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Cotter Pin by Martin Indars
Tibet’s oppressed. Arctic ice is getting thin. But all I need is a cotter pin.
If not that a bolt or rivet may do
for my troubles now are small -their fixes are too.
I know, I know Australia’s coral is bleaching while my countrymen celebrate science’s death. But first I’ll go fix the dirt patch out back with sand and soil and my ryegrass sack.
You see I’m on that side of the hill where I see finity and pay less mind to worldly ills neither felt nor heard
from my quiet corner garden in Norwich.
As I seed the dirt I finally see something I can do within arm’s reach. It will not heal the earth or spur civility
but the dog I adopted thinks the world of me.
Martin Indars lives in Norwich, Ct., and works at Nippy’s Driving Range. His photopoems can be found at martinindars.com
It’s Hard for Me to Tell My Brother I Love Him, So Instead I Write a Story by Alice Kinerk
The word addiction comes from Latin. It means to surrender. A drug addict is a person who has given over his or her life to a substance, who has given drugs the helm.
The first time my brother went to rehab, he was fifteen and I was six. I was in the living room when a thunderbolt hit our front door. That’s what it sounded like. Then it happened again. Dad’s wood chopping ax, left behind when he moved out a few months before, broke through. Then a hand reached in and unlocked the deadbolt.
Mom yelled for me to hide, so I shimmied under the couch, which I knew from playing was just enough space to shimmy under. In my haste, one sandal slipped off, toe pointing toward my location like an X on a pirate’s map. From there I watched my brother chase Mom through the house, ax raised.
In the decades since, I’ve forgotten if the ax incident occurred before or after my brother bought me the Strawberry Shortcake game for his Atari, before or after he picked the pieces of my broken plastic headband out of the backyard and superglued them back together, before or after he made a box of brownies, cut it into quarters and shared it with me three to one, before or after his girlfriend dumped her cosmetics onto the kitchen table and painted my eyelids blue.
When my brother was twenty and I was eleven, Mom and I flew across the country to visit him at Yosemite, where he had work washing dishes. We camped, hiked, and admired Half Dome, but it was the pine trees I couldn’t get over. We had pine trees in New Hampshire, but the ones in Yosemite were different. Narrow while ours were bushy, sparse while ours were dense. My brother was happy. All three of us were.
Over the next decade, my brother made the local news when he tried to drown someone in the YMCA pool. Later, showed his friends how to climb the fire escape into Dad’s apartment. He stole Mom’s car and drove it to New York. He also wrote me a step eight letter, that one where you make all the amends.
My brother came to my wedding when he was thirty-one and I was twenty-three. I was living in Washington State by then, while he’d been back east for a decade. It was a long time since I’d seen him. He looked well-scrubbed and healthy. Because he couldn’t get a driver’s license, he told me he walked several miles every day back and forth to the restaurant where he was a server. It took hours, along rutted back roads, but he didn’t mind because it gave him time to think. His girlfriend was beautiful, their baby was adorable, and in that moment of new beginnings I allowed myself to imagine once again that his good times might last.
When my brother was fifty-one and I was forty-two, he landed in the hospital, which is where he usually turned up after a period of MIA. Only this time Mom was not allowed to visit him, and couldn’t even stand outside with balloons like people did in those days, because he was too sick to get up to see out the window. He was detoxing, plus COVID, plus his pacemaker. Mom texted me to keep my schedule open for a funeral.
When my brother was fifty-six, I was forty-seven. I was visiting for a week. We had lunch with Mom’s wife in her memory care unit. My brother spooned squash into her mouth while Mom caught up on emails on her phone. Eighties rock blared from an enormous television. According to my brother, eighties rock was what they always played. It was meant to appeal to their elderly patients, nostalgic for their youth. This miscalculation made us chuckle, but in a morbid, won’t be long sort of way. At the beginning of each song there was a lag before the title and artist appeared onscreen. Maybe ten seconds, just the opening chords. And each time, my brother knew the song. Title and artist. Correct every time.
Okay, maybe not every time. But a lot of times. Thinking about it now, three thousand miles away and half a year later, it felt like he knew every song. And he’s my brother, it’s my memory, and I want to remember it that way.
This fall, my brother went to prison. He’s facing up to five years for distribution of narcotics.
In February, Mom called to say she had written my nephew out of her will. It was one thing for my brother’s ex-girlfriend to block their son from seeing him. That was understandable, given his habits. But now, as an adult, for his child to maintain the estrangement? Unforgivable. Everything will now come to me, my brother having declined his inheritance years ago, explaining that receiving a lump sum of money would kill him.
A drug addict is a person who has given their life over to a substance. At least, that’s how Mom explained it to me when I was six. But recently I’ve been thinking a better definition is that a drug addict allows a substance to dictate some of their life details. Because even my brother has good days. And who among us, sober or not, can really claim to hold all the power in their lives? I’ve been married and divorced. I’ve been passed over for promotions. I’ve planted gardens consumed by deer.
Drifting toward a half-century of life, I have a hand on the rudder, but the water is choppy. The ocean is vast. Sometimes it feels like the only thing I can do is wave from afar at the people I love. Raise my arm up in greeting, once in a while, squinting at the horizon while their vessel passes by.
Alice Kinerk gave up keeping her house clean in order to devote more time to writing. She’s published in Colorado Review, North American Review, Terrain.org, and elsewhere. Read more at alicekinerk.com.
The Blue Binder by Jonathan Ferrini
Victor grew up inside a trailer park with dilapidated trailers packed together like tuna in a rusty old can. His grandmother’s trailer smelled of cleaning supplies; the scent she brought home from cleaning offices overnight. She raised Victor alone after his mother abandoned him for a life as a hippie drifting from commune to commune.
She knew he was different: not able to speak, withdrawn, unable to tie his shoes, write his name, never learning personal hygiene and unable to feed himself. Schools labeled him “retarded” and wouldn’t enroll him.
In the corner of the trailer sat a dying black-and-white television with bent rabbit ears. Victor sat cross-legged inches from the television screen, mesmerized by flickering images while the picture rolled and the sound hissed. His grandmother couldn’t afford a sitter to supervise him while she worked. Victor didn’t require supervision because the television and a transistor radio kept him engaged inside a world, he felt safe.
The components of a broken transistor radio were Victor’s playmates: a ferrite rod antenna wrapped in copper; a small oval loudspeaker; and the tuning capacitor. Other friends included the compact circuit board, cylindrical transistors, and striped resistors.
He spread the radio components across the floor. His grandmother gave him a wooden puzzle set of familiar geometric patterns. Victor preferred triangles because they had a base and stood upright like he was signaling the need for steadiness.
Victor built faces with the components of the radio; two round capacitors became eyes; a curved wire became a mouth sometimes bent upward, flat, or dipped into a quiet sadness; the loudspeaker formed the body; the ferrite rod antenna became a spine; and copper coils became hair. He placed a small transistor perched on top like a hat, tilted just enough to suggest the figure was attempting to say “hello” with a tip of its hat. Victor used components the way other children handled crayons.
His grandmother described his component constructions to his pediatrician, “He always places a mouth on the triangles.”
The pediatrician suggested, “I believe these triangles are Victor’s only way of communicating his feelings. “Children like Victor require around the clock care and will never amount to anything more than grown toddlers. “As he grows into manhood and you become frail, there is no alternative but to have Victor committed to a state hospital where retarded children are cared for and live out their lives.”
***
The intake office at the Junction State Hospital smelled of antiseptic and urine. The intake social worker, Joanie Greenstreet, watched Victor closely as he rocked in his chair, eyes drifting toward the ceiling.
“This is the worst part of my job. “It’s best you slip out of the room with no goodbye, so Victor isn’t aware.”
Victor’s grandmother left her grandson forever.
***
Junction State Hospital was built in 1940 on state land inside the countryside, out of sight, and out of mind where the paved road with sidewalks and streetlights gave way to a narrow dirt road leading past the locked rusting gates of the hospital resembling a haunted mansion.
The hospital was for children who did not speak; rocked incessantly; banged their heads against walls; screamed at sounds no one else could hear; and couldn’t feed or bathe themselves. They were children with autism before autism had a proper name: Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, learning disabilities, and genetic conditions doctors didn’t understand.
Their care required around the clock attention, which was beyond the financial resources for most families. The parents were convinced by medical providers “long-term placement,” “specialized supervision,” and “they’ll be safer” were the only alternative.
Fathers hurriedly carried suitcases inside and left quickly while mothers cried openly and others didn’t cry, having lost the ability. Many parents never came inside choosing to hand their child off to an attendant from the car like dropping a package marked “No Return Address” into a mailbox.
As the children matured inside Junction, they roamed the narrow hallways, heard keys, and came accustomed to the smell of disinfectants, feces, and urine. They quickly learned which staff were gentle and which were not.
When they died without family, there was nowhere for them to go except for an undignified cemetery on the hospital grounds.
***
Victor was placed in a ward with boys suffering from mild to severe disabilities. Some were cunning and feigned friendship, sitting next to Victor on the edge of his bed only to touch the portable television he brought with him which he hid under the bed. His radio components were confiscated, thrown away as “choking hazards” which eliminated the safe and kind world which might shield Victor from for the horrors of the ward. He erupted into violent fits requiring sedation and restraints at times. Victor refused group activities and meals if it meant leaving the TV behind.
***
Joanie Greenstreet was a young post-doc psychologist who tried to help Victor adjust but couldn’t reach him. She offered to keep the television safe inside her office, but Victor wouldn’t allow it to be taken from him.
The hospital’s chief psychiatrist was determined to permanently medicate Victor and subdue him into submission, but Joanie pleaded for more time to reach Victor explaining, “I see something special inside Victor, Doctor Spencer. “I need more time to reach him.”
“You supervise a large ward of boys demanding your attention and making Victor a ‘pet project’ isn’t fair to the others, but I’ll give you a limited amount of time.”
***
Doctor Spencer’s words dusted up Joanie’s memories of a failed marriage to a man whose family tree spawned several babies with “Down Syndrome” and, when she became pregnant with his baby as an undergraduate, he demanded she receive amniocentesis testing.
The results came back showing the genetic markers for a baby with Down Syndrome.
“You’ll have an abortion, dear, and we’ll try again.”
“I’ve been reading babies born with Down Syndrome can lead productive lives, dear.”
“I won’t stand for you delivering a freak of nature.”
“Choose an immediate abortion or a divorce!”
Joanies decision to acquiesce to the abortion created a fracture in the marriage which led to divorce. She finished college earning a bachelor’s and master’s degree in social work determined to assist families and those afflicted with developmental disabilities.
***
Joanie motivated Victor to attend group meals by permitting him to bring along his TV. She collected broken transistor radios from sympathetic staff members which permitted Victor to return to a familiar, safe place within his mind, inside the privacy of her office. Victor trusted Joanie.
After months of their meal routine, Joanie was optimistic Victor could avoid permanent sedation when he agreed to leave behind the television underneath his bed when going to meals. One evening after dinner, Joanie escorted Victor to his ward. The television was on top of his bed and the knobs and rabbit ears were broken off accompanied by a perverse chorus of laughter and giggling from the boys inside the ward.
Victor screamed while rocking back and forth managing to break free from Joanies embrace. Three staff members subdued him with plans to administer a mind-numbing sedative. Joanie wrestled the syringe from the attendant. She held Victor tightly until he settled down.
Joanie tucked Victor into bed and sat beside him all evening. She recalled a small shop inside town named Nakamura’s TV & Radio Repair.
Joanie obtained a day pass to have Victor accompany her to the repair shop. They carried the broken television inside the shop smelling of dust and warm metal cluttered with old TV sets and radios.
Kenji Nakamura was an old man with a pocket protector loaded with pens, pencils, and tiny screwdrivers. He flipped the television around, removed the back, and stared inside.
“It’s all vacuum tubes. “Even if I could find the parts, the cost of repair is more than buying a refurbished set. For ten dollars, I’ll sell you a reconditioned set including a remote control.”
Kenji held Victor’s hand, guiding his forefinger to the blue button pressing the remote. The television jumped to life with a crystal-clear screen. Victor was mesmerized by the ability to command the television.
“You’re holding a magic wand.”
Kenji leaned into Joanie and whispered, “Why don’t you buy it for the kid and take it with you?”
“I have a plan in mind which might be breakthrough therapy for Victor.”
***
Victor collected pop bottles from every trash can and sometimes absconding with half-filled soda pop bottles he found on desks. Staff members collected bottles from home and placed them inside a collection drum within Joanie’s office. Victor’s daily collection showed a work ethic with a goal in mind which impressed Joanie and Doctor Spencer.
After months of collecting bottles, Victor placed a soda pop bottle inside the collection drum. He pointed to a ten-dollar bill Joanie taped to the bottle collection drum reminding him of the monetary goal.
“You’ve collected five hundred bottles according to my tally.
“Let me hold your forefinger to the calculator. “Let’s press five, zero, zero.
“What is the price paid for each bottle, Victor?”
Victor practiced tracing the number two and cent sign for weeks and traced the number and cent symbol with his finger in the air.
“Let’s press the letter ‘X’ which will multiply ‘500’ by two cents.”
Joanie held Victor’s forefinger to the calculator’s equal sign. “10.00” glowed in red. He ran to the ten-dollar bill taped to the collection drum, tore it off, and proudly handed it to Joanie. Victor tugged on Mrs. Greenstreet’s arm as a non-verbal signal to immediately leave for Kenji’s shop to purchase the television set.
***
Kenji proudly handed Victor the television.
“Why are packing boxes strewn about?”
“I’m retiring because transistors have put me out of business.”
He handed Victor a tattered and faded blue three-ring binder. “These are my notes including everything I learned in the Army Signal Corps and repairing TV’s and radios for twenty years. I want you to have it.”
Victor opened it carefully as if understanding it contained magic. The pages were filled with precise pencil drawings including circuits, pathways, and transistors including handwritten notes. Victor studied the first diagram, and his breathing changed, catching Kenji’s attention.
Victor’s finger lifted and hovered above the paper before touching, following and tracing the circuits pathway. His finger shifted slightly and to a different point and found a shorter path and tapped it once. Victor looked towards Kenji as if speaking in a non-verbal communique only the two would understand. Kenji felt something stir in his gut.
Victor placed his finger in the air sketching an invisible correction knowing he mastered an improvement to the diagram. Kenji wrote on the page what Victor was inscribing in the air with his finger pencil.
“Is this what you see?”
Victor traced the path with his finger on Kenji’s diagram. He tapped it once. Kenji understood Victor was not reading the circuits like a map but inventing shortcuts for the pathways allowing the signal to flow quickly and flawlessly.
“Victor knows the signal’s destination and devised a better way for it to arrive. “I hit a wall with my intellect, but Victor doesn’t see a wall. “He intuitively devises pathways over, under, and around my wall. Permit him to study the binder, Joanie.”
“You believe he understands it?”
“I believe he understands what it wants to become.”
Joanie carefully turned the pages finding detailed handwritten drawings of electronic circuitry including images of tiny boxes with legs resembling metal insects.
“What are these images, Kenji?”
“Tiny transistors replacing vacuum tubes and the future of electronics.”
“Are you certain you want to part with your life’s study?”
“I’m not parting but handing the baton off to a new generation who will usher electronics into the future.”
***
Joanie set up a desk, lamp, and chair inside her office for Victor to study. Joanie watched as Victor sketched transistors and circuits. Kenji’s binder began to fill with pages of original study intuitively devised as if constructing the triangular figures he adorned with radio components. Kenji organized his study as if he were providing Victor with a light to follow discovering new pathways Victor would provide to the signal.
Victor watched television with the binder open on his lap. The screen glowed, and so did the pages of the tattered blue binder. Nobody except Victor knew there were two signals inside; a signal guiding him through the world as it was, and the other signal showing him what the future of the world could become.
Joanie invited Doctor Spencer to review the blue binder with her. He turned each page with fascination.
“A TV repairman and Victor put this together?”
“The original work was a gift from Kenji Nakamura to Victor, but the newest pages are Victor’s original scholarship.”
“I developed a rudimentary knowledge of electronics by reading Popular Electronics as a young man. “
“The original scholarship resembles a ‘paint by numbers’ directional guide for Victor to follow.”
“Victor owns this?”
“Yes.”
“Small computer companies are sprouting up which will change the world.
“They’ll want a peek at this work but, before they do, I want to consult with a patent attorney.”
***
Victor and Joanie sat as the attorney explained the importance of protecting the blue binder with patent applications. Victor was distracted mimicking the finger gestures of a secretary striking the keys of a typewriter.
“I’ve prepared a retainer agreement but given Victor’s diminished mental acuity, he’ll require a guardian’s signature.”
“Doctor Spencer will sign.”
“I’m also preparing a trust for the benefit of Victor.”
“Why is that necessary?”
“Stand by and find out, Joanie.”
***
Vigorous attempts to locate Kenji led to an obituary about his burial at Arlington National Cemetery.
Negotiations for purchasing the blue binder followed quickly after filing the patent applications with the potential sale price reaching into the millions of dollars.
“If Victor will agree to sell the blue binder, he can build a home suitable for his special needs with round the clock care and retain a sizable estate for himself.”
“You must make Victor understand the value of his intellectual property or in time, others may improve upon Victor’s innovations, and the blue binder will become worthless.
Money meant nothing to Victor because his world didn’t comprehend what it could buy, control, or influence. Victor refused to look at renditions of new homes because the small bed inside the ward with his black and white remote-controlled television was home.
Joanie never attempted to influence Victor to sell the blue binder. She made gentle suggestions as though placing electronic components on a workbench and trusting his hands to assemble them. She hit a nerve when she mentioned, “…kindness is its own reward like a gift from Kenji to you of the blue binder allowing you to carry on his study.”
Victor understood Joanie to mean the signal’s pathway design was finally completed. Kenji provided him with a compass to follow along transistor trail, and Victor understood currents moving through copper also move through people. He knew currents went where it was guided, and money was a current. Victor found the inspiration to provide others with the happiness he found inside a smiling electronic triangle built with components.
***
Doctor Spencer retired from Junction State Hospital and devoted his retirement years to pioneering the burgeoning field of neuroscience. Doctor Spencer made a visit to Victor before leaving the hospital forever. He came upon Victor sitting with Joanie as he designed improved pathways inside the blue binder.
“I’ve spent my medical career learning how signals move through the brain and become interrupted requiring people to live inside Junction State Hospital.
Big electronic boxes called ‘computers’ are helping us to understand why pathways become distorted and the signals are lost inside the brain.”
“Your blue binder can help us build smarter computers and show us how to repair twisted pathways and confused signals.”
Victor turned his attention back into the pages of the binder not noticing Doctor Spencer and Joanie had left the ward. Doctor Spencer left behind a framed photograph of himself, Victor, and Joanie, taken not long after Victor arrived at the hospital. The photo was a reminder of the first day he didn’t feel alone but happy like the smiling triangle wearing a hat.
***
Joanie returned to her office from morning rounds to find the blue binder on her chair with a smiling component triangle inscribed with a letter, “I.”
Doctor Spencer explained the notation was an engineering abbreviation for the term “sustained current.”
***
Joanie retired but Victor remained enjoying quiet happiness watching his television illuminating darkness. The framed photograph of Joanie, Dr. Spencer, and himself was hung near his bed. On his nightstand, a vacuum tube gifted to him by Kenji remained reminding Victor that it once provided the glow behind a television screen creating light, but now, he felt like he gifted the same glow creating light to others made possible by the advances within neuroscience leaping from the pages of the blue binder.
***
Institutions like Junction State Hospital were replaced with group homes providing home-like environments and patients transferred elsewhere. Victor didn’t moan the loss of familiar people because he lived within the circuitry of his mind where the signals resembling Joanie’s quiet voice and Kenji’s patient hands remained.
Victor was the last to be buried within the hospital cemetery. Junction State Hospital was replaced by a new state college. The neuroscience institute created a scholarship for underprivileged students studying electrical engineering named The Blue Binder Scholarship. Although the hospital was forgotten, Victor remained broadcasting a signal comprised of memories including love passing like currents between human beings.
Victor Kline
1958–2014
He could not live in the world as it was,
so he quietly helped build the one that came next.
Jonathan Ferrini is the published author of nearly one hundred published short fiction stories and poems. He is the host and writer of the weekly podcast, “The Razor’s Ink Podcast” where he discusses movies, television, and music. A partial collection of Jonathan’s short stories has been published within “Hearts Without Sleeves Twenty-Three Stories” and available at Amazon.
Johnny Ace at the Pearly Gates by Jeffrey Hantover
Johnny Ace (John Marshall Alexander, Jr.)
December 25, 1954
The last week in December was always a busy period for St. Peter. Many of the infirm and the aged who willed themselves to make it to Christmas expired a day or two after the holiday having triumphantly crossed the finish line. Distant family members came together for the holidays, and old grievances and resentments were rekindled in close quarters. Domestic spats lubricated by too much drink turned violent and fatal. Regrets multiplied, depressions deepened, and death seemed the only answer in the 4 a.m. darkness. St. Peter had to call upon his brother St. Andrew to help out with the extra load at a temporary desk set up thirty paces to the left of the gate. Even with the help St. Peter was frazzled by the constant parade of the dead in their gaudy Christmas sweaters and their ill-fitting blouses and shirts they would have returned in the next few days.
St. Peter heard the whoosh of a new arrival. He looked at him and then down at the book of life to confirm the identity of the young dark-skinned man, about five feet seven, who stood before him in a shiny gray sharkskin suit.
“Mr. Alexander, I am sorry to see you here so soon.”
Johnny Ace looked around, confused by his surroundings. He looked down at his polished alligator shoes. “What happened, sir? He asked in a soft lilting Southern voice.
“There was a bullet in the chamber.”
“I didn’t hurt Olivia, did I?”
“No physical harm. I’m afraid, that’s all I know.”
Johnny Ace twisted the three-stone diamond ring on his right hand. “She gave me this today.” He paused. “And Big Mama. Is she okay, sir?”
“You frightened her terribly, Mr. Alexander.”
Johnny Ace didn’t look St. Peter in the eyes. He spoke quietly, full of “yes sirs” and “no sirs.” He was a shy, polite young black man born and raised in the South who knew his place when speaking to a white man. St. Peter had waved many innocent young black men in their prison stripes through the gate. Johnny Ace had a sweet baby face marred by a wispy moustache and pomaded hair. His suit was tight across his chest. He carried more weight than he should for a man of his slight frame. St. Peter could tell without looking at the book that the young man was not taking care of himself. He was not eating right and drinking too much. Successive one-night stands hundreds of miles apart had taken their toll on his once slim body and youthful appearance.
St. Peter sensed the young man’s discomfort at being called by his birth name. Everyone knew him now as Johnny Ace. Calling him “Mr. Ace” seemed awkward to St. Peter. Against normal protocol, he addressed him as Johnny. In the last two years St. Peter heard the angels humming Ace’s hits. It was often the last thing that teenage drivers heard when their speeding cars veered off the highway into gullies and trees. Though he grew up in Memphis, the home of Beale Street blues, Ace was a mellow baritone, a crooner of heartfelt ballads with a warm, relaxed tone. There were a sadness and vulnerability to his singing that cut across the musical color line.
“Johnny, do you know where you are?”
“Looks like the pearly gates I do believe, so you must be St. Peter with those keys dangling up against that white robe of yours. Am I going to heaven, sir?”
“That’s for God to decide.”
“Don’t have the Lord go talking to my mama. For sure, I’ll be going straight to the fires of hell.”
“But I see here in my book that you sang in the choir of the Bethel AME Church when you were younger. That must have pleased her.”
“She thought I lost my way, sir, playing my guitar down on Beale Street. The blues was the devil’s music to her way of thinking.”
“I’ve heard your music, all those hits you had. They were sweet and gentle to my ears. No shouting, no rough words.”
“Thank you, sir. But for mama if it weren’t church music, it was the devil’s music.”
“Your mother took in your wife and child. That was a fine thing to do.”
“Yes sir, she treated Jean and little Glenn when he came along like family. But I wasn’t welcome in my own home. She said I wasn’t doing right, said I had lost my way.”
“Was it just the music?”
Johnny didn’t say anything. He tugged on the sleeve of his suit, avoiding St. Peter’s eyes. He seemed to St. Peter like a child caught stealing a candy bar from the neighborhood grocery store.
“Up here Johnny you have to look at the truth head on. This is the last stop on the train. Do you understand?”
“Yes sir.”
“I see you were dishonorably discharged from the Navy.”
Johnny smiled. “Yes sir, the Navy didn’t agree with me.”
“I can’t see that you ever had a real job.”
“No sir. I spent most of my days shooting pool and horsing around with my pals down on Beale.”
“How did you support your wife and child, Johnny?”
“Mama and my father looked after them.”
“You never gave your wife and child any money? Not even after your records were selling and you were performing all over the country?”
“No sir,” Johnny mumbled softly.
“Come closer, Johnny so I can hear you better.” Johnny took two small tentative steps toward St. Peter. “I thought all you singers liked to be front and center in the spotlight.”
“No sir. I just sat at the piano and sang. Big Mama liked the bright lights not me. Guess you would say I’m shy. Always have been, unless I’m juiced up.”
“You did drink a lot.”
“Not when I was younger. It was all that travel that got me down. I’d wake up in the morning and didn’t know what town I was in. Drinking kinda softened the edges, you know what I mean.”
“Was it dangerous on the road? Were you afraid of getting robbed? Was that why you bought that gun down in Florida?”
Johnny laughed, “If anybody give us trouble, we would have sicced Big Mama on ‘em. Didn’t need me no gun. I could take of myself. I always wanted a pistol since I was a kid. Played cowboys and Indians out in the alley. Liked to wave it around like the Lone Ranger. Driving down the highway, I’d stick that pistol out the window and shoot holes in Burma Shave signs. When I had me too much vodka, I’d put it out the hotel window and shoot a few rounds off for fun.”
St. Peter wanted to reach over the desk and give Johnny a good shake, but the time for shaking was past. “You could have hurt somebody.”
“I was just funning. I meant no harm to no one.”
“Johnny, if there is a time for truth telling, it’s now. Did you mean to kill yourself?”
“I know the Lord don’t like people killing themselves. I didn’t kill myself. I wasn’t playing no Russian roulette. I was just drinking vodka and playing around. My tooth was aching bad. I wasn’t sure I could go back on stage after intermission. I put an aspirin against my tooth. Dear Lord, I sure am sorry for being such an ignorant fool. I was waving that .22 around. Pointing it at Olivia – sure glad I didn’t kill that sweet lady– and her friend Mary and her friend a fella I barely knew. One, two, three clicks, and I am laughing. That fella didn’t like me pointing the gun at his girl and him. If you want to point it, point it at yourself he says. Always up for a dare, I put the barrel to my forehead, ‘I’ll show you it won’t shoot‘ I said. I heard it fire, felt the heat against my face. That’s all I remember.” Johnny Ace shook his head side to side, tears running down his cheeks.
He looked up, one of the few times he looked straight into St. Peter’s eyes. “It don’t look good, does it? I can smell the brimstone.”
St. Peter prided himself (but not to the level of a sin) on keeping calm in the face of lives cut short or wasted. The why and when of death was God’s department. God had his reasons beyond St. Peter’s understanding. God gave man free will, and so St. Peter’s anger was directed at Johnny Ace. An anger that surprised him. A beautiful voice. A wasted gift. Just twenty-five. Dead from foolish recklessness on the day of Christ’s birth upset him even more. How could he be angry at a child who didn’t know better. Johnny Ace was a man child, a boy in a grown man’s sharkskin suit.
“Sir, all I ever wanted to do is make music. To sing. The folks at Duke records sent me to a tailor. Bought me some fine clothes. They wanted me to look high class they said, not like some sharecropper straight out of the cotton fields. I had to look as smooth as my voice. I didn’t sing rough like Howlin’ or Muddy. They bought me a Cadillac, and I sure did like driving around in that car. But true, I didn’t need all that to make music. I played down on Beale Street for nothing. I just wanted to sing, that’s all. Maybe I could have been another Nat King Cole.”
He was a child not fit for the hard ways of the music business. St. Peter’s anger turned to sympathy. He felt sorry for Johnny Ace. All he knew was music.
“I had me a new song, ‘Pledging My Love.‘ Just out a few days. It was going to be a hit. You could bet on it.”
“Can you sing it for me, Johnny.”
“Johnny Otis played some sweet vibraphone, but I’ll try.” Johnny Ace hummed the melody, then eyes closed began to sing, “Forever, my darling, our love will be true.” The words were simple, Johnny Ace’s voice, clear and direct. He was singing not to make a dollar. He was singing from the heart. St. Peter heard the rustle of angel wings. He turned to see a half dozen angels crowded behind the gate listening to Johnny Ace.
St. Peter sent his silent thoughts to God. How could you silence that voice?How could you punish a man who always was and would be a child? How could God deny the blessed of heaven the sweetness of Johnny Ace’s voice? St. Peter waited for God’s decision. God did not usually take so long to decide.
St. Peter waited. He heard a faint divine humming, the tintinnabulation of starlight turned into sound, the soft melody of “Pledging My Love.” St. Peter smiled. He put his hand on Johnny Ace’s arm and led him to the gate. He opened the gate.
“Join the angel choir, Johnny.”
Johnny Ace passed through the gate. His fine sharkskin suit fell from his body, his diamond ring melted into the heavenly ether. With a few steps all that remained of Johnny Ace was the memory of his sweet, gentle voice and his imperfect soul.
Jeffrey Hantover is a writer living in New York. The author of three novels and a novella, his poetry and short fiction have appeared in various literary journals including Flora Fiction.
Altered by Christina Rousseau
There’s a peculiar amount of freedom
that comes with losing everything.
The colors of my life dance around me
as they are stripped away.
Rosy reds of my blood that once washed my cheeks
reminding me that I could feel.
Soft purples of being held.
They gather on my skin and detach from it,
breaking away like the flaky layers of the
dreams it took to make them so.
And I, still enamored by the yellows of my past—
clenching to its innocence, soon learn
to let even those go.
I bid the greens goodbye as they whirl
around my ankles, tickling my toes for the
last time—plucking my raveled roots.
Every shade, shape, and texture
that fashioned this life.
The cranks and shifts of gears.
The buzzing and bustling of bark and stone.
The weary whistling of desire and fear.
I watch as it all falls in front of me.
Rising up and diving from the sky as a hawk
would in pursuit of its prey.
And in the ghastly gore of mash and matter
I sit still enough to see it perish.
In every life this moment awaits.
The refined sentence to see yourself die.
All your colors, your glory, your refuge
gutted and burned.
So that you may start again.
C. S. Rousseau is a writer and visual artist based in New Orleans, Louisiana.
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