Upstate
When I was a boy I only had my mother, but even she forgot where I was most of the time. Then she started seeing invisible things: cupcakes, spaceships, tornadoes. When I was learning the multiplication tables one day, Ms. Brower came in to tell me they were sending her upstate. I thought that meant into the air, someplace in the clouds. As if what must happen to those in such mental trouble cannot be rendered here on the ground. Their state must be taken up. Anyway, then I lived with a guy people said I should start calling Dad but he didn’t want that and said to call him Senator like everyone else. Senator knew all things about machines. Anything with grease, he said. There were little metal parts in all the drawers and cabinets in the kitchen. At the bottoms of all the closets. Even under my bed and in the bathtub. Dusty, greasy, threaded metal things. Gears. Rods. Handles. There were even bigger hunks in the garage and out back. There used to be a yard with grass, our neighbor Stevie told me, but all the big hunks had smothered it to dirt.
Anyway, Senator showed me how to make beans on the stove, which was real easy once you got the can open. He showed me what a short circuit was and how any soldered connection can fry. Senator, I said once, what happens upstate? Oh, he said, it’s a lot of long miles and antiques and they say the air up there is good for what ails you. I wasn’t entirely confused. In the air, it’s space and all that breath and sunshine. And my mom up there, old as moms are, she’s the antique, I figured.
Face of the Clock
When he had just graduated from college Ahmad realized that he could stop time. All he had to do was look at a clock and concentrate. But it had to be a clock with hands. It never worked on digital. The first time he was in the dentist’s office and everything froze. Ahmad looked around like he could spot something that would explain it. Once he concentrated again everything continued. He fantasized about exploiting his power. At the bank, the supermarket, the mall. But he never came close to actually doing anything when things were frozen other than observing in wonder. Some part of him knew the unknown was responsible for this ability and that the unknown would be responsible for what came as a result of using it. And now, twenty years later, he stands on the street corner, freshly divorced, unhappy though relieved, gazing up at the face of the big clock at First National. Everything, the cars, the people, birds, clouds, the very universe, halts. Ahmad smiles to himself. He looks around in wonder, and before he steps into the crosswalk, everything jumps back to action.
Day of the Bird
When the last wave of blowing dust had passed, leaving the final layer of sand on everything, Clete patted his helmet. The sand puffed into the air, it was so fine. Clete knew this was day 118 of his tour, so he said it to himself quietly. In the past there was always movement out in the dunes that he could aim at, but as the war had waned, it was just a desolate emptiness out there. Sometimes he thought he saw a bird. At oh eight hundred he was relieved by PFC Samuels, the one from Indiana not the one from Oregon. Clete walked back down the trench that led to the main wall of the FOB. As he approached the doorway he heard a deep screech repeating. On the top of the wall was a white-throated kingfisher, watching him. It turned its head left and right, as if to say, what are you doing here? And in that moment Clete had absolutely no answer.
Senior Year
Bryce went everywhere on his electric scooter. This would be the best year of his life, he felt. He also loved white tank tops because they showcased his athletic build, and he wore one today, a drizzling gray set of hours, as he zipped through the streets of his suburban downtown, the brick and tan buildings whizzing by as if the world might stand still for him anytime he liked. How could the universe be for anyone but him? He inflated his chest when he rode his scooter because it made his muscles look majestic. His stubble appeared casual though it wasn’t. The hair on his head was naturally tufted and in the drizzle only increased in volume. He slowed the scooter on Chestnut Street, allowing the world to move again. Along this block was Rogers Park, a place he had come as a boy with his parents to the summer concerts year after year. Bryce looked upward to notice the sun threatening to reveal itself. An SUV pulled into the spot nearest him and out of it stepped his mother, Carol. Together they walked up the block to Raymond’s for lunch, but there was a line out the door and rather than wait an hour they continued on, gazing up at the thinning sky, the late summer trees, the tops of century-old buildings, as if pleading for something but neither spoke nor imagined nor desired anything beyond the very steps they now took.
