Short Stories (single Author)

From 'The Etch A Sketch Shaman'

'This guy,' asked Jessamyn as she hovered an outstretched index finger a few inches from the picture hanging before her, 'does all this with old cassette tapes?' She was pointing at an all-too familiar pose of Tom Waits on a crème-coloured canvas. His outline was dark and shiny, like the straight-edged of an oil spill.

'He does,' replied Trevor. He stood directly beside Jessamyn, closely examining the next canvas in line; a reproduction of Frank Zappa from his younger years, backlit by its mint green canvas. Zappa was majestic in stature. Trevor, in his late twenties with a mop of thick shaggy hair and mustache, attempted to match the posture before slumping back down into his comfortable farm boy slouch. Jessamyn would say Trevor was more modeled after Vonnegut in stance and form, a hint that pushed both at humility and quiet self-confidence. 'He was working on a couple when I was over at his place a few weeks back. He was using old cassettes someone had traded him for a couple of old car speakers at the booth he runs at the Flea Market over Irvington way.' Trevor had described initially Edgar Moore as that one great hustler artist that every Midwestern city should and generally manages to develop. Trevor had known him in the way that small town friends often had, in a sort of life-out-time fashion that knew no beginning and no end.

Jessamyn wiggled her finger, posited a lighter look at the picture, then dropped a step back to take in the rest of the canvases that hung on the single wall of the makeshift gallery. There were about a good ten or eleven of all the same size. The art was fairly mundane in folk art nature, but there was something near magical in the way it struck her. Jessamyn was little taller than Trevor, a year younger, and carried the dark hair and tanned complexion of her Persian father. She had the fine angular features of her mother. 'He sounds like a flea market professional,' she opined, realized that she sounded like a judgy out-of-towner and quickly added in sympathy. 'The things we go to get by.'

'He is known to work in the flea market,' offered Trevor. 'But a little better known as artist. A shamanic artist, a real healer of sorts.'

Jessamyn paused to consider. 'Shamanic?' she repeated. She was a newcomer to Indianapolis. She had come to know Trevor in the last few months. She had got to talking to him at a Pacer's game during an event held by the pharmaceutical company she works for. A mere few weeks into her new job in the research lab position and Trevor had become her one other single and 'hip' friend actually from the city. He was a bonafide Hoosier and good company in the way very few other men or women at work had managed to be. She might have called this particular night a date, seeing as it was only her and Trevor. It could have seemed that way quite easily, except that the two had managed to be both awkward together and quite comfortable at the same time. There was an emotional and physical line that neither one had been willing to cross.

'Yeah,' said Trevor, 'like the Lenape kind we stole the state from. He used to be pretty famous about it.'

Jessamyn hummed a reply to this. This idea fascinated her. Back home, Indiana was often referred to as the backwoods kind of place down south full of farmers, conservatives, and religious zealots. Out of something that was undoubtedly not a coincidence, Toledo's local bible thumping television station ads would be majority from Indiana PO boxes. There was something evangelical about the land she had come to inhabit. A lot of her neighbours had seemingly bought into it, for good or bad. And the daughter of Muslim auto workers with an undergraduate degree in microbiology was left more curious and wanting about spirituality in America. Edgar Moore the shamanic healer artist was about as interesting as it got for Jessamyn.

From 'Birding with Dad'

The last time Paul went for a walk with his father, they'd descended from their fifth-floor apartment and trudged into the hydro field behind the building, pushing through the long grass until their pant legs were damp and covered in seeds. Before they reached the other side of the field, his father twisted his ankle in a gopher hole and had to lean on his son as they made their way home again. Paul had felt proud to feel his father's weight on his shoulder, but his father had been grumpy for the next week.

Paul liked it when his dad included him in his walks. It made him feel hopeful and mature, as if his father regarded him as a trusted partner rather than a nuisance or an agent of his mother. This evening, he let Paul run ahead of him along the path that led from their apartment building through the hydro field. The sun was starting to set. A man with a dog angled through the long grass ahead of them toward a barrier between the field and a dead-end road. The man loaded his dog into the back seat of a black car and drove away. Paul plunged ahead of his father into the thick grass, then returned to the path and waited for him to catch up. The damp grass soaked his canvas running shoes. Small green seeds stuck to his arms.

Black cables hung between the outstretched metal arms of the hydro towers like skipping ropes in a game played by skeletal giants. Standing near the base of one of the towers, Paul and his father gazed upward into the maze of metal beams and porcelain insulators until they spotted a birds' nest wedged into a corner. Paul's father took a slingshot from his pocket. He picked up a rock and fired it at the nest. He tried three times, but each time he missed the nest. He handed the slingshot to his son. 'You try,' he said.

Paul kicked at the dirt around his feet until he found a smooth pebble. He looked up at the nest, placed the pebble in the leather pouch of the slingshot, pulled back on the rubber bands and fired. The pebble struck the bottom of the nest. The nest dangled above the ground like a spectator's dislodged hat. Paul could see a cluster of chicks clinging to the ragged edges of the nest. They squeaked like rusty hinges as they blindly opened their beaks, waiting for food. 'Try again,' his father said. When Paul hit the nest a second time, one of the chicks spilled to the ground. Paul's father walked over to the stunned bundle of feathers. He looked down, raised his boot and stepped on the bird. 'Sometimes I'd like to do this to your mother,' he said, and then he made a guttural sound intended as laughter.

In the pause between his father's words and his chuckle, Paul caught a glimpse of his father's anger. It was no joke.

When they walked home, Paul's father said, 'Tell your mother that you want to sleep tonight in your own bed.' They walked farther. 'A boy your age shouldn't be sleeping with his mother,' his father said. When they got home, Paul's father lay down on the couch and turned on the TV. Paul walked down the hall to his mother's bedroom, knocked and waited for his mother to give him permission to enter.

His mother was leaning against a satin pillow propped against the headboard, blowing on her nails. There was a bottle of nail polish on the table beside the bed. She was wearing a pink slip that left the tops of her breasts exposed. Paul said, 'I should sleep in my own bed.'

'Who told you that?' his mother said.

'Father.'

His mother sighed. 'How many times do I have to tell you?' she said.

Paul had heard the same story from his mother many times. It all began, she told him again, with her wish to protect him from harm. 'The world can be a dangerous place,' she said.