52stories

Eat Your Vegetables

A Boys Own Adventure in 10 Chapters

Billy was eating broccoli when the aliens invaded.
Or more precisely, Billy was not eating broccoli when the first immense star ship slid into the sky over his city, sending hundreds of citizens out into the streets where they were promptly seized and sucked, screaming, up into the ship by powerful tractor beams.
Billy wasn't screaming, he was sitting alone at the dining room table, his heels beating a tattoo against the wooden chair rung in time to a tune only he could hear. Before him, on a pale green Melmac plate, sat the ruins of the evening meal. He'd done sort of okay on the pork roast, dry as it was, and had made short work of the mashed potatoes and the frozen peas, but the broccoli... Billy didn't do broccoli. Billy was nine years old.
He wasn't even pretending to eat; his knife and fork lay toppled on the table, his hands were tucked between his legs and the chair seat, and his eyes were focused on some middle distance, perhaps the place where that inaudible tune was playing.
"Billy, stop kicking the chair, you're wearing off all the paint!" His mother appeared behind him, her hands on her still slim hips, the very picture of pretty exasperation. Marjorie Harris was more than pretty, she was sensible. Now that her apron was off, you could see that she was wearing a simple cotton shift and a pair of sensible shoes (rubber-soled flats in a soft blue leather). Her thick black hair was cut sensibly short (bangs, with a flip at the back) and she'd cooked her family a sensible meal (meat, potatoes and two vegetables) and darn it, her son was going to finish it.
"Honestly, Billy, just get it over with. You're only making it worse by sitting here while your food gets cold. Let's see, there's just ..." she counted quickly, "... eight stalks left. Pop them in your mouth and you're done."
She gave his crew cut hair an affectionate rub.
Billy's focus returned to the here and now and he looked at his mother in the large, horizontal mirror that filled a niche along one wall of their dining room. He faced that mirror every time he sat down to dinner and was just tall enough — and the mirror just low enough — that all he could see of himself was his head from the neck up.
"I can't, mom," Billy said brightly, twisting briefly to look up at her before returning his gaze to his own reflection and allowing his voice to grow solemn. "I don't have any hands. I don't even have a body. I'm all head."
This was one of his favourite dinner time games.
"If I eat that broccoli, the chewed-up bits'll just go down my throat and fall onto the floor and then you'll be telling me to 'Pick up that disgusting mess!' only I can't — on account of I haven't any hands."
Because they were taller than him, his parents had never seen Billy's head in the mirror the way he had, and they had never figured out what he was talking about. They often had a hard time figuring out what he was talking about; Billy was nine years old — they weren't. Far as he could tell, they never had been.
"No hands, no feet. Just a head, a biiig head." He looked at his head in the mirror, turning it from side to side and nodding his approval. "Oh - and I won't be needing my bath tonight — you can just give me a shampoo in the sink."
From the living room came the dry rustle of a newspaper being lowered and then his father's voice calling out: "Young man! I don't want to hear any more nonsense about your disincorporation! Finish that broccoli before I come in there and finish it myself!"
He meant it. Donald Harris loved his food. He was 38 and still rake thin, but it was hard to believe that could last. At the dinner table Donald was a scrounger, someone who inhaled his own food, and then went on the prowl for more. He'd snatch up a serving platter, hold it above his plate, angling it downwards and trapping the falling sprouts or potatoes or carrots with the serving spoon and ask "Anyone want seconds?" But the words would no sooner leave his lips than he would lift the serving spoon gate and allow the food to tumble onto his own plate. "Waste not, want not!" he'd say cheerily.
He was a good man to cook for, Marjorie often thought, but she worried that with all that competition, young Billy might not get enough nourishment. Sometimes, after dinner, she'd call him in to help with the dishes and quietly slip him a couple of cookies.
"Now Don, Billy's doing just fine. He loves broccoli, and he's going to gobble it all up so he can have some ice cream, aren't you Billy?"
She locked eyes with him in the mirror and nodded, almost pleading.
Reluctantly, Billy nodded back.
"Okay, Mom. I'll eat them."
From the living came the explosive snap of a newspaper being reopened.
Billy picked up one of the cold, limp stalks and made a face.
"You know mom, because I don't have a body, I think my tongue overcompensated and grew too many tastebuds. I'm probably a supertaster, and I heard on my sci-cast that supertasters are especially sensitive to the cruciform vegetables — anything from the Brassica family."
"Don't you talk Latin to your mother, young man!" his father's voice rang out.
Billy looked at the broccoli and then, quietly, so his dad wouldn't hear, asked, "Mom? What if the broccoli doesn't like being eaten?"
His mother laughed.
"Silly Billy, vegetables don't have feelings. Now you eat up and I'll get the ice cream ready."
Billy reluctantly bit the head off the stalk and began chewing, his mouth turning down at both corners in an exaggerated grimace. His mother ignored the face and ruffled his hair again.
"I'll just go tidy the kitchen, you come in and see me when you're done," she said and walked out, muttering cheerfully about where that apron had got to.
Alone again, Billy bit off another head, made an even bigger face and then spat the unchewed food onto his plate.
"Yech!" he said. But quietly. With a quick glance towards the kitchen and another over his shoulder via the mirror, he used his paper napkin to scoop up the broccoli. He was about to shove it into his pocket when he seemed to reconsider. Opening the napkin he took out one stalk, broke it and then crumpled the pieces back onto his plate. He considered his handiwork for a moment, nodded, and then crammed the napkin and food into the front pocket of his jeans.
He looked in the mirror at his floating head and smiled. After a while, he began beating out a new tune on the rungs of the chair with his heels.
That's when he heard the siren.

***

Billy sat very still, listening intently. The siren was far off at first, an oscillating cry no louder than baby Jocelyn's wail from behind her bedroom door on the second floor. But a siren meant an ambulance - or maybe police or even a firetruck! - so Billy sat and listened, concentrating.
It was getting louder! It was getting closer! It was still too far away for the grown-ups to hear, but to Billy it was as clear and urgent as a summons from an angry dad — only without the promise of getting your ears boxed. This promised excitement and spectacle and maybe even a little danger. Neat.
Billy pushed back his chair, grabbed his plate, and made for the kitchen.
"All done, Mom!" he cried as he burst through the swinging door.
Marjorie was standing with her back to him, facing the open kitchen window and the new greens and soft whites of their blossoming backyard apple tree. She twirled to face him and a shot glass flew out of her hands and bounced across the linoleum. He could see she had found — and put on — her apron. As Billy deposited his plate on the kitchen island and pushed it towards her for the inevitable inspection, he stopped. It looked as though she'd been crying.
"Mom?"
"Oh, Billy, you, you startled me. I, ah, I..." She took a breath. "I was just looking at the apple tree and thinking about ... about, all those apples ..." She sniffed once, and drew the back of her hand across her cheek to catch a tear.
"It looks like a great year for apples, doesn't it?" She sniffed again, took a breath and pressed forward. "There'll be buckets of apples to peel and lots and lots of apple sauce and apple pies to make!" Her voice was brightening, picking up speed as she talked. She finally seemed to notice what he'd left on the counter.
"Why young man, I do believe you've finished all your broccoli!" She grabbed the plate.
"Oh! No, not quite, there's a few little bits left, but that's good enough, I think." She turned and popped the lid on her stainless steel trash can with a quick stab of her foot, scraped the plate clean, added it to the stack beside the sink, and turned back to face him in a movement that was as swift and precise and as graceful as a plié from her years at dance school.
She brought her hands together and leaned forward smiling. Billy could smell whiskey on her breath.
"Now, then. How about a nice bowl of ice cream and a shortbread cookie!"
Billy actually paused for a second. A cookie, too?! But then the sound of the sirens — he could tell now that there were more than one — came wafting in the open kitchen window with a heady dose of apple blossom perfume. He glanced toward the window and saw a wasp — polistes fuscatus, the paper wasp — wander in and begin a lazy inspection of the window sill, shuttling back and forth. But even that wasn't enough to hold him against the siren's song. He shook his head.
"No thanks, Mom. I'm all fulled up — it doesn't take much when you're just a head." He spun and ran out of the room before she could stop him. She stood open mouthed, frozen in the act of opening the freezer door. As his steps echoed down the front hall, she shut the door and bent over to retrieve her shot glass from the spotless tiled floor.
The sirens were getting louder and now Billy thought he could hear two other noises: a distant droning, like some immense but far away motor boat; and voices, amplified and echoing.
As he ran past the living room his father barked out his name: "Billy!" He skidded to a halt.
Donald was sitting in his big leather armchair, smoke curling up to the ceiling from behind his open New York Times. Billy sniffed the air, waiting. Borkum Riff Cherry Cavendish, his dad's favourite pipe tobacco.
Without dropping the paper or removing the pipe from his mouth, his father continued.
"Billy — are you going out and leaving the television on?"
"No Dad. I haven't been watching television, I've been eating broccoli. That noise is from outside — I think there's a parade!" And before his father could ask any more questions, Billy flung open the front door and stepped outside.

***

The noise was much louder outdoors. There were sirens and someone talking through a bullhorn - he couldn't make out the words. Billy lived in a big brown shingled house on a corner lot, and as he stood on the front stoop, trying to get oriented, a patrol car raced by, turning sharply onto Locust one block away. That's all Billy needed. He flung himself down the steps and gave chase.
He only paused once in that headlong rush, stopping at the curb as if he'd met an invisible alien force field. Only it wasn't an alien force field, it was his Mom's voice inside his head: "Go on now, play outside Billy, just don't leave our lot — there's a lot of bad things in a big city."
He teetered on the curb, the toes of his sneakers poking out into the forbidden territory of the street. The noise grew louder. "Ahh, this isn't a bad thing, it probably is just a really neat parade," Billy said to himself. "It'd be a shame to waste it." He brightened. "Waste not, want not!" he thought giggling. Looking both ways, he leapt off the curb and made for Locust.
A few blocks later, Billy rounded the corner onto Atlantic Avenue and was hit by a wall of sound and a tall man in a fedora.
The two fell to the sidewalk in a tangle of arms and legs. The man pushed Billy off of him, leapt to his feet, took two steps, turned and strode back to where Billy was still picking himself up off the sidewalk. Billy fell back and the man loomed over him. For second Billy was frozen. He thought suddenly that his mother had been right - you never should leave your lot, there were a lot of bad things in the city. He waited for the slug from a .38 to tear into his skull. Or maybe it would be a knife slipping out of the man's sleeve, into his hand and then between Billy's ribs. Billy wished suddenly that the last thing he had eaten hadn't been cold broccoli.
No, darn it! He thought of Daredevil - would he just lie here? No way. He drew his knees to his chest as though he was going to kick out and the man flinched and drew back. Billy saw his chance and took it, rolling suddenly off the sidewalk and onto the edge of the road. His head struck pavement - hard - and things got dark all of a sudden.
From somewhere a car horn blared and Billy opened his eyes to see the tall man looming over him, reaching for him. Billy tensed himself again, but the man just reached past him and snatched up his fedora.
"Better run back home kid," the man said, jamming the hat on his head. "We're being invaded by aliens."
And with that the man turned and ran down the street, leaving nine-year-old Billy Harris lying in the gutter as a loud roaring filled his ears and an alien space ship slowly swept into view overhead, blotting out the evening sky.
"Holey moley!" Billy whispered to no one in particular, and then there was a blinding flash of light and he felt himself being lifted into the air.

***

The alien space ship was huge. Massive. Billy was lying on his back in the loading bay or wherever it was that the tractor beam had dumped him. It was a big open space lit by blinding white lights set high in an arched ceiling. "Holy Macaroni!" Billy said squinting against the light. "This place is bigger than Freeport Stadium - and it's got a roof!"
A shadow fell across him and Billy saw his first alien.
It was tall and thin and green. No arms, no legs. Where its hair should be there were a mass of moving stalks, most of which seemed to end in a tiny eye.
"Of course it's got a roof, puny earthling. If it didn't our blood would boil away in the hard vacuum of space. Now raise yourself up onto your lower appendages and follow me." As it said that several of its eye stalks twisted to scan the room, as if checking to see if anyone was watching them.
Billy scrambled to his feet and stood facing the alien. Surprisingly, it was not much taller than him. Its voice came from a 'mouth' set just about even with Billy's belly. It was a wide mouth. With lots and lots of teeth. He didn't know where to look - at the mouth that was talking to him, or at the ever shifting set of eye stalks that were turned his way. He chose the eyes — those teeth gave him the willies.
"You've been to outer space?! Man! That's so neat!" A thought struck Billy.
"Wait. You speak English?"
"Of course I speak English. We've been tracking your transmissions since we instantiated in your solar system three of your days ago. That's how we found you: by following a trail of Friends reruns back to your planet. Yech. I prefer your Space Channel."
Billy's eyes widened.
"Instantiated? You must have a Quantam drive!"
"Close enough. We also have a matter/anti-matter fission drive the size of your head, but that one's in the shop." The alien made a noise like a cat coughing up a hairball, its wide mouth opening and closing fitfully. It was laughing.
Billy's frowned. He didn't like being made fun of.
"Hey! My Mom says it's not polite to laugh at people."
The alien's mouth snapped shut.
"People? You're not people. You're food."
"Food?! I'm not food! I'm a nine year old boy!"
"Which means you're still nice and tender; we won't have to slow cook you," a deep voice said from behind him. Now two aliens were making cat coughing up hairball noises.

***

Billy spun around and was staring straight into the wide open, tooth-filled, two-tongued mouth of a much, much bigger alien. He tilted his head back. This one must be at least 16 feet tall!
A cluster of stalks from its head were bent downwards, focusing on him. As he watched, one of them shot out, growing impossibly long impossibly quick. He felt a sudden sharp sting and almost instantly collapsed to the floor. He was awake and conscious, but he couldn't move his arms or legs.
The big alien flicked a couple dozen eye stalks in the direction of the little one.
"Quit playing with your food, Q'axar." It slid from his view.
"Aww. Mo-om!"
"Don't 'Aw Mom' me. Harvest is just beginning and the nursery ships are on their way. This is no time for playing. Get that food back into the bin before it spoils."
Spoils? thought Billy. That doesn't sound good. Maybe this 'meeting an alien' thing wasn't quite so cool.
The smaller alien, Q'axar, hopped once and slammed down to the deck with a thud. "I didn't take it out of the bin - nobody put it in yet! And I wasn't playing. This food was bugging me with stupid questions. And you know what? I don't care about your stupid old Harvest!" Q'axar disappeared from Billy's view.
"You come back here this instant, young man or I'll skin your stalk!"
Silence.
"Q'axar!" She sounded angry — Billy was pretty sure about that, even though she was an alien. "You'll get no dinner until you get back here and pick up your food! I mean it, young man!"
The mommy alien leaned over Billy. Her mouth was opening and closing in anger and frustration. Her breath smelled vaguely like old meat, but with a hint of something sweet. Something rotten. "Honestly, that child is spoiled rotten! You wait right here." And she was gone. And Billy was alone and frozen and lying on the deck of an alien spaceship.

* * *

Billy lay there a long time. At first, since he couldn't see, he listened. It was a big space, this hold, or loading dock, or wherever he was. He could hear machinery humming and every minute or so a loud SNAP like very small thunder which was almost always followed by a thud. Billy figured it was the tractor beams dropping people on the deck, because the thud was almost always followed by yelling and screaming. The screaming never lasted long, though. He figured the aliens were stinging them as quickly as they could.
It went on a long time.
"They're like Sphecius speciosus, the cicada killer wasps," Billy said to no one in particular. "We're going to become food for their larvae."
"Hey! My mouth's working. The paralysis must be wearing off!"
At first he could only move his mouth and drum his heels on the deck. So he did, then stopped when he realized that might draw attention. After a while he could move his fingers and arms and turn his head. His vision was still a little cloudy — from the venom he guessed — so he couldn't see much more than some vague shapes scuttling about in the distance.
Billy should have been scared. And part of him was. But another part of him was thinking maybe he should escape. But how? He had no death ray, no superhero skills, now horse to whistle for, he didn't even own a slingshot. He felt his pockets, wondering if there was a weapon there for him: a pencil stub, a metal car with no wheels, his dad's old cell phone, a small length of metal chain, two children's bus tickets, a tooth, a folded up note that Krissy had passed him in social studies ("Lorraine thinks you don't stink") and a brass hinge.
He moved on to the other pocket.
A small piece of soapstone (carved to resemble one of the giant stone heads of Easter Island), his thumbdrive, two pieces of gum, and a wadded up napkin containing six stalks of cold, cooked broccoli.
The broccoli!
Arching his back he pulled it out, grabbed a couple of pieces and stuffed the rest back in his pocket. He lay there waiting. The broccoli felt kind of gross in his hand.
He smelled something, ozone maybe, and suddenly there was a loud SNAP and a thud beside him. As he turned to look in that direction a figure suddenly loomed over him.
It was the tall man in the fedora.
"So they got you too, huh kid?"

* * *

The man helped Billy to his feet.
"Come on. There's got to be a way off this tub," the man said, grabbing Billy's hand and starting off at a run towards a distant doorway. They almost made it. Just as they were approaching the door, a nearby section of wall slid open and an alien slid out.
Billy and the tall man skidded to halt and the alien moved between them and the doorway.
This one was about 12 feet tall and its eye stalks were rigid, almost quivering, as it advanced towards them. It's large mouth opened and closed with an audible 'clack!' of teeth.
Billy stepped forward, wound up, and timing it just right, thew one of the pieces of broccoli in the alien's gaping maw.
The mouth snapped shut. Opened. Closed again. The alien shuddered. Its eye stalks stood straight up and then flopped down. With a loud Thud! it collapsed to the floor.
"Yechhh." it said and was dead.
The tall man turned to look at Billy.
"Nice arm, kid. And whatever it was you fed Mr. Greenjeans, I hope you've got more of it."
Bill nodded, not taking his eyes of the alien. Wow. They must be superdupercolossaltasters! He felt kind of sorry for it — what a way to go.
"Come on." The tall man tugged at Billy again and pulled him through the doorway.
They were in a much smaller room facing what Billy recognized as some kind of air lock door. Beside it, about 8 feet off the floor, was a panel with lights and switches and dials and buttons. The tall man ran up to it and began studying it.
"Just as I hoped - there's a shuttle on the other side of this airlock, if we can get through it, we'll see if my navy pilot's training was any good." He ran his hand above the control and then punched one button. The door slid open revealing a very small room, another door and another panel.
He started to step inside, stopped and then came back to Billy, taking both of the boy's shoulders in his hands.
"You've got to buy me some time to get inside and figure out the controls. You guard the door and if anybody comes near — give 'em a dose of what you gave ol' snake eyes back there." He gave Billy's hair a quick rub and strode into the airlock.
Billy turned to face the door just as another alien slid through it.
"Bad food! What have you done to X'linor! Get away from that — aaach."
Thud.
Billy dug the rest of the broccoli out of his pocket and kept his eye on the doorway. Behind him the tall man cried "I'm in!" and "won't be long now!".
Twice more angry green aliens showed up at the door and twice more Billy fed them a little of his leftover dinner. The bodies were stacking up in the doorway like so much cordwood.
Billy felt a low rumble and heard the sound of an engine revving up behind him. From inside the shuttle came a gleeful shout from the tall man. Billy began backing towards the airlock. He was halfway in and just about to turn and run for it, when Q'axar appeared in the doorway.
The little alien vaulted over the bodies with surprising ease and slid towards Billy.
His mouth was shut.

* * *

Billy kept backing up and just when he figured he should be at the door, one of Q'axar's stalk thingies shot out.
Billy tensed, expecting to be paralyzed once more but the stalk whipped over his head and struck a button on the panel behind him.
Whooosh! The airlock door shut.
Nine-year-old Billy stopped backing up and faced the approaching alien, looking him squarely in the eyes. Or tried to — they kept waving around.
"Would you like some broccoli?" Billy asked, extending one of his final two stalks towards Q'axar's firmly-closed mouth.
"It's good, my mom cooked it. It's got sesame seeds..."
He waved the piece back and forth in front of Q'axar's mouth the way you dangle a toy before a kitten.
"If you think I'm going to eat that, you're crazy" Q'axar said from between clenched teeth. "Stinky old vegetable."
"Don't be silly," Billy gently scolded the alien. "Broccoli's good for you — and it's yummy, too."
He lifted the piece up, dangled it in front of his own mouth and, mentally screwing up his courage, popped it in.
It took all his self control to stop from gagging or spitting it out. Instead he chewed it carefully, gave what he hoped was a winning smile and swallowed, patting his stomach.
"Mmmmm, mmmm! That was good. Now it's your turn Q'axar." He held up his last stalk of cold, limp broccoli moving it back and forth like a pendelum. Q'axar's eye stalks swayed in time, like seaweed in a current.
"Open up. Come on, now, there's a good little alien. If you finish your broccoli you can have a nice big human head for desert. Open up now..."
Billy could hear the shuttle's engine cycling up to a fever pitch. There was a loud rumbling in the deck underneath his feet.
"Hey!" said Q'axar. "You're not allowed to use the shuttle! I'm telling P'xi — Aaachh!"
Thud.
Billy wiped his fingers on his pants and looked down at the dead alien.
"I lied about the desert." he said as the door behind him whoooshed open.
"Come on! We've got to scram," the tall man said, grabbing Billy and yanking him onto the shuttle.

* * *

The shuttle lifted off Atlantic street with a roar and Billy waved goodbye to the tall man in the cockpit. He watched as the shiny ship rose above the trees and houses, hovered for one deafening second, and then shot off into the western sky, "to round up the cavalry" the tall man said.
As Billy turned, he caught his foot on the curb and tripped, falling backwards into the gutter, smacking his head once more.
Things went dark and blurry for a second or so but a sudden blaring of car horns called Billy back.
"Hey kid - are you okay?"
Billy sat up and, rubbing the back of his head, turned toward the voice. His vision was still blurry, but he could see a man in a pick-up truck stopped on the street, looking at him. The man was wearing a hat.
Billy shook his head. Then nodded it."Yeah. I'm, I'm fine, I just tripped."
"Well, okay, then. You'd better be heading for home, though, don't you think?"
Bill nodded again, and got to his feet. He realized he was holding something and stopped to look at it. Oh. It was the crumpled up napkin his broccoli had been in. He turned at tossed it into the open mouth of a nearby garbage can.
"Nice arm, kid — now scram, it's getting near dark."
Billy nodded once more and started up Locust, heading for home.

* * *

As he opened his front door and stepped inside Billy took a deep breath, smelling his father's pipe tobacco, the faint remainders of the pork roast and a touch of the apple blossom. He smiled. He was home.
His father called out to him from the living room.
"How was the parade?"
Billy stopped in the doorway - his father was still reading the paper, still holding it out in front of him like he was expecting someone to throw something at him
"There's wasn't any parade. I was captured by an alien tractor beam and sucked into a spaceship where they wanted to eat me, but I fed them broccoli instead and so they all died."
"Huh," his father grunted. "Tractors? In a parade? Don't know why they wouldn't use trucks. Your mother was looking for you." He turned a page and a puff of smoke appeared above the wall of paper.
Billy continued on down the hall and pushed open the door to the kitchen. Marjorie Harris was sitting at the kitchen table sipping something from the ceramic pig mug that Billy had given her for Mother's day. She was reading a magazine but as he entered she looked up and her face opened into a broad smile.
"There you are, young man. I can't believe you ran off without your ice cream. Your father said something about a parade - you didn't leave our lot did you?" She took another sip from her mug.
Billy thought for a second.
"If I told you I went for a ride in a space ship and a 16 foot tall alien tried to eat me, so I had to kill it, would you believe me?"
As he spoke a wasp floated into the room through the open window and began flying in lazy circles around his mom. She put down her mug, picked up her magazine — En Pointe, Billy noted — swatted the wasp out of the air onto the table and then killed it with a sharp slap of the magazine.
"Honestly Billy, the things that come out of your head ...."
She pushed her chair back and stood up, swaying slightly. "Maybe now there's enough room in there for a little ice cream?"
Billy nodded and as she turned for his favourite bowl, he took his place at the table.
"You know Mom, I've decided you're right — vegetables are good for you."

The End

Love Among The Spiders

On Tuesday Sam Gregory awoke with a spider in his mouth.
It was big and it was hairy and it was sitting on his tongue. "Achh! Pwach!" Sam sat up and tried to spit the spider out.
But the spider stuck out all his legs and grabbed the corners of Sam's cheeks and the insides of his lips and the roof of his mouth and his roller coaster tongue and cried "Wheee!" in a little spider voice.
"What was that?" Sam's wife called out, suddenly awake. "You had better not have brought another young bird home, Sam Gregory!"
"Go back to sleep, old woman!" Sam said with a scowl on his face (and a spider in his mouth). And so she did. For a moment Sam remembered the colorful young bird he had brought home from the market that one night long ago and all the fun they'd had. It had cost him a week's pay, but it had been worth it. He smiled and started to hum the tune she'd whistled out to him when he'd first spied her, and then he remembered the spider.
"Achh! Pwach!" He tried to spit out the spider once more.
"Wheee!" it said again in a tiny tarantula voice.
At least Sam thought it was a tarantula - they were the only big and hairy spiders he could think of. His wife stirred under the covers behind him and so Sam got up and went downstairs to the kitchen so as not to reawake her; the two of them quarreled like a pair of starlings, but they loved each other and he mostly tried to be a good husband to her.
He leaned over the sink and once more tried to spit the spider out.
But the spider was determined not to go and gripped his cheeks so hard they hurt.
Sam filled a tumbler full of cold wet water and tossed it back, swirling and swooshing the water in his mouth before leaning over the sink and spitting it out in one long gout.
"Ahhh. Thank-you, that was refreshing!" the spider said in his little spider voice. And then he shook himself like a dog on a dock.
Hmmm, thought Sam, I will have to be smarter than this spider.
So he stoppped trying to spit the thing out and took down his kettle and his tea pot, whistling the tune the little bird had taught him as he did so.
While the kettle boiled and bubbled, Sam paced around the kitchen, but kept whistling to keep the spider occupied.
Once, when he passed the toaster, Sam caught a glimpse of the spider sitting on his tongue. The spider lifted one leg and waved it in a cheery greeting. Sam nodded stiffly.
The kettle began to whistle too and so Sam put some tea in a strainer in the pot and poured the boiling hot water in. Then, quick as a weasel, Sam lifted the kettle high, threw back his head and poured the rest of the scalding hot water directly onto the spider.
"Aaaarrrrg!" Sam screamed, then immediately stuffed his fist in his mouth to stifle the scream for he did not want to wake his wife. But it was so hot! He felt his cheeks and tongue blistering and tears pouring from his eyes.
"Thank-you," said the spider in a muffled little spider voice, "I haven't had a shower in a very long time."
Sam pulled his hand out of his mouth and turned to the toaster.
It was true. The spider was still alive and happy. As Sam watched his reflection, the spider did a little dance on his tongue and then gaily popped a large blister with one of his hairy little legs. Sam snapped his mouth shut. He would have to be even smarter.
He decided to make a fruit salad.
Sam gathered together two oranges, an apple, a bowl of berries, a small glass of juice - and a banana.
While the spider danced, Sam peeled and segmented the orange, placing it in his wife's favourite blue earthenware bowl. He added the berries too.
The spider popped more blisters and began singing a happy little spider song as Sam took a large, sharp carving knife out of a drawer and halfed, then quartered, then diced the apple with short swift strokes of the big knife. Sam softly sang the young bird's song as he worked and the spider stopped dancing and crept to the end of Sam's tongue to watch what he was doing.
Sam slowly, deliberately, picked up the banana, peeled it and dropped the skin on the counter. Then he picked up the large and shiny knife. He held it up for a second and the spider could see his own reflection in the broad blade. The spider stood up straight and combed one leg across his hairy thorax.
Then Sam tossed the banana twirling into the air; the knife flashed once, twice, and two pieces of the soft yellow fruit splashed into the bowl while he snagged the remaining piece with his free hand.
The spider in Sam's mouth reared back and applauded with four of his hairy legs.
Sam gave a little bow,  then, tilting his head back slightly and opening his mouth, he tossed the last piece of banana in the air.
The spider did a little spider dance of excitement as the banana spun in the quiet kitchen air.  Sam swiftly raised the knife and plunged into his own mouth, impaling the spider and slicing through his tongue.
He closed his mouth around the blade to muffle his own cries, then carefully slid it out between his locked lips. This time when he spat, the spider - and  a third of his tongue - came out.
"Ha!" said Sam and washed them down the drain.
He picked up the fallen piece of banana and put it in the trash with the skin, got out a large spoon and tossed the fruit salad.
"She can have this for breakfast," Sam thought as placed the bowl in the refrigerator. And then, softly humming his happy song, he climbed the stairs and slipped back into bed.
The next night, as he sat on the bed to remove his slippers, his wife thanked him again for the fruit salad.
"You're welcome," he said and padded off to the bathroom for his bedtime pee.
His wife bent down and pulled a small wooden box out from under the bed.
"Could have used some more banana," she called out to her husband as she held the box to her ear for a second, then smiled, kissed it once, and swiftly slid it back under the bed.
"More banana," Sam grumbled as he returned to the bedroom. "More banana? Couldn't you have just thanked me and left it at that? Or maybe mentioned the berries?"
"Oh, leave off," she said and turned out her light.
Sam lay down and jerked the covers sharply to tuck them under his chin.
"Hey!" his wife cried, and tugged them back. Soon Sam slept.
On Wednesday morning Sam Gregory awoke with a mouse in his mouth.
It was small and it was grey and it was furry and it rode the stump of Sam's tongue like a cowboy on a rodeo bull.
"Giddyap!" it cried in a teeny mouse voice.
Sam sighed, slid out of bed and headed for the kitchen. He didn't want to wake his wife.

Grounded

I had the dream about the tornadoes again.
Two of them, racing across the corn towards me — one a big grey black bastard bearing straight at me, like some bull with its head down, the other a silvered sprite skipping from side to side and stopping suddenly, swaying as if it were busting to tell me something.
On TV, tornado survivors stand amid the splintered remains of their trailer park homes and say things like "It sounded just like a freight train" or "I just thank the Baby Jesus my bowling trophies made it OK."
They never talk about the terrible beauty of the things. In my dream, they're always beautiful,  roiling columns of cloud dropping out of a low and heavy darkness and writing on the skin of the world, writing in some script most of us are just too damn tiny to read.
Or too bent over to even try.
Patrick was different.
They've got all kinds of names for it now, but back then, back in Hammon, Oklahoma in 1963, he was just different.
Two years younger than me and at least two times smarter, Patrick could juggle numbers and dates the way Joe Pepitone, the Yankee's first baseman, could handle the horsehide. I was crazy nuts about Pepitone back then. It didn't matter what you tossed at him - he could field it. Grounders, broken bat balls, desperate double play throws — Pepitone plucked them out of the air or dug them out of the dirt like he was born to it.
Pepitone and tornadoes tore into our lives that same summer, 1963. That was Pepitone's rookie year and the year we moved away from New York and the beloved Yankees, to Hammon, Oklahoma, and their damn tornadoes.
When we moved, I signed up for the Custer County Little League, first base — like I said, I loved Pepitone and wanted to be him, desperately. When he signed to the Yankees, he took his $25,000 bonus and bought a Thunderbird, a 14 ft boat and a sharkskin suit; showed up at training camp wearing the suit, driving the T-bird and towing the boat. I'd never seen a sharkskin suit, couldn't imagine how they were made — didn't care — but I wanted one. Never did get one.
Patrick was cool, too. It never looked like he was paying any attention - to anything - but he was, it's like mostly we just didn't concern him that much. Almost nothing did, except numbers, and flying. He'd watch birds - and planes - all day long, if you let him. And when it came to numbers, like I said, he was different.
"Hey Patrick!" I'd said one summer afternoon shortly after we'd moved to Hammon. "Jimmy here was born on February 17, 1948." I was showing him off. Patrick, I mean. I jerked my thumb at my new friend standing beside me in the hall. I needn't have bothered. Patrick was sitting on the living room rug, playing with his fingers and listening to his transistor radio. Without looking up, he said, "That was a Tuesday, Tuesday, February 17, 1948. 5,595 days ago."
He said that back on June 13, 1963, the day he saw his first tornado, hell, the day we all saw our first tornado, and nearly our last. I remember the date well, but not how many days old Jimmy was back then. For that I had to use the internet and a calculator. Not Patrick, he just did it. Snip snap. Just like that.
"Holy Crap!" Jimmy said, shaking his head. "How's he know that?"
"Dunno. He just does, that's all. He just does." And Jimmy shook his head some more and we grabbed a couple of bottles of soda from the fridge, snagged gloves and a ball from a box by the kitchen door, and headed out into the Oklahoma G&E right of way to play catch until our palms burned and our arms ached.
Patrick was tall for his age and actually pretty good looking, if you could ever get a look at his face. Mostly he didn't let you. He had this white blonde hair, fine and straight, that fell softly across his face. It was real long for those crew cut days, partly 'cause Mom loved it — he was her baby — but mostly because cutting it was such a battle. His eyes were blue like a sky after a summer storm, the kind of sky you only found in storybooks. Or dreams.
But the thing about Patrick I remember most wasn't his hair or his eyes, it was his body. He was tall for his age like I said, and thin, too. But his body was all muscle: thin, incredibly dense ropes of muscles bound to this solid frame of bone. He never exercised, didn't play sports at all, but he felt like he was carved out of rock, and he could move with the speed and grace of some animal, some predator I couldn't name for you.
There were times when he'd sit, seemingly out of it, perfectly still, but I knew he wasn't — out of it, I mean. If you touched his arm or leg you could feel the muscles twitching, vibrating with this incredible, pulsating energy. It was like he was waiting, waiting for something.
I'd stopped wrestling with him years ago; he could clean my clock without breaking a sweat. And to tell you the truth, he scared me a little. Sometimes, all that energy in him just came out, exploded. It wouldn't happen out of the blue. You could see the storm clouds gathering, if you knew how to read him, and I knew, I'd learned the hard way growing up; you learned, or else.
My game of catch ended after about an hour that day, when a violent thunderstorm had come sweeping in from the south. The rain, a surprisingly cold, hard, downpour, had caught Jimmy and I a couple dozen yards from the back door, soaking us to the skin in seconds.
But we beat the hail. They were small and hard, mere pellets at first, then suddenly they got large - cherry sized - and while Jimmy and I whooped and hollered on the front porch, the hail beat a machine gun rhythm on the roof.
"Hey Patrick!" I called in the open front door, "Come out and see this hail - it's as big as baseballs!" I was actually standing on the railing, leaning out into the wild storm, catching the hail with my glove, and slinging it at Jimmy, the two of us laughing like crazy things.
"Paddy!" I called again, my voice high and effeminate in an imitation of my mother, who was at the supermarket, "Ohh, Paddy dear!"
And when he didn't answer, I swung down off the railing, bounded into the house and turned to the living room.
He wasn't there.
Something I didn't want to name drove a spike into my gut.
"PATRICK!"
I don't know why, but I didn't turn to his bedroom down the hall, or to the basement rec room. Instead I headed straight for the kitchen door that led to our tiny backyard and the giant electrical towers that marched through the O, G&E right of way.
And there he stood, planted in the little archway that separated our yard from the scrub grass and sand of the "back field" where the transmission lines ran. Hail was bouncing off his head and shoulders and piling up around his feet in mini-drifts. I noticed he wasn't wearing shoes. He didn't notice any of it. And when I saw what he was staring at with such rapt attention, neither did I.
It was a tornado.
People sometimes talk about tornado light, a greenish glow, or something all yellowed and orange, smeared across the sky.
Not this day. The light was bright — diffuse, but bright somehow, despite the low, boiling mass of grey and black cloud that had raced up from the south.
And there, dipping out of the cloud like the goddamn silver finger of god, was a tornado.
It was slender, but there was no inch of it that didn't pulse with the most awful, amazing power. For a second I flashed on Patrick, back when he was seven, standing on the sofa, his arms stretched towards the ceiling fan he couldn't quite reach, a frustrated keening coming from his open mouth. He'd been pulsating then too. And he'd exploded that day and I have a scar just above my hairline to prove it.
The twister touched down in what looked to be the far side of Ashley's corn field, a half mile down the road on the other side of the power lines. The field exploded - plants and dirt and rocks and soil and fence and trees suddenly flying up through the air, circling the tornado, giving it a wild and chaotic skirt that was slowly drawn up and into that twisting, spinning silver funnel.
"Je-umping jimminy ..." I said. To myself I guess. Nobody else could have heard me in that storm.
The tornado was moving across the field towards the powerlines, towards the towers.
Towards us.
"Ohhhh, sugar!" I said and plunged out into the storm, reaching Patrick in what seemed like two strides.
"Patrick!" I screamed above the wind, grabbing his arm and yanking hard. It was like tugging on a truck.
I pivoted so my back was to the tornado and we stood face to face. I placed both my hands on his chest and, with my face just inches from his, yelled.
"We've got to get inside! Into the storm cellar! Come on Patrick! Now!"
I pushed with all my might and felt him lean a little into me, his rock hard muscles vibrating a little. Pulsating. I pushed harder, but didn't budge him an inch. Looking at him again I saw he wasn't even looking at me — his eyes, usually flat, and almost lifeless, were sharply focussed for once, looking over my head and up, towards the top of the tornado. He raised his hands as if reaching for it. I stopped pushing and took a step back. Some part of me realized I was crying.
Then something exploded, a loud and sharp crack that cut through the banshee shriek of the wind. I shot a quick look behind me, heard another explosion and saw a blue flash as another row of the high tension lines tore free from a tower, arcing and sparking in the mad air.
I was all out of safe swear words: "Ho-ley fuck" I said.
I turned back, ready to punch Patrick in the jaw, kick him in the balls— anything — but he was already moving, spinning out of my reach and sprinting towards the wildly flapping kitchen door. I chased after him, slamming the door behind me and crashing into a petrified Jimmy as I spun around.
"Down into the cellar!" I yelled, pushing him towards the stairs that I prayed Patrick had bolted down.
There were no lights, but I grabbed Jimmy's arm with one hand, followed the wall past one open door and into the next, the windowless room my Dad called our storm cellar. Above us it did sound like a freight train, and like a jet engine thrown into reverse, and like Niagara Falls had sounded from the deck of that boat we took that one summer, the boat that brought you to the bottom of that crumbling mountain of water. I slammed the door behind us.
Jimmy and I sat shivering, with our backs to the door as if that would make some kind of difference. Inside the room it was a darker dark than I'd ever known. God, I hoped Patrick was down here somewhere.
He was.
"May 20, 1949 was a Friday," Patrick said suddenly from out of the inky blackness.
"Patrick, what - " I started.
"A tornado touched down near Thomas, Friday, it was a Friday, an F3, that means winds 158 to 206 mile per hour. The winds carried off 13 of 14 cattle in a Thomas farmer's feedlot. They were found a quarter of a mile away in a muddy field."
He was safe.
"They were still alive."
I wanted to hit him, he'd scared me so much out there, but I wasn't suicidal. I wanted to hug him, but I was a crew cut 15 year old boy in Hammon, Oklahoma in 1963.
So I sat there. Shivering.
"Hey!" Jimmy said, "How'd you know about that? That was the Layton farm, Bobby's uncle."
You see what I mean about paying attention? Where did Patrick pick that up?
The tornado missed us that day. Turned hard right and skipped high into the air, came down again another 200 yards along the power line right of way, like it had developed a taste for the electricity leaking out of those wildly whipping wires.
We lost a lot of shingles off the roof and later I got hell for "letting Patrick out into a tornado".
As if.
I would have had more luck stopping the tornado I said, but nobody listened.
Patrick took a shine to tornadoes, began devouring every book he could find on the topic at the local library (thank-you Mr. Carnegie) and since we lived in Tornado Alley, that amounted to quite a stash. He talked a lot about those cows too, Mr. Layton's cows. About how much the must have weighed and what force would have been required to lift them.
"I weigh less than one seventh of a yearling bull," he announced at dinner one time. Mom looked puzzled, Dad glanced up from his mashed potatoes and peas (he always mixed them together). I felt a small wet chill slide down my spine.
Patrick also started high school that fall. That was the year they killed the president — I remember being called into an assembly and Principal Dudzyk getting up on the stage with this awful look on his face as he made the announcement "An assassin's bullet has struck down President Kennedy." Some hayseed at the back started clapping but got shushed up pretty quick. I remember a couple of the girls started crying, crying right out loud, sobbing. Patrick liked Kennedy, he'd written to the White House when Kennedy was first elected and kept the reply he'd received — on White House stationary — stuck on his wall with tape. I spotted him standing against the wall, by one of the doors - it wasn't hard finding Patrick in a crowd, people tended to give him space - and he seemed totally untouched by the news. He was twisting his fingers and smiling a little.
I graduated from Hammon High two years later and actually got a baseball scholarship to Oklahoma State at Tulsa, which kind of burned Dad, 'cause he taught Classics at Oklahoma U. But baseball was my life by then. I'd gotten over Joe Pepitone, maybe it was his losing that routine throw from Clete Boyer in game four, a blunder that cost the Yankees the World Series. Maybe it was just growing up. Anyway, I'd switched to right field by then and had made something of a name for myself locally as the Hammon Home Run Kid.
Patrick made something of name for himself as well. After that first tornado, Patrick did more than just read about them, he took to racing outside to stand in the nearest field any time any big weather happened — which was often in our part of Oklahoma. Just stand there waiting. He'd found an old cloth and leather Navy flying helmet at the surplus store in Custer City and he always wore it while he waited for the storm. People thought that was proof he was simple-minded or just plain crazy, but I convinced myself it was his own private joke. I was wrong.
At first people would try to coax him into their cars or their homes and when they couldn't do that, they took to calling us, and sometimes the police, to complain about this crazy kid standing out in the storm wearing a pilot's helmet. We'd always go fetch him, pretty near drown ourselves trying to coax him indoors, and sometimes he'd come and sometimes he wouldn't. Mom did a lot of crying.
By the third summer nobody even bothered to call us anymore, he was just another strange and slightly scary feature of those summer storms. A force of nature. Or maybe a byproduct.
When I was away at Tulsa, in my freshman year at State, some of the older boys grabbed Patrick during a thunderstorm and staked him out on the roof of the equipment shed out back of Hammon High. Actually drove stakes into the roof and tied him to them, stretched him out spread eagled like he was an offering to the storm, a primitive people's efforts to propitiate a terrible and angry god. They'd even put the flyboy helmet on him.
I heard he broke one of his tormentor's ribs, snapped it in two with a good sharp kick and almost knocked another attacker clean off the roof, but there'd been six of them.
After they left him, lying there out in that storm, someone took a picture from up in the science lab and sent it to the local paper, with "Tower: Requesting Permission For Take-Off" printed in block letters on the back, but they didn't publish it, they just turned it over to the police. The cops didn't do anything because Patrick wouldn't say a word about it. Not one word. Principal Dudzyk nailed it though, expelling Jeffrey Simpson, the leader of that pack of punks, and suspending four other boys for ten days. Howard Foster, the kid with the broken rib, actually apologized to Patrick before Dudzyk got to him. He only got a two day suspension.
When we first moved to Hammon, I hadn't cared much about any of that stuff - I mean what people thought of Patrick. Sure he was different, but he was my brother. It made me really angry when they treated him badly, but I wasn't embarrassed by him - I was proud of him, I knew he could outthink half that hick town, leastways in math. And he was my brother.
Still, I had found myself spending more and more time at Jimmy's house, staying for hours on end, just hanging out. Having dinner with his mom and dad and feeling guilty that I was happy that we could have a dinner without some messed-up kid banging his head against the table until Mom started screaming and crying and Dad started cursing while Patrick just keep banging and banging until his blood spotted the tablecloth.
Truth is, by my freshmen year at college, I was happy to leave. It's awful. I mean, he was my brother. He was my brother. When I heard what that Simpson and the others had done to him up on the shed roof, I went a little crazy. Dad had tracked me down in the dugout, got them to put the call through on the field house phone. I'd hung up, picked up a Louisville Slugger and swung it against the cinder block wall until it shattered — the bat, I mean — and then I just stood there shaking while my teammates gawked. Just stood there, not saying anything. Just standing there shaking with these stupid tears streaming down my face. I felt so guilty. And so angry.
All that time, all those hours in the fields in all those storms, he never saw another tornado. Not until June 10, 1967.
It was a category four.
I was back in Hammon that summer, working with the county's road crew. My hitting had been enough to get me a spring tryout with the Kansas City Athletics. They were no Yankees,  but Charlie Finley had at least been pouring money into building up the farm team system. When I got the invite I actually visited a Tulsa tailor to look at sharkskin suits, only he didn't have anything in stock. "Not a lot of call for that around here," he said, wrinkling his nose as he looked me up and down with a calculating eye. I couldn't tell if he was figuring the length of my legs or the depth of my wallet. "I can have a bolt of the best sharkskin shipped in here by Saturday, if you're interested," he said. "Oh," I said, "you fly it in from the coast?" He gave me another look.
"Oklahoma City. I've got a supplier there who will throw it on a truck for me." I stammered something about wanting to think about it.
Good thing. Training camp was a disaster - minor league ball ain't college ball. I just wasn't seeing the pitches. My arm and glove were fine, but my bat had gone quiet. I got cut pretty quick. "Go home and spend the summer working on that eye," the batting coach had told me. "Maybe we'll have another looksee next spring."
So I was back in Hammon, wearing a safety vest instead of sharkskin, driving a beat up Ford half-ton instead of a, ah hell, you get the idea. It was honest, outdoor work and the guys were okay. I played industrial ball and, there at least, I was a star. I sent more than my share of horsehide into orbit.
On June 10 we'd quit work early because a line of electrical storms had tore through the county at about 11 a.m. We were sent home but told to stay close to a radio. There were tornado watches popping up all over the place and if anything hit, we'd be called in for clean-up.
I didn't go home.
I took the county truck and went to a roadhouse out on 34, Jake's, with the guys from my crew and we sat sipping beer and watching the storm clouds fly across the fields. We were the only customers. I thought about Patrick some, and where he'd be in this storm, but since I'd been away at State I'd kind of been happy to have him be someone else's problem. He was bagging groceries over at the United in Butler that summer and I guess I just thought he'd be home by now with Mom and the two of them would be watching the storm from the kitchen table.
When the tornadoes began appearing in Custer County, we had already abandoned our beers and taken shelter down in the basement with the staff, the kegs and sacks of potatoes. From that point on we didn't watch the storm, but listened to it on the cook's radio, our faces ghostly in the flickering light of a single, fat, emergency candle. We'd abandoned our beers, but the drinking didn't stop. The owner, Jake, was there, and he saw no reason to let a storm mess up his day's take, so he tapped a keg and kept the beer flowing. The cash went into a cigar box he pulled down from a high and dusty shelf; seemed like it was something he'd done before.
It was quite a party down there. There weren't enough chairs and Susan, the red-haired waitress, spent half the time sitting crossways in my lap as we all told storm stories. Thanks to Patrick, I did most of the talking, and Susan, she grew very quiet and still listening to me. When I finished telling about the time he got staked out on the roof, and my eruption in the clubhouse, her lips brushed my cheek and she whispered soft and warm in my ear something that sounded like "poor baby". I couldn't tell if she meant me or Patrick.
The storms spawned 12 tornadoes that day, four of them in Custer County. The worst was a monster - a category 4 that they later figured had carved a trail half a mile wide and nearly nine miles long. Luckily most of that was through farmers' fields.
But not all of it.
It touched down north of 33, just beyond the tip of Foss Lake, out at the marshy end where we sometimes biked, to hunt frogs and turles. The tornado Patrick and I had seen four years earlier had been slender and sliver, powerful but precise. Not this one. This was big, a monster. It was a maelstrom, a towering mass of earth wind and water that chewed up the world.
And leveled our house.
It's kind of hard to get your head around it now, but back then - with no cell phones, no pagers and no Blackberries - you weren't constantly connected. And you didn't worry about it. People just accepted being out of touch for a couple or three hours at a stretch, like it was normal - 'cause it was.
So I didn't miss the call - no one ever made it.
I was in that roadhouse basement with Susan sitting soft and warm across my legs, my hand resting lightly on the bare skin of her thigh, my eyes full of hers in that flickering half light, so I never saw this brute.
But we heard it.
The tornado tore south by south west from the lake, crossing 33 about a mile and a half out of Hammon and headed straight towards where we sat at Jakes on Route 34, another couple of miles south of town. It didn't hit us - you wouldn't be reading this if it had - but lifted off less than 50 yards away.
We heard some of Jake's picture windows smashing first and then furniture shifting around like somebody was straightening up and then, as the howling roar of the storm grew loudest there was an awful crash and a thud that we all felt in our stomachs. Someone screamed and I gripped Susan's thigh so hard my fingers left angry red marks.
Then suddenly it stopped. The roaring and howling and keening of the wind. Just stopped. Like that, snip snap.
Jake didn't wait for the all clear sirens or for the okay from the radio. He threw open the door and pushed up the stairs with the rest of us close behind him.
The place was a shambles — a tree trunk with most of its branches stripped clean had burst through the roof and north wall between the washrooms and embedded itself in the floor like some kind of errant javelin. Tables and chairs were tossed this way and that and he'd lost two of his big picture windows.
Outside in the parking lot, inches from our truck, the storm had dropped an aluminum boat, a 14 crumpled footer with a trolling motor. Put a trailer under it and it would have looked like I was towing the damn thing.
Debris of all kinds lay scattered about and we wandered amid it for a while, heedless of the rain. Susan and I were holding hands, but at this point we were more like lost kids than aroused young adults. We stopped on the edge of Jake's property and stared across 34 to the northeast where the tornado's track was as clear and straight and simple as a line drawn with a child's thick pencil. Trees, brush, crops, rocks, sheds, barns, and homes — everything that had stood in the tornado's path had been ripped up, chewed up, and spat out. Here and there in that awful alley a tree somehow stood, naked and bent and old and lonely.
"Ho-ley Fuck!" I whispered.
I let go of Susan's hand.
Mike, our crew boss, had gotten all business-like suddenly and was talking with dispatch over the truck's radio. He leaned back out of the cab and called to us.
"Let's go boys — we've got a lot of work to do," and so we left.
For the next couple of hours we moved from scene to scene, shoveling debris off of different stretches of the highways and main county roads, cutting up trees that had been felled by the wind, reporting damage as we encountered it and slowly zig-zagging northwards, crossing and re-crossing that terrible tornado track and getting closer and closer to our home, which was just a little south of 33.
Over the radio we'd heard reports of two deaths — an older couple found in a car lying upside down in a drainage ditch, several injuries from wind driven debris and exploding windows and the like, and a constant stream of look-ups: phone lines were down all over the county and worried relatives and neighbours were contacting the town and police and asking, begging, someone - anyone -  to check up on their loved ones. We knocked on more than a few doors, and put many minds at ease.
It was after 7 pm when I first heard them mention the damage on the East 960 Rd, where we lived. I tore off in one of the trucks, pounding the steering wheel and cursing uselessly the whole way. Dad would have been at his office in the University in Oklahoma City and I was sure he was fine — tornadoes just don't seem to like cities much. But Mom, mom and Patrick. Oh God.
The sun had actually appeared by this point, sneaking under the heavy, dark ceiling of clouds that still stretched across the sky. The effect was gorgeous, a long warm light slanting in and highlighting every bit of relief on that green landscape, painting the fields in bright and glowing colors while the sky remained cloaked in an angry darkness.
It was beautiful, but it barely registered.
Our house was gone. Sliced off at the soil, coarsely ground and then poured sloppily back into the foundations. I thought of our "storm cellar" and tried to calculate how thick the floor over their heads was, how much debris it could hold without collapsing and I cursed Patrick for not being beside me to handle the math. Maybe, I thought, maybe ....
There were police and fire trucks parked haphazardly on the street and knots of people here and there. My dad stood amid a clump of uniforms and my heart stopped when I saw him. He was stooped and looked somehow crumpled. He was hatless. He was never hatless. I stood on the running board, half in and half out of the truck and just started to cry.
They'd found Mom's body a hundred yards away in a tangled pile of tree trunks and branches. But no Patrick. They had begun sifting the wreckage of our house, looking from him in there when word came that he had been found — alive — embedded in the mud in the Ashley's corn field, not far from where we'd seen that first tornado touch down. He was wearing his flying helmet.
Four people died in Hammon that day - my mom, the Cartwrights in their old Packard, and six year old Jenny Littlebear who'd drowned out on Foss Lake. We held a joint funeral for all of them the following Saturday and it's no exaggeration to say the entire town was there. But Dad wouldn't let Mom be buried in Hammon — we drove back to Queens, New York and had another graveside ceremony at the Calvalry Cemertary, where her parents were buried.
Within a year Dad moved back east, taking a job at CUNY. He couldn't - or maybe wouldn't - look after Patrick and placed him in a kind of group home in Yonkers run by a nursing order of nuns.
Our old home was never rebuilt. They just filled the foundations with the debris, the remains of our life, and then bulldozed over the whole thing and let the grasses grow.
The tornado didn't just pick up our house and shatter it, it atomized our family. Scooped us up where we stood, plucked us apart and flung the bits far, far away from each other, never to be put back together again.
I dropped out of baseball, quit school and, moved by some kind of perverse impulse, signed on with the Navy, trying to become a pilot. I got washed out of flight school after developing an inner ear problem that left me susceptible to sudden attacks of vertigo. But there was a war on, and they weren't about to let me go.
I switched to aircraft maintenance and did three tours of duty aboard the USS Oriskany, part of a carrier group doing air support in Vietnam. Spent my war bottled up on a big iron boat helping other men take to the skies.
I don't dream about the war, or even think about it much anymore. Like so many Americans, the more or less healthy ones, anyway, I just want to forget about it.
But I still dream about the tornadoes. Always in pairs, always bearing down on me; one dark, malevolent, murderous even, the other silver and sinuous. And sometimes, in those dreams, Patrick is standing, staring, his arms raised, his face open to the sky. And as I watch, he begins to turn, to twist. And then he opens his mouth and starts to scream and the muscles on his body begin jumping and twitching madly, pulsing, pounding as if they were trying to rip free from his frame.
And I stand rooted in the dirt, unable to move a single muscle, a shattered Louisville slugger in one hand, and empty glove in the other.

A Thing With Teeth

He was, he would have admitted later if anyone had been able to ask, lost in thought.
He was thinking of his daughter, the one he'd just dropped off at her downtown dorm room. The drive down, after a Sunday dinner, was one of the highlights of his week; conversation came easily sitting in a warm car while the cold city streets slid by.
Yeah. He was projecting.
She didn't see those streets as cold or threatening. Not the way he did, not the way he knew them to be. These city streets were her playground, her schoolyard, even though she was a young woman and years from recess.
They chatted softly, about school, philosophers, and urban planning. All safe, neutral topics, if he'd stopped to think about it, which he didn't. He liked safe, no need to venture beyond that.
He stopped in the small circular drive outside her college and she slid out of the car, threw him a "G'Night!" and without a backwards glance, bounded up the stairs, her arms bulging with books and papers, laundry and a laptop. She called out a cheery hello to the porter and disappeared from view.
She was so goddamn happy. So blissfully confident that this world - this city, this school, this and every foreseeable moment - had been placed in front of her for no other reason than for her to savour, no, for her to swallow. That's how she approached her life: swallow it whole, then smack your lips and laugh out loud and turn and look for the next snack.
He pulled out onto the street and headed for home. Thinking, not surprisingly, of his own time at that school. Wondering if he had laughed that loud, that easily, that often. Wondering if he had ever thought the world was for swallowing — as opposed to a thing with teeth and an appetite all its own.
So yeah, he was lost in thought, driving along Wellesley in the Gay Village. So sue him. There were worse places to be lost — than in your thoughts, that is.
A blur of motion caught his eye and he glanced over and out the window. A whippet-thin young man in hot pants and a skin tight tee whizzed by on rollerblades, his arms and legs pumping to the soundtrack his iPod delivered into his ears only. He deked in and out of the pretty people on the sidewalk with an ease that spoke of a youth spent at the local hockey rink. Man, it must have been hell to be a gay teenage hockey player. In those circles a 'faggot' wasn't a stick, it was club used to beat boys like that.
He twisted in his seat to watch the sidewalk ballet a moment longer, and he flashed on his own endless hours with a hockey stick out on the street, playing hard, playing hard for hours, keeping one eye on his bigger, stronger brothers, and one eye out for a "Caaaaaar". He'd been good at it, maybe not ice hockey good, not OHA good, he'd come to skates to late for that, but on the streets he could work some magic with a worn out blade and a hairless tennis ball. He'd owned that street then, why, he — was suddenly blinded by an intense flash of white light.
"What the - ?"
He was confused for second. Reflexively he tapped the brakes.
The light exploded again, angry, raising red spots in his already spotty night vision and — oh! It was the car behind him, flashing its high beams. He gave his car, the surroundings, a quick scan. Nothing wrong. Nothing he needed to be alerted about. So why the hell -
The high beams flashed again and he got it.
His speed.
He had been crawling along at about 40 km/h in a 50 km/h zone. Lost in his thoughts. Not that it made any difference. Hell, there was usually so much foot, cycle and car traffic here in the Village that you rarely hit 25 km/h, let alone 50.
Asshole, he thought - though he'd been guilty of the precise impatience many other times in many other places. You couldn't drive in this city and not get impatient. Still.
He tapped the brakes once more — just to show his annoyance — then touched the gas, pushing the speed up for just a second, swinging around some stalled traffic and into the left turn lane. He stopped, waiting for a green.
The hyper white lights of his impatient follower swung out of the through lane and pulled in behind him, readying for a left turn too.
Deep in the shallow folds of the reptilian part of his brain, something stirred, taking notice. Something metallic trickled into his blood and his mouth dried up.
The light changed and his foot smashed down on the pedal, pushing himself back into the seat and arcing him through the left turn ahead of the startled oncoming drivers.
Shit.
Idiot.
A quick scan again. No police, no danger, he'd done it. In the rearview he spied his follower — a small dark BMW 5 series sedan, tinted windows, wide tires with oversize hubs and thin walls — waiting to turn left.
Hah! Asshole, he thought.
And drove north on Jarvis, wondering a little at the sudden sounding of blood in his ears.
Turning onto Mount Pleasant and beginning the long slide down into that urban valley, he slowed his breath, relaxed his grip, eased off the gas.
Traffic caught up to him from behind as he waited at the first lights. Despite himself, he glanced up in the mirror. A big black pick-up.
He smiled. No BMW. He tried to recover his train of thought. Road hockey, the school, the carefree days. The city as playground. The light changed and they began moving.
He rolled down the window, breathed the cool night air and smiled again.
And then, the BMW pulled out from behind the pick-up and accelerated with a low growl until it was pacing him, on his left . He could have touched it - except he didn't. That would have meant looking and he wasn't going to give the fucker the satisfaction.
The thing inside sat bolt upright and took command, tipping a torrent of fight or flight hormones into his circulatory system. Now he couldn't hear the BMW over the roar of blood rushing through his veins, pounding like footsteps down an echoing, endless corridor.
The BMW pulled away, effortlessly, put a neat single car length between the two of them and then ... simply slid into place in front of him. Like they were both parts of some clicking clockworks. Or like a blade driving home.
Snick.
Foot off the pedal, waiting for a brake light. Another quick scan. Pick-up behind, not too close. Headlights 15 metres back in the left lane, nobody ahead of the Beamer as they dropped into the deepest part of the valley.
No cops at the bottom with their radar guns. It was Sunday night.
Damn.
Something in him laughed at that.
What was he going to do? Screech in beside them and leap out shouting: Help! Protect me from that bad man and the bright lights!
Right.
He started to accelerate a little as they began up the hill and into the curve — the BMW had seen him ease up and had done the same — so now they were very close.
He floated his foot over the pedals. Waiting, slowing, as the hill and gravity took its toll. Come on, he thought, come on.
And was rewarded with a sudden flaring of brake lights ahead of him. So predictable.
But he didn't brake. He slammed on the gas.
And swerved, hard left into the passing lane, clearing the corner of the BMW by inches. Clear road ahead of him. A giddy laugh rising in his throat. And as he came around the turn he saw two cars: an old beater on the right in the BMW's lane, a Camry on the left in his. But they were staggered, with the Camry slightly ahead of the old beater. A gap. He could see, he could feel himself wiggling through it, like he was in running shoes and they were two slow defencemen who'd been caught flat footed. He went for the breakaway.
He pushed his little car hard, it jerked foward and slid between the two cars and into the curb lane, the beater now between him and the suddenly speedy BMW.
Too late.
The gap between the Camry and beater vanished and Mr. BMW was stuck behind him.
This time he did laugh out loud. The two cars behind him were now even, a moving wall of metal with his follower, his impetuous, impatient follower, trapped behind.
He sobered quickly however. He was coming to his turn in another two blocks - what if the Beamer continued this, what if he followed him?
He thought for a second, mapping out his routes and decided to skip this turn, carry past it for another four blocks and head east at that point, give the Beamer time to cool down or turn off on his own route home.
There was another flash in his rearview. Startled once more he looked up — and two cars back saw the BMW turning where he should have turned. The high beams had been a parting shot, a last "fuck you".
Well, fuck you too buddy, he thought, and waiting a moment until the BMW had moved out of sight, he pulled over and cut his engine. Give the bastard time to get well clear of his neighbourhood, this was getting a little close to home.
He slumped forward, forehead against the steering wheel, and listened to his blood, still racing. A vision of that blood arcing out of his body, a thin crimson surge splattering against the windshield came and went in a flash and he shuddered.
Get a grip. It's done.
He started up the car and moved back into traffic, grabbing his turn two blocks up and sliding into the dark tunnel of mature maples that lined the street. A park slid by on his right, the park his daughter had years ago dubbed "The Best Park In The World" in a typical burst of happy hyperbole. He came to a stop at a four way, even though there was no traffic from any other direction. It made him feel virtuous. He started up, bearing a little to the left as the road jogged and the cemetery came into view and —
Shit!
Bright whites flashed once, to his right and half a block away, as he cleared the intersection. The bastard had been lying in wait!
He gripped the wheel hard and tried frantically to come up with a plan, but inside his head he was just cursing in circles. Behind him, the BMW cleared the corner, not bothering with the stop sign, and settled in, floating about four car lengths back, making no effort to close the gap.
The street was dark and empty — a scattering of houses on his right, the yawning dark of the cemetery on his left. There were no other cars.
They continued this way for four blocks.
He was stopped by the lights at Bayview. He held his breath as the BMW approached. Right? Left? No. It stayed directly behind him.
Think, damn it, think!
He couldn't think. It wasn't some game, this guy was some lunatic. Shit.
The light turned green and he moved through the intersection, numb. Made a couple of quick turns and was on his own street. The BMW had matched him, turn for turn.
He'd run out of moves.
He didn't want the guy — it was a guy, wasn't it? — to know where he lived. He slowed. Wait, there! A dog walker. He didn't know the name, but he recognized the dog - a fierce-looking black and white and gray huskie.
He pulled to the curb just ahead of them. And waited. Frozen.
The huskie strained at his leash as he walked by.
The knock on his roof came long seconds later.
Numb still, depleted, he turned his head towards the window.
Something flashed silver in the streetlight and he felt a fleeting pressure at his throat and then along the side of his neck.
"Stupid faggot."
Footsteps sounding on the quiet night air, receding; his blood not pounding, but leaving.
He coughed, slumped sideways against the door frame. Cool. He was so hot.
His thoughts were slow, swimming through syrup. He saw his daughter bounding up the stairs. He wished she'd glanced back. Smiled at him. He wished he had talked of more than school, more than philosophers. What the hell was the point in sticking to safe. There was no safe. These streets were no playground, this city ... this world, this world had ...
He had been, he would have admitted if he'd been able, lost in his thoughts.

Patter

"Normal?"
"Christ on a crutch! What the hell is normal these days - huh?"
Jacob crammed the mop angrily in the bucket of grey and greasy water, yanked it out, and began swabbing the subway platform, the limp tendrils of the mop slapping at the tile floor as he swept it from side to side.
"Is it 'normal' to punch a needle through your nipple so you can hang a silver barbell on your tit?"
"Geez Jacob, watch your mouth - " Uri glanced up and down the platform nervously; it was mid-afternoon and although there was a scattering of people waiting for the eastbound train, they were keeping their distance from the the two men, and more likely, the yellow pool of vomit the pair been dispatched to clean up. Jacob was the senior man on the clean-up crew, and normally Uri was happy to follow his lead, but not if it meant customer complaints - the managers were absolute bastards when it came to complaints. And Jacob was winding up, just cranking it, and so was his voice.
"Keep it down, huh?"
But Jacob wasn't keeping anything down.
"I mean, is it 'normal' to sneak out of the house at 10 pm and come home at 6 a.m. with your eyes all bright and giggly and sucking on a goddamn pacifier? A pacifier — like you're some kind of big baby freak?!"
Jacob jabbed angrily with his mop at the lumpy pool puddled on the platform. He was no longer mopping up the bile - he was just spreading it around.
"Is it 'normal' "— he spat the word out like it was a piece of suddenly rancid meat he'd discovered in his mouth — "to spend three frickin' days locked in your room bawling your eyes out without ever telling your own goddamn father what's wrong!?"
He stopped the mop and stared up at Uri, who was much the bigger of the two.
"Honest to Christ, Uri. Three whole days and nights. Not one word - except 'Go Away.' Not one frickin' word.
"I was outta my mind."
Uri, who had no children, hadn't ever been married, stared at Jacob.
"What did you do? Call the cops?"
Jacob shot Uri a look that said he was a dolt.
"No." The tone bit. Deep. Uri glanced down at the vomit and then quickly looked away. His stomach lurched.
"I didn't call the cops. What I wanted to do was smash down the door, grab her and shake her like a terrier with a rat.
"But I didn't. I don't hit her. I never touch the girl."
Uri risked another question.
"So whatcha  do?"
"I kept asking myself, "What would Donna do? What would Donna do?"
Knowing what was coming, but somehow knowing that Jacob wanted him to just the same, Uri steeled himself and then asked.
"Geez, Jacob, what would Donna have done?"
Jacob barked a bitter laugh.
"Hah! Donna? Nothing. Donna didn't know howta deal with trouble. She would have run away. Hell. She did run away. The two men were silent for a moment. The mop slapped the tile, pushing the bile, but not soaking it up.
"The only thing Donna knew how to do was fucking crack."
Uri lowered his eyes.
"So whatcha you do?"
"So. I made food and left it outside Shelly's door everyday on tray. Put it down on the floor outside her door like she was a goddamn prisoner or hostage or something. Like I was her jailer, instead of father."
Jacob's voice had gone low and quiet - but not soft. Never soft. Not Jacob.
"And on the fourth day she got up, made her own breakfast and went to school like nothing had happened."
The two men stood on either side of the congealing puddle of vomit and looked at each other.
"So don't talk to me about normal."

THUMP

He heard the paper land on the cement stoop with a dull thump and then, the inevitable echo, a car door shutting. An old engine rose up through it's revs unhappily and just before it faded into the dark distance it stopped and he heard the car door open again.
He waited. Counted.
"Mississippi one, Mississippi two, Mississippi three ..."
Lying in his quiet, cool, dark room, he actually whispered the words out loud. In his mind's eye he saw some faceless newspaper carrier, a vague shape moving up the slate sidewalk at Number 27.
"Mississippi six -"
A harsher sound this time, the sharp slap of rolled up paper against an aluminum storm door. And then a muffled thump as it landed on her thick coconut door mat. "Welcome" the mat said in a cheerful bold script, the word bracketed by the green leaves of a stylized pair of vines.
"Welcome."
He actually gave a bitter little laugh, lying there all alone in the dark, and then immediately regretted it, feeling foolish. Self-conscious. Melodramatic.
He shook his head.
"Idiot."
A flash of smooth white skin as the blue kimono slid off her shoulder.
He shuddered and shook his head, clearing his mind of the unbidden memory.
Unbidden - who was he kidding?
It wasn't unbidden. He'd called it up. Hell, he was wallowing in it, like a pimply-backed adolescent boy.
Her breath, sweetened with wine, catching sharply in his ear.
"Fool."
He sat up suddenly.
He hadn't heard the carrier's car door slam a second time.
Hadn't heard the old Volvo's engine growl into life and then fade into the distance, carrying the carrier onto the next street, the next sad scattering of customers.
Some orderly part of his mind had continued the counting, waiting for that thud of the car door. The engine. The tires hissing on the wet pavement.
Nothing.
And then he heard it.
The sound of her storm door opening - the latch was hinky and you had to really pull on it (or push? Which was it?!) to get it open.
And now there was there came the low murmur of voices, muffled maybe by the damp dark air, but voices, unmistakably.
And now the sound of that storm door shutting.
He counted. Desperate now.
"Mississippi one, Mississippi two, Mississippi three .... damn it!"
No car door.
Her soft skin, slick with sweat.
He fell back on his bed with a dull thump.