It weighed her down, that lump found

right before Easter. She imagined it

a small, cold ball of metal, never warming

to body temperature. “I’m going to place

my fingers and move in a circle, out,” he said.

There were precise movements and then,

stuttered, lingered,

pressed in. She knew but thought

maybe I’m being assaulted. Maybe this is his

fetish. He moved to the left breast, felt

quickly. Sat back. “You have a dense mass

right at 5 o’clock.” There is nothing, she thought

nothing to hear or do but move forward. “I’ll schedule

a mammogram for you, next Friday, okay?

I am sure it is nothing. You have dense muscle,

that is all. Just a check.” She loved him for ignorning

words like lump. Like cancer or tumor.

It was nothing. Nothing but muscle. Not this metal

that would grow and with its coldness eat away

until it was carved out, all the dense muscle of her chest

sliced to bone. Not this weight that dragged her

through the days. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

and one more

There was a sharp pain where the scissors came out of his foot. He had ran, barefoot, through the rubble to get there. Without looking he had landed on the upended blades and they slid cleanly through the meat. He took two more steps before the pain hit him, squeezing his kidneys, buckling his knees. He had no more food in him; he hadn’t eaten in days. Two or three; he lost count. The emptiness of his stomach didn’t prevent the bile from coming out. He heaved, keeping his forehead pressed into the broken concrete, but did not cry.

Nother 100

He quit his middle management job, left his excellent benefits and matching 401k. He hated his work, did not respect his boss, and, after a week of constant headaches, turned in his badge and walked out. He got a job picking up litter on the side of the road. He wore the reflective vest and though his pay was almost a third of what it once was he was happy. He walked miles, stabbing and bagging, got blisters, got calluses, and at night was happy.

100 words

He dug a hole for no reason. He dug, throwing the dirt behind him, lifting the shovel, lowering it, lifting. The rhythm calmed him. His hand still hurt from punching the microwave forty minutes before. He grabbed on firmer to the handle. They had just called, they had just told him she had died, and the fridge became too loud and that pot pie in the microwave became infuriating and he heard them on the phone, heard them say “she fought hard” and “it was quick, she didn’t feel any pain” and then the microwave window was shattered. He digs.

100 word story

He sat in his car, on his phone, with another woman. She had just cooked dinner; timed it perfectly for him. She pulled it out of the oven as he pulled into the drive. Nothing special, just pizza, but the kind of pizza he liked. She waited at the kitchen table, stood, looked out the window. Still there, still on his phone. Twenty minutes passed. Thirty. The pizza was cold. She left the house, saw him laughing, saw him see her, saw him hide his phone. Same story, some new stupid girl. She kept walking.

He watched the dog try to jump the dry gulch, knowing that it was too far and the grey dog would not make it. The dog had came from nowhere, running out of the trees, tongue out,moving fast and low to the ground and he stood, hands in pocket, watching.  The dog curved toward him, not at him but in an arc that moved with the land, rushing up to the sudden dip of earth, moving through the leaves like he was jet powered.

He couldn’t tell what kind of dog it was, just that it was medium sized and grey, a Chester, he thought, or Roger. He watched the dog leap into the air, watched the dog as its muscles moved and flexed, stretched his legs out reaching for that other side, reaching for the other edge that was four inches, six, who could tell, away from him. The dog fell from sight and he heard the thud, crack, whimper. Walking through the leaves to the dog created a crunching sound, softer and less sharp than the dog had made. The dog was trying to sit.

He could tell it was broken but loved the dog for trying to walk. He stood, placed down, tenderly, that front right paw, collapsed again. The dog remained that way. He watched it, looking for a collar, looking for anything. A mutt, it looked like, matted fur, paws bigger than he should have. The man could have left the dog there; the nearest vet was miles away and money he didn’t have. He stepped down the bank and the dog sat, one leg raised, looking at him. He growled. The man knew he didn’t mean it. The man felt sorry for him. Maybe a Charles. Or an Edward.

That night I had the same bad dream I’d had, off and on, since I was little. I am standing on top of a house, any house, it changes. The stories change—two story house, six stories, town home, out in the country, it’s just a house with a roof and I’m standing there, looking out and there’s always this river moving fast, the water misting into this wind, the water turning white when it hits the rocks. Sometimes I see the river clearly, sometimes it is hidden by other houses or buildings or land. I am there and there is the water off in the distance and then the flames start and I feel the heat through the roof to my bare feet and everything is on fire and the smoke and there’s yelling inside and I can’t do anything or go anywhere because I have melted into the tar of the roof and she’s inside yelling my name.

I woke up already crying. Not loudly, just wetness on my cheeks letting me know. Velcro is there, awake, I saw his eyes catching the light. He never whimpered or barked when I woke up from my dreams; he just looked at me, made this deep growling sound, then went back to sleep. I put my hand on my stomach, near his nose, so I could feel his breath. I would know he was there even with my eyes close. I counted his exhales until I fell back asleep.

After church on Sunday my mom made fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Aunt Bess came over with her kids, Neil came over with Teri, his wife. We ate dinner and then moved outside so the kids could run and play and Aunt Bess and my mom could smoke.It was almost dark then; just light enough you could see well enough to catch a quick thrown ball, that kind of special time when the lightning bugs come out and everything is still enough you forget you have a body.

Since the wreck people would allow me to fade out of conversations. They would let me sit there, like furniture, figuring that either I was become to worn out and needed to rest or, like my Aunt Bess thought, earthly things now longer concerned me as much seeing as how I’d met with the Great Redeemer. So she thought.

That night I faded out. It wasn’t for either of those reasons. I just got tired of pretending to be interested. I watched my mom and Aunt Bess smoke. I watched the way they would inhale and the ends of their cigarettes would glow, casting their faces in red. Aunt Bess would constantly flick her ashes into the tin bucket filled with sand set between the two women while my mom would let the ash build, blocking the glow of the fire, build until it looked like a sigh from Aunt Bess over a democrat senator would knock it right off and then, with a quick tap on the rim of the bucket, dash it off.

“Time for a walk,” Teri said, nudging me.

It took me a moment to realize what she said. I started to stand.

“He’s already walked enough today,” my mom said. “He’s too tired.”

“I’m fine. I need the exercise.”

“I don’t even know why I bother,” my mom said.

“Helen, let him go,” Aunt Bess said.

Dying.

The thing I remember most about dying is the music. I had just turned the radio to the country station when that car came across the median and hit me. There was glass and metal then I was upside down then on my side with my face on pavement and all I could do was focus in on the incredibly happy singer doing his beer drinking song live while thousands cheered. Then it was dark. The cheering continued, got louder. That’s when, I guess, I died.

Let me stop to say this: this is not a story from a dead person. This isn’t from beyond the grave or actually a story that you find out, surprise, is told by the crazy nut sister who actually killed the protagonist. I survived. I was dead for thirty six minutes. I survived, for what it’s worth.

The thing about dying once is that you always know you’ll have to do it again. I don’t know what it was like for other survivors, if they remember pain or live with a sense of peace or whatever. For me it was kind of a blank, numb experience with a horrible soundtrack. It was the coming back to life part that was painful. After the cheering the next thing I remember is the pain. Tightness in my chest, tube in my throat, stabbing near my knee, a swollen eye.

This really isn’t a story about my death. This isn’t a story about the recovery, either. I spent time in the hospital, my mom cried, my sister brought cake, I did a lot of physical therapy, counselors tried to speak with me about the whole death thing, my aunt swears I saw Jesus (I didn’t) and her church family came to pray over me. There was a lot of pain and anger and profanity. I threw a bed pan. But this isn’t about all of that.

About six months after my death I was sitting on my mom’s patio looking out over the buttercups, watching my dog chase birds. I was sitting there because, while in the hospital, my mom cancelled my apartment lease and moved everything back to her house because she believed I’d need constant care during my recovery. She didn’t ask me before she did this.

I was sitting there, watching my dog, drinking tea, with my best friend Neil. This story is about what happens because of the conversation we had.

“You really aren’t milking this whole ‘I was dead’ thing enough,” he said to me.

“I should have taken that call from Maury then?”

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean right now, as you’re doing your whole recovery pity me shit you could be doing everything you wanted without people questioning you.”

“Like rob a bank?”

“No,” he said, “like traveling the world on credit.”

“People do that all the time without dying.”

My dog, Velcro, had returned to me. I wouldn’t have ever told anyone this but Velcro was the thing that made me happiest in those days. He didn’t look at me with pity, didn’t talk about expanding doors because of the wheelchair, and was the same giant dumb dog as before I died. He sat down next to me, his head on my knee.

“People do. You don’t. You could go do anything right now and if someone says you shouldn’t have you could just start crying and go “oh I died and saw grandpa and came back” and all would be forgiven.”

I laughed. Neil was the only one who treated me like I died on purpose, for the attention. He would berate me for it and I loved him because of it. I also knew that, the day after I woke up in the hospital, he couldn’t come in my room because he was crying.

“Think about it,” he said. “I’m gone, I’ll see you later.”

He left. I did think about it. I sat up in bed that night, throwing crayons at the ceiling, thinking. If I had really died that night, if that had been the last song I heard and the last meal I ate and the last rain and the last everything, would have I died being okay with how everything turned out?

No.

Not enough green. I changed crayons.

I didn’t like my job, I hadn’t traveled north of Tennessee, and I was still in love with the girl. Neil was right. If I quit my job, traveled, disappeared for a year everyone would write it off as being therapeutic. If I found her, got her to talk to me, it would probably be out of pity.

I switched to my left hand, purple. Flick the wrist, thunk the ceiling, bend forward to retrieve, lean back.

I couldn’t handle pity, much less her pity. I couldn’t stay where I was, though.

“Shit.”

I tossed the crayons off the bed and turned the light off. Velcro jumped up next to me and waited as I leaned myself back. He put his head on my chest. In the dark it was easy for me to remember dying. The applause, loud cheering, hot pavement and metal. That could have been it. That could have been the end and I would have never known how it turned out.

They arrived early for their flight.

If they hadn’t, if he had taken the other exit or stopped to get those donuts, she might have missed him completely. But they were early and her flight was delayed so she saw him walking down toward where ever his gate was. He was carrying two bags, had a backpack on his shoulder, and a little girl holding his hand. He looked better than he did when they were dating. He looked stronger, he had grown into himself. His hair was turning gray and he had developed some kind of fashion sense. That thought stopped her.

Maybe he hadn’t developed anything. Maybe he was married and that was his wife’s clothing choice. She didn’t know why it mattered to her. She watched him stop walking, move to the side, bend down to sign to the girl. He laughed. Took off his backpack and gave it to her. Her best friend, who she was travelling with as far as Kansas City, was next to her. She had spotted him, too.

“Is that?”

“Yeah. I’m going to go say hi.”

She stood up before she realized what she was doing. He had put the backpack on the girl. She couldn’t have been more than six or seven.

“Hi.”

He stood up.

“Hi. Sam, this is an old friend of mine. Jess, this is Sam, my daughter.”

She wasn’t expecting it to be his daughter. He might have been married, she gave him that, but not with a daughter. A pretty cute daughter, too, one who smiled easily. She wasn’t expecting him to sign to her. There was an awkward pause.

Now that she was over there she wasn’t really sure what to say. Ten years had pass and he wasn’t the person she left. The man in front of her was responsible enough to have a daughter, his hair cut, and his face shaved.

*****

I took her to her mother’s parents’ every winter. We would stay through Thanksgiving, Christmas, return some time after New Years. My parents’ didn’t like it much but never said anything against it. They understood why I had to. Why I wanted to.

The more she grows, the more she reminds me of her. The way she smiles. She’s starting to write and somehow she has her mom’s y and e. When she does something that reminds her of me, that’s when I become startled. When she eats her hamburger like me, flipping the bun around, that’s the part that kills. She’s our kid. We made her, together. I was lucky enough to have a part of her for such a short period of time, and lucky, again, to have a part of me in such an amazing kid.

When we go to Minnesota it has already snowed, begun snowing. I sit on her grandfather’s porch, my ex-father-in-law, and watch her run down the same hill her mom used to at the same age. I watch her sled and build forts and we have snow ball wars and I imagine that she was like that. I imagine my wife, six years old, breaking the top layer of snow, falling down, thigh deep, hip deep, into whiteness, her laughter ringing back from the trees at the back of their property.

The first winter we had together as a family, right after she was born, we came to Minnesota. Her parents watched our kid as she led me through their property, telling me different stories of her, of the land, than the ones she had told me two summers ago there.

We went past the trees, into the light woods, away from the house, and I followed her sure footed, knowing she wouldn’t lead me down a path she didn’t know, didn’t trust.

*****

After we broke up I completely eradicated him from my life. I switched colleges and moved in with my best friend out of state. I got a job in a different field. I didn’t even eat Mexican for a year because rice, stupidly, reminded me of him. But I always said the break up was for the best. It was my decision, after all.

All those little things about him that I loved when we were together, like the times he would decorate my car in whatever motif made him laugh that day, I would sit around and talk about as an example of his immaturity. The way he could go months without a hair cut, getting shaggy, I used as an example of how I obviously needed a man who could dress and look like he could take me out to a five star restaurant. I’d ignore the fact that, as shaggy as he could get, as unshaven and sloppily dressed, he could cook better than most chefs in those restaurants.

I dated other guys. Met this man who had established himself in his career field. Who looked good in a suit. Who had a new car he got detailed once a month. Who fit this mold of what I had always imagined my husband to be. We married. A big wedding, flowers everywhere, and he looked incredible in his tux.

We settled into our lives. Separate careers in the morning, coming home to a clean house (he had hired a maid). Dinner, usually take out. Sex. And then the sex slowed down. And then there would be nights he wouldn’t come home. I would go out with my friends from work. I was convinced the marriage was working. Was perfect, in fact. We never argued, the bills were mostly paid on time, at his office Christmas party he would guide me around with his hand in the small of my back, possessive, and I would lean into him. We would go home, him, drunk, me sober enough to drive, and the sex would be decent but never… complete.

It was everything I had wanted, and hoped for. And then I found the pictures. He had left them out, almost as if he wanted to get caught. Shot after shot, poses, a naked woman, not me, him, her mouth on him.

From the wedding until the first appointment with my attorney had taken six years. Now I was in this airport with my best friend, flying with her as far as my parents, spending Thanksgiving almost single, and he was there.

Someone playing a joke on me had put his gate across from mine. Not knowing he was coming we had already chosen our seats, facing toward the other gate, sun at our back.

Now he was there. Hair cut, in a nice outfit that he seemed to feel comfortable in. With his daughter. With a wedding ring on. It was funny how, when and if I thought of him, I never imagined him married. He was always out there, single, maybe dating, but always kind of alone.

I watched him with her daughter. Sam. He had laid on the floor, facing his daughter, facing me, and they signed. They signed. He would laugh and there was so much love coming from him that I was jealous of this six or seven year old girl.

Our flights were delayed. Sam had become tired and was resting on him, her head on his chest.

******

After she died the pain was unbearable. Overwhelming. I’m not proud to say it, but I let myself get taken by it. Those first few days I barely remember, save for bits and pieces. Picking out the casket. Sleeping on the couch. Standing, empty, in the bedroom.

Then I woke up to her climbing onto the couch with me and then I realized it wasn’t just me, I couldn’t let myself go. I still had her. I curled up around her tiny body and she fell asleep, her head on my arm, my arm falling asleep, so little and fragile and her heart beat so strongly in her chest and she saved me.

At night, though, was when the pain came back the worst. At night, falling asleep on the right side in a cold bed, missing her talking and laughing, missing her moving around our bedroom looking for her keys or a pen or whatever she had lost. Missing her reading next to me. That was the worst.

But the days moved on. The days moved on and the pain, the big sharp empty aching pain, I grew accustomed to it. Then, out of the blew, these little things, little stupid reminders, would come flying at me and surprise me and rip right through me.

I would be washing my hands and all of a sudden, for whatever reason, notice my ring. I would notice it and this memory of sitting on the balcony of our apartment, before the house, before the wedding, looking out over this parking lot that butted up to some trees. Looking out at these trees, trying so hard to come up with the right vows.

And I would come back to myself, my forehead pressed into the lip of the sink, I would come back to myself crying.

******

I had gone to the bar with a few friends from work. They were shooting pool, I was drinking, laughing, and then I saw her. She was off, over by the darts, smiling and I could’ve sworn she was the absolute, most beautiful girl and I wanted to take her home.That’s all it was, at first, this gut reaction, this lust. Pure and simple and I had never acted on that feeling before, but this time I got up and started walking toward her. About halfway there I realized what I was doing and veered toward the bathroom. I passed her and swore I caught a whiff of her. Cookies and play dough and somehow everything perfect and I realized I’d drunk too much.

I went to the restroom and was walking pass the women’s room when the door popped open, popped me in the nose. As soon as it did I got that copper taste in the back of my throat, that penny in the mouth taste. After that came the pain. She’d broken my nose.

Afterwards I’d wish I could’ve been smooth. Made some jokes, had her laughing, shrugged it off. Something super manly. What I did, though, was cuss. Loudly. Something like god damn mother fucker.

I’d bent over, holding my nose. I saw her shoes. Tennis shoes when everyone else was wearing heels. Bright blue tennis shoes with orange laces.

I stood up. She was still amazing. I still wanted her in my bed. But I was bleeding, steadily, from my nose.

I couldn’t drive. None of my coworkers wanted to leave. She offered to take me to the hospital. I agreed. Her friend came along with us; I guess to prevent me from attempting anything but the pain was making me too nauseous to do anything pass thinking of her smooth her skin must be.

That is how I met my wife. A broken nose, fast car ride, apology drinks the week later and it was like she’d always been in my life. The rest came easy to me, if not her. Marriage, the house, the kid. Cleaning the gutters while she did whatever she did around the house. It was so simple and easy and beautiful and then the wreck happened and, again, we were in the hospital. Again, the taste of copper in the back of my throat. Again, a broken nose, fast car ride.

But the drinks wouldn’t be apologetic. The drinks would be to dull everything, to forget.

When she hugged my mother I knew she was real. I tried to wring the last of the alcohol out of my stomach and into my system. I did not want to be sober for this. I wanted my dad there, standing behind me, telling me that I should do this and should listen to this part of my body and not that part. That was the moment I really realized he was gone. The anger and the grief cut through everything else at that moment, cut through the smells and the sights, and hit my joints until I was not sure I could stand.

The fall she left my dad was the buffer between my mother and me. I could not sit still, could not sleep. I ended up with three jobs and would take odd jobs whenever I could find them. When my mother would begin to tell me that I was going to kill myself working like this and that no girl was worth it he would appear, somehow, and calm her down. I would leave the room to her giggling.

After a few months of this I guess he realized I wasn’t slowing down. He caught me between jobs, eating a sandwich over the kitchen sink, staring out of the window.  He had just left his store. He still had his tie on.

“What exactly are you doing?”

A piece of tomato fell out of the sandwich. It landed in the sink. I pushed it into the garbage disposal.

“Eating. I’ve got work in about twenty minutes,” I said.

“I mean with work. Why?”

I shrugged.

“I don’t know exactly.”

“How much longer are you planning on doing this?”

I shurgged again. Fed the rest of my half-eaten sandwich into the garbage disposal. Turned the water on. Turned the garbage disposal on. Listened to low whine of the teeth finishing my sandwich.

“It won’t bring you closer to her,” he said.

“I know,” I said.

I turned the machine off. Turned the water off.  We stood there in the quiet of the kitchen. He was always a patient man and would wait for me. The refrigerator came to life, a click and a hum. I had been doing what seemed right for those months at work. I needed to stay busy, I needed to exhaust myself, I needed to do those things that would stop me from thinking and wondering and second guessing myself. When the work was done there was always a friend with his dad’s bottle of rum or a six pack of weak beer.

“I think I’m going to buy a car. And I think I’m going to drive,” I said. I didn’t know I was going to say it until it came out.

“Drive where?”

“I don’t really know. Everywhere else, I guess.”

I worked that hard during the winter. She came home at Christmas time, but we stayed apart. I worked shoveling snow on my off time, worked for my father, worked until spring came. Sitting outside of my second job, the one I worked from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and every other Saturday, I looked across the parking lot and between the dumpsters and the cardboard bailer toward the empty stretch of undeveloped land that ran toward the highway that led, east and then slightly south, to the nearest interstate. And I knew I need to be on that road. I turned in my two week’s notice then. To all my jobs.

My dad went with me when I bought my car. It needed some repairs but had four brand new tires. We spent the last two weeks working on the car together. He taught me what little he knew about engine repair and we checked car repair manuals for the stuff we weren’t sure about.  I bought a camera. I bought a sleeping bag. The last night, the night before I left, I slept for eight hours for the first time in about a year. Waking up I laid in bed, letting the sun rise, watching the light move across my bed and reach slowly for my feet. I listened to my dad and mother move about the house.