Please hide...

Skins are so transparent...
Or perhaps my sense to keen...

I sip my drink and nod my head...
I watch the puppet show...

I try to rest my eyes on the surface you present...

But there you are...
Operating beneath the surface...
So out of sync with your waxy shell...

And if I close my eyes...
your spoken word says so much...
And your silence says so much more.

I feel uncomfortable knowing...
I wish I had no clue...
So I tell you that I can see...

Your shell rebuffs but now the inside is looking back at me...

I tell you all I know in earnest...
I make no judgments...
I only wish to disclose...
Your eyes grow wide when you realize...
You're uncomfortable now...

The surface becomes rigid...
You try to measure what you reveal...

You feel as though I've looked through your open widow...
And so do I

Wisdom on the shelf from a father at arms reach.

My child my child... How I yearn to teach you...

A cow... my child... will walk round and round a hill all day to reach the top. Don't be a cow my child.

A hog... my child... will eat acorns under a tree all day... and never once look up to see from whence they came. Don't be a hog my child.

A horse... my child... will hear each twig that snaps... each clap of thunder... each slamming stable door and hear a horse eater... Don't be a horse my child.

A goat... my child... will leap into a rain barrel. So certain of its place that it doesn't stop to look. Don't be a goat my child.

Wandering again

Over moss covered crypts on Hickory Hill... The trees grow heavy in the Southern light.

In the craggy canyon of Devils Jump... The shallows bid the sun goodnight.

Behind the silent knoll called Edwins rock... The shadows reach far and wide.

Under the river ford its shivering cold... And certainly no place to hide.

Around the corner from Armathwaite... The lanterns are large and small.

In front of old familiar... The chief stands brave and tall.

I'm oh so tired and weary... My travels scantly through.

I wish my mind would settle... But its nice to share with you.

The Night Thing Comes

I can feel the dark emptiness spreading in every direction... Like an overturned inkwell... a dark and hungry blot consuming my dreams.

The feeling is all too familiar but I am powerless... unable to escape my slumber. My eyes are useless in the void. But I know its close. I can feel its presence inches from my body... It robs me of warmth...

I stand there in the darkness waiting for the night thing to make its move. My heart pounds in my skull.. faster and faster. My breath quickens..  I know its there.. deadly cold and lifeless. I try to stay calm... But I am overcome with fear. If I can control my shivering... if I can just be still... Maybe it will move on.

Can I see it? Are my eyes closed? Are they open? My teeth are chattering.  It knows I'm here. The night thing moves. I panic. A deafening boom. Metal on metal... It reverberates in my chest.

Grinding, roaring, clanking, it thunders... Its immense... terrifying and so close I could touch it with the slightest movement... Louder and faster... Its so loud I'm afraid the sound alone will tear me apart...

I pray for it to end. I know it will but how long will it last..? how long have I been here? I'm going mad. I can't take it anymore. My scream is lost in the night things metallic roar.

And I am awake. I scream for a moment before the realization that I'm free sets in. My clothes are soaking wet... my heart is still racing and I struggle to catch my breath. But I'm okay... I'm awake. Tonight I will sleep no more. The night thing is on the hunt.

The Heat of The Moment

I can't recall hearing much about domestic violence in the 80's. I mean I was all too familiar with violence in my home and in the homes of some of my friends but I'm not sure it was looked upon the same way it is today...

Mid-summer in Elkhart was hot and humid. It didn't matter to much to me. I was just a kid and those were just words on the weather report. Temperature... like the length of summer was irrelevant. It just was. I've grown older and more heat intolerant so I understand that back then... during that especially hot year... the rising thermometer may have crept into the psyche of the vulnerable.

I liked to eat ice... I'd run up the stairs to our apartment.. which was even hotter.. and fill a glass with ice. Then I'd go back downstairs to the porch and crunch it while I cooled off. My clothes were usually soaked in the sweat of hard play so any air stirring would cool me. The street was only a few feet from the stoop where I sat so I would enjoy the breeze of a passing car while I finished my ice. Sometimes I'd run back up and get another.

My Step-father was at home and hold up in his room. I suppose in retrospect the thundering of my footsteps could have been an irritant... but on my return trip he came out of his room just as I entered the kitchen.

Of course today I can look back at him through the minds eye of a man seasoned by time and experience and see him for what he was... but back then he was imposing. He was tall... arrogant... lanky and pale. He was angry most of the time and he drank. I can't really remember seeing him drink. I just remember seeing him drunk. And that day he was drunk. He barked at me and told me to get out of the freezer. I told him I was just getting ice but the words had no sooner left my lips when the freezer door slammed into my face. Tears immediately flooded my vision. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth.

I remember a little of the drive to the hospital. And I remember seeing our downstairs neighbor when we got there. He worked at Elkhart General. He smiled at me when I came in. It was an... I feel sorry for you smile... but he had kind eyes. I don't know if I smiled back.

The doctor came in... my nose was broken. He asked what happened and my Step-father spoke up quickly and related that it was an accident. The doctor asked to speak to me alone and I confirmed it was an accident. I don't know why I lied... I just felt as though I had to.

The next couple of weeks were tense... I wont lie... I played the injury for all the sympathy I could muster from my Mother and all the while I was feeling less and less afraid of my Step-father. I guess I felt like I had something on him. I'd manage a glare here and there... and a little back talking. The cruel little games he'd play... like the one in which he would ask which arm I wanted to be able to use today... had stopped. The beatings with a belt had stopped... all these things bolstered my position. I didn't push very far... but I was enjoying the reprieve. 

Like I said... I didn't see him drink... he was just drunk. But one day a short time after the trip to the hospital I saw him sitting in the parking lot... passed out in his old Ford Fairlane. I eased up to the car and spoke to him...nothing. I nudged his shoulder and he slid over in the seat... an empty whiskey bottle between his thighs. I'd like to say that what happened next was an accident and that I didn't know. But I knew enough to realize that you couldn't even leave a dog cooped up in a car in the blistering heat. Honestly I can't even remember rolling the window up... but I must have. With the door closed he wasn't visible to anyone... including me and I went back to playing... out of sight... out of mind I suppose.

I was coming back from the park when I heard the sirens. I'd heard the sound of police cars coming to our house but never an ambulance. He lived of course... He wasn't happy when he got home but he never said a word... in fact he never said an unkind word to me again. He kept his distance for the remainder of his stay with us. I never told anyone until now.

The Spy I Never Knew *FICTION ONLY*

Mother met Scarecrow in the early 80's I'm not sure what year but it was at the now famous Mr. Lucky's Lounge in Gary Indiana. Mother was young.. beautiful.. a fiery... fearless red head with skin as white as snow. She looked as though she'd come straight out of the hills of Ireland. She was self educated and very bright. She had an aptitude for almost everything. I remember getting in trouble at school so Mother came to talk to my teacher. After listening to him go over the highlights of the incident Mother chimed in and gave him a thorough and artfully articulate tongue lashing. She shared with him some of her insight into the mind of a child as seen through the eyes of seasoned educator. She chastised him. She wasn't rude or even condescending but she communicated that she was a far better teacher than he would ever be. She answered his questions about her background without pause and batted him back with another round of observations. Of course Mother had never been a teacher of any kind... she didn't graduate from high school but you would never have known it. But that was Mother... she could walk into a new environment and within minutes she could hit the ground running.


I suppose that's why he was interested in her. They shared a glance.. a smile and then a drink. After hours of conversation he told her who and what he was... She didn't believe him at first but the sobered look on his face and the CIA identification he flipped open from his pocket confirmed his story. She told her sister she was leaving with the tall handsome man by the door. Mother and the tall handsome spy left the bar together. She never told me why he was at the bar that night... only that he was traveling across the toll road. I don't know if he was there for her or if for some other purpose and their meeting was some chance encounter. For what ever reason.. they met.


Scarecrow took her back to his hotel. He asked her once more if she was sure...there was no going back. But she wanted it.. She needed the escape.. she needed to climb through that window into a hidden world. A small incision.. a tiny chip... an injection... a tape player on the desk playing an almost familiar sound. The noise became ordered.. The order became information. Time became irrelevant as the serum spread through her veins.


A couple of snaps from his finger woke her. He asked her if she was alright... and she wasn't sure but she answered yes just the same. He asked her who she was and without hesitation she answered.. Snow White.. Snow White the Russian version. He told her he would be calling soon and she got out of the black sedan. She couldn't remember being driven home and she could remember very little of what happened after leaving Mr. Lucky's but she knew she was sleepy. And she slept... off and on for days.


Weeks later she got a call. She didn't speak..she listened for a moment then hung up the phone. She told us not to use the phone and not to leave the house. She was gone for three days and when she got back she slept for nearly a week. I didn't like the calls. It always meant she had to go. Sometimes it meant we had to move out of our home on a moments notice... throwing our belongings on a sheet and wrapping them all up.. out the door and into the car. We bounced back and for the from state to state. Location to location whenever Scarecrow said we had to. It was a hard life but we adapted.


My brother and I never met Scarecrow... the years passed. Mother grew older and grew tired. She suffered a physical and mental collapse and was put in the hospital for several weeks.. when she was released the calls ceased. Eventually we grew up and started families of our own and Scarecrow became a distant memory.


Mother relished having grandchildren. She was tireless when it came to them... always there to lend a hand... pick up the slack or give a break. One afternoon she came over to sit with the children while I ran errands. She sat on the sofa and made herself comfortable. The television was on but I had pushed the mute button earlier to take a phone call. My son had come into the living room and stretched out on the carpet... perfectly content to stare at the silent screen. I was talking to mother when I noticed a change in her face. She lost all emotion... her expression went flat... then she smiled. I asked her if she was alright but she didn't respond. She just kept smiling and staring. For a few moments she sighed and the words “Hello Scarecrow... “ crossed her lips in a whisper. I reached for the remote and turned up the volume. The sound of his voice broadened her smile. The television show was one in which one faction was pitted against another opposing faction in a simulated engagement... experts were called in for technical information and other insight. In this particular episode the CIA faced the KGB. A former cold war CIA operative... the tall handsome man... had been called in for technical analysis. Mother looked on for several minutes.. she chuckled once or twice in response to some anecdote. Eventually she took a long deep breath... let it out slowly... turned to me and smiled with the lids of her eyes moistened with yet to fall tears. She didn't say another word about Scarecrow... she just told me to take my time that she and the kids would be just fine.

North Side

Being a poor kid in the South was somehow different than being a poor in the North. I grew up poor in a small town in Southeast Kentucky. Sure there were plenty of wealthy families but I didn't really realize they were rich and or that I wasn't.


In the late 70's to early 80's we all went to the same church... And no one looked any different sitting on the pews. We all went to the same school... And you were scolded just the same no matter who your parents were. Rich or poor you still bought your groceries at Earl Andersons. Earl had a thriving business in an old block building. The same two cashiers worked the registers for as long as I could remember. The same butcher always greeted you by name and sliced your bologna. The floors creaked and groaned as you walked the isles and you couldn't help but notice the high and low places. Everyone went to Earls but you'd never know he had a dime in the bank.


My clothes came from bales of clothes my Grandma and her friends would buy.. They would cut the bands and sit around in lawn chairs on the front porch sipping sun tea and sort through the clothes... gossiping... laughing... sharing... just the way they did when they broke beans or worked corn. I went to school in second hand rags ...no one seemed to notice. No one seemed to care. I always felt just as good as anyone else.


I had been to Elkhart many times and lived in many places. But for the most part I had been around kids from families like mine... not a lot in the way of worldly possessions. But when I enrolled in North Side Junior High I realized very quickly that there were lines drawn between those who had and those that didn't. I wore fake leather shoes a size to big... I didn't know the difference until the kid next to me pointed it out. My clothes were out of style and didn't match... I didn't know until the girl in front of me turned around to tell me. My hair was fine and stringy.. not because I was nasty... like the kid in gym said... but because my father was Cherokee and both my hair and skin were naturally oily.


I shrank inside myself... I remember a teacher calling me aside and telling me that my pants had too many holes in them.


Yes I was small... poorly dressed... probably not as clean as I could have been... and I looked different and sounded different than most. In spite of that I managed to make some great friends. They were all from families of modest means... though they did a much better job of assimilating than I did. I didn't know how to assimilate... before that time I had only know the unwavering acceptance of a small town. But I was accepted just as I was... by a few and I am thankful for them... They may not know it but I think of them often.


I wish I could go back in time and talk to that little boy. I'd tell him to keep his head up... I'd tell him that one day he'd be strong and confident. And that it didn't matter how cruel the other kids were. I'd thank him for taking their slings and arrows without anger and without fighting back. I'd tell him to be grateful to them... because the lessons they gave us made us excepting and tolerant. They taught us to look beyond the exterior of others. They taught us to find value in others. I'd tell him that one day he'd me me and I am not afraid.