Cody let the trout hold for a moment to rest the tight burn of his forearm. Not a moment later, though, he began reeling with intermittent quick thrusts; water spraying off the line violently and landing atop the hairless skin of his wrist. A Ford pick-up drove down the road behind them, kicking up dust that filtered through the air and tickled inside of Cody’s nose with the faint sensation of an antique store. The moment passed and the truck disappeared on down the riverbank, taking with it the distorted tenor of Merle Haggard singing Big City.
The fish jumped and broke the water; twisting its singular muscle of a body into the air in quiet desperation, before falling on its side, rippling small circles in the flowing water.

“He’s getting tired,” said Cody’s dad.

“I know,” said Cody.

“Start walking toward him,” said his dad.

Cody moved cautious over the rocks. A hatch of flies buzzed around his thighs as the water grew slowly around his waist. The sun had begun to fade down the valley that lead to Virginia City, casting half shadows across the faces of the rolling hills. In the distance the crack of a rifle sounded, scaring a grouping of birds out from the brush and into the air. The fish was below him now. It swam around his legs passively, its body distorted by the moving warble and sunset reflection on the water.

One

by Jesse Gloyd

Before the sun would rise over the ridge that looked down on the trailer that rested up Hall Canyon, Cody Dubois would wake up, wipe the sleep from his eyes, and slip into his mud caked Levi boot cut blue jeans. The warm smell of his stepfather’s coffee would already be dripping slow into the glass pot, stained brown from leaving it on too long the day before. His stepfather’s name was Pat and he would give Cody the two or three minutes it would take to smoke his first cigarette before he had to be ready. It had been the same every morning for the two years since Cody’s mom, Emmy, had moved them to California from Ennis, Montana.
Cody was excited to come out to California. His mom thought it would be a good idea after the death of Cody’s real father. His father worked on a ranch that was called the Diamond J. He’d been working there for about fifteen years, well before Cody was born, when he was killed.

Cody and his father had been fly-fishing the Elk Horn. It was a beautiful late October day where the blue sky held over them as they stood thigh deep in the cool water that reflected and glowed with the sun as it leisurely took their flies through the deep pools and fallen trees.
Cody had caught two rainbow trout that day. They were attached to a chain through their gills and floated almost lifeless in the water, save for the occasional flip of a tail or body contortion. His father had caught a brown. They didn’t get much time to themselves seeing that he worked seven days a week on the ranch. Monday through Friday he would wake up at four and lead the other wranglers around the hills that looked over the ranch in rounding up the horses that would later take the paying guests on trips over the hills and through the valleys around the Diamond J.

During the summer, Cody’s father would let him ride along with them. He was good with a horse and had been riding since he was three. He’d often get in trouble for kicking his boots into the horse’s ass, sending it into a gallop that would spook the guests and their horses. He rode a Palomino he called Dutch. It had been given to him when he was six and he grew up with it.

Spring through fall, Cody lived on the ranch with his father and Emmy. They stayed in a small bunkhouse that sat nestled up the side of a hill that looked down on the dining hall. Emmy worked as a waitress at the Sportsman Lodge. The Sportsman Lodge had brown wooden walls, a pool table, and sawdust on the ground. It was about a half hour drive into town. Every night she’d come home with the stale smell of beer and cigarettes, brought on from the occasional over poured beer, where the foam would drip over the side of the cold glass and run over the back of her hand.

Night came early in Montana in fall. October brought on hunting season where hunters replaced families in the bunkhouses. With leaves making their steady way to the ground, floating, turning, bursting with orange and red, they brought with them their rifles and orange hats to follow the elk and moose as they made their way, easily detected through the skeleton pines all but dead to the winter.

The Day The Music Died

by Jesse Gloyd

There’s something warm about Avalon. I’ve only been there once; crossing the sea and landing in the bay of the Channel Islands’ only town. It was Easter weekend; we stayed for day and a night in a hotel that backed up to the water. We came in on a boat that set out from San Pedro and landed at a dock where calico bass and sheephead floated just below the warbled clear blue surface of the pilings and docked boats.

Benny Goodman discovered Lionel Hampton playing on the island. He had been working in a club or something of the sort. There was a song Benny’d play that was called Avalon and I imagine had something to do with their time spent there. I watched The Benny Goodman Story several times as a kid. Steve Allen, who starred as Goodman, personified the hip to be square mentality with his dark rimmed glasses and dry demeanor. He was also a pretty good jazz piano player and accompanied Jack Kerouac on some recordings.

I started playing clarinet in the sixth grade because of Benny Goodman. I was always hovering near last chair of the best band. I was never very good. I would go to a jazz player’s house every Tuesday and practice. My mom had him teach me to play Stranger On The Shore, a nice warm song written by British clarinetist, Acker Bilk. The man’s house was kept nice; with tasteful posters of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, DNC stickers, and thousands of records and CDs.

We went to watch him play in a tribute to Goodman at Pepperdine University. I sat in the balcony that night and looked down on the piano player and vowed to spend more time practicing. The band cooked; each solo the struggling studio musicians blew or pounded shot across the auditorium and bounced off the once modern art deco fixtures, filling the place with lines of sound and shockwaves of energy.

The piano player worked with the jazz band at my middle school. We’d practice every Monday and Wednesday after school. It was a time that I dreaded; skipping out occasionally to eat Charleston Chews and drink ginger beer in abandoned lot behind Mandell’s Liquor. I played piano with the band and the piano player usually filled in my parts, so there really wasn’t any need for me.

The last I heard of the piano player, he was living in Juno Alaska working for a jazz quartet. He would work during the summer on a fishing boat and play jazz in the evening to all the alcoholic Eskimos.


“Hey,” I said. “Come here.”

“What?” said Noah.

He walked over to me as I lifted up a board. Two small green frogs about the size of the nail of my pinky finger hopped out from under. Noah lived on five acres of land off a canyon back road between Ojai and Santa Barbara. His dad, a German who’d pack his lower lip with tobacco the second he’d step outside their house, had dug a pit that he’d later fill to make a pond. The pond was going to be used to irrigate the dozen or so greenhouses that held rows and rows of brilliant red Poinsettias. He’d started letting the small tree frogs loose on the property to eat bugs off the flowers.

Noah’s mom called us in for dinner. I’d stay the night out there every so often. His dad had bought a satellite dish and would have people over to watch Canadian Football. His neighbor, Alan Thicke, was a frequent visitor. We’d spend the night in the living room, many a morning waking up to watch Throw Mamma From The Train while wrapped in a pile of unzipped sleeping bags and pillows.

We got to go to Alan Thicke’s house one time. It was a barbecue. We walked down a road that was covered in overgrown ferns, over a bridge, and up a path; he lived that close. Noah and I hung out near the stables where the miniature horses were kept. I’m not sure how it happened, but Noah ended up running a rusty nail through the bottom of his shoe. It crushed through the sole and broke the skin about a quarter inch deep. The horses stood calm and held their own while a crowd formed and gawked. Alan Thicke was drunk and concerned. He kept asking Noah’s mom if he needed to call an ambulance and kept apologizing for “leaving junk all around.” Noah’s mom was cool and composed, holding Noah to her, while crouching up to him. I didn’t see him much after that and wondered if he ever had to get a tetanus shot in his stomach.


Poppo bought me a Benny Goodman cassette when I was twelve. I liked Sing, Sing, Sing a lot; I think it was in a cookie commercial at the time. Glenn Miller was interesting too. I was standing ankle deep in the ocean a few weeks ago and String of Pearls got caught in my head. Not the song, rather the song’s title; it ran through my mind like a cool breeze in a dark hot void, black except for pearls like rain drops falling down, bursting, smashing into each other and bursting again, creating more, doubling, blasting, exploding with hot white light. In a flash, it ends like a Super 8 home movie being burned up from the inside out.

The official word on Glenn, was that his plane went down over the English Channel during World War II. There’s another report that has him dying of a heart attack while sleeping with a French prostitute in a Paris brothel. He was a heavy drinker and probably didn’t take care of himself too well, so it’s plausible. The cover up, they say, was to keep the troops’ morale high. When you’ve wiped the blood and guts from your best friend’s head off of your face, the death of an alcoholic trombone player would seem pretty insignificant, I think. They also say he could’ve been a spy; though I assume he could’ve been a spy who died in a brothel.

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“Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?” said the bartender as he wiped the spot of condensation from the counter and threw away the bottle.

“Sure, I suppose,” said the man. He was about forty with dark horned rimmed glasses and dark hair held down with a thick dose of Vitalis. “How ‘bout another beer?”

“Sure thing,” said the bartender, reaching under the counter and popping off the cap. “What’s in the case, a tuba or somethin’?

“Or something,” said the man. He had his arm resting on the rounded top of a black trombone case. “You’re not Harry James or some guy like that, are you?” said the bartender wiping his hands on his pants.

“Nope.”

“Ted Williams stopped in about a month ago.”

“Is that right?” The man turned around on the barstool and leaned against the counter. “That guy can hit a baseball.”

“Sure can,” said the bartender. “It’d be a shame if he were to take a hit over here.”

“Yeah,” said the man, preoccupied with a woman with blonde hair that spun down her face like Veronica Lake before she cut it all off. He lit a cigarette and let the smoke blow straight from his nose. She brushed her hair back and cut him through with a glare that would burn up the heart of even the lousiest fascist son of a bitch.

He got up and walked towards her. “Hello,” he said. “Hello” she said with a smooth French accent. She cut into a piece of steak. Her fork pierced the flesh and let out the juices onto the plate.

“I haven’t seen a piece of meat that juicy since Kalamazoo?”

“It’s camel.”

“How’s it taste?”

“Warm and tender.” she said. “Want a bite?”




He held a cigarette between his lips and leaned up against the headboard. She nestled her head against his stomach and hummed Mood Indigo. He shifted his cigarette to his right hand and picked up a warm glass of scotch. Her hair smelled clean to him. It reminded him of a Cherokee girl he’d see whenever he was in Wichita.

“Do you have anymore cigarettes,” she asked.

“This is my last,” he said, sniffing his drink. He held it down to her and she took a drag.

“How long are you here?” she said.

“A few more nights.”

“Are you going to stay with me?”

“I assume,” he said. He took a sip and set the glass on the bedside table. She reached across him and rubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray.

“What’s in the case?” she said, looking across the room.

“A trombone.”

“Can you get it out and play something for me?”

“Sure,” he said stoically, sliding out of the bed and walking naked across the room. He laid the instrument on its side and unlatched the metallic hinges.

“What would you like to hear?” he said crouching with his back to her. He reached into the hollow end and slowly pulled out a Lugar he’d taken off the rotting body of a Nazi officer he’d stumbled across in an alley in St. Lo.

“String of Pearls,” she said. He turned and fired two shots that hit above her head and sent plaster falling down on her. “I heard you were a better shot,” she said, sliding out of bed. The gun dropped from his hand and sweat began to run from his face.

“Before your tongue swells up and your heart explodes, I wanted to tell you that it brings me great pain to see you go.” She leaned over him and caressed his face as he shook violently, foaming from the mouth and turning a sickly pale white.

When he was still, she covered him with a sheet and went to his overcoat. Rifling through his pockets, she took his wallet and a half-pack of cigarettes. “He lied to me,” she thought. “He lied to me, but I killed him.” And with that, she pulled one out, lit it, and leaned out the window to smoke over the streets of Paris, with a relief and a sense of accomplishment.

Branson

by Jesse Gloyd
(as edited by Andrew J. Hamilton)

I went to Branson for the second time when I was twelve years old. It was the childhood home of my grandfather, who we called, Poppo. Aaron Hoholik, a friend who later graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in film studies, came along. While at Santa Cruz he took a class that studied the work of Stanley Kubrick for half a semester and Robert Altman for the other half. During the Altman portion of the class, they were blessed with the opportunity to view an original print of Nashville. As the story goes, the morning after the screening, one of the students stripped naked, wrapped himself in an American flag, and hung himself dead from the rafters of the theater. Santa Cruz is a big school and I do not know if Aaron knew him.

We flew in to Kansas City. I can't recall if the airport is on the Kansas side of the city or the Missouri, but I do remember the sweet, thick smell of car exhaust and cigarette smoke that held stagnant in the humid summer air as we waited curbside for my dad to come back with the rental van.

From the airport, we drove to Prairie Village to stay with Poppo’s brother Bob. It was on the Kansas side of the city. Bob was Poppo's youngest brother. He had a stroke and passed away recently. He was a funny guy. We spent the first few nights eating cheese sandwiches and brisket and talking about the Royals. Wally Joyner had just signed for about $4 million and was supposed to be a lot better than he was. History says that he probably was, but it didn't matter much because the Royals were no good and would continue to be no good until 2003 gave way to luck and circumstance. Bob didn't get to see 2003. His wife Gene and his son Mike did though, and I would imagine it was fun for them. They had a dog who coughed and wheezed a lot. They think he had emphysema, and he probably did.

We stopped off at the Precious Moments factory about four hours down the road from Kansas City. I don't think we bought anything.

Poppo had a sister named Thelma who was born in 1906. She was still alive and living with her husband Carl in Republic, Missouri when we came down to visit. They had a large place on the corner. We bought a red truck from Carl a few years later. It was supposed to be my first car, but I took more to the my dad’s Trooper and the truck went to my mom. Thelma's granddaughter, who may have been older than my dad, lived in a house on the same property. The house smelled like Carmex and anytime spent outside the yellowed, wafer thin curtains was welcome.

In Republic, I caught fireflies but didn't know what to do with them. Two cousins of mine introduced me to bottle rockets, which were something of a revelation. Pure, powerful, dangerous; the crack, the quick whoosh they made when released. I started by lighting them on the ground but would perfect, later in the trip, the art of releasing them by hand.
Springfield is about thirty miles away from Republic and about an hour or so from Branson. We stopped in Springfield for a coffee, McDonald's, and a spin through the Bass Pro Shop. Those were my glory days of fishing. The Bass Pro Shop, though not purely dedicated to fly-fishing, was a vision to the twelve year old me. Hats, houseboats, lures, motor homes, rods, reels, restaurants, sunglasses, and a forty-pound bass named Bertha called it home. I bought a hat and a t-shirt and some wet flies that we'd heard would work in Lake Taneycomo.

We stayed at Allendale's Resort in Branson, right on the Lake of the Ozarks. Poppo had worked there a few years before World War II. We fished for croppy and dodged falling water moccasins in the inlets of the lake. Small huts, probably seventy or more years old, circled a pool. A billiards room came off the lobby. Poppo used to work in the restaurant. The last time we saw it, they were tearing it down.

Branson is a small town, no matter what people told you. You can walk from Allendale's to the downtown in about ten minutes, and drive from the downtown to the Shepard of the Hills outdoor theater in about another ten.

Fireworks were everywhere. A man in a boat would buzz up and down the lake shooting bottle rockets at us. He was dressed as a pirate and had some type of bottle rocket gun that slung the rockets at a blinding speed. It was a bit of a battle for the docks, I suppose.

For the most part, I managed to eat gravy three meals a day. Breakfast was biscuits and gravy, eggs and bacon; lunch included some form of either fried chicken, chicken fried chicken, or chicken friend steak, mashed potatoes, gravy, and sweet iced tea from a fruit jar; and much of the same for supper, with the possibility of blackberry cobbler a la mode.

A lot happened in Branson. It was my This Boy's Life summer without the gay stuff, abuse, and single motherness. For better or worse, it was where I discovered both the Imax and Ray Stevens. I lean more towards better. Part of an Imax movie was being shot at my great-uncle's farm while we were there. His name is Everett, but for some reason we call him Uncle Fudge. He was a shriner (complete with wacky small car and fez) and had a wife named Becky who used to be a fantastic golfer, from what I hear.

The beginning stages of Alzheimer's were setting in for Becky on this trip. She would bring us drinks three and four times, sandwiches too. She's in a home now, barely able to breathe. We went out to eat one night and she yelled at the waiter for bringing out the food twice.

Everett was a storyteller and a great fiddle player. A lot of the session musicians from the shows would come over and play occasionally. He'd been mayor in the seventies and was really tied in to the history of the region, the vigilantes of the post-Civil War era, the backwoods life of hollers and Brier Rabbit and such. It was as foreign and new and fresh and real as if it happened yesterday, though most of the characters were long dead. The river that ran through town had been part of the Mason Dixon line. The ghosts of back then seemed to lurk clear and vivid in the morning mist of that water.

When Everett was a child, about thirteen or so, his mom came down with some form of nose cancer. A traveling medicine man came through town one day and she bought some lye soap from him. The stuff shriveled up her nose and turned it into a thin flap of black skin. One morning, when the pain became unbearable, she came to Everett with scissors and told him to cut it off. He was scared, I suppose, but he obeyed.

There are many stories floating around down there. I found a baseball program in an old shop in Joplin. I bought it for twelve dollars. There's a picture of Mickey Mantle in it that became mildly famous, an original. The shop was next to a restaurant that served the crispiest, juiciest chicken fried chicken I've ever had in my life. We went back to find the restaurant a few years ago, but it had become a Waffle House.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Baseball

by Jesse Gloyd

When I was ten years old, my grandparents moved from their house on Francis St. to a condo in mid-town Ventura. A large blue wraparound couch with a built-in recliner filled the living room. On the wall above the main section of the couch hung framed labels from orange crates; and to their left, an autographed picture of the Gashouse Gang. It’s not the complete 1934 Cardinal team; rather, single photos of Dizzy and Paul Dean, Frankie Frisch, Leo Durocher, Joe Medwick, and Pepper Martin with autographs gathered at various times and places scribbled on business card sized pieces of paper.

My Grandpa; we called him Poppo, grew up in Southern Missouri and played on some of the same fields as Mickey Mantle would a few years later. He wasn’t much of a baseball player; however, and wouldn’t follow it much in his life, aside from glancing at the occasional story in the paper or in phone conversations with his brother Bob. Whenever we’d visit their Prairie Village home in Kansas we’d sit on the back porch, sip Pepsi, eat potato chips, and talk through the damp summer air about the Royals. We’d try to one up each other with the baseball encyclopedia that was our collective memory; usually getting the facts wrong, however assured we were in what we were saying.

Later in the same year that my grandparents moved into the condo in mid-town, my Dad took me to a barbecue in Santa Maria. Santa Maria’s not of too much note, aside from it being the town that made tri-tip famous. Anyhow, the barbecue was a fundraiser put together by Tsuneo “Cappy” Harada, a Japanese baseball man, who’d managed in Japan, been a scout for the Giants, and eventually ended up as the athletic commissioner for Washington state. For several years in a row, he invited people like Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Durocher, Pete Rose and several other old players who smelled like cigarettes and cocktails to sign autographs for charity at the barbecue. The event was a relatively good deal, as twenty dollars or so, if I remember correct, would get a tri-tip dinner, with garlic bread, beans, salad, and an autograph from any of the mentioned Hall of Famers.

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“Jesse, I’d like you to meet someone,” said my Dad as he pulled me away from a group of kids who were trying to get the autograph of Santa Maria local, Robin Ventura.

“Okay,” I said. Walking to the far side of the room, I was stopped by an older man who was wearing a brown tweed sport coat and having a drink. “Where’d you get that hat?” he asked.

“For my Birthday,” I said.

“Can I see it?” I took it off and handed it too him. It was a late thirties Brooklyn Dodger hat; the white one with the blue stripes. “I didn’t know they still made these,” he said. “Where’d you get it?”

“I don’t know, I got it for my Birthday.”

“You should have him sign it,” said my dad. I handed it to him with a black Sharpie. He signed it just below the “B.”

“Thanks,” said my dad as I put it back on my head.

We walked through the rows of tables and chairs as workers in stained white dress shirts cleared Styrofoam plates and plastic forks. “Who was that?” I asked. “Al Gionfriddo,” he said. “He made a famous catch off Joe DiMaggio in the World Series.” “Oh,” I said as we came up to an old man who, upon recollection, didn’t look too much different than Al Gionfriddo.

“Excuse me, Mr. Cobb?” asked my dad. “Yes,” said Mr. Cobb. “I wanted you to meet my son, Jesse.” He looked surprised and happy in the way that old people do. I shook his wrinkled and leathery hand. “Hello, Jesse. I’m Jim Cobb.” “Hi,” I said. “Do you know who my father was?” I nodded my head in assumption. He went on to spend the evening recounting stories of his father and baseball and the people he met. He smelled like cigarettes and alcohol and bore the blood of arguably the best and most vicious player from the first part of the century.

I don’t remember much of what he had to say, other than that I should do well in school. One story sticks out; though, that was later recounted in the Ken Burns documentary. Mr. Cobb told of a trip he took with his dad to a liquor store in South Carolina. The documentary gave a real dramatic vocal reenactment of the meeting between the two greats; though Jim recalled it as a simple introduction of Joe Jackson to himself by his dad, as “the greatest hitter that ever lived.” I guess it seemed like a nice thing to say; however much Cobb actually believed it, seeing as I’m hard pressed to believe Ty Cobb saw anyone as being better than himself.

The meeting between Jackson and Cobb seemed sad to me in a sense. Both were looked upon as two of the great hitters from the “Dead Ball Era;” both implicated in separate gambling scandals in 1919; Cobb is acquitted, Jackson banned from baseball for life; Cobb enters the Hall of Fame on his first try; Jackson publicly disgraced. I’m not really sure how much it all matters. I assume Joe Jackson didn’t kill anyone, which is something he has on Ty, but I’m only going on assumption. They’re both long gone; same as the players on the wall at Poppo’s house.

I sat and had a cup of coffee last Saturday morning with Poppo. His wife, my Grandma, had died the day earlier and he was having a hard time keeping it together. “Time keeps moving and it’s taking me with it and there’s nothing I can do about it,” he said to me. All I could do was nod my head.

Later that afternoon, I sat by the pool next to my fiancé, and read a book. It was a good book about the summer of a young man who’s just graduated from college. It takes place in Pittsburgh, a town I’m not too familiar with, but felt like moving to when I graduated from college. Pittsburgh seemed isolated and different at the time. I’ve never been there, so it seemed like a good place to start, a good place to rent a small apartment, and a good place to listen to Duke Ellington play Blue Skies on a big grand piano while lying on my back on scattered leaves and unmowed grass.

The season starts today for the Dodgers. After heated arguments with my dad last year regarding Dodger personnel moves, my mom invoked a rule around the house that we weren't aloud to talk baseball. It was like something of a canyon had grown between our respective ideologies. Some might say that baseball doesn't matter in the long run, that it's not something that should be taken so seriously. I guess it's true, but the memory of telling stories about the Royals in Prairie Village means a hell of a lot more to me than any political or philosophical discussion of the past year. Baseball digs deep into the fabric of this country. It is the thing that dulls the pain of winter for many of us. It softens the blow of reality in a way.

This last weekend, Poppo took down pictures of my Grandma that were around the condo. It's understandable that he would do such a thing. The picture of the Gashouse Gang is still up, though. It's been moved into the den and sits above his computer. In 1934 nobody had walked on the moon, Poppo was nine, Jimmie Rodgers was king of the radio, and Dizzy Dean, with thirty wins, was more popular than the President.