calliope

           Calliope leaned close to Sonya and whispered, "Come on. Let's go somewhere."
           The hospital room had become a boy's clubhouse. Reefer talk, newspaper talk, and a garden-variety guy talk loaded with the storm-seeds of a pissing contest.
            Silently, like ninjas they departed: sleek winds blowing down the corridor.
            Two counter-culture chicks bonding with every step.
            In the shade of an elm there was a pushcart falafel vendor on the sidewalk corner.
             Aromas were over-powering.
             The women smiled and walked up to the man with a red bandana tied around his head.
            "Doud, how's it going?" Calliope asked.
            "Very fine! Give me a hug!"
            They hugged, and he squeezed her ass. Old friends.
             Sonya grinned, thinking, This is a very sexy man!
             "Doud, this is Sonya."
             "M'lady--"
             She shook his offered hand, discovering a delicate, almost mincing grip.  Wow! This is so cool!
              "We need two falafel supreme, and two sides of feta and black olive salad," Calliope said.
              "Coming right up!"
              Sonya had never eaten falafel, and was relieved to see it served on pita bread. Like a gyro.
              They took the food over to a bench on the grass.
              A little park bordered a pond with Canadian geese.
              "My new friend!" Sonya gushed. "Calliope!"

apache

          Macomber fixed a mug of what he called Café con Leche, using Pet Milk and Instant Maxwell House. Radio: "Good Morning, Vietnam!" and then it was the Animals, We Gotta Get Outta This Place! He lit a Lucky and opened the new Stars and Stripes.
           Fucking Erskine Brown walked in and sat down with him at the card table. Face registering shock.
           "No Freedom Bird for Morrison," he said.
           "What are you talking about, Douche Bag?"
           "The dude's dead."
           "I saw him leave this morning."
           "Never made it. He was standing in line at departure when  rockets hit Tan Son Nhut. One came through the ceiling and took him out."
            "Christ--! Say, where'd you hear this?
            "Spider Monkey down at the mess."
            "Oh, man. Can anything suck more than that?"
            "That's how Charlie is gonna win this war," Jones stated. "One thousand cuts and a little bit of terror--"
             "Break our resolve--"
             "Whose resolve? I want outta here."

                                                                                          *

              Macomber often took work home with him. He sat now on his cot, cropping pictures. Hated cropping pictures. Why? he asked himself. There was nothing to it.
              Most people hated proof-reading. For some reason he found it painless.
              Same with writing headlines.
              His boss, Master Sergeant Kwilecki frowned upon this after-hours activity, but, knowing how flakey Macomber  was, and figuring it would ensure making deadline, he said OK.  "But, the first time you lose something, Son,you're ass is grass, and I'm the fucking lawn-mower!"
              Beer.
              All work required beer, and so he was on the third one.
              Radio was playing I'm a Girl-Watcher when Erskine Jones flapped in wearing a Hawaiian shirt with his fatigue pants. "Hi Guy," he grinned, bucktoothed fool. "Not gonna get any Am Dao sweating in here!"
              Am Dao. Pussy.
              "Nope," Macomber clucked. "Right about that."
              And that got him thinking about Nguyen, and her platinum blond blushing-pink-slit beaver.
              "Hey, Mac, ya got a brewsky for me?"
              "Help y'self."

                                                                                          *

               Brown drank all the remaining beer, three of them, belched, farted, and then bummed a Lucky. Macomber smirked and shook his head. "You're a real piece of work, Ersky."
               Off came the Hawaiian shirt, then the fatigue pants, then the GI skivvies.
               "Well," Brown stated. "It's time for Long Dong to hit the shower."
   
                                                                                           *

                By the time Brown returned, wearing soapy shower clogs, Macomber was putting his work away, filed in a manila accordion folder.
                "Hey, Mac, what do you know about that gook girl they called Apache?"
                "The sniper who could capture guys, slice off their eyelids during interrogation, making sure everybody on Hill 55 could hear them screaming?"
                 "Yeah, that's the one."
                 "Story's bullshit."






             

Look where a bad attitude will get you

                    Blinding Texas sun reflected from the tarmac as if the ground were covered with snow. Macomber wore wire rim shades similar to those worn by Donald Sutherland in M*A*S*H , standing outside the hanger where an F4 Phantom was parked. He sucked on a breath mint. Lunch at the NCO club consisted of two whiskeys and a Slim Jim. Now he was managing the information booth for the Thunderbirds' Air Show at Randolph AFB, once famed as Westpoint of the Air. He hated public relations. He hated bullshit. He hated Tech Sergeant Timothy McSween, a dumb fuck who could give anybody a bad attitude.
                      "Macomber! I thought I told you to remove those sunglasses!"
                      "Indeed, Sergeant. And I explained these are prescription specs. I need them to see what I'm doing."
                      "Macomber, I don't see you doing anything!"
                      "Fuck you."
                      "I'll have one of your stripes!"
                      "Oh, gee. Well, I'm glad you're not gonna have me sent to Vietnam."
                      "Now that's a thought."


                                                                                              *

                       "Well, here I am in 'Nam," he said to himself for the millionth time, stropping a straight razor.
                       After a Barbasol shave and a splash of Lilac Vegetal  he would be a new man, hanging to the customary left once he had his skivvies on.
                        "Hey, pervert! Put some damn pants on!"
                        Erskine Brown popped him with a wet towel.
                        "Ersky, you're in the know. Are they going to unlock the armory anytime soon, or are they going to wait until Charlie delivers a telegram?"
                        "All I know is you and I each have an M-16 assigned to us and kept under lock and key. Master Sergeant Massey has the key."
                        "Massey carries an old M-14 and an even older Colt 1911."
                        "Which he owns personally."
                       
                                                                                           *

                         Macomber dropped off a roll of Tri-X at the photo shack.
                         "Expedite, OK?"
                         Mister Tran looked up from his paperwork and frowned. He glanced back at Tech Sergeant Morrison behind him, holding fresh glossies. "Rush rush rush, all the time rush."
                          "Like it's the Hindenberg," Morrison groaned. "All right Ace, leave 'em here and come back in an hour."
                           "Thanks, Sarge. Tran."
                           Macomber had snapped a batch showing Vietnamese kids kicking up water in a rice paddy.
                           "Lemme see your piece for a moment," Morrison asked. "Your stuff isn't as good as it used to be."
                           Macomber handed over his trusty Mamiya-Sekor 1000 DTL, a 35mm single lens reflex he had bought in San Antonio.
                            "And that extra lens too. Wanna check 'em both."
                            Macomber dug into his camera bag and took out a Vivatar 85-205 mm zoom lens, also bought Stateside.
                            Morrison had the bedside manner of a Flight Surgeon with a cancer patient.
                            Few moments later, the verdict was in.
                            "All fucked up with mildew. It's all over the mirror inside. The lens is shoddy. Sorry, Ace. Did anybody ever tell you, with those hippie glasses you look like that guy in The Doors?"

Macomber

               A wisp of ash from his Lucky Strike fell onto his olive drab undershirt. Macomber flicked it off and sat up. His cot stank of monsoon. Fungus between his toes, congo creeping crud, itched damnation. "Fuck it," he said. Dousing the immolation with Jack Daniel's: "I baptize thee in the name of unholy revelation."
                The jungle sat upon his hootch. He could hear the beating of its green heart. Words from the Rig Veda: there was neither non-existence nor existence; there was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond.
                 The sky above the rain throbbed with the bruising of the air: chopper blades. The Huey, gray as a dragon's foreskin, its snout daubed with a huge Day-Glo vagina, clambered down Jacob's Ladder with Intel that could not wait.
                 Macomber tried to meditate. His mind closed in on a flamingo lily, or boy flower, hermaphrodite and poisonous to eat. Penis on a platter, the botonist from Hue had called it. Her name was Nuyen, and it had been a month since they kissed behind the bamboo in a small garden where she worshipped her ancestors. Beneath the shade of a green papaya he kissed her almond eyes and then, lifting the gauzy blouse slightly, her brown belly-button.
                  "Wake up, Macomber." Erskine Brown, the cowboy from Flatbush smirked. Floral boxers and dogtags.
                  "I wasn't sleeping."
                  "Whatever. Your eyes were closed."
                  "The hell you want?"
                  "Peace and Love."

                                                                                            *

                   Dusky slats of light fell from French Colonial shutters across Nuyen's belly, guiding his hands and then, slowly, his lips. She had bleached her hair platinum. The thatch excited him. Her inspiration came from either a Japanese art film or a whore she had seen in Saigon. Either way, he didn't care. She rolled over upon her breasts and began to croon his favorite song. By the time I get to Phoenix she'll be rising--
                    "Play with me," she commanded.
                    Macomber stroked his guitar and it sang. Just like Glen Campbell.
                 

Smash-up

                   Sycamore leaf, maybe maple, gummed together with sap, cluttered the dirt road out of Gresham's Wood like origami landcrabs, scattering beneath the tread of the Skell Van. Brother Ambrose drove as rapidly as the route permitted. There were few curves. Lumber czar James "Mess Hall" Gresham had carved it straight as a plumbline through the wilderness. A crepuscule light gradually dimmed. Orc-like tree shadows shifted like phantoms. Headlights fired weak yellow cones of illumination into the deepening gloom. Suddenly between them stood Gresham's great elk. Massive, immobile as cold cement, barring further trespass.
                       The driver skidded the Skell Van into tanglewood, climaxing abruptly in the lap of a giant spruce. He smacked the windshield with his forehead just above the third eye and a shroud of darkness fell upon him like a guillotine blade.

                                                                                  *

                    Innuit intuition told her something terrible had happened to her man and the Skell Van. She put down the paint brush and stepped back from the mural, which was growing quite well in a surreal state of mind. Brother Ambrose had spoken of his late wife Cherry Blossom, whose mural enhanced the van. Sonya shivered, rushed headlong from the church, up the greenwood trail, into the night.  The Skell Van was totalled. From all the blood, as if streaming from a Crown of Thorns, on his face, she thought Brother Ambrose  was also totalled. She knelt by his side and keened into the night.

                                                                                   *

                       Artie Hoffman eased open the door to Semi-private Room 226 and peered inside. He saw a stunning olive-skinned young woman with dark Mediterranean hair sitting at a bedside. Her black Nirvana tee-shirt had been sheared just below her breasts. Intricate jade tattoos covered her arms from shoulder to wrist,  leafy Amazon rain forest. The guy in the bed looked like a pickup truck pot vendor. Artie saw a resemblance to Kurt Cobain, but figured it was something subliminal generated by the woman's tee-shirt. A paperback book lay on the bed. "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross" by John Allegro.
                          "Excuse me," Artie said. "Looking for Brother Ambrose."
                          "Mister Zig-Zag. Yeah, in the other bed. Hi, name's Macomber, and this is Calliope."
                          "Artie Hoffman."
                          "Newspaper man."
                          Artie sighed. "Yep."
                          "Used to be in the wordsmith trade myself. Well, look. Everything's cool. Your friend is sleeping. I think."
                          "Say, how did you come to calling him Mister Zig-Zag?"
                          "By his own admission."
                          From behind the privacy curtain a raggedy voice: "Artie. Is that you?"
                          "Yeah man, it's me."
                          "Come on over."
                          Ziggy looked like the Mummy, or maybe The Invisible Man, wrapped in gauze and self-adhesive stretch tape.
                           "How're you doin', Lazarus?"
                           "Back from the dead. That's right."
                           "So you're Mister Zig-Zag again."
                           "I can explain."
                           Artie pulled up a chair. "Indulge me."
                            "Macomber over there is reading a book about amanita muscana mushroom. I let it out that I knew something about it."
                            "What about it?"
                            "It grows real well during the winter in California. You can find it among bishop and monterey pine."
                             Artie clasped his friend's gnarly hand. "Good to have you back, Ziggy."
                             Someone else had come into the room. It was like a disturbace in the air.
                              They heard Macomber say, "Hi. Can I help you?"
                               A small voice. "Looking for my old man."
                               "Mister Zig-Zag, there's a young Eskimo lady here to see you!"
                               "Sonya! Come here, babe."
                               Sonya stood by Ziggy's bed. She said, "You're not the same person."

Bee's Wax

                Felicity McBride loved to talk about people, but never about her father, the lighthouse keeper who blew out his brains when she was eight. He had been a morose reclusive man suiting himself in raw solitude, leaving a seldom-visited wife and daughter in a coastal shantytown not far from land's end. Actually, it was the sky that killed him. Observing his actions night and day, it was an all-seeing eye much like the one on a dollar bill. It ruled the limitless void beyond his jumbled mind, and yet, it hovered so close behind the right ear lobe that the man could feel a pressure of beating wings. When the existential horror became too great, Captain Wescott removed his Webley service revolver from its desk drawer and ended eveything. Of this Felicity was dead certain.
                 

                                                                                   *

                   Not long after Brother Ambrose and Sonya Chekov departed in the Skell Van, Mary Jane the greengrocer saw Felicity approaching the tent, and noted how advanced the splotches on the old widow's face had become, looking like nipple-sized pink crabs. A gaunt crone in a black gown with stained armpits smelling like wilted roses.
                    "Morning, Mary Jane."
                    "Felicity."
                    "Well guess who came knocking yesterday."
                    "Haven't a clue."
                    "That Jew newspaperman. Asked me what it was exactly I saw going on at that hippy church down near Gresham's Wood, the one that used to be a barn. It seems he gets news from the sherrif's blotter."
                     "Yah--yeah, folks like to read stuff like that, especially the way Scoop slants it. Petty crime, domestic disputes. Arrests. All from the record. It's like reading good gossip."
                      "That's what worries me. He's liable to make me sound like a jackass. Instead of taking that preacher to task."
                      "Felicity, you're the one who ratted, instead of minding your own bee's wax."
                      "You offend me, Mary Jane."
                      "I'm sorry. But you are such a nosy person. What in God's name were you doing down there anyway? That's quite a walk from your--"
                       Felicity whirled like a black-robed dervish, losing her balance in a moment of lightheadedness, and strode off as if a bee had stung her in the ass. If Mary Jane's tent had sported a door, Felicity would have slammed it shut.

                                                                              *

                         Kirkland McBride had left Felicity with modest income, a 401K and an 1890 house, painted pearly white, with two gables and a gingerbread front porch. At the end of the porch was a parlor window. The elegant little room waiting inside, forever in breathless gloom, had a mahogany mantel where a clock's stentorian tick-tock suggested the passage of time. Kirkland McBride's ashes were treasured in a brass urn.

                                                                            *

                            Scoop found Sheriff Ito Tanaka in freshly starched khakies at his desk closely observing the hesitation waltz of a Mexican jumping bean. His black hair was pasted to a porcelain scalp showing male-pattern baldness, giving him a samurai look.
                             "What the hell, Ito?"
                             "Look how it moves. Isn't that something?"
                             "Yeah. Magic, I guess."
                             "Moth larva, inside, moving around."
                             "I gather this is not a busy day."
                             Although the Mexican jumping bean had given him an occult insight toward solving a cold-case murder, the sheriff blushed like a schoolboy caught peeking down a girl's blouse. Then, annoyed, he crooked an eyebrow.
                              "What can I do for you, Hoffman?"
                              "Tell me what Widow McBride saw out at Gresham's Wood."
                              Ito cracked a grin. "An orgy. A satanic orgy. Naked people fucking and hollering and having a damn good time."
                              "You're kidding."
                              "I'm kidding. She's got a screw loose somewhere. What she actually saw was an old fashion baptism. Full immersion. Blub blub."
                               Scoop smiled wistfully. "I see. My late wife was a Mormon. They do the same thing."

                                                                                *

                                That afternoon Scoop visited Mary Jane and they shared some Green River herbal tea. He told her about Ito Tanaka's Mexican jumping bean.
                                 "That Jap cheechako. What a card!"
                                 "He's a clever little guy. What's a cheechako?"
                                 "Tenderfoot."

Regression

          Mary Jane the green grocer sold her locally grown produce from a tent with perfect location. She owned a vacant lot in the heart of town. Cedar Crossroads, where rush hour traffic clotted for only fifteen minutes, was a nexus for zoning misfits The Wicker Man and Andes Bean Company, a homecrafted furniture store specializing in wicker peacock thrones and a gourmet coffee bar catering to unpublished poets, unemployed grad students and underdressed telemarketers. Mary Jane was a rich heiress free to be a counter-culture Mother Jones. Her fortune had been made by a spruce logging empire supplying that special wood needed for World War One aircraft, chiefly the S.P.A.D. pursuit fighter flown by Captain Eddy Rickenbacker and crew. Mary Jane was one fifth Oregonian Chinook, white complected, with high cheekbones and tanned crowsfeet. She wore her silver hair in a long french braid. Her gray eyes danced with clandestine mirth. Always clad in denim longsleeves and jeans, railroad engineer gloves, scuffed wellington boots, and a floppy straw sombrero tricked out with a bluebonnet scarf. A familiar sight, she garnered a continuous parade of honking motorists. Everybody loved Mary Jane. Especially Sonya Chekov.
            The Skell Van parked in the dirt outside the tent and Sonya lumbered down from the shotgun seat, alarmingly rotund for such a strap of a woman. Mary Jane fancied that gravity would haul the baby out, dropping it like a little Buddha at mother's feet. Sonya's buzzcut whitewalls had sprouted lustrous raven plumage, tips flashing electric amethyst hues of purple and violet. She wore a brown paisley burnoose with the hood gaily thrown back. Her elfin face glowing.
              "Hello, darling," Mary Jane said, waving to Brother Ambrose behind the steering wheel. He returned the wave.
               "Hi, yourself," Sonya smiled.
               "How did he like your arugula?"
               "He ate it all up!"

                                                                           *

                 Mary Jane offered Sonya a puffy sofa seat next to a potbelly stove in the "office."
                 "Take a load off," she said. "And tell me what's on your mind. Something's troubling you."
                 "No. No trouble. Just--"
                 "Just what?"
                 "I wish he would tell me about his dead wife."
                 "The one who visits him in the spirit?"
                 "She used to do that. I sense she has truly passed on."
                 "And you want to know what she was like."
                 "Uh-huh."
                 "Well, why don't you ask him?"
                 "Oh--"
                 "Pick a good time and tell him flat out you'd like him to share her with you."
                 "Yes. That sounds right."
                 "I think so."

                                                                 *

                  "Her name was Cherry Blossom and I was called Ziggy. Short for Mister Zig-Zag because I smoked a lot of grass. We made love all the time. She painted the crazy mural on my old van. What can I say? I don't know where to begin."
                   He forced back a sob, stood up and walked out to the patio balcony. Beneath his checkerboard flannel shirt shoulder blades jutted like wings of a gargoyle.
                   Sonya sat with a ringing in her ears.