Great Writers W - Z

Theresa Kuhl-Babcock has worked for over two decades as a Masters Level School Psychologist (LSSP) in Texas. More about Theresa at the end of this section

Staying in the present drains the life right out of me. The current negative moment is that our son Corey is going off to college, and I am about to be an empty nester. My chest aches with the knowledge that while I can create a new truth, my past represents the best of times and the worst of times.

He walks in the door. “Hey mom. Did you make anything for dinner?”

“No. I figured you would just grab something.” I’m not lazy, but both of my kids have preferred quick meals for some time. I’ve learned that the effort isn’t worth it. 

“Okay. Can you cook something tomorrow?” He’s a charming eighteen-year-old with wild curly red hair and smile that just warms my heart.

I would love a family meal, even though he’ll likely make a a plate and get online with his friends. Still, I take the bait. “I can make fajitas.”

“Perfect. And I also want beef tips before I leave.”

He lopes away, and I follow him to his dirty musky-smelling room with clothes and fast-food wrappers strewn everywhere. None of this is acceptable per our house rules, but unless I nag or do it myself, the mess is my reality. But not for long. Soon the room will be a hollow shell, just like the room across the hall. Chloe left for college two years ago. To distract myself from these thoughts, I begin picking up his things. “Did you turn in the check for your cap and gown?”

“Stop mom! I don’t need you to clean my room.” He rushes to pick up his clothes. 

He is a sweet boy. I mean man. “Okay, I can make you a little something.”

“Thanks.” He gives me a peck on the forehead while towering over me to shut his door. 

Tears nearly roll down my checks as I think about only having one more week in my parenthood journey. Chloe told me when she was 16 that parenthood doesn’t stop when you graduate. She reassured me she would need me forever. Now that she is 21, off in college, I hear from her every few months. The phone calls are like a jolt of electricity, that depletes me to zero when the connection ends. The connection ends, yes, that is how it feels. When they go, the connection ends. 

The dogs begin barking. My husband, Ryan, walks in with a stack of who knows what in his arms and puts them on the front table. “Hey!” he says, but he’s already walking into the bedroom to change and does not expect an answer. Our lives are so routine, predictable, lackluster. When you mold your life around your children, that is what happens. 

While I contemplate my emptiness, Ryan comes in wearing his tight red Aero Jersey ready for cycling. “I should be home around 7:30.” He kisses me on my forehead. I remember when we use to give passionate kisses before parting. I remember so much. I miss so much. 

“Have fun.” I smile and goose him playfully.

“You know, you should really join me.”

I want to say that this is the last week Corey will be here, and he should spend the time with us. But I don’t. “Go.” He means well, but he also knows that I hate cycling and would need years to gain the stamina needed to keep up with his riding group.

Our life together has been exactly this. Ryan filled his life with hobbies, while I took care of all the details. The kids over the last 21 years were the bulk of that burden. A burden that filled me with love, exhaustion, pride, and, at times, frustration. Regardless of good or bad moments, those moments were meaningful and became the clothing I wore to present myself to the world. 

In a week, I will be naked. There is nothing worse than landing naked and full of shame. Shame that I am not stronger, more independent, more fulfilled within myself. 

One week later, Chloe arrives to drive up with us to University of Texas. The Tahoe is full and my life is officially empty. Today may actually be the death of me. 

“You’re going to love it in Austin,” she says. “I bet I’ll even run into you at the drag.” She looks like a model with her long flowing strawberry blonde hair billowing across her forehead. She is wearing a moss green crop top and baggy mom jeans with a large belt working hard to keep them over her non-existent hips. I used to have that figure. 

“Don’t cramp my style. Let me know before you creep around.” He pushes her with his shoulder.

“Whatever, loser. You wish a girl as gorgeous as me wanted to creep on you.” 

Corey makes a gross face, “You are my sister!”

While they talk a big talk, they are actually very close and will be there for each other. Every part of me wants to sell the house and follow them, but I have been expressly forbidden from moving within 100 miles of UT. 

“This is it,” Ryan says as we pile into the Tahoe. “Our final road trip as the Charles family.”

While my soul recoils at his words, Corey and Chloe begin chanting, “Road trip. Road trip.” No part of me wants to begin the end of my life as I have defined it for twenty-one years. 

Despite my silent emotional protest, the drive begins. 

“Do you guys remember our road trip to Tennessee?” Ryan asks the kids, I mean the adults in the backseat. 

“Yeah, mom read us Diary of a Wimpy Kid.” Corey goes on. “I read that whole series after that trip. Did you bring a book today, Mom?”

“Not today. I wish I had thought of it.” The mommy of 15 years ago would have thought of it. But today I allow this moment to pass uneventful. Focused on tomorrow. Focused on the loss. No longer focused on the journey.

“I remember the cabin in the Smokey Mountains. Adults upstairs and kids downstairs. I had such a crush on your friend’s kid. What was his name?” Chloe asks. 

“Jeffrey. He was four years older than you.” I respond.

“He was hot. That is what I remember.” She was always a little boy crazy. Interestingly enough, she has grown into a very independent woman and has not yet brought home a serious boyfriend. 

Corey changes the subject, “We went ziplining for the first time. I was the first one to go.”

“You were scared. I think you just wanted to get it over with.” Ryan is as nostalgic as the rest of us.

“True. I hated all the camping and exploring we did in boy scouts then, but now I love it. Lake Travis has a great zipline. We plan to go in few weeks after we get settled.” 

I imagine Ryan is feeling much like me. The exploring that used to be Daddy-time has transformed into the prerogative of a young man and his friends. I reach over and hold Ryan’s hand. He gives me a knowing glance. My heart wrenches. Never have I wanted to turn back time more than today. 

“We should plan a family trip over Christmas.” Ryan offers. 

Chloe looks guilty, “I already have a plan to go to Houston with Desi. I do plan to come down for Christmas Eve, but I have to be back the day after Christmas for work.”

Desi? She has mentioned him a few times, but evidently he is a serious boyfriend—the first. Ryan and I exchange glances.

Corey joins in. “I don’t want a big trip. That will be my first Christmas away. I want to take it easy and decide when it gets closer.” 

His first, coincides with my last. My last Christmas with parent authority passed without my really noticing. From here on out, my holidays will be at their will. Why did I let them become such independent healthy adults?  

“I guess Mom and I can just take a trip by ourselves.” Ryan gives me a suggestive wiggle of his eyebrow. 

My chest tightens. Not because I wouldn’t enjoy a trip with Ryan, but because I am in mourning. Mourning the death of my immediate family. Ryan and I are now extended family. How many times did I choose not to visit my parents? Instead, I happily created my own family. Would Corey and Chloe do the same and visit less and less? Leaving me waiting for the few and far between visits. I turn my head to avoid anyone noticing the lone tear running down my cheek.

Before we know it, we are at the dorm. Corey’s journey into adulthood is starting. Sending your first off to college is hard but saying goodbye to your last is unbearable. 

I focus on the tasks of the day. Unloading the car, decorating the room, eating lunch, and picking up the last few items from Walmart. The inevitable moment approaches. Slowly the wind dies, the streaks of sunshine disappear, the dark cloud rolls in, and the ominous truth enters without invitation. The time has come. 

“Well, I guess this is it.” Corey is excited and ready for us to leave. The juxtaposition of his happiness and my distress creates tension. 

Ryan pats me on the shoulder. “I guess we should leave. We are so proud of you. Don’t forget about us and remember if you need anything, we are a phone call away.” He hugs Corey enveloping the six-foot-tall man in his arms. 

Chloe chimes in, “Don’t worry. I am ten minutes away.” 

I can’t speak. My body feels heavy, and my eyes are filled with sadness. Corey and Chloe look at me. I stick out my lower lip and mom up. “I love you, both. I wish I could take you home forever, but I did my job. Like Dad said, I am here if you need me.” After a group hug, Ryan and I get in the Tahoe and drive away. I turn to look back but as quickly as the day started is as quickly as the moment ended.

In the empty car.

Empty.

READ MORE LIKE THIS IN CORPUS CHRISTI WRITERS 2022

Theresa Kuhl-Babcock has worked for over two decades as a Masters Level School Psychologist (LSSP) in Texas. Living a full life traveling, adventuring and raising a family in addition to experiences gained through her professional life are all in the scope of her creative pursuits. Not Quite Broken is her first and only published novel, set in Corpus Christi. The short story contributed in this compilation is another emotional and insightful piece meant to touch the heart and raise empathy of readers.

Thomas Ray Garcia lives in Pharr, Texas.  See his website

The boys and I used to run all over the Rio Grande Valley like Road Kings until the “easy twelve” at the Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge taught me what it meant to roam.

There we were, half-naked and sweating even before the sun rose above the flatland horizon, sneaking under tollbooth gates and over chained fences until we reached the Malachite Trail. Although it was an hour until opening, who would kick out six cross-country runners cutting across trails and roads and brushlands? And if we were caught, that middle-aged, mafia-hat-wearing, goatee uneven and gray bastard of a coach would do anything to bail us out.

Even in the twilight, I admired my hodgepodge of a team. Who could forget Beans’ telenovela celebrity chin, scarred from his monthly trips across the river? And Russian, who was as white as you could get, was probably more Mexican than all of us combined, but he was pale and his middle name was “Ivan,” and that was all that mattered to Coach Austin while bestowing his nicknames. And then there was Danny Bear, the darkest runner Coach Austin had ever had, and so his nickname followed suit. Julian and Josh, keeping their real names because they transcended the nickname game, were the two self-appointed team leaders and traitors to that necessary tranquility before a run; they ran ahead without telling anyone else. Only Russian and I had Garmins, and this sole fact made us saviors, so we caught up in haste.

“Too fast,” Russian said under a mutter. Those two words slowed us down.

And who would want to rush past the scenery of Santa Ana with its cracked soil and brown plants and suffocating paths winding past one another, a road here and a trail there, all leading in circles until our twelve miles were over and we returned home with nothing to do but wait until the next run? In the middle of a heartbeat, we sunk into a rhythm led by pattering shoes three hundred miles overworn.

“Russian, let’s go sub-six on the last mile, or what?” Danny Bear asked.

No reply, only breathing, and so Danny Bear made the first move: A jerk to the right to escape the pack, and then a surge forward to interrupt Russian’s stride. No good, for the pack sided with Russian, and we answered Danny Bear’s treason with a turn into a clearing off the main trail.

After a silent minute, Danny Bear caught the back end with Beans, Julian and Josh remained in the middle, and Russian and I led the pack with a tinge of reluctance since both of us were beat after a long week of studying English and Biology and whatever else we thought would help us escape this never-ending run. How many miles now? My Garmin sounded off in reply: One. One out of twelve, twelve out of sixty-five or sixty-six that week. We were only sixteen years old, and there were only six of us. We were like the Spartans of the Southmost South, where the weight of Texas crushes the upheaving Mexico, and we’re caught in the middle, trying to hold one up while pushing the other down.

If only I had known the struggle going on in their minds at that moment, whether they realized it or not. They wanted to escape. Their futures foretold it: Russian with his unfulfilled PhD dreams, and Julian—the MIT bright-child of Pharr or Donna or whatever town he put down on the school form, who threw out his back and joined a frat and fell in love with a brunette back home—who left Texas and came back to Texas and never went anywhere but Texas. For love, he said. For fear, I said. Josh joined the Border Patrol (told you he was a traitor), while Danny Bear disappeared into who knows where—some obscure mechanic shop down by Las Milpas most likely—I probably drive past him every day. And Beans? He overdosed the night after graduation.

We all yearned for that salvation from our duties as citizens of the Rio Grande Valley, and my words fail to capture the torpor that hung in our minds every day until I left and “became a writer like Jack London” like my dreams told me I would; and I still run (six days a week in fact) to fulfill my duty, but to jump so far ahead of my story would do injustice to the immediacy of the moment—we were six runners then.

Six was an odd number. This revelation struck me as I fell back with Beans and Danny Bear and watched as we stomped our souls into the dead earth. I saw ten soleless shoes rising and falling in unison, then discordant, then both, and then I stopped staring at the legs and looked at the bare backs. Josh must have been whipped by his abuelo last night. Russian with his acned back didn’t mind, neither did Josh with his suntanned, blotched, bronze shoulders pumping him forward. I fell into Beans’ rhythm, a slow steady pace, relaxed with the world, not resisting the inevitable. Danny Bear followed.

“Who’s gonna be our seventh man?” I asked, tired of the silence. “We can’t compete without him. Ricky, Gecko, or Takis?”

“No seas mamón, Tommy,” Beans said. “Focus on yourself.”

That’s the way it was in the Rio Grande Valley. Think about yourself, forget about the next guy, and don’t give out free rides. I remembered joining this team as an overweight, idealistic cheerleader spouting spirit and teamwork and goodwill to those who would take it. But no one did; we ran as a pack but lived in our minds. We woke up before our parents rose and ran before the sun rose and showered naked (hiding our roses) and learned how not to learn and ran again after the sun set; we were miserable but reassured in our cycle of sleep, run, school, run, sleep. And here we were, at the edge of the nation, running away from it all, together but separated by that invisible border of human disconnection.

The loneliness of the long-distance runner was real.

The sun remembered to rise by mile four, and all attempts at connection were replaced by the gasping of humid air. We were lost. Even if Beans knew the routes, he refused to pick up the pace and lead the pack, so we ran through trails overlapping and never-ending. Thickets surrounded us, but I could still make out the breaks in the trees and bushes to where the river rushed by. I could hear it gurgling. I’d never seen the river, but it was right there. Momma told me to stay away from it. But it’s beyond the trees and right there, separating two worlds, bleeding with foreign blood, and I was the only one who was thinking this as we turned into a new trail, the Bobcat Trail of all names, and we left behind the wonder of that false placidity with no reflection whatsoever.

I had it. I ran past them all. No one protested as I swung my arms in a frenzy brought upon by delusions of the rut I was in. Their route was now my whim, and they struggled to follow me as I circled back toward treaded paths and unfamiliar branches glowing with light. I was drawn to the sound of the river that was a border and a border that was natural in essence yet unnatural all the same.

And there was the river, calm and turquoise, no hints of life anywhere, hidden by encroaching branches and bent-over trees that seemed to return to the land. I stopped. My chest heaved in tune with my mind, pulsing with adrenaline, and I felt like crossing the Rio Grande and disappearing into nowhere.

“If you’re tired, then don’t pick up the pace,” Julian said, annoyed.

I turned to face him, but in my rush my eyes caught a shirt thrown across a nearby trunk. I approached it. It was wet.

“Watch out for beaners,” Josh said.

Only Russian joined me in my quest to retrace wet spots in the soil back toward an incline leading out of the river, and then follow the faint traces of footprints that were separated by two-foot-long strides. Bursting into a sprint, I ignored the protests behind me, my eyes on the trail, discovering discarded candy boxes and empty prescription bottles until they stopped appearing, and I was at a loss until I saw him.

A tall, shirtless teen with a thick bigote stood hunched over, hiding the scar across his chest. His shorts revealed his darkened thighs, not unaccustomed to sunlight. His calf muscles tightened as if in constant alertness, ready to flee, but he remained staring absently at the six sweaty bodies circled together facing him, the singular, beaten stranger.

“Pinche Tommy,” Beans said. Our breathing had subsided. The four miles, and all the miles we had run, meant nothing standing face-to-face with a true lonesome traveler.

After a light tap on my shoulder, Julian ran back through the woods. The pack followed him. I, too, followed, shocked at the nonchalant encounter until I realized he was following us; he ran, long legs pushing off the same ground we treaded, keeping a considerable distance away but still maintaining a pace only conditioned runners could match. Julian and the others had dashed away, pretending they saw nothing, and let the dust left by their soles remain as the only evidence they had seen of the teen that now neared us, gaining momentum without breaking a sweat, determined to join this solitary band of runners.

Waiting for him to catch up, I remained behind. What was there to fear but a possible escape from this heat-infested land? Would he attack me, steal the shorts and shoes that composed my identity, run far and away until he was me and I was dead?

Laughter erupted from him, and I was sure a mania had burst forth from his body as he exaggerated his arm movements, contorted his face so his lips pushed forward and his eyes widened. Then he stopped goofing, and then he started up again, never breaking his gaze with me.

“Want to run with us?” I asked. A naïve hope had kindled in me, and despite the improbability of it all, I hoped he would say yes. No reply. He just pushed forward, looking back as if expecting me to respond in turn, and I did, extending my stride and quickening my pace until our legs chugged in a silent harmony disturbed only by our breathing.

The pack lay ahead. From afar, I noticed how they composed a morphing vehicle of bodies that worked separately for a common good, that is, a physical reminder of human existence that many take for granted, but its absence can easily de-motivate the long-distance runner stuck in the never-ending step, step, breathe, step, step, breathe cycle that both prolongs and invites suffering. And here I shared this experience with the teen beside me, matching my movements limb by limb, never daring to move ahead or shrink back, content with his newfound position.

The long-distance runner never questions why, but always asks how things happen or how things will end up, and I asked myself the same questions until the teen suddenly sprinted forward, catching up with the pack. Russian and Julian and Josh and Danny Bear and Beans ran on. They knew, or maybe they really didn’t know, about the seventh man in their midst; a new breathing pattern and running gait had to have registered in their unconscious, sharpened only by miles of thoughtlessness, but I realized that it didn’t matter whether they thought the teen was he or me. He could run with the pack if he could keep up with the pack, and that was that.

How he could run like that after trekking who knows how many miles and living off scraps and swimming across that divisive river I will never know, but I did know he wanted to be one with the world, or to put it in layman terms, one with the pack of runners that provided anonymity, protection, and freedom, despite it not offering any of these things.

Of course, I didn’t arrive at this conclusion until we ran alongside the scenic road and passed a trolley full of workers and visitors reveling in its shade. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a transformation in the teen’s face—it was done, it was over, the journey had ended, and it was time to go home. I knew this because those eyes betrayed any and all traces of fear. He held his breath mid-stride. But the trolley passed. Only waves from tourists had graced our group of seven runners, all apparently coming from the same place and going to the same place, all one entity in the eyes of a stranger. The teen’s shoulders eased.

We turned off the road and into a path that ran along a dried-up lake. Its red soil cooked in the heat, as did our bodies as we silently yearned for water and relief from the remaining three miles. Where we were headed, I had no idea, and this fact bothered me until a swell of anger rushed from my head to my feet, and I ran up to the front with Russian and Julian, dominant in my ambitions to take control of this lost vehicle. The teen must have felt the same, for he joined me, and I remained quiet until the urge not to ask was overcome by my curiosity.

“Your name?” I asked between breaths.

“Jesse,” he said. And that was all he ever said.

So Jesse and I took the lead, Russian and Julian following, Danny Bear and Josh straggling behind, and Beans behind them ensuring we stay together, yet this was the last thought on the rest of our minds as all we thought was run, run, run, don’t look back, just move on, go past that tree over there that looks burnt from the South Texas sun, jump over that fallen branch, watch out for that dip in the trail, don’t stop.

My Garmin beeped mile ten, and against the wall I went, feeling a growing heaviness in my legs and fatigue burning my chest. Everything slowed down, from the birds crisscrossing the laneless sky and the leaves drooping down, and I even blinked and breathed slower, believing the whole world had joined me in my madness, until I looked over to Jesse who ran straight and tall and confident, those lean arms swaying in rhythmic motion, hypnotic to someone as exhausted as me, and I couldn’t help letting him gain distance on me, so I could watch that body defy time, motion, and the stifling existence we all suffered.

The pack stayed with me, I was the new leader, but Jesse was the true alpha, running at least fifty meters ahead, directing our path on his impulse. I questioned none of it. I followed blindly, his movements inspiring my own, knowing that I couldn’t quit; and despite the quickening pace, I refused to look down at my Garmin to know how many minutes were left because I didn’t want it to be over.

If I had known how it would all go after this run and all our other runs, I would have said, don’t bury your nose in the books, Russian, it’s all worthless; go find your voice like Julian, except he found love instead, and not even in Massachusetts, but right under his nose here in the lowland Rio Grande. And Beans? Don’t die, Beans. Go work with Danny Bear, go make that engine scream, go follow Josh on his travails with forlorn Mexicans. Remember the miles, remember them all, and although we will never run together again, my words will never let your spirits die.

In the final moments of that run, the pack surrounded me like never before. I was propelled forward by an unexplainable force from the energy emanating from their muscles and mouths. We were six, but we were one. We were six minds, six souls, twelve legs that pushed beyond the limits that the world placed on us. We infiltrated this refuge, we ran the miles the way we wanted to run them. We found someone as lost as ourselves and we followed him, he who had transcended it all, and we thought nothing.

I extended my stride to catch up to Jesse, and in this impossible task, I found myself smiling, chasing after a long-forgotten desire I thought I had lost somewhere along the way. I laughed like a child.

The trees and trails looked familiar again, and a sign indicated the beginning of the Malachite Trail up ahead. The fence appeared in the distance, and as we slowed down, Jesse sped on, heaving his whole body onto the wire, until he climbed up and out and ran past Coach Austin’s mini-van and toward the rest of Texas.

“Who was that?” Coach Austin asked us while we climbed over.

“Jesse,” I said.

“He can run.” And that’s all that he ever said about that day.

Now, whenever I wake up early enough to see the sun rise over the Rio Grande Valley and spot a long-distance runner hiding in its shadows, in his eyes all that road behind and beyond him suddenly gone as if my gaze could pierce diamonds and pick his soul out and deport his dreams, I remember Jesse, who could have been Jesus for all we knew, and I look the other way.

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Trish Koval is a citizen of the world. She posts her thoughts on Facebook.

Was on the road, and as I'm driving down swoops a dove from the overpass bridge and lands smack dab in my lane. I was traveling down a steep slope a two lane throughway, clipping along about 50 mph/80 kph. The throughway was quite empty, and I quickly looked in my rear-view before braking to see if there was anyone behind me... there was not. Could only slow down just so much before I was literately on top of this bird (those doves usually take off in flight as a car approaches them...this one didn't for some reason.) I thought, oh crap, I smashed him/her! Looked in my rear-view as I passed, the little bugger was fine, yet continuing into the next lane (no cars coming that I could see.) Maybe it was dehydrated, for it could fly. Hope it made it!

Funny how events suddenly jog the memory of another, for just after this as I continued to drive on I recalled an incident dating back to when I was around 10-11 years old. My father was working a job all the way down in Santa Cruz, CA. Remember well he was constructing a huge sewage plan down there. Anyway, he was on the long drive back home on the coast highway 1 at dusk. As par of the course, it was socked in by fog. He said, suddenly a wild pheasant hit his truck. He pulled over to see the condition of the bird. Its neck was broken, and it was lying dead on the side of the road. He picked it up and put it the back of his truck. When he came home he told he had a pheasant down in the basement, and told me what happened, however he never mentioned it was dead. Guess he assumed that that was understood or he felt bad that it had died and knew how I would react. I went racing to basement to see our new exotic pet! He had laid it out on his work bench. I got all emotional and turned to him and said, 'dad, it's dead!' He said, 'Trisha, of course it is dead sweetheart, it slammed into my truck!' I cried at that point, that I recall so well. My dad felt awful, and was hugging me wordlessly. Then he calmly explained to me that even had the pheasant survived it would have not survived in our care, wild birds rarely do. Nevertheless, him being a country boy, he knew all about plucking, and preparing a bird for cooking. 

Naturally, I did not attend the feast, but my mother and brother did. Soooo... to conclude this bit of small history, he was right about all of it... just took me a bit longer to come to terms.

My beloved spirits were on a roll at 3:45 AM. So downstairs we trotted, getting closer to a ~lovely~ sound. There's a cricket chirping away in my kitchen pantry. For thousands of years, it has been considered lucky to have a cricket on the hearth ... I do believe in this! I got the coffee brewing ... and the glorious aroma commenced to penetrate the air! A big inhale .... ahhhh!! Now out in the dark garden of still silence, the only thing that's at all audible is the peaceful trickling of water running down under the street through the pipes that have taken on the sound of a babbling brook. What a nice touch this morning! It's 58°/14°C out and doesn't feel cold at all! That's due to the fact of no rain yesterday or during the night, a higher temperature than yesterday ... but how the dampness makes such a difference in how it feels, regardless of what the thermometer reads.

I'm one year older today, which I consider a win! This is not necessarily a thought I've begun to consider this year, no, it has time. But, perhaps this year's win is special compared to others ~ ~~

Anywho, all you fine folks have a great Saturday and weekend!! Make it worth it, make it count Peace out ~~~

In coming home and pulling up to my driveway, I encountered after a good long absence, my neighbor who often did pass by on his way to taking his long walks around the park. This would be the fella that suffers deep depression and found that a regimen of Prozac had helped him immensely, and the one that owns a telescope to obverse the skies that also helps him in his battle of insomnia. We got chatting (he's a very talkative and friendly person), going on to tell me he had stopped the Prozac (never said why), but went on to say that he had recently resumed taking it. He went on to tell me about his stargazing with his high-powered telescope and the conversation became intricate, as we spoke of the bright full moon on the 20th, how he has shifted his gaze to observing the volcano in the last months, and politely asked me if he could tell me in Spanish (he always speaks to me in English from the get-go, his choice, not mine.) I told him, as I've told in our last conversations, for he has always asked me if he could do so, 'but of course...adelante (go right ahead/please do.) And as our many previous conversations dealing with astronomy, he takes a deep breath, and continues in English like nothing!! Lol!! He does this every time! I just let him rip. He's a deeply religious individual, a Catholic of course, and grabbed my hand as we spoke blessing me too many times to count, but I feel like I'm covered!! ¡Si señores! He's a man no one would notice, but he's a good guy, with a good heart I think. After 20 minutes of chatting, and many blessings had passed he departed to the park and I was very glad to have seen him out and about once more. 

I'm ready to retire from here to other 'things,' and I've got a query. Are good memories no longer something that brings a breath of fresh air into the present? I mean, even the bad memories serve a great purpose in one's life if you permit them. Are the bittersweet memories of the nostalgia now passé?? I'm hearing this out here, but am in disbelieve. I will go hold my nostalgia and fond memories that have already written, etched in stone, and cannot be undone. What are people missing when they choose to forget or erase such events?? I really don't understand this, therefore I will ponder over it with hope to find an answer. 

Taken up through the trees from the front garden a little after sunrise, it is clear, the sunrise intense, and you can clearly see the half-moon in the sky this morning. Only once in a while do I see the moon out in broad daylight and today was one of those occasions. 

My sleep time is really something! My son and his father slept like Dracula...with almost ZERO movements in their crypts the entire night. Isn't that wonderful?! I thought so!! However, I've got a wholly distinct thing going on! My bed looks neatly made when I hunker down at night, and yes, I make it every day, I must!! At 4 AM what do I have? A true rat's nest of disorder, As crazy as it sounds, the spirits visit me in the night! And I will further say that they finally rouse me between 3:30 and 4, and yes, I am awakened immediately, and don't feel the need to linger! I feel something around me in those hours, and no, it is not the comforter strangling me!! So, it's the spirits most likely hangin' out, for I've no other explanation as to the sensation I feel! Yes, the bright sunshine in my room can be blinding for one!! It's crazy love brightness! Mexico's sun is seriously illuminating!! The altitude is relevant to that, in between its very southern proximity. Anyways, my bed is made for tonight's nightly wrasslin' event of the Spirits Vs. Kovalsky!! I happen to love it!!

The month of September is a truly a menacing month in Mexico. The alertness in a general way is high for quakes. My groups here, and on my phone app are loaded with apprehension all through this month. Of, course, who could blame us after Sept. 19th, 1985 quake (8.1) flattening this huge city within 60 seconds, and then once again, but not once but twice in 2017 within a mere 10-day span...the 7th of Sept we were hit at minutes away from midnight with an 8.1 out from the coast, yeah, it was more than felt, woke me up from a dead sleeps with furniture walking away for the walls. On the 32nd anniversary of the '85 quake unbelievably so, we were struck by a 7.1 near 2:00 PM that was much closer to the valley of Mexico, shallow, an unusual break in the plates had occurred (for they didn't shift and move which is more typical, but exploded from within the plates---rare occurrence with little known as to why) and wreaked havoc within the city. Frankly, I thought my number was up that day as I fled my house to the park in front, I really did, as did many!!
So, now the tension is clearly building, and people write/message these apprehensions ever since September began, and only grows as we near the 19th. Ironically, this date is my mothers' BD, and at the time in '85 when my family had contact via a ham phone radio of a friend of my then brother-in-law bypassed the downed lines, yet could call my house phone, to let me know that my mother was terminal, and to come back to SF...recall my sister Sue was speaking to me in a 3 way conversation if I remember correctly) I did go to be with my mother for 2 and a half months, though it took another week to be able to fly out (airport damaged and closed down.) The world news at that time (as we could not be contacted in any form due to the heavy damages) said Mexico City seemed to be gone from the map...yeah that bad at that time!
Nevertheless, this month represents the 'black hand' over us. We all feel it, how could we not? Fingers crossed that we have a calm month, even though in the heart of hearts nobody believes, nor trusts in that!

Well, to my surprise I received a message from my x, and him wishing me a Happy Mother's Day, (con un abrazo fuerte) with a strong hug. This was a pleasant surprise of sorts, for in the 20 years in our marriage, and 17 of them as a mother and him a father, he always told me he couldn't make a big deal out of mother's day with me, for I wasn't his mother!! Lol! His take! Ohh, boy!! He may have found wisdom, and hope he has. However, there was one year, and many ago, that he hugged me and thanked me on this day, and went on to say, 'who wouldn't want you as their mother?' Oh, he was so honest in that moment, and I felt bad for him reflected on his family history, never forgot that moment and he was brave to express such a feeling I thought. Though his mother, whom I really cared for over the years, she was a stay-at-home mom as was the cultural norm when he grew up, she left her 5 children in the hands of a live-in nanny and went off to help the poor in the Catholic church in arts and crafts. Him writing to me today seems to be a revelation.  

Wayne Hankins lives in Corpus Christi, Texas. He studied creative writing, painting, architecture, computer science; he worked 25 years as a systems & software engineer in flight simulation trainers.

Seventy laps around the sun seemed enough when younger.

Now done, I’ve become greedy and want many more:
because I still find all of this intensely interesting.
Everything about it still fascinates me:

the art of everything, culture, food/drink, life forms,

the vast universe with all its celestial bodies and our small planet,

science, math, life, living,

humans

with our amazing minds, hearts, souls. 

These Rainier cherries are small

my enjoyment of them large.

Drinking coffee may seem a small thing 

I assure you it is not.
Birthday wishes may also seem a small thing

but were not received that way at all.

Savor your days

and the people that have been in them.

William Henneberger is the publisher, “editor”, graphic designer, salesperson, and writer for The Vent Daily: A Monthly Publication. More about Wil at the end of this section.

I love Tom Cruise. So what if he’s nuts or part of some religion crazier than all the other crazy religions? When I look at Mr. Cruise I see a go-getter, a winner who conquered dyslexia and Katie Holmes. Say what you will about the zealous movie star, but I will always be a fan, and not just because of my family’s odd connection to that charming man. 

+++++

If I had to praise one thing about this Federal Prison camp it would be the individual showers, but if I had to praise two things, the second would be the Recreation Department. Some long-time guests of the Federal Bureau of Prisons say that Rec is better behind the fence at the larger, low-security prison down the street or even at other camps, but for a short-timer like myself it’s hard to complain. Sure, the Trivial Pursuit set was from 1995, but any later edition might put those who have been ‘down’ (incarcerated) for the last 20 years at a disadvantage. 

My favorite leisure activity on the inside was playing pool, which accounts for my early purchase of this 1980’s hit by Warren Zevon. There is no Google in prison so I’m operating by memory alone, but in my mind Werewolves of London was part of the Color of Money soundtrack. Specifically, played over one of several Scorsesian montages of pool-hustler Vincent (played by, yes, Tommy Cruise) doing his thing. His thing being sinking shot after shot and swinging his pool-cue around like a certain reptilian-martial-artist-inventor. I listen to Werewolves of London on repeat through my headphones while I play the sport of criminals. Now if I could only make a shot. 

++++

According to my mom, once upon a time my old man was a fairly successful pool hustler. She speaks fondly of the times she would head out of the bar just before a game concluded to position the car for a quick getaway. I remember my dad first introducing me to this geometric art in the bar owned by his mother. During an early 80's Christmas visit to my Depression-era Grandparents double-wide trailer home, dad and I walked the fifty yards to Penny's Place where I stood on a crate to reach the velvety green plane. My old man gave me my first English lesson before the professional drunks arrived. The novelty of this adorable scene must have worn thin because I don’t recall playing much pool with my dad as I grew older. If he was trying to avoid his misspent youth, he could have at least given me some pointers in that too. 

In the month between finding out my prison date and turning myself in, my top priority was to spend as much time as I could with my children, especially my 8-year-old daughter. We watched all 6 Star Wars movies (my picks) plus Ponyo, Spirited Away and Annie (hers). We practiced pitching for kickball and I took her to her first Pool Hall. I'm sure it is the prison-time talking but one thing I’ve decided in here is that when I get out I'm going to turn my daughter into a billiards prodigy. She seemed to enjoy the game and took to it well. I’m also pretty sure I’m the only idiot father sending her letters from prison, explaining the rules of 9-ball. I can already imagine the Color of Money reboot with Tom in Paul Newman’s role and introducing Suri Cruise as Lillian, the young pool shark hustling for enough cash to bail her dead-beat-dad out of the slammer. You’re welcome Hollywood. 

In 1985 my dad was an extra in Top Gun. The Tony Scott adrenaline rush was filmed in part, at Miramar Base near San Diego, CA, where we were stationed for the greater part of the 80’s. Toward the end of the movie when the crew of the Aircraft Carrier surrounds Maverick to celebrate whatever vague mission he had accomplished, one of those unidentifiable sailors is the man who squirted me out 30-some odd years ago. The background role was no big deal, certainly unpaid and nothing that would qualify him for S.A.G. membership, but dad did bring home an autographed photo of the actor. That leads me to believe that under the right circumstances he might actually express some appreciation for the Arts, specifically if his dead-beat son was to ever write a book or maybe a Top Gun remake starring Suri Cruise as a young hotshot fighter pilot, taking on the rogue nation that has her daddy locked up (I'm in a very particular headspace these days). 

Most likely, my apparent daddy issues are part of the reason I've always wished to excel in the art of sticks and balls. On the outside my allotted billiards time diminished, due to the distractions of everyday life. I never practiced enough to get great. I could win 7 out of 10 games when I played anyone in my circle and I was content with what my dad might call mediocrity. Surely he can still easily put me in my place over that green felt, if he ever took the time to try… (one tear). 

+++++

In prison camp I spent 2-3 hours a day playing pool. The winner held the table so a good portion of these hours consisted of waiting for my next game. To get in line you knock on the table and find out who is last in line. There are two worn-out but functional tables and about twenty inmates who played regularly (ten who played daily). I learned in my skateboarding days that if you want to get good at something it's best to practice with people who are better than you. With this in mind I had no problem getting destroyed by a big black inmate named Ross. (I’m still talking about pool, sicko). I could beat Ross about twenty percent of the time but my dormant geometric skills were awakening, and he could see that I was no joke. He started to give advice at a ratio of one tip for every three insults. Ross was a good friend and while we ended up here through very different criminal ventures, we had a lot in common, like watching independent films, political views, and misguided intelligence. A couple of months into my sentence, Ross broke his arm, yet continued to run the table on me regularly. 

If prison pool isn't your preference there are plenty of other options from board games to ball games to leather play, I mean leather craft, even spinning. The recreation department for someone with a relatively short sentence seems bottomless, but I understand how these activities could stale over the years. 

Sedentary time killers include Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble and my personal favorite, Risk. No Monopoly—I heard that was because the money could be used as some form of prison currency. No game of Life, probably since we've already lost at life—no need to rub it in. Just remember when you check out a game, those dice better be in the box upon return. The recreation boss cop does not take kindly to bathroom corner crap games. There are also some random 1000 piece puzzles. You can assemble the one of cute little kittens and get a sorry excuse for a YouTube fix. 

Dominoes, chess sets and playing cards can be purchased through commissary. Pinochle cards can also be brought at the store but since I don't have the slightest idea what pinochle is, I'm not going to mention it any further. Table games are only allowed after four pm. By 6:30 it's almost impossible to find a flat surface not being used for some kind of play. If a locker is empty, turn that baby on its side and shuffle up. After some new friends taught me how to play Gin Rummy and spades, among several other games, I realized how quickly you could burn through four or five hours. Anything you can learn to eat up the month/year is very much appreciated in Prison camp. 

Health conscious prisoners have an even greater selection of activities to maintain weight and physical condition. The track and exercise equipment are available all day long. If your prison camp job only takes an hour or two you can take advantage of your free time. Most of us, however, work until three p.m., which is when the Rec Yard explodes like an inmate at a conjugal. (Sorry that was uncalled for. Conjugal visits don't even exist anymore; that was just gratuitous sexual imagery. I have a problem.) 

Prisoners look at you strangely if you opt to stay indoors in the afternoons or weekends. Even the guys who don't participate in team sport will at least go walk the track once in a while. Then you have the guys who really walk the track— ten to fifteen miles a day. However, much like in the Old West, not many people run for fun. With hours and days and months and years of exercise time, it's common knowledge to go for a low impact routine. 

+++++

Another link in the Tom Cruise connection chain: my younger brother was an extra in the War of the Worlds reboot. He was in a group of background actors who, along with Tom and a Fanning progeny, were running through a field to escape death by alien laser-beam. I don't want to infringe on a story that isn't mine, but you get the point: my family must be cosmically bound to the greatest actor of most Tom Cruise movies. 

+++++

Aside from walking/running you can also pick from a variety of sports according to the season. Basketball is mostly six on six pick-up while football, volleyball, softball, and futbol are more organized. With only 200 campers, the sport leagues usually consist of about four teams who go 'round and 'round with one another. Handball is the most popular sport, basically racquetball without the racquets and against only one wall. I tried it a few times but wasn't willing to callous the palms of my prissy little creative-class hands. There were racquets available but getting by in prison requires one to fine tune the art of minimalism. 

If you prefer a little less cardio you can demonstrate your hand-eye coordination at the horseshoe court(?) field(?) sandbox(?). I'm going with sandbox. If tossing footwear still stresses your heart rate, you might need to take it easier and roll some bocce ball, the only game with benches incorporated into the court. Not to brag, but those benched ballers say I'm a natural, a real bocce phenom. 

For anyone who hasn't yet given up on his bodies, working out is a big deal. Some campers build their entire routine around their regimen. I get it; if you’re losing years of your life inside, you want to make the most of the time you will have in the free world. Staying healthy and living longer is the only way some inmates can gain back the five, ten, or twenty years some guys have paid for their crimes. I'm lucky enough to have dropped weight simply from the lack of fast food. Either that or the couple of times I went to softball practice really paid off.

I've never been in a Tom Cruise film, but I’m darn sure going to try and keep this odd new tradition going, and hopefully even pass it along to my son. Still, if missing Maverick is my lot in life, maybe getting Goose is a good enough consolation for this gander. When I was 11 years old, watching one of my dad’s softball games on Naval Air Station Kingsville, one of the young sailors next to me asked if I had seen Top Gun. Of course I had. He informed me that Goose from the movie happened to be in the stands, spectating. Amazed, I scrambled for pen and paper and politely approached him for an autograph. He signed my scratch piece of paper. I was ecstatic. What were the odds of Goose being in Texas and at my father’s softball game? I gave it about as much thought as any kid with just over a decade of Earth residency would. Cut to, one divorce and two custody battles later I was almost an adult, properly jaded and much more cynical about life and all of its serendipitous celebrity sightings. I found myself wondering about this bizarre encounter and figured I now had the where-with-all to find out if that really was Maverick’s co-pilot and Meg Ryan's beau or if 11-year-old me was just being pranked by a couple of trashcans. It didn't take much detective work. I dug the autograph out of the bottom of a drawer and immediately felt my first ever dose of mortification as I read on the torn-edged slip of paper, not the signature of actor Anthony Edwards, but instead the printed word; “GOOSE”.

Read more great writing in Corpus Christi Writers 2019

William Henneberger is a first amendment advocate and borderline-diabetic liberal with $43 dollars in the bank. He used to go by Billy but is now called Wil – yes, with one “L”.

For a hot second, he was a television newswriter and producer for Corpus Christi’s CBS affiliate.

A baker’s dozen years ago, he professionalized the zine he started in college, to its current newsprint version. He has since acted as publisher, “editor”, graphic designer, salesperson, and writer for The Vent Daily: A Monthly Publication, which consists of highbrow satire, lowbrow comedy, and (unibrow?) celebrity interviews. 

He is also the Creator of and Writer for ventdaily.com and deadtomeobits.com

Wil’s favorite suicided writer is David Foster Wallace, even though he has only read his short stories. His favorite living (at time of print) writer is Chuck Klosterman. 

He has impregnated his legal wife twice, in 1998 and in 2006 and is very proud of the results. Wil’s life is defined  by a constant struggle with the fact that he has a younger, thinner, more successful brother.

Dr. Bill Chriss is a trial and appellate lawyer who is also a historian, political scientist, religious scholar, and published author. More about Bill at the end of this section.

World War II changed the world and Corpus Christi forever. Locally, the big changes were obvious: the military presence in Corpus Christi, gas rationing, post-war prosperity. There were also smaller, subtler byproducts. 

The large influx of military and support personnel (and their families) and a shortage of civilian teachers put quite a burden on the Corpus Christi Independent School District. Eventually, some public schools were forced to run "half sessions." Half of the students in each class attended in the morning and the other half in the afternoon, with the teacher pulling long hours and "double duty."

Many worried about how this stopgap necessity would affect the education of children, particularly younger ones. One local educator did something about it and thus unwittingly founded an institution many local residents fondly remember.

When she married and moved to Corpus Christi, Dorothy Blasingame thought she had left teaching behind and become a homemaker. She had no intention of running Corpus Christi's only non-parochial private school for two decades, nor did she realize in the 1940s that soon her kindergarten would provide hundreds of children with their only "headstart" in the days when there was no Headstart program. All she wanted was to be sure her own children and their friends got the fullest education possible at a time when teachers and equipment were in short supply.

So, she decided to end her retirement and start her own school. She and her husband Charles, who was a principal at Wynn Seale Junior High and later at Austin Elementary, lived in a one-story house on Austin Street near Incarnate Word Academy. When he got home from school, Mr. Blasingame worked on filling in the backyard with sand for a playground, and later he added a second story to the home. Meanwhile, Mrs. Blasingame began teaching a few neighborhood kids in her living room during the day. Soon, unexpected demand created the need for more expansion. A kindergarten room was added to the back of the house, and a first-grade classroom was added behind the detached garage (with Mr. B. doing most of the work himself). By the late 1950s, the Blasingame home had three classroom additions, one for 1st grade, one for kindergarten, and one for pre-kinder. They housed two full-time teachers besides Mrs. B. and a part-time teacher of music and Spanish (which were both mandatory). The kids just kept coming.

Gradually, Mr. and Mrs. Blasingames' little home turned into an entire junior academy. There were trees to climb and swings and slides to play on in a sandbox as big as your backyard, and there were midmorning snacks and orange juice from Mrs. B.'s kitchen.

It was here that many of us learned colors and letters and numbers. It was here that we made our first friends and had our first experiences as pupils. In fact, the first time I ever had my picture in the paper was when a Caller-Times photographer came and took photos of my little kindergarten class climbing trees in Mrs. Blasingames's backyard/sandbox. I was five years old.

I'm not even sure that schools like this were "accredited" in those days. I do know that there was never a problem transferring to public school after completing the course of studies at "Mrs. Blasingame's." CCISD Superintendent Dana Williams and most of the school board members were quite familiar with the quality of the school. With its small class size, its mandatory Spanish and music programs, and its high-quality teachers, Mrs. Blasingame's was ahead of its time. It wasn't expensive, and it wasn't exclusive. It was just a good school where everybody cared and where you could always get an emergency hug or peanut butter and jelly sandwich if you needed one. 

Mr. and Mrs. Blasingame have passed on now, but the house remains. The sand is gone, but the trees are still there, silent witnesses to the childhood follies and foibles of some local adults you probably know, adults who, in quiet moments of memory, see themselves in an old station wagon, carpooling to school. As we thought of the recesses and the orange juice to come, gleefully we sang our silly little anthem: "We're blasting off to Blastingames!" 

READ MORE LIKE THIS IN CORPUS CHRISTI WRITERS 2021

I can’t sleep. Sirens whine and pulses of light flash red on the walls of this dingy hotel. There are only ten channels on the television and no wifi, and I’m stuck another night. All the flights home had departed by the time those New York lawyers finished interrogating the witness. Their hourly rates are higher than mine; certainly their cost of living is, so I understand. It’s a long time since our firm, too, had more than enough work, a long time since the days when practicing law was an adventure and billings were mere bookkeepers’ annoyances. I remember trying ten or fifteen cases a year with files only two inches thick – comp cases, fender benders, divorces, DWIs, and occasionally the more complex civil case or white-collar crime. 

But maybe more than the law practice has been transformed. Maybe I was different then, too. Maybe I’m just growing old, inexorable change befuddling my calcifying brain. Maybe everything was wrong. Maybe I just took the wrong path. Maybe I’ll never rest, never feel that I can go up to my house justified, never, like the prodigal son, come to myself and return where I belong. Maybe that place where I belonged is gone.

This kind of racing inner monologue keeps me awake more and more these days. The last in a long string of failed relationships ended two years ago when Jennifer stopped taking my calls or acknowledging my texts. We started out well enough, but like several before her, she eventually came to pity my failure to conquer the world. I used to be afraid to die alone. Now living, and even dying, alone is the only liberation I know of or hope for. I have grown used to the idea. I pronounce it good. What choice do I have? I’m tired of being hurt. 

I must finally have dozed off. Awakening to find a grey dawn peeking through the curtains, I figure my partners won’t begrudge me a long trip back. And maybe the client won’t flyspeck the travel time charged for this deposition on the next invoice. I should be able to drop by the museum before heading to the airport and still get back to North Padre by dark. I’m not crazy about museums, but Michael told me of a painting here. In my current state of mind, any suggestion might bring an epiphany, so I shower, shave, and set out into the icy morning.

The museum down the street is small and old. Most of the art is uninteresting. “Where is the painting of Odysseus?” I ask an usher in a silly red coat. 

“In the next gallery to the left.” 

And there indeed it is, surrounded by a heavy wood frame with a small brass plaque reading: “Odysseus and the Sirens by Herbert James Draper, 1909.” I am struck by the image of Odysseus tied to the mast of his ship, straining against the ropes, head thrust forward in anguished longing for the evanescent female beings flitting along the rails of the boat. They are singing, chanting, moaning, songs of home. 

“It speaks to one, does it not?” The accented voice startles me from behind. French? Austrian? I turn to see its owner, a bearded man in oddly formal attire. 

“I guess,” I mutter.

“Yes, well, I would judge that you are old enough to have been taught such stories in school before they were deemed irrelevant. It must have been quite a test for poor Odysseus, don’t you think? Ten years of war at Troy; ten years of wandering after; cursed by the gods; far from home; captured by the Cyclops; seduced and enchanted by Circe and Calypso; drugged by the lotus eaters; and yet somehow never losing the desire to return home… home to his long suffering wife Penelope. And so when he entered the waters inhabited by these lovely nude creatures, as Draper depicts them, isn’t it strange that he did what he did?” 

“I don’t know,” I answer, “And I’m not sure there ever was a Penelope, then or now.” 

“Yes, but think on this part of the story. Odysseus knew the siren song was irresistible, that …ah…it had lured all the ships before him onto the rocks, and so he tells his men to fill their ears with wax and to row for their lives no matter what they see. But here is the interesting part: he needs to hear the song himself; ah…he accords to himself the privilege of hearing the song, and so he does not plug his own ears. Instead he has the men tie him to the mast so he can do nothing to stop the progress of the ship. He is the hero, the adventurer, but he is also the wise man. He thinks ahead to protect the crew…and himself...from his need for mystical experience. Without the wisdom, the experience will ruin him; he will never get home.” 

“Whatever that might mean.” 

“Yes,” the old man says, “whatever that might mean, and I suppose it acquires a more difficult meaning when one gets to be Odysseus’s age, about the same age as Hemingway when he died, and, I would think, perhaps about the same age as you.” 

I turn my attention back to the painting. Odysseus’ eyes are agape, almost crazy. The sirens appear pale, ghostlike, mesmerizing. They hover close to Odysseus’s oarsmen, who are looking directly at them without expression, apparently oblivious. Is the crew blind as well as deaf? Or are the sirens somehow personal to Odysseus? When I turn back to ask the old art critic, he is gone. 

The ride home is uneventful: the TSA lines, the usual change of planes in Houston. My little Lexus waits where I parked it at the Corpus Christi airport, and the drive over the causeway is, as always, an exercise in decompression. My little first floor condo is undisturbed and I toss my stuff onto the bed, change into my shorts, and throw a woven Mexican “drug rug” hoodie over my shirt. I slip into my “aloha slap” sandals and step out toward the beach for a walk, locking the door behind me. It’s chilly, but not frigid like it was in New York. 

I like winter at home: no surfers; no Spring Breakers; few humans – mostly old snowbirds from Illinois or Minnesota who claim to be fishing, but who are, in reality, worrying over their various ailments and wishing they had the money to be in Palm Beach or Fort Lauderdale. And hardly anyone walks the beach at dusk this time of year. Most of the tourists have gone inside to warm up by now. 

I leave my slaps at the edge of the pavement, my bare feet hitting the cold sand. Waves roll in like muffled thunder. The falling sun streaks orange trails to the west, and a yellow moon rises over the ocean as I trudge on. I like to walk in the wet no-man’s land between the ebbing and waxing waves. Here the starfish and sand dollars live and die and the tiny subterranean bivalve crustaceans filter their food from water they suck down the little chimneys they blow in the sand. 

The beach feels almost deserted; just a few oldsters with ice chests or chairs ready to be packed up. I wave as I pass. 

The next stranger is farther distant. The sun is almost gone and reveals only the outline of a lawn chair occupied by a figure with one knee crossed over the other: male or female? The top leg kicks in the air, a burnished silhouette of arched foot, pointed toe, slender ankle, and long calf. The form and the motion betray the truth even at this distance. I’ll probably keep my head down. No point in making conversation. But at fifty paces the woman waves a greeting, and for reasons that are still unclear to me I veer up the sloping sand toward her. Maybe it just made sense to approach any sign of welcome.

I open with, “Do you like watching the sunset?” 

“Yes it’s beautiful.”

“But you’re facing the water. The sun’s behind you.”

“Doesn’t matter; it’s still beautiful,” she says. “How about a beer?”

I haven’t had an invitation like this in a while and I’m leery, but “sure,” I say, even though I’m not crazy about beer. And when she hands me the bottle I tell her the half-truth that I am a writer. “I collect stories,” I claim. “Tell me yours.” 

She introduces herself and shakes my hand, then invites me to sit in front of the shallow pit she has dug where a few small logs burn. The sand is cold, but soon the fire envelops us in warm pungent smoke.

“Where did you get the wood?” I ask.

“I bought it down the road. I try to think ahead.”

She is plain and fortyish but not unattractive, visiting from Wisconsin, half German and half Japanese by ancestry she say, with short dark hair and almond shaped eyes. Two hours later, I feel I know her. Both her parents died young and she cries about that. She says she is happily married with three sons. By then we are lying face-up in the sand on opposite sides of the fire, gazing at stars in the indigo dark, and she has come to know me, too.

“Can’t you relax?” she asks after I have finished both the beer and my complaints about life. 

Am I shaking from the chill or my anxiety, or both? She downs her third glass of wine and moves closer. “Why are you so jittery? It’s a beautiful night, and I’m not coming on to you,” she promises, even as she reaches out and touches my shoulder ambiguously. 

“I’m sorry; I’m afraid of everyone,” I admit. “I don’t trust anyone anymore.” 

“You aren’t afraid of me, are you? We’ll never see each other again.”

“Yes,” I say, “I am.”

The full moon, now silver, hangs directly above us, encircled by a halo of cloud that expands outward in a spiral. My heartbeat and breathing begin to slow. 

“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” I whisper. “It’s incredible…dome-like…makes me feel like I’m in a church.”

“Hey,” she responds, “pick a star, any star. Pick a star and make a wish.”

I do, and we talk about it, and about our respective wishes and dreams, as the fire slowly burns out.

At some point the smoke begins to dissipate and I realize we have been here for hours, alone in the dark. Fear, an old friend, rises again within me. What if she has some scheme to entrap me or accuse me of something? How can I explain what we are doing here, even though it’s totally innocent? What would I say if cross-examined by her husband? What would I advise a client in this situation?

I stand. “It’s time for me to go.” 

She rises in response and I reach out to shake her hand again, this time in parting. 

“Let’s do one of these instead,” she suggests, laying her arms around my neck and leaning her torso into me. I glimpse an inquiry or invitation in her eyes, one I ignore. Instead I hug her closer to hide my face behind her shoulder, but she pulls back and kisses my temple chastely. “I hope you find what you are looking for,” she says. 

“Goodbye,” I reply, already walking away toward my empty room. As the building’s outline grows in the moonlight and I near the sidewalk, I can just hear music coming from the bar down the beach, Steely Dan: 

Well, the danger on the rocks is surely past.

Still I remain tied to the mast.

Could it be that I have found my home at last?

Home at last?

Read more great writing like this in Corpus Christi Writers 2018: An Anthology. BUY NOW.

Dr. Bill Chriss is a trial and appellate lawyer who is also a historian, political scientist, religious scholar, and published author. He was nominated for the Rhodes Scholarship and holds graduate degrees in law, theology, history and politics, including a J.D. from Harvard and a Ph.D. in history from The University of Texas. Dr. Chriss has taught Political Philosophy, History, and Constitutional Law and has written several articles for scholarly journals. His first book, The Noble Lawyer, was published by Texas Bar Books in 2011, while his second book, Six Constitutions over Texas, is currently being edited for publication.  

ZER was born and raised in Corpus Christi.  Their work has been featured in the Switchgrass Review, Sink Hollow, the Sagebrush Review, and elsewhere. More on ZER at the end of this section. 

We are under the trellis of Nueva Vita, a garden that murmurs with heaves of impatiens. From somewhere, the scream of autos tears at the plum of gingersnaps. They coil and fold their leaves into boats. I hold your hand while leaning, watching passerines blowing kisses to one another. This is just as you like though we are not llamas gemelas; we are the stems of an allium shooting off in diverging directions, never to touch but always close, borne from the same fruits. We swell from the heat of that glowing suspension and the sun is singing. It singes your skin into milky champurrado. Liberated winds hold their shining ends as if a vessel. And hummingbirds bait and stick us as we turn to sap all over the tree scenery. An SUV bares its teeth across the way to remind us that we are machinery. You cup your hands into buds and hold them over these ears. Your words are soil to me with my ligaments of buzzing bees and veins rippling with honey. “Suelo bueno, tomar este corazón y comerlo.” The cherub fountains of flushed marble cry themselves onto the floor. Brown translucence melts into creases between planets, with our shoes dripping into softness, wasted pollen stolen on fingertips. Now, we no longer stand but float atop the white and scarred swing, still creaking back and forth like the hands on a clock. Usted toma estas flores picante como el suyo en su boca. I give you my roots and you give me your flowers. 

copyright Zoe Ramos

Here's this trouble, she always thought too much of me. i am a

bug-utterchaos entrails with no anatomy

that’s ever been known

the worse animals are immortal seeming just wont die

i was 21 years old when i told my mother that i was dating, the first human being i had ever dated, someone without gender, but black white black and white black white black white black white or another ‘comprehensible’ ‘color’. the selfishness,

what i did

the selfishness

e very thing

no. i was dating what parents would call a woman. shield your eyes

a girl-thing that knew themself better than themself. i don’t blame you for your anger 

to get to that place 

and still know 

the real you? 

tapered, skimped peeling off 

from the teeth guts falling out guts falling 

out why wont you die ? 

the first 

memoriesinnocencesin

obscurefutile efforts of becoming,

becoming becoming what? at war with 

the nothingness, insensible sensibility 

incapability of expressing 

what thou whilst.

she didn't know what to say 

just be careful where you step 

not today not today. 

remember i was young 

and we used to watch rated r movies 

together like what all the world said 

about profanity, parenting meant 

nothing, mother

when a sex scene came on, mother 

you would tell us to look away, 

older sister and me only 9 or 10. 

we would giggle and think little of it 

the moaning the gasping the feverish 

way you would want us to fail to see 

pixels on a screen in oscillating colors

red blue green

colors i once knew 

that i now know are struck 

into a brain electronically 

imaginationorgans sensory pressures, 

body saying what things are 

before you do 

eyes turn over, there are always 

mistakes

where people love you

Here's this trouble, she always thought too much of me. i am a 

bug-utterchaos entrails with no anatomy 

that’s ever been known 

the worse animals are immortal seeming just wont die 

i was 21 years old when i told my mother that i was dating, the first human being i had ever dated, someone without gender, but black white black and white black white black white black white or another ‘comprehensible’ ‘color’. the selfishness, 

what i did 

the selfishness  

e very thing

no. i was dating what parents would call a woman. shield your eyes 

a girl-thing that knew themself better than themself. i don’t blame you for your anger

ZER was born and raised in Corpus Christi. They study chemistry and creative writing at Texas A&M-CC. They have been a poetry editor for the Windward Review since 2016. Their work has been featured in the Switchgrass Review, Sink Hollow, and the Sagebrush Review. They were also awarded a 1st place prize in the 2018 Scissortail undergraduate creative writing contest. Their latest work (in progress) is a multimedia zine which pays homage to social media culture and its impact on communication styles.