The Glass Carafe

There was still a touch of romance in the way I was living: road trip, farmhouse, coming home. I could end my twenties in more than style. I was making a promise to myself, not with words, but with gestures. I would follow roads and take in scenery and stare out the front window while I tried to understand the whole of my experience.

Pieces of the life I was after were lies. Pieces were honest attempts. Pieces were manufactured for comfort and pieces were avoided at all costs. Some days were Nutella on a cinnamon bagel and some days were plain white toast.

Every day, though, one small measure of a routine was played out. One of us boiled water. While the kettle was on, we might brush out teeth or start working on our hair. The unbleached, brown paper filter was inserted into the top of the small glass carafe and the coffee grounds scooped in with a clean spoon. If we were using the fancy coffee, we dumped it into the filter straight from the shiny package. Then, one of us had to man the pour over. We didn't know to call it pour over. We just poured it over. L's grandmother had been using that very Chemex for over thirty years. The glass carafe was older than either one of us. Like so many things in the house. We lived in a space in which you didn't encounter history. You confronted it.

Or you made your way with it.

Modern appliances wouldn't have felt quite right anyway. No toaster. No coffee pot. We had a fussy microwave. We had two crock pots and a sink full of dishes most of the time.

First Feminist

She wasn't the first feminist that I knew, but she was the first feminist I looked up to. I thought, "I could be like her." All my idols were too distant: Naomi Wolf and Gloria Steinem and multiple women writers who came from east and west coast backgrounds. It just wasn't something you saw much in my hometown or in the region. My high school teacher told me it was "cute" that I was a feminist. I didn't have one other friend in school that I talked to about equal rights or why I cared about the movement. I don't remember ever talking about feminism with my gal pals in high school. Instead, I studied it privately. The staff writers at Sassy magazine were my friends. Or if not my friends, then at least my teachers.

When Ann walked into the classroom on that first day, I could already feel my life changing. It wasn't her. It was who I was slowly becoming. I was finally starting to participate. When I learned she was from the region, I finally started to see what could be possible for me.

On 52

It's hard to love the road, but have little love for the people who live along it. I have a fondness for them, in small ways, but when one insists on circling me on his four wheeler while I pump gas on a gravel lot, I lose what little affection I carry for the folks as a whole. When I pass a man wearing a "Cool Story Babe Now Go Make Me a Sandwich" t-shirt, I lose a piece of the respect I was saving for them.

On the other hand, my love isn't about people. It's about place. I know all the arguments about how people make a place. But I'm not settling into one town and making a home. I'm driving through.

Ashland Burial

I made it to eastern Kentucky again, to see my friend's grave. It was around this time a year ago that I learned that she'd died. She passed away almost six months before I knew it. About once a year, I'd look up her phone number and give her a call. Instead of a phone number, the internet gave me an obituary.

Our story was weird and winding. I can't say it ends at her grave. Now that I know where to find it, I can't say that I won't go back to see her again. I want to take things to leave with her: magnolia blossoms, Virginia Woolf books, a university ball cap. I might try to talk to her. This time, all I could say was, "Goddamit, Ann." I had to roll a coffee table across a mausoleum floor and stand on it in order to even touch her...headstone. It's not a headstone. It's a name placed on a marble drawer front. There's a brass vase attached, and faux flowers filling it up. I pushed them out of the way because faux petals were obscuring a part of her name.

There was a sofa sitting in front of a stained glass window and I sat there and looked up at the letters that formed her name and the dates, well, those significant dates. Birth. Death. It's really that simple. You don't see timelines with graduation dates or wedding dates or favorite accomplishment dates. We get two dates, and what little control we have over either. 

I'd say no control, except in her case, she had control over one of the dates. It happens. People take control of their second date. 

I can't say I've spent a lot of time in mausoleums, but it's strange in cemeteries where you have headstones just a few steps away from the mausoleum. Headstones often have titles, too: daughter, mother, beloved wife. There was no title this time. Just her full name and her two dates. And a brass vase filled with faux flowers. They were purple.

It was cold, and smelled like a cheap motel swimming pool. There were rooms, and the one where she was had a stained glass window with the word "Light," built into the design. I thought that was odd because the room was dark. I sat on the sofa and I looked up at her name and her dates and I sobbed for a minute because I wasn't ready for the enormity of it, even though I'd had a year to get used to the idea. There will never be goodbyes or any sort of closure. There will be me on an ugly floral couch spitting curse words because I'm angry that I lost a friend who didn't want to stick around. 

I couldn't find her at first. I walked along all the outdoor mausoleum graves and didn't find her. I finally called the number and the lady gave me the code to get into the larger building. When I told her who I was looking for, she remembered her off the top of her head. "Turn right, then at the end of the hall turn left, then she's on the top left," the lady said. I thanked her. I thought it was kind of fitting that I was back in Ashland, chasing Ann down. I'd done it before, years ago, when I came back to the river for a few days at a time and tried to make plans to see her. I'd drive to Ashland to meet her and she wouldn't be at our meeting place and I'd call her and get no answer. I'd call her parents' house and they'd tell me where they thought she was supposed to be and I'd go there and run into her aunt or uncle, who'd tell me I just missed her. Sometimes I'd find her and sometimes I'd go home bewildered at how quickly set plans could fall apart. I'd be frustrated, but rarely angry. I needed her too much to be angry with her. Maybe I idolized her a little too much, too. Maybe that's whey she dodged our rendezvous. Maybe she was busy, even then, wrestling with the thing. The thing that led to her name and dates on the wall in the mausoleum.

I stood on the wheeled coffee table and I placed my hand on her name. Then I climbed down and put the coffee table back in front of the sofa and then I sat on the sofa for a long time. I sat with her. She can't dodge me now. And I'm angry over it. I'm angry that I didn't have anything to say but "Goddamit." I'm angry that there wasn't a date for the year that we met, that she directed a project created by me and my friend, Amy, that she made us crawfish etouffee and we watched the Academy Awards. I'm angry that she used to dodge my visits and I'm angry that I wasn't a better friend. I'm angry that I didn't know that she was dead for six whole months. For six months, I lived in a world in which she no longer existed and I didn't know it. I'm angry that the sofa is ugly and the room is cold. 

I'm angry at Appalachia for taking her. It made her and it took her and I'm angry that we have at least one half of that equation in common. 

From the ugly sofa in the cold room, I could hear the traffic from the highway that runs beside the cemetery. I don't know if I'd find the sound comforting or maddening. Maybe a few of the cars are driving on, just passing through town, on their way to some place else. Maybe a few carry young women who are getting out of town. Who are getting out. Who are dodging hard lives. Maybe not.

Eddie Listens In

Eddie was still sitting on a milk crate near the wall when she walked in the door. He sat with the glass in hand, hanging between his legs. When she walked in, he looked up at her and shrugged. It was obvious that he'd heard every word. The corners of his mouth were turned down. His eyes were big, like he'd just witnessed a car accident or seen a ghost. She sat down beside him and took the glass.

"Did you hear it all?" she asked.

Eddie nodded.

"Do you think we can find her?"

Eddie nodded.

"I'm not going to get any help from Daniel."

Eddie shook his head slowly.

She stared at the glass in her hand. "You know," she said. "Talking to Daniel just now was a little like eating glass."

Eddie got on his knees and turned to face her. He put a hand on each of her shoulders. "Babe," he said. "Don't take this the wrong way." He lowered his chin and looked up at her with wide puppy eyes.

"But you kind of like the taste of blood in your mouth."

She could have reacted by throwing the glass, or taking a bit out of it and spitting it at him. She could have screamed and thrown her hands up and stomped around the house. She could have gotten angry. She could have denied it. Instead, she thought of all the difficult tasks she took on, including her boyfriend and her high maintenance tenants. She thought about how she was taking on the task of finding the little girl. She'd have to decide what to do with her once she did find her. The options were bleak: police, Daniel, kidnap the kid herself.

Fan Letter

When I was a fledgling undergraduate fiction writer, my professor gave me a thick stack of photocopied stories, and during a brief required conference in his small office made tiny by the numerous stacks of books, said to me, "Your stories remind me a little of Ivy Goodman." He explained to me who Ivy Goodman was. "Ivy Goodman," he said, "was an Iowa Award winner and you should read her work." I walked back to my sparsely furnished, drab one bedroom with the stack of photocopied stories and the question lingering in my mind, "What's an Iowa Award?"

I was new to writing short stories. Heck, I was new to reading short stories. Before the required "Introduction to Fiction" course, I'd read two short stories in my life. Both were read for my high school English class and both were written by men about men doing horrific things. One was "The Most Dangerous Game," and the other was "Harrison Bergeron." I remember thinking that I was getting bored with all these people being chased. When I got to college, I took the intro class to reading fiction and we read all the classics. We read about the woman who kept a corpse in her attic and we read about the enormous radio and we read about the bible salesman stealing the young woman's prosthetic leg.

And then I started writing.

By the time I started writing short stories, I'd been in some pretty absurd situations. I was too shy to present them as nonfiction, so I stole stories from myself. For instance, once, on my way to have dinner with my wealthy boyfriend's family in a big city along the river, I stopped at a trailer park on the way and had the transexual psychic and sometime beautician do my nails so I'd feel fancy for the occasion. That's a premise worth writing about, so I did, but I twisted it. I carved out the best parts and embellished the rest.

It was that story that led to the conference and the mention of Ivy Goodman and my frustration at not knowing what the heck an Iowa Award was. I carried the stack of photocopied stories home and I sat down on my parents' old sofa and lit a cigarette and started reading. I was intrigued. I was impressed. I was enlightened. And I was appalled. I thought that maybe my professor was playing a prank. My work didn't hold a candle. I was completely intimidated - so much so that I didn't think to feel complimented. I just felt kind of sick.

Luckily, my transexual psychic in the trailer park story was the last one I had to write during my undergraduate career. I revised it a little for my applications to graduate school, and then I didn't do much with it ever again. I wrote new opening paragraphs for it. I made new outlines and lists of possible new scenes. But I never finished it. I made that a habit.

I never finished any of them. I'd write a decent first draft and then I'd shy away. I'd retract. I'd think the voice was too distant. I didn't include enough description or detail. They were too thin. They were too something and not enough something.

I made these excuses for years.

The Glass Panel

The door we sometimes locked, sometimes didn't lock, had nine 5 x 7 glass panes in it. They were stacked three high and sat three across. The door was painted pale yellow to match the house. It was technically the side door, and the door that faced us when we pulled in to the spaces in which we parked. There weren't designated spaces. There wasn't even gravel. We did park near the garage, but not facing it. We faced the door.

When you walked through the door, you entered the mudroom. To the left was the bathroom and to the right was the door into the kitchen. At one point in time, it had been the back door. But, when they added the indoor bathroom to the house, they connected it with the mudroom. It had probably been the back porch at one point. The ceiling wasn't covered and the floor was simply poured concrete. It's where we started leaving the dogs while we were gone all day. It was supposed to keep them from getting in trouble in the house. No one was going to come home to chewed shoes, books or other personal items if the dogs couldn't get to those items. We shut the door to the kitchen and left the one hundred pound farm dog and the puppy in the mudroom - where the only accessible window was the bottom row of those glass panels.

It started innocently enough. Both dogs just wanted to see who had pulled in. Or at least, that's what I thought. Later, I realized they knew who pulled in. They knew the sound of the cars. When L pulled in, F was at the window. When I pulled, little B stretched himself as long as he could, and peered out the corner panel.

That corner panel didn't stand a chance.

It was late Fall the first time they knocked it out. I came home and there was glass on the floor. I swept it up and hoped that L wouldn't be too upset. She didn't really react at all.

'The dogs knocked out the window," I said.

She lit a cigarette on the stove and nodded.

There was a glass company a block away from the university, just across the street from the floodwall murals. I stopped and picked up a new pane and we slid it into the spot fairly easily, although we didn't know how to secure it.

"Super glue?" I asked.

"Duct tape?" L asked back.

We let it stay in place, but unsecured. It didn't take long before the dogs knocked it out. They liked that particular pane. Once it was gone, they started sticking their heads out the little space. They could see us getting out of our cars. We could see them shake and bark with excitement. It was heartwarming.

But not housewarming.

It started to get cold and the loss of the panel seemed to stand out more. I offered to pick up another one at the glass company, but it seemed futile if we didn't know how to make it stick. Besides, they'd just break it like they did the last two.

L had a bag of old clothes next to the door since I moved in. On a particularly cold late Fall morning, she grabbed a handful and shoved them in the hole.

The dogs couldn't break them. We spent the winter with old clothes shoved in the door. I didn't mind. I didn't really notice. It was one more quirk, one more quick fix that worked. I didn't need things to be perfectly mended, I needed things to be functional. We let the dogs back into the house during the day and dealt with the occasional chewed shoe.

AR End

The building still stands, but it stands empty. The paint isn't fading and the shingle still hangs. The windows aren't boarded up and the door is dusty, but the glass hasn't broken. It still stands, but it stands empty. Much like the town it once served. People have cleared out. They've fled for more prosperous areas. And the American Restaurant still stands to remind what we once were, what we once had, and what we once valued.

It's in danger. No one can afford it. At least, no one who wants it. The building needs some work, but it could be a restaurant again. Locals would come by. The town would have an alternative to the corporate chains that popped up at the outskirts, and in the center. We would have something. It would be our own. It would be local history and a legacy. It would be a place where everyone knows your name, and more importantly, they know how you take your coffee. They know you. If you care to show up. If you care to claim them.

Locked Doors

We were somewhere between Kalispell, Montana and Minot, North Dakota, driving Route 2 across the northern plains on our way to Minneapolis, Minnesota. I was pleased to see that Montana kept up its espresso and thrift store habit all through the reservations and towns as small as the one I was from (and as small as the one to which I was moving.) We could stay caffeinated and pick up secondhand souvenirs all the way to North Dakota, where the fun dried up altogether.

But we weren't quite to North Dakota when we started talking about all the things we would need to do that first week once we got to the farmhouse. Once we got home. 

"Buy paint," I said.

"You'll have to scrape those layers of wallpaper off first," L said. 

The room I was moving into needed some work. I knew that, and I was ready. My co-workers, upon hearing that I'd be moving 3,000 miles back to the land I told stories about, asked a million questions, including, "Where will you get your remodeling supplies?" When I casually - and without any suspicion that they were up to something - answered, I didn't know I was giving them gift ideas. On my last day, they presented me with a gift card, loaded with a handsome amount of money, to get myself set up in my new room. It was incredibly thoughtful and overwhelmingly generous. I could do a lot with what they gave me.

"Paint the floor," I said. L nodded. 

"Make a place for my chair in the living room," I said. L nodded.

"Get a key made," I said. 

"For what?" L asked.

"For the door," I said. 

"It doesn't lock," L said.

"What do you mean?" 

"I mean, I don't lock it," L said.

"What do you mean?" 

"I mean you won't need a key," L said.

"Why don't you lock the door?" I asked.

"I never have," she said. 

We both grew up in small towns, but I grew up in a house in town, and in a household run by a career firefighter and Marine Corps veteran. Everyone in my family had a healthy distrust of other people, no matter how well we knew them or how close we had to live to them. We locked our doors. It's what we did. We locked them when we were in the house and when we left the house. It was a modicum of control. We said who entered our house, and when.

My friend N's family never locked their doors, but I always thought it was because they lived on a street with other family members and a close relationship with their immediate neighbors. I still didn't understand it, but I at least made up an explanation for it. 

"Well," I said. "How do you know people won't just come right on in?" 

"They don't," L said.

"But, what if they tried?" 

"They haven't."

In my mind, the lock was the signal that you control your home. I couldn't let go of that control. Not yet. I needed that illusion.

"How do you keep someone from just walking in and taking your stuff while you're at work?" I asked.

"If they want in, they'll find a way in. The lock's not going to stop them," she said, and had a point. "Besides," L said, "that's breaking and entering."

"But you can keep them from entering," I said. I said it with conviction because I was convinced. It's what I knew: lock your doors, in your house and your car, while you're there and while you're away. Have a smoke detector on every floor of your house. Keep a blanket and jumper cables in your car at all times. Know where the exits are. Safety. Safety. 

"The door needs a new knob anyway," L said, and we moved onto the next chore for the list. 

We each silently chewed on the conversation for a while, though. Something was revealed in our differing door locks philosophies. It felt fundamental. It seemed important. But so many conversations hold a greater weight when they're had on the road. 

It was just a door. If it's unlocked, it's easier to let people in. And that's where I had trouble. That's where I insisted that my doors stay locked. People had to knock or be given a key. I didn't know another way.

Thoughts on this exercise

I'm enjoying this exercise and mostly feeling productive. Thus far, I feel like I've got the first versions of a few different pieces completed. But, that's where I trip myself: the first version. I've built this great exercise where I create lots of material...but I don't have an exercise for polishing it and making it fit for sharing.

I mean, I'm sharing. This is a public blog. It does keep me accountable. And, to be honest, I'm writing this post the day after it was due and I changed the date to make it reflect yesterday...because yesterday I got sidetracked. I got busy. I had things in mind and I started to revise other things. And it got me thinking about this project and how to do this AND revise pieces. And, does it require the same type of energy?

Is it possible to produce new material and revise "old" material on the same day? I'm sure it is. I want someone to tell me it is. And then I want someone to tell me how, but be very very kind about it. I haven't figured it out yet. I haven't worked that muscle in A LOT OF YEARS. If it's even the muscle I think it is.

The Ghost of Grauman's

When you live somewhere big, sometimes friends come to visit. Of course, they come to the city to see you, but they also come to see the city through your eyes. You'll show them the Los Angeles you know. You'll present the city you think is worth seeing.

And, if you have a chance to spice it up, or offer something special to the days of landmarks and oddities, you do. Because that's what you do.

You can offer half a bed in the sunny little studio you love. The big windows face south, and in the eastern corner, three neon crosses light up the night sky. All of your friends should make the journey just to see that private little calvary. It keeps you company while your friends live far away from you.

In Los Angeles, you've become accustomed to free tickets. You see shows, you're in the audience, you happen onto performances. This time, just in time, you're given two tickets to the biggest night in the music industry. Your friend flies in. You spend the day showing him your Los Angeles. Then, an hour before you're supposed to leave, to take the subway downtown to the event, you both sit in your studio and contemplate forgoing.

"Do we have to?" you whine.

He sighs. "We could just hang out here," he suggests.

"Would we regret it?" you ask.

"Probably," he says and sinks deeper into the chair.

In the end, you get up. You get made up. You stomp to the subway where you witness a mugging and are almost assaulted yourself. Then you arrive at the biggest night in the music industry. You see celebrities. You watch performances. You applaud and you yawn.

"We could have watched this on television," you say.

"And not risk bodily harm," he says.

With the tickets, you were given access to an after party and free drinks. In Hollywood. You went all over the city that day, but not to Hollywood. Not yet. You save the boulevard for last.

In a nightclub on the top floor of a prestigious building, you gaze south over the city and marvel at the shimmer. The glow. The city's nerve endings on fire.

"Let's go," you say.

You walk the walk. Of fame. You stop on stars and say their names in unison. And in front of the grand Chinese theater, you linger. It's quite on the boulevard hours after midnight. No one is around but your shadows. You've entered the area full of hand prints. All the actors who pressed their palms in the mud. Their collected lifelines on display for eternity.

Out of a dark corner comes a stranger. His hair is wild, but his eyes are kind.

"I'm the Ghost of Grauman's," he says.

You freeze. You've already made it through one altercation tonight. You don't have the patience for another.

"I know every hand here," the ghost says. And you see his intent. He wants to put on a show for you. In the heart of Hollywood. You can't say no. Who would you be?

He points at your hand hanging by your hip. You lift it up for him to examine. He gives you a name, and leads you to her square. You sink your hands into the space where Joan Crawford commemorated her career. You feel a kinship for the woman. You feel a new compassion. There must have been more to her than bad mothering. Although, you realize that women aren't allowed to be bad at that. That is the one thing they must get right. No matter their other talents.

Your hands feel heavy and you pull them back quickly. The ghost smiles, as if he's seen that behavior before.

He turns toward your friend, who is more skeptical than even you. The ghost glances at his hands and says, "Tom Hanks." Together, you scoff. You walk over, lean down, and watch your friend's fingers slide into place.

"Like a glove," the ghost says.

He vaporizes. Folds himself back into the shadows. Tomorrow, tourists will come. They'll press their hands into the cement. They'll giggle over the novelty and give the ghost a bill or two.

There are worse ways to earn your keep in town, you think. The ghost knows his ground. You go back to your's, where the calvary burns up the corner of your view. You count the three crosses, you point them out to your friend. You can't look out the window and miss them. They sizzle in the periphery. You received the view for free with your little studio. They put on a show you no doubt will attend.

Huck Finn

The best part about working a minimum wage job in Beverly Hills, California is meeting a man who'll tell you, "Huck Finn ruined my life."

The second best part about working a minimum wage job in Beverly Hills, California is all the other people you'll meet. I'm not talking about the celebrities or the lookalike women who've all had the surgeons carve them the same nose. I mean the co-workers: the people who come to southern California and for one or more of a million reasons, they wind up working a minimum wage job in the most prosperous zip code in the nation.

You'll meet aspiring actors and writers, comic book artists and singers. You'll meet lost girls and boys and ambitious college students who work unpaid all day and then slave away in the evenings to support their experience. You'll meet all stripes and all types. I'm telling you. I was one of them.

I was aspiring AND lost and working paid all day and then slaving away in the evenings to meet interesting people and do something besides drink or watch television. I stood behind the counter at a bookstore, bewildered at what titles celebrities will buy. And, I talked with my co-workers.

One of them told me that Huck Finn ruined his life.

"What?" I asked. I was familiar with the title. It was that book that was always getting banned.

"Yeah," he said. "Basically, after reading it, I just want to float down the river for the rest of my life."

Some would say he's a lost boy, but I knew better by the look in his eye. I wondered if that's why the book strikes such fear in the hearts of so many school board members. It's not the language or the action or the behavior of the characters. It's what they inspire. They inspire flotation. It seems like the opposite of ambition. It looks like laziness. It sounds like a vagrant's life.

That's more frightening than cutting your flesh to change your face. To look similar. To assimilate. One takes money and one takes guts and maybe that's the real fear. That guts without money can thrive in this world. The best part about working a minimum wage job in Beverly Hills, California is feeling gutsy without a big payday. You have your wits and your dreams and you got yourself to southern California. If you can get to Beverly Hills, you can build a raft. You can find a river.

Meeting the Neighbor

After a long day of running errands, I pulled into the driveway and saw, out of the corner of my eye, a long-haired man standing on the back porch of the neighboring apartment building. His hair was dark and he wore round eyeglasses and his hands were on his hips. He was standing with his chest puffed out and looking out over the parking area as if he were a pirate and it was the sea.

I was eager to meet my neighbors. I was eager to meet anyone, really. I was completely solo in my new town, and I wanted to make an ally or two. I parked my car and hopped out, but by the time I turned around, the long-haired man was gone. He disappeared. In a blink of the eye and the time it takes to put the gear shift in "park," he dissolved into the building.

Huh, I thought. Maybe he doesn't want to be met.

I took my grocery bags inside and lingered in the kitchen for a while. The first department mixer was later that evening, and I thought I might want to look nice. I threw the five items of clothing in which I felt most comfortable onto the bed. I picked up the red cotton tank top in which I'd traveled western Europe. I threw it back on the bed. I called my friend Nicole.

"What should I wear?" I said to my friend, who'd just had a baby in Ohio.

"A bra," she answered. "Wear a bra."

Two months before I moved south, I cut off all my hair. I wanted a fresh start, which I thought should include a fresh look. Instead, the cut, plus the product that the stylist convinced me to buy, made my hair look flat and stringy and greasy. I'd gained a little weight between acceptance and arrival, too. I didn't feel like myself, and I had to go meet a bunch of strangers.

"Maybe I should stay home," I said to Nicole.

"Well," she said. "Then you don't have to wear a bra."

I wore a bra. And I went to the mixer. Everyone was generally nice, although I did get the distinct feeling that we were being sized up. I was fresh meat. I walked out onto the porch of the professor hosting the shindig and I saw my next door pirate, standing with a few other people - people I didn't know, and I didn't know if they were new or not. I was new. I knew no one.

But, I'd seen this man and I was fairly certain he'd seen me.

"Hey," I said to him. "I think you're my neighbor."

He whipped his head around to look at me and his hair followed. It punctuated his movements like a period ends a sentence. He moved, and his hair let you know how to read it. His movement seemed quick and clipped. And I could see how this man could disappear in a snap.

He didn't say, "Nice to meet you." He didn't say anything. He just nodded. And then he was talking to the other people.

The nod was enough. I wasn't put off by it and I didn't feel brushed off. A small, still voice from deep within told me that the little yes was big beginning. What it didn't tell me was that before I knew it, I'd have a cataloged collection of every Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode before it was released on DVD. Courtesy of the man with the pirate presence and the exclamation point hair.

The Professor

Each girl met her independently. Gigi met her at the coffee shop. Angela met her in class. Joely met with her for academic advising because she was thinking of taking contemporary literature courses. The professor assured her that she could find a job and that she would have a future if she declared a major in the humanities. Angela didn't care about career paths. She just wanted to read poetry. Gigi heard her speak and thought she recognized something in her voice. It sounded like the twang from her hometown. She'd been homesick for months. She poured the professor a fresh cup of coffee and asked her, "Where are you from?"

It turned out that the professor was from a place about an hour's drive from Gigi's parents' house. Gigi ended up sitting with the professor that day, which almost got her fired. She sat down at the table and they talked about books.

A lot of those titles were scattered at her feet in the storage unit where she stood across from a dead baby. Gigi looked at the other girls and wondered if they'd known the professor better than she did. Before the baby, Gigi would have said, "No way." She thought she understood something about the professor that no one else would or could. Gigi knew where she was from. Gigi knew the place way beyond its name or location. She knew it. And she thought that made her know the professor more intimately, too.

The professor was simply an older version of who she wanted to be. Or at least, that's what Gigi believed from the moment she met her. She signed up for her classes and she sought her advice on everything from boyfriends to savings accounts. Gigi read the books the professor gave her and listened to the music the professor mentioned loving. She was an eager student, and the professor liked an enthusiastic learner.

Angela was an enthusiastic learner.

He Took Her

Ginger waited while Daniel sobbed. She bounced her knee for a while. She nodded her head, up and down, for a while.. She looked around her yard. Finally, when Daniel's tears started to let up a little, she leaned over and put her hands on his cheeks.

"You took her where?" Ginger asked.

Eddie had gone back inside and the streetlights came on. They were alone on the block. No one was witness to the slap she gave him when he took too long to answer. It startled him. He put his hand over the spot where it stung. Ginger took him by the shoulders and shook him.

"You took her where!?" she shouted.

"I didn't take her now," Daniel whispered. He glanced up at her door to make sure Eddie wasn't coming back outside at the sound of the slap.

"I took her and we came here," he said. After hearing himself say what he'd done, however vaguely, Daniel stood up quickly. Ginger rose with him.

"Maybe the police found her," he said. Ginger's head started to hurt.

"Or maybe she went home," he said. He seemed pretty excited at the second option.

"Where's home?" Ginger asked, suddenly aching. She was pretty sure that her property, that duplex, with the yard they were standing in - she was pretty sure that was home for the little girl.

"With her mother," Daniel said to his feet. "She's not gone. She came home one day and we were gone."

Ginger stepped away from him. She walked over to the bush, to the spot where she noticed the little girl on the day she and Daniel walked into Ginger's life. Ginger turned to look at the man, the father, her tenant. She thought of her own parents as she turned away from Daniel to look at her property. She spent a lot of time restoring it. She really loved it. She loved it so much she heard a deep, guttural groan escape from her lips.

She loved it. The only obvious remedy was to move far, far away from it.

But first, the little girl. And Daniel. She didn't know them, not really. She wasn't sure about their names, even. She shook her head.

"Let's go inside," she said. She took Daniel by the elbow and led him into his half of her house. She was fairly certain that if the police had picked up the little girl, they'd have arrested Daniel by now.

"We'll find her," Ginger said. Daniel didn't look very sure.

"I'll find her," Ginger said. She was good at finding things: tools, tenants, properties to own. She had a method. She simply drove around until she saw a sign.

Wolf Stuff 6

I chewed on that anger all the way to Glacier National Park, and then chewed on it some more. I gripped the steering wheel of my little, gas-efficient economy car as if it might save me if we drove over the side of the very steep, very narrow road we were told was magnificent and something to see. It was something to see, alright. And it was scary.

The terror wore off somewhere around Bird Woman Falls. We stopped to take a picture by the sign. Then we continued on, saying things like, "Wow," and "Are you kidding?" We marveled. We mocked. We just couldn't believe what we were seeing.

"I've been to the Alps!" I said. I declared it. And, with residual anger, added, "And this shit puts 'em to shame!"

We stopped at the lodge deep within the park, and the regular stop, I suppose, for travelers going to the sun. I passed over all the wolf stuff. I headed for the bookshelves. I couldn't believe that in all those years of mythologizing Montana, I didn't know anything about that park, those mountains, or the road that will casually lead your through.

Most of the books were history books. I pulled Native North America from the stack because I liked the look of it: copper with confident blue text. I felt fine judging the book by its cover. I opened it to a random page and learned that some tribes isolated their women while they were menstruating because the blood was considered so potent, so powerful and dangerous that it could contaminate sacred objects if it came in contact with them.

"L!" I called out. She came over and I read aloud, "The first period usually included the girl's isolation in a small menstrual hut set apart from the village."

"Is that so the bears and wolves could eat her without putting the others in danger?" L asked.

I shut the book, but I bought it. When I stepped outside on the patio where L was smoking a cigarette, I gasped. There was magic in Montana, and it was in those mountains. It was in that view.

It wasn't at the White Birch Motel and Campground, which was why we'd made the pilgrimage to Kalispell in the first place. I was searching for a spirit, but it wasn't for my dad's deceased friend, after all. It was the spirit of discovery, fueled by the act of traveling roads revealed to you by strangers. It was Going to the Sun or nowhere at all.

Wolf Stuff 5

We woke up cold and hungry. The tent was covered in morning dew and the campground was quiet while I gathered all my toiletries from the trunk of the car and trekked to the public restroom and showers. I was on a mission. I wanted to investigate the White Birch, if only for an hour. While L showered and dressed, I'd be out exploring the grounds of the almost mythical motel of my childhood.

There wasn't much to it. The motel was a two story deal with an office and a laundromat and a shed. The signage was large and imposing. I liked it. It seemed confident. I needed to borrow some for the moment.

I fixated on the shed. I remember hearing it so clearly: Roger shot himself in the shed. In the shed. In the shed. I walked over to the shed. I stood in front of it. I felt nothing. For a minute. Then, I started to feel a little silly. I glanced over to make sure the new owners didn't see me staring at the shed. I also didn't want them to see me taking pictures of it. But, I thought if I had a photo, then I could use that, I could stare at the photo until some profound feeling came over me, some moment of clarity where I all my childhood questions about Roger's death were answered.

Even though I didn't really have questions. I just had sorrow. I didn't know Roger well enough for it to make a big impact on me. I knew his daughter. I knew his best friend. I don't know what I thought I'd learn about the man for whom they grieved. I don't know what I thought a shed on a campground in northwestern Montana would tell me.

"Let's go," I said to L after I stomped back to my car. She was packing everything up, giving me time to talk with ghosts. There were no ghosts there. Unless you counted my childhood thoughts. I didn't.

"I'll drive," I said.

We headed further north to drive the narrow road inside Glacier National Park. I'd never even heard of Glacier before plotting my way back home. Maybe I had heard of it and it didn't register. I wasn't really a kid who paid attention to national parks or state parks or that sort of thing. We had a state park back home that my family and I hiked through a lot, but it was just a part of the area. You could cross the street in front of our house and start hiking. And it wasn't a state park. I didn't know what the fuss was about. I didn't know.

I mean, I'd been to the Grand Canyon by that time. I'd seen a few geographical wow-ers. But I wasn't prepared. The bartender didn't tell me. He didn't describe it accurately. He got it wrong. Simply because he didn't get it right. He didn't describe the majesty of the mountains in Glacier National Park, and for that, I was angry.

Or maybe I was angry that I didn't meet the ghost of Roger while I camped at the White Birch Motel and Campground. Maybe I was angry that I couldn't get an answer to whether or not Roger 1.) took his own life or 2.) why he took his own life. I wanted to know why so I could give my father an answer. He'd lived for almost twenty years without his best friend. That made me angry.