My View of Bookstores and Bathrooms

Photo from BAM
Corporate Website

   Yesterday, my beautiful bride and I went to one of our favorite haunts, Books-A-Million.  On any normal day we love to buy a cup of coffee (two café au lait's with skim milk, please), browse the magazines (she grabs copies of Chronicles, First Things, and the National Review, he grabs France, Analog, and Mental Floss), check out the clearance books, and make silly comments about the covers and titles we see.  As Christmas nears, we add pumpkin spice to the coffee order, search for Christmas presents for our kids and other family members (another book?), and ooh and aaah and giggle at the calendars.  (She always teasing that this year she'll get him that pinup calendar, he always knowing she's just teasing.)Here is where I would like to add an awkward bit to this quaint shopping scene:

   Neither he nor she had ever planned on walking up to the front desk and announcing that they had to relieve themselves in the bathroom.

   Yeah.  I know.  More than awkward.

   But as uncomfortable as it sounds, that is precisely the new twist to this experience.  You see, one of the corporate dingledobs at the big Books-A-Million in the sky has declared that at every BAM store across America, the restroom doors shall remain locked and inviolate.  At no time, shall any man, woman, child, or book-lover be allowed to enter the restroom of their gender without first consulting and procuring the authorization of the Books-A-Million Keymaster.  And yes, said authorization can only be procured by the verbal announcement at the front of the store that yes, you the customer, are in need of the bookstore toilet.  You could, I suppose, lie and ask for the key in order to wash your hands, but this would only be effective if you had little children wherin all within range of your voice would believe that the little brat that's been running amok in the store did indeed smear some sort of sticky substance upon your hands, arms, legs, or other less delicate part of your body.

   I blame the Occupy Wall Street crowd on this one.  I have a feeling that if I Googled Books-A-Million and Zuccotti Park I would find that they are directly across the street from each other.  And we all know what a nuisance those people made with their waste disposal issues.  More than likely they kept slipping out of their tents and into the bookstore to browse the fiction section.  We can speculate this because we know from their statements and poster boards that they have never been in any section of a bookstore that wasn't full of fiction.

   As a concerned customer of my local bookstore, already aware that such stores are losing business to the online giants Amazon and eBay, I quickly approached the store manager as soon as I realized two things.  One, that the restrooms were locked, and two, I had to use the one with the stick figure sans dress.  Oddly enough, the door with the stick figure wearing the dress was not only unlocked, it was slightly open.  I was not, however, that desperate to use the facilities.  Hence my calm, yet determined approach to the manager.

   He seemed less than thrilled to speak with me when I broached the subject.  I was polite, and simply stated my disappointment that the store had begun locking the restrooms, making a point to remind him this was generally only done in gas stations.  He was quick to make the point that it was a corporate policy.  The message was clear.  He could do nothing for me save pull out the key.

   I held my breath.  I was terrified that he would hand me the key attached to the complete works of Shakespeare.  It's not that I don't enjoy the Bard from time to time, I just wouldn't know which one of his plays to start reading while I was in there.  One can hardly be expected to make such an important choice at such an indelicate time.  To my great relief the key was not attached to any sort of book anchor.  Unfortunately, he did not hand the key to me.  He escorted me to the bathroom.  As I shut the door, I was hesitant to begin.  Was he waiting outside?  Was he, in fact, pressing his ear to the door to make sure I was not involved in any destructive shenanigans?  That kind of scrutiny can lead to certain inabilities that would leave the scrutinizer with a silence that would lead him to wonder just what the heck is going on in there?   I wanted to turn around and get out.  But then I realized that he'd wonder why I'd asked to be let in for just three seconds.  Would he think I'd just asked to go in as a prank?  Or worse?  Maybe he'd think I'd arrived too late!



   I did what I had to, making just enough noise to satisfy the man that my intentions were pure and true.  Making sure to run the water loud enough that he would be satisfied with my thorough hand-washing, I took a deep breath and opened the door.

   He was gone.  But another man was standing there, waiting to come in.  He was not a manager.  He was not an employee.  He was just another booklover like myself.  I began to move to one side when it hit me.  Was he really a book lover?  Or was he some graffiti artist, looking to spread his filth across the walls of the bathroom.  Those walls were my responsibility now.  The manager had let me in.  I was the bathroom user of record.  I would be blamed for any damage incurred.  But what did that mean?  Should I block the man until I slammed the door shut, thereby locking him out of the restroom?  A noble act indeed if the man had vandalism on his mind.  A rotten act indeed if the man had only seconds to make it to home plate, so to speak.

   This was all really more than I had bargained for when I decided to go into the bookstore for a coffee and a chance to browse the magazine shelf.

   I let the man in and walked away.  Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead, right?  After all, the manager should have been standing there waiting for me to come out.  If not, what was the point?  Shouldn't he have checked to make sure I hadn't written free verse poetry on the stall door?  (Though if not there, where else would it be appropriate?)  Shouldn't he have made sure I flushed?  What is the point in asking for the key to begin with?  Would he have said no?  I'm sorry, you can't use our toilet.

Books-A-Million
current website logo.
I'm not kidding.
To protest the new
policy, write:
mailto:support@booksamillion.com
or call:
1-800-201-3550

   Next time, I'm gonna be the second guy.  I'll just wait until someone else announces to the checkout crowd that they need to use the bathroom.  Then I'll saunter along behind them, and wait until they come out.

   Seriously, no one wants to have to tell the world they have to use the restroom.

   I gotta go.

A Post-Thanksgiving View

   Thanksgiving is over.  Which is a funny thought.  As if we've given our token thanks and can get on with our thankless lives.  I don't mean to sound harsh about that.  I mean, if I meant to be harsh I'd point out that none of us actually spent any time during Thanksgiving being thankful.  I know: thanks for pointing that out, right?  But that's not my point here.  And neither is it my point that we lead pretty thankless lives.  We don't, for the most part.  I just meant it sounded like that's what I meant when I said Thanksgiving is over.  I'll move on.  You can thank me later.

   Thanksgiving is really not much more than a pre-game warm up for the Christmas season.  We get a chance to reconnect with the relatives we've lost touch with over the year, as if to say "okay, so we know where to find each other for the upcoming festivities, cool."  The Thanksgiving meal is sort of a rehearsal dinner.  I mean, really, it is the same food, you know.  Set in the same order, the same dishes, and eaten with the same comments.  Which is cool, I'm not saying that's bad.  I mean, would we want it any other way?  We have that option, but never seem to take it.  Anyone make a big pizza Thanksgiving dinner lately?  Or maybe had a Chinese food theme?  Sure, the tradition of turkey and all the trimmings is a nod to the Pilgrims, so we might stick with that.  But at Christmas, we don't serve up Stromboli, or fajitas either.  And I'm pretty sure, without any Internet researching, that turkey, stuffing, and ambrosia salad is not a traditional meal based on the eating habits of first century Jewry.  (It's a word.  See my post on the Louisiana State Library for more details.)  Added to this pre-game atmosphere is the new rage of shopping the night of Thanksgiving.  I'll get to that in a minute, but just realize that the shopping is ostensibly for Christmas presents.  Taken as a whole weekend experience, I think my pre-game analogy is pretty accurate.

   The traditions of Thanksgiving, from my own experiences, go something like this:

   I always enjoyed the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  I tried to pass that on to my kids, with off and on success.  They weren't always interested, in fact, they weren't always up at that hour.  But if you ask them, they'll insist they love to watch the parade.  And for the most part that's true.  Me, I enjoy watching the floats more than the balloons, the balloon handlers more than the balloons, too.  I have not become a fan of the Broadway performances.  If they could perform them while marching in the parade, I would be a bit more impressed.  Attempting to drum up ticket sales on the side of the parade is a little less noble.  March, dance, sing, and chew gum at the same time, if you please.

   The smell of Thanksgiving is heaven, and it has nothing to do with eating.  When I smell turkey in the oven, the fragrance of mashed potatoes and gravy, the aroma of corn casserole, I slip through time back to the days at my Grandma Manier's house, or to my Aunts' houses, and certainly to my mom's kitchen (wherever that happened to be, depending on the year).  It doesn't just bring back the memory of eating.  That is a part of it, I suppose, but it mostly has to do with preparing it, and the associated fellowship of the women in the kitchen  and the men and kids scattered elsewhere.  I use to love to slip into the kitchen and listen to my mom chat with her sisters and her mother.  They were always very interesting, and usually ended up pretty silly by the end of it.  Add to that the sound of the electric carving knife and the picture is pretty complete.  This moment in my memory seems to last for hours on end at the start of each Thanksgiving.

   Cheering on the hapless Lions is pretty important for this day as well.  I have cousins in Detroit and so I always cheered for their team.  So many of those years we had the honor of being able to see Barry Sanders scamper about, which was always a treat.  I cheered for the Cowboys every year until Jerry Jones fired Tom Landry and America's team became...something entirely different.  Now we jeer the Cowboys with gusto, which has become quite the tradition in and of itself.  This all sounds exciting, but usually the Lions are losing by halftime and we fall asleep, and only wake up in time to see that the Cowboys are winning, which gives us reason to roll over and go back to sleep, or we see the Cowboys are losing, which gives us reason to scoop out a second (or third) piece of pumpkin pie with too much cool whip and cheer their demise.  It is, after all, a loving holiday.

   In the old days, we watched Mary Poppins every Thanksgiving night.  It wasn't available on blue-ray, DVD, VHS, Betamax, or Lasardisc.  But every year it was on TV, and we watched its heart-warming, slightly disturbing theme until it was time to go home.  My kids might have started a new tradition this year, as we all gathered around for the holiday-themed Die Hard, basking in the glow of its hear-warming, slightly disturbing themes.

   The tradition in my own little family is to spend Thanksgiving night trimming our Christmas tree.  We make a big deal of it, hanging the stockings on the staircase, putting together the fake tree, stringing out the lights and figuring which ones still work.  Drinking sparkling apple cider.  If we are lucky, it will be cold enough to wear robes or sweatshirts.  Christmas music plays as we hang the ornaments, the garland, and lay out the skirt.  When they were little, the kids loved to lay under the lit tree, watching the funny shadows cast by the twinkling lights.  It was all pretty magical.  Now, the kids have it down to a science, and the tree looks much more sophisticated, elegant, beautiful.  But I still sort of miss the tackier, goofy trees of yore.

   I'll admit to shopping at midnight this year.  But the funny thing is, I wasn't looking for any real deals out there.  I was about to go to bed, realized I wasn't tired, and asked the kids if they wanted to go shopping for the fun of it.  I really just wanted to see the loony crowds out there.  Yeah, I picked through the cheap DVDs at Wal-Mart, and bought a few random items, but mostly I enjoy the madhouse energy of crazy ladies rushing around trying to grab the big deal before any one else.  I actually have a fond memory of this, a few years back, when Alex and I got up super early and went to buy a big-screen TV.  Braving the crowds, we were able to get the one we wanted, rushed home, and had it hung on the wall and working in time to surprise everyone as they awoke with an early Christmas gift.

   I suppose the simple point here is that I had a great Thanksgiving weekend, and am incredibly thankful for the family I have and the chance to spend time with them.  All of my kids were home this weekend, and that is not always easy to do anymore.  I am sorry that I could not see my family up in PA, but I am thankful that I feel that way, since not everyone is sorry to have missed their family on any holiday.  All in all, God has been far too good to me.  Not that I'm complaining.  And I'll try not to be thankless throughout the rest of the year.
   (This post, as you might have guessed, was just a warm-up for my Christmas post.)

My View of Louisiana's Poets

Attendees of the Louisiana Book Festival take advantage of
the perfect weather on the grounds of the State Capitol Park.

A few weekends ago, our great state of Louisiana held a book festival in Baton Rouge.  The Louisiana Book Festival of 2011 was held on October 29th, on the beautiful grounds of the State Capitol Park, with panels and readings held in the Louisiana State Capitol Building.  I had the great privilege of attending this festival as the escort of one of the four poets invited to participate in the Louisiana's Poet Laureate's presentation of Louisiana Voices: A Poetry Panel.  I escorted, of course, my wife, Jennifer Reeser, who, along with Amy Fleury, Thomas Parrie, and Mona Lisa Saloy, read portions of their gifted poetry during an early morning panel in the House Committee Room on the first floor of the Capitol.  (It has been suggested that I am Jennifer's personal paparazzi.  Though guilty as charged, on this day I fulfilled this role for all of the poets.)

Julie Kane

    The panel was put together by Julie Kane, the present State Poet Laureate.  A Professor of English at Northwestern State University, Julie is the author of many books, most recently her fantastic poetry anthology Jazz Funeral, a wonderful collection of poems centered around New Orleans.  Julie is a great ambassador for poetry in this state, full of talent and graciousness in equal measures.  About the only disappointing part of the panel was the fact that she did not have time to read a few of her poems for those of us in attendance.

Amy Fleury

     Once the readings began, I was struck by just how fortunate Louisiana is to have such poets writing today.  Amy Fleury started things off with her insightful poetry from her book Beautiful Trouble, highlighted by an unforgettable piece about caring for her ageing father.  Though she is a native of Kansas, she is currently the director of McNeese State University's MFA program as well as the editor of The McNeese Review, and Louisiana is fortunate to have her now.  As a transplant to Louisiana, I appreciated her keen, newcomer's observation as she described the sounds of a Louisiana night, including the sound of the lazy mosquito truck passing by.  This is not something most people think about around here.  Amy, however, was able to weave that great audio image into her poetry in such a way that I actually smiled nostalgically at this usually annoying and always silly nighttime intruder.

Thomas Parrie

  Thomas Parrie followed up with several selections, the strongest of which honored the land and heritage lost when the Toledo Bend Reservoir was built in the 1960's.  The poem did a great job of focusing on Native Americans' struggles for identity due to such losses without devolving into a bitter rant.  Parrie, now in Tennessee, is a native of Monroe, Louisiana.  Though he did not say it in his introduction, his poetry made it very clear he has Native American blood running through his veins, and certainly his soul.  The often repetitive cadences of his verse put me in mind of the slow, drum-beat rhythms that once might have been heard around his ancestors' campfires.  (And, in truth, are still heard today.)  Hypnotic, they helped to drive the words deeper into the listeners' hearts.

Jennifer Reeser

 Next up was Jennifer Reeser, a poet dear to my heart, as you might imagine, who read several of her hauntingly beautiful poems about Louisiana, including one of my favorites of hers, Louisiana Broke My Sleep.  She finished up with the tribute Watching New Orleans Drown, which reminded us all of what our State has been through and just how important it is that these voices should be heard.

Mona Lisa Saloy

 To round out the panel, New Orleans native Mona Lisa Saloy, Professor of English at Dillard University and author of Red Beans and Ricely Yours, gave us a humorous, touching, and soulful look at growing up in the Big Easy.  She finished her reading with a song, a perfect way to celebrate Louisiana poetry and New Orleans.  Her local idioms meshed with her sharp observations kept me always on the verge of a smile, a laugh, or a lump in my throat.  As an outsider who loves New Orleans, it was quite touching to hear an insider's view.











Though Louisiana has been through a great many trials in the past few years, we can be assured that such occasions have not gone unheralded.  This is just a sample of the many voices of this State that are being heard as they tell of our experiences, our hopes, our disappointments, and our triumphs in a land that is always a little mystifying to outsiders. 

My View of the Louisiana State Library

Recently, I was honored to be able to accompany my wife to a gathering of Louisiana authors, in Baton Rouge, for the Louisiana Book Festival.  The party was held at the Louisiana State Library, just across the mall from the State Capital Building.  My wife was one of four poets who were participating at a panel being held the next morning.  The party that night was catered by Mansur's on the Boulevard and music was supplied by a very good jazz quartet.  We did not know too many of the authors in attendance but we had a pleasant time.
     However, I was in a library, or rather, the library of our state.  I could not resist the impulse to browse.  I did not stray far, sticking close to the food.  So with my camera in hand, I ducked into the nearest stacks and began to look for anything interesting.  It was a habit I'd developed as a youngster.  I still fondly remember browsing the stacks in the basement of my father's seminary, checking out the books available in Notre Dame University's massive collection (a book on concrete engineering that I spied there might just be the solid foundation upon which my love of books is built), and spending an hour in the library of Temple University dusting off copies of the Congressional Record while my brother attended his racquetball class.
     It didn't take any time at all for me to find what I was looking for.  I discovered I was in a massive section of Who's Who books.  Who knew there were so many categories of Who's Who?  Not I.  I found so many Who's Who that I needed a What's What in Who's Who to keep track of all the Who's found within.  I found Who's Who in Germany, Who's Who in France, a surprising number of Who's Who in Canada, followed by Who's Who in the Arabian World, in the Midwest, in the East, in the Orient, and so on and so forth and who knows who else was listed who might have distinguished themselves in Whoville?

     I came to a stop when I discovered the collection of Who's Who in World Jewry.  I have to admit, I hadn't even known that Jewry was a real word, let alone an acceptable word to describe the Jews.  After all, has anyone ever been accused of anti-jewry?  A quick check of the online definition of jewry gives the following as the first definition: A section of a medieval city inhabited by Jews; a ghetto.  This is actually the second definition listed at the freedictionary.com, although it is listed first on Google's search page.  The first definition is simply The Jewish People.  I seriously doubt, however, that anyone of the Jewish heritage calls themselves a member of the Jewry.  At least as late as 1989 this series was being published, though I cannot find an edition produced beyond that date.

Who's Who in Library Service was the next little oddity I found.  This was a definite case of nepotism, as books go.  You have to wonder just how many people out there really cared about who was the latest, most important and influential people working in libraries in the Sixties and Seventies?  Okay, I'm sure someone did.  And that someone knew a big shot Who at Who's Who who gave the go-ahead to research, write, and publish a series of books (multiple latest editions, mind you) of who was tops in keeping books organized in 1966.  Of course, the fact is, judging by the size of the books available, there were precious few people in library service at that time.  But at least we know who the heck they were, right?

     I was pretty jazzed to find this next set of books.  If only I would have had the time!  Oh, to be able to sit and browse the list of the extraordinary men and women catalogued in the latest edition of the Directory of British Scientists.  Surely I would have come across the British scientists who had developed all of the awesome science they were doing (to steal a technical term from '60s science fiction movies) in 1964.  Or even better, the wilder, more astounding science done in 1966!  I'm sure James Bond himself had to check out one of these books in order to keep track of who Blofeld was going to kidnap next!  It is no stretch to suggest that the volume on 1964-1965 looks quite worn and heavily exposed to the elements.  There's no telling what kind of exhaustive research was going on as multiple library users combed the depths of this historically essential tome.  Perhaps the Hardy Boys had to check it out in order to discover who that guy was living down the street with the laboratory in his Gothic basement.

     Matching the theme of my interests in cemeteries, I had to stop and admire the Annual Obituary.  First of all, there's no ignoring the publisher's great taste in using the image of a dead tree as the identifying symbol for this list of the recently deceased.  Sure, the tree has died, but it still stands in the open, for all to see, slowly decaying in the exposure of the elements, waiting for the termites to eat out its internal structure until its eventual collapse.  Someone on the Annual Obituary's staff had a wicked sense of humor.  I tried not to puzzle too much over the fact that our library only had copies of this grave collection (oh, I'm so sorry about that!) from the years 1980 to 1987.  I can only guess that this was the reason:  The Eighties were indeed the greatest decade ever, taking into account the music scene of that time, and so it is no wonder that Louisiana wanted to keep a detailed record of those who died in those influential years.  Why stop in 1987?  Well, that was the year this song made it to number one in the charts , which was probably the beginning of the end for the greatest decade of music ever.  Music wouldn't be listed in the 1987 Annual Obituary, but it took its first steps in that direction that year.

     I shouldn't have been surprised to discover the large sections of criticisms aimed at Short Stories (most certainly written by editors!) and Literature in general.  As you can see in the photo on the left, the brown section is the vast collection of Contemporary Literary Criticism (more than 200 volumes in print) that the library keeps.  Since everyone has their own opinion on what they read, I doubt very much that anyone reads these volumes.  Who needs to hear what the critics think of any book that's been painstakingly written by those tenderhearted literary writers?  We can form our own insulting opinions and sling them across the Internet without the slightest effort.  This series, therefore, has become painfully obsolete!

     The last books of interest I was able to capture before we headed out the door was this great little series entitled What Fantastic Fiction Do I Read Next?  I often hear this question from my kids, who, bless their hearts, think I know a thing or two about books and can offer them advice on what great books are out there waiting for them.  If I should ever fail them in that endeavor, I can rest assured that they can always check out this volume and get some advice on what to download to their Kindles.  Or their laptops, or their phones (remember when those were for speaking to people with actual voices?) or to their Xbox 360's, or who knows what next?  Perhaps they'll be downloading books to their calculators.  Or even to their pencils, which will then write out the text onto space-age paper.  At any rate, I hope next year's edition of What Fantastic Fiction Do I Read Next? will include my own books which will soon be hitting the shelves in the coming months.

My View of the Movies of 1997 (Fourteen Years Ago)

On the 2nd of November, fourteen years ago, my fourth son was born.  I can't believe it's been fourteen years since he was born.  Friends and family can't believe my wife and I have gone fourteen years without having any more babies!  Here then, is my view of the films that opened that wonderful year:

      The place to start is at the top.  The biggest movie of that year was a little movie about a boat that failed to make it across the Atlantic Ocean.  Yeah, that's it.  Titanic.  Now, I could say that I was there, first in line, knowing it would become the biggest movie of all time (for ten years, anyway), but that wouldn't be true.  In fact, I did not see it in 1997.  I did go and see it in 1998, since it was still at the cheap theater then, and I thought I would finally go see what all the buzz was about.  Still don't know what it was all about.  It just wasn't my thing, which is strange.  But I tend to dislike anything that is wildly popular.  I'm sure that means there will come a day when I will not like this blog, either.

     Anyway, one movie I remember seeing in the theater in 1997 was Air Force One, one of those great movies where we got to see Harrison Ford's wife in danger, and we then got to see him beat the crud out of everyone who was generating that danger.  The great joy here was that the biggest bad guy was Gary Oldman, who also starred in another villain role in 1997, as Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg, in the nearly perfect The Fifth Element.  Here again, I'll be honest.  I did not see this in the theater, and I think a Mangalores would be within his rights to kick me for not doing so.

     Tomorrow Never Dies was a great movie to see in the theater that year.  Michelle Yeoh's kickin' performance (that's a literal description) is phenomenal.  Watching her and Bond on that BMW motorbike was pure action poetry.  Great stuff.  Those two should have married and made little perfect spies.  All of the buzz that year was about Terri Hatcher starring in this movie.  Sorry, Ms. Hatcher, but Ms. Yeoh stole the show.  Pierce Brosnan comes close to being the best Bond, but that is just a personal opinion.  He was also good that year in the nearly forgotten Dante's Peak, which I also enjoyed seeing on the big screen earlier that year.

     Star Wars (Special Edition) was released throughout the early months of 1997, and sure, I took my children to see it.  That was fun, and I'm pretty sure at least three of my kids can still remember that.  It was pretty cool to see it all again, since I had only seen the first movie in the theater as a kid, and the second and third movies only on TV.  It was also super cool to see my youngsters get a kick out of it.  My oldest son was the same age I was when I first saw Star Wars, so that was a nice connection.

     The Saint was by far the best movie of that year.  Jennifer and I had a rare night out without the kids and we fell in love with this movie.  It is one of our favorite movies to pull out and watch.  I doubt that a year has gone by since we've rewatched this wonderful film.  It is full of adventure, and has fun villains, chase scenes, and a bagful of Val Kilmer's comedic disguises that never gets old.  I was a big fan of Simon Templar, having watched it every afternoon when I was a kid down in Venice Florida.  Roger Moore was perfect in that role, and Kilmer never dislodges him from that spot.  He does, however, add a great new chapter to The Saint that is fun to watch.  I recently read that Kilmer believes his version was a fiasco, which is a shame.

     The rest of that year was made up of big budget movies that I missed for one reason or another.  We were a bit busy raising four kids with a fifth one on the way.  I did not get to the theater to see The Lost World: Jurassic Park, or Men in Black.  I have since seen both and was not impressed either one.

     Just as The Saint became a favorite for Jennifer and me, one of our favorite romantic comedies came out that year:  Fools Rush In.  This one we did not see until it came out on video.  It was an immediate classic for us.  Many of the rest of the average movies that showed up that year we eventually saw on video (gasp!  How did we ever watch such blurry films?!) and there were a few that were pretty good, but I won't try to list them here.  Suffice to say, we spent our share of money on video rentals (and late-fees, I'm sure).  At the time, I was pretty convinced that a video store could make a fortune renting videos and selling pizzas, and delivering them at the same time.  Turns out I was half right.  I just didn't think the movies would be delivered by mail.  And the video rental business was so big then I wouldn't have believed that in fourteen years, there would be only one store left in our area still renting movies.

     Times they are a changin'.

     But movies aren't.  We are actually beginning to see remakes of movies that were made in the 90's.  Whatever.  The kinder, more gentler decade was not the best for Hollywood, but there were a few years that were above average.  Come to think of it, any year that could produce The Saint and Fifth Element wasn't too shabby.

     Come to think of it, any year that could produce a kid like my youngest has got to be one of the best years ever.  Well, at least one out of the four best years ever...I mean five.

My View of the Alwyn Court Apartments

From time to time, I leave the sanctity of my room with no view.  I am always pleasantly surprised to discover that there is indeed a whole other world out there beyond my windowless walls.  And in that world, nestled amongst the masses of people, are wonderful little places that catch my eye.  The Alwyn Court Apartment building most certainly caught my eye last June.

I was out in the streets of Manhattan alone, it was close to seven in the morning.  My family, still in bed at the Wellington Hotel, was not excited about sightseeing so early, so I grabbed my camera and took a morning stroll.  After hitting the Starbucks, that was literally just across the street from the hotel, I began to wander along Seventh Avenue, clicking away at anything that interested me.  As a lover of city architecture, I found plenty to interest me.  Just a few blocks north of the hotel, I came upon an amazing sight.

The Alwyn Court Apartments have stood at the corner of Seventh Avenue and West 58th Street since 1909.  The Original apartments were designed to have fourteen rooms and five bathrooms, though these were later subdivided during the Great Depression.  Built in the French Renaissance style, it is covered in Gothic Terra cotta designs that includes dragons, urns, cameos and crowns.  With many more intricate details, this facade drew praise from critics at the time it was unveiled.

With two apartments per floor, if you were lucky enough to be able to afford one of them in 1910, it would have cost you $10,000 a month.  Unless you wanted the one duplex available!  Being only one block off of Central Park, you would really have to think this was a steal of a deal.  However, the president of the United Cigar Stores, Jacob Wertheim, moved into the duplex and so you wouldn't have had a chance.  Another early tenant included one of the Steinways.

These little darlings to the left look sick to their stomach, as if they've eaten too much caviar!

A large fire raged through the building shortly after it opened, when only five apartments had been let.  No one was injured, though the lack of fire safety design was highlighted at this time.  Fully occupied for the next few decades, the Midtown area around it lost popularity and it was empty by the mid-thirties.  Gutted, it was redesigned to have 75 apartments.  No longer an address of elite businessmen, it was soon rented to capacity and began to turn a profit.

At this time, The Petrossian Restaurant occupies the first floor.  With a French contemporary menu, you could fill yourself to bursting on their smoked fish, caviar and foie gras.

It is this kind of craftsmanship that is visible throughout the city, and I suspect, is largely ignored by the uncounted New Yorkers who stride along West 58th street and Seventh Avenue during their daily hustle.  I was able to enjoy the magnificent view during a quiet summer morning, and have captured these images for you to enjoy as well.

Five Reasons to watch The Beast with Five Fingers

It is getting close to Halloween, which is a great time to dig up some old, black and white movies of yesterday to warn us of the many dangers that lurk in the dark.  In our present age we spend too much time worrying over the economy, pandemics, the price of gasoline, and who will run for the Presidency.  These might be valid concerns, if you are into reality, but these do not begin to compare to the worries that really ought to keep us up at night.  If people today could only realize the horrific and plausible prospect of giant leech attacks, great globules of furious jellied alien life, and apes run amok in the streets of Paris, our petty concerns about overcrowded jails and teenage bullying would be forgotten in an instant of pure terror.

     Just the other night, around midnight, I came into our bedroom and found that my wife had gone to sleep with the TV on.  In the blackened room, lit only by the pale light of a black and white horrorfest, I watched a poor woman running from a deranged ghoul.  Locking herself in a bathroom, she stared in horror at the water running from the faucet.  Through the miracle of Hollywood, this water was bright red, even though the rest of the film was black and white.  Turning from the crimson flow of bloody water, she stared in catatonic shock at a bathtub full of the same, bright blood.  Rising out of this viscous pool was a hand covered in gooey crimson muck.  The woman, in the face of this incomprehensible yet totally reasonable scene, died of fright.

     This was typical of the macabre scenes we often saw as children when the late, late movie was playing at this time of year.  I hated these things, and only watched a little of them before rushing to the TV and turning them off.  Who could blame me?  Even during the day, watching Creature Feature on Saturday afternoons, I had trouble making it through such terrors.

     Now, older and wiser, I have come to enjoy these movies on a higher level.  Yes, they are often filled with campy scenes and low budget monsters that look like the director’s teenager in a suit made out of old carpet swatches, but that is hardly the point.  What these movies really did was allow us to escape fears of reality through the terrors of imagination.  If you need to do so this season, here are five reasons that you would do well to watch The Beast with Five Fingers.

1.  Gothic Atmosphere and Music

     Right from the start this movie has all the makings of a classic horror.  It is set in an Italian village, which is like so many of the European settings for movies like Frankenstein, The Black Room, and The Masque of the Red Death.  It was a way for movie makers to take American audiences and place them in strange lands that were still highly superstitious and plausibly full of dark undertakings.  This was also a chance to fill out the cast with odd, harsh looking immigrants who were readily available in California to project a disturbed view of the population.  There are rarely scenes that include blond All-Americans with classic facial proportions.

     The house in which the story takes place is full of Germanic decoration, large rooms with startling shadows, and statuary that keeps one wondering if they just might come to life.  The central room is nearly empty with only a grand piano set in the middle of it.  Adding to the gloomy and majestic set is the music of Bach’s Violin Partita in D minor, a dark piece that is not only heard throughout the film by the audience but also by the characters who learn it is a sinister precursor to death.  Again and again we hear the music along with the characters and wonder, who will die next?

2.  Robert Alda’s Performance as Bruce Conrad

     A nice treat in this movie is the performance of Robert Alda.  The father of Alan Alda, Robert Alda plays the heroic lead.  We first see him as a scam artist, with a wisecracking attitude around the local law enforcement as well as those who live in the main house.  It is easy to see the seeds of Alda’s son’s character “Hawkeye Pierce” in this smart-alecky role.  As the plot progresses, we see Alda slip into the familiar horror hero role, maintaining an easy-going skeptical presence, intent only on keeping near the heroine and securing her attentions by protecting her from whatever silly thing is worrying her.  He will of course have to both seduce her and save her while keeping above all the horror.



3.  J. Carrol Naish’s Performance as the Commissario

   

Naish (left)



     Naish is one of those character actors that would never get a chance to perform today.  An Irishman by birth, he played nearly every ethnic role (with accent) but an Irishman.  In The Beast With Five Fingers, Naish plays the local lawman, known to all as The Commissario.  An over-the-top character, Naish delivers an unmistakable (and some would now say unforgivable) Hollywood Italian accent, complete with-a the added a on-a every-a word-a.  (Naish had done the very same thing just three years earlier as the tragic Italian in the World War II thriller Sahara alongside Humphrey Bogart.)  Yes, many would shun such nonsense and shake their fingers at this kind of condescending thing, but why?  It’s a foolish performance to be sure, but it is so over-the-top that it can’t be taken seriously.  I suppose if I were Italian I might take offense.  However, as a good German, I don’t take offense at the equally silly performances of actors like John Banner’s Shultz in Hogan’s Heroes.  Why would I?

     Here in Five Fingers, Naish plays a police chief who does a more than competent job investigating the murders.  He does a good job of throwing his authority around, with sincerity at times, and he moves the story along quite well.

4.  The Hand!

     What horror movie would be complete without a monster?  And here, in brilliant black and white, we get to see a most horrifying sight: the murderous, finger-walking hand!  Now here I must spoil the movie for you and warn the faint-hearted that this movie does indeed have a disembodied hand scampering about and killing willy-nilly.  It might just make you ill to see it, so don’t watch if you have a weak stomach.  This hand is so realistic you can see the remains of the radius and ulna where it is cut at the wrist.  Even worse, at times this hand, animated by the magic of Hollywood, looks just like a fake hand that cannot move unless manipulated by Peter Lorre as he hugs it to his chest.  It is almost too terrifying to behold!  (Ummm, never mind.)

     There is, in fact, an intense scene in which the hand crawls through fire, and I am sure it must have been pretty dramatic for audiences in 1946.  As we watched this movie just the other day, my wife remarked that she well remembered the fire scene from watching the movie as a young girl.  Such things are nightmares made of!

  

5.  The Always Perfect Performance of Peter Lorre

You can buy this poster at Amazon, check it out!

       One can never say enough about the screen presence of Peter Lorre.  A mild-mannered, creepy scholar who only wants to be left alone with his books, Peter Lorre’s character, Hilary Cummins, carries the movie with his large sad eyes, and his halting thin voice that never ceases to both repel an audience as well as win them over.  Lorre has always been able to do this.  Even in one of his greatest roles, as the murderer in Fritz Lang’s M, the audience is quickly repulsed by his degenerate behavior, yet equally filled with compassion for him.  Lorre never passed up the chance to exploit this advantage with the audience.  He does so in Five Fingers and then lures the audience along with him as he descends into madness.

     Lorre can’t help but steal the show.  He cannot even walk into a room with the other characters without grabbing your attention by the throat.  In one scene, as all of the characters follow the lawyer into the main room to sign a document, Lorre is the last to enter.  Sliding off to one side, he sits with his back to the others, pausing a few moments before turning to look over his shoulder at them with those big eyes, as if to say, okay, I know I have to be here, just don’t make me join the group.  I don’t like groups!  He never says a word, and that’s the best part of it.

     I know it will come as a shock that Lorre is revealed as the villain.  Who could have seen that coming, right?  But the great bit of writing here is the way in which Lorre loses his mind.  He is no mad-dog monster who charges blindly around attacking the females in the house.  His near sleepwalk attack of Andrea King’s character is as subtle as his transformation to madness is hysterical.  It is easy to quit mocking the Gothic camp of the film and allow yourself to get caught up in his insanity.

In the following scene, Lorre explains what he has done with the Horrible Hand! 

     When all is said and done, and the ghastly hand is finally revealed, The Beast with Five Fingers satisfies on many levels, leaving five reddened finger marks at the base of your neck.  Dare I say, it will really grab you?  The solid screenplay is from the pen of Curt Siodmak, who earned his monster chops writing during Universal Pictures’ golden age of monsters, including the screenplays for The Wolf Man, The Son of Dracula, and The Invisible Man Returns.  (Other notable screenplays by Siodmak include I Walked with a Zombie and Donovan’s Brain.  He also developed the story for Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers, a favorite Sci-Fi of mine.)  The creepy atmosphere includes a mausoleum in the center of a graveyard, desecrated bodies, and creeping hands.  Along the way you will be entertained by the performances mentioned above, as well as the heroine played by Andrea King.  The best line of the movie might just be Robert Alda’s.  As he hears Peter Lorre hammering in a far corner of the house, he asks King, “what’s he hammering on down there?  He’s a sick man!”  Priceless!  Also, keep a sharp eye out for William Edmunds, known for his role as Mr. Martini in It’s a Wonderful Life as one of the servants.

     As in all movies of that age, the greedy will be punished, of course, and the lovers will be united.  It was imperative in that era that the criminals always paid for their crimes; a sentiment that has disappeared in Hollywood.  Once the horror has come to an end, all ends well as the Commissario enjoys a last joke and reminds us just how fun and absurd it has all been.

This movie is not available on DVD, but there are several online movies sites that list it available for download. Amazon is presently providing it for download rental, or you can buy it for download.

  





 

One Reason I Do Not Give Up Writing

As a writer who often struggles with the temptation to give it all up, there are not many things that can convince me to continue writing.  Here, however, is one very good reason that keeps me going.  The following story was published in the Spring 2008 issue of The Louisiana Review.  It is always encouraging to pull this out now and again.

1. The Wanting Dead
(The Louisiana Review, vol. 6, Spring 2008)
a story from The Cities of the Dead
by Jason Phillip Reeser

            My first night in the City of the Dead was a real eye opener.  I was not in the least ready for anything that happened.  But then, no one alive can prepare you for your first night as one of the dead.  No one really tries.  And why should they?  I would never have listened.  I never listened to anyone when I was alive.  I had no idea I would learn to listen so well once I was dead.  But death is full of so many surprises.

            I’d like to explain how it all came about.  At least how the night progressed.  It is a curiosity I’d like to be able to logically describe—how I was lying in the coffin, surrounded by darkness, and how later I came to be standing outside my crypt, reading the inscription on the faceplate as if I were looking for errors in the non-erasable marble.  I remember that distinctly.  I remember reading over it hoping I might find some mistake I could point to and say “there, you see?  They placed the comma in the wrong spot, so obviously I’m not dead.  I may only be alive by a technicality, but I’ll take what I can get.”  I had a vague feeling that such an idea made no sense, but it only bothered me more when I realized it made no sense to be standing outside my burial crypt as well. 

            Maybe, I concluded, what made sense in the world of the dead did not always translate into the world of the living.

            But I have very little patience to explain anything.  I want most of all to speak of what I saw.  And when I think of doing so, I immediately think of this dead guy who went by the name of Dodd.  I don’t remember his first name.  But Dodd sticks in my mind like a migraine.

            “Let me ask you something,” he said to me straight off.  They were the first words out of his mouth.  He just walked up to me and started up a conversation that I soon learned he had with everyone.  “Think about putting a gun to your head.  A big one.  You pull the trigger, right?  BAM!  You’re dead, right?  Isn’t that what you’d expect?”

            I tried to think through his question.  I was sure he was driving at something.

            “Well?  Am I right?”

            “Sure.  Bam—you’re dead.”  My delivery of this response was greatly lacking in passion.

            “That’s what I thought!”  He supplied the passion to our conversation.  “Jeeze Louise!  No one ever said it would hurt!  I mean, you pull the trigger, it should all be over.”

            “It hurt?”  I found myself mildly interested in his scenario.

            “Hell yes, it hurt!  You ain’t never felt hurt like that.   I screamed and screamed.  God, I must have screamed for an hour.  And the whole time I was thinking no one said this would hurt!”

            I watched him shake at the memory.  He drew deep breaths in his open mouth and forced the air out through his nose.  He was obviously more enraged at not having known how painful his death would be than at the pain itself.

            “Don’t mind him, that’s only Dodd.”  A thin little man stepped up beside me and waved dismissively as Dodd continued to describe his pain.  “He goes on like this forever.  Only the new guys listen to him.  Everyone else gets tired of hearing it.”

            “I’m Jack,” I said to him, offering my hand.

            “Nice to meet you, Jack.  I’m Joseph.  Sorry, I don’t—“ he held a hand up and waved away my attempted handshake.  To Dodd, he added “Yeah, yeah—hurt like hell.  We know.  You put a bullet in your brain, you idiot.  You thought it would tickle?”

            Without touching me, he reached out and guided me away from Dodd.  Dodd didn’t seem to mind.  He just kept on saying over and over “hurt like Hell!  God!”

            We walked down the rows of crypts, moving aside from time to time to allow others to pass.  I don’t remember when I accepted that there were so many of us walking about in the early darkness of the evening.  I knew what we were.  No one had to say it out loud.  In fact, that was a distinct point to be made.  No one did say it out loud.  No one dared to mention just what we were.  At least that’s what I assumed.  I came to realize later that most of them simply did not care to say it out loud; as if the whole matter were trivial.  There was no spell that might be broken if our true nature was spoken of.  But from my own point of view, I felt certain it would be in bad form to say anything.

            Joseph led me on past crumbling tombs and one or two weary cast iron fences.  I had no idea where we were going, and I repeatedly asked him where we were going.  He would never give an answer.

The blue and purplish twilight mixed with the glow of white plaster and marble, highlighting our shapes with an otherworldly aura.  This radiance was unnerving to me at first, for it gave off no light beyond the outlines of our bodies.  It merely burned within the boundaries of our frames.  The total effect gave us the appearance of being lit from within by shrouded firelight.  This became more and more apparent as the night grew darker.

            We crossed from one crowded lane of crypts to a more spacious avenue.  Large crypts with detailed stonework stood like the stately homes in the surrounding Garden District.  Beyond these, we came upon a group of low flat coping tombs.  There were a great number of the dead congregating here, the coping tombs being used as benches.

            I had imagined Joseph was leading me here to introduce me to someone who might explain what was going on, or at the very least he would tell me this was the best place to spend the night for safety’s sake.  I wasn’t really sure what would be said, but I expected something—anything.  I never suspected he would lead me there and then promptly ignore me.  Once there, he spoke to one or two of the others then idly wandered away.

            I stood at the head of one of the makeshift benches and watched a woman who sat on the far end of it.  She sat motionless, staring straight ahead.  I turned my head to my right to see just what had her attention.  Across the wide avenue sat a tall narrow crypt with six squares.  The whole mausoleum was done in marble.  It was expensive work, this was no brick memorial overlaid with plaster.  A fat milky cross sat imposingly on a thin shelf just below the name plates.  An inscription in the gable of the roof read Society for the Relief of Destitute Orphan Boys with the year 1894 in its center.  There was something both noble and heartbreaking at the thought of someone or some group spending so much money and effort on children who had spent their life here on earth wanting and alone.

            “Have you ever spoken to any of them?  The children, I mean.” I asked her.

            She turned and gave me a startled and curious look.  I saw right away how drawn and tired she looked.  Her hair was black, as was her dress.  A shadow lay across her and I could not see her hands.  After staring at me for an uncomfortable silence, she answered me with a shake of her head.  I felt as if I’d asked an obviously stupid question.

            “They don’t come out?”  Even as I asked, I knew the answer.  I wished I knew why the orphans never came out, but I did not wish to ask a second stupid question.

            “I knew one of them,” she said softly.

            “There are no names on the plates.  How do you know?”  I thought I had better stop asking questions.  I sensed my questions were not only stupid, but that they were becoming increasingly insensitive as well.

            “He was my child.  My little boy.”  She said nothing more.  She had no need to say more.  She hadn’t been staring at the crypt.  She had been weeping before it, quite possibly each and every night for God knew how many years, only she had no more tears.  Her tears had run out a very long time ago.  Her sobs had ceased to shake her frame as well.  All she appeared to have left was the pain and despair that clouded her soul.  I wished I had never spoken to her.  And yet I wished to know everything; why had the boy been orphaned?  Why had he died young?  Unable to make such wishes come true, I did the one thing I could do and turned away from her.

            “Something the matter?”  A tall man stood beside me furiously cleaning his eyeglasses on his shirt tail.  He held them up to the blackness of the night as if he were looking for spots on them.  He glanced down to take his measure of me before returning to the task of making his glasses spotless.

            “No.  Nothing’s wrong.  I wouldn’t have thought you’d need glasses… anymore.”  I blurted that last bit out before I remembered how taboo the subject of death seemed to be.  I had not meant to make such an obvious allusion to the man’s condition.  I flushed at my error, but he never seemed to notice it.

            “If it’s the girl that’s bothering you, don’t worry over her too much.  That’s just Marie.  She’s batty.”  He felt for a less soiled corner of his shirt tail and smothered a lens with it.

            “I can understand that,” I said with what I hoped would sound like sage understanding, “I’m sure a mother handles the loss of a child with less pragmatism than do fathers.”

            “You’re not seeing things clearly,” he said after sliding the glasses on and wrapping them around his ears.  “It appears to me you’re being made a fool of.  It is as clear to me as my own hand in front of my face—Marie’s no mother.  Never had a son.”

            “How do you know that?” 

            “Oh, damn it all.”  He pulled his glasses off and stuffed them back into the shirt tail, vigorously rubbing at the lenses.

            I turned away from him as eagerly as I had from the grieving mother.  His fanatic craving for spotless lenses baffled me.  I hurried away.  I must have rudely pushed people out of the way.  With a certain detachment, I could hear people complaining as I jostled my way through them.  Whether I murmured my apologies to them or not I cannot say.  But I continued to push on with a total lack of decorum for maybe two or three minutes.

            I eventually regained my composure and walked alone for maybe half an hour.  Honestly, time for us dead did not move in the same way it did when our hearts pulsed with blood.  I had not been buried with a watch, and so I had no way to prove this.  But I had no illusions about how we moved through time.  I could see already that the night would drag on far longer than it would have when we were alive.  I didn’t like that thought.  I wanted to get on with it.  I felt like a sleepless man who lay feverishly in bed only too aware that he had seven more hours alone with his thoughts.  But what added a great deal of unease to my mind was the realization that I was trapped not just with my own thoughts, but the thoughts of all those dead that surrounded me.

            William and Thomas were prime examples of this.  I found them both standing in the middle of a lane, staring at two crypts that stood close enough that only weeds were able to fit between them.

William was a large and imposing figure.  He stood shaking his head at an ornate cathedral shaped memorial made of red granite.  It was topped with four spires at each of its corners.  A high pitched roof bridged the gap between the spires.  Colonnades on both sides of the intricately carved door were covered in stone ivy and flowering vines.  William gestured at the ornate structure without turning an eye in my own direction.

            “Have you any idea how much that cost?  Red Granite, for God’s sake.  Look at it.  I made no provisions for that.  She must have mortgaged the house to have that erected.  What was she thinking?  That woman will be the death of me.”

            “She must have loved you a great deal.”  I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.  But I caught myself in time to say nothing more.

            “Loved me?  I’ve got nothing to do with it.  This is her way of putting on a show for her friends.  She’ll play it up all the way.  They’ll be shaking their heads in wonder and admiration at her sacrificial gesture.  More’n likely they’ll take up a collection for her.  Oh, just look at the flower vases.  Four of them!  Paid full price on all of them, I’d bet.”

            “I’d take red granite,” Thomas said, managing to sound forlorn without serving it up too thick.  “Red granite lasts such a long time.  Can you believe I’ve only got brick with plaster smeared all over it?  They didn’t even bother to add the fake lines that make it look like stone.  And why should they have?  The plaster’s already cracking and flaking off in places.  See there?  Just under the south eave.”

            I couldn’t see it from where I stood, but I said nothing in reply.  I was getting better at that.

            “I won’t even mention the name plate.  Unbelievable.”  He shook his head.  I could hear both anger and shame in his words.  I thought he did have a valid point about the name plate.  It was sitting on the ground in two pieces.  The largest piece leaned against the crypt opening.  Behind this, I could see the unevenly placed bricks which had been thrown together in a really shoddy fashion.  Two bricks were missing at the top.  The smaller piece of the name plate lay flat in the grass.

            “Worked nearly every day for forty-three years.”  William was still talking about money.  “Saved everything I could.  The wife spends it on this.  Do you see what I mean?”

            “No,” I answered.

            “I refused the doctor’s last suggested treatment because I told him I’d be damned before I spent that kind of money.  I hadn’t spent a lifetime saving money in order to waste it all in order to keep myself alive.  And look.  I can tell you, I’ve researched this.  I knew what kind of costs were involved in something this grand.  And I know to the penny just how much I had put away.  She spent it all.  It’s all right here.”

            “Don’t let him get to ya,” Thomas warned me with a hand on my shoulder.  “His loved ones obviously cared enough to put thought and effort into this.  It’s magnificent.  How they must have loved him.  My people, on the other hand…” he held his hands out in the direction of his dilapidated vault and nearly growled at what he saw.

            I opened my mouth to ask if his people had the money to spend on his grave but closed it before the words came out.  I didn’t really want to hear his answer.  I could only imagine that no matter their financial situation, he would find some way to demean the choices they had made.

            I left them arguing over their troubles and found my way back onto the wide avenue where I’d started earlier that evening.  I saw Joseph again.  He was leading a short fat man towards the coping tombs.

            “You look like you could use a friend.”

            I turned towards a very young man who smiled with excitement brimming in his eyes.  Despite his near manic enthusiasm, he had a pleasant face.

            “Don’t get me wrong, but maybe a few answers might satisfy me more than just finding a friend.”  I was sure I had just said something offensive.

            “Don’t I know it?  Your first night, am I right?”  If I’d offended him, he never showed it.

            “Yes.”

            “My first night was worse.  I wandered around all night.  Had no idea what was going on.  I just wanted it to end as soon as possible.”

            “That’s about the sum of my first night,” I empathized.

            “Oh, I know what you mean.  But mine went beyond that.  People came up to me out of nowhere and just whined and complained as if my only purpose was to listen to them cry.  I wanted to be their friend, but not their counselor.”

            I saw Joseph heading towards me and I raised my head in recognition.  He waved a hand towards my excited companion and shook his head.

            “Don’t mind him, that’s only Carter.  He goes on like this forever.  No matter what you say, he’ll not only know what you mean, but he’ll have been through something even bigger than you.”  To Carter he added, “Nobody cares, man.  Nobody cares what you know; nobody cares what you’ve done.  No one wants a friend like that.”

            Before I knew it, Joseph was gently guiding me back towards the now crowded set of benches.  It occurred to me he probably had no idea why he was leading me there.  But I didn’t resist him.  I wanted to find Marie.  I had decided the eyeglass cleaning specter had not known what he was talking about.

            “I’m sorry about your son,” I said softly as I sat down beside her.  She didn’t say anything in response, and I gladly remained silent as well.  I stared at the blank name plates of the destitute orphan boys and waited with her.

            Behind us, a man complained to no one in particular that he was there by mistake.  Some trivial technical error had been made in some vague far off place and here he was stuck amongst the dead.  I tried to block out his voice and just concentrate on Marie and her son.  I couldn’t have said why.  Maybe because she was the only one not saying anything.  Everyone else had something to say.  Even Joseph seemed hell bent on pointing out who should be ignored.  I too had felt the urge to be always speaking, even if it had always been to ask a question.

            But not Marie.  The few words she had spoken had only been in reply to my own questions.  Maybe she had run out of words when she had run out of tears.  I didn’t know for certain.  And I didn’t have to. 

            My thoughts turned towards her son and the other orphaned boys.  Why did they never come out?  Surely they had something to say?  They, more than any of us, had reason to complain; alone, a life of want.  Had they ever learned to accept it?  Maybe in fact they had.  Surrounded by so many who wanted so much, I began to suspect just what set these orphans apart.  They did not demand fairness; they had learned long ago how fickle life could be.  They did not crave the finer things in life; the basics were hard enough to hold onto.  All I had heard and seen that night had been the empty shells of men seeking and desiring what they could not have; before or after death.  One desired to control money he no longer held.  Another had wanted to make and impress a friend.  A mother wanted her son.  And even I had wanted something strong enough to pull me from my grave.  I wanted to understand.  I wanted to know why.

            But there before us lay a tiny group of boys who wanted nothing in death, as they had learned to do in life.

            I only became aware of the tear that rolled down my cheek when Marie reached up and wiped it gently onto her hand.  She rubbed at it with her thumb, rolling it around until it was gone.

            She still had no words to say.  But for that moment, she had taken the tear and it had been enough.  It was something I knew for certain, though I would never understand.  And I hoped that I too could find it to be enough.



End

     A short story of mine, Timeless in Winter, will be appearing online at bewilderingstories.com near the end of November.  Keep an eye out for it!