Screaming at Satan

   Last "free write", the teacher told the class.  Early dismissal day in the 1970s because all of our very best were heading out on assignments.

  2024--By 9112001 our country's civil war tensions had simmered into what was and wasn't a truce.

  The times-together between active duty and tours grows shorter and more compact as the bonfires of wars engulf and merge.

dynamic threats

synchronized attacks

implications

                 wounds

  An auditorium.  Right then, fire and ice, sugarcoated worn thin, and

  Not rushing in

  Targeted AND indiscriminate

  Unless you are going to war.

  Kid: "What if you don't know?"

  

  Then you're probably not going

  yet // at this time the awkward silence of secrets only just inside someone saying like the sparse trees left in the center of the

  For the rest of us it's like getting on the highway, going to work

  Ya motherfuckers

  Are we questioning (?) our own rebellion?  Screaming at Satan

  In activism, in being unhealthy, in warring.  The lull between being attacked and retackiating is excrutiating to the morals and exhausting in a pile of probablies.  Cautious calls.  Rosaries.  The I can'ts swirl with bills and stories just bubbling like scar tissue from a gaping hole.

  The torture and tortured is what we were learning about in the 1970's.  A far cry from

  being at war.

  My mother was only just up to writing in teeny-tiny print her reclaimed name as Mrs.  She and the other mothers were filling in where others had left warm spots in flannel and cups of coffee in various states of drained.  "I can't say that word," my mother's face flashed scarlet at the thought of it.  "All right, then," a practical shoe'd woman breezed the conversation along.  "Maybe you'd do better not teaching health class."  Sherry's eyes stung sharply and quickly.  For her it would be a personal development and being poked by friendlies as the lines of warring closed in.

  We were keeping lists in invisible ink at a clubhouse of words the other won't CAN'T say.  I reported.  She can't say, I whispered it, maxi pad.  And he won't say MAFIA, it came out really loud, mafia.  I didn't really totally understand either word.  And all through the years each word would appear like a someone just off the lawn, then recede into mists.

  Misting, some words would warn of others.  Others jostling about, now replacing, now devouring, now disappearing, the words with days and decades of meaning, each.

  TOPIC HOGS! A car pulls beside on the highway, person hollers.  At least no middle finger.  I have nothing to prove, Fallaci without (sans) manuscript (Mss.) hair astream in her fifties or sixties had exited the building.  Censors had gone off with the work.  The 80's over there did and did not match up to how much she'd missed the simple things.  I tried the toolbox...a swim in the ocean, not this time of year; coffee, tea, or something called chai, no caffeine just yet; Bible? I'd kept it buckled inside briefcase because we'd been in a pre-dawn grayblack to lightening black hole sun and nobody wanted to swear to anything just yet.  She took it from me as others had re-taken scarves and knives and little totems on the fly but

     [insert girlfriends piece from body of work]

  The "Patriot Acts" were the wordy version of a blender meant to keep country safe.  Congress was and wasn't arguing acronyms.  A novel upchucked from a constipated computer skiffs-to-tankers 

  Who was she?  Some artist?  Same time period?  As us?  Will I have to go over?  You may not have to.

  AP style rules and regulations, elevator shafts, old playbooks~new twists like mojitos~just the flavors of, sleeping bags no probablies, cellphone video Missile lands between vehicles on highway, Did the muted scream Too close!  Too close!  Sinking sunken eyes Faces In the Water?

  Sort of like A Virginia Woolf.

  Oh, but the movement 

was to zipper, A mod 

Dad talks to a present 

but unseen partner.  

You're supposed to! A 

little diva in the backseat 

makes a Vee-sign, merging 

zipper then puts Vees over 

eyes, we'll overlook it, this 

time.

  It may have been the USO; or maybe it wasn't that USO's night to sing, technically; or people were re-piecing together songs overheard, together, at any rate, Getting to know you was emerging from some cornered.  "Old enemies," a man kept chiming in.  Lined up, backs to wall, a big butt in a knee-length-hemmed skirt ordered, "Move Away From The Wall." A short, skinny guy in a suit three-sizes too big made us repeat the dance move.  Someone quipped didn't sign up for this.

  When we were recounting the evening to our friends it wasn't funny.  "All the men had moustaches."

  "NOT MY DAD.  HE'S NOT MAFIA."

  "Okay, okay," a band leader picked up his no-writing metal pencil.  A friend shook head trying to separate flute from ruler that had more than patted Stand Up Straight.  Right on the arse like I'd like to, a brother combined his own juice for girls drive with running around keeping girls corraled directives.  It would be weeks of years before....

  Mixing in with the growns, gender divided.  Like a receiving line.  

  BUT THAT IS NOT A

       MAN   WOMAN, kids practically screamed the truth backstage, behind the curtain

  Caused some in the audience to burst into tears.  Others escorted away from.

  We'd have to's flew.  How to transition, how to bridge, how to build the suspense.

  "Like there isn't enough of that going around," a person warned going stealthy by drilling the rest of us in place with something to think about, my mother pursed her lips together, one drill torque half ready, half holding back and hissed like not enough of that went around.  The cat cocktail waitress who wasn't allowed to collect money in play made way to beaten doctor's bag.

  Two more, she reported to the clipboard, plus she rattled off photographically memorized.  Some of us had been memorizing the sights, sounds, trifles and boblies of places, smelly and odiferous, all over the nation.  TO: fill out stated purpose cards TO: index and file TO: compare lists

  The uglier caravan charged! and chasing its tail, the good guys's numbers were tallies on mini putt putt cards, mama seemed more like Grandma Pearl a few years later, her and Daddy stifling it's not really funny laughter.  Should've seen their faces, our Dad tuned the rearview mirror to check faces throughout the station wagon.

  "Heard you took one for the team Sherry." Our mother sucked in a breath, "Looking better Doctor.". Two big rough stiches, tape all over the Doctor's glasses, purpledsand colored bruising, eye, ear, down his neck where he joked without resplitting lip, Look ma, now I don't need a necktie.

  An entourage followed a "movie star", Make room, make room flies, make room, a swooshing feather pen didn't clear the air.  And in general people had been surprise-scared enough to not bat an eye.  Pick up your jaws, I told you good-looking.  Everything from soap to pumpkins, fakirs and falsies in between, to having deeds traded for stolen loved ones was chorusing BE afraid, very afraid.

  The countering ranged from bodily in between fiend and friend to periodic but routine-almost says they'd do that in the Bible.  The counting belts racked up a dollah for everyone of us helping, until curfew, until a Priest got a hold of a ticker-clicker and posited a basket for to collect some dollar bills for place.  In stores the clickers mounted on doors matched up foot traffic to register rolls with and without ink.  One older'n dirt gentleman knocked the odometer off the top of a steering wheel into a pail long enough after 

the car had been worked over "for parts"--it looked like roaches all over a sesame bun had mauled the car.  How long?  He looked at a bunch of us on the way to a Variety Show again trying to locate a leader.  The grown ups with us waited to see who might say, explain need.  "Well," someone started a sentence, "Our church

  "I'm not with their church," someone else cut off.  Little huhs of air sucked in, fighting shock.  "Who are you m'am?" A neighborhood Episcopalian asked.  "A friend from Baptist clear on t'other side of this Town," she'd almost said sir, but pinched doughy lips together to drown more less-equal.

  The sun was melting clown noses.  The older old guy slouched against the missing car door.  Now we were mysterious too.  Great.  Bushy whitegray eyebrows wiggled as the man blinked softly and asked us questions.  You say it's a church?  

  The Variety Show is in a church HALL, a taller clown answered.

  And you all need, a smirk, a move of chew from one inside of mouth to the other, spread a bit of a smile across his leathery face.  He kept his arms crossed and so the odometer was in his arm pit.  That's gonna be ripe, our babysitter mumbled to mama holding a briefcase.  She hushed her, the man crossed legs standing, and held the counter up to the sunlight.  A little dog tried to jump for it, but stuffed animal tail was purposefully stuck under someone's shoe.  "Survey'll tell me.  Whatchaneed this for?"  He opened a shirt pocket and plunked the item in there.

  The answers were a working-through of yeah, why?

  But first the dog who'd wiggled from shoe-hold, safety pin stretched wide in the dirt, stared at the old man's boots, then looked way up to ask, Are you the devil or God?

  We need it to count dollars

  The special ones

  He means the most special ones

  The old man uncrossed his arms.  Parted crowd.  Long finger, dusty nails, tapped on the briefcase.  Mama gulped.  "Open it.  Share." 

  We'd been through the drill maybe fifty times.  You could see mama's mouth was drier than Constitution paper.  The unclicking sound made the same click, click as it did when being closed.  "That good looking, huh?" The man asked the seven of us like he was raising claps.  He'd been pinned with the posterboard sign "movie star" in quotes.  Backstage he didn't look old.  The babysitter put a flat palm down on the opening of the briefcase.  You didn't even hear the man took a telescoping pen-pointer out of his pants pocket.  I have a right per the by-laws

  What WE need the odometer for

  Do I care?  Mama stepped away from the patch of ground where she'd put the briefcase.  Mumbling stuck together words until enough spit and a little cough sputtered voice, Says it's preliminary, the preliminary figures.

  To add up winners, a man's voice said from beneath a sombrero, since you ain't listenin.

  You people want my vote or my soul?  Bushy eyebrows flicked the sombrero sideways with a backhand move.  The kind that goes real fast, stops on a dime, then acts.  "I'm a demo-crap as y'all have been calling us."  The man in the sombrero spit on the ground.  "Now will you go away?"

  We're not canvassing.

  One kid who'd been working up a long speech as to why we were begging for the clicker-counter began Four score and seven years ago, um, Lincoln's wife brought banknotes in a wheelbarrow for bread, our mother stood in front of the kid like a referee behind a catcher and started to back our group away.  "Don'tcha want your hubbies briefcase?" The man called over his shoulder as he reading-glassed to read the paper with estimated pull on it.  We don't NEED anything, mama told us even as the babysitter caught up to us with it.  The tail of the dog the only thing swinging at the park.  Sherry stopped all of us.  She grimaced her eyes into a heavily mascara'd slit and snatched the dog tail from the babysitter.  If YOU evVER

  All mama's unsaid out loud evers targeted the babysitter's heart through her head on chicken neck nodding and shaking no's, nevers.

  Up the thousands of stairs to get to a home away from home but

  "Hot chocolate OR brownie?"

  My mouth was hanging open in spite of pepare to enter into a room as if 

  Nothing's wrong.  My friend put down a textbook and said, "Wait a minute.  Maybe no sugar." She took off my coat and held it up like it was a dress to alter.  Blew out breath real determined to find the nothing.  "Hands." I held them out for the clean enough to eat test.  "You're shaking," she observed.  "Lotta stairs!?!" I ate a second dinner while she kept reading.  "Gonnah talk chew or wait 'til yer finushola'd?" No answer.  I continued looking around her family's home until she said, "How's about I put the book down so you can stop staring at me?" I clunked down the fork.  "Wasn't staring." "Was too." I shook my head, held up a palm to read, "Shaking gone."  Just then a key wiggled in the door lock.  My friend scooped up my plate, grabbed the fork, and didn't quite yell, Dad's home.

  Sort of, she mumbled on the way to the sink, home.

  Her dad came in the door as her mom came out of a room.  He looked just like my Dad coming home.  Trenchcoat, dripping dear, newspaper, she reached past him and locked the door behind him, briefcase, give it, he handed her the briefcase.

  Here it comes, friend said.  The Dad grimaced and started to peel the wet coat off.  "Nice day looking for work dear?" No tie.  Shirt a little too big, still he breathed hard and sucked in what gut he had.  He looked across the room at the dinette-table between him and the crockpot.  Eyebrows up and down quickly asked, How'm I doing?  Friend said, All done here.  It's all yours.  And hers.  Youses.  You young'ins.  Must be hungry.  I would be.  The textbook fell open and out came a novel.

  "Don't tell me the ending.  I haven't read it yet." She looked at me, then the table, then shoved whatever was hers in between the textbook covers.  "Come on.  I'll walk you out."  It was sort of a dance in the small place but then it was me putting on my coat.  "You don't have to leave?!" One of the parents called while pulling silverware out of a drawer.  "Actually," I started back towards the kitchen but stopped to see if I was getting anything on the carpeting.  "Actually what?" My friend asked.  "I actually have a question for Mr. D." He was scooping little piles of the food onto his plate with a teaspoon.  "Remember you said I could ask you anything?" Me? He pointed at himself with a fork in the other hand and silently asked his wife before turning around.

  Licking the spoon he said, "Almost, almost anything," then he adjusted his gaze down to my height.  "Let's all sit in the living room," the Mom suggested.  My friend let everything in the textbook slide onto the coffee table like it was a lunch tray.  Before anyone sat down besides her plunking into the only solitary chair, I asked, "Are all demo-CRATS the same?"

  It's a girl question, right?  And Mr. D did a little really need to poop grimace.  The lady of the house put a hand on the forearm not holding the plate, Why do you ask?  Then she took the plate and fork and headshoved him towards the loo.  My friend got up and took the plate and set it on the coffee table.  Then she gave me that look, turn around, and took my coat off me.  Hung it back on their coatrack.  The Mrs. smoothed the skirt hem above her knees as she sat in the solitary chair.

  We waited.

  After quite a while Mr. D was pounding on the front door.  "It's MEEE, lemme in!" POUND, POUND, POUND.  "I, should I ? SHOULDN'T can't? YOU she pounded back on the back of the door YOU POUND LEMMEE IN POUND POUND

  THEIR "HONEY"s were matching each other and the pounding tired-quieted into decimated neighborhood ground zero 

                  stillness

  After they'd fallen asleep like that on either side of the door, my friend made a pot of coffee.  She went out the back with a steaming cup and used it like smelling salts.  She asked him questions to each observation.  I listened through the Mail slot.  When he spied me spying him, I drew a breath and let the flap drop.  He scrambled up on his hands and knees and poked it open but didn't hold it open.  I didn't move.  "Still in there?" I didn't answer.  I peeked through the crack on the side of the flap as I pressed it shut tight.  Moved mouth closer to crack but not needle-length close.  "Mr. D?"

  "Yes child," I heard his hands palm the door above the slot.

  "Let me see my friend."

  She squeezed in between him and the slot.  I let go of keeping it shut.  She put hands on the edge.  Wiggled.  I poked at them.  To see if ice cold.  "It's me, really me," her mouth said in between wiggling, then dancing on the edge fingers.  "Should I draw on them?" Mr. D put his face next to hers.  I asked him the same questions as Mrs. D started snoring.  "Let me see her," his hand pointed.  We all rolled eyes.  "I locked the backdoor."

  "Good girl

  "Don't say that

  "Mrs. R?

  "Miss R?

  "DON'T" my voice dropped to a loud whispersnarl "call people by married status.  And don't EVER call me Miss."

  "Ba, but you call me Mr. D."

  "You called yerself that."

  "Ah, so I did."

  "I want you to," he had severely dry mouth and his mouth made some smacking noises.  "Here Daddy," her face and one hand disappeared, then the cup of coffee was rested on the edge of the slot.  "Slow old man."

  He sipped and sipped and they convinced me to get the blanket folded up behind the solitary chair and cover up her.  Then get the phone in the bedroom.  Bring it.  "Take the cup Lara," my friend said.  Drained.  Just a tooth in the bottom.  "Should I call now?"

  "Hold up sweetie.  Let's get a plan."

  He stood up full man then.  His skinny leg jeans worn like Dad's.  He rang the doorbell.  I jumped, Out of the way, the sleeping lady groggily said.  She lifted her head and like the sky just lightening, one side of her hair was smushed and kind of droopy.  "It's me schnoopy, time to get up." Her hand automatically tried to poof up smushed.  Then she realized she was on the floor, near the front door, and looking at him in the mailslot.

  Oh dear we did it again

  She tiredly jumped more awake.  "What are you both doing out there?" She turned and looked at me.  "And the back door's locked.". She blinked sticky eyed.  Just as the sun split the twilight into morning the phone rang.  We had it plugged in and like it was on the nightstand.  She instinctively reached for it like everything was normal.  "Huhello?"

  This is Mrs. Lane....SHE'S HERE!  RIGHT NEXT TO ME.  Her hand reached out and patted the blanket.  I shook my head NO.  She blinked more but her eyes seemed to be getting stickier.  "We're ALL IN trouble now," she hung up in the phone rest I handed her.  And broke down into tears.  "OH HONEY, don't, don't cry, honey, let me in." She shook her head no.  Her sobbing quieted into sniffles.  My friend mimed to: get the tissues.

  Mrs. D got up off the floor by pushing herself up the door.  Then she opened the blinds next to the door.  She went to the mail slot.  He put his lips like for a kiss.  She sniffed.  She shut the slot flap.  Burst into tears.  You, you promised.  But what's a promise if it's not holy mat

  I can explain!  The mail slot opened and said.

  I can't take it anymore.  She covered her head with the blanket.  I pushed a corner of it through the slit.  He pulled.  And pulled.  And pulled.  "You guys better hurry up!  My parents will be here quick."

  She slid out of the blanket and smoothed her clothes and her hair.  Told the mail slot to stand in front of the window.  He did.  Didn't open it because there was a wedge cramming it shut tight.

  "I thought you went to the bathroom."

  "I went to put my lazy pants on first."

  "And you drank in there?"

  "Honey, no, I," started to cry, "There was a guy

  "IN THE BEDROOM????

  "Outside on like the side of the house, place

  "Dad, are you for real?"

  "Seriously?"

  "YES MOST"

  My parents pulled up and ran dodgily from the station wagon.  My friend opened the mailslot.  My mother said, "Open the door this minute Missy."

  This time Mr. D yelled, "DON'T DO IT!" I looked at him and my Dad in the window.  He said, after turning my father by the shoulders and looking him right in the face, "She's not my wife!"

  The police cars parked crooked to the curb.  A man and a woman in dress clothes came walking briskly after them.  My Dad and Mr. D had each other, arms locked together and were pumping knees up and down as Mr. D kept saying She's not my wife.  He'd say it and Dad would ask, She's not? And every time they said this he had a different expression on his face and in his voice.

  I opened the door as the police got up the thousand stairs.

  Mama spit out the sip of coffee in the sink.  "Too burnt." My friend refused to budge from the stoop seat.  "Don't worry honey, we'll all get to the bottom of this," Mama called.  "Tell me where they keep the filters." She shrugged.

  "Who was she?" My Dad sat on the stoop next to her.

  "He said, common criminal."

  Mom had quit opening cupboard doors and went and stood near them.  She waved me over.

  Low and behold, my parents would've come sooner but she'd opened the door from the house to the garage and was petrified to see the babysitter dressed like my mother, in her clothes, smoking a glass pipe and dancing in the seat of the family car.

  They'd spent the night on the phone with expert criminoligists.  Criminology wasn't/isn't a made up thing.  And, in fact it was interdisciplinary before there was any such thing as interdisciplinary arts.  People who'd gone to college were putting traditions together and using the checks and balances of skill building.  Degrees and licenses were connected to State, Local, and Federal Law.

  For regular citizens in the tides changing of the 1970s and 80s there had to be razor's edge.  One of our mantras became

     The truth will set you free!