Markers. Ants. Tectonics. X. & Pain. & Illness.

We were on the porch.

Uncle Stephen had decided that the best way to get over his health problems was to ignore them.

We were on the porch, in the cane bottom chairs that both needed to be re-caned, tilted back, the wooden chairs creaking as we shifted our weight and watched the yard, newly green, and the road, where a car might, it being Spring, drive by.

“Anything’s possible in Spring,” Uncle Stephen said.

He had been saying it all morning, while I installed him on the porch, with the cooler, a handful of Pay-Day candy bars he had decided would save his life by giving him the calories he needed, and an old quilt he pulled to him with a hand that was punched through the sewn together end of a sweater, with holes left for his fingers and thumb.

The sweater was a left-over from one of his inventions: footed pajamas for grown-ups. The feet had each had individual toes, which he was proud to point out that he wasn’t taking credit for, but the fingerless tops and tops with gloves were all his.

I had a pair of the tops. The bottoms made my toes miss each other.

It was close to seventy degrees. The oak in the yard had sprouted its red curlings that would become green leaves. And then red again in the Fall. It was Uncle Stephen who had pointed them out to me, unfurling and curlicued as the shell of a hermit crab.

“They’re kind of like a hermit crab,” I said.

He knew what I was talking about because I had thanked him for pointing out the buds. Every year I had sworn to see their first appearance and every year there was an explosion of tiny green leaves of every shade I could imagine and I had somehow missed it again.

Not this year. It turns out I always missed the start of Spring because I was looking for green and some of them were red, or white, or brown.

“A hermit crab?” Uncle Stephen said.

“Sure,” I said, “like, the way the shell curls up on itself.”

“Because leaves, they spend their time in the ocean, being used as shelter by multi-legged creatures who are very shy and smell bad if left too long in a jar forgotten by one particular boy.”

“OK. Not a hermit crab,” I said, “and the car never smelled the same again.”

“No,” Uncle Stephen drank from his coke, “it didn’t. That’s how you can tell ma’s aged, if that’d been me, she would have had me get out and hitch the rest of the way back from the coast.”

I was about to call bull-shit on that story, as he had crushed my metaphor, but then I remembered a time when my cousin Tim had been carrying-on in the car and grandmother had warned him, once, she said, you get one warning, and next word out of your mouth and I’m putting you out beside the road.

He got back to the house eight hours later, at night, one foot so blistered he still has the scars.

“You still happy?” Uncle Stephen said.

“Yup.” And I smiled. I couldn’t help myself. She was suffering. The girl I was so broken up over, my insides so shattered and sharp and scraped and muffled and…

“Why, again?” Uncle Stephen said.

“Because she and her new guy are still having problems,” I said.

A hawk sailed through the yard and shifted into the pine forest. As it passed I heard the feathers in its wings push against each other. And then there was a breeze following, as if the hawk was the future of air.

“I thought you loved this girl,” Uncle Stephen said.

My chair fell to the cement of the porch. The trick was to balance on its back two legs. I had seen Uncle Stephen sit motionless for minutes, balanced on those two legs. I needed the wall.

My chair went forward. And back. And forward, and then, for a moment, I had it, balance, and then it was gone again.

“I’ve been seeing a new girl,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” Uncle Stephen said.

Uh-huh. As if this weren’t news. I wanted to shock him. And I opened my mouth but ended up taking a sip. I had seen the circles under his eyes. The way his chest rose with each breath taking too long. He had insisted I buy him a scale at Target and so we learned that he weighed a hundred and thirty-three pounds. Six feet two inches.
“You want another candy bar?” I said.

“You made her a mix CD, right?” Uncle Stephen said, “Drove up special to see her in the middle of the night. Knocked on her window.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Didn’t you do the same thing with what’s her name?” Uncle Stephen said.

“Whatever works,” I said, but I knew I was fucked as soon as I’d said it.

Uncle Stephen looked at me, and then there was that breeze again. But this time it was as if his eyes had pulled it. His eyes echoed the gray sky, the iris deep black. He looked at me and pinned me to my chair, leaned against the wall, a bug in a museum, a curiosity for him to see, then put away.

Close the case.

“Don’t be stupid,” Uncle Stephen said, “I hate it when you’re stupid, and I haven’t been trying to unstupid you all these years to have you start all over again over girls.”

The worst part about dealing with Uncle Stephen was that he was always right. Even when he was wrong, it was as if he was wrong on purpose. His wrongness made the few times I was right that much clearer and sharper, so that win or lose, I felt chided.

But the clarity was worth it. And long ago I had learned to recognize my own pride. Not enough to be free of it, but at least to recognize it, and know it for what it was.

To try and set aside its yammering.

“I know,” I said, “every woman is different.”

“No,” Uncle Stephen said, “you don’t.”

He didn’t say, Or I wouldn’t have done what I did, but it was there.

“Every human is a human first, right?” Uncle Stephen said.

“And a gender second,” I said.

“And every human uniquely expresses his or her gender,” Uncle Stephen said.

“Yeah,” I said. I looked at the yard.

There were leaves from last Fall scattered there, while in the trees the new leaves were forming.

Uncle Stephen had been too sick to rake.

And I had school.

Uncle Stephen had said something and I had missed it.

And he had seen me miss it.

“Whatever,” Uncle Stephen said.

My eyes teared up. I looked away, towards the scraggling line of trees opposite the pines.

I had never heard that tone in his voice. There was nothing defiant there, nothing trying to convince me I was wrong. There was only exhaustion, hours of days of weeks of months of years of fighting freighted into one word and shoved out.

“I’m sorry,” I said, not even sure what I was apologizing for. The girls didn’t care. Or didn’t seem to.

I wasn’t sure I cared, the way Uncle Stephen defined caring.

Or that I didn’t care.

Shit. I wasn’t sure of anything.

“I had a girlfriend,” Uncle Stephen said, “who used to tell me, when I had done something that she didn’t like, that she hoped one day I would learn what a woman likes. Needs.”

I didn’t say anything. I had decided today was one of those days that I would be better off not saying anything.

“It never occurred to her that maybe I was paying attention to her needs, as best I could, but that every woman was different, every single one. And so she was unique.”

He looked at me again. He smiled.

“Buck-up,” Uncle Stephen said. And when he turned away, I tried to stop it but one damned tear escaped and made it halfway down my cheek.

I left it to dry in the wind.

“It’s what sucked,” Uncle Stephen said, “she kept claiming that she wanted to be special to me, that she wanted to be unique, when there was no other way for her to be. No other way for anyone to be. But she didn’t believe me when I told her there was only one her, because she didn’t even know it herself.”

“And I knew, would watch,” Uncle Stephen said, “when she’d try attitudes or games on me she’d used on other guys. I don’t think she meant any harm. Sometimes I’d play along, sometimes I’d call her out.”

“It’s hard,” Uncle Stephen said, “to learn the person you love, to not try and short-hand it and expect him or her to be like all the rest. Because there are, of course, similarities. But don’t ever mistake the being similar for the being the same.”

“Don’t ever treat any woman as if she were interchangeable,” Uncle Stephen said, “and try to shrug off the roles you’re going to be given by your women.”

“Son of a bitch,” I said.

“Love,” Uncle Stephen said, and his sharp shoulders shifted under the quilt.

“You’re the one who said you loved her,” Uncle Stephen said, “that’s easy. I’m just the guy with an inkling what that means.”

***

For the first time in months, that night, I tore open one of his envelopes, I Miss You, was typed on the outside, and this was on the inside:

We thought we understood each other.
Did we?

***

I put the envelope and its letter under the bed, under the Mississippi State Bulldog blanket.

He had been writing to a her. But she never got any of the letters.

She never knew of his questions.

And he, for how long, pondered the answers?

For how long being both sides of a conversation?

Uncle Stephen had given the questions to time and the silence of the page, and I had stolen them.

When he had wanted them burned.

Do we understand each other?

The obvious answer was that no, they hadn’t understood each other, because then they would have been together, unless they understood each other so well that they knew they weren’t supposed to be together. Or one of them knew that while the other one didn’t.

Christ. And I wasn’t cursing. I was praying. Help me, I thought up and into the world, help me.

It was dark enough in my room that I could look at the ceiling and see nothing.

I was sure I didn’t understand myself.

Could anyone else?

Damn Uncle Stephen.

The ceiling remained dark.

Rich parents are using the same technology Hollywood uses to map star’s faces to computer generated personalities, or avatars, to create characters in the latest killer application of 3-d technology: computerized parenting that sounds (and now looks) just like the actual parent.

Many times, a babysitter will be faced with a spoiled brat who uses the argument of, “My mother never makes me go to bed at nine” at which point the exasperated babysitter is forced to allow the child to say up late and eat far too many chips in a can.

No longer. !

Now, with the flick of a mouse, the babysitter can call up the image of the mother saying, “No!” or any of several thousand other negative expressions, such as, “It’s no wonder you don’t have any friends!” and my favorite, “Drop Dead!”

Of course, the father is still the stricter of the two parents, rarely seen on screen and instead hinted at by the mother, “Wait until your father gets back from Sudan where he’s making very important oil deals!”

The father is scanned mainly as entertainment for the babysitter, who is attracted to older men, and will, of course, eventually replace the mother in real and artificial life.

That’s why soon, we’ll all be scanned at key moments in our lives, so that our personal avatars can be given as gifts or curses or hostages to each other.

Been dumped by some lousy guy?

Use the latest hack!

“Hey Jenny, wanna see my ex beat the crap out of himself?”

We All Can’t Wait.

Uncle Stephen had his latest invention spread on the dining room table at grandmother’s house.

One long string from his collection of holiday themed lights.

This set, consisting of shamrocks, from some long ago St. Patrick’s day.

While grandmother, wearing her Sunday dress and tapping her foot, watched, Uncle Stephen plugged the lights, which ended in a shoe box full of electronics, into the wall.

Two shamrocks, with an unlit one between them, glowed green. The rest of the lights were dark.

“This is it?” grandmother said.

Uncle Stephen sighed.

“Look,” Uncle Stephen said. He pulled from his pocket a tiny bulb, and pulling off the shamrock between the two lit ones, swapped its bulb with the one from his pocket. The whole string lit up.

He grinned.

“See,” Uncle Stephen said, holding up the shoe box attached to the end of the string, “it figures out which bulb is blown and shows you. Between the two lit ones is the burnt out bulb.”

“I’m going to be late for Sunday school.” Grandmother said, and left.

Her perfume stung my nose.

“It’s great,” I said.

Uncle Stephen set the box down on the table, there was a small pop from inside the shoe box, and all the lights went out. A tendril of smoke curled from under the top of the box.

“That whole box full of electronics?” I said.

“I’ll send the design to Eddy,” Uncle Stephen said.

They had met in graduate school, when Uncle Stephen still went to school, and now Eddy was living in China, teaching English.

“He has friends who can make it all small and neat.”

“And fireproof.” I said.

Uncle Stephen started rolling up the lights. He was in a short sleeved white T-shirt, and his arms had small purple bruises in the crooks of his elbows from the last blood tests.

He wrapped the wires up, the shamrocks banging against each other as the wire roped into a loose loop.

“But it’s a great idea,” I said. The smell of burnt electronics almost masked grandmother’s perfume.

“Yeah,” Uncle Stephen said, “I’m chock full.”

Story:

Doctor removes tumors from patients only to keep them alive at home.
Do tumors have the same rejection issues as other transplanted organs?
Could you donate tumors to pigs, like they can donate to us?

***
Scene:
DR brings date home.
Small pig wanders into the room.
The date knows the DR is a famous oncologist, and starts to pet the pig, but it’s covered in lumps.

Doctor: Nobody ever thinks of the tumors. What their needs are. What right to life they might have.

***

Another recent thought: skin is considered an organ.
Or it used to be when I was in school.
Maybe it’s been demoted like Pluto.
What about the interstitial materials that hold all of the skin together?
Is that another organ? I think it should be.
The skin, and the inter-skin. The inter-organ.

And everybody knows how I feel about cells.

for m.a.m.

What, with the distance and the cost of gasoline, we weren’t seeing each other.

At least, not enough.

But there was the phone.

So we tried.

Though neither of us had much experience, and like many first timers, it was more confusion and laughing than satisfaction.

But we tried.

Weeks passed.

I have two phones.

An upstairs phone.

And a downstairs phone.

The downstairs phone I don’t use much.
It’s under the bed. Hidden. More for emergencies. Laziness.

And that one time, the phone sex.

I came home, and the downstairs phone was in the middle of the floor. Blinking. Lumpy. Flopping.

I nudged it with my foot, and it blinked at me. Flopped under the bed.

Later, there was a tiny trill of a ring.

I lay on my stomach and looked under the bed into the darkness of cardboard boxes and gray dust and there was the phone and its baby.

Or something. Still connected to the handset by silver wires, a small blob of plastic with a shining face and one blinking number: 2.

I went upstairs and used the upstairs phone to call you.

“Um.” I said.

“C’mere.” You said.

“Look, we knocked the phone up.” I said.

“My phones fine.” You said.

“Well, mine isn’t.” I said.

“What-Ev.” You said.

“Really.” I said.

“I think we should talk more.” You said.

“I’m not ready to be a father.” I said.

Downstairs, there was another small trill and then a series of beeps.

The connection crackled.

“Do you have another call?” You said.

“No, I have a newborn phone.” I said.

“I need you to be serious.” You said.

We had been having problems.

Your cats were allergic to my deodorant, and your cats were your life.

So far, we had been making it work by my being smelly.

I wasn’t allergic to your cats. But they hated my guts. The first time I had met them, one had gone into shock and we had ended up at the emergency veterinarian, the vet eying me and explaining how I had to be careful and should be more thoughtful and what kind of a man was I anyway to try and kill some cats for vanity’s sake.

“I am being serious.” I said.

The phone line clicked again.

“Is that another woman?” You said, “Some cat-less woman you can be all clean around?”

“Look, I thought maybe you were phone was pregnant too.” I said.

“Hello?” I said.

“You have a weird sense of humor.” You said.

In the background at your house, I could hear the cats. They were yelling at you. Explaining how I wasn’t right for you, how anyone who didn’t like cats was not right for you.

“I have to go.” You said.

“Sure, ” I said, “go take care of your cats. Don’t worry about our baby.”

“That’s sick,” you said, and hung-up on me.

I went to the tool bag, and picked out the wire cutters.

Downstairs, the phone had dragged itself from under the bed, trailing its baby, the umbilical wires taught and hair thin.

I knelt down. The screen of the baby had a different number: 0.

The mother phone’s screen spilled numbers and its keypad flitted with light.

I pulled the dust off of the baby, and then I closed the cutters across the wires, but I didn’t squeeze.

The wire glinted between the blades, and I looked from the baby, its 0, to the mother, its screen flowing with letters and numbers, displaying all of the times you had called, repeating your name, your digits.

I waited for some signal, because I wanted to do the right thing.

I had to do the right thing.

I know. This is not the look of the blog you have come to know and notice.

This is because I’m updating the WordPress software in the background, and last time I did that with my custom theme, there was much chaos of random CSS code flying everywhere.

This time, I’m trying the WordPress basic theme first, and then updating the underlying code. Wish me luck. If this all vanishes, well, it had a good run, right?

p.

He measures and cuts and gathers.

The wood. The nails. The hammer.

Nothing powered.

What he builds will have no electricity.

No water.

But a roof. He starts with the roof, frames the walls.

The last anyone sees of him is through the open framing of the walls, the roof complete, the carpenter moving inside, laying out the plywood and gypsum board.

The carpenter has a neighbor, in a complete house. An open house.

The neighbor watches from inside his own warm house, coffee cup in hand, as the carpenter works.

The neighbor calls his wife, “Come and look at this.”

The wife walks in but doesn’t see the carpenter only the last plywood piece go up from the inside.

“There are no windows.” The wife says.

Rinsing out his coffee cup, the neighbor says, “No doors neither.”

That night the neighbor and the wife walk around the closed house.

They touch the rough plywood of the walls.

Beneath their fingers the wood vibrates from the striking of a hammer, somewhere inside.

“The rain’ll ruin this unless he gets some siding up,” the neighbor says.

The wife thinks of that awkward triangle of blackness she saw as she came into the kitchen, the blackness vanishing behind the wood, as the carpenter sealed himself in.

Inside, the carpenter builds a maze.

Moving always right, with his materials piled behind himself, he hammers, pausing only to reach for more nails, or another piece of wood.

There is no light.

And as each piece slots into place, he makes a small noise.

He is sure he has brought it into the house with him.

Each wooden slat, each doorway that he seals shut behind himself, and each inner wall gets smaller as he goes.

And still he is sure it is right there, with him.

He can hear it breathe.

Twelve times, he makes the rounds inside the house.

There are hallways and doors and rooms within rooms, angled and closed, sharp and final.

The carpenter sits in the center. He can’t stand up, there isn’t space.

It waits outside this last little room.

It has started to suspect. But too late.

“Come on in,” says the carpenter, “this is our place.”

It joins him in the box that touches the shoulders of the carpenter.

The carpenter pulls the last board from under his legs and places it over the hole.

The carpenter hammers the nails around the final piece.

“There,” he says, “now it’s just you and me.”

From Uncle Stephen’s weekly advert in the Webster Country Daily Progress:

So when your Zen wisdom finally hits you and you become completely aware, what then?

What you’re probably going to need is an Aware Conditioner, which conditions you to the fact that you’re aware and everyone else plain isn’t.

I’m taking pre-orders now.

It’ll probably resemble one of those baseball caps with the places to hold your beers and straws, only instead of beers and straws it’s got hammers on springs.

When you sense yourself getting close to complete awareness you put on the cap and then when you are aware, the hammers spring down and smack you in the forehead, to Condition you to being Aware when other people are still dense as posts.