To my son whom I have not met.

Don't listen to the critics, they seldom know what they are talking about.

Open the door for her every time, she's worth it.

Read books.

Read lots of books. They'll be your fondest companion from time to time.

Listen well.

Don't just hear people, but really listen.

Make eye contact. Don't be distracted.

Be the type of man that others describe using terms such as faithful and true and humble.

Give yourself away everyday to everyone. No, they don't deserve it, but no one deserves anything in life.

Knowing this, live in and by grace.

Be a dreamer.

Dream larger than you know how to.

Be a man who knows the value of a hard days work.

Enjoy sweating.

Enjoy achey muscles. One day the ache won't go away.

Watch sunsets and sunrises every chance you get.

Now and then share them with someone you love.

Know how to cook a great steak.

Take care of your body, you only have one.

Fall in love with a girl who is already in love with Jesus.

Call her your second love.

Hold onto money loosely. Give it away all the time.

Be someone who learns to suffer well through trials and sorrows.

To do this I encourage you to read God's Word daily.

Memorize it. It will save your life.

It will be your most difficult ministry, but love your family with the love of Jesus Christ.

If you move away always call on Sunday's.

Learn how to play an instrument.

Music is a form of God's voice, listen carefully.

Remember birthday's.

Have a favorite beer.

Don't give people bad or corny gifts.

Give from the heart.

Know how to play one sport well.

Sports are a form of physical glory.

Have at least three men in your life that know you very well and know three men in the same way.

Be open with them about everything.

Pray Often.

Eat good food.

Live for the Gospel.

Let Jesus be the all encompassing fire of your heart.

Love,

Dad

My Sister in the Forest. Part II - The Hunter.

William Forger was a man of gargantuan height and breadth. If you were to think of a large wooden cask of brewed hops then you will have an ample visualization of his chest. He rarely spoke to other people of the town and kept mainly to his cabin, which sat on the outer rim of the village. William was by far the largest man to ever live in our town. His shoulders were as broad as cliffs and in the snowy season children would follow him and jump, two feet at a time, into his boot marks as he sauntered from side to side with enormous lunging steps.

In the winters Forger would take two weeks time and cut wood in the Black Forest for all of the elderly folks in the village. For this he gained the compensation of baked goods and fresh bread year round from frail, withering old women. When he would go cottage to cottage to deliver wood the old women would, with shaking, aged hands, grasp his muscular forearms and think back to when their husbands were strong and capable. Many of them dead or deaf by now. Forger was the town’s head game hunter. He led hunting parties year round into the Black Forest to gather quail and deer for the town. He was fearless. He had a past that would make any man hard to the gentler side of life. Four winters prior he had lost his bride and his newborn son.

In the middle of a warm spring in 1806 he had taken a three days venture into the forest to hunt the elk of the western planes with three other men from the town. One day while he was gone his wife went to the edge of the wood to gather berries for a pie that she would bake for a family with a sick child. She gathered up her baby son in a basket filled with blankets and walked the two hundred yards or so to the wood’s edge.

She was more beautiful and graceful than words can describe. And, even if I tried, I would be doing the work of God’s hands a great disservice. Try to picture Eve if you can, the mother of all women. Her hair was an indescribable shade of yellow and her skin, flawless. If you were to look into her eyes on a clear sun-lit day you would think less of the day for it. She was kind and gentle, warm and giving. All of the women in the town loved her. All of the men wanted to be her husband and to do chores for her and to love her. But those jobs were for William.

In the summers leading up to her fifteenth birthday Forger would watch her as she would go to the creek in the wood and would wonder things about her.

How could something so beautiful be worthy of viewing by a man such as himself?

OR

How does a woman keep her skin so flawless in a world such as this?

He loved her from the first moment he saw her and when they were both of age they married. He built her the cabin on the edge of the town and they were happy and loved one another with an indefinable love.

When night had fallen and the lights of the cabin were still not lit Ms. Kreps, a mid-wife who lived in town, became worried and ventured up the gentle hill to the cabin. No lights lit, no one in the beds, just silence. Ms. Kreps ran down to Roger Rawling’s cottage to tell of the missing pair. Roger Rawlings was the mayor of the town, a strong stalky man with large hands and a scar that ran from his left ear to the bottom of his chin. He was an Indian killer from the early years. He didn’t speak of it much but everyone in the village loved him and respected him none the less. To find the missing woman and child he gathered two separate parties of men. One party to search for the wife and baby and the other to ride the three days to fetch William’s hunting group. But before the men had reached William the towns people had found the wife and baby, or what remained. For fifty feet in any direction it was as if a cloud had opened up and rained down red water on the lush grassy floor of the forest. The town’s people feared for their own safety, gathered what they could and returned back to their homes. The basket, the damp red blankets and his wife’s spotted, torn summer gown were left on the porch of the Forger’s cabin.

It took seven months for William to come down into town after that, and even then he only spoke one or two words here and there. Mainly you could find him talking quietly to Roger Rawlings about the needs of the elders or about what level the meat supply was at. He came to church on Sundays but remained in the back pew with his head bowed low. I like to think he was in prayer but I never knew for certain. I never did speak one word to that man.

Once that first year had come and gone after his wife’s murder he would go into the forest every spring for the full length of a month. At first people thought it was to hunt, but he never returned with anything. Just his rifle, ax, knife and a large hook connected to a length of chain. The hook and chain were used for hanging and cleaning deer and other large game. So as to why he took it with him into the Black Forest every year was a mystery. For, cleaning had always been done at cabin side where he could hang the pelts and skins of his kill more easily. The men never asked why or questioned what he was doing out there in the bleakness of those woods. They just knew that he did what he needed to do and that was enough for them. It was enough for all of us.

At a natural spring after a nine-mile hike.

She palmed the warm spring water onto her face again and again, rinsing the dirt of the trail from her cheeks. She knelt in such a way that he almost mistook her for a landed angel.

She stood slowly at the bank of the spring and as she rose he noticed that the heat of the water had placed a pinkish-red sunset hugh on her skin. he has always thought her to be beautiful but at that moment the sight of her made all of the thoughts fall out of his head.

With eyes closed she stepped a few un-balanced paces from the shore with water dripping off of her chin. For a towel she lifted her tee shirt to wipe the mineral rich water from her brow and temples.

He stared at the skin of her pale, soft stomach and, even with the past seven months being what they were, thought to himself,

"What a wife I have."

My Sister in the Forest. Part I - The Twins.

What you need to know are these things:

1. Grandmother has an appetite of ferocious proportions.

2. I fear my sisters dreams.

3. I will never again venture into the Black Forest.

4. I miss my sister.

Part I – The Twins

My sister loved when the fresh snows of November would fall slowly, trickling, sprinkling down upon the needles of the forest. One could, on a quite regular basis, find her sitting, staring with lingering thought, into the denseness of the Black Forest. Even with freshly laid snow she would find appropriate time to sit there on the edge of the small town. Constantly and frequently I would find myself sitting with elbows on windowsills watching her from behind the wavy, uneven glass panes of our home. Wondering, pondering her thoughts, sometimes in anticipation and other times in fear of the things that she contemplated.

From birth we were at odds. You see my sister was dead when she was born. The cord of my mother’s womb had strung itself around her neck and had made it impossible for her to breathe. The doctor's fumbling old hands worked quickly to untangle the slippery mess and once free he patted her back with the heel of his hand. Two minutes had passed before she made the tiniest of coughs and come to life, animated into the residence of the living right before our mother’s eyes. They say it was a miracle. I leave this determination to the hearer of this tale.

We are twins of age seventeen, she and I, both having deep chestnut hair with fair skin. Our fingers were nimble as were our toes. The knobs of our knees were of disproportionate size to the rest of our legs. They jutted out like crab apples sitting atop a naked tree branch. They were the subject of many a joke aimed at us by the Gillings brothers. Another set of twins that lived across the town from us. Incessantly annoying and unforgivably ugly. Between my sister and myself though, from a merely cosmetic stance we were, for all intensive purposes, perfectly alike, except for the scar that ran along the flat of my left foot. From ball of heel to tip of large toe I had been run though by an orphaned hunters knife while running in the Black Forest.

My sister and I had been playing a game of hide and seek. The sun had set below the foothills to the west and twilight came on like a deep veil over the forest. I was seeking and could not find her. I shouted and shouted for her. I was beginning to become scared, my shoulders becoming tense, as I grew weary of the forest. Fear crept on like a cold blanket.

“Isabelle!” I shouted.

I knew not where she hid and thus found myself at a crossroads. Knowing that I could not bear to be alone in the forest at dusk I yelled,

“This is no longer fun sister, I’m going home!”

I ran as though being chased. I ran as though if I were not to run death would have me. I ran because of the tales that the hunters would tell at my father’s table. I ran because of the things that my mind had created from tidbits of wives tales. I ran because I wanted to live.

As I had finally reached the forests edge my thin shoe split and I found myself prostrate on the forest floor, bare stomach aching on the frozen, compact powder snow. I slowly rolled over, reeling from the pain, only to see a large swatch of blood creeping over the white snow that layered the ground. The hunter’s knife had cut deep and had made short work of my tender skin. I began to weep and that is when my sister appeared. The crimson cloud of snow continued to grow as my sister stood idly by. I looked up at her to see her staring, without movement, just watching as my blood pooled in the heel of my shoe proceeding to pour out onto the snow. She made not a sound and said not a word, just watched, standing over me. Then finally, in utter monotone,

“I’ll fetch Mother.”

She walked away slowly with a lull in her step that made me sufficiently uneasy. I began to feel woozy.

That is when Isabelle was lost as a sister. She had become something else. She was someone that I did not know.

Jaq in his hospital room with the annoying guy.

As the man was asking his question the answer had already popped into his mind reeling in preparedness,

"It's red food coloring." Jaq mumbled.

The man persisted in his line of annoying questions. All the while Jaq suckled the tiny bottle of crimson red fluid. That is, until the nurse left the room.

Jaq lunged. Jumped then clung. Ripping the flesh of the annoying man's neck with his canines and incisors.

The annoying man tried to yell but Jaq had cut his voice box. Scalpel. On the table. Within reach.

"Yummy..." said Jaq.

"Uughggggggglleeee..." said the annoying man.

Comforting un-comforts.

I like beer. I do.

I unbutton my jeans when i'm home alone.

I read Steinbeck because I miss those times.

Even though I never lived them.

I hate running cold water over my hands in the winter.

Whiskey is more than liquor. But I don't need it.

Only 33 short years.

The stars were whispering and the planets were mumbling and then He said, "Hush."

And all was still.

Pluto made a quiet complaint about not being able to see.

Jupiter and Saturn kept on congratulating Earth on her new gift with their booming voices.

Venus was very jealous and stayed quiet.

Then finally, He powerfully said, "Quiet." And there was not another word. He asked his son if he was ready and the son nodded and then He turned over his shoulder to see if the Star was ready and he was as well.

All at once the earth smiled and giggled and the Star expanded and grew and shined more brightly than it have ever shone. Neptune and Mercury cried tears of quiet joy and Pluto continued to complain about not being able to see. Then all the massive bodies turned to wave their goodbyes to the star and he smiled one last bright grin and then faded out. A sacrifice for the Sacrifice.

Then, once again, everything was quiet. Everything waited. Everything was still and good and patient.

Twenty-four

They'll look back on twenty-four and all of their relationships that had gone by the wayside and will say things like:

"But, I learned a lot."

OR

"Whatever."

OR

"It just wasn't meant to be."

OR

"Fuck it."

But what they fail to see through impatiently blinded eyes is the future that is yet to be. The future that has already been created but not brought to fruition. The future that the Big Voice in the Sky has not yet whispered.

Car door.

Jainey has to drink the rest of the gin before she gets out of the car because she knows that if she doesn't that Chris will drink more than his fair share and then she won't be able to get a sufficient drunk and thus will not be able to forget the nights events.

The Robot and the Sparrow.

Coffee Shop

The one on 36th is for the freaks.

The one that sits at Elm and Regan st. is for mathematics grad students.

12th is too small to study in but is always filled with men, ages 36 to 55 playing chess.

49th is always filled with geeks playing games on boards.

Carmen st. is the one where the trendys meet. They have outside seating.

There is one on the second floor of the that laundry mat on 1st but they barely serve coffee.

I think it's a drug front.

Rock Tree st. is the hodgepodge where it's ok to be who you are, but if you go in and don't know what to order everyone gives you an odd look.

There is that Starbucks on 3rd, but...you know.

I bought a coffee maker.

But it's hard to find any oddly shaped older men wearing berets sitting in my kitchen.

Mums.

There were little things that had been changed. He noticed. All of her home-coming memorabilia had been taken down, probably stored away in some dark box in the attic. He walked in hesitantly as if even a slight change in the air pressure of the room would wipe away the memories that were sitting in his mind at that very moment.

The sheets on her bed were still strewn about the mattress and her pillow still had an indention in it.

The room seemed empty and cold. He drew the blinds and opened the window and sunlight came streaming in and filled the room with a bright 9am shine. On her old trunk were pictures from middle school and high school and from when they were dating senior year. On the bookshelf sat the albums that she had made him for every year of college that they had gone through together. He had never really appreciated them but he went and got them down, one by one, and began to flip through them in chronological order.

He started laughing and having vivid flashbacks but soon it was too much and he just rested, sitting against the wall, crying.

He was not sure if he was crying because he was sad or because of the fact that he couldn't help her in the end. But he knew that he loved her with everything that he was. His whole self. The fullness of what someone had made him to be.

He stole a picture of the two of them from one of the albums and put it in his pocket. It was from that time when they were on that hillside with the sun setting in the background. He liked it because the sun made her hair look like it was on fire.

He placed the albums back on the shelf and looked around one last time. He thought about closing the blinds but decided against it knowing that a room like that should never be dark.

The Town Loveless.

The Town Loveless was a place filled with melancholy lives & bowls of depression & every shade of gray imaginable. It was the saddest place you've never known. Even the street lamps had frowns. I suppose that is why she thought herself out of place.

Wouldn't you if your name was Happyson McJoyjoy?

From the bookshop window

What you don’t know about Bernadette is that she was never born.

She just was one day.

On a rainy morning on a corner of some street in some small town she just became. Sadly no one was around to see her become what it was that she was destined to be. I wish that I had been there. Present, there on that rainy street, to see the origins of the woman for whom I love so deeply.

Her hair reminds me of mud if the mud were sprinkled with gold flecks. Her shoulders are deeply freckled and each one overlaps another, telling stories from summers long ago or from some paintbrush held by God.

Across the street from her bakery stands an old bookshop. Sometimes I sit in the bookshop at the window on the bench that has been there since Jesus was a boy. I sit and I watch her hands as they press firmly into the dough of an unbaked loaf of bread or the sticky concoction that will, undoubtedly, become the greatest cookies ever created.

I watch her not in lust or desire. I watch her not for personal enjoyment or because I gain anything from this action. But I watch her because, to me, she is something that I have never seen before and will never see again.

Today it is raining.

I walked to the bakery to see and talk to her. But as I got closer and closer to the bakery I could see that all the windows were covered in brown packing paper and the door handles were gone and replaced with heavy chain and a pad-lock. I tried peering in through slits in the paper-covered windows but could only see flour and yeast covered floors. No tables, no oven, no bowls…no Bernadette.

I turned and looked into the street in utter ponderment, my eyes focusing and re-focusing on the slick-shiny cobblestones. I thought about where she could have gone and why she would ever leave. As my eyes wandered they stopped on a space, a gap, where a stone should have sat. In its place laid a puddle of water. As I looked closer I could see at its bottom a bed of mud sprinkled with gold flecks.

Move.

Who wants to fall in love?

'Cause I'm dyin' over here and this old heart ain't got much left in it so I'm just gun' give it all away from now on until that last of days when my Lord Jesus comes a'runnin' down those stairs of gold.

I ain't got time to waste.

Get to runnin' with me or get out ma' way.

Bean Pole.

The little boy had not meant anything by it but it birthed within him an anger that he could not control. He lashed out yelling, "AUTHOR!? AUTHOR!?" The boy ran for his mother hiding behind her legs and clutching her thighs for safety.

"I am NO AUTHOR!" He screamed at the top of his lungs stomping his feet and pounding clinched fists angrily on a fictional table.

"I'M A FUCKING WRITER!"

The veins of his neck bulged and coiled and undulated like worms reeling for life under his flesh. The beast had been reborn in him. It was no laughing matter. People eyes began to widen, mothers swept up children, husbands shielded wives, a scarecrow of a security guard spoke a few words of haste into a shirt-clipped radio.

"You all think just because you bought the book that your opinions matter to me? well THEY DON'T!"

He sprinted to a table covered in teenaged vampire novels and flipped it with the ease of an angry ogre.

"Is this the kind of crap that YOU WANT?!? Well take it!"

He started grenade tossing books into the crowed of book store customers. As men would approach to stop him he would fast ball the books at them hitting one man square in the eye-ball, the man fell dead with blood oozing from his head. People began running for the door and hiding in between stacks of Fiction-Fantasy and Sci-Fi books. His rage was out, it was present and it had taken him over fully.

Four security guards appeared in front of him varying in age and height and width and tone. A tall, bean pole, black man with a bald head, maybe 40. A thin old woman who was too bored at home after her husband had lost his battle with cancer. A fat pudge roller of a man who had to cut new notches in his security uniform belt which held only keys and a flashlight. And finally, the captain. A shaved head, pierced ear, tattooed punk ass who he hated instantly.

"Really?" mocking the rag tag security crew.

"They're mocking my life's work here!"

The shaved head twenty-something raised his hand in a STOP gesture and said, "Sir, please calm down."

"CALM DOWN! This is who I am you punk ass NOTHING!"

Just then the black, bean pole security guard gestured to one of the store employees to call 911. The book chunker saw this and was enraged. He grit his teeth for all to see and began to vibrate with pure and unadulterated rage.

"I'm not goin' anywhere!"

Just then he felt the weight of something strapped to his shoulder and when he reached for it his hands clutched an AK-47 automatic assault rifle. He raised the gun towards the guards with one hand and waved with the other yelling, "See you in hell you illiterate rumple-shaggers!"

He pulled the trigger and...

Signing the last of the books he looked at the little boy and, through gritted teeth said, "It's writer, not author, I'm a writer."

The girl who spoke in waves.

Eveline walked into her bedroom, laid on her bed, rested her head on the pillow and was asleep instantly. This is her dream.

You see, Eveline is a girl who sees beyond what is there. She is one in whom others find what they are looking for. Eveline is a dreamer in waves.

Eveline walks quietly and with great caution into the blue lit ballroom and her skin shudders and calms all at once. Her eyes roam from side to side and all the tables and chairs and center pieces and lighting arrangements watch her as she moves. Her dress sways like a ripple in gold water and her skin if pinkish with hues of tan and khaki and yellow and orange. Her skin is perfect. There is water outside the windows and in it float IV bags filled with clear liquid and amongst them swim small balls of light that speak to her but she can't understand them. They are too beyond what she needs to know.

Then all at once she hears the voice in the distance that is coming from beyond the velvet curtains of the ballroom and they speak softly and comfort her and then they are gone and she knows. They tell her, "It's OK my baby. You can do it."

Her alarm rings from the other side of the room and she gets up to smash the snooze button. She stumbles drunkenly back to the edge of the bed and rests her face in her hands and begins to weep and say softly, "I know, i know, i know..."

She gets dressed. She drives to the hospital. She checks in. She walks to her mother's room. She speaks quietly and softly and gently and lovingly to her. She calls in the Doctor. She cries her goodbyes.

"Them" or "Shiva" or "People that keep me from falling into pits"

They write on the insides of books and the walls of hearts.

Their intentions are scribbled in bathroom stalls and the heart of God.

Their cars are chariots for the spirit,

their feet carry them to and fro on the winds of God's will.

Those around them do not know,

but among them walk the living dead.

Their voices sound like voices

but if you are an angel they sounds like symphonies.

Their eyes are green and blue and brown

and all of the regular colors,

but when they close them they see bright white

light and colors that man has not yet named.

They listen to things that no one can hear

and do things when called to action by individuals

who are not seen that reside in places never visited.

These are the people who keep me from falling into pits.

The Whale, The Fox and Mr. Bagell (Full Edit I)

The Whale, The Fox and Mr. Bagell (Revised/whole)

Part I

I am sitting next to the lake. I have been holding this orb of light in my hands for over two hours and I can’t look away. Not even for a second. Not even for the sake of being aware of anything that might be of harm to me.

I found it.

I found it in the dark.

I found it in the place where no one ever looks.

I found it when I didn’t even want it.

I sit on this cold rock and my feet sink into the silt muck of the lakeshore. The muck oozes through my toes like it did in my youth when I would run along the shoreline and my dad would watch form under the tree with the rope swing and he would yell out, “Faster Jonny, Faster”.

The house is far away to the east and the rest of my family sleeps soundly in their beds with their covers tucked in around their necks like scarves and their toes poke out from under the sheets because it helps to keep them cool in the warm night.

I am not worried about anything.

It’s almost as if I have never worried about anything in my whole life.

The water is still and calm and rested and it looks like glass; glass that someone might be abele to walk across. Then he is there at my side. His fur is a dark orangey red and his tail is white white white. The eyes in his foxy head are yellow like the fire you find between the orange fire and the blue fire when your burning smores in your backyard. His name is Pure and he talks quietly to me about staying calm and remembering what love means and how this will all end for some but that for me it’s only the blink of the beginning. He tells me about staying on the narrow road and about remembering rules that are coated in gold and blood and about fighting the good fight.

Pure has a very thick coat and his tail seems to exude light from its end. His voice is like a warm cloak that sets itself upon my mind and my heart and my soul and it makes me feel like the broken pieces of me are being knitted back together. He speaks very slowly and very quietly and as I stare at the orb I strain to catch every last letter that drips from his mouth. And then as if he were never there I am alone again there on the rock with my toes sinking in the mucky siding of the lake.

No paw prints.

No fur on the mud.

No smell of canine or fox or whatever it is that they are.

Time has past but how much I am not sure.

It’s then that the orb I am holding, Whale I will call it, begins to change color. I wish with the fullness of my whole being that I could in some form or fashion describe to you these colors. But, I do not know their names or their hues or their origins and my mind is not large enough or wide enough to capture them fully and because of this I apologize with the deepest of feeling because if I were to accurately describe them I am sure that your whole life would be better and more complete.

Whale shows me things.

Whale turns memories into lessons.

Whale loves me so he scolds me.

Whale makes a char filled brain clean and clear.

Whale showed me all of his colors and shapes and then inside of him I began to see them. They danced around and were all connected and were all made of the colors that Whale had been showing me. There was no sound but I could still hear them singing and stomping their feet and slapping their thighs. Whale never spoke but I could feel his words on my heart like stickers from the field sticking into the soles of me feet. They were there to stay; they were never going to be taken away.

They clung but not in a needy way.

They wanted to be there.

I wanted them there more than they wanted to be there.

I am not sure if this is true.

Whale dimmed and those that were in him went away and the colors reverted back to white and everything in my head got still and quiet again. My inability to divert my gaze was cut and my head jerked back and my eyes rolled like ping-pong balls in their sockets and my face rushed with blood and I fell back-first to the cool earth and passed out.

I think it has been ten minutes.

The air still feels the same and the stars seem to be in the same places they were before. The moon still low in the east.

The orb sat cradled in the deep mud of the lakes shore and inside it was what seemed to be a low burning candle. The flame was low and it flickered and it did not give off much light but for some reason I do not feel like Whale will ever go out. Ever. Never. Ever.

I sat up and the wet shirt on my back clung to my skin and my body is cool and I feel relaxed and very tired. I look out on the lake and I see a figure on the other side. It is large and roundish in the center and it saunters in big lumbering steps from side to side and it takes me a few moments to realize but the figure is walking the edge of the shore and is coming towards me. He’s hugeness scares me very much. The blood in my heart pumps much more quickly and I can hear it in my ears like a sledgehammer against conrete.

He?

Is it a male?

Yes, He.

He.

He stands before me and I stare up at him, ninety-degrees up. The kind of up that people talk about when they are referring to skyscrapers or hot air balloons directly overhead. He is a bear. He’s not a bear that I have ever seen nor is he one that I can affiliate with species that I have seen on the television or in books. His fur is flowing but thick and rough like straw and his paws remind me of large mitts of leather and knives. Hit snout and teeth deserve respect and so I do and I step back a few feet remembering not to trip over Whale who lies dim behind me.

He stares out over the lake and over the land and up at the stars and at the moon and he sniffs loudly and he blinks frequently. At this point I am unsure as to whether or not he knows I am even there. But then he speaks.

“Quite the evening I must say.”

His voice is so deep that I can feel my ear drums vibrate and rattle. My heart murmurs and stops for a split second and my breath is knocked out of me and I go blind. I blink and my sight is regained and tears stream down my face while catching a breath floating by on the cool evening breeze. The lungs in my chest fill and I feel life come into my body. My eyes focus and everything is silhouetted and the hair on the back of my neck rises and falls.

“Do you not think so?”

I am still catching my breath and try to push out a yes towards his face that towers above me. The bear speaks very slowly and lingers on words and meditates on every thought that is spoken.

He seems brilliant.

He seems to know a lot about things that I don’t.

He seems to eat well.

His voice reverses the invention of fear.

“Bagell’s the name.”

I am unsure as to what my next move should be. I keep exchanging glances between Mr. Bagell and the stars that sit atop his head. Brilliance sat atop his shoulders.

“Do you know Whale?

I ask it like a child. I ask it as though his answer might complete my life. I ask in it such a way so that I am prepared for my whole life to change. His face twists and his eyes wonder and he scratches under his chin and picks me up and places me on his shoulder.

“Walking is a good way to spend a conversation.”

I didn’t agree or disagree. The drop from his shoulders was easily twenty feet so I was along for the ride weather I wanted to be or not. The fur on his shoulders is thick and very comfortable and so we began our walk along the edge of the lake.

“I know Whale.” He said with bass in his throat. “Have you met Fox? I love Fox”.

I say, “Yes, I met Fox while my feet were in the mud.”

“Fox is very quiet. Fox speaks for me most of the time.” Mr. Begell says.

All of this seems very vague and simple. I want to know if this bear knows Whale and if he does, what is Whale? Who is Fox? Why am I not in bed?

Part II

I am cold and my butt is numb and the door creaked as I walked into the cabin where the rest of my family was asleep. My watch got water in it when I was swimming four days earlier and so now I can’t tell what time it is but the sun is peeking up over the tree line so I know that I have to get in bed now or my parents will know that I was gone all night.

Mr. Bagell talked so slowly that in the time we spent together he only made out about seven or eight whole sentences. That’s fine though, everything he said was gold, pure gold that glimmered in a night so dark that without his words we would not have known where we were going.

I am so tired.

How are my eyes open?

Where are my shoes?

I don’t care.

Brother is sleeping in a ball on his bed with no covers and the only thing he has on are his whitey tighties. He’s twelve but when people my parents know get invited over to the house my brother talks to them as if he were an old Englishman with a vocabulary that resembles that of the child of a dictionary and an etiquette manual for young adults.

I’m undressed with my shorts on and as I lie here my calves are burning and my head is spinning and my butt is still numb because, even though Mr. Bagell is a nice and kind individual, his shoulder is not. His fur is thick and when I sat in it I sank but after a short time the hair began to itch the back of my legs and without being able to maneuver much I was stuck with a numb butt for some time.

I can’t remember anything.

I can’t remember what he said.

I can’t recall one single word.

Did he even speak?

I fall asleep with my hair sticking with sweat to my forehead and a light steam rising from the damp warmth of my chest.

I am asleep.

Part III

I am awake.

My watch is completely lifeless now. The incessant ticking that I had once found so unbelievably annoying was now gone and it made me sad. That was my dad’s watch and his dad’s before him.

Mom is in the garden, Dad on the porch, brother most likely in the woods and sister is asleep in her crib in the back room that was once a sewing room but is now her room and not a sewing room. My mother, when I was younger would make all of my clothes back in that room but now I am too old and I prefer to get my clothes from the stores in the city.

I am walking outside when I see Whale. He’s just sitting there in the middle of mom’s garden in a patch of kale. Mom doesn’t even notice him. Dad doesn’t notice him.

Is he there?

Can they see him?

He is still dim.

In the garden?

I am not going to go out to him yet because I never go into the garden and my mom will be wondering why I am all of the sudden taking interest in the garden and if she hasn’t seen Whale yet then she definitely will and due to this a lot of questioning will happen and I have no answers about anything. So I stay inside. I walk back to my room and I sit down on the bed. I have to go to the Lake.

Put shirt on.

Open window.

Go out window.

Run to lake.

“FOX?!”

“FOX?!”

“FOOOOX?!”

I am not very interested in Mr. Bagell right now because he talks much too slowly and I need answers and I need them in a quick fashion. I think Fox can help me in this way.

“FOX?!”

The dirt of the lakeside is drying and cracking and my toes have nothing to sink into so I just sit on the rock again and look out onto the water and wonder if I really just dreamt everything last night. But that couldn’t be because my calves were still sore this morning and my shirt still had mud on it from the lake.

“Fox!” I yelp.

“Hello boy, why are you yelling so?”

“Do you know Whale?” I ask.

“Yes, I know Whale. He is Me and I am He and We are We.”

I am confused and I fear that if I ask Fox why Whale is in my mother’s garden that he will give me an answer to which I will need an equation to understand. So I stay quiet. Fox has never looked at me. He just looks out at nothing I suppose. He is very still and I try to pet him but my arm can’t ever seem to reach him no matter how close he seems but he is always near.

Fox’s tale I have told you about. His paws are perfect white even when he walks through the mud and the field and the water and the muck. His nose is black like death and his eyes are deep and dark and they taunt me with the wondering thought that they just might hold the answers to the universe. His fur is a shade of orange that Whale showed me.

“Fox, who are you?”

“I am your helper, boy.”

“OK.”

I decide to not ask him about Whale but rather I go straight to the point.

“Fox, I need you to get Whale out of my mom’s garden.”

“Boy, I can’t do that. Whale is everywhere. You will be seeing much of him now.”

I turn to ask him what he means but as I turn he is gone and a wind blows and my hair flips up over my ear and I see some clouds rolling in. It’s going to rain. I head home.

Part IV

“Boy.”

“Boy, come to me, boy.”

I am sitting in a kitchen chair balancing on the back two legs trying to keep myself from touching the wall behind me. I am facing west with the sun streaming in through the bronze screen door onto my face and my bare chest. I am skinnier than normal this summer and my mother continues to fill my plate at dinner with more food than I could eat even if I were starving. She thinks me to be sickly. I’m just not hungry.

“Boy.”

I had been ignoring it for about fifteen minutes when I knew that I had to get up and see where the voice was coming from.

Whale.

The orb sits in a nook of the huge oak tree that rests at the corner of the front yards eastward fence line. Dad and mom are sitting on the porch in the warmth of the summer sun drinking hard tea and holding hands. Brother is down at the lake fishing with Timothy Gurman; a local boy who lives on the next ranch to the west. Sister is lying fast asleep on a blanket in-between my mom and dad on the porch.

“Boy.”

It’s a loud but gentle whisper that carries with it a wind, a breeze.

“Here I am boy.”

I look at mom and dad. They hear nothing.

“Boy, I am here in the branches. Come to me.”

I look back one more time to see my parents with eyes closed and heads reclined back onto the chairs where they sit. I move slowly towards and tree keeping one eye on Whale and one eye on my parents.

Still no movement.

Everything quiet.

Am I deaf?

The grass is cool under my feet.

“Boy, are you listening?”

This is the first time Whale had ever asked me a direct question and I was confused because he had no mouth or ears or anything to justify a response from a sane person of sound judgment. Why should I, a sane young man, be talking to a glowing orb?

“I’m listening.” I was.