The Collected Works of Jeff Carr

Planting Ideas, Harvesting Solutions (magazine)

2010-08-27T18:44:00.003-06:00

Another article in Utah State Magazine, and another I felt honored to write. It'd be a fantastic story with or without a writer, and it made the cover on the good faith of my colleague Donna's always-stellar photography. I chose not the title (though it's ok) nor the exclamation point at the end of the fourth paragraph. Enjoy it here.

President Stan L. Albrecht: Five Years In (magazine)

2010-01-04T11:42:00.007-07:00

Another feature article in Utah State Magazine. This is a long one, but it was a hugely important project, and I was honored to be entrusted with it. Most people seem to think it went well. Here's the link. Enjoy.

Zamyatin's We: Persuading the Individual to Sacrifice Self (essay)

2009-06-01T14:43:00.004-06:00

My senior honors thesis was just published online at USU Digital Commons. Feel free to check it out, if you're into that sort of thing. It's about the political ramifications of a little-known Soviet dystopian novel on the question of individual liberty vs. state security. Yes, that's what I'm into.

http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/honors/23/

Appraising the Pistol (fiction)

2009-05-10T19:08:00.004-06:00

Here's a new story that people seem to like. I'm not convinced. See me for the full text.

The closing of the heavy, marble casket hardly made a sound, and Patrick successfully suppressed a smirk. How appropriate, he thought. Passive in life and death. The green earth at Rose Hill Cemetery opened to receive the wide body of Walter Callahan, 55, heart attack. It wasn’t that Patrick was happy about the death of his father, a high school math teacher, or about having to take time off of work to come home, but he certainly wasn’t as sad as he should have been, or as sad as most people were when their fathers died. He realized this, as he ushered his red-faced mother away from the gravesite and toward the car, but he wasn’t overly bothered by it. Life goes on. Out of respect for his mother, though, and for the sake of common decency, he had worn the face he was supposed to wear all week long.

Reductions in Force (essay)

2009-05-10T18:53:00.010-06:00

Author's note: This is a braided essay, fusing personal story with research. It's a wonderfully revelatory genre of nonfiction that aims to find significance and connection across seemingly unrelated space and time. It's extremely fun to write, and I'd love to do more. I'm especially proud of this particular piece, which is incomplete here because it's currently being submitted to literary journals for potential publication. Feel free to contact me for the entire piece.

The morning sun threw 800 long, quivering shadows onto the green grass of the quad at the Agricultural College of Utah. For the farm boys casting them, this would be the first day for a lot of things—college, manhood. The boys, many as young as 18, stood in formation in three groups of about eight rows each. They wore thick khaki with five buttons, two chest pockets, two lower shirt pockets, tight collars, matching pants, tan hockey-style socks that rose over the pants almost to the knee, and black boots. It was President Wilson who decided that full-time uniforms and orders was an acceptable new price for a college education—a price that proved lofty for some, but a godsend for others. And whether or not the lurking fine print, the potential sacrifice of a pastoral Utah life for a deadly European combat tour, was truly acceptable, it was pointless to consider now. On this first day of October, 1918, early in the morning, simultaneous ceremonies in identical khaki were already underway on the green quad at the UAC and more than 500 other colleges across the country.

Captain Stephen Abbot spoke first, after accepting a commemorative flag from the mayor: “The honor of every man here is as solid and sound as the hardest rock in these mountains,” he said. Members of the administration and faculty looked on from the north corner of the Main building under the secure civilian black of their hats and long coats. Those who glanced up from the shadows had a clear view of the solid, sound Wasatch Mountains enveloping the quaint valley and tiny campus. The scenic view, however, just like everything else at the college, it seemed, would soon be a remnant of the past. A tower crane resting at the edge of the quad already hinted at a brave new era, guarding the construction of what promised to be an imposing three-story brick barracks. A testament to the whirlwind of activity that brought them here, the farm boys’ brand new home wasn’t even finished.

When Captain Abbot concluded his speech, Captain Henry D. Moyle rose to the podium and administered the Oath of Allegiance to the 800, who repeated it back in unison, probably focusing more on getting the words right than internalizing their meaning. Capt. Moyle then read a statement from President Wilson, thanking them for joining the war effort and congratulating them on becoming inaugural members of the Student Army Training Corps. College students and soldiers on the same daunting day. Years later in retrospect, differentiating between the two roles must have been problematic.

*

The brittle March grass folded under my feet as I sprinted diagonally from one end of the quad to the other, running as if from gunfire. Strong spring gales blew down from the mountains. “I can’t believe how dead campus is at midnight,” I remarked to my three accomplices. Lucky for us.

We didn’t know exactly where the entrance was, but it had to be somewhere between the historic Old Main building on the west face of the quad, and the Ray B. West building on the south face, we thought, so that’s where the search began. And then, almost immediately, there it was, inconspicuous on the sidewalk halfway between the two dated structures—a round, rusty manhole cover with twelve silver-dollar-sized holes dotting the iron. It was completely obvious to somebody looking for it. We gathered around. “What do you think’s down there?”

“I’ve heard it’s just for heating vents and pipes and stuff—nothing exciting.”

“Yeah, but it’s still a tunnel.”

The wind blew through and obscured the fearful squirms about us, replacing the truth with the voracious flapping of the flag at Old Main. Blaine aimed a quivering flashlight at the circular holes, and Matt and I peered down, but there was nothing to see but gray. Other than the one light, none of us had brought along any tools. Having never attempted breaking and entering before, we didn’t think we’d need any. Just pull up a grate and climb down the ladder—it should have been that simple. For some reason, though, the manhole cover wouldn’t budge. It was as though it was never meant to move at all. For the next couple of moments, Melanie stood by and watched as the three newly macho 18-year-old boys took turns bending over and pulling skyward on the rusty lid, trying to lift it like a dumbbell.

*

I dig through the wicker basket and fish out a green jawbreaker—precisely what I was looking for. The thin plastic wrap pops as I squeeze one end, and the marble falls out. As I ingest the first of its sugary juices, I step out of the office and into the hall. Scavenging leftovers from the candy basket is one of the more thrilling joys of my job as supervisor of the Utah State University Writing Center. I’m always here. Honestly, I feel like I live here, after three years of both work and school every day in the same dilapidated English department. I adore the prospect of discussing truth and morality through stories, exploring movements and ideas far greater than myself. Being an English major almost satiates my desire for adventure. Out in the hall, a white flyer seizes with an unexpected title: “The War is Over!” It’s not enough to stop me to discover why, or which war. Instead, I ascend the stairs, past the framed portrait of Ray B. West, and toward the restroom on the second floor.

Over the years here, I’ve gotten to know most of the faculty pretty well. That familiarity, though, only makes this time harder. It’s 2009, and they say it’s the greatest economic recession since the Great Depression, but as a full-time student on protected government dollars, I’m not in a bad position personally. As far as my student job goes, I don’t get paid enough to be laid off. It’s ironic, because despite my greatest efforts to make it appear otherwise, my position is largely expendable. It’s the actually vital, meaningful careers of many of my friends that are on the line. The state legislature imposed a massive budget cut to the university, and the non-tenure track lecturers—the collective backbone of our department’s instruction—are at serious risk. Not long ago, the department head called each one of the fifteen or so lecturers in and offered them severance packages if they would willingly walk away at the end of the semester. All of them. I’m sitting at my desk when my boss and a couple of other lecturers return from the meeting and relate the news. They each throw their arms up and shrug in surrender. What else can they do? I picture each of these middle-aged women outside in the heat, thumbs out, wandering the desolate job market armed with nothing but English degrees intended for times of excess. These are supposed to be my superiors. That’s the day the recession hits me.

*

A letter sent from Newton D. Baker, U.S. Secretary of War, to the “farmers’ college,” among others, related that military instruction should be provided for those desiring to enlist, and in accordance, provisions would be made to facilitate the creation of the Student Army Training Corps, or SATC. The corps was to serve a twofold purpose: to mitigate wartime reductions in student body, and to train up more soldiers for the effort. Enlisted men would be paid the same amount as privates, train for combat, and all the while work toward a college degree. Locally, The Logan Journal proclaimed that when the fall quarter of 1918 commenced, the college would be “a veritable West Point,” and indeed, for the farm boys enrolled, it must have seemed that way. University reports show that the SATC in Logan expected 53 hours per week of “military work, class room recitation, and preparation,” 11 hours in “physical training and practical and theoretical military instruction,” and 42 hours in “allied subjects,” including courses in standard university specialties from English to chemistry to descriptive geometry. That makes 106 hours, out of the total 168 that constitute a seven-day span. The remainder is just under nine hours per day. Assuming the student soldiers slept, the guidelines didn’t allow for a wealth of spare time.

As is life in the military, the boys of the SATC didn’t possess much in the ways of personal effects or space either. As they stood at attention at the foot of their narrow, metal-framed bunks, or racks, awaiting the crisp orders of their commanding officers, they could have easily reached out and clasped the hands of their bunkmates for support. The beds, if they can be called such, consisted of nothing more than thin mats atop the shiny frames, none too long or wide. Small foot lockers were stored underneath. In all of Utah State University’s surviving archival photos of SATC racks, there appears no evidence of pillows. When the lights went down on the drafty barracks, and the boys curled themselves sideways atop the abbreviated altars, they must have appeared quite like human sacrifices.

*

Lifting the manhole cover was hopeless. There was no need for the flashlight, the entirety of our preparation, as we scoured the well-lit grounds for more possible cavities. The soft light, just as the absence of tools, comforted me and allowed me to maintain the guise that what we were doing was completely in line with my conscience. This wouldn’t hurt anyone.

I had heard whispers about a whole system of tunnels that snaked and spread under the quad area, and some of my friends had overheard similarly vague stories from upperclassmen, but nobody was specific about where. Somewhere around Old Main. The initial source of the rumors, my uncle was able to descend freely when he was student body president in the ‘70s, but this was 2004, and we were freshmen with no official business and no connections whatsoever. Just a penchant for exploration and the allure of the underground. Our own secret space.

The wind continued to howl around us as we searched the ground on the quad-side face of the brick building, the university’s first. Nothing on the southeast end. Once we passed the front doors, though, we discovered the northeast corner to be an utter gold mine of orifices into the deep. The giant fluorescent ‘A’ atop the famous bell tower illuminated window wells cutting into the foundational concrete below the brick. Each one was covered over with a thick grate. The window wells wouldn’t be much help, we surmised, but there were also two similar-looking rectangular grates along the building unconnected with windows. In addition, there was a gated-off wide stairwell down to a set of white double doors in the basement, and there was even a separate brick structure—some sort of wide, cylindrical ventilation shaft—rising six feet out of the ground a short distance away from the building. Long iron grates ran along the sides of the shaft, and adjacent to them, two hatches with handles. The cylindrical structure itself opened only at the top, which opening, of course, was also covered with a grate. To me, this spelled solid evidence of a tunnel’s existence. Our prospects were looking better. These flimsy openings were nothing like the thick, weighty manhole cover we had encountered earlier.

*

From my desk in the basement of the Ray B. West building, when there’s no one blocking the doorway, a portion of the hall opens to my view. Admittedly, though, there’s not much to look at. I can see the bottom of the red-orange stairwell leading up to the quad, and a white door on the white wall directly under the stairs. It’s room 105, but nobody cares. Sometimes I see maintenance workers go in 105 with mops and electrical equipment and don’t seem to ever come out, or maybe I just don’t notice. Long periods of time go by with seemingly simultaneous crises and conflicts in the Writing Center. My job title says supervisor, but I’m basically an empowered receptionist. As such, long periods of time also pass by with little to no activity at all.

This is not one of those times. I’m trying to juggle two student clients and talk to a tutor and fill out a request-for-leave form when I’m interrupted by an ethereal sight in the doorway. A small brown-haired boy, about four years old, stares up at me. He holds in his hand ribbons tied to three helium balloons—two blue and one white, our school colors. Together with the frazzled woman that appears behind him, the boy and his balloons block every square inch of the doorway, high and low. It’s John Engler’s wife and one of their six children. They’re looking for his class so they can surprise him for his birthday, and they can’t find the room. John is one of the lecturers whose his career in serious danger. After making a living for ten years writing manuals for computer hardware, he came back to school to pursue his original love of literature. Now he teaches lit classes for non-majors and ends up actually converting students to the department with his enthusiasm and deep commitment to the moral accountability of literature in society. I know, for I am one of his converts. I changed my major, took another one of his classes the next semester, and we’ve been friends ever since.

John’s son gives the balloon strings a tug and relates to me a truth: “I got these.”
“They’re perfect,” I respond. He already looks just like his father. I tell Mrs. Engler awkwardly what a great teacher I think her husband is, which statement for some reason sounds redundant, or unnecessary to me. I’ve told her before, though I’m sure she doesn’t remember. She replies that he loves to do it. However, rather than being openly gracious or friendly, she appears on-edge. She shoots sideways glances up and down the hallway as we talk.
*

--Please contact me for the rest, which I'll happily give--

The Lady of the House (fiction)

2009-01-26T11:12:00.010-07:00

Author's note: I think this is the best short story I've written, far better than the one that won all the awards. Oh well. See what you think. Maybe I'm crazy. Meanwhile, I'm sending it out to a few journals, which is why it appears here only in part. Please contact me for the full text, which I'll gladly give. PS- It was once tentatively titled "The Art of Sales."

She knew immediately. “I’m sorry, we’re not interested,” she nodded out of instinct, with a squint. Even before her own final word, Rebecca had begun to ease the door closed.

“Oh…no! Don’t worry, I’m…I’m actually not selling anything. Good evening, by the way.” The salesman smiled. Rebecca peered at the emblem on his white polo shirt, and then drew up to his face in utter distrust. “Actually, I have kind of a strange, but really easy favor for you, if that’s ok,” he continued. “See, I was just doing some work on your neighbor Mr. Bruce’s security system in his house, and you know we require an emergency contact in case something goes wrong and we can’t reach him. Anyway, we’ll usually just use a close friend or relative or something, but he says all of his relatives are dead, and he doesn’t know anyone around here. Weird, I know. He’s not even that old or anything. Just a little…well, you know—he’s your neighbor. Anyway, he has our top-of-the-line system, and uh, just loves it. But we’ve asked him for a phone number three or four times since he’s had the system, and he’s never been able to give us one. So… uh, the thing is…would you be willing to be his emergency contact?”

Rebecca’s original inclination to anger at the audacity of the salesman became lost somewhere in bewilderment at the situation. She let out the air she had been unconsciously holding in since almost the beginning of his spiel. This was the sort of unexpected occurrence that so worried her about city life. And security systems? When they finally moved to a decent small town to raise their family, they wouldn’t have to deal with stuff like this.

“Ma’am?” The salesman stood waiting, occupying her entire field of vision. He must be pretty successful, she realized, because she couldn’t get a single word in during his entire explanation, edgewise or otherwise. He paused right when he should have, at the end of each sentence, and yet, while pausing, he simultaneously diverted his eyes from her gaze, so as not to allow her any windows in which to object. Still, he didn’t come off rude, per se. He seemed pretty natural on the door, and he was personable, and not unattractive. And yet, Rebecca thought, she still would have closed him out right away had he actually been selling something. This one’s lucky.

By this time, Shawn stood back behind his wife in the hallway, at the entrance to the kitchen, watching. His black motocross-racer goatee rustled on his face, concealing whatever expression caused it. Rebecca sensed his presence and turned back to face him, but upon receiving nothing, started back at the door, though more politely. “We really don’t like giving our number out… did you try the guy next door?” She motioned toward the brick townhouse twenty-five feet to her right, just beyond the shared kitchen wall. “He’s always home.”

“Oh, that’s him,” said the salesman. “Mr. Bruce. This… this is for his system.” He quickly added, “Although, if he’s always at home, you’ll probably never get called. I mean, this is all just a security measure, anyhow, right? Unless he knows something I don’t…” Rebecca frowned. The salesman unconsciously slipped a white business card directly into Rebecca’s hand, and while she was reading it, he pulled the pen from atop his ear and clicked it loudly. The salesman stood motionless with the pen already trained inside his binder, which he held angled up and out of view.

“Oh, Mr. Bruce. Yeah, I forgot that was his name…” A flash of a 60-year-old man with close-cropped gray hair and a blue duffel bag exited his car and glanced her way. Rebecca shook off the image. She shifted her weight and opened her mouth to speak again, but instead just looked down at her feet. “Yeah, he doesn’t… he doesn’t talk much.”

“I bet.” The salesman added.

It Takes a Family to Raise a Village (magazine)

2009-01-16T00:43:00.006-07:00

To read the full text of the feature article from Utah State Magazine, please proceed here. Also, enjoy the photography, some of which was also mine. This was a fun project. Here's the link.

The Cave (essay)

2008-04-23T01:02:00.006-06:00

Author's note: This personal essay recently won 2nd place in this year's contest at USU, and will therefore be published in the 2009 Scribendi. It's the literary, but completely true account of something that happened to Ken and I in Mozambique. I knew going into this day that the whole cave adventure would be a good story, but the disappointment turned out to be a much better one.

The helicopter settled on the dirt like an old man into a recliner, and the weed scraps that had been tossed into the air fluttered back to earth. The villagers had seen us coming from miles away over the flat savannah, and many gathered around to discover what prominent figures would emerge. It could have been the president of Mozambique and his entourage, and they wouldn’t have known. They didn’t even know they lived in Mozambique. It wasn’t the president, anyway. It was my uncle Ken and me—two distinctly unimportant American travelers. He, a robust, blonde college professor working in the country, and I, a wiry student writer sent to report on his project. This particular jaunt into the bush, however, was strictly for pleasure. We brought with us a translator, Domingos, and Tatu, one of the kitchen boys at the Chitengo café. We never would have thought to invite him, but he had mentioned at breakfast that he was born and raised in this very village, so we figured he could take the afternoon off and ride along. I sure didn’t mind. All I wanted was to see the cave.

Tatu was the first one out of the helicopter, and I think that’s really what surprised them the most. He left this home village of Nhaminga ten years before and had never returned, let alone with shoes, a cell phone, and from the sky. Nhaminga was alone in the tall, yellow-green grass, only twenty kilometers from the Chitengo camp at the edge of Gorongosa National Park. Only twenty kilometers, but in all those years, Tatu hadn’t been home even once. It dawned on me that he must have had no way of getting there, save by foot, and that’s assuming he somehow knew the way, using trees or rivers as landmarks. Heaven knows there were plenty of trees and rivers to go around. Even from only a couple hundred feet up, the landscape looked like a thick, rolling bed of moss. I reached down in my mind and squeezed a clump of it, then brushed off my hands in the helicopter. Nhaminga was at the edge of the moss, in a vast flatland that was just as much golden as green. The river, like most in Africa, was brown.

An ecstatic man in his early twenties, who turned out to be Tatu’s cousin and childhood friend, received us as we emerged, and a bevy of wide-eyed children rounded out the greeting party. The cousin had on a bright blue Hawaiian shirt with a fist-sized gash taken out of the back, but it was still nicer than most of the children’s clothes. He explained to the local youths who this rich stranger was, and they lined up to shake his hand, then ours. Ken and I exchanged humble smiles.
When I arrived in the capital a few days before to gather information for my article, I noticed right away how friendly everybody was. My uncle said, “If you think they’re nice, wait ‘til you meet the people out in the bush.” I had to admit I was intrigued at the thought. The city was exotic in its own way, but honestly, it was nothing too out of the ordinary—just a lot of potholes and street vendors selling quasi-authentic trinkets, little voodoo masks and the like. Standard third-world fare. Now we were really in the middle of nowhere. The Chitengo camp was the only habitation of any kind within 30 kilometers of Nhaminga, and thick cornstalk-like growth made the prospect of a shoeless trip to anywhere all the more menacing.

A couple of other young men and some young mothers with babies joined the group congregating around the helicopter. One mother in her early twenties sported a pink bandana over her head, along with a faded royal blue World Cup shirt with different national flags around the collar. She carried one small child and tethered at least one other in the dirt nearby. Another mother weaned her own toddler unabashedly in front of us on a breast roughly the size and shape of a plastic baby bottle. Everything here was so real. At one point in my awkward glancing about, she gathered it back into her shirt, at which point the child immediately thrust down his searching hand to reclaim it.

“So they’re taking us to the cave?” I asked the translator, Domingos, the only one I could really converse with. He explained that they were taking us into Nhaminga first, where we’d have to ask formal permission from the regulo. He didn’t know how to translate that. Apparently, the cave held a special significance to the villagers, and they wanted to ensure we wouldn’t screw around in there. Fair enough. We had landed only about a hundred yards away from the village, but I couldn’t see it at all through the grass. And then, only when we were right on top of it, it appeared—a circular clearing, no bigger than the third floor of my apartment building, dotted with burnt yellow structures spaced out on the dirt floor. There were twelve of these structures in their village. I counted them. Among them, about eight or nine had walls of dried golden mud from the river, or horizontally woven sticks, and the rest were open on all sides. Ken and I poked our heads into one of the stick-walled ones and found it completely empty—nothing more than pale shelter. The huts weren’t anything pretty, but I supposed they kept out the sub-Saharan sun, which was beginning to assert its authority on the back of my neck. Also, the thick, bright blanket of endless sky made up for anything lacking in aesthetics. And the huts had a sort of understated majesty. They were just as I had imagined them, lying in bed on the third floor. Just like on the Discovery Channel. They were ideal.

How simple this bush life, and how untainted by impure motives, I thought, as the villagers led us toward the center of the clearing. The quest to understand people at their innermost selves is what drove me to be an English major in the first place. It is a quest I had become somewhat obsessed with. I knew that in our modern world, any attempt to discover the core of humanity was liable to be lost in a fog of interpretation at the hands of business, politics, and media. Opinions rarely stood independent of ulterior motives. Such it was in civilization. Such, they said, wouldn’t be the case here. “Simplify, simplify, simplify,” shouted Thoreau, and his words resonated through my skull. My literature classes had strangely prepared me for this meeting with the regulo in the exact same manner that years of TV had. Every single source agreed that from uncorrupted noble savages like these, I would gain actual perspective on life. I knew it was true. According to everything I had learned, this village, this salt-of-the-earth people had the potential to embody the pure, elemental goodness of human nature more so than any people I had ever met.
One slightly larger communal structure stood in the middle of the scatter of huts, with a thatched roof, like the rest, and about twenty knotty wood poles to hold it up. As we approached it, some of the children rushed ahead to set up a circle of chairs and benches in the shade of the only tree nearby, while the remaining adults sauntered out of their huts. The log benches were rudimentary, but the chairs came from a lighter wood, and had square corners- a sign that they had likely been fashioned by someone with more sophisticated tools than were available in Nhaminga. My uncle said that priests visited these isolated villages sometimes, and probably brought them the “nice” furniture. I wondered what else they brought, noting that the huts wouldn’t successfully conceal much.

So this cave was supposed to be pretty good. “Oh, you have to see the cave,” gushed the employees at the national park. “I’ve heard it’s really something.” I had never been a particularly devoted spelunker, but the anticipation was starting to get to me. Ken was excited too. After a month in Maputo teaching an MBA course and attempting to negotiate an exchange program with the university and the national park, he had earned a scenic detour.

Two of the legs of my chair had steady contact with the ground, and I rocked indecisive about the third as I tried to catch words from the conversation among the men of the village, which was in Sena, the local language, but which also had words from Portuguese. I didn’t know much Portuguese either, but my chances were considerably better than with Sena. Domingos translated as the regulo, who appeared to be the only elderly person in the entire village, welcomed us to Nhaminga and chattered away happily about it. He had an old, light brown button-up shirt that was too big for him. He was even thinner than the others, and was missing most of the teeth that should have been in his shriveled little avocado head. Poor guy. As he talked, one younger, stronger man ambled out of his hut a few minutes later with bloodshot eyes, squinting against the brightness of the sun, and holding a pink hand towel loosely against the left side of his head. He had malaria, one whispered to Domingos, who whispered to us. He joined the circle, but kept his head down most of the time. My own time in the circle was spent both worrying about the poor malarious man, and watching the long benchful of restless boys across from me poking each other and whispering secrets. I yearned to know what they could possibly be talking about. What would you whisper about if your entire life was twelve huts, tall grass, and a river? Surely, the hunt would make for good stories. I knew for a fact that there were lions, hippos, and all sorts of predators who viewed these humans as no more than another link in the chain.

My focus returned to the adult conversation, both ends of which Domingos was handling with seemingly limited success. I picked up a word here or there, but nothing substantial. Domingos told the villagers that we wanted to see the cave. We were not the first with such a request. He also translated our message to them, which was that we would be able to bring in a nurse from the park from time to time to heal their ailments. The adults each nodded, some more heavily than others. The regulo agreed to show us the way to the cave, and even offered us a live chicken in return for our kindness. We told them thank you. We couldn’t take it in the helicopter, we said, but we’d eat it together with them the next time we came. Thank you very much.

Satisfied with our dealings to that point, the regulo conferred with a couple of other men in Sena, and then rose and informed us that a sort of ceremony would required before outsiders could see the cave. How appropriate, I thought. How perfect! I had realized earlier in the morning that it was Easter, at least in the Christian world. Certainly, this particular cave-access ceremony would not be akin to Easter services I’d attended since childhood, I imagined, but it would be some sort of unique spiritual experience, nonetheless.

The men of Nhaminga eyed down their white American visitors. Trying my best to show respect and not patronize our hosts, I attempted to capture a couple of non-invasive, candid shots of the council with my digital camera, which I held upright on my left knee. Ken held his hands together on his lap and gauged their faces. He had hardly said a word upon arriving in the village. The council was discussing something in Sena in a tone far different from the gentle greetings that had been occurring thus far, but I couldn’t pin down what it was exactly. Finally, Domingos rose from his chair near the little boy bench. He nervously related to us that the villagers would be requiring beer, bread, and cigarettes to properly perform the ceremony. Ken and I turned to each other in alarm. “What? No one told us about this!” Ken pleaded with Domingos.

“What about that cooler you brought?” Domingos inquired. It was nothing but a few small dinner roll sandwiches and sodas and bottled water for the four of us. Our translator took a liberty and offered the group as much of the cooler’s contents as they’d need for the ceremony, but that that’s all we had. The adult men conferred with one another yet again and agreed that that would have to do. It was decided that the ceremony would be performed there, at the mouth of the cave itself, and so off we went, in single file through the tall grass.

The mile-long “path” to the cave was visible for only ten or fifteen feet ahead at any given time. The golden, cornstalk-like grass weaved itself across the dirt from both sides, rising up over my head like a bridal arch as I plodded ahead into the unknown. I walked at the distant helm of our little non-native contingency, preferring the guise of solitude in the wilderness to Ken and Domingos’s louder-than-necessary joking—western voices which obscured the grass, the crickets, the birds, the bellow of frogs. I wanted to hear Africa. The pack of villagers up ahead darted and glided through the curves with great ease. They knew exactly what they were doing. Even the man with malaria passed us up and took off through the grass. I picked up my pace. I wanted to learn Africa, and I wanted the villagers of Nhaminga to teach me.

And then, just off the path, a gaping hole in the rock.

Many of the villagers already sat at the mouth of the cave, watching as the regulo spread a thin, white cloth on the ground and knelt in front of it. The crowd reverently followed suit, kneeling or sitting in place on the rocks all around. About twenty different people came to the ceremony with us, though most would not be proceeding down into the cave, and many, again, were children. The regulo spoke slowly and resolutely as he sprinkled flour—the one ingredient the village provided—onto the center of the cloth in a perfect little mound. He then took one of the squatty 300mL glass bottles of Coke, which one of the others had opened for him with his teeth. That was hard to watch. The regulo poured a dollop’s worth into a mangled plastic cup on the cloth, a little more onto the ground between his knees and the cloth, and then propped the remainder in its bottle up against the rock. He then did a similar thing with one of the Fantas, only more hastily. He didn’t use much of the soda at all, and none of the bread. There would be plenty left for lunch after the cave, and I was beginning to feel hungry already. A thin scar of light pushed through the trees onto the surface and reached the sacramental cloth as the skinny old man pleaded with his ancestors first for permission to enter the cave, and safety once inside. Such Domingos explained, anyway. The light smiled down upon the little ceremony for an instant, then moved off the cloth and onto a nearby rock. I waited reverently for the tokens to be passed around, or consumed by the regulo, or something, but they remained, and the ceremony ended. The old man’s face rose slowly from the dirt and twisted as he gazed directly into Ken’s eyes, then mine. He spoke to us in his native tongue: “Next time, don’t forget the beer.”

Eight of the men and older boys of Nhaminga accompanied Ken and me down a guano-sloshed ladder into the deep. At last, this was it. The ground was springy with untold inches of deposit, and thousands of bats lined columns rising up toward, but not reaching the sky. Ken and I waved our feeble flashlights around and searched out possible pathways to each other, anticipating what was surely to come. The ceiling was high, the rooms spacious, and the spongy walls swallowed up the beams of light so that visual detail was hard to come by. Developing patterns suggested that there was nothing to see but bat excrement, anyhow. That’s certainly all there was to smell. Still, I didn’t care. I thought back on the sterilized offices at university advancement, where the publisher of the alumni magazine called me in and asked if I wanted to spend a week in Africa during my 18-credit semester. I said yes. It was an easy question.

Ten minutes more of slowly traversing loose rocks and wading through chest-high freezing water, and we were there. The corridor opened into a hollow where actual sunlight poured in and reflected off the wet rocks. It was an underground lagoon. Roots and vines from trees on the surface hung down dozens of feet and looped around a tree somehow growing out of a rock in the middle of the chamber. Other vines hung down and pleaded to be swung on. The whole room was like a Vegas menagerie, only more perfect than man could have hoped to create on his own. Water from an underground river cascaded down levels of weathered rock, surrounded the crag with the tree, collected in a series of pools, and flowed out the other end of the room and out of sight.

A shout echoed down from the sunlight, and the man with malaria, standing on the surface, waved to his friends. Ten minutes later, he was with us. Ken said matter-of-factly that he didn’t think the man actually had malaria. I had to admit that he sure was bouncing around a lot for being deathly ill. In fact, he seemed to be getting better as the day went on. No longer waiting for our guides, Ken and I climbed ahead and explored the lagoon. After five minutes, though, we had scoured the whole of it and returned to where the villagers squatted on some rocks near the water’s edge. Pretty as it was, the room wasn’t huge. “Where to next?” I asked, anxious to see what else the cave had in store. Domingos relayed the question to Tatu’s cousin on my behalf. I received the short response on my own. This was it. “They told us there was three hours’ worth of cave!” I started. “The helicopter won’t be back until 4:30. There has something else we can see, somewhere else to go.” A villager pointed out what appeared to be a room up high on the rock wall, and sent one of the more silent natives to guide me there. I exercised my merit badge skills and climbed up, having to take my shoes off halfway there for better traction.
“Anything up there?” Ken inquired. There wasn’t. From my perch, however, I could see that down on a rock in the lagoon, the younger village boys had found an injured bat, and were jabbing it with sticks and fingers. The men sat nearby and watched. Ken urged Domingos to tell the boys about a disease worse than malaria, but they didn’t seem too concerned. The little bat screeched in pain with each prod. Ken and I started back toward the surface on our own.

We didn’t make it far before the natives started following us. It dawned on me that most of them didn’t have any way of generating light down there in the abyss. We ascended the guano-soaked ladder and returned to the site of the ceremony, where the empty cooler sat open. Our lunch was gone. Released from the cave and standing on my own in the sunlight, I knew that what I had been seeing my entire life were nothing more than shadows on the wall. These people were tainted, and so was I. Ken took up the cooler, and we made the silent trek back to where the helicopter would pick us up over two hours later.

My uncle dropped the empty box onto the dirt, sat upon it, and began watching two ant colonies down between his knees. Domingos found a sharp ramp of dead tree branch, and offered it to me for a chair. I thanked him, not sure where on it I was supposed to sit. I improvised, and the villagers followed and squatted in the dirt nearby, talking amongst themselves. Domingos joined them and began asking questions and taking notes about their history for the park records, or so I gathered. I wondered how much of it was real.

I tried to doze off on the log, knowing full well that my slowly-simmering neck and arms would continue to burn if unchecked. I didn’t care, though. More than anything, I just wanted to take off my sopping wet shoes and socks, but I knew it would have been a bad idea, what with all the ants.

I slept for a little while sitting there, I think. The next thing I remember, Ken had a short stick, and was passing the time by attempting to transplant ants from one colony into the other, unsuccessfully. He sensed my movement and asked if I was hungry. When I answered in the affirmative, he told me he still had some of that weird South African jerky from the plane. The unidentifiable burgundy and gray meat he pulled from his back pocket wasn’t appealing in any way, but this wasn’t a time to be picky. We two stood up and turned our backs to the villagers of Nhaminga as Ken worked the vacuum-packed meat free as discreetly as possible, transferring exactly one half of it from his closed hand to mine. That was our ceremony.

The Trans-Siberian Railroad (poem)

2008-04-03T16:12:00.002-06:00

Author's note: This is one of only two poems of mine that I actually like. On long train rides through Siberia, when everyone else was asleep, I often found myself staring out the window at night and watching the little villages pass by. It's something I still think of sometimes. How I'd love to go back there and actually visit the people in those places, and see what it's like. Someday, maybe I will.

We pile the extra horse blankets

in front of the heater to stop the flow

of Russian over-compensation

and the gentle undulation

that now has lulled

my colleagues to sleep on narrow sleds

folded out of the edge

of a room unforgiving and metallic as the

clanging of the rails, gaps in them swollen

and contracted by the bitter cold that builds

unhindered.

no hills,

no towns,

no trees,

If not for the pervading darkness,

I’d see the pole. But no-

just a gloss of flaky water

many meters high, and hardened

by months of inactivity- a state

where life cannot survive under suffocating

blankets- a forever sleeping land.

Every couple of hours, a town

approaches and then passes quickly as the

flicker in the lantern of a man

who dons his fox and then his bear

to dutifully prepare to venture out,

the only time today, into the deep

to retrieve unfrozen water from the pump,

then woodenly step back

into his icy little hovel,

where no blankets go unused.

Lit Analysis (poem)

2008-04-03T16:09:00.001-06:00

Author's note: Maybe you've read this before. It's updated, though. I'm not a poetry writer by any means, but I do like this one. And yes, I wrote it while sitting in Lit Analysis (ENGL 2600), and yes, if you know him, it's about Dr. Crumbley. Great teacher, though.

Few college minds,

hope of our future,

are truly awake at this hour-

too engulfed in last night’s

party or tomorrow’s exam

to heed Chaucer’s counsel.

the Tweed Man, conversely, thrives

on his cream and artificial sunrise.

he divulges to us, in big words, secrets

he’s wanted to tell of since he

was a boy: how Conrad showed

him mankind as it is. How

Hemingway defined for him a

generation in five-word

sentences. how Whitman carried

him up to the stars and

made him aware, before MLA

documentation caught him

and sent him back to bed.

In Exile (essay)

2008-04-03T16:00:00.003-06:00

Author's note: I'm more pleased with how this piece turned out than just about any that I've written. I've been working on it more lately (and not posting it here), so if you've read this before July 2010, this is entirely different, and hopefully better. It's still very much a work in progress.

“A real gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion.”
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, following his
four-year exile in Omsk, Siberia

Siberia is complicated—-difficult to describe, strangely enough. It seems like it should be easy. Each of the initial stereotypes that come to mind are true, after all, both about the land and the people. When you really get down to it, though, comparing whole societies is, as it should be, problematic. I recall, however, that people never spat on me in America—-not even during my stint as a door-to-door salesman. In hindsight, I think it’s the spit versus lack of spit that entrenched my initial bias in place. Note to self: Russians are mean—-I have proof. I brushed it from my coat.

Six days a week and well into night, we were asking to get spat on, wandering the crooked, grayscale streets searching for podyezd doors left carelessly open. The thick steel doors and their steel locks were put in place specifically to keep people like us out, and though the foot-thick concrete walls around them eroded right onto my jacket sleeve—another stain—when I brushed by too closely, the doors themselves received regular upgrades and often boasted sophisticated key technology. A bare-minimum cost for intimidation. The Russians themselves, by the way, were similarly steel-faced, unsmiling, and I didn’t smile at them either. But this is about the buildings. The Stalin-era apartment buildings that house nine-tenths of the Russian populace are built vertically, and almost without exception, they’re either five or nine stories tall. The nines have elevators. In neither type are there hallways—only entryway-stairways, called podyezdy, with four or six apartments on each floor. A five-story podyezd took about 20 minutes to knock through, assuming nobody expressed any interest. Nine floors took 45. People at home in Idaho Falls or suburban Buffalo, where Malcomb was from, lived in houses. Homes. I beat Malcomb in chess five times in a row last week. When the two of us would find a door open, we’d start at the top, knock at each apartment, and pray for a sober person to emerge and say “Mormons?!? Of course I want to hear your message!” That or hot girls. In the absence of either, each slammed door widened the gulf between the Russians and me. My friends in America were partying, going to school, my family was sitting around the fire watching a movie, and here I was for two years, living a monastic life with an ironically bald cohort, walking around in a concrete-stained suit, and perfecting my pronunciation of nyet.

Missionary work was hard all throughout the former Soviet Union, but in the Siberian city of Omsk it was famously more so. I don’t know why. Our church was fairly new there, membership was sparse. But that was the case all over the country. Even in 2005 and in August, the land itself was cold, dark, and vast—a centuries-old natural prison. I hate to use the word bleak, which seems so obvious for Siberia, but Omsk was that more than anything else. It remains the unconscious standard by which I judge all usages of the word.

I never really felt at ease wandering around Omsk in a suit, since the
rebyata—literally “children” but in practice often something more like “hooligans”—were somehow worse there than in other cities. More outgoing, that is. “Ey, Amerika!” followed by some cursing in one of two languages, then a guiltless plea for money or a threat of some sort. Still, walking in twos helped, especially when your bald, broad-shouldered companion was scowling half the time. That actually was helpful. I had no idea how Bankston did it. He was another Omsk missionary, and he was always smiling, defenseless like a doe. And he was skinny, too, like me. The rebyata never actually did anything to me, luckily. In the summertime, the misty Siberian sun lingered well into the morning hours at such latitude, which helped. In the winter, of course, the opposite was true, and the sun started to set almost immediately after it made its appearance. But then, though, it was outrageously cold—too cold even for danger. So it all balanced out.

“The city was built almost entirely by prisoners,” I was told by a local soon after
arriving. “The name ‘Omsk’ is an acronym for Otdelyonnoye Myesto Ssylky
Katerzhnikh—Remote Place for the Exile of Convicts.”
Bad PR.

It was Wednesday, our day off, and on the last Wednesday of the month, about eight of us went to check e-mail at a new internet club. The city had a few such places, in random basements and back alleys. No matter how crazy things got in Russia, the general attitude was that it was always ok at home, and that’s what we got to remember on Wednesdays. I got to be consciously from there—the magical, stable, prosperous place that I wouldn’t have even believed existed if not for the weekly e-mails. On the way to this particular internet club on the last Wednesday of the month, which club was in both a basement and a back alley, Malcomb and I traversed the broad mud field separating it from the street by leaping between concrete slabs and other random debris. The place itself was inhabited by a dozen or so lanky teenage rebyata in black jackets and pointy shoes, scattered throughout the dimly-lit room playing war games and surfing the net. I always got the impression that much of the Siberian youth yearned, as I did, for personal connections to the stable world outside, even if they had never seen it. They saw us, and they liked that we were there, even if they’d never show it. So I assumed, anyway. We were palpable evidence of elsewhere. Malcomb and I sauntered past them to a room in the back.

I don’t remember who first logged onto CNN there in the back room, but within a minute or two, each of our eight monitors swung to the same story: a giant hurricane was tearing, at that very moment, through the southern United States. The honor system rule against outside websites went out the window as we collectively pored over hundreds of photos of people sitting on rooftops, trapped, floating face down through the muddy debris-filled streets. When one missionary came across new information, he’d yell it out to the group—this many dollars in damage, that many lives lost. I didn’t yell out so much. I was mostly just silently engrossed. It was incredible. A good chunk of New Orleans leveled. We knew New Orleans. A couple of us had been there.

One member of our suddenly animated group was noticeably less engulfed by the chaos occurring back home. It was Bankston, the smiler, who had only recently arrived in Omsk, though his reputation had preceded him. Elder Dustin Bankston was different from most of us in a lot of ways. First, there was the smiling, regardless of his audience, always, always smiling, but not like the one I’d put on at the end of a long day, timed just long enough to be seen through the peephole. Sometimes he even broke into song, though his voice was high and whiny—one of his honestly weaker attributes. He was a weird guy. For whatever reason, he was an extremely successful missionary, though. He was beloved by the Russians in a way I couldn’t comprehend, other than that he was maybe somewhat of a novelty. It was obvious even then that he was far less obsessed than the rest of us with preserving national bravado, at least in the traditional sense. Maybe it was because he had almost served his full two-year term and had learned from experience. I tend to wonder, though, if it had something to do with his origin.

Before he left it behind to come to Siberia, Bankston lived with his mom and younger sister in a 19th century mansion right on the coast in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. To the rest of us mostly-sheltered Northerners and Westerners, he was the South. He always said “no, sir” and “yes, ma’am,” and he even sang in a gospel choir, which is odd for a Mormon. He was full of stories about crocodiles and trailer homes. His best story, though, was about how his mom, a respected nurse, had recently bared all for the MTV cameras at Mardi Gras. This sort of behavior is also uncharacteristic of Mormons. No, Bankston and his family weren’t shy, per se. But on the last Wednesday in August, when the flashing dot on the CNN map was directly over his hometown, he didn’t have much to say. And he didn’t get any e-mail.

The next day was the one-year anniversary of my arrival in Siberia.
“Congratulations,” said our American mission president on speakerphone the next morning. Malcomb and I called to inform him of the situation with Bankston, of which he was already aware. We mentioned that our compatriot didn’t seem overly disturbed by the whole ordeal. He was quiet at the internet club, and later that day still seemed indifferent about the questionable existence of his house. Malcomb said he was in denial.

“It’s antebellum!” Bankston’s reedy voice sang when he told us. “It survived Hurricane Camille. It can withstand anything!” Had Bankston known that his entire hometown had been leveled, he may have felt differently. He had to know, though, and his outward confidence baffled me. The president assigned Malcomb and me to watch out for Bankston and prepare him for the possibility that everything was gone—basically, to let him down gently, assuming the worst. Later that day, Malcomb and I spent an hour trapped standing in a hot, crowded trolley bus experiencing electrical problems. In my journal that night, I lamented the inefficiency of such Russian “conveniences” for an entire page. I said “it’s a good thing that the majority of Americans are nice enough to lie when Russians ask questions comparing our two nations… Nobody that has lived in both societies can even approach a comprehension of how much better things are in America.” I also stated simply, “God bless America.” I don’t recall the tone of voice that hovered above the metallic ink that day, but I hope it was grateful. In context, it doesn’t seem likely, though.

At our missionary meeting the following day, I knew Malcomb would be insensitive toward Bankston, and he was. “It’s all gone, man!” Bankston took it with the same smile as always. I tried to be the bigger man and comfort my senior elder, telling him that while the Lord does indeed watch out for His servants, it’d be wise to mentally prepare for the possibility that he no longer had a home. But while Bankston remained more or less unfazed, I could feel my own steel door faltering. Here he was, a prisoner in Omsk, and while he’s away doing good, his home is attacked. It wasn’t fair. We were all prisoners, but most of us probably deserved to be there for one reason or another. Malcomb and I certainly did. Bankston was the best man among us, and yet it was his home, his point of reference destroyed, his neighbors floating face down on CNN. It didn’t bother me theologically. Every day, I fielded the question “Why do bad things happen to good people?” That was easy: good people are tested, just never above that which they are able to bear. Bankston had been so tested, and he appeared to be passing. I would have failed pitifully.

As I sat in silence, a younger missionary spoke. “Hey Bankston, if you need a place to stay for a while, you can live with my family in Utah.” Another concurred, offering his own house, and then another followed. Even frigid Malcomb offered lodgings with his family in Buffalo. I don’t think Bankston seriously considered any of the offers, though. He smiled as he sang to us about Dixie, unprovoked. I wish I was in de land of cotton—old times dar am not forgotten. I’m sure a big part of him did wish he was there, but I also realized that Bankston was Bankston, even in exile. He didn’t need to validate himself by consciously remembering where he was from. He just plain was from there, and even if he never saw home again, he had gleaned the best things from it. He had lost it because he was the only one of us who didn’t need it.

Bankston’s last three months in Siberia were harder than most. A couple weeks after the hurricane, his mom got a hold of him. As a nurse, she had been working night and day in a care center, with no way to call out. Some things were salvaged from their antebellum house, but most things were gone. Work in Omsk continued much as it had been before. Though it was only mid-September, winter had already made noticeable advances. Wind pushed through the crooked avenues, forcing us into heavier coats and hats as we scoured the bleak town for open doors. A punk on a crowded trolleybus unzipped the front pocket of my bag and almost had his hands on my wallet when I noticed him. I told him “nice try,” then elbowed him in the stomach, not nearly as hard enough, on my way off of the bus. I needed to be better.

It was only years later that I made the connection between the Russians and their steel doors, exhibiting stone-faced severity only on the outside. It seems so obvious now. The thing is, it was a front, yes, but a front understood and agreed upon by the whole community. Bankston figured that out, and responded to it as one probably should respond to someone who takes themselves too seriously—with a smile. His may not have been the Russian way, but it was real, and was received warmly. The front of mirrored toughness I had built up to that point was, conversely, entirely artificial, and the locals could see right through it. With time, I started to figure it out, and things got better.

The Conformist (fiction)

2008-04-03T15:52:00.001-06:00

Author's note: This is the first short fiction I really ever attempted. I wrote it almost two years ago, and it shows. I still love the idea, but I've never really been pleased with how it turned out. Maybe later down the road, I'll pull it out and make it work.

He was in the cemetery when it happened. He loved the cemetery. Not because he had a particular morbid fascination with death, but more because of the trees. They must have been over a hundred and fifty years old. The tall, stately pines that lined the roads between the headstones often drew him in for an evening’s walk, even in the brisk autumn. Of course, being in the cemetery, he couldn’t resist scanning the names as he sauntered along the path- pioneers, legends, founders of the sequestered mountain town from back in the peaceful Union days. There they lay, helpless to share any of the wisdom they must have accumulated in their long years.

The young man approached the stone bench where he always ended up. It wasn’t just a monument, but a thoughtful gift to wanderers, thinkers, and sweethearts for years to come. It was perfectly situated so as to see through the trees, down the hill, to the glow of Main Street. He smiled to himself, noting that whoever’s grave this was actually did something for society, unlike the still-living people down the hill.

He was old-fashioned, they said- un-different- the only one that voted in favor of the invasion. How could anyone be pro-war? The vote was supposed to be just a formality. He noticed, though, that ever since then, people around town started eyeing him with even more disdain than before. Oh, they thought of themselves as accepting, but they were only accepting of those that thought like they did. Often it was a young mother pointing and whispering to her child, or packs of homogenous scraggly teenagers taunting the local clean-cut conformist. It didn’t really bother him, though. Being “different” seemed to be a paradoxical standard for normalcy in the world. Where the word originally denoted being a part of the minority, it was now nothing more than the ironic label of the “open-minded”.

The young man couldn’t help but wonder what those long since passed would have said had they been around to see his world. Theirs was a time of progress, when people worked for the common good, regardless of race, religion, or gender. The majority of those legendary figures, however, due to circumstances at the time, were white males, which meant their “culturally insignificant” history was no longer studied in detail in the public school system. The Equality Commission discarded those old textbooks long ago in favor of newer ones that required the amount of information about members of each race to be exactly identical. Much pertinent information was lost.

The young man took a deep breath and prepared to address these idols of his directly when his bench began to quake. Freezing, he watched as all around him granite crosses toppled over in turn, fracturing upon impact with more modest stones around them. He jumped up from his seat and whipped around backward in time to see one of his beloved old pines reverently bow away, taking the rest of the row down with a deafening crash. Now fully expecting the undead to break through the surface to claim him at last, the young man exhaled- and saw and heard nothing, save the dissonant blaring of some nearby car alarms. The shaking gave way to ominous calm.

The stillness was soon broken by the sounds of front doors exploding open, followed by townspeople emerging from their homes, hoping to catch a clue as to what had caused the blast. He racked his brain, trying to remember the last time his once-fair little town had suffered an earthquake. To his knowledge, there had never been any. The jabber of the people outside grew louder as he approached, and he understood that the power and fiber-optic lines had been severed. As soon as it left his mouth, he knew it was a stupid question. “What happened?”

The young man had a hard time sleeping that night. He found himself largely ignored by the townspeople, who were busy looking after their own homes and families. He wandered off, and by the time his disheveled mind knew where he was, he was at home staring down at his equally disheveled twin bed. He climbed straight in and tried to relax, but every time he drifted off, images of his past haunted him back into consciousness.

The young man was again a boy at Moore Elementary, carefree and happy. He was reserved as a child, but confident. He wasn’t the smartest kid in the class, but he always got straight A’s. And he got along great with the other kids, despite his preference toward thoughtful solitude on the swings at recess, rather than kickball with the others. One Friday afternoon after a particularly good day of swinging, the boy returned to his classroom. Fridays were the day for special lessons after recess- not the usual social studies or science. On those days, the teacher taught the school’s very own grown-up lessons of life. The kids enjoyed Fridays, and would sit cross-legged on the floor staring up at the teacher, hoping to soak in morsels of her wisdom. The boy was no different. He loved Fridays too. But this particular Friday would forever change him.

On this particular Friday, his teacher placed a disc in the player and stood back to explain to the children what they were about to see. Familiar images were projected onto the board. He had seen this before. It was the president and his congress. “Grandpa taught me about this!” he thought excitedly to himself. The boy focused on the screen. For some reason, the people of the congress were split into two groups. One of the groups- the bigger one- seemed really happy about something, and they started jumping and yelling and pointing fingers at the other side.

“This happened yesterday,” the teacher started. “Does anyone know who these people are? That’s right- the congress.”

“Why are they fighting?” one of the kids asked.

“The little quiet group on the right is a group of old-fashioned people who like something called the Constitution. It’s a set of rules for our country that tells us what we can and can’t do. Who here likes rules?” The boy raised his hand, one lone skinny arm in a sea of contorted, disapproving faces. He lowered it slowly upon being ignored. “That’s right!” the teacher began again sharply- “Nobody!”

The teacher went on to explain how the big group on the left is “just like us” and voted to get rid of the rules. Now we will have rights without responsibilities! The class erupted in a raucous cheer.

* * *

The young man arose the next morning relieved to find his house largely how he left it after the earthquake. However, in the light of day now, he could see a few things that had indeed been knocked from their places. A framed portrait of his grandfather lay face down on the floor. The brick he salvaged from the destruction of the old church- one of the cornerstones- was in pieces, caked in its own dust. People were still technically allowed to worship in their own homes, but any sort of public display of affiliation to a denomination could land you in jail for “insensitivity”, so he kept it to himself now. Grandpa would have been proud that his little boy still believed- or at least he thought he did. “Search for the truth,” he heard his grandpa whisper as he bounced upon his knee, the old man’s dark eyes gleaming youthfully. “The truth may hurt sometimes, but it will make you free and happy in the end. Most people just make up their own opinions to sound unique and be heard. But you know what is right.” Now on the brink of mature adulthood, the young man felt increasingly more distant from the harmony that seemed to reign when his grandfather was still around. He was once one of the town’s most respected civic leaders and examples, as well as its last evangelical leader. But that was before the revolution.

A knocking at the door quickly shook him from his trance, as he hastily shoved the biggest chunks of brick under the bed. The knock grew louder and more insistent. The young man fingered a sharp corner of the brick, approaching the door slowly. His muscles relaxed a bit when the peephole revealed nothing out of the ordinary. “Hello?” Silence. Sliding the deadbolt over, he eased the heavy door open and peeked out. Hanging just above the dilapidated houses, an eerie, yellowish glow in the sky in the direction of the big city caught his attention. He instantly forgot about the knocking, stepped forward, tossing the door closed behind him. What could that be? He entertained a brief thought, then shrugged it off. He had been half-expecting this for over a year now. It couldn’t be, though. Someone would have spoken up.

Lost in thought, the young man turned around and lurched back as if shot in the chest. There sprawled across his front door was a giant blood-red letter ‘C’. He flipped back around, scanning the horizon, and saw no one. He frantically flung the door open, entered, slammed it shut behind him, and collapsed in tears in the hallway.

The young man arose disoriented a little later to hear the whir of the refrigerator from the next room. The power was back. He darted to the couch and turned on the TV to see the same message blaring on every channel: town meeting at 4:00. All those technically considered “narrow-minded” (those who voted for the invasion) generally weren’t welcome at town meetings, although by law everyone had to be admitted. The boy contemplated how he could lay low while still taking in the action. He had always taken an interest in politics and current events, but his traditional values and persona all but disqualified him from participating directly. A quick trip up to the costume box in the attic he hoped would provide him eligibility to be heard. It only took him a second, then he was gone, out the door, and down the street.

Chaos reigned at the meeting. The pungent odor of weed mixed with various forms of the coffee bean wafted through the air as the mayor attempted to gain order. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sure you’re all wondering about the tremor we felt last night.” Angry accusations arose from amongst the townspeople, blaming the earthquake on anyone that came to mind- “The government! Oil companies! War-crazed conformists!” The mayor waited patiently, moving the hair away from his eyes. “I’m afraid…” He was forced to lift his left hand to hush the crowd. “I’m afraid it’s much worse than you think…” The din began to trail off. “We’ve received word that our capital city was the victim of a nuclear attack. Communication with the city has been cut off, but we know we’ve lost myriads of people- more than we can begin to count. Under the circumstances, the highway has been closed. We would ask you to please remain at home, and remain calm. Rest assured, we will inform you of any developments as we receive them.”

Rioting ensued at the hall once again. Various citizens rushed to the podium in order to speak their minds and place their blame. A slight young man with purple hair took his turn, speaking more timidly than those before him, but with more conviction. “I know what this might sound like, but hear me out. We’ve been well aware that Nevada has been stockpiling nuclear weapons for well over a year now, but we voted to do nothing about it. It’s probably them invading us, just like they threatened.” Right then, the boy was seized from behind, casting off his wig.

Nevada Special Ops agents burst in from the back just as the townspeople dragged the last “conformist” away. At last, everybody was different, and the truth wouldn’t offend anyone anymore.

Superior (fiction)

2008-04-03T15:50:00.004-06:00

Author's note: This is the story that won the USU (Scribendi) fiction contest for 2008, the Dylan Days fiction contest in Hibbing, MN, and got me a place in the finals of Hollins University's annual short fiction contest. That's perhaps the best writing school in the country, and I was the only finalist (there were 9) west of Arkansas, so I don't feel too bad about not winning that. This was my first attempt at unreliable narration, but I think with time it turned out all right. Enjoy it here courtesy the Scribendi website.

http://www.scribendi.usu.edu/fiction_ugrad_1st.html