No. 1: Night Things

Night Things

The old dogs in the street looked up at the windows of the night, and had pleasant thoughts about night things. The owners of these dogs looked down into the street and watched the dogs, and played songs on their pianos about night things. This went on every night until the deaths of both the dogs and the humans, and every night the moon watched and wondered.

"A sin isn't a sin unless you're caught," Branson the dog would tell the other dogs. "And a man isn't a man unless he has a dog."

The year was 1954, and the world was cold, and dusty. You weren't a respected member of any community without a brown-brimmed hat and a button-up shouldercollar. You didn't know how to be a man unless you bought a fish at the fish deli and rode your auto to the automat. A man wasn't fit if his woman didn't trust his judgment, and wear flowery dresses to the right funerals, and subtle dresses on bus trips. This was a time when pain came in all flavors, fruited stripe and ruby lith.

And back then, the dogs knew. "Don't let a man judge you fully," continued Branson the dog, as the other dogs watched with respect. "Not when his dander's up."

The dogs knew what it was like to feel the tender touch of the opposite sex, and be repulsed a little at the same time. The humans did, also; maybe a little less directly, but they knew. Maybe that's why the dogs and the humans got along so well, despite their clear differences. Maybe that's why the windows and the alleys were linked together so naturally and nicely, and maybe that's why the moon didn't mind if the two species mixed and mingled in a pleasant way. If there really was a Jesus God up there, he knew what was good and what was bad.

The world was like a math problem; a two-line equation in a AA-grade chemistry set. Dogs on the bottom, humans on the top--night air in-between, lofty thoughts and cigarette ash.

I observed it all from afar, from up there in the boiler room, at the casket factory. I was too wary of the way things worked back then to be part of it. I enjoyed watching; I got by. I drank when I was thirsty and ate when I was hungry. I washed my clothes when they became dirty.

The facts are like this:

The southern boiler room was hot in a way that I just couldn't handle. I was used to heat... sour heat, moist heat, the heat of bad men and good men. I was a boiler apprentice in college, and I briefly owned my own boiler practice. Not bad for a farmer from rock country. Everyone who knows me knows I like to play in the sun and cherish the moment. I am not a serious man. I crumble under the strain of responsibility.

You see, during all that time I spent in the boiler room at the casket factory overlooking the dogs and the men, I lusted after the touch of women and the smell of sin (sin that benefited me; sin that soothed my skin), which hindered my position as southern boiler room manager greatly. I embraced my task but I loathed it. My body slowly crumbled every day. The casket factory's temperature needed supervising, and the fates decided I was the one to do it. I was in charge of the amount of sweat on the workers' backs. I was in charge of just how big the frown was on the faces of the old. I was in charge of regulation, irrigation, condensation. In the silent darkness, I used to chant:

Ignore Temptation when it comes;
Pitter, pitter, pat.
Woman flesh appears; I run
Hark! Just like that.
And rain will hit the roof, and I
Will plug up the window pane.
And that's the way a man today
Will slowly go insane.
So bottled up I stay in here,
Inside the heat and I
Will enjoy my moments, in a way,
Until the day I die.
So hush, my darlings;
Pitter, pitter, pat.
Woman flesh appears; I run.
Hark! Just like that.

We all must accept responsibility and make the most of it. Squeeze it, break it, mold it into something worthless to everyone but ourselves. Curse those who do not understand the power of a steady responsibility! Curse those who stand in the ways of those who are right and just. Curse the heat and the men who made it.

Each day, I would descend the long marble steps leading to the boiler room. As I entered, I was greeted with a room similar to a prison cell, devoid of the proof and promise of human life. My perch was in the center of the room, which was filled with knobs and dials and elaborate, cold machinery. I did my job and I did it right, but each decision made me wince, each result made me cry.

And during all the time that I toiled in my private office high atop the town, I watched the men, and I watched the dogs, and I watched the way they reacted to each other. Maybe one day I would be worthy of either joining the men or the dogs, but, at that moment, I was content with my position. You know, it's not so bad to have a place to be and just stay there forever. It's not so bad to have a little purpose. Some people go their whole lives without knowing which horse they want to ride, which carnival they want to go to, the one on the East side of town, or the one on the West. Some people eat and sleep in the same room.

Sometimes, in the concentrated hot darkness of my solitary workplace, I would begin to imagine that I was in a vast, lonely desert. In that moment, it was comforting, like a mother slave that I could extract milk from when I needed to.

I would act out a new life in there, and squeeze through the pain a little bit. A scenario slowly developed over time, and I honed it, and gave it tender attention and appreciation. I would begin to narrate aloud. It went like this:

"We brought the shovels, and we brought the picks, and the iron nails, and the corduroy patches, and the blueberry cottonseed. The sun beat down on us intensely, and the jagged desert rocks began to shift and change in front of my eyes as I suffered from mild heatstroke. Our supplies were hard on the camels' backs, and Mary would whisper "I'm sorry" occasionally, leaning close to her camel's head and making eye contact with it. Mary is my favorite wife.

"It is my belief that a person doesn't truly understand what it is like to own a working human body until he has been thrust into the desert, and has experienced a throat of sandy holes, of vacant, scabbed pink honeycombs. It hurts to live in the desert, with the sun, the rocks, the camels, the supplies, the wife. Each movement is strenuous and poisonous and risky. Energy should not be wasted in the rainless land. The pockets of the Earth where pain is most plentiful should be taken seriously. The pain should cause intimidation and fear.

"My wife always looked so beautiful when she was experiencing torturous pain. The most tender things of this world are at their peak when they are being tortured, when their essence is unbridled and open and free. There is a beauty in pain, hot like the sun and the rocks and the sand. Mary sat high on that camel with authority and grace. I had been sitting on my camel with a clumsy fear, so I was respectful of Mary's technique. I looked at Mary, and the sand, and the sun, interchangeably, for many hours. It was a holy trinity, an honest cycle. If I was going to die, I was going to die observing all that I was being offered.

"Curse the physical world... curse the sandy winds that blow, and the hot black clouds, and the vast, solid beige sea. Curse the series of events that make up a life; curse the wrong decisions made at the wrong times. Curse the way the world's physical things feel on my hands, and the way I react to their touch. Curse mother for making this all possible.

"Curse sunny days; the firey rays do something awful to my ways. Like candlelight inside the night, I'm always in a daze.

"There is an undying temptation to emphasize the dramatics when describing an event like this. What you must understand is that any pain you have felt in your life is an abomination and a lie when compared to a pain of hopelessness in the hot, hot sun.

"Mary is a noble person. She always knows what to say in any given situation; she is an excellent conversationalist and host. This journey in the raging soulless desert brought her to her knees. She began murmuring softly, methodically, without emphasis or tone. She began to recite rhymes from her childhood, and she began to list every item of clothing her father wore when she was a child, and she listed grocery receipts and laundry lists and the last time the moon waxed and wained.

"I tried to comfort her, but she would respond only by hitting and swearing and cursing our blessed lord. Two people who are riding camels together in an empty sand-plain should strive to get along at all times; to function as a team and win, and win, and win. Mary only wanted us to lose, and her delirium was holding us back. It was holding us back from the prize.

"I am a firm believer in ownership. I love the beauty of objects, and I want them all. As a result, I am wary of what is real. I don't trust the physical things.

"When I look at a water mass, am I looking at a water mass? When I look at a sink, am I looking at a sink? I can reach out and touch the sink and the water mass, but I can reach out and touch a friend, or a family member, or an animal. I don't trust the physical things!

"'Pretty, pretty little kitty,' sung Mary quietly, perched on her camel. 'You're so soft and smooth and witty. I love the way you coo and play and perform before the cat committee. Stay cozy in your garbage can; tonight's the night of the kitty plan.'

"'Stop it!' I protested. 'Can we have silence, Mary? Can we hear our camels trot?'

"'When kitty chews a blossom fruit, simple minds will find,' said Mary. 'That kitty, timid and sincere, is in a ghastly bind. She coos too much and chews too much and always leaves the rind!'

"'Mary,' I said. 'We are in danger of death. The sand is getting deeper and deeper, and the sun is getting hotter.' I paused. 'We will burst to flames, Mary... the two of us. We'll turn into horrible, unusable, pink sour flames!' Another pause. 'Is that what you want, Mary?'

"Mary was smiling, but tears were running down her cheeks.

'Pretty ladies in the shade,' said Mary. 'Drinking rum and lemonade. What will the burly husbands think of wifey's sinful liquid drink?'

"'Mary...'

"'Maybe they will beat or howl, or gamble at the horse corral.'

"'Mary...'

"'Or mayhaps they will turn their house's halls into dirty chamber walls!'

"'Mary...'

"'Regardless, they will find a way to make the dreadful wifies pay.'

"There was a piercing silence in the desert, as darkness fell and the animals howled."

I would always end this dream with laughter, and applause, simulating the laughter and applause I was sure to get when the world saw the purity in something to real and true. I would sit back in my chair, and smile, and dream of the things to come. Then I would snap to and realize that I was doomed to be in the heat forever, in the darkness and the dankness and the hell, the hell, the hell! It was okay, though. I found my bed and I tucked the sheets tight.

I want to tell you something. I would like to believe that a person can exist in the world without the touch of another human, but I have slowly found that this is not a realistic prospect. As you lay in bed alone at night, looking over the window and watching the clouds change, something begins to happen. A warmth and a coldness develop and stir inside you, and a horrible pain sprouts out and overtakes your worthless body resting in the sheets. The pain of missingness comes out, and you crave a mass of flesh to match yours, and you can't fathom another second without a touch, and things start to come crashing down a little, and then a lot, and then you're screaming and crying and urinating ten times a night, in the sheets, and there is thick hot blood. Your penis has spasms and the flesh around your testicles erupts and burns and shifts and changes, like the jagged desert rocks in my audio play.

There was an epilogue:

"The jagged desert rocks! Mary was spread out on them, sleeping. She looked so beautiful when she was inactive. I was reminded of simpler times, honest times, the times of responsibility and purpose. As I looked at my wife sprawled out on nature's hardness, a feeling of comfort and fear pulsated in my heart."

That was my favorite part. I considered it a wonderful ending; a hopeful ending. Around this time my shift was through, and I used the large key the casket workers had given me four years ago on my first work day, and climbed three stories of yellow stairs down to my living quarters, the sub-sub basement, the palace of dirt and dreams.

By this point, I wasn't sure what was real. I know I never had a wife named Mary, and I knew I had never been in a desert train. I knew I was a good person, though, and I knew I loved my mother and treated those who loved me honorably and well. I slept all right at night and always fed the clown fish.

But each night, as I pulled the covers close and began to drift into temporary nothingness, I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to be a dog and see night things, or be a human and see night things. I was in-between. I only observed. One time I saw a fireworks show but I could only see hints of it through accidental fence cracks.