Another Country

He used to talk about the fifties like was another country or something. Used to sit right over there in one of the window booths, lighting one fresh Chesterfield off the dying butt of the last one, stubbing the last one out into the growing mountain of ashes he had built up on the table in front of him. He'd nod to the guy behind the counter and abracadabra another cup of coffee would magically appear right there before him. He used to talk about the fifties like it was another country or something. Used to sit there all the time.

There was a woman, he said. There was always a woman. This one used to wear her hair piled up in a high like some Hollywood starlet. Wore pearls around her neck and those tight Jayne Mansfield sweaters, the figure on this girl you wouldn't believe, and she loved him to death. Followed him everywhere. She swore she'd do anything for him and he believed her. In the end that's what sent him packing. He left her there waiting for him and he hit the ground running. Never did go back. But he was just a kid, and he figured he'd be better off down the road.

She died in a fire, at least that's what he'd heard. 1972, 73. Fell asleep drinking with the candles still lit, that's all it took. "The toughest thing," he'd say, and then he wouldn't say anything.

9th and 3rd, 1959

"I remember one time he was the Silver Tin Can. If there was a window open, or a door, he'd throw a in can through it with a note: 'The Silver Tin Can Strikes Again!' He'd wear a cape and give his Doctor Sax laugh. 'Mwee-hee-hee-hee-hee!' Everybody thought it was the dirty Greek, me. Jack's mother just couldn't believe Jack would do anything like that. He'd be in his cape - thirteen years old - jumping over fences and running, always running."

- G.J. Apostolos

Santo and Johnny, 1959

Galveston, 1900

"All over Galveston freakish things occurred. Slate fractured skulls and removed limbs. Venomous snakes spiraled upward into trees occupied by people. A rocket of timber killed a horse in midgallop.

"At the expensive Lucas Terrace apartment building, Edward Quayle of Liverpool, England, who had arrived in Galveston with wife three days earlier, happened to walk past a window just as the room underwent a catastrophic depressurization that blew the window outward into the storm. Mr Quayle rocketed to his death trailing a slipstream of screams from his wife.

"At another address, Mrs Willima Henry Heideman, eight months pregnant, saw her house collapse and apparently kill her husband and three-year-old son. She climbed onto a floating roof. When the roof collided with something else, the shock sent her sliding donw into a floating trunk, which then sailed right to the upper windows of the city's Ursuline convent. The sisters hauled her inside, dressed her in warm clothes, and put her to bed in one of the convent cells. She went into labor. Meanwhile, a man stranded in a tree in the convent courtyard heard the cry of a small child and plucked him from the current. A heartbeat later, he saw that the child was his own nephew - Mrs Heideman's three-year-old son.

"Mrs Heideman had her baby. She was reunited with her son. She never saw her husband again."

- Isaac's Storm,
The Drowning of Galveston
Erik Larson

from "February"

The world’s always been an irrational place, you don’t need me to tell you that. You take that woman down in Florida, brought her boy down to a shooting range and put a bullet through the back of his head. Said later angels or something made her do it, she certainly didn’t want to. She loved her son, grieved for him now he was gone. Makes no sense, but I see no reason not to believe her.

I’ve lived here all my life. This is a fairly quiet part of the world, that’s what I like about it. And I’ve known Bill since we were both kids. He was a pretty good guy, all in all. Ran a little wild back in high school, couple of years after he came back home from the army. He was the kind of guy that you’d run into from time to time, always picking his kids up from school, etc and so forth. Little League. His wife, Janice, was one of those PTA milk-and-cookies types, knew everybody, always volunteering for things. You’d look at the two of them together and you’d think, well sure. I guess they had it figured out.

Last time I actually saw Bill, saw to talk to anyway, was at the bank, of all places. I don’t even remember what we talked about. Kids and weather, probably. He seemed OK that day, though I don’t know how anybody knows anything about people when you come right down to it. People show you what they want to show you, and that tends to be good enough. And then he went and did the most terrible thing you could imagine.

Vapor Trail

He thought she'd probably be gone before he even got there, and when he pulled up to the house, when he saw the empty driveway and the windows shut tight, he was certain of it. But he got out of the car anyway. Went up and rang the bell. Knocked on the window and called out her name, the whole bit.

She sounded strange on the phone, that's what brought him over here halfway across the county in the first place. Stoned or something, though she swore up and down she didn't do that anymore, swore those days were past her. She sounded a little too happy and disconnected. He didn't tell her he was coming, he'd learned the hard way not to tip his hand like that, but she must've heard it in his voice. She must've had the car keys in her fist before she even hung up the phone.

He stood there for another minute, shaking his head and staring at her goddamn locked door. Ringing the bell again and listening to it echo around inside. A landscaping truck drove past, slowing down just a little before continuing on. An airplane climbed up along the horizon. He stood there for another minute before giving up. Then he headed back down towards his own parked car, the engine still ticking away under the hood.

Cowbirds

"Cowbirds are brood parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of other birds and leaving them to the care of foster parents. Unlike parasitic Old World cuckoos, which lay eggs closely resembling those of a host species, cowbirds lay eggs in the nests of more than 200 other species, mostly smaller than themselves. Some host species eject the unwanted egg, others lay down a new nest lining over it, but most rear the young cowbird as one of their own. The young cowbird grows quickly at the expense of the young of the host, pushing them out of the nest or taking most of the food. It has been suggested that cowbirds became parasitic because they followed roving herds of bison and had no time to stop to nest."

- Audubon Field Guide,
North American Birds