Michael McClintock: ONCE IN A MEADOW, NEAR LOS OSOS

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God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the One who with a single thought filled the universe, God of the Exodus and the empty tomb:

In the year the snows came late and the coastal ranges alone made room for spring, many times dandelions delayed my journey, their faces all innocent, clean, wholesome—they called me off the road, they unraveled my purpose like a spool and threw away my coat, crowding in upon me, they and the daisies and the poppies—most especially the poppies, fields of them, in riot and aflame, wanton and loving with color.

My heart was rampant and willing and so into their beds I went radiant and sprawled naked among them, embraced and kissed, flaring like a candle.

God forgive me what was done among the dandelions, the wildflowers, most especially the poppies.

........a poppy . . .

................a field of poppies!

................the hills blowing with poppies!

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by Michael McClintock

Fresno, California

first published in American Haibun & Haiga 4 (2003)

Michael McClintock: HIS GRACE ON THEE

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In Vietnam, skinny Alvin carried an M60 machine gun weighing 25 pounds and humped over a thousand miles. I remember his letters from the big base at Chu Lai, where his battalion stayed when not in the field. He always made it sound like he was having a party over there, but then would slip in how all he wanted to do when he got home was go fishing under some shade at Marble Lake, like he did regularly as a kid —which for him meant before he was drafted into the Army.

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"Only this time," he would add, to make the point he wasn't a kid any more, "I think I'll bring some beer with me, and a girl . . . like maybe Janet." I remember that letter especially, that mention of Janet.

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There were a few more letters after that one, and then his mom, over in Kinderhook, called and told me Alvin "had got himself hurt" and would be coming home from a hospital in Japan in a month or two. "Home to stay," she said. "My little boy . . ."

.

Alvin lived with his mom in Kinderhook until she died just a few years ago. Now he lives at a place called Parkland, over in Coldwater, where he has a room and some independence, and where on most fair-weather days you can find him there in a leafy green place thick with elderberry bushes and maple trees.

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Janet and I make a point to visit Alvin about once a month; they won't allow us to bring him any beer. We do it anyway, because we love him.

long summer day . . .

launching worms into the pond,

a boy with a stick

by Michael McClintock

Fresno, California

first published in Modern Haiku, Summer 2001

Michael McClintock: INTERVAL

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...............day’s end . . .
........the dog pokes his bowl
..........for something to eat

“Not yet,” I tell him. Movement in the kitchen window catches my eye and I walk to it, look quickly, and step outside.

My land falls in a gentle swale down to a paved road that divides the world into small dirt farms on one side and open range on the other. The sun is low and I squint, surprised by what I see.

open prairie . . .
in the summer wind
a golden horse

The horse was no dray or farmer’s nag. It was tall and broad, powerfully muscled in the chest and haunches. The sunlight bathed and burnished it with a luminous perfection. The beast’s natural color was white or cream, pure and flawless; perhaps it was a very light gray. I’d never before seen such a naturally poised and handsome animal. No saddle or bridle—nothing whatsoever to encumber that wild form, standing in the shaggy meadow.

The horse did not come alone.

My visitor appeared to come right up out of the ground and straight up the old wagon road, flapping like a bird, huge and ungainly, the Apocalypse itself yapping after him. Momentarily he was framed by the red, afternoon sky. I thought possibly I recognized him, but I was cautious.

He was dressed all in black, clothes three or four sizes too big. His right hand clamped down on the flat crown of a canvas hat, the long fingers splayed out, as if stretching to cover every inch possible, the hat’s wide brim catching the wind and wanting to fly off his head. He held his left arm like a rudder or balancing beam, now bent at the elbow, now extended straight, the heavy cloth of his suit snapping and tugging at his long, skinny limbs. His gait was steady and powerful but seeming to be at all angles, he struggled so with the wind that buffeted him. Where I stood there was not the slightest breeze.

.....a grasshopper
.....jumps into it:
.....the gathering dusk

He looked like a gaunt country preacher, one of those lonely souls that follow the seasons and go town to town, exhorting all who would listen, except that he lacked the cleric’s white collar and carried no book that I could see. He brought no sheaves with him, as it were. His feet were huge, encased in rough, square shoes—it seemed as though those colossal feet were the sole reason he maintained his hold upon the earth at all. And hold it was, more than just the force of gravity. But for his awkwardness, and his flailing limbs, one might have thought that he was dancing . . . there was a wild rhythm in his movements and progress up the road.

At each step rose a puff of dust, much like those I had seen made by big raindrops on that same road, or in the dirt in the side yard of the house. But these were heavier, almost sticky, and elastic like smoke. The wind tore them away from under his feet and sent them smoldering into the grass, like wisps from the hot embers a prairie fire leaves behind.

“This your farm?” he was asking; he repeated this question several times before I took it in. “I think you know who I am, and why I’m here.” He spoke with a drawl, and though the words came slowly, almost casually, there was a distinct, odd undercurrent of being somehow in a hurry, of restrained impatience, but a desire to be finished quickly with what he had come to do.

“No,” I lied. “I don’t.”

“Oh, I think you do. Sure, you do.” This he said matter-of-factly. I resented his tone, and his sureness.

“Maybe you’d rather ride?” he asked. He gave a long backward glance to the horse, now a quarter mile away. It was a disconcerting gesture; his eye seemed to stretch out from its socket more than it should, giving his face a mawkish expression.

“No, no, I do not, Sir,” I hesitated, wondering at this statement and my own formality. “I have work yet to do, to finish,” I said. “And a dog that wants feeding.”

He appeared astonished. “A dog?” His clothes dropped limp in folds about his frame as the wind stopped. “Do you know what traveling I’ve done to get here?”

His voice had changed in register to that of a nine or ten year old boy. I saw then that his face was hairless—no eyelashes, no discernible eyebrows, no indication of any kind of beard or facial hair. His hands were hairless. There was hair on his head only, wiry and grizzled, sticking out from his hat brim over his ears, with a large number of renegade strands, thin as corn silk, mere filaments, that drifted out from his head and glinted, as if tipped in a copper wash. His gray eyes were like pools under an overcast sky in which nothing dropped or thrown could ever make a ripple.

“Have you come far?” I asked.

The question baffled him. “You’re not what I expected, “he said, and we took measure of each other. There was no shadow between us now.

“Nor are you,” I confessed, “—what I expected. You know, one day we had to meet. It was always somewhere ahead of us.”

“Perhaps it’s this place,” he said, “these circumstances I didn’t expect, more so than you . . .” He did not finish this confused thought.

I shrugged, feeling some sympathy for him.

“I thought there’d be a struggle in the end!” he blurted. “A fight!”

“That would be meaningless,” I said, stating the obvious, making my voice as calm as I could. I did not wish to be harsh about it.

“The banality of it!” he cried.

“Yes, there is that . . . But have you looked at yourself lately? And look at me!”

“But isn’t this what is called a dirt farm? And what is that miserable town over the hill there?”

“Quealy,” I answered him. “Quealy, Wyoming.” He was grasping at his pride, and he found it wanting. “There’s a kind of perfection to the simplicity of it, isn’t there?” I coaxed. “The future was never ours to see.”

A few more words, and I went into the house and got the shotgun from its place under the wall clock. I checked both chambers and rejoined him outside. “We can be quick about this,” was the last thing I said to him.

I buried the body in the side yard that same hour, just as night fell, then went into the house to feed the dog. I confess I gave no thought to the horse.

not knowing
what more to do
. . . crickets

by Michael McClintock
Fresno, California
first published in Modern Haiku

Michael McClintock: GREAT ROCKAWAY

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tin cans rattling

in a bag—the music

of Paradise

I'd been retired for a month and it was time to arrange for the payout of those special investment funds I'd squirreled away for the past 20 years to supplement the meager pension. Several of my work colleagues had done the same, and from one of them, who heard of my plans, I received this strange letter:

.

I, too, had funds with "Great Rockaway." Let me know what you plan to do when you at last come to realize it was all a myth, a spun-sugar fantasy. I could have warned you about all this, but decided not to, as I wanted to observe how you would react to the situation—a sort of a rat-in-the-maze kind of problem. I have always had a clinical-type interest in you, not unlike the entomologist's feelings for his subject. This should now get really interesting. Thank you for bringing me such happiness and pleasure.

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.......................................................................................Yours, —

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I folded the note away and made a quick, uneventful trip to Glendale. I easily found Central Avenue and drove on to 500 North Central, where I saw a large building with a strange shifting sort of sign. I could never quite catch the name of the building. I parked in a trash truck lot conveniently nearby and trekked to 500 North Central.

ah the city

tumbles under

the sun in

blue gulfs

of air

Once there I took the elevator to the 2nd floor, expecting to find room 220. I went down the hall to the right of the elevator, and found 200 and 210, but no 220. So I went to the left of the hall and found 230 and 240, but no 220. All the doors were locked so I could get no help. I went down to the lobby but it was abandoned. There I found an old gent leaning on his broom, apparently a custodian. I asked him where I might find the Great Rockaway office, or room 220. He asked if I had tried the 5th floor. I said no; he said you might try that.

I went up to the fifth floor and found only scaffolding and construction, but no people. No 220. I went back down to the lobby and found the old gent again. I told him I could not find 220 on the fifth floor. He looked bemused and shook his said saying, "Hmmm, it was there last week." He thought a while and said a lot of times people came in and couldn't find 220. He said it seemed to move and shift and some never found it. I said I HAD to find 220! As all my money was there. He asked if it was much money. I said it was to me.

He could tell I was quite agitated and said I might go try 260½. Sometimes people got help there. He said the entrance to 260½ was off a janitor's closet and pointed the direction. I made my way there and up a flight and a half of stairs until I found a door labeled 260½. I timidly opened the door, and found a ceiling only four or five feet high—it was a half floor! I crouched my way in and saw no one. On a desk was a stack of papers saying "Take One," then some complicated directions on this half floor that would lead to room 220. I worked my way from there, following the instructions.

I began to smell the warm aromas of comforting food. I approached a door and emerged—into a MC DONALD'S! I turned over the instruction sheet and found a coupon for free French fries with the words "We have moved and have no forwarding location. Enjoy the fries. Great Rockaway."

Bereft, I made my way back to where I had parked. As I walked by 500 North Central the sign continued to shift — it seemed to be winking at me. My car was gone and the lot locked. I walked over to the Glendale Library, where I sit now. I booted Miss Ross off an internet computer and got into my email via MailStart. I am going out to pick up cans and see if I can make cab fare back to my place. Wish me luck.

Animal Control

took my cat this morning

my caged bird stopped singing

months ago

now I’m alone and bitter

by Michael McClintock

Fresno, California

Michael McClintock: KOI IN WINTER

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It's true — a snowflake screams as it enters water.

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George had read my haibun about the dish at Arecibo that listens to the stars. "This is the other end of the spectrum — micro sound."

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George smiled at my alarm. We were in his backyard, near the koi pool, testing the sensitivity of sound equipment he was engineering for the next Martian probe, intended for landing at that planet's southern pole.

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"What do you make of it?" he asks. "I thought you'd appreciate it. Our senses are gross. Imagine a disk the size of a quarter. Lay a human hair on it. The human hair represents the breadth of what we see and hear of the world. Poets write about the human hair—that's all." He said this teasingly; he was always at me about my interest in poetry. "Of course, you're welcome to it. But for me that's not enough data to draw conclusions."

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I am unnerved by what I hear. Snowflakes are falling into a shallow pan of water. Thin, insulated wires run from the pan to a book-sized electronic device, into which our earphones are jacked.

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George sniffs the air, like a dog. "Perfect conditions today, just a few flakes falling." He turns to his meter. "Here, listen to this . . ."

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I hear heavy panes of glass falling into a street and look at him in disbelief. There is screaming among the falling shards.

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" . . . a snowflake hitting this little metal plate," he says.

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That was four weeks ago. I gaze over the wall into his yard, at the wind-sculpted white. I listen to the sifting shadows. A bright half-moon shines hard in the dogwood tree, a splintered wedge.

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I keep going back to what George had asked so casually. I wonder what he meant when he said, "What do you make of it?"

..............................................do they dream?
...........................................................the fish pond

...........................................................deep under snow

by Michael McClintock
Fresno, California
first published in Frogpond, V25, N1, February 2002

Michael McClintock: WHALES AT SANTA CRUZ

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In Memory of LaDona Valencia Cook

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This place she loved above all others on the coast, at this same time of year, the fall. We came each year to watch the whales. She was small and from the gulls she had learned how to lean forward and balance herself against the blast of wind. She was propped on pillows and sitting up in bed when with that same motion she leaned forward and died.

I have waited for darkness; it is illegal to release human remains here.

I am told three hundred whales will pass this rock point tonight. As they pass, they will sing. I have heard before the voices of these creatures, on recordings; I have sampled their grammar and measured the entropy of their phrasing: the clicks and squeals, the unpredictable trilling, the small chirps like those in a twilit garden at the borders of hearing. I have come to a few conclusions about those songs, their theme and sequence, but they are improbable conclusions.

The kelp forest stirs in the neap tide, the wind is light. A giant's sleeping breath fills the space above the sea.

the emptied urn—

a good size for holding

flowers come spring

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by Michael McClintock
Fresno, California

first published in Modern Haiku, 34.1, Winter/Spring 2003

Michael McClintock: ORDINARY SEDUCTIONS

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Dolores rose early and, careless about buttoning up the front of her sky-blue house coat, under which she wore nothing, primped her small flower beds and mowed her rug-sized lawn, the dew fanning from the blades in a light spray that wet her legs and made a thin, tremulous rainbow in the air. The last thing she did was step to her front gate and carefully twine a strand of flowering vine from fence to mailbox post. Smiling, she then went into the house and I saw no more of her that day.

honeysuckle . . .

the mailman takes a sniff

as he closes the box

.

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by Michael McClintock

Fresno, California

first published in Blithe Spirit, V12, N2, June 2002

Michael McClintock: MAZATLÁN IN JULY

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.....1


heat lightning . . .
........................all the way into Mexico
...........the mountains rise

That was an omen, but we did not recognize it at the time.

At the airport taxi depot no one had ever heard of the hotel shown on our reservations document, or of Calle Pescado where it was located. There was no Roshi, and no “Let’s Get Acquainted” ginko walk, to welcome us.

“But no matter,” our smiling concierge said. “No one come to Mazatlán in July. Very bad time of year for visit. You find many hotels most empty. They happy to welcome you as best guests.”

Later, outside the empty Hotel Maria where we’d checked in, my friend Thomas remarked, “Looks like we got snookered, Pops. Told you it was too good to be true. Four nights in Mazatlán for two, with all meals and roundtrip airfare, for $270? What were you thinking?”

I hadn’t told him the air tickets were purchased for full price with the promise of a cash rebate at the Pollo de Playa Hotel. That was the hotel that didn’t exist.

Young Thomas was a haiku poet whom I was mentoring at the time. Our misadventure seemed a good place to begin his serious introduction to the ways of haiku and the resiliency of the haijin.

“It doesn’t matter,” I told him. “Let go of regrets. Live life in the moment, in the here and now.”

..........2


.....going the other way,
.....a woman with six kids
.....and raccoon eyes

Except for this family, the beach stretched long and peopleless into the murk, hot and humid. Thousands of stranded jellyfish littered the sand to landward of us. The sky was completely overcast and the air a thick, ugly soup of splotched grays and yellowish, half-lit whites, vast pockets of it dead and motionless, as if held in place by some invisible pressure dome, while in other areas, on land and out over the ocean, wind gusts whipped and swirled. A paltry, fetid place, smelling of Ivory Liquid soap, sour tequila-and-fruit drinks, and rotting flesh.

It really was shockingly bad, but I did not let Thomas know I felt that way.

“Let’s collect material for a haibun,” I suggested.

Thomas pulled a pint of Southern Comfort from inside his belt and took a hit. “Just great,” he said. “The sun is shining and the fun has begun.”

We began to walk, staying near the water and avoiding the jellyfish. We’d left our shoes and our copies of R. H. Blyth’s Haiku—Volume III: Summer, back at the hotel. We both enjoyed the smooth, silky feel of the sand on our bare feet, but I wished we had brought the books.

“Let the experience of each moment flow, one into another,” I was saying. “Take it all in, make no judgments. There need be no purpose to our journey but the journey itself . . .” And so on and so forth.

“Aw, jeez,” Thomas moaned.

He had stepped on a syringe. The needle appeared to have gone clean through the webbing between his big and second toes, left foot.

I felt myself gag.

..........3


.....how huge
.....must be your teeth,
.....wandering sand flea

We had wandered into a debris field of some sort, exhaled by a sewer pipe or upchucked from some undersea shelf.

I brushed at the sand around his foot, to get a look at the syringe: the syringe was empty. I wasn’t sure what that meant. The more I brushed at the sand, the more objects I discovered. Every pointy, jagged, bladed horror imaginable was in that sand. Each wave sent a shallow fan of foaming water over the area, reburying the mess. Instantly, the sand fleas re-emerged in their biting millions.

How deep we were in the field I could only guess, but I thought it safe to assume we were only at the edge of it. We needed only to back out a few feet. Quickly, without making a moment of it or saying anything alarming, I pulled the needle from Thomas’s foot and threw it aside. He passed out, either from terror or from whatever had been in the syringe.

I had to drag him out of there. But he was dead weight—a big man, about 240 pounds. The thin tank top he wore tore away in my hands. His flesh was wet and slippery from the humidity. I couldn’t just bend over and drag him or scoop him up. I could get no grip on him. I needed some kind of harness, so I improvised. I wore no undershorts but that seemed hardly to matter now. I took off my pants and tied a leg snugly under each arm. This gave me the leverage and grip I needed; I covered about a foot of ground with each straining pull . . . .

That’s when the police showed up—five men piled on a tiny three-wheeled all-terrain vehicle, flying the Mexican flag from a whip antenna. They were not smiling and they were armed with rifles.

I then saw that my wallet had popped from my pants pocket. The surf picked it up and sucked it away as I watched.

..........4


.....sunlight comes through it—
..........a narrow slot
...................................for the passage of meals

I don’t know where Thomas is but a Mexican attorney has told me that I am in the Municipal Jail not far from the Divina Providencia hospital in downtown Mazatlán, and not to worry about Thomas. The cell I am in is very small, like a closet, with no windows, a solid door, and one electric light bulb in the ceiling, which is controlled from the outside. I have been charged with vagrancy, public lewdness, possession of drug paraphernalia, and either mayhem or attempted murder.

“Well, which is it?” I sneered at him.

“That depends,” he said. “Señor, you have no identification. I believe, but they do not believe. They want to know who are you. They want to know why you come to Mazatlán in July . . .”

by Michael McClintock

Fresno, California

first published in Raw Nervz V7, N3, October 2001

Michael McClintock: MEN OF PROPERTY

I let my eyes and hands run over the tools he had used—the trowel, the spade, the mulching fork. I gazed at the few remaining tin pails, enameled green, and recalled how the one got its crimped side and the other its bullet hole. I pocketed the worn canvas gloves; the man buying the place had much smaller hands than dad’s, and could not wear them. But all the tools and pails and contents of the shed he said he would use, and would be grateful to have them.

I stepped out of the shed and walked onto the broad sloping hillside, only a small corner of which belonged to the property. The shed was planted in the middle of six rows of fruit trees, six trees to a row, with extra room made for the shed and open ground around it for loading boxes with fruit from the buckets: oranges, lemons, plums. I could still hear my father from somewhere in the trees calling to my brother and me, to bring him a ladder, or come get the dog, or haul out the pails full of fruit, or stop horsing around and go in to supper—he’d follow.

hefting a plum—
I know by heart
my father’s orchard

by Michael McClintock
Fresno, California
first published in Anthology of Days (Backwoods Broadsides, No. 70)

Michael McClintock: AFTERNOON GARDEN

For the time being, well past noon, God, I ask that you above all leave me alone, that I might just sit here in the leaf shade, beside the wall with its swallow-thrown shadows and the easy, unmended thoughts time affords me: these solid forms of pots, flush with zinnias, and the sun patch fading where the grass snake glides unknotted.

a hollow tree
the beginning
of dusk
.

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by Michael McClintock
Fresno, California
first published in Anthology of Days (Backwoods Broadsides, No. 70)

Michael McClintock: THE FACE ON THE FLOOR

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The only time I saw her face in twenty years as her neighbor was on that one day in October when she failed to retrieve the morning newspaper from her doorstep and I with two other neighbors opened her front door—it wasn't locked—after knocking and ringing her doorbell, getting no response, and found her dead but still warm in a simple flower print house dress on her living room floor with her blue eyes open and her small, delicate arms and hands flung outward in a gesture of surprise and rapture. I stood gazing at her face the full hour it took for the coroner to arrive and place her on a gurney and unfold a clean sheet over her entire length—covering that face which was one of the most beautiful and perfectly guileless and unforgettable I have ever seen.

heavy drapes,
a carefully-made bed—
a life like that

by Michael McClintock
Fresno, California

first published in Anthology of Days (Backwoods Broadsides, No. 70)

Michael McClintock: MEN AND WOMEN ON A PIER

The hot, dry Santa Anas blew until mid-afternoon, scouring the air and drawing new lines of dust on every windowsill. Then the winds ceased and all was motionless; the heat was copper and tasted clean but bitter.

I was restless and drove thirty miles to the ocean and walked out on the Cabrillo beach fishing pier, over the flat blue-gray water. Men and women laughed and talked in many languages at the open sinks, where busily they gutted the day's catch, washed away the blood and the useless parts, and wrapped the clean fish in paper. At one sink, fish heads prized for soup filled a large bucket.

Their work done, the people lingered there to watch as the copper air vibrated and the sun fell into the sea.

a warm evening,
warm even
in the eyes of fish

by Michael McClintock
Fresno, California
first published in Anthology of Days (Backwoods Broadsides, No. 70)

Michael McClintock: NOAH’S ARK

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1

I found myself back on robbery-homicide, partnered with Brick Landers, the summer Brick broke his neck on what at first we all thought was a solo felony pursuit out on Big Tujunga Road. Who the fugitive was or why Brick was after them out there in the foothills no one seemed to know. According to Sergeant Dinker, he'd made two unintelligible radio calls and then went static. Brick's passenger, Archie "Archilita" Spence, had been shot once in the head through the front window of the Crown Victoria.

.

300-pound guy

in drag

the eternal optimist

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That's how a lot of us remembered Archilita. We knew him from many encounters in Foothill Division. Over the years, it was through Archilita and his small-time drug hustling that we had reeled in dozens of more dangerous, predatory street fish. He was an asset and we liked him.

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I felt edgy and thought it over while I waited outside the station, under the trees, for a car to come around from the motor-pool. Brick had been pulled from the wreck that same morning. No one had expected to find Archilita in there with him. Eyebrows were raised; crude jokes were made. Had I worked that night, it could have been me.

.

the morning wind

a hurrying sound

in the pines

.

Why had Brick been up there in the first place? With Archilita? And what did Brick mean in his radio call by the reference to a "gecko party"? Gecko party?

.

I knew Brick to be an unreliable, on-the-job drunk, so it was natural for me to suspect he'd been up to funny business. No one in homicide seemed to realize that he'd been pulled from that wreck less than a quarter mile from his ex-wife's house. I kept that piece of the puzzle to myself, I'm not sure why. When I had worked with Brick a few years back he had told me about his wife, the house, the alimony, the drugs, her nutty friends, and his suspicions about who on the force was sleeping with her. The wilder stuff he told me I simply chose not to believe. Since I'd been back, there wasn't much new to the story.

.

I took the car and drove over to Queen of Angels Hospital. But Brick couldn't move and he couldn't talk, so I then drove out to see his ex-wife, Marla.

.

this place

where the crow sits

the crow likes

.

I wondered why the crow's perch was the head of a huge cast-cement Buddha—it must have weighed a couple tons—that sat in weeds at the foot of the long driveway that went up to the house from the two-lane road. The crow flew off. I parked on the shoulder and took a closer look.

.

racing around

in the Buddha's nose

—tiny spiders

.

What really caught my attention was the other nostril—it was perfectly clean. Inside, where I put my hand, was a tight roll of hundred dollar bills. I counted out $7900, recorded a dozen of the serial numbers, and put them all back. I decided not to see Marla alone.

2

smell of gun oil waxing the deep finish
.

We were in the weapons locker with Sergeant Dinker's Illegal Substance Team B, once more going over the layout of Marla Landers' property and why we were going out there. A few of the officers wore doubtful expressions. The eye-talk of one in particular, Zabel—and the way he caressed the mahogony stock of his Weatherby with a carefully folded rag, in a rhythm like that of a big cat tapping its tail—annoyed me. I knew then I had to keep my eye on Zabel.

.

"She's a cop's wife," someone said. "This is screwy."

.

"And what's this about a gecko?"

.

"She's a cop's ex-wife," I said, "and we don't know what Landers meant when he mentioned the gecko." I then went over to the chart on the wall. Still keeping an eye on Zabel.

.

3

.

We arrived up at Marla's place in two vans and three sedans. We dropped Zabel off at the bottom of the drive by the Buddha and told him to stay there as lookout. He was a little stunned by this change in the rehearsed plans; we drove off with his rifle. Out of Zabel's sight we stopped again on the long driveway and let out Dinker and three others, to keep an eye on Zabel down below.

.

Marla's house was a solitary clapboard cottage surrounded by tall eucalyptus trees, at the end of the corkscrew drive. It was a real retreat up there, dusty and quiet and beautiful.

.

even

in the shady paths

the air is heavy

.

I peered inside.
.

flickers in black and white deluge she sits stoned

.

On the TV was a scratchy video print of Zanuck's Noah's Ark. I hammered my palms on the door a few more times before Marla was able to stir herself. Her eyelids twitched recognition when she saw me standing there at her door. I took her by the arm and pushed my way in, five others right behind me.

.
what the hell do you want softer she repeats

.

Brick had never told me his wife was in this deep. Remnants from some sort of party were strewn about the livingroom—cups and plates and half-filled snack bowls, and little strips of paper with short poems on them, some scrawled and barely readable, others neatly handwritten. Marla retreated to the far side of the universe while the house was cleared, room-by-room. Still, from that far place, she managed to project hatred on me, not confusion or sadness. Dinker finally called on the hand-held and told me Zabel had taken the money-roll and they had him in cuffs. Did I want them to bring him up?"

.

By all means," I said. I turned back to Marla and told her it was time to talk.

.

4

.

We pieced together the rest of the story three days later when Dinker and I went to see Brick at Queen of Angels. Brick was still motionless but he could speak.

.

"Not gecko—ginko," Brick told us.

.

banging trays,

the nurse not happy to be here

this summer day

.

So he'd been taking Archilita to Marla's ginko party. Among other things, Archie Archilita Spence had been a haiku poet. A darned good one, some said.

.

"He was hitchhiking on Brand and I stopped and asked where he was headed. I wasn't pursuing anybody, just doing a favor for Archie. I called in and said so." And, sure, Brick intended to do some looking around while he was there.

.

Months before—and he told no one, not even me—Brick learned that Zabel was not only screwing his ex-wife but feeding her dope and using her house as a drop for exchanging drugs and cash—that's what the business with the Buddha's nose was all about. It was very simple.

.

Zabel had been making a deposit when Brick roared up with Archilita on the seat next to him. Apparently, everyone recognized each other at once. Brick headed the car straight at Zabel and the Buddha, missed both, slammed into the hillside, knocked himself out cold on the steering wheel. Zabel, seeing Archilita with Brick and knowing Archilita's seedier background, assumed Archilita had somehow found out about his little game and had ratted him out. But this weird meeting had to be totally by chance.

.

Zabel fired off a round . . . and watched the Crown Victoria careen backwards down the hill, bouncing shoulder to shoulder, then tumble down a ravine. Nothing he could do but hope Brick was dead.

.

Shows you how wrong you can be.

.

It was dark out when Dinker and I left Brick to his slumbers and pain. Dinker was smoking like a pulp mill, speechless and angry, especially about Zabel being dirty—and a member of his own team—and Brick knowing all about it and saying nothing.

.

a burning cigarette

arcs end over end

through the night sky

.

It was an unbelievable mess for the department and in the morning it would be all over the newspapers.

.

"Good night, Dinker."

.

"Go to hell," he said.

.

Then the Lord God closed the door and shut them in.

by Michael McClintock
Fresno, California
first published in Tundra 2, 2001