Nut by Ralph Bailey, PLUS

ADDENDUM

 How do you explain this series of events? George, all his life long, had major problems. Why was not this damage to his personality addressed sooner? I am certain that President Bush was to blame. It was under his watch were to become a nation mentally impaired and socially nonactive. It twas under his command that bound up the immediate need of the soon to be you. No underling government, no State and the Local levels, can be accorded sudden sustenance during need without the sting of bureaucratic red tape being ripped off our collective butts infecting us with the poison sickle of Time. Oh, yes, my friends, George had a serious problem. And I cannot say that George’s fate, the sneaky stew of anonymity we partake each day, need never happen again. But no, ye brave incisible, invisible daughters and sons of Nobody of old, you poets in the healing wind of nothing, and you there, you who will become vapors in the clouds seen only by the blind, all of us, butt first, we will suffer the backdraft of the Julian Millennium, and know not how our cry to the Source for our lives comes out of our pores like bile from the horses of the Apochrapit, and how it will go to the Bad in our unknown disintegration. It is true. We will shake the hand of Hades for its constant availability. Then the trauma of losing our sense of freedom will be deemed unredeemable, as well. For we will hand over televisions of deprivation, bodiflex, doctor phil, families of comic bereavement, the most exciting medical examiners and their gooey extravagations of that wondrous anatomical dig in search of the archeology of identification whoopee. Destruction and expirations, they say as they are unplugged, is the thing, to catch the con shush of the King but let me tell you one thing. Better to sink mireward than to leave a friend. Better to play the trombone than to curse the water. And, you, too, bandit bandmates, rather to hoist the cow than to see it drown. And most of fall, plan for the end, plan for the next Thursday, and be found with me, floating in the friendly snakes of home. And, me, I'm Ralph Bailey (NUT:The STORY copyright 2007 Weemus Studio)

Nut, Part 3

George Zacker was never seen again by man nor beast. His mother lies there at home in her hospital bed, not knowing what’s going on. Beth and Sandy moved in to share the work of full-time caregivers. They almost broke up several times due to the surreal stress of this arrangement. They finally moved Mrs. Zacker to an assisted-living complex in Jackson, Georgia, twenty-five miles south of Atlanta in the tranquil woods of Henry County. Beth and her beautiful partner moved north and built a house among the breeze of gardenia and patchouli in the sweet Georgia hills near Lake Burton. Oh, and Beth, by the way, talked one night to Sandy about a memorial service for George. But time went by and it was never done, and they never talked about it again as if to ask without really thinking it, “ But why?”. Thursday visits Margie, not knowing that every time she shows up it is at the exact moment Margie is making coffee. They gulp laughter, almost choking on it, spraying coffee from their lips, covering their mouths splattering it all over the floor. They straighten up for a moment at one time or another and mention that the pot is good, but never again as good as it was “beFORE the SKWER-uhl.” Nut had no descendants. No little squirrels out there to skip in that funny way that Nut did. I just know it’s true. Just go outside. Look around. Look around in the park. Do you see any cute little squirrels doing cartwheels? 

Nut, Part 2

He was gripped instantly by an overwhelming shiver in his brain. The muscles in his legs locked. His hands rubbed each other fiercely and his jaw grinded against his upper teeth. He was having a panic attack. Trying to calm himself with a mantra picked out of the air, he repeated, “It’s just, it’s just, it’s just . . .,” trying to find reason enough to know what it was just. After a five minute blackout, he remembered his deep breathing exercises. He was almost out of it. Feeling beaten, George reversed his steps, turned round and walked back to the Huddle House. His mind still buzzed.George, feeling exposed by the light of the moody streetlamp glow, tried to correct his composure and straighten his shirt. He tucked it back in. He put his chin to his chest and revolved his head to his right shoulder, his back and on to his left shoulder when a nail of a pain was driven into his neck. He saw a blinding flash of light.------------Little squirrel Nut was in a parking lot. He noticed tall pine trees as he jumped to face the rear. He jumped again toward a lightpole tree and scampered toward a big truck and hid under it. There was plenty of room down there, but Nut sure didn’t like the smell of chemicals and the gases some of them made. He escaped to the front of the truck and when a person came giggling out of the Huddle House, Nut hopped, and leaped to the top of the truck. He was frozen again with time. The truck made a jerk and a grinding noise and, before Nut could leap off, he was moving with the truck. Then, climbing into a warm vent he found without looking for it, he closed his eyes and prayed for the best. He thought about what a wonderful day he had, and how fun it was to do cartwheels, and about his favoritest tree. “Oh my,” he tried not to dream, “Oh my oh my.”George held onto the CB antenna on the top of the truck. His eyes were closed so tightly that he was getting yet another headache. He wondered how many miles he had been. He thought he felt, or saw in his closing mind, a dimly fading in of daylight. The wind was barely cool all over him, and was soothed by a beam of warm air from a vent just beyond the antenna he clasped like a vice. Then he could swear the truck was slowing. It was slowing and turning into a convenience store. It was stopping, by God, right under the blaring lights above the gas pumps.George listened carefully for the footsteps of the driver to enter the store. When he was sure the man was gone, George rumbled nervously down the front of the truck and ran to the street. He was in the grass shoulder of Georgia State Highway 78. The driver must’ve headed back towards Ponce de Leon and swept north on the way to Athens or somewhere, and stopped halfway to Stone Mountain. George was miles from home. Wherever he was, he thought he knew he was never lost. He paused a moment, turned around, and sauntered south, back to Atlanta.----------The Presley Trucking Company appreciated the dedication of its Number One driver, Fernie Hickens. Hickens was hired by Mr. Presley himself, back in 1982. He had logged more miles than any other driver and had never had a complaint about any of his deliveries. He was even put in charge of the account for The Georgia Board of Education, Presley’s supreme client. He was a crew of One, bringing new schoolbooks to the students and faculties of several West Georgia schools of all grades. Now he was aimed for the University of Georgia, the Home of the Georgia Bulldogs. Since this first delivery was on this particular Friday night, he thought he might stay overnight in an Athens hotel and go to the game against Alabama the next day. That was his plan. After all, he was his own man. His only obligation, the only one he had to answer to, was The Presley. He even liked the sound of that. “The Presley,” he often ended his flights of thought, speaking the name aloud as if it were an Amen to a prayer.Fernie got his Nesquick Reduced Fat Double Chocolate drink, and was opening his new box of Marlboro Reds, and mounted his truck cabin like John Wayne and was off to Athens. He was going to make his infamous, all-important delivery before morning. He was not going to make it to the game.George saw the Mac truck he had ridden in a haze, and turned away as it passed him, going the other way. He knew the driver probably wouldn’t even see him, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Turning around to watch the truck out of sight, he saw the headlights of the truck empty their beam onto a road sign reading, “South,” and inside a white silhouette of Georgia, black numbers, “78.” George was going the wrong way. The truck entered the expressway in a round loop and went north toward them Bulldogs. George crossed the quiet highway and walked on, this time for sure, to Atlanta and home.Down the grassy shoulder of the highway Nut skipped and turned cartwheels. The sun was coming up again, and he didn’t have a care. He didn’t retain the trauma of his ride. He was glad to be alive, and even more glad he was a squirrelly little squirrel. “That’s me!”, he hollered, “Nut the Squirrel. The squirreliestist squirrel there is!” And he skipped on and on and on as the sunny sun lit his way.Meanwhile, Fernie had a flat. He was scratching his bald head and staring at the ruined tire. He finally reached for the cell phone hanging on his belt and called the office. Amy, Presley’s eighteen-year old daughter answered the phone, “Presley Truckin’ Cumpnee.” Fernie lusted after Amy a bit, but mindlessly ignored his lust for the Sake of The Company.  “Amy, it’s Fernie,” he said, while cars whizzed by beside him.“Hello, Mister Fernie,” Amy smacked wildly on a sour apple gumball.“Got a bad tire here,” Fernie grunted, adjusting his belt, “I’ll be getting a ride to the stop in Convent, then I’ll be back and on my way. I needyou to call the college and tell ‘em I’ll be there in, whoa, three hours.”“Okay, Mister Fernie, I’ll call right away. You be careful, now.”“Will do, and you, too,” he finished, and hung up, looking both ways.Fernie ran across the expressway and waved down the first car that approached him. He didn’t look to see who was driving as he got in and closed the passenger door. “Where ya headed?,” drawled the casually dressed drag queen driving the lime green circa 1974 Valiant, dolled up as drag as the driver. Shifting about on the fake angora seat cover, Fernie said, “There’s a truck stop right off the expressway at Convert.” “I’m going right BY there.”, she reported, “Shoot, that’s just about nothin’” “’Preciate it,” Fernie finalized the conversation, still wriggling in his seat.George was humming “Hank and Joe and Me,” a Johnny Cash tune about a man left in the desert to die of dehydration. Hank and Joe knew he was a dyin’ man, so they left him there to let him die. They couldn’t stand to hear him cry for water. A sign about a mile back let him know he was now about thirty miles from Atlanta. He pulled his shirttail from his pants and looked to the sky. He could almost see the buzzards circling way above the trees waiting for him to fall. The noon sun created phosphene in his eyes. Mister Fernie wasn’t watching much anyway except the grass. “As long as I stay on the grass,” he thought.Our favorite squirrel was getting anxious about the cars and trucks whizzing by. As he rested on a bridge he saw a pole, a streetlight, just like the ones at the park. He leaped legs by legs until he had crossed the bridge, thinking he could walk the wires all the way to something familiar. Halfway up the pole he stopped – looked around – and clawed his way to the top as quickly as he could. He cleaned his paws and stepped lightly onto the telephone wire that ran forever into the distance. Scoot scoot, across the wire he went, but he held on, upside down and shaking, when a big truck passed just by his ears. He swung side to side in the backdraft wind.----------Fernie and his new friend pulled into Fain’s Truck Stop, commandeered by Amos Fain, the largest man in Georgia, which is the biggest state east of the Mississippi – he’s that big. Fernie got out and Thursday, the driver, waved buhbye, closing her hand a finger at a time. Fernie waved back, smiling, and turned to run into the restroom.George Zacker was still stomping his way to the big city. The arms that swung from his shoulders were pulling his mind toward the earth’s core. A hot wet heat bombarded him from the sun above, and from the sweltering, churning earth below his sleepy magnetic fingertips. Daydreaming, he craved the taste of wood, some salted pecans, that’s it. And a cold draft beer. Oh yeah.It was Margie’s day off, so Thursday pulled into her driveway and sashayed to the door of Margie’s Beauty Salon in a trailer just outside Convent in Darma. “You’re just a ‘Darma bum’,” she liked to say, knowing Margie had no idea what one was. Margie was in the shampoo chair watching Montel on a small battery-powered black-and-white TV. “Well, garl fren, let’s light ‘em up,” Margie chuckled. They sat and smoked Thursday’s dynamite pot from a fancy chrome and jade pipe she had bought in New York during her last visit to Wigstock. That was the year she performed lip-syncing Millie Jackson’s “Butt-A-Cize.” It was the first year Wigstock , the gigantic celebration of Love, Music and Wigs, was held in Central Park. Thursday switched the channel to the last thirty minutes of “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” and they laughed until they almost asphyxiated.Mrs. Zacker was about to have a heart attack. Beth and Sandy were feeding her cheddar cheese and filling her with iced tea. The police had come and gone twice. They said the best thing Mrs. Zacker could do was calm down and stay by the phone. George was sure to call. She yelled for Beth to get her some “meddy meddy one-two-three-four-seven.” Beth went from object to object saying, “Is it this? Is this what you want?” She didn’t want a shoe or a brush, or a tacky costume watch which had dead batteries in it for over three years. Beth found the plastic basket of drugs. She instinctively asked, “Tylenol?” “Yes yes yes,” cried George’s mother. Sandy was in the kitchen making more tea, thinking of substances within arm’s reach that could be used to poison George. She was silently livid. Beth’s name and number were still listed on the phone list glued to the wall facing the refrigerator, under thick black Sharpie-scrawled letters saying “IF EMERGENCY!” The oxygen generator rattled so loud that no one could even hear the television. Beth was stuffing towels between a wall and the generator, bracing it tightly against them trying to stop the noise. George knew how to stop it by taking one wheel off so it slanted into the wall where he stuffed two pot holders. He would stretch the oxygen tube all the way out so he could do all this in the other room. It wasn’t likely that George would ever do this ritual again. This is exactly what Beth wasn’t thinking when the phone rang. She ran to answer, lifted the kitchen wall phone receiver bumping into Sandy, dropped the phone and they both bent over to pick it up, knocked their heads together, and were snuffing out their laughter shushing each other. Beth had the receiver at her ear and heard the answer machine blasting, “This is the Zacker residence. We’re not (a crackling sound distorted a few words) – eez leave a message at the beep.”. In the silence after the beep Beth was saying, “George? George. . .”. She heard several clicks. The sound of a phone ringing, or purring, was heard on the end of the line. A BellSouth lady answered in a recorded voice, “If you’d to make a call, please hang up and try again.” Beth hung up and said, “Shit.”Fernie was making the fourth phone call to his mechanic in Convert when Nut was testing the next long telephone wire to the next pole. At this moment, the same moment Beth was hanging up, Thursday was still laughing, after two gin fizzes and all the marijuana she could handle. She fell against her Valiant with an “Oh, God.” She revved up her engine and was on the expressway, not remembering how she got there. Nut almost scooched like a monkey to the midpoint between poles and was suddenly swinging upside down again. A trailer full of cows, about five of them being pulled behind a souped-up Ford F150 swerved to miss a big leaf. The driver’s big cigar was burning a hole between his legs as he blasted to the fire, “ OH Lord, oh Lord oh lord oh God.” Thursday, following too close behind him swung the steering wheel left aiming her across the other side and into the ditch, but she righted herself left and was weaving in the direction of a telephone pole. She missed the pole, but heard a simultaneous thump and whack. A squirrel had fallen from the sky and had landed head-first into Thursday’s windshield right in front of her face. She pulled over to the shoulder, waited for traffic to clear and got out. She turned away from the horror of the incident in solid anguish. “Oh LORD! Oh God oh lord oh my God,” she spewed.

Just As I Am, Without One Flea

NUT

by Ralph Bailey

Nut the Squirrel was having a wonderful day. He saw a ray of sunlight beaming into his room from the round window made from a knot in his tree. He hopped up and stretched as if he could really touch the ceiling. He knew he could not; he was a short little squirrel. But being short made him faster and feisty, and he was very proud of that. He scooted out the door without even looking. He was practicing his bravery and feistiness.  

He was down the tree in a second. On the ground, he stopped and stood on his hind legs to survey his possibilities. He knew this was his home. What he didn’t know was that this is Piedmont Park, Atlanta’s Midtown playground. On certain days Nut could see lots of people wandering about - kids with balloons and couples holding hands walking by, and he could smell meats and vegetables cooking, and sometimes, mmmboy - nuts!

Nut saw that the coast was clear, so he scampered all the way across the yard to the lake where he lapped up a full tummy of cool, delicious water. The sun was coming up above the shiny buildings in Midtown. It was going to be a beautiful day. “Yes yes,” Nut thought, “I’m having a wonderful day.”, and he scampered toward the big oak tree. He collected as many acorns in his mouth pouch as it could hold and ran back home. He was up his tree in a second. Collecting his acorns and packing them tight in the corner, he glanced around his room. Everything seemed wonderfully in order. But a sudden thought made him stop. “Wait a minute here,” he said, “Where is Mother?”

“Where is Mother?,” George Zacker thought. He was not having a good day. He was sitting in the driver’s seat of his old Dodge Dart, with a line of cars along Briarcliff Road right at him, and he’s thinking morning rush hour. Shaking his brain from the little wooden room, he felt he hadn’t slept in a couple of days. In a panic he tried to start the car. It blasted a loud whine when he turned the key. It was already running. He put it in Drive and checked the side mirror for a hole in the traffic. A young woman, blond and dressed with clout, stopped to let him enter the street. She was smiling and Zacker returned the smile and waved a friendly thanks, and he was into action. He thought a minute at the stop light at Ponce de Leon (pronounced pons- da-LEE-on in Atlanta), and decided to turn right to go east toward Downtown and home to check himself out.

George was surprised to find no available parking spot on Charles Allen Drive. Everyone on the street had known for many years that he always parked in front of his house. After six and a half minutes (he’d been watching the clock), finally, someone across the street was leaving, pulling out. He didn’t recognize the car, so he figured it must be someone visiting overnight, someone who would not be back, at least not for a while. He jerked the Dodge through the gap in the median, and was parked and walking up the walkway to his front door. Another car was parked in the front yard. He recognized it as Sandy’s. Sandy, beautiful Sandy, was his wife’s oldest and closest friend. Beth, his wife, was beautiful, too, he thought, but Sandy was something special. Everybody in school knew it, and all her current friends did, too. He entered the screened-in front porch, not remembering that Beth must’ve painted the trimming a darkened Kelly green. He saw his keys in his hand and rattled through them for the door key. Where was his door key? Had he lent it to someone, someone visiting perhaps, maybe one of their Chicago friends? Starting to knock, he checked the door first. It was unlocked. He crept carefully into the front room. She had been rearranging again. The place looked great. Peeking into the dining room, where Beth often kept her easel and paints for work in the largest space in the house with natural light, he saw she had just cleared the table of her breakfast dishes. A large linen napkin and a souvenir coaster from London were left behind. He heard a squeak from up front, in the guest bedroom, rose-colored from the sunlit curtains that puffed upward in the morning breezes.

The door was wide open. He stood in the doorway as Beth rose from under the comforter, as Sally moaned and rolled to her side. He saw a moment of Sally’s breasts, streaming in slow motion as she turned and settled without waking. In shock for a split-second, he was suddenly amazed that he had never, in all these years, seen Sandy naked before. Surely he had wanted to, but he couldn’t remember when. George was looking at the floor considering these things when Beth tiptoed to him scowling and shushing him though he wasn’t making a sound. In fact, he had momentarily stopped breathing. Beth closed the bedroom door slowly and quietly, and pushed George all the way into the kitchen. “What are you doing here?,” she barked in a loud whisper.

He was already remembering. He was already remembering they had been divorced for well over a year. He was already remembering he didn’t live here anymore. He remembered Beth and Sandy had been together for some time now. He was silent, gazing blankly into Beth’s furious face. “George!,” she said, trying to shake him into consciousness, then, realizing what was going on, she froze for a second, then turning away she said, “Oh God, not again.”

Beth ran to the phone to call he didn’t know who, maybe the police. “George,” she shouted, trying not to be too loud, then, louder she yelled, “George!” But George was already out the door, halfway down the sidewalk to the corner of the street.

Nut wasn’t sure at first where he was, but as he stood on his hind legs and looked both ways in a jerk. He recognized Candler Park right across the street. He bounced happily through the shadows of the tall pine trees, across the cool pine needles and was up the thickest tree he could find. He paused a moment to clean his face with his cute little paws, then wondered at the newly mown grass and the tennis court beyond, where two girls were pounding the shit out of a ball with their rackets. Nut chattered his teeth and went “rrrrrr” with his tongue. Then he was down the tree again and hopping through the smell of cut grass and up to the next corner, and was on his way home. There was a whirr of cars passing, and a light wind blowing. Voices floated from the shops at the triangle beyond Moreland Avenue. He heard one man’s voice rising from the distance. “Hey, George,” it said. George, stooping to avoid whoever it was, ran to the right and stopped at the intersection a few yards north. A car pulled up beside him. A trim long-haired man rolled down the window. “Hey, George,” the man smiled and said, “Where ya goin’?”. George tried to answer but didn’t know what to say. “Get in.”, the man invited. The door opened and George got in, closing the door as the car drove away. “So, where ya headed?,” the driver grinned. “Home,” George said, “I’m going home.” They headed for Poncey-Highlands.

The driver was Mark, who was George’s friend from the theatre where they both worked backstage arranging props for plays produced at the Little Theatre north of town near Marietta. George didn’t remember this as Mark was talking about some party someone was having that weekend. Apparently, Mark thought George knew what party he was talking about, but George, for the moment, didn’t know anything. He was dazed and in shock, suddenly wishing the car would stop. It did stop, right in front of George’s house. Mark mumbled something George couldn’t quite make out, and he closed the door saying, “Yeah, right. I’ll see ya soon.” “Got cha!,” Mark announced, driving away. George pounded his forehead with his fist, trying to form a thought, as he walked into his living room. 

He heard his mother’s voice. “Doors. Doors!”, she cried. His mother had suffered a major stroke five years ago, and had ended up with paralysis on her left side, and speech apraxia. George was the only one who could always understand her. A few friends and relatives could understand her some of the time, and they were always saying how well they understood her, though she hadn’t improved since the end of a year of speech therapy. She was as well as she was going to get. Her mind was just about as sharp as ever, certainly sharper now than George’s mind had ever been. He was better now, he often thought, now that the pills were working, the pills he almost always forgot to take. He was better, too, since his therapy sessions with his doctor, whose name, ironically, was Dr. Melvin George. Dr. George recently made a diagnosis of some possible identity disorder with major depression and general anxiety disorder and a stubborn acute panic disorder he had not quite figured out. George was, Dr. George liked to say in a broad cliché, “a work in progress.” The good doctor did not deeply pursue the issue, or perhaps the scholarly doctor never knew in all of George’s lengthy years of therapy that his alter identity was a happy little squirrel.

“Doors!,” his mother called again, in her way of saying “George, wharoo have been?”. “I’m here, Mother,” George said loudly, opening the refrigerator for something to drink, “I’m in the kitchen.” There were two Diet Cokes. He opened one and got a plastic straw out of a drawer, put it in the Coke, and walked into the TV room in the back where his mother lay in her hospital bed watching a Gunsmoke rerun. She picked up the remote and tried to hit the mute button, only to change channels that persistently flashed silently one by one on the screen. “I call you,” she said, holding the black cordless phone in the air, “buh call you thish memonee fuchsia.” “My phone ran out of juice and it took forever to charge it up,” he explained, trying to escape a conversation. “Sue down say whiff me an’ temmie who the woman, no,” she attempted, and George knew she wanted him to lie on the sofa and watch Gunsmoke with her, and she wanted to know who the guest star was. “That’s Harry Dean Stanton,” he said, sipping at yesterday’s coffee cup. He laid down on the lumpiest sofa in Atlanta. “No,” she said, “the woman, no, thotherun.” “Oh,” George noted, craving milk and cookies, “that’s J. C. Flippen.” More than anything before in his life, he wanted out of this room, out of this house, out of reach from the silent scream of his mother’s neediness, far away from her co-dependency. “I could heal,” he thought, with an increasingly unbearable anxiety building in his throat. “Well, my gudniss,” said his mother. 

The phone rang as another old episode of Gunsmoke began. Matt Dillon once again shot the man who had drawn and shot first. The answer machine picked up the call. No one had actually answered the phone for about fifteen months. George noticed his mother was sleeping again, so he turned the TV volume way down and he could hear the hum and whirr of the oxygen generator. His mother rubbed her hands across her stomach, probably dreaming she was at work again, surveying computations by auditors who met with her office, explaining complicated projections that might correct the results they had estimated. She squinted and her brow was furrowed as she fell deeper into The Books. She had been so smart, George thought, so valuable, but she was and is, at home, so very, very needy. He started to get up to fix a tall glass of ice water. That sounded so good. But instead he rolled into the pillow he had brought to the sofa some nights before, and said with a silent sigh, “Fuck it.” And he fell into a dream, miles of genre away from his mother’s workplace.

Nut the Squirrel was so so very very happy. He had just learned he could turn cartwheels. He didn’t know he could do that. He knew of no other squirrel that could tumble end-over-end like this. Nut giggled and flip over one more time. He was so thirsty now. He knew the people at the picnic table by the lake might frighten him, or might even throw sticks at him, so he climbed up the nearby utility pole. He scooted a couple of feet across the cable, then scooted a couple more. Then, after two more apprehensive scoots, he darted all the way to the next pole, then the next. Suddenly he was at the pole nearest a large birch tree. He jumped to a close branch and flipped around it upside down to get his balance. Nut ran to the trunk of this large tree and stared down at the lake. He ran down the side of the tree opposite the table, shuffled to the edge of the lake and drank, leaning and stretching close to the water. He drank and drank, standing up once or twice to keep a lookout for invaders. He couldn’t hear people behind him, so he darted in one scoot to the side of the tree to make sure they were gone. They were, so he ran up to the top of the concrete picnic table. Nut hunkered down close as he could to the table top, sniffing for bread or nuts the visitors might have left behind. He was at the other end of the table now, closing his eyes for just a moment so that he could smell a little more closely.

George yawned and stretched and slowly looked up and then blinked three times. The rustle of leaves on the branches above him were being coaxed by a gentle wind that felt like dark early morning on his moistened face. He must’ve been lying on this picnic table for, oh, at least an hour, maybe twelve. He was soaked in sweat. George righted himself and sat at the edge of the table. Then he stood with a long, wide stretch, and he knelt at the lake’s edge for a full splash of cold redeeming water from his cupped hands. “Yes,” he concluded, “I could heal.”

He decided to walk back to Beth’s house to get his car. He thought he could sneak by her place from across the street and crawl to the driver’s side door and be out of there without anyone noticing. He would wait until the night was good and dark. He took off his shirt and snapped it at little drier, then he soaked it in the lake and snapped it again a few times more. When he put it back on it was refreshingly cool almost to a chill.
------------------------
He was crawling down the street in front of Beth’s house. He couldn’t believe there was a party going on. He had heard about this party somewhere, maybe, maybe not. He caught a peek at a young couple coming down the driveway toward him, laughing and talking, with large plastic cups in their hands. George rolled over and under his car. He saw the ankles and bright red shoes of the woman, and the split edge of the hem of her Capri slacks. He could barely see the man who was sort of dancing beside her, and George waited until they were out of sight. He heard their car start and watched its tires go by following the beam of its headlights. Crawling out from under his Dart, he reached up to open the door, and got in, slithering into the seat. The car started quickly and he was on the way out of there. He heard Mark’s voice behind him shouting, “Hey, George!” “Oh, God.”, George was thinking as he whipped around the corner, “Now they’ll talk and laugh about crazy George, caught up in Georgeworld again.” He snorted through his nose in a huff and pretended he could care less.

He drove home with the A/C on and his window down, fiddled his fingers in the glove compartment for a cigarette. There was an old hard pack of Winston Lights with one partially butt from he didn’t know how long ago. He pulled into the carnival lights of the nearby Chevron station and paid a dime for a pack of matches advertising smokers.com. He smoked the rest of his old friend Winston, A/C on, window down, his arm rested on the window’s edge. A cassette played George’s favorite new tune, The Residents’ “What Have My Chickens Done Now?”, sung eerily by an old woman in a high voice. “This is the life,” George snickered.

The next morning George made breakfast while the TV squealed, seven feet from his mother’s bed. She had the volume up all the way all the time. And the TV was on always, all night, all day, day in, day out. If George was a madman, the persistence of this noisy drone made him madder. He put her breakfast plate on her rolling hospital cart, pulled her outstretched good arm so that she was standing, and inched her closer to the head of the bed. She always slipped down way below the elevated head of the bed, so that she was always flat on her back. She liked flat on her back. That way she could strain her neck with her chin to her chest so she could worsen her problematic neck, already stiffened by osteoporosis. She liked to eat in this position so that she could choke and cough and spew food all over her messy nightshirt.

George’s mother was in the position now where she could be raised up toward the tray. Her increasing fatness kept her at arm’s length to her plate, but nothing could stop her from shoveling the food in, and wheezing under the oxygen tube in her nose. He brought her another Diet Coke with a straw and filled his own plate with bacon, scrambled eggs and toast with three gulps. He surmised that, at this rate, someday he might be as healthy as his mother. He smiled at his ever-hardening sarcasm.

A car was driving up. George put his plate on the floor and wiped his mouth on a napkin from the table as he passed through the dining room on the way to the living room where he slowly parted a curtain. A police car was pulling up behind his. Two uniformed officers were coming up the drive. George picked up his plate from the floor and was immediately out the back door. He flung the plate over the next door neighbor’s fence and ran as fast as he could in through the woods between his house and the back yard of the house behind it. He leaped into the street from the drive that circled like a cul-de-sac in front of this house, and was out into the fresh new day of city streets and park benches.

Nut the Squirrel was happily practicing his cartwheels. He was getting out of breath so he darted under the nearest picnic table and stood up waiting. He waited and waited and waited. He waited as the traffic gathered and slowly dispersed. He waited, still standing there as the sun flickered through the trees that outlined the park. He waited, not moving a flea’s inch, until the moon shone over the high-rises behind him. He skirted up the tree next to the picnic table. He had been in this tree before, many times before. “Yes yes,” thought Nut, “this is just about my very favoritest tree.” And he strattled a limb with his tiny arms and his tiny legs, and drifted off to sleep on his tummy. He had had a long, happy happy day. “Yes yes,” Nut dreamed, “my favoritest tree.”

George awoke at first light. It took some forty-five minutes to get sleep out of his eyes and ears. Finally, he could tell he was in the park. It must’ve been about 6:30 in the morning, he figured. He had to get something to eat. There was a total of eight dollars and sixty-nine cents in his pants pockets, left over from his mother’s social security check he had cashed the previous week. He turned on his heels to face to Krystal’s restaurant at Peachtree and 5th Street. The day was the coolest since last Spring. Now it was suddenly September, finally comfortable outside, and George needed comfort. His outside time would surely increase. Something deep inside him
was telling him it would be a long time before he would be able to relax indoors.

He finished three Krystal hamburgers, a Diet Coke and a small order of fries and stood looking north on Peachtree Street, deciding to take MARTA bus 23 to Brookhaven in North Atlanta, a thirty-minute ride. George paid the driver and looked for an empty seat next to a window. There was only one; it was near the front. He could look out to the east at the various shops down Peachtree. He thought that, through the years, he must have been in every one of them at one time or another. A young woman got on at the next stop and she quickly swung around the silver pole up front like Elvis and was sitting beside him. He reckoned he would get off at the same stop she did, not to follow her, but to have a goal. Otherwise he might ride this bus forever. Bus 23 followed its course stop after stop, and was slowly emptying morning workers into their jobs stop after stop. The woman next to him still hadn’t left the bus when they reached Buckhead, about twelve miles from downtown. George thought it fortuitous that she stood up to pull the string, ringing the bell to get off at the next stop - Brookhaven in North Atlanta. He swung around the silver pole and was out in the dark, slow suburbs. A Huddle House restaurant lit the trees just beyond the corner where he left bus 23, which whirred and belched as it squeaked North. The woman, her red hair purple under the fluorescent streetlight, followed behind it, crossing nonchalantly the empty intersection, checking her small leatherette purse, as the 23 disappeared into outer Metro Atlanta. George headed South on the sidewalk toward the only living thing he could see in this direction, the Huddle House, for coffee. Through a line of shrubs as he walked, he could make out the outline of a Mac truck under a streetlamp in the parking lot.