NYC Midnight Flash Fiction submission.

This post on this spiritually-expired blog has nothing to do with New Orleans or traveling.  It is for participants in NYC Midnight to view a recent submission to its flash fiction contest since my other links on the forum failed.  Please leave feedback on the forum post, thanks!

Dig a Sheet-rag a Hole.

Training with dead men sucks.  Louis lost his arm in a factory and can’t do a pushup, while Carlos won’t stop vomiting up his last meal, an infected cheeseburger that killed him.  Ronnie burned to death after he dumped half a can of kerosene on his outdoor grill.

I train hard. Run, climb, read.  I get high marks on the tests.  The ones around me, the living ones, they do the same. We want to graduate boot camp on top.  But the dead guys, the ghosts, we feel they slow us down.  The officers call them sheet-rags, like, hey, ghost, where’s your rag costume?

            Sergeant Miller says the army is an equal opportunity employer.  Discrimination against the dead is unlawful.  But we know how he really feels.  He has no use for dead men in the squad.  

             On the second week we practice different field positions at the shooting range. I’m stationed next to Jose.  He’s missing his left eye.

            “Someone shoot it out?”  I ask.

            “No,” he says.  “I was home for college break and mowing the lawn for my dad.  The blade kicked back a small rock.  I didn’t blink in time.”

            “It killed you?”

            “No, that was next year. Drunk driver.” 

            “I’m sorry.”

            “Don’t be,” he says and smiles.  Jose is upbeat, unlike the others.  Like Thom. Thom died of lung cancer at forty-three and won’t stop talking about it, how unfair it all is, which is true.  It’s just we don’t want to hear it all the time.  It’s depressing.

            “At least you can do things as a ghost,” I once told him.  “Not everyone is so lucky.”

            “If I could be so lucky to just rest,” he said.  “Instead I have to pretend to be alive.”

            Jose struggles with marksmanship, not a surprise.  After an hour of practice Miller tells us to clear our rifles. 

             Jose tries to release the magazine. 

            “Check the catch button,” I tell him.

            His rifle fires down the line and strikes Ronnie in the gut.  Ronnie drops his weapon and rolls over moaning. The dirt sticks to his still-burnt skin.  There is no blood. The trainees around him, the living ones, start laughing.

            “Who the hell just fired?”  Miller says.

His face is deep red like he might re-kill a man.   All the rifles are cleared except Jose’s.   Miller snatches it from him. 

            “You lose your brain through that miserable hole in your face?  Goddamn..  You’re lucky you shot a sheet-rag instead of a real, living, breathing human being, someone who would actually be of use to his country.”

            Jose lowers his eye.  Miller dismisses us.  Ronnie’s dead friends help him to the infirmary.

            Nobody sees Jose leave that night.  It’s something the dead can do that we can’t, just leave, and in this way, nobody really has authority over them.  More than anything, I think that’s what scares us most. 

             I don’t sleep that night.  I think about my dad and brother, if their ghosts are out there and what they’re doing.   Driving around, looking for a drink, maybe.  I wonder if he blames my dad for it all.  Then I smell smoke.  Thom is smoking a cigarette in the bunk below me.  

            I crook my head down to look at him.

            “Why are you here?” I ask.

            He shrugs.

            “I’m not trying to be mean.  I want to know. What’s in it for you?”

            “Discipline,” he says. 

            “Yeah?”

            “ I smoked and drank ‘til the day I died.  I never had much discipline.  Had even less after cancer.”

            “What about the others?”

            “I don’t know.  Stability, maybe, routine.  A lot of us don’t know what’s next, why we’re this way while the others get to rest.   I guess soldiering makes sense.  You?”

            “The same, maybe. I don’t know,” but I did know.

            Thom holds out a cigarette and match.

            “Screw it,” I say.

 I light it, inhale hard.  The heat purrs in my throat, and I hold it in there and forget everything I want or worry about, family, love, violence, boredom, liquor, just the nicotine is enough.  

            The lights flick on.  We crush our cigarettes and stuff them under the mattresses.  Sergeant Miller enters. Everyone snaps out of bed to salute him.

            Miller is in full uniform. I wonder if he also never sleeps.  He stops at Thom’s bed.

            “Smoke?” he asks.

            “Smoke, sir?”

            “Smoke. I can smell it,” he says.  

            “It was me, sir” I say.

            I reach under the mattress and pull the butt out. 

            “It’s a bad habit, sir,” I say.   

            “Covering up for a sheet-rag, eh?  Get dressed and meet me out front.  Both of you.”

           

            We follow Miller behind the shooting range where a jeep is parked in the rough bluegrass, its headlights illuminating a dead man sitting on a bucket.  It’s Ronnie.  There are two shovels next to him.  Ronnie is smiling and rubbing his belly-wound like he’s got a baby in the bullet hole.

“Ronnie here feels like that bullet did it for him,” Miller says.  “That he’s now ready to rest.  Says he just wanted to die with honor, not be killed by a damn Coleman Grill.”

Ronnie smiles at us.  He looks like shit. 

            Miller points to the shovels. 

            “Six by six by two should be big enough.”

            “Why can’t he dig the hole, sir?” Thom asks.  

            “Does he look like he can dig his own damn grave?  The man wants to rest for eternity, and you want him to dig his way there in his last hour? Christ, Thom, he’s hardly got any skin. Have some heart.”

            We stand back-to-back and start digging, the living and dead watching from each side.  Miller lights a cigarette.  He gives one to Ronnie.  They both smoke, keep smoking for hours while we dig, until we’re three feet deep, dirty, sweating, until we can’t remember who’s who, who’s dead, who’s alive, who has authority over who.  Who we’re digging this hole for, but still, we keep digging.   

Climb Concepción with Your Guide Hermanaso

This story is written in second-person to put you on the volcano.  It takes place in the town of Altagracia, on Isla de Ometepe, Nicaragua.  

 

          You're living on an island made from two volcanoes in the middle of a fresh lake in Nicaragua.   You live with a family in a house made of concrete.  You chase chickens from your room in the morning.  You sleep under a mosquito net.  In the mornings, you take a Spanish class in a different house.  Sometimes you chase the chickens out of that room too.

 Your spanish teacher tells you the island wasn't made like other islands.  Many years ago a man and a woman from different warring tribes fell in love.  Since their love was forbidden, Nagrando cut the wrists of her lover, Ometepelt, then walked a hundred meters and cut her own.  Her body formed one volcanic island and their blood filled the lake.  The other island and its two volcanoes were formed from the chest of the Ometepelt. 

            “But it’s funny,” says your Spanish teacher, “because one techo is bigger than the other.”  In spanish techo means roof, but my teacher means breast.

            All week you wonder which techo you will climb before you leave.  Madera has a crater lake you can swim in.  Concepcion is taller and active.  You ask locals which they think is the best but they loyally answer the same way, “Los dos.”  They also tell you to get a guide.

             At night a young man named Yonas offers to take you up a volcano for cheap.  He has a flat face and a thin mustache and he can’t stand up straight.  The next day he doesn’t remember you and you realize he was drunk. 

            The other guide’s name is Ivan, but everyone calls him Hermanoso because he is “more than a brother.”  He speaks Spanish the way you wished every Latino spoke: slowly.  No word ever rushes from his mouth, they come out in single file and then linger in the audible space between you long enough that you can hear it, reach out to grab it, digest and comprehend it, then wait for the next word.  When he greets people he calls them Hermanaso to show fraternity.  All this inspires your trust more than Yonas did. 

            The next day you take a bike ride to a beach. Everywhere you go Concepcion looms over you.  It is steep and intimidating.  It is challenging you.  It is also your local volcano, on your side of the island.  You decide which techo you will climb.

            Hermanaso tells you what to bring.  Two liters of water.  A snack. Sunscreen.  Long pants.  He tells you that it will be hard and you’ll need to concentrate.  You’re used to the American style of overstating dangers and challenges, so you listen, but you don’t hear him completely.  Still, you bring three liters of water and three sandwiches.  

      You start the hike at 5:30 in the morning.  You walk out of town and onto a dirt road between lengths of farms.  The smell of plantain trees is strong.  Farmers on short horses pass you. There are howler monkeys in the taller palms.   Hermanaso cups his hands over his mouth and talks to a monkey with grunts and whoops.  The monkey talks back.   

            “What did you tell him?” you ask.

            “Cuidate en los arboles.”  Be careful in the trees.  

        At the entrance to the park you are sweating profusely.  You haven’t even started the ascent yet.  There are two other groups and guides.  A pair of Dutchmen complain about their knees and then rush on.  A young British man grabs the whistle around Hermanaso’s neck.

            “So we’re going to use this to call in the helicopter right?”  You pay two dollars to enter the park and a man gives you a complimentary walking stick.  You start hiking up.

            The forest around you is thick and the birdsong and howler monkeys form an irregular chorus.  Every sound is singular, like you could pluck it from the air.  The trail turns to rock.  It’s made of small and big stones set in the dirt.  The gradient is, at places, 45 degrees.  This requires you to high-step and sometimes scale the rocks.

            You follow Hermanaso up, up, up.  You exit the thick cover of the forest where the volcano trades tall trees for low-lying bushes and grass.  The sun is strong, but you’re two thousand feet above the island floor, so it’s cooler too.  You see Madera in the distance, the whole island stretched out and from here you wonder if it’s always looked this way.   Altagracia is only a patch of white dots below you, and the only proof that humans live here is you.  You take pictures to reaffirm your delusion of strength.  You finish half of your water.

 

Picture yourself flexing here

 

      Up, up, up.  Hermanaso points out a special flower, Satyria, warszewiczii, a variety of the ericaceae family.  He tells you it’s good for your energy and then picks one and eats it.  You do the same.  It is sour and sweet with a squirt of water in each bite-sized blossom. 

            You forage for other berries and flowers and seeds.  You climb another 1,000 feet.  You start to get tired.  Your feet drag.  Your shirt is heavy with sweat like you had swam in a lake.  You fall behind Hermanaso. 

            When you catch up he’s waiting with two small berries in the palm of his hand. 

            “These are for your spirit,” he says, and you wonder if he just grabbed any berry and told you this to make you make you feel better, but believing this won’t help, so you eat the berries and think, yes, these are good for my spirit. 

            “Vamos, Hermanaso,” Hermanaso  says, which makes you feel good because now he’s calling you Hermanaso, too.

              Soon the rock trail gets steeper and after another 1,000 feet you’re in the clouds walking in a thin overgrown trail.  The Dutchmen’s guide, who had gone in front of you, cut a small corridor with a machete because in the three days that no one hiked the trail the tropical plants with leaves the size of your chest had overtaken it.

             You stop to eat sandwiches at a vantage point where the sea and the sky look the same.  Hermanaso suggests maybe we shouldn’t go to the top.  The gases could cause you respiration problems later in life, he tells you.  You can smell the sulfur, but you also know the crater is only another 15 minutes away and it’s a long way to climb to turn away now.  But you also recognize that as hard as it was going up, it will be harder, even dangerous, going down. 

            You tell Hermanaso that this worries you.

            “You must think positively,” he says.   You convince Hermanaso to take you to the top for only a minute to see the crater.

            You hike through the sulfur clouds.  You can hardly see Hermanaso, even when he is in front of you.  100 feet from the top the thick leaves and bromeliads stop growing.  The earth turns white.  

 

           

              When you are fifty feet from the top, you can hear the Dutchmen.  They are standing at the rim of the crater rapping in English. 

            “We started from the bottom, now we’re here.  We started from the bottom now our whole fuckin' team’s here.”

              As you reach the top, you join them in a verse and then stop, because you realize it’s not what you want to be doing at the summit of a 5,000 foot climb.  You take pictures.  But your camera refuses to get past the smog.  It is thick and you start to cough from the sulfur dioxides.  You get ready to go.  The clouds shift for a moment and reveal the crater.   It is deep and wide, pools of mud and water boil at the bottom and thin towers of charred rock pimple the surface.  It looks like death.  You put your camera away, cover your mouth with your shirt and leave.  The Dutchmen sit on the rim and continue to laugh and rap.  They stay there for half an hour.

            Hermanaso is upset that you went up at all but he is too chill to be angry, so he just says, “Next time if there are clouds like that, we won’t go to the top.”  You try to imagine a next time, but you can’t.

            Just below the clouds you stop to drink the rest of your water because you feel like you need to.  The third group is eating and relaxing, a British guy, American, and Australian girl.   The British guy asks you,

            “If you were at the top of the volcano and knew it was going to erupt in 15 minutes without any chance of escape, what would you do?”

            You say, “____________________________________ (what would you say... say it in the comment section)”

            “That’s a good answer. You’re a better man than me.  I said have a wank and eat a cheese sandwich.”  The American says he would have an orgy.  The Australian girl looks nervous.  Later she leaves her group.

             You follow Hermanaso down, down, down.  You go slow.  You concentrate on every step.  This hike becomes the hardest hike of your life.  It was steep going up, but, inexplicably, it feels steeper going down.  After a few hundred feet your knees begin to buckle.  You become very thirsty.  You kill a fly that lands on your arm then look around for the ghost of Chico Largo, a phantom in a black sombrero that lives in the bottom of a lagoon but sometimes visits the mountain to protect the flora and fauna from people.  You don’t see him.  But you don’t kill another fly either. 

            When the flowers appear again, you forage.  Each blossom offers a tiny squirt of water.  You relish every drop.  You hike another two thousand feet until you can see town again, the static white speckles sprinkled in the green wood below, and you can’t believe you are still so far away.  You take another picture of Hermanaso and gives you a look, so you take the rest more furtively.

           Another 1,000 feet and you’re losing energy.   The Australian girl passes you and suggests you eat something.  But you’re not hungry.  You are thirsty.  You have never been thirstier in your life.  Your mouth is dry and every step you take you sweat, losing more fluid.  You lick your lips until they crack.  You think about combinations of beverages awaiting you at the bottom in neat rows in shacks and markets.  Gatorade, cola, juices, smoothies, water, ice pops, cold beer, chocolate milk, ginger ale, coconut water, and you think about this rest of the way, for three straight hours.  You don’t care about the views or the howler monkeys.  When Hermanaso stops to tell you something about a medicinal plant, you don’t listen.  You can’t.   You don’t have the energy to concentrate on information.  He gives you the last of his water.  You forget that it’s tap water, and you know your stomach will punish you for it later (and it does for three days).

            You pass the exit.  You leave your walking stick behind.  The ground starts to flatten.  Your knees rejoice. You have another couple miles to walk but the finish feels tangible, and now that you can feel the end you have the energy to go on.  

 

           You kick a pink flowery thing on the ground.  Hermanaso picks it up and it’s covered in dirt.  You think, dear God, Hermanaso, don’t ask me to eat that.   Then he opens it up.  Inside it’s filled with wet jelly-like fruit.  You eat all of it, and it’s the best fruit you’ve ever had in your life (pitaya).  Then he finds a starfruit from a tree and you can feel some life to return to your body.  Hermanaso tells you that he wish he could hike the volcano three times a week but there are not enough tourists.  At a clearing next to a farm Hermanaso stops you.  He tells you to turn around and look.  It is Concepcion, and it seems even bigger now.  It looks different now that you’ve known been to its top.

            “Look at that.  We climbed that,” Hermanaso says.  You feel so good you give Hermanaso a hug.     

             In town you drink, in order, an apple nectar juice, a coca-cola, a half-liter of water, an ice pop, a liter of water, a powerade, and then another liter of water.  At night you walk along your family’s street and it’s like you’re a celebrity.  Somehow everyone knows you, the one white guy in town, the guy who climbed the volcano today.  The restaurant owner now knows you and stops you.  Young men drinking beer.  A mom riding her bike.  An old man with a glass eye sitting on a porch says to you in Spanish, so you climbed Concepcion, and his one good eye glimmers at you with charmed approval and you get to say, yes, yes, I did.

            The next day you pack your bags to leave town.  This time you don’t chase the chickens from your bedroom.  You say goodbye to your family and walk one block to the center of town. 

Yonas, drunk, tries to follow you.  It is nine on Sunday morning and he reeks of rum. He also knows you climbed the volcano, but without him.  He asks if you are friends and then calls you blanco and rich before falling onto your shoulder and whispering into your ear, Help me, please help me, and you’re sad that this is the last person you’ll see on the way out of town. 

Before you board the bus you see Hermanaso.  He is sitting on the curb talking to his friends, calling each of them Hermanaso.   You hug and say goodbye.  He gives you a last lesson about medicinal flowers. You don't tell him that about the pain in your thighs.  That you can't bend your legs.  On the ferry, named Che Guevarra, you meet the Dutchmen.  They are in worse shape.  They say they are going to a pool party to recover and that you should join them.  You stand on the back of the boat to watch the volcano fade as you drift back to the mainland.  You say to yourself, “I climbed that bad motherfucker,” but also, “never again.” 

Volcan Concepcion, Isla de Ometepe, Nicaragua

The view from the ferry leaving Isla de Ometepe.  Can you see it behind the clouds?

Satyria, warszewiczii, a variety of the ericaceae family