the green bucket on the back of the truck

My brother has told me for years to do whatever the hell he tells me to do. He says it will save me a lot of trouble, because he'll tear my ears off if I don't, and that will make for a terrible childhood. Sometimes I don't want to do it, but he's usually right. He's never torn my ears off, but he gave me two snake-bites, put four lumps of shit in my basketball shoes, and nailed me with about a hundred and seven charlie-horses.

All of that stuff was pretty awful, so I usually follow instructions.

Here I am on the back of the pickup, though, and Matt's yelling from the cab.

"GodDAMMIT, Stephen. God. . .DAMMIT!"

I hear him fumble around in there, and I'm pretty sure he's getting that huge bolt out of the glove compartment so that he can stick his head out the back window and throw it at me. He'll aim for my ass. I know that this is happening, but I can just barely think about it. What I'm doing is I'm looking at this five-gallon bucket, and I'm not kicking it off the back of the truck. I'm not. There are some things that one will not do.

Here comes the bolt.

At last Will woke up and walked to the kitchen.

The room had just finished filling with sunlight, the coffee was already on, and the kitchen was empty, except for the sunshine. Will whistled while he sloshed the morning brew into his favourite rainbow-coloured mug, and watched the white-washed horses neigh and whinny at one another in the pasture past the apple trees, which sat damp and dappled in the backyard. Of course the fence is white-washed, he thought, and not the horses.

Shuffling his feet across the linoleum, he sat down at the kitchen table and whistled three final bars while he blew across his warm coffee. He set his mug to one side, and began to write a letter:

Dear My Dear Friend Francis F. Fowler,

After several weeks of careful observation, I've confirmed a most startling fact: a unicorn is habitually grazing on the apple trees in our backyard.

When I first found a few donut-shaped apples scattered across the wet morning grass, I suspected that Horace, the chocolate coloured stallion with the comical overbite, had been making midnight raids on my Jonathan Apples.

Further inspection, however, yielded a great number more things to be considered (as is so often the case!).

Later that same week, I snuck up into the biggest tree in the yard, just before Kathryn came home. My plan, as you might imagine, was to hide among the pomaceous boughs and fire fruit into her wicker basket from the sky. On my way up the trunk, my hands slipped on a piece of loose bark and I fell back onto the grass, landing on a rather unfortunately placed apple. Where the bark had slipped away, nearly two yards up the tree trunk, I noticed a score of scratch marks. The exact sort of marks one might expect to find if an abnormally large and white horse with a horn had been looking to sharpen it by rubbing it against our tree.

Coupling these observations with the daily hoove-marks in the grass and an enormously long and light silver hair found by the water-bucket (which Kathryn now wears wrapped around her wrist), I am left with no doubt whatsoever. There is most certainly a unicorn visiting our trees at night.

Having stood for you at your wedding and taught each of your children to throw, I consider you an expert on Near-Mythical Creatures of Incredible Beauty. What should I leave out on the porch - and should I mash it, mince it, or chop it? And will it stay, Frank?

Yes, I heard about the Gnome in the Tool Shed at the Christiansen's a couple of years ago, but figured a unicorn was a more delicate issue and needed the approach of a doctor like yourself.

Why don't you stop over for dinner this week? I'll pick green beans.

Yours,
William Y. Saide

Will sealed the letter in an envelope, and walked to the closet. Pulling down his leather knapsack, Will took out his "Lives of the Saints," and placed the letter about a quarter of the way through the book. Firmly closing the pages on Saint John Boscoe around the note, he put the book back into his bag and swung it deftly around his shoulder, in a single motion.

Walking down the lane towards the Fowler's, Will listened closely to the birds flying above and around him and watched his horses graze quietly, their eyes fixed on the apple trees.

the northern lights

I have this dream where we're playing foosball in Alaska.

When I wake up, I'm always in Ohio.

So I get up and grab my bike and ride down to the lake and watch the sunrise.

--

There was a flood back home a few years ago, and it left everything pretty wet. Water everywhere. I think it's the water that finally made you leave. Most of your stuff was ruined, so it seemed like the right time, and we all agreed that you hadn't planned on living in that basement room forever. Anyway, you decided to leave. Thought you might go to Alaska, you said. We said that sounded pretty good.

--

So, you left. And did you get to Alaska? That's our question.

I guess we all figure that we'll hear about it when you get back.

Maybe you went to Brazil or El Dorado.

I guess I don't know where you are, just that you're not here.

--

“Hey, you know if they have foosball in Alaska?”
“Yeah.”
“Really?
“Yeah, they do. They have it there.”
“I thought maybe they did. That's good, that's good.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty great.”

--

Whenever I think of Alaska, I think of the Northern Lights. I'm not even sure if you can see the Northern Lights from Alaska. Is that Alaska or Iceland? Maybe it's both. Greenland, maybe? No, no, no, I think it's Alaska. Yes, it's Alaska, because David always laughed about that Eskimo legend, the one where the coloured streaks in the air are the spirits of the dead playing football with a walrus skull across the sky. For some reason, I can never remember why they're playing with that walrus's head, though. Anyway, David calls the Northern Lights "aurora borealis," and talks about spirits and walrus-head footballs.

I think about the dawn and the North Wind and you.
Bryan thinks about the energy source of the solar wind flowing past the earth in such and such a fashion and with such and such an effect.
Even though he's blind, I wonder if our friend Peter has any thoughts on the Northern Lights.
Probably not.

--

The thing is, anyone of us could be right, I guess. About the Northern Lights, I mean. None of us has ever seen them. But if you're under those lights right now, staring up at them somewhere in Alaska, and if you're looking at them real closely, then maybe you know. But maybe not, maybe not. Maybe you never went to Alaska or you have your eyes closed or you're sleeping or you're in Africa or Istanbul or Cleveland. I don't know. I do like to think about you looking at them, though.

--

I'm a Catholic. I'm a Catholic, see, but the black church, I'm going to tell you a little bit about the black church, because the black church isn't the same church, Adam. I know you're a Christian, but you don't know this church. You don't know.

See they think the bigger your stomach is, the bigger your holy ghost. You don't know this, I know you don't know this, Adam, but this is what they believe. They believe this. So Joe says to me last Sunday, "Where's your stomach, Tony? What happened to your stomach?" And this is right in front of my mom, my kids, that he's asking me this, see?

And see, I got stomach muscles, look - I mean I don't have no gut, I have muscles. So it's hard for me to relax them, and so I don't have no stomach, and so to him I don't got no holy ghost. He thinks I've got a demon in me, then, you see? He's asking me, where's my stomach? But he's not asking me anything, he's saying something.

So look, what I'm saying is that this is just wrong, man. That's not what it is. I'm going to tell you this. This man is telling me that he knows something. No, he doesn't. He doesn't know anything. There's signs in this world, yeah, and a lot of them have to do with your stomach, yeah - I mean, did you ever know of that man Samuel Johnson? That man, and that's a wise man, he said to never trust a man who doesn't listen to his stomach - and he was right! Seriously, I'm hungry, by the way - I mean, I'm listening. But I'm telling you right now that they's signs. That's true. But we don't know how to read that script. No way. They're mysterious, Adam.

I mean this place is mysterious. You read books, I know you're reading the books all the time, well this here's a mystery story. I mean the world. It's a mystery book. You know the ones, where you feel like you know what's going to happen, or what might happen, or at least that something is going to happen, you feel it getting ready to happen, and you've got this tickle, this shiver like everything you're reading is trying to tell you what's going to happen but you've got to turn the page, you've got to see the next page cause you don't know what it's gonna be? That's what this is, that's what's in here, in these signs, in our stomaches, in our eyes, even, Adam. It's a tickle, it's like you're sprawled out in the park and they's these blades of grass on the back of your hand, man. That's what it is.

Grass on the back of your hand, man.

My third night in this room and I have a dream about my children's hair and my hair. I dream that there are bright blue beads bound-up in my daughter's pigtails, and crystal coloured roses hanging from my braids. My son is sleeping in his perambulator, in my dream, with green leaves woven in and out of his thick nappy hair. We are in an old-fashioned train, and I do not know why. This almost worries me, but doesn't. We are riding somewhere, giggling as we go, holding our heads out the window and watching our hair grow farther and farther and farther out into the whipping winds.

When I wake I feel the soft heave-ho of my daughter sleeping against my side.

I stay awake and watch the light from the street lamp on the ceiling for awhile. Neither the street light nor the ceiling change, but the light swells and shifts and moves, and so do the shadows.

Things have really changed in this new place, I guess. And maybe things really can change. I brought my children here for a new life. Maybe we are finding it. Maybe I am discovering things that are real, finally. Am I? Is this all more real than it's ever been before? Maybe so. Maybe not, though, maybe not. Maybe it's only real in the same way that everything before was real. It feels real. Maybe we will get somewhere real sometime soon. Maybe I should go back to sleep.

Maybe I am drinking diamonds in the desert, and maybe you are too.

I've got an idea for how to get the moon into my dark brown wooden wheelbarrow. It's nice and old and has one wheel and they used to pull me around in there, but tomorrow I think the moon will fit in it. We could give it to someone nice, but I think I would want to give it to you. Or we could just bring it to play in the yard for awhile, and run through the sprinklers with the moon, you and I.

We'd have to get it back, and I've got a plan for that too, but you'll have to bring those chairs from the kitchen.

I wrote you forty-nine nice lines outside the parish hall, and said them over and over to myself. I scribbled them on a napkin and looked at the ink-running palimpsests, like the layers of a forty-nine line cake in my hands. I buried them in my billfold and pressed them down in my pocket neatly. They were nice lines and I said them quietly, leaning against the wall, watching the buzz of clouds and stars above the street, above the lake, above the wavy waterfalls and reeds.

I wrote you forty-nine nice lines and then sang them aloud while we stared at the ceiling and slept. I secretly wished that we were staring at stars, and fell asleep, fell asleep, fell asleep. And I dreamed that God might have seen me standing outside the parish hall. And in fact, I'm sure that he did. I know God watched me scrawling these lines, because I did not feel alone, not at all, though all of my friends were inside or already gone. Max had just left us, and the wake had just started, but out I went to wed words from my head to this world. And I felt marriage, not melancholy. Me and my obsolete old body, me, macabre middle-class man of the Middle-Mid-West - I felt alive, felt married, felt love.

I'm an old, old man and I haven't written poetry for years, years, years. Didn't need to write, didn't need to read, I suppose. And you were the book that I couldn't stop thumbing-through, couldn't put down over lunch, had to read. There was some heavy presence, some weight, some significance, in your words, and I marveled at their mystery in my open hands. I read until I could only carry you with me, in my pocket or my pick-up, to lunch or to the fields, too afraid to read anything closer to the end.

Then forty-nine nice lines came into my head like a fire, and I spoke them out, wrote them out, sang them to you.

Something happened here. That's what makes these white walls and this gray window gleam some indigo glow.

Something happened here years ago, and it left these four corners to coruscate forever its soft sad light.

If you're standing in the corner, which you are, then you can see how Shannon must have seen the room before he etched a cross into the cushioned crease of paint and pressed his hand against it, knowing his only hope was to cross. Letting his linens swing in the lingering breeze on the tree limb, he left an open window, an empty room, and a pile of books on the floor.

Shannon lived in this room before you.
He left a pile of books, a cross, and an indigo glow.

He lowers his head onto the pillow and begins to climb the trees of his unconscious. In one single breath, he lays back and reaches up to the first tree branch. The frames overlap. They are the same moment. Up, up, up - his rest carries him upward.

He climbs skyward, sleeping soundly, silently stretching from branch to branch. Here is a postcard of this great tree; it is smothered in sunset, and shows the stark streak of his silhouette scaling its side. The postcard is addressed to his mother in thick green ink. It floats out of his hand and drifts through the arms of the tree and onto his bedcovers below. Still moving higher, he looks down at how his bed is resting on a field of books, trees growing out of their open pages. He climbs his tree, he climbs his tree. He begins to hear melodies that sound like the sunset; both the sound and the sunset are in the air of his dream, this is their location. He is not really thinking about this. He is climbing higher. The rainbow of book-covers drops farther and farther away. He's not even sure where he's going, to be honest. Just higher. Further up, further in-like. To the sky, he supposes. The tree begins to sway, slightly. Soon the branches swell and swerve and shake and stir and spill him into the breeze. He tries not to change the rhythm of his steps, not to doubt his stairway. He wishes he was there, in the sky, but he is not - he is still holding on to whatever is there. He looks up and around at the sky. He climbs toward the sky.

It seems like there will be family there, in the sky. Family like he's known before. There will be barbecues, he thinks. The sky has barbecues in back yards so big that they are fields. Back yards that have hills. He has never been to the sky, but he expects it will feel familiar. Up he goes, up he goes.

He wishes he was in the sky, and climbs toward it in his tree. And no, he can no longer see his bed below. Two children on bicycles are wandering around out there by the clouds now. And now there are less and less branches; and there is more and more space. More and more sky. He is almost in the sky, maybe. He is still moving higher. He is waiting for a moment, for the release. He is waiting for when there are no more tree branches, when he has to let go to crawl into the sky, where even the allegory slips and flutters down prettily towards the book-field. He is waiting for some kind of release. Each branch is smaller and more tenuous, some feel almost whispy. He hangs onto them more tightly than ever, anticipating the last of them, unsure of what will happen then.

He is reaching for some kind of release, for some surrender to the sky.
He is sleeping, on top of his covers, waiting.

Where is it, Sarah? I'll tell you exactly where it is: Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Because I threw it out the window, that's why. Chucked it at a stop sign, actually.

Because it creeps me out, Sarah. It's strange. Because it's strange. Because it's not a normal thing to hang around your rear-view mirror. I mean, why do you think? For three hours, I'm driving with that thing dangling a foot away from me and it's annoying me and I'm just about ready to die it's so annoying. Just before Ypsilanti, this hornet flies in my window and scares the shit out of me, hovers around my face for like five seconds, buzzes me two or three times, and I'm about ready to jump out of the car or hit a truck or something when it shoots back out into the air. Well, I was all flustered and upset and needed to throw something, and there you have it.

Well, because I could have died. Did you consider that? Wouldn't you throw the first thing you saw? Wouldn't you throw the obscene piece of trash that had been swinging around right next to you for 200 miles?

Yes, I'm sure it was not a wasp.

Because it was a hornet, Sarah. That's why.

I can be kind of a jerk, I know. Things are sort of crazy around here, and it's been a hard couple of years for me. Haven't seen my kids since March. Haven't seen my wife in a year. Somewhere in there I just sort of settled and accepted it. I started thinking I wasn't worth anything, and I blamed it on everyone else. Blamed it on the fact that I was a black man. A Muslim. Blamed it on the fact that I was raised in a foster home. I know that it's not that stuff. It's just me. This is just the way it all happened. I know that. I know that I can be short with people sometimes. I can be sort of haughty, too. I'm working on that.

Anyway, I guess Gerald's hearing-aid could pick up that we were talking, but I'm pretty sure he couldn't hear what we were saying. Jeff and I were several minutes into a conversation about which Egyptian Pharaoh's name sounded the most like our friend Eddie's face looked when Gerald nodded at Jeff and said, "Oh, what? Is he giving you trouble? Don't worry about him, Jeff, he's an angel - there's a sweet man inside there - he's a good man!" He was in complete earnest.

We both looked at Gerald and laughed along with him. When Jeff and I turned back to one another we about died. Jeff and I have been close buddies for about seven months. He's a good guy. Quiet guy. I guess we've been friends ever since we both came here. Nice of Gerald to look out for Jeff, even though neither one of us know him that well. I patted his smooth, bald head on my way back inside, and thought that either his head or my hand felt, for a second, sort of angelic. I smiled.

On New Year's Eve, the whole family runs out into the yard in our underwear to clang pots and pans and make whooping noises at the stroke of midnight. It's a tradition. This year, Eleigh came to the house for the holidays; she stayed in the basement and helped in the kitchen almost every night. Mom let her run the blender for the milk-shakes, and we all thought they were the best tasting milk-shakes of the year. Eleigh found a bowling ball named Janet in the basement and bowled it seven blocks down the lane while we made our annual din with the kitchenware. While I looked for my shirt under the bushes, I thought, "She is the best friend a girl could ever have." I believe it, too.

There is something very, very plain about Eleigh. It reminds me of the pots and pans and the Holidays. I'm not sure why. When Eleigh comes over, we all laugh at the way she talks, at her silly words and sayings. One or two of her expressions make me laugh, but a hundred of them start to move me around, like the phrases she uses are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion, nudging up against me in line for a milk-shake.

She is like the pots and pans. Eleigh is like New Year's Eve. She is that noise, that funny whooping. Eleigh is my family on the front yard at midnight in our underwear. There is something so plain, so odd and old and ordinary, something so nice standing here.

"I'm celebrating," he said, "Every day is a new record."

He's drinking a Coke, celebrating. That's how he is. All he's talking about is being alive. Which, when you think about it, is worth celebrating, I guess. Another day, another record. Ten years ago he didn't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out. Wanted to curl up in a drainage pipe and die. Almost did. Woke up, though. Now he's here, celebrating.

And me, I struggle with the internet, the picturebooks, the blogs, the walls, the messaging. Want everyone to remember that this is a real-life lattice of human hearts and souls. Don't want us to forget this. Don't want to forget that we are connected. That we are connected in a way that is real and raw and meaningful and doesn't have anything to do with electronics or gadgetry. Don't want to forget this. It is first. But I want to use these gadgets as sticks - want to draw pictures in the sand, want to dance out, to show off, to shake up a sense, a rhythm, a reminder that we are all one.

So.

I bring you this great mound;
It is me,
It is we.

Every day is a new record.