Try to Avoid Bad Words

(My round 10 entry into NPR's "Three Minute Fiction" contest, which mandated the story be no more than 600 words, and to be in the form of a voice mail)

“Ahem. Hello and good evening Mr. and Mrs. Palabra. This is Irving Skinner calling, Dean at the Northwestern Directional School for Boys. I’m sorry to trouble you during the dinner hour, but I was hoping I might be fortunate enough to actually speak with either of you as you’ve been terribly difficult to reach.

As you’ll recall, you enrolled your son, Mala, here in September. I’ve heard reports that your Volvo left a lengthy patch of warm rubber in front of his dormitory on drop-off day, and unfortunately the opportunity to introduce myself escaped more quickly than you did. On a side note, I appreciate the consistent and very gracious checks you’ve been sending in the envelopes with a large smiley face in place of a proper return address.

I have repeatedly attempted to reach you at the emergency contact numbers you provided the admissions office. When I call the number for Patty, I am asked to leave a message regarding my thoughts on “the driving habits of any of Highway Master’s over the road professionals.” I was forced to weigh the odds of you being in the trucking business, Mrs. Palabra, with the notion that you made a typographical error on that particular line...

I also tried the number listed as the best way to reach your husband, Tristan. I was promptly and loudly given the hours of operation for Pete’s Ping Pong, Pool and Pizza Pub. Out of morbid curiosity, I paid a personal visit to Pete’s, and yes, all of those wonderful things are indeed present under one roof, along with a surprisingly valid permit to serve food. Not present was Tristan Palabra.

As luck would have it, one of our students here has a parent working for the FBI, and he helped me track you down. Let me say for the record that I wouldn’t normally leave a message like this, but your evasive actions have left me no choice.

On the day Mala arrived at our prestigious school, we had our first recorded fire. In nearly 150 years of caring for and instructing the leaders of tomorrow, we’ve never had such an incident. Your son took full responsibility for the blaze during a group interrogation when he wrote “I started the fire” in magic marker on my pant leg. Our school psychiatrist assisted me with an impromptu counseling session for him that evening, during which, and to my complete amazement, he managed to start the second fire in school history.

The list of atrocities has been lengthy in his first two months here.  We’ve had several organized spray painting contests, a statue relocation into my office, and, in the most memorable incident at the Homecoming Football game, a solo streaking of the field that lasted seven...full...minutes.

The final straw occurred today, though. Over the course of the semester, despite all his tribulations, Mala has actually attended class. In between food fights and the sit-ins he leads in solitary protest of mandatory showering, your son has also begun to fancy himself a writer. He handed in an English paper this morning that shocked his teacher so deeply that she immediately left the classroom to bring it to me. She’d instructed the boys to write a poem about  the human heart, and for his part, Mala could only muster thirteen words. Let me read it to you:

Mine sped off in a fast Swedish coupe, and I never said goodbye.

Perhaps a visit is in order? Some of us here could probably use a hug.

Oh, and bring your checkbook...”

My entry in Round 9 of NPR's "Three Minute Fiction" contest.
The prompt, write a 600 word story that revolves around about a President, real or fictional.




Amigo’s New Hope

Fresh coffee drips while the girls pick through yesterday’s magnificent May Day arrangement. Each places a spring bud behind her ear; a pale pink Primrose for Malia and a shock-white Ghost Flower for Sasha. Kisses and goodbyes fill up the kitchen and then they exit. Neither acknowledges me under the table, my chin propped along Father’s shoe; my legs lazily splayed.

From down here, he doesn't look well. The nervous tapping of his unoccupied shoe narrowly misses my ear. His face is tired and drawn like an old scarf. He leans down, tousles the scruff of my neck and slowly pulls straight the curls there, ten or twenty times. He’s out of sorts and distracted- hasn’t flung my tennis ball once across the room, though I patiently wait.
Mother rises, kisses his forehead and whispers slowly against it, “Be calm. Breathe. You’ll make the right decision.” His smile for her is awkward at best; painful at worst.

He’s walking now and I tether. I adore his gravelly voice in my ears and his large hand on my neck. In the sprawling circular office I rest near him, but out of reach. I've learned that if I want to stay in here, I must stay out of the way. People fire in and out throughout the morning. Mr. Gates and Mr. Biden arrive first and never leave. Mrs. Clinton comes in just before lunch, straight from the helicopter that seems daily to invade my yard. I can’t stand the violent, spinning blades; howl at them with thunder. Sensing my agitation, she is quick to me; spending a minute around my ears, eyes locked with mine. I like her immensely.

Food and tea trays rush in and out during the long day, and three times I leave to stretch my legs in the grass. Mr. Biden joins me once while talking rapidly into his phone. The roses are in glorious bloom and I spend hours wandering around them, nuzzling, admiring and dozing off in the freshly cut grass.

It’s nearly 4:00 when I wander to the kitchen for water. The girls should have come home slinging their jackets and laughing, but they’re nowhere to be found. I’m rankled by all of it. Our routine is missing. When I trot back to his office, he’s halfway down the hall, heading to another room. He turns on his heels and calls me to follow with his eyes and hands.

The Situation Room is packed, but silent. “I need to watch this,” he says, and I spin under his chair and press my chin onto his shoe. Again, the scent of leather and coffee beans makes me heavy-eyed. People murmur and drone for a while. I hear the snap of a camera; raise my head quickly at their sharp claps and solemn hand raps on the tabletop.
“He’s dead,” someone says.  The room slowly empties.

Now, it’s very late and I’m curled up against Sasha on her bed. He watches her chest rise and fall in restful beats. He kisses her, pulls her covers up and tight, and turns his hands to me.

He’s different now.  Lines from this morning have softened; the dim light of the room imbues his face. A corner smile rises as he gently runs his hands along my back.

“After today, I hope to sleep as well as you do, Bo…Amigo’s New Hope, indeed” he whispers.

I can’t comprehend, but I understand. I doze away dreaming of Roses and Ghost Flowers; worn leather soles and Arabica beans.

A short story for NPR- His Floor

This is my submission to NPR's new short story (600 word) contest. It must be about someone coming to town, and someone leaving town. Wish me luck...

His Floor

Her nose drained down her lip, tried to freeze there, but dropped to a button on her coat. Winter’s gravity pulled everything toward the sidewalk. She imagined sleeping there, but the wind pushed her legs further down the street. Rusty pulled up in his truck, yanked his coat and briefcase toward him, and pled with her to accept the offer. This time, after three days of declining with soft smiles, she took it and climbed slowly into the warm cab.

He’d been watching her for weeks. He knew her patterns and paths, and could tell the time of day by her location on the street. He did what he knew he should have done before winter landed in Laramie, and offered her the space. She stared out the cracked windshield of the blue Ford and thought about what he’d just explained.

He had a house on Grand, had rehabbed the entire thing and, being single and in a college town, split it into two apartments. He lived in one and rented the other to grad students. But he never properly finished the basement to create a third unit suitable to rent. She could stay there if she wanted, free of charge. Burdette wasn’t afraid of Rusty, and never needed to look closely at him to judge his character. In 83 years, she’d heard enough voices to trust through tone.

The basement was dark, but heavily insulated and dry. He’d already moved a spare single frame and mattress into the corner with an unfinished nightstand next to it. He was in the process of stripping and re-staining it, and that told her he was sorry he didn’t have much more in the way of furniture. The tenants upstairs might loan her a spare chair or a radio. He said he would check with them, and she nodded and ran her hand under her eyes. Then she hugged him a bit and he hugged her back, warmly and without regard for the smell in her hair and clothes.

She came and went freely for the winter, awakened each morning straining her eyes to see the floor joists above her. The comforting cut wood suspended across the ceiling of the room, her strong and oak-scented shelter. Rusty brought her a grey porcelain mug full of coffee each morning before he left for work, and on finishing it, she departed for the 12^th Street Mission Kitchen. No matter the depth of the snow, the wind’s force or the pain in her bones, Burdette spent every day walking. Her legs went for loops of blocks, stopping in the Kitchen twice a day and always back to Rusty’s at dusk, falling asleep under the oak joists. Her ceiling was his floor.

In April, as the swell of snow slipped to rain and tulips, he sat down with the grey mug and touched her hand. He was quiet while she drank her coffee and looked up the joists. Her eyes dropped and caught his, reddened. He took off his glasses and spoke softly.

He’d been transferred to Cheyenne. More money and somewhere he’d always wanted to live. His renters upstairs had graduated and were moving to Omaha. The house was sold to a man, he explained, moving to Laramie with a family- two children and his pregnant wife. They needed a big house, so Rusty had sold it to them. He kissed her forehead and went to his truck.

Burdette drank her coffee in silence, and imagined the feeling of running her hand along that ceiling. She put on her coat and she walked.

2012 Breakdown: Fantasy Style

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Debt Ceiling Problems? Lower the Floor.

I was granted an exclusive interview with the world's foremost expert in the Debt Ceiling Crisis recently, and he reluctantly agreed to allow me to publish the interview here with the stipulation that I not reveal his identity. Imagine listening to this interview in the slowed down voice of Will Ferrell from this classic scene in "Old School". We shall refer to our Debt Ceiling Crisis Expert henceforth, as Fritz, since all people with that name ought to be wise and scholarly.

CK- Good morning. Lots of people are unwilling to admit they don't know enough about this issue to be as worried as CNN and FOX news says they should be. Can you help the general public get a grip on the Debt Ceiling Crisis for us?

Fritz- Good morning, and yes, I'm happy to help. Please imagine for a moment the largest stack of pancakes you can possibly imagine...Do you see it?

CK- Uh, yes. I see it.

How tall is it?

Well, almost as tall as me. It has a golden hue to it, glistening with Wisconsin Maple syrup. It's gorgeous.

No. Wrong. This is an analogy, so think bigger.

To the "ceiling"? That high? (I'm laughing, cleverly)

Son, the debt ceiling, if it were a stack of pancakes, would reach from your plate on the table, to SATURN. This is the magnitude of what we're talking about. Our National Debt is into the TRILLIONS. A trillion pancakes is so tall that most people can't even comprehend it.

What about that competitive eating champ? Aaaahh, shoot. You know the guy that got banned from the Nathan's Hot Dog competition...Could he imagine it?

You mean Joey Chestnut?

No no. The Asian kid that weighs 120 pounds. Kokomo?

Kobayashi?

YES! Could he eat the Debt Ceiling Pancake?

This is not about eating, this is about understanding the magnitude of the crisis we face. Forget the pancake analogy. Let me break it down more simply. The US has a credit score, just like you and I do, and we've attempted to keep it blemish free by borrowing when we need to and repaying our debt on time. Right now, our credit score is dangerously low. For decades, we've been the two buff dudes in the commercials with "749" across their chests. If we don't raise the Debt Ceiling or erase our debts by August 2nd, Moody's will downgrade us...we turn into the Fatty Arbuckle with the "510" and a hockey mask. Got it?

Moody's? What is that? A bar and grill for menopausal women? I'm picturing Kathy Bates checking ID's at the door...

No. For cripes sake. It's a credit rating agency which performs international financial research and analysis on commercial and government entities for the purpose of positioning them in the global investment market.

Uhhh...do you see the irony in that name? They rate the strength of a company or country's economy on any given day...and their name is Moody's?

Wow. You're right. That's like Zagat changing their name to "Deservedly Bitchy and Tired with 3 Hungry Kids"...

Totally!

Anyway, Moody's downgrades the credit worthiness of the US and experts agree there would be total financial chaos. The stock market would suffer terribly. Interest rates would climb. Because of your country's debt, which you repay as a taxpayer, you would be forced to pay private lenders 2 to 3 times as much to borrow private money. That's best case scenario. The downside includes 11% mortgages and 20% auto loans for good credit.

That's like letting the Car and Driver awards be chosen by a guy who walks to work everyday! Moody's...what a great name for a shitty bar where everbody hates your name. Oh! What if we came up with a company that rates how good a movie is and call it "Rotten Tomatoes"? The IRONY!! I love it, Fritz. While we're at it, let's hire Rupert Murdoch be the new spokesperson for ADT.

Do you not see the seriousness of this issue?

I do, but if the writing is on the wall and the WORLD knows that a credit default is imminent if we don't work out a deal, why don't the powers-that-be just carve out a deal that allows us to increase the debt ceiling temporarily while we find a long term, bi-partisan strategy to reduce the National debt through spending cuts in silly foreign wars, fat trimming on frivolous projects and imposing higher taxes for the uber wealthy that pay little to nothing?

Impossible. That would mean that someone would have to admit defeat in a pre-election year. Nobody is that stupid.

So this is political posturing for the 2012 election?

Jeez, dummy. Did you pay any attention to the NFL Lockout?

Sure. Why?

Same game...different name. Millionaires fighting millionaires over millions of YOUR dollars. What came of that debacle? Huh? Friend of mine told me that the collective bargaining agreement was reached 4 months ago, but that Roger Goodell and DeMaurice Smith played golf every day since then pretending to carry on the battle. Why? So there wouldn't be a perceived loser. The public salivates like rats waiting for the desired outcome, finding it implausible that they won't get it, but cautiously afraid that they might not. What if they don't have football? What will I CARE about this fall? During the waiting, posturing and fighting, the media gravitates over hot button issues that sell papers and ads and cause web traffic to spike. It's a big scam. You lose nothing but your self respect. You get football, and you'll gladly pay the increase in season ticket or parking prices because you got your crack back.

What's my crack in the debt ceiling debate?

National pride. History. 

Can it really be fixed...the debt?

Sure. We can find middle ground. We could legalize marijuana and tax it. Legalize internet gambling and tax it. Keep the business in the private sector and let Uncle Sam have his share. End the Afghan and Middle East wars. Bring troops home to long term jobs. Let the private sector flourish. Stop letting GE and big oil off the hook for billions in untaxed profits. Bring the American dollar back to something with value. Burn clean coal and spend the profits finding free renewable energy...blah blah blah. So no. It can't be fixed, because we will likely never agree to do anything as a team. This is the World Series of Poker. Boehner has a 3-7 off suit. Obama has a pair of two's. The Flop was King, Queen, Ace. Rainbow. Fourth street was a 4. We're just waiting for someone to fold this shitbag.

You're getting really pessimistic and political. Is there any bright spot here that I can share?

Sure. A deal will be made. Just like the NFL. The 30 days of posturing will cause both sides to proclaim victory. Moody's should downgrade us now if they really wanted to prove a point. But they won't.

That's not really bright. Give me something that will make people feel better. Feel like we're getting somewhere as a country!

Moody's has two for one well drinks tonight from 8:00 to Midnight.

Good enough. I'm buying.

Earning Your Stripes

I'm pretty sure I was 24 when my wife and I decided we needed to end our run of apartment living and grow up, buy a house and have some kids. We had no cash and decided to take out a loan to rent a picket fence to go with it. When we first started house-shopping, I looked immediately at the lot size, imagining the dream yard from my Wyoming boyhood. We needed at least an acre of green grass so I could install a batting cage and a putting green. On the other three acres we'd raise horses and build a self-sustaining garden. I would prance each morning through the lush greenery with a piping hot cup of coffee and sing the praises of nature. Also, I would need to quadruple my meager living as an assistant golf professional with some street hooking and heroin sales to pay the lawn crew to keep up the illusion.

It was then, during a sweaty daydream about lawn bowling and Jarts with the neigbors, that she challenged my manhood for the only first time.
"We have to buy a condo, dumbass sweetie. Maintenance provided. You can't take care of grass," she said. And when she said it, she sounded like an old German Kindergarten teacher telling me (a math genius) that I couldn't recite Pi to 3000 digits.

"You...can't take care... of GRASS!"

It was sooooo true. I worked Monday through Friday at a sweet private golf course where my job was to show up at dawn and make people happy and better at golf until nightfall. Then on the weekends, my job was to show up 3 hours before dawn to get ready to make people happy and better at golf until two hours afer nightfall. On my days off, I had to play golf so that I didn't accidentally teach these people how to drink 3 gallons of coffee on their drive to work (my only other talent) by mistake. So in truth, I had no time to take care of a sweet, Wyoming-style 5-acre yard with a full baseball diamond in the middle. But I wouldn't relent. She struck a chord with me the way Nels Cline strikes a chord during this. It was hard hitting and real and it pissed me off undressed my vision of what I was supposed to be. That chord resonated until I'd owned a house for a couple of years, and tirelessly failed at upkeeping a lawn between the hours of 1:00 and 3:00 a.m. and finally decided to give up the golf business in order to keep on being a half decent member of my own family.

I soon gained a freedom I'd never before had which people referred to as "weekends".

They were strange to me. There were hours with which you could do things, like mow and sleep. You could also coach and ride bikes and go to movies and breath air. IT WAS STARTLING. But the flip side of every wheat penny is still Abe Lincoln...so I had to come to terms with who I really was. I was (and still am) a yellow and black-striped worker bee...to the core. Wow, so self indulgent. I work soooo hard.

I don't sit still very well, except during funerals and old episodes of The Benny Hill Show, so I had to keep moving. I became a fanatic at proving my wife wrong taking care of my grass. As small as it was, that little patch of chlorophyll was going to be the earth's greenest, lushest, most tropical piece of earth on earth.

But every August in Kansas City- when grass falls from the ocean into hell in 30 seconds- my yard would die. It would flourish in May and early June, then struggle mightily past the 4th of July, soaked in firecracker dust and barbeque sauce. Sadly, by the time Leo came to roar around the Zodiac, the Keefe yard looked eerily similar to the illustrated cover of The Grapes of Wrath.

I got better by buying chemicals and invested in watering (GENIUS!) the grass. Now, it's a decent patch of earth.

The point of my little story is proving her wrong the caring. I got my first job caring (about grass) when I was thirteen. My old man dragged me and our 1/2 horsepower mower down Oak Street on a Saturday morning and basically paid a few hungover elderly neighbors to let me shittily mow their grass. They gave me my Dad's money back and got a hackjob for their time. I reaped all the benefits ($12)

On the way to the grocery store riding in the back of my Mom's car, we'd pass one of my shitty yards with asymmetic lines in it and a dozen 6-inch mohawks of missed cuts and it would be neatly framed by yards on each side where the DAD OF THE YEAR that lived there had spent 3 hours hand clipping every stem for the big yard award show that never happened (but which he felt he won every Sunday morning as he pranced out to fetch his paper with a cup of coffee). My yards had that Pig Pen swirl around them. I needed to change.

But I didn't change. Not until I turned 40 and grew the hell up started mowing feverishly, five yards a week. That's what I do now. I get it right. I mow yards on my block on my day off and during non-committed weekend hours. I mow grass like Da Vinci painted flowers...hyperbolically and without my left ear.

And I do this almost for free and entirely to prove to my teenage son and wife that there is solitude and great joy in doing something with purpose. Sometimes, it takes an hour to get the pattern right and the edging takes another hour you could be spending watching Benny Hill Reruns playing X Box. But when you step back and admire the symmetry of a piece of earth you care for and love, you have something that other teenagers people don't have...

The $10 bill and sense of pride that comes from a summer job.

I love a fresh cut lawn, whether it's my own or not. I love the fact that symmetrical lines in your yard can make the chaos inside your head house seem normal.

Maybe, just maybe, I will pass this curse trait on to my son this summer as we begrudgingly heartily launch Keefe and Sons Lawn Care.

Don't try to hire us, though. We have just enough earth beneath our feet to perfect before we can really get to work.

Shoes Drop...Deal With It

Sometimes I sit down to write something and find myself without a subject. You might attribute this to mid-life doldrums or my apparent inability to leave the city to find adventure, much less take a different route to work or try a new cereal. It's times like these, when I'm in a bit of a rut, that I fear a life altering jolt the most. It's not so much the other shoe dropping as it is the first shoe dropping. Nobody ever worries about that...It's after the first shoe drops that we walk on eggshells until the second one hits. And no, I have no idea where that idiom was born. Legend says that it was a guy from Pawtucket, standing under a power line staring at a pair of shoes, laced together, hanging 20 feet above his head. He was walking his dog and noticed them, wondered how the hell they'd gotten there in the first place and stared at them until Rover urged him home. Three weeks later, he noticed there was only one shoe, dangling by a thread. It really perplexed him at this point, so he waited, breathlessly, for the other shoe to drop. He knew it would; gravity demanded it. But when and why, he might never know. So we watched when he could (without losing his job or being accused of being crazy) to no avail. One day, on his customary walking of Rover, the other shoe was gone. He'd waited, nervous for the conclusion to the mystery, and it happened without his knowing. He was devastated. Then he got over it. A week later he tied his old running shoes together and lopped them over another power line on a different street in order to torture some other bastard.

The first shoe drops more and more often as we age. Life clips along at whatever pace we choose for it, and then it happens.
Your car breaks down in the middle of a rainstorm.
An old friend has a heart attack and never wakes up.
Your boss tells you that your postition is being eliminated.
The stock market falls like a house of cards in a Kansas dust devil and you lose your kid's college fund.

Having the first shoe on the ground should be a relief. We already have the pain and angst. We're already in fight or flight mode. If Jason jumps out from behind a tree sporting a bloody hockey mask and a pickaxe, you crap your pants and start to run. If Freddy Krueger pops out behind him and takes chase as well, it's really no big deal. In all likelihood, if you simply outrun Jason then Freddy will get tired and just slaughter him and leave you alone. You could even become friends and have a laugh over a beer about the whole thing later.

So, right now I'm in the mode of waiting for the first shoe to drop. How sad is that? I'm assuming that life is so simple and natural and gliding along at such a terrific pace, that there must be a slasher behind one of the trees I'm about to pass when I'm walking my dog. What a stupid way to walk the dog.

There are roots in my fear; they're based in past experiences and faith and reality. Life is abrupt. In the grand scheme of things, it starts and stops like a trigger thumb on a stopwatch. Babies are born every second, and bodies are lowered into the ground almost as often. Three different people inside one city block could be minding their own business when one will trip and break their arm, another crash their car into a fence and the third will be laughing with gusto at a joke. Life happens. Shoes drop. Waiting for it is ultimately the biggest sin against proper use of your time that you can commit.

I want to dedicate this roustabout of non-linear thought to my little brother, his wife and their daughter. She was born about a year ago and she is perfect. She arrived just in time for them to be able to handle the other shoe dropping. Their first "kid" Maddie, was a beautiful Golden Retriever who buried her head in your crotch, not to sniff, but to hug you. She was regal. She was 11 and lived a stellar life of love and happiness in the confines of a terrific Colorado yard and many hiking and camping adventures. She had a brother Goldie named Charlie added to her world, and she loved him too. When her human sister (my sweet niece Quincy) joined the team, I think Maddie realized that the other shoe could drop and it wouldn't break a house of cards. Love and bravery make us ready and capable of handling anything.

And just so you know, that pair of shoes I hooked on that power line in 1999 are still there, swaying lightly in the afternoon breeze. And I don't care. Sweet dreams, Maddie.