How are you, Stranger?

No stranger than usual. How ‘bout you, Bud?

I’ll let you know when I’ve had a little more of this coffee. Honestly, I feel like I’ve aged a week since I saw you last.

Hey, it’s only been a week, but this is weird. Things have come to where you act like seeing my image on the laptop is the same as “seeing” me. Did you get a haircut?

I did. Jodi said I was looking more like a homeless person than an aging rock star. What are we doing today? Are we gonna play some tunes?

That’s the plan. First thing would be to check the gear and see what kind of readings we’re getting for latency. I’m showing you at five mili-seconds total for your audio interface.

Wow, that’s pretty good. You’re reading closer to ten, but still in the green. Are you having some weather over there in Santa Fe?

Snowed again last night. That might affect these crazy jitter readings. Should we both hit the “resync” button?

Good idea. Ahh, that’s better. Yeah, all your settings are in the green now. I was online yesterday jamming with a bass player in Michigan and we were getting about the same readings. He was probably a thousand miles from here, but we had a tight session. He’ll make somebody very happy in a cover band doing oldies. No real issues, but he’s not the one we want for this particular ensemble.

Okay, let’s play something together to warm up the guitars, and then I’d like to run over the new songs. Did you get my email with the revised lyrics?

Yeah, I printed them out last night. I think the lyrics are fine, but I do have some questions about where you want the harmony vocals.

I’m not sure about that yet. Let’s use the software to make a place holder recording this morning; we’ll be better able to decide about details of the arrangement after we hear what we did. Meanwhile, and I don’t know if you’d be up for this, but I thought it would be fun to get away from our material for a half hour play some Hank Williams tunes.

Yeah, like which ones?

Anything you’d like. Lost Highway, Lovesick Blues, Hey, Good Lookin’, I Saw The Light, Your Cheatin’ Heart. Any of those appeal to you?

Let’s do I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry. In the People’s Key of E flat.

All right then. You want me to kick it off?

Harpeth Rivers is a New Mexico transplant from all over who has written songs about isosceles triangles, played bass guitar in a band, and declared himself “Retro-eclectic.” His novel-in-progress is entitled Last Year.

“We’ve hit rock bottom,” my wife Anna groaned. “Sitting on the couch watching other couch potatoes on television critiquing reality shows like we do, it’s proof positive we have no life.”

“When did we die?” I played along, but Anna frowned.

“Okay, we breathe, eat and do other things that mirror life but we’re just making a mockery of it. Pass the popcorn,” she groused.

I took a sour bite of reality chewing Anna’s words. I mulled over the touchstones we should’ve heeded as our world shrank: living vicariously through reality stars like the Kardashians, Saturday date nights becoming a toss-up between doing laundry or grocery shopping, the family barbecue three years ago when my father-in-law started making sense. Even the dog stopped chasing balls instead lolling on the couch with us barking at the canine stars of Pitbulls and Parolees.

“How did we fade away, Anna?” I sputtered but my wife, paying rapt attention to our new flat screen TV, silenced me with a finger that zipped both our lips.

Bookended by births and funerals, we first ran circles around our parents then our kids ran circles around us. We became chauffeurs and coaches. We spent Fourth of July on our front lawn gleefully watching our neighbor across the street light off illegal fireworks. Our aging parents sandwiched us as caregivers, and the death of the 9 to 5 job killed any free time and passion to live life on our terms. Ground to a powder, we burrow into the couch to escape reality by watching and parsing reality shows. And now we watch our proxies do it for us.

“Pass the popcorn, Anna,” I shrugged and slipped into my Snuggie.

Marc Litman is from Granada Hills, CA

It is morning and I am sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper having finished a bowl of cereal. My wife comes down after arising, showering and various other things. I take a good look at her and exclaim “You look like a million bucks”. She is appreciative

Time passes as I do things around the estate. We have lunch together. She has been to the grocery store and stood in line at Target after fighting an obvious welfare lady for the last bottle of Windex. I think she lost. I look at her and exclaim “You look like three quarters of a million bucks.” she smiles.

She did a chore or two and then napped. She came down about 3. I looked at her, hesitated and exclaimed “Girl; you look like a half a million bucks”. She looked at me not saying anything as she wasn’t quite awake.

She made us dinner after she had been to the gym for a workout designed for 30 year olds. She is more than twice that. I sat down at the table with her and proclaimed “You look like a quarter of a million bucks”. She smiled but added an icy glare.

About 8:30 after she had fallen asleep twice in her lazy girl while watching a rerun of the real housewives of Bagdad, she awoke and looked my way. I looked at her and said in a quiet humble voice “You look like $100,000”. She fell back in her chair and nodded off again.

Later we went upstairs to bed. She finally left the bathroom and jumped into bed wearing her combinations World War Two memorial night gown and hazmat suite. I looked at her and sheepishly said “You look like $25,000”. She snorted and rolled over.

I couldn’t sleep. I was trying to figure out if I had lost $975,000 that day.

Kenan Bresnan is from Indianola, Iowa

The doctor asked us in the E.R. if we had noticed anything different in recent days before Daddy’s nosebleed, speech impediment, and his crippled arm that look superglued to his side and not moving when he commanded and cursed it. I was puzzled why the doctor thought that what happened before mattered. Any idiot could tell Daddy’d had a stroke. Behavior leading up to it wouldn’t change a thing.

“He seemed red in the face, was grumpier than usual, and got in a fist fight with our old neighbor, Mr. Willis,” Mom said.

“Old neighbor? How old was he?” the doctor asked.

“90.”

“Fist fight about what?” He was writing on the chart and looking over his glasses on the bridge of his nose.

“Our pear tree limb hung over in his yard. We’d always let him keep the pears on his side of the fence, but he lopped the limb off without asking. Said he needed prunes, not pears. I didn’t hear it all, but I called the sheriff to break it up. I yelled from the porch, but they weren’t stopping. Sheriff told them he’d put them both in jail if they did it again. He didn’t have time for their shenanigans with all the drugs he has to deal with.”

The doctor shook his head. “With hardening of the arteries added to an already decreased blood flow, people begin to act more like children.”

Mama leaned toward the bed and said, “Jack?”

Dad’s eyes moved toward her.

“His eye movements are a good sign. We’re going to go ahead and get that left artery scheduled. It’s like a roto-rooter going in there and breaking up that plaque, so he can get better flow. We’re like old cars. Need new hoses, points and plugs, lube job every now and then.”

Daddy nodded and we said, “Thank you.” The doctor bolted, and daddy’s head turned in the pillow, his eyes closed, and Mama whispered to me: “I’m gonna go by the store and get Mr. Willis some prune juice and tell him your daddy is in the hospital and he’s sorry. It’ll make Mr. Willis feel better about it all and not be scared.”

Niles Reddick is author of the novel Drifting too far from the Shore, two collections Reading the Coffee Grounds and Road Kill Art and Other Oddities, and a novella Lead Me Home. His work has been featured in seventeen anthologies, twenty-one countries, and in over three hundred publications.   http://nilesreddick.com/

 

I am biting into a cookie. Chocolate chip. This is back before cookies were soft and pliant and there would be no crumbs falling to the kitchen floor, linoleum covered with the faint of yellow wax.

It is Tuesday, and my father is late for dinner again. Outside the window, beyond the orange flower curtains, the trees are green and budding. It is April, and everything is young.

I hear the hallway door slam open; an umbrella being stabbed into the stand. It didn’t rain the way mother insisted it would.

I am biting into a cookie when the shadow that is my father walks in. My mother has taken the broom from the closet and is sweeping crumbs into the dustbin. She is kneeling to get the smallest crumbs, and turns her head startled towards my father.

I am biting into a cookie and my mouth freezes open into a cave as my father pulls my mother up by the collar of her flowered housedress. I’ve seen this before. His arm above his head. Tornado in his fist.

My mouth closes around a scream as he lets go of her and crumbles into himself, his arm falling to his side. His face as purple and twisted as a howl.

The grass outside a shiver in the wind, the only sound until the hee-haw of the ambulance whooshing up the street. My mother lifting up my father’s face, brushing crumbs off of his cheek, sweeping everything off to the side.

Francine Witte from New York City

 

I hadn’t thought of high school, those awful best years of my life, since college, not as ghastly. Afterwards I kept things on an uneven keel, keening not keening, that would be unmasculine, suddenly it was out – mine, hers, both? – can’t tell in this light, nothing’s hard, nothing will be, it’s the drink, not age, not me, it may be me, it’s

A screaming comes across the world, the stain of love upon the sky, that can’t be it, and yet

She, not seen since, moved one of the coats on the bed, cloaked the small intruder. “Not here,” she said.

“Where then?”

“Nowhere, I had a crush on you then but I’m in my fifties now and you”

“Never mind about me, just”

Then our song came on, dancing time. She smiled, crooked, led the way downstairs, not touching, we rejoined the party buttoned up as though nothing happened, nothing did, she rejoined her husband, I went outside, couldn’t retch, came back, cold, damp, not miserable, someday she, we’ll laugh, tell no one, blab it all about, what

I grabbed a cold one only to

Clyde Liffey lives in Ivoryton, CT, near the water.