December, 1919 – Chapter 1

Welcome to the first chapter of  “December, 1919”, a serialized novel written by Oliver Gray. New chapters will be published every Wednesday.

Chapter 1

Face red and flecked with sweat, he held his cap chest-height, scrunched between fidgeting fingers.

“G’d morning ma’am. That’s not to say it’s a good one. I’ve just come from down the docks,” the boy said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, as if trying to buy time before speaking again. “I’da telephoned you see, but then I remembered y’ain’t got one. I came running when I seen it. There’s been an accident ma’am.”

“Yer husband…” he said, dropping his head.

Mother’s face completed his sentence. Sickly pale and expressionless, like her spirit had already moved on to join my father, leaving her body behind as a barely breathing husk. We both lingered in the kitchen as seconds sludged by in agonizing silence. I wanted to speak, hug her, lie, conjure some linguistic magic to tell her we’d be OK without him. But instead I just stood, watching the sky turn rotten apple orange in a cloud-muddled sunset. At some point, my mother broke her silence, and left me alone at the kitchen table. Her shock faded into sobs, which, as the night’s shadows sank ever deeper, crescendoed into unrestrained wails. I couldn’t do anything except listen to her mourn and refill my glass.

The boy had offered little in his bumbling description of the events, just a blunt announcement that my father would never come bounding through that door into our home again. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t know what really happened, he’d come of his own accord, in a rush, in the face of a situation that would have taken the heart of most boys. The police didn’t come to report his death for several hours, but when he hadn’t come trudging down that side alley after work the previous day like he did with machined consistency, we had braced ourselves for bad news. Part of me felt something change in the energy of our little home that night, a goodbye winked in the streetlights reflecting on the snow, in the quiet mewling of Andy, our alley cat, like the world was letting me know he was already gone.

It was hard to tell whether I’d fallen asleep, or if the bourbon had eloped with my consciousness at some point in the night. Solar knives cut through kitchen, piercing the Philadelphia air, highlighting the emotional hangover that had slung itself over the house. My mother still sobbed, but now her cries sounded pathetic, not angry. I cracked three eggs into a bowl. I wished I could do the same to my brain to relieve the pressure. As the clear turned white against the black of the cast iron and my mind focused back on painful reality, I heard a knock on the front door.

Before I could take the eggs off the heat, my mother emerged from her room, wiped her face, and forced a smile through puffy cheeks. She’d changed into a black dress. Sharp juxtaposition to her normal vibrant purples and blues. “I’ll get it,” she said.

I followed, not wanting her to be alone with anyone quite yet. I could see a man through the side window, but the sun glared at just the right angle to obscure his face. I was wary it might be the police again, or some nosy neighbor that wouldn’t want to leave my mother in peace until she has all the details to share with the church gossips. She cracked the door slightly, hiding most of her body behind the wood and hinges like a shield, and peeked out into the morning.

In perfectly pressed tweed stood my father’s oldest friend, Elmer Green. I hadn’t seen him in years. He’d put on quite a bit of weight, but those wrinkles – the natural tattoos of a man who smiles and smokes too much – gave him away. He took off his hat. “Sorry t’ bother you so early Meredith. And you, Jack. I was in New York. Came down as soon as I heard.”

Mother made some tea. Earl Grey. His favorite. Elmer slurped it thankfully, trying to shake December’s romantic advances. “I can’t believe it,” he said, steam from the cup obscuring his eyes, “Shot? And by the police no less? What did the inspector say? I just can’t believe Andrew made it through that hell for something like this to happen.” He stopped talking when mother’s eyes went dewy. “I’m sorry Mere, it just seems so…unfair.”

It was unfair. My father, the proud and loquacious Corporal Andrew Cooper, served two years in the blood-slick mud of the French countryside. He’d beaten the statistical odds and returned relatively unharmed, save for a shrapnel scar on his right cheek and some memories he’d rather have left on the other side of the Atlantic. He’d faced down Germany and death, emerging from the stink of the trenches victorious.

All to be mistakenly gunned down by some flatfoot who thought he’d make a name for himself by catching a thief.  “They thought he’d robbed a bank,” I said, trying to fill in some details for Elmer, “he was lugging a sack of barley. In the dark the police thought it was a bag of money.”

From the police recount, my father had acted suspiciously and refused to step out into the light to show himself to the officer. The officer in return felt threatened, and was forced to fire. This version of the story conflicted greatly with my father’s personality and with what the dockboy had told us. I didn’t know what to believe, except that a man had killed my father and wouldn’t face any justice for doing so.

Elmer reached into his bag and pulled out a stack of papers.

“I hate to do this now, but it’s important,” he said, shuffling through the mess of yellowing sheets. “Before we left for the War, Andrew asked me to witness for ‘im. I’ve got all the correspondence. He was worried he’d never come back from France, and wanted to make sure you and Mere was taken care of.”

“A will?” I asked. It was unlike my father to think so far ahead.

“Of sorts,” Elmer said, handing a careworn, fold-marked letter to me. “More like a contingency. Not officially legal, but a judge wouldn’t be denying these if you presented ’em. He left the house and service pension to Meredith. What little is left of his grandfather’s money is hers, too.”

I couldn’t handle it anymore. I’d forced the idea of his death from my mind when he went to war, imagined my father a modern day Achilles, nearly invulnerable, incapable of succumbing to a force so common as death. And now, after celebrating his return, finally settling back into some kind of familial normalcy, I had to face the senselessness of it all. I thanked Elmer for taking the time to see us, and excused myself before the dam behind my eyes gave way to the building torrent.

“Wait, Jack, there’s one more thing,” Elmer fished around in a separate pocket of the bag for another, much cleaner and official looking document.

I turned.

“He left the brewery to you.”

To be continued…

Two Announcements, One Blog Post

Resolutions. Never liked ‘um. They always seem like psychological scapegoats, faux-vagaries and promises cobbled together to atone for holiday gluttony.

So no, I won’t be making any resolutions for 2015.  Instead, I want to announce my two big projects for the year. Admittedly 2014 was sort of punchy and random on the blog, partly because my neurons naturally fire punchy and random, partly because in the blur of re-adjusting my life after loss, I found it difficult to look too far into the future.

But 2015 offers a fresh twelve on the Gregorian, plenty of time to plan, and a coming spring packed to the petals with potential. I’ve always worked best within the confines of a larger tasks, knowing I’m working towards some discernible end, tackling the very large by splitting it into the very small.

Nonfiction Project: Homegrew.com

My garden embodied emotional peace for me last year, and as I was planning out what I wanted to grow this year, it struck me: why not grow my own barley? I’ve already got hops in the ground, so grain seemed like a natural progression. From there I figured I might as well reclaim my own rainwater to water said crops, and it didn’t take too many logical leaps to add wrangling my own yeast strain to the list of springtime yard-jobs.

And then, if I had all four ingredients, just sitting there all nice-like, I might as well brew some beer, right?

Thus, from the verdant loamy field of my brain, Homegrew was born. I plan to grow and malt my own barley, isolate and cultivate my own wild yeast strain, collect and filter rainwater, and pluck and dry some hops all to brew a beer completely made by my hand. Nothing store bought, ingredients wise. I will not, however, be building my own tools (he says now…).

I’ve already created the site, and will track every step of my journey via categorized posts. My goal is to turn the site into a searchable archive of how I did each step, the problems I faced, and (hopefully) how I overcame them. It’s sort of like extreme homebrewing meets extreme gardening meets extreme blogging. Sort of.

Please stop by and check out the new site at: www.homegrew.com. I already added some preseason content, but new posts will start rolling in as I do research, buy seeds, etc. I may cross-post on Literature and Libation some, but for the most part, it will be all original, new content.

Thanks to my friend Melody for the “From Seed to Sip” inspiration

Fiction Project: “December, 1919”

The last Session had Alan McLeod asking what beer books we’d like to see in the coming year. While there were many excellent suggestions, one collective desire sounded a bit louder (or a bit closer to home) for me: beer fiction. I’ve written some tangentially beer-related fiction before (here, here, and here), and many other short stories inspired by beer, but they’ve always been one-offs, standalone flashes, never anything of any real substance or scale.

In 2015, I plan to remedy that. Instead of following the traditional path of writing a whole manuscript, editing it, and sending it off to collect rejections from publishers, I figured I’d do what I (like to) do best, and blog the story. Or serialize it into 52 parts. One chapter a week, every Wednesday, for a year. Around a thousand words per chapter, give or take a plot point or two.

Without having to add a “spoiler alert” tag, the story is titled, “December, 1919” and tells the story of Matthew Cooper, a young man who unexpectedly inherits his father’s brewery (and legacy) on the cusp of Prohibition in the US.

The first chapter will go up next Wednesday, January 21. I hope you’ll stop by and read a while.

Cheers, prosit, sláinte, and thanks for all the support.

Brew Fiction: Twice A Maharaja

He knew it was a bad idea to split his soul again, but with the curved blade inching nearer to his heart and the garlicky, bearded breath of his murderer beating down on his face, there weren’t many other options.

He closed his eyes, whispered in a language long forgotten by man, and felt lightning blast through his veins. For an uncountable flash he was a bolt, pure power, a god incarnate.

When he opened them again, he was looking down at his old body; feeble, mangled, gasping through the blood and tears of a life about to end. He locked eyes with the white and hazel that had been his for 70 some years, watching the confusion unfold as the assassin tried to understand that he had, thanks to the Maharaja’s hidden talents, just murdered himself.

A copper pan fell and clattered on the floor, and the king leapt back, bloody kukri held out in front of him, still dripping lethal red warning. This body wasn’t as young as he’d hoped his next would be, but it was lithe and flexible, built to run and climb and kill. He lowered the blade and slipped behind a nearby pillar of ornately carved sandstone, hoping to catch a glimpse of the unlucky voyeur.

Silhouette sprawled across the bedroom floor in furniture and curtain shaped cut-outs of pale, lunar glow. The moon was full and fierce but half the room remained pitch and hidden, plenty of space for another assailant to hide. He eyed the corners behind the massive royal bed warily, for any slight sign of unwelcome movement.

Shiny fur, more obsidian than matte, slinked through the night, weaving in and out of shadow like it was made from, or part of, the darkness. Two jaundiced eyes ruined the perfected camouflage. The cat silently jumped onto the king’s table, disrupting the maps and military figures he’d been obsessing over only a few hours earlier.

“Oh, it’s just you?” He reached out and let the cat sniff his fingers. The digits were knobby extensions of an ugly hand, hairy, scarred, betraying a life of poverty and thuggish petulance. It had been so long since he inhabited another, that the sudden unfamiliarity of his limbs made him feel dizzy, and he grabbed the edge of the table to keep from falling.

The sudden movement scared the cat, who darted to safety under the bed. The king knew he needed to eat and rest, but the scene in the bedroom had to be cleaned up before the servants came to preen and dress their lord for his morning rituals. He grabbed a earthenware pitcher from the table and swallowed greedily. Where he had expect water he got beer, malty and warm, left out of cold storage for too long. It felt good to have something in his stomach, and the alcohol ever so delicately shaved the edges off the pain still echoing in his brain.

Even though the body was no longer his, the memory of the blade’s bite remained, sending phantom messages to his nerves and flesh, who sung dissonant songs of pain in return. He had long ago mastered a way to keep physically young, but his mind was layered with a millennium of memories, a hundred different lives, some rich, some poor, some blissful, some agony. He wondered, wiping the beery froth from his coarse unkempt beard, what this new body, this next life, would teach him about the world.

A far curtain rustled, and the king turned to see what the cat was up to now. But instead of finding more feline antics, he found three men who had presumably entered through the window, all wrapped in faded gray linens, brandishing knives just like his. The biggest of the three looked down at the pile of bloody regal robes, then back up at the king’s new body. He opened his mouth and sounds came out, but the Maharaja did not recognize them as words.

“व्हत् हप्पेनेद?” The assassin used the tip of his knife to point at the corpse. “तेल्ल् मे व्हत् हप्पेनेद!”

He poured through his history, through all the books he’d read, all the places he’d lived, trying to decode the message coming from this gruff intruder. To buy time, he grunted, feigned exhaustion, even knelt in faux-fealty, hoping, assuming, that this man was his superior in whatever gang they represented.

Unsatisfied, the three moved towards the king, silky hisses of sharpened steel being drawn from leather following close behind. The Maharaja panicked for the first time in a century, unsure he had the energy to stop all three men, given how recently he’d changed corporeal residence. He held the kurki forward, but his arms were weak. The first parry knocked him back into the table, soaking the maps in the remainder of the beer.

Just before he was stabbed for a second time that same night, just before giving the man a chance to imprint another painful puncture, just before the world turn blindingly white, he closed his eyes and whispered those ancient words.

This time the lightning was more like fire, his soul an insatiable inferno moving between realms.

When he opened them again, he could see the hunched backs of the three men, bent over the space he’d so temporarily rented. The room seemed much brighter than before, but the colors were muted, as if some were missing. This body felt good; springy, agile, seductively sneaky.

The men seemed happy with their work, and went to rifling drawers for royal secrets and treasures. The Maharaja watched them closely, perched atop a bookshelf, his two yellow eyes the only sign he was there at all.

“And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.”
― John Milton

Brew Fiction: Firestone Walker Double Jack

The flames speak.

Each crack a noun, each snap a verb, each sizzling hiss an adjective. All part of a language no person can comprehend, part of an infinite chain of echoes that has been flaring and dying since that first bolt of lightning kissed the trees in the Earth’s infant years.

Interconnected, but not a hive-mind. Sentient, but not sentimental. Alive, but not quite living.

The flames sing.

They repeat every story ever told to them, mimicking the words and waves that thump out a beat for their endless dance. They absorb and become those stories, fueled by the tales and their troubadours, perpetuating the oral tradition with burning lips.

Every campfire a ghost story. Every grease fire a spitting satire. Every bonfire a Homeric odyssey.

The flames rage.

They’ve seen it all, those eyes in the inferno; the wars of steel, the wars of hearts, the wars of gold and greed. They know our history as it is their own, and lash with red-hot whips against the conflagration of our culture.

Unable to stop us. Unable to tell us. Unable to do anything but burn us if we get too close.

The flames die.

Their energy dissipates, leaving only the light of elder embers and the chants of a slow dirge. The heat leaks, and with it the story, warming the air and ground and soul of the planet, sprouting into new fledgling flames somewhere in the unseen distance.

In every flick then lick of fire or flame a word and idea. In every human eye a reflection of the glow. In us all a burning need to tell.

Brew Fiction: Southern Tier 422 Pale Wheat Ale

The waves never relent. A group of Sanderlings, all grey and brown and white like they are made from the same sand they run on, chase the ebb and flee the flow. Two boys, lathered with lotion and stung with sun, fight over the height of their tiny Tintagel. The high tide washes over my feet, baptizing them in the name of this unchanging summer ritual.

It’s impossible not to notice the surfers, the dots of purple and blue and orange on the horizon appearing and disappearing behind troughs and crests. I watch their practiced patterns: wait, paddle, stand, ride. I admire how they jump up from their knees to their feet, like proud warriors against the waves. I cringe as they fall, face first, into the greenish brine. From the dry safety of my chair I’m with them, balanced as precariously between awake and asleep as they are between surfing and swimming.

As a black wet suit and orange board peaks at the top of a foaming surge, another surfer slides by, thrashing wildly on the stubby East Coast wake, like a shark caught in waters too shallow for comfort. He turns hard, spraying water behind him, before the energy of the wave is spent, and his ride unceremoniously ends. Slapping the water out of frustration, he pulls himself back up onto his board.

I’m sure out there -weightless, bobbing, free – we sand-slugs look silly hunching under umbrellas, sprawling on towels like jerky left to dry in the sun. Out there, in the endless tides, where a dolphin is more than just a fin in the distance, a man can be calm. Out there, where the only focus is feet and wax and waves and wonder.

Out there.

I swear to myself I’ll ride one of these days, feel the spray of salt on my face. I swear I’ll know the freedom and fun of a day on a longboard. I tell myself to just stay positive, to work hard, to take it one day at a time. I tell myself that practice makes perfect and without pain there is no gain.

I call to my assistant. The thin wheels of my chair are stuck in the wet sand. This happens every summer, when I demand time at the beach, and then demand I wheel myself to a ramp, off the boardwalk, into the sand, down to the water.

I tell myself that soon I’ll be unstuck. I won’t need an assistant to wheel me back to the van. Soon I’ll be able to feel that water washing over my feet, feel the sand burn my soles. Soon I’ll have an orange board and a black wet suit of my own. Soon it will be the power of the wave carrying me forward, not the power of my arms.

Soon I’ll be out there.

Brew Fiction: Dogfish Head Sixty-One

The cheer rose to crescendo, hovering in the rarefied air just below the mineralized fibers of the dropped-ceiling tiles, and held there, floating in the blueish glow of muted florescence for a single, glorious second before falling back down to polished wood of the twelve parallel lanes. The other eleven had fallen idle as all attention crowded on Lane 9, where Costello had just sent his purple and green swirled 15-pounder sliding towards the brave pins standing like a perfect set of post-orthodontic teeth, sixty feet away.

The ball hooked hard right then scurried left, spinning in a way that seemed to give the middle finger to the laws of physics, crashing into the gap in the front teeth, sending them scattering into the gutters and each other. The ten-pin, a stubborn molar, wobbled drunkenly, unsure whether he’d fall or stand, collapse or correct. The echo of that last tooth dropping filled every bit of free space in Waterford Lanes. Rumor had it you could even hear the sound of the plastic-on-wood clattering and reverberating in the stalls of the men’s bathroom.

And as soon as it was officially down, and the judges deemed no toe had crossed fault line, and no other bowling etiquette or technicalities stood in the way, the screens flashed like two dozen malfunctioning robots, displaying over and over and over again: 300! The same cheer that had collectively burst from Costello’s fans as he hit that eleventh strike, exploded anew, part scream, part yell, part singing celebration of something that is as statistically unlikely as a rookie golfer sinking a hole-in-one on a par 3.

He stood and stared at the robotic arm sweeping away the corpses of the pins, aware but unbelieving, having courted the high 200s for years and years, thinking perfection was impossible. He cracked his knuckles and turned around to face the little boy in an over-sized shirt that matched his. The boy looked at him like a mortal upon a god, eyes glistening with pride, ears covered by his tiny hands to muffle the deafening exuberation all around him. He threw his eight-year old arms as high around Costello’s legs as they’d go, hugging him with the same zeal as a he’d squeeze a new stuffed bear just to show how much he loves it.

Whistles shot from the back of the crowd and a slow chant started, Costello’s surname rhythmically pumping with the pulse of the alley, like his legend, his perfect game, were now part of the beams and dirt and concrete that gave the alley a form. Old Arkansas, the portly and pleasant owner, came and dropped a tall domestic in his hand. “Ya finally did it you son of a bitch!” 

Costello winced and then smiled. “Hey, hey now. Not in front of the kid.” He rustled the mop of blonde hair that was still firmly attached to his legs. He’d done a good job, he reassured himself. The boy, despite his lack of understanding about anything parental, was doing alright. Sure he was a load or four of laundry and a trip to Hair Cuttery away from being truly presentable. But overall, given the emotional toll of the unexpected and unwelcomed, he was growing up strong and smart.

It took a solid hour for the line of congratulants to clear out, each one wanting to shake the hand of the first man to toss a 300 in this place since Chuck Werner did it in ’66. The mob of after-party had dwindled into a few stragglers too drunk to drive, but the energy still buzzed in the air, as real as the Alan Jackson tunes that floated lazily from the dated speakers mounted in the walls. Costello sat with the boy, slowly drinking his beer, letting the silky bubbles roll around his tongue and slide between his teeth before finally swallowing. It was late, even for him, and the little eyes on the little face next to him kept popping open and then slowly closing, defiantly trying to stay awake and hang with the grow-ups.

Midnight chimed it’s inevitable arrival. Costello knew the days of hanging in the alley with Jessica or Cathy or Angela until 3:00 A.M. were over, so he finished his beer and tried to pay Arkansas, who promptly refused. “You kiddin’? That game of yours made me a bundle tonight. Least I can do is give you a beer or two on the house.” He picked up the empties and nodded toward the boy, now curled in the fetal position on the orange plastic chair. “Best get him home and in bed.” Costello scooped up the crumbled sleeping mess of boy, slinging him over his shoulder like an human-shaped sack, careful not to hit his head on the door frame as he carried him out to the parking lot.

As Costello settled the boy into the back seat of the black and rust colored Silverado, he whispered, sleep blanketing his tiny voice, eyes still closed, “Luke, will you teach me how to be a bowling hero?”

♦♦♦♦♦

The bowling alley was as old as the town hall, and featured just as prominently; the thirty-foot Art Deco sign could be seen from almost anywhere in the town. One advantage for advertisers and billboard enthusiasts on Maryland’s east coast: no hills. In the low, stinging sun of morning the alley’s age showed in wrinkles of peeling mint-green paint and growing gaps in the grain of the wooden siding. He stood for a moment in the shadow of the massive sign before looking down at his nephew. “OK Kyle; bowling time! Let’s find you a good, 8 pound ball.”

It took Arkansas nearly fifteen minutes to dig up a pair of kids size 3 bowling shoes, but the lack of wear and scuffs made them perfect for Kyle, like they’d been on reserve for him alone, waiting for him to discover his tokens of destiny and take up shoe and ball like Theseus took up sandals and sword.

Kyle demanded to tie the shoes himself. While he fumbled with the laces and tied about a dozen knots in each, Arkansas pointed behind them both to the new, shiny addition on the wood paneled wall near the entrance. There, next to Werner’s huge sixties mustache and amber tinted glasses, hung a little picture of Costello, right arm up in the air, a candid shot of him as he released the ball for the final strike. The little gold plaque read simply, ‘Luke Costello – Perfect Game – June 1, 1998.’ Arkansas had wasted no time getting that award engraved and mounted, as proud of the achievement and the man as he was happy that it happened in his alley.

“You ready?” Kyle was already on his feet, awkwardly stomping around with the wooden heels of the shoes, showing off how well he’d adhered them to his feet. He wore his over-sized bowling shirt again, nearly refusing to take it off since the victory three nights ago, and looked equal parts absurd and adorable with the line of buttons on the front hanging just below his knees. Costello made him tuck it in; the last thing he needed was for the kid to trip and bust his lip on the slippery wood and carpet. God knows what kind of stuff was growing between the gums stains.

In his typical fashion, Kyle refused to have the bumpers raised and refused to use the chrome-plated ramp-assist, arguing with Costello that he could easily get the ball to the end of the lane, easily get a strike, if he really wanted to and tried. When Kyle became so defiant, so self-empowered and bold, he could see in the boy some of his father, the father before the accident, before the diminishing power of a motionless year in a hospital bed, before his youth and energy had all but drained into the dozens of bags of fluid and blood that collected and dripped in perpetuity.

And when he ran up to that foul-line, stopping just short to let the ball glide out of his hands with inborn grace, short arms guiding the ball skillfully even though no one taught him how, overly long blond hair twirling like the bottom of a loose summer skirt, he could see in the boy some of his mother. The ballerina, the prom queen, the girl so much better than this nothing town, the one going places, so in love with life that even her failures were enviable. The girl he’d loved just as much as his brother had, whose hand he’d held as her soul left that broken body, unable to take anymore of this world.

The ball moved well, but the slick of the polish got under it at the last minute, and Kyle’s attempt only managed to clip the seven pin. He slammed one foot down angrily. “What did I do wrong!?” Costello stepped up behind him, showing him how he’d released the ball too soon, and how that had caused the trajectory of the ball to change dramatically. He held his arm, one hand on his elbow, the other on his wrist, and swung it for him, stopping it in the air where he should release the ball. Kyle’s next throw knocked down eight pins.

Costello let him practice using his frames, not counting those towards his total, knowing Arkansas would give them as many free games as they wanted until the buzz of the perfect game and minor celebrity wore off. He sat and watched Kyle, throw after throw after throw, thinking about how he’d never expected to have this much responsibility. Thinking about how in the vast cosmic swirl of unfair circumstance, he’d become a father because of a rainstorm, had his life injected with sudden parenthood because of a poorly maintained patch of country road and a violent collision of tree and steel.

Kyle threw the last frame, finishing in a huff of disappointment, his ball hitting two pins before disappearing into the black abyss behind the lane. He looked straight forward, and cracked his knuckles, or tried to, like he’d seen Costello do at the end of a game. His confidence morphed into a huge frown as he looked up at the monitor to see his score. “I didn’t even get 100.”

“Well would you look at that” Luke playfully poked Kyle in his side, trying to elicit a laugh and a smile. “The first game I ever bowled was a 61, too.”

Beer Review: Dogfish Head Noble Rot

The Earth’s breath swept through the stones as long interred guests howled in disapproval of our gathering. It was a late winter 8 A.M., everything floating in lifeless grey, nothing bragging about the joy of life except for a few bouquets of violet anemones that were propped up next to a sign that read, plainly, “Matthew Leonard Cole.” Leafless skeletal hands reached into the ashen cloud-cover, like some mischievous undertaker had come in the night and flipped all the trees upside down.

Roots above, blossoms below.

The priest, a stranger to us but not this town, stood stoically in his freshly dry-cleaned robes, performing his never ending duty with that bible like Sisyphus with that rock. A red silk bookmark hung from the pages of the holy text, tongue wagging in the winter wind, holding a place of reminder, of memory, of last rites.

Well practiced but unfamiliar, the priest stumbled through an exaltation of Matthew’s life: his myriad but inconsistent successes, his tragically short but intense relationships, the nothing and something and everything he left behind. He did the best he could, having received the scribbled pages of notes from friends and family only hours before, to make Matthew seem like a person who would be missed after this small crowd dispersed.

The priest read and read – those canon phrases buried in Pslam; valleys and walking and shadows and death – monotone to match the grey, somber to match the cold.

My mind wandered, drunk on loss and beer from the night before, and I had a hard time understanding the religion that filled my ears. His words seemed familiar, like I’d heard them before, like I knew their shape and structure, but it felt like I was listening to someone try to explain a complex idea in a language I didn’t know. Or at the very least couldn’t remember.

The few people who had shown I knew through Matt or Matt knew through me – a conclave of our combined social lives. Some had come far unexpectedly, others had come short, full well expecting. They hunched, coats like clerical robes covering sadness, the morning mist gathering on then rolling off waterproof fabric like tears. I counted nine. Nine to remember twenty seven. One for every three years.

Finally, the priest stopped communing and looked at me.

“I believe Katherine has a few words to say.”

I had hoped he’d forgotten, that the idea of this eulogy had slipped away in the midst of the verses, had been carried off by the holy spirit. I fumbled in my pocket for a square of white, my memories of Matt condensed into eight point five by eleven. I unfolded it carefully, reminding myself that he would be doing this for me were roles opposite; were I horizontal and he vertical.

I stared down at the crease in the sheet, one line a little longer than the other, meeting perfectly in the middle.

“Matt asked me to speak for him, but I’m worried that I can’t. I only knew him as a sister and a poor one at that. Many of you – his friends, cell-mates, fellow-trouble makers – might have known him better. But because I share blood, the responsibility falls to me to remember how he was and who he was, when he was.”

The Times New Roman on the paper blurred, deformed and refracted through the water in my eyes. I said I wouldn’t. Didn’t think I could. I folded the paper along the cross and put it away.

“I had prepared something, but it won’t do. It’s too sterile, too formal. Matt isn’t an anecdote, isn’t a punch line to some bad gallows humor. Well he wasn’t, at least.”

Several that had been staring down at the coffin looked up to me now.

“Death baffles me. What does it mean to go away? To disappear from the places you used to be? To leave a house, a car, a life that is full of your things but is empty of you? If our words still appear on paper, if our voices still echo in memory, do we ever really leave? I think Matt is still with me, still in the spaces around me, in all that air that we think is nothing, in the poems and photographs, still lingering like an eternal radio transmission.”

The wind threw a left hook, a massive gust that toppled the sign with Matt’s name, blew the purple blossoms across the graveyard’s tombstone teeth. A few errant strands of blond whipped across and stung my face, self-flagellation for a sister who’d in recent years misplaced her piety.

“And when we go, does our dignity flee? Does it run from this life, this planet, like a scared child in the face of a pillaging army? Or does it persist, angry that it has been dethroned by something as inevitable as death? The Egyptians buried their dead with gold and jewels and all those beautiful things that defined worth and value. I’d like to think we bury Matt today with all the love and spirit he brought to the world. I’d like to think we bury him beautifully, bury him with all kinds of otherworldly riches…

…but I wonder. Death equalizes and strips. The body decays even when encased in gold. Is it possible for a corpse to be regal? Is it possible to nobly rot?”

“Western funerals: black hearses, and black horses, and fast-fading flowers. Why should black be the colour of death? Why not the colours of a sunset?”
― Daniele Varè

Beer Review: Sam Adam Blueberry Hill Lager

“Have I ever told you about Blueberry Hill?”

Edgar sat as Edgar liked to sit, in the almond slices of afternoon that came through his window like a star forced through the slats of a wooden park bench. The light caught him, processed him, and charged him. The verdict: guilty of age. It glanced off his head, peeked through his little white hairs, those few near-translucent hangers-on, stubborn and unwilling to finally just give up, poking up from his saggy head-skin like defiant sign-waving protesters.

His eyes fixed on the sterile room’s only window, he went on, his voice an anachronistic skip like the hand of a record player stuck in the same groove, repeating the same sounds, desperately needing to be reset.

“Sheila always reminds me of the hill. She comes to my house to get me, loitering at the end of my drive. From my front door she looks like a tiny flower dancing on the wind. My dedicated daffodil.”

Despite the medication and the careful care from his well-trained and well-meaning attendants, earthquakes still raged through his nerves, the epicenter his cracked and faulted brain. As his hands involuntarily rattled against the wheels of his chair, his eyes remained still but squinted, shielding themselves from the barrage of rays.

“She sure is something. Those sun dresses she wears…” he closed his eyes, savoring the memory, chocolate on the tongue of his mind, “…the wind catches the fabric and her hair and blows them all around, and she giggles. She likes to wrap as much of her hand around mine as she can, and then we walk towards the hill, just the two of us in love, not a care in the world. Yes sir, she sure is something.”

A cloud passed between man and sun and the stream of light flickered like a memory captured on film, replayed so many times that the vivid colors of youth faded to grainy black and white. The cloud lingered a moment longer and the room showed itself true: not haven or refuge or sanctuary, but a grey and gruesome headstone. It was not here that he lived, anyway. Edgar resided in a Massachusetts that no longer existed, a home remade perfect and pristine by those few fleeting snapshots that still remained intact. It was a place of another time, one he could always, and never, return to.

“You know why they call it blueberry hill? ” A few-toothed smile climbed up onto his face. “The blueberries bushes! Dozens of them, randomly growing on the side of the hill. In summer, they’re packed with so many of those juicy little things. They look so nice, sometimes I feel bad about eating them and ruining the perfect scene. Everyone always says that wild blueberries are too sour to eat but, oh, not these. These are perfect. Just like my Sheila.”

Leaning forward in his chair, trying not to let the wheels slip out of his achy grasp, straining against the ichor in his bones, Edgar longed to see a little further out the window.

“That hill, let me tell you, it isn’t just a hill. That place is love incarnate. I stole my first kiss there, a few years back, but Sheila didn’t mind. I was lying next to her, laughing that we forgot a blanket again, and as she smiled, staring up at all that blue and white, I rolled over and kissed her cheek. She didn’t pull away, didn’t laugh, just turned and looked at me with those eyes and I knew. That grass and those bushes. That’s the place.”

The hill. Sheila. April blueberries. Teenage love on a spring day. The world he saw out that window was an invisible paradise.

“Can I go outside? It’s such a beautiful day, I’m sure Sheila’s already waiting on me.”

It was an involved process to get him ready; his lungs couldn’t muster any defense from the onslaught of pollen and pollutants, and he could barely move under the weight of the oxygen tank and UV blanket. He was proud, but in his protective suit, looked more machine than man, more artificial than real.

He blinked, staring out over the poorly kept courtyard, staring at the lone gnarled stick that masqueraded as a tree and the dozen bluebells that struggled up through the sun-scorched ground.  After surveying the landscape, his shoulders sagged and he rolled his head back slightly, blue-green eyes looking into mine past the molded clear breathing mask of the respirator. Those eyes, with longing spilling out as tears, flashed for a moment, his computer rebooting as if it had hit some unrecoverable error upon seeing this ruin of nature.

“Have I ever told you about Blueberry Hill?”

Beer Review: Evolution No. 3 IPA

The memories are inconsistent, jumbles of pictures and sounds but nothing concrete. A fall. A cut. Bleeding. Healing. I recognize these wet, fallen leaves, but not this naked skin or the blood on my hands.

“I have the schedule. We’re going to review batches one through eight from Sample Block E.” The lab coat, animated by some pale ghoul wearing glasses, spoke with authority. “We purged blocks A and B earlier this week. Only one batch had a slight improvement over earlier iterations. Strains were isolated and taken for further study.”

I hear water. Somewhere off to my left, the trickle of a stream. I try to move towards it, but my muscles ache from the gnashing cold. My bones feel like iron being dissolved by acid. The branches from these fallen trees jab my bare feet, poking and stabbing and torturing with every step. I can see my breath.

“I was disappointed with the results from number one. Do you concur?” One lab coat shuffled awkwardly next to another, hazy outlines of men washed out by glaring overheard lights. “Number two shows a lot of potential, but it’ll never work with those defects. We’ll extract the sequences and move on.”

The sun is dropping in perfect time with the temperature. As the shadows grow longer, my aches burrow deeper. I’m not sure I can outlast this day, not without finding some kind of haven. The water soothes my cracked throat. My teeth chatter.

“Ah, three-ee. Three-bee showed great improvement, but we had to remove it due to a psychological abnormality.” One lab coat marked something on a clipboard, pen skittering across the paper like a spider across a web. “I think this one is the first passable example we’ve seen. Except…”

The sun is gone. I don’t know if I’ll see it come up again. I can see a light in the distance, up high, casting a yellow glow over the clearing. My legs feel too sore to run, but I move towards the light. Towards the light. The warm, seductive beams of light.

“No, no. This won’t do. The project parameters specifically set the tolerances of variation. If we accept this batch, we’d be undoing years of meticulous splicing.” Lab coat one turned and whispered something to lab coat two. “No. I said no! Flush the chamber.”

The light is affixed to a wall of stone. Several more throw flat light in all directions. The wall is smooth and cold, but I can feel a hum coming from the other side. The leaves and sticks have been cleared here. Familiar.

“I don’t care if you think the progress is too slow. Natural evolution takes hundreds, thousands of years. We can speed it up, but these changes are subtle, gradual.” Several other lab coats had gathered, all of them moving away from Block E, ghosts moving from one life to the next. “We’re scheduled to review Blocks C and D tomorrow. There’s still hope our engineering will have the desired effect.”

I pass several large, round openings, most dripping water into shallow pools. Tracks, deep grooves in the mud, move off in every direction. I can finally see a door, brown and thick and metal. I run my hands along the concrete for guidance and support. I move slowly. I see a sign.

“Good, good. Three-cee appears to be within limits. Inform the director. We’re ready to move to live trials.”

The metal is cold, etched. Words. A language. Words I know: united, lab, genetics, states. My fingers are numb. I try to remember, but the memories are inconsistent, a jumble. I slump against the wall. I rub my hands across my chest, trying to keep warm. I find something. Raised skin, painful lumps. A three. A bee. I close my eyes.

“Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous.” -Barbara Ehrenreich