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Grassroots luxury for everyday life.

LIVE WALDEN INN WALDEN SPA WALDEN CLUB WALDEN GATHER WALDEN

w a l d e n

5336_WD Muse_apr_09.indd 1 2/5/09 6:07:48 PM

I ’m totally serious.

It’s him.

—Bennigan?

Yeah, Bennigan. Just take a look. He still has that limp

from the time with the circus pony.

—There’s no way. Look at that suit. That’s a thousand

dollar suit, easy. And look what he’s driving. And

there – look what he’s got sitting in his passenger seat.

No way is that Bennigan.

Wait. Watch – look where he’s going. Yup. He is walk-

ing straight through the front door of Wilson & Per-

roni. That chump has gone out and done it.

—That is not Bennigan. I’m tellin’ you right now, that

is not Bennigan.

Listen. It’s Bennigan. It is. You can debate all you

want, but you’re making the wrong argument. You

don’t believe it’s Bennigan because you don’t want to

believe that a guy like us can make it out there. ‘Cause

if Bennigan’s a success, that means you’re a failure.

That’s what this is really about. Ain’t that right Joe?

—Huh?

Ain’t I right about Stan and Bennigan?

—Oh, sorry. I was watching the backhoe. It just looks

like it’s eating that wall. The Hornblatt Building, pile

of bricks, just like that. Hundred years, gone. Wonder

what’s behind it ...

Christ. I don’t know why I bother with this anymore.

Where did our dreams go? What happened to all

those nights we sat here and allowed ourselves to be-

lieve that we were going to be the ones, the ones every-

body watched, every single one of us, fearless in our

ambition, unafraid to say exactly what we wanted and

then to want more and to believe that it was going to

happen. We fucking burned. We were steel. It was

bound to happen. Maggie, you turned heads all day

long, just sitting there. It all came to you so easy.

Christ, Joe. You most of all. We all knew you were the

one. We were good, but you, Joe … and look at you now.

—Well it’s not like you exactly set the world on fire.

Watch it, Maggie. Don’t you even start. You all know

what happened to me. You know it wasn’t my fault. I

was on my way. I was there. I had it. The rest — you

can’t blame me for that. Nobody could have seen that

coming. None of you could have.

—Wait. He’s coming back out. Lordy lord. Would you

look at that? I’ve never seen one that big. It ain’t

frickin’ fair.

Screw it. I’m hungry. Who wants Chinese? M

ADDRESS UNKNOWNBY DAVID GIFFELS

{ T H E C O V E R I M A G E }

No.

COVER

BUNNIES

CHUCK MINTZ

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Founded in 1987 as Ohio Writer, MUSE is the quarterly journal published by The Lit, a nonprofit literary arts organization. No part of this journal may be reproduced without written consent of the publisher.

JUDITH MANSOUREditorjudith@the-lit.org

TIM LACHINADesign Directortim@wjgco.com

RAY MCNIECEPoetry Editorwords4muse@the-lit.org

ROB JACKSONFiction Editorwords4muse@the-lit.org

ALENKA BANCOArt Editorimages4muse@the-lit.org

KELLY K. BIRDAdvertising Account Manageradvertising4muse@the-lit.org

THELITCLEVELAND’S LITERARY CENTER

ARTCRAFT BUILDING 2570 SUPERIOR AVENUE SUITE 203 CLEVELAND, OHIO 44114

216 694.0000 WWW.THE-LIT.ORG

MUSE IS THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL PUBLISHED BY THE LIT

SUBMISSIONS(content evident) may be sent electronically to words4muse@the-lit.org, images4muse@the-lit.org. We prefer electronic submissions. MUSE publishes all genres of creative writing — including but not limited to poetry, fiction, essay, memoir, humor, lyrics, and drama; stories about the writing life; profiles; book reviews; news of importance to writers, publishers, and agents; and other things which might stimulate public interest in reading and writing. Preference is given Ohio-based authors.

VO L U M E 2 , I S S U E 2

0 50 9

contents03 Address Unknown By David Giffels

06 The Transmitter Field By Steve Smith

07 Fusion is Not Granted By Bree

The Uninhabited World By Robert Miltner

11 The Vampire Lover By David Megenhardt

24 Geniosity.com By Carolyn Jack

25 Book Archaeology By Rob Jackson

26 Like It Was Something Good on TV By Jake Snodgrass

BACKGROUNDBILLY DELPS

PLAYGROUND, NYC, 2003

VO L U M E 2 , I S S U E 2

Spring in Cleveland usually means that we can look forward to only

another few grueling weeks of sleet, ice, and clouds. In lieu of new buds,

warmth, and sunshine, we’ve brought you new voices and artists for the

6th issue of MUSE. Alenka, Tim, Ray, Kelly, and I have been lucky

enough to find Rob, our newest staffer to MUSE’s editorial board. Rob

Jackson, our newly appointed fiction editor and creator of our new

column, Book Archaeology, is first and foremost a voracious and judicious

reader. He has an eye for prose that is edgy and well-crafted, and he

looks forward to reading your submissions (hint, hint!), and we look

forward to hearing your voices.

Also in this issue, Alenka has provided new images created by cover art-

ist Chuck Mintz, and interior work by Billy Delfts, Jeff Yost, and Marga-

ret E. Arthur. Ray has chosen new poetry and prose, crafted in response

to those images, by David Giffels, Bree, and Robert Miltner. Rob pre-

miers his books column and short fiction by emerging writers David

Megenhardt and Jake Snodgrass. I read each of their submissions, satis-

fied that new work is blooming all around us in Cleveland, despite clouds,

rain, and an unstable economy. I’m grateful that new work is never in

short supply here in Northeast Ohio.

In The LIT’s (and now MUSE’s) time-honored tradition of collaborating

with other art forms and arts organizations to bring heightened visibil-

ity to literature, we revisit the very popular Mirror of the Arts program

for our 35th anniversary celebration on Saturday, June 6th at Convivium

33 Gallery. We honor John Gabel, Bonnie Jacobson, Robert McDonough,

Leonard Trawick, and the late Cyril A. Dostal, early members whose on-

going leadership, direction, and support have sustained us. We will also

recognize with lifetime membership individuals whose poetry and ded-

ication to craft shaped our mission: Mary Chadbourne, Christopher

Franke, Nina Freedlander Gibans, Diane Kendig, Joan Nicholl, and

John Stickney. Using For Closure: Visions of Reality, Words of

Promise; An Exhibition of Photography, Words, and Found

Materials as the backdrop for this celebration, honorees and guests will

be treated to music, performance, libations, and hors d’oeuvres to mark

this special occasion.

There’s a lot to celebrate here. Including spring. M

Judith

BILLY DELFTSLISA, 2008

8.5X8.5"FROM THE SERIES:

STREET PORTRAITS COMMISSIONED BY

CLEVELAND MAGAZINE

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Founded in 1987 as Ohio Writer, MUSE is the quarterly journal published by The Lit, a nonprofit literary arts organization. No part of this journal may be reproduced without written consent of the publisher.

JUDITH MANSOUREditorjudith@the-lit.org

TIM LACHINADesign Directortim@wjgco.com

RAY MCNIECEPoetry Editorwords4muse@the-lit.org

ROB JACKSONFiction Editorwords4muse@the-lit.org

ALENKA BANCOArt Editorimages4muse@the-lit.org

KELLY K. BIRDAdvertising Account Manageradvertising4muse@the-lit.org

THELITCLEVELAND’S LITERARY CENTER

ARTCRAFT BUILDING 2570 SUPERIOR AVENUE SUITE 203 CLEVELAND, OHIO 44114

216 694.0000 WWW.THE-LIT.ORG

MUSE IS THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL PUBLISHED BY THE LIT

SUBMISSIONS(content evident) may be sent electronically to words4muse@the-lit.org, images4muse@the-lit.org. We prefer electronic submissions. MUSE publishes all genres of creative writing — including but not limited to poetry, fiction, essay, memoir, humor, lyrics, and drama; stories about the writing life; profiles; book reviews; news of importance to writers, publishers, and agents; and other things which might stimulate public interest in reading and writing. Preference is given Ohio-based authors.

VO L U M E 2 , I S S U E 2

0 50 9

contents03 Address Unknown By David Giffels

06 The Transmitter Field By Steve Smith

07 Fusion is Not Granted By Bree

The Uninhabited World By Robert Miltner

11 The Vampire Lover By David Megenhardt

24 Geniosity.com By Carolyn Jack

25 Book Archaeology By Rob Jackson

26 Like It Was Something Good on TV By Jake Snodgrass

BACKGROUNDBILLY DELPS

PLAYGROUND, NYC, 2003

VO L U M E 2 , I S S U E 2

Spring in Cleveland usually means that we can look forward to only

another few grueling weeks of sleet, ice, and clouds. In lieu of new buds,

warmth, and sunshine, we’ve brought you new voices and artists for the

6th issue of MUSE. Alenka, Tim, Ray, Kelly, and I have been lucky

enough to find Rob, our newest staffer to MUSE’s editorial board. Rob

Jackson, our newly appointed fiction editor and creator of our new

column, Book Archaeology, is first and foremost a voracious and judicious

reader. He has an eye for prose that is edgy and well-crafted, and he

looks forward to reading your submissions (hint, hint!), and we look

forward to hearing your voices.

Also in this issue, Alenka has provided new images created by cover art-

ist Chuck Mintz, and interior work by Billy Delfts, Jeff Yost, and Marga-

ret E. Arthur. Ray has chosen new poetry and prose, crafted in response

to those images, by David Giffels, Bree, and Robert Miltner. Rob pre-

miers his books column and short fiction by emerging writers David

Megenhardt and Jake Snodgrass. I read each of their submissions, satis-

fied that new work is blooming all around us in Cleveland, despite clouds,

rain, and an unstable economy. I’m grateful that new work is never in

short supply here in Northeast Ohio.

In The LIT’s (and now MUSE’s) time-honored tradition of collaborating

with other art forms and arts organizations to bring heightened visibil-

ity to literature, we revisit the very popular Mirror of the Arts program

for our 35th anniversary celebration on Saturday, June 6th at Convivium

33 Gallery. We honor John Gabel, Bonnie Jacobson, Robert McDonough,

Leonard Trawick, and the late Cyril A. Dostal, early members whose on-

going leadership, direction, and support have sustained us. We will also

recognize with lifetime membership individuals whose poetry and ded-

ication to craft shaped our mission: Mary Chadbourne, Christopher

Franke, Nina Freedlander Gibans, Diane Kendig, Joan Nicholl, and

John Stickney. Using For Closure: Visions of Reality, Words of

Promise; An Exhibition of Photography, Words, and Found

Materials as the backdrop for this celebration, honorees and guests will

be treated to music, performance, libations, and hors d’oeuvres to mark

this special occasion.

There’s a lot to celebrate here. Including spring. M

Judith

BILLY DELFTSLISA, 2008

8.5X8.5"FROM THE SERIES:

STREET PORTRAITS COMMISSIONED BY

CLEVELAND MAGAZINE

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the transmitter field

right where the city dump ended and gave way to a dark clearing we ran as children and tried to catch one another in the dark to catch someone and hold them their skin slippery from the sheen of summer nighttime fear and from running fast

i was 7 and a half and that made me faster. center in the clearing were two transmitter lights, glowing red and warm like errant planets and if caught by a snaggle-toothed boy or red-headed girl you had laid down, if only for a moment on dry summer grasses, the ground still warm, to recharge by the blurry radiance of the twin red planets

towering and humming on idle in the great and magnificent foreground of stars

and Friday night when Roy cracked a watermelon we slurped and ran and spit seeds into the mystical darkness at one another, careless juice drizzling on rounded bellies

and we began hurling rinds and hooting our confused lusts at the sky and the wind was whooshing by my red sunburned ears

an explosion of bone to bone went off in my head when Robert the Birdman slammed his wooden forehead into mine in a spiral of dizziness and we both fell backward

only to become new men by the red lights of the transmitters

i never loved the transmitter field any more than the night when Darlene gave us kool-aid jars long since emptied of peanut spread each punctured lid an instrument ringing with spinning metal and glass

if the keeper could run and leap and catch the firefly that hung magically above then hovered slowly to the left or the right and should you be caught in the transmitter field with light in your jar you could run all night.

and when i laid down and prayed til my eyes were flash white with dreams i awoke and swear,

still to this day,

that i had taken down from the pitch clear sky far above the transmitters

a star in my jar.

steve smith

Fusion is Not Granted

To marry is the best.Loft ilk, etched in acidWhich changes a thingOver time.

A nurse once ignoredThe fledgling/now u nurse Me, amid the recycled,

U walk not fly with me.

Yr hip is mine & evenOft on a blurred stretch ofOur landing.

BREE

The Uninhabited World Our village was all the world we needed. We bred red birds until we could afford babies.

At night our bodies were string beans in a box. You worked so hard your nails cracked

while my hands bled from the sharp stones, relics I dug from of the dirt so we could sow

seed in the fields. I set down my hoe when the government forces trampled

the tall oats and planted landmines to explode the feet off the insurgents.

While they rounded up goats, ducks, and the other young men, we slipped

through shadows from our home to a farm shed at the village edge.

Do you remember how we awoke to the patch of blue sky in the roof?

To the yellow birds nesting in the eaves? To the kick of army boots and gun butts?

At the refugee camp they stripped us like peapods and shaved us like sheep.

We looked like sardines taken from a can.Each morning I see carts being pushed

toward the open pit over the small hill beyond which the wind goes to die.

Last month I aged a thousand years, this week another hundred more.

Soon the salt will settle on my shadow and my bones will be covered in lime.

I dream I have the body of a white birdthat flies around this beating world.

You’ll know it’s me, floating like a kite,a skeleton holding an unsigned poem.

ROBERT MILTNER

TRANSMITTER

JEFF YOST

MARGARET E. ARTHURCOUPLE OIL, 60X46"

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the transmitter field

right where the city dump ended and gave way to a dark clearing we ran as children and tried to catch one another in the dark to catch someone and hold them their skin slippery from the sheen of summer nighttime fear and from running fast

i was 7 and a half and that made me faster. center in the clearing were two transmitter lights, glowing red and warm like errant planets and if caught by a snaggle-toothed boy or red-headed girl you had laid down, if only for a moment on dry summer grasses, the ground still warm, to recharge by the blurry radiance of the twin red planets

towering and humming on idle in the great and magnificent foreground of stars

and Friday night when Roy cracked a watermelon we slurped and ran and spit seeds into the mystical darkness at one another, careless juice drizzling on rounded bellies

and we began hurling rinds and hooting our confused lusts at the sky and the wind was whooshing by my red sunburned ears

an explosion of bone to bone went off in my head when Robert the Birdman slammed his wooden forehead into mine in a spiral of dizziness and we both fell backward

only to become new men by the red lights of the transmitters

i never loved the transmitter field any more than the night when Darlene gave us kool-aid jars long since emptied of peanut spread each punctured lid an instrument ringing with spinning metal and glass

if the keeper could run and leap and catch the firefly that hung magically above then hovered slowly to the left or the right and should you be caught in the transmitter field with light in your jar you could run all night.

and when i laid down and prayed til my eyes were flash white with dreams i awoke and swear,

still to this day,

that i had taken down from the pitch clear sky far above the transmitters

a star in my jar.

steve smith

Fusion is Not Granted

To marry is the best.Loft ilk, etched in acidWhich changes a thingOver time.

A nurse once ignoredThe fledgling/now u nurse Me, amid the recycled,

U walk not fly with me.

Yr hip is mine & evenOft on a blurred stretch ofOur landing.

BREE

The Uninhabited World Our village was all the world we needed. We bred red birds until we could afford babies.

At night our bodies were string beans in a box. You worked so hard your nails cracked

while my hands bled from the sharp stones, relics I dug from of the dirt so we could sow

seed in the fields. I set down my hoe when the government forces trampled

the tall oats and planted landmines to explode the feet off the insurgents.

While they rounded up goats, ducks, and the other young men, we slipped

through shadows from our home to a farm shed at the village edge.

Do you remember how we awoke to the patch of blue sky in the roof?

To the yellow birds nesting in the eaves? To the kick of army boots and gun butts?

At the refugee camp they stripped us like peapods and shaved us like sheep.

We looked like sardines taken from a can.Each morning I see carts being pushed

toward the open pit over the small hill beyond which the wind goes to die.

Last month I aged a thousand years, this week another hundred more.

Soon the salt will settle on my shadow and my bones will be covered in lime.

I dream I have the body of a white birdthat flies around this beating world.

You’ll know it’s me, floating like a kite,a skeleton holding an unsigned poem.

ROBERT MILTNER

TRANSMITTER

JEFF YOST

MARGARET E. ARTHURCOUPLE OIL, 60X46"

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VampireTheLover

M Y B O S S TO L D M E TO F I N D S O M E O N E to fill a sales job so I placed an ad in a local newspaper. Normally I wouldn’t handle hiring, but the human resources lady, Sheila Burst, had taken a medical leave because of shingles or a goiter, and my boss hated interviewing.

BY DAVID MEGENHARDT

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VampireTheLover

M Y B O S S TO L D M E TO F I N D S O M E O N E to fill a sales job so I placed an ad in a local newspaper. Normally I wouldn’t handle hiring, but the human resources lady, Sheila Burst, had taken a medical leave because of shingles or a goiter, and my boss hated interviewing.

BY DAVID MEGENHARDT

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may have even been missing an ear. Her right side was stunning

and perfect, the remnants of what I had seen on paper. I hired her

anyway and she stayed with the company for two years before mov-

ing to Arizona to be a massage therapist. She was incredibly effi-

cient and hardworking, and by hiring her my reputation as a hiring

sage grew.

I called Benny. He answered in a low mumble that

seemed somewhere between a drunk and a hangover. When I told

him the nature of the call he rallied his strength and his inflection

sharpened.

“Hey, I can’t say I wasn’t expecting the call. That resume

is Sputnik. It’s rocket-fire. I’ve been to the moon and back, baby,

on the vapor trail of that little piece of paper,” he revved up in a

hammy patter.

I didn’t hang up, which probably said more about me than

Benny. Beef O’Bundy, Sputnik, nonsensical patter. I rubberneck at

every crash as I am irresistibly drawn to disaster.

“How does 11:00 AM Thursday look to you for an inter-

view?” I asked.

“I like flesh and blood. You tell me when and I’ll be there

with winged feet and winged tips”

“Are we agreed?”

“You’ve said it. I’m ready to follow.”

I highlighted the time and date and even drew a star on

my desk calendar.

The day came, our receptionist ushered in Benny, and

we met near my door with a handshake. I loomed over him like a

giant. His hand felt dry and brittle and his grip barely registered.

I imagined he had to hold a glass of milk with two hands, with

one hand under the bottom of the glass to keep it in the air. I of-

fered him a seat and he waited until I was settled before easing

slowly into his chair. The movement betrayed a ferocious case of

hemorrhoids.

I stared at a man at the end of his road. His blue jacket

was shiny from wear and almost matched a green cotton tie secured

with a giant Windsor knot. The shirt, blue and thin, had a frayed

and worn collar that had been discolored by sweat. His glasses

were enormous, crooked and pushed flat against the bridge of his

nose. Perched atop his obviously bald head lay a dark gray toupee

framed by a band of thin white hair. The toupee looked like it had

been fashioned out of mouse fur.

I didn’t think I had the energy to make it through the in-

terview. I knew I had to throw him an easy opening so he could

gain an advantage or I would have stared at him for a few moments

and then asked him to leave.

“So, I see you played on Beef O’Bundy. When I saw that I

realized you were a celebrity when I was a kid. I don’t remember you

though. What parts did you play?” I asked without much enthusi-

asm because even Beef and Gimpy couldn’t pull me out of my funk.

He ruminated on the question dramatically as he leaned

back in his chair, placed a hand on his chin and struck a thoughtful

frown.

I felt my shoulders stoop and my head wobbled as I was

on the precipice of a migraine.

“Well, if you don’t mind me saying so, Beef O’Bundy is a

cocksucker. Strong words I know, but a cocksucker nevertheless,”

he concluded with a nod of his head.

“Well, what parts did you play? Were you on camera?”

“I was with Beef from 74 to 84, ten years. I played parts.

Lot-o-parts. For instance, remember the running Tarzan gag we

ran with. Like Tarzan kept trying to find coconuts, right, and Jane

keeps nagging him about trying to find the right kind of coconuts,

remember? Well, let’s just say I’m not above doing drag. You know

what I saying?”

I vaguely remembered the skit, and the best I could

muster was a wan smile.

“Remember the burping cigar store Indian?”

“Halo kemosabe! Belllllchhhh!” I nearly shouted the

catch phrase of this particular skit. It was pure reflex. I couldn’t

believe I had retained the information and recalled it so easily. I

warmed to him and we spent the next fifteen minutes discussing in

detail all of the skits on the show whether he acted in them or not.

I tried to talk to him about the horror movies they showed but he

waved the line of inquiry away.

“I never understood them. How can you understand a

Dracula? And what the hell is Frankenstein? Jesus.”

“Everyone always calls the monster ‘Frankenstein.’ It was

actually Dr. Frankenstein, so other than it being the last name of

his creator it had nothing to do with the actual monster,” I said

seriously.

Benny returned a blank stare and then realized he was out

of his depth so he squirmed uneasily in his chair. So I asked him

about his relationship with Beef O’Bundy.

“He’s no good that one. I give him ten years and now he

acts like he don’t know me. You know how many calls he hasn’t

returned. It all went to his head. He’s just a big Pollack anyway.

Nothing Irish about that sonofabitch.”

Benny had some sales experience peppered throughout

his long career but I never questioned him about any of it.

I learned he fronted a Dixieland Jazz band called B. Coco and

the Crawdaddies, had a short stint as a master of ceremonies in a

downtown hotel, wrote a handful of unproduced and probably un-

read movie scripts, scouted talent for a record company, played ac-

cordion in a Polka band called the Bratwurst Boys, had a gig as a

trombonist in a traveling circus, and even had tours of duty in a

flour processing plant and a ketchup factory.

esumes poured into the

office and I began to wonder if I had made the job seem too good.

The sales job of this particular territory was horrible and most of

the recent hires exited the company humiliated. I had not put this

information in the classified ad, but I did throw in a couple of ex-

clamation points and the words “Sales Career” at the top in bold

letters. Such simple chum worked better than I thought possible,

but as the slush pile of resumes on the corner of my desk grew well

past 400, I guessed that the catatonic regional economy had some-

thing to do with so many people seeking such a perversely bad job

with an unknown company.

So how did I come to hire Benny Coco out of a crop of

overqualified college graduates, career lead salesmen, hustlers,

consultants, free-falling executives, drunks, crazies, and beauti-

ful young women looking to move out of their parents’ homes?

Benny’s resume jumped out of the pile for every wrong reason. It

had been copied on cheap paper, slightly askew and smudged. He

had not proofread it thoroughly, so along with a batch of gram-

mar mistakes several words were misspelled or missing. It was four

pages long, listing a series of jobs held for no more than six or seven

months, and for several he had written the reason for leaving in

pen in the margins. I should have just sent it through the shredder,

but near the middle of the third page he had listed “Comic Actor—

The Beef O’Bundy Show” in his chronicle of experience.

For a few years of my childhood baseball and the Beef

O’Bundy Show were the two most important influences outside

the family. The show came on at 11:30 PM on Friday night, right

after the local news. O’Bundy and his dwarf sidekick, sometimes

called “The Kid” and other times known by his full name Gimpy

Von Shrieker, showed old horror and science fiction films and pep-

pered the evening with crudely filmed comic sketches complete

with a strangely resonant laugh track. They showed every film

Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee had ever been in, the old Ham-

mer Film stable of creaky horror tales with titles like Frankenstein

Created Woman, Dracula has Risen from the Grave, and The Vam-

pire Lover, and a slew of American black and white schlock.

My first memory of the show is of my Dad coming home

from the factory around 10:30 PM. The crunching of truck tires

on the gravel drive announced the arrival of a bag of McDonald’s

hamburgers that my brothers and I would devour. I was six or

seven, and I tried to stay up to watch the movies I didn’t really un-

derstand. Every Friday night I passed out on the floor with my

ear pressed into the carpet with my belly full of meat and my head

filled with horrible dreams of blood-sucking monsters dressed in

suits. I filled notebook after notebook with different renditions

of Dracula, wolf men and women, and the Frankenstein mon-

ster, usually the Boris Karloff version. I collected plastic models of

every horror figure I could find and crudely painted them. We cre-

ated horror scenes in our backyard with masks and bed sheets for

costumes, capturing them with my Dad’s brownie camera. I once

went to school with bolts drawn on my neck, a remnant of an elab-

orate photo shoot.

For the next eight years I watched Beef O’Bundy intro-

duce the night’s movie, sometimes in a gorilla suit or dressed as an

effeminate vampire sophisticate, and act in one insipid skit after

another. After the punch line was delivered the actors predictably

mugged for the camera and a twisted laugh track sounded. In one

sequence they had a pizza eating contest. The standing champion

was Mealmouth Malorgha, a 400 pound behemoth who could fold

a whole pizza into his limber mouth. The only challenger I ever

saw him lose to was an overweight rottweiler. In another skit the

dwarf, who sported a wooly beard, dressed up like the New Year’s

baby, walked around town asking for lollipops and wished every-

one a happy New Year even though it was June. So is it any wonder

that for years I had autographs of both Beef O’Bundy and Gimpy

Von Shrieker tacked to my bulletin board? I had scored the auto-

graphs at a grand opening of a frozen custard stand where a thick

knot or parents and kids my age had come out to see them. After

they left we played Space Invaders and pinball and compared our

autographs.

For obvious reasons I pulled Benny’s resume to schedule

him for an interview. Whenever I was given the task of interview-

ing I always managed to fog the process with my personal failings.

Usually I pulled resumes of women who appeared beautiful on

paper, unqualified though they may be, in hopes of passing a pleas-

ant half-hour with someone not misshapen. Judging beauty from

a resume was an inexact science at best, and my average hovered

around 10 percent. Once I called a woman named Skye Love for

an interview. Everything from her name to her voice on the phone

to her chronological list of experiences that included modeling,

clothing apparel manager, and her bachelor’s in communication

pointed toward rare beauty. My instincts were correct, but unfor-

tunately a car accident had mangled the left side of her head which

was a confusion of scar tissue and shattered bone. I thought she

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may have even been missing an ear. Her right side was stunning

and perfect, the remnants of what I had seen on paper. I hired her

anyway and she stayed with the company for two years before mov-

ing to Arizona to be a massage therapist. She was incredibly effi-

cient and hardworking, and by hiring her my reputation as a hiring

sage grew.

I called Benny. He answered in a low mumble that

seemed somewhere between a drunk and a hangover. When I told

him the nature of the call he rallied his strength and his inflection

sharpened.

“Hey, I can’t say I wasn’t expecting the call. That resume

is Sputnik. It’s rocket-fire. I’ve been to the moon and back, baby,

on the vapor trail of that little piece of paper,” he revved up in a

hammy patter.

I didn’t hang up, which probably said more about me than

Benny. Beef O’Bundy, Sputnik, nonsensical patter. I rubberneck at

every crash as I am irresistibly drawn to disaster.

“How does 11:00 AM Thursday look to you for an inter-

view?” I asked.

“I like flesh and blood. You tell me when and I’ll be there

with winged feet and winged tips”

“Are we agreed?”

“You’ve said it. I’m ready to follow.”

I highlighted the time and date and even drew a star on

my desk calendar.

The day came, our receptionist ushered in Benny, and

we met near my door with a handshake. I loomed over him like a

giant. His hand felt dry and brittle and his grip barely registered.

I imagined he had to hold a glass of milk with two hands, with

one hand under the bottom of the glass to keep it in the air. I of-

fered him a seat and he waited until I was settled before easing

slowly into his chair. The movement betrayed a ferocious case of

hemorrhoids.

I stared at a man at the end of his road. His blue jacket

was shiny from wear and almost matched a green cotton tie secured

with a giant Windsor knot. The shirt, blue and thin, had a frayed

and worn collar that had been discolored by sweat. His glasses

were enormous, crooked and pushed flat against the bridge of his

nose. Perched atop his obviously bald head lay a dark gray toupee

framed by a band of thin white hair. The toupee looked like it had

been fashioned out of mouse fur.

I didn’t think I had the energy to make it through the in-

terview. I knew I had to throw him an easy opening so he could

gain an advantage or I would have stared at him for a few moments

and then asked him to leave.

“So, I see you played on Beef O’Bundy. When I saw that I

realized you were a celebrity when I was a kid. I don’t remember you

though. What parts did you play?” I asked without much enthusi-

asm because even Beef and Gimpy couldn’t pull me out of my funk.

He ruminated on the question dramatically as he leaned

back in his chair, placed a hand on his chin and struck a thoughtful

frown.

I felt my shoulders stoop and my head wobbled as I was

on the precipice of a migraine.

“Well, if you don’t mind me saying so, Beef O’Bundy is a

cocksucker. Strong words I know, but a cocksucker nevertheless,”

he concluded with a nod of his head.

“Well, what parts did you play? Were you on camera?”

“I was with Beef from 74 to 84, ten years. I played parts.

Lot-o-parts. For instance, remember the running Tarzan gag we

ran with. Like Tarzan kept trying to find coconuts, right, and Jane

keeps nagging him about trying to find the right kind of coconuts,

remember? Well, let’s just say I’m not above doing drag. You know

what I saying?”

I vaguely remembered the skit, and the best I could

muster was a wan smile.

“Remember the burping cigar store Indian?”

“Halo kemosabe! Belllllchhhh!” I nearly shouted the

catch phrase of this particular skit. It was pure reflex. I couldn’t

believe I had retained the information and recalled it so easily. I

warmed to him and we spent the next fifteen minutes discussing in

detail all of the skits on the show whether he acted in them or not.

I tried to talk to him about the horror movies they showed but he

waved the line of inquiry away.

“I never understood them. How can you understand a

Dracula? And what the hell is Frankenstein? Jesus.”

“Everyone always calls the monster ‘Frankenstein.’ It was

actually Dr. Frankenstein, so other than it being the last name of

his creator it had nothing to do with the actual monster,” I said

seriously.

Benny returned a blank stare and then realized he was out

of his depth so he squirmed uneasily in his chair. So I asked him

about his relationship with Beef O’Bundy.

“He’s no good that one. I give him ten years and now he

acts like he don’t know me. You know how many calls he hasn’t

returned. It all went to his head. He’s just a big Pollack anyway.

Nothing Irish about that sonofabitch.”

Benny had some sales experience peppered throughout

his long career but I never questioned him about any of it.

I learned he fronted a Dixieland Jazz band called B. Coco and

the Crawdaddies, had a short stint as a master of ceremonies in a

downtown hotel, wrote a handful of unproduced and probably un-

read movie scripts, scouted talent for a record company, played ac-

cordion in a Polka band called the Bratwurst Boys, had a gig as a

trombonist in a traveling circus, and even had tours of duty in a

flour processing plant and a ketchup factory.

esumes poured into the

office and I began to wonder if I had made the job seem too good.

The sales job of this particular territory was horrible and most of

the recent hires exited the company humiliated. I had not put this

information in the classified ad, but I did throw in a couple of ex-

clamation points and the words “Sales Career” at the top in bold

letters. Such simple chum worked better than I thought possible,

but as the slush pile of resumes on the corner of my desk grew well

past 400, I guessed that the catatonic regional economy had some-

thing to do with so many people seeking such a perversely bad job

with an unknown company.

So how did I come to hire Benny Coco out of a crop of

overqualified college graduates, career lead salesmen, hustlers,

consultants, free-falling executives, drunks, crazies, and beauti-

ful young women looking to move out of their parents’ homes?

Benny’s resume jumped out of the pile for every wrong reason. It

had been copied on cheap paper, slightly askew and smudged. He

had not proofread it thoroughly, so along with a batch of gram-

mar mistakes several words were misspelled or missing. It was four

pages long, listing a series of jobs held for no more than six or seven

months, and for several he had written the reason for leaving in

pen in the margins. I should have just sent it through the shredder,

but near the middle of the third page he had listed “Comic Actor—

The Beef O’Bundy Show” in his chronicle of experience.

For a few years of my childhood baseball and the Beef

O’Bundy Show were the two most important influences outside

the family. The show came on at 11:30 PM on Friday night, right

after the local news. O’Bundy and his dwarf sidekick, sometimes

called “The Kid” and other times known by his full name Gimpy

Von Shrieker, showed old horror and science fiction films and pep-

pered the evening with crudely filmed comic sketches complete

with a strangely resonant laugh track. They showed every film

Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee had ever been in, the old Ham-

mer Film stable of creaky horror tales with titles like Frankenstein

Created Woman, Dracula has Risen from the Grave, and The Vam-

pire Lover, and a slew of American black and white schlock.

My first memory of the show is of my Dad coming home

from the factory around 10:30 PM. The crunching of truck tires

on the gravel drive announced the arrival of a bag of McDonald’s

hamburgers that my brothers and I would devour. I was six or

seven, and I tried to stay up to watch the movies I didn’t really un-

derstand. Every Friday night I passed out on the floor with my

ear pressed into the carpet with my belly full of meat and my head

filled with horrible dreams of blood-sucking monsters dressed in

suits. I filled notebook after notebook with different renditions

of Dracula, wolf men and women, and the Frankenstein mon-

ster, usually the Boris Karloff version. I collected plastic models of

every horror figure I could find and crudely painted them. We cre-

ated horror scenes in our backyard with masks and bed sheets for

costumes, capturing them with my Dad’s brownie camera. I once

went to school with bolts drawn on my neck, a remnant of an elab-

orate photo shoot.

For the next eight years I watched Beef O’Bundy intro-

duce the night’s movie, sometimes in a gorilla suit or dressed as an

effeminate vampire sophisticate, and act in one insipid skit after

another. After the punch line was delivered the actors predictably

mugged for the camera and a twisted laugh track sounded. In one

sequence they had a pizza eating contest. The standing champion

was Mealmouth Malorgha, a 400 pound behemoth who could fold

a whole pizza into his limber mouth. The only challenger I ever

saw him lose to was an overweight rottweiler. In another skit the

dwarf, who sported a wooly beard, dressed up like the New Year’s

baby, walked around town asking for lollipops and wished every-

one a happy New Year even though it was June. So is it any wonder

that for years I had autographs of both Beef O’Bundy and Gimpy

Von Shrieker tacked to my bulletin board? I had scored the auto-

graphs at a grand opening of a frozen custard stand where a thick

knot or parents and kids my age had come out to see them. After

they left we played Space Invaders and pinball and compared our

autographs.

For obvious reasons I pulled Benny’s resume to schedule

him for an interview. Whenever I was given the task of interview-

ing I always managed to fog the process with my personal failings.

Usually I pulled resumes of women who appeared beautiful on

paper, unqualified though they may be, in hopes of passing a pleas-

ant half-hour with someone not misshapen. Judging beauty from

a resume was an inexact science at best, and my average hovered

around 10 percent. Once I called a woman named Skye Love for

an interview. Everything from her name to her voice on the phone

to her chronological list of experiences that included modeling,

clothing apparel manager, and her bachelor’s in communication

pointed toward rare beauty. My instincts were correct, but unfor-

tunately a car accident had mangled the left side of her head which

was a confusion of scar tissue and shattered bone. I thought she

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At the end of the interview I hired him. I had only inter-

viewed a handful of candidates from the massive slush pile growing

on my desk, but who could have been better than Benny? I handed

him the health insurance application, 401K information, and W-4

in manila folder and told him to return on the next Monday with

them completed and to be ready for work. He said ‘thank you’ at

least eight or nine time using different inflections and a couple

of different accents. He held the folder with both hands. A slight

tremor in his left hand betrayed an oncoming disease. He paused.

I waited for him to make a movement toward the door or at least

acknowledge my instructions. After the moment became awkward

he raised his eyes which were sparkling with tears.

“This is no fooling right? I’m taking it that I am NOT on

Candid Camera, OK? B. Coco doesn’t want to celebrate over the

weekend only to find out it was a BIG hoax played at his expense.”

“No, Mr. Coco. I have made you a serious offer of hire. I

would not play a joke on you.”

“Never fool a fooler, but I have been known to fool a fool.

Monday it is Chief. Halo kemosabe, bellcchhhhh!”

He bounded out of the door.

I didn’t feel any remorse until later that night when I was

eating a bowl of soup, watching a west coast college football game.

It occurred to me that the hiring decision could reflect poorly on

me. How would I explain that of all the people in the world I ended

up with Benny Coco? I couldn’t rescind the offer, but I felt sick at

the prospect of Benny showing up to work on Monday. I could

only hope that over the weekend he would splurge on a better

matching toupee or wear unstained clothing.

It wasn’t to be. On Monday we wore the same inter-

view clothes and, if anything, his toupee looked as if it had caught

mange and seemed dangerously close to disintegrating. I had re-

hearsed several excuses for when the boss caught sight of him, such

as he was the uncle of an important customer or that I had stolen

him from one of our competitors where he was a top salesman. All

were too easily verified. I did come up with “Boss, you have to look

beyond appearances. I just want a guy that can sell,” that I would

use as a spell to confuse him long enough for Benny to prove he

could do the job. That, and the fact that no one, not long-legged

women or men with luxurious hair, had been able to hold the job

for more than six months, gave me leverage.

The boss saw him later in the morning in the coffee room

while we were taking a break from Benny’s initial training.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir. I’m excited about the

prospect of working here. I think I’ll be able to hit the ground run-

ning and make you happy you hired me,” Benny said in liquid tone.

I thought I saw the boss’ moustache twitch and his eyes

may have lingered a little too long on Benny’s pate. He held out his

hand and Benny gave him a firm handshake.

“It’s good to have you on board,” the boss mumbled from

the back of his throat before he poured his coffee and retreated

back to his office.

The boss stared into his coffee cup as he passed me. I

didn’t take that as a good sign. I wondered how long it would be

before he called me into the office to ream me. I felt reasonably

protected by my carefully crafted spell, but he could be a moody

and unreasonable man. If he made the meeting too painful I would

have to remind him of some of his less than perfect hires, like the

receptionist who was addicted to blowing the delivery drivers and

posing for nude photos or the janitor who lived in the supply room

for a year before being caught. I decided against ever bringing up

Danny Ribovec, a murderer who addicted half of the employees to

pills. No one ever brought up Danny.

The call never came and Benny concentrated on the train-

ing. He learned the job quickly and made friends with the front

office staff, making sure to fawn over the secretaries and the re-

ceptionist. I saw him once or twice talking baseball with the boss,

standing in the doorway of the boss’ office, coffee in hand, and

chatting leisurely about the intricacies of the game. The boss didn’t

know a goddamn thing about baseball and after listening for a few

moments I realized neither did Benny. The boss had a delinquent

son who showed some ability in little league, so he thought the lit-

tle bastard was going straight to the majors. For months he cajoled

the staff about the kid’s prospects and by now everyone was weary

from his imbecility. Benny listened and ingratiated himself with

comments like:

“Kid’s a lefty? I think the show has scouts in elementary

schools looking for lefties. I wouldn’t doubt it. Don’t think it don’t

happen. Struck out eight batters in a row? Ohhh, baby. Maybe

they’ll be making a movie someday “A League of HIS Own.”

We were all relieved to have someone on staff willing to

take the flak, so Benny became something like a family’s favor-

ite crippled and blind pet. He even began selling. His first quar-

ter sales were 36% higher than the previous salesman and the third

highest aggregate for that territory in six years. With Benny and

Skye Love on my hiring resume I was beginning to be thought of as

a hiring guru.

Chas Butterman, a long time successful salesman, caught

me in the parking lot one day as I was coming back from lunch.

“What the hell did you see?”

Chas was wearing a three-piece gray suit. The vest had

grown tighter over the years and now looked like Saran wrap

stretched over his meaty chest and belly.

“What?” I asked. I was nearly incoherent. I had met my

girlfriend at our apartment for lunch and took her from behind.

The image of her ass was still prominent in my thoughts.

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“In Coco. What did you see that nobody else could? Are

you Nostradamus or a fucking gypsy fucking fortuneteller?”

“He’s doing well.”

“Well? That little fucker is kicking ass all over town. It’s

like he knows everybody. He’s had every job in the goddamn world

and he sells his ass off. Tell me, is he using Beef O’Bundy to get into

places?”

“No, I don’t think they talk anymore. I don’t think he’s

even using Gimpy von Shrieker.”

“Shit. The guy’s a fucking natural. You, sir, have the balls

of a lion.”

“What?

Chas was already heading toward the door, shaking his

head as he went.

Over the next quarter his sales held steady and he invested

in a couple of new dress shirts, short sleeved, and a new pair of

slacks he wore every other day. I could swear he was spray painting

his shoes to keep them a reasonable black.

I started hearing a few complaints from the secretaries

about his indiscriminate farting. Brenda Weeker, a faded and over-

weight beauty, pulled me aside.

“The last time it was nearly in my face. He didn’t even say

excuse me. He’s a nice old guy, but my husband doesn’t even fart

on me like that.”

I had witnessed it a couple of times. Once in the break

room he blew what sounded like a bugle from his ass and the smell

was terrifying.

Another time we were in a sales meeting. The sales man-

ager droned on about expectations and the ramifications of not

surpassing last year’s sales. Suddenly Benny’s wooden chair seat

rattled and the two guys seated on either side of him turned their

heads in disgust. The sales manager paused and narrowed his eyes

at Benny.

“Ah, too much bean in the burrito my good man. I apolo-

gize to the delicate natures of my compatriots.”

“This is a meeting, Benny, Jesus. Go to the goddamn toi-

let,” said the guy seated to his left.

“Hey, didn’t you know I played trombone. I’m a natural.

Nature versus nurture. Nature always wins”

After a time a complaint made it to the boss’ desk. The

boss slapped his right palm flat on his desk.

“Goddamnit. I’ve got a guy who does nothing but make

money for the company and you mental midgets want him fired

because he breaks wind. Are you out of your goddamn minds?

What do you want me to do about it? I’ll build a hermetically

sealed room around him so nobody gets offended. Christ,” said the

boss in the retelling of the scene that made its way around the com-

pany in the next few days.

Around this time I noticed that the other employees al-

ways referred to Benny as “your guy” or “that guy you hired” when

telling a story about him. With credit, comes blame. My status as

guru was on shaky ground unless Benny adopted a more reason-

able diet in line with the capabilities of his colon. I doubted anyone

had directly confronted him, so I decided to talk to him. Keeping

my status was worth the effort.

I called Benny into my office, shut the door and turned on

him quickly.

“Benny, you cannot fart wherever you please in the office.

I’ve got complaints from everywhere. People say they feel like they

work in a landfill when you’re around. We can’t have people calling

off sick because of your farts. Seriously. Did you know this was a

problem?”

“I’ve been eating my fill. It’s been a while since I’ve had

three squares. I’ve never shit so much in my life. Complaints? If

you’re going to do something do it well. Complaints about my

gas?”

“Seriously, if a couple people turn on you who have the

boss’ ear you’re done for.”

“I thought I was doing well.”

“You are doing well. We are very pleased with your

performance.”

“But there’s talk of firing me? You’re going the fire me be-

cause I’m doing well,” Benny said as a thousand hurts, slights and

disappointments welled up to the surface.

“No, you’re misunderstanding me. There’s no talk yet of

firing you. There is talk about your farts, which, if you consider it a

moment, is not a scenario you should wish to continue. You want

to be known for your performance, not your gas.”

“This is crazy. I’ve been treated in a lot of ways but this is

a cake topper.”

“You’re not being treated in any way. You are farting and

offending people. You need to stop that, find a bathroom or a de-

serted corner or go outside where there is wind and do your busi-

ness there. If you take care of this. If you are mindful of other

people. If you pay attention to what you’re eating. It goes away and

everybody goes back to being happy.”

“Are we done, sir? Because there are sales to be made out

there. And I’m in here.”

“I don’t know. Did you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” he said as he lowered his head.

I was pretty sure he was crying.

“Go, go make your sales.”

I waved him off and averted my head to give him time to com-

pose himself. He left noiselessly. I couldn’t help thinking I had made

matters worse. For the first time since my early trepidation when I hired

him, I felt Benny’s tenure with the company would end badly.

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The complaints stopped and for weeks Benny was less

of a presence around the office. I didn’t see him at the boss’ door

chatting about baseball. He poured his coffee and exited the break

room without engaging anyone. He seemed to be spending more

time in the field. His personality faded, his quirks were suppressed

as he became fully incorporated into the staff.

Then the third quarter sales figures came out. He had

made one sale throughout the quarter. It was the lowest figure ever

recorded in the territory. Even Dave Burns, a salesman who had a

heart transplant recorded more sales in the quarter in which he had

the operation than Benny’s posting. The sales manager and the

boss met with him behind a closed door. I checked the door peri-

odically as the meeting lasted for hours. I could tell Benny had held

his job as the time went by. Firings were over in minutes. The door

would shut and moments later the victim would emerge with a

cardboard box and an escort.

The door swung open. I heard laughing.

“Halo kemosabe! Beellllllchhh,” the boss chortled.

Benny backed out of the office, making mock bows and

hammy facial exaggerations. When he turned to retreat to his cubi-

cle, Benny seemed buoyed, a trace of a grin on his face, looking de-

termined with a minor swagger to his walk.

Hours later I saw him in his cubicle, head in hands, staring

at the phone. I watched him for awhile but he didn’t move.

“Benny, are you sick?”

He didn’t answer.

I entered the space and placed a hand on his shoulder. I

felt nothing but thin polyester over bone.

“Benny, are you sick?”

His head jerked up and he swung the chair around wildly.

His lips glistened with drool. It took a few moments for his eyes to

focus on me.

“Whoa, sneaking up on a guy while he’s thinking.”

“You were sleeping,” I hissed under my breath.

“Thinking. Sleeping. What’s the diff? It’s all brainwork.”

“Are you out of your mind? Didn’t you just have a meet-

ing with the boss today?”

“Are you my mother? I just can’t do nothing right in your

eyes, huh?”

“Goddamn,” I squeezed out through clenched teeth as I

left him. I decided I wouldn’t interfere any more. He was on his

own,

“I can take care of myself, kemosabe,” he said to my back

as if giving form to my thoughts.

For as ghostly as he was the preceding weeks, Benny dom-

inated the office over the next month with jokes, impressions,

dancing demonstrations, and endless chatter about Beef O’Bundy.

He brought in sales bin roses for the receptionist, started wearing

a new pair of orthopedic shoes, and gave the two secretaries slightly

discolored chocolate truffles. The word was he showed up at one

of the boss’ kids baseball games, and he and the boss coached from

the stands. Some said the two went drinking afterwards but no one

could confirm it. A few of the staff went to see him play with the re-

formed Crawdaddies at a gazebo performance at a local town square.

They said he wasn’t too bad except that his teeth kept slipping as he

played the trombone. I stayed away because a chill had inhabited

our relationship even though I really wanted to see the band.

At our next sales meeting he fell asleep at the table. I had

noticed his eyelids descending inexorably downward earlier in

the meeting, so I watched him closely as sleep descended. First

his head tilted forward and his jaw slackened, parting his lips. He

kept unconsciousness at bay a few times by jerking his head but he

could never open his eyes. The battle had already been lost. The

sales manager read some motivational piece about honey bees.

The descriptions of hive organization did nothing for my morale.

I didn’t listen but I supposed we were workers and he was drone. I

heard someone mutter the sales manager wanted to be the queen.

I couldn’t argue. Benny slackened and nestled deep into his chair.

He began to snore. The first sounds were light wheezing, but then

it shifted deep within the sinus cavity and throat, sounding more

like a death rattle than anything else.

The sales manager stopped, ordered his notes and folded

his hands in front of him. He watched Benny sleep, as did all of us.

He looked troubled and fitful. I imagined he had not slept peace-

fully in many years as he looked braced for a coming blow. We

shifted in our chairs as we waited for the sales manager’s interest

to wane. We sat for several minutes. The quiet drove Benny to the

edge of REM. It would have taken a cannon shot to wake him.

“You may all leave, but please do not wake Mr. Coco,” the

sales manager said in a viscious whisper.

We gathered our papers, slid our chairs back quietly and

crept from the room to the soundtrack of Benny’s snores. The sales

manager didn’t move as he continued watching Benny from across

the table. We left the tableau and its horrible conclusion without

a witness. The last person out of the room clicked the door shut.

We retreated to our spaces thankful to Benny for short-circuiting

the lecture. I imagined my legs laden with pollen as I walked to get

more coffee.

Benny’s disappearance wasn’t noticed for a week. Sales-

men often scheduled days away from the office to focus on their

customers. The boss encouraged the practice as long as sales rolled

in and the salesman phoned in to the office daily. His cubicle lay

undisturbed each time I passed. A few personal artifacts were

bunched in a tiny circle in the right corner of his desk: a pair of

reading glasses, a rubber yellow wrist bracelet that had STRONG

TEETH embossed in it, a robin’s feather, and a dog eared photo

12 shops + soda fountainLargest used bookstore

between Cleveland and Pittsburgh50,000 in stock, all categories

50¢ paperbacks, K-12 textbooks,older computer & business, etc.???

10,00 record albums from $1.

Antiques, collectables, curios, dishes, glassware, furniture, art, new & used hous-wares & hardwares, Amish jams & relishes,

wallpaper $8, borders, specialities.

Local history in an 1894 brick building, Rts 5 & 7, Kinsman, OH, 6 miles south of Rt 322 on PA line

330.876.3178www.kinsman.us

suttondonald@cmbarqmail.comMon-Fri 10am-6pm Sat-Sun 10am-5pm

Market Square

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Mac's Backs-Books on Coventrywww.macsbacks.com

Coventry Street Fair Thursday June 18th from 6-9 p.m.

Booksigning with Harvey Pekar & Joyce BrabnerSpecial Guest Russell Howze, author of Stencil Nation:

Graffit, Community, and Art

New Arrivals Harvey Pekar/2009 Books

The Beats: A Graphic HistoryStuds Terkel's Working: A Graphic Adaptation

American Splendor: Another Dollar Bree

was chicken trax amid sparrows tread:poems and one long movement

Catherynne ValentePalimpsest

Susan PetroneA Body at Rest Thrity Umrigar

The Weight of Heaven S. Andrew Swann

Prophet

Congratulations to the LIT on it's 35th Anniversary!

“An edgy intensity driven by a relentless intelligence that refuses to look away or ignore the real world. The range and depth of his emotional insight is unnerving. The powerful deft imagery is drawn from a truly unique creative voice. Highly recommended!” Review fRom Gilda KelseyUniv. of delawaRe

BooKs availaBle diRect thRoUGh tRaffoRd PUBlishinG; on line at amazon, BoRdeRs, B&n; oR oRdeR thRoUGh any local BooKstoRe. isBn 1-4120-7147-X

The Cold Wick! Poems by Stephen Koelsch

without a frame of a woman standing in front of a wooden cigar

store Indian.

I went to the sales manager to inquire about Benny’s fate.

“Is he fired?”

I could see that he was revising his thoughts on bees as he

had scratched several editing marks across his notes. He deliber-

ately set his editing pen down on the desk. He considered me for a

moment before reaching over and holding up an envelope with the

company logo printed in the upper left corner.

“Last check. Goes in the mail today.”

“What?”

“Your guy hasn’t checked in for a week. A-W-O-L.”

“You didn’t fire him?”

“For what? I told him to stop farting and sleeping. He

got extremely squirrelly with me after that. Didn’t talk to me for a

few days then stopped showing up. I couldn’t get an answer on his

phone so out goes the check,” he said as he concluded with a shrug

that I assumed meant the process was completely evident.

“I’ll take the check to him.”

I held out my hand waiting for the delivery of the

envelope.

“Right. Bring it back if you can’t find him. Maybe he just

took off,” he said as he handed me the envelope.

“Where would he go?”

“You have a point.”

I collected his personal belongings in a blue plastic gro-

cery bag and looked up his address online. I expected him to live

in one of the seedier parts on town, but the address was in a suburb

along the lake that hadn’t yet been taken over by rot. I imagined

the residence was a possession from an earlier and more successful

period in his life.

After work that afternoon I drove to his house. The sub-

urb had been mostly developed between 1955 and 1964. The lawns

were a little wider than suburbs closer to the city and every house

for 20 blocks was a ranch with an attached garage, either on the

right or left hand side. Giant oaks and maples towered over the low

rise houses casting broad swaths of cool shade. Residents land-

scaped their yards with evergreens and hostas and the town felt like

a well-developed campsite amidst an old forest.

I found the address and pulled into the driveway of a

brick ranch. The tyranny of leaves rattled and hummed as a breeze

from the lake sliced through. The bushes of the house had been

sculpted into green globes, and the lawn looked like it had been cut

with a straight razor and tweezers. Even the mortar of the brick

looked like it had been scrubbed with a toothbrush. The driveway

gleamed in the filtered sunlight as if it had been poured just days

before. Benny’s old Chrysler sat in the street, leaking.

I rang the bell which sounded suspiciously close to Heart

and Soul. In my left hand I held Benny’s check and his bag of per-

sonal items. An elderly lady answered the door by swinging the

door open wide and standing regally behind the latched screen.

Her gray hair was molded elegantly and she wore a high-collared

silky dress with a bow on the front. She greeted me by arching her

right eyebrow and waiting for me to announce my intentions. The

smell of potpourri and chamomile tea escaped from the opening.

“Ma’am, I’m looking for Benny Coco. I’m from his work

and I would like to speak to him.”

I felt rumpled and soiled and somehow unworthy to be on

her step.

“Benny is in the garage,”

I walked to the garage under the scrutiny of her imperi-

ous eye before the door clicked shut. The garage door was closed

and after a moment’s hesitation I knocked and then knocked again.

The garage door opener purred awake as the door rose with a rat-

tle and a sway, slowly revealing Benny as he waited for it to lift. His

countenance stiffened once he recognized me.

“The Grim Reaper returneth. I, sir, awaitheth your judge-

ment,” Benny said in a British accent.

Behind him a small television set flickered with the sound

off. The set rested on a stack of snow tires five high in front of

an overstuffed armchair that bled chunks of polyester from its

arms. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light I picked up more detail.

Along the back wall a sculpted old fashioned refrigerator sat next

to a work bench that held a greasy chain saw, a set of screwdrivers,

wrenches, hammers and a hot plate slowly warming a pan of what

smelled like broccoli soup. A threadbare Winnie the Pooh carpet

had been thrown down on the concrete in front of a wooden sin-

gle bed that, judging by the intricate headboard, had once belonged

to a small girl. Over the bed, along the wall loomed a row of rakes

and shovels. A collection of suit coats and stained shirts had been

hung on nails on the wall next to the shovels and rakes. A kerosene

heater at the foot of the bed emitted an oily vapor. On the other

side of the garage gleamed a preserved Buick built a decade before.

It looked like it could have had the dealer tags still hanging in the

window.

“I take it that’s not your car,” I said.

Benny turned his head and inspected the car as if for the

first time.

“No, that car would belong to the lady of the house.”

“Not your wife?”

“My wife?”

“Your wife is the lady of the house?”

“No wife. No. This gentle Mistress of the Manor has been

kind enough to let me stay in her garage as I iron out a few of life’s

wrinkles.”

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“It’s a pretty big house. She doesn’t have a spare

bedroom?”

“Decorum, my good man, what would the neighbors

think or your grown children who live five and seven states away?

She is a kind woman, without an ounce of passion. If I were Lance-

lot I would be unable to scale her daunting fortress. She even keeps

the door between the house and garage locked so that I do not suc-

cumb to my animal urges. One must knock in order even to use

the bathroom. Would you like a cup of soup?” he said in a voice

that was meant to ape Johnny Carson but I couldn’t be sure.

I declined and he offered me a seat. I sat in the armchair

which smelled like mice. Benny walked over to the hot plate and

poured the soup into a coffee mug. He

wiped a spoon on his pants leg and as he

came back he tripped over a trombone that

was lying on the concrete without a case.

Near it sat an accordion and a snare drum

with a neck strap.

“I need a couple of nails to get

this stuff off the floor.”

“I brought your last check and the

stuff out of your

office,” I said in a mumble.

“Why beat around the bush?

Straight as a train in a china shop, I

suppose."

“What?” I couldn’t help asking.

“As if my thoughts on this subject

matter in the least.”

I offered him the envelope and

the blue bag.

“You can throw them on the floor.

I’ve got my hands full of soup.”

I set them down in front of the

TV.

“I’ve got a gig with the Crawdad-

dies over at the Medina Summer Fest tonight. We’re the fourth to

go on, not a bad slot, five to six pm. Soup keeps me strong.”

The back of my neck started itching from being in con-

tact with the arm chair. Suddenly, my torso felt covered in mites

and I wanted to rip off my shirt and roll around in a patch of dirt.

I perched on the edge of the chair, ready to bolt if the infestation

worsened.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” I offered as the beginning

of a conclusion.

“Life, hey,” Benny said with a shrug before he raised a

spoonful of soup to his mouth. “Sometimes the bear.”

“Right.”

“I want to show you something before you leave. I was

going to bring it in…”

He set down his half-eaten cup of soup on top of the TV

and rummaged in a large paper bag that had gone limp from being

folded so many times. He produced a video tape that had had sev-

eral labels adhered and imperfectly removed over its life. He placed

the tape in a battered VCR lying on the floor underneath the TV

and it clunked awake. The stress of the operation made the ma-

chine sound like it had been built with hydraulics. Benny found

the video channel with a remote and the screen went blue then an

image stuttered.

The familiar Beef O’Bundy intro began. The music

sounded like a perverse brass quintet play-

ing underwater. The faux bass of an an-

nouncer’s voice said “You are about to

waste two hours of your life watching a

movie that should have never been made

and performing actors who should be em-

barrassed to be paid. YOU HAVE BEEN

WARNED. Tonight we play Frankenstein

and the Monster from Hell, a curious little

oddity that will likely haunt your dreams

for the rest of your life. Nowhere in the his-

tory of celluloid has a monster as scary and

dreadful been captured for your viewing

pleasure (‘Yeeeeaaaa righhhhhttttt!’ said

a sarcastic voice in the background. Now,

here are your hosts Beef O’Bundy and his

assistant Gimpy Vin Shrieker.” (A warbling

shriek punctuated their entrance.)

Benny hovered over my shoulder.

“This is the show where we introduced

the Cigar Store Indian,” he said.

“You have the whole show?”

“Yea, commercials and the movie and

everything.”

I settled back in the armchair and forgot about the itch-

ing. Benny handed me a cup of broccoli soup in a Styrofoam cup

with a plastic spoon, followed closely by a can of beer. I thanked

him, but what I really wanted was to hear the crunch of truck tires

on our gravel drive announcing the arrival of my dad with a bag of

McDonald’s. I knew I was going to waste the next two hours of my

life watching this show that should have never been made. I also

knew that I was going to enjoy it more than anything I’d seen on

TV in a long, long time. M

Song of the Rest of UsMindi Kirchner

“Mindi Kirchner’s poems are rich with vivid detail and full of passion and spirit. Song of the Rest of Us recognizes and cel-ebrates ‘the rest of us,’ people whose lives sometimes get over-looked, ignored, by elements of our larger culture.” —Jim Daniels, Judge 2007 Open Chapbook Competition

SaltLiz Tilton

“A clear, seemingly effortless voice and a special curiosity animate the world Liz Tilton gives us in Salt. And it is a world, ranging from domestic life to manatees and the governor of Texas. Dis-coveries abound. Salt is smart, subtle, and essential.” —Don Bogen

Wick Poetry Series edited by Maggie Anderson

Entry guidelines for Wick Poetry Center competitions are avail-able at www.kent.edu/wick. Visit www.kentstateuniversitypress.com for a complete list of winners.

Poetry from The Kent State University Press

Far From AlgiersDjelloul Marbrook

“How honored I am—how lucky—to have been able to choose this superb first book by Djelloul Marbrook that honors a lifetime of hidden achievement.”

—Toi Derricotte, Judge

The Next of Us Is About to Be BornThe Wick Poetry Series Anthology: In Celebra-tion of the Wick Poetry Center’s Twenty-fifth AnniversaryEdited by Maggie Anderson

“The books in the Wick Poetry Series present

exciting writing by new and emerging poets. Di-verse, surprising, and politically and emotionally charged, this series has published some of the best new poetry being written, chosen by many of our most beloved and respected poets. The Next of Us Is About to Be Born is a valuable addi-tion to the landscape of contemporary poetry.”

—Harvey Hix

NeW IN The WICk ChAPBook SeRIeS WINNeR oF The STAN ANd Tom WICk PoeTRy PRIze

WICk PoeTRy ANThology

The Kent State University Press307 Lowry Hall • Kent, Ohio 44242-0001

■ www.kentstateuniversitypress.com

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Winning attention for your

creative writing has never been

easy.

In fact, in the last decade or two,

most emerging writers have

probably had an increasingly

hard time persuading literary

magazines and book publishers

even to read their work as

competition keeps intensifying,

agents seem to want only

potential blockbusters and

publishing houses generally

accept nothing but agented

manuscripts. 

The whole process of reaching

an appreciative, buying

public can be difficult and

discouraging. That’s why, when

I started Geniocity.com in

June 2008, I wanted to create,

not just a great news-and-

opinion webzine about what’s

happening on the cutting

edge of a whole spectrum of

fields, but also an online store

featuring the most interesting

and promising creative works

by artists and inventors of all

kinds – the kinds of work whose

value some huge publishing or

retail conglomerate might never

recognize.

That’s also why I’d like to invite

all serious – including seriously

funny – writers to submit their

work to The Geniocity Shop.

We’re starting a collection

of excellent literature – from

poetry, plays and essays to short

stories, novels and nonfiction –

to go with the selection of visual

art, film, music and functional

designs we’re already building.

Why consider The Geniocity

Shop? We’re dedicated to

searching out the best and

most creative English-language

authors, no matter how new and

unknown, and we plan to find

them in Northeast Ohio, the rest

of the U.S. and the world. The

works we select will be brought

out in attractive, limited-

series, softcover additions that

readers will find enjoyable and

affordable to collect – and

Geniocity.com will market them

to make sure as many readers

discover them as possible.

Most important for you, writers

will: receive 60 percent of

the sales price of each of

their volumes sold; retain all

copyrights; and have their work

displayed on attractive store

web pages featuring excerpts,

author bios and contact links.

In return, we ask only that you

sign a short-term contract of

between six months and a year,

giving Geniocity.com exclusive

rights to sell your work or works

for that period of time.

So maybe it’s time to take that

manuscript out of the drawer

and get in it front of the reading,

buying public at Geniocity.com.

Please check out our site at

www.geniocity.com, including

The Geniocity Shop and the

Submit Your Work page, and

feel free to call 216.544.8848 if

you have questions. I hope you’ll

give Geniocity.com a try.   

     

CAROLYN JACK

Geniocity.comA global marketplace for your writing

HAROLD BLOOMYale UniversityAuthor of The Western Canon and Shakespeare: The Invention of The Human

The book I recommend is LITTLE BIG

by John Crowley. I submit the following

comment: John Crowley’s Little Big is a

miracle of a fantasy novel. It has sus-

tained about a dozen readings by me and

always refreshes me anew. I don’t want

to ruin any reader’s experience of it by

describing its surprises in advance. I just

urge that it be read.

JONATHON EVISONAuthor of All About Lulu and West of Here

Though widely considered a masterpiece

throughout Europe, Bohumil Hrabal’s I

SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND is a

hilarious, sensual, and incisive portrait

of Nazi-occupied Prague through the

eyes of a Quixotic young waiter is, in my

humble estimation, vastly underexposed

stateside. Anyone who has ever worked in

the food service or hospitality industry,

must read this book, which was released

in 1971 by Petlice, an underground anti-

communist press in Prague, and not pub-

lished in America until 1990. Hrabal was

a bigger-than-life (though highly accessi-

ble) figure in Czechoslovakia, where he

died at the age of 83, falling from a fifth-

story hospital window while trying to

feed pigeons.

LEE K. ABBOTTOhio State UniversityAuthor of All Things, All at Once: New & Selected Stories

WINTER’S BONE by Daniel Woodrell:

Ozarks noir served up in a prose lyrical as

it is loopy. Not since the hey-day of Barry

Hannah and Dorothy Allison have you

read fiction that spins the head even as it

roots at the heart. Danny may be the

wickedly funniest novelist in captivity.

LYDIA MILLETAuthor of How The Dead Dream and Georger Bush, Dark Prince of Love

I’d recommend WAR WITH THE

NEWTS, by Karel Capek: This dystopic

sci-fi fable, first published in 1936 but un-

believably resistant to aging, was written

by the Czech genius best known for coin-

ing the term robot (which he actually

credited to his brother). Hilarious, poi-

gnant, and as gripping as the purest pulp.

LAVONNE MUELLERWoodrow Wilson Visiting FellowAuthor of Little Victories, The Moth-ers, and Hotel Splendid

I recommend the play OPEN ADMIS-

SIONS* by Shirley Lauro. It is what I con-

sider a perfect one-act. The play not only

has an original haunting theme about a

teacher–pupil relationship but also fol-

lows dynamic theatrical conflict. I use the

play in my teaching and as a reminder to

myself to follow an essential dramatic

structure. (Note: The play was enlarged

into a full-length play but lost its power.

I recommend only the one-act.)

JAKE SNODGRASSCreator of underground zines 

Stuart Dybek, in THE COAST OF CHI-

CAGO does all the things that any great

writer does, but the one thing that sepa-

rates him from many others is that his

stories always manage to move me. Their

impact is so great that I can only read

them in short bursts – I read one, maybe

two stories, and then I read something else,

before coming back for more. They touch

me as if they were events in my own life.

Memories and memory itself play a big

role in his stories. Often, he writes of

when he was younger, and the stories he

tells are both entertaining and thought-

provoking, but in the end the focus is not

so much on the memories as it is on his

memory of them and what that means to

him in the present. In his story Chopin In

Winter we read about a boy who interacts

with a young musician who is dealing

with an unplanned pregnancy and an old

man who is nearing death. The story

focuses on their stories, and in the end we

are impacted by those stories, but even

more so we are affected by what these

memories mean to the boy who is now a

grown man. Like him, the reader feels a

sort of bitter sweetness for the past, both

the character’s and his own. M

*out of print but available used

Some of my most memorable reading experiences came from books that I never heard of. I always tell people, for example, that I can’t believe that Frank’s World: The Odyssey of a Fleshy Lump by George Mangels is out of print and mostly forgotten. At minimum, I thought the work would become a cult classic, especially because of its inspiration the film Blue Velvet. Whenever I meet a fellow bibliophile the subject of books

inevitably arises, and it is the works that I don’t know that I pay most attention to. I want to know what great books are out there that I may miss. I guess I also sympathize with the writers of under recognized gems: all that hard work and often more talent than others that, perhaps because a lucky break here or there, received recognition and a multitude of readers. – ROB JACKSON

Book Archaeology 

Where we go in search of lost books... established and emerging writers offer forgotten published works that deserve to be rediscovered

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Winning attention for your

creative writing has never been

easy.

In fact, in the last decade or two,

most emerging writers have

probably had an increasingly

hard time persuading literary

magazines and book publishers

even to read their work as

competition keeps intensifying,

agents seem to want only

potential blockbusters and

publishing houses generally

accept nothing but agented

manuscripts. 

The whole process of reaching

an appreciative, buying

public can be difficult and

discouraging. That’s why, when

I started Geniocity.com in

June 2008, I wanted to create,

not just a great news-and-

opinion webzine about what’s

happening on the cutting

edge of a whole spectrum of

fields, but also an online store

featuring the most interesting

and promising creative works

by artists and inventors of all

kinds – the kinds of work whose

value some huge publishing or

retail conglomerate might never

recognize.

That’s also why I’d like to invite

all serious – including seriously

funny – writers to submit their

work to The Geniocity Shop.

We’re starting a collection

of excellent literature – from

poetry, plays and essays to short

stories, novels and nonfiction –

to go with the selection of visual

art, film, music and functional

designs we’re already building.

Why consider The Geniocity

Shop? We’re dedicated to

searching out the best and

most creative English-language

authors, no matter how new and

unknown, and we plan to find

them in Northeast Ohio, the rest

of the U.S. and the world. The

works we select will be brought

out in attractive, limited-

series, softcover additions that

readers will find enjoyable and

affordable to collect – and

Geniocity.com will market them

to make sure as many readers

discover them as possible.

Most important for you, writers

will: receive 60 percent of

the sales price of each of

their volumes sold; retain all

copyrights; and have their work

displayed on attractive store

web pages featuring excerpts,

author bios and contact links.

In return, we ask only that you

sign a short-term contract of

between six months and a year,

giving Geniocity.com exclusive

rights to sell your work or works

for that period of time.

So maybe it’s time to take that

manuscript out of the drawer

and get in it front of the reading,

buying public at Geniocity.com.

Please check out our site at

www.geniocity.com, including

The Geniocity Shop and the

Submit Your Work page, and

feel free to call 216.544.8848 if

you have questions. I hope you’ll

give Geniocity.com a try.   

     

CAROLYN JACK

Geniocity.comA global marketplace for your writing

HAROLD BLOOMYale UniversityAuthor of The Western Canon and Shakespeare: The Invention of The Human

The book I recommend is LITTLE BIG

by John Crowley. I submit the following

comment: John Crowley’s Little Big is a

miracle of a fantasy novel. It has sus-

tained about a dozen readings by me and

always refreshes me anew. I don’t want

to ruin any reader’s experience of it by

describing its surprises in advance. I just

urge that it be read.

JONATHON EVISONAuthor of All About Lulu and West of Here

Though widely considered a masterpiece

throughout Europe, Bohumil Hrabal’s I

SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND is a

hilarious, sensual, and incisive portrait

of Nazi-occupied Prague through the

eyes of a Quixotic young waiter is, in my

humble estimation, vastly underexposed

stateside. Anyone who has ever worked in

the food service or hospitality industry,

must read this book, which was released

in 1971 by Petlice, an underground anti-

communist press in Prague, and not pub-

lished in America until 1990. Hrabal was

a bigger-than-life (though highly accessi-

ble) figure in Czechoslovakia, where he

died at the age of 83, falling from a fifth-

story hospital window while trying to

feed pigeons.

LEE K. ABBOTTOhio State UniversityAuthor of All Things, All at Once: New & Selected Stories

WINTER’S BONE by Daniel Woodrell:

Ozarks noir served up in a prose lyrical as

it is loopy. Not since the hey-day of Barry

Hannah and Dorothy Allison have you

read fiction that spins the head even as it

roots at the heart. Danny may be the

wickedly funniest novelist in captivity.

LYDIA MILLETAuthor of How The Dead Dream and Georger Bush, Dark Prince of Love

I’d recommend WAR WITH THE

NEWTS, by Karel Capek: This dystopic

sci-fi fable, first published in 1936 but un-

believably resistant to aging, was written

by the Czech genius best known for coin-

ing the term robot (which he actually

credited to his brother). Hilarious, poi-

gnant, and as gripping as the purest pulp.

LAVONNE MUELLERWoodrow Wilson Visiting FellowAuthor of Little Victories, The Moth-ers, and Hotel Splendid

I recommend the play OPEN ADMIS-

SIONS* by Shirley Lauro. It is what I con-

sider a perfect one-act. The play not only

has an original haunting theme about a

teacher–pupil relationship but also fol-

lows dynamic theatrical conflict. I use the

play in my teaching and as a reminder to

myself to follow an essential dramatic

structure. (Note: The play was enlarged

into a full-length play but lost its power.

I recommend only the one-act.)

JAKE SNODGRASSCreator of underground zines 

Stuart Dybek, in THE COAST OF CHI-

CAGO does all the things that any great

writer does, but the one thing that sepa-

rates him from many others is that his

stories always manage to move me. Their

impact is so great that I can only read

them in short bursts – I read one, maybe

two stories, and then I read something else,

before coming back for more. They touch

me as if they were events in my own life.

Memories and memory itself play a big

role in his stories. Often, he writes of

when he was younger, and the stories he

tells are both entertaining and thought-

provoking, but in the end the focus is not

so much on the memories as it is on his

memory of them and what that means to

him in the present. In his story Chopin In

Winter we read about a boy who interacts

with a young musician who is dealing

with an unplanned pregnancy and an old

man who is nearing death. The story

focuses on their stories, and in the end we

are impacted by those stories, but even

more so we are affected by what these

memories mean to the boy who is now a

grown man. Like him, the reader feels a

sort of bitter sweetness for the past, both

the character’s and his own. M

*out of print but available used

Some of my most memorable reading experiences came from books that I never heard of. I always tell people, for example, that I can’t believe that Frank’s World: The Odyssey of a Fleshy Lump by George Mangels is out of print and mostly forgotten. At minimum, I thought the work would become a cult classic, especially because of its inspiration the film Blue Velvet. Whenever I meet a fellow bibliophile the subject of books

inevitably arises, and it is the works that I don’t know that I pay most attention to. I want to know what great books are out there that I may miss. I guess I also sympathize with the writers of under recognized gems: all that hard work and often more talent than others that, perhaps because a lucky break here or there, received recognition and a multitude of readers. – ROB JACKSON

Book Archaeology 

Where we go in search of lost books... established and emerging writers offer forgotten published works that deserve to be rediscovered

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Like It Was

Something Good On TVBY JAKE SNODGRASS

W HEN I WAS LI V ING W ITH M Y SISTER, we got into the routine of going to The Elks every Wednesday for their fish fry, and after awhile we got to know one of the bartend-ers there, a guy named Vince. He was pale and thin, about forty years old, with wispy blonde hair and a dead tooth. He had an ugly, skeletal face, but his voice was deep and appealing, like that of a county-western singer. One time, after we had been going there for about six weeks, Vince came over

and asked us for our orders, but instead of the usual — fish, slaw and a Crown &

Coke — my sister said, “Vince, all I want is a kiss.” But Vince just flashed her his dead

tooth and walked away.

Later that night, after we’d had our fill of fish and were deep into the drinks,

Vince came back and hung out with us. After awhile, he picked up my pack of Win-

ston’s and lit one for himself without even asking, but I didn’t really mind because

Vince always treated me good when it came to the drinks. And then even later, he

pulled my sister over onto his lap and started whispering in her ear. And then he

started kissing her with long silent kisses — and I just sat there, drunk, watching

them like it was something good on TV.

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Like It Was

Something Good On TVBY JAKE SNODGRASS

W HEN I WAS LI V ING W ITH M Y SISTER, we got into the routine of going to The Elks every Wednesday for their fish fry, and after awhile we got to know one of the bartend-ers there, a guy named Vince. He was pale and thin, about forty years old, with wispy blonde hair and a dead tooth. He had an ugly, skeletal face, but his voice was deep and appealing, like that of a county-western singer. One time, after we had been going there for about six weeks, Vince came over

and asked us for our orders, but instead of the usual — fish, slaw and a Crown &

Coke — my sister said, “Vince, all I want is a kiss.” But Vince just flashed her his dead

tooth and walked away.

Later that night, after we’d had our fill of fish and were deep into the drinks,

Vince came back and hung out with us. After awhile, he picked up my pack of Win-

ston’s and lit one for himself without even asking, but I didn’t really mind because

Vince always treated me good when it came to the drinks. And then even later, he

pulled my sister over onto his lap and started whispering in her ear. And then he

started kissing her with long silent kisses — and I just sat there, drunk, watching

them like it was something good on TV.

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One morning, my sister and I

were sitting on the couch, watching The

Price Is Right, when my sister pulled out a

state ID that she had gotten the day before.

“Don’t I look like Aileen Wuor-

nos?” she said as she handed me the ID. “I

told the lady at the DMV that when I show

my ID at the bank, the teller is going to say,

‘Well, hello, Aileen, we thought they killed

you!’”

I looked over the photo and then

handed it back to her. “It isn’t a perfect re-

semblance, but—“

“I look so

hardened!”

“Yeah, but you

don’t really look like—“

“I look like Ma

Barker, that’s what I look

like!”

“Yeah, or maybe

Aileen’s sister, but not so

much like Aileen herself.”

“I need a face lift

bad! Do you know any

plastic surgeons, or any-

one who has gone to a

good one? I need a really

good one!”

I lit up a cigarette

and rested it in an ashtray

on my knee. “Do you want one that can

make you look more or less like Aileen

Wuornos?”

“Less! Less! I can look more like

her on my own!”

We both laughed, and then my

sister grabbed the remote. “I can’t stand

this commercial,” she said and started to

furiously flip through the channels.

I went into the kitchen, and came

back with two beers and a whiskey. As I sat

down, I gave my sister a beer, and then

took a sip of my whiskey followed by a slug

of beer.

“What’s the name of that schizo-

phrenic you used to take care of when we

were growing up?” I asked.

“Which one?” my sister scoffed.

“The one who lived down the

street from us. The one who communi-

cated with Hamilton, Ohio by talking to

the ceiling.”

“Eva Mae.”

“Did she talk to Hamilton

everyday?”

“Oh yeah, all the time! And if

Hamilton wasn’t talking back, she’d put

her underwear on her head and get into

bed and completely cover herself up with a

sheet and lay there as straight as a board

and not answer to anyone. And the only

way we could coax her out was with her

sweet milk.”

“Sweet milk?”

“Yeah, that’s what she called her

vitamin drink. It was the only thing she’d

eat! She was super skinny…I mean, like 90

pounds! And her teeth were thin and as

black as a rat’s.”

I took a drink of my beer and

looked at the TV where my sister had

turned it back to The Price. I wanted to ask

more about Eva Mae, but my sister hushed

me and pointed at the TV where the Show-

case Showdown was about to get

underway.

• • • Later that morning, Vince

stopped by with some beer. He and I

started drinking, while my sister went in

the kitchen and cooked us some sausage

and eggs.

After awhile, Vince slid a ciga-

rette from my pack and lit it up. With the

cigarette bouncing between his lips, he

said, “What movie do you think has been

seen by the most people? The Wizard of

Oz? Star Wars? Titanic?”

I stared at the TV where an epi-

sode of The Golden Girls

was muted. “Who cares,”

I said.

“Come on, have a guess.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Come on.”

My sister stuck her head

out over the bar. “E.T.!”

she yelled. “E.T.!”

I rubbed my forehead

with my hand and contin-

ued to stare at the TV.

“Come on,” Vince said.

I dropped my hand into

my lap. “Alright,” I said,

“Logan’s Run.”

Vince wrinkled up his

forehead. “That futuristic

flick? Come on, man, that didn’t even

show in theaters.”

“I don’t give a fuck if it didn’t

show in the theaters,” I said as I reached

out and slid my pack of cigarettes towards

me. “It’s still my guess.”

Vince shook his head and blew

smoke out of his nose. “Yeah, well, I sure

as hell ain’t never seen it.”

“Whatever.”

“Not from beginning to end, I

haven’t.”

“Whatever.”

“I haven’t.”

“Whatever.”

Vince crushed his half-smoked

cigarette into the ashtray, and started to get

up, but my sister came around the bar, car-

rying two plates of food for me and Vince.

“Well, what was it?” she said. “E.T.?”

“Aw, who gives a fuck,” Vince said

as he took his plate and sat down. Then

after taking a bite of his sausage, he said,

“This is freezing cold.” He dropped his

fork onto his plate and shoved it away.

“How is that even possible? Huh?”

• • • My sister and Vince fought a lot,

but that was to be expected, because my

sister has fought with every man she has

ever known for more than twenty-four

hours. But one night they had a huge blow

out—one that was more fucked up than

usual—and I could tell that it was over for

good.

After the fight, Vince went out to

his car, and my sister went in the bedroom

and cried. I went outside to tell Vince to

stay the fuck away for good, but somehow I

ended up taking a ride with him and pick-

ing up some beer.

“I’m sick to death of these

bitches,” he said as he aimlessly steered us

through town. “I don’t need any of them.

Right now, I’ve got three chicks that I’m

fucking on a regular basis, and there could

easily be five others—maybe even ten oth-

ers—that I could get back on the team at a

moment’s notice.”

It was cold out that night, and it

must have been late November or early De-

cember, because the main street in town

was decorated for Christmas. Hanging

from every streetlamp, I saw candy canes

made from tinsel and sparkly lights, and in

front of the library, I saw a manger scene

with illuminated plastic figurines resting

on a bed of hay.

Vince pulled into a parking space

alongside the street and we sat there,

drinking beers and watching the wind-

shield slowly fog up.

“You know what I’d like to do?” Vince

said. “I’d like to get me a video camera and

hide it outside my house. And then I’d like

to call every one of those bitches and tell

them to be at my house at a certain time.

And I’d tell them all to wear something

nice and to bring me a home cooked meal.

Then, on the big day, I’d turn on that video

camera, and leave the country—go to

Mexico or Puerto Rico or something—

and then later that night, you could go get

the video tape and send it to me. That’s ex-

actly what I’d like to do.”

Vince laughed and finished off

his beer. He then leaned in front of me,

opened the glove compartment and pulled

out a flask. He took a swig and passed it to

me, and I took a swig too, and then Vince

laughed again.

I almost laughed too, because I

started thinking about all those women

out in front of his house, all dressed up and

holding containers of home cooked food.

Then I pictured them all deciding to make

the best of it by sitting down on his porch

and having a little picnic. And then I

thought of Vince getting a video tape of it

in the mail. Vince in Mexico or wherever,

watching his bitches partake in a potluck

on his front porch—that was an image that

made me smile.

I handed the flask back to Vince

and he raised it in a mock toast and then

tipped it back for a swig. He then screwed

on the cap, stashed it against the crease in

the seat, and said, “Cover me,” as he sud-

denly swung open his door. He jumped

out of the car and began running toward

the manger in front of the library. As soon

as he reached it, he plunged his arms into

the cradle, yanked at something, struggled

for a moment and then yanked even

harder. He then charged back toward the

car, cradling a plastic baby as if it was real.

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” he yelled,

even though he was the driver, and then he

gunned it as he simultaneously swung the

door shut.

• • • When I woke up the next morn-

ing, I was on the couch, and my sister was

in the Lay-Z-Boy. She was eating ice cream

and watching The Price.

I think we watched the rest of the

show before I said anything. She didn’t

even provoke me—she hadn’t even said a

word—but something about the way she

was acting got under my skin.

“It’s the same thing all over

again,” I said. “The same things that at-

tract you to a man are the exact same

things that you end up hating about him.

That’s how all women are—they want it

both ways. They want to hook up with a

real man, but then as soon as they have

him, they want to cut off his nuts. Well,

you can’t have it both ways. And if you

keep thinking that you can, then you’re

stupider than I thought.”

I remember my sister looked

angry, like she was going to start yelling at

me, but then she just said, “I know, I

know,” and then let out a couple quiet sobs.

“I’m not saying Vince was any-

thing special,” I said. “In fact, that’s the

point: he was exactly the same as every

other man, but until you see that, this is

just going to happen to you again and

again, just like it always has.”

After that, we didn’t say any more

about it. We just watched TV, and then I

got us some beers and we drank for most of

the day. I remember we watched The Mun-

sters and later we watched Leave It To Bea-

ver, and I remember we both laughed

pretty hard at both shows. Then I think we

both went to sleep. M

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One morning, my sister and I

were sitting on the couch, watching The

Price Is Right, when my sister pulled out a

state ID that she had gotten the day before.

“Don’t I look like Aileen Wuor-

nos?” she said as she handed me the ID. “I

told the lady at the DMV that when I show

my ID at the bank, the teller is going to say,

‘Well, hello, Aileen, we thought they killed

you!’”

I looked over the photo and then

handed it back to her. “It isn’t a perfect re-

semblance, but—“

“I look so

hardened!”

“Yeah, but you

don’t really look like—“

“I look like Ma

Barker, that’s what I look

like!”

“Yeah, or maybe

Aileen’s sister, but not so

much like Aileen herself.”

“I need a face lift

bad! Do you know any

plastic surgeons, or any-

one who has gone to a

good one? I need a really

good one!”

I lit up a cigarette

and rested it in an ashtray

on my knee. “Do you want one that can

make you look more or less like Aileen

Wuornos?”

“Less! Less! I can look more like

her on my own!”

We both laughed, and then my

sister grabbed the remote. “I can’t stand

this commercial,” she said and started to

furiously flip through the channels.

I went into the kitchen, and came

back with two beers and a whiskey. As I sat

down, I gave my sister a beer, and then

took a sip of my whiskey followed by a slug

of beer.

“What’s the name of that schizo-

phrenic you used to take care of when we

were growing up?” I asked.

“Which one?” my sister scoffed.

“The one who lived down the

street from us. The one who communi-

cated with Hamilton, Ohio by talking to

the ceiling.”

“Eva Mae.”

“Did she talk to Hamilton

everyday?”

“Oh yeah, all the time! And if

Hamilton wasn’t talking back, she’d put

her underwear on her head and get into

bed and completely cover herself up with a

sheet and lay there as straight as a board

and not answer to anyone. And the only

way we could coax her out was with her

sweet milk.”

“Sweet milk?”

“Yeah, that’s what she called her

vitamin drink. It was the only thing she’d

eat! She was super skinny…I mean, like 90

pounds! And her teeth were thin and as

black as a rat’s.”

I took a drink of my beer and

looked at the TV where my sister had

turned it back to The Price. I wanted to ask

more about Eva Mae, but my sister hushed

me and pointed at the TV where the Show-

case Showdown was about to get

underway.

• • • Later that morning, Vince

stopped by with some beer. He and I

started drinking, while my sister went in

the kitchen and cooked us some sausage

and eggs.

After awhile, Vince slid a ciga-

rette from my pack and lit it up. With the

cigarette bouncing between his lips, he

said, “What movie do you think has been

seen by the most people? The Wizard of

Oz? Star Wars? Titanic?”

I stared at the TV where an epi-

sode of The Golden Girls

was muted. “Who cares,”

I said.

“Come on, have a guess.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Come on.”

My sister stuck her head

out over the bar. “E.T.!”

she yelled. “E.T.!”

I rubbed my forehead

with my hand and contin-

ued to stare at the TV.

“Come on,” Vince said.

I dropped my hand into

my lap. “Alright,” I said,

“Logan’s Run.”

Vince wrinkled up his

forehead. “That futuristic

flick? Come on, man, that didn’t even

show in theaters.”

“I don’t give a fuck if it didn’t

show in the theaters,” I said as I reached

out and slid my pack of cigarettes towards

me. “It’s still my guess.”

Vince shook his head and blew

smoke out of his nose. “Yeah, well, I sure

as hell ain’t never seen it.”

“Whatever.”

“Not from beginning to end, I

haven’t.”

“Whatever.”

“I haven’t.”

“Whatever.”

Vince crushed his half-smoked

cigarette into the ashtray, and started to get

up, but my sister came around the bar, car-

rying two plates of food for me and Vince.

“Well, what was it?” she said. “E.T.?”

“Aw, who gives a fuck,” Vince said

as he took his plate and sat down. Then

after taking a bite of his sausage, he said,

“This is freezing cold.” He dropped his

fork onto his plate and shoved it away.

“How is that even possible? Huh?”

• • • My sister and Vince fought a lot,

but that was to be expected, because my

sister has fought with every man she has

ever known for more than twenty-four

hours. But one night they had a huge blow

out—one that was more fucked up than

usual—and I could tell that it was over for

good.

After the fight, Vince went out to

his car, and my sister went in the bedroom

and cried. I went outside to tell Vince to

stay the fuck away for good, but somehow I

ended up taking a ride with him and pick-

ing up some beer.

“I’m sick to death of these

bitches,” he said as he aimlessly steered us

through town. “I don’t need any of them.

Right now, I’ve got three chicks that I’m

fucking on a regular basis, and there could

easily be five others—maybe even ten oth-

ers—that I could get back on the team at a

moment’s notice.”

It was cold out that night, and it

must have been late November or early De-

cember, because the main street in town

was decorated for Christmas. Hanging

from every streetlamp, I saw candy canes

made from tinsel and sparkly lights, and in

front of the library, I saw a manger scene

with illuminated plastic figurines resting

on a bed of hay.

Vince pulled into a parking space

alongside the street and we sat there,

drinking beers and watching the wind-

shield slowly fog up.

“You know what I’d like to do?” Vince

said. “I’d like to get me a video camera and

hide it outside my house. And then I’d like

to call every one of those bitches and tell

them to be at my house at a certain time.

And I’d tell them all to wear something

nice and to bring me a home cooked meal.

Then, on the big day, I’d turn on that video

camera, and leave the country—go to

Mexico or Puerto Rico or something—

and then later that night, you could go get

the video tape and send it to me. That’s ex-

actly what I’d like to do.”

Vince laughed and finished off

his beer. He then leaned in front of me,

opened the glove compartment and pulled

out a flask. He took a swig and passed it to

me, and I took a swig too, and then Vince

laughed again.

I almost laughed too, because I

started thinking about all those women

out in front of his house, all dressed up and

holding containers of home cooked food.

Then I pictured them all deciding to make

the best of it by sitting down on his porch

and having a little picnic. And then I

thought of Vince getting a video tape of it

in the mail. Vince in Mexico or wherever,

watching his bitches partake in a potluck

on his front porch—that was an image that

made me smile.

I handed the flask back to Vince

and he raised it in a mock toast and then

tipped it back for a swig. He then screwed

on the cap, stashed it against the crease in

the seat, and said, “Cover me,” as he sud-

denly swung open his door. He jumped

out of the car and began running toward

the manger in front of the library. As soon

as he reached it, he plunged his arms into

the cradle, yanked at something, struggled

for a moment and then yanked even

harder. He then charged back toward the

car, cradling a plastic baby as if it was real.

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” he yelled,

even though he was the driver, and then he

gunned it as he simultaneously swung the

door shut.

• • • When I woke up the next morn-

ing, I was on the couch, and my sister was

in the Lay-Z-Boy. She was eating ice cream

and watching The Price.

I think we watched the rest of the

show before I said anything. She didn’t

even provoke me—she hadn’t even said a

word—but something about the way she

was acting got under my skin.

“It’s the same thing all over

again,” I said. “The same things that at-

tract you to a man are the exact same

things that you end up hating about him.

That’s how all women are—they want it

both ways. They want to hook up with a

real man, but then as soon as they have

him, they want to cut off his nuts. Well,

you can’t have it both ways. And if you

keep thinking that you can, then you’re

stupider than I thought.”

I remember my sister looked

angry, like she was going to start yelling at

me, but then she just said, “I know, I

know,” and then let out a couple quiet sobs.

“I’m not saying Vince was any-

thing special,” I said. “In fact, that’s the

point: he was exactly the same as every

other man, but until you see that, this is

just going to happen to you again and

again, just like it always has.”

After that, we didn’t say any more

about it. We just watched TV, and then I

got us some beers and we drank for most of

the day. I remember we watched The Mun-

sters and later we watched Leave It To Bea-

ver, and I remember we both laughed

pretty hard at both shows. Then I think we

both went to sleep. M

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