Tag: fiction

January 23, 2026

~ 690saintpaul ~ Leave a comment

The frozen green orb swings heavily in the frigid pre-dawn air. With a creaking groan, the crunch of contracted tires packed thick with snow slush and yesterday’s mud, strain left into the iced over intersection; the steering wheel, sliding and spinning gently through the warmth of leather bound hands and fur cuffed wrists.

The automobile rights itself, pushing into the iced over intersection, shifting awkwardly until the wheels run parallel to the length of Mount Hope Cemetery.

Burial home of Frederick Douglas, the famed abolitionist and Susan B. Anthony, pivotal in the women’s suffrage movement, Mount Hope Cemetery stands enclosed in fencing, gorgeous and frighteningly sharp black wrought iron posts and finials with deadly spear points, gracefully crafted. These posts have stood guard since 1838; Victorian in form; standing the test of time, multitudinous seasonal changes, alterations and vagaries, politics and peoples.

Years ago on a morning, a large buck, antlered and graceful and very, very dead, rested tragically impaled on one of the weaponized finials. He had attempted to spring in the darkness into the park from the edge of the narrow sidewalk; cement lying squeezed between the more heavily trafficked road and the quiet solitude of the sloping hill. Perhaps he observed the shadows of headstones and monuments. Perhaps he noticed the lovely rise of the hills, the large trees, the imagined respite of quietude. He lept home where death lay in wait to meet him; the specter himself resting patiently, waiting and watching on the tip points of the deadly enclosure.

Today out of pitch coal black air, there appear three bobbing, dodging lights moving quickly along the length of the deadly spikes; headed west up Mount Hope, in the general direction of the car; jouncing awkwardly up and down. They appear as a phantasm, resurrected spirits from the older graves, disturbed and disgruntled memories; frozen lights bouncing along the horizon in the black air.

The car rolls slowly past these lithe joggers, the snow runners; perhaps medical professionals from the large hospital around the corner; those dedicated to getting in the exercise, hours before the normal work day begins for most travelers along this old street.

Runners in the cemetery. They traverse the fine line between the past, the present, the invisible spirit of the impaled buck; the sleeping Victorians and the demands of the abolitionist and the suffragette.

January 16, 2026

~ 690saintpaul ~ Leave a comment

There was a plan. It worked; a decent sort of ‘end of the day’ dismissal plan for all the students in a sprawling urban school.

Students riding the bus, exited separately from those who walked home or were picked up by family members. The walkers went to the gymnasium where they sat patiently in a line on the floor with their teachers hovering nearby. The man responsible daily for opening the big metal school doors, turning on the microphone and conversing with parents, arrived by 2pm and got the whole process started.

There was a plan.

That was last year.

This year, an administrator decided things should change.

‘Some people were not doing their jobs’, was the rather ominous and vague explanation as to the necessary adjustment thrust upon staff and students.

No one was happy. The new dismissal plan launched.

Instead of lining up in the gymnasium, entire clusters of walkers and disgruntled staff tromped outside to wait in bunches, sandwiched haphazardly between the greenhouse and garden, the large parking lot and an even larger playground area, half of which belonged to the school district with the other half belonging to the city.

Hastily printed cardboard signs pointed to where classes should congregate and hold in place. Some children wandered off in the direction of the park. Others ran off to meet confused parents and caregivers who upon seeing that the children were outside, sat in the parking lot and honked their horns. A few students wandered into the greenhouse and had to be rescued. A couple miscreants threw dirt at each other from the garden. The autumn wind whipped the cardboard signs mercilessly so that it was hard to tell where one’s grade was standing.

It rained.

Then came the winter winds and the bitter windchill and after a few days of frozen misery, and more dirt throwing, the unwieldy circus moved back into the sanctuary of the gymnasium.

Blessedly and just in time, the Christmas holidays arrived.

In January, the heavy hand of change lifted a creative finger once again.

Paper rosters with student names were deemed no longer valid. A quickly generated google chart, supposedly accessible on everyone’s phone fanned out into cyber space with not all teachers managing to successfully locate the appropriate application. Some miniscule boxes were checked. Some lists were abandoned and paper rosters were temporarily reinstated.

The microphone did not work.

On Monday, it was determined that the doors where the man with the non-working microphone waited, were no longer valid. They were closed and locked.

We dismissed horizontally; every student exiting one at a time; off to the far left door at the front corner of the gym.

One at a time.

All of them.

Blessedly, the next day school was called off due to excessive cold and slippery roads.

It’s a work in progress…

January 4, 2026

~ 690saintpaul ~ Leave a comment

‘Mrs. Algarin! Mrs. Algarin!’ I hear a small voice screaming through the wind across the parking lot as I exit my car. I turn around. I see him, this chunky wonderful little boy on his bike. It is an exceptionally cold day to ride a bike.

He wobbles and propels himself forward on his machine. The bike is a bright green hornet sheen. He uses training wheels; a third grader with training wheels. But then, he is new to all of this.

He’s landed here in the midst of a stranger world; the world of Campbell Street and urban chaos and the failing vagaries of public education. He comes from far, far away. So far, far away.

‘Good morning! How are you?’ I call out. ‘Yes’ he answers. His father, small in stature and bent over his phone, holding up mightily against the wind, this man who only recently resided in mountainous lands with the winds and skies of a thousand years, greets me carefully. ‘Good morning’.

I hold my breath as the little boy teeters on the edge of the sidewalk, coming far too close to the edge where cars slide quickly by. The drivers see him but it’s still unsettling for me to watch.

He speeds up, peddling as fast as his chubby legs will carry him and he careens into the school parking lot.

Now he’s to the right of me and I get a better look at him. He’s wrapped up well against the cold. He’s wearing trendy sneakers, a down jacket and he is riding that cool bike. This family appears to have blended quickly into the new and strange culture; for survival and pleasure.

‘Hello again!’ I say. ‘Is that a new bike?’ He looks directly at me and answers, ‘Yes!’ ‘Well I really like it” I answer. ‘Thank you’ he responds. So we have obviously made some progress with English.

I look back and wave to his Dad before I head to the entrance door; but he is still hunched over his phone, this man from the mountains and a thousand years.

The boy steers left with the bike, heading toward the fence which opens onto the playground; so, so close to where there was a deadly shooting last weekend.

‘See you later, alligator!’ I yell out and against the early morning dank and the cement and wind and the empty playground with the swings.

He is silent. Why would the teacher be talking about an alligator?

Homage #2…

~ 690saintpaul ~ Leave a comment

The summer was quiet, a necessary healing place safe from the rancor, discord and upset of the recently concluded school year. Nothing, and no teacher or student remained unscathed. The annual educational cycle could be described in simple terms; toxic and anxious. It was manifold, exhausting and downright ugly.

Our building played the role of a decrepit theater; a place where there were so many stories told, untold, imagined, regretted…endured. We waged a bitter war against the obvious and we all lost. When all the final test scores were collected, tallied and announced, our district was found wanting and crawled around miserably, apologetically at the bottom of the swamp.

It was that kind of school year.

Summer. At first it needed to go, that loud creaking noise in the upstairs bathroom, that hidden joist where saddened wood met human weight and slightly mal-aligned boards and screws complained bitterly. It was the perfect summer project.

But then, I was told it could not be fixed. That was that. I sat quietly on the porch and chose to look out at Heaven in the afternoon and watched a soaring, silent bird gliding over the shadow of the creatures which pass unnoticed through our yard at twilight and I finally thought better of the creaking noise upstairs.

The creaking meant someone other than myself and the variety of woodland creatures was home.

It was that sort of summer.

Heat. In the warmth of the buttery sunshine, I watched the neighbor teach his small son to ride a bike while I observed out of the corner of my eye the enormously obese bumble bee tilting wobbly around my porch. The fat insect was harmless, drunk with sun and pollen and summer air. He wove heavily and flitted around the flowers, buzzing half-heartedly.

I heard, ‘Drift and hit the peddles, drift and hit the peddles! No! That’s the wrong driveway!’ I watched the duo, the exasperated father and struggling son disappear at the sidewalk’s edge.

Who was wobbling? The bee? The child? Me?

Summer was like that.

Was there anything more glorious than sitting on the porch in the warm air with a bowl of cold, fresh chicken Caesar salad topped richly with heaps of pickled red onions? I didn’t think so.

From deep within the house drifted the faint strains of Bach’s double concerto, talented hands drove their rosined bows over the strings, coaxing life’s beauty and essence out of cat gut and wood. Marvelous.

I tried envisioning J. S. Bach eating salad topped with pickled red onions. I could not knit that image together in my mind. I placed my bowl carefully on the table next to my chair. The porch was so cool and the neighborhood so very, very quiet.

It was that kind of summer.

June 4, 2025 ‘A Day in the Life’

~ 690saintpaul ~ Leave a comment

At approximately 2:30am, the Heavens opened a window and threw a large bucket of water out over us. The deluge was short-lived, a thundering cavalcade across the roof and up against windows. I awakened, heard the sound and thought, ‘oh good, this will break up the heat’.

The heat yesterday was beastly. Not beastly like the reddened land, burning up, lung searing, bury oneself in crusted sand heat; that’s the temperature the southwest endures. Our heat, the heat in the northeast is the kind which makes one stand at the end of the driveway, arms akimbo and say things such as ‘huh’ and ‘wait until February’. It sets us back a step or two. We don’t fight it. We don’t join it.

My Mother admonishes us as children on our annual westward trek to South Dakota, ‘don’t fight it, it will make you hotter!’ We wail from the back seat, ‘but look, the entire box of crayons has completely melted!’ She nods. ‘Shhh…don’t move. It makes you hotter!’ We cry out from the back seat, ‘but the seat belt buckles are branding our legs!’ ‘Shhh…hush. Read a book, crank open a window, be quiet’.

In the living room, I look curiously out of the window. The street is empty. There are a lot of children in this neighborhood. They will come out later as the evening shadows draw down. I have not seen our neighbors who live behind us for days now, it seems. Then at twilight, I witness her with the dog and the family together creep quietly out of the house and head up the cooling sidewalk. The huge, white furry husky looks bedraggled and generally disappointed with life.

I move to the porch, wave from the corner railing and say, ‘Hello, how are you?’ ‘Oh’…she sighs heavily. ‘We are finding things to do’. I nod and chuckle. ‘Huh’ I offer helpfully. ‘Huh’ she responds in kind.

They wander quietly away, the dog still grieving his fate…

May 18, 2025 ‘A Day in the Life’

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So what I thought I heard her say was…’Oh, do you like hot dogs too?’ It didn’t seem quite right that this overly chatty clerk helping customers at Sterling Optical was asking me about hot dogs…but given the way the day had already rolled and my general malaise and knowing the world is often more weird than not…I ran with it. ‘Oh yes!’ I replied. ‘I love hot dogs. Who doesn’t love a good hot dog?’ I considered going further and mentioning my favorite condiments, but I held back.

She smiled brightly and said to another customer, ‘We just built a new deck so now we’re really all set’. I sat there and thought about all the hot dogs soon to be grilled on the deck. This was a happy conversation which suddenly slid slightly sideways when I heard her say cheerily, ‘Of course the weather needs to be right around 60 degrees. That’s ideal’.

This gave me pause. Of all the hot dogs I have ingested over the years, never once was 60 degrees held up as the ideal eating temperature. 20 below in February…chili dogs with onions. 100 degrees in July…dogs with mustard, ketchup and relish at the ball park.

I looked at her, confused. She chatted on happily…such a non-stop chatter, this one. She turned away from the customer at the counter and addressed me again. ‘You know…when you have to get out and go right in the house, 60 degrees is just about perfect!’ The customer standing there nodded politely in agreement. I looked away and swallowed carefully. Hot tubs. Not hot dogs.

I shifted in my seat and stared vaguely in the general direction of a pile of glasses frames lying on the table in front of me. Considering my aforementioned malaise, the trick now was to extricate myself from this conversation without having to explain anything…hot dogs, hot tubs, condiments, my inadequate hearing.

I stirred slightly, edging ever so slowly in another direction, away from the clerk, the counter and the general business of buying new glasses.

She didn’t miss me.

Overall, the visit to Sterling Optical was a success. I ordered bi-focal contacts and new glasses. They don’t sell hearing aids. She thinks I own a hot tub. I know she owns one and likes to talk about it. What I don’t know is if she likes hot dogs. I’m not sure whether the other customers own hot tubs or eat hot dogs.

I’m glad I did not mention condiments…

May 6, 2025 ‘A Day in the Life’

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‘Hey! Hey!’ At what felt like 3am, he asked, ‘What did you get for breakfast?’ Or that’s what I thought I heard at that hour. I began the work required to pull oneself up out of layers of deep, almost comatose primordial sleep. It was sluggish, heavy and labored going. I heard my voice say, ‘Two kinds of sweet rolls; one cinnamon with traditional white icing and the other plain with strawberry and cream icing’. Silence. ‘No doughnuts?’ ‘Nope’ I responded. ‘Who asks about breakfast at 3am anyway?’ Silence. I must not have heard right and drifted back off, down into deep slumber.

In the morning, I looked out the upstairs window and noted the strong winds from last night had leveled the neighbor’s swing set. The blue plastic slide jutted off at an angle and pointed toward the street. There was a large piece of black rubber lying along the edge of the property; the brown beams, swings, chains, silver nuts and bolts and braces were all collapsed on top of themselves in a crumpled heap, broken and pointing toward the bright blue May sky.

‘Well, there goes my asymmetry problem’ I said, turning away from the window. ‘Solved by the wind’.

Last summer when the neighbors with two small children set up the large beamed swing set, they placed it at a jaunty angle on a slight slope; the left end of it lined up crisply flush with the property line…and the far right end of it bent awkwardly inward. It was a fluke of physics; perhaps the right side was heavier than the left, or they had measured badly or the ground was uneven or muddy. Whatever the reason, the entire swing set was not symmetrical, not flush, not sequential in its ‘flow’ and I could observe this daily from our upstairs window. The set leaned drunkenly forward waiting for a stiff breeze to knock it over.

‘It makes me nuts and dizzy’ I said on more than one occasion. ‘Now I can’t look out of the window’. He had rolled his eyes at the time and laughed. ‘Do you want me to go tell them to fix it?’

I went downstairs to put the coffee on to brew. I heard him coming down the steps and turned around as he entered the kitchen. ‘Hey! Hey, did you see the swing set?’ He grinned and pointed in the direction of the neighbor’s yard. ‘There’s your asymmetrical problem. Gone!’ I glanced upwards as a sunbeam began a golden descent over the curtain’s top hem, through the window, touching the edge of the table and moving slowly in the direction of the oven. ‘The wreck of the Hesperus in the suburbs. They did not build that thing right!’ he shook his head. ‘They didn’t pour cement to set the posts in or to lay down chains under the soil. They just sat the thing on top. On top of a hill!’ He shook his head again.

‘What do you expect?’ I asked. ‘They are jazz musicians. They’re gone every weekend playing the venues. Can a jazz musician pour cement?’ He sipped gingerly at the steaming coffee. ‘Well, I can’t pour cement’ I answered myself. ‘Things better left undone’…I remembered a recent wall paper incident which had gone badly. Despite an inordinate amount of time spent measuring, the wall paper had come up short. ‘Or I came up too short’ I said quietly. ‘What?’ He stared at me. ‘Hey, what’s for breakfast?’ He looked over at the oven. ‘Did I ask you already?’ I stared at him. ‘Don’t you remember? At 3am? You asked if we had doughnuts?’ He stretched his neck a bit, ran his right hand down over his beard and queried, ‘Doughnuts? What about sweet rolls? Are there sweet rolls?’ I sighed. ‘I have the wreck of the Hesperus out there and a Jackson Pollock mess in my kitchen. And by the way, no! Jazz musicians should not attempt to pour cement. They’d hit that high note and assume it was all good. Richard Wagner seems more appropriate’. ‘Who’s he?’ he asked. I sighed. ‘Nobody, nobody at all. Nobody a stiff spring breeze couldn’t take down’.

He swallowed the rest of his coffee. ‘After I eat my doughnut, I’m going to go over there and ask if they need any help putting it back up’. ‘Sweet rolls! We’re having sweet rolls!’ I sighed for the third time. ‘Think Wagner!’ I yelled as he headed out the door. ‘Poured cement! Flush with the property! No jazzy notes…!

March 2, 2025 ‘A Day in the Life’

~ 690saintpaul ~ Leave a comment

Struggling in the dark space of worrying about tomorrow; an anxious place too small to cuss a cat, I awaken to the slightly disturbing sound of late February rains…the ice flows in chunks out of gutters and down to the frosted grass. Will the edge of the roof jam up and leak? It did that a couple of years ago and there remain two delicately shaped brown spots on the ceiling. It was a half hearted attempt at leakage…just enough to remind us of who and of what is in charge.

The old strands, the tired spirit of spring is resting out there, somewhere. This is the teasing thaw of February and March is soon upon us. The longest month of the year…31 days of ‘will it rain? Will it snow, sleet, thaw, flood or ice?’ Some brave robins flit in and about and their numbers will soon expand. One morning they spend inordinate amounts of time and energy scurrying around the large tree by the porch…then three mornings in a row, they are gone and the tree stands silent.

After strong coffee and rain watching, some music serves purpose and various versions of Amazing Grace and idyllic Irish tunes soon pour out over the kitchen. March is upon us in sound, if not in exact date. The light in the window begins its slow transformation…from damp greying to more hints of gold and yellow and something akin to sage. Even for a bit, I catch glimpses of it on the glass pane…a surge mid morning, before everything sinks back down in wet fog.

‘I feel so Irish, now…I do, I do!’ he calls out as he heads down the stairs. He sees me in the living room and tips his head back laughing. ‘But I’m not! I’m not!’ and he keeps laughing.

I hand him a thick mug of freshly brewed coffee. ‘You’re just jealous that we tell better jokes than you do!’ I retort. He laughs again. ‘Yes, you do. But we’re still going to Spain first before we make any trip to Ireland’. He takes a swig and sits down to watch the rain. ‘Oh sure’ I concede and look out of the glass, now shimmering again in sage as the damp outside powers forward in a fleeting surge. ‘Oh yes, indeed’. And…the glass winks back at me.

The same ship, the same ocean, the same fierce winds…only the height and measure of the sails differ…’who bids the mighty ocean deep, its own appointed limits keep…’